The Mujahedin-E Khalq (MEK) was formed in 1965 by a group of leftist students in Iran who opposed the regime under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.[1] Its leaders are Massoud Rajavi and his wife, Maryam Rajavi.[2] Its military wing, the National Liberation Army of Iran (NLA) and its political wing, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), facilitate the goals of the MEK.[3]
Throughout the 1970s, the MEK targeted U.S. forces and offices in Iran.[4] Although the group denies any involvement, the U.S. State Department alleged that the MEK assisted in the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.[5] Following the overthrow of the Shah, the MEK was initially supportive of the new regime led by Ayatollah Khomeini.[6] However, the MEK did not agree with Khomeini’s post-revolutionary politics, which eventually caused a falling out between the MEK and the new administration, forcing the leaders to flee to Paris.[7] In 1981, Massoud Rajavi started the NCRI.[8] The NCRI was conceived as an umbrella organization for dissident Iranian groups that would lobby western governments and presented itself as a government-in-exile. [9] In 1986, the NCRI and the leadership of MEK were expelled from France following a warm up in relations between Iran and France; they subsequently relocated to Iraq. [10]
Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the MEK received support primarily from Saddam Hussein and was granted patronage in Iraq along the border shared with Iran.[11] MEK forces were involved in bloody exchanges during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, and from their new base in Iraq they were able to organize and execute several large scale terrorist operations over the course of the 1990s and early 2000s. [12] After the onset of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the MEK negotiated a ceasefire with coalition forces following which they surrendered the weapons. [13] The group’s members were confined to Camp Ashraf. [14] Following years of lobbying by pro-MEK figures in the United States and the Iranian diaspora around the world, the MEK finally succeeded in being removed from the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organization list in 2012. [15] View full narrative