A darling of US conservatives, Iran’s top opposition group may face an uncertain future

A darling of US conservatives, Iran’s top opposition group may face an uncertain future

CNN-July 10th,2023

By Nadeen Ebrahim,

Its annual conferences have attracted the who’s-who of right-wing and hawkish, conservative politicians from the West, including former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former United States National Security Adviser John Bolton and ex-Vice President Mike Pence.

But recent setbacks for the most powerful Iranian opposition group have some observers wondering whether its glory days are numbered.

A shadowy dissident group in exile, the Mujahadin-e Khalq (MeK) was once a US-designated terrorist group but today counts prominent anti-Iran Western politicians as key allies. Iran accuses it of terrorism, saying it carried out a series of attacks in the 1980s. The MeK denies those charges.

It is one of the best-organized opposition groups confronting the Islamic Republic, but it has little support among Iranians, largely due to its violent past and for having supported Iraqi President Saddam Hussein during his almost decade-long war with Iran.

However, analysts say that recent diplomatic activity between Iran and its foes however may not bode well for the group.

In the span of one week, the MeK last month witnessed a rare raid on its sprawling base in Albania, where it is headquartered, as well as a brief ban on a planned annual rally in France, where it has held such events for several years.

The MeK believes these actions were part of a “policy of appeasement” of the regime in Tehran, a top representative from the group told CNN in an email interview.

“It became clear that the security concerns were simply a pretext to placate the clerical regime,” Shahin Gobadi, a Paris-based member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the political arm of the MeK, told CNN, referring to the French ban.

Albanian police said the June raid on the MeK’s Ashraf 3 camp near the capital Tirana was due to suspicions that the group was involved in political activity, according to local media. Political activity is banned under the agreement that allows them to stay in Albania. One person was killed in the raid, and police denied they were responsible for the death.

Iran welcomed the raid, and last week an Iranian official said that some of the seized hard drives arrived in his country, and that Iranian experts were working on data recovery to identify the group’s agents and sabotage cells, according Iranian state media.

The MeK called on Albania to clarify whether any of the hard drives were indeed sent to Iran.