All of this is little more than Straussian neocon nonsense, a feeble-minded attempt to shift blame on Iran in the lead-up to a shock and awe campaign to be unleashed against that country next month or early this summer. First and foremost, if we are to believe Rajavi’s fairy tale, we have to assume that the religious Shia leadership in Iran would bomb their own holy shrines “as part of a war … in Iraq against its people,” who are primarily Shia. “Like the tombs of the Prophet Mohammed, Imam Ali and Imam Hussain, no self-respecting Muslim, whether Shi’ite or Sunni, would ever think of attacking such a place,” notes Richard Steven Hack. No doubt Maryam Rajavi realizes this, but then she is reading from a Straussian neocon script. Moreover, MEK entertains visions of grandeur, fully expecting to rule Iran in the wake of the scheduled Anglo-American attack (back in August of 1993, NCRI selected Rajavi to serve as the interim president in Iran in the event that the mullahs are overthrown).

In fact, it is appropriate to view Rajavi as the leader of a cult. Massoud (often called the “Pol Pot” of Iran) and Maryam Rajavi “exercise absolute control over the group’s rank-and-file, requiring that members worship them and practice Mao-style self-denunciations,” explains the Center for Cooperative Research. “Many of the MEK’s members are tricked into joining the group. For example, the parents of Roshan Amini [told] the Christian Science Monitor in 2003 that their son joined because he had been told he would be able to complete two school grades in one year and earn a place in college. But after joining, Amini was not permitted to leave.”

In 1997, the U.S. State Department listed MEK as a terrorist organization (during the 1970s, MEK killed U.S. military personnel and civilians working on defense projects in Tehran and supported the takeover in 1979 of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran; in 1981, MEK detonated bombs in the head office of the Islamic Republic Party and the Premier’s office, killing some 70 high-ranking Iranian officials, including Chief Justice Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, President Mohammad-Ali Rajaei, and Premier Mohammad-Javad Bahonar, according to the State Department).

In June, 2003, after French authorities raided the MEK compound, nine members across Europe set themselves on fire in protest and critics claimed that the self-immolations were ordered by MEK’s leadership.

In May, 2005, Human Rights Watch documented torture in MEK camps (MEK critics were tortured, beaten, and subjected to prolonged detention in solitary confinement at military camps in Iraq).

Of course, for the Straussian neocons, it does not matter that Maryam Rajavi and the followers of MEK are certified nut cases and sadistic sociopaths.

MEK “has been backed … by right-wing lawmakers, a group of hardline neoconservatives and retired military officers called the Iran Policy Committee (IPC), and some U.S. officials—particularly in the Pentagon—who believe that the MEK could be used to help destabilize the Iranian regime, if not eventually overthrow it in conjunction with U.S. military strikes against selected targets,” writes Jim Lobe. “While the group’s supporters in the Pentagon so far have succeeded in protecting the several thousand MEK militants based at Camp Ashraf near the Iranian border from being dispersed or deported, they have failed to persuade the U.S. State Department to take the group off its terrorist list, to which it was added in 1997 based on its attacks during the 1970s against U.S. military contractors and its participation in the 1979 seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. The European Union (EU) also cites the MEK as a terrorist organization.”

“The MEK has been registered by the State Department as a terrorist organization for the past 10 years, but now neo-conservative factions of the Bush administration are lobbying hard to remove it from the list,” explains an editorial posted on the Bellaciao website. “Should the MEK end up benefiting from US pro-democracy largesse, it would send a clear message to people inside Iran that Washington funds groups that engage in terrorist activity.”

Of course, this is hardly new, considering the United States has a long and sordid history of supporting and funding terrorists, most notably the hobgoblin of the engineered “clash of civilizations” conflict, Osama bin Laden, who was until his demise a prized CIA asset.

In fact, the CIA was responsible for overthrowing the democratically elected leader of Iran, Mohammad Mossadeq, and installing and training (with help from the Israeli Mossad) the brutal SAVAK secret police. It is interesting to note that CIA-sponsored coup was code-named Ajax—the brand name of a scouring powder—because the CIA intended to “wash the red out” of Iran (red as in communist). It is ironic now, some fifty years later, the neocons want to use a group of Mao-inspired terrorists in their effort to reduce Iran to a smoldering heap of ethnic and religious strife.