Depending on who you ask, the MEK is extremely popular with the Iranian population or it is a cult-like organization who lacks popular support within Iran itself. The reality is that the MEK has shown itself to be a truly moderate option to the current Iranian regime. As a part of the larger coalition of Iranian opposition groups, known as the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the MEK has worked to build relationship within the international community and has repeatedly criticized the Iranian government, calling it a “regime” that needs to be ousted.
The NCRI claims that as long as the ruling mullahs are in power in Iran, there can’t be any true democratic reform. They point to the multiple instances of executions, public floggings, torture and long prison sentences for political prisoners as proof that the Iranian government doesn’t want to make real changes, but they want to maintain their theocratic power and see it spread throughout the Middle East. This ideology is built on oppressing the Iranian people. Even on their own state television and media outlets, Iranian government leaders have admitted to wide-spread fraud and that it is a structural problem of the Iranian regime.
“In a systemic corruption, the entities responsible for dealing with corruption are themselves affected by it,” said former Iranian regime’s MP Ahmad Tavakkoli to a Quds Force new agency in early February.
The people of Iran are the ones hardest hit by an economic policy that cares for those on top at the expense of those that they are supposed to serve. Unemployment is high, industrial towns are being shut down and those that are not have been run at less than half their capacity.
Do the actions of Iran support this reality? Throughout the U.S.-Iranian relations of the last few decades, it has been obvious that Iran doesn’t hold up their end of the bargain in any agreement. While they want the benefits of sanctions being waived, they are unlikely to stop testing ballistic missiles or working toward a nuclear weapon.
The NCRI, along with the MEK, were against the nuclear deal with Iran, noting that economic sanctions were key to bringing Iran to the table, but to create real change, the Iranian regime needed to go. Since the sanctions were waived as part of the 2015 nuclear deal, the funds have not trickled down into the Iranian economy, as were initially anticipated, due to the various levels of corruption within the government and at the local level.
The only real beneficiaries have been the IRGC, who control the energy production and multiple other industries within Iran. “Critics say the MEK has little or no support inside Iran, in part because it opposes the nuclear deal. That deal is extremely popular on the Iranian street. It partially ends Iran’s international isolation and should, at least in theory, boost Iran’s anemic economy,” said Michael J. Totten, a journalist with World Affairs.
In 1997, US President Bill Clinton added Iran’s People’s Mujahadeen (Mujahideen Khalq in Persian, or MEK) to the list of designated foreign terrorist organizations, and in 2012 his wife Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took them off.
Several sources acknowledge that the MEK was originally given a designation of terrorist organization by the U.S. in order to improve relations with Iran during the 1990s. This was after the allegedly moderate Mohammad Khatami won the presidential election 1997. Iran has demonstrated since then that the mullahs are incapable of being “moderate”.
Their involvement in Syria, Iraq and Yemen are just a few of the examples of how Iran has continued to export terrorism into the region. They have created multiple splinter groups that have gone on to become terrorist organizations in their own right.
On the other hand, the MEK and the NCRI have built an international coalition. They have a 10-point platform meant to build a democratic Iran where religion and state are separated. Whatever their history, it is clear that the MEK has become the liberal and moderate answer to the current Iranian regime theocratic and totalitarian rule.
“What I do know, without any doubt whatsoever, is that whatever these people were in the 1970s, today they’re genuine liberals and moderates. They are not fake moderates of the Muslim Brotherhood or the Iranian presidency,” said Totten.