Israeli intelligence teams up with terror group-turned-cult to kill Iranian nuclear scientists

If this is true, it is really disturbing.  US officials leaked to NBC Israel is teaming with the Mujahideen e-Khalq (MEK) to kill Iranian nuclear scientists.  

Five Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed since 2007, mostly by car bombs.  The Iranian government said it discovered the connection between Israeli intel forces and the MEK after the 2010 arrest of a would-be assassin who failed in his mission to kill a scientist.

There are also unconfirmed reports in the Israeli press that Israel and the MEK were involved in the November 12, 2011, explosion that destroyed an Iranian missile research and development site in Bin Kaneh, 30 miles outside Tehran.  

Two US officials confirmed the partnership, one saying, "All your inclinations are correct." Israel's Foreign Ministry declined to comment and the MEK said the allegations were "absolutely false."

Formed in 1965 by a group of radical Tehran University students convinced Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was a puppet of the West, the MEK, or the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI), aimed to spark an armed struggle based on Marxist-Islamist ideology and lead the people in a revolt against the government.  The organization focused on the indoctrination and training in urban guerilla warfare of a small core of activists in its first five years.  It worked closely with the Tudeh (Communist) party throughout the 1970s and developed close ties with the Soviet Union, Cuba, East Germany, and other leftist organizations throughout the world.  An example of the MEK’s outreach to what it perceived to be like-minded international movements was in 1970 when thirteen members traveled to Jordan and Lebanon to receive military training inside Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) camps.  After failed street protests against the Shah in the 1980s, they were exiled to Iraq, where they recently have been kicked out of Camp Ashraf.  

The MEK is just about universally despised at home. I can't imagine a better way to unite Iranians around their regime than to team Israel and the MEK against them.  Even those who share the goal of removing the current regime from power, such as the youth-led Green movement that was so brutally repressed following fixed presidential elections in 2009, reject the group.  Suspicious of its aims and unsupportive of its violent tendencies, the democracy activists seek support at home, as opposed to the MEK’s high profile courtship of Western backing.  According to Zahra Rahnavard, women’s rights activist and wife of Green Movement leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, “The MEK can't be part of the Green Movement. This bankrupt political group is now making some laughable claims, but the Green Movement and the MEK have a wall between them and all of us, including myself, Mr. Mousavi, Mr. [Mohammad] Khatami, and Mr. [Mehdi] Karroubi.”  Not only are the MEK's violent tendencies rejected, but many in Iran see the organization and traitorous terrorists who are willing not only to kill, but to kill their own people. Further, the fact that the MEK sided with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war is unforgivable.   The destruction wrought by that war on Iranian society is difficult to fathom from the outside—an entire generation of men wiped out, marched to their deaths for naught. 

The organization was placed on the US list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) when the list was created in 1997.  The MEK has a long history of targeting Americans and Iranians abroad and at home through hostage taking, assassinations, and bombings.  

The MEK's lobbying prowess on Capitol Hill is top notch. For years, its political arm was practically the only Iranian-American group organized for lobbying. Drawing upon its deep pocket from undisclosed sources, the MEK asserts it speaks for the people of Iran, demands democracy for its people, and seeks to work with the US to undermine the Islamic Republic.  These efforts have been remarkably successful. In 2011--not a year of bipartisanship, to say the least-the MEK was able to get 51 Democrats and 45 Republicans to sign a resolution calling on State to remove the MEK from the list of FTOs.  

It also counts Howard Dean, Rudy Giuliani, former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) Hugh Shelton and Peter Pace, Wesley Clark, General James Jones, former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, former intel officials Dennis Blair and Michael Haden, former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, and former congressman and 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton among its supporters.  At least a handful of these officials receive generous speaking fees from the group.  

There has been pushback by United States officials against changing the designation of the MEK as a terrorist organization. Cofer Black, the Department of State’s former counterterrorism coordinator, said, “The US government does not negotiate with terrorists. The MEK’s opposition to the Iranian government does not change the fact that they are a terrorist organization.”   As Secretary of State, Colin Powell said, “Any flirtation with the MEK would undermine Washington’s stand against terrorism.”   Current Obama administration officials have been less explicit. In a October 27, 2011, hearing before the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would only say State is currently reviewing the designation of MEK as a terrorist organization.

Cooperation between Israeli intelligence forces and the MEK is a publicity coup for the Iranian regime and further alienates any sections of Iranian society who may be not completely supportive or adamant about Iran's nuclear program.  While the partnership may make short-term gains by taking out a few scientists or program sites, it is not a long term solution and only makes the situation more polarized and emotionally fraught.