The extraordinary lobbying campaign on behalf of the sometime Marxist/Islamist cult/terrorist group known as the Mujahedin-e Khalq is getting waged on ever more fronts. The specific objective is to get the Obama administration to remove the MEK from the list of foreign terrorist organizations. Wherever the money to fund the campaign is coming from, some of the largest expenditures so far have been in the form of fat speaking fees to notables who are willing to accept the check and come out in favor of delisting the group. Some of these high-profile hired advocates later acknowledged they did not have all that much knowledge about the MEK.
Having purchased advocacy at the high end, the organizers of the campaign are now buying it at the low end. For a demonstration outside the State Department on Friday, demonstrators who, it is probably fair to say, know even less about the MEK than the big-name speakers were bussed in from as far as New York City. Many demonstrators were provided not only the transportation but also in some cases lodging and meals. One of the participants, a 23-year-old homeless man from Staten Island named Melvin Santiago, said he learned about the demonstration from a friend who in turn got word of it through a flyer distributed in front of a church—where the friend, said Santiago, “usually goes for the food pantry.”
Those who have sold their advocacy for big bucks deserve shame; those who have done so for a meal or two maybe deserve our pity. Those who have gotten mixed up in the campaign through a crude belief that Iran is an enemy and the enemy of my enemy is my friend need to realize that being an enemy's enemy does not make one a friend. Those who have some notion that the MEK can serve as a force for opposing authoritarianism in Iran are badly mistaken about the nature of the group—a good description of which is in a recent piece by Elizabeth Rubin in the New York Times. The most telling comments about the MEK are from leaders of the Green Movement in Iran, who point out that any rehabilitation of the MEK—which has almost no popular support within Iran, especially ever since it functioned as an arm of Saddam Hussein's security forces—would only serve to discredit pro-democracy forces in Iran.
Even setting all that aside, there is an important procedural issue involved. On this issue alone, the pro-MEK campaign is objectionable. The decision of the secretary of state that the campaign is attempting to influence is not some subjective act of crafting policy. It is supposed to be a straightforward application of the terms of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which created the formal list of foreign terrorist organizations (creation of such a list having been necessitated by other provisions in the act, such as the criminalization of material support to terrorist groups). The procedure for listing or recertifying FTOs, as they are called, involves not only the State Department but also the Justice Department and the intelligence community. It is a long legal and administrative procedure, as I can testify from having been involved in the creation of the initial list of FTOs after passage of the 1996 law. The criteria to be applied involve such things as involvement in terrorist activity and effects on U.S. interests (which is not to be equated with terrorist attacks being directed against U.S. targets). Having conducted an anti-U.S. terrorist attack recently is not one of the criteria; if it were, many current FTOs—such as Lebanese Hizballah—would not be on the list.
Abbas Milani, in an otherwise informative piece in these spaces about the MEK, unfortunately suggests an equivalence between the well-funded pro-MEK campaign and statements that have been critical of the campaign and the group. Milani even talks about Iranian regime funding of anti-MEK lobbyists. (That last point is a little puzzling. The regime assuredly hates the MEK as much as most Iranians do and, if the group were delisted, would get plenty of mileage from loudly proclaiming that this action shows how phony is any U.S. affirmation of supporting democracy in Iran. But precisely for that reason, and because of how the action would help to discredit the democratic opposition in Iran, the more strategically minded hardliners in the regime probably would quietly welcome delisting.) Whatever the Iranian regime may be doing, the statements critical of the pro-MEK campaign that I am familiar with (and have participated in myself) have nothing to do with the regime, and they are not an attempt to lobby the secretary of state. Instead, they are a calling to account of the large and illegitimate campaign that is trying to pressure the secretary. The calling to account would not be necessary if the pro-MEK campaign were not being waged. The MEK has been recertified as an FTO several times in the past with no noise about it in the street, on speakers' platforms or in opinion columns.
Comments
I cannot understand the authors’ real intent. I was in the protests just came back. First of all I have many Iranian friends in Iran and outside , I was also in touch with sources during the 2009 election protests; as a journalist, it is a shame to use this craft to misrepresent or impose prejudged ideas that only culminate hate and bloodshed. This article does not provide a basic independent and factual reporting and since it is engaged in smearing a specific organization which, has members under possible threat of massacre in a remote desert in Iraq, therefore does not fulfill the standard principles of Journalism. About popularity of the group, neither you nor I , can judge that. Since none of us have been to Iran, and none have speculatively ad comprehensively been able to conduct a fair and democratic poll on the issue. Therefore it is in our best interest to leave that to Iranians to figure out. About the fund issue, preparing for a campaign is no big deal. I have known and corresponded with many Presidential Candidates who have official done the same.! The rest of the information put out is on the same level of worth. I do therefore suggest that my good colleague here explains his innate interest in smearing these people?
I believe I spoke too early. This is all I needed to find out. It seems Mr.Pillar you have been challenged with what is very clearly called "the hanging man" test. You are actually confessing to the fact that you give credit to the butchers here, and lust to destroy the victim? I would like to refer you to former FBI head Luis Freeh who is more than an expert in "terror" listings who had confessed not to have been , even remotely, aware of what the State department at the time had implanted for political reasons " the MEK" into the FTO list. He also explained that mysteriously however, the "top" were too engaged in persuading him to actually say, he had found evidence that proved the MEK to be a terrorist org. So Mr. Pillar, more than "Experts" have already played that card.. Please tell us what other "new evidence is there to prove your expertise" on the issue. Prey, let us hear thy words!
I disagree with Paul Pillar in the way he sees the world. His article “The Lobbying that shouldn’t be Happening” in National Interest on August 27 shows clearly how he looks at the world. In fact, Paul Pillar's state of mind is apparently the lobby kind, which is to consider whoever is advocating a cause does that for a specific, measurable, material and personal benefit. For him, more than thirty former US authorities who recommend delisting the main Iranian opposition group, the MEK, from State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) have all done this, and do this, for money. He even claims, presumably thinks, that those people who have participated in a rally on August 26 in front of the State Department were paid and bussed to Washington from as far as New York City.Fortunately, I do not share his vision of the world, so I am not really considering himself as somebody being paid by the pro-Iranian regime’s lobby, in spite of his fervent defense of the latter. But as an Iranian scholar who has studied his country's situation continuously for more than 30 years, I can assure Paul Pillar that his knowledge of the Iranian resistance movement, notably the MEK, is far inferior to that of a good number of the people who participated in August 26 rally in Washington.But while lack of knowledge does not forcibly prevent somebody to express his views, it might however put him in serious trouble when he accuses a legitimate opposition movement of having "functioned as an arm of Saddam Hussein's security forces". He might ignore that this allegation is incriminating, among others, the State Department who was involved in interviewing every member of the MEK in camp Ashraf in Iraq in 2004, and finally not even one single person among those interviewed was accused of any illegal act, and they were all given protected person status under the Forth Geneva Convention. It is of course not conceivable that US security apparatus and State Department give protected person status to anybody considered to have been an arm of Saddam's security forces.Pillar goes a long way to reason that the decision to list the MEK is a “straightforward application of the terms of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996”, a “long and administrative procedure” and not an act of “crafting policy”, to be influenced by political campaigning. He seems to have been too much engaged in the creation of the FTO list those days, so he has missed the confirmation by a senior White House official in the Los Angeles Times of October 9, 1997 stating that the MEK had been put on the FTO list as a “goodwill gesture” towards Iran. Martin Indyk, then Assistant Secretary of States for Near Eastern Affairs was quoted in September 2002 by Newsweek confirming that the listing was part of Clinton administration’s policy of rapprochement with the Iranian regime. On October 21, 2004, according to an AFP news bulletin, the European Union’s negotiating team with the Iranian regime proposed to continue “considering the MEK a terrorist organization” if the Iranian regime stopped enriching uranium. Are these examples of the “straightforward application of the terms of law”, or shameful policy crafting?Paul Pillar is right to warn that the US affirmation of supporting democracy in Iran might look phony, but not because of delisting the MEK, as he claims, but on the contrary, for having made the FTO listing a bargaining chip in cheap negotiations with one of the bloodiest regimes of our time.Paul Pillar is again right when he says that "the MEK has been recertified as an FTO several times in the past with no noise about it", and further claims that the pro-regime lobby "would not be necessary if the pro-MEK campaign were not being waged." Sure enough, some people in Washington and many more in Tehran would have been happier that way, but the exact point of the campaign is to make enough noise so that the public opinion, in spite of the smoke screen created by the pro-regime lobby, realizes how "policy crafting" has been done, for years, in silence.And of course there is an added reason: the FTO list has been used as one pretext for a deadly attack on April 8, 2011, against the main MEK camp in Iraq called Ashraf. 34 people were killed, and around 500 severely wounded. Although formally under US and Iraqi protection, the unarmed residents of camp Ashraf might at any moment become victims of another attack, so it is vital to wipe away that pretext.One last point: Paul Pillar criticizes Abbas Milani, for having mentioned that a pro-Iranian regime lobby is active in Washington, to keep the MEK listed. In fact, this is virtually the only precise and valuable part in Mr. Milani's article on the issue. Unlike Pillar, Milani acknowledges that there is a war going on, between the pro and anti regime forces on this issue. The Iranian people know very well about this war, so does the MEK, who has lost more than 120000 of its members to this struggle. There is no third party to this war, anyone claiming to represent that imaginary party in fact belongs to one of the two warring parties. Paul Pillar, even the so-called Green movement, are no exceptions.