The Mujahedin-e Khalq (MKO) craves legitimacy. It pays retired politicians and government officials five- and sometimes six-figure honoraria in exchange for endorsements at rallies whose crowds it inflates by paying random students to attend in exchange for a free trip to Paris. Many of the American officials attending MKO rallies are ignorant of the group’s ideology, its history of terrorism against Americans, its support of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, its anti-American indoctrination, its embrace of Saddam Hussein, and the opacity surrounding the true source of its income, if not outright tax evasion.
Iranians deeply resent the group for its continued embrace of terror, as well as its cult-like behavior. That its leader Maryam Rajavi has held her position for 40 years hardly builds confidence in her supposed commitment to democracy. There is an irony, too, that her spokesman Ali Safavi will cast wild aspersions against critics who question the group’s democratic credentials and outlook, but then refuse challenges to identify even a single time when he criticized or differed in policy with Rajavi.
The FBI, which handles most senior security clearances, does not clear Mujahedin-e Khalq members.
Iranian Americans have contributed disproportionately to American society and the American economy. Iranians are overrepresented in medicine, engineering, and in academe. They serve in the U.S. military and across the U.S. government. While these Iranians are Americans first, grateful for the protection the United States gave them when they fled religious dictatorship, they care about the country from which their families came and have strong opinions about its politics. Some lionize Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late shah. Others come from families associated with the Tudeh, the left-of-center party that rallied around former Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. Still others are constitutionalists or republicans. Those Iranian Americans who join the U.S. government submit themselves to ordinary and even enhanced security clearances without difficulty.
Here, though, the Mujahedin-e Khalq is an outlier. The FBI, which handles most senior security clearances, does not clear Mujahedin-e Khalq members. The members of the cult refuse to face polygraphs and, when they do, reflect deceptiveness.
MKO behavior is strange in other ways. The MKO may talk a good game in its Paris rallies, but how many MKO members who are U.S. citizens or green card holders actually serve in the U.S. military? If the MKO is as pro-American as they say and has nothing to hide, why such a strange omission? Indeed, of all immigrant and political groups who come to America, the MKO may be alone in eschewing such service.
Other elements of the Mujahedin-e Khalq reality should also raise red flags among those considering accepting its cash. Safavi can vehemently deny that the MKO is a cult, but he distracts from the simple fact that few if any children of MKO members—they seldom marry outside their political movement—attend public schools or broader multicultural schools. Cults thrive by isolating members. The isolation that MKO children endure is extreme.
By this metric, there appears to be little difference between the Mujahedin-e Khalq’s American wing and Branch Davidians, Unification Church, or People’s Temple. Each may have had the right to their beliefs and politics so long as they did not contravene U.S. law, but in each case, the rhetoric of public-facing leaders reflected less the groups’ reality than did the internal isolation their children suffered. American officials should be very, very cautious when signing onto the MKO’s talking points or accepting their claims. Sometimes an honorarium is not worth the embarrassment sure to follow.
