- 19 August 2011
- 1 Comments
- MEK, Neo-Con Agenda

Iran Policy Committee head Raymond Tanter with members of the MEK's political wing, the NCRI
The Iran Policy Committee–a Washington organization dedicated primarily to spreading pro-MEK propaganda on Capitol Hill and elsewhere around Washington–organized an event at the National Press Club yesterday that is raising eyebrows.
It wasn’t the spectacle of former U.S. officials rehashing MEK-prepared talking points and referring to MEK as the “main opposition”–this we have all grown accustomed to (especially now that the big money machinations behind these efforts have exposed by the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Huffington Post).
It also came as no shock when the Iran Policy Committee’s head, Raymond Tanter, invoked the death of Neda Agha Soltan (while obliviously pulling up a picture of a completely different person).
It wasn’t even surprising that Tanter referred to the Green Movement’s Mir Hossein Mousavi – who has been under house arrest since February – as a “sell out,” particularly since the Green Movement has so unequivocally expressed its opposition to the MEK and the use of violence in the struggle for democracy.
No, the surprise came when the panel suggested the MEK should be taken off the terror list so they could stage a “tit for tat” campaign of attacks within Iran.
Mujahedin Supporters Envision “Tit for Tat” Campaign Against Iran:
Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney said an MEK delisting should be part of a campaign of “proactive actions” against Tehran. The MEK, he said, is the only “credible overt political-military counterforce to the Iranian regime.”
“We need a very active tit for tat policy,” said McInerney. “So every time they kill Americans, they have an accident in Iran.”
John Sano, formerly of the Central Intelligence Agency, echoed those sentiments.
“I agree one hundred percent with what the General just said, it’s got to be tit for tat. We have known that the Iranians have been in Iraq talking to our enemies. We know that the MOIS has been in Iraq causing harm to U.S. personnel. And the only thing that can counter that is force,” Sano said. “I know that may sound too militaristic, but you have to go with what your enemy understands.”
I don’t think there has been a clearer sign that the campaign for delisting the MEK has little to do with supporting democracy in Iran or humanitarian concerns about Camp Ashraf but is instead central to a push to escalate a military confrontation with Iran.
The lesson of recent history–the disastrous war of choice in Iraq–has clearly not sunk in with this crowd. But coming just one day before the anniversary of the 1953 coup d’état that deposed Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh (a coup that pro-sanctions, pro-war Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum recently endorsed as bringing “freedom” to Iranians), yesterday’s conference helped emphasize that the empirical history of miscalculated interventions and adventures in Iran have been completely lost on Washington’s pro-war establishment.
A full write-up from the event is after the jump.