The National Council of Resistance of Iran With Its MEK Members, Goes on Offensive at Weekend Events

By Jubin Katiraie

This weekend in a cavernous convention hall outside of Paris, over 100,000 flag waving, foot-stomping, cheering supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran ( consisted of MEK/PMOI and other groups and personalities) gathered for their annual meeting.

Part pep rally and part television programming for a global audience, the annual event has for years been focused on galvanizing support for the MEK and drawing attention to the plight of dissident refugees sheltering in squalid camps inside Iraq and subject to frequent attacks from Iranian-backed forces resulting in score of deaths.

What was different this year was that all of MEK members —nearly 3,000 of them—were safely evacuated to a welcoming Albania as part of long-delayed resettlement program and escaped the clutches of an Iranian regime that seemed hell-bent on eradicating any sign of an indigenous Iranian resistance movement.

In a dramatic cinematic touch, a satellite feed from Tirana, Albania of the 3,000 resettled MEK members was beamed into the main Paris rally to the delight of the participants and vice-versa in what could be considered the world’s largest video conference call.

The atmosphere bordered on giddy as the MEK logged several positive developments over the past few months, not the least of which was the survival of their besieged members in Iraq.

The movement benefitted from a sea change in political fortunes with the departure of the Obama administration and the incoming Trump administration taking a decidedly harder tone with the Iranian regime, along with a Republican-controlled Congress that has made it a legislative priority to re-impose economic sanctions on Iranian regime for its ballistic missile program and sponsorship of terrorism.

The Iranian resistance movement, led by the National Council of Resistance of Iran which counts as its members human rights groups and the People’s Mojahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK), experienced a similar resurgence within Iran itself as the Iranian political landscape experienced what can only be described as a significant earthquake during presidential elections this year.

Top mullah Ali Khamenei and his personally selected councils did an admirable job vetting thousands of candidates for president to just six men, all of whom were old hands within the clerical bureaucracy, but Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guard Corps which controls virtually all of the Iranian economy, made a move to push incumbent Hassan Rouhani out and install Ebrahim Raisi whose dubious claim to fame was to be part of a “death commission” that helped sentence 30,000 Iranian dissidents mainly MEK members and supports to death in 1988.

The attempted swap failed and the regime had to resort to its usual ballot box stuffing to make it look like there was an overwhelming turnout from an electorate that was decidedly unenthusiastic over its choices or lack thereof.

In fact, the NCRI and its leader, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, got an unexpected boost with some of the most overt and daring signs of public protest yet in Iran under the mullah’s rule with the hanging of banners and signs bearing Mrs. Rajavi’s picture throughout Tehran and other provinces.

The mere act of publicly supporting the banned MEK can get you imprisoned and executed in record time, but that did not deter what seemed by a considerably larger number of clandestine protestors, including a steady stream that secretly filmed themselves (without their faces showing) clapping in rhythm to a banned resistance song in front of iconic Iranian landmarks.

The parallel changes in fortunes in the U.S. and in Iran produced a cavalcade of speakers ranging from noted American politicos such as former Speaker Newt Gingrich, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and former FBI director Louis Freeh to human rights activists Ingrid Betancourt of Columbia and Rama Yade, French human rights minister, taking the podium to pronounce a common theme: The Iranian regime was in trouble internally and it was time for the world to align itself with the Iranian resistance movement.

Gingrich, ever the professorial lecturer, reminded the audience of President Ronald Reagan’s decision to support a nascent Solidarity union movement led by a then-unknown welder named Lech Walesa in helping topple Poland’s communist regime and spark and the beginning of the end of the Cold War.

A similar move to endorse the NCRI and Mrs. Rajavi might be the catalyst necessary to ignite regime change within Iran according to several speakers, including former Senator and vice-presidential candidate Joe Lieberman.

Most intriguing was the unity shown by a parade of speakers and delegations from assorted Arab nations, led by Saudi Prince Turki bin Faisal, who emphasized how radically things had shifted in the Middle East by labeling Iran the center of all of the turmoil the region is currently experiencing.

It was a notion hard to ignore since Iranian forces and support are now involved in a vast area including Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Bahrain, and Pakistan in a variety of proxy conflicts, terrorist actions and efforts to overthrow regional governments.

This is on top of the proliferation of ISIS which was enabled by Iranian regime through its meddling in Iraqi politics forcing a split between Sunni and Shia coalition partners and driving Sunnis into the arms of a then-nascent ISIS that was getting a free pass in Syria from attack by Assad regime and Iranian regime-backed forces in order to concentrate their firepower on moderate rebel groups.

Speaker after speaker noted how the Obama administration’s ill-fated attempt to curry favor with the mullahs in Tehran through a flawed nuclear agreement that essentially paid for most of the regime’s military for the past three years had failed miserably and now the Trump administration is left to deal with the debris in its wake.

But the tone was upbeat and optimistic in that the prospect of real regime change within Iran actually closer now that it had been in most participants’ recent memory.

Mrs. Rajavi, in her remarks, emphasized that regime change must come from within Iran and not be perceived as being fueled or controlled by external forces such as the U.S. Only then could the Iranian people embrace a peaceful movement to a true democracy willingly aligning themselves with fellow exiled Iranians notably MEK members.

The stage has been set and the recipe seems to be cooking. Now we just have to see if the chef can whip up a masterpiece.

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