Designation As A Terrorist Organization
The NCRI is regarded by the Iranian regime as a terrorist organization, and is classified as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation by the United States. The US alleges that the NCRI "is not a separate organization, but is instead, and has been, an integral part of the MEK at all relevant times," and that the NCRI is "the political branch" of the MEK. However, some top US officials such as Dick Armey (the former House majority leader 1995-2003) have suggested that the State Department wrongly included MEK in the terrorist list from the beginning. Alireza Jafarzadeh was its official representative in the US until the Washington office was closed by the US State Department in 2002 on the grounds that it was only a front group for the MEK, by then listed as a terrorist organisation in the US. It has been alleged that the inclusion of NCRI and MEK in the list was a token offered to the theocratic regime of Iran rather than based the facts of the matter. According to the Wall Street Journal "Senior diplomats in the Clinton administration say the MEK figured prominently as a bargaining chip in a bridge-building effort with Tehran." The Journal added that: In 1997, the State Department added the MEK to a list of global terrorist organizations as "a signal" of the U.S.'s desire for rapprochement with Tehran's reformists, says Martin Indyk, who at the time was assistant secretary of state for Near East Affairs. President Khatami's government "considered it a pretty big deal," Mr. Indyk says.
The European Union in May 2004 implied that NCRI is part of the MEK (rather than vice versa), but excluded the NCRI itself from a list of organisations considered to be terrorist organizations. Instead, the EU listed the MEK "minus the National Council of Resistance of Iran".
On Monday January 26, 2009, EU Council of Ministers agreed to remove the MEK from the EU terror list. The group said it was the outcome of a “seven-year-long legal and political battle”.
The Middle East department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in the United Kingdom stated in early 2006 that it is widely understood that “Iran’s program, which was kept secret from the IAEA for 18 years, became public knowledge largely because of revelations of the NCRI, and this led to heightened international concern.” At the same time Michael Axworthy, former head of the Iran section at the FCO, claimed that the NCRI is a "tightly disciplined front-organization for the MEK and deemed them unreliable."
On September 28, 2012 The U.S. State Department formally removed MEK from its official list of terrorist organizations, beating an October 1 deadline in a MEK lawsuit.
Read more about this topic: National Council Of Resistance Of Iran
Famous quotes containing the words designation, terrorist and/or organization:
“In a period of a people’s life that bears the designation “transitional,” the task of a thinking individual, of a sincere citizen of his country, is to go forward, despite the dirt and difficulty of the path, to go forward without losing from view even for a moment those fundamental ideals on which the entire existence of the society to which he belongs is built.”
—Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818–1883)
“The terrorist and the policeman both come from the same basket. Revolution, legality—counter-moves in the same game; forms of idleness at bottom identical.”
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)
“Your organization is not a praying institution. It’s a fighting institution. It’s an educational institution right along industrial lines. Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living!”
—Mother Jones (1830–1930)