Will USA Protect Islamic Terrorists?

Iran wants the USA to hand over opposition terrorists

Strange things happen in the world sometimes. It seems that there can be nothing in common found between the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and American occupation troops in Iraq. There is nothing in common, unless we assume that they might meet each other on a battlefield one day. Probably, it will be possible to avoid that, though, taking into consideration the fact that the command of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards has recently put forward an unexpected initiative.

To all appearances, the Iranian government decided to use the fruit of the British and American victory in Iraq. The word "use" has a political meaning here: the government of Iran decided to deal with the opposition.

The point of the whole matter is as follows. The commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Major-General Yahya Rahim Safavi, called upon the USA to hand over the gunmen of Iraq-based Mujahedeen Khalq, or People's Mujahedeen Organization, to Iran. As Safavi said in a statement, the American administration is supposed to hand over those gunmen to Iran, if USA's words about the struggle with terrorist are true: "We know that the US has listed the MKO (People's Mujahedeen) as a terrorist organisation, so in order to prove it is sincere in the war against terrorism, the US has to hand over the MKO's leader to us," Safavi was quoted as saying.

Until recently, few people were aware of the fact that one of the largest organizations of the Iranian opposition was based in Iraq. To all appearances, the reason why is rather simple: Mujahedeen Khalq counts thousands of members, although the organization has not exercised its activity for a long time already.

The organization was founded in 1963 to struggle with the shah regime in Iran. Mujahedeen Khalq's founders believed that it was too pro-Western. Originally, the organization united basically students of Tehran institutes, teachers, engineers and so on. The ideology of Mujahedeen Khalq is a combination of Islamic norms and Marxism. The goal of the group was to set up the social Islamic state in Iran. It is worth mentioning that it was the most powerful organization of the Iranian opposition in the beginning of the 1970s. It arranged tens of acts of terrorism, both against shah administration officials and American citizens. However, special services of the shah regime managed to cause considerable damage to Mujahedeen Khalq in 1972, but they did not manage to destroy it completely.

Anyway, Marxist Islamites did not manage to find a common language with Imam Homeni, who could not stand anything socialistic. Mujahedeen Khalq tried to organized the armed resistance against the new regime, although it experienced a debacle in the end. During the war between Iran and Iraq, the majority of its members moved over to Iraq together with their families, where Saddam Hussein welcomed them. Hussein apparently believed that Mujahedeen Khalq would become something like a response to the Shiite Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which was in its turn based in Iran. Mujahedeen Khalq members wanted to conduct several operations against the Iranian troops indeed, but they were not really successful.

The United States is not likely to meet Iran's requirements. First of all, Mujahedeen Khalq gunmen will all be killed in Iran. Second of all, American secret services will most likely try to find the members of the organizations that were implicated in acts of terrorism against Americans. However, a lot of time has passed, and it is not known, if any of those terrorists are alive. On the other hand, a small group that opposes the incumbent Iranian regime might come in handy some day.