WASHINGTON — The Obama administration will remove from the U.S. terrorism list an Iranian militant group formerly allied with Saddam Hussein, officials said Friday, describing a move that will infuriate Tehran and end years of high-profile campaigning by the group.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will notify Congress of her intent later Friday, the officials said. A court order had given her until Oct. 1 to make a decision about the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or MEK. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak about the matter.
Clinton’s decision comes just days after the last big batch of the Iranian exiles reluctantly left their decades-old paramilitary base in northeastern Iraq, relocating for now to a refugee camp outside Baghdad. The U.S. had insisted that the MEK’s 3,000 members comply with an Iraqi demand to leave Camp Ashraf as a condition of the MEK’s removal from the list of foreign terrorist organizations.
Derided by its critics as a cult, the group has journeyed through multiple countries and the shifting alliances of the Middle East over its four-decade history. The MEK helped Islamic clerics overthrow Iran’s shah before carrying out a series of bombings and assassinations against the Iranian government. It fought in the 1980s alongside Saddam’s forces in the Iran-Iraq war, but disarmed after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. It has since suffered violent recriminations from Iraq’s new Shiite-dominated government.
The decision to remove the MEK list rested on two factors: whether it still had the capacity and intent to commit acts of terror. Several American military officials and defense contractors were killed by the MEK in the 1970s, U.S. officials maintain, and its attacks have killed hundreds of Iranians. But the group contended it swore off violence more than a decade ago and now only seeks a peaceful overthrow of Iran’s theocratic government.
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