Will the U.S. get fooled once again?

last updated 8 January 2015

Iran

Neda Bolourchi

Just as they did in Iraq, the Americans are backing the wrong horse in Iran, said Neda Bolourchi in the Web-based Asia Times. For many months before the Iraq invasion, U.S. officials met with Iraqi dissidents and exiles who wanted Saddam Hussein’s regime deposed at any cost. Ahmad Chalabi and his gang were willing to make up wild stories about weapons of mass destruction if that’s what it took to secure a U.S. invasion. Now, U.S. officials are listening equally credulously to Maryam Rajavi, leader of the Iranian opposition group Mujahideen-e Khalq. Rajavi’s group, at least, has more credibility than Chalabi’s. The MEK is the group that in 2002 first revealed that Iran had secret nuclear plants—a claim that proved true. But the MEK will never be able to rally Iran to rise up against the mullahs. It is too “authoritarian” and too “Marxist” to appeal to Iran’s youth. And older Iranians hate it for its early collusion in the Islamic revolution as well as its traitorous siding with Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. If the U.S. tries to use the MEK as an agent of “regime change,” it will alienate “the most pro-American populace in the Middle East.” A repeat of “Chalabi-style fantasies” is not the answer.