Why is the Former US House Speaker Lending His Support to the Paris-Based MKO Terrorists?

Former US House of Representatives Speaker, Newt Gingrich, who is potentially being vetted to be Donald Trump’s future Secretary of State (if Mr. Trump does in fact win the White house) recently flew to Paris to appear at a gala celebration for the Mojahedin-e Khalq, or People’s so-called “Mojahedin” (which be the way they are not), here after abbreviated as the MKO (Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization). 

The word, “Mojahedin” literally means, “Holy Warriors”. However, the correct Persian word to refer to these polished-up, terrorist traitors is, “Monafegheen”, which literally means, “Hypocrites”.  This is a vicious expatriate group – I dare NOT to call them Iranians – that wants Washington’s backing for regime change in Iran. Up until 2003’s US invasion and occupation of Iraq, these traitors-of-the-absolute-worst-kind were on Saddam Hussein’s payroll. Now, they are in the deep pockets of the ever-terrorist-supporting Saudis, the misinformed French, Mossad, the CIA, and who knows who else. 

In his remarks, Newt Gingrich heaped praise on the MKO’s “efforts” and congratulated the terrorist group on the presence of another “dignitary”, Turki al-Faisal, a senior member of the Saudi royal family and former head of Saudi intelligence service.

What Gingrich miserably failed to mention in his enthusiastic endorsement of these MKO terrorists, however, is that these dissidents previously spent three decades trying to achieve their aim through terroristic attacks, and some of their first victims were Americans! He also avoided talking about the fact that the group’s terrorist cell was once based in Iraq, where it was armed and protected by Saddam Hussein.

The timing of Gingrich’s appearance at the MKO gala was awkward for Trump, since the Republican Nominee had argued that the late Iraqi dictator, while being “a really bad guy,” deserved some credit because “he killed terrorists.”

“He did that so good,” Trump told supporters in North Carolina not too long ago. “They didn’t read them the rights; they didn’t talk; they were a terrorist, it was over.”

A few days after that comment, Gingrich reminded the world that Saddam, in fact, had a history of support for terrorist groups like the MKO, whose members helped foment, albeit later on betrayed, the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution, in part by killing American civilians working in Tehran, and then lost a bitter struggle for power to the Iranian revolutionary clerical power structure. After they were forced to flee Iran in 1981, the MKO members set up a pseudo government-in-exile in France and established a military base in Iraq, where they were given arms and training by Saddam as part of a strategy to destabilize the legitimate Iranian government in Tehran that Saddam was at war with.

MKO has poured millions of dollars into reinventing itself as a moderate political group [which it’s not] ready to take power in Iran if Western-backed regime change ever takes place. To that end, it lobbied successfully to be removed from the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2012.

The Iranian exiles achieved this over the apparent opposition of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in part by paying a long list of former United States officials hefty speaking fees of between $10,000 to $50,000 for hymns of praise like the one Gingrich delivered recently in Paris, where the MKO’s political wing held its annual “Free Iran” gala.

With all their cunning public relations tactics, we must never lose sight that this cult-like dissident group whose married members were reportedly forced to divorce and take a vow of lifelong celibacy has no viable chance of seizing power in Iran because they are absolutely loathed by all Iranian people.

If the current Iranian power structure is not the anti-revolutionary elements’ first choice, the MKO is not even their last — and for good reason. The MKO supported Saddam Hussein during those bitter eights-years long Saddam-imposed war. The people’s discontent of the war at that time did not [and would never] translate into supporting an external enemy that was firing Scud missiles  into Tehran, using chemical weapons and killing hundreds of thousands of Iranians, including many civilians.

Naturally, today the MKO is viewed very negatively by all Iranians, who obviously prefer to maintain the status quo than to ever rush to the arms of a traitor, corrupt, criminal, MKO cult.

Despite how little reality there is behind the claim that the MKO’s political wing, the so-called “National Council of Resistance of Iran”, is a force for “democratic change”, Newt Gingrich was joined at the terrorist group’s gala in Paris by a bipartisan group of former U.S. officials, including former U.N. ambassadors John Bolton and Bill Richardson, former FBI Director Louis Freeh, a former attorney general, Michael Mukasey, the former State Department spokesperson P.J. Crowley, the former Homeland Security Adviser Frances Townsend, the former Congressman Patrick Kennedy, and the former Vermont Governor Howard Dean. The gala was even hosted by Linda Chavez, a former Reagan administration official who has loudly opposed Donald Trump’s nomination.

As Gingrich noted, however, perhaps the most important speaker at the MKO gathering this year was the Saudi royal, Turki al-Faisal.

Although the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran is not new, Turki’s speech to the dissident terrorist group seemed like a departure to many Iranians, not least because it was marked by the bizarre spectacle of the terrorist exiles interrupting his address to chant, in Arabic: “Al Shaab Yureed Isqat al-Nitham!” — “The People Demand the Fall of the Regime!”

Video of this moment, broadcast on Al-Arabiya, the Saudi-owned satellite news channel, showed Turki respond: “I, too, want the fall of the regime.”

The comment, an open call for regime change in Tehran from a Saudi royal, struck Iranian journalists and activists as a turning point. It was also deeply ironic, given that the chant was used in the pro-democracy protests across the Middle East in 2011 that Saudi Arabia fought so hard to repress.