"As FAIR (1/11/18) has noted before, US media—in an effort to find images of Iranian “dissidents”—routinely normalize the fringe group Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), despite the fact that it has virtually no support or legitimacy in Iran. This was seen again this past week when a number of major outlets reported on a speech Trump advisor Rudy Giuliani gave at an MEK conference; the outlets failed to note that the group is widely loathed inside Iran, and seen as an illegitimate cult by experts across ideological lines.
The MEK has next to no support in Iran itself, where it’s hated for working with Israeli intelligence and fighting alongside Saddam Hussein in Iraq’s war against Iran in the 1980s that killed roughly 500,000 Iranians. The group—which was formerly disowned by the last major protest movement inside Iran, the Green Movement—has carried out several terrorist bombings in Iran, and was officially listed by the US State Department as a foreign terrorist organization for 16 years, until it was removed by then–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2012, after a lobbying effort by pro–regime change groups inside the United States."