Rudy Giuliani applauds as a video is displayed before he speaks at the Iran Freedom Convention for Human Rights on May 5. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo Giuliani, Gingrich to address controversial Iranian group The Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, formerly considered a terrorist group, has several friends close to Trump and is seeing some of its longtime goals advanced.

Two close confidants of President Donald Trump are scheduled to speak Saturday before a controversial Iranian opposition group previously designated as a terrorist outfit, raising fresh questions about the group’s Washington influence as Trump pursues a pressure campaign against Tehran.

Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and informal adviser Newt Gingrich are listed as headliners for Saturday’s “Free Iran” conference in Paris, organized by the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq and its affiliates. For 15 years, the U.S. designated the MEK a terrorist group, while analysts describe it as a cult – both allegations the group rejects.


The MEK holds frequent conferences, but this weekend’s gathering comes at a heady moment for the group. Several of the politicians it has cultivated in recent years, with the help of handsome speaking fees, are now key figures in Trump’s orbit — including not only Giuliani and Gingrich but National Security Adviser John Bolton.

Trump has also taken several steps in line with the group’s desire to oust Iran’s Islamist rulers. They include Trump’s exit from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which the MEK repeatedly criticized, and increased sanctions and other pressure that some Trump aides hope will weaken the regime in Tehran.

On Tuesday, a State Department official announced that other nations, including China and India, must stop purchasing Iranian oil by Nov. 4 or face U.S. sanctions. Iran is already experiencing significant economic pain, sparking a series of recent protests that have rekindled hopes in Washington for a popular revolution that would install a more moderate government.

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State Department and White House officials declined to speak on the record or on background when asked whether the Trump administration has had any contact with the MEK or its affiliates, and it’s not clear whether Gingrich, Giuliani or Bolton have discussed the group with Trump.

Giuliani did not respond to requests for comment, but the former New York City mayor has spoken at MEK events in the past, leading chants in recent months of “regime change” and openly talking about the possibility of MEK rule in Iran. Gingrich, another long-time MEK backer, confirmed that he will attend the Paris event.

In emails, Gingrich declined to discuss his conversations with Trump, but he argued that the MEK has been unfairly “maligned.” “In meetings I have been in they draw very large, enthusiastic crowds and have sustained a spirit of opposition,” Gingrich wrote. “Their sources inside Iran including reporting on recent mass demonstrations indicate a level of support greater than any other group I have seen.”

The appearance of Giuliani and Gingrich at the conference “underscores once more how some of Trump’s top surrogates are advocates of regime change in Iran,” said Dartmouth College's Daniel Benjamin, a former Obama administration counterterrorism official with expertise on the MEK.

The MEK, which reportedly pays its speakers tens of thousands of dollars, has enlisted allies from across the U.S. political spectrum. Other scheduled speakers listed by the group for Saturday include former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat, and Fran Townsend, who served as homeland security adviser in the Republican presidential administration of George W. Bush.

Officials involved with the MEK and its more polished affiliate, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, did not answer multiple requests for comment.

The Clinton administration designated the MEK a terrorist group in 1997 due to its decades-long armed campaign against Iran’s current theocratic regime and its predecessor, the U.S.-backed monarchy of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The MEK is alleged to have carried out a string of bombings in the 1970s that killed several Americans then in Iran, including military personnel. The MEK, which was founded by a group of leftists and has some Marxist ideological roots, also earned the enmity of many Iranians because of its support for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.

The Obama administration reversed the group’s terrorist designation in 2012 amid arguments that the group had shed its militant past. The group’s defenders say it is waging a heroic fight against Iran’s repressive theocratic government, and note that it has supplied some useful intelligence about events within Iran, including about the country’s nuclear program. The MEK and its affiliates say they support a secular democratic government in Iran.

However, many analysts say that, even if it no longer espouses violence, the MEK has come to resemble a cult. It imposes strict rules on members, its funding sources are mysterious and it has little genuine support within Iran. The MEK is led by Maryam Rajavi, and, supposedly, her husband Massoud, who has not been seen publicly in years.

Despite what the MEK may hope for from the Trump administration, aides to the president have denied that regime change is an official U.S. goal. But Iran experts say the administration’s policy suggests otherwise.

In the spring of last year, for instance, Joel Rayburn, a senior National Security Council official who deals with the Middle East, spoke with Washington think-tanks experts about the possibility of creating a coalition of Iranian minority groups — such as the Kurds, the Baluch or the Azeris — to try to topple the regime, according to a former senior Trump administration official. (National Security Council spokesmen declined to offer comment.)

Since his May 8 withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, which lifted sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program, Trump has re-imposed a raft of sanctions directly on Iran. He is also threatening to sanction European and other countries that do business with the country.

Soon after, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a speech laying out U.S. grievances with Iran and listing 12 demands that many analysts said were tantamount to a call for regime change. In the days afterward, Pompeo downplayed that idea.

“It’s not about changing the regime,” he told Voice of America’s Persian language service. “It’s about changing the behavior of the leadership in Iran to comport with what the Iranian people really want them to do.”

The new economic pressure from Washington is taking a toll on Iran. Several large European companies have said they’ll quit the Iranian market to avoid potential U.S. penalties. Further rattling Iran’s economy were remarks from a State Department official, speaking on background to reporters Tuesday, who said the Trump administration expects other countries to stop purchasing Iranian oil, the country’s top export.

The news, which rocked oil markets, further dashed the hopes of Iranians who believed the nuclear deal might transform the country’s economy but have endured continued economic stagnation. That contributed to a wave of demonstrations in December and January which were snuffed by a harsh government crackdown that reportedly left at least 25 dead and thousands arrested.

Protests have flared again in recent days, apparently driven by economic grievances. As in the December-January protests, there were also hard-to-verify reports of Iranians openly criticizing the regime and demanding that it stop spending money on military activities in other countries and invest more on its citizens at home.

The senior State Department official who spoke to reporters on Tuesday seized that narrative.

“Iranians are basically fed up with the regime squandering the nation’s wealth on not-particularly productive ventures abroad,” the official said. “This situation exists because of the regime’s behavior.”

Still, some Iran experts warned that any Trump administration effort to try to take credit for the protests could backfire, especially given many Iranians’ dim views of Trump. Far from seeing the U.S. president as their ally against the Islamist regime, many instead despise Trump for imposing a travel ban, upheld this week by the Supreme Court, that bars most Iranians from setting foot on U.S. soil.

“Iranians are both bitter about American pressure and their own government,” said Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institution, who added, however, that, “one way or another the regime will try to discredit and taint those who dissent as somehow driven by outside support or orchestration.”

Another Iran analyst, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that even if the protesters are tired of the current regime, that doesn’t mean they have any sympathy for the MEK.

“Iranians don’t want to replace one regime with another,” he said. The MEK is “a regime in exile tied to Marxism. They just don’t have the backing in Iran.”

Still, the Trump administration appears eager to fan the unrest, especially online.

The web site of America’s “virtual embassy in Iran” – the U.S. has no formal diplomatic presence in Iran – is filled with statements and announcements bashing the Iranian government on issues such as human rights and terrorism.

The Iran unit at the State Department also operates a Twitter feed in the Persian language that has been unusually aggressive under Trump.

One tweet, sent out in mid-February, features a menacing caricature of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, saying the phrase “A resistance economy” even as a chart behind him shows the falling value of Iran’s currency. “How would you describe this cartoon?” the tweet asks readers.

On Tuesday, it tweeted a poll asking if readers thought Iran’s economic condition was adequate.

Pompeo, too, has gotten in on act. Using his official Twitter handle, the secretary of state has sent out a series of images and comments in recent days emphasizing the plight of ordinary Iranians. On Wednesday, Pompeo tweeted out a photo that appeared to show Iranians protesting.

“It should surprise no one #IranProtests continue,” he wrote. “People are tired of the corruption, injustice & incompetence of their leaders. The world hears their voice.”

The messages on the U.S. diplomatic accounts in many ways echo the extensive social media network set up by the MEK and its affiliates, which also hype any instance of protest in Iran. In recent days, the group’s Twitter accounts have frequently re-tweeted Pompeo’s comments, while prominently featuring news of Trump’s efforts to re-impose sanctions.