A vocal and militant opposition group to the Iranian government, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, has taken some pretty hard hits recently. A Sept. 1 attack on Camp Ashraf in Iraq, where around one hundred MEK members are confined, resulted in the death of 52 residents and the abduction of seven more. The National Council of Resistance of Iran, the MEK’s parent organization, posted live updates with graphic images and video from the attack, along with an out-of-the-blue call for the United States government to relocate all residents of the camp to the United States.
Since that date, the MEK has continued attempting to draw attention to the attack, including posts on the NCRI website and tweets from Maryam Rajavi, the organization’s leader, to various news organizations, presumably in the hope that they perk up and write something.
But there are way bigger things at play right now that may strip the MEK of its vaunted status as thorn-in-the-side of the Iranian regime. The group’s main problem, according to one analyst, is that diplomacy is actually going pretty well between Iran and the United States right now.
The cuddlier things get between Presidents Hassan Rouhani and Barack Obama, the harder it will be for the MEK to grab anyone’s attention. Geneive Abdo, a fellow and Iran expert in the Stimson Center’s Middle East program, said recent diplomatic progress on key issues the Middle East and the organization’s lack of constituency inside Iran serve to make it an irrelevance for either public or private discussion for leaders at the United Nations General Assembly, which begins Sept. 24.
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