By Ken Blackwell Originally Published in Townhall, May 17, 2022
Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s presence at the headquarters of the largest Iranian opposition movement this week marked a significant moment in US-Iran policy. Its impact on the strategic US outlook toward Iran may be indirect or momentarily hazy, but its historic connotation will be neither short-lived nor inconsequential. It has the potential to persuade a shift in focus to an American policy orientation that has been dangerously discounted for far too long.
In November 2019, Iran was shocked by the most unprecedented nationwide protests in its history. In January 2020, the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, delivered a major public speech, in which he blamed the main opposition Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) for organizing the protests. This is a critical point that Western policymakers ignore.
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This week, the most senior American official to date, a Secretary of State in the previous administration, visited Ashraf-3 and met with Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), in which the MEK is the main component. READ MORE…
The above photo of Sec. Pompeo and Mrs. Maryam Rajavi at Ashraf-3, Tirana, Albania is courtesy of the MEK archives.