TEHRAN - Iran’s permanent representative to the United Nations said on Tuesday that the U.S. has close cooperation with the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO or MEK) in order to harm Iran.

“The MKO which is supported by certain regional and European countries has close cooperation with the U.S. intelligent forces to cause harms to Iran,” Majid Takht Ravanchi said at a UN Security Council meeting entitled “Threats to International Peace and Security: Linkage between International Terrorism and Organized Crime”.

“Even though terrorists and organized criminals differ in their motives and methods, they are similar to one another concerning the repercussions of their acts, which are total disruption and comprehensive destruction,” Press TV quoted Takhtravanchi as saying.

He added that Iran has been a victim of terrorists and international organized criminals, and has been a pioneer in the fight against them.

He highlighted that 17,161 Iranian citizens, including President Mohammad Ali Rajaei, Prime Minister Mohammad Javad Bahonar, Supreme Judicial Council chief Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, Deputy Chief of the Armed Forces General Staff Ali Sayyad Shirazi, 27 legislators as well as four nuclear scientists have been killed by terrorists.

“The MKO terrorist group, which bears responsibility for the death of more than 12,000 Iranian civilians, is currently being sponsored by a number of regional counties and several states in Europe. The U.S. has provided its members refuge after removed the group from its list of designated terrorist organizations. The U.S. intelligence service is working closely with them in order to hatch conspiracies of destruction in Iran,” Takht Ravanchi noted.

The MKO did numerous terrorist acts in Iran, especially in the early years of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. It also sided with Saddam Hussein’s army in the war against Iran in the 1980s.

Saddam also used the extremist group in violent crackdown on the Iraqi Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south.

In 2012, the U.S. State Department removed the MKO from its list of designated terrorist organizations under intense lobbying by groups associated to Saudi Arabia and other regimes adversarial to Iran.

A few years ago, MKO members were relocated from their Camp Ashraf in Iraq’s Diyala Province to Camp Hurriyet (Camp Liberty), a former U.S. military base in Baghdad, and were later sent to Albania.

France hosts annual gathering of the MKO. Maryam Rajavi, who does not tolerate any criticism within her group, has been mockingly portraying herself as the leader of the opposition outside Iran.

Kazem Gharib Abadi, Iran’s representative to the Vienna-based international organizations, said in January that the presence of MKO terrorists in Western countries show double standards in countering terrorism.

In a post on his Twitter page on January 10, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said, “Europeans, including Denmark, Holland and France, harbor MEK — who killed 12000 Iranians and abetted Saddam’s crimes against Iraqi Kurds—as well as other terrorists staging murder of innocent Iranians from Europe. Accusing Iran won’t absolve Europe of responsibility for harboring terrorists.”

Rudy Giuliani, a personal lawyer of U.S. President Donald Trump, spoke at a rally in Warsaw organized by the MKO in February. He has acknowledged receiving payments from the group in the past.

In April 2017, the late U.S. Senator John McCain lauded the MKO, describing it as “an example to everyone in the world that is struggling for freedom.”

NA/PA