Thread by @KyleWOrton

#MEK should not be called "Iranian opposition". Historically, operationally, and ideologically they are part of the same Islamist revolutionary trend that currently governs #Iran, and a MEK regime would not be noticeably different to the Islamic Republic.

At best #MEK is Trotsky to #Khomeini's Stalin, an opposition *within* the regime that lost a power struggle and wishes, from exile, to displace the ruler of the old country, while not significantly changing the actual system.

The difference in this analogy is that it is far from clear that in #Iran the Stalin figure lost out: MEK's antagonism to Khomeini was because he was not extreme enough in his revolutionary rule.

https://twitter.com/KyleWOrton/status/1243575517066002432

Tangentially: I am begging my fellow #Iran hawks to firewall themselves from #MEK. Associating with this gang renders anything we say about concern for Islamist extremism or the human rights of Iranians laughable. And even in cold practical terms, MEK is useless to us.

Addendum on #MEK being useless as an instrument against #Iran's regime. The extreme unpopularity of MEK - if you have Iranian friends, you know their reaction to MEK varies only in intensity (and how much of it could be printed in a family newspaper) - has seriously ramifications

Public opinion being impossible to measure inside #Iran allows #MEK to play what one might call "God of the gaps": if you can't take a serious poll showing Iranians hate them, and they have some videos of protests from Isfahan, maaaaybe they do have a large network in the country

The argument that #MEK "revelations" about #Iran's nuclear-weapons program shows their reach in the country is wrong twice: (1) the Natanz case in 2002, it is an open secret #Israel laundered its intel through MEK; and (2) MEK's subsequent nukes claim have nearly all been false.

#MEK could not topple the Islamic Republic when it amassed thousands of its forces and invaded #Iran under the cover of Saddam Husayn's air force in the summer of 1988, and their capabilities have not improved since then. To the contrary.

A less emphasised problem with #MEK when it comes to using it against #Iran's regime is how deeply infiltrated MEK is by the clerical regime. There is a constant stream of legal and diplomatic cases from Europe and America with Islamic Republic spies uncovered in MEK's ranks.