Iranian exiles' offices shuttered

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The United States yesterday seized assets and shuttered the Washington offices of the People's Mojahedin, the major exile opposition to fundamentalist Iran since it came to power under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the late 1970s.

In the process, however, the U.S. government may have alienated a recent source of intelligence on the Islamic republic of Iran's nuclear-weapons program.

U.S. Treasury agents closed the National Press Club offices of the Iranian opposition, also known as the National Council of Resistance of Iran and notified vendors in the United States and abroad that the group was considered a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. government.

The Treasury Department also took steps to freeze the group's bank accounts while Justice Department officials delivered a cease-and-desist order to individuals associated with the organization.

Treasury Department spokesman Taylor Griffin told the Associated Press that nearly $100,000 in financial assets belonging to the group was found in the United States and was frozen.

The U.S. representative of the group accused the Bush administration of giving in to demands of the Iranian government.

The decision to target the group came after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell determined that it was the political arm of Mujahideen Khalq, which has been listed as a foreign terrorist organization since 1997. This name for the opposition group is a translation of People's Mojahedin.

Although many U.S. officials believe the various names stand for the same group, the rebels themselves say the groups are only close affiliates.

Under former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein's protection, the People's Mojahedin used Iraqi soil to stage attacks on Iran throughout the 1980s and 1990s, including assassinations of leading member of Iran's security services.