Iranian exiles’ offices shuttered

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.

During Operation Iraqi Freedom, U.S. forces reached a cease-fire with the organization in its northern Iraq enclave, temporarily allowing the group to keep its weapons. In negotiations in May between U.S. and Iranian officials, the Iranian side proposed a swap of Iranian rebel fighters for the transfer of al Qaeda operatives in Tehran’s custody.

Alireza Jafarzadeh, the group’s U.S.-based representative, suggested the opposition group had become a pawn in negotiations with Iran.

“This appalling act by the State Department is clearly kowtowing to the demands of the terrorist religious theocracy ruling Iran and is giving in to the godfather of international terrorism,” Mr. Jafarzadeh told the AP. “It will convince Tehran’s rulers that their policies of blackmail and terrorism is profitable.”

State Department acting spokesman Tom Casey told United Press International yesterday that the decision to designate the group as a foreign terrorist organization had no connection with U.S. policy toward Iran.

The group is also listed as a terrorist organization by the European Union. French police in July raided the European headquarters of the group outside Paris and arrested about 150 people. Many were quickly freed.

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