TEHRAN -- Top U.S. lobbying firm BGR has inked a $40,000 contract with the Washington office of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO), ahead of the notorious anti-Iran terrorist group’s annual conference.
Media reports said that according to documents filed with the U.S. Justice Department last week, BRG will now help put on the terrorist group’s annual conference.
The BGR team includes former senior-level appointees, including both Democrats and Republicans, in the White House, Congress and U.S. Executive Branch departments and agencies.
The conference is set to draw more than two dozen bipartisan members of Congress, according to a filing.
At least nine U.S. lawmakers are slated to speak at the terrorist group’s event: Representatives Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.), Scott Perry (R-Pa.) Don Bacon (R-Neb.) and Joe Wilson (R-SC) .
The event is also set to feature former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper and former U.S. national security adviser James Jones.
The MKO throws lavish conferences every year in Paris, with certain American, Western, and Saudi Arabian officials in attendance as guests of honor.
Past attendees have included former U.S. national security advisor John Bolton, former U.S. president Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Saudi Arabian spy chief Prince Turki al-Faisal.
The MKO was designated in the U.S. as a terrorist outfit for 15 years before it was delisted in 2012 after an intense lobbying campaign by political lobbyists in Washington and Iranian exiles.
Media reports said at the forefront of the delisting campaign were several organizations across the U.S., including the so-called Iranian American Society of Texas, which paid more than $110,000 to a Washington lobby firm, DiGenova & Toensing, to campaign for the lifting of the ban on the MKO.
Colorado’s so-called Iranian American Community also paid $900,000 to a Washington lobby firm, DLA Piper, to get the MKO unbanned, and the so-called Iranian American Community of Northern California paid $400,000 to a Washington lobby group, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, to work on Capitol Hill for the removal of the MKO from the list of foreign terrorist organizations.
U.S. lobby firm, DLA Piper, was also financed by the so-called Iranian Society of South Florida (ISSF) to press for the unbanning of the MKO in the U.S.
The MKO has carried out numerous terrorist attacks against Iranian civilians and government officials since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. Out of the nearly 17,000 Iranians killed in terrorist attacks over the past four decades, about 12,000 have fallen victim to the group’s acts of terror.
During former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s war on Iran between 1980 and 1988, the MKO members were armed and equipped by Iraq and fought alongside Ba’ath forces against the Islamic Republic.
After the war, the U.S. and the European Union removed the MKO from their lists of terrorist organizations in order to use them as proxies against Iran. The terrorists enjoy freedom of activity in the U.S. and Europe, and even hold meetings with top American and European officials.
The terrorist group was relocated by the United States and harbored in Albania in 2016 after it was expelled from Iraq amid anger among many Iraqis who had suffered at the hands of Saddam’s forces and the MKO henchmen.
Since 2012, the MKO has been heavily propagandized as an “Iranian opposition group” by the West and received strong favorable Western lobbying.