Word: iran
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...Iranian population is generally frightened of or repelled by [the NCRI], and the supporters in [Iran] ... have all mostly vanished," says Olivier Roy, one of France's leading experts on Middle East politics and Islam. "It now basically operates abroad as a sect with international branches whose membership is dwindling as its base grows older and young people shun...
...group's officials disagree. They claim the NCRI has thousands of members in Europe and North America. As evidence, they point to a rally outside Paris on Saturday that drew as many as 90,000 people to protest the situation in Iran. NCRI leaders are also quick to point out that the organization supplied information from inside Iran that was pivotal in documenting Tehran's military nuclear ambitions - a fact acknowledged by Western diplomats. (Read "Joe Klein: What I Saw at the Revolution...
...While conceding that the NCRI's clandestine networks in Iran have been hit by the execution of what he says has been thousands of members and sympathizers over the past two decades, foreign-affairs chairman Mohaddessin says a recent burst of recruiting and activity has restored some of the group's ability to operate inside the country. Operatives there, he says, are busy gathering intelligence and organizing to undermine the regime. According to Mohaddessin, sympathizers secretly monitored more than half the polling stations during the presidential election, providing the NCRI with enough information to claim that scarcely 15% of Iranian...
...NCRI was founded in 1981 to serve as an umbrella organization to Iranian opposition groups, and its dominant force has always been the MEK, which espouses a curious mix of Marxism and Islamist militancy. MEK originally worked with radical Islamist organizations to topple the Shah and rid Iran of what it described as Western imperialism. In the wake of the 1979 revolution, though, the group found itself under attack by its former allies in the new Islamic regime and took up arms. Its military wing was based in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. From there, MEK carried out assassination and terrorist...
...Many Iranians know victims of MEK violence or still feel the fear and fury its name provokes," says a French counterterrorism official who has followed the NCRI and MEK. "Because MEK remains widely hated in Iran, the mere threat by Iranian leaders that it and NCRI are waiting to take over in the event of crisis tends to chill musings of regime change in Iranian streets...