aka National Liberation Army of Iran (NLA), the People's Mujahidin of Iran (PMOI), National Council of Resistance (NCR), Muslim Iranian Student's Society

In the 1960s, years before Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown in Iran, college-educated children of Iranian merchants formed the [Page 246]Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MEK). With an ideological blend of Marxism and Islam, the MEK originally sought to work against Western cultural and economic influences that the group's founders felt pervaded their country. After the revolution of 1979, the MEK developed into Iran's largest and most active armed dissident group, opposing the mullahs' control of the country.

Although the U.S. State Department has declared the MEK to be a terrorist organization, others consider it to be a grassroots movement opposing a tyrannical theocracy. The MEK has also been described as a group of stooges for Saddam Hussein's military government in Iraq, where its organization of ...