Yusef Jalali
Press TV, Tehran
From assassinating the second Iranian president, Mohammad Ali Rajaei, and Prime Minister Mohammad Javad Bahonar to Judiciary Chief Mohammad Beheshti, the MKO terror group stands as the number one enemy of the Islamic Republic.
The MKO stands for the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization, a terror group that stepped into existence in the days of Iran's Islamic Revolution, initially as a revolutionary force, but later changed course as an anti-Iran terrorist organization.
Iran says the MKO has killed over 12,000 Iranian civilians and statesmen. Perhaps the most notorious terror attack was the 1981 bombing of the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, killing 73 officials, including the then justice chief, Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti.
The MKO also fought alongside Iraqi forces in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. The latest terrorist attacks blamed on the MKO concern the 2010s targeting of Iranian nuclear scientists, carried out with the help of Israeli intelligence service, the MOSSAD.
The MKO is widely detested here as the enemy of Iranians, but to the US and some European countries, the notorious terror group is an intimate friend, bringing those countries under fire for sheltering the terrorists.
In 2012, the terror group was relocated from an American military base in Iraq to Albania and France, after the US and Europe delisted the group as a terrorist organization. Since then, the US and Europe have been taking part in the MKO's annual summits in Paris.
In 1988, the Islamic Republic executed the remnants of the terror cult in Iran. The group is currently led by 67-year-old Maryam Rajavi, who is facing pressures from French human rights entities as "a smear on France's record of human rights advocacy."
Ask any Iranian about the MKO and they will call them 'Monafeqin', the Persian word for hypocrites. This is because the group calls itself the crusaders of people's cause, but in fact, they kill people to ascend to power.
While the US still shelters the terrorist group, it is widely viewed in Iran as an obsolete killing machine that has passed its expiry date.