The controversial leader of an Iranian dissidents group was called to Capitol Hill to lend her expertise about the Islamic State lawmakers. Her testimony Wednesday showed she was only interested in talking about Iran.
Maryam Rajavi, leader of the Iranian dissidents organization Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), a group that until 2012 was list on the State Department’s terror list, insisted Tehran was the root of the Islamic State’s power. In prepared testimony, she mentioned Iran 135 times. By comparison, the Islamic State, or ISIS, got 19 mentions; Iraq was mentioned 48 times. Nuclear, as in Iran’s nuclear program, got 31 mentions.
But lawmakers tolerated Rajavi’s notion that “terrorism and fundamentalism came from the mullahs’ regime in Iran. When that is overthrown [the Islamic State] will be destroyed.”
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), who previously defended to FP his decision to invite Rajavi to testify, used his opening statement to admit she wasn’t an expert on the Islamic State — but could provide insight into the group because of her knowledge on Iran.
Other lawmakers praised Rajavi, who testified via videoconference from Paris, where the headquarters of MEK’s umbrella organization — the National Council of Resistance of Iran — is located. Three House members who are not on the subcommittee were granted permission by chairman Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) to praise Rajavi and ask her questions. But her answers were often jumbled, hard to hear, and focused on regime change in Iran as opposed to problems in Iraq and Syria.
Two former senior State Department officials rejected Rajavi’s credentials so strongly that they refused to appear with her at the hearing. One — former State counterterrorism director Daniel Benjamin pulled out of the hearing all together to protest the MEK’s inclusion. The other, Mideast expert and former Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, told reporters after the hearing that the only reason he didn’t join Benjamin was that American lives were on the line in the fight against the Islamic State.