As US-Iran tensions escalate into open confrontation, a once-discredited Iranian exile group is again attracting high-level American political patronage — raising hard questions about Washington's long-term strategy for regime change in Tehran.
In a heavily fortified compound in Manze, Albania, approximately 3,000 members of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) — also known as Mujahedin-e Khalq, or PMOI — have been quietly consolidating their position as Washington's most convenient Iranian opposition asset. As US strikes against Iranian targets intensify and the Islamic Republic's regional proxy network continues to fracture, the MEK's fortunes inside the American political system are once again on the rise.
The group's trajectory is one of the more improbable stories in modern Middle Eastern politics. Founded in 1965 by leftist Islamic students opposed to the Shah, the MEK played a role in the 1979 Iranian Revolution before falling catastrophically out with Ayatollah Khomeini. Expelled from Iran, it relocated to Iraq, accepted military patronage from Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War, and spent years on US, EU, and UK terrorist designation lists for attacks that killed six American nationals. Washington delisted the group in 2012, under the Obama administration — primarily, former State Department officials have acknowledged, to facilitate its resettlement out of Iraq and avoid a potential massacre, rather than out of any ideological endorsement.
A Bipartisan Lobbying Machine
That humanitarian rationale has since been eclipsed by something altogether more political. Over the past decade, the MEK and its political umbrella — the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), fronted by Maryam Rajavi, who has declared herself the future prime minister of a post-revolutionary Iran — has built one of Washington's most effective foreign lobbying operations, bankrolling speaking engagements for a rotating cast of senior American figures from both parties.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Vice President Mike Pence (who visited the MEK compound in Albania), former National Security Adviser John Bolton, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich are among the most prominent figures who have appeared at MEK and NCRI events, publicly advocating regime change in Tehran and lending their names to Rajavi's "Ten-Point Plan" for a democratic, non-nuclear Iran. Bolton once told a 2018 rally that they would "celebrate in Tehran" before the year was out. Giuliani has gone further, claiming that ongoing Iranian protests are being coordinated by MEK members based in Albania.
Congressional support has also grown. In 2025, Representative Tom McClintock sponsored a House resolution backing Rajavi and the NCRI that attracted over 150 bipartisan co-signatories. In the Senate, a resolution co-sponsored by Senator Thom Tillis and joined by Democrats including Cory Booker, Bob Menendez, Chris Coons, and Jeanne Shaheen explicitly recognised the MEK and its political programme. A high-profile Senate briefing organised with NCRI in late 2025 drew Senator John Cornyn, who endorsed the push for a "free, non-nuclear republic" in Iran.
Official Distance, Unofficial Embrace
The US State Department continues to maintain formal distance. A Department spokesperson has stated plainly that Washington does not regard the MEK as a viable or representative democratic opposition movement, and denies providing any financial, military, or cyber support to the group. That official position, however, sits uneasily alongside the volume and seniority of the American political figures openly championing the organisation — many of them figures with direct ties to the current or recent administration.
Albania's role compounds the ambiguity. Tirana agreed to host the MEK in 2013 at Washington's and the UN's request, with then-Prime Minister Sali Berisha finalising the arrangement with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The deal was framed as a humanitarian solution, but its strategic logic was always evident: it kept the group alive, organised, and accessible within NATO territory. The cost has been real — Iran carried out major cyberattacks on Albanian government infrastructure in 2022, leading Tirana to expel Iranian diplomats and the US to impose sanctions on Tehran's intelligence ministry. Prime Minister Edi Rama described the attack as "state aggression." Albania, analysts note, is less a willing host than a loyal NATO ally absorbing the consequences of Washington's Iran policy.
A Tool Without a Strategy
The deeper problem for anyone treating the MEK as a serious regime-change vehicle is the group's near-total absence of popular legitimacy inside Iran. As one regional analyst has noted, it would be difficult to find a serious observer who believes the organisation has the capacity or the support within Iran to destabilise, let alone replace, the Islamic Republic. Its history — the collaboration with Saddam Hussein during a war that killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians, and its role in violence against Iranian civilians — has left it among the most reviled exile groups in the Iranian public's perception. Even within the broader US Iran-policy debate, the working assumption is that regime change will require defections from the Iranian military and coordination across multiple ethnic and political constituencies — Kurds, Baluchis, reformists — rather than reliance on a single exile faction.
The MEK has also attracted sustained criticism on internal governance grounds. A US government-commissioned report described the organisation as exhibiting numerous characteristics of a cult, citing enforced celibacy, suppression of internal dissent, and strict psychological control over members. Families of members — including Canadian couple Mostafa and Robabe Mohammadi, who travelled to Albania to find their daughter Somayeh — have reported being placed under surveillance by Albanian intelligence, underlining the opacity of Camp Ashraf-3's operations.
Despite declining membership, mounting internal defections, and growing scrutiny within Albania itself, the MEK continues to stage large annual rallies in European capitals, drawing conservative American and European politicians and generating media visibility that far exceeds its actual political weight in Iran.
For Washington, the MEK is not a policy — it is a pressure instrument. As a symbolic conduit for amplifying anti-regime messaging, validating exile opposition, and sustaining rhetorical commitment to regime change, it retains utility. As an actual vehicle for political transformation inside Iran, it has none. The gap between those two realities has defined American engagement with the group for over a decade, and there is no indication the current escalatory environment will resolve it.
Illustration: Perplexity