M.E.K. might be the most infuriating thing you will read about the global war on terrror today: The New Yorker's Sy Hersh reports that during the Bush years,  the U.S. military trained the Iranian opposition group even though it is and was on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations. Members of M.E.K. (which translates to the People's Mujahedin of Iran) were trained at a U.S. base in the Nevada desert starting in 2005. More recently, as NBC's Richard Engel and Robert Windrem reported in February, they have been involved in the targeted assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. Hersh adds in his report that while it's not known if those involved in the scientist killings are the same operatives as those who were trained in Nevada, Pentagon officials are impressed with how far M.E.K. has come. “The M.E.K. was a total joke,” a senior Pentagon consultant told Hersh, “and now it’s a real network inside Iran. M.E.K. now has a capacity for efficient operations than it never had before."

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Alexander Abad-Santos