The appointment of John Bolton as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser has stirred many reactions in Tehran, not only because of the former UN ambassador’s hawkish policies on the Middle East, but also his links to an Iranian opposition group responsible for thousands of deaths.
Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said March 25, “It is a matter of shame for a country that is apparently a superpower that a national intelligence official took money from a terrorist cult that has a history of murdering 17,000 civilians.” Shamkhani’s reference is to the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq organization, more commonly known as the MEK, which waged a bloody campaign against the Islamic Republic shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Another notorious act in the group's history was to side with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War.
