The U.S. military armed and trained members of a dissident Iranian opposition group during the Bush administration, according to a report published Friday in The New Yorker.
The report claims members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq organization were provided with extensive training by the U.S. Defense Department's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). The training sessions were allegedly conducted in secret at a site belonging to the U.S. Department on Energy in Nevada.
The organization, also known as the MEK or the People's Mujahedin of Iran, was originally founded by leftist university students as an Islamist-Marxist group in 1965. It later staged attacks against the Islamic Republic from within Iraq, under Saddam Hussein.
According to the report, the training of MEK operatives was conducted as part of the Bush administration's global war on terror, and ended before Barack Obama took office.
The head of a controversial US and Israeli-backed aid group has defended its work after repeated...
The decision was taken "to put America's interests first" and followed a Department of Defense review...
