The Iran Policy Committee, which includes a former Mideast ambassador and former U.S. intelligence and military officials, was referring to the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK), which has been listed as a dangerous foreign group by the U.S. State Department for years.
MEK is a member of the exile group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), based in Paris.
The State Department on its website says that the MEK supported the 1979 takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and killed U.S. citizens working on defense projects in Tehran in the 1970’s.
The U.S. government also blames the MEK for helping deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein suppress Kurdish and Shia uprisings in Iraq in 1991, and says that starting in the late 1980s, once the group was expelled from Iran after the Islamic Revolution, it was primarily supported by Saddam.
The official U.S. policy holds MEK responsible for terrorist attacks within Iran and elsewhere.
But the committee says that the MEK has been unjustly portrayed as a terrorist group, and says delisting it could allow the party to assume a leading role among Iranian pro-democracy groups. It also would send a positive signal to Iran’s neighbors.
"Regionally, and especially among the Gulf states, the signal would go out that small, weak neighboring countries do not have to put up with Tehran’s bullying pressures and destabilizing operations any more," the Iran Policy Committee wrote in the report released Tuesday.
Specifically, the committee said, MEK could even become a "legitimate opposition group" in neighboring Iraq, to act as a "cultural, political and religious counter-weight to the rising tide of Islamist extremism there".
"This positive effect would aid the U.S.’s efforts to strengthen the position of moderate forces overall in Iraq, sending a signal to radical Iranian proxy groups in Iraq that their efforts are not welcome," the Iran Policy Committee wrote.
U.S. officials privately blame the Teheran government for funding and backing much of the violent insurgency aimed at Iraqi citizens who cooperate with the U.S.-installed new government, and at U.S. military forces.
The committee suggested a change in MEK’s status could also spark similar action by the European Union and potentially bolster negotiations between Tehran and Brussels.
The group said its research showed that the terrorist charges against MEK are "unsupported by facts" and the result of "disinformation campaigns" by the clerical regime in Tehran. It said charges that the MEK colluded with ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein were "fallacious".
One piece of evidence cited by researchers, who studied Farsi and English language websites, found that the Iranian government paid much more attention to MEK than to other opposition groups, indicating the regime was "worried about the MEK because of the latent and overt support the group has within the Iranian population and the capability of the MEK to help facilitate regime change".
Delisting MEK would also allow the group "to open offices and organize the American-Iranian community in line with U.S. government efforts to spread democracy in the Middle East", the group said.
The 10-member committee includes James Akins, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia; Raymond Tanter, former senior staff member at the National Security Council, and Clare M. Lopez, who has held several positions in the Central Intelligence Agency, both in Washington and abroad.
The State Department said it was not familiar with the report.