When talking about Iran, many of us suggest that we should try to strengthen Iranian opposition parties. Sure, they may not be as moderate as we would like them to be, but God knows they can’t be worse than the bunch of extremists currently in charge of the country formerly known as Persia, we argue.

Perhaps, indeed. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an extremist, even to Iranian standards. He is, for us, the wrong person, at the wrong place, at the wrong time. There’s simply no way we can call him ‘moderate’ in any way, shape or form. If even Iranians themselves consider the man to be an extremists, who are we to argue with them?

True enough, but the fact of the matter is that Iran’s opposition is not exactly ‘moderate’ either. Iran’s opposition is no friend of the West, nor a friend of freedom and democracy. The opposition’s leaders may be less extreme than Ahmadinejad, but the differences are relatively small. They may be moderate to Iranian standards, but that doesn’t mean a lot. After all, if you don’t call for the destruction of Israel and the Israeli people on a daily basis, you’re already a ‘moderate’ in the opinion of most Iranians.

One such opposition party, and one that has been embraced - to a degree - by the West, is the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran (MEK). It was initially put on the terrorism list of the UK, but the British Parliament removed the MEK from that list this Monday. Furthermore, this group is the organization responsible for Western knowledge about Iran’s nuclear program. They are the ones who leaked information about this program to us.

So, many seem to think, this means that they should be in charge of Iran; they can’t be as bad as the Mullahs. They’ve got to be a force for democracy and freedom; after all, they say they are.

But there’s a problem; they’re not. Just spend some time thinking about the name of the MEK. The People’s Mujahedeen of Iran. First things first; the “People’s.” What does that mean, normally? Right, that a party is Marxist. Same goes for the MEK: it’s a Marxist party. And what about Mujahedeen? What does that mean? Well, fighters, warriors, for Islam. In other words, the MEK is a Marxist-Islamist organization.

That’s not exactly what most people have in mind when we think about allies of the West in Iran and similar countries.

The MEK was founded in 1965 after a split in a Marxist-Leninist movement that had waged a guerrilla war in northern Iran. Its ideology emerged as a mix of Islam and Marxism, with ingredients from the Islamist pamphleteer Ali Shariati, who advocated an “Islam without a clergy.”

With help from the KGB, the group engaged in a campaign against the former shah of Iran and sent cadres to Cuba, East Germany and Palestinian camps in Lebanon to train as guerrillas. Its hit men assassinated a dozen people, including an Iranian general and five American military and civilian technicians in the 1970s. An operation in 1971 to kidnap the U.S. ambassador to Tehran, Douglas MacArthur III, failed. But it helped the group heighten its profile among anti-shah terrorist outfits.

Later, the MEK would play a key role in the events that swept Ayatollah Khomeini to power. The break with the mullahs came when the People’s Mujahedeen, under its “Supreme Guide” Massoud Rajavi, attempted an armed uprising against the new regime in 1981. Not allowed to field candidates in presidential and parliamentary elections, the MEK sent hit squads to assassinate prominent mullahs and raided several military bases…

In Paris, meanwhile, France’s Socialist government negotiated a deal in 1982 between the MEK and the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, which was then engaged in a war against Iran. Mr. Rajavi frequently visited Baghdad and formed a close relationship with Saddam, who set up camps in Iraq to train MEK militants for sabotage operations against Iran. Even after the 1988 cease-fire between Tehran and Baghdad, Mr. Rajavi, with Saddam’s approval, continued a low-intensity war against Iran from Iraqi territory.

Now, does that sound like a good, trustworthy ally?

Amir Taheri (linked to and quoted above) seems to believe that it’s still possible for the MEK to change its ways. After all, Sinn Fein did the same thing. Sure, that sounds nice and all, but the problem with the MEK is that it has to abandon its ideology… completely. There can be no Marxism in that group anymore, and there can be no Islamism anymore. It has to become a somewhat liberal-democratic party, although adapted to Iranian history and culture. This means that the MEK does not have to become like, say, the Democratic Party in the US, but it should also not be what it is today. Not even almost the same.

The reason is simple: if these people come to power, they may very well prove to be a tremendous headache for the West, just as the Ayatollahs are now. Unless, that is, they embrace the views of the Enlightenment. If they do not, I do not quite see how they can be considered allies of the West; not even if they stop using terrorism and apologize for the hurt they’ve caused in past decades. Indeed; if they have their way, they will simply transform Iran into a Marxist-Islamist state. That, that goal, has to change. Not just their terrorism. And in order to change, they will not longer be the MEK, but something else altogether.

Are they willing and able to do that? I think not. And if they say they are, they have to prove it first, before the West starts supporting them on a massive scale, or in one way or another.