Is FOX News’ Foreign Affairs Analyst A Former Terrorist?

Jafarzadeh's name first appears in the media in a Houston Chronicle article dated December 24, 1986, where he is described as a spokesman for the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq). In the article he denied US State Department claims the MEK was a terrorist organization responsible for the assassination of at least six Americans in Iran. Jafarzadeh was the public spokesperson for the National Council of Resistance of Iran until its office in Washington was closed by the US State Department in 2002 on the grounds that it was a front group for the MEK, by then listed as a terrorist organistion.

A 1994 State Department report indicates that the Mujahedin has trained and fought alongside Iraqi troops on a number of occasions, and that "Saddam Hussein has been one of [its] primary financiers, providing weapons and cash totaling an estimated hundreds of millions of dollars."

...The Mujahedin's Washington spokesman, Alireza Jafarzadeh, attempts -- unconvincingly -- to distance the group from its past. He says, for example, that the group assassinated Americans in the 1970s because it had been taken over by radicals; in fact, U.S. intelligence indicates that Massoud Rajavi, the group's leader, was in firm control at the time. Jafarzadeh also claims that the 1979 U.S.-embassy takeover was a Khomeini scheme to test his supporters, and that the Mujahedin had to either "endorse [it] entirely" or take a vague and "very calculated" decision to sign on; Jafarzadeh claims the group took the latter. But in fact, on the day of the takeover, the Mujahedin issued a statement: "After the shah, it's America's turn." And when the hostages were released, the group boasted that it was "the first force who rose unequivocally to the support of the occupation of the American spy center." Still, the group continues to find naive supporters like Congressman Edolphus Towns, Democrat of New York. He says, "I think they could replace [Iran's mullahs], I really do." Experts on Iran scoff at this claim.