Addressing a meeting of violent opposition group the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) in Paris, U.S. President Donald Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, said the United States would keep applying pressure on Iran's government until it collapses.
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"We are now realistically being able to see an end to the regime in Iran," Giuliani told supporters of MEK, an organization that calls for the violent overthrow of Iran's government, supported Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war, and was listed as a terrorist organization by the United States until 2012.
Giuliani told the group of exiles: "Trump doesn't turn his back on freedom fighters."
Giuliani was also joined by former U.S. House Speaker and informal Trump adviser Newt Gingrich, former FBI Director Louis Freeh, former U.S: Ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson, former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, two former French foreign ministers and five members of the British Parliament.
This is not the first time U.S. officials have attended MEK events. Despite the group's former classification as a terrorist organization, Giuliani, along with Trump's National Security Adviser John Bolton and former Obama administration National Security Adviser James Jones, have been known to attend MEK events for nearly a decade.
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Last year, at the same conference, John Bolton, who had not yet been appointed to the Trump administration, told the MEK they would be ruling Iran by 2019.
The organization, which was originally founded as a student group, participated in the 1979 Iranian Revolution to oust the Shah, but lost out in a power struggle with the larger faction led by Ayatollah Khomeinei. Currently it is based in a heavily militarized compound outside Paris.
A report by The New Yorker in 2012 revealed that the United States had covertly trained MEK members in Nevada during the Bush administration, an operation that required the utmost secrecy due to the organization's official classification as terrorist. MEK members, according to The New Yorker, were trained in communication and intelligence providing, as well as weapons and tactics.
The MEK has also been known to have links to Mossad, the Israeli secret service.
Meanwhile, Iranian government leaders have continued calling for Iranian unity in the face of U.S. attacks.
"The enemy's plan is to create gaps and separations between the establishment and the people, and this design reflects their stupidity because they do not know that the Islamic Republic is nothing but the Iranian nation, and these two cannot be separated," Iranian leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said.