State Department officials have announced that Hillary Clinton is moving toward taking the Mujahedin e-Khalq, or MEK, off the list of foreign terrorist organizations. The secretary of state has already delayed her decision to review the MEK’s status for almost two years, even though congressional rules maintain the process should take 180 days. But now, according to reports, Clinton may make her final decision on the MEK’s status within 60 days after the group’s last member is relocated in Iraq, from Camp Ashraf to Camp Liberty. The question is whether that’s going to give MEK members time enough to find refuge, or rather an opportunity for the Islamic Republic of Iran to round them up.

Some reports have suggested that delisting the MEK will anger the Iranian regime, which perceives the MEK as a fratricidal enemy, and throw another wrench into negotiations over Tehran’s nascent nuclear weapons program. And yet the Obama administration is in this jam precisely because of U.S. policymakers’ long record of self-deception when it comes to dealing with the IRI.