An American political commentator in Madison said the terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO also known as MEK) is making baseless allegations against Tehran’s nuclear program at the request of its “paymasters” in Washington and Tel Aviv.
“…when the MKO makes allegations against Iran’s nuclear program, it is undoubtedly doing so at the behest of its paymasters in Washington, DC and Tel Aviv, who want to put their false charges against Iran into the mouth of a supposedly ‘Iranian’ source,” Kevin Barret told the Tasnim news agency.
Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist, is one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror. Dr. Barrett has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications. Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin, where he ran for Congress in 2008. He is the co-founder of the Muslim-Christian-Jewish Alliance, and author of the books Truth Jihad: My Epic Struggle Against the 9/11 Big Lie (2007) and Questioning the War on Terror: A Primer for Obama Voters (2009). His website is www.truthjihad.com.
The following is the full text of the interview.
Tasnim: The terrorist group Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) recently claimed that the Islamic Republic is violating the 2015 nuclear agreement between Tehran and world powers by secretly conducting research on nuclear weapons components at the Parchin military site in Iran. The spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) strongly dismissed the allegations by the terrorist group against Tehran’s nuclear program, saying the claims are of no value for the Islamic Republic. What is your take on this? What is behind such allegations?
Basirat: The MKO is one of the world’s craziest terrorist groups. Its combination of fanatical leftist extremism and irrational strategy and tactics is reminiscent of groups like the Red Brigades and the Baader-Meinhof gang, which we now know were run by the Pentagon’s Operation Gladio during the Cold War.
Like the Red Brigades and the Baader-Meinhof gang, the MKO has no popular support whatsoever. Iranians of all political stripes hate them, largely because MKO operators have murdered thousands of Iranians in terror attacks dating back to the 1980s, when the MKO was an ally of Saddam Hussein in the Imposed War against the Islamic Republic.
How can a group with no popular support continue to operate and garner attention? By serving as a front for Iran’s external enemies, led by the US and Israel. So when the MKO makes allegations against Iran’s nuclear program, it is undoubtedly doing so at the behest of its paymasters in Washington, DC and Tel Aviv, who want to put their false charges against Iran into the mouth of a supposedly “Iranian” source.
Tasnim: It seems that the new US administration has breathed new life into the terrorist group. Republican US Senator John McCain praised the head of the MKO, in a recent meeting in the Albanian capital, Tirana. What do you think? What is terror group looking for under Trump?
Barret: The mercenaries who run MKO undoubtedly want to extract as much money from the US government as they possibly can. And Trump and McCain, despite their personal differences, both take a very hostile anti-Iran line. So this is a marriage made in hell between the terrorist mercenaries and the anti-Iran extremists in the US. The Trump Administration, dominated as it is by Jared Kushner and other followers of Netanyahu, will probably waste more money on the MKO than the Obama Administration did. Strategically, this is a stupid move, because it will harden the resolve of the Iranian people. But Trump’s and Bibi’s people are not very intelligent strategists. They probably imagine they can destabilize Iran using the MKO in the same way the US and its regional “allies” destabilized Libya and Syria using proxies from those countries. What they seemingly don’t realize is that the forces of destabilization did have some support within Libya and Syria, but the MKO has zero support inside Iran. So the only accomplishment of this anti-Iran campaign will be to unite Iranians against the MKO and its backers.
Tasnim: As you know, more than 17,000 Iranians, many of them civilians, have been killed at the hands of the MKO in different acts of terrorism including bombings in public places, and targeted killings. Why do Saudi Arabia, US, and certain European countries continue to support the anti-Iran terror group despite its heinous crimes?
Barret: That is a good question. Why do these backers continue to prop up a failed, fanatical communist terrorist group that all Iranians hate? As I said, the MKO is a strategically counterproductive tool in the hands of Washington and Tel Aviv. Why would Iran’s enemies keep shooting themselves in the foot? I suppose the answer is that the MKO’s backers are deceiving themselves. They get their information about Iran mainly from Iranian exiles in Los Angeles, especially the wealthy, well-connected ones who were often close to the Shah’s ruling circles. Some of these wealthy exiles harbor fanatical hatred for the Islamic Republic. They want to hurt it. And their instinctive hatred leads them to think and act irrationally and to give bad advice to their American and Zionist masters.