Page 192 – Nejat Society

Former AG set to lobby for Terrorist group

As U.S.-Iran tensions escalate, Iran’s domestic opposition group is courting allies in the U.S in hope to replace the current authoritarian Iranian regime.

Last week, another former high-ranking official joined the camp.

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who served under President George W. Bush, registered last week as a foreign agent lobbying pro bono for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a major Iranian dissident group pushing to topple the country’s current administration. Mukasey’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Earlier this week, Mukasey received attention for defending President Donald Trump in an op-ed, pointing to the Justice Department’s statement that declined investigations into the president’s July call with Ukraine.

The council is the political arm of Iranian opposition group Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MEK. Responsible for killing Iranian and American citizens in the past, the group was a U.S.-designated terrorist group before its delisting in 2012 following a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign.

The group also had close ties with Iraq President Saddam Hussein, who in 1986 sponsored MEK with weapons, funding and a military base in hope for help against the Iranian government.

Although Mukasey officially registered his ties to the group just last week, he had previously met with the group several times between 2015 and 2018, Foreign Agents Registration Act records in OpenSecrets’ Foreign Lobby Watch database show.

Mukasey is among a list of high-ranking former officials who gave paid speeches at conferences in support of the MEK, and was investigated, but never sanctioned, by the Treasury Department for potential violations of law for accepting speaking fees.

Mukasey spoke last year in Paris at the “Free Iran” conference — a gathering of Iranian opposition groups — in favor of a regime change in Iran, promising that he would never rest while supporting the effort. “We hope that the mullahs will topple,” Mukasey said, “but it’s gonna take more effort.”

The former attorney general joined lobbying firm Debevoise & Plimpton after he stepped down as attorney general in 2009. Since 2011, Mukasey and his family members have given more than $50,000 to mostly Republicans and their affiliated PACs, records show. Much of the money went to hawkish lawmakers including Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and former Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

All three senators spoke vocally against the Iranian government in the past. In 2017, Tillis was part of a U.S. delegation led by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) to Albania to meet with MEK’s leader Maryam Rajavi. She later thanked the Blunt-led delegation for the Senate’s effort to protect MEK members in Iraq.

Cotton, a longtime critic of the Iranian government, pushed the Trump administration in June to launch a “retaliatory strike” against Iran after the U.S. blamed the country for a series of attacks. McCain backed Trump’s decision to shelve the Iran nuclear deal long before the president withdrew from the agreement, arguing that Iran has “literally been getting away with murder.”

Mukasey’s registration comes at a time when the U.S.-Iran tensions continue to build since Trump’s withdrawal in 2018 from the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal.The already-strained relationship took a downturn after multiple attacks and U.S. military movements near the Persian Gulf.

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As the bilateral disagreement intensifies, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif recently warned that the Middle Eastern country will defend itself with an “all-out war” if the U.S. launches a strike against it. Last Saturday, the U.S. Air Force pulled its longtime Qatar-based Middle East command center back to South Carolina for the first time, the Washington Post reported, saying Iran-related incidents sped up the decision.

Amid rising distrust, the National Council of Resistance of Iran claimed last week that it has evidence proving the Iranian government dictated the attack on Saudi oil facilities, further fueling the conflicts.

Raising its profile in Washington, D.C., over the past few years, the group often participates in congressional briefings, receptions and other events, FARA filings show. They also frequently run opinion pieces in conservative media outlets such as The Washington Times, the Washington Free Beacon and Fox News.

The council has paid American lobbying firm Rosemont Associates $1.4 million since 2013 to lobby the government. Senator-turned-MEK-lawyer Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) — lobbying on behalf of the group — received backlash in 2002 for his support for Iranian opposition groups. While senator, Torricelli met with the council twice in 2001 discussing human rights issues and Iranian missile attacks, records show.

Mukasey’s registration is only the most recent revelation in a network of current and former government officials and ambassadors with ties to the high-profile opposition group.

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton, well-known for his aggressive foreign policy views on Iran and other countries, is a longtime critic of the Iranian regime. He advocated for the withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, and proposed to bomb Iran to stop nuclear proliferation in an op-ed.

For over a decade, Bolton publicly backed the MEK as a replacement for the current Iranian administration. His personal financial disclosures revealed that he was paid $40,000 in 2016 to conduct a speech to the group.

Between 2015 and 2018, the group met multiple times with Rudy Giuliani, former New York City Mayor and now Trump’s attorney, records show. Representing foreign clients while offering legal services to the president, Giuliani has invited scrutiny. The attorney, with rich connections with Ukraine, pushed the foreign government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden in the most recent Trump-Ukraine controversy.

Giuliani spoke publicly on several occasions in support of overturning the Iranian regime. “The mullahs must go, the ayatollah must go,” said Giuliani at last year’s “Free Iran” conference, “and they must be replaced by a democratic government which Madam Rajavi represents.”

Torricelli, who has long lobbied on behalf of the council, published a Politico op-ed in 2016 arguing that Giuliani’s ties to the group should not be concerning.

Officials of the council met Giuliani in July 2015 to discuss Iran’s nuclear program, days after Iran reached an agreement with six other countries in Vienna to scale back its nuclear commitments in exchange for sanctions relief. Since Trump pulled from the deal, Iran has ramped up uranium production, potentially setting the country on a path to breaching the agreement as the U.S.-Iran tensions worsen.

By Yue Stella Yu, OpenSecrets

October 3, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

New revelations on the US- based UANI

Emails Suggest UAE and Saudi Arabia Funded U.S.-Based Anti-Iran Pressure Group

For the second year in a row, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo chose an unusual venue in which to present new escalations in the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” strategy against Iran during the annual United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Speaking last week at United Against Nuclear Iran’s (UANI) annual conference, Pompeo announced the administration was expanding its pressure campaign, targeting Chinese entities believed to be transporting Iranian oil. “[W]e’re telling China and all nations, know that we will sanction every violation of sanctionable activity,” said Pompeo.
Pompeo’s choice of venues was a curious one. What UANI is and who is behind it appears to be a closely held secret but documents reviewed by LobeLog show a funding apparatus funneling over $35 million over two years into anti-Iran and anti-Qatar advocacy work. LobeLog was provided emails that appear to show UANI principals soliciting diplomats and government advisers from regional rivals of Iran for funding, raising questions about UANI’s funding sources and whether the group is acting as an undeclared foreign agent.
The “non-governmental” anti-Iran pressure group’s summit included Bahraini Ambassador to the U.S. Sheikh Abdullah bin Rashed bin Abdullah Al Khalifa, Saudi Minister of State for Arabian Gulf Affairs Thamer al-Sahban, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer, U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, and U.S. Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Sigal Mandelker. UAE Ambassador to the U.S. Yousef Al Otaiba was also visible in the audience. Billionaire Thomas Kaplan, who was shown to be the majority funder of UANI in 2013, was also in attendance.
Earlier in the week, UANI drew notice from both U.S. media outlets and Iran’s foreign ministry. Last Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Seyyed Abbas Mousavi announced the addition of UANI to Iran’s list of terrorist groups due its “close ties and cooperation with terrorist groups,” according to the Islamic Republic News Agency. The reference to “cooperation with terrorist groups” is presumably regarding a conference of Iranian opposition groups held last week in New York. The event had murky ties to UANI and was primarily attended by supporters of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an opposition group that the U.S. listed as a terrorist organization until 2012. Iran still considers the MEK a terrorist group.
Al-Monitor reported:

UANI denied any involvement with Tuesday’s event and said Wallace convened it in his “personal capacity.” The program for the event at the Roosevelt Hotel, however, listed UANI as the organizer. UANI said that was an error.

UANI’s support for Iranian opposition groups, including those who have engaged in terrorism according to the State Department, makes a lot more sense when clues to the organization’s financial backers are examined.

In 2017, UANI received $5 million of its $5,084,533 in contributions from is umbrella group, the Counter Extremism Project United Inc (CEPU), according to publicly available tax documents. UANI’s sister group, the Counter Extremism Project (CEP), which receives State Department funding and echoes Saudi and UAE accusations about Qatar’s ties to terrorism, received $7 million of its $7.8 million in contributions from CEPU.
CEPU received over $22 million in 2017 and nearly $15 million in 2016. UANI and CEP are the primary recipients of CEPU’s largesse, but former National Security Adviser John Bolton received $240,000 between 2016 and 2017 from CEPU, according to CEPU tax filings, before he entered the Trump White House, an amount that differs from the $165,000 he declared in his financial disclosure.
The source of those funds is unknown but a previously unreported email, allegedly originating from the email account of UAE Ambassador to the U.S. Yousef Al Otaiba, offers a clue.
In September 2014, CEP president and former U.S. Homeland Security Advisor Frances Townsend emailed Otaiba:

By the way can we chat about UAE support for the Counter Extremism Project? I had this whole idea about an Abu Dhabi Sheik Zaid conference. I know you have spoken with Mark Wallace and the (sic) Richard Mintz was briefed. I don’t want to see this get caught in the The (sic) bureaucracy and I think it is exactly something both you and MBZ would support.

Mark Wallace is the CEO of UANI and CEP, Richard Mintz is the managing director of the Harbour Group which advises the UAE government, and “MBZ” is the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.
Townsend did not respond to a request for comment about the email.
Other emails previously published by LobeLog add to the evidence of Emirati and/or Saudi funding behind CEP and UANI.
Earlier that same September, Wallace appeared to email Otaiba regarding a “cost estimate” for an upcoming “forum.” Wallace wrote:
Forum concept. Was asked for an [sic] included very aggressive meaning high cost estimates and we included that. Believe that this will be self-funding in short order with donors and attendees that we would attract.. Thanks and look forward to actually meeting.
Mark
An email allegedly sent in January, 2015, appears to show Townsend soliciting Otaiba’s assistance in arranging a meeting in Abu Dhabi with Mohammed bin Zayed. Townsend concluded her email writing:

And many thanks for your and Richard Mintz’ ongoing support of the CEP effort! Given the tragedy in Paris this effort becomes more urgent everyday!

Many thanks,

Fran
Republican Party mega-fundraiser and Saudi lobbyist Norm Coleman also appears in the tranche of Otaiba’s emails, specifying the tax status of CEP on behalf of then-Saudi Foreign Minister Adel bin Ahmed al-Jubeir. He wrote:

Ambassador,
Foreign Minister Al Jubeir recommended that I follow up with you on the attached matter. The Counter Extremism Project is a 501c4. Let me know if you have any questions.
Regards,
Norm

Mark Wallace, France Townsend, and the embassies of the UAE and Saudi Arabia did not respond to requests for comment about the possible role of Emirati and Saudi funding in fueling UANI, CEP, and Bolton’s advocacy work.
Other efforts to identify the funders behind UANI and CEP have met little success.
In 2015, the plaintiff in a lawsuit against UANI sought to review the group’s donor rolls as part of the discovery process. The Justice Department quashed the suit with an invocation of state secrets, a surprising occurrence since the U.S. government wasn’t a defendant in the suit.
Also in 2015, CEP faced scrutiny for its funding after Twitter refused to participate in one of the group’s conferences.
Buzzfeed reported:

A Twitter spokesman told BuzzFeed News that Twitter declined to work with the group when it reached out to the company last year because of concerns over its “undisclosed funding.” Twitter was invited by the State Department to the event on Monday and declined to participate, again due to questions about the CEP’s funding, the spokesman said.

[…]
Asked about Twitter’s reasoning in an interview with BuzzFeed News, Wallace said it was “irresponsible” for Twitter to suggest that CEP should disclose its donors. Their being public, he argued, could put them at risk of being threatened. Fran Townsend, for example, has received death threats from ISIS-boosting Twitter accounts, he said. “We keep our donors confidential for security reasons.”
If UAE and Saudi funding are underwriting CEP and UANI’s advocacy work, it raises serious questions about whose interests the groups are representing and whether they are acting as agents of foreign principals, a status requiring disclosure under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA).

The fact that the Secretary of State has twice chosen UANI as a venue for high profile speeches outlining new sanctions against Iran and its trading partners, and that the former National Security Advisor received $240,000 in compensation from CEPU before entering the Trump administration—$75,000 of which appears to have gone unreported—suggests that UANI is an influential force in shaping U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf and has access to the highest levels of the U.S. government.
While UANI’s presence during the UN General Assembly last week was unmissable, whoever funneled $35 million over two years into CEPU prefers to remain in the shadows.
Eli Clifton

October 2, 2019 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

U.S. Secretary of State Should Not Meet the group killed Americans

An Open Letter to President Donal Trump

My name is Reza Sadeghi Jaballi, a former member of the Mojahedin Khalq (MEK). I am currently a human rights activist living in Brussels. In 1994, the Mojahedin smuggled me into the United States from Canada where I obtained a green card and a passport. I lived in both the MEK base at 3721 Oceanview and their safe house at 2450 Louella Avenue in Los Angeles which was take down by the FBI in 2004 as part of “Operation Eastern Money”. As a result, many of the Mojahedin’s agents and operatives were arrested and seven of them who were engaged in fundraising activities on behalf of a foreign terrorist organization pleaded guilty to federal charges of providing material support to the group.

Dear Mr President,

I am writing to you now to express my deep concern that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attended this terrorist organization’s gathering on Wednesday September 25 in New York. In particular considering the MEK’s past record of assassinations of American military and civilian personnel:

Lt. Colonel Lewis L. Hawkins, killed: June 2, 1973

Air Force Colonel Paul Schaeffer, killed: May 21, 1975

Air Force Lt. Colonel Jack Turner, killed: May 21, 1975

Donald G. Smith, Rockwell International, killed: August 28, 1976

Robert R. Krongrad, Rockwell International, killed: August 28, 1976

William C. Cottrell, Rockwell International, killed: August 28, 1976

As President and Commander-in-Chief, it would be absurd to have a Secretary of State who meets and admires the same terrorists who not only killed many Americans, but who also took part in the hostage-taking of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979 and even asked the Iranian government to hand them over to them so that they could execute them.

MEK Assassinated AmericansThe MEK’s dirty past includes the anti-Imperialist inspired murder of six Americans in pre-revolution Iran which it later celebrated in songs and publications

Dear Mr President,

You were absolutely right when you said, when the World Trade Center came tumbling down, thousands of people were cheering because I was there myself in the Mojahedin Camp in Iraq where those thousands of people were celebrating and cheering. These are the same people that your Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met in New York.

I should inform you that Alireza Jafarzadeh, one of the Mojahedin’s high ranking commanders, who met with Mike Pompeo is the same person who declared to the leader of the Mojahedin in a conference call in 1997 he is ready to blow himself up on Capitol Hill or anywhere else. I am ready to testify anytime under oath and ready to take polygraph as well that this is true.

It was very strange that during the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton was the person who surprisingly took this terrorist organization off the U.S. terrorist list in 2012; one must question what motivated her decision.

Mr President,

The Mojahedin that Mike Pompeo met with was the first organization to chant “Death to America” in 1964. The Mojahedin organization was created with the ideology and belief in armed struggle against U.S. imperialism. They began their terrorist war and their assassinations under the rule of the Shah of Iran, beginning with the murder of Lieutenant Colonel Lewis L. Hawkins.

I believe it’s time to put an end to Hillary Clinton’s horrible decision and put this terrorist organization back on the terrorist blacklist where they belong.

Respectfully,

Reza Sadeghi Jaballi

September 30, 2019 0 comments

Iran

Iran to include UANI in list of terrorist organizations

The announcement followed reports that United Against Nuclear Iran’s summit would include a fringe Iranian diaspora group, Mujahideen-e Khalq, which had close ties with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Iran announced on Tuesday that it would begin the process to include the American NGO United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) in the list of terrorist organizations.

UANI describes itself as a “not-for-profit, bi-partisan, advocacy group that seeks to prevent Iran from fulfilling its ambition to obtain nuclear weapons.” According to its website, it was founded in 2008 by Ambassador Mark D. Wallace, the late Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and Middle East expert Ambassador Dennis Ross.
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyyed Abbas Mousavi’s announced the Tehran would label UANI as a terrorist group on the eve of the organization’s Iran Summit scheduled for Wednesday. The event will feature US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

According to a report by the Washington Post, the summit has sparked controversy for including a fringe Iranian diaspora group, Mujahideen-e Khalq, or MEK, which until 2012 was included in the list US list of foreign terrorist organizations for allegedly killing Americans in the 1970s and for its ties to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. For the latter reason, the group is harshly criticized in Iran as well.

“On the one hand, the United States deceitfully speaks of compromise and negotiation, and on the other hand, it organizes, finances, and arms criminal and terrorist groups … and provides them with intelligence,” Mousavi said, adding that MEK is responsible for the death of thousands of Iranians during the Iraq-Iran war.

Iran, its threats to the stability of the region, and the need to find solutions to prevent Tehran from reaching a nuclear weapon are among the topics at the center of the United Nations General Assembly which is taking place in New York between September 17 and September 30.
By Rossella Tercatin

September 30, 2019 0 comments

Terrorist groups and the MEK

Kurds Boycotted UANI MEK Gathering

Pompeo to speak at Iran opposition event snubbed by Kurds

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Iran’s Kurdish parties say they will not take part in a conference allegedly organized by the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) on the fringes of the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday because the Kurdish question in Iran is not a key part of the agenda.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is scheduled to speak at the event fronted by Iran hawk and former diplomat Mark Wallace, according to The Washington Post.

The US State Department considered MEK a terrorist organization until it was de-listed in 2012.
With the help of a powerful lobby in the US establishment, MEK has sought to present itself as the official opposition to the Iranian regime.
Confusion over who actually organized the event, and the belief that Kurdish issues have been left off the agenda, led Kurdish parties in Iran to decline invitations.

“The Cooperation Center of Iranian Kurdistan Political Parties is informing the public that after subjective interpretations from all the parties, we agreed not to take part in the conference set be held on September 24 under ‘The Future Iran’ in New York,” a joint statement from the parties read.
The cooperation centre was formed by five Iranian Kurdish parties to better coordinate their activities. The Kurdistan Democratic Party-Iran (PDK-I), Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), and two branches of the left-wing Komala party are among its members.
Salih Sharifi, spokesperson of the cooperation center, told Rudaw: “The Kurdish movement has its weight among the Iranian oppositions and it should be the case when it comes to taking part in such conferences.”
“But in the agenda of the New York conference, the weight and position of Kurds is unclear to us,” he said.
According to the official organizers of the conference, invitations were sent to Kurdish opposition groups a few months ago.
“It is even unclear which side sent the invitations, nor did it say which parties were to attend,” he added.
According to media reports, the controversial MEK group is said to be the main organizer of the conference.

“Not all the opposition parties of Islamic Republic are attending the conference either,” Sharifi said.
MEK, which Tehran considers a terrorist organization, is an opposition party headquartered in Albania, with a presence in France and the US. The party advocates for regime change in Iran.
In 1981 the MEK formed an alliance with the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI). However, the KDPI left the alliance in April 1985 when its then-leader pursued talks with the regime regarding Kurdish autonomy. MEK said there should be no negotiation with the regime.
The group was listed as a terrorist organization for its role in the overthrow of the Western-backed government of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and for its ties to the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
It has since been rehabilitated as an acceptable opposition movement, although critics have likened it to a cult.
Former National Security Advisor John Bolton, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, former senator Joseph I. Lieberman, and former Vermont governor Howard Dean have all spoken it its events.
Pompeo’s decision to speak at Tuesday’s gathering is another sign of establishment endorsement.
Tensions between Tehran and Washington have been increasingly fraught since May 2018 when US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the landmark 2015 nuclear accord and reimposed crippling economic sanctions.
Although Iranian Kurdish parties were not invited to a mid-February US-Poland conference in Warsaw, they called for unity among the Iranian opposition and urged the world to work with them if they want to contain the Islamic Republic’s destabilizing activities.
Kurdish groups such as the PDKI and PDK-I, Komala, and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)-affiliated Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) have been based in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region since 1992 and often engaging in sporadic military confrontations with Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the border areas.
Iran is worried the US, Israel, and their regional allies are using the Kurds against the regime in Tehran. However, Kurds have categorically rejected the claims, saying they fight for greater rights for their nation in the western part of the country, known as Rojhalat.

Zhelwan Z. Wali, Rudaw,

September 28, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Among terrorists, blaming Iran for terrorism!

Pompeo addresses anti-Iran summit associated with terror groups, blames Iran for terrorism

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has addressed a gathering of notorious anti-Iran terrorist and separatist groups in a bid to urge action against Iranian”aggression.”

Speaking at the United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) 2019 summit in New York on Wednesday, Pompeo called on world countries to stand with the US alongside Israel, announcing new sanctions against Iran and blaming Tehran for backing”terrorist groups”.

The Unites States has imposed new sanctions on Chinese firms and individuals over violation the US illegal sanctions on Iran.

The summit, which was being held on the sidelines of the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, is reported to be dominated by terrorist groups such as the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO).

Earlier this week, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Abbas Mousavi described the UANI as an American”cover organization”closely tied to terror groups, adding that Tehran would consider blacklisting the UANI as a terrorist group.

Senior official from Saudi Arabia, Israel and Bahrain also took part in the anti-Iran meeting.

Speaking at the summit on Wednesday, Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir accused Iran of terrorism and of being behind the recent Yemeni-claimed attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities, an allegation firmly rejected by Tehran.

Jubeir said that Riyadh was considering political and military options in response to the attacks.

Saudi Arabia has forged close links with separatist and terrorist groups seeking to operate in Iran, most notably the MKO. In May 2017, Saudi Arabia, under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, pledged to take”the battle”to Iran.

Washington, which had labeled the MKO as a terror organization until dropping the designation in 2012, has also considerably stepped up support for the group and other like-minded terror organization targeting Iran.

The increasingly confrontational approach against Tehran by Tel Aviv, Riyadh and Washington has, nonetheless, raised concerns about a probable disastrous military quagmire in the region.

Iran’s foreign minister says an all-out war in the region is quite a possibility in case of a US military strike against the Islamic Republic.

On Wednesday, numerous peace activists attempted to interrupt the UNIA summit in protest against Washington’s provocative campaign of”maximum pressure”against Iran.

Code Pink, a grassroots anti-war NGO based in the US, reported a number of the demos, showing protesters at times being violently dragged away from the event.

September 28, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Pompeo embraces the Cult killed Americans

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will attend a meeting linked to a terror cult that has murdered 6 Americans

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks to the media before departing from al-Bateen Air Base in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2019, as U.S. special representative on Iran Brian Hook, left, listens. (Mandel Ngan/Pool via AP)
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Associated Press

• US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo plans to attend a meeting at the UN General Assembly that is linked to the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (the People’s Mujahedin of Iran).
• MEK is a notorious Iranian cult which has murdered at least six American civilians and thousands of Iranians.
• It was once a designated terrorist organisation.
• MEK has given enormous speaking fees to American politicians willing to

speak at its events, including Rudolph Giuliani, John Bolton, Joe Lieberman, and Howard Dean.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo plans to attend an event at the UN General Assembly tomorrow that is linked to a notorious Iranian cult which has murdered at least six American civilians and spent over 20 years protected by Saddam Hussein’s regime.

The Mujahedin-e-Khalq (or People’s Mujahedin of Iran)”is an organisation that fancies itself as the official Iranian opposition in exile,”said David Patrikarakos, an analyst and author of Nuclear Iran: The Birth of an Atomic State.

“In truth, it’s a cult-like group that was for years on the State Department’s list of terror organisations and has little support in Iran due to the fact that it fought with [Iraqi leader] Saddam’s forces during the Iran-Iraq War.”

The meeting, dubbed the”2019 Iran Summit,”will feature Pompeo and Mark Wallace, a longtime US advocate of MEK. Former US senator Joseph I. Lieberman, who has previously spoken at MEK events, will also attend the Pompeo-Wallace event.

Officially, MEK will hold a separate event, according to the Washington Post, putting a small degree of separation between Pompeo and MEK itself.

When asked about the meeting’s links to MEK, a State Department official”dismissed the concerns about the MEK’s participation in Wallace’s event, [telling the Washington Post],”Have you looked at the people attending the U.N.?”

MEK is currently based in an Albanian compound and does not report the sources of its funding. It has a long history of violence against civilians, hostility towards Israel in rhetoric that borders on anti-Semitic, and sponsorship of attacks against the West.

Despite this, the group has managed to purchase its way to credibility in some US political circles by offering huge speaking fees to US lawmakers willing to share a stage with violent militants. A MEK front group called the National Council of Resistance of Iran is already using Pompeo’s name in its propaganda.

The MEK supported the overthrow of the US-backed regime of the Shah in the 1970s conducting scores of terror attacks against US military and commercial targets inside Iran, as well as supporting the 1979 takeover of the US embassy.

It later broke with its revolutionary comrades and defected to Iraq, and the patronage of its president, Saddam Hussein.

A US State Department analysis concluded that the group had killed six Americans, including military officers and civilians doing business in pre-revolutionary Iran, as well as thousands of Iranian civilians in terror attacks.

This history of aligning with two of America’s most hated enemies in the Middle East — Iraq and Iran — along with its pursuit of a terror campaign inside Iran that killed thousands of civilians, a conclusion reached by the US State Department, led to the group being designated a terror organization by the US government until 2012.

How did a group widely considered among the most bizarre and violent in the region became acceptable company for current US government officials? Money.

After the US invasion of Iraq and defeat of Saddam in 2003, the group immediately began throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars at anti-Iran politicians in Washington, usually in the form of speaking fees to address the group’s rallies and events.

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton, former NYC mayor and current lawyer to the president Rudy Giuliani, former senator Joseph I. Lieberman, and former Vermont governor Howard Dean as well as a slew of lesser-known figures have all addressed the group and publicly taken up their cause. MEK is known for paying very large speaking fees.

This attention — and American desperation for a dissident group to support against the current Iranian regime — led to the group being delisted as a terrorist organization in 2012.

Even if you set aside its history of murdering Americans and supporting despotic regimes, it is unlikely that the group will ever become a credible political partner of the US.

That’s because in Iran, MEK is regarded as a bunch of traitors who fought alongside Saddam Hussein and have a history of murdering Iranian civilians in terror attacks.

“The fact that the Secretary of State is openly meeting with them will only serve to provoke the Iranians with little gain for the US or its interests,”said Patrikarakos. He pointed out that the group is widely hated even by Iranians who otherwise oppose the current regime.

“Indeed, working with them discredits the West in the eyes of normal Iranians who otherwise aren’t crazy about the Islamic Republic,”he added.
Mitch Prothero, Businessinsider.com

September 26, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Cement ties to MEK Terrorists!

Iran hawks cement ties to former US-designated terrorist group

United Against Nuclear Iran’s CEO embraces the MEK as his group prepared to host Pompeo.

Demonstrators rally to support a leadership change in Iran outside the UN headquarters in New York City, New York, US, Sept. 24, 2019.

NEW YORK — Leading Iran hawks are increasingly open about their ties to a controversial opposition group, triggering Iranian retaliation and posing a quandary for the Donald Trump administration.

On the eve of the hawkish United Against Nuclear Iran’s annual summit featuring Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, UANI CEO Mark Wallace Tuesday convened a gathering of Iranian opposition groups. The event was billed as an unprecedented gathering of diverse opposition groups, including Kurds, Balochs and Azerbaijanis.

“This is the first time in history, since the Iranian revolution in 1978 and 1979, that such a broad cross-section of the leaders and delegates from Iranian dissident … groups have gathered in a convention for Iran’s future,” Wallace said. “This gathering demonstrates the willingness of many here today to set aside many of the disagreements of the past.”

But attendance was dominated by the Mujaheddin-e-Khalq (MEK) and its allies. Iran considers the MEK a terrorist group, as the United States did until 2012.
Also read

UNGA 2019US and world powers continue to talk past each other on Iran at UN

UANI denied any involvement with Tuesday’s event and said Wallace convened it in his “personal capacity.” The program for the event at the Roosevelt Hotel, however, listed UANI as the organizer. UANI said that was an error.
The program for the event listed UANI as the organizer. UANI says that was an error.

The group may be reluctant to be seen as openly rooting for the MEK, which advocates for overthrowing the ruling clerics in Tehran and has critics even among Iranians who oppose Tehran. A Los Angeles-based Iranian American pro-democracy activist told Al-Monitor that people in that community had advised UANI against being involved in an event including the MEK and controversial ethnic separatist groups.

“Terrible choices,” the activist said. “Many separatist groups [were invited] … They [UANI] did not listen.”

Several days ago, an umbrella group of several Iranian Kurdish political parties — including the Kurdistan Democratic Party-Iran (PDK-I), Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) and two branches of the left-wing Komala party — announced it would skip the event but did not offer a reason. The event had signs for several of the groups, but their seats were empty.

Openly embracing the MEK could also put the Trump administration in an uncomfortable spot. The administration does not officially support regime change, but recently stopped ruling out the MEK as a political alternative.

Regardless of UANI’s denials, Al-Monitor spoke with several participants at the event who believed the group was involved. Tehran seems to think so as well, and announced Tuesday that it would be designating UANI a terrorist group following similar action against the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).

“On the one hand, the United States deceitfully speaks of compromise and negotiation,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Seyyed Abbas Mousavi said Tuesday. “And on the other hand, it organizes, finances and arms criminal and terrorist groups … and provides them with intelligence.”

Jason Brodsky, UANI’s policy director, denounced the remarks in a tweet from inside the Future of Iran conference: “First FDD is declared as a terrorist organization. Now, Iran’s regime follows by declaring UANI a terrorist organization. The regime’s war on research continues.” He later wrote on Twitter that, like Wallace, he was attending in his personal capacity.

Minutes later, UANI’s CEO invited to the stage Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer and a longtime MEK advocate.

“I call them the regime of terror,” Giuliani said to thunderous applause. “We’re here today, and we’re going to support a regime of freedom.”

Laura Rozen contributed to this report.
Julian Pecquet , Al-monitor.com

September 26, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Never knowingly engage with the Mujahideen-e Khalq

Trump, Iran’s Rouhani descend on same corner of New York but remain far apart

After months of lobbing threats and vowing military reprisals, President Trump will find himself on the same block of midtown Manhattan as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani this week at the annual U.N. General Assembly.
At times, Trump has flirted with the idea of meeting with Rouhani for a historic tete-a-tete, only to retreat to a position of imposing tougher economic sanctions.
Trump’s top advisers privately opposed such a meeting and appeared to win that debate after an attack on Saudi oil facilities Sept. 14 prompted the United States to impose more sanctions on Tehran. But Trump has not ruled anything out.
“Nothing is ever off the table completely, but I have no intention of meeting with Iran, and that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen,” the president told reporters Sunday on the South Lawn of the White House. “I’m a very flexible person.”
Even if Trump changed his mind and extended an invitation, however, it is far from clear that Rouhani would accept, something critics attribute to the Trump administration’s mixed messages.
Trump has tried to appeal to Tehran in various statements, ruling out regime change and entertaining a French plan to extend a line of credit to Iran to return to the 2015 nuclear deal the United States withdrew from last year. But the president’s hawkish advisers have taken a tougher posture: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday that Iran is “bloodthirsty and looking for war,” and his diplomats did little to help facilitate a meeting in the run-up to the General Assembly, said U.S. officials, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal operations.
On Wednesday, Pompeo is scheduled to speak at an event hosted by Iran hawk and former diplomat Mark Wallace, who has drawn criticism for including a fringe Iranian diaspora group, Mujahideen-e Khalq, or MEK, in his programming surrounding the U.N. gathering.

Until 2012, the MEK was listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States for allegedly killing U.S. personnel in Iran in the 1970s and for its links to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. It is largely reviled inside Iran because of its alliance with Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq war. It is participating in a dissident convention hosted by Wallace a day before Pompeo’s speech at the Iran summit.

Analysts said Pompeo’s involvement in Wallace’s event risks confusing Trump’s declaration last month that “we’re not looking for leadership change.”
“This is an extremely unwise and dangerous decision,” said Dalia Dassa Kaye, director of the center for Middle East public policy at the Rand Corp.

“The message this will send is that regime change is still in the mix despite the president’s statements to the contrary,” she said. “There’s already confusion about U.S. aims on Iran, so this will only raise more questions about what the U.S. has been trying to achieve since its withdrawal from the nuclear agreement.”

An Iran scholar scheduled to speak at the same event as Pompeo has dropped out because of the MEK’s involvement in the event Wallace is hosting Tuesday.

Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institution said in a statement to The Washington Post that she “would never knowingly engage with the Mujahideen-e Khalq, a cultlike terrorist organization that is despised by many Iranians.”
“Although the summit and the diaspora event will be held on separate days, the overlap in the sponsorship of the two events was too close for my comfort,” she said.
Pompeo has previously distanced himself from the group when asked about the attendance of Trump attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani and then-national security adviser John Bolton at MEK events. The group offers generous speaking fees and has cultivated close connections in Washington among Democrats and Republicans, including to former senator Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and former Vermont governor Howard Dean (D).
“Let’s not beat around the bush,” Pompeo reportedly said during a meeting with Iranian American leaders in April. “Ambassador Bolton spoke at an MEK rally. President Trump and I have not.”
A senior State Department official dismissed the concerns about the MEK’s participation in Wallace’s event, saying, “Have you looked at the people attending the U.N.?”

When asked about his decision to include the MEK, a spokesman for Wallace said he “decided early on that the convention will not discriminate or make value judgments on participation.”

His spokesman, Joshua Silberberg, added that Wallace’s organization, United Against Nuclear Iran, “admires Suzanne Maloney and respects her decision about participating in the Iran summit on Wednesday, which is an unrelated event.”
Ali Safavi, an official with the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which speaks for the MEK, said Maloney “has no credibility whatsoever to comment on the MEK.”
As diplomats from around the world streamed into New York for the United Nations’ 74th annual General Assembly, Pompeo and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif continued to trade barbs.
Pompeo, going further than Trump in assigning blame for the attack on Saudi Arabia, said, “This was an attack by Iran on the world.”
“We’re looking for a diplomatic resolution to this, unlike the Iranians,” he told CBS.
Unlike Pompeo, Trump has not directly blamed the country for the assault, saying last week that “as soon as we find out definitively, we’ll let you know.”

Trump did, however, approve new sanctions on Iran’s state bank Friday and signed off on a new deployment of U.S. troops to the Middle East to enhance Saudi Arabia’s air defenses.
With those moves, Iran’s foreign minister told reporters that Trump “knowingly or unknowingly on Friday closed the door to negotiations.”
“I think it’s all going the wrong direction in addressing this issue,” Zarif told CBS on Sunday. “I don’t think this type of posturing helps.”
U.S. officials said the Trump administration would try to build a coalition to denounce Iran’s activities in the Middle East this week. Rebels in Yemen, known as Houthis, took responsibility for the strike on Saudi oil facilities, but Pompeo and Saudi Arabia have said the militants do not possess the type of drone and cruise missile weaponry used in the attack. Even some Democrats reluctant to embrace Trump’s messaging have rejected Iran’s denial of involvement, including former secretary of state John F. Kerry, who said Iran was responsible “one way or the other.”
In an acknowledgment of the worsening tensions, France’s top diplomat, who has tried to broker a meeting between Rouhani and Trump, said it was now more important to de-escalate the “dangerous” situation rather than set up a meeting between the two governments.
“What is at stake during this week is whether or not we can carry on with this de-escalation process,” Jean-Yves Le Drian said.
Carol Morello contributed to this report.
John Hudson,

September 25, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

MEK’s paid speakers,”to be or not to be”

The latest news on US politics included a bad one for the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi). President Trump fired one of the most vocal supporters of the MEK, his national security advisor John Bolton because he”disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration”.

Bolton is notoriously known for his warmongering attitudes, especially, against Iran. He is well known for his op-ed in the New York Times in 2015, headlined:”To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.”[1]
This extremely anti-Iran stance makes him sexy enough to get in bed with the MEK. That’s why after his departure from the White House all reports and analysis point out to his many appearances in the MEK’s events as a paid speaker.
“One group that is no doubt devastated by Bolton’s departure is the MEK — the Iranian exile group that wants regime change in Tehran, by force if necessary, and has paid Bolton & Rudy Giuliani to make speeches”, tweeted Edward Wong of the New York Times. [2]
Barbara Slavin, director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank, welcomed Bolton’s departure from the administration.”Bolton is an absolutist; it’s all or nothing, black and white. He’s not very good at step-by-step or incremental agreements, and those are the only kinds of agreements that are realistic with adversaries,”Slavin told the Middle East Eye.”So I think he’s been a major impediment to diplomacy. He is a war-monger. He’s somebody who’s advocated for bombing Iran, as recently as this past summer, and he has ties with the Mujahideen-e Khalq, an Islamo-fascist cult. So I’m glad he’s out.”[3]
Jason Rezaian of the Washington Post states,”His absence also means that the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), a reviled Iranian opposition group that long lived on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist groups, no longer has a powerful ally in the White House.”[4]
Rezaian truly suggests that the MEK’s money does mean more to Bolton compared with its almost no support among Iranians.”The MEK can claim no popular support, and among Iranians of nearly all political orientations, inside the country and in the diaspora, it was Bolton’s paid alliance with the cult-like group that made him such an odious character,”he writes. [5]
Daniel Larison of the American Conservative who had previously warned about Bolton’s paid sponsorship for the MEK, a few months earlier, in June, denounced Bolton’s policy towards Iran due to his notorious links with the Cult of Rajavi.”Bolton’s long relationship with the MEK discredits everything he has to say about Iran,”he wrote.”No one that has praised this cult as a potential replacement for the Iranian government should have anything to do with U.S. policymaking at any level, much less at the White House. No one foolish or fanatical enough to side with this cult should be entrusted with any government position.”[6]
Larison strictly warned about the MEK-Bolton dirty connections.”Bolton’s ties to the MEK should be mentioned in every story that reports on him and the administration’s Iran policy, but unfortunately they are only rarely included in media coverage,”he stated. [7]
“It is unacceptable for a top government official responsible for shaping U.S. foreign policy to have been the paid shill of this awful organization that previously killed Americans,”Larison continued.”It is wrong for an official with ties to the MEK to be influencing decisions on Iran policy. There are many reasons why Bolton should be fired, and this is right at the top of the list.”[8]
On September 10th, after Bolton’s departure, Daniel Larison published an article on The American Conservative, titled”Good Riddance, Bolton”in which he expresses his pleasure to the”good news”. According to the senior editor of TAC, as far as Bolton is not a member of the administration his ardent support for the MEK is not dangerous for the region.”He should never have been hired, but at least he is out of government. Now he can go shill for the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) full-time,”Larison suggests. [9]
Definitely, the Saudi funded establishment of the Mujahedin Khalq is able to buy the support of any warmonger figure in the US political scene but as far as the group is despised by the Iranian nation, its paid sponsors are not capable of running their agenda. To be or not to be in the US administration team will not make Bolton a proper person to run the MEK’s agenda. The MEK can keep on expending dollars to buy the support of American high profiles. However the will and determination of the Iranian nation is certainly against the will of the longtime traitors who fought alongside Saddam Hussein against their country fellow men and opened fire against innocent civilians in the Iranian cities.
By Mazda Parsi

References:
[1] Bolton, John, To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran, The New York Times, March 25, 2019.
[2] Abshenass, Emad, ‘I Rule the White House’: Will Bolton’s ouster help Trump facilitate US-Iran negotiations?, United World Data, September 15th, 2019.
[3] Middle East Eye, Trump sacks national security adviser John Bolton, September 10, 2019.
[4] Rezaian, Jason, Bolton’s departure will fundamentally alter Trump’s Iran policy, The Washington Post, September 10, 2019.
[5] ibid
[6] Larison, Daniel, Bolton’s Relationship with the MEK Is a Scandal, The American Conservative, June 6th, 2019.
[7] ibid
[9] Larison, Daniel, Good Riddance, Bolton, The American Conservative, September 10th, 2019.

September 24, 2019 0 comments

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