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Prisoners of Their Own Rebellion

The Cult-Like Group Fighting Iran

Members of the Trump administration have been providing support to a political sect that aims to topple the Iranian regime in Tehran. Around 2,000 of its members live in a camp in Albania. Former members say it subjected followers to torture and psychological terror.

Political sect from Albania fights against Tehran

On a country road in northwestern Albania, a rather odd collection of men and women living together in a camp are busy preparing themselves to topple the Iranian regime. Three times per week, many of them apparently practice slitting throats, breaking hands, jabbing out eyeballs with fingers and performing the so-called Glasgow Smile, which involves cutting cheeks from the corner of the mouth up toward the ear. That, at least, is the story told by a former member of the group.
The camp, roughly the size of 50 football fields and surrounded by high fences, is located just a 35-minute drive from the lively bars of downtown Tirana, but the people inside live in something of a time capsule. Former members of the group report that most of the 2,000 camp residents aren’t allowed to possess mobile phones, watches or calendars, though members of the organization that operates the camp deny those claims.
“My daughter is living somewhere in there,” says Mostafa Mohammadi, a 61-year-old Iranian man with a high forehead and deep eye sockets. Her name is Somayeh, a woman of 38. Her father, who lives in Canada, claims that she is being held in the camp against her will, which is why he spent several months in Albania last year. During a meeting there, he said:”I don’t have anything to do with politics. Please, I just want to see my daughter.”
Just like everyone in the camp, Somayeh Mohammadi is a member of the People’s Mujahedin, a once-militant Iranian opposition group that was listed by the United States. and Europe as a terrorist group until 2012. These days, however, several members of the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump are supporting the group, commonly known by the abbreviation MEK. Both the administration and the MEK, after all, want to see the end of the current regime in Iran — and now that the group has Washington’s backing, the Mujahedin apparently hopes that its time has finally come.
On the sidelines of the Middle East conference in Warsaw, which began on Wednesday, Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of possible”war”with Iran. And at an MEK rally in Warsaw, Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani called for regime change in Tehran.
For almost 30 years, several thousand members of the People’s Mujahedin lived in exile in Iraq, but in 2013, many of them moved to Albania. And since 2017, the majority of the group has lived in the isolated camp near Tirana.

Growing Influence

Ever since the group set up shop in Albania, however, more and more members have defected.

Some tell stories of torture experienced in the camp and of group sessions in which members are required to open up about their sexual fantasies. Women are allegedly forced to wear headscarves. And all of it takes place in the name of a phantom leader named Masoud Rajavi, who hasn’t been seen since 2003. Indeed, it isn’t even clear if he is still alive; photos from the 1990s show a mustachioed man in a green uniform.

The residents of the camp are just one part of the movement, which is led by Maryam Rajavi, the wife of the vanished leader. The 65-year-old commutes between Albania and her office in Paris, from which she leads the group’s political arm, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which is active in both Europe and the U.S. NCRI is structured as a kind of interim government, ready to take over in Tehran as soon as the current regime is toppled and the group has offices in many capital cities, including one in Washington not far from the White House. In Berlin, NCRI has an office in the Wilmersdorf district, located just southwest of the city center. The movement in Germany has just a few hundred members, but it has several thousand members around the world.

Maryam Rajavi is the acting leader of the People’s Mujahedin. Her husband has not been seen since 2003.
And they have proven to be adept lobbyists, having won over influential supporters in recent years. U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, National Security Adviser John Bolton and Giuliani have all spoken at NCRI events and they all view the group as a viable alternative to the current regime in power in Tehran.
“The mullahs must go, the ayatollah must go, and they must be replaced by a democratic government, which Madam Rajavi represents,”Giuliani said at an annual NCRI rally in Paris in June 2018. And he suggested that such a regime change could come soon:”Next year, I want to have this convention in Tehran!”he said. Both Giuliani and Bolton have even visited the group in Albania, and last Monday, the 40th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution, the national security adviser issued a video message addressing Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, in which he said:”I don’t think you’ll have many more anniversaries to enjoy.”
But who are Trump’s allies inside the secretive camp? Two lion statues guard the large iron gate at the camp’s entrance and guards call out”No, no!”if anyone stops out front. Three men march out of the gate and refuse to answer any questions, promising that interview requests will be responded to the next day. But nobody ever calls.
DER SPIEGEL never received a response from the People’s Mujahedin or from the NCRI to any of its interview queries prior to the visit, neither from Tirana, Paris or Berlin. A lawyer representing the group likewise declined to discuss the case of Somayeh Mohammadi. Indeed, the group only responded when DER SPIEGEL sent an email outlining the accusations that had been made against it, with an NCRI spokesman in Berlin essentially denying everything. On its websites, the organization claims to stand for democracy, human rights and the strict separation of church and state in Iran.”We want a pluralist system, freedom of parties and assembly,”it says, for example, in an article entitled”Maryam Rajavi’s Ten Point Plan for Future Iran.”
The statements suggest that once the People’s Mujahedin take over power in Iran, everything will immediately improve. But reports from those who have experienced life in the camp do not reflect that message. Instead, they appear to be prisoners of their own rebellion.

Gholamreza Shekari; Tirana; Der Spiegel

‘Lies, Manipulation and Fear’

It is, of course, undeniable that the regime in Tehran and the People’s Mujahedin are engaged in a propaganda war and lies from both sides are to be expected. But DER SPIEGEL has spoken with 15 former camp residents, some of them for several hours — and their stories are largely consistent on the most important point: The organization is essentially a sect that is difficult to escape.
Gholamreza Shekari, a slender 50-year-old man with bony cheeks, says he spent 27 years as a member of the People’s Mujahedin, adding”the organization’s public face is liberal. Internally, though, it works by way of lies, manipulation and fear.”
Shekari fell into the group of fighters as a 20-year-old, as many others apparently did as well — through false promises. In 1988, during the confusion of the Iran-Iraq War, he fled across the Iraqi border, where he met members of the People’s Mujahedin.”They spoke of freedom and democracy for Iran,”Shekari says.”And then they promised me that they would arrange a visa for Europe for me.”He believed them.
Later, he says, they took his documents and told him that if he left the group, he would end up in an Iraqi torture prison. An organization spokesman rejects the claim as a”ridiculous and fictitious film scenario.”
“They told us lies to ensure our obedience,”says Shekari.”We were guarded and forced to break off contact with our families.”Claims that fighters were banned from maintaining contact with their families are”baseless lies,”says the organization.
Shekari says that he repeatedly asked when he would be allowed to leave. But that turned out to be a mistake: According to Human Rights Watch, the organization began torturing members who wanted to leave the group or who asked critical questions in the mid-1990s.

“They insulted me as a spy, beat my shins until they were bloody and put out burning cigarettes on my skin,”Shekari says. After a week, he says, his lower legs were completely black. He rolls up his jeans to reveal scars covering his legs.

Ultimately, he says, the leader Masoud Rajavi gathered all those who had been tortured.”He threatened that if we ever spoke about it, we would be handed over to the Iraqis, which would mean additional torture or death.”

Group Denies Torture Claims

When confronted with these accusations, the spokesman for the organization’s German chapter says that”neither in the 1990s, nor before or after, did the group keep its members prisoner or torture them.”
Despite everything, Shekari remained with the organization for another 23 years, which at best could be explained as being the result of brainwashing. Only in Albania did the others allow him to leave, in September 2016. Now, he lives in a sparsely furnished apartment in Tirana and receives financial support from the UN Refugee Agency. He doesn’t have much choice but to stay where he is because, as an Iranian, getting visas is difficult and there are many countries to which he is not allowed to travel.
After he left the group, he says he received the equivalent of 350 euros per month from the group for half a year”so that I would keep my mouth shut,”Shekari claims.”The organization claims that we are all agents so that nobody believes us,”he says.”But I’m not working for anyone.”

MEK lobbying

The People’s Mujahedin used to receive funding from the erstwhile Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but these days, group supporters collect donations and can often be seen in the pedestrian zones of German cities, showing passersby photos of executions in Iran. They operate under the cover of organizations with names like the”Association for Future Hope”or”Aid Organization for Human Rights in Iran.”According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, these and other groups are linked with the People’s Mujahedin. In a message written to DER SPIEGEL about the camp’s financing, the group wrote:”All costs are covered by supporters of the resistance both inside and outside of Iran.”
Security experts believe that the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Israel also provide the group with financial support, but there is no proof for that supposition. The organization writes:”We haven’t received even a single euro from any government.”

Masoud Rajavi launched what he called an”ideological revolution”in 1985. He married the wife of a confidant and forced all others to get divorced

An ‘Ideological Revolution’

The transformation into a sect-like organization can be explained by history. After the overthrow of the shah, the militant group, still adamantly anti-American at the time, lost the ensuing power struggle and was persecuted by the religious regime under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini. The members fled to Iraq, from where they carried out terrorist attacks in Iran and fought against their own country in the Iran-Iraq War.
Fearing that the group might disintegrate, leader, Masoud Rajavi launched what he called an”ideological revolution”in 1985. He married the wife of a confidant and forced all others to get divorced, with children being sent abroad. Loyalties other than the one to the group’s leader were no longer to be tolerated — and that is when the personality cult surrounding Rajavi and his new wife Maryam began. Still today, many camp residents continue to wear the leader’s likeness on a chain around their necks.
The last time Masoud Rajavi was seen was in March 2003, shortly before the first American bombs began falling in Baghdad. But Maryam Rajavi continues speaking about her husband as though he were still alive. Not long after the beginning of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Americans captured the People’s Mujahedin’s camp and disarmed the group. Soon, though, the organization began claiming it backed the U.S., even though it had been fighting on behalf of Saddam Hussein only a short time before.
The group’s disarming could have spelled the end, but hardliners like then-U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney wanted to use them as leverage against Iran. Already in 2002, the group had worked with the Israeli secret service Mossad in revealing that Iran had begun covertly enriching uranium.

US training MEK members

In 2007, units of the People’s Mujahedin began to receive training at a U.S. military facility in the desert of Nevada — even though the group was still listed by Washington as a terrorist organization at the time. And now, the Trump administration has taken the position that the People’s Mujahedin has been demanding for years: a hardline stance toward Iran. And the group believes that it has played a role: When Trump abandoned the nuclear deal with Iran in May, the group’s commanders celebrated as though they had just won a great victory.
Their list of supporters is currently longer than it has ever been, including numerous U.S. Senators and members of the U.S. military and security apparatus. The former Saudi Arabian intelligence chief, Turki Bin Faisal al Saud, is also a proponent. In the European Parliament, a group called Friends of a Free Iran advocates on behalf of the People’s Mujahedin as does a multipartisan group in the German federal parliament, the Bundestag, called the German Solidarity Committee for a Free Iran.
Trump confidant Rudy Giuliani:”The mullahs must go, the ayatollah must go, and they must be replaced by a democratic government, which Madam Rajavi represents.”
In October, Martin Patzelt, a parliamentarian with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), visited the camp in Albania together with former Bundestag President Rita Süssmuth, also of the CDU. Süssmuth raved about the”joie de vivre culture”among the People’s Mujahedin, adding that the Iranian secret service has repeatedly propagated”terrible things”about the group.
The People’s Mujahedin has often rejected all manner of accusations as propaganda from Tehran. And it has been an effective strategy, in part because Iran has brutally persecuted the group in the past and executed thousands of its followers.

around a thousand members work in the so-called”computer division,”allegedly using fake accounts to post pro-organization propaganda on Twitter and Facebook

War Footing

The depictions of those who have left the organization make it sound like the group is constantly on war footing. Eight residents sleep in each room and they have to get up between 4:30 and 5:00 a.m. In addition to combat training, they also take care of construction projects in the camp. The defectors also say that around a thousand members work in the so-called”computer division,”allegedly using fake accounts to post pro-organization propaganda on Twitter and Facebook. Others, say former members, use the messenger service Telegram to entice new Iranian recruits to join them in Albania.
The group’s spokesman counters that claims that the organization is running a troll factory are merely an”attempt to cover up fake accounts belonging to the Iranian regime.”
Former group members say that there are some 200 commanders in the camp and they sometimes read out a letter from their vanished leader, including sentences like:”Have no fear, victory is ours, we will be in Iran.”
The question as to why the Albanian government tolerates the Iranian group in their country is one that the Interior Ministry in Tirana is not willing to answer. But U.S. government documents make it clear why the People’s Mujahedin ended up in Albania in the first place.
After the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the situation became increasingly dangerous for them. During her time in office, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton helped find a solution, together with the United Nations, and ultimately Albania agreed to accept a number of group members. In return, the U.S. donated $20 million to the UN Refugee Agency and pledged development aid to Albania.
Starting in 2013, group leaders began buying up more and more land and ultimately built the camp, including dozens of white containers and gray, two-story buildings. They house a large kitchen, a bakery, a music studio, a computer center and a dentistry practice — at least according to a propaganda video. On another one of the few videos from inside the camp, Somayeh Mohammadi can be seen, the woman whose father has been trying to free her for 21 years. In the clip, she is wearing a uniform with a headscarf and is being interviewed by two Albanian journalists. Her father, she says, is an agent of the Iranian regime and insists she wants to remain in the camp.”Here is a free country. If I want to go anywhere, I can go.”
The story that her father has to tell, one backed up with documents and video material, sounds quite different. Mohammadi himself was a long-time supporter of the organization and he collected donations for the group in Canada, where he has lived since 1994. When Somayeh was 17 years old, a woman from the organization offered her a”short trip”to the camp in Iraq.

Mostafa Mohammadi; Somayeh Mohammadi father

Iranian families of some of the 3,200 members of the MEK, who said loved ones were trapped at the MEK base in Iraq at Camp Ashraf, during a conference on Nov. 25, 2011, in Baghdad, Iraq. The Iraqi government said it would close the base by the end of that year.
Photo: Scott Peterson/Getty Images

‘The Organization Gives Nothing’

Somayeh never came back. The organization sent a cassette recording of Somayeh saying that she had decided to remain in the camp. Her father says that the organization lured him to places in various countries with the promise that he could see her, but instead used him in demonstrations.”The organization gives nothing without getting something in return,”Mohammadi says.
On one video from June 2003, Mohammadi can be seen in front of the French Embassy in Ottawa, apparently drenched in gasoline as he pulls out a match — which a journalist then knocks out of his hand. At the time, group leader Maryam Rajavi was in pre-trial detention in France on suspicions of terrorism and protesters in many countries had lit themselves on fire in front of French embassies. Because he too had apparently been preparing to do the same, Mohammadi was considered a hero within the group from that moment on. He was even allowed to visit his daughter in the camp. But he ultimately distanced himself from the group and began filming everything in an attempt at collecting evidence that she was being held against her will.

On Oct. 17, 2013, Somayeh sent a letter to Canadian authorities, in which she wrote:”Please help me return to my former country, Canada, as soon as possible.”But Somayeh doesn’t have a Canadian passport and the authorities were unable to help her.

But then, she apparently changed her mind yet again — and a book was even published in her name as a PDF document, in which she claims that she wants to stay with the People’s Mujahedin.
“Who knows what they did to her,”says her father.

By Luisa Hommerich / DER SPIEGEL

February 20, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Giuliani seems wholly addicted to the MEK’s honorarium checks

Trump Lawyer Rudy Giuliani Gives Rally Calling for Iran Regime Change Right Outside Warsaw

Ahead of a U.S.-led summit on the Middle East that got underway today in Warsaw, Poland, President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani was spotted giving a speech at an event for the Iranian opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran or the Mojahedin-e Khalq, also known as MEK.
“It’s a great honor for me to be here with you in order to make a very important point to all of the government officials who are meeting across the way in the stadium,” Giuliani told the crowd. “In order to have peace and security in the Middle East, there has to be a major change in the theocratic dictatorship in Iran. It must end, and end quickly, in order to have peace and stability.”
The group, which the U.S. listed as a terrorist organization until as recently as 2012, openly advocates for regime change in Iran. Giuliani has a longstanding relationship with MEK and frequently speaks at its annual conferences in Paris.

“If the MEK were holding an event on the South Pole, Rudy Giuliani would participate,”Ambassador Daniel Benjamin, Director of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College and former Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the State Department, told Newsweek.”He seems wholly addicted to the group’s honorarium checks, and he refuses to let it bother him that the MEK has American blood on its hands. He is the picture of a man without principle.”

Experts estimate that MEK pays its high-profile speakers up to $50,000 for their appearances. The group says raises money from private donations, but the source of its funding has never been publicly verified.
Other U.S. officials who have spoken at MEK rallies include National Security Adviser John Bolton and former U.S. Representative Newt Gingrich. Bolton is another vocal proponent of regime change in Iran.
The group has an office in Washington, D.C., and has registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) with the name National Council of Resistance of Iran.
“NCRI-US engages in disseminating information about the politico-economic situation in Iran and the Middle East, holds conferences and gatherings, conducts meetings, and engages in media activities. It will respond to inquiries as well as brief the U.S. Government, Congress and the general public,” reads one of the group’s recent FARA filings.
MEK first formed as a student group in the 1960s, when it espoused an ideology that mixed Marxism with Shiite Islam.
After Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini rose to power, he became suspicious of MEK’s Marxist ideology and prohibited the group from taking a role in government. In response, MEK began to launch attacks against Khomeini’s followers. The MEK bombed the headquarters of Iran’s ruling party in 1981, killing more than 70 government officials.
In 1992, the group gained international notoriety by attacking Iranian embassies in 13 different countries, including the Iranian mission to the United Nations.
MEK has been described as a cult and is deeply unpopular in Iran. Today, the group is led from Paris by Maryam Rajavi, the wife of MEK founder Massoud Rajavi, who disappeared mysteriously in the early 2000s. The group is known to pay participants to attend its events to create the appearance that it has more robust support than it actually does.
The U.S.-led summit on the Middle East takes place in Poland throughout Wednesday and Thursday. Iran is expected to be a major topic of discussion during the event.

By Cristina Maza , Newsweek.com

February 18, 2019 0 comments

Nejat Publications

Nejat NewsLetter No.59

Inside This Issue:

Parviz Heidarzadeh Declares His Defection From The MEK
When The Anti Iranian Camp See No Light At The End Of The Tunnel
AN UNHOLY ALLIANCE: THE USE OF TERRORISM ACCORDING TO JOHN BOLTON
Handling Of Iran Is Juvenile. MEK The Darling Of Trump Admin
Aznar, Zapatero … The Other Politicians Financed By Terrorists
News in brief 7
Another Member Of The MKO Left The Group

To download the PDF file click here

February 18, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force The cult of Rajavi

MEK: Who is this Iranian ‘cult’ backed by the US?

The MEK, an Iranian group that opposes the Iranian government and has committed several terrorist attacks is hugely controversial. But that doesn’t stop the US from supporting them.

“Iran should be isolated until Iran changes,” US President Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani, who claimed to be representing the Iranian group the People’s Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (MEK), during a Middle East conference in Warsaw, Poland.
Giuliani’s suggestion for who will lead the democratic government after replacing the current Iranian government is Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the group that was, until recently, listed as a terrorist organisation by the US.
US support of the MEK is controversial not least because of the cult aspects which dominate its practices, but also the group’s violent past which some suspect continues today.

So, what is the MEK?

The MK is a religious and ‘Marxist’ group aiming to remove the Iranian government. It was founded in 1965 in Iran in opposition to the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and launched bomb attacks against him. The group is responsible for killing Iran’s then-president Mohammad Ali Rajai and Prime Minister Mohammad Javad Bahovar in 1981 and is suspected of the assassination of six American servicemen.
The group relocated to Iraq after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, when Iran proved that the group had lost a power struggle against the government, and found military support and shelter in Camp Hurriya in Baghdad.
When the eight-year Iran-Iraq war broke out in 1980, the MEK fought alongside Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. That led to them being branded traitors by the Iranian government, who executed thousands of political opponents, including MEK supporters, at the end of the war in 1988.
The US State Department added the MEK to its list of terrorist organisations in 1997, and the exact reason why is unknown but the group carried out several terror attacks killing Iranians, Iraqis and Americans in the 70s and 80s. The terrorist label was reversed under the presidency of Barack Obama in 2012 after the group led a multimillion-dollar campaign. A Guardian investigation found that the group flew funds to members of Congress while running a lobbying campaign to erase its past.
When the US illegally invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, the group surrendered to the Americans and began presenting itself as a group advocating democracy.
Until 2012, the group remained in Iraq under US protection, but in fear of Iranian attacks, it was relocated to an unlikely country, Albania, where the group built a massive compound surrounded by barbed wire, high-tech surveillance and armed guards.

Why the US supports the MEK

There is one main reason behind the current US support of the MEK: defeating Iran, the biggest enemy of the US in the Middle East.
In 2015, the Obama administration, along with the UK, China, Russia and Germany reached a deal with the Iranian government. According to the agreement, Tehran would limit its nuclear programme and the world powers sat at the table would remove economic sanctions on Iran.
The US end of the deal eventually fell through when US President Donald Trump decided to withdraw from the agreement in May 2018. Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton, who long advocated for the removal of the agreement, and Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s lawyer, have been taking to the stage at the MEK’s rallies, where the speakers are reportedly paid $30,000 to $50,000 per event. Despite speaking at the rallies, neither Giuliani or Bolton have ever confirmed receiving payment from the MEK.
For the US, the rebranded version of the group is the best alternative to fight against Iran, and Rajavi has been leading an expensive propaganda campaign through events at which she aims to attract more supporters. The group’s supporters often make appearances in front of buildings where Iranian officials are attending political gatherings outside of Iran. The group advertises itself as the ‘popular opposition’, but the fact is that it is”almost universally despised among Iranians both inside the country and in the diaspora.”

Is it a cult?

Despite describing its founding principles as a mixture of Marxism and Islam, the group has practices that are characteristic of neither Islam nor Marxism. For followers of the MEK, applying those practices is a matter of dedication and obligatory as much as working against the Iranian government.
It includes the strict segregation of men and women almost from toddlerhood, compulsory divorce and a ban on having children. The members of the group reportedly attend weekly gatherings where they have to confess and clean any idea they have that could conflict with the rules.
The ideology is justified by the group as being in the state of war. “Soldiers can’t have wives and husbands,” one of the followers of the group was quoted as saying in a New York Times article in 2003.
Human rights groups often denounce the group’s cult practices and reported abuses such as torture, solitary confinement and compulsory divorce.
TRT World

February 17, 2019 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Spiegel: Political sect from Albania fights against Tehran

Luisa Hommerich of Spiegel posts a detailed report on the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/ MEK/ PMOI) as apolitical cult with violent practices, on February 15, 2019.

The article that was published in German sheds light on the violent nature of the group.

“Over 2000 of their people live in a camp in Albania – defectors tell of physical and psychological torture”, according to the report.
“On a country road in northwestern Albania, strange men and women are preparing for the overthrow of the Iranian regime at a camp,” Luisa Hommerich states.
“Three times a week, many of them allegedly practice cutting throats with knives, breaking hand bones”, the German journalist reports referring to the testimonies of former members.

She provides a clear portrait of the isolated camp of the Cult of Rajavi in Albania.

“It is just 35 minutes’ drive from Tirana’s colorful bars, but in it people live like in a time capsule,” she writes. “Defectors say most of the approximately 2,000 residents are likely to have no cell phones, no clocks, no calendars; Representatives of the organization running the camp deny that.”

Hommerich who has interviewed several individuals for this documented report cites Mostafa Mohammadi whose daughter Somayeh has been imprisoned in the MKO since teen age.

“Somewhere in there my daughter lives,”She cites.”Her name is Somayeh, she is an adult woman of 38 years.”

The Spiegel correspondent describes certain cases of human rights violations that take place in the MKO camps every day. Somayeh is one of the 2000 people who are held in the MKO against their will.

February 17, 2019 0 comments

Iran

No; Islamic Republic Not Months Away from Collapse

Iran celebrated the 40th anniversary of its revolution on Monday, with people marching to honour an unexpected victory that birthed the Islamic Republic.

40th anniversary of Iranian Revolution

Packed crowds of Iranians were on the streets in Iranian cities to commemorate the sweeping away of the US-backed rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, defying a prediction that few in Iran are in celebration mood considering rising unemployment and inflation exacerbated by US sanctions.
But this was not the only prediction proven false. The celebrations left unfulfilled the latest prophecy of the hawkish US national security advisor John Bolton, who hoped last year “the Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1979 revolution will not last until its fortieth birthday.”
In his speech to a conference of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), the notorious group behind biggest terror attacks in Iran, Bolton also said they would hold celebrations in Tehran before 2019.
Even at that time, the statement appeared more like a case of wishful thinking.

It’s All Illusion

In fact, the US politicians have long been talking of the Islamic Republic’s imminent demise.
The US pressure campaign against Tehran was launched just months into the revolution, after US officials were convinced the Islamic Republic was not something they could stand.
Western governments could live without Iran’s petrodollars and its highly profitable economic opportunities, but they couldn’t afford to see Mideast people ruled by similar dictatorships to follow in Iranians’ footsteps and copy this model in the region’s oil kingdoms.
Throughout the years since the 1979 revolution, US officials and their propaganda mouthpieces have periodically asserted the Islamic Republic is merely months away from collapse.
In fact, Bolton’s friends at MKO are a big victim of such mentality, losing thousands of forces in a plainly ridiculous operation to take Tehran and other Iranian cities in 1988.
Before them, the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had tried to bring an end to the Islamic Republic in weeks, taking advantage of Iran’s post-revolutionary chaos in the 1980s.
However, despite generous financial and arms support provided by wealthy Arab governments and the west, the Iraqi war machine failed to achieve tangible achievements after eight years of relentless war.

40th anniversary of Iranian Revolution

Manufactured Revolution

The last time we were told the end is near for the Islamic Republic was 2009, when allegations of widespread fraud in the presidential elections that year ignited street protests in Tehran and other cities.
Such claims could hardly be credible, as the victor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had won by an 11-million lead over his nearest rival and it was impossible for him to collude with hundreds of thousands of election organisers to steal so many votes.
But facts were no important to western media and politicians, who portrayed a nation tired of the revolution which had stood up to finish off a decaying regime.

For a few months, the uprising was heroically advancing, and the so-called Green Movement was to take over the country soon.
However, despite the hopes of overexcited commentators in the western press, things didn’t go as their audience would have expected.
With the predictions of the western dreamers proven untrue, then US president Barack Obama appeared to start admitting the reality about Iran, beginning with the recognition of Iran’s right to peaceful atomic energy.
The Obama administration concluded the nuclear deal with Iran and exchanged prisoners with the country, believing that the experience of decades of US hostility towards Tehran provided the Iran problem is not just another nail to be tapped by the strong US hammer.

Illusions Make Comeback

Then Donald Trump came to power and pulled out of the nuclear deal, alleging that his predecessors had not been tough enough with Tehran, mocking Obama for being too soft on Iran.
People inside the new US administration claimed there are many parallels between Iran and the former Soviet Union, believing the current president could play a part similar to former president Ronald Reagan by taking an uncompromising position towards Iran.
Soon, western governments’ propaganda mouthpieces took up the Soviet analogy as their watchword and started repeating a nearly forgotten mantra: Iranians want change.
The narrative was set up skilfully: Iran’s youth, particularly the army of the unemployed, have been hit hard by the economic downturn and other challenges and are fed up with a regime full of mischief.
The western mainstream media’s audience were endlessly told that Iranians have grown wary of the regime’s corruption and are yearning from within for transformation.
According to this narrative, the US and other western governments have a humanitarian duty to intervene and help Iranians realize their hope.

Soviet Analogy in Action

Before the 40th anniversary of the revolution, western media were publishing mountains of commentary and strident headlines raising the familiar theme of Iran’s need for change.
Reuters ran the story of a former judge who is frustrated with the revolution; the Daily Telegraph remembered “horrors” of the post-revolution Iran; and Bloomberg assertedIranians have endured 40 years of “terror, deprivation and cruelty” under the Islamic Republic.
Moreover, the Wall Street Journal said the Revolution has failed to fulfil promises; The Washington Post believed the “decaying” Islamic Republic is “showing its age” and the Christian Science Monitor claimed the country has reached a turning point.
Likewise, Financial Times reported many of those born since the 1979 Revolution want reform, France 24 quoted an expert saying the Iranian state represses its people and deprives them of the country’s wealth, and Deutsche Welle predicted the Islamic Republic is likely to be toppled in the near future.
But the noisy celebrations on Monday showed once again that the stories by narrated the dreamers in the western press and fantasies woven by hawks in the US government have little to do with reality.
The case was too big to ignore, and the western agencies had no choice but to cover the celebrations, although they sought to play down the annual event.
The celebrations were frequently referred to as “state-organized” marches that saw tens of thousands or at best hundreds of thousands of people in Iran’s 31 provinces in attendance.

Pipe Dreams

The reaction of the US government was even more interesting.
Presumably, the size of crowds in the February 11 celebrations could be the first indicator of the success of the so-called “maximum pressure” campaign, designed to bring Iran to its knees.
Trump and Bolton were so annoyed by the popular celebrations that they issued separate messages hours later, with the advisor denouncing the “Iranian regime” which “has failed to fulfil its promises.”
They seem to be convinced that the Iranian government is vulnerable to collapse and tough US sanctions could hasten its demise.
But Iran has been under sanctions for over forty years. Why should we believe the new round of US sanctions will bring a collapse of the Islamic Republic now?
The reason why the Islamic Republic survives such undue pressure is a story for another day, but it seems safe to conclude that the current US pressure campaign is doomed.
There is no doubt that the Iranian government faces a series of unnerving domestic and foreign challenges. But the 40-year-old Islamic Republic is different from the one that emerged in 1979.
Iran has now secured itself, boosted its regional influence and established a buffer zone between its borders and hostile powers.
It has grown domestically, too, trying to keep up with a dynamic society.
More importantly, many Iranians are now convinced they have to stand on their feet and bear US pressures, having experienced first-hand that the US is a hopeless case.

Alireza Hashemi, Iran Front Page,
Alireza Hashemi is an Iranian political journalist with several years of experince working for Iran’s English and Persian-Language media who regularly contributes to IFPnews. He previosly served as a staff writer at Financial Tribune.

February 16, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Trump allies hijack Warsaw summit with calls for Iran war, regime change

WASHINGTON — An international conference US officials had insisted was not about demonizing Iran got off to an awkward start in Warsaw today thanks to two close allies of US President Donald Trump.

First, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer in the Russia investigation, called for Iran regime change at a rally in Warsaw of the controversial Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group until recently designated as a terrorist group by the United States, and widely reviled by Iranians both inside and outside of Iran as a cult that fought with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war.
Then, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his spokesman tweeted comments whose English translation said the Warsaw meeting was important for bringing Israel together with Arab countries “to advance their common interest of war with Iran.” Those tweets were subsequently deleted and reposted with the translation of Israeli-Arab common interest being in “combatting” Iran, but not for over an hour from the Israeli prime minister’s official Twitter account.
State Department officials had already had a hard time convincing other allied nations to send their foreign ministers to the two-day supposedly ministerial conference on promoting peace and stability in the Middle East. (Netanyahu also serves as Israel’s foreign minister.) In the end, only two foreign ministers came from Western Europe to Warsaw.
British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt came for one day to chair a “quad” meeting on Yemen, with his counterparts from the United States, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, along with UN Yemen envoy Martin Griffiths. But Hunt was expected to depart before the proceedings Thursday. France and Germany, the other two European nations that helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal that Trump withdrew from last year, sent their political directors.
Israel’s Netanyahu was the only head of state who came from abroad to the conference; US Vice President Mike Pence also attended. That made for an awkward “family photo” of the attendees in which the Polish president and foreign minister, Pence, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Netanyahu were some of the only recognizable figures in the front row of some 50 nations’ representatives.
US envoy on Iran Brian Hook, in an interview with the BBC Persian service, said repeatedly that the United States does not have a relationship with the MEK, and said Giuliani does not represent the US government. But the fact that the president’s personal lawyer, as well as his national security adviser John Bolton, are or have been longtime lobbyists for the controversial group has made many other countries wary of the Trump administration’s hard-line policies on Iran and where they are heading.
“I don’t think there’s any hiding the fact that despite the label being changed, the US very much has an agenda here in terms of creating this alliance that is anti-Iran,” Ellie Geranmayeh, deputy director of Middle East programs at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Al-Monitor.
“The messaging from European capitals has been so clear that they don’t want to be associated with that kind of meeting,” Geranmayeh said. “It’s a big snub that the German and the French foreign ministers haven’t gone. And the only reason Hunt’s going can be put down to Brexit next month and the country being in limbo.”
On the agenda for Thursday, the US undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, Sigal Mandelker, is expected to lead discussions at a special session on finance and terrorism.
“To be honest, even today, speaking to some of the Europeans, they have no clue what is coming out of this tomorrow,” Geranmayeh said. “The impression they had is the agenda is still a mess.”
“I think the US has still been pushing for follow-up working groups to continue on some of these issues,” she said. “But one diplomat said it really depends on how the US handles the discussions in Warsaw. If they really go into full Iran-bashing mode, it is going to be so unhelpful.”
The fact that Trump’s personal lawyer is meeting with the MEK “makes everyone in Europe very skeptical of the intent behind this meeting,” Geranmayeh said.
Laura Rozen, Al Monitor
Laura Rozen is Al-Monitor’s diplomatic correspondent based in Washington, DC. She has written for Yahoo! News, Politico and Foreign Policy. On Twitter: @LRozen

February 16, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Gingrich considered registering as a lobbyist for Iran regime change

The former House speaker sought advice late last year on whether to register as a foreign agent for the Iranian opposition.

Newt Ginrich

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich attends the”Free Iran 2018 — the Alternative”event organized by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an exiled Iranian opposition group, on June 30, 2018, in Villepinte, north of Paris.
Former US House speaker and Donald Trump ally Newt Gingrich asked the Justice Department for advice last year on whether he should register as a foreign agent amid deepening involvement with groups seeking regime change in Iran.
Gingrich asked the department in mid-September whether he should register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) after an undisclosed person asked him to urge a foreign ambassador in Washington to seek funding from that ambassador’s country to “promote democracy” in Iran. Gingrich declined to respond to Al-Monitor’s requests for comment and it’s not clear if he ever went through with the person’s request.
The request is spelled out in an Oct. 19 advisory opinion posted to the FARA web site. While Gingrich isn’t named in the redacted document, descriptive details are a perfect match for his Virginia-based Gingrich Productions firm (Al-Monitor was able to independently confirm the request came from Gingrich).
In his letter to the Justice Department, Gingrich also seeks guidance on whether he should register as a lobbyist for a “foreign political party” after making “a number” of “paid appearances” sponsored by the group’s US affiliate both inside and outside the United States. While the foreign party isn’t named, it appears to be a clear reference to the pro-regime change National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI-US); Gingrich has attended the group’s annual gathering just outside of Paris several times.
In its advisory opinion, the Justice Department says Gingrich, who has not registered as a foreign agent, may need to do so if the US affiliate “is acting in any way on behalf of” the parent party. Interestingly, the NCRI’s US office itself has been registered under FARA as a foreign agent of the NCRI since 2012. A spokesman for the group said it had nothing to do with Gingrich’s potential outreach to the unnamed foreign ambassador.
Gingrich was an adviser to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and remains close to the president, who sought his advice on how to avoid a Democratic “blue wave” ahead of the 2018 mid-term elections. His wife, Callista Gingrich, was tapped as ambassador to the Vatican in May 2017.
But he isn’t the only Washington insider in the president’s orbit who’s close to the Iranian opposition. Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani has also long been a fixture at NCRI events. And Al-Monitor first reported that national security adviser John Bolton had disclosed being paid $40,000 for his appearance at the group’s rally in France in 2017 before he joined the government.
Gingrich’s stepped-up political activity on behalf of the Iranian opposition is particularly noteworthy as the Donald Trump administration sponsors a Middle East conference in Poland this week that was originally billed as an anti-Tehran summit. Giuliani is slated to appear at an NCRI rally in Warsaw coinciding with the summit.
Julian Pecquet , Al-Monitor
Julian Pecquet is Al-Monitor’s Washington Editor. He was previously Congressional Correspondent from 2014 through May 2017 and most recently before that headed up The Hill’s Global Affairs blog. On Twitter: @JPecquet_ALM, Email: jpecquet@al-monitor.com.

February 16, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

As Giuliani Calls for Regime Change in Iran, Netanyahu Raises the Specter of “War”

RUDY GIULIANI, the former mayor of New York City who now serves as President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, called for the overthrow of Iran’s government on Wednesday during a rally in Poland staged by a cult-like group of Iranian exiles who pay him to represent them.
Speaking outside the Warsaw venue for an international conference on the Middle East attended by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Giuliani said that his message for the 65 governments discussing ways to confront Iran was simple. “The theocratic dictatorship in Tehran,” Giuliani said, “must end and end quickly.”

Former NY Mayor @RudyGiuliani in Warsaw:
In order to have peace & security in the Mid-East there has to be a major change in the theocratic dictatorship in #Iran. It must end & end quickly in order to have stability#FreeIranWithMaryamRajavi#PolandSummit#IStandWithMaryamRajavi pic.twitter.com/aKafMjxq4k
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) February 13, 2019

Giuliani went on to suggest that peace in the region would only come when Iran was ruled instead by his clients, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an exile group of former terrorists also known as the Mojahedin-e Khalq, or People’s Mujahedin. The group’s leader, Maryam Rajavi, already refers to herself as “President-elect.”

.@RudyGiuliani: We have seen regime change work & fail. In #Iran’s case we don’t have to worry. There is a viable alternative. Maryam Rajavi’s 10-point plan stands for a #FreeIran w/ a democratically-elected Gov instead of a tyrant/monarch.#FreeIranWithMaryamRajavi #WarsawSummit pic.twitter.com/EFJHIw2WUV
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) February 13, 2019

Off-stage, the U.S. president’s lawyer admitted that he was paid by the exile group, but stressed to reporters that he was in Warsaw on behalf of the MEK in his personal capacity and would not be attending the diplomatic conference organized by the State Department.
Even before the conference began, the Israeli prime minister appeared to shrug off efforts by the State Department and the Polish government to portray the gathering as broadly focused on Middle East peace, describing it as primarily a meeting of Iran’s enemies.
In video posted on the prime minister’s official Twitter feed, Netanyahu characterized a meeting with Oman’s foreign minister as “excellent,” and one focused on “additional steps we can take together with the countries of the region in order to advance common interests.”
According to the English translation of Netanyahu’s remarks in Hebrew prepared by his office, the prime minister then added: “What is important about this meeting — and it is not in secret because there are many of those — is that this is an open meeting with representatives of leading Arab countries that are sitting down together with Israel in order to advance the common interest of war with Iran.”

Netanyahu’s use of the word “war” seemed to throw Israel’s diplomatic corps into chaos. Within minutes, as journalists speculated that the prime minister’s office might have mistranslated his comment, Netanyahu’s spokesperson to the Arab media, Ofir Gendelman, wrote that the Israeli leader had described his nation’s common interest with Arab nations as “combatting Iran,” not “war with Iran.”
The subtitled video produced by the prime minister’s office was then deleted from his Twitter feed and replaced with the text of Gendelman’s alternative translation.
As my colleague Talya Cooper explains, however, Netanyahu did in fact use the Hebrew word for “war” in the video, which has not yet been deleted from his Hebrew-language YouTube channel. In a separate video, posted by Netanyahu’s office on Facebook earlier in the day, the prime minister had used the Hebrew word for “combat.”
Aron Heller, an Associated Press correspondent based in Jerusalem, also filmed the remarks and reported that although Netanyahu had mentioned “war,” his office said later that he was referring to “combatting Iran.”

Did @netanyahu really say “war” with Iran? I was there and the word was ”milchama” = war. pic.twitter.com/ZzhrDs2lWA
— Aron Heller (@aronhellerap) February 13, 2019

Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, seized on the Israeli leader’s apparent Freudian slip as evidence that Netanyahu’s true aim of provoking a war with Iran was now out in the open

We’ve always known Netanyahu’s illusions. Now, the world – and those attending #WarsawCircus – know, too pic.twitter.com/0TSDzIak9e
— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) February 13, 2019

Zarif also suggested that the Trump administration and the exiles of the MEK might have been behind a suicide bombing on a bus in southeastern Iran on Wednesday, which killed 41 members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

“Is it no coincidence that Iran is hit by terror on the very day that #WarsawCircus begins?” Zarif tweeted. “Especially when cohorts of same terrorists cheer it from Warsaw streets & support it with twitter bots? US seems to always make the same wrong choices, but expect different results.”

The foreign minister was clearly referring to the MEK, which spent three decades trying to achieve regime change in Iran through violence, including terrorist attacks. The well-funded exile group was also suspected of being behind social media trickery discovered by the BBC, which reported that Twitter bots had been deployed “to artificially create a trend which hints at popular support for the summit and — by extension — widespread resentment towards the Iranian establishment.”
The Iranian exiles have been caught in the past paying nonsupporters to fill out its crowds at rallies, a tactic reportedly used at the event in Warsaw on Wednesday, according to journalists on the ground.

The MEK is having a rally in Warsaw where as usual about a third of the crowd is random non-Iranians who’ve been bussed in from Slovakia and can’t read the signs they’re holding pic.twitter.com/NnJyqMxnEY
— Gregg Carlstrom (@glcarlstrom) February 13, 2019

Spoke to journalist in #WarsawSummit. He had attended the MEK terrorist org’s rally. Many of the”demonstartors”were Slovak high school kids who couldnt really provide an answer as to why they were there.

Just as the MEK buys bots on Twitter, they do so in real life as well…
— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) February 13, 2019

Members of the MEK helped foment the 1979 Iranian revolution, in part by killing American civilians working in Tehran, but the group then lost a struggle for power to the Islamists. With its leadership forced to flee Iran in 1981, the MEK’s members set up a government-in-exile in France and established a military base in Iraq, where they were given arms and training by Saddam Hussein as part of a strategy to destabilize the government in Tehran that he was at war with.
In recent years, as The Intercept has reported, the MEK has poured millions of dollars into reinventing itself as a moderate political group ready to take power in Iran if Western-backed regime change ever takes place. To that end, it lobbied successfully to be removed from the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2012. The Iranian exiles achieved this over the apparent opposition of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in part by paying a long list of former U.S. officials from both parties hefty speaking fees of between $10,000 to $50,000 for hymns of praise.

Despite the claims of paid spokespeople like Giuliani and John Bolton — who predicted regime change would come at a lavish MEK rally in Paris just months before being named Trump’s national security adviser — the MEK appears to be as unprepared to take power in Iran as Ahmad Chalabi’s exiled Iraqi National Congress was after the American invasion of Iraq.

#JohnBolton 8 months ago among MEK supporters tells them they will overthrow #Iran’s regime and celebrate in #Tehran with Bolton himself present, “before 2019” pic.twitter.com/H7oaaU3faU
— Bahman Kalbasi (@BahmanKalbasi) March 22, 2018

Ariane Tabatabai, a Georgetown University scholar, has argued that the “cult-like dissident group” — whose married members were reportedly forced to divorce and take a vow of lifelong celibacy — “has no viable chance of seizing power in Iran.”

If the current government is not Iranians’ first choice for a government, the MEK is not even their last — and for good reason. The MEK supported Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War. The people’s discontent with the Iranian government at that time did not translate into their supporting an external enemy that was firing Scuds into Tehran, using chemical weapons and killing hundreds of thousands of Iranians, including many civilians. Today, the MEK is viewed negatively by most Iranians, who would prefer to maintain the status quo than rush to the arms of what they consider a corrupt, criminal cult.
Despite such doubts, spending lavishly on paid endorsements has earned the MEK a bipartisan roster of Washington politicians willing to sign up as supporters. At a gala in 2016, Bolton was joined in singing the group’s praises by another former U.N. ambassador, Bill Richardson; a former attorney general, Michael Mukasey; the former State Department spokesperson P.J. Crowley; the former Homeland Security adviser Frances Townsend; the former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I.; and the former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean. That Paris gala was hosted by Linda Chavez, a former Reagan administration official, and headlined by Newt Gingrich, the former speaker who was under consideration to be Trump’s running mate at the time.
Fears about Bolton’s apparently open desire to start a war with Iran have been exacerbated by his boosting of the MEK and his steadfast denial of the catastrophe unleashed by the invasion of Iraq that he worked for as a member of the Bush administration. Last year, when Fox News host Tucker Carlson pointed out that Bolton had called for regime change in Iraq, Libya, Iran, and Syria, and the first of those had been “a disaster,” Bolton disagreed.
“I think the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, that military action, was a resounding success,” Bolton insisted to Carlson. The chaos that followed in Iraq, he said, was caused by a poorly executed occupation that ended too soon. On the bright side, Bolton said, the mistakes the U.S. made in Iraq offered “lessons about what to do after a regime is overthrown” in the future.
Earlier this week, Sen. Chris Murphy warned that Bolton appeared to be laying the groundwork for war in a belligerent video message from the White House to mark the 40th anniversary of the Iranian revolution.

Here Bolton says Iran is seeking nuclear weapons. This simply isn’t true. The intelligence says the opposite and he knows it. He is laying the groundwork for war and we all must be vigilant. https://t.co/1zHR5vaEGn
— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) February 12, 2019

Another strong supporter of the disastrous U.S. invasion of Iraq was Netanyahu, who, between terms as prime minister, testified to Congress on Sept. 12, 2002 as a private citizen, and advised lawmakers that attacking Iraq would be wise.
A review of Netanyahu’s 2002 testimony — in which he said, “I think the choice of Iraq is a good choice, it’s the right choice” — reveals that he linked his strong support for a United States invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein with the possibility of inspiring the implosion of the ruling theocracy in neighboring Iran.

“It’s not a question of whether Iraq’s regime should be taken out but when should it be taken out; it’s not a question of whether you’d like to see a regime change in Iran but how to achieve it,” Netanyahu said then. “If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region. And I think that people sitting right next door in Iran, young people, and many others, will say the time of such regimes, of such despots is gone.”

“If you take out Saddam,”Netanyahu told Congress in 2002,”I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region. And I think that people sitting right next door in Iran… will say the time of such regimes, of such despots is gone.”pic.twitter.com/ZNTxpSP3a2
— Robert Mackey (@RobertMackey) February 14, 2019

Updated: Feb. 14, 2019
This article was updated to include Congressional testimony from Benjamin Netanyahu on Sept. 12, 2002, in which he advocated a U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Robert Mackey, The Intercept,

February 16, 2019 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Whether Massoud Rajavi Is Dead or Alive, Big Brother Is Alive

Although it is thought that the dictatorship of communism was perished with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the monster is still alive. One may find it strange that the symbolic world that George Orwell depicted in “1984” is still practiced in some communities. As a former member of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ the Cult of Rajavi), the book might astonish you with the huge similarity of the real world inside the MKO and the fictional world in Oceania – the fictional country in the book.

“I was in Turkey in 1992 when a friend recommended me reading “1984” of George Orwell,” writes Mehdi Khoshal, ex-member of the MKO.
“I read the book three times in six months because it was very similar to the situation inside the Cult of Rajavi that I had personally experienced.”

Creating the fictional world of a dictatorship in 1984, George Orwell coined some words and expressions that are called ‘Orwellian’, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “Characteristic or suggestive of the writings of George Orwell, esp. of the totalitarian state depicted in his dystopian account of the future, Nineteen Eighty-four”.
It’s the dystopian substance of Oceania which fits so accurately with the Mujahedin Khalq Organization. It is 2019 and members of the MKO are living in an Oceania-like world. This means that ruling system in Oceania is not only a government but also a life style that removes individuality from human beings and make them follow the community and its ruler.
The parallel of the term “Big Brother”—referring to the absolute leader of Oceania—is “Brother Massoud” referring to the co-leaders of the MKO.

Using the terms brother or sister is a successful attempt to diminish the notion of family in the minds of members of the community. Big Brother and Brother Massoud neglect the identity of members. Under their rule, mother and father are taboos. Members should revolt against the opposite sex.

According to the symbolic world that George Orwell creates in “Animal Farm” and “1984”, totalitarians can be communists, fascists or terrorist extremist like ISIS and the MKO. The leaders of the MKO were the leftist Islamists in 1970s but turned out to extremist cultists who rule their rank and file by their propaganda that launches lie, hatred, war and hypocrisy among the public.
George Orwell also created the word “doublethink” in his dystopian novel. “Doublethink is the act of holding, simultaneously, two opposite, individually exclusive ideas or opinions and believing in both simultaneously and absolutely”, based on Oxford dictionary.
In “1984”, the three slogans of the party —”War Is Peace; Freedom Is Slavery; Ignorance Is Strength”— are obvious examples of doublethink. The act of doublethink also occurs in more subtle details throughout the novel. In the MKO, members are called “freedom fighters” but they are not free. They are not allowed to leave the group. They are called “unique gems” but they bear sever verbal and physical abuses under brainwashing programs imposed by the group leaders everyday.
The novel explicitly shows people learning doublethink and newspeak due to peer pressure and a desire to”fit in”, or gain status within the Party—to be seen as a loyal Party Member. In the novel, for someone to even recognize—let alone mention—any contradiction within the context of the Party line was akin to blasphemy, and could subject that person to disciplinary action and to the instant social disapproval of fellow Party Members. This is exactly what the MKO members have been enduring in their everyday life at least for the past three decades. Amir Yaghmaiee who once has been one of the MKO militia recently recounted the very contradictions he experienced inside the MKO. He ultimately could manage to leave the group after the American invasion of Iraq. He was under a 24-hour-long brainwashing session just because he had declared his willingness to leave the group. [link of the video]
1984 demonstrates the rule of ignorance instead of the rule of wisdom. Isolation and brainwashing of members of the community leads to the ignorance of the public opinion. In Oceania, technology in form of telescreens and televisions brainwashes people. In the MKO, the group’s satellite TV and its websites together with the bots in the social media deviate the realities, cover the truth and launch misinformation.
Big brother is alive even if brother Massoud is dead. Brother Massoud is a notion that rules the minds of victims of the MKO.
Mazda Parsi

February 14, 2019 0 comments

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