Page 235 – Nejat Society

EU Splits With Trump On Iran Nuclear Deal – Analysis

The US exit from the Iran nuclear deal hurts Europe;US plans for sanctions won’t work without allies.

In addition to effectively tearing up the Iran nuclear deal on May 8, President Donald Trump announced re-imposition of American sanctions in place before the landmark agreement. These covered the Islamic Republic’s energy, banking and other sectors, with a provision for penalizing foreign businesses worldwide trading with or investing in Iran. This act of economic and diplomatic unilateralism undermining the Western alliance is welcome news for Russian President Vladimir Putin as well as Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The premise of the nuclear deal – officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA – signed by Iran, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany and the European Union – was to let Iran rejoin the global economy in exchange for denuclearization. Trump’s decision undermines the JCPOA’s foundation. Before his rash move on Iran, Trump had angered the 28-member EU by refusing to grant it exemption from the tariffs he imposed on steel and aluminum imports in March. An American president is authorized to take such action to protect national security. EU officials argued that their bloc is a US ally – all members but Sweden are members of Washington-led NATO – but to no avail.

“We are witnessing today a new phenomenon: the capricious assertiveness of the American administration,” said Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, on the eve of the EU summit in Sofia, Bulgaria, on 16 May. “Looking at the latest decisions of President Trump, some could even think, ‘With friends like that, who needs enemies?’” After the summit Tusk announced that EU members agreed unanimously to stay in the agreement as long as Iran remains fully committed: “Additionally, the [European] Commission was given a green light to be ready to act whenever European interests are affected.” Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, said that to protect EU companies doing business with Iran, he would turn to a plan last used to shield European businesses active in Cuba facing sanctions: “the ‘blocking statute’ process, which aims to neutralize the extraterritorial effects of US sanctions in the EU.” He did so on May 18.

The 1996 statute prohibits EU companies and courts from complying with foreign sanctions laws and stipulates that foreign court verdicts based on these laws are null and void in the EU. Juncker added that the European Investment Bank will also provide a funding stream for businesses working in Iran. This has reassured small- and medium-sized EU companies since most have no presence in the United States. Large multinationals doing business in the United States are seeking specific exemption from Washington. Their chances of success, though, are slim.

By happenstance, on 16 May the National Iranian South Oil Company signed an agreement with London-based Pergas International Consortium to develop the Keranj field in the oil-rich Khuzestan province over the next decade.

Though in his election campaign Trump had attacked the JCPOA as a “bad deal,” he granted waivers from re-imposing sanctions thrice because his three senior advisers – secretaries of state and defense, and the national security adviser – urged him to do so. But following his sacking of Rex Tillerson and the resignation of H.R. McMaster, Trump appointed Mike Pompeo and John Bolton secretary of state and national security adviser, respectively. Both are super-hawks against Iran. And Secretary of Defense James Mattis may have decided against pushing too hard his argument that exiting the JCPOA would cause serious rupture with European allies and tarnish Washington’s credibility in the world.

The other important factor was Trump’s imminent meeting with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un. Along with Bolton, Trump reckoned that withdrawal from the Iran deal would make Kim realize that he did not issue empty threats, thus easing his path to get what he wants. Overall, when dealing with a foreign regime that refuses to kowtow to Washington, the policymakers advocate either changing its behavior through economic and diplomatic pressure, or overthrowing the offending government through relentless destabilization or military force. Within that frame, Mattis belongs to the behavior camp and Bolton firmly to the regime-change camp.

Trump’s 11-minute address on May 8 explaining his exit from the Iran deal had Bolton’s imprint. After that speech Bolton told the reporters that the United States ceased to accept UN Security Council Resolution 2231 endorsing the JCPOA. As an official in the George W. Bush administration, Bolton advocated invading Iraq and remained unapologetic about his stance. In his 25 March 2015 op-ed in The New York Times, Bolton summarized as argument pithily: “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.” In a July 2017 speech to the conference of the Paris-based anti–Islamic Republic organization, Mujahedin-e Khalq, or People’s Mujahedin – listed as a terrorist organization from 1997 to 2012 by the US State Department – Bolton expressed hope that the Iranian regime would be overthrown “by 2019,” that year being the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Republic.

Bolton and his supporters seem to have a particular scenario in mind. Economic pressure applied by US sanctions and military pressure by Israel, starting with its attacks on Iranian military targets in Syria, will generate momentum for overthrow of the regime. Such a scenario is untethered to reality.

The most effective tool in former President Barack Obama’s economic armory was to slash Iranian oil exports by isolating Iran’s Central Bank from the global banking system – and the fact that Iranian oil prices are quoted in US dollars. At present, of the 2.6 million barrels per day of oil that Iran ships to foreign destinations, compared to 1.1 million per day before 2015, almost half goes to China and India, with China in the lead. Both countries were main buyers of Iran’s petroleum before 2012. They managed to circumvent harsh US and EU sanctions. During 2012 to 2015, Chinese oil companies used a domestic bank, Bank of Kunlun, to settle petroleum transactions with Iran, worth tens of billions dollars, in euros and Chinese renminbi.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, in the wake of Trump’s May 8 decision, Beijing was the first foreign capital visited by Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif along with top oil officials. After meeting with his counterpart, Wang Yi, both sides stated they would remain in the JCPOA.

In the case of India, a rupee-rial mechanism was put in place after 2012, whereby almost half of India’s oil imports from Iran were paid in exchange for such items as rice, wheat and medicines not under sanction. According to Ram Upendra Das, head of the Centre for Regional Trade, US sanctions are unlikely to have any material impact on Indian exports to Iran since there are several mechanisms through which payments can be made for bilateral trade.

About 37 percent of Iran’s oil exports go to European destinations. All told, the EU is Iran’s number one trading partner. The value of trade between the EU and Iran soared from $9.2 billion in 2015 to $25 billion in 2017. Given EU leaders’ resolve to nullify the extraterritorial application of US sanctions on Iran, trade between their bloc and the Islamic Republic is unlikely to dip. The angry parting of the EU from the Trump administration over the Iran nuclear deal is set to become a milestone in the weakening of the Western alliance forged 70 years ago in the form of NATO.

By Dilip Hirom, eurasiareview

*Dilip Hiro is the author of A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Middle East (Interlink Publishing Group, Northampton, MA). His forthcoming, 37th book is Cold War in the Islamic World: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Struggle for Supremacy (Oxford University Press, New York/ Hurst & Co, London/ HarperCollins India, Noida).

May 27, 2018 0 comments

Missions of Nejat Society

Pompeo’s speech unites Iranian media, politicians

Iranian officials and the normally divided Iranian media have uniformly rejected and ridiculed the May 21 speech by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo outlining 12 demands of Iran that in essence would fundamentally transform the Islamic Republic.

Pompeo

Iran Newspaper, controlled by President Hassan Rouhani’s administration, headlined its article on the speech “The illusions of the newly arrived politician.” The article stated that the speech outlined “Trump’s hostile policies toward Iran.” The Reformist Etemad chose the headline “Pompeo’s delusions” for its front-page story. While the Donald Trump administration is promising unprecedented sanctions against Iran and trying to put pressure on Tehran, Etemad reported, America’s closest allies in Europe are busy negotiating with Iran on how to keep trade and the nuclear deal alive.

The newspaper Javan, affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, used its headline to call Pompeo’s speech “bluster.” According to the article, Pompeo had tried to act like Trump in his speech, making 25 false statements. In addition, Pompeo said “Iran must” 15 times. The article charged that when Pompeo was 14, the United States would say what Iran “must” do, and Mohammad Reza Pahlavi would say “yes,” but then Iran kicked out the shah. Javan described Pompeo’s 12 demands as “unintentionally listing America’s failures and Iran’s ascending strength.”

Kayhan, whose editor is appointed by the supreme leader’s office and is often the first to attack the Rouhani administration for every perceived and imagined shortcoming, saved its wrath for Pompeo. The headline for its front-page article roughly translates “To hell with Pompeo’s 12” and makes reference to America’s “big mouth.” The article said that Pompeo’s speech, which channels Trump, was a reminder that whenever a country retreats in the face of the United States, Washington only increases its demands of it.

A number of Iranian officials also commented on Pompeo’s speech. In a speech delivered May 21, Rouhani likened Pompeo’s demands to those from George W. Bush’s presidency, adding, “The world will not accept America making decisions for all countries.” On Pompeo, Rouhani said, “That a person who worked in a spy agency for years becomes the secretary of the state and wants to make decisions for all of the countries is in no way acceptable.” Rouhani asked rhetorically, “Who are you to decide for the world and Iran in the field of nuclear energy what Iran must do?”

The Foreign Ministry released a statement responding to what it called Pompeo’s “insulting comments.” It described Pompeo’s speech as an attempt to “divert world attention from America’s illegal action and violation of the nuclear deal.” It also said Pompeo’s speech once again demonstrated America’s “poor intelligence, weak insight and backward analysis” in its decision-making process. It added that those in America who are seeking war “do not know history nor are they able to learn its lessons.” In response to Pompeo’s accusations that Iran supports terrorist groups, the statement countered, referring to the United States “as the father of al-Qaeda, Daesh [Islamic State], the hypocrites [Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, MEK], Jundollah and other takfiri terrorist groups.”

Even the normally soft-spoken Mohammad-Bagher Nobakht, spokesman for the Rouhani administration, struck an unusually harsh tone in his weekly press conference May 22, in light of Pompeo’s speech. Nobakht referred to post-revolutionary Iran in the 1980s, asking rhetorically whether the United States remembers Iran’s foreign policy of “neither East nor West” or the US helicopters that crashed in Iran attempting to rescue US hostages in 1980 or Iran not being weakened by the MEK bombing campaigns. Nobakht expressed incredulity at comments by US national security adviser John Bolton to an MEK crowd that they would be celebrating in Tehran in 2018.

https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/05/iran-pompeo-speech-jcpoa-nuclear-deal-unity-iran-reaction.html

Al-Monitor Staff

May 26, 2018 0 comments

Iran Interlink Weekly Digest

Iran Interlink Weekly Digest – 230

++ Ebrahim Khodabandeh, head of Nejat Association, wrote about the MEK in Albania. He identifies the three most important recent issues as: bringing Massoud Rajavi back from the dead with a written directive from him; whose message is ‘No Exit’ – nobody is allowed to leave. The next significant issue is the appointment of Mehdi Abrishamchi as overall commander of Camp Ashraf Three; again, to enforce the No Exit policy. Both these signify MEK panic over people running away. The exodus recently exploded after former members succeeded in getting their living allowance money from the UNHCR instead of from the MEK. Now the MEK is trying to fight back. As well as the above measures, MEK pays some ex-members to write against the others. MEK also deploys some members to follow the ex-members and intimidate them. But every week it is more and more apparent that these tactics have no effect and the MEK organisation is collapsing from within. Khodabandeh writes, ‘It seems the third camp will be their last and they have reached the end of the road’. According to Khodabandeh, in addition to these issues, there is the problem of members asking questions to which MEK have no answer. MEK have therefore placed a ban on asking about three specific issues. One is: ‘if we have support in Iran as you say we have, how come we see no evidence of this from inside Iran?’ Another issue is: ‘You said President Trump will first liberate Syria and then liberate Iran. But nothing has happened. If the Americans were serious about Syria, wouldn’t they have tried to topple Assad by now?’ The third issue is: ‘You got very excited about Trump tearing up the JCPOA. If the Americans do that to their agreements with other countries, how can we believe they will support us, how can we trust them?’

++ This week as Ramadan began, Maryam Rajavi jumped on the publicity bandwagon. With her glamorous clothes and candles and lavish food, she offered Iftar to guests. People who have seen this before criticise the MEK primarily because they don’t believe in any of these things [religious practice]. For MEK it is all about feeding lobbyists while the members suffer because their food is not up to standard these days.

++ MEK has already announced the annual Villepinte event in July. Members and ex-members say the leaders have announced it forty days in advance since they are desperate for propaganda because they can’t answer the members after lying to them about Trump’s support and the inevitability of war with Iran, etc.

In English:

++ Mazda Parsi in Nejat Bloggers writes about ‘Money Adventures of the MKO and the Bloodthirsty Security Adviser. Parsi examines the backtracking of John Bolton after Trump appointed him National Security Advisor. When challenged over his advocacy for the MEK and his desire for violent regime change against Iran, Bolton told CNN “I’ve written and said a lot of things over the years when I was a complete free agent”. He admitted that he is not a decision maker in the US administration. “The circumstances in I’m in now is that I’m the national security adviser to the president. I’m not the national security decision maker. He (Trump) makes the decisions and the advice I give him is between us.” Parsi quotes one of many critics of Bolton in the American media, Caitlin Johnstone of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity: “The MEK is widely considered a cult, using very cult-like methods of indoctrination including exerting control over the personal and sex lives of its members and forcing them to go through weekly ‘ideological cleansings’… The MEK reportedly has weirdly deep pockets which have enabled it to spend millions of dollars rehabilitating its image in recent years, and to pay out sizable fees for panelists and speeches by experts willing to advocate in favor of its regime change agenda.”

Parsi concludes: “The fact that almost no one in the paid campaign of the MKO supporters brings up the cult-like nature of the MKO, its violent past and its unpopularity among Iranians indicates that they are totally motivated by the filthy dollars of the group laundered into their pockets via European Banks.”

++ Various media outlets denounced ‘corrupt American leaders whose salaries are paid by MEK’. Al-Monitor, Newsweek, CNN, Reuters, The Transnational (Oxford), all reported that the position of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security advisor John Bolton as well as others in Trump’s administration, have strengthened the Iranian establishment and united the people behind their leaders.

May 25 2018

May 26, 2018 0 comments

Missions of Nejat Society

Why Pompeo’s Iran speech was So Outrageous

Oxford (The Transnational) – Speaking at the Heritage Foundation…, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo practically declared war on Iran. His unprecedented threats against Iran went even beyond what President Trump had said in the past.

Commenting on the speech (full transcript here), JStreet wrote: “With their decision to violate the historic JCPOA arms control agreement, the president and his ‘war cabinet’ have created a strategic disaster of their own making and undone the major accomplishments of the previous administration. They have made the US, Israel and the world less safe.”

Short history of Iran’s nuclear activities: 1957 to the JCPOA

After 12 years of intensive talks, initially between Britain, France and Germany (the EU-3), and finally between Iran and the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany (P5+1), Iran and the leading world powers reached a landmark agreement. The nuclear deal (officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA) was the result of the efforts of the greatest experts in nuclear non-proliferation, including experts from the IAEA and departments of energy and intelligence service of all those countries.

Iran’s nuclear programme had started in 1957 with the help of the United States as a part of the Atoms for Peace program, when a “proposed agreement for cooperation in research in the peaceful uses of atomic energy” was announced.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mohammad Reza Shah’s government started an ambitious nuclear program. It established the Tehran Nuclear Research Centre in 1967, with a US-supplied 5-megawatt nuclear research reactor, which was fueled by highly enriched uranium.

Iran was one of the first countries to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968. The NPT allows all member states to engage in peaceful nuclear activity, including full range of processing, so long as they refrain from manufacturing nuclear weapons.

In return, the five recognized nuclear states (the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France) promised to move towards the elimination of their nuclear weapons in “good faith”. Not only have they not fulfilled this requirement, on the contrary, they have continued to develop more and more deadly and sophisticated nuclear weapons, and they have also been joined by India, Pakistan, Israel and recently by North Korea.

In 1974, with US backing, the Shah approved plans to construct up to 23 nuclear power stations, producing 23,000 megawatts of electricity. US and European companies competed against each other to help build those reactors.

In 1975, the Erlangen/Frankfurt firm signed a contract worth up to $6 billion to build the first nuclear power station in Bushehr. President Ford signed a directive in 1976 offering Iran the chance to buy and operate US built power stations, including a U.S.-built reprocessing facility for extracting plutonium from nuclear reactor fuel.

After the Islamic Revolution, all those programmes were suspended, including the Bushehr power station that was nearly complete.

The start of the eight-year long Iran-Iraq war further delayed the resumption of the nuclear program. Eventually, in 1981 during the presidency of the late Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, Iranian officials decided that the country’s nuclear development should continue.

They turned to the Western countries that had promised to build reactors in Iran to resume their work, but all of them refused to cooperate.

In 1983, IAEA officials were keen to assist Iran in various aspects of reactor fuel fabrication, chemical engineering and design aspects of pilot plants for uranium conversion, corrosion of nuclear materials, LWR fuel fabrication, and pilot plant development for production of nuclear grade UO2. However, contrary to NPT regulations, the United States directly intervened to discourage IAEA assistance to Iran.

Finally, Iran turned to China, but under US pressure China too dropped her nuclear commerce with Iran.

However, Iran was successful to persuade Russia to complete the Bushehr reactor, which was completed after long delay and at great cost to Iran. Faced with this situation, Iran decided to conduct her own work on nuclear enrichment, in which she succeeded.

The United States imposed unilateral sanctions on Iran and forced other countries to follow suit. Iran was taken to the Security Council, which also imposed crippling sanctions that cut Iran’s oil exports by half and cost Iran billions of dollars in lost revenue.

Iran continued with her nuclear programme and increased the number of her centrifuges, despite threats of war, crippling sanctions, cyber sabotage, the assassination of her nuclear scientists by Israeli agents, etc.

It was only after President Barack Obama agreed that as a member of the NPT Iran was entitled to a peaceful nuclear programme that intense negotiations started, resulting in the JCPOA.

While establishing her right to engage in nuclear activity, Iran accepted the harshest conditions as confidence-building measures. The agreement reduced Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile by 98 percent and restricted the level of enrichment to 3.67 percent.

Given that an enrichment level of more than 90 percent is needed to build a nuclear bomb, the deal makes it impossible for Iran’s uranium to be weaponized.

Under the deal, Iran also reduced the number of its centrifuges from 20,000 to a little over 5,000, far below the number that would be needed for manufacturing a single bomb, even if she wanted to do so. Iran closed the Arak reactor, which was capable of producing plutonium, and agreed to severe restrictions on research and development activities in other facilities.

In short, the agreement made it virtually impossible for Iran to build a single bomb.

Some of Pompeo’s intolerable conditions

1) Pompeo demands that: “First, Iran must declare to the IAEA full account of prior military dimension of its nuclear programme, and permanently and verifiably abandon such work in perpetuity”.

This is something that was pursued under PMU or Possible Military Use during the talks. The IAEA studied all those allegations, including taking soil samples from Parchin military base where the Israelis had claimed that nuclear activity had been conducted. The IAEA decided that there had been “no diversion” of nuclear material for military use.

Iran has agreed to abandon work on nuclear weapons in perpetuity, and all the talk about so-called “sunset clauses” is baseless. In addition to being a member of the NPT, Iran has also joined the “Additional Protocol”, which requires continuous, unannounced inspections of all her nuclear sites, and she has also given an undertaking never to produce nuclear weapons.

The prohibitions do not stop at the end of the “sunset clauses”, but will continue in perpetuity.

The IAEA that is the only legal body in charge of monitoring the deal has, on eleven separate occasions, certified that Iran has fully complied with the terms of the deal.

2) “Second, Iran must stop enrichment and never pursue plutonium reprocessing. This includes closing its heavy water reactor.”

Demanding that Iran should stop enrichment goes against NPT rules. As for “never pursuing plutonium reprocessing”, this is precisely what Iran has agreed to do under the JCPOA, and has destroyed her heavy water reactor.

3) “Third, Iran must also provide to the IAEA full unqualified access to all sites throughout the entire country.”

This is again another provision of the JCPOA, which the IAEA has used on many occasions.

4) “Iran must end its proliferation of ballistic missiles and halt the launching or development of nuclear-capable missiles.”

This is yet another misleading and illegal demand. Like any other country, Iran has the right to defend herself (UN Chater Art 51) and as she is unable to acquire advanced military equipment that the United States has readily sold to all Iranian neighbours, Iran’s missiles are her only means of deterring a military aggression.

Iran does not have intercontinental ballistic missiles as she has limited the range of her missiles to 2,000 kilometres. They are not designed to carry nuclear weapons, and in any case Iran does not have nuclear warheads.

5) Pompeo accused Iran of spreading terrorism in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, etc.

Iran has been fighting against ISIS and other terrorists in Iraq and Syria at the invitation of the governments of those countries. It is up to the Syrian government to ask Iran to withdraw her forces from that country, not for a US Secretary of State to dictate to other countries what they should and should not do.

All experts agree that the mantra of “Iran-backed Houthis” is exaggerated propaganda, as Iran’s contacts with the Houthis and influence over them is minimal.

It is Saudi Arabia and members of her coalition who, with American support, have been bombing Yemen, killing and wounding tens of thousands of innocent people and creating the world’s greatest humanitarian catastrophe there.

What this is really about: Obsession with revenge and regime change

President Trump and his three senior officials, Mike Pompeo, John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani, seem to be preparing the ground for a disastrous war with Iran.

Their hostility towards Iran does not seem to have anything to do with Iran’s nuclear programme, but has everything to do with an obsession for regime change.

Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum, Mike Pompeo boasted that “one of the first things the President did is to go build a coalition of [Persian] Gulf states and Israel to help find a platform which could uniformly push back against Iranian expansionism.”(1)

When he was still a member of Congress in 2016, Pompeo called for action to “change Iranian behaviour, and, ultimately, Iranian regime.” (2)

In the past, he has called for strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.(3)

Some of his hostility towards Iran seems to have been based on his hatred of Islam. In 2015, Pompeo, then a Congressman, attacked Barack Obama, who, according to him, took the side of the “Islamic East” in its conflict with the “Christian West”. “Every time there has been a conflict between the Christian West and the Islamic East, the data points all point to a single direction,” he said.

John Bolton is another strong advocate of regime change in Iran.

In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on 15 January 2018, entitled “Beyond the Iran Nuclear Deal: US policy should be to end the Islamic Republic before its 40th anniversary”, Bolton condemned the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran as a “massive strategic blunder.”

However, he went on to say that American policy, “should be ending Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution before its fortieth anniversary.”

He continued: “Recognizing a new Iranian regime in 2019 would reverse the shame of once seeing our diplomats held hostage for four hundred and forty-four days. The former hostages can cut the ribbon to open the new U.S. Embassy in Tehran.” (5)

The former Mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, who is now a member of Trump’s legal team has also been a fervent advocate of regime change in Iran.

Speaking at a conference of the terrorist, cultish group, the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organisation, in Washington on 5 May 2018, Rudy Giuliani openly said that Washington’s policy was regime change in Iran, and he even promised that next year they would celebrate the event in Tehran. (6)

This obsession with the past and a deliberate decision to bring about a regime change in Iran will have incalculable costs.

Let’s not forget that prior to Iraq war, Paul Wolfowitz, one of the authors of that war, predicted that it would be a “cake walk”, that it “would pay for itself”, and that “US forces would be welcomed with roses”.

Fifteen years after that disastrous war, American forces are still operating in that country, and the war which has cost trillions of dollars to US taxpayers has killed and wounded millions of innocent Iraqi people, shattered that country and has given rise to a number of vicious terrorist movements.

It should be clear to everyone who is familiar with the Middle East that a war against Iran will not be like Iraq, it will be much worse. It will kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people, will set the Middle East on fire and will do a great damage to Israel and other US allies that she seemingly wishes to support.

During his confirmation hearing at the US Senate, Mike Pompeo was asked if Russia was a unique country. He replied: “This [US] is a unique, exceptional country. Russia is unique, but not exceptional.” (7)

This kind of aggressive, bullying, threatening, demanding and illegal language has not been heard from a responsible government official since before the Second World War.

The concept of Americans being unique and exceptional and almost chosen by God, and referring to other nations as inferior, in the way that President Trump referred to the Latinos as animals, is not far removed from the concept of a superior race and Der Untermensch, or subhuman people.

If we wish to avoid the horrors of the Second World, we must put an end to this kind of arrogant mentality.

It is time for the Europeans, for all the peace-loving Americans and for millions of concerned people across the world who will be paying the cost of this misadventure to stop this madness before it is too late.

Notes

Aspen Security Forum, The View from Langley, July 20, 2017.
“Rep. Mike Pompeo: One year later, Obama’s Iran nuclear deal puts us at increased risk”, Fox News Opinion, July 14, 2016.
Raphael Ahren, “With anti-Iran, pro-Israel stances, Pompeo may become Jerusalem’s new darling”, The Times of Israel, 14 March 2018.
Peter Beinart, “Mike Pompeo at State Would Enable Trump’s Worst Instincts”, The Atlantic, Nov 30, 2017.
“Beyond the Iran Nuclear Deal: US policy should be to end the Islamic Republic before its 40th anniversary”, Wall Street Journal, Jan 15, 2018.
“Rudy Giuliani speaks at Iran Freedom Convention”, CBSN, May 5, 2018.
USA: ‘US exceptional, Russia is not’ – Trump’s Sec of State pick Pompeo on YouTube here.

Reprinted with author’s permission from The Transnational

Farhang Jahanpour,Juancole.com

May 23, 2018 0 comments

Terrorist groups and the MEK

Is MEK/Jundullah The ISIS Of Tomorrow? – OpEd

One would think that the United States would have learned by now, that it is never a good idea to arm terrorist groups in different parts of the world, due to the inevitable “blowback” which eventually ensues after these violent groups determine that the USA is no longer in support of them, or when the USA wants to deny that they have any relationship with them.

We have seen this paradigm unfold countless times before, over the past few decades, with groups like Al Qaeda, Al Nusra, La Fenice, Avanguardia Nazionale, Ordine Nuovo, the Contras, Cuban Exiles, Colombian Paramilitary Organizations, Los Pepes, Kosovo Liberation Army, Jundullah, Mujahedin-e Khalq (“MEK”), and countless others designed to engage in United States sponsored terrorist activities against sovereign governments and nations that the US doesn’t like for whatever reason.

In the wake of the abject failure of the US using ISIS to destabilize, disrupt and disorient various governments throughout the Middle East, such as Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and others, followed quickly by various ISIS-attributed terrorist attacks against the US and Europe by ISIS, President Donald Trump was swept into office in large part because the American and European people discovered this via the veritable “sieve” known as social media and the internet.

But rather than change US foreign policy to ban or cease using violent thugs to carry out US policy overseas, instead it appears that the US Government through the CIA have now adopted a smaller more surgically precise approach by supporting, through its proxy nations Israel and Saudi Arabia, smaller groups such as MEK and Jundullah, who operate primarily in tiny regions of the world, such as in and around Iran, without much of a global presence.

But like cancer, these groups have a tendency to grow uncontrollably, and then later turn on the US and Europe, when and if the latter starts to pull funding or divorce themselves from the court of public opinion through plausible denial.

This is exactly how ISIS grew into a formidable fighting force, and eventually turned on its creators, much like the Frankenstein monster in the Mary Shelley novels.

All of this must be an abject nightmare for the US FBI, DHS, ICE and DEA pull their proverbial hair out, because they must often clean up/explain the horrific domestic messes of terrorist blowback occurring on US soil when these groups inevitably turn on their paymasters, just like they are the chief law enforcement/preventative bodies that deal with the drug war, also in large part caused by the CIA’s open and clandestine support of massive drug producing/trafficking regimes in Afghanistan, Colombia, Venezuela and Mexico.

The news lately has revealed that the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia are openly funding, supporting, arming, training and providing logistical support to Jundullah and MEK in order to take down the current sovereign government of Iran.

Even though the USA, Saudi Arabia and Israel may not like the current government there, what right do they have to engage in this type of state sponsored terrorist behavior?

There is a reason why various governments throughout the world have stood the test of time, and exist in their present states.

Perhaps their people wanted it, or perhaps there was need for that specific type of ideology or mode of governance, but unless and until those governments actively target or harm Americans, the US has absolutely no business getting involved with those groups, and indeed, has invariably and inevitably lived to regret it countless times, in nearly 100% of all cases.

By Rahul Manchanda,Eurasia Reveiw

May 23, 2018 0 comments

Missions of Nejat Society

Islamic Terrorism Has an Advocate in the Oval Office

John Bolton’s ascent to one of the most important positions in government and Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or Iran nuclear deal, have allowed an avowed terrorist group – and its cult-like leader – to take on a position of authority in Washington and in American foreign policy. The Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK), or People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran, has a long history of terrorism, of murder, and of attacks on civilians. But its chief Washington lobbyist, John Bolton, is seeing to it that the MEK will be the go-to-organization in the event that “regime change” comes to Tehran. That in and of itself is a crime.

The MEK is as much a cult as it is a terrorist group. It was created in 1965 by a husband and wife team, Massoud and Miryam Rajavi. They combined Islamism with Marxism and helped to overthrow the Shah of Iran, carrying out bombings and terrorist attacks in Tehran for nearly 15 years, including against Americans. In November 1970, the group attempted and failed to kidnap Douglas MacArthur II, the US ambassador to Iran, and in 1972, they assassinated US Air Force Brigadier General Harold Price. The MEK was reportedly the first group ever to use an improvised explosive device.

The MEK supported the Ayatollah Khomeini and the takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979, but they split with the regime because their personalized brand of violent Marxism didn’t fit in the new Shia Muslim theocracy. The Rajavis, along with their 5,000-member “National Liberation Army,” the MEK’s military wing, finally fled to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1981. They were the perfect propaganda tools for Saddam, and he provided them with money, weapons, safe haven, and a military base along the border with Iran so that they could attack Iranian villages, border guards, and soldiers and then retreat to the safety of Iraqi territory.

Rank-and-file Iranians, including leftists, came to regard the Rajavis as traitors because of their alliance with Saddam and because of news reports that Massoud Rajavi had personally identified Iranian targets for the Iraqi military to attack and because MEK operatives would slip into Tehran and carry out assassinations. Indeed, the Rajavis murdered Iranian brigadier general Ali Sayyad Shirazi on the front steps of his home in 1999.

And that is the basis of the American political right’s love affair with the MEK.

Massoud Rajavi disappeared in Iraq in 2003 and has not been seen or heard from since. Miryam immediately assumed leadership and, upon Saddam’s overthrow, surrendered to US forces. It was her hatred of the Iranian government that made her an attractive propaganda figure to the likes of John Bolton, then serving as George W. Bush’s Undersecretary of State for International Security.

Never mind that Miryam had been charged with crimes against humanity for her role in Saddam’s massacre of Shia Muslims in southern Iraq in 1991. Never mind that she had actively sought – and carried out – the assassinations of American officials in Iran. Never mind that the MEK was on the State Department’s list of terrorist groups, as well as terrorist lists in the European Union and at the United Nations. John Bolton decided that they should be rehabilitated and that the group should be represented in Washington.

This wasn’t just John Bolton’s position, borne of his hatred of all things Iranian. It was also part of Miryam Rajavi’s forward-looking policies. She understood that anyone and anything in Washington could be purchased. And so she hired lobbyists.

The first order of business was getting the MEK off the terrorist list. Lobbyists Joe DiGenova (Ronald Reagan’s former US attorney for the Southern District of New York), the giant international law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and, yes, John Bolton worked the issue. They succeeded, and the MEK was taken off the list in 2012. It reportedly cost the group millions of dollars.

Miryam also began paying enormous speaking fees to American politicians and then leveraging those relationships to lobby on the group’s behalf. The New York Times and other outlets reported that Democrats who have taken MEK money include former Vermont governor Howard Dean, former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, and former House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Lee Hamilton. The MEK is equally generous with Republicans. Recipients of the MEK’s largesse include former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, former secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, former attorney general Michael Mukasey, and former White House chief of staff Andrew Card. Even Alan Dershowitz and Elie Wiesel got in on the action.

This is emblematic of everything that stinks in Washington. It’s all about the money. Everybody at the upper levels of government eventually gets rich. That’s always the plan. Do your time making $160,000 a year in some federal position and then cash in, even if you have to get in bed with terrorists. It’s a bipartisan play.

Bolton is making it worse, though. It’s not just about the money for him. Sure, the MEK helped to make him rich. But he wants something more. He wants to overthrow the Iranian government and install Miryam Rajavi as its new leader. We’ve already seen the first step in that direction. Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA and ramped up the rhetoric against the Iranian government. He’s doing Benjamin Netanyahu’s bidding here, all with the full support of the royal families of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates. That’s always been the plan for all of them.

Meanwhile, Miryam Rajavi is waiting patiently. If John Bolton has his way, she will be the next in a long line of US puppets around the world, even if her path has been decidedly circuitous. It doesn’t matter that she has murdered American citizens. It doesn’t matter that she is wanted in Iraq for crimes against humanity. It doesn’t matter that she’s listed by the United Nations as an “international cult leader.” She’s a part of John Bolton’s plans. Expect to see a lot more of her in the coming few years.

By John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News ,

John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act – a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program.

May 22, 2018 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Money adventures of the MKO and the bloodthirsty security advisor

The Middle East has been set in fire during in the last two decades due to the clashes between US-sponsored terrorists and the states of the region. By the withdrawal of Donald Trump from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), his newly-elected National Security advisor longs for another proxy war, this time in Iran using terrorist cultists of Mujahedin Khalq (MEK, MKO, PMOI, the Cult of Rajavi).

On the eve of this year’s gathering of the Mujahedin Khalq in France, while Bolton was supposed to offer the MKO more hope for regime change in Iran, he seems to have retreated from his previous position. As Bolton was widely criticized for his last year’s speech at the so-called grand gathering of the MKO in which he openly called for regime change in Tehran, he said on Sunday that this is not the Trump administration’s current policy.

“That’s not the policy of the administration. The policy of the administration is to make sure that Iran never gets close to deliverable nuclear weapons,” Bolton said on the ABC program. [1]

“I’ve written and said a lot of things over the years when I was a complete free agent,” Bolton said when pressed on the issue of regime change in Iran on CNN’s “State of the Union”. He admitted that he is not a decision maker in the US administration. “The circumstances in I’m in now is that I’m the national security adviser to the president,” He said. “I’m not the national security decision maker. He (Trump) makes the decisions and the advice I give him is between us.” [2]

Bolton’s recent comments on Iran indicates how unbalanced are the supporters of the MKO. In 2015, Bolton wrote an op-ed in the New York Times calling for air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. And in 2016, Bolton called for regime change while he was reportedly under consideration to be Secretary of State. As he confesses, he has said a lot of things. Particularly, in response to large amounts of dollars that the MKO has poured in his pockets, he has said all the things the group loves to hear. The most significant thing was his speech at the group’s gathering where he said:

“There is a viable opposition to the rule of the ayatollahs, and that opposition is centered in this room today. I had said for over 10 years since coming to these events, that the declared policy of the United States of America should be the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime in Tehran. The behavior and the objectives of the regime are not going to change, and therefore the only solution is to change the regime itself. And that’s why, before 2019, we will celebrate in Tehran!” [3]

One of many critics of Bolton in the American media, Caitlin Johnstone of Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity writes: “Bolton, who is so stupid, crazy and evil that he remains one of the only high-profile individuals on this planet who still insists that the Iraq invasion was a great idea, spoke about the need to prevent the Iranian government from achieving”an arc of control”through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. He decried the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), claiming that Iran was still a nuclear threat under the existing agreement, and spoke glowingly of aggressive sanctions against Tehran.” [4]

Johnstone clarifies that how dreadful is Bolton’s choice to alternate the Iranian government. “Also known as the Mojahedin-e Khalq or MEK, a group of a few thousand members who vocally oppose the Iranian government,” he describes the MKO. “The MEK is widely considered a cult, using very cult-like methods of indoctrination including exerting control over the personal and sex lives of its members and forcing them to go through weekly”ideological cleansings”.” [5]

As Johnstone puts, “the president’s bloodthirsty National Security Advisor” and other advocates of the MKO lead the regime change agenda under the stimulus of the multi-million-dollar campaign of the group. “The MEK reportedly has weirdly deep pockets which have enabled it to spend millions of dollars rehabilitating its image in recent years, and to pay out sizable fees for panelists and speeches by experts willing to advocate in favor of its regime change agenda,” he writes. [6]

The fact that almost no one in the paid campaign of the MKO supporters brings up the cult-like nature of the MKO, its violent past and its unpopularity among Iranians indicates that they are totally motivated by the filthy dollars of the group laundered into their pockets via European Banks.

Mazda Parsi

References:

[1] Reuters staff, Bolton says Iran plan isn’t regime change; sanctions against Europe also possible, Reuters, May 13, 2018

[2] ibid

[3] Agorist, Matt, WATCH: John Bolton Promises Room Full of ‘Former Terrorists’ the US Would ‘Overthrow’ Iran by 2019, The free thought project.com, May 11, 2018

[4] Johnstone, Caitlin, That Time John Bolton Promised Regime Change In Iran Before 2019, Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, May 11, 2018

[5] ibid

[6] ibid

May 21, 2018 0 comments

Albania

Conflict between roots and soil and rejection of a terrorist’s corpse

Surely you are informed by the media that the cult Mojahedin has announced that Marzie Rezai, a senior official of this organization, has died in Albania. In this way, her illegal burial was opposed by the residents of Manza in the city of Durres. Of course, those who were like me in Ashraf’s death camp in Iraq well known that there are suspicious deaths inside of Rajavi cult and those who knew Marzie Rezai, know well that in addition to the history of oppression within the organization Mojahedin, she was recently against Masud Raxhavi’s policies, according to a statement by Maryam Rajavi, she has died in Albania.

Ehsan Bidi

The point is, if that what says Maryam Rajavi is correct and Marzie Rezai has died of an illness then why and how about the slightest illness of Maryam Rajavi, when she ill, she will be treated by the best doctors that her treatment cost hundreds of thousands euros, but why the members of the Mojahedin organization cannot have this treatment? Why you did not offer such conditions to Marzie Rezai?

But if we look at the other side of the currency that is closer to reality, the question arises maybe Marzie Rezai drunk a cup of poison served by Maryam Rajavi, it can be true or not?

It should be remembered that during the burial of Marzie Rezai in the cemetery of Manza in the city of Durres, something interesting has happened. The burial of Marzie Rezai’s corpse by the Mojahedin organization has sparked the hatred of the inhabitants of this city and this issue echoed among the Albanian media to the point that the mayor and senior government officials intervened and voted in favor of residents of this city, why the cult Mojahedin buried the corpse of Marzie Rezai without coordination with the cemetery of Manz town in Durres, where the inhabitants of that region were deeply angry or even planned that day to exhume and remove the hideous body of a terrorist who insulted their privacy and identity.

The residents of this city said that the Moxhahedin-Khalk Organization is a terrorist group and in Albania has come under the umbrella of the US and the government with taxes and our money keeps them, instead of spending these money for drinking water and electricity, where residents of this area face daily with these deficiencies. Residents of Manza said that they were tired of the presence of the Mojahedin organization because of the apparent interference with the villagers’ personal issues to the extent that mobile phones were being inspected.

Conclusion:

The Albanian people believe that this land possesses roots and historical passages, and powerful Albanian men and women have been born and buried here. As a result, the body of a terrorist is on these roots and on this earth.

Residents in Durres refuse to bury Iranian jihadists

By Ehsan Bidi

May 19, 2018 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Back to the future? Bolton, Trump and Iranian Regime Change

Now that the Trump administration has derailed the Iran nuclear deal, the old issue of regime change in Iran is back again. National Security Adviser John Bolton is obviously the chief regime-change advocate in the administration, and there is every reason to believe he has begun to push that policy with Donald Trump in his first month in the White House.

Bolton was part of the powerful neoconservative faction of national security officials in the George W Bush administration that had a plan for supporting regime change in Iran, not much different from the one Bolton is reportedly pushing now. But it was a crack-brained scheme that involved the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) exiled terrorist organisation that never had Bush’s support.

Bolton may find history repeating itself, with Trump resisting his plan for regime change, just as Bush did in 2003.

Trump calls for change

Trump has appeared to flirt with the idea of Iranian regime change in the past. During the December protests in Iran, he said on Twitter that it was time for a change, noting: “The great Iranian people have been repressed for many years.”

Trump’s killing of the nuclear deal, however, stopped short of rhetoric signalling the aim of overthrowing the Islamic Republic. Instead, Trump suggested that “Iran’s leaders” are “going to want to make a new and lasting deal, one that benefits all of Iran and the Iranian people”. He added: “When they do, I am ready, willing and able.”

Bolton has been one of the most enthusiastic clients among former US officials who have associated themselves with MEK, which seeks to overthrow the Tehran regime with US backing

A few days after the Trump announcement, an unnamed National Security Council (NSC) official avoided any hint of regime change, telling the neoconservative Washington Free Beacon: “Our stated policy is to change the Iranian regime’s behaviour.” Now, Bolton has issued an even more explicit denial, telling ABC News: “That is not the policy of the administration. The policy of the administration is to make sure Iran never gets close to deliverable nuclear action.”

And on CNN’s State of the Union, he said:

I’ve written and said a lot of things when I was a complete free agent. I certainly stand by what I said at the time, but those were my opinions then. The circumstance I’m in now is I’m the national security adviser to the president. I’m not the national security decision-maker.

It’s not difficult to read between the lines: the implied message is that his views on regime change have not prevailed with Trump.

Advocating to bomb Iran

Bolton has long been one of the most vocal supporters of such a policy, although he is better known as the primary advocate of bombing Iran. He has been one of the most enthusiastic clients among former US officials who have associated themselves with MEK, which seeks to overthrow the Tehran regime with US backing.

Bolton has not only appeared at MEK rallies in Paris, along with other former US officials on the take from the well-endowed paramilitary organisation. In July 2017, he declared that the Trump administration should adopt the goal of regime change in Iran, calling MEK a “viable” alternative to the regime. And his final line, delivered with his voice rising dramatically, noted that “before 2019, we here will celebrate in Tehran”.

It appears that Bolton was still pushing the idea within the administration as of last week. The Washington Free Beacon reported on 10 May that a three-page paper outlining a regime-change strategy from a small far-right organisation called the Security Studies Group, with which Bolton is said to have close ties, was circulated among NSC officials. The quotes from the paper in the story make it clear that the strategy is based largely on seeking to exploit ethnic and religious conflicts in Iran.

The paper reportedly makes the point that ethnic minorities – such as Kurds, Azeris, Ahwazi Arabs and Baloch – represent one-third of Iran’s population, and argues that the Iranian regime’s “oppression of its ethnic and religious minorities has created the conditions for an effective campaign to splinter the Iranian state into component parts”. It adds: “US support for their independence movements, both overt and covert, could force the regime to focus attention on them and limit its ability to conduct other malign activities.”

Those minorities have all had organisations that have carried out violent actions, including bombings and assassinations against Iranian officials, over the past decade, and such a strategy would presumably involve supporting a step-up in such activities – in other words, US support for terrorist activities against Iranian government targets.

The role of MEK

But none of this is new. It was the official line of the powerful alliance between the neoconservatives and the Cheney-Rumsfeld axis within the Bush administration. By 2003, Douglas Feith, the uber-neoconservative former undersecretary of defense for policy, had developed a plan for giving MEK, whose army had been captured by US troops in Iraq, a new name and using them for a covert paramilitary operation in Iran.

Meanwhile, Iran was offering to provide names and other data on al-Qaeda officials it had captured in return for US information on MEK. When former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld sought to protect MEK from such a deal, Bush’s response was: “But we say there is no such thing as a good terrorist.”

Despite the neocon fixation with supporting MEK, both the CIA and the Israelis have long regarded the idea that it could be an instrument for regime change in Iran as ridiculous. After the organisation helped Saddam Hussein’s regime suppress Shia and Kurdish uprisings, it lost any semblance of legitimacy inside Iran. After it relocated to Iraq, moreover, it was transformed into an authoritarian cult.

The former Israeli ambassador to Iran, Uri Lubrani, who was given a free hand to organise a programme for destabilising Iran, recognised long ago, as he told two Israeli journalists, that MEK has no capacity to do anything inside the country.

It was Lubrani who first advanced the argument that about a third of the total Iranian population were ethnic minorities, and that promoting their anti-Tehran activities could help to destabilise the government. Those groups have carried out terrorist bombings and other armed actions in various parts of Iran over the years, and it is well documented that Israel was supporting and advising the Baloch extremist organisation Jundallah on such operations. But the Israelis have used MEK mainly to put out disinformation on Iran’s nuclear programme.

The policy paper Bolton is reportedly pushing states explicitly that the regime change policy should include the use of military force against Iran if necessary. That was the premise of the Cheney-Bolton plan for regime change in Iran, as former Vice President Dick Cheney’s Middle East adviser, David Wurmser, later revealed. And it is the game that Bolton, the enthusiast for bombing Iran, is apparently still playing.

By Gareth Porter, Orbitt.net

First published in Middle East Eye

May 19, 2018 0 comments

Albania

Albanian PM offends the Jews by comparing their suffering to terrorists

Albania, situated in the middle of the Balkans, harbours one of the most eccentric political leaders in Europe. But Edi Rama, Prime Minister of the country, doesn’t claim the spotlight only for his lavish dress sense. On May 13th Prime Minister Rama surprised once more by comparing the suffering of Jewish people during the Second World war to a terrorist organization known as the MEK. A comparison that isn’t only stupid, it’s also deeply offensive against the Jews who suffered under the Nazis.

For those who are not familiar with the Mojahedin Khalq (MEK), allow me to give you a short history. The MEK is a terrorist organization, responsible for thousands of civilian murders in Iran and Iraq over three decades. Until 2012 MEK was listed as a terrorist organization by the United States, the year Hillary Clinton decided to delist them and strike a deal with Albania to take them in.

Nowadays the MEK is demanding that the US and Israel rain bombs down on the homes of their own families in Iran. They were brought to Albania because Iraq refused to tolerate the presence of American backed former Saddamists in their country. They were supposed to be de-radicalized and rehabilitated back into society once they arrived. To be completely clear, this never happened.

Instead, the Americans have insisted on re-grouping the MEK and using them as ‘regime change’ marketeers; placing Albania on the front line in the Neocon’s and Likud’s war against Iran.

Albania, which has already more than enough trouble fighting the well-known organized crime sector, is now wasting costly resources and police officers to keep this vile and dangerous group under control.

This anecdotal view comes with its own headlines. Criminals involved in drug smuggling and arms and human trafficking are still highly organized and very active. The mysterious disappearance of 60 asylum seekers has been treated by the police and SHISH as a matter of state secrecy. Albanian officials I spoke with said, off the record, there was no doubt they had been trafficked to Europe but that the government does not want Europe to be aware of this ongoing business. The fact that some of those who disappeared belonged to the Iranian Mojahedin Khalq (MEK) terrorist group only adds to what the report called a “scary event”.

In this context, Rama has a lot to answer for but has evaded the difficult questions. One of those difficult issues is the disturbing activities of the MEK in the country. Since the first arrivals in 2013 to the last group who arrived at the end of 2016, this group has caused controversy. Only recently, local residents in Manzë had enough of it and protested against their presence. Pointing not only to the MEK’s unwelcome use of their families’ cemetery to bury their dead, but also to the economical inequality between ordinary Albanian citizens and MEK members. Those members do not have pay or pensions and therefore pay no taxes but are afforded the luxury of 24-hour water and electricity supplies that locals cannot access.

When asked by Italian Radio Radicale about the MEK presence in Albania (3.30m – 5.15m), Rama’s oafish, self-satisfied reply is a shocking example of lazy, casual Anti-Semitism. He likens sheltering the MEK now to sheltering Jewish people fleeing the Nazis during WWII.

This comparison is deeply, deeply offensive to Jewish people. The history and current situation of the MEK is about as diametrically opposed to the experience of Jewish people in Nazi Europe as it is possible to imagine.

PM Rama is not only wrong – the MEK’s unchecked presence in Albania is also an affront to the citizens of that country – he reveals how un-statesmanlike he is. How incapable of showing leadership and how easily he has been ‘persuaded’ to stupidly and ignorantly follow American and Israeli foreign policy to the detriment of his own country’s national interests. If unchecked, the MEK in Albania could turn into an even bigger problem for the country, as the recent protest shows.

Anne Khodabandeh (Singleton), Balkan Post

Anne Khodabandeh, is an expert in anti-terrorist activities and a long-standing activist in the field of deradicalization of extremists. She has written several articles and books on this subject, along with her husband, who is of Iranian origin.

May 19, 2018 0 comments

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