My dear brother,
It is long years that we are looking forward for you. When would you liberate yourself from the clutches of the cult of Rajavis? We cant enjoy our life without you..
Maryam Rajavi has come to Albania to pave the way for you and other member’s victimization..
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has been noticeably quiet about the Trump administration’s slowness to denounce the spike in anti-Semitic attacks and bomb threats, its nomination of an ambassador to Israel who described J Street as “worse than kapos,” and its ties to ethno-nationalists like 
White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon and senior adviser Stephen Miller. But AIPAC has done more than just tolerate the U.S. tilt toward extreme and often xenophobic views. Newly released tax filings show that the country’s biggest pro-Israel group financially contributed to the Center for Security Policy, the think-tank that played a pivotal role in engineering the Trump administration’s efforts to impose a ban on Muslim immigration.
In 2015, AIPAC launched a 501c4 advocacy group, Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran (CFNI). Expected to spend $20 million in July and August 2015, the group was “formed with the sole mission of educating the public ‘about the dangers of the proposed Iran deal,’” spokesman Patrick Dorton told The New York Times. The Times reported that the $20 million budget would go to ad buys in as many as 40 states as well as other advocacy.
Indeed, the group’s filing (viewable here) show that the AIPAC spin-off paid $18 million for “media related expenses,” $8.35 million for “phone program expenses,” and $58,200 for “survey expenses.”
Shortly after the group launched, my colleague Ali Gharib and I noticed that the group’s website featured two items promoting an exiled, ex-terrorist Iranian opposition group, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK). CFNI even used b-roll footage from a press conference held by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which the State Department deemed the MEK’s “political wing” (earning it a corresponding terrorist designation until the MEK was delisted as a terrorist organization in 2012).
After we reached out for comment, AIPAC’s anti-Iran deal advocacy group scrubbed their website of the MEK related materials, seemingly acknowledging a PR misstep. But the b-roll footage remained in their television commercials and on YouTube.
AIPAC’s flirtation with extreme groups appears to have gone even further than borrowing footage from the MEK.
Tax disclosures reveal that CFNI contributed $60,000 to “Secure Freedom,” a donation to a group with the tax-id number 52-1601976. That tax-id number belongs to Center for Security Policy, a hawkish think tank largely devoted to advocating for greater defense spending (it received funding from Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Raytheon, and General Electric) and pushing completely unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about American Muslim and Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the U.S. government.
The contact address for the contribution was a residential address in New Orleans belonging to Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) staffer Marsha Halteman. Halteman did not respond to questions about why her address appeared beneath the donation.
CSP is headed up by anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney who baselessly claimed that Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, and former George W. Bush appointee Suhail Khan were part of a Muslim Brotherhood plot to infiltrate the U.S. government. He also asserted that the Missile Defense Agency logo “appears ominously to reflect a morphing of the Islamic crescent and star with the Obama campaign logo” and helped launch an interfaith group to support Trump’s anti-Muslim agenda.
Gaffney and Trump aide Kellyanne Conway played a pivotal role in bringing about the administration’s efforts to ban immigration from seven (and now six) Muslim-majority countries.
In 2015, Gaffney commissioned Conway’s firm to produce a poll about Muslim attitudes. Released in June 2015, the poll found that 51% of Muslims agreed that “Muslims in America should have the choice to being governed according to Shariah,” among other findings. But the poll’s methodology was deeply flawed, relying on an opt-in online survey which industry experts consider unreliable. Conway’s own firm later admitted the data was not “statistically representative of the entire U.S. Muslim population.”
None of that stopped Trump from citing the poll as his justification for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on,” on December 7, 2015.
It’s possible that the funds went to support CSP’s advocacy opposing the Iran nuclear agreement. Nonetheless, AIPAC’s willingness to partner with an organization whose president, Frank Gaffney, was denounced by the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the American Conservative Union (which briefly banned him from their events after he accused political opponents of being part of a Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy) raises serious questions about AIPAC’s commitment to fighting bigotry, discrimination, and, in particular, Islamophobia.
Neither AIPAC nor CSP responded to requests for comment.
By Eli Clifton,
About the Author
Eli Clifton reports on money in politics and US foreign policy. Eli previously reported for the American Independent News Network, ThinkProgress, and Inter Press Service.
On the occasion of the Iranian New Year Celebrations, the Cult of Mujahedin Khalq (the MEK, MKO, Cult of Rajavi) once more found the opportunity to launch its massive propaganda. This year, the group’s Albanian headquarters was announced as the new base to receive its paid sponsors.
Former US ambassador in the United Nations, John Bolton is one of the most prominent figures in the Republican Party who supports the MKO ardently. He is received at the New Year celebration in Tirana. Bolton is known as one of the hawks of President Bush; a warmonger figure who is now one of the closest politicians to Donald Trump. “I am here to stay with the Iranian opposition to celebrate the Iranian New Year, Nowruz”, he addressed the MKO ceremony. “Glad to meet you here, I have every confidence that one day we meet again in a free Iran.”
Paul Pillar, a CIA academic and veteran explains how certain American think tanks, particularly in the Bush and Trump administrations are stuck in the “myth” of changing the Iranian government by supporting the Cult of Rajavi. His recent article on the National Interest titled “Evolution, Not a New Revolution, in Iran”, analyzes the futile efforts of the MKO sponsors for regime change:
Some hardline myths about Iran never seem to die. One myth especially pertinent to U.S. policy is that revolutionary regime change in Iran is a significant possibility in the near future and that with a bit more of a push from the outside, the Islamic Republic will collapse and be replaced by something much more to our liking. This illusion was prevalent in much of the George W. Bush administration, which accordingly adhered to a policy of refusing to deal with Iran and instead of trying to isolate it and to inflict economic pain through sanctions. Several years of lack of results in the face of ever-increasing sanctions demonstrated the fecklessness of that policy. The sanctions became useful only when the next U.S. administration began to negotiate with Iran and sanctions were used as a bargaining chip to conclude an agreement that blocks all possible paths to an Iranian nuclear weapon.
The myth often is connected to a faith in exile groups as instruments for quick transition to a completely different type of regime. Many of those hoping for regime change in Iran look in this way to the Mujahedin-e Khalq, a cult-cum-terrorist group that actually has almost no popular support within Iran. Some of the same people had placed a similar faith in Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi, whose qualities as a huckster more than as someone who could father a new Iraqi republic became increasingly apparent after the U.S. invasion of 2003.
Today there evidently is another ex
pression of the old myth about Iran, with talk about regime change, among Trump loyalists at the White House and National Security Council staff. According to these individuals, increased pressure and kicks from the outside can bring about positive results in Iran, rather than, as expert analysis both inside and outside the national security bureaucracy explains, merely eliciting hostile responses from a firmly implanted Islamic Republic. It is unclear whether holding of the myth represents genuine misbelief or instead is a rationalization covering other reasons the holders want to maintain Iran as a perpetually isolated bête noire. Either way, the myth leads to damaging and ineffective U.S. policy.
Pillar warns the US warmongers that the policy of violence including regime change and revolution is far from Iranian’s aspirations. The bottom line of his argument can lead the audience to the conclusion that opposition groups such as the MKO lack the support of the Iranian people.
Iran is not at all close to any political upheaval that could be described as a new revolution or a counter-revolution, even with more pressure and pushes from the outside. Iranian politics certainly exhibits plenty of disagreement and controversy, with the possibility of significant policy change coming out of that political competition. Despite the substantial defects in the Iranian political system, there is a political robustness missing from, say, the Arab monarchies on the other side of the Persian Gulf. But most Iranians do not have an appetite for making a new revolution.
Both the regime and the people in Iran have demonstrated an ability to withstand hardship much greater than what U.S. sanctions can inflict. They did so during the extremely costly eight-year Iran-Iraq War, which Iran doggedly continued for some time even after Saddam—who started the war—began seeking an armistice. Certainly if pressure or punishment from an outside power is involved, both the regime and the people exhibit determined resistance.
He describes the natural social and individual evolutions that has happed to the Iranians during the past decades compared with the extremely prejudicial and sexist ideas ruling the communities of other Gulf countries:
There already has been much evolution in the direction and nature of the Islamic Republic during its nearly four decades of existence, although probably not as much as there would have been without the ostracism. The large majority of Iranians today were born since the revolution. Hijabs have inched above hairlines, and domestic life has become looser and freer. Especially for the female half of the population, looking across the Gulf does not instill any ideas about better alternatives.
According to Paul Pillar the policy of engagement and diplomacy will be more fruitful in the interactions between Islamic Republic and the West.
Further evolution of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its policies in the years ahead will correlate directly with the extent to which it has normal political and economic interaction with the rest of the world. Isolation and punishment would strengthen Iranian hardliners’ arguments that there is neither a possibility of, nor a payoff to be expected from, such interaction. Bolstering of the hardline position in turn would mean diminished prospects for further liberalizing political change in Iran. Conversely, increased commerce, foreign investment, and the economic development that go with them would strengthen the political position of those favoring normality in foreign relations, would increase the Iranian stake in even more peaceful normality, would loosen the grip of those in Iran whose economic and political power depend on isolation, and would increase Iranian exposure to ideas and examples of still more change.
The contributing editor of the National Interest advises the US warmongers to engage in peaceful talks paving the way for the West to achieve its goals in Iran and this is what the MKO’s nature cannot accept at all. The MKO leaders run their multi-million-dollar lobbying campaign to buy the support of US hawkish politicians just because they are not able to buy the support of the Iranian people. The MKO has no way to gain power in Iran except by a forceful military intervention by the side of the Iranian enemies.
Those in the United States seeking, or at least talking about, regime change in Iran should face up to how the best way to achieve such change is to let these processes that already are in train play out, and to encourage them with increased interaction and commerce between Iran and the West. The change may not be sudden enough or violent enough to be described as a revolution with a capital R, but the change is even more likely than anything sudden or violent to be in a direction favorable for Western interests. This will be the course of Iranian history as long as we do not screw up the process with mindlessly applied isolation, economic punishment, and attempted subversion.
++ After her International Women’s Day event, Maryam Rajavi remained in Tirana to stage two more events based on the Persian New Year. Commentators though say that the fact she did not return to Paris shows only that she is desperately needed in Albania to keep everything together. The whole MEK organisation in that country is disintegrating. However, from the time she arrived and after three glamorous and expensive events,
++ Reports from MEK formers in Albania indicate that Rajavi is in deep trouble. As people separate in increasing numbers, the MEK has had to move these disaffected members to a different apartment block some distance from the other members so that their dissent does not affect the whole organisation. It is alleged that the CIA and Albanian mafia have coerced the UN to not pay these individuals as refugees but to illegally give their money as a lump sum to the MEK leaders for their upkeep. This means that disaffected members cannot fully leave and are still subjected to MEK control – they are effectively held in a state of modern slavery. Many formers who had escaped the MEK in Iraq say they have seen this scenario before. Their testimonies describe how, after 2003, the Americans at first would not allow dissenters to leave Camp Ashraf. When these people became enough to cause problems for the MEK the Americans established the adjacent TIPF. They separated dissenters only so they wouldn’t infect the other members. In TIPF the dissenters were treated harshly to deter others from joining them. Eventually, in 2008, the Americans abandoned the dissenters by driving them into the desert and leaving them to make their own way to safety. This is what is now happening in Albania; dissenters will at first be separated to keep them from going public about their treatment, and eventually they will be abandoned with no money or possessions and perhaps no legal status. Just as many people lost their lives in the MEK camps in Iraq, it is predicted that the same scenario will play out in Albania.
++ The quarter where the MEK are stationed and where Rajavi held her catwalk event is one of poorest most run-down parts of Albania. It has now changed the name of its main street to President Donald Trump Street. The mayor has insisted that Trump is now an honorary resident of that township. This prompted a small demonstration by residents who declare they are sick and tired of the CIA activities and bases in their country and the CIA ridiculing Albanian citizens by bringing the MEK to a desperately poor town which already has more than enough problems. Several weeks ago there were similar demonstrations in the capital Tirana, protesting against the government, corruption and American influence. Protestors labelled their government a puppet regime.
++ Families of the MEK’s hostages have written their views through Nejat Society. The MEK responded by swearing at the families accusing them of being angry because the MEK is supported by the Americans. The families published a statement denying any feelings of anger.
++ Sahar Family Foundation was established in Baghdad in 2008 to provide aid to abandoned MEK members (see second item above). Soon after, families of current MEK members also gave their support and joined Sahar in trying to rescue people who wanted to leave the MEK but were prevented by the MEK leaders. Sahar issued a statement last week announcing that six months after the Baghdad office closed, Sahar Family Foundation would begin its activities again, this time focused on the MEK in Albania. The statement did not mention where the new office would be.
In English:
++ Albanian newspaper Gazeta Impakt in an article titled ‘US News Agency BIRN calls Iranian terrorists residing in Albania “dissidents”’ highlighted how the US news agency BIRN, linked with George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, treats MEK as “dissidents”, unlike ISIS and other Wahhabi terrorists.
++ Mazda Parsi in Nejat Society calls the MEK “a destructive cult of confession”. “…Based on numerous evidences, the MKO was one of the first groups to commit suicidal terror acts against civilians. Besides, several group members committed self-immolations in European capitals to protest the arrest of their co-leader Maryam Rajavi by the French police, in June 2003.”
++ ‘Evolution, Not a New Revolution, in Iran’, an analytical article by Paul R. Pillar in Lobelog, demolishes the myth that regime change can or will be forced on Iran. The article mentions the role of the MEK. “The myth often is connected to a faith in exile groups as instruments for quick transition to a completely different type of regime. Many of those hoping for regime change in Iran look in this way to the Mujahedin-e Khalq, a cult-cum-terrorist group that actually has almost no popular support within Iran. Some of the same people had placed a similar faith in Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi, whose qualities as a huckster more than as someone who could father a new Iraqi republic became increasingly apparent after the U.S. invasion of 2003.”
++ Publishing an interview with John Bolton by Top Channel, Tirana, Iran Interlink comments: “Warmonger John Bolton attended a secret meeting of the MEK in Tirana. In an interview afterwards it becomes clear that the terrorist MEK cult is being groomed in Albania as part of a bigger agenda to confront Russia. Albania, a member of NATO, is not part of the EU. John Bolton was passed over by President Donald Trump for any position in his cabinet. Analysts believe this was partly based on his continued support for the toxic MEK.”
March 24, 2017
Several days ago, the US news agency BIRN, linked with George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, published an article titled ‘Iran Launches Albanian Media to Target Dissident Exiles’. Among other things, the article claims that “Iranian media are opening an online war against an opposition group – some of whose members live in exile in Albania – by launching new websites in English to influence local opinion”.
But unlike ISIS and other Wahhabi terrorist organizations, BIRN treats the Iranian Mojahedin as peaceful and harmless people.
In the article Fatjona Mejdini, BIRN journalist, stated that the newspaper Impact “also publishes video from a YouTube channel called Impact that broadcasts interviews with those who call themselves former members of the MEK. The YouTube channel is connected with an Albanian newspaper, also called Impact, which since last summer has written about the dangers that arise from the MEK presence in Albania.”
Impact newspaper, which has published an interview with former Mojahedin member Anne Singleton, is proud that its journalistic investigations are receiving international fame. Impact Newspaper would be happy if the leader of the Radicalized Iranian MEK jihadists and the Albanian Prime Minister would honor us with a debate on refugee activity and the Iranian Mujahedin in Albania.
The article in full is below:
[The MEK clearly believes that any publicity is better than no publicity and insisted on publishing the BIRN article in full on its own website.]
Iran Launches Albanian Media to Target Dissident Exiles
Iranian media are waging an online war against an opposition group – some whose members live in exile in Albania – launching new websites in Albanian to influence local opinion.
By Fatjona Mejdini
Tirana – An Iranian NGO called the Habilian Association has added a new section in Albanian to its news website, Habilian, aiming to target Iranian opposition activists who have found refuge in Albania in recent years.
“The Habilian Association has launched the first specialised website in the Albanian language providing news, analysis and documents on crimes conducted by the Mujahedin-e-Khalq organisation,” the first post in Albanian on the site on January 29 said.
Habilian is one of a few Iranian media outlets that have recently started publishing in Albanian.
While its decision to publish in the language of a small Balkan country night appear unusual, Habilian is open about the fact that it is targeting members of Mojahedin-e-Khalq, the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, who are living in Albania.
While some believe the Iranian government is backing it and other Iranian media that target the MEK, a diplomatic source from the Iranian embassy in Tirana denied this.
Albania agreed take in MEK members in 2013, when the then Prime Minister, Sali Berisha, offered to shelter some Iranians then under the protection of US forces in Iraq.
The People’s Mujahedin of Iran is a controversial resistance group. Founded in 1965 as a left-leaning opposition to the Shah’s regime, it turned against the Islamic Republic following the 1979 Revolution.
The US listed it as a terrorist organisation in 1997 but it was removed from the black list in 2012 after it renounced violence.
The Albanian authorities have declined to give the exact number of MEK members and their families who found refuge in the country, but estimates suggest there are about 2,000.
Online battle
The Habilian Association’s website says that it is “an Iranian human rights NGO established with an aim of elucidating the fact that Iran is one of the biggest victims of terrorism”.
The website says the organisation was founded in 2005 by a group of families of Iranian terror victims killed by organisations like MEK.
“As more than 2,000 members of this dangerous cult were relocated to Albania, Habilian Association’s Albanian website was launched in order to enlighten public opinion in Albania about the true nature of the MEK and make the Albanian people aware of the threats posed to them by this terrorist group,” it reads.
A member of the Habilian Association, Masoud Heidari, told BIRN that the Albanian section of the the website aimed to “warn” Albanians about the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran.
“We decided it was our responsibility to warn the Albanian media, politicians and most importantly of all, the Albanian people, of the capacities of this terrorist group to corrupt politicians, [engage in] money-laundering activities, and ultimately their cultish nature,” he said.
The website’s Albanian page is filled with detailed articles and videos that emphasize the alleged dangers of the MEK group.
It also publishes videos from a YouTube channel called Impakt that broadcasts interviews with those who call themselves former MEK members.
The YouTube channel is connected to an Albanian newspaper, also called Impakt, which since last summer has been writing about the alleged risks that the MEK poses to Albania.
Habilian is not the first Iranian media organisation to start publishing in Albanian.
In July 2016, Iran launched the Pars Today news outlet in Albanian, alongside 24 other languages. Pars Today is part of the state-run media corporation Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, IRIB.
On March 3, Pars Today published an article in Albanian entitled “Support for terrorism and Mujahedeen-e-Khalq damage the credibility and interests of the United States”.
The site has several articles about MEK members, who are described as a terrorist group and a cult.
BIRN asked Pars Today to explain their interest in opening an Albanian language section, but got no reply to the time of publication.
The Iranian opposition organisation, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, also has an Albanian section on its official webpage, alongside six other languages.
Disinformation campaign?
Linda Chavez, a former US representative to the UN Human Rights Commission, who visited Albania in late February to see how MEK members in the country are living, told BIRN that the articles published in Albanian were Iranian government propaganda.
Chavez described it as a disinformation campaign intended to make MEK members’ lives more difficult in the country.
“I will hope that it will not resonate with Albanian people because the MEK -which whom I have a long association – oppose the anti-women misogynist regime in Iran that is continuing to oppress their own people,” she said.
“The risk to me is if Iranian propaganda is taken seriously,” she added.
She said the Iranians living in Albania were in the process of obtaining refugee status and had started slowly to integrate into society.
After BIRN contacted the Iranian embassy, a source from the embassy insisted that the Iranian government has nothing to do with the websites.
“We do our job here in accordance with our diplomatic functions/role and good relationship with the government of Albania, and we don’t have any connections with these sites, newspapers or YouTube channel,” the source said.
The MEK in Albania seems to have a strong political support. Albanian politicians and MPs from the ruling majority and opposition participated in the MEK’s “Free Iran” event in Paris on July 2016.
However, on January 14, Albanian Foreign Minister Ditmir Bushati made the first official visit by a top-rank Albanian diplomat to Tehran, meeting his Iranian counterpart and President Hassan Rouhani.
During his visit, Albania and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding agreeing to hold regular political talks.
Iranian oppositionists were not mentioned in an Albanian foreign ministry press release that was issued about the discussions.
But Iran’s ambassador to Tirana, Gholamhossein Mohammadnia, said that the issue of what he called the “terrorist cult” was discussed during Bushati’s visit.
Mohammadnia said Iran has been assured that the MEK members have no permission to engage in political activity while living in Albania, the Albanian Daily News website reported.
“Therefore, these people are not allowed to threaten Iran’s security or interests inside or outside Albania,” Mohammadnia added.
—————————————————–
Gazeta Impakt, Tirana, Albania,
Michael Ware meets with high-level representatives of the MEK, a group that wants to overthrow the Iranian government.
Michael Ware, an Australian journalist from National Geographic, investigated the Mujahedin-e Khalq that he met during the Iraq War. He describes MEK as “the living epitome of the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
He met them in Iraq back in 2005 when he was a war correspondent. After the American invasion of Iraq, he went to the Camp Ashraf, the MEK’s headquarters, and shot a footage. There he interviewed some female members of the group and now after more than a decade he’s “chasing down the story of who and what the MEK is now. How many of the MEK are left? Where are they and who is supporting them today?” He adds that he also wants to find the girls he met back in 2005 at Camp Ashraf.
He started his journey from Paris, “chasing an Iranian spy ring across Western Europe.” He has tried a lot to “get in touch with someone, anyone inside the group who will talk” to him. After 6 days, he could finally arrange a meeting with Shahin Ghobadi, an MEK spokesman, and found his way into the MEK headquarters. He sat with MEK’s high-level representatives, Mohammad Mohaddesin, Shahin Ghobadi, Farzin Hashemi and Sarvenaz Chitsaz.
His main question from the MEK representatives was about the method they want to use to overthrow Iranian government. But they did not reveal too much and they’ve gone “a long way around to not answering my question.”
He asked for a meeting with the girls he met at Camp Ashraf and they said they are in Germany.
“A look I catch here or there lets me know they are still ready to fight for the revolution,” he concluded.
Ware and his crew flew to Berlin, hoping to meet with the girls. Shahin Ghobadi joined them in Berlin and took them to a symbolic hunger strike, which was “part of a broader MEK propaganda war to gain both new recruits and support for their cause.”
He believed that Germany was a diversion and the girls were not there.
Although the MEK had warned them, if they went to Albania, they’d be on their own, they set off for Albania, where some 3000 MEK members are settled.
They went to the MEK camp, outside Tirana. Surprisingly, Shahin Ghobadi followed them to Albania, “to make sure things go smoothly here in Albania.” There, he was only allowed to “see what Shahin wanted” him to see. “He opened one door and shut another.”
He finally met with two of the girls and sat with them, hearing their story.
In the end, Michael Ware said that certainly the MEK is “still very much devoted to its cause” and they will happily give their lives.
You might have heard about or have seen the pictures of mass suicide of cult members in the United States like Jamestown and Davidians or you might see the news of suicide bombers of Taliban and ISIS in the Middle East every day. The victim-attackers of such incidents are all grown up under certain systems with same criteria. The system is considered a cult. Typical characteristics of cults are based on true accounts taken from testimonies of their victims, carefully studied by cult experts. The result of studies has ended with the crucial conclusion that the Mujahedin khalq Organization fits all criteria of a destructive cult.
Based on numerous evidences, the MKO was one of the first groups to commit suicidal terror acts against civilians. Besides, several group members committed self-immolations in European capitals to protest the arrest of their co-leader Maryam Rajavi by the French police, in June 2003. Two of the self-immolators died and the others became paralyzed forever. But, what is going on in the cult “milieu” that leads its followers to commit such violent acts against themselves and others?
Robert Jay Lifton is an American psychiatrist and author of a book titled “Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism”. Dr. Lifton conducted a thorough study of American returned POWs to discover the process used to reform their thinking. Though his focus was on prisoners of war the criteria carry over to the cult mind control model executed in other cult-like systems including the Mujahedin Khalq that is better to be called “the Cult of Rajavi”.
Coincidently, some of the Iranian POWs of the Iran-Iraq war were deceived by the recruiters of Cult of Rajavi. They were not released even after the exchange of POWs following the end of the war .At first, newly recruited ones saw the leaders of the MKO as friendly and supportive compared with Iraqi officials. It took them a while to find out that they got trapped in a horrible controlling system.
This is what Dr. Lifton calls Milieu Control. Milieu is the environment in which we live. It includes all our interactions on a daily basis. It includes the information we take in and the information we give out. It includes the people, places, events, and ideas that pass through our daily life. For a member of the Cult of Rajavi the milieu is restricted to their superior authorities in an hierarchy on top of which the Rajavis rule and their peers who are not reliable ones but they are rivals who have to watch you, spy you and report your deeds. The place, events and ideas are all those that the Rajavis define for members. This milieu implies isolation and solidity of thought that according to Lifton paves the way for “a thought reform milieu”. Actually, “thought reform” is an academic equivalent term for brainwashing.
Lifton suggests, “Through this milieu control the totalist environment seeks to establish domain over not only the individual’s communication with the outside (all that he sees and hears, reads or writes, experiences, and expresses), but also – in its penetration of his inner life – over what we may speak of as his communication with himself.”
He seems to be describing the milieu of Camp Ashraf, Camp Liberty, the MKO headquarters in Paris and even its current base in Albania. The most recently defected member of the Cult of Rajavi Karim Aliyari was a POW of Iran-Iraq war. According to Nejat Society, “his name along with some other prisoners’ names were not registered on the Red Cross list. So as, after the war ended and an agreement signed between Iran and Iraq and RC to exchange POWs of both countries, the Baath Regime didn’t register their names on the exchange list of RC.” He was handed over to the MKO by the Baath officials.
Karim had had no contact with his family since he was captured during Iran-Iraq War in 1986. Finally Karim managed to liberate himself from the mental and physical barriers of the MKO cult in Albania and contact his family after more than thirty years. Some other members of the MKO who had been recruited while they were POW in Iraq, left the group after years of suppression. Immediately after their release, they began revelations against the Cult of Rajavi.
Dashtestani was a 16-year old teenager when he was captured by Iraqi forces in his way from Abadan to Mahshahr [two towns in SouthWestern part of Iran where Iraq invaded in 1979].In 1988, after ten years of imprisonment in Iraqi prisons when Mujahedin offered him help return to Iran, he accepted their offer. He was deceived by MKO due to two reasons .First because he was not informed enough and second was MKO’s dirty recruitment tactics and the mind control system that enhanced and abused them due to lack of sufficient information.
“In their mind control system they had to prevent the members’ minds getting into sexual or emotional thoughts. If you think of your ex-wife, you should write it and then read your confessions in the brainwashing meetings where your comrades will attack you, insult you saying that”you are wrong”,”damn you”.”That woman is not your wife any more”.”She is your ideological sister”.”She belongs to the leader”, says Mahmoud Dashtestani in one of his interviews after his release. [https://www.nejatngo.org/en/posts/3309]
According to Dashtestani and many other defectors of the Cult of Rajavi, The weekly brainwashing meetings are obligatory. You must confess a sin -a sexual one. It will be even worse if you do not confess anything. They take you to a place called Bengali where they talk to you for several days, putting you under too much pressure. They say that you definitely have some sexual thoughts that you are concealing. “Their arguments and sometimes quarrels in the meetings were justified as”human science”! What a human science! They call it monotheist”Anthropology”in which they use peer pressure as weapon. They say peer pressure is just like the leader,” he says. []
Dr. lifton labels the destructive cults like the MKO as “Cult of Confession”. The Closely related criteria of a destructive cult is confession. Not legitimate confession to God, but improper confessions. Any personal weakness, bad thought, failure to give 100% to the group, must be confessed. Even wrongs not committed can be confessed to help the leader achieve the utmost authority over members. Confession can have a purifying effect on the person confessing. It can also provide leverage to use on the person in the future as often happens in cult-like systems. Open confession sessions can create a sense in the group of personal uncertainty. If a seemingly strong person is confessing the weaker followers will feel less sure of their own purity. Public confessions can eliminate the sense of boundaries you need to maintain your individuality. Thus, gradually your individuality is ruined.
Good news is that those who returned usually quickly returned to the worldview and value system in which they were raised. In other words, brainwashing does not last if it is not maintained. Therefore, helping the MKO hostages get released from the bars of the cult should be a vital agenda for human rights bodies and international communities.
By Mazda Parsi
Inside This Issue:
Download Nejat NewsLetter ISSUE NO.44
Download Nejat NewsLetter ISSUE NO.44
Israel’s role in assassinations of nuclear scientists
(Mojahedin Khalq, Rajavi cult, Saddam’s Private Army, were trained by Mossad to assassinate Iranian scientists)
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Although Israel has a policy of not commenting on allegations of murder and terrorism, authorities and unnamed sources have hinted that Israel may be involved in the assassinations of four Iranian nuclear scientists between 2010 and 2012.
Four Iranian nuclear scientists – Masoud Alimohammadi, Majid Shahriari, Darioush Rezaeinejad and Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan – were assassinated between the years 2010 and 2012. Another scientist, Fereydoon Abbasi, was wounded in an attempted murder.
Two of the killings were carried out with magnetic bombs attached to the victims’ cars. Rezaeinejad was shot dead in front of his wife and young daughter, and Alimohammadi was killed in a motorcycle-bomb explosion.
Reza Najafi, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nation’s International Atomic Energy Agency, said on Thursday at a meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors that “Israel-hired terrorists” were behind the assassinations of the nuclear scientists in the Middle East.
“Unfortunately, the Zionist Regime has ignored the rightful requests of the international community in the last years, and having the blind support of some Western countries and with infringing all international laws and regulations, has pushed its dangerous military nuclear program forward,” the ambassador said.
The former Iranian envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, had called the assassinations of nuclear experts instances of “nuclear terrorism”.
During the time of the assassinations, there was speculation about the identity of the killers. The Israeli Mossad intelligence service and Israel Defense Forces were seen as the most likely perpetrators. However, the Iranian opposition group Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), intelligence agents from Arab countries opposed to the Iranian government and the United States were also under suspicion.
While then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denied any U.S. involvement in the killings, given the reported lack of U.S. intelligence assets in Iran, Israel neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.
In 2015, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said in an interview with Der Spiegel that he bore no responsibility “for the life expectancy of Iranian scientists”. Speaking about Iran’s nuclear program, he commented that, “it must be stopped”.
“We will act in any way and are not willing to tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. We prefer that this be done by means of sanctions, but in the end, Israel should be able to defend itself,” he said, hinting at Israeli involvement in the assassinations. He called the nuclear negotiations between Iran and six world powers “a historic mistake”.
According to a report by CBS News several years ago, the Obama administration pressured Israel to stop carrying out assassinations inside Iran against the country’s nuclear scientists. This came amid Washington’s attempt to reach a nuclear deal with Iran.
Although Israel never admitted to carrying out the killings, Mossad officials concluded that the assassination campaign became too dangerous for its spies, said the CBS News report.
A well-sourced and convincing investigation from 2012 by NBC News in the U.S. concluded that “deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by an Iranian dissident group that is financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service”. It also cites two senior Obama administration officials as confirming that the MEK is responsible for the killings.
NBC quoted Mohammad Javad Larijani, a former top diplomat and current chief of Iran’s human rights council, as asserting that Israel’s secret service, Mossad, trained MEK members. This information largely came from the interrogation of a would-be assassin detained in Iran in 2010.
The MEK, however, denies any involvement with Israel, but Israeli commentators have confirmed the MEK-Israel connection.
The MEK was designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department in 1997, although the designation was lifted in 2012. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said that, even while it was listed as a foreign terror group, MEK members received training from the Joint Special Operations Command in Nevada. During the confrontational period between Tehran and Washington over Iran’s nuclear program, the MEK was attractive to U.S. intelligence agencies as an opposition group in Iran.
Israel has a history of systematic assassinations, most prominent of which are targeted killings of Hamas leaders in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. According to an Israeli intellectual, “targeted assassinations have become the most significant and frequent form of Israeli military attack,” and serve to control Palestinian territories.
In 2013, a young Iraqi nuclear scientist, Mohammad al-Fouz, was allegedly gunned down by Mossad in the country’s capital city of Baghdad. A member of Fouz’s family told reporters that unknown gunmen targeted the young scientist when he was on his way back home. He had just published his new uranium enrichment formula in a number of Western journals before he died.
No evidence has been provided linking Israel to the murder and Israel denies involvement. However, earlier reports suggest Mossad’s involvement in the assassination of more than 350 Iraqi nuclear scientists and more than 300 university professors. The attack on al-Fouz was the most recent in a series of attacks on Iraqi nuclear scientists.
According to a report released in 2010 by the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Israel refused to admit that it had been carrying out “targeted killings” for decades.
“There is no policy, and there never will be a policy or a reality, of willful killings of suspects. The principle of the sanctity of life is a fundamental principle of the Israeli army,” the report quoted the Israel Defense Forces as saying.
Israel has defended its use of assassinations and targeted killings as legal under international humanitarian law.
However, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that all individuals have the right to life, liberty and security. Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights also says the right to life must be protected by law and “no one shall be arbitrarily deprived” of that right.
According to the United Nations’ “Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions,” governments must prohibit such executions and ensure they are considered offenses under their state’s criminal laws. It rules out “exceptional circumstances, including a state of war or threat of war” as justifications for such executions.
Mark Regev, the former Israeli prime minister’s spokesman, said in 2012 that it is preferable to arrest and bring “terrorists” to court, but that is not always possible. “Sometimes in the combat reality, the only real option is to eliminate,” he said.
Research by the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), stated that from 2000 to 2008 the Israeli military carried out 348 “extrajudicial execution operations” in the occupied Palestinian territories. The attacks killed 754 Palestinians: 521 of whom were specifically targeted and 233 of whom were civilian bystanders, including 71 children and 20 women.
++ On International Women’s Day, many women formers have written about their experience of being females inside the MEK. They talk of spurious hysterectomies, rape, forced marriage, forced divorces and a myriad of other wrongs and humiliations. Some write about the present day and how the MEK refuses to acknowledge or treat women’s medical problems such as issues around periods, the menopause, cancers (breast, cervical, uterine, etc). Alongside these memoirs, the Iranian Women’s Association based in Germany attended a meeting in Brussels. Afterwards, they met with several MEPs and had the opportunity to explain the particular conditions for women inside the MEK.
++ To mark International Women’s Day, Maryam Rajavi emerged in Albania – which was not unexpected after having sent her lobbyists as emissaries to that country. The MEK blocked the public road between the two apartment blocks used by MEK, and dressed it up as the Oscars red carpet. Maryam Rajavi was filmed traversing this street from one end to another with flag waving MEK members on both sides. At the end she poses like an Oscar winner. What the MEK haven’t realised is that instead of looking at her, observers notice that the men and women lining the street are all over 60 years old. Rajavi tries to act as a humanitarian person by trying to kiss the stumps of a disabled woman in a wheelchair who has lost her legs in one of the attacks on the MEK camps in Iraq since 2009. The attacks took place long after international organisations and the government of Iraq had warned Rajavi that the camps are vulnerable and begged her to remove everyone to safety in third countries. Many MEK were killed due to Rajavi’s insistence that she get paid for the land of Camp Ashraf before anyone could come out. She used the members as bargaining chips, this disabled woman was one of them. Her parade received no coverage whatsoever from any media outlet. Whoever paid for it got nothing back for their expenditure. Even the MEK’s own websites reverted the next day to business as usual – attacking Iran, which is what they are paid for. Every day the MEK websites publish one sensational exposure or other about something that happens in Iran (they want to pretend they have people inside Iran). The sites promote non-rapprochement with America and the hope that America will go to war. These revelations about Iran have become so silly that a proverb has been coined for it, Iranians call it ‘the yoghurt strategy’. That means ‘the act of waiting for decades for somebody’s yoghurt dish to fall to the ground and break so they will be able to lick some up from the floor’. After forty years, the MEK are still waiting.
In English:
++ A film broadcast by National Geographic and made by Michael Wade exposes the MEK in a way that was certainly unintended. The film reveals four leading members contradicting themselves by talking about the MEK’s public version of their aims and their internal ideological version of the same. Even worse is the filming of an MEK member who has been on the US wanted list on charges of funding terrorism since 1985. It was thought he was out of reach in Iraq, however he is now resident in France in Maryam Rajavi’s headquarters at Auvers-sur-Oise where the film was made.
++ Nejat Society reported that former POW (Iran-Iraq war), Karim Aliyari was able to free himself from the clutches of the MEK while in Albania. He has now regained contact with his family in Iran.
++ Faryad Azadi, Paris reports that several MEK formers wrote to the Canadian Senate warning them about the presence of Shahram Golestaneh who is undertaking lobbying there under false pretences. Golestaneh poses as the head of the Iran Democratic Association. This is a bogus organisation and Golestaneh has been ordered to hide his membership of the MEK.
11 March 2017
