Page 346 – Nejat Society

CASMII Statement on Iran and the P5+1 Deal: Prospects for Lasting Peace

Introduction

The nuclear deal signed between Iran and the P5+1 countries on July 14, 2015, and the subsequent UN Security Council resolution passed on July 20 are the first major steps taken by the United States and its allies toward a peaceful relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran. These steps represent a crucial turning point from the neoconservative dominated interventionist policies that came into full force by the previous American administration, and continued in various forms within the current one.

While the deal has been vigorously criticized on both sides, the willingness to cooperate to resolve differences without resorting to force is ultimately a victory for citizens of both countries and those of the region. The agreement could be the first of a series of steps that may lead to true peace and cooperation between Iran and the United States. Even now, however, this small step is in danger of being sabotaged by the same powerful forces that constantly seek to promote hostilities with Iran. The Western media narrative is still dangerously shortsighted and inflammatory. Decades of biased demonization without any balancing response have created much fear, disinformation and mistrust to be exploited by the pro-war forces exactly as it was done with the disastrous Iraq war in 2003.

It is with this reality in mind that we set to provide some of the missing context crucial to understanding this deal and the Iranian behavior in general. We hope that peace-loving voices in the independent media would make good use of these facts in order to save this fragile step toward a more peaceful future.

A History of Lies and a Manufactured Crisis

Two seemingly contradictory trends have been dominant with respect to Iran’s nuclear question. First, for decades Iran has been accused of not just developing nuclear weapons but being a short time away from actually using them [1]. Second, non-political nuclear experts, including those at the United Nations, American and Israeli intelligence agencies have consistently disproven these accusations [2]. The western media hardly discusses the latter point, and the irresponsible hype around the former creates the impression of constant imminent danger that needs to be addressed by force [3].

The propaganda campaign against Iran has not been without purpose. The long-standing policy has been to engineer “regime change” [4], the same goal that the Bush Administration articulated with respect to Iraq. Just like Iraq, the Iranian nuclear issue was simply identified as potent rally point to “sell” future hostilities to the public [2]. Just like Iraq, unsubstantiated allegations from self-serving sources were used to convict Iran rhetorically. For example, the terror group MEK claimed [5] to have “exposed” two “secret” Iranian nuclear sites under construction in 2002, which was immediately seized upon by Western governments and media as positive proof that Iran was developing nuclear weapons in violation of the NPT. Left unsaid in the propaganda blitz were the inconvenient facts that the facilities were for production of energy and that Iran had no legal obligation to declare them until shortly before nuclear material is transported to them (i.e. several years later) [6].

In response to the accusations, the Khatami administration voluntarily suspended Iran’s nuclear energy program, but regime change proponents saw this only as a sign of weakness, and refused to negotiate with Iran. Still in the following years, other chances for peace were created with the help of intermediaries such as the EU [7], Brazil and Turkey, but again the American side was not interested in a successful deal [8].

The Bush administration used strong-arm and fear tactics as leverage to push through UN sanctions against Iran [9], fully exploiting the fears of the international community – not so much the fear of a nuclear Iran, but fear of US starting another war. This is the basic origin of the UN sanctions in force against Iran today. The present nuclear deal’s proposal to lift these sanctions is certainly a welcome path toward peace, but it does not address the inherent injustice toward Iran.

Why Nuclear Energy is Important to Iranians

Some commentators have asked why Iran cares about nuclear energy if it has substantial oil reserves? [10] The premise of the question, which is never challenged in the western media, represents a view that openly considers Iranians as lazy simpletons without ambition or capacity for complex economic planning in their own country. For historic reasons dating back to British and Russian colonial strategies in Iran, the independent development and mastery of native industries in Iran is of tremendous importance to Iranians across the political spectrum. The sanctions against Iran and its oil industry have done nothing but to reaffirm and reemphasize this important phenomenon in the Iranian psyche. Iran is a country rich with significant deposits of Uranium and one of the few in the world that has the potential to build the entire nuclear ecosystem entirely inside the country. As such nuclear energy represents not only national pride, but also a strategy to diversify energy resources and be better prepared for exactly the kind of economic warfare waged upon it for decades.

Legal Basis for the Iranian Nuclear Program

One often repeated canard heard from British and American pundits is that “we are giving Iran” a large sum of money in “exchange” for not developing nuclear weapons. The statement is beyond absurd [11]. The only funds under discussions are the ones legitimately belonging to Iranians themselves that have, for example, been withheld by Iran’s trading partners due to American threats of economic retaliation. The withholdings have always been on shaky legal grounds and some of them have been successfully challenged in courts. The other side of the equation is also not true. Iran is already obligated under the Treaty on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) not to develop any nuclear weapons. This was Iran’s legal obligation before the deal and it will remain so after the deal.

What Western media fail to mention is that the same NPT signed both by Iran and the United States, entitles Iran to “have the right to participate in, to the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy”. The NPT further explicitly obliges nuclear weapons states like the U.S. to “facilitate” such transactions [12]. The United States has never taken this obligation seriously and has worked to block Iran’s access to civilian nuclear technologies. It was the lack of such “facilitation” from the West that partially convinced Iranians to develop their own native nuclear power infrastructure, to which they also have what the NPT explicitly calls “the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination” [13].

Failure of Sanctions and Regime Change Policies

Contrary to the claims of the Obama administration, the failure of sanctions policies – and not their success – brought about this agreement [14]. The toughest sanctions in modern history were placed on Iran with the urging of US and Israel. American officials and hawkish pressure groups have been boasting since 2006 that “crippling” and “strangling” sanctions would force Iran to dismantle its nuclear program. There was widespread belief that Iranian people would blame the government for the economic turmoil, then rise up and topple the government with the help of friendly outside forces. It was supposed to be the freezing of assets, then financial sanctions, then an oil embargo, then preventing Iran from buying processed petroleum products, then punishing of third party suppliers to Iran, etc. that were each supposed to push Iran over the edge and bring regime change or at least force Iran to halt its nuclear activity [15]. None of these achieved the desired effect. Of course plenty of ordinary Iranians suffered and continue to suffer under the sanctions, be it due to increased inflation, air transport accidents or lack of proper medicine, all brought about by the sanctions. But ultimately neither capitulation, nor revolution came to pass. In reality, as bad as their situation became during the “crippling” sanctions era, it was nothing compared to what the Iranians had experienced in the 1980’s when Saddam Hussein imposed a real war on them. Saddam was militarily and financially supported by almost the same cast of countries now negotiating with Iran and Iranians do not forget this.

The sanctions regime, enacted with enormous cooperation and economic sacrifice from America’s allies around the world began to unravel. By 2015, analysts were nearly unanimous in predicting the complete collapse of the sanctions regime. Even the Obama administration, the architect of many crippling sanctions against Iran acknowledges this failure when the President claims the only real alternative to the deal is eventual war with Iran.

Prospects for Peace and Cooperation

The Vienna nuclear discussions were concluded in agreement without even a mention to the many acts of sabotage conducted against Iran which were with full knowledge and in some cases, full participation of the United States. The most well known of these acts are the cyber attacks against the Iranian nuclear infrastructure, and the assassination campaign against Iranian civilian nuclear scientists. While both of these extra-legal acts of aggression have been attributed to Israel, it is widely believed the US was fully complicit in their execution.

The present nuclear agreement also doesn’t acknowledge Iran’s continued non-deviation of nuclear materials as confirmed by many international experts including US and Israeli spy agencies. In spite of this point, Iran agrees to substantial reduction of its nuclear centrifuges and fissile material, and further, it agrees to voluntarily adopt the additional protocols even though many NPT signatories have not adopted them.

In contrasts to the claims of Obama critics that Iran somehow “duped” the P5+1 with a favorable deal for itself, the nuclear deal is under attack by many Iranians for being unfair to Iran. In this context the signing of the deal by the Iranian executive and the official backing of it from the Supreme Leader’s office represent an enormous olive branch to the West, particularly the United States.

American administrations have failed to reciprocate important Iranian peace overtures in the past and the resulting diplomatic disgrace within Iran’s political order has consistently given rise to more confrontational politics. A rejection of this deal by the American Congress would signal an unmistakable failure of Iranian pragmatists and substantially increase the chances of continued hostilities in the future.

We call on all responsible, non-violent groups to recognize this historic opportunity for peace and to support the present nonproliferation agreement. A coalition of powerful forces with deep pockets has enormous investments in hostile policies between Iran and US. Already millions of dollars are being poured into misinformation and propaganda campaigns to kill this agreement. Only by forcefully, publicly and proactively confronting the lies, can we defeat the coalition and preserve this historic chance for peace.

Notes

[1] In 1992 Benjamin Netanyahu went on the record claiming Iran could be as little as three years away from a nuclear weapon. Future Iraq-war architect Donald Rumsfeld said in 1998 that Iranian ICBMS will reach the United States by 2003. For a short summary of claims throughout the decades see Scott Peterson’s “Imminent Iran Nuclear Threat? A Timeline of Warnings Since 1979”, http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/1108/Imminent-Iran-nuclear-threat-A-timeline-of-warnings-since-1979/Israel-paints-Iran-as-Enemy-No.-1-1992

[2] The 2004 US DNI estimate to congress did not cite any evidence toward weaponization. It detailed Iran’s nuclear energy progress and expressed concern that “same technologies” could be used for military applications. The 2007 estimate reported that Iran has capabilities but has not decided to pursue nuclear weapons. The estimate was much maligned in the media and many voices within the Bush administration were calling for its revision, but Intelligence community refused to budge. Ronald Burgess, Jr., Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said in early 2010 that: "The bottom line assessments of the NIE still hold true. We have not seen indication that the (Iranian) government has made the decision to move ahead with the program.” Subsequent estimates have confirmed the same basic facts, but remain susceptible to opportunistic politicization. For more information see Joshua Rovner’s 2015 Washington Post article “Why U.S. intelligence is right about Iran.” Similarly Israeli intelligence estimates indicate that Iran has not taken steps toward a weapons program. Even before Prime Minister Netanyahu was waving a cartoonish bomb graphic at the United Nations, the Mossad had told him Iran was “not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons.” See the Guardian’s 2015 article “Leaked cables show Netanyahu’s Iran bomb claim contradicted by Mossad.”

[3] See Gareth Porter’s Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of Iran Nuclear Scare (2014, Just World Books). A short review is available at FPIF.

[4] In his 2007 Telegraph Article titled “Bush sanctions ‘black ops’ against Iran”, Tim Shipman reports “President George W Bush has given the CIA approval to launch covert ‘black’ operations to achieve regime change in Iran, intelligence sources have revealed.” The article details funding of dissident groups, supplying violent extremist groups with money and weapons as well as currency/economic manipulation as some of the methods employed to achieve regime change.

[5] National Council of Resistance, “People’s Mujahedeen”, or “Mujahedeen Khalgh” (MEK) has a long and illustrious history of violent attacks against civilians starting with American citizens in the years before the Iranian revolution. See the Guardian’s 2012 article “what is the MEK and why did the US call it a terrorist organisation?” An excerpt appears below:

The MEK ran a bombing campaign inside Iran against the Shah’s regime the 1970s. The targets were sometimes American, including the US information office, Pepsi Cola, PanAm and General Motors. The group routinely denounced Zionism and "racist Israel", and called for "death to America".

A state department report in 1992 identified the MEK as responsible for the killing of six Americans in Iran during the 1970s. They included three military officers and three men working for Rockwell International, a conglomerate specialising in aerospace including weapons, who were murdered in retaliation for the arrest of MEK members over the killings of the US military officers.

MEK has been enlisted by Israel (believed to be the real source of 2002 revelations), to conduct a campaign of assassinations against Iranian scientists. More recently, the group has been working hard to sabotage the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the P5+1. In a moved timed shortly before Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial address to the US Congress, the MEK claimed to possess new evidence showing a secret nuclear facility called “Lavizan-3”. The evidence was disproven almost immediately by multiple sources.

[6] “Under its safeguards agreement, Iran is not required to allow IAEA inspections of a new nuclear facility until six months before nuclear material is introduced into it.”, Albright and Hinderstein, 2002. http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iran/iranimages.html

[7] From “To Stop Iran Nukes, Give it a Stake,” 2012, by David Patrikarakos:

Almost ten years ago, in May 2003, shortly after the United States had obliterated the Iraqi Army, Iran offered the U.S. a historic deal via the Swiss ambassador under which it would compromise on its program and normalize relations between the two countries. The deal was reportedly rejected out of hand by then vice-President Dick Cheney (we don’t negotiate with evil was his terse and short-sighted response). Nonetheless, European diplomats at the International Atomic Energy Agency sensed palpable fear in their Iranian counterparts during those early months of 2003; a few months later, in the October 2003 Tehran agreement, Iran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment while talks to resolve the overall crisis continued. Iran subsequently suspended enrichment for two years while vague European promises of more discussions never materialized – largely because without U.S. involvement in negotiations, there was simply nothing of substance they could offer Iran.

[8] From “The Turkey-Brazil-Iran Agreement: Thanks, but No Thanks?” by Patrick Seale, 2010:

Washington has interpreted the Tehran agreement as an act of defiance of its global authority, an argument which carries weight with other permanent members of the Security Council. Reluctant to see the initiative in important matters of international security slipping from its hands, the Obama administration has persuaded the permanent members of the Council to circulate a tough draft resolution demanding that Iran suspend uranium enrichment, and adding a long list of restrictions on Iranian military, commercial and financial activities.

[9] See “US Coercion of India against Iran at IAEA”, CASMII, March 2007.

[10] In fact the case for Iran’s nuclear energy needs was made by the USA itself in 1960’s. America supplied Iran with its first atomic reactor as well as set up education and training programs. (See “Sixty Years of ‘Atoms for Peace’ and Iran’s Nuclear Program”), 2013.

[11] See “Treasury: No, Iran Is Not Getting $150 Billion From The Nuclear Deal,” Huffington Post, 2015.

[12] NPT Article IV.

[13] At various times in the past two decades, the US administration has claimed that the NPT article IV does not give Iran the right to enrich Uranium on its own soil because there’s no explicit mention of enrichment in the text of the article. For example in a 2013 debriefing to congress, Wendy Sherman—Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and the senior U.S. representative in the P5+1 nuclear talks with Iran said this:

It has always been the U.S. position that Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty does not speak about the right of enrichment at all [and] doesn’t speak to enrichment, period. It simply says that you have the right to research and development.

While she acknowledged that close US allies such as Germany and Japan do not hold this view, she nevertheless reiterated that it is the US position with respect to Iran.

International experts have debunked this position on multiple grounds. For a good summary see “America’s Lead Iran Negotiator Misrepresents U.S. Policy (and International Law) to Congress” (2013) by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett. The authors point out that not only Germany and Japan, but an overwhelming majority of countries in the world read the NPT’s phrase “inalienable right” to include nuclear enrichment.

From any objectively informed legal perspective, denying non-weapons states’ right of safeguarded enrichment amounts to nothing more than a shameless effort to rewrite the NPT unilaterally.

Furthermore, the Leveretts cite evidence that enrichment is wholly consistent with the NPT, including articles II and III.

In 1968, as America and the Soviet Union, the NPT’s sponsors, prepared to open it for signature, the founding Director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, William Foster, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—the same committee to which Sherman untruthfully testified last month—that the Treaty permitted non-weapons states to pursue the fuel cycle. We quote Foster on this point: “Neither uranium enrichment nor the stockpiling of fissionable material in connection with a peaceful program would violate Article II so long as these activities were safeguarded under Article III.”

Furthermore, even specifically with respect to Iran, the US stated position was that enrichment was a legal right. As Dr. Mohammad Sahimi points out in 2013 “Iran Has a Right to Enrich—And America Already Recognized It.”

[14] See “No, Sanctions Didn’t Force Iran to Make a Deal” (2014) and “The US Was Forced to Negotiate with Iran Because of Changing Global Circumstances” (2015).

[15] Timeline: Sanctions on Iran, 2012.

CASMII, campaigniran.org

August 20, 2015 0 comments

Iran

Iran Urges Iraq to Expel All MKO Members

Deputy Head of Iran’s Human Rights Headquarters for International Affairs Kazzem Qaribabadi called for the complete expulsion of Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO, also known as the MEK, PMOI and NCR) terrorist group members from Iraq.

Qaribabadi made the remarks in meetings with Iraq’s judiciary and human rights officials during his two-day visit to Baghdad which started on Tuesday.

During the meetings on the first day of his trip, he underlined the necessity for joint cooperation in fighting terrorism at international circles, hailing Iraq’s campaign against the terrorist groups, specially the ISIL.

Qaribabadi also appreciated Iraq’s position against the MKO terrorist group, and underlined the necessity for continued efforts to expel all MKO members from the Arab country.

The MKO, founded in the 1960s, blended elements of Islamism and Stalinism and participated in the overthrow of the US-backed Shah of Iran in 1979. Ahead of the revolution, the MKO conducted attacks and assassinations against both Iranian and western targets.

The group started assassination of the citizens and officials after the revolution in a bid to take control of the newly-established Islamic Republic. It killed several of Iran’s new leaders in the early years after the revolution, including the then President, Mohammad Ali Rajayee, Prime Minister, Mohammad Javad Bahonar and the Judiciary Chief, Mohammad Hossein Beheshti who were killed in bomb attacks by the MKO members in 1981.

The group fled to Iraq in 1986, where it was protected by Saddam Hussein and where it helped the Iraqi dictator suppress Shiite and Kurd uprisings in the country.

The terrorist group joined Saddam’s army during the Iraqi imposed war on Iran (1980-1988) and helped Saddam and killed thousands of Iranian civilians and soldiers during the US-backed Iraqi imposed war on Iran.

Since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the group, which now adheres to a pro-free-market philosophy, has been strongly backed by neo-conservatives in the United States, who argued for the MKO to be taken off the US terror list.

The US formally removed the MKO from its list of terror organizations in early September, one week after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent the US Congress a classified communication about the move. The decision made by Clinton enabled the group to have its assets under the US jurisdiction unfrozen and do business with the American entities, the State Department said in a statement at the time.

In September 2012, the last groups of the MKO terrorists left Camp Ashraf, their main training center in Iraq’s Diyala province. They have been transferred to Camp Liberty. Hundreds of the MKO terrorists have now been sent to Europe, where their names were taken off the blacklist even two years before the US.

The MKO has assassinated over 12,000 Iranians in the last 4 decades. The terrorist group had even killed large numbers of Americans and Europeans in several terror attacks before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Some 17,000 Iranians have lost their lives in terror attacks in the 35 years after the Revolution.

August 19, 2015 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Victims of the MKO Need Help

Mostafa was visiting the headquarters of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO) in Auvers sur d’Oise, Paris when he was beaten up by some of the thugs of the group. He was violently encountered because he was asking the group leader to allow him to meet with his daughter Somayeh. After travelling to the group’s camp in Iraq for several times, Mostafa, finally took his case to the group leader, Maryam Rajavi. Due to severe beating Mostafa was hospitalized overnight. He was accompanied with his other daughter Hooriyeh who was also injured by the MKO agents in Auver.

Somayeh is an example of many people captured in the cult of Rajavi (the MKO), separated from family, friends and society. “Family Survival Trust” that is a foundation formed by volunteers who are concerned for people, families, communities and societies who are abused by totalitarian cults. Some of the members of this foundation are volunteers whose children, parents, siblings, friends or colleagues were recruited by cults. Their task is very similar to ours at Nejat NGO that is specifically focused on the salvation of the victims of the MKO cult.

This article refers to Family Survival Trust as a reliable and informed source on the cults since they professionally deal with a large number of case studies being abused by different cults. FST’s website proposes, “What damaging cults have in common is their vindictive abusiveness and their dissociative totalitarianism”.

The above mentioned fact about destructive cults is definitely witnessed by a large number of members of the MKO (the Cult of Rajavi).

Ghorban Ali Hossein Nezhad is a former high-ranking member and interpreter of the group. He also has a daughter taken as a hostage in the MKO’s Camp Liberty, Iraq. As a disassociated member, he is not allowed to meet with his daughter Zeinab by the group leaders. “Cults are dissociative, separating members from families, friends and colleagues,” FST proposes.

The horrifying events that are happening inside the cults are the main reasons that the cults’ leaders are able to keep members out of reach for a long time. Ebrahim Khodabande, a former member of the MKO and cult expert describes how a cult victim is indoctrinated by the cult system:

“Cults have no unchangeable principal; they have only one fixed principal and that is: Everything must go around the leader’s interests and will. Maryam Rajavi told us:” You are not good enough unless you recognize Massoud’s interests and will and then you try to fulfill them”.

According to FST, Cults recruit members by various forms of enticement or deception, demanding total submission and adoption of the ideas by members. Free thinking is not allowed.

Khodabandeh’s testimony absolutely confirms the above characteristics of cults: “In cults, lying and deceiving is formulated and indoctrinated by the system. Everything is based on lie and deception. The hierarchy tells lies from top to bottom.”

He admits that he was deceived and then was recruited by the MKO. ”Then I was brainwashed under the mind-control system and I was manipulated to tell lies about the group’s cause as if it was a secular pro-western organization,” he says.

The MKO’s pro-West and pro-democracy gesture has an external function for the leaders. This way they can gain the support of western politicians, particularly Zionist warmongers of the US Congress. ”At the same time, to gain acceptance from wider society, cults lobby politicians and the public, using the same ideas of freedom of expression which they deny their members,” FST states.

In contrast with the MKO’s slogans for human rights and democracy, the Human Rights Watch report titled “No Exit” offers testimonies of numerous cases of human rights violations committed in the Cult of Rajavi. Besides, there are a lot more interviews and memoires of ex-members of the group who were victims of its cult-like structure (most of them are available at Nejat NGO website).

“Cults tend to be psychologically manipulative or abusive in order to exploit and control members commercially or sexually,” according to the FST’s description of cults. ”Some cults can also be physically abusive”. The No Exit report confirms that members of the Cult of Rajavi are mentally and physically tortured and at least in one case a man named Parvis Ahmadi was killed under torture in the group’s jail in Camp Ashraf. Parvis’s case was approved by some other defectors of the group.

Furthermore, as FST proposes, cults are abundant and deceptive and the reason for concern is clear. “The separation from loved ones, whose personalities may become unrecognisable after cultic recruitment, causes a great deal of grief and upset to families and friends,” the website says. “Seeing changes in, or hearing of the abuse suffered by, cult victims – or sometimes having to deal with an individual’s disappearance – can cause a great deal of stress, anger and upset in the home.”

The common grief of the two fathers Hossein nezhad and Mohhammadi made them to take an action near the MKO’s headquarters in Auver Sur D’Oise, Paris. They tried to inform citizens of Auver Sur d’Oise about the violent, cult-like nature of the MKO. They distributed flyers, brochure, images and CDs to inform the citizens that the cult has kidnapped their daughters.

Khodabandeh believes that it is essential for the family of the victims to be involved in order to speed up the process of liberation. He suggests that the salvation of the MKO hostages is possible if they are supported from outside of the cult, such as the family members and other philanthropists. “That’s why the cult leaders forbid and control any contact with families,” he says. All cult victims need help, no matter how they have been involved or harmed, according to FST.

By Mazda Parsi

August 17, 2015 0 comments

Iran Interlink Weekly Digest

Iran Interlink Weekly Digest – 108

++ The Mojahedin Khalq likes to pose to an English speaking audience as a political opposition group, but even a cursory glance into its murky Farsi world reveals the cultic quagmire which more accurately reflects its actual state. One of the major problems for the MEK are its numerous critics. These include what we call ‘internal critics’ who are still enthralled by the MEK but believe they are capable of constructive criticism of the organisation, its leadership and its policies. Several Farsi outlets reported on an appearance by internal MEK critic Iraj Mesdaghi on the Youtubed TV programme Andishe. In answer to his critics Mesdaghi declares “not only do I not regret being with the MEK, but I am proud that I have been and still am a supporter of the MEK.” In response, some people wrote open letters and comments criticising Mesdaghi for supporting a plethora of crimes from the past three decades. They question whether Mesdaghi really is criticising the MEK or in fact working for them to annoy the ex-members.

Iran Interlink as usual published these items with the sources in the Persian section. After a week, Mesdaghi suddenly responded to this on his website (affiliated to the MEK) by swearing at Iran Interlink and specifically saying that this is the website of the Intelligence services of Iran and claiming that Massoud Khodabandeh has planned all the things he has said himself in coordination with the people in Tehran and that they have made a plan to attack me because I write about thirty years ago when I was in prison in Iran. Iran Interlink published the whole of Mesdaghi’s writing as an example of how Mesdaghi answers his critics. After that several people both overtly and indirectly criticised Iran Interlink for even engaging with him as he is notorious for being ‘mentally disturbed’ and because he has ‘nothing better to do than swear at everyone and everything under the sun because he believes he is better than he really is’. Massoud Khodabandeh copied the attacks Mesdaghi used against him on his Facebook with this explanation: the point that every now and then he attacks me for any old reason is because he thinks that if he attacks me he will be attacked less by the Rajavis – which shows he doesn’t know Massoud Rajavi at all. He doesn’t know that contrary to what he believes about himself he is a very weak person and is so afraid of Rajavi that he tries to placate him by attacking me. I pray that all those internal critics who still think there is a chance to stay inside the MEK and criticise Rajavi will one day wake up and join the real world.

++ When Hadi Ta’ali, who was just over sixty years old, died this week in Tirana, Maryam Rajavi was quick to claim him as her martyr and the ‘best of the best’, blaming the Iraqi government and the UN for his death because of lack of medical attention. Each of the authorities in Iraq have repeatedly made it clear that it is the MEK leaders there who don’t allow their critics to have medicine. Over this week at least twenty ex members have written to say that they knew him and that everyone inside the MEK also knows that Ta’ali was actually held captive there and had at various times been taken to the MEK court and subjected to beating and imprisonment. These writers express profound contempt for Maryam Rajavi’s opportunism; after killing him she claims him as her martyr.

++ A two part programme made by BBC Farsi has attracted controversy through its mention of the MEK. Some of the stories featured people who have been in prison in Iran. One of guests was ex member Saeid Shahsavandi. This prompted the MEK to again start attacking the BBC; labelling it “Ayatolllah BBC”. However, another such person is Saleh Kohhansal who is still in prison in Iran. The MEK claim he belongs to them and has published a letter supposedly from him against the BBC. The letter, written with the typical nervous MEK language of hatred, swears at everyone and praises Rajavi, has prompted reactions from internal critics as well as ex members saying that Maryam Rajavi is clearly trying to get him killed, but the point is that no one believes this letter comes from him unless you believe that a prisoner in Iran has access to satellite TV to watch BBC Farsi (satellites are illegal for ordinary citizens), and that he is free to not only write a letter swearing at the highest people in Iran and accuse them of anything he likes, but nobody even stops him sending it. Ironically they point out that nobody inside the MEK can watch satellite and for even getting close to insulting Rajavi you will, as a minimum, be severely beaten up if in Europe and if in Iraq then God help you.

++ The UN has reached an agreement with the MEK to send 203 Camp Liberty residents to Albania. This number is broken up into a group of fifteen or sixteen every week. The individuals in the first two groups have been named by Haghighat Association so that families know their loved ones are in Tirana. The new arrivals have said that the reason only fifteen per week has been negotiated by the MEK is because with this agreement we are seeing the end of Camp Liberty and the MEK sees this clearly as well. Rajavi is afraid that if a larger number come they will all revolt. The MEK is rapidly trying to buy properties in Tirana to disperse these people quietly so it will not look as though they have left all at once.

In English:

++ AlMuraqib alIraqia, Baghdad refers to the testimony of a former member of the MKO, Gorban Ali Hussein Nejad who served as the Arabic interpreter of the group leader, Massoud Rajavi, to expose financial corruption among some political parties in Iraq in relation to the Mojahedin Khalq.

++ Nejat Society in Tehran published an interview with cult expert Ebrahim Khodabandeh in which he describes how the Mojahedin Khalq used deception and psychological manipulation to get him to tell lies to further the cult leader’s agenda.

++ Ali Gharib writes in Lobelog about ‘UANI, Joe Lieberman and the MEK (Mojahedin Khalq)’.

August 14, 2015

August 15, 2015 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

The MEK and the Deal with Iran

AIPAC has been lobbying against the nuclear deal as one would expect, and this week they are touting the opposition of a handful of former military officers to the agreement. The first one that they cite is Hugh Shelton, who recently penned an op-ed objecting to the deal while praising the virtues of the “former” terrorist group Mujahideen-e Khalq’s political umbrella organization, the so-called National Council of Resistance of Iran. It is telling that they edited the quote to leave out his reference to the latter, since they probably know it would discredit what Shelton says.

Shelton is a longtime MEK booster, and was cheering them on even before they were removed from the official list of foreign terrorist organizations. The MEK seeks to overthrow the Iranian government, as do the cult’s many American fans, so they are predictably opposed to any agreement with Tehran. Anyone that sides with this group is pushing a regime change agenda that is extremely unpopular among Iranians, and so shouldn’t be taken seriously on anything related to Iran.

As he has done before, Shelton presents the cult and its allies as Iran’s “main opposition,” but this is plainly false. The group is widely hated inside Iran and has almost no support in the Iranian diaspora. It is wildly unrepresentative of what most Iranians in Iran and elsewhere want for their country, and it is also at odds with what most Iranians think about the nuclear deal. Most Iranians support the deal, as do most dissidents inside Iran, so it is dishonest in the extreme to assert that the MEK’s rejection of the deal represents the wishes of “the Iranian people.” Shelton is recycling the propaganda of a fanatical exile group and trying to pass it off as something radically different in order to influence a major policy debate here in the U.S.

By Daniel Larison

August 15, 2015 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

UANI, Joe Lieberman and the MEK

I only have a few words to add to Jim’s post about United Against a Nuclear Iran naming Joe Lieberman as its new president. Those words are: Mojahedin-e Khalq. That’s the ex-terrorist Iranian opposition group, often known as the MEK, that has campaigned tirelessly for decades for regime change in Iran, and Joe Lieberman is one of their favorite advocates in Washington.

Here’s a bit of something I wrote in June about Lieberman’s positions on Iran and the MEK:

As far back as 2008, Lieberman was joking—yes, joking, as if this were a laughing matter—about the “appeal” of bombing Iran. In a 2010 speech to the Council on Foreign Relations that re-purposed many of the talking points Lieberman had used to push for the invasion of Iraq, he spoke of a six-month deadline—six months! in 2010!—for Iran to roll back its nuclear program before the U.S. had to seriously consider a military strike.

Lieberman’s been at it since then, too. In 2012, he said that a military strike could cause Iran’s nuclear program to “be delayed for enough years that we may hope and pray that there will be a regime change.” And that is the central point of Lieberman’s advocacy: he wants a U.S. policy of regime change. Just this month, he participated by video in a confab of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), the ex-terrorist Iranian opposition group that relentlessly pushes for regime change.

“Inevitably,” Lieberman addressed the MEK members directly, “as individuals you may ask yourself: Is it possible that we can bring about a change of regime in Iran? And I want to say to you that it is. I’m confident that it is and it will happen.” The US, he said, “should be working closely with your resistance group.” The event was even the subject of a “sponsored report“—whatever that means—from The Washington Times that helpfully categorized Lieberman’s statements as “American support for regime change and the Iranian opposition.”

I mention this because of the raft of deal opponents who just won’t stop insisting that actually they don’t want war with Iran, they just want a “better deal.” If that’s the case, they ought to stop naming Joe Lieberman to prominent positions in their organizations. As it stands now, the hawkish former Democrat holds positions in several major anti-deal groups in Washington. Jim noted his roles at theAIPAC anti-deal spin-off (which has also promoted MEK materials in its advertisements), the American Enterprise Institute, and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, adding to that now his elevation from advisory board member at UANI to being its leader.

Fellow board members who actually support the Iran nuclear deal, such as Graham Allison and its Lieberman’s immediate predecessor, Gary Samore, might take note.

But hawkishness on Iran is a matter apart from support for the MEK. The group is reviled in Iran; it has launched terrorist attacks there; many impartial analysts have described it as a cult. Eli and I have already written about UANI’s targeting of legal humanitarian trade with Iran, and how it belies its professed solidarity with the Iranian people. Now, we can add UANI’s promotion of a pro-MEK hawk to that score. What’s worse, though, is the group’s elevation of a man who has such a cavalier attitude toward war with Iran and who wants official US policy toward the Islamic Republic to be regime change.

We’ve seen this move before with the Iraq war, and UANI seems determined to have Joe Lieberman, who, as Jim noted, was Honorary Co-Chair of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, return to star in the sequel.

Ali Gharib,

About the Author

Ali Gharib is a New York-based journalist on U.S. foreign policy with a focus on the Middle East and Central Asia. His work has appeared at Inter Press Service, where he was the Deputy Washington Bureau Chief; the Buffalo Beast; Huffington Post; Mondoweiss; Right Web; and Alternet. He holds a Master’s degree in Philosophy and Public Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science. A proud Iranian-American and fluent Farsi speaker, Ali was born in California and raised in D.C.

August 13, 2015 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

Ebrahim Khodabandeh: I was manipulated to tell lies

Ebrahim Khodabandeh the famous former member of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO) was arrested by the Syrian officials, in 2003. He was serving for the international relations committee of the MKO. After his arrest in Syria he was submitted to the Iranian government

In Iran, he was imprisoned in Evin prison where he began studying about cults. Khodabandeh has so far published articles and translated books and articles on the threat of destructive cults, particularly the MKO.

Esharat, an Iran-based journal is one of the numerous media that have interviewed him up to now. The following includes parts of the interview translated by Nejat Society.

– Having been motivated by Islamic and anti-imperialistic ideas you joined the MKO but practically you observed another face of the group. As you stated you yourself used to work hard to portrait a secular pro-Western image of the group for your Western audience, wasn’t it provocative for you?

Good question! Yes, I have witnessed a 180-degree turn in the MKO’s positions and interests since the Islamic Revolution. For example, Rajavi who once offered gifts to Yaser Arafat and said that the only way to liberate the Palestinian nation is the armed struggle against Israel, today is proud of the Israeli company for his group.

… Cults have no unchangeable principal; they have only one fixed principal and that is: Everything must go around the leader’s interests and will. Maryam Rajavi told us:” You are not good enough unless you recognize Massoud’s interests and will and then you try to fulfill them”…

– Does it mean that you officially told lies and deceived people?

In cults, lying and deceiving is formulated and indoctrinated by the system. Everything is based on lie and deception. The hierarchy tells lies from top to bottom.

I was deceived by the MKO so I was recruited by it. Then I was brainwashed under the mind-control system. I was manipulated to tell lies about the group’s cause as if it was a secular pro-western organization…

When you are a member of a destructive mind-control cult, you have no fixed and stable beliefs and thoughts. You are just asked to obey the absolute power of the leader. In a community where everyone thinks the same, in fact nobody thinks. The leaders thinks instead of everyone.

– Didn’t you find it paradoxical or contradictory? For example, you joined the group with your anti-imperialistic ideas to fight the US, and now the MKO was acting the opposite?

Of course, Yes. I was faced with contradictions. Other members also had paradoxes in their minds but the cults have trickeries to encounter such contradictions that occur every day. Contradiction means that the data you were given does not seem logic. However, your contradiction would not be solved by debate or arguments but it was faced with psychological techniques or in better words, with peer pressure and mental suppression. Once you enter a destructive mind control cult, you are kept and controlled by psychological techniques.

– If you were not arrested in Syria, would you stay in the MKO until now? And, didn’t you try to swallow a cyanide capsule after you were arrested?

Yes, I would have definitely been in the Cult of Rajavi in ignorance and under the mind-control manipulative system of the cult. I would have no way out to salvation…

In my mission to Syria, I didn’t have cyanide capsule. If I had one, I would eat it because being arrested alive and yeilded to the Iranian government was our red line.

– Do you really believe in the term salvation for your separation from the MKO?

Yes, exactly. Being released from the hands of a destructive mind control cult is in no way simple. This is possible if you are supported from outside of the cult, for example if you are aided by your family. That’s why the cult leaders forbid and control any contact with families.

– What happened in Evin prison that your beliefs and thoughts changed?

I should notify that members of mind-control destructive cults have no determined ideas. They are dedicated to their leader. Massoud Rajavi was officially presented as the ideological leader. Our ideas were those of Massoud’s. If he changed his words every day we would change our words every day. Cults do not practice ideologies; they do practice psychological methodologies that control people’s minds…

When I arrived in Evin prison, I still saw myself as a devoted Mujahed-e Khalq under the order of Massoud Rajavi . I was ready for torture and execution but gradually I was faced with reality. I thought about the attitudes and interests of the cult of Rajavi so I increasingly faced contradictions. I simply found that I was not able to defend the MKO’s approaches even in my own mind. Logically I had no point to defend Massoud Rajavi whom I used to worship …

About a year later, I started reading the book “Cults in our Midst” of Mrs. Margaret Tahler Singer. My brother Massoud Khodabandeh had sent it to me from England. It should be said that in the prison, I tried to keep myself behind the boundaries I allegedly had with the Islamic Republic. Even I did not want to read the Iranian books, newspapers and I avoided watching Iranian TV.

The book had nothing with the Iranian government nor the MKO but I was really moved by the book. Although, the writer had no idea of the MKO, the similarities between the MKO and the cults in the United States were so significant that you would think it was written about the MKO … For the first time after so many years, I let myself think freely and independently. Of-course, getting to this turning point took me two years in the prison.

– Suppose that you are told that you submitted to the Islamic Republic and turned against the organization you embraced for 23 years due to the pressure of imprisonment or the risk of execution or for the sake your suffering mother, what is your answer?

This question seems rational. In response, I should say that one may regret his past or repent of his past under pressure, one may give information about his past organization and condemn it under pressure of the imprisonment but he is not able to argue, discuss and prove his arguments. All I say about the MKO is based on scientific arguments and reasons that are confirmed by other defectors of the cult. I am ready to argue it with everyone everywhere to prove that the most basic human rights are being violated in the Cult of Rajavi. The cult uses destructive fraudulent manipulation techniques to control members’ minds. It is not what it pretends.

It is not hung up to any principals. This is all I have said to this point. If a force wants to fight the Islamic Republic it doesn’t have the right to abuse its own members and to mentally suppress them…

– Suppose that you are accused of having been brainwashed in Evin prison! What do you say?

I was liberated from the Cult of Rajavi over 12 years ago. During these years, I have been far from the atmosphere of the Cult and its indoctrination sessions and cult jargons. I have been studying the phenomenon known as “the threat of the third millennium”: Destructive Mind Control Cults. I have studied and translated and authored a lot of books and articles. In her book titled “Brainwashing”, Ms. Kathlyn Taylor specifically suggests that the main condition to become the target for brainwashing is to be unaware of its techniques. The MKO never permitted me to read something freely but in the Evin prison I read books. Regarding my studies and the information I got, there is no possibility to brainwash me now because I’m well aware of the techniques and tricks ….

Thus, it is very important to know about functions of destructive mind control cults…

August 12, 2015 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Corrupt Money circulating between the MKO and Iraqi parties

Iraqi politics is affected by financial corruption of certain political parties.

According to Iraqi parliamentarian sources quoted by the Iraqi Newspaper “alMuraqib alIraqia”, “Some politicians fund ISIS with money stolen from Iraqi nation.”

The report adds that the money is originally paid to opposition figures such as Ayad Alavi by the Mujahedin Khalq Organization. Ayad Alavi is the president of Alqaemia Alvatania party that criticizes the Iraqi Shiite government. He is a vocal supporter of the MKO in Iraq.

alMuraqib alIraqia refers to the testimony of a former member of the MKO, GorbanAli Husseinnezhad who served as the Arabic interpreter of the group leader, Massoud Rajavi: “Iraqi political figures and media received large amounts of money from the MKO directly or indirectly.”

According to Hosseinnezhad some of the Iraqi officials who cooperated with the MKO were: Tariq alHashemi, Saleh Matlak, Ashvaq Aljaf, Faezeh Alabidi and Ala Talibani.

The report states that the corrupt money has succeeded to buy the support of satellite TV channels in Baghdad in order to obstruct Iraqi political processes and to expand political party disputes. Iraqi parliament speaker warns that the expansion of political disputes is only in agreement with the interests of terrorist groups like ISIS and the MKO.

August 10, 2015 0 comments

Albania

MKO high rankings to be transferred to Albania

Mujahedin-e Khalq group is moving 203 high ranking members to Tirana.

According to Nejat Society reporter among the transferees are members of leadership council, commanders and headquarters ranks.

In March 2013 the Albanian government announced its agreement to accommodate in Tirana a number of MKO members residing in Camp Liberty, Iraq. Several groups of Camp Liberty (TTL) has relocated in Tirana since then.

August 8, 2015 0 comments

Italy

Ali Akbar Rastgou Open letter to Giulio Terzi

Open letter to Italian ex FM

Dear Mr. Terzi,

In your interview with “Il garantista” from 6/17/2015 the “National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)” is described as a “coalition of Iranian organizations, groups and Democrats residing abroad”.

Accurate would be to designate the NCRI as a political arm of the People’s Mojahedin “Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK / MKO / PMOI)”. Although after its foundation in 1981 in addition to Abulhassan Bani Sadr, a former president of the Islamic Republic, also the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (DPKI), followers of Mohammad Mosaddeq founded National Democratic Front and various Stalinist groups joined the NCRI, but in 1982 Bani Sadr already left the NCRI. Like him many other groups not being satisfied with the absolute leadership style of Rajavi and the dominance of the MEK in the NCRI, followed him till the 1984th.

Furthermore, it is said, the NCRI combines “representatives of ethnic and religious minorities, such as Kurds, Baluchis, Jews and Zoroastrians “.

Also in the Iranian parliament, according to the Constitution of the Islamic Republic, there are reserved five seats for representatives of religious minorities. Even Article 13 of the Constitution recognizes Iranian citizens of Zoroastrian, Jewish and Christian faith officially as religious minorities, who determine their personal status and religious education even after the corresponding own religious rules. Should we therefore call the Islamic Republic as a prime example of religious freedom and democracy?

What matters is how this apparent openness for minorities and other opinions and ways of life is implemented in reality.

Mr. Terzi, in the interview, you talk about the demand of young Iranians “… for more freedom in the school, in information, in everyday life …” But can such a claim at all to be implemented by an organization that keeps its members under strict supervision in the camps since decades, prohibiting them from access to information and independent media, controlling and directing all social contacts?

You point out, the fight against the Islamic State is “hopeless” when Islamic fundamentalism will further be “fueled by Tehran”. The “Shiite sectarianism” be the “trigger” for the “radicalization of large parts of the Sunni world.”

How can you seriously believe that an organization with such a strong personality cult around its leaders Massoud and Maryam Rajavi and such cultish structures based on a radical indoctrination of its members against all dissenters could make a contribution to the pacification of this regional and religious powder keg? An organization that has always been calling on Iranian people to rise up and overthrow the regime, only to take itself to power as a “transitional government”.

So worthy of support the demand for the inclusion of other refugees from Camp Liberty in Italy may be, you should look carefully whether the organization you designate “…The only solution for the future of Iran…”, can deliver what it promises, or whether the many dropouts and critics, human rights organizations and aid workers as well as nearly all those who have taken a critical look with the MEK apart, are right when they accuse the organizations cultish structures, the leader cult , indoctrination and oppression up to the ill-treatment of members, foreclosure of the world and reality, and a very idiosyncratic understanding of democracy.

You cannot fight the fact that you support an organization with a more radical and more fundamental ideology of fundamentalism and radicalism.

You cannot fight terrorism and bloodshed, by supporting an organization that has been practicing this for many years and still takes the view, “liberation” of Iran can only be possible through a (violent) overthrow of the government.

As nice as moderate and western-democratic the facade of the MEK may seem, viewing behind the facade reveals its true face fast!

Best regards,

AAWA Association e.V.

Dipl. Ing. Ali Akbar Rastgou (Chairman)

[2] http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2000/09/iran-s14.html.

[4] http://othes.univie.ac.at/18784/1/2012-02-29_0948167.pdf , S. 6.

[6]NCR

August 5, 2015 0 comments

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