Page 797 – Nejat Society

THE ROVING EYE

General Petraeus in his labyrinth

General David Petraeus, media-hungry US supreme commander in Iraq doubling as Pentagon counterinsurgency messiah, will continue to be the key pawn in the current, breathless demonization-of-Iran campaign, whose target is to manufacture consent for an American attack against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) inside Iran.

Petraeus’s latest is that Iran’s ambassador to Baghdad, Hassan

Kazemi-Qomi,”is”a member of the elite al-Quds force of the IRGC, now upgraded by Washington to the status of”terrorist organization”.

In – what else – a remix of the lead up towards war on Iraq, Petraeus even has his own Kurdish version of Ahmad Chalabi. According to Rozhnama, a credible, independent daily paper published in Sulaymaniah, in Iraqi Kurdistan, he is”a special and informed source belonging to an Iranian opposition group”.

A seasoned, highly respected US-based Kurdish scholar, who’d rather remain anonymous, says:”I’ll bet my every dollar this means a Kurdish group. No Persian group is going to give information to the Iraqi Kurds.”

Petraeus’s dubious sources also include the ragtag Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK), a micro-terrorist group that used to be harbored by Saddam Hussein inside Iraq and now is protected by the Americans in Diyala province. So from Saddam’s terrorists the MEK are now elevated to the status of”our”terrorists.

The Kurdish scholar stresses that this Kurdish source, or sources, don’t have close relations with the MEK.”The Kurdish group with whom the US and Israel are doing business is the PKK arm – PJAK [the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan]. Which explains why the PKK’s reward is a Washington wink while they attack Turkey. At this time, the indigenous Iranian Kurdish groups are not leaders, they are followers hoping to replicate the Iraqi Kurdish situation in Iran if they can help to bring down the Tehran regime.”

So what we have is basically a situation of Kurdish PKK guerrillas attacking Turkey from bases in Iraqi Kurdistan, and PJAK guerrillas attacking Iran also from bases in Iraqi Kurdistan. As early as six months ago United Press International was reporting that”the Bush administration was actively courting PKK leaders and Iranian opposition groups based in Iraq to stir up trouble inside Iran”.

Tehran knows exactly what’s going on. Editorials at the conservative Mehr news agency in Iran routinely accuse the US – and especially the CIA – of using both MEK and PJAK to”destabilize Iran”. As much as Turkey now wants to go after the PKK rear bases in Iraqi Kurdistan, Iran has already shelled PJAK rear bases in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Round up the usual suspects

Also according to Rozhnama, Mahmood Farhadi – part of an Iranian commercial delegation from Kirmanshah and arrested by the Americans in Sulaymaniah in late September -“was”a commander of the al-Quds force. And like most Iranians in consular and trade delegations in Iraqi Kurdistan, he hailed from Iranian intelligence agency Ittilaa’t, Petraeus was told by his source.

Semantics do count. Some of these Iranians may have had a background in intelligence services. But this does not mean they still work for them, or are still IRGC commanders. This correspondent was repeatedly told in Tehran – and relatively independent Iranian media like Ettemad-e Melli confirm – that since President Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005 he has sprinkled many of Iran’s ministries and even Iranian Red Crescent positions with people from Ittilaa’t.

Anyway, as far as the White House/Pentagon/Green Zone axis is concerned, all arrests – including previous cases in Baghdad and Irbil – concern Iranian”terrorists”, be they former or current al-Quds force or Ittilaa’t. This is at the heart of the restless spin unleashed on US public opinion.

The Kurdistan regional government has officially asked US Ambassador Ryan Crocker in Baghdad what this is all about – and has demanded the release of Farhadi, the Iranian official, who was legally on a mission in Kurdistan. These arrests offer additional proof – if any was still necessary – of the degree of”sovereignty”enjoyed by Iraqis whatever region they are in.

Iraqi Kurdistan depends on Iran for as much as 40% of its imports, and for much of its gas. There’s a healthy free flow of trade along the five border crossings. Iran has already closed the borders for a few days after the arrest of Farhadi – to the despair of Iraqi Kurd officials. Now Iraqi Kurds are caught between a rock and a hard place. They have to convince Tehran in no uncertain terms that Washington still fashions itself as the absolute power in Iraq and even in virtually independent Kurdistan – and there’s not much they can do about it. And at the same time they have to tell Washington to please not arrest people without telling us first – we have to maintain at least an appearance of”sovereignty”. No one knows whether Iraqi Kurds will be able to remain neutral as they are caught in a merciless war between the US and Iran.

Show me the money

Regarding the alleged Iranian”terrorists”, where is Petraeus’ hard evidence? There is none – and US corporate media, politicians and presidential candidates have not even bothered to ask him for it.

So much for US”diplomacy”- when Ambassador Qazemi-Komi, now derided as a”terrorist”, had already conducted two meetings with Crocker in Baghdad to discuss the Iraqi quagmire. From now on the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, could record a standard video response and release it for every new arrest by US forces;”terrorists”are bound to proliferate as Iran will soon open two consulates in Iraqi Kurdistan – in Irbil and Sulaymaniah.

Petraeus’ mantra is that the al-Quds force supplies material for roadside bombs – including the armor piercing variety – that kill US soldiers in Iraq. It would be enlightening to hear Petraeus’ outrage on an even more lethal form of roadside bomb: mercenaries of the Blackwater variety who kill not occupying troops but Iraqi civilians in their own country.

And it’s not only Blackwater. There are Lebanese Christians, South African white supremacists, former soldiers under the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, the British from Aegis. There’s Vinel Corp and BDM International – both affiliated with the US Carlyle Group. There are the Israelis from Interop and Colosseum training Iraqi Kurd militias. From Peruvians making US$1,000 a month to Americans making US$1,000 a day, all these mercenaries are ultimately financed by American taxpayers – the whole net subcontracted by Petraeus’ former boss, Donald Rumsfeld. Petraeus is just a general caught in a (mercenary) labyrinth – without a Garcia Marquez to elevate him to glory.

It was not the al-Quds force in a convoy of SUVs that opened fire – unprovoked – on a car this Tuesday in Karrada, in central Baghdad, killing two Christian women, Marou Awanis and Geneva Jamal; Awanis, like so many Baghdadis in distress, was using her own car as a taxi, taking government employees to work as a way to get a little bit of cash to take care of her – now orphaned – three daughters. And it was not the al-Quds force which on September 16, also in Baghdad,”deliberately killed”- according to an official investigation by the Iraqi government – no less than 17 civilians.

Blame it on market forces

As reported by the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, an October 5 US operation in Baquba killed 26 Iraqi civilians and wounded 40. The pretext – according to the Pentagon – was destroying an”Iranian cell”.

Let’s even assume that Petraeus could produce hard evidence – which he won’t. Even if rogue, former or de facto al-Quds force commanders are helping Shi’ite militias in southern Iraq – and that would be predominantly the Badr organization, trained by the IRGC and allied with the Americans – this is part of a war. The US is an occupying power, and the local resistance, in this case Shi’ite, has the right to use all means necessary to kick the occupiers out.

On the other hand absolutely nothing justifies a direct consequence of the Bush administration’s methods of privatizing war and commercializing death: the killing of innocent Iraqi civilians by mercenary armies with absolute impunity – as they are all impervious to Iraqi law since the days when the country was subjected to J Paul Bremer’s sinister Coalition Provisional Authority.

This correspondent has witnessed it live in Baghdad. What Iraqis fear most is not”ghost”al-Quds forces (bundled up in the magma known as”the Iranians”) or even al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers’ suicide bombers (widely referred to as”the Wahhabis”). Ultimate fear means a convoy of gleaming SUVs with tinted windows, lights frantically flashing, sirens wailing, masked, beefed up guys in khaki clothing with their high-tech weapons scanning the sidewalks. They are referred to by a universally comprehensible term, even in Arabic:”mafia”.

Some Iraqis even miss those days when they just had to contend with Saddam’s goons. At least it was an Iraqi-Iraqi affair. Now the name of the game is no-holds-barred, globalized commercialization of death. Mercenaries conducting dirty wars against the barbarians; that’s exactly how the Roman Empire started to collapse.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

By Pepe Escobar

October 16, 2007 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Cult Parameters within MKO’s Internal Ideological Revolution

Of the key terms to develop an understanding of MKO’s internal revolution is the notion of ‘being in the leader’s debt’. That is the principle that requires all the individuals to deny their personal qualifications and potentialities and completely rely on the leader for the legitimacy of any value. In other words, any goodness is attributed to the leader and the vices are all on the part of the individuals. Through this mechanism, the personality of the insiders crystallizes under the absolute submission to the leader and no claim of any significance, theoretically and practically, or encouragement are validated unless by the leader’s approbation. In general, the insiders, regardless of their ranks and potentialities, must feel indebted to the leader for their success and spiritual felicity. To reach this stage, the insider has to be first purged of his wholly sinful past lived in the absence of the leader; it is impossible unless he is full of remorse and is dissolved in the teachings of the sphere he has joined. Expounding on the process that the insider has to undergo, Maryam Rajavi has said:

In anybody’s career can be found flaws and individual-class ill-indoctrinations engulfing him which deprive him of the blessings of an outward leader. Anybody who believes to be his own leader is left in the sepulchre of his own thoughts. You must push aside the tombstone and reach for a handhold outside. Attach yourself to the source of leadership to gain energy. [1]

According to such a vision, of course the insider must consider himself in somebody’s debt who has unbounded him from a dark, sinful past lived wholly devoid of a leader. Whatever he has committed in the past, even if they were acts of virtues, are worthless in the presence of the newly adopted leader. From here on, the past being completely denied, the individual’s qualifications and personality is conditioned to the absolute submission to the leadership. As Bijan Niyabati admits:

He [who is absorbed by the revolution] is a no one that represents no individual value. His gained prestige is neither an award of his imprisonment inside the prisons of Shah and clerics nor his presence in the fronts of fire and blood. He is neither an eloquent orator nor a highly educated man. He is not even a man. In a word, he carries none of his past merits. [2]

Simply said, a person’s badge of courage and the valor of his revolutionary combats as well as his gained social prestige and all the other merits are volatilized. Now, unquestionable self-surrender is the mechanism that generates his promotion and grants him personality and legitimacy:

From then on, promotion in rank and status is attained not by the virtue of political and organizational qualifications, but through prostrating before a woman. A woman who, for the first time in the history of Shiism, is promoted to the status of an imam. [3]

Denial of the past and absolute submission to the leader leaves the door open for anyone who wishes to join. These two factors demarcate between the old and the new worlds and they are the infrastructures of Mojahedin’s ideological revolution. Is it, as Mojahedin claim, the discovered missing-link in the world of creation that is exclusively possessed by Mojahedin and inserted in their revolutionary methodology? They insist to say that the issue of the ideological leadership and solemnizing mutual relations are tokens of ingenuity and creativeness owned by Mojahedin and which comply with the laws of existence. As Mehdi Abrishamchi admits:

Nowhere in a context out of our mind can we legislate. We must discover laws. We make success if our discovery is proper, otherwise we fail. Social development and evolution have their own set of rules, too. We make advance if we discover their rules, otherwise, we cannot. [4]

Then he asserts that Mojahedin’s leadership has developed a better comprehension of these issues and, thus, has proved to be much qualified for the leadership:

As the human society is part of the created world which is superior to our society and world, the one who has a deeper vision of the general laws dominating the motion of the world and society, which in its simplest definition is termed as ideology, can revolutionize the society. [5]

Is that really the missing-link Mojahedin claim to have discovered? In fact, the claims are the most commonly techniques practiced by the majority of movements’ leaders at least in the past century. Eric Hoffer in his social and psychological autopsy of the believers in the contemporary mass movements, being reactionary or revolutionary, and the exploited techniques to transmute their believers observes that all of them end in cults. More interestingly, the presented evidences are from among the capitalism and socialism camps as well as fascist and pseudo-fascist movements. Tracing the factors in the Soviet Union’s Communist Party, Hoffer has said:

The total surrender of a distinct self is a prerequisite for the attainment of both unity and self-sacrifice; and there is probably no more direct way of realizing this surrender than by inculcating and extolling the habit of blind obedience. When Stalin forces scientists, writers and artists to crawl on their bellies and deny their individual intelligence, sense of beauty and moral sense, he is not indulging a sadistic impulse but is solemnizing, in a most impressive way, the supreme virtue of blind obedience. All mass movements rank obedience with the highest virtues and put it on a level with faith:”union I of minds requires not only a perfect accord in the one Faith, but complete submission and obedience of will to the Church and the Roman Pontiff as to God Him- self.”Obedience is not only the first law of God, but also the first tenet of a revolutionary party and of fervent nationalism.”Not to reason why”is considered by all mass movements the mark of a strong and generous spirit. [6]

What happens in MKO in respect to inspire in insiders the feeling of regret for the past is surprisingly identical with what Stalin did in his purges of the old Bolshevik leaders when he deprived them of any possibility of identification with the past which consequently led to their unbounded contempt for the past and for history:

It is somewhat terrifying to realize that the totalitarian leaders of our day, in recognizing this source of desperate courage, made use of it not only to steel the spirit of their followers but also to break the spirit of their opponents. In his purges of the old Bolshevik leaders, Stalin succeeded in turning proud and brave men into cringing cowards by depriving them of any possibility of identification with the party they had served all their lives and with the Russian masses. These old Bolsheviks had long ago cut themselves off from humanity outside Russia. They had an unbounded contempt for the past and for history which could still be made by capitalistic humanity. They had renounced God. There was for them neither past nor future, neither memory nor glory outside the confines of holy Russia and the Communist party and both these were now wholly and irrevocably in Stalin’s hands. They felt themselves, in the words of I Bukharin.”isolated from everything that constitutes the essence of life.”So they confessed. By humbling themselves before the congregation of the faithful they broke out of their isolation. They renewed their communion with the eternal whole by reviling the self, accusing it of monstrous and spectacular crimes, and sloughing it off in public. [7]

To stabilize the authority of Nazi Party, as Hoffer points out, the devout are always urged to seek the absolute truth with their hearts rather than their minds:

The devout are always urged to seek the absolute truth with their hearts and not their minds.”It is the heart which is conscious of God, not the reason.”Rudolph Hess, when swearing in the entire Nazi party in 1934, exhorted his hearers:”Do not seek Adolph Hitler with your brains; all of you will find him with the strength of your hearts.”[8]

As Hoffer discusses, insiders’ self-surrender is blazoned as atonement for the past sins which the groups themselves cultivate in the insiders:

Self-surrender which is the source of a mass movement’s unity and vigor, is a sacrifice, an atonement, and clearly no atonement is called for there is a poignant sense of sin. Here, as elsewhere, the technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure. An effective mass movement cultivates lea of sin. It depicts the autonomous self not only as barren and helpless but also as vile. To confess and repent is to slough off one’s individual distinctness and separateness, and salvation is found by losing oneself in, the holy oneness of the congregation. [9]

The meeting point to comprehend bilateral cult relations is that in the paradoxical converge of the two factors the person comes to recognize the new identity he is led into. Rajavi has always reiterated that he bears the responsibility for the sins the members have done. Rajavi is promoted as the theophany that forgives his followers’ sins and warrantees their salvation. That is what Hoffer terms as ‘a tender spot’. To achieve salvation, Rajavi requires insiders’ total devotion which is accomplished through undergoing a certain process. Explaining on the tender spot, Hoffer states:

There is a tender spot for the criminal and an ardent wooing of him in all mass movements. St. Bernard, the moving spirit of the Second Crusade, thus appealed for recruits:”For what is it but an exquisite and priceless chance of salvation due to God alone, that the omnipotent should deign to summon to His service, as though they were innocent, murderers, ravishers, adulterers, perjurers, and those guilty of every crime?”Revolutionary Russia too has a tender spot for the common criminal, though it is ruthless with the heretic-the ideological”deviationist.”It is perhaps true that the criminal who”embraces a holy cause is more ready to risk his life and go to extremes in its defence than people who are awed by the sanctity of life and property. [10]

A scrutiny into MKO’s teachings of the ideological revolution well approves that, in contrast to the organization’s claims, its parameters are nothing more than emulating commonly practiced cult techniques. It is a historically proven fact that most cults apply these techniques since they work the best in the recruitment and enslavement of the new members. MKO is not an exception.

Sources:

[1]. Shams-e Haeri, Hdi; Mordab [Swamp] (originally in Persian), vol. II, p. 101.

[2]. Niyabati, Bijan; A Different Look at the Ideological Revolution within MKO, Khavaran Publication, p. 102.

[3]. Ibid.

[4]. Mehdi Abrishamch’ lectures on MKO’s ideological revolution.

[5]. Ibid.

[6]. HOffER, ERIC; The True Believer, Harper &. Row Publishers, New York, 1966, p. 108

[7]. Ibid, pp. 62-63.

[8]. Ibid, p. 77.

[9]. Ibid, pp. 55-56.

[10]. Ibid, p. 56.

Bahar Irani – Mojahedin.ws -October 14, 2007

October 16, 2007 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Help me release my sole

The Mujahedin Cult

October 16, 2007 0 comments

USA

The US Utilizing a Terrorist Group

Speaking on PressTV’s "Middle East Today" program on Saturday evening, Dr. Mohammad Marandi, the head of North American Studies at Tehran University said, "The Bush administration has never shown any evidence to show in any way that Iran’s nuclear energy program is anything but peaceful."

He asserted that the United States is utilizing a militia group it currently labels a terrorist organization in an attempt to strike Iran. In collusion with this terrorist group, the Iran Policy Committee, formed in 2005, is a pressure group that aims to influence U.S. government policy towards Iran. The IPC fervently believes that regime change in Iran should be the policy of the Bush government.

The IPC much creative suggestion is removing the Iranian-opposition terrorist group Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MKO) from the State Department Foreign Terrorist Organizations list. The committee then suggests the U.S. government arm and train the group in Iraq for insurgency operations within the Islamic Republic.

"The United States sees itself as being somewhat exceptional in the international community," Marandi said, "it allows itself to support terrorist organizations that have killed thousands of Iranians on the streets of Tehran and other major cities. The MKO spied for Saddam Hussein during the war. These terrorists were and are stationed in Iraq, in Europe and the United States."

Marandi said this is very counterproductive, "It allows people to see the extent of American hypocrisy. This is a very dangerous game the Americans are playing."

Mojahedin.ws – 09/10/2007

October 14, 2007 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq 's Function

Shahsavandi: MKO a gadget exploited by the West

Rajavi tries to copy Chalabi

The session 131 of Saeed Shahsavandi’s recent interview with the Voice of Iran, originally in Farsi, mainly focused on the issue of MKO’s turning into a plaything in the hands of the West worked against Iran. He said “Mojahedin are a part of a carrot and stick policy the West has adopted to confront Iran”.

Expressing his regret over Mojahedin’s easily yielding to be exploited by the Western powers in their political dispute with Iran Shahsavandi said:

“It is so awful and regrettable to see Mojahedin are gadgets exploited by American’s neocons and hawks.”

Explaining on the disappearance of Massoud Rajavi and the underlying causes, he said that Rajavi had nothing more to present. He has already talked of whatever position and stances he is holding and has nothing more to add. The only fact he has to come and admit is that his past strategies have proved to be nothing more than failure today. “He has to come and admit that we have erred in our policies. Of course, he will be consequently descended of the imam-like status he is holding among Mojahedin.”

Shahsavandi asserted that Mojahedin, and Rajavi in particular, play the same role as did Ahmad Chalabi in winning acceptance for the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq. The same as Chalabi, Rajavi also claims his goal is a democratic government in his homeland. However, Rajavi’s destiny will never be better than Chalabi even if his dreams can find an opening into the world of reality.

www.shahsawandi.com

October 14, 2007 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Council of Europe consults terrorists

Iran cannot understand why the Council of Europe should consult with a group even France and the US consider to be terrorists, Majlis speaker says.

Unfortunately, the West receives its information on Iran from unreliable sources and uses it to analyze the country’s situation, Iran’s Parliament speaker, Gholam-Ali Hadad-Adel, said.

“What happened in Strasbourg was a case in point, in which a terrorist organization served as a source of information for the Council of Europe,”he told the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Secretary General, Anders B. Johnsson in Switzerland.

“Iran does not understand why the Council of Europe consults with a group that has been labeled ‘terrorist’ by France, the US and even the Council itself and is on the Interpol’s wanted list,”Hadad-Adel said.”Regrettably, however, the media today is controlled by people who don’t want Iran’s voice to be heard.”

He then turned to the issue of resolving the Iraqi crisis and said,”The stronger a parliament, the less room for dictatorship!”

“The situation in Iraq is critical, and we believe that the Inter-Parliamentary Union should take immediate action to help resolve the problems of the Iraqi nation,”he said.

Gholam-Ali Hadad Adel cancelled his planned speech in Strasbourg after Maryam Rajavi, the ringleader of the terrorist Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO), addressed European lawmakers in a Council of Europe session on Monday, October 1.

presstv – Oct. 8, 2007

October 14, 2007 0 comments

Europe

A leader of a terrorist organization is welcomed in Strasbourg

On Monday, October 1, 2007, Maryam Rajavi, the self appointed next president of Iran and the leader of the terrorist religious cult of mohahedin-e khalq of Iran was invited by the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) Parliamentary Group to speak at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.

This marked a dark day for the legitimacy and credibility of the EU. Indeed, inviting Maryam Rajavi goes against the very core principles of democracy and its practice. Mrs. Maryam rajavi and her organization which she represents have never stood by any of her claim of a believer in democracy and human rights. She simply speaks what she believes people want to hear without ever backing those words with actions.

She, along with her organization is responsible for the killings of hundreds of innocent Iranians in the years 1982 to as recent as 2003. One of the key reasons for today’s brutal conditions in Iran is in part thanks to the mohajedin and their role in supporting a violent means to an end and legitimizing crackdown by the Iranian regime.

They have for two decades been the long arm of Saddam Hussein in his terror against his own people as well his neighbors. They acted as the 5th division of Saddam Hussein’s army in waging war against Iran (1980-1988) and the repression and killing of kurds and shias in Iraq.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Iraq_War

This organization has a long history in repressing and killing of their own members as evidenced in human right report (NO EXIT: Human Rights Abuses inside MKO Camps) as well as sworn testimonies by former members.

http://hrw.org/backgrounder/mena/iran0505

http://www.iranpeyvand.com/2007/03/09/mko-terrorist-operations

As an effect, the invitation of such an individual is stains the EU parliament and its member who approved of this meeting and therefore must answer of their true intentions.

To use the mojahedin as some sort of a triumph card against the Iranian regime shows the lack of understanding of the Iranian psyche and the role that mojahedin plays in this part. It is a proven fact that the mojahedin hold no real support amongst the Iranian people and is seen as a traitorous group who in the past has allied with Iran’s enemy and now deliberately and behind the scene calls for attack on Iran by US forces. The regime in Iran has long since stopped looking at Mojahedin as a threat and only use them as a mean to legitimate their continued oppression of dissident voices amongst the populace.

Let’s not forget that the mojahedin continue to be listed as a terrorist organization by most of the western government and is listed in Interpol wanted list.

http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2006/82738.htm

The only way EU and the world at large can help the Iranian people is to support and speak out in favor the true democratic voices within Iran and their struggle for a democratic Iran.

Karim Haggi Moni – Iranpeyvand – Oct 8, 2007

October 14, 2007 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Mojahedin Khalq the US-backed Terrorists

The best way for the US to start rolling back its regime change policy, both editors and several officials said, would be to dismantle a US-backed militia of Iranian exiles based in Iraq, known as the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK). The MEK supported Saddam Hussein in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and subsequently its 3,600 fighters, many of them women, stayed on in Iraq. According to US sources, since the invasion of Iraq US intelligence agencies have disarmed the fighters but have kept the MEK camps near the Iranian border intact, using MEK operatives for espionage and sabotagein Iran and to interrogate Iranians accused of aiding Shia militias in Iraq. Until recently, MEK radio and TV stations broadcasting to Iran were based in Iraq, but Iranian pressure on the Baghdad government forced their relocation to London. When the moderate Mohammad Khatami was elected president of Iran in 1997, the State Department made a conciliatory gesture by listing the MEK as a terrorist organisation guilty of human rights violations, and it is still on the list. Dismantling the MEK paramilitary forces would be an effective way to signal US readiness to accommodate Tehran, suggested Abbas Maleki, an adviser to the National Security Council, since it is the only militarised exile group seeking to overthrow the Islamic Republic and is the darling of the Washington lobby for regime change in Iran. Alireza Jaffarzadeh, chairman of the MEK’s front group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, appears regularly on the conservative TV channel Fox News as its Iran expert, rather like the pro-US Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi before the Iraq invasion, rallying Congressional and media support for military action against Iran. As its terrorist listing of the MEK showed, the Clinton administration hoped for a diplomatic opening to Iran. When the Republican House speaker, Newt Gingrich, pushed through an $18m appropriation for non-lethal covert action to force the replacement of the current regime in Iran, the White House restrained the CIA. But the Bush administration was quick to change course. Cheney shared Gingrich’s goal of regime change and he persuaded doubters that pressure on Tehran would strengthen the US in negotiations to end the uranium enrichment programme. First, the administration revived and expanded the dormant plans for direct US non-lethal covert action. Then, in February 2006, it obtained a $75m appropriation from Congress for an overt State Department programme “to promote openness and freedom for the Iranian people”. Finally, it cast about for covert ways to harass the regime militarily without the need for a formal presidential finding. … Selig S Harrison is director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy, senior scholar of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (both in Washington), and author of In Afghanistan’s Shadow: Baluch Nationalism and Soviet Temptations (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1980) ———————– full Report: Covert action, economic pressure and destabilisation; The US meddles aggressively in Iran

Le Monde Diplomatique, Selig S Harrison, October 01, 2007

Despite the disaster of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Bush administration wants not just to deter Iran’s nuclear ambitions but maybe even to overthrow the Islamic Republic. It has already authorised ‘non-lethal’ action within Iran and helped separatist groups. But instead of supporting the country’s democratic opposition, US meddling has encouraged its hardliners to reinforce their positions

The battle lines are familiar and clearly drawn in the unresolved policy struggle over Iran within the Bush administration. Vice-President Richard Cheney and his allies in the Pentagon and Congress, prodded by the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), not only want the US to bomb the Natanz uranium enrichment facility but are also calling for air strikes on Iranian military installations near the Iraq border.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wants to test diplomacy first by broadening the US-Iran negotiations on stabilising Iraq that began in Baghdad in May. But, as the price for postponement of a decision on military action, she has agreed to a self-defeating compromise that has directly undermined the Baghdad negotiations: increased covert action to destabilise the Islamic Republic, formalised by a presidential “finding” in April.

Covert action to undermine the Tehran regime has already been under way intermittently for the past decade. Until now, however, the CIA has operated without a finding (authorisation for covert action) by using proxies. Pakistan and Israel, for example, provide weapons and money to insurgent groups in southeast and northwest Iran, where the Baluch and Kurdish ethnic minorities, both Sunni Muslim, have long fought against the repression of Shia-dominated Persian regimes.

The presidential finding was necessary to permit accelerated non-lethal activities by US agencies. Besides expanded propaganda broadcasts, a media disinformation campaign and the use of US and European-based Iranian exiles to promote political dissent, the programme focuses on economic warfare, especially currency rate manipulation and the disruption of Iran’s international banking and trade.

Although the finding was nominally secret, it did not stay secret for long after it was reported to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, as required by law.

On a recent visit to Tehran, everyone was talking about it and both conservatives and reformers agreed that it came at an unusually damaging moment of genuine opportunity for cooperation with the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. Senior officials in the foreign ministry, the National Security Council, the office of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and pro-government think tanks all said that stability in Iraq and Afghanistan is in Iran’s interest. Cooperation with the US is possible, they said, but only in return for a gradual accommodation between Washington and Tehran, starting with a complete cessation of covert and overt regime change policies.

“The United States is like a fox caught in a trap in Iraq,” said Amir Mohiebian, editor of the conservative daily Reselaat. “Why should we free the fox so he can eat us? Of course, if the US changes its policy, there is scope for cooperation.”

At the other end of the journalistic spectrum, Mohammed Adrianfar, editor of Hammihan, identified with the moderate former president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, said: “The atmosphere here is for starting negotiations and relations. People want stability. The slogan ‘Death to America’ doesn’t work, and our leaders know it. It’s an irony that two governments which are now enemies have many of the same interests in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

While officials would not discuss whether Iran is aiding Shia militias in Iraq and, if so, which ones, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, chairman of the Majlis (parliament) Foreign Affairs Committee, criticised US “coddling” of Baathist and Sunni elements and made it clear that Iran expects Shia domination as the prerequisite for stability in Baghdad and for US-Iranian cooperation there as part of an overall accommodation.

“The US occupying authorities are not truly pursuing de-Baathification of the security forces,” he said, “and should give the Iraqi government greater freedom to do so. That is the key to cooperation between our countries in Iraq.”

US-backed militia

According to US sources, since the invasion of Iraq US intelligence agencies have disarmed the fighters but have kept the MEK camps near the Iranian border intact, using MEK operatives for espionage and sabotagein Iran and to interrogate Iranians accused of aiding Shia militias in Iraq.

Until recently, MEK radio and TV stations broadcasting to Iran were based in Iraq, but Iranian pressure on the Baghdad government forced their relocation to London. When the moderate Mohammad Khatami was elected president of Iran in 1997, the State Department made a conciliatory gesture by listing the MEK as a terrorist organisation guilty of human rights violations, and it is still on the list.

Dismantling the MEK paramilitary forces would be an effective way to signal US readiness to accommodate Tehran, suggested Abbas Maleki, an adviser to the National Security Council, since it is the only militarised exile group seeking to overthrow the Islamic Republic and is the darling of the Washington lobby for regime change in Iran. Alireza Jaffarzadeh, chairman of the MEK’s front group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, appears regularly on the conservative TV channel Fox News as its Iran expert, rather like the pro-US Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi before the Iraq invasion, rallying Congressional and media support for military action against Iran.

As its terrorist listing of the MEK showed, the Clinton administration hoped for a diplomatic opening to Iran. When the Republican House speaker, Newt Gingrich, pushed through an $18m appropriation for non-lethal covert action to force the replacement of the current regime in Iran, the White House restrained the CIA. But the Bush administration was quick to change course. Cheney shared Gingrich’s goal of regime change and he persuaded doubters that pressure on Tehran would strengthen the US in negotiations to end the uranium enrichment programme. First, the administration revived and expanded the dormant plans for direct US non-lethal covert action. Then, in February 2006, it obtained a $75m appropriation from Congress for an overt State Department programme “to promote openness and freedom for the Iranian people”. Finally, it cast about for covert ways to harass the regime militarily without the need for a formal presidential finding.

The most readily available means of doing this was to get Pakistan and Israel to arm and finance already-existing insurgent groups in the Baluch and Kurdish areas through well-established US ties with Pakistan’s Interservices Intelligence Directorate (ISI) and the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.

The ISI channelled weapons and money to an already established Iranian Baluch dissident group, Jundullah (Soldiers of God), which inflicted heavy casualties in raids on Iranian Revolutionary Guard units in Zahedan and southeast Iran in 2006 and 2007. The US made no effort to hide its support for Jundullah. On 2 April 2007 the Voice of America interviewed its leader, Abdolmalek Rigi, introducing him as “the leader of the popular resistance movement of Iran”. Several of my Baluch contacts recently provided detailed proof of Rigi’s ISI ties.

Mossad contacts

Mossad has built up contacts in the Kurdish areas of Iran and Iraq since it used bases in Iran during the days of the Shah to destabilise the Kurdish areas of Iraq. Against this background, Seymour Hersh’s report that Mossad is giving equipment and training to the Iranian Kurdish group Pejak is credible (1). Jon Lee Anderson interviewed a senior Kurdish official in Iraq who said that Pejak is operating out of bases in Iraqi Kurdistan to conduct raids in Iran and has “received covert US support” (2). In retaliation, Iran bombarded these bases for two weeks in late August, prompting Iraqi protests.

The most dangerous latent separatist threat facing Tehran is in the south-western province of Khuzestan, which produces 80% of its crude oil revenue. The Arab Shia of Khuzestan share a common ethnic and religious identity with the Arab Shia across the Shatt-al-Arab waterway in Iraq. Ahwaz, the capital of Khuzestan, is only 150km east of Basra, where British forces in Iraq have been headquartered.

Not surprisingly,in the light of history, Tehran accuses Britain of using Basra as an intelligence base for stirring discontent in Khuzestan.

Backed by British forces and British oil interests, the Arab princes of Khuzestan seceded from Persia in 1897 and established a British-controlled protectorate, Arabistan, which Persia did not recapture until 1925. Although most of Iran’s oil wealth is produced in Khuzestan, separatist groups charge that Tehran denies the province a fair share of economic development funds. So far, the scattered separatist factions have not created a unified military force like the Jundullah and no evidence of foreign help has surfaced. But they periodically raid government security installations and bomb oil production facilities.

Several broadcast propaganda in Arabic from foreign locations that are not clearly identified. The National Liberation Movement of Ahwaz, which advocates independence, operates Ahwaz TV, a satellite channel with an on-screen caption giving a fax number with a California area code. Another satellite channel, Al-Ahwaz TV, broadcast by Iranian exiles in California, is linked to the British-Ahwaz Friendship Society, which advocates regional autonomy for the province in a federal Iran. Nearly half ($36m) of the $75m 2006 US appropriation goes to support for the US-operated Voice of America and Radio Farda and to anti-regime broadcasting outlets run by Iranian exiles in the US, Canada and Britain.

Another $20m goes to NGO human rights activists in Iran and the US. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns has revealed that “we are working with Arab and European organisations to support democratic groups within Iran”, since getting direct US funding into Iran “is a very difficult thing for us to do” given “the harsh Iranian government response against the Iranian individuals” (3).

One Iranian participant in a US-sponsored workshop in Dubai last year told the Iranian-American journalist Negar Azimi that “it was like a James Bond camp for revolutionaries” (4). Four Iranian participants were later arrested.

Counter-productive attempts

My clear impression in Tehran was that covert and overt efforts to destabilise the Islamic Republic andpressure it economically to abandon its nuclear programme have been counter-productive. They have given hardliners an excuse to harass Iranians working internally to liberalise the regime and visiting Iranian-American dual citizens such as Haleh Esfandiari of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, who was imprisoned for three months on vague espionage charges.

By aiding ethnic minority insurgencies, the US has enabled Ahmadinejad to cast himself as the champion of the Persian majority. The minorities constitute at most 44% of the population. The largest, the Azeris (24%) have been mostly assimilated, and the rebellious Baluch, Kurds and Khuzestani Arabs are bitterly divided between advocates of secession and of a restructured federal Iran. Ahmadinejad can also blame external economic pressures for economic problems that are mainly the result of his own mismanagement.

Negotiated compromises on stabilising Iraq and Afghanistan are possible, but only if destabilisation stops and not if President Bush takes the military steps implied in his 28 August threat “to confront Tehran’s murderous activities” in Iraq. Even if the pressure is relaxed, a definitive nuclear compromise is unlikely in the absence of changes in the US Persian Gulf security posture, though a suspension of the Natanz facility might be possible if Israel would agree to a parallel freeze of the Dimona reactor. “How can we negotiate denuclearisation while you send aircraft carriers to the Gulf that, for all we know, are equipped with tactical nuclear weapons?” asked Alireza Akbari, deputy defence minister in the moderate Khatami government. “How can you expect us to negotiate when you won’t talk about Dimona?”

The covert and overt pressures so far applied to Iran are just sufficient to infuriate Iranians of all political persuasions, strengthening the hardliners, but are not nearly enough to undermine the regime. The economic pressures are more effective than the covert insurgency aid. Out of 40 European and Asian banks doing business with Iran, though, only seven have cut ties with Iran in response to US sanctions. In any case, Iran is routing its international business though 400 Dubai-based financial institutions, mostly Arab. With trade between Iran and the United Arab Emirates, including Dubai, nearing $11bn this year, US Undersecretary of the Treasury Stuart Levey’s threat of reprisals against firms dealing with Iran, in a speech in Dubai on 7 March, were pointless. The administration is now pushing more sharply-targeted measures against enterprises linked to the Revolutionary Guards and the conglomerates run by clerical interests, but their impact has been limited.

Likening the US-Iran tussle to a bull fight, a respected European ambassador long resident in Tehran asked: “What’s the point of all this? What good does it do to keep waving the red flag? It just makes the bull more and more angry. It doesn’t kill.”

(1) “The Next Act”, The New Yorker, 27 November 2006.

(2) “Mr Big”, The New Yorker, 5 February 2007.

(3) Council on Foreign Relations, New York, 11 October 2006.

(4) “The Hard Realities of Soft Power”, New York Times Magazine, 24 June 2007.

Selig S Harrison is director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy, senior scholar of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (both in Washington), and author of In Afghanistan’s Shadow: Baluch Nationalism and Soviet Temptations (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1980)

Le Monde Diplomatique, Selig S Harrison, October 01, 2007

October 14, 2007 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

The right to choose within cults

October 8, 2007 0 comments

Iran

Iran: Washington behind today’s assassination of Shia clergyman

US-backed terrorists martyred a clergyman in Khash, in this southeastern province Tuesday night.

The clergyman, Mehdi Tavakoli, was delivering sermons at a mosque when he was martyred by unknown terrorists.

The White House which has been defeated by the resolve of the Iranian nation, has put support for terrorists on its agenda in order to create an atmosphere of terror and intimidation and kill innocent people.

———-

A military commander said here Wednesday that the Tuesday night assassination of a Shia clergyman in Khash was aimed at sowing discord among Shia and Sunni Muslims.

The clergyman, Mehdi Tavakoli, was delivering sermons at a mosque at Eftekharabad village of Khash when he was martyred by an unknown”US-backed terrorist”.

Commander of Fatah Base, General Mohammad Ghafari, further said that the martyrdom of the clergyman was surely a pre-orchestrated plan aimed at sowing discord among various sects and ethnic groups in the province.

“US-backed terrorists are retaliating Washington’s failures at political and international scenes through blind assassination in Iran,”he said.

October 7, 2007 0 comments

Newer Posts

Older Posts