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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Iran: DC Plot Suspect a High Profile MeK Member

State News Agency Speculates Plot Was Effort to Frame Iran.

Adding to the growing intrigue over last week’s DC assassination plot, the Iranian government State News Agency Speculates Plot Was Effort to Frame Iranrevealed today that Gholam Shakuri, who US officials claimed was a member of the Quds Force, is actually a “key member” of the Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MeK), a State Department listed terrorist organization hostile to the Iranian government.

Shakuri was accused of being behind the plot along with the much more widely covered Mansour Arbabsiar, a US citizen and failed used car salesman from Texas who officials speculated was brought into the plot because a history of living in Texas meant he might be able to find Mexican drug cartel leaders to recruit.

Shakuri was charged, but never actually arrested, and the Justice Department insisted that he is “still at large.” Iran appears to have been looking for him for awhile as well, and says he has used forged Iranian passports with the names Ali Shakuri or Gholam-Hussein Shakuri as well.
Iran’s state news agency Mehr speculated that the plot was actually an MeK effort to implicate Iran, and if this is the case it appears to have worked quite well since even though a number of experts have shrugged the plot off as nonsensical US officials continue to rail against Iran and vow revenge.

by Jason Ditz

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Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Delist Terrorists as ‘Provocative’ Action Against Iran

Retired US General: Delist Terrorists as ‘Provocative’ Action Against Iran
Praises MEK as ‘Overt Military Counterforce to the Iranian Regime’

In comments that further underscore the depth of the support the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) has generated with its massive pay-for-speech campaign, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney praised the MEK and called for their delisting as part of a campaign of “provocative actions” against the Iranian government.

“We need a very active tit for tat policy, so every time they kill Americans they have an accident in Iran,” declared McInerney at the pro-MEK conference in Washington DC. It wasn’t too long before he made it clear that the MEK would be arranging these “accidents,” declaring the group a “credible overt political-military counterforce to the Iranian regime.”

Such comments would seemingly go against the MEK’s repeated claims to have transitioned from Islamo-Marxist cult into the non-violent champion of the free market it now styles itself as, but didn’t seem to phase anyone, including the conference’s organizer Ray Tanter, who insisted the attacks the MEK has conducted inside Iran were simply “military activities” and didn’t count as terrorism.

The MEK was a founding member of the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and conducted numerous attacks against US targets before the Iranian revolution, transitioning into a key Saddam Hussein ally afterwards and eventually into a darling of US hawks who are keen to use them as a proxy force to attack Iran.

by Jason Ditz

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Antiwar’s Scott Horton interviews Gareth Porter on MEK

This interview is from the KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles broadcast of August 12th.blank

Gareth Porter, independent historian and journalist for IPS News, discusses the infamous “laptop of death” documents from which the vast majority of “evidence” about Iran’s supposed clandestine nuclear weapons program comes from; the conspicuous mistakes in the documents that lead him to believe a foreign intelligence agency (probably Mossad) fabricated them; how Iran’s refusal to turn over military missile blueprints (which are none of the IAEA’s business) got them labeled “uncooperative” and sanctioned by the UN; and how the MEK launders information, passing off documents sourced from Israel as their own.
Download Antiwar’s Scott Horton interviews Gareth Porter on MEK

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Texas Congressman Praises MEK Terrorists as ‘Freedom Fighters’

Rep. Poe Termed Cult’s Iraq Camp a ‘Bastion of Freedom’

Reports on the millions of dollars the terrorist organization the Mujahiden-e Khalq has spread around in an effort to buy its way off the State Department’s terror list have added to scrutiny of its paid advocates. They haven’t, however, slowed the flow of advocacy.

Fresh off of hawkish British MP David Amess lauding the group on TheHill.com yesterday, his US equivalent, Rep. Ted Poe (R – TX) is in TheHill.com today cheering the group as a ticket to regime change in Iran.

Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the Amess and Poe pieces are not their differences, but their massive similarities. Both seem to be working off the same script, using the same list of talking points. Both praise the group as the only “real” opposition in Iran, while lashing the existing political opposition movement and accusing all critics of the MeK of a “policy of appeasement.”

Poe’s slavishly pro-MeK comments go yet farther, however, as he praises the cultish Marxist-Islamist group as “freedom fighters” that deserve American support. It is unclear if either MP Amess or Rep. Poe are among the hundreds of top officials who have been paid for their endorsements, or if they simply see the MeK as the surest road to a US war with Iran, which both also support.

Poe, however, has a long history of shilling for the group, sponsoring the bill pushing their removal from the State Department’s list while terming Camp Ashraf, an MeK camp in Iraq left over from the long-standing support for Saddam Hussein, a “bastion of freedom” that the US had to protect from Iran’s “proxies in Iraq.”

The MeK’s history of terrorist attacks includes repeated attacks on US businessmen and military personnel in pre-revolution Iran, and the group was one of the founding members of the “Foreign Terrorist Organization” list when it was created by the US State Department in 1997. The group is typified by its harsh reaction to any criticism, and was reported by Human Rights Watch to have run a private system of detention centers inside Iraq to detain (and in many cases torture) dissident members.

by Jason Ditz

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Mujahedin Khalq Organization

Scott Horton and Trita Parsi discuss MKO terror group

Trita Parsi, founder and president of the National Iranian American Council, discusses the blankMujahideen-e Khalq’s tendency to accuse their critics of working for the Iranian government; how constant US belligerence and the MEK’s violent radicalism serve as useful foils for the Iranian regime – discrediting dissidents and keeping the people in fear; how violent coups beget radical authoritarian governments, while nonviolent methods often deliver democratic results; the many former US officials now employed as well-paid lobbyists, working toward the MEK’s de-listing from the State Department’s terrorist group list; and the implausibility of a Hamas, al-Qaeda or Hezbollah fundraising and lobbying event on Capitol Hill (though they share the same terrorist designation as the Congress-friendly MEK and MEK’s loyal service to Saddam Hussein, helping put down the 1991 uprisings and acting as his shock troops throughout the 1990s.

Dr. Trita Parsi is the author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States, recipient of the Council on Foreign Relation’s 2008 Arthur Ross Silver Medallion and the 2010 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order.

He wrote his Doctoral thesis on Israeli-Iranian relations under Professor Francis Fukuyama (and Drs. Zbigniew Brzezinski, R. K. Ramazani, Jakub Grygiel, Charles Doran) at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies while heading the largest Iranian-American organization in the US, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC).
Download Scott Horton interviews Trita Parsi

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Mujahedin Khalq Organization

Scott Horton Interviews Philip Giraldi

Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi discusses the MEK’s rightful place on the State Department’s blank(admittedly flawed and politicized) terrorism list; why a lack of determined opposition (unlike to, say, Jonathan Pollard’s pardon) will probably get the MEK what it wants; why Americans never seem to catch on even after being lied into war again and again; Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper empire that specializes in printing propaganda about Iran from Israeli and British intelligence agencies; and the best way to get a “Persian summer” after the Arab spring: leave Iran alone and stop giving the regime an external enemy to blame for its problems.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is a contributing editor to The American Conservative and executive director of the Council for the National Interest. He writes regularly for Antiwar.com.
Download Scott Horton Interviews Philip Giraldi

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Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

MEK Threatens Antiwar Radio Guest

So say the Mujahedeen e-Khalq terrorists in the comment section below my recent interview of Huffington Post writer Shawn Amoei. They’re angry with him for having the temerity to say that they blankare the enemies of Iranian reformers and friends of the Israelis and Americans who want war with Iran. And that they are terrorists.

At least they only threatened to sue me. Not that I would mind making the case in court for what commie-murderer-cultist former puppets of the Ayatollah Khomeini, Saddam Hussein, Donald Rumsfeld, disgraced neocons and the Israeli Mossad they are — or what a pathetic pile of lies their K-Street front, the NCRI, is constantly pushing about Iran’s nuclear program — not at all.

But fair warning. I’ll counter-sue for court costs. And will win. And will have fun humiliating you.
Herr Hillary, of course, is planning to de-list the MEK from the State Department’s list of officially designated terrorist organizations.

Speaking of which, here’s a nice little summary of the MEK’s crimes by the U.S. State Department:

“The group’s worldwide campaign against the Iranian government uses propaganda and terrorism to achieve its objectives and has been supported by reprehensible regimes, including that of Saddam Hussein. During the 1970s, the MEK assassinated several U.S. military personnel and U.S. civilians working on defense projects in Tehran and supported the violent takeover in 1979 of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Despite U.S. efforts, MEK members have never been brought to justice for the group’s role in these illegal acts.

“In 1981, MEK leadership attempted to overthrow the newly installed Islamic regime; Iranian security forces subsequently initiated a crackdown on the group. The MEK instigated a bombing campaign, including an attack against the head office of the Islamic Republic Party and the Prime Minister’s office, which killed some 70 high-ranking Iranian officials, including Chief Justice Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, President Mohammad-Ali Rajaei, and Prime Minister Mohammad-Javad Bahonar. These attacks resulted in a popular uprising against the MEK and an expanded Iranian government crackdown which forced MEK leaders to flee to France. For five years, the MEK continued to wage its terrorist campaign from its Paris headquarters. Expelled by France in 1986, MEK leaders turned to Saddam Hussein’s regime for basing, financial support, and training. Near the end of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, Baghdad armed the MEK with heavy military equipment and deployed thousands of MEK fighters in suicidal, mass wave attacks against Iranian forces.

“The MEK’s relationship with the former Iraqi regime continued through the 1990s. In 1991, the group reportedly assisted in the Iraqi Republican Guard’s bloody crackdown on Iraqi Shia and Kurds who rose up against Saddam Hussein’s regime; press reports cite MEK leader Maryam Rajavi encouraging MEK members to ‘take the Kurds under your tanks.’”

And I don’t know what they’re saying here, but the MEK’s former cult leader (it’s now run by his widow, the cult leader runner-up) looks like he had a much warmer thing going with Saddam Hussein, that great ally of the Iranian people, than even Rumsfeld had back in their mutual good old days:

blank

Scott Horton

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

More Talks to Remove MEK from Terror List

In yet another attempt at destabilizing Iran, Hillary Clinton will soon announce a decision by US State Department on whether or not to remove Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), or “the people’s holy warriors,” from its terrorism registry. Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), cautioned that doing so “would allow the Mujahedin to receive US funding and become a powerful force in support of war with Iran, just like the Iraqi exiles who deceived us into war with Iraq did.”

In an age where the word terrorism or bomb is enough to get you arrested and thrown out of the airport, why are American officials and policy wonks pressing for the removal of MEK from terror watch list? They, just like the Taliban and the Contras, are valuable pawns, or so they think, in the quest for American dominance of the Middle East. MEK is so highly valued by the war-with-Iran crowd because they were the group that “revealed” the Natanz nuclear site and brought to light documents concerning the Iranian nuclear program in 2002. As Gareth Porter argued, the documents provided by MEK and their political extension, the National Council of Resistance in Iran, were fabricated:

The German source said he did not know whether the documents were authentic or not. However, CIA analysts, and European and IAEA officials who were given access to the laptop documents in 2005 were very sceptical about their authenticity.
The Guardian’s Julian Borger last February quoted an IAEA official as saying there is “doubt over the provenance of the computer”.
A senior European diplomat who had examined the documents was quoted by the New York Times in November 2005 as saying, “I can fabricate that data. It looks beautiful, but is open to doubt.”
Scott Ritter, the former U.S. military intelligence officer who was chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, noted in an interview that the CIA has the capability test the authenticity of laptop documents through forensic tests that would reveal when different versions of different documents were created.
The fact that the agency could not rule out the possibility of fabrication, according to Ritter, indicates that it had either chosen not to do such tests or that the tests had revealed fraud.

Additionally, MEK’s “discovery” of the Natanz site was doubted by many keen observers of Iranian politics who noted the groups friendly relationship with Israel, as well as their lack of key posts in government positions that would have made any relevant information hard to come by.

Since 2002, new information has emerged indicating that the MEK did not obtain the 2002 data on Natanz itself but received it from the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. Yossi Melman and Meier Javadanfar, who co-authored a book on the Iranian nuclear programme last year, write that they were told by “very senior Israeli Intelligence officials” in late 2006 that Israeli intelligence had known about Natanz for a full year before the Iranian group’s press conference. They explained that they had chosen not to reveal it to the public “because of safety concerns for the sources that provided the information”.
…
Israel has maintained a relationship with the MEK since the late 1990s, according to Bruck, including assistance to the organisation in beaming broadcasts by the NCRI from Paris into Iran. An Israeli diplomat confirmed that Israel had found the MEK “useful”, Bruck reported, but the official declined to elaborate.

Not only can MEK not be trusted as an objective source of information, but the violence carried out against Americans in the past by this terrorist group should give great pause to anyone, especially members of government, considering supporting this group. Additionally, the bipolar nature of American-MEK relations, from the worst of enemies to best of friends and back again, gives absolutely zero assurance that this group would be conducive to American interests even in the near future.

While the War Party is hoping that MEK will be a valuable propaganda tool in initiating an attack on Iran, they ought not fool themselves into thinking that MEK will bring about regime change nternally. Universally hated in Iran for siding with Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war, Iranians have little tolerance for this troublemaking group.

It’s best the US just stayed out of the whole brouhaha.

Brian Beyer

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Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

Don’t Remove the MEK From the Terrorist List

Since 1997, the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK), an Iranian opposition group, has been listed by the State Department as a terrorist organization. The European Union followed suit and also listed the MEK as such, but as a result of intense lobbying and a deceptive campaign by the supporters of the MEK, the EU recently removed the organization from its list of terrorist entities.

The same tactics are being used by the MEK in the United States. It has been spending millions of dollars on lobbyists, public relations agents, and communications firms in an attempt to pressure the State Department to remove the organization from the terrorist list. The MEK’s argument is that it renounced violence and terrorism in 2001. This is a lie. FBI documents indicate that as late as 2004 the MEK was involved in planning terrorist operations. Removing the MEK from the terrorist list as a result of its lobbying is akin to allowing al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Pakistani terrorist organization Lashkar-e Taiba to hire lobbyists, spend millions, and make campaign contributions to members of Congress (as MEK supporters have done) in order to gain “legitimacy” as an organizations.

The MEK was founded in 1965 by three Islamic leftists with the goal of toppling the U.S.-supported regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. In the 1970s it undertook a campaign of assassinating U.S. advisers and bombing U.S. corporations in Iran. It supported the 1979 Revolution in Iran, but in 1981 it turned its guns against the Tehran government and began a campaign of assassinations and terrorist operations that resulted in the death of thousands of Iranians, including the executions of its own supporters by government officials, soldiers, police officers, and ordinary people. It then moved its headquarters to Iraq, made a pact with the regime of Saddam Hussein, which was fighting a ferocious war with Iran. The MEK spied on Iranian troops for Iraq, attacked Iran at the end of Iran-Iraq war with Hussein’s support, and helped Hussein put down the uprisings by the Iraqi Kurds in the north and Shi’ites in the south after the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91. The MEK is despised by the vast majority of Iranians for what they consider to be treason committed against their homeland.

Since the 1980s, Masoud Rajavi, the MEK’s ideological leader, and his wife, Maryam Rajavi, the “president-elect of the resistance,” have turned the MEK into a Stalinist-style cult. The MEK has its own calendar filled with special occasions in its history, dress codes for its members, and a censorship index. All orders to the members come from the top. Maryam Rajavi has never won any election; she was handpicked by her husband. A simple search on the Internet turns up horror stories told by former members who wanted to leave the organization before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 but were arrested by MEK guards and jailed. They were tortured, beaten, kept in solitary confinement, “reeducated ideologically,” and, if nothing else worked, turned over to Saddam Hussein’s Special Security Organization as Iranian “spies.” For more information, see this report by Human Rights Watch.

In its campaign in the United States, the MEK has made an alliance with the neoconservatives and the Israel lobby.. The neoconservatives and their allies have sponsored six conferences over the past several months in Europe and the U.S. to prop up the MEK as the leading alternative to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Such infamous figures as John Bolton and former CIA director R. James Woolsey support the MEK. Bolton has said repeatedly that the U.S. must bomb Iran and support the MEK. The neocons also channel their support for MEK through conservative groups such as the Iran Policy Committee (IPC). An investigation published by Jim Lobe’s Lobelog in September 2010 revealed that the IPC has shared an address, accountants, and some staff with multiple organizations that either fronted for or had direct ties to Iraqi con man Ahmed Chalabi‘s Iraqi National Congress — the same organization that fabricated much of the bogus intelligence that neocons used to garner support for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The MEK has also set up several front organizations. The National Council of Resistance (NCR), its political arm, is not listed as a terrorist organization. Near East Policy Research and Strategic Policy Consulting, two “consulting companies” headed by longtime MEK members and spokesmen, lobby for the MEK. The Council for Democratic Change in Iran provides cover for political figures to support the MEK without being directly associated with it. It invites politicians to speak at its gatherings without telling them that they are an MEK front group, and it pays the speakers honoraria so large that it’s difficult for them to resist. Conservative academic Raymond Tanter, who founded the IPC, is an example. [..] Former CIA operative and IPC staff member Clare M. Lopez is another MEK supporter.

The MEK lobbying campaign has also made inroads among mainstream figures who probably know nothing about its past. Howard Dean, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is one. President Obama’s former National Security Adviser Gen. James L. Jones is another. Others include Bill Richardson, former energy secretary and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; Michael Mukasey, attorney general under President George W. Bush; Tom Ridge, former governor of Pennsylvania and homeland security secretary under Bush; Gens. Peter Pace and Hugh Shelton, former vice chair and chairman, respectively, of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Louis Freeh, former FBI director; Lee Hamilton, former Democratic congressman; Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA; Gen. Anthony Zinni, former commander of the Central Command; Frances Townsend, homeland security adviser in the Bush White House; and Brad Sherman and Dana Rohrabacher of the House of Representatives.

Such people are not approached by the MEK directly, but by the NCR, the CDCI, or another affiliated group. The lobbyists introduce themselves as representatives of Iran’s Green Movement, as “members of Iran’s parliament in exile“(there is no such parliament), or as Fox News analysts, claiming that they have vast support among the Iranian people who will rise up in support of the MEK if only the U.S. supports the group. But the claims are bogus, and if the MEK ever comes to power, the resulting bloodbath will dwarf anything that has happened in Iran .

If the MEK is removed from the terrorist list, there is no reason to believe it will not use its lobbying apparatus to obtain U.S. funding and to promote war with Iran. If it succeeds, the MEK cult will try to silent the voices of the Iranian-American community, represent itself as the voice of Iran’s true opposition, and take the U.S. down the path of another illegal war, all in the name of Iran’s nonviolent Green Movement. It will be Ahmed Chalabi all over again.[..]

by Muhammad Sahimi

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Iraq

Iraqi Police Storm Ashraf – US ‘Not Happy’ as Iraq Announces Plans to Close MEK Camp

US officials are reportedly “not happy” with the situation unfolding in the MEK’s Camp Ashraf, following yesterday’s deadly raids by Iraqi forces. Today, the Iraqi government says that it plans to close the camp down entirely.

It remains unclear what the closure will mean to the thousands of Iranian exiles which reside in the camp, and which enjoy the status of “protected persons” under the Geneva Convention. The camp was turned over to the Iraqi government’s control in January, and yesterday’s raid killed at least eight and injured over 400 according to the governor of the Diyala Province.

The raid on the camp and the detention of several members of the anti-Iranian militant group has been welcomed by Iranian officials. Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said the move “came late” but was still a welcome chance to clear Iraqi territory of terrorists.

Though the MEK is recognized as a terrorist organization by the US State Department, it has a complex relationship with the US. The Saddam-backed group has supplied the US with considerable information regarding Iran, though there is doubt over whether the information is accurate or simply an attempt to foment a US invasion and regime change.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has urged both sides to “exercise restraint” in the wake of the clashes, and House Foreign Affairs Committee members released a statement accusing the Iraqi government of not living up to its commitments. Other US officials concede that since they turned the camp over to Iraqi control there is very little they can do about the clashes.

by Jason Ditz

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