Hamid-Reza Taraghi, a senior politician close to Tehran’s hardliners, blamed a combination of Saudi Arabia, the US, Isis and the exiled opposition group MEK for Wednesday’s attacks. “Saudi Arabia is definitely playing the leading role in these incidents, considering that its foreign ministry threatened Iran two to three days ago,” he said, referring to a call by Riyadh for Iran to be punished for supporting terrorism …
An Iranian exile group is spending millions of dollars in a lobbying effort to be removed from the US’s list of foreign terrorist organisations, recruiting a group of US national security luminaries to be its advocates.Dozens of former officials across the political spectrum – from conservative John Bolton to liberal Howard Dean – have been paid tens of thousands of dollars to speak at events organised by supporters of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq aka MKO/MEK/PMOI, or People’s Mujahedin, in the US, the Financial Times has learnt.
…He also claimed Tehran had information that US officials were holding talks with Izzat al-Douri, the former Ba’athist senior official who is said to be leading parts of the Sunni insurgency. “This is a disaster for the Iraqi people,” he said…
We have some information, and some indication, that contrary to what the Americans claim, there has been some contact with some terrorist groups. This is why I talked about good will at the beginning. One of the bad policies of the United States is this double standard towards terrorism, to divide terrorists into good and bad terrorists. This is the source of so many problems.
In the most widely reported covert operations under way in Iran, the US is smuggling weapons and money to disaffected non-Persian ethnic minority factions. But at the recent Iran-US talks in Baghdad, Iranian delegates focused on less publicized sabotage and espionage missions in the Persian heartland of Iran by a US-backed militia of Persian exiles known as the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK).
This is what we understand. Iraq is suffering a vicious cycle. There are foreign forces who have occupied Iraq, and justify their presence on the pretext of the ‘war on terror’ and terrorists who claim they are fighting occupiers …Each is justified by the other.The only solution is to end occupation, and this means a well-planned strategy.
Mr Araghchi, a career diplomat seen as a potential interlocutor with Washington, insisted the US presence was part of Iraq’s problem. “Iraq is suffering a vicious cycle. There are foreign forces who have occupied Iraq and justify their presence under the pretext of the ‘war on terror’ and there are terrorists who claim they are fighting occupiers.”
..the People’s Mujahideen Organisationaka PMOI/NCR/MEK and its political co-leader, Maryam Rajavi, are given leeway in the US as they campaign to have the”terrorist”tag removed and to become eligible for US funding of Iranian opposition groups…the group led by Mrs Rajavi and her husband Massoud, was outlawed by the US for its killing of Americans before the 1979 Iranian revolution; alleged collaboration with Saddam Hussein’s genocidal campaigns against Iraqi Kurds; and attacks on civilians inside Iran.