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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Kristol objection to foreigners with American blood on their hands,highly selective

Bill Kristol on Iran Deal: ‘Its Munich!’

Bill Kristol is the epitome of the neocon mindset: cultivating a staid and urbane image while writing the most unhinged and mendacious claptrap. In his utterly predictable denunciation of the successful Iran nuclear talks, Kristol frames the issue in the crudest terms: if the deal goes through on the US end it will mean the return of $150 billion that was seized from the Iranians by the United States — and that money will be used to commit terrorism against the United States!

Writes Kristol: “How can we debate [the deal] without attending to the $150 billion that is going to a regime with American blood on its hands?”

Kristol cites the National Review which makes the fatuous claim (first made by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, which is headed by a close advisor to Israeli prime minister Netanyahu) that Iran has killed 1,000 Americans since 9/11. It turns out any weapon used in Iraq or Afghanistan against an invading US military that might have Iranian manufacturing origins means that the Iranians are responsible for that kill.

Do they want to extrapolate that methodology to include every bullet sold by the US military-industrial complex to every despot overseas?

But you can see how this works: A Netanyahu think tank makes an outlandish claim, it is picked up by the National Review and thus laundered from its biased foreign origins, and then recycled and further laundered by Kristol in his publication. Cute trick.

And Kristol’s objection to foreigners with American blood on their hands is highly selective. The Marxist-jihadist death cult Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MeK) has plenty of American blood on its hands, but Kristol’s own magazine joined other neocon voices in urging the US to remove the terrorists from the US list of terror organizations. Why? Because they are Kristol’s kind of terrorists: they infiltrate Iran to assassinate civilians and foment unrest, while passing off laptops with Mossad-fabricated data made to look like Iranian nuclear weapons activity.

The other thing that has Kristol up in arms over the deal is what he calls the “notorious” Annex III.D.10 of the agreement, which he claims will “help the Iranian regime fight off attempts by others to slow its nuclear program, and more.”

But what does that annex really say?

10. Co-operation in the form of training courses and workshops to strengthen Iran’s ability to prevent, protect and respond to nuclear security threats to nuclear facilities and systems as well as to enable effective and sustainable nuclear security and physical protection systems;

10. Co-operation through training and workshops to strengthen Iran’s ability to protect against, and respond to nuclear security threats, including sabotage, as well as to enable effective and sustainable nuclear security and physical protection systems.

In other words, the parties to the agreement will help Iran protect against attempts to attack and sabotage Iran’s peaceful and legal nuclear program. Recall the Israeli/US cyberattack on Iranian nuclear facilities and simultaneous programs to assassinate Iranian scientists. Kristol is furious that anyone would find such illegal and murderous activity to be objectionable. After all, blood on one’s hands doesn’t count if it is Iranian or other Muslim blood.

Oh, and, writes Kristol: “Munich!!!” That is obligatory any time diplomacy supplants neocon lust for war.

That Kristol remains a favored foreign policy “expert” on stations like FoxNews and ABC says very little about the quality of his analysis and much more about his saying what the mainstream media want their audiences to hear.

Who can forget Bill Kristol’s greatest hits, such as this 2011 piece on the “liberation” of Libya titled “The Party of Freedom“? In it he writes:

And so, despite his doubts and dithering, President Obama is taking us to war in another Muslim country. Good for him. …Our invasions have in fact been liberations…in our own national interest, of course, but also to protect Muslim peoples and help them free themselves. Libya will be America’s fifth war of Muslim liberation.

Ah yes, that glorious liberation of Libya!

Indeed the timeline of his faulty predictions would no-doubt span the equator. Imagine any other profession where one can be so consistently wrong and still be considered (and handsomely remunerated as) an expert. Imagine your doctor was wrong in his diagnosis 95 percent of the time. Imagine your financial advisor consistently lost 95 percent of anything you invest with him. Yet Kristol continues to drop his golden turds from the hallowed heights of the foreign policy firmament. What a country…

By Daniel McAdams,

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Breaking the Resistance with US Sponsored Terrorism and Proxy Wars

With the situation in the Middle East seemingly spinning out of control, many political observers are left wondering what it all means. The war in Syria has been at the forefront of the news since 2011, and rightly so, as Syria has become the epicenter of a larger regional conflict, particularly with the ascendance of ISIS in the last year.

Undoubtedly, the mainstream acceptance of the ISIS threat has changed the strategic calculus vis-à-vis Syria, as the US prepares to launch yetanother open-ended war, ostensibly to defeat it. And, while many in the West are willing to buy the ISIS narrative and pretext for war, they do so with little understanding or recognition of the larger geopolitical contours of this conflict. Essentially, almost everyone ignores the fact that ISIS and Syria-Iraq is only one theater of conflict in the broader regional war being waged by the US-NATO-GCC-Israel axis. Also of vital importance is an understanding of the proxy war against Iran (and all Shia in the region), being fomented by the very same terror and finance networks that have spread the ISIS disease in Syria.

In attempting to unravel the complex web of relations between the terror groups operating throughout the region, important commonalities begin to emerge. Not only are many of these groups directly or tangentially related to each other, their shadowy connections to western intelligence bring into stark relief an intricate mosaic of terror that is part of a broader strategy of sectarianism designed to destroy the “Axis of Resistance” which unites Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah. In so doing, these terror groups and their patrons hope to internationalize the war in Syria, and its destructive consequences.

Terrorism as a Weapon in Syria and Iraq

In order to understand how these seemingly disparate groups fit into the regional destabilization, one must first recognize how they are connected both in terms of ideology and shared relationships. On the one hand you have the well known terror outfits operating in the Syria-Iraq theater of this conflict. These would include the ubiquitous ISIS, along with its Al Qaeda-affiliated ally Jabhat Al-Nusra.

However, often left out of the western narrative is the fact that the so called “moderate rebels,” such as the Al Farouq Brigade and other similar groups affiliated with the “Free Syrian Army,” are also linked through various associations with a number of jihadi organizations in Syria and beyond. These alleged “moderates” have been documented as having committed a number of egregious war crimes including mutilation of their victims, and cross-border indiscriminate shelling. And these are the same “moderates” that the Obama Administration spent the last three years touting as allies, as groups worthy of US weapons, to say nothing of the recent revelations of cooperation with US air power. But of course US cooperation with these extremist elements is only the tip of the iceberg.

A recent UN report further corroborated the allegations that Israeli military and/or Mossad is cooperating with, and likely helping to organize, the Jabhat al-Nusra organization in and around the Golan Heights. Such claims of course dovetail with the reports from Israeli media that militant extremists fighting the Syrian government have been treated in Israeli medical facilities. Naturally, these clandestine activities carried out by Israel should be combined with the overt attacks on Syria carried out by Tel Aviv, including recent airstrikes, which despite the inaction of the UN and international community, undeniably constitute a war crime.

Beyond the US and Israel however, other key regional actors have taken part in the destabilization and war on Syria. Turkey has provided safe haven for terrorists streaming into Syria to wage war against the legally recognized government of President Assad. In cooperation with the CIA and other agencies, Turkey has worked diligently to foment civil war in Syria in hopes of toppling the Assad government, thereby allowing Ankara to elevate itself to a regional hegemon, or so the thinking of Erdogan and Davutoglu goes. Likewise, Jordan has provided training facilities for terrorists under the guidance and tutelage of “instructors” from the US, UK, and France.

But why rehash all these well-documented aspects of the destabilization and war on Syria? Simple. In order to fully grasp the regional dimension and global implications of this conflict, one must place the Syria war in its broader geopolitical context, and understand it as one part of a broader war on the “Axis of Resistance.” For, while Hezbollah and certain Iranian elements have been involved in the fighting and logistical support in Syria, another insidious threat has emerged – a renewed terror war against Iran in its Sistan and Baluchestan province in the east.

Rekindling the Proxy War against Iran

As the world’s attention has been understandably fixed upon the horrors of Syria, Iraq, and Libya, a new theater in the regional conflict has come to the forefront – Iran; specifically, Iran’s eastern Sistan and Baluchestan province, long a hotbed of separatism and anti-Shia terror, where a variety of terror groups have operated with the covert, and often overt, backing of western and Israeli intelligence agencies.

Just in the last year, there have been numerous attacks on Iranian military and non-military targets in the Sistan and Baluchestan region, attacks carried out by a variety of groups. Perhaps the most well known instance occurred in March 2014 when five Iranian border guards were kidnapped – one was later executed – by Jaish al-Adl which, according to the Terrorism Research and Analysis Consortium is:

an extremist Salafi group that has since its foundation claimed responsibility for a series of operations against Iran’s domestic security forces and Revolutionary Guards operating in Sistan and Balochistan province, including the detonation of mines [link added] against Revolutionary Guards vehicles and convoys, kidnapping of Iranian border guards and attacks against military bases… Jaish al-Adl is also opposed to the Iranian Government’s active support of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which they regard as an attack on Sunni muslims…Jaish ul-Adl executes cross border operations between the border of Iran and Pakistan and is based in the Baluchistan province in Pakistan.

It is important to note the centrality of Iran’s support for Syria and the Syrian Arab Army (and of course Hezbollah) in the ideological framework of a group like Jaish al-Adl. Essentially, this terror group sees their war against the Iranian government as an adjunct of the war against Assad and Syria – a new front in a larger war. Of course, the sectarian aspect should not be diminished as this group, like its many terrorist cousins, makes no distinction between political and religious/sectarian divisions. A war on Iran is a war on Shia, and both are just, both are legitimate.

Similarly, the last 18 months have seen the establishment of yet another terror group known as Ansar al-Furqan – a fusion of the Balochi Harakat Ansar and Pashto Hizb al-Furqan, both of which had been operating along Iran’s eastern border with Pakistan. According to the Terrorism Research and Analysis Consortium:

They characterize themselves as Mujahideen aginst [sic] the Shia government in Iran and are linked to Katibat al Asad Al ‘Ilamiya; Al-Farooq activists; al Nursra Front (JN), Nosrat Deen Allah, Jaysh Muhammad, Jaysh al ‘Adal; and though it was denied for some time, appears to have at least personal relationships with Jundallah…The stated mission of Ansar al Furqan is ” to topple the Iranian regime…”

Like its terrorist cousin Jaish al-Adl, Ansar al-Furqan has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks against the Iranian Government, including a May 2014 IED attack on a freight train belonging to government forces. While such attacks may not make a major splash in terms of international attention, they undoubtedly send a message heard loud and clear in Tehran: these terrorists and their sponsors will stop at nothing to destroy the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Two inescapable facts immediately come to the fore when examining these groups. On the one hand, they are Sunni extremists whose ultimate goal is the destruction of the Iranian state and all vestiges of Shia dominance, political, military or otherwise. On the other hand, these groups see their war against Iran as part and parcel of the terror wars on Syria and Iraq.

And then of course there’s Jundallah, the notorious terror organization lead for decades by the Rigi family. Anyone with even cursory knowledge of the group is undoubtedly aware of its long-standing ties to both US and Israeli intelligence. As Foreign Policy magazine reported in 2012, Israeli Mossad and US CIA operatives essentially competed with one another for control of the Jundallah network for years. This information of course directly links these agencies with the covert war against Iran going back years, to say nothing of the now well-known role of Israeli intelligence in everything from assassinations of Iranian scientists to the use of cyberweapons such as Stuxnet and Flame. These and other attacks by Israel and the US against Iranian interests constitute a major part of the dirty war against Iran – a war in which terror groups figure prominently.

It should be noted that a number of other terror outfits have been used through the decades in the ongoing “low-intensity” war against Iran, including the infamous Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a terrorist group hailed as heroes by the US neocon establishment. Thanks to Wikileaks, it also now documented fact that Israel has long since attempted to use Kurdish groups such as PJAK (Iraqi Kurdish terror group) to wage continued terror war against Iran for the purposes of destabilization of the government. Additionally, there was a decades-long campaign of Arab separatism in Iran’s western Khuzestan region spearheaded by British intelligence. As Dr. Kaveh Farrokh and Mahan Abedin wrote in 2005, “there is a mass of evidence that connects the British secret state to Arab separatism in Iran.”

These and other groups, too numerous to name here, represent a part of the voluminous history of subversion against Iran. But why now? What is the ultimate strategy behind these seemingly disparate geopolitical machinations?

Encircling the Resistance in Order to Break It

To see the obvious strategic gambit by the US-NATO-GCC-Israel axis, one need only look at a map of the major conflicts mentioned above. Syria has been infiltrated by countless terrorist groups that have waged a brutal war against the Syrian government and people. They have used Turkey in the North, Jordan in the South, and to a lesser degree Lebanon and, indirectly, Israel in the West. Working in tandem with the ISIS forces originating in Iraq, Syria has been squeezed from all sides in hopes that military defeat and/or the internal collapse of the Syrian government would be enough to destroy the country.

Naturally, this strategy has necessarily drawn Hezbollah into the war as it is allied with Syria and, for more practical reasons, cannot allow a defeated and broken Syria to come to fruition as Hezbollah would then be cut off from their allies in Iran. And so, Hezbollah and Syria have been forced to fight on no less than two fronts, fighting for the survival of the Resistance in the Levant.

Simultaneously, the regional power Iran has made itself into a central player in the war in Syria, recognizing correctly that the war could prove disastrous to its own security and regional ambitions. However, Tehran cannot simply put all its energy into supporting and defending Syria and Hezbollah as it faces its own terror threat in the East. The groups seeking to topple the Iranian government may not be able to compete militarily with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, but they can certainly create enough destabilization through terrorism to make it more difficult for Tehran to effectively aid in the fight in Syria.

The US-NATO-GCC-Israel alliance has not needed to put its own boots on the ground to achieve its strategic objectives. Instead, it is relying on irregular warfare, proxy terror wars, and small-scale destabilizations to achieve by stealth what it cannot achieve with military might alone.

But it remains paramount for all those interested in peace to make these connections, to understand the broad outlines of this vast covert war taking place. To see a war in Syria in isolation is to misunderstand its very nature. To see ISIS alone as the problem is to completely misread the essence of the conflict. This is a battle for regional hegemony, and in order to attain it, the Empire is employing every tool in the imperial toolkit, with terrorism being one of the most effective.

Eric Draitser is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City, he is the founder of StopImperialism.org and OP-ed columnist for RT, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Eric Draitser,

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Mujahedin Khalq Organization : US-Israel Sponsored Terrorist Entity directed against Iran

In their abortive effort to assassinate another Iranian nuclear scientist, Israeli officials only sustained desperation and disgrace in their dastardly elimination campaign against Iran which was apparently in sync with ISIL inhumane brutalities inside Iraq and Syria.

More alert than ever, security forces are diligently tasked with protecting the lives of the Iranian scientists wherever they are.

A top Iranian military official said on Saturday that in the last two years, “the Zionist entity has been making clandestine efforts to assassinate an Iranian nuclear scientist, but the timely presence of the IRGC security forces thwarted the terrorist operation.”

It is now common knowledge that Tel Aviv has been carrying out covert ops inside the Iranian soil for a couple of years, assassinating Iranian nuclear officials and scientists although Israel has constantly declined to admit to its unjustified iniquity against the Iranian nation.

Translating suspicion into conviction, a report carried by CBS News in March 2014 revealed that Obama has pressured Israeli espionage apparatuses to put an end to their assassinations inside Iran against the country’s nuclear scientists.

The terrorist Mujahedin Khalq Organization AKA MKO or MEK seems to be a ubiquitous agent any time there is an assassination in Iran. A shadowy cult with myriad of financial, military and intelligence connections to Tel Aviv and Washington, the MKO works in league with Kidon, the assassination unit within the Mossad. There are solid reports which indicate that the MKO members have received military and intelligence training both from the US forces as well as from the Mossad.

In 2012, Seymour M. Hersh revealed that at a secret site in Nevada, the US Special Operations Command (JSOC) conducted training, beginning in 2005, for members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, “a dissident Iranian opposition group known in the West as the M.E.K.” According to the report, the training ended sometime before President Obama took office. A retired four-star general says, “They got the standard training, in commo, crypto [cryptography], small-unit tactics, and weaponry—that went on for six months…. They were kept in little pods.”

Within the US government, the cult enjoys a rather immense support for their sabotage activities against the Islamic Republic. Among their shills are former top Bush officials and other Republicans (Michael Mukasey, Fran Townsend, Andy Card, Tom Ridge, Rudy Giuliani) as well as prominent Democrats (Howard Dean, Ed Rendell, Bill Richardson, Wesley Clark).

A revealing report by NBC News report by Richard Engel and Robert Windrem cites two anonymous senior US officials with two interesting claims: 1) that it was MEK which perpetrated the string of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and 2) the terrorist group “is financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service.” So the report testifies to the veracity of what Iranian officials have asserted about the involvement of MEK and Israel in murdering nuclear scientists on the Iranian soil.

Interestingly, a few weeks ago, I received a threatening email from Ali Safavi, the notorious MKO spokesman (through a western publisher of mine) in which he had pontificated about the virtues of the MKO terrorists and the so-called ‘vices’ of the Islamic Republic, accusing me of serving as a mouthpiece for the Islamic Republic. I strongly believe that revealing the murky realities of a terrorist group responsible for the deaths of 17000 innocent Iranians is only my ethical obligation. Besides, Ali Safavi and the likes

of him should come to their senses and realize that their efforts to whitewash their crimes will eventually prove pointless and that there is no way at all for them to lend a cloak of legitimacy to their unnamable crimes against the Iranian nation.

During the Iraq-Iran war, the MKO joined hands with Saddam Hussein, the tyrannical ruler of Iraq in attacking and killing Iranian combatants. However, a bloodier chapter in the history of the cult can be traced in their collusion with Saddam in crushing the popular uprisings in 1991. No doubt, their tanks took an inconceivable reprisal on thousands of innocent civilians. The callous command of Maryam Rajavi is still gnawing and tearing at the hearts and minds of the Iraqis: “Take the Kurds under your tanks, and save your bullets for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.”

Unfortunately, the MKO, long considered a terrorist organization, was delisted thanks to the unflagging endeavors of former US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In 2011, Mohamed Ali Lobnani, a Lebanese national, who was arrested on charges of spying for Mossad confessed that he had spied for Israel under the cover of a Shiite cleric in Lebanon.

In a court hearing session, Lobnani said he had phone contacts with Mohammad Alizadeh, an MKO ringleader, claiming that had no idea that the number was a Mossad contact number.

Asked about the link between MKO and Mossad, he noted, “As far as I know, the group (MKO) has been collaborating with Israel for several years and has massive interactions with Mossad.”

The MKO is the artifact of a corrupt ideology which is in many respects comparable to that of the ISIL cult. No wonder they are fighting shoulder to shoulder with the ISIL terrorists in Iraq and Syria.

The fact that these two curious cults are thriving rigorously, that the West caters – either publicly or secretly – to their cravings, that they are being bigheartedly financed by the puppet regional regimes and that they receive sophisticated military and intelligence training from Mossad and CIA evinces a believable bond between the two.

That the MKO and the ISIL cults are pursing the selfsame path of perversion is no coincidence at all. The reason is simple: they are cut from the same cloth. And that Mossad is dispatching assassins into Iran to liquidate Iranian scientists is only meant to strike fear and beyond that, to secretly make up for what the ISIL and MKO terrorists feel emasculated to do in Iran.

Dr. Ismail Salami,

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

The March to War: Fighting ISIL is a Smokescreen for US Mobilization against Syria, Iran

The ISIL or IS threat is a smokescreen. The strength of the ISIL has deliberately been inflated to get public support for the Pentagon and to justify the illegal bombing of Syria. It has also been used to justify the mobilization of what is looking more and more like a large-scale US-led military buildup in the Middle East. The firepower and military assets being committed go beyond what is needed for merely fighting the ISIL death squads.

While the US has assured its citizens and the world that troops will not be sent on the ground, this is very unlikely. In the first instance, it is unlikely because boots on the ground are needed to monitor and select targets. Moreover, Washington sees the campaign against the ISIL fighters as something that will take years. This is doublespeak. What is being described is a permanent military deployment or, in the case of Iraq, redeployment. This force could eventually morph into a broader assault force threatening Syria, Iran, and Lebanon.

US-Syrian and US-Iranian Security Dialogue?

Before the US-led bombings in Syria started there were unverified reports being circulated that Washington had started a dialogue with Damascus through Russian and Iraqi channels to discuss military coordination and the Pentagon bombing campaign in Syria. There was something very off though. Agents of confusion were at work in an attempt to legitimize the bombardment of the Syrian Arab Republic.

The claims of US-Syrian cooperation via Russian and Iraqi channels are part of a sinister series of misinformation and disinformation. Before the claims about US cooperation with Syria, similar claims were being made about US-Iranian cooperation in Iraq.

Earlier, Washington and the US media tried to give the impression that an agreement on military cooperation was made between itself and Tehran to fight ISIL and to cooperate inside Iraq. This was widely refuted in the harshest of words by numerous members of the Iranian political establishment and high-ranking Iranian military commanders as disinformation.

 After the Iranians clearly indicated that Washington’s claims were fiction, the US claimed that it would not be appropriate for Iran to join its anti-ISIL coalition. Iran rebutted. Washington was dishonestly misrepresenting the facts, because US officials had asked Tehran to join the anti-ISIL coalition several times.

Before he was discharged from the hospital after a prostate surgery, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the highest ranking official in Iran, told Iranian television on September 9, 2014, that the US had requested that Tehran and Washington cooperate together inside Iraq on three different occasions. He explained that the US ambassador to Iraq had relayed a message to the Iranian ambassador to Iraq to join the US, then, in his own words, «the same [John Kerry] — who had said in front of the camera and in front of the eyes of all the world that they do not want Iran to cooperate with them — requested [from] Dr. Zarif that Iran cooperate with them on this issue, but Dr. Zarif turned this [request] down.» The third request was made by US Undersecretary Wendy Sherman to Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

Khamenei additionally made it clear that he categorically ruled out any cooperation with Washington on the issue. «On this issue, we will not cooperate with America particularly because their hands are dirty,» he publicly confirmed while explaining that Washington had ill intentions and nefarious designs in Iraq and Syria.

Like Russia, Iran has been supporting Syria and Iraq against ISIL. Also like Moscow, Tehran is committed to fighting it, but will not join Washington’s anti-ISIL coalition.

New Invasion(s) and Regime Change Project(s) in the Pipeline?

As was pointed out on June 20, 2014, in Washington’s eyes Nouri Al-Malaki’s federal government in Baghdad had to be removed for refusing to join the US siege against the Syrians, being aligned to Iran, selling oil to the Chinese, and buying weapons from the Russian Federation. Iraq’s decision to be part of an Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline also undermined the objectives of the US and its allies to control the flow of energy in the Middle East and to obstruct Eurasian integration. [1]

 There were also two other unforgivable cardinal sins that Al-Malaki’s government in Baghdad committed in Washington’s eye. These offenses, however, should be put into geopolitical context first.

Remember the post-September 11, 2001 (post-9/11) catchphrase of the Bush II Administration during the start of its serial wars? It went like this: «Anyone can go to Baghdad, but real men go to Tehran!» The point of this warmongering catchphrase is that Baghdad and Damascus have been viewed as pathways for the Pentagon towards Tehran. [2]

Like Syria, Al-Malaki government’s cardinal sins were tied to blocking the pathway to Tehran. Firstly, the Iraqi government evicted the Pentagon from Iraq at the end of 2011, which removed US troops stationed directly on Iran’s western border. Secondly, the Iraqi federal government was working to expel anti-government Iranian militants from Iraq and to close Camp Ashraf, which could be used in a war or regime change operations against Iran.

Ashraf was a base for the military wing of the Iraqi-based Mujahidin-e-Khalq (MEK/MOK/MKO). The MEK is an anti-government Iranian organization that is bent on regime change in Tehran. It has even openly endorsed US-led attacks on Iran and Syria.

Although the US government itself considers the MEK a terrorist organization, Washington began to deepen its ties with the MEK when it and its staunch British allies invaded Iraq. Disingenuously and ironically, the US and Britain used Saddam Hussein’s support for the MEK to justify labeling Iraq as a state-sponsor of terrorism and to also justify the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Since then the US has been has been nurturing the MEK.

Since 2003, the US has been has been funding the MEK. Washington has been protecting the MEK, because it wants to keep them on a leash as either leverage against Tehran or to have the option of one day installing the MEK into power in Tehran as part of a regime change operation against Iran. The MEK has literally become incorporated into the Pentagon and CIA toolboxes against Tehran. Even when the US transferred control of Camp Ashraf to Baghdad, the Pentagon kept forces inside the MEK camp.

 Eventually the MEK forces would mostly be relocated in 2012 to the former US base known as Camp Liberty. Camp Liberty is now called by an Arabic name, Camp Hurriya.

The Istanbul bureau chief of the Christian Science Monitor, Scott Peterson described how US officials began to really put their weight behind the MEK during the start of the Arab Spring in 2011. This is tied to Washington’s regime change dreams. Peterson wrote that US officials «rarely mention the MEK’s violent and anti-American past, and portray the group not as terrorists but as freedom fighters with ‘values just like us,’ as democrats-in-waiting ready to serve as a vanguard of regime change in Iran.» [3]

Washington Has Not Abandoned Dreams of Regime Change in Tehran

Washington has not abandoned its dreams for regime change in Tehran. Is it a coincidence that the US and EU support for the MEK is increasing, especially when the ISIL threat in Iraq began to be noticed publicly?

 Six hundred parliamentarians and politicians from mostly NATO countries were flown in for a large MEK gathering in the Parisian northeastern suburb of Villepinte that called for regime change in Iran on June 27, 2014. Warmongers and morally bankrupt figures like former US senator Joseph Lieberman, Israeli mouthpiece and apologist Alan Dershowhitz, former Bush II official and Fox News pundit John Bolton, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, and French former minister and United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNIMIK) chief Bernard Kouchner all met the MEK to promote regime change and war. According to the MEK, over 80, 000 people attended the regime change rally. Supporters of the insurgencies in Iraq and Syria were also present at the Villepinte gathering calling for regime change in Iraq, Syria, and Iran.

The irony is that the money for the event most probably came from the US government itself. US allies probably contributed too. This money has gone to the MEK’s lobbying initiatives with the US Congress and US Department of State, which in effect is recycling US funding. People like Rudy Giuliani — probably one of the most hated mayors in the history of New York City until he took advantage of the tragic events of 9/11 — are now effectively lobbyists for the MEK. «Many of these former high-ranking US officials — who represent the full political spectrum — have been paid tens of thousands of dollars to speak in support of the MEK,» according to the Christian Science Monitor. [4]

Giuliani has been speaking at MEK events at least as far back as 2010. In 2011, he publicly pushed for regime change in Tehran and Damascus at a MEK gathering. «How about we follow an Arab Spring with a Persian Summer?» he rhetorically declared. [5] Giuliani’s next sentence revealed just how much of a scion of US foreign policy the initiative to support the MEK truly is: «We need regime change in Iran, more than we do in Egypt or Libya, and just as we need it in Syria.» [6]

Joseph Lieberman’s friend and fellow war advocate Senator John McCain was unable to make the trip to the Parisian suburb in Seine-Saint-Denis, but addressed the regime change gathering via video. Congressman Edward Royce, the chair of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, also showed his support for regime change in Iran through a video message. So did Senator Carl Levin and Senator Robert Menendez.

Large delegations from the US, France, Spain, Canada, and Albania were present. Aside from the aforementioned individuals, other notable American attendees to the June 27, 2014 event included the following:

1. Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the lower chamber (House of Representatives) in the bicameral US Congress;

2. John Dennis Hastert; another former speaker of the House of Representatives;

3. George William Casey Jr., who commanded the multinational military force that invaded and occupied Iraq;

4. Hugh Shelton, a computer software executive and former chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff;

5. James Conway, the former chief of the US Marine Corps

6. Louis Freeh, the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI);

7. Lloyd Poe, the US Representative who sits on (1) the US House Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats and chairs (2) the US House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Non‐proliferation and Trade;

8. Daniel Davis, a US Representative from Illinois;

9. Loretta Sánchez, a US Representative from California;

10. Michael B. Mukasey, a former attorney-general of the US;

11. Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont;

12. William Richardson, the former secretary of the US Department of Energy;

13. Robert Torricelli, a former legislator in the US House of Representatives and the US Senate senator who is the legally representative of the MEK in Iraq;

14. Francis Townsend, former Homeland Security advisor to George W. Bush Jr.;

15. Linda Chavez, a former chief White House director;

16. Robert Joseph, the former US undersecretary that ran the (1) Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, (2) the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, and the (3) Bureau of Political-Military Affairs;

17. Philip Crowley, the former assistant-secretary of state responsible for public affairs;

18. David Phillips, the military police commander who restructured the Iraqi police and was responsible for guarding Camp Ashraf and Saddam Hussein as a prisoner;

19. Marc Ginsberg, the senior vice-president of the public relations firm APCO Worldwide and former US ambassador and US presidential adviser for Middle East policy.

Like the US presence, the French presence included officials. Aside from Bernard Kouchner, from France some of the notable attendees were the following individuals:

1. Michèle Alliot-Marie, a French politician who among her cabinet portfolios was responsible for the military and foreign affairs at different times;

2. Rama Yade, vice president of the conservative Radical Party of France;

3. Gilbert Mitterrand, the president of the human rights foundation France Libertés, which has focused on ethnic groups such as Kurds, Chechens, and Tibetans;

4. Martin Vallton, the mayor of Villepinte.

From Spain the notable attendees were the following:

1. Pedro Agramunt Font de Mora, the Spanish chair of the European People’s Party (EPP) and its allies in the Council of Europe;

2. Jordi Xucla, the Spanish chair of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) Group in the Council of Europe;

3. Alejo Vidal-Quadras, a Spanish politician and one of the fourteen vice-presidents of the European Union’s European Parliament;

4. José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the former prime minister of Spain (who was also visibly accompanied by his wife Sonsoles Espinosa Díaz).

Other notable attendees from other Euro-Atlantic countries included:

1. Pandli Majko, the former prime minster of Albania;

2. Kim Campbell, the former prime minister of Canada

3. Geir Haarde, the former prime minister of Iceland;

4. Ingrid Betancourt, a former Colombian senator;

5. Alexander Carile, a member of the British House of Lords, the upper house of the British Parliament

6. Giulio Maria Terzi, the former foreign minister of Italy;

7. Adrianus Melkert, a former Dutch cabinet minister, a former World Bank executive, and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s former special envoy to Iraq.

Not only regime change was talked about, but the cross-border crisis in Iraq and Syria was a major subject. Fox News gave the event special coverage. Just in July, the MEK’s leadership had condemned Iranian support to the Iraqi federal government in its fight against the ISIL, yet since the US had began to nominally fight the ISIL the MEK has begun to hold its tongue.

Before the regime change gathering, the MEK’s leader Maryam Rajavi — who the MEK has designated as the president of Iran since 1993 — even meet with the puppet Syrian National Council’s leader Ahmed Jarba in Paris to discuss cooperation on May 23, 2014.

MEK leader Maryam Rajavi and SNC leader Ahmed Jarba meet to discuss cooperating for regime change in Tehran and Damascus.

Regime Change in Damascus through Mission Creep in Syria

The bombing campaign that the US has started in Syria is illegal and a violation of the UN Charter. This is why the Pentagon took the step of claiming that the US-led bombing campaign was prompted by the threat of an «imminent» attack that was being planned against the territory of the US. This allegation was made to give legal cover to the bombardment of Syrian territory through a warped argument under Article 51 of the UN Charter that allows a UN member to legally attack another country if an imminent attack by the said country is about to take place on the UN member.

 Barack Obama and the US government have done their best to confuse and blur reality through a series of different steps they have taken to claim legitimacy for violating international law by bombing Syria without the authorization of Damascus. Although US Ambassador Samantha Powers informed Syria’s permanent representative to the UN that US-led attacks would be launched on Al-Raqqa Governate, informing Bashar Al-Jaafari through a formal unilateral notification does not amount to being given the legal consent of Syria.

The US-led attacks on Syria do not have the backing of the UN Security Council either. The US government, however, has tried to spin the September 19, 2014, meeting of the UN Security Council that John Kerry chaired as a sign that the UN Security Council and international community are backing its bombing campaign.

Nor is it a coincidence that just when the US assembled its multinational coalition to fight the ISIL and its pseudo-caliphate, that John Kerry conveniently mentions that Syria has violated the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). While admitting that Syria did not use any material prohibited by the CWC, Kerry told US legislators that Damascus had breached its commitments to the CWC on September 18, 2014. In other words, Washington intends to go after Syria and pursue regime change in Damascus. If this does not make it clear, then the fact that the US will use Saudi Arabia to train more anti-government forces should. [7]

A US brinkmanship strategy to justify a US-led bombing campaign against Syria has been put into action with the intent of creating a pretext for expanding the illegal US-led airstrikes in Syria that started on September 22, 2014.

 What the US envisions is a long-term bombing campaign, which also threatens Lebanon and Iran. According to Ali Khamenei, the US wants to bomb both Iraq and Syria using ISIL as a smokescreen on the basis of the model in Pakistan. More correctly, the situation should be compared to the AfPak (Af-Pak) model. The US has used the spillover of instability from Afghanistan into Pakistan and the spread of the Taliban as a pretext for bombing Pakistan. Iraq and Syria have been merged as one conflict zone, which Ibrahim Al-Marashi, using a neologism, has described as the rise of «Syraq.»

The Broader Objective: Disrupting Eurasian Integration

While the US has been pretending to fight the same terrorist and death squads that it has created, the Chinese and their partners have been busy working to integrate Eurasia. America’s «Global War on Terror» has been paralleled with the rebuilding of the Silk Road. This is the real story and motivation for Washington’s insistence to fight and remobilize in the Middle East. It is also the reason why the US has been pushing Ukraine to confront Russia and the EU to sanction the Russian Federation.

America wants to disrupt the reemerging Silk Road and its expanding trade network. While Kerry has been busy frightening audiences about the ISIL and its atrocities, the Chinese have been busy sweeping the map by making deals across Asia and the Indian Ocean. This is part of the westward march of the Chinese dragon.

Parallel to Kerry’s travels, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Sri Lanka and went to the Maldives. Sri Lanka is already part of China’s Maritime Silk Road project. The Maldivians are newer entries; agreements have been reached to include the island-nation into the Maritime Silk Road network and infrastructure that China is busy constructing to expand maritime trade between East Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. Nor is it a coincidence that two Chinese destroyers docked at the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas in the Persian Gulf to conduct joint drills with Iranian warships in the Persian Gulf.

Parallel to east-west trade, a north-south trade and transport network is being developed. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was in Kazakhstan recently where he and his Kazakhstani counterpart, President Nursultan Nazarbayev, confirmed that trade was due to see manifold increases. The completion of the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran railway, which will create a north-south transit route, is being awaited. Cooperation between Tehran and the Eurasian Union was also discussed by the two presidents. On the other western side of the Caspian Sea, a parallel north-south corridor running from Russia to Iran through the Republic of Azerbaijan has been in the works.

The anti-Russia sanctions are beginning to cause uneasiness in the European Union. The real losers in the sanctions in Russia are the members of the European Union. Russia has demonstrated that it has options. Moscow has already launched the construction of its mega natural gas Yakutia–Khabarovsk–Vladivostok pipeline (also known as the Power of Siberia pipeline) to deliver gas to China while BRICS partner South Africa has signed a historic deal on nuclear energy with Rosatom.

Moscow’s influence on the world stage is very clear. Its influence has been on the rise in the Middle East and Latin America. Even in NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan, Russian influence is on the rise. The Russian government has recently compiled a list of over one hundred old Soviet construction projects that it would like to recuperate.

An alternative to US and EU sanctions is beginning to emerge in Eurasia. Aside from the oil-for-goods deal that Tehran and Moscow signed, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak announced that Iran and Russia had made several new agreements worth seventy billion euro. Sanctions will soon merely isolate the US and the EU. The Iranians have also announced that they are working with their Chinese and Russian partners to overcome the US and EU sanctions regime.

America is being rolled back. It cannot pivot to the Asia-Pacific until matters are settled in the Middle East and Eastern Europe against the Russian, Iranians, Syrians, and their allies. That is why Washington is doing its best to disrupt, divide, redraw, bargain and co-opt. When it comes down to it, the US is not concerned about fighting the ISIL, which has been serving Washington’s interests in the Middle East. America’s main concern is about preserving its crumbling empire and preventing Eurasian integration.

Notes

[1] Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, «America pursuing regime change in Iraq again,» RT, June 20, 2014.

[2] Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, «The Syria Endgame: Strategic Stage in the Pentagon’s Covert War on Iran,» Global Research, January 07, 2013.

[3] Scott Peterson, «Iranian group’s big-money push to get off US terrorist list,» Christian Science Monitor, August 8, 2011.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Matt Spetalnick, Jeff Mason and Julia Edwards, «Saudi Arabia agrees to host training of moderate Syria rebels», Caren Bohan, Grant McCool, and Eric Walsh eds. Reuters, September 10, 2014.

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya,

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Pro-Israeli American Billionaires Helped by the White House “Make War on Iran”

Pro-Israeli American Billionaires Helped by the White House “Make War on Iran”, Law Suit Reveals

There is a group of Jewish American billionaires who are apparently doing their best to make sure than negotiations with Iran go nowhere in the mistaken belief that they are doing what is best for Israel. And they would also appear to be assisted in their efforts by the White House, which is at the same time claiming that it wants the talks to be successful. The odd relationship is currently playing out in a Manhattan courtroom where the Justice Department is seeking to squash a lawsuit that it fears might expose the extent to which the government has hypocritically played fast and loose with classified information while simultaneously sending journalists and whistleblowers to jail over allegations that they have done the same.

The power and wealth of the anti-Iran groups as well as their unrivalled access to the United States government means that a policy of détente with Iran, which would be a no brainer based on both American and Iranian interests, only proceeds by fits and starts with the US Congress and much of the media lined up solidly to stop the effort. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its affiliated educational foundation, which have focused on the “Iranian threat” over the past three years, have a combined budget of more than $90 million while AIPAC’s spin-off the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) has $8.7 million.

The American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) efforts are more diversified but uniformly hawkish when it comes to the Middle East. It has a budget of $45 million. Identified multi-million dollar donor/supporters of AIPAC, AEI, and WINEP include Sheldon Adelson of Las Vegas Sands, Paul Singer of Elliot Management hedge fund and Bernard Marcus of Home Depot.

Other right wing think tanks including Heritage and Hudson in Washington also support unrelenting pressure directed against Iran. Even the more centrist Brookings Institute is hard core when it comes to Middle Eastern politics by virtue of its Saban Institute funded by Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban. And then there are the mainstream Jewish organizations to include the Anti Defamation League, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations and the American Jewish Congress, all of which have vast resources and unparalleled access to the White House, Congress and the media.

 All the pro-Israel anti-Iran groups engage in pressure tactics on Capitol Hill and have been effective in dominating the political debate. Of thirty-six outside witnesses brought in to testify at seven Senate hearings on Iran since 2012 only one might be characterized as sensitive to Iranian concerns. The enormous lobbying effort enables the anti-Iran groups to define the actual policies, move their drafts of legislation through congress, and eventually see their bills pass with overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate. It is democracy in action if one accepts that popular rule ought to be guided by money and pressure groups rather than by national interests.

Less well known is United Against Nuclear Iran, which has a budget just shy of $2 million. UANI is involved in the New York lawsuit. The group, which has somehow obtained a 501[c]3 “educational” tax status that inter alia allows it to conceal its donors, has offices in Rockefeller Center in New York City. It is active on Capitol Hill providing “expert testimony” on Iran for congressional committees, to include “help” in drafting legislation. At a July Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Iran all three outside witnesses were from UANI. It is also active in the media but is perhaps best known for its “name and shame” initiatives in which it exposes companies that it claims are doing business with Tehran in violation of US sanctions.

UANI is being sued by a Greek billionaire Victor Restis whom it had outed in 2013. Restis, claiming the exposure was fraudulent and carried out to damage his business, has filed suit demanding that UANI and billionaire Thomas Kaplan turn over documents and details of relationships regarding UANI donors who it is claimed are linked to the case. Kaplan, a New York City resident, made his initial fortune on energy exploration and development. More recently he has been involved in commodities trading in precious metals. His wife Daphne is Israeli and his involvement in various Jewish philanthropies both in the US and in Israel have invited comparison with controversial deceased commodities trader Marc Rich, who reportedly worked closely with the Israeli government on a number of projects.

The Justice department would like to the see the UANI lawsuit go away as it is aware that what is being described as “law enforcement” documents would include both privileged and classified Treasury Department work product relating to individuals and companies that it has investigated for sanctions busting. Passing either intelligence related or law enforcement documents to a private organization is illegal but the Justice Department’s only apparent concern is that the activity might be exposed. There is no indication that it would go after UANI for having acquired the information and it perhaps should be presumed that the source of the leak is the Treasury Department itself.

Who or what provided the documents to a private advocacy group that is also a tax exempt foundation supported by prominent businessmen with interests in the Middle East is consequently not completely clear but Restis is assuming that the truth will out if he can get hold of the evidence. The lawsuit claims that UANI intimidates its targets by defaming their business practices as well as by demanding both examination of their books and an audit carried out by one of its own accountants followed by review from an “independent counsel.”

 Kaplan is named in the suit as he appears to be the gray eminence behind UANI. He once boasted “we’ve (UANI) done more to bring Iran to heel than any other private sector initiative.” Kaplan also employs as a director or officer in six of his companies the Executive Director of UANI Mark Wallace and reportedly arranged the awarding of the Executive Director position at Harvard’s Belfer Center to its President Gary Samore.

 Kaplan is a business competitor to Restis, whose lawyers are apparently seeking to demonstrate two things: first, that the US government has been feeding sometimes only partially vetted information to UANI to help in its “name and shame” program and second, that UANI is itself supported by partisan business interests like Kaplan as well as by foreign sources, which apparently is meant to imply Israel. Or even the Israeli intelligence service Mossad. Meir Dagan, former head of Mossad, is on the UANI advisory board, which also includes ex-Senator Joseph Lieberman and former Senior Diplomat Dennis Ross, both of whom have frequently been accused of favoring Israeli interests and both of whom might well have easy access to US government generated information.

And then there is the Muhadedin-e-Khalq, the Iranian terrorist group that has assassinated at least six Americans and is now assisting the Israeli government in killing Iranian scientists, a prima facie definition of what constitutes terrorism. The group was on the State Department terrorist list from 1997 until 2012, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton de-listed it in response to demands coming from friends of Israel in Congress as well as from a large group of ex government officials, many of whom were paid large honoraria by the group to serve as advocates. The paid American shills included former CIA Directors James Woolsey and Porter Goss, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Louis Freeh and former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton. The promoters of MEK in congress and elsewhere claimed to be primarily motivated by MEK’s being an enemy of the current regime in Tehran, though its virulent anti-Americanism and terrorist history make it a somewhat unlikely poster child for the “Iranian resistance.”

Supporters of MEK also ignore the fact that the group is run like a cult, routinely executes internal dissidents, and has virtually no political support within Iran. But such are the ways of the corrupt Washington punditocracy, lionizing an organization that it should be shunning. MEK’s political arm is located in Paris and it has long been assumed that it is funded by the Israeli government and by at least some of the same gaggle of billionaires, possibly including their Israeli counterparts, who support the anti-Iranian agenda in the United States.

 Iranian negotiators have accepted that their country should have only limited uranium enrichment capabilities coupled with a rigorous inspection regime but the talks in Geneva drag on and on as the United States continues to hesitate, raising new objections regularly in spite of claims that it operates in good faith and seeks a settlement. That an agreement is within reach is undoubtedly true and it would even be good for Israel as it would remove the regional nuclear option while making much less likely another pointless and devastating war. But the men who write the checks do not see it that way and, unfortunately, they are the ones who all too often both pay the piper and call the tune.

Philip Giraldi,

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USA

US turned against Maliki for cleansing Iraq of US sponsored MEK terrorists

The Strange Case of Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki against the Backdrop of the “War” against the Islamic State (IS)

While the world’s attention has been fixated on the rapid advance and conquering of territory by ISIS/ISIL in Iraq, a clear shift has taken place in the rhetoric against, and analysis of, Prime Minster Nouri al-Maliki and his government. Though he was praised up and down by Washington while US troops remained on Iraqi soil, in the nearly three years since their exit he has transmogrified into a brutal sectarian autocrat evoking the worst aspects of both Saddam’s regime and that of his Shia neighbors and allies in Iran. What could possibly account for such a dramatic about-face?

The question then becomes: Is it simply that the world has finally taken notice of Maliki’s dictatorship against the backdrop of the war against ISIS/ISIL? Or could it be that the narrative has changed because the US agenda and interests have changed, and thus, so too has the image of Maliki. From democratic representative of the religious/ethnic majority to vicious tyrant bent on the destruction of Sunni and Kurdish minorities, Maliki has undergone a shocking political makeover.

Indeed, Maliki is not the first, nor is he likely to be the last, leader propped up, armed, and supported politically and militarily by the US, only to then become the proverbial “greatest threat to peace and stability in the region.” Such was Saddam’s fate. So too was it the fate of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti. And it seems now that Maliki, like countless other would-be US puppets who suddenly discovered their own national interests, has magically become the center of evil in Iraq and the region.

It should be noted that an examination of how the narrative on Maliki has shifted should not be taken as a de facto endorsement of all his actions or policies. Quite the contrary, such an analysis is rooted in an examination of the facts and material conditions, rather than an emotional appeal to “pick a side” and “support the people.” These and other hollow phrases have adorned the writing of many analysts on this issue in recent weeks without thoroughly examining the real forces at play. As such, the hollow phrases turn into shallow analysis which leads to the confusion about Iraq today.

Washington, Tehran, and Maliki’s “Sins”

It should come as no surprise to anyone who is even moderately aware of how US foreign policy and propaganda has historically operated, that the demonization of Maliki is directly linked to the inability of Washington to control him or, to put it another way, his refusal to accept US diktats. Consequently, he has been made into a villain, rather than a leader attempting to establish independent institutions in a country in which all institutions were created by the authority of a military occupation. So, the question then becomes, is Maliki simply trying to consolidate all power to himself? Or has Maliki been attempting to purge his government of US agents, clients, puppets, and other assorted front men? As is so often the case, the answer will lie somewhere in the middle.

To listen to the talking points of the State Department, news pundits, and “security experts,” you’d think that everyone in the Obama administration and the US political elite was in agreement that Maliki is an autocratic dictator. However, Obama himself revealed quite the opposite when the Iraqi Prime Minister came to the White House less than two and half years ago. On December 12, 2011, just weeks before the ultimate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, President Obama stood next to Maliki and made the following remarks:

Today, I’m proud to welcome Prime Minister Maliki — the elected leader of a sovereign, self-reliant and democratic Iraq… Iraq faces great challenges, but today reflects the impressive progress that Iraqis have made.  Millions have cast their ballots — some risking or giving their lives — to vote in free elections.  The Prime Minister leads Iraq’s most inclusive government yet.  Iraqis are working to build institutions that are efficient and independent and transparent.

In examining these and other comments made by Obama, and Bush before him, it becomes clear that a tectonic shift has occurred in how Maliki is viewed by Washington. Once seen as a pliable, compliant client regime, Maliki has now become the embodiment of corruption, sectarianism, and lust for power. What could possibly have motivated such a drastic change?

First and foremost are Maliki’s attitudes and policies towards the US occupation and the presence of military and non-military personnel. In fact, it was Maliki’s refusal to grant the US request to maintain US military bases in the country after the withdrawal which prompted the first round of attacks on him and his government. And it was then that the image of Maliki as Iranian puppet truly became popularized, at least in Western media. Indeed, as The Guardian noted at the time,

“The Pentagon had wanted the bases to help counter growing Iranian influence in the Middle East. Just a few years ago, the US had plans for leaving behind four large bases but, in the face of Iraqi resistance, this plan had to be scaled down this year to a force of 10,000. But even this proved too much for the Iraqis.”

Maliki also took the absolutely monumental step of closing down Camp Ashraf and killing or expelling its inhabitants. Far from being a camp for “Iranian political exiles” as Western media have attempted to portray, Ashraf was the base of the Iranian terrorist organization Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), an organization supported wholeheartedly by neocons (as well as most “liberals”) in its continued terror war against Iran. Of course, because Maliki dared to cleanse Iraq of these US-sponsored terrorist thugs, he was immediately convicted in the court of US public opinion which described the operation as an assault on Iranian “freedom fighters.” We know all too well what the US means when it describes terrorists as freedom fighters.

And so, by refusing basing rights, refusing to extend immunity and legal protections to US contractors operating in Iraq, and wiping out Camp Ashraf and MEK members, Maliki became a villain. More to the point, it was his refusal to allow Iraq to be used by the US and its allies as a military and political bulwark against Iran that earned him the West’s ire. Far from wanting a “sovereign, self-reliant and democratic Iraq” as Obama eloquently proclaimed, Washington needed the country to remain a client state to be used as a weapon of US foreign policy in the region. By rejecting this, Maliki, almost overnight, became “a dictator.”

But the Maliki-as-dictator meme has become a powerful device for shaping the narrative about Iraq. One of the primary methods of this narrative-building is establishing, and constantly reiterating, that Maliki has consolidated all power to himself by purging his government of political rivals. While there is undoubtedly some truth in the fact that Maliki has sought to sideline certain political figures who were unwilling to “play ball” with his regime in Baghdad, this is only half the story, the only half western media wants you to hear.

The other side of that story is the fact that Maliki was left by the US with a government rife with factions and individuals who represented not Iraq, but Western political and financial interests. One of the patterns to which Maliki’s accusers point as an example of his dictatorship is his purging of key figures in major Iraqi institutions. However, these same accusers never mention exactly who was purged, and why.

One of the principal examples of such purging was Maliki’s sacking of two key figures in the banking establishment in Iraq. Specifically, Maliki dismissed Sinan al-Shabibi, Governor of Iraq’s Central Bank, and Hussein al-Uzri, former head of the state-owned Trade Bank. These dismissals were reported as a power grab. However, for the most part, they fail to mention the critical fact that these two very powerful individuals in Iraq’s financial establishment are very close friends and associates of Ahmed Chalabi. This name should ring a bell for those who have followed the Iraq tragedy for these last twelve years; Chalabi was the darling of Bush, Cheney, and the neocons. A close political ally, Chalabi was originally envisioned by Cheney and Co. as the leader of the new Iraq, an Iraq which would be amenable to US political and corporate interests in the country.

Though Chalabi was rejected by the Iraqi people, and was never able to establish political power for himself at the time, he and his neocon friends were able to embed their people in Iraq’s banking institutions, thereby giving the US effective control over credit in the country. As has always been known, power over finances is de facto political power and authority. So, was Maliki seeking to consolidate all power to himself? Or was he attempting to rid Iraq’s banks of corrupt agents of Western finance capital who had been undemocratically put in place by precisely those same forces who eagerly championed the destruction of Iraq?

Another of Maliki’s grave crimes was taking on Western oil companies looking to make massive profits off of Iraq’s vast energy deposits. Perhaps the most well known instance occurred in 2012 when ExxonMobil signed an oil exploration deal with the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region in northern Iraq. Maliki rejected the validity of the deal, noting that any oil contracts must be negotiated with the central government in Baghdad, rather than Barzani’s US-aligned government in Arbil. Maliki’s spokesman noted at the time that:

Maliki views these deals as representing a very dangerous initiative that may lead to the outbreak of wars… [and] breaking up the unity of Iraq…Maliki is prepared to go to the highest levels for the sake of preserving the national wealth and the necessary transparency in investing the wealth of the Iraqis, especially oil… [He] sent a message to American President Barak [sic] Obama last week urging him to intervene to prevent ExxonMobil from going in this direction.

It is no secret that Maliki’s strong-willed resistance to this deal, in addition to his refusal to pay ExxonMobil upwards of $50 million to improve production at one major southern oil field, led directly to the oil company pulling out of the lucrative West Qurna-1 project. Essentially then, Maliki took on the very powerful oil corporations (BP is no friend of Maliki either), seeking to get a better deal for Iraq. It would be safe to assume that the endemic corruption in Iraq would have made it easier for Maliki and his associates to enrich themselves by skimming off the top and/or receiving payouts from other oil interests. However, this is secondary to the primary “crime” of challenging the hegemony of oil companies in Iraq. Doesn’t Maliki realize that the US fought a war in Iraq to protect and further the interests of oil companies, among others?

Undoubtedly, Maliki’s greatest sin in the eyes of US-NATO-Israel-GCC has been his steadfast support for Syria and Assad. Maliki refused to abandon Assad when the US-NATO war machine was gearing up to bomb Syria. He loudly proclaimed his support for Assad and his resistance to any attempts to coax and cajole Iraq into allying against him. In this way, Maliki affirmed the alliance of Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus-Hezbollah against the US-NATO-Israel-GCC axis of power, and in doing so put himself at the top of Washington’s enemies list.

In late 2013, Maliki, along with Assad and Iranian authorities, participated in continued negotiations over the proposed Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline, which would bring Iranian and Iraqi gas to the Mediterranean via Syria, thereby giving those countries direct, overland access to the European market. Naturally, this was seen as a direct challenge to US ally Qatar and its dominance of the Middle Eastern gas trade to Europe. It should be noted that it is no mere coincidence that the eruption of the war in Syria coincided perfectly with the initial negotiations over the proposed pipeline.

So, rather than a leader defending national interests and attempting to engage in independent economic development outside the hegemony of Western political and corporate powers, Maliki has been portrayed as a corrupt and brutal tyrant bent on destroying Sunnis, Kurds, and anyone else who stands in his way. Might it not have something to do with Maliki not being a willing puppet for a war on Syria?

Almost as an afterthought are still other reasons why Maliki has been demonized. He has purchased significant military hardware from Russia, including attack helicopters, rather than being solely reliant on US military assistance. Maliki allowed Iraqi Vice President Hashemi, a politician known to be close with Qatar and the US, to be indicted and tried for running an assassination-for-hire operation. Maliki moved to reorganize Iraqi political life by breaking some of the deliberately dysfunctional political institutions created by the US occupiers after the initial war. He sought to use loans and credit to rebuild some of the destroyed infrastructure. He refused to allow Shia politics to be the sole territory of the Sadrists and others. These and countless other actions obviously demonstrated to the US and its allies that “Maliki must go,” as they are so fond of saying.

Is the US Really Supporting Maliki?

One of the more pernicious aspects of the coverage of the conflict in Iraq has been the propagandistic talking point from both mainstream and some non-mainstream outlets that the US is “supporting” and “propping up” Maliki. Dozens of articles and interviews have appeared in recent weeks in which experts espouse the notion that the Obama administration is trying to keep Maliki in power. Despite flying in the face of both logic and the facts, this narrative has taken root in many quarters, and has become the basis upon which many have provided de facto support to ISIS/ISIL and the Sunni insurgents allied, however tenuously, with them.

It would seem that those who argue that the US wants to preserve Maliki’s position in Iraq have not been paying attention. Indeed, headlines such as “US leaders want Iraq’s Nouri al-Maliki to step down in return for US airstrikes on ISIS: Report” from the International Business Times, or “Iraq must form new government, Kerry warns in Baghdad” from the Financial Times, call into question that very assertion. In fact, it is not Maliki that the US is trying to preserve, it is its own influence in Iraq. This is the point that many so-called experts have utterly failed to grasp; Maliki is not doing what he’s told, so the US wants to put in his place someone who will. And they are using the ISIS/ISIL takeover as a convenient pretext for this sort of regime change.

And whose name keeps coming up in discussion about who the US might want to see replace Maliki? It’s none other than good old Ahmed Chalabi, the same puppet who Bush and Co. tried to install in the first place. Ayad Allawi, another Iraqi politician with close ties to the US, is also on the short list. So, two failed US political proxies are now being promoted as the “democratic” and “inclusive” future of Iraqi politics. It’s enough to make anyone laugh, or be sick.

It is also amusing to hear so-called experts discussing how the US has sent troops to Iraq to help Maliki. Such a superficial analysis reveals a complete lack of understanding of both military matters and the way in which the US operates abroad. The authorization for the deployment of 300 military personnel to Iraq is evidence not of an attempt to save Maliki, but to preserve certain key political, financial, and energy infrastructure for Western interests.

The US is not protecting Maliki, but protecting itself and its investments from Maliki, should he attempt to cling to power. Those troops have been protecting the US embassy, advising key figures in regards to securing the oil fields, and providing protection for foreign oil workers among others. This cannot be mistaken for military support for Maliki, unless of course it is the goal of those espousing this nonsense to convince the world that Maliki is the “US man in Iraq.”

Today Iraq is at war, and in danger of breaking apart. With Islamist militants and Sunni insurgents fighting a war against the government in Baghdad, the country is headed for total collapse and partition. But this war did not start with ISIS conquering Mosul. It did not start with Maliki consolidating power. It began before the last US troops ever left Iraq. It began when Maliki decided that he would not be cowed by US threats and diktats. It began the second Iraq tried to assert itself independently. And for this, Iraq is paying the ultimate price.

Eric Draitser is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City, he is the founder of StopImperialism.org and OP-ed columnist for RT, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”

By Eric Draitser

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

The Iranian “Smoke and Mirrors Threat” and Washington’s “Human Rights Card”

In a cycle of habit borne out repeatedly in the mainstream western media, demonization and fear mongering against Iran is picking up pace again in the face of attempts by the new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to rebuild relations with the west and work toward international cooperation. The techniques and methodologies used by the west in perpetuating the geopolitically-motivated, neo-imperialist, agenda against Iran often come across in the media as clumsy and awkward in their reasoning. Before delving into the hard geopolitical reality, a much needed word on the disingenuous leveraging of human-rights against countries such as Iran is critical.

Iran and the Western “Human Rights Card”

In a recent Fox News report, Iran’s human rights record is criticized by Benjamin Weinthal, a Berlin-based fellow of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). His arguments are employed to argue against the feasibility of pragmatic negotiations with Iran as according to his logic, Iran is not a regime “worthy” of practical negotiation with. To use the reported human right violations against religious minorities and Christians and particular as geopolitical leverage to argue against diplomacy and negotiation with Iran wreaks of compromised, corporate-financier motivation, especially when juxtaposed with the intimate collaboration of the United States and its allies with one of the most repressive regimes in the Middle East (and the world), Saudi Arabia.

While Iran is often berated for its short-comings, these short-comings pale in comparison to the atrocities perpetuated by the Saudis. In Saudi Arabia, no Jewish or Christian worship is allowed and possession of a Bible could warrant you various brutal punishments. Saudi Arabia has been notorious for rigid campaigns against Bible possession and religious symbols, especially in airport customs searches including the shredding of any Bibles found and in one case, harassing a nun who was passing through Jeddah on a transit flight.

Saudi Arabia, in cooperation with the United States, is currently promoting a sectarian-extremist-driven destabilization campaign in Syria whose byproduct has resulted in nightmarish lives for people across religious lines which can be described as nothing less than premeditated genocide with former CIA official Robert Baer predicting campaigns against Christians in Syria and Lebanon during an interview with Seymour Hersh for his excellent 2007 article, “The Redirection.”

What is rather ironic in light of western focus on Iran is that Baer stated that joint US-Saudi-Israeli machinations in Lebanon, which were generating radical Islamist groups, would necessitate the protection of Christians which would be done by Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah and the Shiites as opposed to the US and France. Iran is predominantly Shiite and while conservative Islam is the norm, this conservatism is distinct from the twisted inventions and atrocities of radical Wahabism in Saudi Arabia which serve as the hotbed of global Al Qaeda activity.

Let it not be forgotten that Saudi Arabia is the primary underwriter of Al Qaeda’s proliferation throughout Eurasia, done admittedly and particularly in line with western imperialist designs of isolating Iran and serving as geopolitical pawns. It is noted that the Taliban and the Wahabi fundamentalists that constitute its ranks and the ranks of extremists from Nigeria to the Philippines would not exist without Saudi financing done purposefully to create a twisted brand of Islam and produce a “Swiss-Army knife” to be used against the targets of western foreign policy such as Syria today and previously against Afghanistan during the 1980s; it has since formed the cornerstone of the fake “war on terror” driven by western neo-imperialist interests. The largest arms sale in U.S. history has been to Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia regularly conducts brutal executions through the means of hooded swordsmen including on religious charges of being accused of “sorcery and witchcraft” in the grimly-dubbed “Chop-Chop Square.” Women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia and foreign women cannot visit the country without being accompanied by a male guardian.  In addition to toeing the line of western corporate-financier geopolitical agendas in cooperation with Israel such as in Syria, the Saudi establishment interlocks with these interests as noted in points “6” and “7” in the article “Introducing the Gulf State Despots” by Tony Cartalucci.

Iran, which may have its shortcoming, has an unprecedented standard when compared to Saudi Arabia. Iranian Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians are guaranteed their own seats on the Iranian parliament in proportion to their population. Iranian Jews, roughly 30,000 in population, enjoy relatively peaceful lives in Iran with a Jewish hospital, two kosher restaurants in Tehran, 11 synagogues, many with Hebrew schools, and a Jewish library including 20,000 titles. Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued edits in the 1980s stating that Iran’s Jewish and Christian populations be “protected.” Many of these points are noted by Benjamin Schett’s article “Debunking Anti-Iran Propaganda” which conflict with the gravely austere picture painted by western media. This short documentary by Journeyman Pictures gives a candid picture of Jewish life in Iran.

It is often claimed that Iran promotes institutionalized anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial but Benjamin Schett explains why this is not true. Ahmadinejad has made accusations against the reliability of the Holocaust but this does NOT represent the position of the Iranian state or people whose state-media even broadcasted a popular, Hollywood-quality film commemorating the suffering of the Jews and featuring the story of Abdol Hossein Sardari, an Iranian diplomat who helped save Jews from the Holocaust by giving them false passports to flee Nazi-occupied France. Iran’s former Jewish Member of Parliament, Moris Motamed, has criticized Ahmadinejad for his statements on the Holocaust and even held a press conference to denounce those statements. However, such sentiments must not be seen as reflecting the entirety of the Iranian society as clearly is not the case.

Criticism against Israel is mainstream and expected but not because of any religious animosity towards the Jews, as Ahmadinejad himself stated in a speech in Esfahan cited by Schett, but rather because of the complicated political issues surrounding the Palestinian plight.

Benjamin Schett notes that it is impossible to give 100% insight of life as a religious minority in a religiously conservative country without being in that position oneself but unlike in Saudi Arabia, at least such minorities openly exist. Of course, such minorities must not settle for the bare minimum and as a westerner, I’m in the tradition of the equality for all. If and where any cases of rights violations exist, such as those noted in the original Fox News article by Benjamin Weinthal, they must be openly addressed but done so in a manner unlike the western media’s purpose which is to highlight certain facts, at the expense of others, and use any incident they can as propaganda fodder for the sake of western geopolitical objectives aimed at stifling peace and diplomacy, substituting it with war-mongering, and covering up the west and its assets’ own serial crimes against humanity.

Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD): Is it Really About Democracy?

Of particular interest in the Fox News article is that the author, Benjamin Weinthal, is listed as a fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), an organization with a vested interest in promoting western corporate- financier objectives around the world with human rights simply employed as an easily-leveraged cloak for naked imperialism. I will assume good faith on the part of Benjamin Wienthal as many people drawn into organizations and NGOs that served western subversion are drawn it by honest intentions which is something that imperialist systems exploit as they have in history. Nevertheless, the overall bulk and existence of the FDD cannot be casually excused when one gets an insight into the interests and networks propping it up. Tony Cartalucci in his excellent article, “The War on Terror is a Fraud”, explains the FDD:

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is a corporate and US State Department-funded policy institute that claims to be dedicated to promoting “pluralism, defending democratic values, and fighting the ideologies that threaten democracy.” It is decidedly “Neo-Conservative” and focuses almost exclusively on starting and maintaining wars at America’s expense.

FDD’s “executive team” includes James Woolsey and Clifford May, while its “leadership council” includes Bill Kristol – all signatories of a recent Foreign Policy Initiative letter addressed to House Republicans asking them to discard the UN mandate for NATO’s Libyan intervention and commit more support specifically for regime change. Acting Senator Joseph Lieberman also can be found on FDD’s “leadership council” and has been a chief proponent of war with Libya, as well as Syria and Iran, alongside John McCain. FDD has a myriad of publications expressing the elation of the “Neo-Conservative” establishment over current operations against Libya and the possible springboard the Libyan war serves toward US intervention in Syria and Iran. FDD’s only criticism of Obama is that more should be done, faster, and at a greater expense to America. Michael Ledeen, a “freedom scholar,” expresses this well in his article titled, “Lessons of Libya (and Syria, and, Some Day, Iran),” where he throws in his organization’s collective desire to intervene in both Syria and Iran, for good measure.

The Atlantic article, “Al-Qaeda Is Winning,” written by FDD “senior fellow” Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, expresses the true contempt these individuals have toward their audience. In this piece reflecting on the last 10 years of the “War on Terror,” Gartenstein-Ross claims that Al Qaeda’s ability to use cheap means to provoke the United States into a multi-billion dollar defense is rendering an Al Qaeda victory through a “strategy of a thousand cuts.” Of course, the x-ray machines and other security apparatuses being installed across the United States and the tremendous amount of money being used to sustain combat operations around the world “hunting terrorists,” doesn’t go into a black hole. Instead, it goes into the pockets of the very people funding the work of Mr. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and his peers throughout his and other US and British think-tanks.

Those who have read my recent article on Libya will note the entirely illegitimate nature of the NATO campaign against Libya and the intellectually bankrupt mentality of those who shamefully perpetuate its talking-points. The FDD, at the top of the organization, is not merely concerned with human rights themselves but rather leveraging such concerns for their own sake, something the US government and the corporate-financier interests it represents have clearly done before with regards to China. It should be noted that the FDD is just one element in the neo-imperialist racket. Other corporate-financier, “globalist” think-tanks, who are the true underwriters of western policy, includes the Council on Foreign Relations, Chatham House, the International Crisis Group, and the Brookings Institute. In “Naming Names: Your Real Government”, Tony Cartalucci points out who truly controls the United States/NATO and lists the prominent individuals and corporations financing and directing them.

Iran and the Western Geopolitical Struggle

The Brookings Institution is of particular concern among these think-tanks as it has been the primary facilitator in the drive for war against Iran founded on distortion and geopolitically-motivated propaganda. Contrary to media reports portraying Iran as an immediate, existential threat to US and Israeli security, the Brookings Institute released a policy report that was basically a handbook for overthrowing nations titled Which Path to Persia? (.PDF). It was written by six prominent analysts within establishment circles, including Kenneth Pollack, admitting that Iran poses not a threat to the survival of the United States and Israel’s security but their collective regional and geopolitical hegemony and interests across the region. It was noted that Iran was playing a strategy of firmness and even aggressiveness but not recklessness in combating western hegemony and imperialism as can be seen in its recent economic endeavors in the pipeline and gas politics of the region. It was also noted that Iran was deliberately avoiding a conflagration with the west and that any possible nuclear weapons capability for Iran (which is noted as unconfirmed and nonexistent in other reports) would be used as a deterrence for attack and protecting regional ambitions Iran has for the region (pg. 24-25).

This is reconfirmed by the recent 2013 RAND Corporation report Iran After the Bomb which while noting that no evidence exists that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons according to the US intelligence community, envisions a post-nuclear scenario of Iran. RAND is another “globalist” think-tank that hosts compromised interests but manages to give an honest synopsis of the Iranian reality. It is also noted that Iran’s “supreme leader” Ayatollah Khamenei has issued religious decrees labeling nuclear weapons as “against Islamic principles.” Contrary to recent reports circulation by MEMRI TV and mainstream media, these fatwas are not fake and actually do exist. And contrary to some critics, they are not an example of taqiyya (deception) as Juan Cole notes. One thing that is very revealing is the following statement by RAND which sums up their insightful report:

The Islamic Republic [of Iran] is a revisionist state that seeks to undermine what it perceives to be the American-dominated order in the Middle East. However, it does not have territorial ambitions and does not seek to invade, conquer, or occupy other nations. Its chief military aim is to deter a U.S. and/or Israeli military attack while it undermines American allies in the Middle East [which includes the economic interests of the totalitarian kingdoms of Saudi Arabia and Qatar whose atrocities in human rights dwarfs anything Iran is guilty of]… Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons will lead to greater tension between the Shi’a theocracy and the conservative Sunni monarchies [Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc.] However, Iran is unlikely to use nuclear weapons against other Muslim countries…The Islamic Republic views Israel in ideological terms. However, it is very unlikely that Iran would use nuclear weapons against Israel, given the latter’s overwhelming conventional and nuclear military superiority. (pg. vii)

The Brookings Institution not only enumerates transparently the similar points that Iran is not an existential threat but goes further to enumerate a list of strategies for US provocations against Iran to initiate a war that, according to the report, Iran does not want. It is even noted that an Iranian retaliation in the case of American airstrikes would not be inevitable and that Iran may deliberately refrain from retaliation in order to strategically “play the victim” (pg. 84-85, 95) Let it not be forgotten how the US and Britain staged the CIA “Operation Ajax” in 1953 to oust the democratically-elected Iranian president Mohammad Mosaddegh, who nationalized the country’s oil, in favor of the pro-American Shah who ruled as a brutal dictator. Similar plans for regime change are enumerated in the Brookings Institute report where it is admitted that the opposition “Green Movement” in 2009 was orchestrated by the US government through “civil society and NGOs” in order to provoke Iranian belligerence through regime change operations, capitalizing on internal dissent. This is not to deny any legitimate aspirations and calls for reform in Iran which are prevalent among student groups but merely to point out how such ambitions are co-opted and used by western interests for their own agenda (103-105, 109-110). See this excellent summary of all these critical points.

Other means proposed included playing upon sectarian and ethnic divisions inside Iran to destabilize the country and even funding radical Sunni militant groups, specifically the MEK, which has killed Americans in the past and is labeled by the U.S. state department as a “foreign terrorist organization”. Its ideology is described by analysts as radical “left-wing” Islamic-Marxism which makes it interesting to consider the US plans to fully employ this group as political assets. MEK has also collaborated with Saddam Hussein’s forces in guerilla warfare against Iran in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s (113, 117-118). The group is against the dominant Iranian establishment and it is noted that the US has worked covertly with them in the past and that in order to work overtly with them, the group had to be removed from the terrorist list (118).  Regarding the MEK on pages 117-118, Brookings states:

“Perhaps the most prominent (and certainly the most controversial) opposition group that has attracted attention as a potential U.S. proxy is the NCRI (National Council of Resistance of Iran), the political movement established by the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq). Critics believe the group to be undemocratic and unpopular, and indeed anti-American.

In contrast, the group’s champions contend that the movement’s long-standing opposition to the Iranian regime and record of successful attacks on and intelligence-gathering operations against the regime make it worthy of U.S. support. They also argue that the group is no longer anti-American and question the merit of earlier accusations. Raymond Tanter, one of the group’s supporters in the United States, contends that the MEK and the NCRI are allies for regime change in Tehran and also act as a useful proxy for gathering intelligence. The MEK’s greatest intelligence coup was the provision of intelligence in 2002 that led to the discovery of a secret site in Iran for enriching uranium.

Despite its defenders’ claims, the MEK remains on the U.S. government list of foreign terrorist organizations. In the 1970s, the group killed three U.S. officers and three civilian contractors in Iran. During the 1979-1980 hostage crisis, the group praised the decision to take America hostages and Elaine Sciolino reported that while group leaders publicly condemned the 9/11 attacks, within the group celebrations were widespread.

Undeniably, the group has conducted terrorist attacks—often excused by the MEK’s advocates because they are directed against the Iranian government. For example, in 1981, the group bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, which was then the clerical leadership’s main political organization, killing an estimated 70 senior officials. More recently, the group has claimed credit for over a dozen mortar attacks, assassinations, and other assaults on Iranian civilian and military targets between 1998 and 2001. At the very least, to work more closely with the group (at least in an overt manner), Washington would need to remove it from the list of foreign terrorist organizations.”

The compounded criminality of western and Israeli collaboration with MEK is emphasized here. It should be noted that the MEK has recently been removed from the US list of terrorist organizations as part of the next phase of using them as a proxy. MEK claims to have killed 40,000 Iranians in the past and has been trained on U.S. soil in a secret base in Nevada, published on the Huffington Post and cited here by Kurt Nimmo in an excellent and well-sourced article emphasizing the coordinated western agenda against Iran.

In culminating these abhorrent proposals, Brookings further notes the option of a military invasion and conventional war against Iran if the above proposals failed to accomplish western interests. This is the most alarming option especially in context to the following admission:

If the United States were to decide that to garner greater international support, galvanize U.S. domestic support, and/or provide a legal justification for an invasion, it would be best to wait for an Iranian provocation, then the time frame for an invasion might stretch out indefinitely. ..However, since it would be up to Iran to make the provocative move, which Iran has been wary of doing most times in the past, the United States would never know for sure when it would get the requisite Iranian provocation. In fact, it might never come at all (65)… it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes [as a catalyst for an invasion] before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it (85).

In all this certified criminality, which has obviously been at play even as the report was being published in 2009, it must not be forgotten that the Brookings Institution is of, for, and by big business and their collective agenda of integrating Iran into their international consensus and exploiting its 76 million population for their unipolar order. This is opposed to Iran’s attempts to foster national self-sufficiency and develop ties with nations strategic to western interests including India, Thailand, China, and Russia. Brookings Institution is funded by the likes of the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, The Carnegie Foundation, Goldman Sachs, and the Carlyle Group among others; their report even includes a special acknowledgement of financial support from the Smith Richardson Foundation upon which Zbigniew Brzezinski sits as an active governor as pointed out by Tony Cartalucci and easily verifiable in the report’s preface.

Such international criminality is magnified when Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh revealed in his article “Preparing the Battlefield” that the U.S. is cooperating with their anti-Iranian terrorist asset, Saudi Arabia, in order to fund radical, Al Qaeda-linked, Sunni-groups like the Jundallah to destabilize and destroy Iran as a viable geopolitical opponent. Al Qaeda, directed by the Saudis in cooperation with western geopolitical objectives, has been leveraged as a “Swiss army knife of destabilization” across the Middle East in the fake “war on terror” as Seymour Hersh exposed in another report  titled “The Redirection”  published in 2007. In that report, Hersh reveals that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have been working since 2007 to destabilize Syria and Lebanon with a wave of sectarian-extremists currently being marketed in the media as a “political uprising” and a “revolution”. This is different from the legitimate internal political opposition in Syria that has collaborated with the Syrian government in a reform initiative and maintains distinctiveness from the extremist and terrorist elements that clearly constitute the bulk of the “Syrian rebels” supported by the west. In his report, Seymour Hersh states:

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda…[Saudi Arabia’s Prince] Bandar and other Saudis have assured the White House that “they will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis [Al Qaeda] to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.

There is no doubt that there is an anti-Iranian proxy conflict being waged in Syria by a joint US-Saudi-Israeli effort to further the Wall Street-London geopolitical consensus. Undermining and destabilizing Syria would further isolate Iran and perpetuate the united geopolitical front against Iran that has been the objective of western politicians and think-tanks. Iran would ultimately serve as a vital door into central Asia and a springboard against Russia and China who are the ultimate target for absorption within the western design of a unipolar world order. Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who is an active agent in the networks of these machinations, makes it no secret in his book The Grand Chessboard that U.S. “global pre-eminence” (a euphemism for Wall Street/London geopolitical domination and a unipolar world order) is the agenda along with American influence in central Asia to which Iran is a doorway. Russian President Vladimir Putin has also spoken of hegemonic ambitions on the part of the west to establish a unipolar order at a 2007 Munich conference.

In addition to this evidence of open subversion, it must be noted that Clinton Bastin, former director of US nuclear weapons production programs, has sent an open letter to President Obama in December 2011 claiming that there is no nuclear weapons threat from Iran, stating the following on Iran’s nuclear weapons program:

The ultimate product of Iran’s gas centrifuge facilities would be highly enriched uranium hexafluoride, a gas that cannot be used to make a weapon. Converting the gas to metal, fabricating components and assembling them with high explosives using  dangerous and difficult technology that has never been used in Iran would take many years after a diversion of three tons of low enriched uranium gas from fully safeguarded inventories. The resulting weapon, if intended for delivery by missile, would have a yield equivalent to that of a kiloton of conventional high explosives.

As warmongering against Iran is expected to drastically pick up pace as western designs for domination across the Middle East show increasing signs of faltering, it is absolutely critical to be educated on these matters in order to undermine and extinguish the effects of the media propaganda echo-chamber. This is not to deny any human rights accusations against Iran altogether but one must guard themselves from being misguided and swayed by disingenuous corporate-financier, globalist interests seeking to expand their empire. It is imperative for people around the world to recognize the corporations and institutions perpetuating systematic atrocities and genocide across the planet and realize that once they eliminate the sovereignty of other countries, they will then turn their attention fully to the people within their own borders in the west.

A real revolution will come by boycotting the degenerate corporations and financier interests seeking to enslave humanity and building up our own communities to create a world order in our own image and not in the image of Wall Street and London.

Sam Muhho is a student of history and an advocate for anti-imperialism and anti-globalism. He can be reached at smuhho1@gmail.com

and runs the Facebook page “Globalist Watch” at facebook.com/gwatch1776 in order to explain the reality at play in global affairs.

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

American Jounralist: MKO engaged in violence against innocent civilians

The U.S. and Israel have made a Joke of the United Nations Security Council

Glenn Greenwald is a prominent American journalist, author, lawyer and blogger. His writings Glenn Greenwaldand articles have appeared on several newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The American Conservative, The National Interest and In These Times. Greenwald has received different awards including the first Izzy Award for independent journalism in 2009, and the 2010 Online Journalism Award for Best Commentary.

Until a few months ago, he was a columnist and blogger for Salon.com, but he left his job there and continued cooperating with The Guardian newspaper which he has been contributing to since June 2011.

Greenwald has published four books which include “How Would a Patriot Act?” and “A Tragic Legacy.” A progressive journalist, Glenn Greenwald is an outspoken critic of the U.S. military expeditions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and its war threats against Iran.

He has written extensively on the underground operations taken by Israel and the United States to empower and finance the exiled Iranian terrorist group MKO which has declared as one of its key objectives the overthrowing of Iranian government. With regards to the U.S. Department of State’s decision in taking the name of MKO off the list of foreign terrorist organizations, he says: “[t]his shows that anything the United States government says about terrorism and really the whole concept of terrorism itself should be viewed as nothing more than a ridiculous joke. MKO is a classic group that is a terrorist organization. They have engaged in violence against innocent civilians, they have devoted themselves to overthrow a government using violence and there are credible reports that they are the ones who are working with Israelis and are behind the assassination of civilian scientists in Iran that included the shooting of not only the scientists, but also in two cases their wives.”

I had the opportunity to talk to Glenn Greenwald for an exclusive interview which was originally appeared in Persian on Tasnim News Agency. What follows is the full text of my interview with Glenn Greenwald in which we discussed a variety of topics pertaining to the international political and military developments.

Q: What do you think about President Obama administration’s plans for shaping a new Middle East based on the national interests of the United States and dominating the vast oil reserves of these countries?

A: A crucial part of the Obama administration’s strategy and the strategies of all the prior administrations in the United States was to basically put into place dictatorships in the Muslim world that would keep the population suppressed and serve the interests of the U.S. government, particularly in the countries with remarkable oil and energy resources. So you see the relationships the United States has with the [Persian] Gulf states such as Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. These are the governments which suppress their population, but serve as loyal allies of the United States and make oil available to the U.S. and the Obama administration continues supporting them.

Q: In the recent months, we have been witness to the continued killing of the pro-democracy protesters and imprisonment of political activists in Bahrain. However, the U.S. government hasn’t taken any practical steps to stop bloodshed and persuade the Al Khalifa regime to stop using force and violence. What’s your idea in this regard?

A: Well, this is a perfect example of what I was describing. The governments which I named and the Bahraini government are unbelievably oppressive. They murder protesters who are demonstrating peacefully, put people in prison and torture them and the Obama administration does nothing about that and continues to strengthen that regime through financing it and even sending it a lot of arms, while the regime is cracking down on the citizens in such a brutal way. The reason the U.S. government supports Bahrain is that the regime allows the U.S. to maintain a very large fleet of naval resources off the coast of Bahrain that can be used to threaten Iran and that generally allows the U.S. government to dominate the [Persian] Gulf region, and so in extreme for the regime in Bahrain, that is basically the puppet and client government of the United States, the U.S. government supports the regime as it murders its own citizens and suppresses of all forms of freedoms. And Bahrain is a perfect example of the strategy the Obama administration has adopted to just dominate the region militarily and help the dictators of the region suppress their populations.

Q: One of the electoral promises of President Obama was to close the Guantanamo bay detention facility within one year after being elected. However, on January 7, 2011, he signed the 2011 Defense Authorization Bill which placed restrictions on the transferring of detainees to the U.S. or other countries, thus impeding the closure of the underground detention camp. What’s your take on that?

A: The excuse the Obama administration gave was that the people in the Congress refused to allow Obama to close down Guantanamo. But the truth is that from the beginning, Obama’s plan was to keep the system of Guantanamo in place and transfer the detainees to the U.S. while people from all around the Muslim world still are allowed to remain in prison without charges of any kind and without due processes at any time. But to remove them from Guantanamo and placing them in a new prison inside the United States would only add some sort of a symbolic aspect to it. So it was always the Obama administration’s plan to keep the Guantanamo open. They simply wanted to move it, not to close it. And this Defense Authorization Bill which you ask about was passed in December 2010 and January 2011 is a sort of legislation that empowers the president whoever he wants on accusations of terrorism, without having to charge that person with any crime, without having to in any way offer the person the opportunity to contest the allegations or present compelling evidence, and President Obama has signed a law that actually strengthened this system of indefinite lawless detention.

Q: What’s your perspective on the U.S. drone attacks on Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia and its violation of Iran’s airspace last year in December 2011 and in the last week?

A: The drone attacks on Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia have repeatedly killed all sorts of innocent civilians; women, children and innocent men, and the Obama administration simply believes that it has the right to kill anyone it wants anywhere in the world regardless of who dies, and this is the policy that the Obama administration has actually pursued even more aggressively than the Bush administration and the drone attacks have increased significantly under President Obama. He has used drones on six different Muslim countries; Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. I should point out that President Obama has extremely aggressive beliefs that in the name of combating terrorism, he can kill whoever he wants or attack anyone he wants without regard to any nation’s sovereignty. The ironic part about that is that it’s precisely the drone attacks which cause terrorism in the first place.

The reason why there are so many people in the world, especially in the Muslim world want to attack the United States is precisely because they watch on a regular basis the United States attacking their countries, killing their children, innocent men and women and they come to the conclusion that the only way to stop this is by having the violence go both ways. The drone attacks not only kill innocent people, but they make the problem of terrorism far worse. As far as the drones in Iran are concerned, Iran has the absolute right, like any other country does, to take down surveillance instruments that fly over their land without permission. What strikes me is the way this is reported and discussed here in the United States, and that is when Iran successfully shoots down or disables a U.S. drone that has entered its airspace, it’s talked of as if it’s some sort of aggressive action on the side of the Iranian government.

But of course if Iran ever sent a drone anywhere near the airspace of the United States, let alone into the United States, not only that drone would be immediately shot down, but everyone in the United States would talk of it as if it was a horrible act of war and would probably result in bombs being dropped on Iran in retaliation. So you see here this extreme double standard that the United States thinks that it has the right to send drones on Iran’s airspace, but nobody in the United States and almost nobody would think that Iran would have the right to do the same to the United States.

Q: The United States has always called itself a champion of combating terrorism and frequently criticizes other countries for their alleged sponsorship of terrorist groups. But in a controversial decision, they took the name of Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization off the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, and there’s credible evidence showing that Washington has been supporting MKO in its terrorist operations, both militarily and financially. Isn’t this a hypocritical approach in dealing with the issue of terrorism?

A: This shows that anything the United States government says about terrorism and really the whole concept of terrorism itself should be viewed as nothing more than a ridiculous joke. MKO is a classic group that is a terrorist organization. They have engaged in violence against innocent civilians, they have devoted themselves to overthrow a government using violence and there are credible reports that they are the ones who are working with Israelis and are behind the assassination of civilian scientists in Iran that included the shooting of not only the scientists, but also in two cases their wives. And because this group has paid so many influential politicians in the United States and also because this group now carries out terrorist operations on behalf of Israel and the United States in promotion of the interests of Israel and the United States, they have been removed from the list of terrorist organizations by the Obama administration and this really shows that the United States is not against terrorism.

The U.S. government uses terrorism continuously to serve its interests. The United States government says that it is against terrorism only because terrorism is the word that applies to anybody who opposes or impedes the agenda of the United States, and the willingness to remove the name of MKO from the list of terrorist organizations even though they are committed to the use of violence and killing of Iranian officials proves how worthless the United States’ claims about terrorism are.

Q: What do you think about the humanitarian impacts of the anti-Iranian sanctions? In one of your articles, you alluded to some facts regarding the scarcity of foodstuff and other goods in Iran as a result of the sanctions. I’ll add the medicine, travel restrictions and unsafe aviation fleet to your list. Isn’t it some sort of violation of human rights by the United States?

A: Of course. One of the worst crimes that the United States has committed over the last several decades was the sanctions regime that it imposed on Iraq which killed several hundred thousands of children, deprived people of basic food and medicine and strengthened Saddam Hussein by making everybody in the country poor and dependent on him. This is now repeating itself in Iran, not to the same extent yet but it has its own effects where there are poor Iranian children who are sick and unable to get medicine and are dying as a result. Obviously the American officials openly brag about the destruction of Iranian economy and the collapse of Iranian currency which they are causing with their sanctions regime, and you see it’s a kind of collective punishment to terrorize the Iranian people for the alleged crimes of their government; the kinds of crimes that the United States has condemned the other countries for committing for many decades. So absolutely the sanctions regime which the United States is leading is really an act of war and a way of making Iranians and innocent civilians suffer greatly, and absolutely a kind of collective punishment that should be judged by the decent people.

Q: What’s your idea about the U.S. mainstream media’s portrayal of the developments in the Middle East and especially Iran? They don’t allow the citizens to be aware of the fact that, for example, the economic sanctions are paralyzing the daily life of ordinary Iranian citizens, as they did with regards to the Iraqi people. Why do the American media want to leave their people in ignorance and unawareness?

A: The role of the U.S. media in general is to serve the interests of the U.S. government. They claim that we have a free media, but for a lot of different reasons, these media are owned by the corporations and these corporations are very well to the U.S. government. And so part of what any government wants to do when it wants to be aggressive on other countries is to dehumanize their population; to depict them in very simplistic ways. What the U.S. media generally show of Iran is nothing more than the claims that they have evil, extremist leaders and almost never talk of the complexities of Iran and tens of millions of Iranian citizens who produce a complicated and difficult to caricature society.

Q: How do you perceive the relationship between Obama and the Israeli lobby? How much influence has the Israeli lobby had on Obama and what role has it played in the reelection of Obama? Do you think that Obama was at odds with Netanyahu on such cases as settlement constructions, or they were simply superficial conflicts and they were practically close allies?

A: Any differences between Obama and Netanyahu are, as you said, superficial and symbolic and never resulted in meaningful action. If you turn to Israelis, they will tell you that the relationship between the United States and Israel under Obama is closer than it has ever been under any prior U.S. President. We saw that with the Israeli attack on Gaza, the Obama administration 100 percent justified and stood behind Israel, and just in the two recent votes in the United Nations, one on Palestinian statehood and the other that demanded Israel to open its nuclear stockpile to inspection, the United States sided with Israel and isolated itself in almost the entire world.

So you have this extremely loyal relationship between Obama and Israelis including Netanyahu, and it’s in large part because as many prominent American columnists including Jewish and pro-Israel commentators have observed there’s a very strong pro-Israeli lobby in the United States which is very well-funded and very powerful and that basically keeps both the political parties completely on the side of Israel in every single controversy or dispute, even when doing so harms the United States, they force both political parties to choose loyalty to Israel over the interests of the United States and as a result, neither political party is able, even if they want to, to in any meaningful way pressure the Israelis or challenge them.

And despite all the loyalty that the United States has to Israel, Israelis continue to pursue policies that the United States doesn’t want them to do, like the expansion of settlements in the West Bank and yet the United States in unwilling to punish them or sanction them because of the domestic political pressures.

Q: Iran has assumed the three-year presidency of the Non-Aligned Movement in the 16th summit of the organization which was held in Tehran in August 2012. What’s your viewpoint regarding the importance of this summit for Iran which the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi along with several leaders from across the world attended?

A: I think it’s significant because one of the main objectives of Israel and the United States was to depict Iran as isolated from the rest of the world. But what we are seeing is that to some extent, they are Israel and the United States that are increasingly being isolated from the rest of the world. And the refusal of so many countries in denouncing Israel and the United States’ calls for not attending the summit and otherwise isolating the Iranian government is very significant in that regard as are the two votes that just took place in the UN that overwhelmingly sided against Israel. So I think the Israelis have become their own worst enemies through their extreme pursuance of the ideological vision, their refusal to compromise, their expansion of settlements that are illegal and their use of violence and aggression have alienated a huge part of the world, much more than Iran has, and if there’s anyone in the danger of isolation, I think it’s Israel.

Q: And finally, what’s your viewpoint regarding Israel’s aggressive war rhetoric against Iran and its continued threats of using force against Iran? These war threats clearly violate the UN Charter, but the Security Council hasn’t taken any practical steps to criticize and punish Israel for its illegal behavior. What’s your take on that?

A: Well, I think that UN Security Council’s enforcement of those roles is practically impossible because almost everybody knows that the United States will veto any resolution to condemn Israel for its use of those threats. It’s also the case that many countries that are in the Security Council, mostly the United States, but also Russia and China also use threats against other countries in violation of the UN Charter, so everyone is a little bit afraid of punishing Israel for violating rules that those countries themselves like to violate, but it’s really the case that the United States and Israel have made a joke of the UN Charter and continuously threaten Iran to use military force against Iran, to bomb Iran, to keep all options on the table including a military strike, and this is a clear violation of the UN Charter and everything that it was intended to stand for. As long as the U.S. has the veto power, the Security Council will be completely unable to act against Israel’s violation of the UN Charter.

By Glenn Greenwald and Kourosh Ziabari

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

US “Delisting” of Terror Network: Washington overtly supports the MEK

In a flagrant show of hostility toward the Iranian nation and a clear exercise of double standards in dealing with international terrorism, the U.S. Department of State has just removed the name of Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO) from its list of foreign terrorist organizations. MKO which was established on September 5, 1965 is a terrorist cult which assisted Saddam Hussein in the 1980s war with Iran and killed more than 40,000 innocent Iranian civilians. It’s also responsible for the assassination of several high-ranking Iranian officials in the first years of the Islamic Revolution and also 5 Iranian nuclear scientists since 2010.

The U.S. government claimed that MKO has not been involved in any terrorist operation in the past 10 years and thus its designation as a foreign terrorist organization should be revoked. This hostile decision by the U.S. government is obviously an attempt aimed at putting more pressure on Iran over its nuclear program with the final objective of persuading Iran to make political concessions. However, the high-ranking MKO officials have constantly declared that their final objective is a regime change in Iran. The Council of the European Union had removed the name of MKO from the EU’s list of terrorist organizations in 2009.

In order to delve on the removal of MKO’s name from the list of foreign terrorist organizations by the U.S. Department of State and its underlying reasons, Iran Review conducted an interview with American journalist and researcher Tony Caralucci.

Tony Cartalucci, is an independent geopolitical researcher based in Bangkok, Thailand. He maintains the Land Destroyer Report blog and is regularly republished across the alternative media. His work has also appeared translated in newspapers from Europe and the Middle East, to Asia and South America. He is currently co-authoring a book with geopolitical analyst and photographer Nile Bowie, titled, “Subverting Syria”.

Cartalucci is one of the informed American sources about the underground activities of the MKO and has written an elaborate article in this regard for the Global Research. What follows is the text of Iran Review’s interview with Tony Cartalucci which was conducted a few days after the U.S. delisted MKO and provoked anger and astonishment across Iran.

Q: Tony Cartalucci, please tell us about the proofs and evidence which are available and attest that the United States and Israel have been funding, equipping and supporting MKO in its anti-Iran operations. I think Seymour Hersh and Glenn Greenwald have extensively written in this regard. Am I right?

A: I am most familiar with Seymour Hersh’s reports. Seymour Hersh, citing those directly involved in U.S. programs to fund, arm, provide intelligence and even training to MKO terrorists, has reported extensively on the group over the years. In 2008, he published an article titled, “Preparing the Battlefield,” and revealed that MKO, still on the U.S. State Department Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list at the time, was receiving “arms and intelligence, directly or indirectly from the United States.” In a 2012 article Hersh published, titled, “Our Men in Iran?” he reveals that MKO terrorists were actually trained inside the United States as far back as 2002.

Hersh’s 2012 article also reveals that MKO terrorists have been working with Israel in carrying out their attacks within Iran, meaning that while Israel now attempts to convince the world that Iran poses a threat to its existence, Israel itself has been violating the security of Iran for over a decade, carrying out attacks that have killed Iranians and destroyed Iranian infrastructure.

Similar admissions have been made in articles published by the British press. One article from the Daily Mail titled “Mossad Training Terrorists to Kill Iran’s Nuclear Scientists, U.S. Officials Claim,” states that U.S. officials “confirmed” that Israel was behind the MKO terrorists that killed several of Iran’s nuclear scientists.

But perhaps the most damning evidence of all, comes from U.S. policy makers themselves, particularly from within the Fortune 500 funded Brookings Institution in their 2009 report, “Which Path to Persia?” where they fully admit MKO is a terrorist organization. Brookings policy makers stated explicitly that “undeniably, the group has conducted terrorist attacks,” yet MKO was still being considered as a viable “potential U.S. proxy.” Brookings added that, “to work more closely with the group (at least in an overt manner), Washington would need to remove it from the list of foreign terrorist organizations.” And that is just what U.S. politicians, former U.S. military and intelligence officers, and policy makers set out to do, lobby to get MKO delisted from the U.S. State Department’s FTO list.

At one point, during the closing phases of America’s occupation of Iraq, the U.S. literally handed over one of its military bases, “Camp Liberty,” to MKO. The U.S. State Department played a leading role in organizing this handover, again, despite the U.S. State Department itself having the militant group listed on its own foreign terrorist list.

There is no doubt that the United States was for over a decade, using a listed-terrorist organization as an armed proxy against the nation of Iran as part of a wider strategy to destabilize, manipulate, and terrorize its population. This was all done in direct violation of U.S. and international anti-terror laws and understandings. Now that MKO is delisted, we can only expect this support and MKO operations to expand.

Q: What’s your assessment of the U.S. Department of State taking MKO off the list of foreign terrorist organizations? Will this decision help the MKO militants to foster and promote their terrorist operations across Iran and further their plans of destabilizing Iran under the guise of a civilian, peaceful organization?

A: The sole purpose of the U.S. State Department delisting MKO was not because the organization has “reformed” itself in any way or abandoned its terroristic posture, but specifically for the U.S. to foster and promote their terrorist operations across Iran in a more overt manner, just as was prescribed by Brookings policy makers. It was the fulfillment of just one of many long-planned steps toward further destabilizing Iran.

That it occurred during the presidential administration of Barack Obama is important – it illustrates that the West’s agenda is singular and continuous, independent of elections and the alleged political ideologies of sitting presidents. What began as part of the Bush “War on Terror” was carried out to completion under Obama, with the explicit support of his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. That policy seems to manifest itself first in corporate-financier funded think tanks like Brookings before being rubber stamped by politicians and sold to the public by the media, gives us a clearer picture of the West’s true power structure and helps us understand better what that true power structure has in store for Iran in the future.

In regards to how MKO will be portrayed to the public, it is unlikely that the organization will exist under the guise of a “civilian, peaceful organization,” but rather will continue a more covert campaign of violence and subversion inside Iran and along its peripheries. The West, because MKO is now delisted, can simply be more liberal in regards to funding and arming it, but will do so still very much out of the view of an easily distracted American public.

If and when the West succeeds at triggering wide scale unrest and/or violence within Iran itself, MKO may be introduced as an armed “pro-democracy” movement just as terrorists operating in Syria have been by the West. MKO’s Paris-based political wing will then be merged into a Western stable of “transitional leaders,” just as has been set up during the Western destabilization of Libya and Syria.

Q: It was on the reports that MKO had invested a great amount of money in lobbying efforts to convince the U.S. government to remove its name from the list of terrorist organizations. Many high-ranking U.S. officials, including the governors of different states, Congressmen and former CIA officials had also supported their bid. Would you please explain more about this?

A: I believe the story of the MKO paying out large amounts of cash to U.S. politicians, former military officers, and lobbyists was an attempt to conceal what is in reality a decades-long conspiracy to use the group as an armed proxy against Iran. By portraying MKO’s American lobbyists as merely financially motivated, the true nature of their duplicity and betrayal to the American people, as well as their true motives, have been obfuscated. Of course, it is the United States that is funding MKO in the first place. Are we then expected to believe they are taking this money and sending it right back to America to lobby for their delisting? Of course not, it was a combination of theater and formalities to preserve in the eyes of stakeholders in the West’s international order, a semblance of “rule of law.”

What many may not know about MKO’s American lobbyists is that many of these men have been the most vocal proponents of the “War on Terror.” This includes former New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani, former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, Howard Dean, Ed Rendell, former FBI director Louis Freeh, retired U.S. Army General Wesley Clark, Lee Hamilton who in fact chaired the 9/11 Commission, and finally, former U.S. Marine Corps Commandant and former-National Security Adviser to President Obama, General James Jones.

It is difficult to fathom why these men, who have built their political careers on decrying terrorism, would come out to support MKO, especially Generals Clark and Jones, when considering MKO has killed U.S. citizens, including 3 high ranking U.S. military officers. MKO had also attempted to kidnap a U.S. ambassador and attempted to assassinate a U.S. Air Force brigadier general.

While one might claim MKO has reformed their ways, even Brookings policy makers seeking to further utilize the organization recognized that they are undoubtedly still involved in terrorism. Such overt, reckless abandonment of even the semblance of “rule of law,” with the U.S. State Department, former civilian and military leaders all brazenly violating their own nation’s laws while simultaneously charged with upholding them, threatens to plunge the entire nation into a crisis of credibility – one that seems to already be having a negative, impeding effect on Western foreign and domestic policy.

Despite America’s attempt at window dressing, with the lobbying and the official “delisting” of MKO, what we have left is still an alleged “Western democracy” funding, arming, and encouraging a terrorist organization.

Q: The U.S. Department of State claimed that the Mujahedin-e-Khalq have not been involved in terrorist operations during the past 10 years. Is this true? Many Iranians firmly believe that the hands of MKO are stained with the blood of five Iranian nuclear scientists in the past two years. Why has the U.S. government ignored and overlooked these atrocities?

A: If the U.S. State Department has claimed MKO has not been involved in terrorist operations during the past 10 years, it may be worth investigating the most recent definition of what the U.S. government claims “terrorist operations” are.

For example, the US State Department’s criteria for listing a group as a terrorist organization now states that the organization must, among other things, threaten the security of U.S. nationals or the national security of the United States. In the past 10 years, MKO does not appear to have attacked any U.S. targets, though, according to the U.S. government’s own definition of what constitutes terrorist activity, MKO is still most certainly engaged in terrorist operations against other nations. Again, U.S. policy makers themselves not only concede this fact, but seek to delist MKO specifically so it can expand its terrorist operations. U.S. officials have openly admitted that MKO, and indeed, even Israel, were both behind the assassinations of Iran’s scientists.

Clearly U.S. policy is underpinned by law written entirely for convenience, free of any enduring, objective principle of justice. These laws betray absolutely the spirit in which the vast majority of Americans believe they were written in when they were first passed. This convenient legal circumvention of America’s principles says a lot about the current state of so-called Western “democracy” we are meant to believe is a morally superior standard to which the entire world must be held.

Q: Doesn’t the decision made by the U.S. government show some kind of a duplicitous and hypocritical approach toward the issue of terrorism? After all, there’s credible evidence showing that MKO has been involved in several assassination attempts and other violent actions. How does Washington justify this move?

A: Washington, for the time being is not really trying to justify this move, but on the most superficial level, at least publicly. Privately, the corporate-financier interests that dictate Washington’s policy have long since justified it as a simple matter of utility and “might makes right.” In other words, in regards to Washington, it is not a topic that will receive much public exposure across the Western media, and it will not be discussed often by Washington’s politicians.

MKO’s activity will remain more or less clandestine in nature – because despite the delisting, they still fully intend to carry out blatant acts of terrorism against Iran – acts that regardless of their legal status in the U.S. won’t and can’t be publicized. A similar regiment of selective reporting can be seen at work with the West’s destabilization of Syria, and with the various terrorist organizations it is supporting there.

Even if the West succeeds at triggering widespread violence and destabilization across Iran, whatever MKO is rolled into, perhaps the “Free Iranian Army,” its terroristic history, the American blood staining its hands, and its atrocities against the civilian population of Iran both past and present will not be discussed by the Western media.

A similar campaign of perception management surrounded Libyan terrorists NATO had funded, armed, trained, and even provided air support for during the Western orchestrated overthrow of the Libyan government in 2011. We were told that these were “pro-democracy” “freedom fighters,” when in reality they were the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), not only a listed U.S. foreign terrorist organization, but listed by the UK as a proscribed terrorist group, and as an official affiliate of Al Qaeda by the United Nations itself. Rarely is LIFG mentioned in the Western media, and when it is, not many details are provided for readers unaware of its history. We can expect MKO to be treated in a similar fashion.

Q: Do you know of other cases that the U.S. government has made concessions and compromised its stance with regards to terrorist groups in order to pressure a foreign country with which it has been at odds? Overall, I want to know your idea about the U.S. double standards in regards to terrorism when it comes to groups such as MKO.

A: U.S. double standards exist only in the realm of public opinion. Behind closed doors, U.S. policy makers have a single standard – that of utility. The utility of a particular personality or group takes precedence over all other considerations. Public perception is often an afterthought, and as described previously, generally is handled by keeping the public in the dark about the true nature of America’s chosen proxies.

U.S. support of MKO is but one of many examples of this. As mentioned before, the U.S. has provided significant aid to Libya’s LIFG, which has in fact shifted many of its fighters and NATO-supplied weapons into Syria to wage the West’s proxy war there against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

What many readers may not know is that LIFG and its various incarnations, has received, on record, support from British MI6 and America’s CIA for over 30 years, with the violence in Libya last year, and LIFG’s operations in Syria this year, being only the latest chapter in a long partnership with the West.

LIFG fighters were in the Afghan mountains in the 1980′s during the inception of the joint U.S.-Saudi terror front, Al Qaeda – yet another example of American-made and subsidized terrorism.

Sectarian extremists operating in Lebanon against Hezbollah, terrorists in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, Jundallah, and extremists operating in Russia’s Caucasus region, are all examples of the U.S. supporting terrorist organizations to target and carry out violence against nations to either exact concessions or regime change.

It really isn’t that the West’s leadership is betraying their principles – they clearly have no such principles. Instead, what we are seeing is the West attempting to dress up its agenda and methods to legitimize what is clearly unacceptable behavior the West’s respective populations would otherwise never tolerate.

Q: And finally, what should be Iran’s response to this hostile decision made by the U.S. government? MKO has assassinated several high-ranking Iranian officials in the first years of Islamic Revolution, including former President, Prime Minister and judiciary chief, and several nuclear scientists in the recent years. Should Iran file a lawsuit against MKO in an international court?

A: This is a difficult but important question to answer. Iran’s government, its military and intelligence networks in particular, are in the best position to know the true impact of MKO’s activities and what capabilities they themselves possess with which to counter these activities. Raising public awareness both at home and abroad of who the MKO is and what they are doing would be a good start.

It is important to warn the public, police, and security forces regarding the tactics MKO terrorists employ – not only currently, but what their role will be if ever the West succeeds at triggering widespread unrest across Iran. It is very likely that MKO terrorists are already prepared to ignite violence at protests staged by Western-backed opposition groups. Just as the West has done against Syria, initially peaceful protests are targeted by Western-affiliated and trained gunmen, operating clandestinely from cover, targeting both their own protesters and security forces to ignite cascading violence. The resulting escalating violence will provide cover, just as it has done in Syria, for foreign militants to infiltrate and begin full-scale military operations against the government and its people.

Second, like any dangerous pest, it is necessary not only to simply swat at it when it draws near, but to identify the source from which it was spawned, and eliminate it. In MKO’s case, it has bases inside of Iraq. Working closer with Iraqi security forces to eliminate these bases would be a good start. Additionally, Iran, Russia, and China have been working together to create a united front against these clandestine organizations, and appropriately labeling them as terrorists. Expanding this effort and working with other nations suffering from covert destabilization to develop the tools to protect national sovereignty is also very important.

Currently, the greatest advantage the West has is a general state of global ignorance regarding the mechanics of covert destabilization and regime change, namely the use of foreign-funded NGOs, terror organizations, and foreign-backed opposition groups to strip away national sovereignty. A united front determined to raise awareness of these mechanics, while developing the operational capacity to counter them would steal from the West the cloak of secrecy and impunity they have operated behind for so long.

Finally, whether Iran files a lawsuit against MKO in an international court or not, depends on which court is being considered. It may be worth investigating the creation of an international court that exists beyond the influence of Western corporate-financier interests. For example, the International Criminal Court has been exposed many times as but a tool for executing Western foreign policy. To approach the ICC for any reason but to condemn its lack of integrity and legitimacy, only serves to perpetuate its existence and standings amongst global public opinion.

By Tony Cartalucci and Kourosh Ziabari

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Delisting the MKO. America: A State Sponsor of Terrorism against Iran

In an act of unequivocal and explicit hostility toward Iran, the United States took the name of Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO) off its list of foreign terrorist organizations on Friday, Delisting the MKO. America: A State Sponsor of Terrorism against IranSeptember 28, showing its unconditional support to the sworn enemies of the Iranian nation straight from the shoulder.

The U.S. government announced the decision a few days after the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton submitted a file of classified information about the terrorist cult to the Congress.

The decision was made under the pretext that MKO has not carried out any terrorist operation over the past 10 years. This controversial announcement which bespeaks of the United States’ undeniable animosity with the Iranian people comes while there are several reliable documents confirming that the MKO is responsible for the killing of more than 40,000 Iranians during the 1980s war between Iran and Iraq. This gang has also assassinated Iran’s former President Mohammad Ali Rajaei, Prime Minister Mohammad Javad Bahonar and judiciary chief Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti in the first years of Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979. Since 2010, it has also assisted Israel’s Mossad to kill four high-ranking Iranian nuclear scientists in a bid to thwart Iran’s scientific progress.

Immediately after the announcement by the U.S. government, the Paris-based leader of the terrorist group Maryam Rajavi made a statement, hailing the decision: "this has been the correct decision, albeit long overdue, in order to remove a major obstacle in the path of the Iranian people’s efforts for democracy." Rajavi promised that her group will step up pressure on Iran, and one may easily visualize what devilish and malicious plans they have in mind for the people of Iran.

New York Times says that MKO bribed some of the influential U.S.politicians in the Department of State and some lawmakers in the Congress to convince them to uphold the anti-Iranian bid. Some of the high-ranking U.S. officials supporting MKO include former CIA Directors, R. James Woolsey and Porter J. Goss; former FBI director Louis J. Freeh; former U.S. President George W. Bush’s homeland security secretary, Tom Ridge; Attorney General, Michael B. Mukasey; and President Barack Obama’s first national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones.

The MKO which receives underground funding from Israel and some of the Western governments had invested a lot in attracting the support of high-ranking American politicians and is said to have paid fees amounting from $15,000 to $30,000 to these people as an incentive to compel them to attend their rallies and give speeches in support of their anti-Iranian activities.

The former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, Edward G. Rendell, admitted in March that he had received a total of $150,000 from the group to support their cause.

One day after the U.S. government de-listed MKO, Lord Ken Maginnis, a neo-conservative member of the House of Lords and a former UK parliamentarian called it a "landmark decision by U.S. State Department" and "a victory for justice."

"Now, the best way to ease the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran is to facilitate a regime change in Tehran. And that is on the horizon. The Iranian resistance doesn’t need troops or arms; it needs the support of freedom-loving people and of governments that eschew tyranny," he wrote in an article.

There are credible reports, indicating that MKO members have received considerable amounts of money, military training and equipments from the states which are hostile to Iran and fear of its growing influence in the Middle East, including the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

In an article published in New Yorker on April 6, 2012, the renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh revealed that how the U.S. government has furtively supported the MKO terrorists. The article entitled "Our Men in Iran?" documented that members of the MKO were trained in communications, cryptography, small-unit tactics and weaponry by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) at a base in Nevada starting in 2005.

"JSOC instructed MEK operatives on how to penetrate major Iranian communications systems, allowing the group to intercept telephone calls and text messages inside Iran for the purpose of sharing them with American intelligence," wrote Nile Bowie in a research article published on Global Research on April 16, 2012. The Joint Special Operations Command

(JSOC) is a component command of the United States Special Operations Command and is known to have carried out clandestine operations in Iran with the direct authorization of George W. Bush.

On July 7, 2008, Marsha Reid revealed in an article for Geopolitical Monitor that JSOC has been kidnapping members of Al-Quds force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and taking them to Iraq for torturing and interrogation. It’s said that MKO has been involved in these underground operations.

The prominent investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote on February 10 on Salon.com that MKO has received "substantial fees" from some of the high-ranking U.S. officials to carry out terrorist operations on Iran’s

soil: "one of the most under-reported political stories of the last year is the devoted advocacy of numerous prominent American political figures on behalf of an Iranian group long formally designated as a Terrorist organization under U.S. law. A large bipartisan cast has received substantial fees from that group, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), and has then become their passionate defenders… As The Christian Science Monitor reported last August, those individuals have been paid tens of thousands of dollars to speak in support of the MEK."

According to an NBC News report by Richard Engel and Robert Windrem, the terrorist group "is financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service." Two unnamed senior officials in the U.S. government also admitted that "the Obama administration is aware of the assassination campaign" directed at Iran’s nuclear scientists. Iran has long insisted the Israel and the U.S. are using MKO to carry out terrorist attacks on its soil, including the murder of its scientists, and NBC notes that these acknowledgments "confirm charges leveled by Iran’s leaders." NBC has also pointed out that MKO has previously worked with the mastermind of the first attack on the World Trade Center in New York City.

Qorban Ali Husseini Nezhad, a former senior member of MKO who served the group for 30 years as a foreign affairs analyst and Arabic translator and declared his defection from MKO after he ran away from Temporary Transit Location (Camp Liberty) on Wednesday April 25, 2012, revealed terrible facts and figures regarding the complicity of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi with the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during the years of war with Iran. In a letter following his defection, he unveiled that Saddam Hussein had allocated a remarkable portion of Iraq’s oil revenues to MKO so as to strengthen this terrorist group in its anti-Iranian efforts.

According to Husseini Nezhad, in his last visit with Saddam Hussein in August 2000, Masoud Rajavi "asked Hussein to increase his oil share up to 100 thousand barrels a day (3 million barrels a month), according to the documents and letters I translated or reports composed by his closest comrades that I was able to read. Rajavi received his oil share in coupons which were then sent to Europe to be changed into dollars. Rajavi’s quota from Iraqi oil was 50 to 70 thousand barrels before the visit."

Another MKO defector Maryam Sanjabi also pointed out that the group has been receiving funds from Israel and Saudi Arabia. Speaking in an exclusive interview with Ashraf News website she said there is evidence about the relations and cooperation between the MKO and the Saudi kingdom.

She also revealed that when she joined MKO, she was told from beginning that leaving the organization would be impossible: "When I was appointed as a senior member of the MKO leadership council, I was told that I could never leave the organization. Otherwise, I had to kill myself by taking a cyanide pill."

All in all, there are bitter and painful truths behind the MKO and the life of its members. They are a group of misguided people who have intentionally or inadvertently betrayed their countrymen and should be held accountable over the atrocities they have committed and the bloods they have spilled.

The U.S. Department of State’s delisting of MKO will embolden the terrorist gang and make it able to carry out more terrorist operations under the umbrella of a civilian group which is simply opposed to the Iranian government, But their ultimate goal is disintegrating Iran and destroying the current establishment of the country. People of conscience from around the world should lend a hand and counter the threats which this dangerous group poses to the security of Iran, Middle East and the whole world.
–
Kourosh Ziabari is an award-winning Iranian journalist, peace activist and media correspondent. He has won Iran’s 18th Press Festival first award in the category of political articles. Kourosh is a member of World Student Community for Sustainable Development and also a member of the European Association for Teaching of Academic Writing.

By Kourosh Ziabari,

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