Lobelog

The MEK’s Influence in EU Politics Matters

In a sign of re-emerging ties between the European Union (EU) and Iran, Edgars Rinkevics, Latvia’s minister of foreign affairs, visited Tehran on April 24. The visit was significant because Latvia will hold the EU’s rotating presidency in the first half of 2015. Issues pertaining to regional cooperation between the EU and Iran in Central Asia and Afghanistan were discussed during Rinkevics’ stay, indicating an EU desire to look beyond Iran’s nuclear program. This visit was another step in a string of reconnections that include trips to Iran by foreign ministers and parliamentarians from a number of EU countries including Austria, Sweden, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

Not everybody is pleased with these developments. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the front group for the exiled Iranian dissident organization, the Mujahadeen-e Khalq (known as the MEK, MKO, or PMOI), which was classified as a terrorist organization by the EU until 2009 and by the United States until 2012, denounced a trip last month to Tehran by Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz. The denunciation came two weeks after the so-called Friends of Free Iran (FoFi), an informal network of members of the European Parliament (MEPs) closely allied to the NCRI, organized a conference calling for regime change in Iran and lauding the NCRI-MEK as the democratic alternative.

This is the message that the NCRI and bedfellows like FoFi have been promoting for years in European countries where the MEK has had many more years to lobby for and promote its agenda than in the United States. While the notion of an irreconcilable enmity between the West and Iran was relatively easy to promote during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency (2005-13), the election of the moderate Hassan Rouhani and the meaningful progress in negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program challenge that narrative. So, the MEK, which detests the notion of rapprochement between Iran and the West, has shifted gears and chosen human rights as its casus belli against the Iranian regime.

[..]

The good news is that MEK lobbying efforts against diplomacy with Iran are unlikely to succeed. Even with the extravagant funds the MEK has spent on endorsements by political elites, the group’s prominence in the EU is confined only to one part of the EP. The foreign policy decision-making bodies of the EU — the Council of the EU and the External Action Service (EEAS) — do not consider the MEK a serious alternative to the current government in Tehran, as it has virtually no support among the Iranian population. The dominant EU line now clearly favors diplomacy with Iran, which will, hopefully, lead to a final deal over Tehran’s controversial nuclear program. The more the chances of success for diplomacy increase, the more irrelevant the MEK will become.

It would be a mistake, however, to completely disregard the capacity of the MEK to poison the present atmosphere of European-Iranian relations. Institutions like the European Parliament are by their very nature open to lobbying from different groups, and the MEK has proven very adept at recruiting supporters. Among the conservative right, the MEK is viewed as staunch defenders of Israel and Western values against Iran’s so-called “mad mullahs”; among the progressive left, the MEK is seen as victims of the American invasion in Iraq in need of protection (the MEK created its base, Camp Ashraf, in Iraq following its exile from Iran).

The MEK’s expensive lobbying and advocacy efforts have also promoted an image of the group as defenders of human rights, especially women rights, facing Iran’s alleged “medieval, barbaric mullah regime”. The group’s strong presence of women, including leader Maryam Rajavi, is sold as evidence of its commitment to gender equality and secularism. Never mind the irony of its members in Camp Ashraf — excluding, of course, Mrs. Rajavi — being invariably dressed in uniformed, almost military suits and headscarves, and never mind the documented human rights abuses by the MEK against its own members.

On the operational level, the MEK is extremely persistent and aggressive. MEK lobbyists maintain a constant presence in the coffee bars of EP buildings in Brussels and Strasbourg, or in front of the plenary room in Strasbourg. These are strategic locations from which to bombard MEPs and their staffers with requests to support the MEK. Sometimes, however, they overdo it — one MEP recounted to me about how she had to scream at an MEK activist until they exited the elevator she was using to get to her office. Even MEPs’ offices are targets: the MEK lobbyists have no qualms about entering them uninvited and distributing flyers against alleged “Islamo-fascist tyranny” in Tehran.

Yet there is a growing backlash in the EP against the MEK. In May 2011, a number of MEPs from across the political spectrum sent an open letter to their colleagues warning against legitimizing the MEK and its destructive agenda, including to heavyweights such as the powerful German chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, christian-democrat Elmar Brok, the leader of the social-democrats, Austrian politician Hannes Swoboda, the president of the party of the European liberal-democrats, Annemie Neyts, and many others. The last resolution of the European Parliament on Iran contained no references to the MEK or its demands. And the delegation for relations with Iran, while regularly offering the floor to various opposition groups, resisted giving a platform to the MEK.

However, more needs to be done to counter MEK propaganda, which can impede diplomatic efforts with Iran that can, arguably, allow the government to reform from within. Iranian diaspora organizations and individuals, the vast majority of whom do not sympathize with the MEK, may feel that confronting the MEK would give the group unwarranted importance, but the reality is that by being the only organized and constantly present Iranian opposition group in the West, the MEK gets its voice heard. The only way to prevent those MEPs who sincerely desire democratic change in Iran — but are uninformed about Iranian politics or the MEK — from falling into the MEK´s trap is to provide alternative sources of information.

Tehran can also play its part. The leaders of the MEK and the Iranian government may never get along — the Islamic government executed MEK members en masse in the 1980s following terrorist acts by the MEK against Iranian officials that also killed civilians, and the MEK sided with Saddam Hussein’s regime during the brutal Iran-Iraq war — but the Iranian government faces no current, tangible threat from this organization. By complaining about the group to foreign dignitaries, Iran appears weak and preoccupied with secondary concerns. For example, the EP’s ties with the MEK were raised at all meetings during the EP delegation’s visit to Iran in December 2013, but members of that particular delegation never supported the MEK. Denouncing the MEK to this group of people was akin to preaching to the converted.

Ultimately, a successful nuclear deal will make the MEK more irrelevant, and the EU is an important actor in this process. This deal should also make way for tangible improvements in Iran’s domestic environment. So far, the MEK has not presented a credible challenge to this process, but it must not be given the opportunity to parasite on the legitimate concerns of the international community over Iran’s nuclear program and its civil and human rights policies.

–Eldar Mamedov has degrees from the University of Latvia and the Diplomatic School in Madrid, Spain. He has worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia and as a diplomat in Latvian embassies in Washington D.C. and Madrid. Since 2007, Mamedov has served as a political adviser for the social-democrats in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament (EP) and is in charge of the delegation for inter-parliamentary relations between the EP and Iran.

Eldar Mamedov, Lobelog FP

May 10, 2014 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Analysts Respond to Expected US Decision to delist MEK from FTO List

Jim Lobe and I wrote a report yesterday for IPS News about the expected US decision to delist the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (aka MEK, PMOI and NCRI) from its foreign terrorist organizations (FTO) list. Most analysts we interviewed predicted that the removal would only worsen already abysmal relations with Iran and possibly make any effort to defuse the gathering crisis over its nuclear programme yet more difficult. Here’s a round-up of what they had to say beginning with statements that came in following the article’s publication:

John Limbert, a retired career Foreign Service officer and former embassy hostage in Tehran who served as the first-ever Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iran from 2009 to 2010 when he returned to teach at the US Naval Academy:

There may be reasons, but it’s a strange and disappointing decision.

I know the group claims it has abandon its violent and anti-American past. I wish I could believe them. They have a very dubious history and a similarly dubious present.

Farideh Farhi, Iran expert at the University of Hawaii:

As to the MEK delisting, especially after high-level leaks by members of the US intelligence community that the MEK was involved in terror operations inside Iran, the decision will no doubt make the Iranian leadership even more distrustful of US intentions regarding the future of Iran, particularly given the congressional support for the MEK to spearhead regime change. Less trust will make compromise less likely, presumably a preferred outcome for the high profile supporters of the MEK in Congress and elsewhere.

Note that the Obama Administration’s humanitarian argument for delisting says very little about the future operation of this group in the US and how their well-funded operation and agitation for regime change will be promoted or managed in the US. This ambiguity by itself will be a source of tension and will be used by hardliners inside Iran to further delegitimize all efforts to agitate for political reform from inside and outside of the country.

The issue is not about whether something needed to be done to help the poor souls caught in Iraq, abused by everyone including their own cult-like organization. The issue has to do with the wisdom of linking the highly political and politicized process of de-listing to a humanitarian effort.

Paul Pillar, a former top CIA analyst who served as the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005:

“Delisting will be seen not only by the Iranian regime, but also by most Iranian citizens, as a hostile act by the United States.”

“The MEK has almost no popular support within Iran, where it is despised as a group of traitors, especially given its history of joining forces with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War,” Pillar, who now teaches at George Washington University, added.

“Any effect of the delisting on nuclear negotiations will be negative; Tehran will read it as one more indication that the United States is interested only in hostility and pressure toward the Islamic Republic, rather than coming to terms with it.”

Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former senior Iranian diplomat and nuclear negotiator currently at Princeton University:

“The Iranian security establishment’s assessment has long believed that foreign intelligence agencies, specifically the CIA, Israeli Mossad, and the UK’s MI6 utilise the MEK for terror attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists, nuclear sabotage and intelligence gathering,”…

“Therefore, the delisting of MEK will be seen in Tehran as a reward for the group’s terrorist actions in the country,” he wrote in an email exchange with IPS. “Furthermore, Iran has firmly concluded that the Western demands for broader inspections (of Iran’s nuclear programme), including its military sites, are a smokescreen for mounting increased cyber attacks, sabotage and terror of nuclear scientists.

“Delisting MEK would be considered in Tehran as a U.S.-led effort to increase sabotage and covert actions through MEK leading inevitably to less cooperation by Iran with the IAEA (the International Atomic Energy Agency).”

He added that government in Tehran will use this as a way of “demonstrating to the public that the U.S. is seeking …to bring a MEK-style group to power” which, in turn, “would strengthen the Iranian nation’s support for the current system as the perceived alternative advanced by Washington would be catastrophic.”

Karim Sadjadpour, analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace:

…said the move was unlikely to be “game-changer” in that “the MEK will continue to be perceived inside Iran as an antiquated cult which sided with Saddam Hussein during the (Iran-Iraq) war, and U.S. Iran relations will remain hostile.”

“It doesn’t help (Washington’s) image within Iran, certainly, and some Iranian democracy activists may misperceive this as a U.S. show of support for the MEK, which could have negative ramifications,” he noted.

Jamal Abdi, policy director at the National Iranian American Council:

“The biggest winner today is the Iranian regime, which has claimed for a long time that the U.S. is out to destroy Iran and is the enemy of the Iranian people,” said NIAC’s policy director, Jamal Abdi.

“It will certainly not improve U.S.-Iranian relations,” according to Alireza Nader, an Iran specialist at the Rand Corporation, who agreed that the “delisting reinforces Tehran’s longstanding narrative regarding U.S. hostility toward the regime.

“Nevertheless,” he added, “I don’t think it is detrimental to U.S. interests as Tehran suspects U.S. collusion with the MED anyhow, whether this perception is correct or not.”

Mila Johns, a researcher at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland:

“The entire atmosphere around the MEK’s campaign to be removed from the FTO list – the fact that (former) American government officials were allowed to actively and openly receive financial incentives to speak in support of an organisation that was legally designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, without consequence – created the impression that the list is essentially a meaningless political tool,” she told IPS.

“It is hard to imagine that the FTO designation holds much legitimacy within the international community when it is barely respected by our own government,” she said.

No other group, she noted, has been de-listed in this way, “though now that the precedent has been set, I would expect that other groups will explore this as an option.”

By Jasmin Ramsey

September 23, 2012 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

MEK remains on US FTO list after Camp Ashraf deal

In August I was one among several people who wrote about a well-funded lobbying campaign by the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) to get delisted from the US’s foreign terrorist organizations (FTO) list. The MEK is an exiled Iranian group that has killed US and Iranian citizens. It’s also described as a “cult” that has committed human rights abuses against its own members as documented by the Rand Corporation and Human Rights Watch.

Armed and supported by Saddam Hussein, the MEK helped him repress Iraqi Shias and Kurds and fought against Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. Many analysts including neoconservative Michael Rubin have urged against delisting, noting potential blowback and acknowledging that the group would not be able to implement regime change in Iran due to its unpopularity with most Iranians.

President Obama was put in a tough spot by the MEK’s lobbying blitz not only because of the political heavyweights that expressed differing degrees of endorsement after thousands were paid to them in “speaking fees“, but also because of the MEK’s dishonest merging of the humanitarian concerns at their Camp Ashraf base with their FTO listing. Many expected that the Obama administration would announce a decision in September after dragging its feet for over a year following a 2010 Court of Appeals rare order that the designation be reevaluated, but no final announcement has been made and to date the MEK remains FTO-listed.

Under increasing Iraqi pressure to relocate and from human rights organizations urging leader Maryam Rajavi to allow independent access to over 3,000 Iranians at the camp, many feared a humanitarian tragedy such as mass suicide. But progress has been made after the UN convinced Iraq to sign a memorandum of understanding to temporarily resettle the residents to a former US military base north of Baghdad. The Head of the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq Martin Kobler said relocation was voluntary.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Sunday that the temporary solution had the U.S’s “full support” and that the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) would be conducting refugee status determinations for the members “toward resettlement to third countries.”

She also stressed that for the initiative to be “successful”, the camp’s residents would have to give their “full support” and urged them to “work with the UN”–an indication that resistance is expected from the MEK’s avid supporters (many are believed to be held against their will).

While the majority of MEK members have never left the camp, Rajavi has been living in Paris where she has successfully lobbied the group off the UK and EU FTO lists. The whereabouts of her husband Masoud are unknown, but some suspect he’s inside the camp. It will be interesting to see whether any new information about him is disclosed and if Maryam Rajavi will ultimately relinquish her hold on the group’s members.

So far there have been no independent confirmations of a MEK claim that Iranian rockets struck their camp on Sunday. We’ll also have to wait and see whether the residents allow themselves to be relocated out of Iraq. The only thing that’s certain is that these people–especially those who have been lured and born into Camp Ashraf–deserve a better life.

The following is an excerpt from the RAND report (pg. 38-9) for those who want to understand the MEK better.

The MeK as a Cult

From its earliest days, the MeK had had tight social bonds, but these began to be transformed into something more sinister during the mid- 1980s after the group’s leaders and many of its members had relocated to Paris. There, Masoud Rajavi began to undertake what he called an “ideological revolution,” requiring a new regimen of activities—at first demanding increased study and devotion to the cause but soon expanding into near-religious devotion to the Rajavis (Masoud and his wife, Maryam), public self-deprecation sessions, mandatory divorce, celibacy,enforced separation from family and friends, and gender segregation.

Prior to establishing an alliance with Saddam, the MeK had been a popular organization. However, once it settled in Iraq and fought against Iranian forces in alliance with Saddam, the group incurred the ire of the Iranian people and, as a result, faced a shortfall in volunteers. Thus began a campaign of disingenuous recruiting. The MeK naturally sought out Iranian dissidents, but it also approached Iranian economic migrants in such countries as Turkey and the United Arab Emirates with false promises of employment, land, aid in applying for asylum in Western countries, and even marriage, to attract them to Iraq. Relatives of members were given free trips to visit the MeK’s camps. Most of these “recruits” were brought into Iraq illegally and then required to hand over their identity documents for “safekeeping.” Thus, they were effectively trapped.

Another recruiting tactic was arranged with the assistance of Saddam’s government. Iranian prisoners from the Iran-Iraq War were offered the choice of going to MeK camps and being repatriated or remaining in Iraqi prison camps. Hundreds of prisoners went to MeK camps, where they languished. No repatriation efforts were made.

For coalition forces, the MeK’s cult behavior and questionable recruiting practices are significant insofar as they affect both the daily operations at the camp and the strategic disposition options available to the group. The leadership is unlikely to cooperate with policies that would undermine its ability to exert direct control over its members. Indeed, Human Rights Watch reports that the MeK long ago instituted a complicated process to retain members who expressed a desire to leave, which included a “trial,” forced confessions of disloyalty, and even torture. Although this process has been modified since the group was consolidated at Camp Ashraf, would-be walkaways are still “debriefed” for days or even weeks while held in some form of solitary confinement, during which they are encouraged to change their minds.

Conversely, the long-term indoctrination and isolation experienced by MeK members are likely to have instilled an exaggerated sense of loyalty, causing them to reject offers to separate themselves from their leaders. This would apply in particular to repatriation to Iran, where the expectation of persecution has been dramatically instilled in their minds.

Jasmin Ramsey

December 28, 2011 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

Facts vs. Fiction and the MEK’s PR Campaign

In 1994, the U.S. Department of State produced a comprehensive report exposing the Mujahideen-e-khalq (MEK) for what it is — an exiled Iranian fringe group with a record of terrorism, violence, political opportunism and the abuse of its own members.

It states

…our mutual distaste for the behavior of the regime in Tehran should not influence our analysis of the Mojahedin.

and that

Shunned by most Iranians and fundamentally undemocratic, the Mojahedin-e Khalq are not a viable alternative to the current government of Iran.

But that was years ago and any day now the MEK could be delisted from the U.S foreign terrorist organizations (FTO) list. Virtually unchecked, its well-funded lobbying blitz in Europe resulted in its delisting from the U.K. and E.U. terror lists. This has enabled it to create a larger support base there than it has in North America. It particularly enjoys a significant audience among past and present British parliamentarians such as Lord Corbett of Castle Vale (Robin Corbett). Corbett is the chairman of the “British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom,” the main British MEK lobby group. In addition to the U.S. heavy-weights with high national security officials that the MEK has paid to appear at its European rallies are Iranians and non-Iranians like the people pictured here and here.

After its successful test run in Europe, the MEK set its sights on the world’s most wanted ally and now its crazed leader Maryam Rajavi (her husband’s whereabouts are unknown) is knocking on Washington’s door saying things about the “Mullahs in Iran” while using key buzz words like “democratic”.

Over the years the FBI, Human Rights Watch, the Rand Corporation and several U.S. mainstream news outlets have produced in-depth investigations detailing the group’s past and present, some revealing the absurdly high “speaking fees” it provides to prominent figures who have appeared at its events. But even with a steady flow of damning information available, it is still spreading non-factual claims through its lobbying representatives. One way it does this is by issuing regular press releases through PR Newswire (a well-known online marketing tool) which are then reproduced as articles on news websites (see here and here for one example). Its lobbyists regularly talk to the press which is forced to quote them and MEK representatives have also been given full editorial slots in major U.S. newspapers.

The MEK’s ongoing delisting campaign is guided by the belief that the American public and the U.S. government are ignorant enough to believe its statements no matter how many times they’re proven false. The breathless claims of seeming support made by former U.S. officials are marketed by the MEK as a testament to its legitimacy, especially when these people conflate the human rights issue at the MEK’s base in Camp Ashraf near the Iran-Iraq border with its FTO delisting campaign as if they go hand in hand. But they don’t. Writing about Mitt Romney adviser Michael Reiss’s advocacy for the MEK the American Conservative’s Daniel Larison states (emphasis is mine):

Like many other pro-MEK advocates, Reiss has confused the issues of the treatment of the population of Camp Ashraf with the question of whether the MEK should remain on the FTO list. The people at Ashraf should be relocated outside Iraq, and they should not be sent to Iran against their will, but this has nothing to do with the MEK’s designation by the U.S. as a terrorist organization. It ought to be possible to address what is properly a political refugee problem left over from the Iraq war without legitimizing a terrorist group.

Dokhi Fassihian and Trita Parsi have also written about how the “international community” rather than just the U.S. can help the people of Camp Ashraf.

Some of my colleagues have called the MEK delisting campaign an “Iranian debate” but this couldn’t be further from the truth. The majority of Iranians don’t support the MEK in Iran or outside of it. Most Iranians aren’t debating the MEK’s merits, they’re either loudly speaking out against it, or consider it an annoying distraction from the widely recognized opposition in Iran. That’s because the MEK killed Iranians through organized terror bombings and assassinations during and after the revolution and because it fought against its own people during the Iran-Iraq war. The war took hundreds of thousands of Iranian lives. It is ingrained in Iranian memory as nearly a decade of suffering imposed on them by the U.S.-backed regime of Saddam Hussein who even used chemical weapons on young Iranian soldiers. Which nation’s people would forgive such an act of treason?[..]

Those who think Iranians would support the MEK simply because of its number one goal of bringing down the Islamic Republic are seriously mistaken. Every anti-IRI Iranian I have interviewed has said something to the tune of: “They are bad, but the MEK is worse.” Those who think the MEK should be supported simply because it detests the Iranian government as much as they do (see Patrick Kennedy) are also misguided. The chances of the MEK being installed in Tehran are very low; the Iranian population wouldn’t allow it.

The only Iranians who support the MEK are family members of those who were persecuted by the regime and those whose understandable hatred of the current government has driven them to blind desperation. At best, its support base among Iranians is under 30,000 and perhaps significantly less, and Iran is a country of over 70 million. If the MEK has such a large support base as it claims, why was its recent rally outside the Washington Department of State attended by “hundreds” rather than thousands or hundreds of thousands? Why did organizers feel the need to bus and fly people to the rally for free from other cities? As with many of its other events, some attendees admitted to not being familiar with the group or its objectives. Others admitted to being paid to attend.

Some may wonder why I am writing all this if the MEK is so obviously illegitimate. That’s because their delisting campaign has been well-organized and somewhat effective. They have, after all, successfully convinced the U.S. government to reconsider their FTO designation. Their campaign is also currently in full swing and should be addressed as such.

But delisting the MEK is unlikely to result in the group being accepted by Iranians, or the fall of the Iranian government. It may not even impact the status of the 3,000+ people who are trapped in Camp Ashraf, all under real threat by the Iraqi government and many held against their will. But delisting it will result in the leadership being able to raise money easier in the U.S. which they can then use to sway Mideast policy by lobbying congress.[..]

A decision to delist will strike yet another blow to the possibility of peaceful U.S.-Iran relations since it will be interpreted by the Iranians as an act of U.S. aggression, adding more fuel to the ongoing Cold War between the two countries. It will also reinforce a well-known stereotype about the U.S. as a country led by people who are indeed gullible enough to believe anything — even the claims of a well-funded terror group that has killed U.S. nationals.

The leadership cannot escape its bloody past. Among Rajavi’s militaristic quotes are: “Take the Kurds under your tanks and save your bullets for the Islamic Guard.” It also cannot erase the abundant information that journalists and other neutral non-state actors have made available about them. The MEK can only counter negative press with fabrications (as it is doing with its cyber army of defamers and lobbyists) and hope that the Obama administration is weak and naive enough to submit to the pressure it has been working furiously to impose upon it.

But as argued by Elizabeth Rubin of the New York Times who visited Camp Ashraf in 2003 and experienced the group’s inner-workings first-hand:

Mrs. Clinton should ignore their P.R. campaign. Mujahedeen Khalq is not only irrelevant to the cause of Iran’s democratic activists, but a totalitarian cult that will come back to haunt us.

We can only hope that Mrs. Clinton is listening.

lobelog – By Jasmin Ramsey

September 3, 2011 0 comment

USA

Defending MEK, Mukasey, Ridge & Freeh Attack Obama

Defending MEK, Mukasey, Ridge & Freeh Attack Obama For Hastily Exiting Iraq, While Admitting He’s Trying To Stay

In an article on Fox News’ website, former Bush administration officials Michael Mukasey and Tom Ridge and former FBI director Louis Freeh claim that in his apparent rush to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq, President Obama is abandoning the Iranian exile group the Mujahedeen-e Khalq’s (MEK):

[I]n a panicked haste to exit from Iraq, the Obama White House is abandoning the 3,400 members of the MEK – including young men, women and children – who are living in exile in a camp near Baghdad and intends to leave them to the indelicate mercy of Iraq’s new Shia prime minister, the Mullahs’ good friend Nouri al-Maliki.

There’s so much wrong with this brief clip of their piece that it’s difficult to know where to start.

To begin with, Obama is hardly in a “panicked haste to exit from Iraq.” As news reports have indicated over the past months, the Obama administration has been pressuring the Iraqis to strike a deal to allow U.S. troops to stay past the end of 2011, a deadline imposed by a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) struck by George W. Bush in 2008 despite warnings that the deal could constrict the next president’s policies.

Indeed, Freeh, Mukasey and Ridge acknowledged this fact five paragraph’s later in the same article:

The Obama administration is, of course, eager to complete a formal agreement with Prime Minister Maliki concerning the status of American troops remaining in Iraq after 2011.

Attacking Obama for wanting to rush out of Iraq seems just as disingenuous as the authors’ charge that the administration “intends to leave [the MEK adherents in Ashraf] to the indelicate mercy of…the Mullahs’ good friend Nouri al-Maliki.” The notion that Iraqis — who have officially wanted the MEK off their soil since 2008 — need to be pressured by the Iranians into harsh actions against Ashraf is absurd. As CAP analyst Matt Duss recently noted, the MEK, which is designated as a terror group by the U.S., is “despised…by many Iraqis for having aided Saddam [Hussein] in his crackdowns on Iraqi Shiites and Kurds.” Earlier this year, Duss explained:

The MEK also fought alongside Hussein’s forces after the 1991 Gulf War to put down the Shia uprising in Iraq’s south and the Kurdish uprising in the north. They were driven by MEK leader Maryam Rajavi’s infamous command to “Take the Kurds under your tanks, and save your bullets for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.”

The New York Times also recently noted that the Obama administration — far from abandoning the MEK members in Iraq — has been engaged in active diplomacy to get them out of harm’s way, eventually hoping to relocate them to a third country outside Iran (where they’re also likely to face persecution) or Iraq. However, the diplomacy, reported the Times, has thus far hit a dead end because “the residents are refusing to leave, and no countries have come forward to welcome them.”

That the three conservative officials-turned-pundits would make disingenuous attacks on Obama is no surprise. Their skewed perspective absolving the MEK of its role in blocking solutions to its predicament might also be easy enough to explain, though: Freeh, Mukasey and Ridge are among a coterie of top former U.S. officials who have been paid by groups that support the MEK, advocate for removing them from the U.S. terror list, and in some cases urge U.S. support and recognition as an Iranian government in exile despite the lack of any meaningful MEK political constituency within Iran.

Lobelog – Eli Clifton

August 16, 2011 0 comment

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