Los Angeles Times

Terrorist supporters at white house

This Iranian opposition group was labeled a terrorist organization. Now it has supporters in the White House

For decades, the United States categorized the Mujahedin Khalq, or MEK, as a terrorist organization. In the Trump era, members of the Iranian dissident group, which seeks to topple the government in Iran, have found key allies in Washington.

People close to President Trump, including national security advisor John Bolton, and Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, are supporters of the Mujahedin Khalq. For years, Bolton and Giuliani have called for a change of government in Tehran and have described the Mujahedin Khalq as a viable alternative to the government of the Islamic Republic.

This month, Giuliani appeared at a Mujahedin Khalq conference in Albania, where he gave a speech condemning the Islamic Republic and described the group as a “government in exile.”

“This is a group that we can support. It’s a group we should stop maligning and it’s a group that should make us comfortable having regime change,” Giuliani said to a cheering audience.

During a 2017 Mujahedin Khalq conference in Paris, Bolton told a room filled with its members that U.S. policy should be “the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime in Tehran.”

He added, “There is a viable opposition to the rule of the ayatollahs and that opposition is centered in this room today.”

Both Giuliani and Bolton have received tens of thousands of dollars from the group in exchange for speaking at its rallies and conferences.

Founded five decades ago by leftist students in Iran who opposed the Western-backed monarchy of Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, the Mujahedin Khalq is an insular organization with a militant past. Many Iranians despise the group and from 1997 to 2012, it was on the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist organizations in part because of its bloody attacks in the 1970s that left American diplomats and businessmen dead.

The Mujahedin Khalq and its supporters claim that the group stands for a free and democratic Iran and that its decades-long struggle has helped make it the most qualified opposition group. But critics and human rights organizations describe the group as a cult, and many lawmakers and State Department officials don’t believe it has popular support or influence.

The group has a history of networking with U.S. politicians on both ends of the political spectrum.

“Different people come and go with each administration. We’ve had the same position and demands over the years no matter who is in the White House,” said Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a Mujahedin Khalq-linked group based in Washington.

But despite its continued lack of support among many in Washington, the Mujahedin Khalq feels emboldened now that tensions with Tehran have escalated and it has key supporters who have Trump’s ear. “I can’t recall in the past 40 years seeing such a two-year period where there’s been lots of developments shaping Iran,” said Jafarzadeh.

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The Mujahedin Khalq, founded in the early 1960s by husband-and-wife team Massoud and Maryam Rajavi, carried out a series of terrorist attacks during the 1970s against Iran in which several U.S. military personnel and civilians who were working on defense projects in Tehran were killed, according to a 1994 U.S. State Department report.

The group also helped the country’s Shiite Muslim clerics topple the shah during the 1979 revolution. But it didn’t take long before the newly formed conservative theocracy headed by anti-Western Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to view the Mujahedin Khalq as a rival.
About 2,000 members of the group relocated to Iraq during the 1980s.

In addition to providing shelter, then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein armed the group with heavy military equipment. During the Iran-Iraq war, its members teamed with Baghdad in an attempt to take down the Islamic Republic. Iraq remained a safe haven for the Mujahedin Khalq for nearly two decades.

Throughout that time, the group continued to launch attacks inside Iran and on its embassies abroad. The State Department described the Mujahedin Khalq in its 1994 report as “the single most violent underground group” in Iran.

“Shunned by most Iranians and fundamentally undemocratic,” the report said, the Mujahedin Khalq is not “a viable alternative to the current government of Iran.”

U.S. relations with the group, however, grew complicated after the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Although the group disarmed and was confined to Camp Ashraf, a 14 square-mile former Iraqi military base , the new Iraqi government wanted its members to leave. Faced with a potential humanitarian crisis, officials in Washington sought to find the Mujahedin Khalq a new home.

Daniel Benjamin, the State Department counter-terrorism coordinator under then-President Obama, said that was a factor in removing the Mujahedin Khalq from its list of foreign terrorist groups.

“All these people were the subject of violence, that’s what really caused the U.S. to look at the issue … to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe,” Benjamin said.

Eventually the U.S. brokered a deal with the government of Albania.

“The Albanian government basically wanted reassurance that they weren’t a terrorist group. I didn’t promote them as an ideal group but they didn’t deserve to be slaughtered,” said Daniel Fried, who was tasked by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to find a country that would accept Mujahedin Khalq members.

Their future looked grim up until after the presidential election in 2016, when Trump’s “maximum pressure campaign” on Iran became American policy.

Already, several policies that the Mujahedin Khalq had long advocated for, such as designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group and placing U.S. sanctions on Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have been implemented under Trump.

“This administration sees ‘the enemy of my enemy as my friend.’ So any organization that opposes that Islamic Republic is fine by them,” said Barbara Slavin, the head of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council. “The administration knows it makes the Iranian government crazy. It sends a message of animosity.”

***

But the extent to which the Mujahedin Khalq can gain stronger credibility in Washington — even during the Trump administration — remains uncertain.

“The MEK has American blood on its hands. No serious observer or scholar of the region that I’ve met has thought that the MEK was remotely acceptable to any significant percentage of the Iranian people,” Benjamin said.

And in recent months some officials in the Trump administration have taken steps to distance it from the Mujahedin Khalq.

In April, Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo met privately with a small group of Iranian Americans in Dallas. Michael Payma, an attorney, was one of those people invited to attend the roughly hourlong conversation.

“Pompeo said he knows Giuliani and Bolton have had some kind of relationship with the MEK, but he made it clear that neither him nor the president have any association with the group,” Payma recalled.

In June, Brian Hook, U.S. special representative for Iran, reiterated those points when he told reporters that the State Department meets with all members of the Iranian diaspora and that the future of Iran will be decided by its people, not the United States.

“We have been, I think, zealously neutral with respect to groups who all care very much about the future of Iran, and that’s going to be something which the people of Iran decide for themselves,” Hook said.

Regardless, Washington’s cozier relations with the Mujahedin Khalq has Tehran concerned.

In recent years, there has been an uptick in attacks against the group by Iran. Two Iranian suspected of surveilling the Mujahedin Khalq were arrested in Albania in 2018, and an Iranian diplomat in Vienna was arrested on suspicion of plotting to bomb a Mujahedin Khalq rally outside Paris.

Nader Karimi Juni, a Tehran-based analyst, said Iran is on edge because the Mujahedin Khalq has members and supporters in positions of power in the U.S. and Europe.

“Iran has good reason to regard the MEK as a threat,” Juni said.

By Melissa EtehadStaff Writer , latimes.com

Special correspondent Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran contributed to this report.

July 30, 2019 0 comment

The MEK Expulsion from Iraq

U.S. plans to move Iranian exile group out of Iraq hit snag

Mujahedin Khalq leaders are resisting the transfer of the Marxist-Islamist group’s members to other countries. But Iraq’s government tires of protecting them.

The State Department’s decade-long effort to find a new home for a controversial Iranian opposition group has

Members of the Iranian opposition group Mujahedin Khalq in a street in Tirana, Albania. The exiles have been moved to Albania from a camp in Iraq as part of a relocation process. (Hektor Pustina / Associated Press / May 17, 2013)

ground to a near halt only days after the announcement that the exiles had begun moving from Iraq to permanent homes in Europe.

Fourteen members of the Mujahedin Khalq militant group, or MEK, were flown from the outskirts of Baghdad to Albania on May 15, in what was expected to be the first step in the departure of 3,100 members of the group that has long opposed the government of clerics in Tehran and is also at odds with the government of Iraq.

But a State Department official told Congress on Wednesday that the group’s leadership was not cooperating in the departures, despite the risks to the members’ lives in Iraq.

Beth Jones, acting assistant secretary of state for Near East Affairs, told a House foreign Affairs subcommittee Wednesday that although U.S. officials have worked hard to persuade the group’s leadership to cooperate in the departures, "very few have been allowed to move." She appealed for cooperation.

The Marxist-Islamist group, described by some critics as a cult, moved from Iran to Iraq in the early 1980s, and fought with Saddam Hussein against Iran’s Islamist government during the Iran-Iraq war. The current Iraqi government views the group with suspicion, and U.S. and United Nations officials have been trying to resettle them abroad since 2003.

But though the group’s leadership signed an agreement with the U.N. and Iraq last year to abandon their longtime base, Camp Ashraf, in Diyali province, the leadership seems reluctant to move the group’s members from Iraq. They apparently prefer to remain and continue their effort to overthrow the Iranian government, diplomats say.

The group’s leadership, based in Paris, is apparently refusing to allow their tightly controlled subordinates to cooperate with the U.N. screening required before resettlement can be arranged.

After refusing for years to leave Camp Ashraf, most of the residents began leaving in September for a temporary base. About 100 members, determined not to give up their fight and convinced that world powers have betrayed them, remain.

American and U.N. officials believe the group needs to leave Iraq as soon as possible because of hostility from several Iraqi groups and the limited patience of the Iraqi government, which is protecting it.

In February, eight group members were killed in a rocket attack on the temporary base, which is called Camp Hurriyah. There has been speculation that the attackers were Shiite militants with Iranian backing.

Mujahedin Khalq leaders say they don’t want the group resettled in small numbers in many countries, but instead moved as a single group to new homes in the United States or Europe.

Only about 200 people were slated to go to Albania. U.S. and U.N. officials say that because of lingering concern about the tendencies of a militant group that was on the U.S. list of terrorist groups from 1997 to 2012, no country will take all of them.

The group, which also calls itself the National Council of Resistance of Iran, didn’t respond to messages left with its office in Washington.

By Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times

May 24, 2013,

paul.richter@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/middleeast/la-fg-iran-militants-20130525,0,3610225.story

May 25, 2013 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

The hypocrisy of American bluster toward Iran

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen under the terrorist spotlight

A U.S. representative who accused Tehran of sponsoring terrorism has a track record of supporting terrorists herself.

By now there is little doubt that hypocrisy has become Washington’s standing policy on foreign affairs. What is astounding is the lack of shame in such overt duplicity as Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s (R-Fla.) accusations in her Dec. 14 Times Op-Ed article that Iran is a state sponsor of terrorists — when she herself has a track record of supporting terrorists.

In February 1988, Orlando Bosch was arrested in Miami and implicated in the 1976 plot to blow up Cubana Flight 455, a terrorist act that killed 73 passengers. Joe D. Whitley, the associate U.S. attorney general at the time, called Bosch "a terrorist, unfettered by laws or human decency, threatening and inflicting violence without regard to the identity of his victims." Bosch, however, had the distinct advantage of having Ros-Lehtinen make advocating for his release one of the cornerstones of her 1989 congressional campaign. Bosch had another advantage: Ros-Lehtinen’s campaign manager was Jeb Bush, President George H.W. Bush’s son. In 1990, after lobbying by Jeb Bush and Ros-Lehtinen, the Bush administration went against the Justice Department’s recommendation to deport Bosch and authorized his release. Since then, Bosch has become a permanent resident of the United States.

Ros-Lehtinen also supports the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), a group by the State Department as a foreign terrorist group. Leading up to the Iraq war, in October 2002, Ros-Lehtinen circulated a letter in Congress expressing support for the MEK. She continues her support.

Common sense dictates that Iran would want security in its two neighboring countries given the spillover effect. By now, it is also common knowledge that the Sunni Taliban and Shiite Iran have been hostile toward each other for years (several Iranian diplomats were killed by the Taliban in 1998), and no doubt this hostility led to Iran’s decision to assist the Northern Alliance and the U.S. in efforts in the overthrow of the Taliban after the 9/11 attacks — efforts that were rewarded with the infamous "axis of evil" brand. Yet Ros-Lehtinen would insult the American public’s intelligence by telling them that Iran, without mentioning any history, has a hand in Afghanistan. Does Ros-Lehtinen ever wonder if other countries simply do not welcome occupation by any foreign force?

One has to question what motivates Ros-Lehtinen in her push to put financial sanctions on foreign and domestic companies that sell refined petroleum products to Iran. Doing so could lead to more job losses in America and more hostilities between U.S. allies and Iran. This is a time when our policy makers should be thinking about America and Americans, period.

Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich is an independent researcher and writer living in Glendale.

By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich

December 28, 2009 0 comment

Iraq

LA Times : Iraq says raid on militant group’s camp wasn’t Iran’s idea

Seven members of the Iranian opposition faction Mujahedin Khalq were reportedly killed by Iraqi security in Iraq’s Diyala province, but government officials said outside pressure was not a factor.
Reporting from Baghdad — The Iraqi government refuted suggestions today that Iranian pressure had prompted a raid on a camp belonging to an Iranian opposition group, saying that Iraqi security forces are merely seeking to extend sovereignty over all Iraqi territory.

The Mujahedin Khalq (MEK), a militant group that has long opposed the Iranian government, claimed that seven of its members died in clashes with Iraqi security forces after Iraqi police attempted to enter its camp in Diyala province Tuesday to open a police station.

"The Iraqi government is determined to establish its sovereignty over all positions and facilities that were under the control of foreign forces," government spokesman Ali Dabbagh told reporters. "The government wants to open an Iraqi police station inside the camp to impose the rule of law and establish the rule of the state."

Dabbagh said Iranian citizens in the camp would not be forced to return to Iran, where they fear they would be punished..

Camp Ashraf, as the facility is known, illustrates the complex relationship that has emerged between Iraq and its two biggest allies, the U.S. and Iran. The camp dates back to the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein invited the MEK to establish a presence in Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war.

The U.S. military inherited control of Camp Ashraf after the 2003 American-led invasion in which Hussein was ousted, and U.S. forces disarmed the group. Though the U.S. brands MEK as a terrorist organization, it has also protected the perimeter of the camp and has argued against the forcible deportation of its 3,500 residents to Iran.
With the implementation of last December’s security agreement between the U.S. and Iraq, Iraqi forces assumed control of the camp’s perimeter and they have for months been threatening to take control of the camp itself. Iraq, meanwhile, has come under intense pressure from neighboring Iran to close the camp, from which residents are accused of carrying out acts of terrorism in Iran.

MEK says it has not carried out any acts of violence since 2002.

Iran’s parliament speaker Ali Larijani praised the raid. "This action by Iraq came late, but it is laudable that they decided to clear the country of terrorists," he was quoted as saying by the Fars news agency.

MEK quoted the group’s leader, Maryam Rajavi, who lives in Paris, as saying that "the attack was carried out at the behest of the Iranian regime." But Iraqi officials insisted Iranian pressure had played no role.
"This is an Iraqi operation on Iraqi land. . . . Our forces have the right to enter any place inside our country," said Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed Askari.

The pledge to assert the right of Iraqi forces to extend their authority over all of Iraq has potentially profound implications for another simmering dispute, over territories claimed by the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan and currently controlled by Kurdish peshmerga forces.

The peshmerga have prevented Iraqi security forces from entering their territory on at least three occasions since May, and U.S. commanders have identified the dispute as the biggest single threat to Iraq’s stability.

On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited Kurdistan to meet with Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, who has just won reelection to the presidency of the northern region. Gates urged him to work with Baghdad to find a solution to the disputes before American troops finish withdrawing from Iraq, and said the U.S. was willing to help mediate a solution.

Gates told reporters that the exit of U.S. troops from Iraq’s cities has gone better than expected, and said it may be possible to speed up the withdrawal of some U.S. forces. Combat troops are due to go home by August 2010, and all U.S. forces are scheduled to be withdrawn by the end of 2011.
"I think there’s at least some chance of a modest acceleration," the Associated Press quoted him as saying aboard his plane on the journey back to Washington.Those brought home early could be a combat brigade of 5,000 troops, Gates said.
LA Times – July 29, 2009

July 30, 2009 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Seven plead guilty to raising funds for Terrorist MKO

Seven plead guilty to raising funds at LAX for terrorist organization

Members of a group that for the last few years has sought donations from travelers at LAX on behalf of what they said was an Iraqi-based charity pleaded guilty Wednesday to federal charges of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

In a plea agreement that came just as a jury was being selected for trial, the seven defendants each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization and one count of actually providing material support to the group.

In court the defendants admitted that they knowingly raised funds to support the activities of the Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MEK, by collecting money from MEK supporters and soliciting money from unwitting donors at public locations, including the airport. Donors were told they were supporting a charity called the Committee for Human Rights, which was sometimes referred to as the Committee for Human Rights in Iran.

However, the Justice Department charged that CHR was simply a “front organization” to support MEK operations, including its terrorist activities.

The fundraising activities took place from late 1997 to February 2001, authorities said. The group had established nonprofit status and set up bank accounts from which itwired money to the MEK.

“These defendants raised money at locations like LAX on behalf of the MEK, which is a terrorist organization,” U.S. Atty. Thomas P. O’Brien said. “We cannot allow any terrorist organization to fundraise on our shores or to steal money from our own citizens so that they can finance their own terrorism operations. Terrorism anywhere poses a significant security risk to the United States.”

The seven defendants are: Roya Rahmani, 48, of Vienna, Va.; Alireza Mohammadmoradi, 38, of Los Angeles; Moustafa Ahmady, 54, of Los Angeles; Hossein Kalani Afshari, 52, of Mission Viejo; Hassan Rezaie, 54, of Los Angeles; Navid Taj, 58, of Santa Monica and Mohammad Omidvar, 54, of Corona.

The defendants face a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison. Sentencing is scheduled for Aug. 10.

Updated at 10 p.m.: Over the years, the MEK has carried out bombings, assassinations and cross-border attacks aimed at unseating Iran’s government, and was provided sanctuary safe harbor in Iraq by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

The group contends that it has since abandoned violence and is working to promote democratic transition. Ironically, U.S. troops in Iraq were once given the task of protecting an MEK base there.

Julie Cart

May 2, 2009 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Europe may find itself providing refuge for MKO Terrorists

EU removes Iranian group from terrorism list

The new status of the Mujahedin Khalq organization, which seeks to overthrow the Iranian government, is likely to complicate international diplomacy with Tehran.
Reporting from Paris and Beirut — The European Union on Monday announced the removal of a high-profile Iranian opposition group from its list of terrorists, a victory for a movement that European governments have described as a dangerous sect and prosecuted on terrorism charges.
The change in the status of the Mujahedin Khalq organization, or MKO, which seeks to overthrow the Iranian government, is likely to complicate attempts by the international community to reach a diplomatic settlement with Tehran over a range of issues.
The decision, announced at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, results from recent legal and diplomatic developments combined with intense lobbying by the group, whose leader, Maryam Rajavi, lives in France.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement decrying the ruling as a violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1373, which requires governments to freeze the funds and halt the activities of those involved in acts of terrorism.
"The MKO’s hands are stained with the blood of thousands of innocent Iranians and non-Iranians," said the statement, according to the Iranian Students News Agency. "The delisting is invalid and condemned."
Analysts said European leaders probably acted out of diplomatic expediency because of the impending expulsion from Iraq of nearly 3,000 members of the opposition group’s military wing, who once fought against their homeland on behalf of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Europe may find itself providing refuge for some of those fighters, and could not do so if the terrorist label persisted.
Iran quickly signaled that the move could complicate deliberations with the West, which wants Tehran to curtail sensitive aspects of its nuclear program and rein in support for militant groups opposed to Israel.
"The EU plans to use the MKO as leverage against Iran in the nuclear talks," said an editorial Monday in the conservative daily Politics of the Day. "The EU should tell the world why it blacklists Lebanese and Palestinian resistance groups fighting Israeli aggression but clears the MKO, which has committed countless crimes in Iran and Iraq."
Protesters in Tehran gathered around the French and German embassies to denounce the decision, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency, demanding the "extradition" of MKO members "who have killed many of our children and families."
Opposition leader Rajavi in turn described the decision as a "stinging defeat for the European policy of complacency" toward the Iranian regime. "The inscription of the Iranian resistance on the blacklist has helped prolong the regime of religious fascism in Iran," she said, according to a report by Agence France-Presse.
The MKO remains on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations, a designation it acquired in 1997. European leaders made it clear Monday that they do not view the organization as fully rehabilitated. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and several colleagues warned that the MKO could be again designated as a terrorist group depending on its activities and on a French appeal of a Dec. 4 decision by an EU court to unfreeze nearly $9 million of the group’s assets.
The MKO was founded in the 1960s as a radical and often violent guerrilla group opposed to the U.S.-backed monarchy of Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi. It took part in the 1979 revolution that ousted him.
But the group quickly fell out with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the rest of the country’s clerical leadership. Many of its supporters were jailed, and the MKO launched a campaign of bombings against leaders of the revolutionary government.
During the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, the group fought alongside Hussein’s troops against the Islamic Republic, a move that earned it the anger of many Iranians. Iraqi Kurds allege that the MKO helped crush an uprising against Hussein after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Several thousand members live in Camp Ashraf, a desolate patch of desert and tumbleweed near Baqubah, Iraq. A 2005 report by Human Rights Watch said the camp was rife with abuse, citing evidence of "prolonged incommunicado and solitary confinement" as well as "beatings, verbal and psychological abuse, coerced confessions, threats of execution, and torture" against members who don’t conform to the group’s sometimes bizarre rules and rituals.
Its blend of Islamist and Marxist ideologies alienates both supporters and opponents of the Islamic Republic. Iran watchers in Europe and the U.S. say the organization has little public appeal. But it mounted an all-out lobbying campaign that won over legislators, especially in Britain, according to Farhad Khosrokhavar, an Iranian French expert on Islamic extremism.
"They have been very successful at giving a positive picture of themselves in Europe," Khosrokhavar said in a telephone interview. "I think many people have been duped by them, especially in the British Parliament."
Khosrokhavar predicted that the EU decision would only increase Iran’s animosity toward the West.
"The Islamic Republic will be stronger in its suspicion of the West and European Union," he said. "My guess is they will be angry, and the one issue where they will be even more inflexible is the nuclear issue."
Rajavi and other leaders were arrested in 2003, when more than 1,000 police officers raided their compound outside Paris. France’s top anti-terrorism judge charged that they were involved in terrorism in Iran and plotting violence in Europe as well.
The investigation, which was assisted by the FBI in the United States, did not turn up powerful proof. A lawyer for the group said Monday that prosecutors should throw out the still-pending case.
"One finds oneself confronting a judicial dossier that is empty of substance after the removal from the list," said the lawyer, Patrick Badouin, according to French reports.
daragahi@latimes.com
Times staff writer Sebastian Rotella in Madrid contributed to this report.

By Achrene Sicakyuz and Borzou Daragahi

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran-opposition27-2009jan27,0,1790285.story

January 28, 2009 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Mojahedin Khalq terrorists the sources that America uses it in its allegations against Iran

Mojahedin Khalq terrorists the sources that America uses it in its allegations against Iran and the IAEA has repeatedly rebuked the allegations of the White House in its reports Iranian leader tempers anti-U.S. rhetoric; Ahmadinejad takes a softer tone in the wake of a U.S. report that says Tehran had halted its nuclear arms program. Ramin Mostaghim and Borzou Daragahi Special to The Times 12 December 2007 Los Angeles Times Home Edition TEHRAN In his first formal news conference since a U.S. intelligence report last week undercut claims that Iran was secretly developing nuclear weapons, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad struck an unusually mild tone Tuesday, calling for dialogue with Washington and forgoing his usual anti-American and anti-Israeli rhetoric. He also denied that Iran had resumed a secret nuclear weapons program, a claim made by an Iranian exile group, the Mujahedin Khalq, which has been listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department and the European Union. The group cited unidentified sources in Iran as saying the Islamic Republic had restarted its program in 2004. A U.S. National Intelligence Estimate released last week concludes that Iran halted its weapons program in 2003. Tehran denies ever having such a program. Ahmadinejad initially gloated over the report as vindication for Iran, though it says his country continued to enrich uranium and that Iran easily could restart its weapons program. But at the two-hour news conference, Ahmadinejad described the report as "a positive and forward step" by the U.S. to ease tensions in the Middle East. "We do hope there will be one or two steps forward so as to make a different atmosphere for finding solutions," he told reporters. "If further steps are taken, then our problems will be less complicated."

Despite the softened tone, Ahmadinejad said Iran would continue its uranium enrichment program in defiance of international standards. He predicted Iran would have the ability to run 50,000 high-speed centrifuges within five years. Iran has about 3,000 centrifuges, which if run continuously for a year could in theory produce enough highly enriched uranium for one nuclear bomb, though inspectors have not detected high levels of enrichment at Iran’s facility in Natanz.

Many officials in Iran viewed the U.S. report as an olive branch, and some analysts have urged the Iranian leadership to take the opportunity to enhance ties or at least reopen channels of communication between Tehran and Washington. The two nations have had a hostile relationship since the 1979 revolution in Iran.

U.S. and Iranian officials are scheduled to meet in Baghdad on Dec. 18 for the fourth round of talks over securing Iraq. Such meetings have usually been preceded by chest-thumping and accusations on both sides. But at Tuesday’s news conference, his eighth since taking office in 2005, Ahmadinejad expressed confidence that the meetings would eventually produce positive results for bolstering security in Iraq.

Regardless of what the U.S. report concludes, Iran still faces the prospect of a third round of international sanctions over its enrichment of uranium. A team of International Atomic Energy Agency experts arrived in Tehran on Sunday in an attempt to clear up lingering questions over the country’s nuclear program. Iran insists its goal is to generate electricity, but the West suspects the effort is a cornerstone for an eventual weapons program.

Iran’s nuclear program and political and material support for armed groups fighting Israel have brought Tehran under heightened international scrutiny. Ahmadinejad and his circle also have come under enormous pressure from multiple quarters within Iran’s fractured political class.

On Monday, influential lawmaker Ahmad Tavakoli criticized Ahmadinejad for gloating over the U.S. report, which Tavakoli said contains many allegations that cast Iran in a negative light.

"By expressing happiness we may increase the credibility of these kinds of reports," said Tavakoli, a former ally of Ahmadinejad. "In the future, they may release some reports which will have more credibility and are against the Islamic Republic of Iran."

Former President Mohammad Khatami, who tried unsuccessfully to liberalize Iran’s Islamic system, told students at Chamran University on Tuesday that people should not be "Islamicized by force," a criticism of Ahmadinejad’s hard-line social policies.

Witnesses said students chanted, "Death to despotism!" Hundreds of students demonstrating at Tehran University on Sunday burst through the campus gates, chanting, "Ahmadi-Pinochet, Iran will not be Chile!" before they were dispersed by riot police.

Rival conservative, moderate and reformist Iranian political factions see Ahmadinejad and his loyalists as vulnerable in upcoming March parliamentary elections, primarily because of his administration’s failure to curb inflation, create jobs or draw foreign investment.

Although he confidently answered questions about Iran’s nuclear program, the security situation in Iraq and his country’s opposition to Israel, Ahmadinejad brushed aside a question about the reason for recent increases in the price of dairy products and other foods.

"In the near future," he said, "I will explain it in a press conference to the people."

daragahi@latimes.com

Mostaghim is a special correspondent and Daragahi a Times staff writer.

Reports by LATimes (USA) and ISNA (Iran), December 12, 2007

————-

BBC Monitoring Middle East, December 11, 2007

Text of report by semi-official Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) website

MKO claims Iran resumed nuclear weapon programme in 2004 – Agency

Tehran, 11 December: The terrorist group of hypocrites [a reference to Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization, MKO] claimed that America’s intelligence estimates in which it had been said that Tehran has stopped its nuclear weapons programme in 2003 is true, but Iran has resumed this programme since 2004.

According to Wall Street Journal, this claim of the terrorist group of hypocrites, that is going to be announced publicly today, is in tandem to the claims by American Conservatives’ war-mongers who say that the National Intelligence Estimate has brought about the misunderstanding that Iran’s nuclear programme is not considered a critical threat.

The terrorist group of hypocrites is among the sources that America uses it in its allegations against Iran and the IAEA has repeatedly rebuked the allegations of the White House in its reports.

The American Conservatives has called that the process which led to this estimate should be reviewed.

But Iran has repetitively emphasized the peacefulness of its nuclear plans and after the release of this estimate on last Monday [4 December], Iran has emphasized that it had no nuclear weapons programme.

The National Intelligence Estimate has raised new questions regarding the damaged credibility of the White House regarding war [with Iran].

The estimate, which is the result of a consensus among 16 American intelligence agencies, declares that it is not clear whether Iran pursues nuclear weapons or not. By stopping its programme, Iran has shown that it has been more responsive in the face of international pressures than what had been estimated.

At the same time, the National Intelligence Estimate’s report warns that the Islamic Republic still has kept the nuclear option open and rejects the international society’s demand for suspending uranium enrichment and it is possible that Tehran could produce nuclear weapons between 2010 to 2015.

By claiming that Iran has stopped its nuclear weapon programme in 2003, this intelligence report adds: The decision of Tehran for stopping the nuclear programme shows that Iran is not as determined in producing nuclear weapons as we had estimated in 2005.

Source: ISNA website, Tehran, in Persian 0930 gmt 11 Dec 07

December 16, 2007 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

The UK adopts a cautious approach in de-proscription of MKO

LONDON — In a victory for British politicians pushing for regime change in Iran, an appeals tribunal ruled Friday that their government had no authority to ban a leading Iranian opposition group as a terrorist organization.

The ruling, which could help the group gain legal status across Europe, was hailed by proponents of the cause as a significant boost to efforts to organize democratic opposition to the Islamic government in Tehran.

But by legitimizing an organization with a history of deadly attacks in Iran, the British panel’s decision could also undermine Iran’s willingness to cooperate on international anti-terrorism fronts and inject a new stumbling block into negotiations over the Persian Gulf nation’s nuclear program, British officials have warned.

The successful appeal was filed by three dozen members of the British Parliament, many of whom say they hope to empower Iranian opposition groups to peacefully overthrow the government in Tehran.

"This judgment will help Iran build a new country," said Robin Corbett, chairman of the parliamentary committee that filed the appeal. "Iran will be free."

The British government said it would probably appeal the ruling.

The case involves the People’s Mujahedin, also known as the Mujahedin Khalq, which over the years has carried out bombings, assassinations and cross-border attacks aimed at unseating Iran’s government. The group maintains that it has abandoned violence and is working to promote democratic transition, but it says it cannot effectively carry out its political activities when it is banned as a terrorist organization.

Outlawed in U.S., Europe

The group is outlawed by the U.S. and throughout the European Union. Its lawyers said it hoped to use Friday’s ruling to win reconsideration internationally and step up efforts to topple the Iranian government.

"The fundamental solution to Iran’s crisis is neither foreign military intervention nor appeasement. The solution is democratic change by the Iranian people, and resistance. For this solution to work, all obstacles placed in the path of the resistance must be removed," said Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an umbrella political opposition group that includes the People’s Mujahedin.

Rajavi spoke to cheering supporters in London by video link from the group’s headquarters in Paris. Dozens of Iranians filled the street outside the courthouse in London after the decision was announced, some weeping, many waving the group’s flag, while organizers handed out sweets.

"Thank you!" the crowd chanted repeatedly.

The British warned in evidence presented to the Proscribed Organizations Appeal Commission that delisting the group could present foreign policy problems for Britain.

"The government adopted a cautious approach in relation to the de-proscription of the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran," Home Office minister Tony McNulty said in a statement.

"I remain convinced that where terrorism is concerned, the rights of the law-abiding majority and the overriding need to protect the public, both in the U.K. and abroad, must lead us to take such a cautious approach," he said.

The secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Saeed Jalili, noted that U.S. officials also regard the group as a terrorist organization, and he said he had been assured that the British government would attempt to retain its prohibition.

"Some of you have seen for yourselves the terrorist activities of this group inside Iran. They have assassinated, they have killed and injured innocent Iranian citizens. This will not at all be a good precedent for Britain," he said during a visit to London to negotiate Iran’s nuclear dossier with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

In 2002, the National Council of Resistance provided the first public reports of Iran’s then- secret nuclear program, and some U.S. military officers say the group has provided valuable intelligence about Iran’s leadership and could be a key ally.

A State Department counter-terrorism official said Friday that the Bush administration was not considering removing the People’s Mujahedin from its own terrorist list, where it was placed in 1997.

U.S. officials believe the group, also referred to as the MEK, is capable of committing acts of violence harmful to American interests.

By Kim Murphy

December 2, 2007 0 comment

USA

Financing terrorists is not about speech

The high court is right: Prosecuting alleged contributors to a ‘terrorist’ group isn’t a 1st Amendment issue.

THE SUPREME COURT has rightly refused to block the trial of seven Los Angeles residents accused of contributing funds to an Iranian opposition movement that the State Department has branded a terrorist group.

The high court let stand a ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that prosecuting the defendants ” who are innocent until proved guilty ” posed no 1st Amendment problem. As Judge Andrew J. Kleinfeld pithily put it: "Sometimes money serves as a proxy for speech, and sometimes it buys goods and services that are not speech. Guns and bombs are not speech."

In 1997, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright designated the Marxist group Mujahedin Khalq, or MEK, as a "foreign terrorist organization," a designation reaffirmed in 1999. Formed in the 1960s to oppose the rule of the shah of Iran, MEK now opposes the Islamic regime in Tehran and, according to the State Department, engaged in terrorism against Iran between 1997 and 2001.

Under the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, it’s a crime to knowingly provide material support to an organization that appears on the State Department’s list. The defendants in the Los Angeles case are accused of soliciting donations for MEK in Los Angeles and of wiring at least several hundred thousand dollars to an MEK bank account in Turkey.

The truth of those allegations is a matter for a jury. What the defendants sought from the 9th Circuit was a ruling that their prosecution violated the 1st Amendment because of flaws in the way MEK was designated a terrorist organization.

Yet, as Kleinfeld noted, MEK’s own description of its activities supported the terrorist designation. The designation was on the books when the defendants allegedly contributed to the group. More to the point, as the Supreme Court has recognized in upholding restrictions on contributions to election campaigns, money cannot always simplistically be equated with speech even in a domestic context. The "money is speech" mantra makes even less sense when the money buys guns.

Of course, the State Department should use care in designating a group as a terrorist organization. Such designations can be challenged though not ignored. Individuals accused of providing such a group with material support shouldn’t be able to substitute their judgment for the department’s any more than consumers should be able to substitute their judgment about a dangerous drug for that of the Food and Drug Administration. Neither case is a free-speech issue.

January 25, 2007 0 comment

USA

High Court Denies MKO’s Appeal

The Supreme Court refused Monday to block the trial of seven Los Angeles residents charged with raising money for an Iranian opposition group that was designated a "foreign terrorist organization" by the U.S. government.

Lawyers for the seven had argued the charges were unconstitutional because they had a free-speech right to raise money for a political group. That claim was rejected by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which noted the Iranian opposition group ” Mujahedin Khalq, also known as the MEK ” had a record of supporting assassinations and bombings.

"Sometimes money serves as a proxy for speech, and sometimes it buys goods and services that are not speech. Guns and bombs are not speech," said Judge Andrew J. Kleinfeld for the appeals court.

In their appeal, the lawyers said the accused deserved the right to challenge the group’s designation as a "foreign terrorist organization" as part of their defense.

Although the justices turned down the appeal without comment, they could take up the issue later if the seven are convicted of the charges.

"We are very disappointed the court decided not to hear this case. We believe the decision poses a threat to the civil liberties of any person who wants to contribute to a political organization in this country," said Stacey M. Leyton, a lawyer in San Francisco.

She said the law was written so broadly that organizations such as Greenpeace or the African National Congress in South Africa could be deemed foreign terrorist organizations. And once the group is on the government’s list, "the individual doesn’t have a right to challenge it," she said.

In the Antiterrorism Act of 1996, Congress gave the secretary of State the authority to designate foreign groups that "engage in terrorist activity" that threatens the security of Americans. Once a group makes this list, it is a crime for anyone to "knowingly" provide "material support" to it.

The MEK was founded as an Iranian Marxist group in the 1960s with a mission of overthrowing Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi and establishing a Marxist regime. But after the shah’s fall in 1979, the new Iranian regime was dominated not by Marxists but by Muslim clerics.

Later, the MEK participated in terrorist activities that targeted Americans, the government said. In a federal court in Washington, the group also admitted it supported assassinations of Iranian officials and mortar attacks on Iranian facilities.

The group first made the list of "foreign terrorist organizations" in 1997. Over the next four years, the seven defendants were charged with soliciting contributions at Los Angeles International Airport and wiring at least several hundred thousand dollars to an MEK bank account in Turkey.

LATimes, January 09, 2007

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-scotus9jan09,1,3883070.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

January 12, 2007 0 comment

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