Reza Aslan

Iran-Iraq Alliance?
Yesterday, Iraqi troops stormed a camp of Iranian exiles. The Daily Beast’s Reza Aslan on why the raid could signal Iraq’s shift away from the U.S.—and toward its former enemy.

Reports out of Iraq say government troops have raided the camp of an Iranian exile group, the Mujahedeen-e Khalq. Though the MEK has long been recognized as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department, its members housed in Camp Ashraf just north of Baghdad had been placed under U.S. protection since the Iraq invasion in 2003.

U.S. military officials, including Gen. Ray Odierno, commanding general of the U.S.-led Multi-National Force in Iraq, insist the raid was carried out without their knowledge. Considering that the Iranian government has been clamoring for years to have the camp disbanded and the MEK members extradited to Iran to stand trial on terrorism charges, the action by the Iraqi government may indicate a shift in Iraqi policy away from Washington and toward friendlier relations with Tehran.

The MEK’s support for Saddam Hussein during the horrific eight-year war with Iran has made it perhaps the group Iranians detest .

A Marxist paramilitary organization formed in Iran in the 1960s, the MEK was an integral part of the anti-imperialist coalition that overthrew the regime of Mohammad Reza Shah in 1979. Its guerrilla tactics, which killed dozens of the shah’s supporters as well as a number of American soldiers and civilian contractors working in Iran at the time, were instrumental to the revolution’s success. After the formation of the Islamic republic, however, the MEK lost favor with the clerical regime and was promptly outlawed. Its members were forced to flee to Iraq, where they were provided protection from Saddam Hussein in exchange for their assistance during the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq.

After the American invasion of Iraq, members of the MEK were rounded up at Camp Ashraf and detained, as negotiators in Iran and the United States began mulling over a prisoner exchange. The Iranians had dozens of captured Taliban and al Qaeda fighters that they were willing to hand over to the U.S. in return for members of the MEK who had been charged with terrorist activities in Iran.

The interim Iraqi government encouraged the prisoner exchange. Indeed, it wanted all of the MEK members expelled from Iraq and prosecuted for the active role they took in assisting with Hussein’s massacre of the Kurds and Shiites after the first Gulf War. But as negotiations were under way, the Bush administration suddenly changed course and granted the MEK protected status under the Geneva Conventions—something it had yet to grant Iraqi prisoners of the war.

There was, at the time, a simple reason for the shift in policy, as the conservative commentator (and professional Islamophobe) Daniel Pipes wrote in 2003. The MEK, Pipes claimed, offered the Bush Administration “an excellent way to intimidate and gain leverage over Tehran.”

Put another way, the MEK may have been a terrorist organization with what the State Department insists is “the capacity and will to commit terrorist acts in Europe, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, and beyond.” But with the proper assistance it could become our terrorist organization.

Since then, the MEK and its Paris-based political wing The National Council on Resistance in Iran has been increasingly viewed as the most viable alternative to Iran’s clerical regime: the Iranian equivalent of Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress. That explains why the MEK/NCRI is the only internationally recognized terrorist organization with offices in D.C. and an open line to some extremely influential people within the federal government. Indeed, the group has been championed by more than a few powerful personalities on Capitol Hill, as well as by neocon avatars like Pipes and Richard Perle.

Rep. Bob Filner, a Democrat of California, has called the MEK “our best hope to counter the [Iranian] regime.” Last month, Filner, who is chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, along with his fellow California Democrat, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, called on the Obama administration to actively assist the MEK/NCRI in its attempts to bring down the Iranian regime. (In 2002, more than 150 members of Congress signed a letter to the State Department demanding that the MEK be removed from its terrorist list; this year the European Union caved to pressure and removed the group from its own terror watch list.)

Senator Sam Brownback, a Republican of Kansas, echoes Filner. When I spoke to him a few years ago for a related story, Brownback told me: “There are serious questions to be raised about [the MEK’s] terrorist designation, particularly in light of the intelligence they have provided on Iran’s nuclear program.”

The MEK/NCRI has indeed provided both Israel and the United States with a trove of intelligence about Iran. Unfortunately, as was the case with the Iraqi National Congress, a great deal of that intelligence is not only uncorroborated but unquestionably tainted by the organization’s own personal interests.

Even some of the most ardent opponents of the Islamic Republic are wary of the MEK’s influence in the U.S. government. Michael Ledeen, founder of the Coalition for Democracy in Iran and one of the most vocal supporters of regime change in Iran, bluntly dismisses the possibility of cooperating with MEK.

“I do not think we should have anything to do with the MEK,” Ledeen once confided to me. “They are a terrorist organization despised by most Iranians.”

Ledeen is right. The MEK’s support for Saddam Hussein during the horrific eight-year war with Iran has made it perhaps the group Iranians detest.

Yet for a great many of the group’s detractors, it is not so much its terrorist designation that is of concern but rather the bizarre devotion its members have for their husband and wife leaders, Maryam and Massoud Rajavi. Scholars and human-rights activists have long accused the organization of functioning like a religious cult, employing brainwashing techniques, ideological cleansings, forced celibacy (except when it comes to the Rajavis themselves), and even torture to condition its members to absolute obedience.

When French authorities arrested Maryam Rajavi—whom the group considers Iran’s president in exile—in 2002 for her alleged involvement in terrorist activities, several of her followers immolated themselves on the streets of Paris in protest. According to Human Rights Watch, members who have criticized the Rajavis or their organization have been detained against their will—and some have committed suicide to escape. Those who refuse to be rehabilitated were sometimes forced to make videotaped confessions of their disloyalty, then handed over to Saddam Hussein as Iranian spies to be tortured.

None of this fazes supporters like Filner, who has declared that since an invasion of Iran is not a viable option at the moment, the U.S. should just “get out of the way” and let the MEK do the job for us.

“We should not stand in their way of trying to get rid of the present regime,” Filner said.
In other words, the enemy of my enemy…

It is difficult to know how to read the sudden decision by the Iraqi government to raid and disband the MEK camp. Does the move imply increased tensions between the Iraqi and U.S. military? Is Iraq betting that, with American troops soon departing, warmer relations with Iran—which, after all, is not going anywhere—may serve its interests better than relations with the U.S.?

Thus far, it seems that no decision has been made about what to do with the MEK members rounded up in the raid. Will they be extradited to Iran, where they will surely face execution? Would that not drive a wedge between the U.S. and Iraq?
Stay tuned.

Reza Aslan, a contributor to The Daily Beast, is assistant professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside and senior fellow at the Orfalea Center on Global and International Studies at UC Santa Barbara. He is the author of the bestseller No god but God and How to Win a Cosmic War.

Editor’s Note: Research Associate Reza Aslan, a scholar of religions and the author of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam (Random House), recently published in paperback, submits this examination of a public diplomacy challenge for the United States and its image in Iran and surrounding Muslim countries. Aslan offers that current U.S. policy considerations may provide an untenable challenge for public diplomacy practitioners.

Over the last few months, there have been an increasing number of reports that the Pentagon, under special instructions from the vice president’s office, has been using an Iranian terrorist organization called the Mujahedin-e Kalq (MEK) to conduct stealth operations in Iran in anticipation of a possible military attack. Indeed, a number of recent bombing attacks in Baluchistan and Khuzestan have been linked to MEK fighters who have infiltrated Iran’s borders from bases in Iraq and Pakistan. It seems the purpose of these infiltrations is not only to set up possible staging grounds for an invasion but also to stir up Iran’s small Sunni community (centered in these regions) to help bring down the clerical regime once the bombs start falling. The strategic use of the MEK, therefore, is a sign that, as Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker, the Administration believes that a sustained bombing campaign would not only halt Iran’s nuclear program, but would also weaken the clerical regime to the point that Iranians would be compelled to rise up and overthrow it.

The idea that the MEK could serve as an Iranian version of the Iraqi National Congress once again demonstrates the almost willful ignorance this administration when it comes to the people, politics, religion, and culture of the Middle East. The MEK is a pseudo-Marxist organization that, along with its Paris-based political wing, the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), has been on both the U.S. and E.U. terrorist watch-lists for years. However, since the invasion of Iraq brought with it the specter of seriously pursuing regime change in Iran, the MEK has begun to transform itself into the Iranian equivalent of Ahmed Chalabi’s ill-fated INC. In fact, the MEK may be the only internationally recognized terrorist organization in the world with offices in D.C. and an open line to some very influential members of Congress, including Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan) and Representatives Gary Ackerman (D-NY) and Bob Filner (D-CA), not to mention neo-con avatars Richard Perle and Daniel Pipes.

Formed in the 1960s as an anti-imperialist organization, the MEK gained fame for their guerilla tactics, which killed dozens of Muhammad Reza Shah’s political cronies and several American soldiers and civilian contractors working in Iran. However, after the Shah’s expulsion in 1979, both the secular-minded democrats who formed the provisional government and the religious factions who followed the Ayatollah Khomeini rejected the MEK and their radical Marxist agenda, forcing its members to flee to Iraq. There, in exchange for assistance and intelligence during the Iran/Iraq war, the MEK was protected and armed by Saddam Hussein.

The ceasefire between Iran and Iraq in 1988 put the MEK in a vulnerable position. Isolated in remote camps on the border of Iraq, the group gradually transformed from a revolutionary Marxist guerrilla organization into a fanatical cult of personality centered on absolute devotion to its husband-and-wife leaders, Maryam and Massoud Rajavi. As with most cults, it is incredibly difficult to break through the veil of secrecy that shrouds the MEK. However, based on the research of Professor Ervand Abrahamian, who has written extensively on the group, and the testimony of former members who have escaped the organization, a horrifying history of terrorist activity, mass murder, and human rights abuses has emerged.

According to published reports by Human Rights Watch, MEK members are forced to line up every morning in front of pictures of Maryam and Massoud to salute them and sing their praises. Members who have criticized the Rajavis or their organization have been detained against their will — some have committed suicide to escape. The Rajavis have outlawed all contact between their male and female followers. Celibacy is strictly enforced, and all members must undergo weekly ideological cleansings in which they are compelled to publicly confess their sexual desires. Many MEK members are orphans who joined the organization as children. They refer to themselves as martyrs and have been conditioned for absolute obedience to the Rajavis. Indeed, when French authorities arrested Maryam Rajavi in 2002 for her involvement in terrorist activities, nine of her followers immolated themselves in protest.

After the American invasion of Iraq, the MEK was rounded up and detained while diplomats in the U.S. and Iran began negotiations for a prisoner exchange. The Iranians were willing to hand over dozens of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters they had captured trying to cross the country’s borders in return for members of the MEK who had been charged with terrorist activities in Iran. The Iraqi leaders of the interim government encouraged the exchange of prisoners and called for the expulsion the MEK from Iraq. The Iraqis had good reason to want the MEK brought to justice. After all, the group took an active role in Saddam Hussein’s brutal massacre of the Kurds and Shi’ites who rose up after the Persian Gulf War.

But before negotiations with Iran could continue, the MEK was inexplicably granted protected status under the Geneva Convention. At the time, the move was lauded by neo-cons like Daniel Pipes, who wrote an op-ed for the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy arguing that the MEK offers "an excellent way to intimidate and gain leverage over Tehran." Since then, the organization has been increasingly viewed as the most viable alternative to Iran’s clerical regime. More than 150 members of Congress have signed a letter to the State Department demanding that the MEK be removed from its terrorist list. Speaking at a rally organized last year by the NCRI in D.C., Representative Bob Filner (D-CA) referred to the group as, "our best hope to counter the [Iranian] regime." Filner is not alone in trumpeting the MEK. Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), whose Iran Freedom Act calls for funding Iranian opposition groups like the MEK, told me in a phone interview conducted last year that, "there are serious questions to be raised about [the MEK’s] terrorist designation, particularly in light of the intelligence they have provided on Iran’s nuclear program."

It is true that the MEK has been a major source of U.S. intelligence on Iran’s clandestine nuclear activity. Some of that intelligence, including information on Iran’s nuclear program at Natanz, seems to have originated with Israeli intelligence services, who then filtered the information to the US through the MEK. However, a great deal of the intelligence provided by members of the MEK has proven to be unsubstantiated and unquestionably tainted by the organization’s own personal interests. Moreover, the MEK’s support for Saddam Hussein during his horrific eight-year war with Iran has made it the only group Iranians detest. It is for this reason that some of the most ardent opponents of the clerical regime are wary of their influence in the U.S. Michael Ledeen, founder of the Coalition for Democracy in Iran (CDI) and one of the most vocal supporters of regime change in Iran bluntly dismisses the possibility of cooperating with MEK. "I do not think we should have anything to do with…a terrorist organization despised by most Iranians."

Still, despite its checkered past and its dubious intelligence claims, the MEK seems to have once again emerged as a viable partner in the pursuit of regime change in Iran. Of course, when an unreliable and, as some would argue, criminal exile group begins furnishing the U.S. government with intelligence designed specifically to encourage it to preemptively strike a foreign country so as to bring about regime change, we should all stand up and take notice.

In the run-up to the Iraq war, the president assured Americans he would exhaust all his diplomatic options before considering war. We now know this was a lie. Plans for the invasion of Iraq had begun soon after the attacks of September 11, 2001 and were unlikely to be derailed by any act of diplomacy short of Saddam Hussein’s withdrawal from Iraq. If the reports about the MEK’s infiltration into Iran are true, then it could mean the president is once again lying about working toward a diplomatic option in Iran, even while preparing for an second pre-emptive invasion.

Reza Aslan – USC center on PUBLIC DIPLOMACY BLOG – MAY 19, 2006

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