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US trained Iranian ‘terrorist’ group

The United States’ Joint Special Operations Command (JSOT) conducted training for the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group listed by the US as a terrorist organization, journalist Seymour Hersh claims.

The Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site, 65 miles from Las Vegas, was the site of extensive military and intelligence training for the MEK, in addition to elite Iraqi combat units, Hersh writes in The New Yorker. The training is believed to have been covertly sanctioned by the Bush administration, and was stopped shortly before President Obama took office.
“We did train them here, and washed them through the Energy Department because the D.O.E. owns all this land in southern Nevada,” a former senior American intelligence official said. “We were deploying them over long distances in the desert and mountains, and building their capacity in communications — coordinating commo is a big deal.”

Hersh’s article quotes a retired four star general who advised the Bush and Obama administrations on national security issues. The general noted that Iranians associated with the MEK received “standard training in commo, crypto, small-unit tactics and weaponry.” He also said he cautioned the JSOT that the Iranian government was very good at counterintelligence and that the US could end up in a lot of trouble if the training program was discovered.

Former and present intelligence officials, Hersh states, also note that US has been providing the MEK, directly or indirectly, with arms, intelligence and logistics since 2003.

But it turns out that the US is not the MEK’s only ally. A former senior intelligence official said Israel cooperated with the MEK to conduct a number of sabotage operations inside Iran, including pipeline attacks. Last month two senior Obama administration officials told NBC News that Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, trained and financed MEK units that organized the assassinations of Iran’s nuclear scientists. MEK spokesmen have denied this claim.

Delist or not delist?

The MEK is a formerly radical Islamic-Marxist movement, labeled a “cult” by Human Rights Watch and listed by the US State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, alongside Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah.

In the meantime, more and more public figures, including former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, have been pushing for the MEK to be delisted as a terror group. But experts note that the US would be better off not delisting the MEK if it is to continue its alleged close ties.

“On the one hand, the MEK was relisted year after year after year in the eight-year duration of the Bush administration, and it’s been relisted since Obama came into office,” Reza Marashi, research director of the National Iranian American Council noted on RT’s Alyona Show. “So it might just be as easy as, if we’re going to continue to cooperate with this group directly or indirectly it doesn’t really make a difference if they’re on the terrorist list because this was so close-hold until recently. This wasn’t readily available information even to people inside the US government.”

Hersh is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and author based in Washington, D.C. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine on military and security matters. He has also won two National Magazine Awards and is a five-time Polk winner and recipient of the 2004 George Orwell Award.

April 12, 2012 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Giuliani claims ‘terrorist’ MEK only chance to stop Iran

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has become the latest senior US politician to call for regime change in Iran – and endorse an organization his own government considers terrorist to Giuliani claims ‘terrorist’ MEK only chance to stop Iran carry it out.

Mujahedin-e Khalq, also known as MEK, is a former radical Islamic-Marxist movement, labeled a “cult” by Human Rights Watch and listed by the US State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, alongside Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah.

It is also embroiled in a US political scandal for allegedly making illegal payments to retired US politicians.

Yet Giuliani believes the US government should put its might behind MEK, which is currently based in Iraq.

"I have a feeling that the only thing that will stop [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] and the only thing that will stop Ahmadinejad is if they see strength, if they see power, if they see determination, if they see an America that is willing to support the people that want to overthrow the regime of Iran," Giuliani told the audience at an international conference in Paris, reports the International Business Times.

Although officials in Washington have openly accused Iran of trying to acquire nuclear weapons, President Obama has so far called for a diplomatic resolution. And while some in Israel and the US have advocated limited military action to disable Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities, Republican Presidential candidates Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum have all called for the Iran Regime to be overthrown.

But none of them have campaigned for MEK to lead the revolution.

The MEK has forsaken its anti-Western and radical Islamist roots, and promotes itself as a secular, democratic government-in-waiting – to its Western backers. But at its base in a refugee camp in Iraq it enforces strict discipline – celibacy, limited sleep, no electronic communication, forced divorce for married members, and a personality cult surrounding its leader Zohreh Akhyani[Nejat Society note: the so called leader of MEK is now Maryam Rajavi as his husband Massoud is in hiding]. Human Rights Watch has accused it of severe human rights violations.

Meanwhile, the US first placed it on the terrorist list in 1997 over fears that it might attack American citizens, and as recently as 2007 it claimed MEK was a terrorist organization despite its formal renunciation of violence against civilians.

Cash for credibility

But despite its dubious credentials, MEK has proved almost irresistible to a whole slew of nominally respectable US politicians. Among them former UN ambassador John Bolton, presidential candidate Howard Dean, and former Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge, who’ve all made speeches in favor of the MEK.

But a recent investigation initiated by the US Treasury Department discovered that the MEK was paying its supporters lavish speech fees in the tens of thousands for several minute-long talks extolling its virtues. It has already subpoenaed several former officials including former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell.

If it turns out that they received money from MEK, they will be in contravention of US legislation prohibiting anyone – never mind top political figures – from receiving funding from terrorist organizations.

Considering Giuliani’s long history of ostentatious support for the MEK, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that he is next to be investigated. Aware of this, in his Paris speech he brushed off the investigators, saying they "don’t frighten me, won’t stop me.”

Nonetheless, MEK have launched legal action in US courts, to be taken off the terrorist list, provoking an angry reaction from the State Department, which doesn’t want the courts to dictate who it considers a potential national threat. In his speech Giuliani accused "cowardly sources in the State Department or elsewhere” of “unknowingly doing the bidding of the mullahs [the current regime in Tehran]."

If as expected, the MEK legal campaign fails, and Giuliani’s long-rumored financial links with the MEK are exposed, the nation will wonder how the man considered a national hero for his response to 9/11 has become closely associated with a terrorist organization.

April 2, 2012 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Americans support Mojahedin Khalq Terrorists as well as Jondollah

Scandal over US-supported Terrorists in Iran

Iran insists the US was backing the leader of an armed Sunni group heading an insurgency in the country who was captured earlier this week. Washington denies the claims.
Abdolmalek Rigi says he was on his way to the Manas air base in Kyrgyzstan to meet with a US official when he was seized – sparking further mystery over American use of the facility in the Central Asian country.

It’s not the first time the Manas airbase has hit the headlines, and all for the wrong reasons.

The latest allegation is from Iran claiming the facility is an American front to transport terrorists to undermine the Iranian government.

Read more
“The Americans promised to give us aid, they said they would cooperate with us and give me arms and machine guns. They told me in Kyrgyzstan they had a base called Manas near Bishkek and that in a place like this some high ranking American person could come and we could make an agreement about making personal contacts,” Abdolmalek Rigi said.

This statement comes in a televised confession on Iranian state TV. Officials claim when they captured the terrorist leader he was carrying a fake Afghan passport.
“The Americans said that Iran was going its own way and they said their problem at the present is Iran, not Al-Qaeda, not the Taliban, but Iran,” Abdolmalek Rigi said. “One of the CIA officers said that it was too difficult for them to attack Iran militarily but they plan to give aid and support to all anti-Iranian groups that have the capability to wage war and create difficulty for this Islamic state.”

The confession has sparked criticism from those who let the United States set up shop in their backyard.

“The US is setting a precedent of double standards which manifests itself in the backing of Sunni terrorists who fight against the legitimate government of Iran to create a separatist state in the south of the country. It’s sad that the US air base has now become a transit corridor for pro-American militants from Sunni insurgent groups which organize attacks in Iran,” says political analyst Toktogul Kakchekeev.
The Jundallah group confirmed the arrest of Abdolmalek Rigi and now is accusing the US and other foreign intelligence services of helping the Iranian government capture its leader.

“The Jundallah group or The Rigi Brothers organization – it is a family firm, you might say – which operates as a terrorist organization and is widely thought to be based in Pakistan, but it operates in Iran on the other side of that border,” explained investigative journalist Webster Tarpley, who is sure there is an extra twist to the story involving Pakistan, which possibly gave the militant leader away.
The Jundallah group is believed to be engaged in drug smuggling and organizing terror acts.
They are accused of blowing up top Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers last year.
“This Abdolmalek Rigi was the number one most wanted terrorist on the Iranian most wanted list,” he said.
Despite the fact that the details of Abdolmalek Rigi’s arrest remain unclear, “either way it is a tremendous victory for the Iranians because they essentially decapitated this very threatening terror group,” believes Tarpley.
CIA’s dark ties
Webster Tarpley said that western political observers, like Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker and Brian Ross of the BBC, believe that the Jundallah group was on the CIA payroll.
“This is the US$400 million in Iran’s Regime Change Act approved under [George W.] Bush. This guy has been meeting with, as some say, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer who met this terrorist and certainly NATO generals in Afghanistan,” accused Tarpley and added that “they [Jundallah group] operate as an arm of NATO strategy in the entire region.”

In Webster Tarpley’s opinion, this episode is part of the battle for Belujistan, a critical area for Iran for hydrocarbon transit to China.

It appears, said Tarpley, that the goal of the offensive of the US in the Helmand province of Afghanistan is Iran’s economic interests. By announcing the offensive in Helmand province, they “wanted to drive the Taliban to Pakistan,” cutting Iranian exports to China through Pakistani seaports.

Dr. Seyed Mohammad Marandi of the University of Tehran claims that the US is being hypocritical and that Iranians are happy after Abdolmalek Rigi was captured.

“They were not only supporting this particular terrorist organization…[…] For many years, they’ve carried out many thousands of terrorist attacks on Iran, as well as other terrorist groups such as Pi-juk and so on,” Marandi told RT. “What is extraordinary about this particular terrorist organization, that has the backing of the United States, is that they carry out some of the most brutal murders, they cut people’s heads off on television and it does not get any coverage on BBC or CNN or in The New York Times, which is itself pretty extraordinary, but the murders that they carried out have angered the Iranians for the last few years. And it was a major victory for the Iranian intelligence organizations that they were able to capture the leader and his deputy the other day.”

Investigative journalist, Wayne Madsen, also posits there is a connection between the US and the group.

“What [Rigi] has stated on Iranian television is that he was there to meet a top US official,” says Madsen. “And the word I get from Asian intelligence services is that person was President Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke who happened to have been in Bishkek at the same time.”

Meanwhile, the US State Department strongly denies any involvement with Rigi and released this statement to RT:

“We view the arrest of Mr Rigi as a positive step to prevent potential attacks against innocent civilians. The US strongly condemns all forms of terrorism, including those that target Iran. Any allegations of US involvement are absurd. The US does not sponsor or support terrorism,” US State Department spokesperson Darby Holladay said.

Also, the Obama Administration has repeatedly said relations with Iran have to begin with renewed diplomacy, a sentiment that has critics growing increasingly more skeptical.

“I think it’s quite obvious that the United States is being very hypocritical,” Dr. Seyed Mohammad Marandi says. “They are not only supporting this terrorist organization but they were also supporting the MEK for a number of years, they have carried out many terrorists attacks in Iran over the last three decades.”

Russia today

February 28, 2010 0 comment

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