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Is the US preparing to stash 3,000 terrorists near the Ukrainian border?

After removing the extremist organization Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) from its list of terrorist organizations in 2012, the US State Department has been unsuccessfully trying to move militants from this group out of Iraq and closer to sites that are being readied for future armed hostilities.

Romanian Foreign Minister Titus Corlatean listens to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Brussels, December 3, 2013

Washington seems to feel that Romania would be an auspicious location for 3,000 of these militants, specifically the city of Craiova, which is located near the Bulgarian border. Massoud Khodabandeh, who was previously a highly placed leader within the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, referred to the Bulgarian press in his claims that the issue of their resettlement was discussed during the meeting between the American secretary of state, John Kerry, and the Romanian foreign minister, Titus Corlatean, in Brussels in early December 2013.

Early last year, Albania and Germany announced their willingness to accept a few hundred of the 3,000 fighters. However, the MEK insists that all the members of the group be resettled together in one area, something to which the governments of these countries have not been prepared to agree.

Despite Hillary Clinton’s decision to the contrary, the MEK is still considered a terrorist organization in Iraq and Iran. Iraq’s Shiite government, which rose to power after the US invasion in 2003, has an adversarial relationship with the members of the Mojahedin-e-Khalq and insists that any countries that provide the group with support also be willing to accept its members for resettlement within their own borders.

At present, MEK militants are being housed at a former American military base near Baghdad, and their camp has more than once been the target of rocket attacks in recent months (the latest incident was on Dec. 27, 2013). Mojahedin-e-Khalq militants blame the Iraqi authorities for the attacks, but the latter have denied any involvement.

Who is the Mojahedin-e-Khalq?

The MEK is a militant organization that is waging an armed struggle against the Iranian regime. The group has been responsible for the deaths of about 50,000 people, including the assassination of the president, prime minister, and dozens of senior Iranian officials. After its relocation to Iraq in 1986, Saddam Hussein often received assistance from the organization’s members during the Iran-Iraq war and also employed them to suppress the Kurdish separatist movement.

From the beginning of the US campaign against Saddam Hussein, the organization became a focus of interest of the American government. In 1994 the State Department sent Congress a damning 41-page report conclusively proving the MEK’s status as a terrorist organization, and as a result, the group was included in the State Department’s 1997 list of terrorist organizations. The report specifically stated, “It is no coincidence that the only government in the world that supports the Mujahedin politically and financially is the totalitarian regime of Saddam Hussein.”

After the American military invasion in 2003, the group came under US control. The MEK actively lobbied to be removed from the official list of terrorist organizations, and the US put its members to use as part of America’s clandestine commando operations against Iran.

It has now emerged that the Bush administration secretly brought members of the MEK to the US for military training that included signals intelligence and other skills related to covert espionage. Presumably the program ended just before the Obama administration took office. Apparently, the MEK was then placed under the control of Mossad, which utilized it to kill Iranian nuclear scientists. Thanks to an article by Justin Raimondo, the writer and founder of the Antiwar.com website, the group was dubbed “Hillary’s Terrorists.”

It is obvious that the Mojahedin-e-Khalq is not a peaceful organization. In fact, it would be better compared to the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, or Jubhat al-Nusrah, other groups which also enjoyed the tacit support of the United States until they became too unruly. In addition, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan have still been unable to extricate themselves from the aftermath of the MEK’s activities within their borders.

One can only guess at what awaits Romania should this army of 3,000 militants come calling at its door. Harboring so many fighters so close to Ukraine, a country that has been afflicted with EuroMaidan fever for the past month and a half, could pave the way for any number of coercive scenarios for regime change.

Source in Russian: Regnum

By Anna MIKHAILENKO (Russia), Orientalreview.org

January 12, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

US to flood Romania with terrorists

Washington may turn Romania into a hotbed of tension, which will prove quite a headache both to Romania proper and the neighbouring countries. The point is the United States is making efforts to move several thousand members of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran organization (Mujahedin-e Khalq) from Iraq to Romania. The so-called civilized society’s care for radical Islamists is due to the fact that the Mujahedin see their mission in fighting Iran, which the West also seeks to weaken by all means available.

Both Iran and Iraq see Mujahedin-e Khalq as a terrorist organization. The armed wing of the organization, – the National Liberation Army of Iran, is believed to have founded the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which brings together all of Iran’s opposition forces. Those who opposed the rule of the Shah of Iran started their resistance in the middle of the 1960s on a romantic idea of building a class-free socialist society, but as time went on, the idea degenerated into mass-scale terrorist attacks and acts of sabotage. The Iranian authorities’ sharp rebuff caused Mujahedin-e Khalq to move to the neighbouring Iraq, whence it launched armed attacks on Iran during the Iran-Iraq War and helped the Iraqi regime to quash Kurdish rebellions. Mujahedin-e Khalq went on with its attacks on Iran in the subsequent years taking advice from and controlled by the United States.

But the impressive "record of service" (some 50,000 people killed, including Iran’s top-echelon officials) proved no hindrance to the EU and US recent decision to strike Mujahedin-e Khalq off their list of terrorist organizations. The EU and the US obviously proceeded from the assumption that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", although the two saw Mujahedin-e Khalq as terrorists just a short while ago.

Washington’s plan to deploy the Islamists in Romania is inappropriate at the very least, says Russian expert in Oriental Studies Boris Dolgov, and elaborates.

"If the Romanian leaders have certain doubts, and they will certainly question the correctness of the decision, then they should stiffly oppose the move. The organization acts against Iran, Tehran sees it as terrorist, Mujahedin-e Khalq is known for numerous terrorist attacks and life attempts. Besides, the US plan is at variance with the recent trend towards improving relations between Washington and Tehran. Also, a presence of Islamic militants will serve to aggravate tension in the region. It’s obvious that peaceful coexistence with the people of other religions is the last thing the Islamists will think of when arriving in Romania".

So far, the US attempts have proved futile, even though Romania heavily depends on Washington. The US sees Romania as an important nation in terms of its geopolitical interests, and has been patronizing Bucharest throughout the post-Soviet period. But the pay Washington has demanded seems clearly excessive.

Yet, when the US State Secretary John Kerry met with his Romanian counterpart Titus Corlaţean in Brussels in December, they took up the issue of moving the Mujahedin in question to Romania, according to some reports. A year earlier, Germany and Albania said they were prepared to accommodate Mujahedin-e Khalq militants. But the organization chiefs insist on a compact settlement of all three thousand militants, who are currently making their home at a US military base in Iraq. But the Albanian and German authorities see this as too dangerous. The terrorist leaders are in a stalemate. They are welcome nowhere, while in Iraq they have been coming under rocket fire recently. The organization activists put the blame at the current Iraqi government’s door, namely because the Iraqi Cabinet has been openly demanding that the terrorists be removed from the country.

Action on the US plan is fraught with danger, but is highly improbable, points out an expert with the Moscow-based Institute for Strategic Studies and Analysis, Sergei Demidenko, and elaborates.

"A transfer of a large group of people, drilled ideologically and militarily, to an unstable European area will clearly add no quiet to the area. But Romania will hardly approve the scenario, since Bucharest realizes that Romanians will otherwise have to deal with people of specific mentality, oriented to fighting the non-Moslems, or kuffar, which is about the only thing they can do at all. But if the events do follow that scenario, this will only serve to further aggravate the situation around Islamic radicalism in Europe, the more so since the European security services can do nothing to counter Al-Qaeda militants who are active in southern Europe".

Of course, one may admit by a stretch of imagination that sticking to its friends in trouble is kind of noble of the United States; the more so since the US is due to build a military base in Romania, where the militants could be accommodated at first. Also, the recent agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme involving the United States will hardly prove a watershed event in the Iran-US standoff. Washington has not forgone up the plan to deploy its missile defence system in Europe to defend the West from Iran’s missile strike.

Whether to accept the members of an organization, placed on a par with Taliban and Al-Qaeda, or not depends wholly on the Romanian government, which will likewise be solely responsible for its decision. The authorities of the neighbouring Ukraine will also have food for thought. The well-trained fighters may prove effective as a force to change the government or at least rock the unstable situation, for they are not used to sitting idly.

Ilya Kharlamov – Voice of Russia

January 11, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

U.S. to move 3000 MKO terrorists to Romania

As it became known from the Romanian Foreign Ministry employees dialogue in a social network “WordPress” http://danamarca70.wordpress.com/2013/12/18/48875763/

Currently the U.S. and the Romanian government are negotiating the deployment about 3 thousand representatives of the terrorist organization “Mojahedin-e Khalq” (MEK) on the territory of Romania. It is assumed that in the case of the Romanian leadership consent members of the group will be compactly settled near the city of Craiova.

According to Ioana Raiciu and Dana Marca, the Romanian Foreign Ministry employees the U.S. State Secretary and the Romanian Foreign Minister discussed the issue of militants migration during the meeting in Brussels in early December. John Kerry’s adviser Jonathan Weiner who deals with the problem of MEK migration is to arrive in Romania with the same purpose.

I turned to the Romanian Foreign Ministry press service for confirmation of these data by phone using the telephone numbers listed on the ministry’s website, but they refused to give any comments, saying this is a too sensitive issue.

Indeed, the disclosure of the information about moving about 3 thousand terrorists to the country is sure to cause a violent public backlash against the government. At the same time, the information leak to the Internet possibly means that Romanian authorities are trying to test the waters before making official statements.

So what sort of an organization the “Mujahedin-e Khalq” is?

“Mojahedin-e Khalq” is an Iranian Islamist terrorist organization in exile, which advocates the overthrow of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Since its inception in the mid 60s, this group has made numerous assassination attempts on the Iranian leadership, murdered the U.S. military personnel and civilians, supported the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 calling for the execution of embassy staff.

In 1981 MEK members killed 70 Iranian officials including the prime minister, the president and the head of the judiciary. A decade later, they organized a coordinated attack on the Iranian embassies in 13 countries. During the Iran-Iraq War, 1980-88, the group fought against Iran on the side of Saddam Hussein. In total the organization killed more than 50 thousand people in different countries.

In 1997, the U.S. State Department put the MEK into a list of terrorist organizations. And in 2002, the European Union did the same, but in 2009 the EU crossed it out of the list. And in 2012, the United States followed the example. At the same time, the organization is still considered a terrorist one in Iran and Iraq.

One can hardly say that the MEK has completely abandoned the ideas of terror. According to the American TV channel NBC and other media reports, the MEK played its role in the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists. According to other data, the organization was also involved in the murder of Mojtaba Ahmadi, the IRGC cybersecurity service commander, as well as in a serious accident at the factory for the production of heavy water in Arak in autumn 2013.

According to the American TV channel CNN, a terrorist organization has a strict military structure. The MEK headquarters is based in the so-called Ashraf “refugee camp” in Iraq .

https://dlb.nejatngo.org/Media/Report/CNN-MEK-201312.mp4

to download the video file click here

You can see a straight column in blue and white uniform marching on a spacious area framed by the lion sculptures. According to Michael Ware, the author of the video, back in 2007 Camp Ashraf numbered about 4,000 fighters and was one of the best military bases in Iraq. The MEK has more than 2,000 tanks, artillery, armored personnel carriers and air defense means. The territory is a small town with shopping malls and hospitals, blooming gardens, monuments and fountains, which is totally unexpected in war-torn Iraq.

Moreover the Iranian Mujahideen are considered to be involved in undermining the bus with Israeli tourists in the Bulgarian resort of Burgas in summer 2012. The Bulgarian secret services allegedly accused Lebanese Hezbollah but the group rejects all charges despite the fact that it took the responsibility for many terrorist attacks previously.

The terms of an agreement are still unknown. However, the U.S. is likely to use all available means and methods of pressure and persuasion to make Traian Basescu take the right decision. It is obvious that the United States doesn’t really care about the interests of Romania and its people as well as the security in the Balkans.

Delyan Martov, Sofia

December 26, 2013 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

MEK Purchases 27 US Senate Votes for War With Iran

On Tuesday, I posited that the threat of new sanctions kicking in if a final agreement on nuclear technology is not reached could serve as a strong incentive for Iran to bargain in good faith with the P5+1 MEK Purchases 27 US Senate Votes for War With Iran group of nations. But then, on Thursday, an actual sanctions bill was introduced. Ali Gharib took the time to read it (he got an advance copy and posted about it Wednesday) and what he found is profoundly disturbing (emphasis added):

The legislation would broaden the scope of the sanctions already imposed against Iran, expanding the restrictions on Iran’s energy sector to include all aspects of its petroleum trade and putting in place measures targeting Iran’s shipping and mining sectors. The bill allows Obama to waive the new sanctions during the current talks by certifying every 30 days that Iran is complying with the Geneva deal and negotiating in good faith on a final agreement, as well as meeting other conditions such as not sponsoring or carrying out acts of terrorism against U.S. targets.

In accordance with goals laid out frequently by hard-liners in Congress and the influential lobbying group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the bill sets tough conditions for a final deal, should one be reached with Iranian negotiators. Among those conditions is a provision that only allows Obama to waive new sanctions, even after a final deal has been struck, if that deal bars Iran from enriching any new uranium whatsoever. The bill states Obama may not waive sanctions unless the United States and its allies “reached a final and verifiable agreement or arrangement with Iran that will … dismantle Iran’s illicit nuclear infrastructure, including enrichment and reprocessing capabilities and facilities.” (Congress could also block Obama’s waivers by passing a “joint resolution of disapproval” against a final deal.)

Although Gharib ascribes the war mongering aspects of this bill to positions advocated by AIPAC, the work (and funding money) of MEK, which advocates for (in my opinion, violent) regime change in Iran, seems to be just as likely, if not more likely, to be behind this hideous piece of legislation. The chief architect of the bill is Robert Menendez (D-NJ). He lists his cosponsors (Menendez’s original release claimed 26 cosponsors and the news stories linked below also cite 26, but Corey Booker was added to the list this morning while this post was being written. The press release was changed to add Booker to the list without changing the 26 to 27. The press release at the old URL was wiped out so that an empty page is returned. The date of December 19 for the release was also retained.):

The legislation was co-sponsored by twenty-six senators [sic], including: Senators Menendez, Kirk, Schumer, Graham, Cardin, McCain, Casey, Rubio, Coons, Cornyn, Blumenthal, Ayotte, Begich, Corker, Pryor, Collins, Landrieu, Moran, Gillibrand, Roberts, Warner, Johanns, Hagan, Cruz, Donnelly, Blunt and Booker.

Perhaps the only encouraging aspect of this long list of bipartisan backers of war is that back in June of 2012 this group got 44 signatures on a Senate letter calling for all negotiations with Iran to cease unless three conditions were met:

The senators wrote that the “absolute minimum” Iran must do immediately to justify further talks is to shut down the Fordo uranium enrichment facility near Qom, freeze all uranium enrichment above 5 percent, and ship all uranium enriched above 5 percent out of the country.

Note that the current agreement does stop enrichment above 5%. It also calls for half of the 20% uranium to be diluted back down to 5% while the other half is converted to a chemical form for fuel that can’t easily be further enriched. Qom is not shut down, but the agreement does spell out specific numbers of centrifuges that can be used at the two enrichment sites.

But consider this for a moment. Most of what these war mongers were lobbying for last year actually appears in the interim agreement, and so they have been forced to move the goalposts in order to reach a point that they think won’t be part of the final agreement. What they want is a war to change the regime in Iran, not a diplomatic solution that prevents nuclear weapons being developed by Iran.

It became obvious during the final discussions that led to this interim agreement that Iran insists on its right to low level enrichment to produce fuel for nuclear power plants. Since that is seen as a deal-breaker for Iran, it is precisely what the MEK now sets as the determinant of whether sanctions that will certainly lead to war are enacted.

The intellectual dishonesty surrounding this move by MEK shills in the Senate is stunning. They claim, as stated in Menendez’s press release that their goal is “the complete and verifiable termination of Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons program”. Low level enrichment is not part of a weapons program and yet this group insists that Iran also must abandon low level enrichment along with any aspects of a weapons program.

Even more disturbing is that stories today by both the New York Times and CNN mention the introduction of the bill but don’t get around to explaining that the bill calls for the extreme sanctions if all enrichment is not abandoned and that that condition is almost certainly a deal-breaker for Iran.

There is at least some push-back within the Senate. A letter signed by ten Democratic committee heads has been sent to Harry Reid strongly advocating against bringing the bill up for a vote. Sadly, the letter fails to point out the manner in which Menendez’s bill undercuts the ongoing negotiations by setting terms that almost certainly are not going to be a part of any final agreement with Iran. There also is an op-ed (in Politico!) by Carl Levin and Barbara Boxer lobbying against the bill. Significantly, Levin was one of the 44 signatories on the June, 2012 letter but now seems to have come around to favoring diplomacy over war. Failing all this, the White House has promised to veto any bills calling for new sanctions since they clearly violate the interim P5+1 agreement.

by Jim White, Emptywheel.net

December 22, 2013 0 comments

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

It’s Time to Close the Camps

The last quarter century has been a time of great change across the globe, much of which has been for the better. The number of electoral democracies has grown from 69 in 1989 to 118 today. Despite

Michael Rubin Russia’s resurgence, the instability wrought by the Arab Spring, and the dangers posed by rogue regimes, the world remains far freer now than at any point in history.

How tragic it is, then, that so many tens of thousands remain effectively imprisoned in political concentration camps. North Korea, of course, is the world’s worst violator. According to the Guardian, the left’s flagship paper, up to 200,000 North Koreans remain imprisoned. CNN has detailed some of the ongoing horror in the six camps, and any report from the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea is worth reading. The Hermit Kingdom is not alone, though.

For decades, China has also maintained a series of “re-education through labor” [laojiao] camps. And while the Chinese government has recently promised to dismantle its network, actions ultimately speak louder than words.

The United States might have little leverage over China and North Korea, but low-hanging fruit which could be resolved with American diplomatic pressure does exist. The Mujahedin al-Khalq (MKO) is correct to castigate those who believe that the Iranian government or its militia proxies should enjoy an open season on group members. Opposing massacres is not synonymous with support for the group, however; it may no longer be a U.S.-designated terror group, but remains just as much an authoritarian cult. And while MKO spokesmen may castigate the Iraqi government and the Iranian regime, the real victims of the MKO lay within the group itself. Camp Liberty—the successor to Camp Ashraf—exists as much if not more to keep MKO members insulated from the real world and under the control of MKO leader Maryam Rajavi’s commissars than as a means of protection for group members.

Other camps exist in the Tindouf province of southwestern Algeria. Here, perhaps 40,000 residents of southern Morocco, Algeria, western Mali, and northern Mauritania languish in camps controlled by the once-Marxist Polisario Front, largely kept from returning home by the group’s political commissars and the Algerian government. During a recent visit to Dakhla, in Western Sahara, I had the opportunity to speak to former members who described not only their own escape from the camps, but the attempts by others who were forcibly returned to the camps, where Polisario authorities punished them for the audacity of seeking to return home rather than languish in camps 22 years after the war between Morocco and Algeria ended. Simply put, Polisario realizes that if the camps close, the gravy train of international assistance would end and the Polisario would lose its raison d’être.

The Polisario is not the only Cold War remnant stubbornly holding hostages. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia also engages in the practice, holding some prisoners for more than a decade. While some journalists parachute in and whitewash just what happens in FARC camps, it is hard to see “cultural programming” as anything other than an attempt at ideological re-education.

The Obama administration came into office seemingly committed to prioritizing human rights, never mind the debates about how best to guarantee rights, freedom, and liberty. The State Department became a revolving door not only for journalists, but for human-rights advocates, most notably Human Rights Watch’s Tom Malinowski and writer Samantha Power. Increasingly, however, it seems such figures are either window dressing for an administration so disinterested in human rights that it is willing to sanction political concentration and re-education camps or, worse yet, that these figures are so permeated by moral equivalency and skewed in their understanding of what universal human rights are that they are willing to normalize with the regimes, sponsors, and groups which engage in such practices.

Concentration camps and slavery (discussed in a previous post) are two phenomena that simply should not exist in the 21st century. That they do is a sad testament to the reality of regimes like North Korea’s, China’s, Algeria’s, Venezuela’s, and Cuba’s, and the choices which successive U.S. administrations–both Democrat and Republican–have made to not let such issues be stumbling blocks to engaging with the United States on other issues.

Michael Rubin, Commentary Magazine

December 18, 2013 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Notes on the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq and Americans in Paris

On Saturday, 7 December 2013, in an auditorium at the Bourse in Paris, France, Maryam Rajavi and the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK) held a meeting with several notable supporters including former New York

Photo by CSD of Rudolph Giuliani and Maryam Rajavi

Mayor and Republican Presidential Candidate Rudy Giuliani, former Vermont Governor and Democratic Presidential Candidate Howard Dean, former attorney general in the George W. Bush administration Michael Mucasey, and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s daughter Naomi Nontombi Tutu. Over the years, despite it cult-like practices and even when it was formally labeled a terrorist organization, the organization managed to acquire quite a list of high-profile ex-dignitaries in the United States.

I went to cover the event because I think the group may wind up playing a role of one sort and another helping to undermine American and European efforts to reach an agreement with Iran to forestall and foreclose its nuclear weapons capability.

There are several ways the MEK might do this.

It was listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization until last year for reasons outlined in this Council on Foreign Relations Backgrounder. Despite official denials, it may yet try to use violence inside Iran to undermine the talks, knowing full well that any terrorist incidents will serve the hardliners in the regime and “exacerbate the contradictions,” as leftist revolutionaries used to say. When Iranian scientists have been killed, suspicion often has fallen on the MEK, the Israelis, or both.

The MEK claims to have extensive intelligence resources on the ground in Iran and claims credit for the important revelation in 2002 of the regime’s secret nuclear program, although there has been extensive speculation that the actual intelligence was supplied to the MEK by the Israelis. Its ability to float information — or disinformation — about the regime’s activities could complicate debate inside the United States.

To the extent the MEK claims credit for adding to the pressure on the Iranian government to negotiate it strengthens the hand of those inside Iran who want to discredit the negotiators.

But its greatest disruptive ability at the moment may well be connected to the way the Iranian-backed government of Iraq has treated MEK members in various camps there. On September 1 this year, 52 of them were killed, allegedly by special forces from the Iraqi Ministry of Interior, and seven (six of them women) are alleged to have been taken hostage.

Why the Iraqi government would do this, even with prodding from the Iranians, is something of a mystery. One obvious possibility would be revenge: the MEK sided with the mullahs to overthrow the shah, then attempted, and failed, to take over the revolution; it subsequently blew up scores of top Iranian religious leaders, and after Saddam Hussein invaded Iran it sided with his forces. More than 20 years later, when the United States led the invasion of Iraq to overthrow Saddam, the MEK still supported him. But U.S. forces decided its members might be used in some way as a card in future negotiations with Iran and the more than 3,000 MEK members in Iraq were put in a camp, disarmed, and began an existence in legal, political and diplomatic limbo. As the United States withdrew from Iraq in 2011, fears mounted that the government of Prime Minister Maliki would simply ship the Iranian MEK members across the border to face the tender mercies of the government in Tehran.

That did not happen. Instead their camp at Ashraf was closed after a violent incursion by Iraqi forces and they were sent to Camp Liberty on the outskirts of Baghdad (although they are still referred to by the MEK as “Ashrafis,” which is why in my tweets there were some references to killings at Camp Ashraf that were in fact at Camp Liberty).

The United States and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees assured the Ashrafis that they would be resettled in other countries, but that process has been very slow and one of the few countries willing to accept them even temporarily for medical care has been Albania. The camp came under repeated mortar attacks, and then came the September 1 killings and abductions.

Giuliani, Dean and others who worked to get the MEK “delisted” from the State Department’s catalogue of foreign terrorist organizations were involved to some extent in the assurances given the MEK that they would be protected at Camp Liberty and relocated in a timely fashion.

Giuliani argued yesterday that the issue of the Ashrafis and the nuclear negotiations should be linked, something the Obama administration is very unlikely to do. Dean claimed that failure to protect the Ashrafis dishonored the United States of America.

Following are my live tweets from the meeting:

http://christopherdickey.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/the-mujahadeen-e-khalq-mek-and.html?spref=fb

Award-winning author Christopher Dickey is the Paris Bureau Chief and Middle East Regional Editor for The Daily Beast. Chris’s nonfiction books include “Securing the City,” a New York Times Book Review notable book in 2009; “Summer of Deliverance,” his memoir about his father, poet and novelist James Dickey; “Expats,” about Westerners in the modern Arab and Muslim world; and “With the Contras,” a first-hand account of combat in Central American wars. He is also the author of two acclaimed thrillers: “Innocent Blood” and “The Sleeper.” Before moving to Newsweek, Chris worked for The Washington Post as Cairo Bureau Chief and Mexico City Bureau Chief. Chris’s columns about counter-terrorism, espionage and the Middle East appear on The Daily Beast. Links to most recent columns and articles are posted on The Shadowland Journal, and also on the archive at ChristopherDickey.com.

Christopher Dickey, The Shadowland Journal

December 10, 2013 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

Mujahedin Khalq Cult in the Shadow War

An Interview with a former member of Mojahedin-e-Khalq, Massoud Banisadr

Masoud Banisadr was an active member of the controversial Iranian opposition group Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK, PMOI) for twenty years, serving as the organizations representative to the United Nations and to the United States during his tenure. The group is largely obscured from public discourse, or more recently veiled in headlines describing them as political dissidents or refugees. To those more familiar with the group the debate tends to focus primarily on their nature. For many MEK is a dangerous terrorist organization, yet for others they are freedom fighters and the only legitimate alternative to the Iranian Government. They’ve been subject to several pieces suggesting they work as assassins for the United States and Israel. Masoud has published a book called Memoirs of an Iranian Rebel about his experience in the organization, which he very candidly describes in detail as a cult, and one that has long lost its strength and vibrance. He now focuses much of his work on the research and understanding of cults, terrorism, and cult behavior within those structures.

Richard Potter: How long were you active in MEK?

Masoud Banisadr: I left MEK 1996. Before that I was the representative in the United States and the United Nations.

You were only in the political arm?

Yes.

You would have joined in 1976 when it was a more political guerilla movement?

Yes at the time I joined them I was a PhD student in UK in New Castle University. I was married and I had a little daughter. Of course I married young, so everything was very fast. We married in UK far from Iran, but the only source of news we had during the Iranian revolution was from MEK. So because of the past history and the number of martyrs the MEK had against the Shah we trusted them. The slogans they gave were about freedom and democracy and equal rights, women’s rights, minority rights. All destructive cults are like some lizards and can change colors very rapidly to their surroundings.

How did this change?

What happened in 1981 is that Massoud Rajavi (The head of MEK until 2003. Currently believed dead or in hiding) saw that he had attracted so many students and he thought he could repeat the Bolshevik revolution of Russia in Iran. So what he did was he suddenly on 20 June 1981 asked all members and supporters to come to the streets of Tehran and overthrow the new establishment. MEK says that 500,000 people came to the streets. They failed. They failed and they couldn’t do anything and from the next day they changed into a clandestine organization. Between the summer of 1981 the MEK went through many terrorist actions. They bombed the Islamic revolution party buildings. They killed the new President and Premier of Iran, and then they killed at Friday prayers in different cities through suicide operation, they killed different imams through suicide operations. They themselves claim that within one year that they killed almost 1400 people, high officials and supporters of the new establishment in Iran. At the same time they claimed 2000 of their members were killed in street clashes with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. In Iran what they were doing was what they called “heroic terrorism operations” later they thought the word terrorism had a bad connotation, especially in the west and they changed it to heroic actions. Most of their supporters in Iran were those who joined this group because of its peaceful nature. For the democratic liberal and pro social justice nature, so they were not ready to change into terrorist or even guerrillas. People are ready to vote for a party, but not to fight for that party.

You refer to MEK as a destructive cult, when do you believe they transformed from a political group or a guerilla group to a cult?

What happened was within Iran they were left losing 99% of their member. Only 2,000 to 3000 members left in Iran. Most of them were gone because of change of policy from peaceful demonstration to terrorist activities and street fighting. Even those who could become radicals were either killed in street clashes or by execution by the government. They lost the battle in Iran. Outside of Iran they were portraying themselves as the democratic alternative to the Iranian government. Two of the most important allies of theirs were ex Iranian President Banisadr and the Kurdish democratic party of Kurdish Iran. These two left the National Council of Resistance in 1984, suddenly this coalition of Rajavi and others turned into the pseudonym MEK. In 1983 they could get support from the labor party of UK and the socialist party of France, but after this they did not have it anymore. MEK was on the verge of disintegration, so he had to do something, which is why I think he did what was called the ideological revolution, which is when it became a destructive cult.

You’ve written about the organization forcing you to divorce your wife at this point, can you elaborate?

At this time they were telling me that my wife was what they called “revoluted”- meaning that she had accepted the ideological revolution and she was now a disciple of Mr. and Mrs. Rajavi and if I wanted to leave the group I had to leave my wife and my children as well. This was my main problem. It wasn’t just leaving the group it was leaving my children and the love of my life. I tried to rationalize it and I tried to stay in the group. Then there was some time later when they asked me to divorce my wife, again it was the same problem. Then I was in the United States and everything was wrong and slogans were wrong and meaningless, everything they said was meaningless.

How did you rationalize all of this?

There is an experiment where they put a live frog in a pot and they turn the heat up degree by degree. Outside the pot is cold, inside the pot is warm. The frog won’t jump out of the pot. It can but it won’t. It’s because the outside is cold. But when it’s realized that it is boiling and it is cooking the opportunity is gone because all of his muscles have been cooked. This is what happened to us. When the ideological revolution changed and we could see the pot was boiling, all of our muscles were cooked. All our self confidence or individuality that would help us jump out of the pot were gone.

MEK was originally aligned with some of the Kurdish groups but later on there was a great deal of fighting between MEK and Kurdish groups. What caused this change?

After the gulf war when Saddam lost the war the Kurds in the north and Shia in south thought they could revolt against Saddam Hussein and get rid of him. Unfortunately the US didn’t help and this is why they lost. Since Saddam’s army wasn’t in good shape after the war they asked MEK to attack some of the Kurdish guerillas in the north and MEK committed many atrocities. Of course then I was outside of Iraq and I couldn’t believe that we did this. After I left the group and I met other who left I realized it was true. What we were told was we were fighting Iranian revolutionary guards who had Kurdish guards, and this is what I was believed. When the accusation was brought up at the UN or anyone I would deny it vehemently, but when I left the group and met ex MEK from that war I realized this wasn’t an accusation, but a fact. They say they even killed women and children.

Saddam was probably one of the only allies in the Middle East MEK had at that time, no?

No. At this time Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were helping as well. As a matter of fact, Rajavi at one juncture traveled to Saudi Arabia and met the king. In MEK they showed us a video of him meeting the king. It was secret, the KSA and UAE support. Everyone knew about Saddam, but even within the group they didn’t speak about KSA or UAE. I saw the video when I reached the highest rank men could go in MEK. When MEK had their last battle, Forough Javidan, which means eternal light, the plan was that MEK, with the help of Saddam Hussein, would take part of Iran and announce the government order over it, calling it the democratic Islamic government of Iran- They’d go and capture western Iran and establish a government and immediately Saddam Hussein would recognize it and Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates would support it, and there were others. They were hoping Kuwait would join and the United States could be pressured to acknowledge them and they could create a situation of pressure on Iran like North and South Vietnam, or Korea. This was their tactic.

This one of the bloodiest incidents during this period, no?

They failed. They lost a third of the members. As a matter of fact I was in that battle. I lost some of the muscles in my right soldier because I was shot. Of course, we were not trained, not for that battle. They said everyone had to attend, even representatives who weren’t in Iraq. So I had to go back to fight. I had no military training but I had to go. Rajavi wanted everyone to attend but himself and his wife.

I’m sorry to hear about this

It was very horrible. There were 15 students who were from the United States, they were supporters. They were brought to Iraq and in the same night they were moved to the battle field. Because of my political rank I was a commander even though I had no military background. I didn’t know anything about fighting. Only a few days before for the first time I saw a machine gun, and I only shot it once. So in the first battle I almost lost my life, I was shot and went unconscious and was take back to the hospital. Unfortunately I learned all 15 died because they didn’t have any training, and because it was done so quickly no one asked them their names and nothing was recorded. I didn’t even know their names. It was horrible

How did you eventually get out?

In 1996 Maryam Rajavi (Wife of Massoud Rajavi and current head of MEK) was speaking in London and they asked me to come and mobilize supporters, and talk to British politicians and arrange meetings for Mrs. Rajavi, including Margaret Thatcher. So in London after five or six years I met my daughter. Before that she was 13 and now she was 18. I was faced with a lady. Emotions and feelings are very important in destructive cults. They isolate you from your loved ones, so you don’t turn your emotions to your loved ones. In London I could see my daughter and my sister and my old friends. From early morning to midnight I had to see old friends, ex-supporters of MEK, and answering thousands of questions which internally I had no rational answer for any of them. So these things, my feelings between my friends and family helped me change. And also luck. I had an accident and back problems, and I was so active in London that I had to go to the hospital. My back gave out. Fortunately for me MEK was very busy then for Maryam Rajavi with different meetings, so they didn’t care about me. If it was another juncture they’d make sure someone was with me, because MEK never leaves a member without a chaperone, always at least two with each other they watch and look after each other. So in the hospital I was alone for the almost a month and I could see normal relationships of people with each other. There was a guy beside who had an accident and I was helping him to shave his beard, or to feed him and so on, and this revived my individuality and my humanity and self confidence. All gradually it came back. When it came that I left the hospital I left MEK. I didn’t reject them fully yet, but I realized I couldn’t be with them anymore.

There are many who believe MEK serves as proxy for the West and that they are allied, do you believe this?

I don’t think so. Another problem MEK has is that Americans and Europeans know MEK has no support. In the early eighties there was an illusion of support but it was realized there was no support. There are no demonstrations for MEK and no one comes to support them. Even in Iran anyone who hates the government, even the old supporters, if you ask them they’ll say MEK is worse than the Mullahs. Western governments know this. Would the US repeat the same mistake they made in Afghanistan by supporting MEK where in Afghanistan they supported the Taliban but now they fight them. All of this aside it isn’t said that they don’t use MEK, because they do. As long as there is a bad relation with the United States and Iran they will use MEK. The Israelis, they also use MEK very much. But it doesn’t mean that even the Israelis trust them.

There was an accusation that the US was training MEK in Nevada to be used as assassins. Do you believe this?

No I don’t believe this. What is the average age of MEK members now/ I think it is about eighty. What do you want to do with people this old? I don’t think so. Probably not even spying. The only use they might have for them may be in relation to some terrorist activities in Thailand and in Europe where they say Iran or Hezbollah are committing terrorist attacks against Israeli embassy or the personnel of the Israeli embassy. Probably they could use MEK to discredit the Iranian government or even Hezbollah because Politically I don’t believe they use these tactics at this point, it would be political suicide for them. There was a story in the United States that came to the media and vanished about someone who was going to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in the United States. It’s possible they can create this news with MEK members to work against the Iranian government, but no real action.

Richard Potter, Mondoweiss

More Information on:

Link to Research Institute on Destructive Cults (RIDC)

About Richard Potter

Richard Potter is a 27 year old Social Worker and writer from Pittsburgh, PA. His work has been featured in Vice, Your Middle East, and Rohingya Blogger.

November 28, 2013 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Derailing diplomacy: MEK weighs in on Iran nuke talks & Tom Ridge interview

Last week while the outlines of a historic interim deal were being hashed out between the P5+1 nations and Iran, a last ditch effort to derail diplomacy and garner support for regime change in the Islamic Republic took place on Capitol Hill organized by the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, also known as the the MEK. VOR’s Sean Nevins writes about the event, as well as his one-on-one interview with former Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, and a discussion with the MEK’s political arm.

The MEK, which according to U.S. Department of State, has been involved in the assassinations of American citizens and committed abuse against its own members, held a congressional briefing about a group of MEK members that were kidnapped following an attack on their compound in Iraq on September 1st of this year.

Prominent US officials, such as John Bolton (Fmr. US Ambassador to the United Nations), Tom Ridge and Brad Sherman (D-CA), attended and spoke on behalf of the MEK.

However, rather than focusing on the legitimately tragic events that took place against the MEK and its compound in Iraq, speakers zeroed in on the Iranian nuclear deal and its potential problems while also supporting regime change in the country.

Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat from Texas’s 18th District, said, “I want to see Iran disarmed, totally disarmed” while Randy Weber, a Republican also from Texas, said, “We need regime change. That’s pure and simple.”

None of the speakers over the two-hour time span supported diplomatic efforts taking place in Geneva.

A one-on-one with Tom Ridge (Fmr. Secretary of Homeland Security)

Following the briefing, Voice of Russia, intercepted Tom Ridge and asked him about his support for the MEK, an organization that has killed American citizens in the past. He denied the veracity of the claims, calling them “allegations,” and said that, if true, “the people at Liberty and Ashraf [the camps in Iraq] weren’t involved in those… assassinations back then”. This answer is despite the that fact that the State Department, Human Rights Watch, and the Rand Corporation say that the MEK was involved with those killings.

Additionally, Voice of Russia asked the former Secretary about allegations by the same aforementioned organizations that the MEK has abused its own members in the Iraqi camps. Again, the Secretary challenged the veracity of the claims. He said, “I think the Rand report, I’m not sure about the Human Rights [Watch report], has been discredited for many, many years.” This answer also came despite the fact that the State Department has said, “the Department does not overlook or forget the MEK’s past acts of terrorism, including its involvement in the killing of U.S. citizens in Iran in the 1970s and an attack on U.S. soil in 1992. The Department also has serious concerns about the MEK as an organization, particularly with regard to allegations of abuse committed against its own members.”

With regards to the talks going on in Geneva at the time, Ridge told Voice of Russia, “I think a bad deal is worse than no deal.” During his presentation, he also emphasized that he did not support negotiations.

My own encounter with the MEK

Following my discussion with Tom Ridge, two people named Ali Safavi and Ben Borhani, from the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which is a political arm of the MEK, approached me to inquire about my questioning of the Secretary. They claimed that my concerns were part of a massive propaganda campaign targeted against the MEK by the Iranian regime.

I invited Mr. Safavi to come into the Voice of Russia studio on another date to voice his organization’s views, and so I could moderate a debate between himself and, if possible, a member of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). I have no idea if a member of NIAC would agree to such a debate but will not have to find out as Mr. Safavi declined the request. He then alleged that Trita Parsi, the president of NIAC, is “acting as a lobby for the [Iranian] regime”, which is laughable as NIAC is stalwart in their criticisms of human rights violations by the Ayatollah and other government officials in Iran. For example, NIAC frequently criticizes the Iranian government’s treatment of Bahais, who are not allowed to attend university in Iran, and are frequently murdered and imprisoned for their beliefs.

However, Mr. Safavi did invite VOR into the NCRI offices to further discuss his organization and its plans, which we will do in the near future.

The 2009 Rand report on the MEK says they are “skilled manipulators of public opinion”. It says that the group has a “long history of deception”. Included in the report is an account of how the MEK has lied to the US government in the past in order to achieve favorable status as detainees at Camp Ashraf in Iraq.

Sean Nevins, Voice of Russia (VOR)

November 27, 2013 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Mojahedin Khalq spending spree suffers backlash in Washington

Lindsey Graham returns donation to Iranian exile group

Masood Abooali contributed $2,600 in August to Sen. Lindsey Graham’s reelection campaign. The next month, the Iranian-American received a refund, along with a terse explanation: The campaign was “uncomfortable” with some of his associations and had rejected his contribution. Lindsey Graham returns donation to Iranian exile group

Abooali, a 56-year-old engineer who lives in Northern Virginia, left Iran 30 years ago and is now a U.S. citizen. He said in an interview he’s a former political prisoner — detained three times for a total of two years — of the regime in Iran that came to power in its 1979 revolution.

He’s also a supporter — but, he emphasized, not a member — of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, known as the MEK, a leftist group of Iranian exiles pushing for the overthrow of the regime.

Last year, the State Department removed the MEK from its list of designated terrorist organizations after a number of defense heavyweights spoke out on the group’s behalf, including former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and Frances Townsend, who was a homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush.

For his part, Abooali said his “past is clear of any violence or any activity against the United States, which I am proudly a citizen of.”

“I’m a hardworking family man concerned for my family that I left behind, concerned for my mother who I haven’t seen in 30 years,” he said, explaining that he contributed to Graham’s reelection campaign because of the South Carolina Republican’s hard-line stance on sanctions against the Iranian government and his denunciation of its human rights abuses.

“To me,” Abooali added, “the politics of appeasement is hurting us.”

Graham is very much a hard-liner on the issue. The outspoken member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who faces several conservative primary challengers back home, is pressing for stepped-up sanctions against the Islamic Republic even as the Obama administration works to clinch a deal to curb the country’s nuclear program.

Graham’s push for tougher sanctions — an issue that could become a sticking point this week with the Senate expected to take up its annual defense authorization bill — has won him the backing of a number of supporters of the MEK.

His roster of donors last quarter includes two names that match those listed as having signed a 2011 letter urging then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to overturn the group’s terrorist designation. Others match the names of those listed as having commented in support of the group in online forums or signed pro-MEK petitions.

Each of the contributions was refunded.

“During routine due diligence by campaign staff, it was discovered that a few donors had associations the campaign was uncomfortable with,” said campaign spokesman Tate Zeigler, who declined to provide further details.

“In an abundance of caution,” he said, “the contributions were refunded.”

Last quarter, the Graham campaign sent refunds to 24 donors totaling $44,825 according to its latest filings with the Federal Election Commission. But not all of the refunds were because of the contributors’ associations, Zeigler said. A “significant number” were because the donors “had exceeded their federal limit.”

In all, Graham’s campaign hauled in $1.2 million in the past quarter and has raised $6.2 million this election cycle. His recent donors include the political action committees for a number of top defense contractors — Raytheon, General Atomics and BAE Systems, among others — along with a personal contribution from former President Bush.

Abooali said he had no hard feelings over his rejected contribution, noting that Graham never asked for his support. He also said he would donate again to “any politician who takes sides with the Iranian people” and works to strengthen sanctions against the regime.

Earlier this year, Abooali contributed to two other Iran hawks, giving $2,600 to Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and $1,000 to Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Neither campaign reported sending Abooali a refund, nor did either respond to questions about whether they have concerns about accepting donations from a supporter of the MEK.

The State Department revoked the group’s designation as a foreign terrorist organization in September 2012, saying its decision was based on three factors: The MEK had renounced violence, its members hadn’t committed any “confirmed acts of terrorism” in more than a decade and it had cooperated in “the peaceful closure of Camp Ashraf,” a refugee camp in Iraq where thousands of members of the MEK had lived in exile since the 1980s.

“The department does not overlook or forget the MEK’s past acts of terrorism, including its involvement in the killing of U.S. citizens in Iran in the 1970s and an attack on U.S. soil in 1992,” a senior State Department official said last year, speaking to reporters on background.

The decision came after a lobbying blitz — complete with television ads, speaking gigs and columns in a number of major newspapers — urging Clinton to overturn the terrorist designation, which dated to 1997.

Last year, for example, Ridge co-wrote a pro-MEK op-ed with retired Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Hugh Shelton and former Democratic Rep. Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island.

“The regime in Tehran views MEK as an existential threat because MEK strives to replace the unelected, clerical regime with a liberal democracy that champions a non-nuclear Iranian future, equal rights for women and minorities, and a free press,” they wrote in the op-ed, published online by Fox News.

“But,” they continued, “the major opposition to the mullahs is being prevented from realizing these dreams of freedom for the Iranian people because both Iran and the U.S. designate them as a terrorist organization.”

Austin Wright, Politico

November 16, 2013 0 comments

Members of the MEK

Meet The Weird, Well-Connected Ex-Terrorists

Meet The Weird, Super-Connected Group That’s Mucking Up U.S. Talks With Iraq

When Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki begins a three day official visit to Washington today, he’ll face predictable questions about Iran, Syria, and Iraq’s own political instability and soaring violence. Top lawmakers, however, will press him on a very different issue: the recent killings of dozens of members of a former terrorist group that the Iraqi government had promised — and failed — to protect.

The Mujahedeen-e Khalq, or MEK, is the most powerful lobby you’ve never heard of, and probably the most unusual. It has used a combination of political savvy and seemingly bottomless pools of money to persuade many prominent lawmakers and former officials from the Bush and Obama administrations that it has broad support within Iran and could help turn the country into a democracy. Along the way, it’s gone from being as seen as a group responsible for the deaths of at least six Americans to one that is a vital partner in the effort to overthrow Iran’s theocratic regime.

MEK supporters like New Jersey Democrat Bob Menendez, the powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, say they want to punish the Maliki government for an attack on an MEK compound called Camp Ashraf last month that left that killed at least 50 of its members. During an October 3rd hearing, Menendez told Wendy Sherman, the number three official at the State Department, that he would suspend U.S. weapons sales to Iraq until more was done to protect the MEK members at the base.

Vice President Biden discussed the MEK issue when he spoke with Maliki Wednesday morning, according to a senior administration official. The official said Baghdad wanted the MEK to leave Iraq, but said the U.S. government had no credible information that the Iraqi government was involved in the September attack on Camp Ashraf. Still, the official said that Washington worried that the group’s roughly 2,900 members would be in danger until they could be moved to new homes in other countries. The problem, he said, was that Albania and Germany were the only nations that have so far been willing to take in even small numbers of MEK followers.

Menendez aides say the senator, for his part, plans to specifically raise the Iraqi government’s treatment of the MEK members, along with his concern that Baghdad is allowing Iran to use its airspace to fly weapons and fighters to Syria, when he sits down with Maliki later Wednesday.

“It is unacceptable to lose one more life when American commanders gave these individuals a written guarantee toward their safety and it sends a message to others in the world that when we say that we are going to do that and we do not, that they should not trust us,” he said at the time. “I doubt very much that we are going to see any approval of any weapons sales to Iraq until we get this situation in a place in which people’s lives are saved.”

The MEK has also enlisted prominent retired officials to tout its cause in public speeches and private meetings at the State Department and on Capitol Hill. Its long list of supporters includes former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Attorney General Mike Mukasey, former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, retired Marine General Jim Jones, Obama’s first national security advisor, and retired Army General Hugh Shelton, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

MEK advocates like Rendell receive up to $30,000 per speech, which means many have been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the group. Rendell, in an interview, said he genuinely believed in the group’s cause and wasn’t in it for the money. He said that he and MEK advocates like Jones and former FBI Director Louis Freeh have spent hundreds of hours personally lobbying the State Department and members of Congress on behalf of the group and had done so pro bono. Rendell said he bills $1,000 per hour as a lawyer, which meant that had foregone significant amounts of money to aid the group.

“The U.S. had promised to guarantee their safety and then just stood aside when they were massacred, gangster style,” he said in the interview. “It’s disgusting.”

Rendell helped draft a letter to Obama last week that demanded U.S. assistance for the MEK members still stuck at Camp Ashraf. In the letter, obtained by FP, MEK’s advocates said the killings at Camp Ashraf was a “premeditated mass murder planned at the highest level and executed by Iraqi forces and agents, using equipment and training provided by U.S. forces.”

“We urge you to allow all of the Camp Liberty residents to be evacuated immediately from Iraq, using United States forces, and brought to safety in a United States Government supported facility,” the letter read. Until that happened, the group argued, the Obama administration should “suspend any aid or sale of arms to Iraq.”

For the moment, that’s not a step the White House is prepared to take. Bernadette Meehan, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, said the administration was “deeply concerned” about the safety of the MEK members at Camp Ashraf and consistently pressed the the Iraqi government to do as much as possible to protect them. Still, she said that delaying weapons sales to Iraq could do more harm than good.

“U.S. security assistance, and foreign military sales in particular, are tools that we use for building and shaping Iraq’s defense capabilities and integrating Iraqi security forces with our security forces and regional partners,” Meehan said. “Withholding security assistance may well serve to decrease our influence in Baghdad, our ability to seed relationships, and provide leverage for strategic competitors who will fill the vacuum and could conceivably damage our long-term interests.”

Administration officials said the president would discuss a range of regional and security issues with Maliki when the Iraqi leader visits the White House Friday but declined to say whether the president planned to specifically raise the MEK issue.

Either way, the MEK’s prominent role in the U.S.-Iraqi relationship represents a remarkable turnaround for a group that was once held responsible for a string of bombings and assassinations inside Iran that killed at least six Americans, including the deputy chief of the U.S. military mission to Iran and a senior Texaco executive. It was also linked to the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. In 1997, the State Department designated the group a “foreign terrorist organization,” a move that imposed strict financial sanctions against the MEK. The MEK’s current leadership has long denied any involvement in the killings or the seizure of the embassy.

The group’s relationship with Washington improved dramatically after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The MEK group gave up its weapons and formed a warm relationship with senior American commanders, who gave the group formal promises of protection. Last month, however, masked gunmen with military-quality weapons swept into an MEK compound outside Baghdad, killed roughly 50 of its members and abducted seven others. Grisly videos released by the MEK showed the corpses of men who were shot in the head with their hands tied behind their backs. The group’s supporters here at home immediately accused Maliki’s government of orchestrating the attack, something Baghdad denies, and called for it to be sanctioned in response.

The MEK’s power in Washington surprises many experts on the group, who describe it as a cult that exerts tremendous power over the daily lives of its followers.

Jeremiah Goulka, a former RAND researcher who has made repeated visits to Camp Ashraf, said MEK leaders physical cut their members off from the outside world, limit their access to outside newspapers or TV stations, and enforce gender segregation and celibacy. He said the MEK required its followers to attend regular sessions where they were forced to admit whether they had sexual thoughts. Those that admitted to them were publicly humiliated, while those that denied having them were derided as liars and criticized anyway.

“That’s the definition of how a cult works,” he said.

Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the group had little support back home because ordinary Iranians were nationalists troubled by both the MEK’s vaguely socialist ideology and its past relationship with Saddam Hussein, which funded the group’s operations for decades. Many outside experts believe the MEK is still drawing from the pools of money it received from the former Iraqi leader.

“What keeps them in the news are their deep pockets,” Sadjadpour said. “Once those deep pockets run out they’re basically going to be rendered irrelevant.”

By Yochi Dreazen

November 2, 2013 0 comments

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