. . .one of the more noteworthy developments is an accelerating campaign to remove the mojahedin-e khalq, or MEK, from the U.S. Government’s list of foreign terrorist organizations. Over the last few months, a number of prominent Republicans-including John Bolton, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former White House homeland security and counterterrorism coordinator Fran Townsend, and new House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen-have been publicly agitating to delist the MEK. But this effort has now gone bipartisan and big time, including engaging the services of a Washington, DC consulting firm.
To document this last point, we link here to the video of an event held in Washington last week, clearly designed to build public support for delisting the MEK as part of a U.S.-led campaign for regime change in Tehran. The event was organized by Executive Action, LLC, which describes itself as "a McKinsey & Company with muscle, a private CIA and Defense Department available to address your most intractable problems and difficult challenges". (Exactly who engaged Executive Action’s services for this event is not clear.) Featured speakers included not only Republican figures like Mukasey, but also retired U.S. Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni; former New Mexico Governor, Clinton Administration cabinet officer, and Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson; former Democratic New Jersey Senator Robert Torricelli; and retired Marine Corps General James Jones-who just stepped down, in November 2010, as President Obama’s first national security adviser. All of the speakers argued for bringing down the Islamic Republic and forging a new political order in Iran-and for embracing the MEK as the foundation of a new Iranian "opposition" capable of bringing about both of these objectives.

I really don’t know what to say to the fans of the MEK in Washington. They apparently have no ability to look at this situation from the viewpoint of the Iranian people. The MEK was a rival for power during and after the Iranian Revolution. They fully expected to take over the government from the "mullahs" and the secular nationalists. They were ousted and purged during the hostage crisis. They went to Iraq where Saddam Hussein gave them support, and a place to mount their attacks against the Islamic Republic. The fact that they stayed in Iraq under Saddam’s protection during the Iran-Iraq war caused widespread expressions of hate for them in Iran. Of course they are completely guilty of terrorist operations in the pre-Revolutionary days, and they continue to take credit for bombings and civil unrest in Iran–which I guess doesn’t count as terrorism since it is directed at Iranian citizens.

But the most important fact that Bolton, Ros-Lehtinin and others fail to comprehend is that the MEK could never, never in a million years form an alternative government in Iran. The Iranian people mistrust them at best, and most thoroughly despise them and think them to be traitors. Their supporters are largely cynical "get rid of the Mullahs at any price" types who also don’t believe in their "cause" whatever that is.

Not only that, but they are aging, and not recruiting new supporters. This is a bankrupt group that is not going to do what the Right Wing neo-con dead-enders in Washington hope they will do. It is sad and pitiful for anyone to be hitching their horse to this group. I only wonder who is paying the lobbyists and others trying to gin up their empty cause.

It is also sad that Washington politicians waste their energy on cockamamie schemes such as getting this group off the terrorist list so that we can throw millions of taxpayer dollars down their rat hole in the utterly vain hope that they will bring about regime change in Iran rather than seriously trying to engage Iran ourselves.

Culture and International Affairs – Bill Beeman – University of Minnesota

The post Beeman– Mojaheddin-e Khalq Can Never Rule Iran appeared first on Nejat Society.

Iran has never had a proven nuclear weapons program. Ever. This inconvenient fact stands as an indictment of the Bush administration’s stance on Iran.

The recently released 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that Iran “suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003” caught the Bush administration flat-footed. In his panic, Bush grasped desperately at the idea that the weapons program may have once existed. However, the report does not offer a scintilla of evidence that the weapons program was ever an established fact.

Designating 2003 as the date that Iran “stopped” its program is telling:
this is the year the Bush administration first decided to create a case for attacking Iran based on the purported danger of its nuclear program.

In February 2003, the U.S. government-designated terrorist group Mujahedin-e Khalq, better known as the MEK (or MKO) “revealed” the existence of Iran’s nuclear facilities to Washington. The MEK, which had been purged from Iran during the period following the 1979 revolution, took up residence in Iraq under the protection of Saddam Hussein. The MEK, sometimes identified as an “Islamic Marxist” organization, is dedicated to the overthrow of the current Iranian government. It has been assiduous in courting American lawmakers to recruit U.S. support for its cause. Legislators such as Kansas Senator Sam Brownback and Florida Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen have championed this cause, and neoconservatives Patrick Clawson and Daniel Pipes lobbied for its removal from the U.S. list of terrorist organizations in order to use the MEK in the Bush White House drive for regime change in Iran.

Subsequently, the Bush administration claimed that Iran had “concealed” its weapons program for decades, and began a campaign to shut down all nuclear development.

In fact, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) grants all nations the “inalienable right” to peaceful nuclear development. Further, it does not require any nation to report its facilities to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) until fissile material, such as uranium, is actually introduced into the facility.

Iran did indeed have a brief reporting lapse. It revealed the start of its nuclear enrichment experiments at the time they began, rather than announcing this to the IAEA 180 days before experimentation as was required. This was in 2003, and it was the only serious breech of protocol.

The National Intelligence Estimate now identifies 2003 as the date when the weapons program stopped — literally at the point when the Bush administration first became aware of it.

2003 was two years before the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It was more than a year before the United States began to lobby for U.N. economic sanctions against Iran. Claiming that “international pressure” had caused Iran to modify its behavior, the Bush administration tried desperately to justify its exaggerated characterizations of the danger Iran posed to the world. The only event that the Bush administration can now claim as constituting “international pressure” is the May 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

If the international community understands that Iran never had a weapons program, President George W. Bush’s statement that Iran could start the program up “again” is clearly absurd.

It is now clear that the Bush administration’s campaign to convince the world of the danger of Iran’s purported immanent nuclear weapons was a sham. The campaign was one in a series of public pretexts to effect regime change in the Islamic Republic. No amount of equivocation, or bluster about Iran’s “continuing” danger can mask the fact that American credibility on this issue has been irrevocably damaged.

The only positive outcome of this debacle may be that the Bush administration may finally accept that differences with Iran can only be solved by actually talking to the leaders of the Islamic Republic. Restoration of diplomatic relations, even at a low level, will begin the process of reducing the hostile atmosphere that has been created, and will start the long, slow process toward the restoration of productive and peaceful relations.

New America Media, News Analysis, William O. Beeman

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