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On The Path To Failure

In early 2014 we remarked on Color Revolution by Force in Syria and Ukraine:

Accompanying the demonstrations and illegal occupations of government buildings are in both cases brutal, criminal attacks on the police and other government forces. In Syria the violence”muscle”part was done by foreign financed Jihadists while neo-nazi gangs are used in the Ukraine. The demonstrations and the attacks on the state are planned and go together. There is nothing”peaceful”in demonstrations that are only the public-relations cover for attacks on the state. But the foreign politicians and media immediately utter”concerns”and threats over completely normal government responses to them. It is a scam to justify”western””support”for the demonstrators and to further the violence.

The aim is”regime change”of legitimate governments by small minorities. Should the”regime”resist to that the alternative of destroying the state and the whole society is also wholeheartedly accepted.

We have since seen similar CIA operations in Venezuela and most recently in Nicaragua. The same concept is used to attack Iran. In December peaceful economic protests were hijacked by violent elements. Last night a similar attempt occurred:

Khoramshar water shortage protest turned violent tonight.

What we know:

– At least 2 protesters shot, possibly by getting close to military zones

– Mobs set 2 museums on fire (reports)

– 1 hour of calm

– No base takeovers (anti-regime journos have claimed)

– Armed bike is suspicious

via Sayed Mousavi – bigger

The scene with the”armed bike”in the video attached to the above tweet can be seen better in another video. It shows two”peaceful protesters”on a motorcycle shooting at police with an automatic gun. The shooter is hit and falls off. Another”peaceful protester”picks up the gun and continues shooting.

A year ago the CIA created a new mission center to attack Iran:

The Iran Mission Center will bring together analysts, operations personnel and specialists from across the CIA to bring to bear the range of the agency’s capabilities, including covert action. …

To lead the new group, Mr. Pompeo picked a veteran intelligence officer, Michael D’Andrea, who recently oversaw the agency’s program of lethal drone strikes …

… Mr. D’Andrea, a former director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, is known among peers as a demanding but effective manager, and a convert to Islam who works long hours. Some U.S. officials have expressed concern over what they perceive as his aggressive stance toward Iran.

The tool the U.S. is using in Iran are operatives of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), a terror cult that has been fighting with Saddam’s Iraq against Iran and is despised by the Iranian people. When the U.S. was kicked out of Iraq it transferred the MEK camps from Iraq to Albania where the cult is now training its terrorists.

Yesterday a conference of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a political umbrella controlled by the MEK, was held in Paris. One of the well paid guest speakers was Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudi Giuliani. He acknowledged U.S. involvement in the protests in Iran:

“Those protests [in Iran] are not happening spontaneously. They are happening because of many of our people in Albania and many of our people here and throughout the world.”

The MEK is just a front group, trained by Mossad and financed with U.S. and Saudi money. It is not backed by Iranian people. Only half of the attendees of the conference were Iranians at all:

The other half consisted of an assortment of bored-looking Poles, Czechs, Slovakians, Germans and Syrians who responded to a Facebook campaign promising travel, food and accommodation to Paris for a mere €25.

These”color revolution by force”regime change protests are only one of the tools the U.S. is using to destroy Iran.

Trump wants to end all oil exports from Iran to starve the country of foreign currencies. Iran’s biggest customers are Europe, India and China. The big Europe oil companies have already folded under Trump’s pressure, India followed and China has still to decide if it wants to take a (costly) stand. Trump is pressing Saudi Arabia to increase its oil supplies to replace the Iranian oil that can no longer reach the world market.

Making Iranians poorer is thought to lead to an uprising and regime change. But it is doubtful that such will work. The identity of the Islamic Republic is quite strong. It is more likely that the Iranian people will pull together and accept the hardship while asymmetric Iranian operations slowly destroy the U.S.’s policies. Saudi oil ports are quite vulnerable targets …

Within the Trump administration Secretary of State Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton are the biggest proponents of regime change in Tehran:

Bolton views the demonstrations that have broken out in Iran in recent months over the state of the country’s economy as an indication of the regime’s weakness. He has told Trump that increased U.S. pressure could lead to the regime’s collapse.

One person who recently spoke with senior White House officials on the subject summarized Bolton view in the words: “One little kick and they’re done.”

Secretary of Defense Mattis is said to be opposed to regime change in Iran. He fears that such an effort might lead to a larger Middle East war. Trump will likely fire him soon. Sheldon Adelson, the Zionist billionaire who financed Trump’s campaign, paid Bolton and supports Netanyahoo, will have Trump ears. He demands regime change in Iran no matter what.

Regime change in Iran is not just a Trump administration project. The support for the MEK nutters is bipartisan. Several Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, also spoke at the MEK conference in Paris. The neo-conservative lunatics are established in both parties. Here is Obama’s ambassador to Russia who tried and failed to implement regime change there:

Michael McFaul @McFaul – 18:21 UTC – 30 Jun 2018

A democratic Iran not only would free Iranians from repressive theocracy but produce closer ties between our two countries; real security, economic, and moral benefits for both Iranians and Americans.

To which the father of the neocons responded:

Bill Kristol @BillKristol – 18:29 UTC – 30 Jun 2018

Bill Kristol Retweeted Michael McFaul

Very true. And great to see a bipartisan consensus for regime change in Iran! (It would be happily ironic if, totally inadvertently, tough sanctions followed by the JCPOA followed by withdrawal from the deal caused so much whiplash that the regime crumbled.)

Surely, the U.S. will be welcome in Tehran with candy and flowers (not). Such neo-conservative”moral benefit”nonsense has already led to the disaster of the war on Iraq. Iran is several times larger. It has a quite modern economy, effective proxy forces and very significant allies. Any attempt to defeat it militarily will be a hopeless endeavor.

The U.S. has only weak allies in the Middle East. Should a conflict with Iran become hot it would have its hands full with trying to save them from falling apart.

For now we can expect more protests in Iran that will be hijacked in an attempt to create a”revolution”. There will be U.S. directed proxy attacks by Kurdish and Baluchi forces on iran’s borders. The economic pressure within Iran will increase further.

But all these efforts are likely to fail. Since its Islamic revolution in 1979 every U.S. attempt to damage Iran or its allies has led to the opposite effect. Every time Iran emerged stronger than before. It is likely that the current attempt will have a similar result.

moon of alabama

July 10, 2018 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

It is OK for Mr. Harper to take MEK’s money

Stephen Harper’s Paris speech to Mojahedin-e Khalq: No laws were broken; appropriate interests were served; get over it!

Many readers would be offended if someone were to suggest the Roman Catholic Church was a former terrorist organization with cult-like attributes.

Still, wouldn’t terrorism be a fair description of the Inquisition, the brutal effort to root out heresy carried out from the 12th to the early 19th centuries by what was effectively a non-state actor, as we say in the bland militaristic bureaucratese of the 21st Century?

And isn’t the idea of excommunication for whatever reason, even if it is not much practiced any more, the sort of behaviour we associate to this day with religious cults?

I ask these questions only as a sort of back-handed defence of Stephen Harper, the former Conservative prime minister who obviously has far too much time on his hands these days, for travelling to Paris last Saturday to give an apparently well-compensated speech to a “Free Iran” rally sponsored by an Iranian exile group Mr. Harper’s own government classified as terrorists as recently as 2012.

And 2012, alert readers will grasp, isn’t as long ago as the 12th Century. But that was then and 2018 is now, and not just as far as Mr. Harper is concerned.

Mojahedin-e Khalq, the group in question, often referred to as MEK and also known as the People’s Mujahadeen, was declared by various Western governments to be a terrorist group in 1979, back in the days it wanted to overthrow the Shah of Iran, a geopolitical ally of the United States.

The same year, as it turned out, someone else overthrew the Shah. Eventually, MEK ceased to be officially branded a terrorist group. This was probably because, over time, it began to talk instead about overthrowing the Shia Islamic religious government of Iran, which is emphatically not a geopolitical ally of the United States.

While Mojahedin-e Khalq doesn’t seem to have repeated the assassinations and terrorist attacks it perpetrated in the 1980s, it continues, by all accounts, to be a rather unsavoury organization that has a weirdly cult-like structure. This makes it quite unlike the Catholic Church, which, by comparison, nowadays plays a largely positive role throughout the world.

Given its new status as a non-terrorist cult-like organization, it must be said, Mr. Harper is entirely within his rights to address the MEK rally in Paris. No laws were broken.

It’s likely, moreover, that he was well compensated for his histrionics, as MEK is reputed to pay North American politicos sums in the order of $50,000 US to address its gatherings for a few minutes. We all have to make a living.

Plus, the restless former MP had company. Conservative House Leader Candice Bergen, former Harper Era foreign affairs minister John Baird, and Liberal MP Judy Sgro all trooped to the podium in Paris with him. Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani, confidants of U.S. President Donald Trump, also addressed the group, and posed for photos with Mr. Harper and MEK leader Maryam Rajavi.

I’m sure Mr. Harper won’t mind if we refer to him henceforth as, say, “Mojahedin Steve.” After all, it was under Mr. Harper’s leadership in 2006 that the Conservative Party of Canada smeared the late Jack Layton, leader of the NDP in Parliament, with the sobriquet “Taliban Jack” for daring to suggest that what was really needed in Afghanistan was “a comprehensive peace process … to bring all the combatants to the table.”

Mr. Layton was excoriated as naive at best and treasonous at worst. He was accused by the then-nascent online Conservative Rage Machine of failing to support Canada’s soldiers abroad and giving comfort to people who were shooting at them.

The Conservatives have never apologized for this, and never explained themselves. Meanwhile, however, the world has moved on and, nowadays, even the U.S. armed forces gingerly talk to the Taliban, which we mostly recognize is an important part of a coalition that enjoys considerable support from Afghanistan’s Pashtun ethnic majority and will someday probably return to power.

This illustrates the point made by Lord Palmerston, twice prime minister of Britain in the 19th Century, that “nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.”

For the moment, the interests of the United States and those of Mojahedin-e Khalq align, and therefore it is OK for Mr. Harper to take MEK’s money and give them a nice speech about freedom, with a little arm waving thrown in, no matter how unmoved the sentiments he expressed may actually have left the organization’s leaders.

Will the day come when it is acceptable for a Canadian Conservative politician to give a speech to a freedom rally in a nice Western capital put on by the Islamic State, better known as ISIS? This may seem unlikely right now, but never say never.

There’s been evidence Western military forces mucking about in Syria were willing to let ISIS fighters go, as long as they directed their terroristic attentions at the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whom the Americans would like to topple. Mr. Assad’s Russian allies, at any rate, have accused the Americans of that, and worse.

Indeed, this may present a future business opportunity that Harper & Associates – whose spokesperson defended Mr. Harper’s Paris speech on the grounds he didn’t endorse a MEK government for Iran – for that time in the future when the West has a self-serving public Road to Damascus moment about the nature and intentions of ISIS.

In the meantime, he might be smart to stick to meetings of the International Democrat Union, the right-wing Internationale he heads.

As for the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition, it’s changed its name and doesn’t seem to have executed anyone for heresy since 1826.

David Climenhaga , Alberta politics.ca

July 7, 2018 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq as an Opposition Group

The MKO’s Villepinte show in the eye of the Western media

The Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/ MEK/ the PMOI/the Cult of Rajavi) held its annual gathering in Paris on Saturday, June 30, as what it calls the “Grand Gathering for a free Iran”. The group’s well organized event in Villepinte that costs them it large sum of money each year is supposed to be the voice of the Iranian opposition but it is hardly ever followed by reactions from Iranians inside and outside Iran.

Regarding the speakers at the gathering one may see a large range of former western politicians among whom the most prominent figure is former New York mayor Ruddy Guiliani, but no Iranian except Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the group. The Guardian’s report on the recent gathering denounces the MKO as a fake unpopular group which does not embrace the criteria of an opposition group except that it has enough money to bring together foreigners from all over the world.

Giuliani spoke to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an umbrella coalition largely controlled by the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MeK), which was once listed as a terrorist organization in the US and Europe and is still widely viewed as a Marxist-Islamist cult built around the personality of its leader, Maryam Rajavi, reported the Guardian. [1]

“We are now realistically being able to see an end to the regime in Iran,” Giuliani told a crowd of about 4,000, many of them refugees and young eastern Europeans who had been bussed in to attend the rally in return for a weekend trip to Paris, according to the Guardian. [2]

Interviewing the bussed participants of the rally, the Guardian correspondents document the assertion of “Most observers of Iranian politics” who “say the MeK has minimal support in Iran and is widely hated for its use of violence and close links to Israeli intelligence.” [3]

Around half of the attendees were Iranian. The other half consisted of an assortment of bored-looking Poles, Czechs, Slovakians, Germans and Syrians who responded to a Facebook campaign promising travel, food and accommodation to Paris for a mere €25, based on the report. “Hundreds of Syrian refugees settled in Germany also attended. Many snoozed under trees during speeches.” [4]

“We saw the deal on Facebook and we agreed to come on a holiday,” told the Guardian, a young Syrian mother as she sat on the conference floor, fanning her two young children. “I have never seen Paris. I don’t know anything about the MeK.” [5]

The MKO’s longstanding critic, Daniel Larison of the American Conservative accurately asserts that “the MEK has no support in Iran or the Iranian diaspora, and no one wants anything to do with it except for paid Western shills and the government of Saudi Arabia”. Referring to Guilliani’s desire to have this convention in Iran next year, he writes, “No matter what happens in Iran, the MEK won’t be returning there next year or fora long time to come. They are understandably reviled in Iran for their crimes and treachery, and anyone embracing them reveals an intense hostility to Iran and an equally profound ignorance of the country and its people.” [6]

American scholar and political analyst Kevin Barrett told Press TV, “US leaders were clueless about the situation in Iran, calling the regime change plan for Iran a “joke”. Barrett acknowledged that Iranians hate the MKO more than Americans hate al-Qaeda terrorists. [7]

“They are actually trying to make the MKO terrorist group the next government in Iran, promising them to be in control of the country in less than a year. What a joke …This program for regime change in Iran which Bolton and Pompeo are leading is humorous, and it’s complete cluelessness,” he said. Barrett reiterated that the plan would never work. [8]

Maryam Rajavi seems to be alone in her own rally. Her speech is not reflected or analyzed in the media; the gathering was considered as a whole. No prominent expert view Maryam Rajavi and her cult-like group as a movement that might be involved in the Iranian political relations. This year’s gathering was just like the recurrence of a ceremony for the insiders of the group and its paid supporters.

Mazda Parsi

References:

[1]Merat, Arron & Borger, Julian, Rudy Giuliani calls for Iran regime change at rally linked to extreme group, The Guardian, June 30,2018.

[2] ibid

[3] ibid

[4] ibid

[5] ibid

[6] Larison, Daniel, The Despicable Hawkish Embrace of theMEK, The American Conservative, July 1, 2018.

[7]Press TV, US scholar describes US plot to topple Iraniangovt. as a joke, June 30, 2018.

[8] ibid

July 7, 2018 0 comments

Missions of Nejat Society

Stephen Harper criticized for speaking at ‘Free Iran’ rally hosted by ‘cult’ former terror group

Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper is taking criticism for appearing at a Paris event sponsored by MEK, an Iranian dissident group that Harper’s own government considered a terrorist organization as recently as 2012.

“Thank you for your long battle for a free and democratic Iran,” Harper told a crowd at the Free Iran rally in Paris on Saturday.

The event was organized by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a group founded by Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), a well-funded Paris-based group devoted to the overthrow of the current Iranian regime.

Even among voices opposing the Iranian regime, however, the group is controversial for its extremism, cult-like leadership and history of violence.

Thomas Juneau, a University of Ottawa professor and former Department of Defence analyst, wrote that Harper “openly supports a former terrorist group, a cultish, undemocratic, completely illegitimate group that is NOT, in any way, an alternative to the current regime in Iran.”

Stephen Harper

Farzan Sabet, an Iranian policy expert at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, said Harper’s attendance “speaks to the sophistication of MEK political operations, and naivete or venality of Western politicians who chose to attend.

However, a spokeswoman for Harper defended his appearance, noting that the former prime minister did not specifically endorse an MEK-ruled Iran.

Samira Mohyedin

“The Free Iran event was attended by thousands of Iranian dissidents, from all political backgrounds from around the world,” said Anna Tomala with Harper & Associates. “Mr. Harper has not, and will not, endorse specific political movements or candidates.”

Harper attended alongside his former minister of foreign affairs, John Baird.

Founded in the 1960s, MEK (also known as the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran) was among the dissident groups that helped to overthrow the Shah of Iran in 1979.

However, it quickly broke with the country’s new Islamic regime, leading to decades of violent opposition. This included terrorist attacks and assassinations within Iran in the 1980s, as well as a close alliance with Saddam Hussein that saw MEK members fighting for Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War.

Farzan Sabet

MEK was also implicated in a series of 1970s-era assassinations of American workers and soldiers in Iran, although the group has blamed those killings on a rogue Marxist splinter faction.

Samira Mohyeddin, a Canadian journalist a vocal critic of the Iranian regime, has called the group a “well-documented terrorist cult who have committed many crimes against humanity.”

Samira Mohyedin

MEK has since renounced violence, helped in part by the forcible disarming of the group following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Both Canada and the United States removed MEK from their roster of terrorist organizations in 2012, although a statement from the U.S. state department at the time said they still had “serious concerns about the MEK as an organization, particularly with regard to allegations of abuse committed against its own members.”

The group has frequently been criticized for demanding cult-like devotion to its leaders, the married couple Massoud and Maryam Rajavi.

A 2009 analysis by the RAND Corporation wrote that the group engages in “public self-deprecation sessions, mandatory divorce, celibacy, enforced separation from family and friends, and gender segregation.”

Speaking to Vice in 2014, former member Masoud Banisadr, who once served as spokesman for MEK, said the group imposes a “black-and-white world view” on its members.

“I remember a guy who said, ‘My brother works in the Iranian embassy in London. Before I loved him as my brother, now I hate him as my enemy. I am ready to kill him tomorrow, if necessary.’ And everyone applauded,” said Banisadr.

Massoud mysteriously disappeared after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, but Maryam remains a visible MEK representative. Official video feeds of Harper’s speech frequently cut away to show the reaction of Maryam Rajavi, seated in the audience.

Maryam Rajavi

With Maryam Rajavi referred to as “Iran’s future president,” the National Council of Resistance of Iran frames itself as Iran’s parliament-in-exile and the chief driver of democracy in the country.

In a 2011 public letter, however, a group of Iranian academics dismissed these claims, and asserted that they were undermining legitimate Iranian democratic movements.

“The MEK has no political base inside Iran and no genuine support among the Iranian population,” they wrote, adding that the Iranian regime has justified crackdowns on pro-democracy protesters “by associating them with this widely detested group.”

Harper was a vocal opponent of the Iranian regime during his 10 years as prime minister, and said nothing in his Free Iran speech that he has not previously put on the record.

“Iran is presently ruled by a despotic, anti Semitic regime … it should not be a surprise to see him speaking against the regime,” said Harper spokeswoman Anna Tomala.

For much of his address, the former prime minister denounced Iran’s repressive policies and listed his own anti-regime moves as prime minister, including listing Iran as a state sponsor of terror and severing diplomatic relations with the country’s government.

“We closed the Canadian embassy in Iran and told the mullahs to get out of Canada!” he said.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran has held many similar rallies in Paris, often to the chagrin of the French government. In 2014, the French Foreign Ministry denounced MEK for “its violent and non-democratic inspirations” and “intense campaign of influence and disinformation.”

This is complete delusion. The Islamic Republic will (unfortunately) still be there next year. And if or when it goes, the MeK will only continue to do what it does – flashy adds in rightwing newspapers, shiny conferences – but it will not have any role in Iranian politics. https://t.co/LeePjatgB2

— Thomas Juneau (@thomasjuneau) June 30, 2018

Thomas Juneau

Given the sheer size of the weekend’s Free Iran rally, MEK certainly has no problem attaining substantial funding. The group also remains a hated enemy of the Iranian government. Prior to the Paris event, Belgian police arrested three people — including an Iranian diplomat — suspected of plotting a terrorist attack against the gathering.

Recently, MEK supporters have included a growing cadre of prominent American conservatives, including former speaker of the house Newt Gingrich and current national security advisor John Bolton.

According to a 2011 analysis by the New York Times, American political figures are well-compensated for their appearances at MEK events, with speaking fees ranging as high as US$50,000.

This year’s Free Iran event also featured a fiery call for regime change by Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York and personal lawyer to U.S. president Donald Trump. “Trump doesn’t turn his back on freedom fighters,” Giuliani told the crowd.

The Trump administration was quick to distance itself from Giuliani’s comments, however. “He speaks for himself and not on behalf of the administration on foreign policy,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Monday.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani presents the letter by 33 American dignitaries and former U.S. officials in the Free #Iran – The Alternative, Gathering – Villepinte, June 30, 2018#FreeIran2018#IranRegimeChange pic.twitter.com/NGNZMzSvz7

— Maryam Rajavi (@Maryam_Rajavi) June 30, 2018

July 4, 2018 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Who is the Iranian group targeted by bombers and beloved of Trump allies?

Cult-like MeK was listed as terrorist group in US until 2012 – but its opposition to Tehran has attracted backing of John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani and others bent on regime change in Iran

The Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MeK), the extreme Iranian opposition group who was the target of a foiled bombing attack in France, was once a sworn enemy of the United States. The cult-like Iranian group was responsible for the killing of six Americans in Iran in the 1970s; in 1979 it enthusiastically cheered the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran, when angry students held 52 American diplomats hostage for a period of 444 days.

Its opposition to Tehran’s current rulers, however, has earned the group powerful allies in the west, particularly among Americans bent on regime change.

Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, addressed an MeK rally in Paris on Saturday, calling for regime change in Tehran. On Monday, Belgian authorities said four people, including a diplomat at the Iranian embassy in the Austrian capital Vienna, have been arrested after being accused of preparing a bomb attack in France targeted at the MeK rally.

Many in the crowd of about 4,000 that Giuliani was addressing were eastern Europeans bussed in to attend the event in return for a weekend trip to Paris. He is among a series of high-profile US politicians, including John McCain and John Bolton, who have met the MeK’s leader Maryam Rajavi or spoken at its rallies.

It was only in 2012 that the US delisted it as a terrorist group. But the arrival of John Bolton, the MeK’s most powerful advocate, as US national security adviser has given the group unprecedented proximity to the White House and a new lease of political life.

“There is a viable opposition to the rule of the ayatollahs, and that opposition is centred in this room today,” Bolton said at an MeK rally in Paris last year. “The behaviour and objectives of the regime are not going to change, and therefore the only solution is to change the regime itself.”

Bolton’s ascent to the White House has reinvigorated the group, analysts say, raising questions about the dangers of having in the earshot of the US president a group that some experts say uses human rights concerns to bury its murky past and portray itself as a democratic and popular alternative to the Islamic Republic.

Believed to have between 5,000 to 13,000 members, the MeK was established in the 1960s to express a mixture of Marxism and Islamism. It launched bombing campaigns against the Shah, continuing after the 1979 Islamic revolution, against the Islamic Republic. In 1981, in a series of attacks, it killed 74 senior officials, including 27 MPs. Later that year, its bombings killed Iran’s president and prime minister.

During the eight-year Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, the MeK, by then sheltered in camps in Iraq, fought against Iran alongside the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a turning point for the group, which sought to reinvent itself as a democratic force.

Today, it functions as a fringe exiled group with characteristics of a cult that works for regime change in Iran, though it has little visible support inside the country. It portrays itself as a democratic political institution although its own internal structure is anything but.

Eli Clifton, a fellow at the Nation Institute, said the MeK’s influence in the US is multilayered. “When [MeK] members go and swarm Capitol Hill and seek meetings with the members of Congress,” Clifton said, “they’re very often the only voices that are heard, because there is simply not a lot of Iranian-American presence on Capitol Hill.”

Clifton said the MeK, which operates under a set of front groups, writes very large cheques to those speaking at their events. Estimates are in the range of $30,000 to $50,000 per speech. Bolton is estimated to have received upwards of $180,000 to speak at multiple events for MeK. His recent financial disclosure shows that he was paid $40,000 for one speech at an MeK event last year.

Jason Rezaian, the Iranian-American Washington Post journalist who was jailed in Tehran for more than a year, wrote in March that in the seven years he lived in the country, he saw a great deal of criticism towards the ayatollahs but “never met a person who thought the MeK should, or could, present a viable alternative”.

Clifton said the MeK “shares many qualities of a cult”. That description was echoed by Iraj Mesdaghi, a Sweden-based Iranian activist who was jailed in Iran from 1981 to 1991 for his links to the MeK. Mesdaghi left Iran in 1994 and worked for the MeK in its headquarters in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, until 2001.

“In the MeK, everything has to morph into leadership, and leadership means Masoud Rajavi [Maryam Rajavi’s husband, missing since 2003]. Not only your heart belongs to him, any love belongs to him, it’s forbidden to have love for spouse, mother, children,” he said.

He compared working for the MeK to holding an electric wire. “You have to follow the path, you have to transfer what you’re given, you’re not meant to add or reduce anything, you can’t pose any ifs.”

A 2007 state department report included claims that MeK has forced members to divorce. Human Rights Watch, in a 28-page report, has shed light on the MeK’s mistreatment of its members, including claims that those wishing to leave the group have been subjected to “lengthy solitary confinements, severe beatings, and torture”.

Iran, which considers the group as a terrorist organisation, also has a history of mistreating MeK supporters. In the summer of 1988, thousands of leftists and MeK supporters were executed in a massacre of political prisoners.

Mesdaghi said MeK members kept in a massive military-style complex in Albania are particularly vulnerable because they are not given refugee status and depend on the group’s leadership for survival. From March 2013 to September 2016, about 3,000 MeK members are believed to have been sheltered in Albania, after being transferred from Iraq.

Masoud Khodabandeh, a former senior MeK official, has written that MeK members in Albania are “effectively being held in a state of modern slavery”. In a recent interview, he described the group as a “destructive cult” which controls its members financially, physically and emotionally.

The MeK did not respond to email queries seeking comments.

Djavad Khadem, a co-founder of Unity for Democracy in Iran (UDI), an umbrella group of exiled Iranian opposition groups, said MeK’s “collaboration with Saddam against Iranian people will never be wiped out from the memory of Iranian people”.

Khadem said Bolton’s appointment by Trump may have looked liked a coup for the MeK, but argued that Bolton was bound to act more responsibly in administration. “But Bolton will use them as an instrument of pressure on the regime,” he said. “This is bad tactics, because the Islamic regime will use it to frighten the middle class in Iran, as they have done for the last 40 years.”

Clifton said the MeK’s claims of intelligence revelations about Iran are often “hit and miss”, with “some monumental screw-ups”. The group, however, has revealed intelligence relating to Iran’s nuclear programme, which Clifton said was likely to have been passed on by Israel or Saudi Arabia. In 2016, Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former head of the Saudi intelligence agency, was one of several VIPs who attended a MeK conference near Paris.

The MeK, Clifton said, presents a narrative that it is a vibrant, secular, democratic government-in-waiting that has popular support within Iran.

“That’s built on so many falsehoods,” he said. “It’s scary if policymakers listen to that and believe that fairytale.”

Saeed Kamali Dehghan, Iran correspondent

July 4, 2018 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Trump Luminaries at Iranian Jihadi Cult Conference in Paris

Many Trump stalwarts have a peculiar, paid position as lobbyists for the People’s Jihadi Organization (Mojahedin-e Khalq), the Iranian expatriate group aiming to overthrow the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Hence we find Rudy Giuliani addressing their annual convention and pledging regime change in Iran.

Giuliani only has experience of two kinds of regime change. Disastrous and more catastrophic. He thought invading and occupying Iraq would be a swell idea.

Personally, I never liked the Islamic Republic of Iran. But I try to be objective. Its government is less Draconian than Saudi Arabia’s, a close American ally, and certainly than North Korea’s, with which Washington is now making nice. Regime change as a project has a long record of failure and blowback. George Kennan’s essay on containing the Soviet Union is worth revisiting here. He pointed out that the social and economic conditions in mid-20th century Russia and China were not at all similar to those in the US, so why should we assume they would have the same form of government? Where they threatened US interests, he said, they should be contained. Otherwise, he implied, there was nothing to do but leave them alone internally. In contrast to all the coup-plotters that followed him (e.g. Iran 1953), and in contrast to the architects of the Vietnam War, Kennan’s vision actually succeeded as policy.

The other thing to say is how ridiculous it is that Trump and Giuliani have conspired to keep out of the US ordinary Iranians who want to pursue an education or business here, but are openly consorting with an organization that has been on the US terrorist watch list!

Although the People’s Jihadis were inexplicably removed from the State Department list of terrorist organizations a few years ago, they have a sordid and violent past of shootings, assassinations and bombings. They were even given bases in Iraq by dictator Saddam Hussein, from which they launched terrorist operations (blowing up children on schoolbuses e.g.) against Iran.

It isn’t just a matter of politics making for strange bedfellows. The tens of thousands of dollars in fees that Rudy Giuliani, John Bolton and other Trump intimates have taken from the People’s Jihadis makes them more or less employees of this terrorist organization.

Even Nancy Pelosi has come out for the People’s Jihadis.

It is the damnedest thing.

When I visited Iran in summer of 1976, the newspapers were full of dire warnings about “Islamic Marxists.” They meant the People’s Jihadis, who were then blowing things up and sniping and committing terrorism to overthrow Mohammad Reza Pahlevi, Iran’s CIA-stalled puppet king. After the 1979 Revolution and through the 1980s, the People’s Jihadis or MEK or MKO went into opposition and the ayatollahs attempted to crush it. Thousands were killed or jailed, and the jihadis took to the streets, sometimes spraying machine gun fire on foot or on the backs of motorcycles. In 1981, they set off an enormous explosion that killed At one point in 1988 the regime committed a prison massacre of them. Saddam Hussein gave them a base from which to commit terrorism inside Iran.

That the chief high Poobahs of the US government on both sides of the aisle have now rehabilitated this political cult with its violent past tells you all you need to know about the poisonous atmosphere in Washington. My suspicion is that if you dig a little you will find the Israel lobbies complicit in all this, as well.

But as politics it is not only evil but stupid. The Iranian public long ago decided against the People’s Jihadis, whom they view as glassy-eyed terrorists. The young people in Iran may want a different society, but it certainly is not Maryam Rajavi’s cult.

Although the official Press TV is an Iranian propaganda organ, in this particular case it is not clear to me that its point of view is very far from that of the Iranian public. It is worth seeing the other side here:

Iran’s Press TV: “Trump lawyer Giuliani steals show at anti-Iran event”

https://dlb.nejatngo.org/Media/Report/PressTV/PressTV_Giuliani_20180630.mp4

Juan Cole

July 3, 2018 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

‘Stupid’ Giuliani addresses MKO fanatics in Paris

Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, addressed a rally staged by an extreme Iranian opposition group in Paris on Saturday, calling for regime change in Tehran.

The extreme group, called Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MeK) or Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO), has long history of assassinations and terrorist activities inside and outside Iran.

Analysts are of the opinion that Giuliani is either too stupid to know about this group, or he is being too much money to speak at the gathering, or he and other American hawks are so obsessed with animosity against Iran that they desperately to resort to extremely radical groups to show their teeth to Iran.

The Iranians refer to the MKO as monafeqin (hypocrites). They sided with Saddam Hussein in the war against Iran in the 1980s. The Saddam regime also used the group to suppress the Kurds and Shias in northern and southern Iraq.

The group was until recent years listed as a terrorist organization in the U.S. and Europe.

It is widely hated in Iran. It has close links to Israeli intelligence. Israel used the MKO operatives to assassinate a number of Iranian nuclear scientists just in the recent past.

The MKO is still widely viewed as a Marxist-Islamist cult built around the personality of its leader, Maryam Rajavi.

Ridiculously, Giuliani said the current ruling system in Iran “must be replaced by a democratic government which Madam Rajavi represents”.

In remarks which looked like a joke, Giuliani said, “Next year I want to have this convention in Tehran!” the Guardian reported.

The former New York mayor, who became a cyber security adviser in the White House before being named as Trump’s personal lawyer in April, is one of a long line of American conservative hawks to attend the MKO annual conference. Another guest on Saturday was Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker and a close Trump ally.

Giuliani also claimed that the protests in Iran, which were driven by a devaluation of national currency and a rise in prices, was being orchestrated from outside.

“Those protests are not happening spontaneously,” Giuliani said.

The guest of honor at last year’s MKO conference was John Bolton, who has since become Trump’s third national security adviser. Bolton told the 2017 rally U.S. policy should be to make sure the Islamic Republic “will not last until its 40th birthday” –1 April 2019.

Giuliani was one of 33 senior U.S. officials and military brass at the year’s conference on Saturday. Bill Richardson, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, U.S. energy secretary and Democratic governor of New Mexico, was also in attendance.

Stephen Harper, former prime minister of Canada, also delivered a speech advocating regime change in Iran.

It was unclear if the speakers at the Saturday conference were paid. The NCRI and MeK have been known for paying very high fees. The money mostly comes from Saudi Arabia.

In sweltering temperatures on Saturday, around 4,000 people arrived by bus at the Parc des expositions centre. Many were draped in the MeK flag, which replaces the sign for “Allah” on the Iranian flag with a yellow lion. Others wore yellow sun hats displaying the hashtag “#Maryam Rajavi”.

Around half of the attendees were Iranian. The other half consisted of an assortment of bored-looking Poles, Czechs, Slovakians, Germans and Syrians who responded to a Facebook campaign promising travel, food and accommodation to Paris for a mere €25. Hundreds of Syrian refugees settled in Germany also attended. Many snoozed under trees during speeches.

“We saw the deal on Facebook and we agreed to come on a holiday,” said a young Syrian mother as she sat on the conference floor, fanning her two young children. “I have never seen Paris. I don’t know anything about the MeK.”

July 3, 2018 0 comments

Missions of Nejat Society

The Despicable Hawkish Embrace of the MEK

The Trump administration’s MEK fans participated in the group’s annual rally in Paris over the weekend:

Giuliani spoke to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an umbrella coalition largely controlled by the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MeK), which was once listed as a terrorist organisation in the US and Europe and is still widely viewed as a Marxist-Islamist cult built around the personality of its leader, Maryam Rajavi.

“The mullahs must go, the ayatollah must go, and they must be replaced by a democratic government which Madam Rajavi represents,” Giuliani said. “Freedom is right around the corner … Next year I want to have this convention in Tehran!”

It is bad enough that prominent Americans and other Westerners lend support to a totalitarian cult because it happens to share their loathing of the Iranian government, but it is even worse that they are helping to rehabilitate this group as if it were a legitimate and democratic alternative to that government.

This not only whitewashes a despicable organization that has the blood of Americans and Iranians on its hands, but it is an insult to genuine Iranian political reformers and dissidents. The MEK has no support in Iran or the Iranian diaspora, and no one wants anything to do with it except for paid Western shills and the government of Saudi Arabia.

No matter what happens in Iran, the MEK won’t be returning there next year or for a long time to come. They are understandably reviled in Iran for their crimes and treachery, and anyone embracing them reveals an intense hostility to Iran and an equally profound ignorance of the country and its people.

Unfortunately, Bolton, Giuliani, and Gingrich aren’t just has-beens getting paid to recite talking points. If they were, their support for this group might be disgraceful but ultimately irrelevant. The danger is that these men are among Trump’s closest advisers and allies, and it seems more likely than not that they are pushing an agenda of regime change in Iran. As long as these Trump allies are cheerleading for the MEK publicly, we should assume that they are offering the president similarly warped and poisonous advice privately as well.

By Daniel Larison,

July 2, 2018 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

US’ Iran Regime-Change Plan: Hit Economy, Orchestrate Protests, Engage MEK Cult to Chant “Democracy”

While the hard-hit Iranian economy is likely to continue reeling, driving more protesters into the streets, one shouldn’t mistake their pain for a desire to subject themselves to a totalitarian cult with hardly a fraction of the support enjoyed by the Shia clergy helming the Islamic Republic.

WASHINGTON — Iran’s latest wave of protests against the suffering state of the economy and the plunging value of the rial appeared to have come and gone by Wednesday, as crowds dissipated and businesses opened up shop following a two-day strike. While clashes between security forces and protesters during the protests were far from widespread, the very fact that the protests broke out hints at the extreme duress Iran is undergoing thanks to President Donald Trump’s renewed economic war on the country.

Judging by the enthusiastic response to the demonstrations in the U.S., Saudi, and Israeli press, anti-Iranian forces are clearly banking on the possibility that the sanctions that will soon be reimposed in the next several months could dislodge the Islamic Republic, clearing the way for a regime friendly to the West.

Thus we have witnessed anti-Iran publications like the Israeli Jerusalem Post frothing over with excitement over scenes of alleged Iranian citizens chanting “Death to Palestine,” “Let go of Syria – think about us,” ..

While videos from Iran depict what could very well be an organic groundswell of social protest against government policies, photos published in papers like the Post show a different story: middle-aged Persian men gripping English-language signs and the flags of the toppled Iranian monarchy, along placards bearing the portrait of an unlikely figure: the moustached, mysterious and long-disappeared charismatic cult leader who is considered an outlawed terrorist and traitor to the nation — Massoud Rajavi.

Elliott Gabriel article on Mintpress

Rajavi was the leader of the group that lies at the center of the anti-Iran alliance’s “regime change” dreams: Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), or the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI). A fanatical militant group whose title translates literally to the “The People’s Holy Warriors,” this eccentric left-nationalist, pseudo-religious cult has been led by Massoud’s wife, Maryam Rajavi, since the 1980s.

Formed in 1965, the group’s tortured history has seen it transformed from a movement of communist-influenced, Islamist-tinged anti-imperialists who carried out attacks on U.S. military officers in Iran into an authoritarian de facto mercenary army serving anyone opposed to the Islamic Republic – be it Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Israel, or the United States.

The group wields major PR clout and outsized influence in Western capitals through countless front groups like the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), through which it depicts itself as “a political coalition that represents all of Iran’s religious, ethnic, and political groups proportionately;” stresses feminist, Islamist, free-speech and pro-free-market values; and is firmly “committed to a secular, democratic, non-nuclear republic” in Iran.

The RAND Corporation described the group as “skilled manipulators of public opinion,” but a cursory look at its publications shows a rather ham-fisted and self-celebratory pile of cultish jargon. Throughout the past week, publications like Iran Focus or Iran News Update – the latter of which bills itself as “Insider News & Analysis in Iran” – have pumped out articles boosting NCRI as “the only viable alternative to the Iranian regime” and claiming:

As protests in Iran continue to multiply and intensify, the regime’s claim to power is looking more and more tenuous. If the people were to overthrow their tyrannical government, the only democratic organization in the position to take over governance would be the NCRI … The regime’s reign of terror is at its close.”

The MEK was one of the first groups to be named a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. State Department, but its extreme opposition to the Islamic Republic of Iran and generous donations to politicians has led to its eventual delisting. The roster of politicians and influential figures tied to the MEK and its fronts spans much of the U.S. political spectrum, from the far right to the left-of-center.

Trump’s White House is a virtual all-star cast of MEK associates – explaining the administration’s frenzied push to scrap the nuclear deal and push to topple Tehran. Among the top supporters of MEK is White House National Security Advisor John Bolton, whose hatred of Iran’s government verges on the pathological.

A congressional foreign-policy aide who attended an Iranian New Year celebration hosted by an MEK front group told Foreign Policy magazine:

Bolton is positively predisposed to the MEK … they will have some access to this White House, [to say] the least.”

From revolutionary anti-imperialists to bizarre mercenary cult

The MEK once enjoyed a decently-sized support base within Iran and even played a role in the 1979 Iranian Revolution that overthrew U.S.-loyal Shah Reza Pahlevi and opened up a new period of national independence for the nation. Following the revolution, the group’s political struggles with the faction led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and failure to secure widespread support led it to deploy its Shah-era “armed struggle,” or terrorist tactics, against officials and clergy loyal to [Ayatollah] Khomeini, claiming the lives of dozens of key figures in the newly-formed government.

The Mojahedin (jihadists), whom the Islamic Revolution’s leader regularly derided as monafeghin (hypocrites) – an allusion to those in the Quran who conspired against the Prophet while feigning loyalty – became the top enemies of the Islamic Republic.

Faced with the full brunt of the Islamic Republic’s retribution, the group fled to Iraq in the 1980s and became a virtual “Iranian Legion” for Saddam Hussein, who equipped the group with heavy armor, uniforms, and artillery so that it could fight alongside Iraqi forces during the Iran-Iraq war. Following the war, the self-styled “national liberation army” launched a series of cross-border raids against Iranian civilian and military targets, sacrificing nearly all of its remaining support among Iranians.

The drop in Iranian support led to a push to replenish MEK ranks by targeting family members, wealthy potential donors, and expatriate Iranians in Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. True to their form as a cult, the group promised to connect prospective recruits with a lifeline of assistance as the trade-off for their enlisting in the group.

According to the RAND Corporation:

Many were enticed not with promises of an opportunity to fight the IRI, but rather through promises of paid employment as translators, assistance in processing asylum requests, free visits to family members, public-health volunteer opportunities, and even marriage. All ‘recruits’ were brought into Iraq illegally and then required to hand over their identity documents for ‘safekeeping,’ effectively trapping them at MeK compounds. These findings suggest that many MeK recruits since 1986 were not true volunteers and have been kept at MeK camps in Iraq under duress.”

Tens of thousands of the group’s members remained under the protection of the Iraqi dictator, even participating in the bloody massacres that followed the Shia Arab and Kurdish uprisings of 1991, until the fall of the Ba’athist regime in 2003 when the U.S.-led coalition bombed the Saddam loyalists’ camps.

Seeing continued use for the MEK for their own anti-Iran efforts, however, the U.S. placed 3,800 members of the group under protective custody at Camp Ashraf, the sprawling city-sized base built for them by Saddam. Those who escaped the group had to undergo cult deprogramming.

Watch | Introducing Camp Ashraf

According to RAND, the group – which claims to uphold women’s equality – ensured that lines were “painted down the middle of hallways separating them into men’s and women’s sides” at the camp, prior to their expulsion by Iraqi forces in 2013. Many were shipped by the U.S. to Albania, the only country willing to accept them.

Yet while a major portion of the group’s membership spent over three decades imprisoned in Ba’athist Iraqi camps near the border with Iran, a significant chunk of the group – such as leader Maryam Rajavi – nestled into the Iranian expatriate communities in Paris, Washington, and other capitals. The group spent decades relentlessly lobbying Western governments and lawmakers to support its attempts to bring “reform” to Iran, and has even furnished intelligence to U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies in hopes to provide a casus belli for hostile policies and even military actions versus Tehran.

The “Iranian Resistance” wags the dog in Washington

In the U.S. capital, the group was enormously successful in its efforts to recruit an auxiliary brigade of highly influential top politicians to its cause. Even the far-right Washington Times, owned at the time by charismatic cult leader Reverend Sun Myung-Moon, issued glossy “special report” inserts hailing the militaristic group as the bringers of “freedom” to Iran. The publication included words of praise from Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the late Saudi Prince Turki bin Faisal al-Saud, and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), among many, many, others.

A brief list of these MEK supporters in the Republican Party reads like a who’s-who of anti-Iran officials from the neoconservative administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump:

In 2000, future Bush administration attorney general and Republican then-Senator John Ashcroft intervened on behalf of MKO military commander Mahnaz Samadi, who has been detained by immigration authorities due to her failure to disclose past terrorist ties — hailing the former anti-Iran combatant as a “highly regarded human-rights activist” and a “powerful voice for democracy.”
Former Pennsylvania Governor and first U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge praised the National Council of Resistance in Iran as “the single most visible, most credible, and most effective democratic movement with a clear and specific program to bring a democratic Iran to existence,” led by the “steady hand and inspiring leadership” of cult leader Maryam Rajavi.
Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Miami, Florida, who served as Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has been a major leader in legislation calling for regime-change measures against Cuba, Iran, Syria, and Venezuela, and even called for Fidel Castro’s assassination in 2006. In 2003, she came out in defense of MEK as a group that “loves the United States” and is an ally in the “war on terrorism.”
Tea Party leader, Bush confidante and former House Majority Leader Dick Armey promoted the MEK while working for lobbying firm DLA Piper. Armey also represented Saeid Ghaemi, an Iranian expatriate in the U.S. who paid almost $910,000 to the lobbying firm “for Armey’s services bringing issues relating to Iran to the attention of Congress, the State Department, the Department of Defense, the White House, the National Security Council and the Department of Treasury.”

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

Watch | Giuliani Leads MEK “Regime Change” Chant

And then we have the top luminaries from President Donald Trump’s circle, including:

Former New York City Mayor and top White House lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who co-signed a letter along with various bipartisan officials urging a newly-inaugurated Trump to “establish a dialogue” with NCRI, and was revealed to have been a paid advocate for the removal of MEK from the State Department terror group list. Giuliani has been an almost annual guest at MEK functions in Paris and a regular anti-Iranian voice on television. In 2015, Giuliani stood before a crowd of MEK supporters in Paris and shouted:

The ayatollah must go! Gone! Out! No more! I will not support anyone for president of the United States who isn’t clear on that slogan behind me. What does it say? It says regime change!”

Trump adviser and GOP elder Newt Gingrich, who ripped on former President Obama for bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia, but was caught on camera bowing to Maryam Rajavi – whom the conservative ultra-patriot sees as an Iranian version of U.S. founding father George Washington.
Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, the elite Taiwanese-American wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has received honoraria in the amounts of $50,000 and $17,500 to speak for MEK front groups like the Iranian-American Cultural Association of Missouri and the NCRI. At the same Paris event attended by Giuliani, Chao sat as guest of honor alongside “president-elect” cult leader Rajavi before delivering a feminist-themed speech slamming Iran’s government.

And then, of course, there’s John Bolton, a ravening ultra-hawk with a nearly obsessive hatred of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Speaking to Foreign Policy magazine, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace senior fellow Karim Sadjadpour commented:

I suspect Bolton’s interactions with the MEK were above all motivated by financial interests … The MEK may be a backward cult with little to offer, but they are the enemy of his enemy. And they pay handsomely.”

The same can likely be said about the rest of the elected “representatives”-for-hire in Washington, whose belief in the MEK’s ability to lead a post-IRI Iranian state is no doubt on par with their trust in the late Rev. Moon’s claims to be the one and only messiah.

While the hard-hit Iranian economy is likely to continue reeling, driving more protesters into the streets, one shouldn’t mistake their social demands or financial pain for a desire to subject themselves to a totalitarian cult with hardly a fraction of the support enjoyed by the Shia clergy helming the Islamic Republic — no matter the extent to which Washington and the Saudis attempt to foist the Rajavi group on the Iranian nation.

Yet despite the group’s dearth of political legitimacy, the congressional aide who spoke to FP understands why they remain a mainstay in the U.S. Capitol:

They’re useful as provocation … They’re useful as a signal to the Iranian government that we’re coming to get you.”

Elliott Gabriel is a former staff writer for teleSUR English and a MintPress News contributor based in Quito, Ecuador. He has taken extensive part in advocacy and organizing in the pro-labor, migrant justice and police accountability movements of Southern California and the state’s Central Coast.

Stories published in our Daily Digests section are chosen based on the interest of our readers. They are republished from a number of sources, and are not produced by MintPress News. The views expressed in these articles are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MintPress News editorial policy.

by Elliott Gabriel , Mintpressnews.com

June 30, 2018 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Maryam Rajavi’s show in Villepinte, France distracts from sinister death of Malek Shara’i in Albania

A paid advert by MEK (Maryam Rajavi cult) in Albanian media

As Maryam Rajavi in the absence of her husband Massoud Rajavi is preparing to receive likes of Rudi Giuliani and Newt Gingrich as paid speakers in her yearly event to glorify terrorism and self-immolations, another MEK member disappears in Albania. Malek Shara’i has vanished in mysterious circumstances, which brings to mind the fate of tens of hundreds of missing people in Mojahedin Khalq Organisation under the rule of Saddam Hussein.

Malik Shara’i was one of the few remaining witnesses to the mysterious death of 53 MEK members in Camp Ashraf Iraq. According to the people who knew him he was also trying to get himself out of the closed and inaccessible MEK camp in Iraq. He is probably the latest victim of rebranding MEK. According to this news, ISIS is the next guest terror group Albania must host.

Gjergji Thanasi, well known Albanian investigative journalist, thinks otherwise.

Massoud Khodabandeh, Iranian.com on Gjergji Thanasi, Gazeta Impakt, June 29 2018

June 30, 2018 0 comments

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