Articles

­++ The Mojahedin Khalq websites have been on overdrive this past week in support of the Saudis. The MEK repeats the crude propaganda of Saudi outlets like Al Arabiyeh which claims that Iran was responsible for the deaths of pilgrims during Hajj. Even the most anti-Iran Farsi commentators have responded with disgust and accused the MEK of sinking to new levels.

++ This week the MEK started forcing people in Tirana to call their families in Europe, North America and Iran to extract money from them. Using such stories as, we need money for hospital or, I’m in prison or, I need money to pay a smuggler to get to Europe. Anything to get money. If a family agrees to send money, the MEK offers various ways to pay. But when two families asked their relatives if they received the money they were told they hadn’t. The families then traced the money they sent and found it had gone directly to MEK bank accounts about which their relative had no knowledge. After this was exposed, some families have answered phone calls by their relatives by saying “yes, we’ll give money, but only if we can see you and give it to you directly. We are not rich enough to pay for John Bolton or Rudi Giuliani to make speeches in Paris!” The Farsi Commentariat has reacted with disgust that families who only want a visit after thirty years are being labelled “agents of the regime” and “Iran’s Intelligence agents” and accused of visiting Camp Liberty to “kill” the MEK there, but are now being contacted and told lies by their relatives in an effort to fool them into paying to sustain Rajavi’s cult empire.

++ The MEK’s planned demo in New York on 28th has been so dismal they didn’t even cover it on their own websites. It was a complete disaster – they couldn’t even bring outside people to swell the ranks like before, no poor black or homeless persons. There is evidence that this demo was backed by the Israeli Defence League in the US and that they are severely disappointed with Rajavi that he couldn’t bring anyone to stand against Iran at that critical time.

++ Ghorban Ali Hossein Nejad who is based in Paris wrote in his Blog to say he has been informed by those close to the MEK and others that Maryam Rajavi has booked a large salon in Paris for October 10th to commemorate the ‘day of the abolition of execution in France’. She clearly intends to create another carnival event with foreign paid speakers. People say they found out about it when the MEK started recruiting in refugee camps and paying people to come. Hossein Nejad reminds us of the MEK’s own papers which boast how many people they killed in Iran and Iraq during Saddam’s era. He also gives the names and documentary evidence for people who were executed inside the MEK after being tortured in Abu Ghraib and Camp Ashraf. The title is: ‘Rajavi celebrates abolition of execution – joke of the year’.

In English:

++ Fars News covered the exposure of letters sent by Massoud Rajavi and the Mojahedin Khalq to the Soviet Union: “The three letters which date back to 1985 were sent to the Soviet Union and the communist party 4 years after Rajavi escaped to France. A copy of each letter can also be found in Stanford University’s archives.

“In these letters, Rajavi and Farhad Olfat, an MKO representative, have demanded $300mln aid and granting asylum to the MKO members who had fled Iran.

“But what attracts attention in these letters, is Rajavi’s crystal-clear confession that he had ordered the killing of over 10,000 Iranians across the country which proves Tehran’s claims that the MKO has killed over 12,000 Iranian people.”

++ Nejat Bloggers’ article ‘Mojahedin Khalq and Islamphobes, Strange Bedfellows’ analyses the irony and paradox that “the MKO leaders endeavor to pass themselves off as democratic progressive Muslims as an alternative for the government in Tehran. However, the majority of the group’s supporters in the West is consisted of anti-Islam politicians who detest Islam and particularly Islamic Republic.”

++ ‘Brace Yourself, New York! The Annual Anti-Iran Terrorist Freak Show Is Back in Town!’ The title says it all. Although the MEK were too embarrassed to give coverage to their own disastrous demonstration outside the UN building, Caleb T. Maupin writing in Countercurrents.org had no hesitation in exposing the debacle. The gratuitous nod to the cultic LaRouche movement adds spice the piece:

“You would think that individuals claiming to be “Islamic Marxists” — former members of an illegal Zionist terrorist organization — and Republican elected officials would generally not associate with each other. However, once a year for the last decade or so, they all gather together in front of the United Nations during its General Assembly to display their insanity to the world by calling for greater hostility between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

“Already on September 21, some of the early arrivals were out in front of the United Nations. With sandwich boards and like carnival barkers, a few blocks down from where the Lyndon LaRouche movement was set up, a group of elderly, agitated Persians tried to pass themselves off as ‘Human Rights Activists.’

“All it takes is a little bit of research to discover that the psychologically disturbed protesters in bright yellow shirts with “No to Rouhani” on them are members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (People’s Holy Warriors). This is a violent cult whose members claim to be “Islamic Marxists” while they openly collaborate with Israel’s Mossad and the US Central Intelligence Agency. (http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/09/12/abdi.dont.delist.mek/)”

++ Juan Cole’s piece ‘Things Like Ted Cruz’s Threat to Kill Iran’s Ayatollah Are Why Iranians Don’t Trust the U.S.’ doesn’t need deep analysis to explain why “If the UN Security Council can implement in a fair way the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action for inspecting Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment activities so as to make impossible down the road any weaponization of the program, it will start the process of overcoming decades of American dirty tricks and dastardly plots against the Iranian people.”

Cole simply lists some of these “dirty tricks and dastardly plots”, including:

“5. In the 1980s the group the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq or People’s Jihadis) committed several dramatic acts of terrorism. In 1981 it bombed the HQ of the ruling civilian Iranian party and killing over 70 high officials, including several cabinet members and a supreme court justice. Saddam Hussein gave the group a camp in Iraq from which they struck into Iran in the 1980s, when the US was actively allied with Saddam. After the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US kept the camp in place, essentially deploying a terrorist group against Iran. Several mysterious bombings took place in Iran after 2003. The State Department delisted the MEK as a terrorist organization, apparently under Israeli pressure, in 2012, and the MEK has now bought a number of US congressmen (there is an obvious overlap between politicians supported by the Israel lobbies like AIPAC and politicians who support the MEK). So Cruz’s threat to send Khamenei to paradise, i.e. murder him, is not actually crazy talk from an American politician.”

++ Nejat Society reported the visit of two fathers of MEK hostages to the Mayor of Auvers-sur-Oise last week. The two were escorted by police for protection after two previous visits had been met by violent attacks by MEK operatives in the streets of the quiet French tourist village.

++ Massoud Khodabandeh wrote an explanation in Iranian.com ‘What does it mean when we say ISIS operates as a mind control cult?’ Using a quote from Chapter nine of Judit Neurink’s book ‘The war of ISIS: On the road to the Caliphate’, Khodabandeh describes the internal dynamics of ISIS and the methodology used to convert brainwashed recruits into suicide bombers and beheaders.

October 02, 2015

++ Stanford University published a series of letters which were exchanges between the then Soviet Union and the Mojahedin Khalq. In one letter the MEK asks for $30m to push the Soviet agenda for Iran. In another, Massoud Rajavi writes directly to Mikhail Gorbachev. Ironically, in this advertising letter, Rajavi admits that the MEK had killed thousands of people. The letters date around 1986. Farsi commentaries say that this clearly shows that Rajavi had always been a mercenary, and didn’t just fall into it after he joined with Saddam Hussein.

++ Rajavi has been very active this week trying to persuade neoconservatives in the West to put pressure on Iraq to stop the deliberately estranged families from demanding family visits with Camp Liberty residents. Experts interpret this as a panicked reaction by Rajavi as the UN exerts pressure to allow the visits. The families reply is to affirm that they will not go away and they are pursuing a fundamental human right to have family contact. Interestingly, although the MEK made no mention at all of a missile attack on Baghdad airport on its websites, the MEK instead fed false reports to several news outlets suggesting that Camp Liberty had been the target. One of these was the well-known Al Arabiyeh of Saudi Arabia. MEK operatives are then able to show the manufactured news to their lobbyists and advocates in the West as proof that the families at Camp Liberty – who, in spite of being mostly elderly parents, are accused of being “agents of the Iranian regime” – pose a serious threat to the lives of the residents and must therefore be prevented from visiting the camp.

++ Maryam Rajavi has sent a message to Iranian school students at the start of the school year which has become a laughing stock for everyone. One point which everyone highlights is that the target audience of the message cannot be the children or any Iranians for that matter. Her speech is obviously directed at her backers in the West. The lies she tells are something which everyone living in Iran sees through instantly, so clearly they cannot be her intended audience. Other comments ask whether Maryam Rajavi has given up being Iranian since she says ‘you and your country’ rather than ‘our country’. Some suggest she has adopted Saudi identity.

In English:

++ Mazda Parsi of Nejat Bloggers writes that the panic of the MEK over the prospect of normalized Iran-US relations is evident in its propaganda media. While US Democrats blocked the Israeli-led effort to kill the Iran nuclear deal, the MEK has had to reinforce its links with the US Zionist warmongers and Israel in order to survive the deal.

++ ‘The Rubicons That Have Been Crossed’ – Farhang Jahanpour from Oxford University, England writing in Inter Press Service (IPS) – “In their attempts to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program, the United States and Israel have resorted over time to a number of unorthodox, illegal and in some cases criminal methods to achieve their aims. They have included the following:…

“2. Assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists.

“There have been at least four documented cases in which Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated on the streets of Tehran. Israeli agencies have been implicated in those assassinations. A number of suspects who had been arrested testified that they were members of the terrorist organization, the Mojahedin-e Khalq, who had been recruited by Mossad, taken to Israel and trained in the use of those explosive devices…”

++ “College of William & Mary Professor and Ron Paul Institute Academic Board Member Lawrence Wilkerson frankly assesses that former United States General and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director David Petraeus’ proposal that the US support al-Qaeda to fight the Islamic State (ISIS) is a “crazy idea” that creates a blowback danger for Americans. Wilkerson declared this assessment in an interview Thursday with RT host Thom Hartman.

“In the interview, Wilkerson, a former US Army colonel and chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell, elaborates on his conclusion by warning:

“’I would point out that this is just the kind of thing we do that gives us this enormous blowback later. There is a direct line between our support for the mujahideen — the training and arming of al-Qaeda in particular in Afghanistan — and 9-11. And there will be a line, I assure you, between any support we give al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda-like elements in Syria and any future attack on the United States overseas, or here, by them. It’s just something that happens, and it’s extremely dangerous to be playing with this sort of thing.’”

++ nsnbc international website published an interesting and detailed article by Finian Cunningham of the Strategic Culture Foundation which exposes the Mojahedin Khalq’s decades long terrorist campaign against Iranians from every background which resulted in the deaths of over 17,000 individuals.

The article concludes:

“Iran’s three decades of battling Western state-sponsored terrorism within its borders is an illuminating example of Washington’s real connection to international terrorism, and how that relationship has been obscured by Western media. Washington’s relationship to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State is wholly consistent with Washington’s support for the MEK in Iran. Why this connection appears anomalous or perhaps shocking is simply because of the sanitising role that Western media disinformation, commonly referred to as “news”, has played in making the Western public ignorant of such criminal connections.

“Russia and Iran have therefore every right to take measures to combat terrorism within their own borders and those of their allies such as Syria and Iraq. Washington’s recent remonstrations with Moscow and Tehran over military aid to Syria are, in the light of American state-sponsorship of terrorism, contemptible. Washington’s remonstrations are disingenuous, double-think and outrageous hypocrisy.

“The least party that deserves to be consulted or listened to about counter-terrorism is the arch-sponsor of terrorism – Washington.”

September 25, 2015