Articles

Mujahedin Khalq; what are they really after?!

Mujahedin Khalq official websites have announced for a gathering in Paris on June 27.every year in June- on the anniversary of the beginning of the armed struggle of the group – the organization holds a Gathering Mujahedin Khalq; what are they really after?! along with some big names.

The same as every other rally the group has to hire attendees since group does not enjoy any support among Iranians.

Ghorban Ali Hussein Nejad, a defected member of MKO who currently lives in a charity center for refugees in France states that the MKO is vigorously recruiting attendees from refugee camps in exchange for money. Hussein Nejad says the group is recruiting African Arabs and Afghanis to participate in the so called “Huge gathering of Iranians” as acting extras.[1]

That is the MKO leaders must not only pay speakers to sing their praises at their rallies, but also the audience members.

The PR machine of Mojahedin Khalq as the only active part of the organization is hard at work during the year to hold demonstrations, rallies and events under different pretexts and in different places. It organizes trips for the so-called leader of the group Maryam Rajavi.

Scorned by many Iranians as a cult and for its long alliance with Saddam Hussein which causes the group’s having no base within Iran and among its own nation, MKO‘s efforts are all concerted to gain attention and support of the western powers.

In fact the Mujahedin Khalq’s decades long, intense and well-funded lobbying efforts to get itself delisted was a prerequisite in its struggle to show itself as a legitimate opposition group to Iran current government and as a democratic alternative .

Although the MKO’s opposition to the Iranian government earned its support and promotions and it got delisted through some deft lobbying, still it has never been considered as a viable alternative.

Indeed it is not new in the continuous policy of the United States or other European governments to embrace the terrorist and violent so called opposition groups to press the governments that do not follow their bids and get in their way.

Still as a group whose leadership has been living outside Iran for three decades, the PMOI has limited value to them, and its association with Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s dictator until the allied invasion of 2003, makes it an unpalatable ally.[2]

The Western governments have come to the consensus to negotiate with the current government of Iran and even If they think of an alternative, MKO is not the group they mull over.

The State Department’s report regards the Rajavis as “fundamentally undemocratic” and “not a viable alternative to the current government of Iran.”[3]

Eldar Memedov; the Political Advisor for the Social-Democratic Group in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament in its recently published article writes:”The foreign policy decision-making bodies of the EU — the Council of the EU and the External Action Service (EEAS) — do not consider the MEK a serious alternative to the current government in Tehran, as it has virtually no support among the Iranian population. [4]

Mamedov asserts:”The dominant EU line now clearly favors diplomacy with Iran, which will, hopefully, lead to a final deal over Tehran’s controversial nuclear program.”[5]

Indeed the delisting was symbolic and brought nothing for the group but paved the way for the west to use it as a tool against Iran.

The MKO’s efforts in derailing diplomacy on the nuclear programme beared no fruit as diplomacy is working and Iran and the 6 world powers are negotiating on the final stages of the agreement. As a group which have been on the list of terrorist organizations and has been repeatedly condemned by the UN of violating the Rights of its own members, the MKO’ propaganda on the issue of Human Rights in Iran is also futile.

The group talks about democracy in Iran while their own members do not have any freedom and live in a deplorable condition. The group’s leadership do not have any sympathy for the Iranian people or even its own members. They only care for keeping their own luxury life style,since they are now well aware that achieving power in Iran is an illusive dream.

A.Sepinoud

References:

[1] https://www.nejatngo.org/fa/posts/15967

[2] Vogel, Toby, A credible alternative for Iran?, European Voice, February23,2012

[3] 1994 US State Department Report on the People’s Mojahedin of Iran

[4] Mamedov, Eldar, The MEK’s Influence in EU Politics Matters, LobeLog, May6,2014

[5]ibid

May 22, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

How did a false Iran nuclear narrative come to dominate global politics?

(Dr Gareth Porter is an investigative journalist and historian specialising in US national security policy)

Some misconceptions about Iran’s nuclear programme are based on false evidence, argues Porter [AP]

As the crucial phase of the nuclear negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran began in Vienna recently, the fate of the agreement hangs by a thread. A wide chasm separates the declared positions of the two sides in regard to the enrichment capabilities that Iran would be permitted to keep, as has been widely reported.

What has gone unnoticed, however, is that the US negotiating demand for a deep cut in Iran’s enrichment capabilities has been shaped by Obama administration’s firm belief that Iran has been deceiving the world by hiding its firm determination to obtain nuclear weapons. That view of Iranian nuclear policy has come to dominate the international politics of the Iran nuclear issue over the past decade. But it has not emerged as a result of straightforward evidence.

As documented in my book, Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, the narrative of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons programme is the net result of a combination of strong political predisposition in US administrations and the intelligence community to believe it and a falsified intelligence dossier that has been foisted on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – and on world opinion.

The wrong kind of missile

The false Iran nuclear narrative began when the CIA set up a new centre for WMD proliferation in 1991 staffed by specialists on the subject who were pointed toward Iran as a target state threatening to proliferate. Not surprisingly that centre responded by judging repeatedly over the next decade that Iran’s efforts to obtain uranium enrichment technology beginning in the latter half of the 1980s was aimed at creating a “nuclear weapons capability”.

What the CIA’s weapons and proliferation experts never mentioned, however, was that Iran had responding to a crude political intervention by the Reagan administration beginning in 1983 to pressure the governments of France and Germany to refuse to cooperate with Iran’s nuclear programme. The effect of that intervention, which was not justified by any claim of evidence that Iran was trying to obtain nuclear weapons, was to prevent Iran from relying on a French-based company to provide the enriched uranium fuel for Iran’s Bushehr reactor. Not surprisingly, when confronted with the choice of abandoning its nuclear programme entirely or obtaining an independent enrichment capability Iran chose the latter.

By 2004, the news media and political atmosphere were already thoroughly saturated by the false Iran nuclear narrative. At that point a major political manoeuvre quietly unfolded that would ensure that the accusation of a secret Iranian nuclear programme would dominate the international politics of the issue for the next decade.

In August 2004, a set of intelligence documents said to have come from the laptop computer of a participant in a purported Iranian nuclear weapons research project fell into the hands of Western intelligence. The documents included drawings of apparent efforts to redesign the reentry vehicle of Iran’s Shahab-3 missile to accommodate a nuclear warhead, which the Bush administration portrayed as “smoking gun” evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons programme.

IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei and other senior officials of the agency had serious doubts about their authenticity. But Safeguards Department chief Olli Heinonen collaborated with Washington in 2008-09 and pushed the position in IAEA reports in 2008-09 that the documents were “credible” and that Iran was refusing to cooperate with the IAEA “investigation” of the documents. That position made it virtually impossible to question the authenticity of the documents.

It is now clear that ElBaradei’s skepticism about the documents was justified. The former coordinator of US-German relations in the German foreign office, Karsten Voigt, revealed in an interview with this writer last year that senior officials of Germany’s intelligence agency, the BND, had told him in November 2004 that those documents had been provided by a sometime BND source who was a member of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), the Iranian exile group allied first with Saddam and later with Israel that was listed as terrorist organisation by the US. The BND officials told Voigt that the MEK source was considered “doubtful”.

They were unhappy, because Secretary of State Colin Powell had just commented publicly on information – obviously from the same documents – about alleged Iranian work on mating their Shahab-3 missile with a nuclear weapon. They could hardly have forgotten that in early 2003, the Bush administration had relied on information from another BND source named “Curveball” to justify the US invasion of Iraq, despite having been warned by BND Chief August Hanning not to rely on the source.

There were other reasons to doubt the authenticity of the documents. As was confirmed to this writer by former IAEA Deputy Director General Olli Heinonen, the missile shown in the drawings of efforts to redesign a missile reentry vehicle to accommodate a nuclear weapon was the Shahab-3. But Iran’s defence ministry had decided to replace with a much-improved missile and reentry vehicle as early as 2000, and the earliest drawings are dated mid-2002. Whoever ordered those drawings done was obviously unaware of the switch to the new missile design, which means that they were done by an outside intelligence agency – not by the Iranian military or defence ministry.

Influencing perceptions

Israel is the only country in the world that had actually created an office in its foreign intelligence agency responsible for influencing foreign perceptions of the Iranian nuclear programme, as revealed by the book The Nuclear Jihadist, by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins.

Furthermore, as ElBaradei observed in his own memoirs, Israel had openly provided the IAEA an entirely new series of intelligence reports and purported documents on alleged Iranian nuclear weapons work while ElBaradei was still Director General. The dossier that the IAEA published in November 2011 was based entirely on those documents, although the source was never mentioned by the agency.

The story from the IAEA dossier that made news headlines around the world was that Iran had installed a cylinder at its Parchin military facility in 2000 for nuclear-related testing. But no real evidence was ever produced by the IAEA to support that claim – only a reference to a scholarly publication by a Ukrainian scientist who had helped Iran’s work on nuclear weapons, according to the agency. And the publication actually described – and included a drawing of – a cylinder for nanodiamonds production the physical characteristics of which were quite different from those a weapons-related cylinder.

The IAEA has also expunged from the published record the fact – virtually unknown to the outside world – that Iran agreed not just once but twice in 1995 to allow the agency to inspect any five sites of its choice in one of the four quadrants of Parchin and to take environmental samples. It is inconceivable, of course, that a state would allow such freedom for international inspection at a military base where it was concealing an incriminating nuclear testing facility.

The Obama administration, blissfully ignorant of the real history of the Iranian nuclear programme, has accepted the false narrative of Iran’s supposed determination to obtain nuclear weapons. Its negotiating position in the nuclear talks is based on the thesis that Iran must be prevented from having anything less than a six-month “breakout” period, on the spurious notion that Iran is poised to race for a bomb and must be shorn of the bulk of its enrichment capability.

Perhaps US diplomats will find a way to avoid letting the false logic that governs its posture sink the negotiations. If the talks fail, however, it will be the result of the toxic combination of wilful US self-deception and deliberate falsification of intelligence by the Israelis.

Gareth Porter, Aljazeera

May 20, 2014 0 comments

Canada

Why Canada is getting it wrong on Iran

As west moves towards reconciliation with Tehran, Ottawa is making a big mistake by pursuing a wrong policy which isolates Iran and hurts its people.

Ever since Canada broke off diplomatic relations with Tehran, Ottawa has toughtened its stance on Iran, taking a similar approach to that of Israel.

As the west seizes upon the opportunity to engage with the moderate president, Hassan Rouhani, Canada just seems to be going in the opposite direction, ignoring not only calls for dialogue by the international community but also from the very Iranian dissident voices Ottawa claims to be defending. Instead, Canada is siding with radicals – dodgy exiled groups and rightwing Israelis – and moving away from the realities on the ground.

In 2012, Canada’s foreign affairs minister, John Baird, described Iran as “the most significant threat to global peace and security in the world today” as it announced a unilateral decision to shut down his country’s embassy in Tehran and expel Iranian diplomats from the Canadian soil.

Within a year, as Rouhani travelled to New York to revamp Iran’s relations with the west backed by strong popular support at home, Baird warned “kind words, a smile and a charm offensive are not a substitute for real action.”

Later, as Iran and six world powers including Britain and the US, reached a historic nuclear agreement in Geneva, trying to defuse the threats of yet another war in the Middle East, Canada injected deep scepticism.

Canada’s big excuse is human rights. [..]

But Ottawa’s policy of isolating Tehran, at the time Rouhani is under pressure from internal hawks and fudamentalists, is doing a disservice both to the future of peace in the world and the wellbeing of Iranians themselves. By rejecting engagement with Iran, Canada is also turning a blind eye to repeated calls by leading Iranian opposition figures, for the unique opportunity created because of Rouhani’s election.

This week’s Iran human rights event at Canada’s parliament embodied what is wrong with Ottawa’s approach. A key speaker at a programme studying violations of human rights in Iran was Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the radical exiled group MEK, which was listed as terrorist organisation by the US and the UK until recently. The MEK, charactrised by many observers as a cult-like group, has been repeatedly slammed by the United Nation because of mistreating its own members.

The MEK appearance at the programme reportedly made the UN special rapporteur for human rights in Iran, Ahmed Shaheed, to withdraw from the event, the Nation’s Ali Gharib reported on Wednesday. To much criticism by the Iranian authorities, Shaheed has extensively reported on the violations of rights in Iran, including mistreatment of prisoners, some of whom are in fact in jail in Iran for having links to the MEK.

“If you want to improve human rights in Iran, don’t invite MEK leader, a group accused of serious human rights violations, as a speaker,” tweeted Golnaz Esfandiari, who blogs on Iran. The MEK remains extremely unpopular in Iran because of its support for the former Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, during the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq. MEK fought against their countrymen at the time.

Earlier this month, Lobelog’s Eldar Mamedov detailed how the MEK is using human rights as its casus belli to mix up the complexities of politics inside Iran for an outsider eye and derail the process of Iran-west rapproachment. It looks as Canada is repeating a mistake the US and some European countries did decades ago by relying on radical groups such as MEK, or some Iranian monarchists, to keep itself updated about the complicated bigger picture of today’s Iran.

Moreover, Canada often berates Iran in the excuse of defending human rights activists and opposition figures who have been imprisoned in Iran. But when the very same people, including 50 prominent political prisoners, reached to US president Barack Obama asking him to end “crippling” economic sanctions hurting ordinary people in Iran and seize “the last chance” for dialogue with Tehran under Rouhani, Canada seemed to have sealed its ears.

Instead, it should listen to more reasonable voices, such as it own former ambassador to Tehran, John Mundy, who has stated it was wrong for Ottawa to cut diplomatic ties.

Let’s be clear, no one is denying the gross abuses of human rights in Iran or the challenges ahead in finding a permanent nuclear settlement with the Islamic republic. But human rights in Iran can only be improved by the ways of dialogue and engagement. This is why the recent visit to Iran by the EU’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, who visited a number of leading women rights’ activists, was more effective than Canada’s many human rights statements.

Canada has had a very frosty relations with Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution. It became more restrained in 2003 when an Iranian-Canadian photographer, Zahra Kazemi, died while in jail in Iran under torture because of a skull fracture. But if Ottawa is genuine about the wellbeing of Iranian citizens, including those persecuted in the country, it should reconsider its Iran policy. But for now, Canada is just getting it wrong on Iran.

Saeed Kamali Dehghan,

May 19, 2014 0 comments

Massoud Rajavi

The MKO and the mirage of Alternative for IRI

The likely successful nuclear negotiations between Iran and the West have pushed the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO) to face more challenges in order to impede a normalized Iran-West relationship. The group’s heavy scale well-funded lobbying campaign to derail diplomacy with Iran has come up with new dimensions.

For years, the MKO’s propaganda had focused on the Iranian nuclear program, spreading misinformation about it but once the nuclear talks started in Geneva, the group found itself empty handed. While the Cult of Rajavi has always claimed to be the alternative to the Iranian Government, the ongoing diplomacy process between Iran and the West has wiped out its slightest hope for achieving power in Iran. Furthermore, today the MKO is more concerned for its own survival, let alone governing Iran –Where it hardly ever enjoys public support.

That’s why the MKO is awfully nervous about the recent visits to Iran by the European politicians. For instance, the group, denounced a trip last month to Tehran by Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz. The denunciation came two weeks after the so-called Friends of Free Iran (FoFi), an informal network of members of the European Parliament (MEPs) closely allied to the NCRI, organized a conference calling for regime change in Iran and lauding the NCRI-MEK as the democratic alternative, according to Edar Mamedov who is a political adviser for the social-democrats in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament (EP) and is in charge of the delegation for inter-parliamentary relations between the EP and Iran. [1]

After the election of Rouhani as the Iranian president, the significant progress in the Nuclear negotiations pushed the MKO propaganda to actively run the new agenda of Human Rights. As an official who witnesses the MKO’s lobbying efforts in the European Parliament, Mamedov suggests, “So, the MEK, which detests the notion of rapprochement between Iran and the West, has shifted gears and chosen human rights as its casus belli against the Iranian regime.”[2]

Although Mamedov does not disregard “the capacity of the MEK to poison the present atmosphere of European-Iranian relations”, he clarifies, “The good news is that MEK lobbying efforts against diplomacy with Iran are unlikely to succeed.” [3]

“Even with the extravagant funds the MEK has spent on endorsements by political elites, the group’s prominence in the EU is confined only to one part of the EP,” writes Mamedov.” The foreign policy decision-making bodies of the EU — the Council of the EU and the External Action Service (EEAS) — do not consider the MEK a serious alternative to the current government in Tehran, as it has virtually no support among the Iranian population. ” [4]

Among the few European parliament members who favor Maryam Rajavi and her cult-like organization, Alejo Vidal-Quadras the Spanish EU Parliament member is “the key man in Spanish political relations with the Iranian People’s Mujahedeen”, according to Elsa S. Vejo of the Spanish News Website Esterella Digital. [] The Spanish journalist criticizes their 13-years working politician for the “astonishing” cause of the MKO. According to official versions, the MEK was “voluntarily disarmed”.” According to the unofficial version, the CIA and the Israeli Mossad is training the Mojahedin for their own benefit,” He writes. “So much so, that in January 2012, Ilan Mizrahi, former head of the secret Israeli intelligence service, disclosed the involvement of the Mojahedin in the “secret war” against Iran that had already cost the lives of four Iranian nuclear scientists.” [5]

In addition, the support for the group in the US Congress is not so noteworthy. There are also a few retired American officials who embrace the MKO in response to large amounts of donation the group pays them. Rudy Guiliani former New York mayor is one of the well-paid ardent sponsors of the group whose “warm embrace of the MEK terrorist organization is shocking and deplorable.”

Hamid Babaei counselor and head of Press Office for the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations in New York wrote a response to an op-ed by Rudolph Giuliani , “Team Obama keeps miscalculating Iran — ‘change’ under Rouhani is a mirage” that appeared in Fox News Opinion. Babaei states, ” Journalists and think tanks across the world have sounded the alarm regarding the “cult-like” practices of the MEK, such as forcing members to give up their children in order to dedicate more time to the cause, and their decades long reign of terror and brutality has been well established by many including the U.S. Department of State when it designated it as terrorist organization in 1997 while describing it as a “repressive cult despised by most Iranians and Iraqis.” Babaei also refers to the 2009 report by the Rand Corp. in which the authors denounce the MKO for its “cultic practices and its deceptive recruitment and public relations strategies”.[6]

The MKO’s large-scale effort to gain the West’s support does not seem to be efficient. “The dominant EU line now clearly favors diplomacy with Iran, which will, hopefully, lead to a final deal over Tehran’s controversial nuclear program,” suggests Mamedov.” The more the chances of success for diplomacy increase, the more irrelevant the MEK will become.” [7]

By Mazda Parsi

Sources:

[] Mamedov, Eldar, The MEK’s Influence in EU Politics Matters, Loblog FP, May 10, 2014

[]ibid

[5] S. Vejo, Elsa , SPAINISH POLITICIAN’S DANGEROUS RELATION, Esterella Digital, May 6, 2014 (Translated by Iran Interlink)

[6] Babaei, Hamid, Embrace of Mojahedin Khalq shocking, deplorable, Fox News, May 7, 2014

[7] Mamedov, Eldar, The MEK’s Influence in EU Politics Matters, Loblog FP, May 10, 2014

May 18, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization

Controversial Iranian Exile Shakes up Canadian Parliament’s HR Program

A weeklong series of events in Canadian parliament on Iran’s human rights record caused worry among some human rights advocates who fear that the activities could harm their efforts. The controversy centers around Iran Accountability Week, a program of hearings at the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Human Rights and other events organized by members of parliament from the three major parties, with Liberal MP Irwin Cotler taking the lead. The program runs through Thursday.

A human rights lawyer and pro-Israel figure, Cotler has organized three Iran Accountability Weeks. In the past, the events included testimonies highlighting Iranian political prisoners and other victims of Iranian human rights abuses. This year’s lineup, however, was different: Maryam Rajavi, the leader of a controversial exiled Iranian opposition group called the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), appeared in the program along with a UN rights official and pundits from a hawkish American think-tank.

One human rights advocate working on Iran, who asked not to be named, raised the issue of other advocates sharing a platform with the head of the MEK, which the activist called “toxic and irrelevant”—a view widely held among Iranians of all political stripes, save members of the MEK itself.

The MEK, which until two years ago was listed as terrorist organization by the United States and Canada, has a tortuous history that carried it from its founding in the mid-1960s as an Islamo-Marxist anti-Shah group to its current position as a vocal opponent of the Islamic Republic. Many critics say the group exhibits cult-like behavior. In addition to its history of violence, the MEK has, notably, been accused of its own human rights abuses.

In a phone interview, Cotler, the Canadian MP whose office spearheaded the multiparty Iran Accountability Week, said the invitation to Rajavi was only to give “issue-specific testimony”—specifically the alleged killings of MEK members by Iraqi security forces.

The MEK moved its operations to Iraq in the 1980s, to fight alongside Saddam Hussein in the bloody Iran-Iraq war, taking up in a desert military base called Camp Ashraf. In September 2012, nine years after the fighters had been disarmed following the US invasion, Iraqi forces evacuated Ashraf. Those MEK members and fighters who remained in country moved into Camp Liberty—an erstwhile American military installation. At various points since Hussein’s overthrow, both Liberty and Ashraf had come under attack, mostly by Iraqi security forces, and disarmed MEK members have been killed.

When asked why a notice for the event sent around by his office, obtained by The Nation, said Rajavi would discuss more broad “violations of the rights of the Iranian people”—a category that expands beyond the Ashraf/Liberty incidents—Cotler repeated that the invitation was “issue-specific,” though he noted Rajavi may speak on or be asked about other matters. (In 2012, Colter reportedly joined a campaign to get the MEK removed from terror rolls in the United States and Canada.)

The association with the MEK, however, raised red flags for another participant, Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran. Since 2011, when his mandate was initiated, the Maldivian diplomat has been a main address for credible information about Iran’s alleged human rights abuses. Shaheed was scheduled to address the subcommittee on Thursday, May 8 by video link in an open hearing.

According to his office, however, Shaheed requested to withdraw from the official Iran Accountability Week proceedings. He agreed, an assistant said, to brief lawmakers “in a different context than Accountability Week.” Asked why, Shaheed’s representative responded, “He just didn’t think it was appropriate.”

The assistant explained that Shaheed felt the event’s framing “made it feel less like a briefing and more of something that encroached upon what he believes is his independence on the issue” of human rights in Iran.

Cotler confirmed that, fifty minutes before he was set to go on, Shaheed phoned and requested his testimony be delivered on camera, or in a closed-door session. But the Canadian parliamentarian denied Shaheed withdrew from Iran Accountability Week: “He was not taken off the program. His appearance was in camera,” Cotler said, adding that Shaheed did not request in their phone call to withdraw.

Divining whether Shaheed was indeed withdrawn from the program proved difficult. Cotler’s office referred The Nation to the bureaucrats who run the subcommittee, but none would comment on whether Shaheed remained part of Iran Accountability Week. Asked if Shaheed was on the public program, Miriam Burke, the subcommittee clerk, said, “I can’t tell you.” Shaheed’s name did not appear in a May 8 press release on Cotler’s official website.

Several sources said the MEK’s involvement spurred Shaheed’s request to be removed from the program. One source with knowledge of the decision said several human rights groups reached out to Shaheed’s office, “and it didn’t take long for them to make this decision.” Two other sources confirmed the account. “From our understanding he was unaware he was part of this broader program,” said a rights activist. “Once it was discovered, the MEK issue was a critical concern.”

The issue is particularly fraught because Shaheed has, over the years of his UN mandate, attempted to negotiate with the Iranian government for access to the country. The Islamic Republic rejected Shaheed’s latest report in March. One Iranian MP remarked that “the intelligence sources for Ahmed Shaheed’s reports are the hypocrites”—the way Iran refers to the MEK—”and the Islamic Republic of Iran’s opposition.”

Cotler said he would explicitly renounce any connections made between various witnesses at hearings in a press conference marking Iran Accountability Week’s closing. “We will not make any association between Dr. Shaheed and the MEK,” he said. “The last thing any of us would want to do would be to hurt Dr. Shaheed’s work or testimony. Not that [the Iranians] need any excuse to do that.”

May 17, 2014 0 comments

Iran Interlink Weekly Digest

Iran Interlink Weekly Digest – 52

++ Iraj Shokri, a famous writer who left the MEK some time ago, has blogged to reject some of the quotes used by the MEK when they wrote about Kamal Rafatsafai (a poet who recently died who also left the MEK and became very critical over their human rights record). Shokri says that although he doesn’t usually answer the MEK, this time they sneakily used his name and he has had to refute their misuse of his quotes.

++ Nejat Association reports about the situation inside Camp Liberty. Apparently, runaways have become a serious problem for the MEK and they have added more sentry posts around the residential blocks in an attempt to prevent this. The MEK says its last hope is its commanders keeping control of the rank and file. Also, the MEK have expressed disappointment with the Iraqi election result. They had already acknowledged that if the elections in Iraq don’t work out for them with the return of some Baathists they are finished.

++ Reports from Albania show pictures of around eight people who were among the children evacuated from Camp Ashraf in 1991 to Europe, before being sent back to Iraq again for military training. Because they all have residential history in European countries, the reports say, the MEK have deliberately sent them to Albania in order to delay their arrival in these European countries and to prevent them from talking. To keep them quiet in Albania, the MEK henchmen Ismael Mortezai and Hassan Nayebagha from Paris, are threatening them from one side – we will kill you if you act without our approval – and on the other side promising that if they get refugee status from the UNHCR in Tirana the MEK itself will transfer them elsewhere in Europe.

++ Mohammad Alavi on Aryia Iran website has written an article titled: ‘One thousand Ashraf camps in Europe and toppling the regime with photoshop’. He says everyone is aware the MEK are busy touring refugee camps to buy people for their 30 June event to celebrate the start of their armed struggle. This year the event is to be held on 27 June in Villepinte in north Paris. Alavi details the history of these events over the last few years and provides links to coverage in Le Monde, France 24 and Radio Farda which have all exposed the pretence. The article also has links to other media items in which people have admitted they were paid either to speak or to attend. Some other ex members write on same subject revealing that the MEK visit travel agencies as well as refugee camps and offer free trips to Paris and a hand-out of money in exchange for two hours attendance in their meeting. They reveal that this year the meeting will include performances of singing and dancing as well as speeches in order to attract people and fool them about the true nature of the event.

++ The Iraqi election is finished and the official result will be out next week, and it is already clear that Maliki’s coalition has come out on top and is widely supported. There will now follow negotiations between the various factions to agree roles and responsibilities. But it is clear the new government, whatever its configuration, contains many fewer Saddamists, Danesh and other MEK sympathisers.

++ Homayoun Kohzadi has published a short note in Yaran Association website saying that several people who have escaped from Camp Liberty have contacted him. They say that Massoud Rajavi has again made an announcement declaring that these are the last days of the Iranian regime. He has ordered an alert to be ready. Rajavi says, while Maryam is doing the last bits of toppling by creating one thousand Camp Ashrafs in Europe, the combatants in Camp Liberty have to be ready for the last attack toward Iran. Kohzadi begs the question, ‘why does Rajavi not look at himself in the mirror?’ “Your audience” he tells Rajavi, “has no weaponry, the government of Iraq is in charge so you won’t even get to border. But putting even these obstacles aside, how can these old and sick people go to war? They would die on the way.” He finishes by saying, “Rajavi has gone mad.”

++ Mojahadin.com reported a meeting at the University of Semnan in which Ebrahim Khodabandeh gave a speech to the students and staff about cults. Khodabandeh said, “I have been in the MEK’s camps and I have been in Evin prison. With reference to the problems in Section 350, one thing I am certain of is that the amount of contact the Evin prisoners have with the outside world is not comparable with the contact MEK members have with the outside because the MEK have none!” He also announced that through research he can now say that the number of ex members is well over the number of current MEK members. He concluded that although we don’t have the power to rescue the people who have fallen into this trap, my friends and I will make sure they can’t drag new people into their trap.

++ Mohammad Karami from Paris and some others have responded to an article in Iran Global written under pseudonyms. The writers claim they are a group working with the Intelligence Service of the Netherlands who are responsible for trapping ex MEK member Behzad Alishahi through various sting scenarios so that he would be arrested under national security laws. The group uses this article to threaten every other critic of the MEK that “if you don’t stop this criticism of the MEK we have the power to deal with you the same way we did Alishahi”. This threat follows previous reports, particularly from Albania where MEK henchmen carry Pentagon ID cards, of MEK intimidation and threats in the West. Karami and others have exposed this ‘group’ as a man called Amrollah Ebrahimi, an ex member from TIPF who was bought by the MEK and who is working directly under the supervision of Hadi Roshanravan (a commanders in the MEK’s Intelligence Section who has been highly trained by Saddam’s Mokhaberat). Karami and other writers question what is behind publishing this on Iran Global website in particular, and conclude that since the MEK has been exposed to be behind the intimidation of ex members through their own websites, they have outsourced this to Iran Global so it doesn’t look like the MEK are behind it.

++ Razieh Kermanshahi has died from a heart attack in Albania. She was 57. Rajavi has been quick to add her to the list of martyrs from the Leadership Council. But many who knew her say that she had heart problems for many years which the MEK deliberately neglected. Essentially they sent her to Albania to die. In this respect Javad FIrouzmand wrote an article for Aryia Iran naming several other people who suffered neglect or have been denied medical attention by the MEK. He reveals how they have been eliminated in this way from the time of Saddam up until the present.

++ This week Maryam Rajavi has put on a show for internal purposes. She was photographed strolling around a display of pictures of the MEK’s so called martyrs from the time of the revolution until now. This was published on their Farsi websites. Edalaat Association wrote an analysis about why Maryam has done this while 99% of her time is spent with the Israeli lobby and the like. The article says there is an identity crisis inside the MEK among members and unpaid supporters who cannot understand what is the MEK’s relation to Israel, Al Qaida, Syria, Nigeria, and etc. Rajavi has taken these pictures to prevent the internal forces from collapsing.

In English:

++ Fox News published a reply by Hamid Babaei, counselor and head of the Press Office for the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations in New York, to an op-ed by former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Babaei described Guiliani’s “warm embrace of the MEK terrorist organization” as “shocking and deplorable”, describing it as “a repressive cult despised by most Iranians and Iraqis.”

++ Elsa S. Vejo Destrella Digital (Digital Star) spoke with Alejo Vidal- Quadras MEP as the key man in Spanish political relations with the Iranian People’s Mujahedeen. She writes the question of where the MEK gets its money? “The question still remains unresolved and the experts bring to the fore the question of where does the MEK get all the money it costs to maintain this important network of contacts and support . According to Vidal-Quadras, solely from the Iranians in the diaspora, “some of them are very wealthy”. Although other politicians we consulted doubt this. “I am not so naive to think that the contributions of all Iranians in exile are sufficient to maintain that infrastructure. I do not rule out that there may be powers that are instrumental in acting in their favor”, admits Gari Duran Sen. PP Baleares, and one of the Mojahedin’s greatest defenders in Spain. The USA , Israel and Saudi Arabia are among the possible hidden funders. Duran, however, says she does not care about that; “I have seen people on hunger strike, I have seen the pictures of the dead and have heard their mothers talk, and unless you have to conclude that this is a giant deception, to me it is real.””

++ Nejat Association wrote an open letter to Ms Laura Boldrini, President of the Chamber of Deputies of Italy, asking to meet with her during her visit to Iran with a 10-member delegation, headed by co-chairman of Iran-Italy parliamentary friendship group Ettore Rosato. Nejat said it wanted to meet to find a way to rescue the members in Iraq and try to put them in contact with their families in Iran.

++ Ali Gharib writing ‘Controversial Iranian Exile Shakes up Canadian Parliament’s Human Rights Program’ in The Nation, exposed the damage caused by the inclusion of Maryam Rajavi by Skype in the event. According to Gharib, “Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, Shaheed requested to withdraw from the official Iran Accountability Week proceedings. He agreed, an assistant said, to brief lawmakers “in a different context than Accountability Week.” Asked why, Shaheed’s representative responded, “He just didn’t think it was appropriate.” The assistant explained that Shaheed felt the event’s framing “made it feel less like a briefing and more of something that encroached upon what he believes is his independence on the issue” of human rights in Iran.” “…Another human rights advocate working on Iran, who asked not to be named, raised the issue of other advocates sharing a platform with the head of the MEK, which the activist called “toxic and irrelevant”—a view widely held among Iranians of all political stripes, save members of the MEK itself.”

16 May 2014

May 17, 2014 0 comments

Maryam Rajavi

Introducing Maryam Rajavi as a human rights activist is the wrong tool for the wrong job

Although Canada is not party to the P5+1 nuclear negotiations, the Canadian parliament’s all-party Iran Accountability Week aimed to put pressure on Iran over its human rights record. Instead, it degenerated

Introducing Maryam Rajavi as a human rights activist is the wrong tool for the wrong job into another crude attempt to fuel enmity and hatred and prevent any rapprochement between Iran and western powers, even a clumsy attempt to create conditions which would derail the negotiating process. The weeklong series of events backfired badly as Ali Gharib writing in The Nation revealed.

The inclusion of the Mojahedin Khalq’s notorious second in command, Maryam Rajavi, who describes herself as the ‘president-elect’ of a future Iran, was guaranteed to create controversy. The MEK itself has a well documented history of human rights violations. The group is hated by Iranians inside and outside the country.

Predictably, several participants pulled out of the event. Most notably Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran.

Among the others there were divisions. Some indicated that the inclusion of Maryam Rajavi is not in the benefit of Israel, others clearly scorned her presence, as Ali Gharib reported: “One human rights advocate working on Iran, who asked not to be named, raised the issue of other advocates’ sharing a platform with the head of the MEK, which the activist called “toxic and irrelevant”—a view widely held among Iranians of all political stripes, save members of the MEK itself.”

The result was that Maryam Rajavi’s backers were forced to get her to water down her speech, to narrow it down to talking about the MEK’s camps in Iraq and what is happening there and not to use the event as a platform for wider anti-Iranian attacks. Even then Rajavi had nothing but MEK propaganda, riddled with lies and misinformation, to tell the assembly.

The Skype appearance followed a failed attempt to get Rajavi a US visa during the P5+1 negotiations on May 8. It was known that Rajavi had also applied to visit Canada, but apparently she wasn’t welcome there either, and in the end Rajavi’s speech from her headquarters outside Paris had to be censored to render it bearable if not credible for real human rights advocates and activists who attended. Even then they felt they had been deceived and tricked into listening to someone contemptible.

The presence of Maryam Rajavi – an advocate of the Saddamists, Al Qaida and ISIS in Iraq – exposes the real agenda behind the so-called human rights advocates who invited her. While it is understandable that MOSSAD may use the MEK as a mercenary force to assassinate Iranian scientists or for information laundry, nobody will accept the MEK as humanitarian. This is simply the wrong tool for the wrong job.

Anne Khodabandeh (Singleton), Middle East Strategy Consultants,

May 17, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

SPAINISH POLITICIAN’S DANGEROUS RELATION

Alejo Vidal-Quadras , the best friend of the Mojahedin Khalq

The President of Vox admits to 13-years working for an astonishing cause: remove the Iranian Mojahedin Khalq from the terrorism list and rehabilitate the group. He says Spanish politicians should support this organization, which is an ” ally ” of the CIA.

Alejo Vidal- Quadras is the key man in Spanish political relations with the Iranian People’s Mujahedeen. The ‘ ex-popular ‘ and current president of Vox was the first Spanish politician to begin having a liking for the “Iranian democratic opposition in exile.” This is how he defines it: “The year was 2000 and I had just been elected to the European Parliament. I was soon to be in Brussels when I met a socialist Portuguese MEP, Paulo Casaca. He had spent a few years working with the Iranian democratic opposition and asked me to receive some representatives of this movement. We had a long conversation and I was provided with documents and they explained to me the circumstances of Iran and the Mojahedin’s history. Here began our relationship…

Since then, he gave his full support to this cause. Since being in the European Parliament, he has “13 years” working for the Iranian National Resistance Council – according to many experts, the political arm of the Iranian People’s Mujahedeen – to achieve its objectives. First, get them off the list of terrorist organizations, in which the group was included in 1997 in the U.S. and 2002 in the EU, being accused of the murder of several Americans in the 1970s and the attempted attack in 1992 against the Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York. And second, to have it recognized as the “legitimate alternative” opposition in the eyes of the international community. To do this, the ‘lobbying activity’ performed for more than 20 years by the organization has been fundamental. And the support of the Spanish politician – a leading member of the group Friends of Free Iran, consisting of around 70 MEPs – has been essential to take the message into international institutions.

The first objective has already been met. In 2009 the Council of the European Union withdrew the terrorist designation. “But it was a strictly judicial procedure,” Vidal-Quadras quickly justified . “It’s been the courts that have ruled that they are not terrorists,” insists the ex-popular, referring to the judgment issued in 2008 by the Court of Justice in Luxembourg, claiming that no evidence was found of the MEK terrorist threat. After this victory in the EU, the Mojahedin also began their specific crusade in Washington. “I lived very close to this process. I had a long meeting with lawyers to raise the issue in the U.S.. We explained how the dispute had been worked out in Europe”. The result? In 2012, the U.S. State Department also stopped considering them terrorists.

What could motivate the U.S. to take them off the blacklist?

Academic researchers, however, rule out that the only reason to get them out of the blacklist was legal. Hillary Clinton warned that the department she headed would not “ignore” or “forget ” past events ” including the MEK’s involvement in the murder of U.S. citizens in Iran in the 1970s and an attack on U.S. soil in 1992 “, but in the opinion of the experts we consulted there are several reasons that led the U.S. government to take this decision.

First, in 2002 the Iranian People’s Mojahedin allegedly discovered Iran ‘s nuclear program and enabled the U.S. to declare ‘war’ on the regime of the ayatollahs. Second, when the U.S. invaded Iraq, after the Mojahedin were captured as prisoners of war, the U.S. granted them the status of “protected persons”. According to official versions, the MEK was “voluntarily disarmed”. According to the unofficial version, the CIA and the Israeli Mossad is training the Mojahedin for their own benefit. So much so, that in January 2012, Ilan Mizrahi, former head of the secret Israeli intelligence service, disclosed the involvement of the Mojahedin in the “secret war” against Iran that had already cost the lives of four Iranian nuclear scientists. And thirdly, for years, U.S. politicians supported the Mojahedin cause as an instrument of pressure against the Iranian regime. “They speak Farsi and still maintain important contacts within the regime. Useful for the USA, justify the experts we consulted.

Of course what these experts do not believe is that this support is selfless. In the U.S. there are precedents. The New York Times reported years ago on the Mojahedin’s alleged bribery of influential politicians to support its cause. Then there was talk of fees of between 15,000 and 30,000 dollars; and even the former governor of Pennsylvania, Edward G. Rendell, had to face an investigation by the Department of Treasury of the United States for having taken more than 150,000 dollars from this group which was still included in the terrorism list at the time. And in the case of the European Union it is the same. DIGITAL STAR has unveiled two Spanish presidents attended meetings in Paris annually in June to take payments. “But other politicians who support them do not charge a euro”, Alejo Vidal- Quadras hastens to clarify. “In the world there are still regimes that crush human rights, such as Cuba , North Korea and Iran. I believe it is the duty of any democrat to help transform Iran into a democracy”, concludes the current president of Vox.

Who funds the Mojahedin?

The question still remains unresolved and the experts bring to the fore the question of where does the MEK get all the money it costs to maintain this important network of contacts and support . According to Vidal-Quadras, solely from the Iranians in the diaspora, “some of them are very wealthy”. Although other politicians we consulted doubt this. “I am not so naive to think that the contributions of all Iranians in exile are sufficient to maintain that infrastructure. I do not rule out that there may be powers that are instrumental in acting in their favor”, admits Gari Duran Sen. PP Baleares, and one of the Mojahedin’s greatest defenders in Spain. The USA , Israel and Saudi Arabia are among the possible hidden funders. Duran, however, says she does not care about that; “I have seen people on hunger strike, I have seen the pictures of the dead and have heard their mothers talk, and unless you have to conclude that this is a giant deception, to me it is real.”

The deaths of 40,000 Iranians during the Iraq- Iran war are attributed to the Mojahedin, as are the assassination of the Iranian president Ali Rajaei and Prime Minister Javad Bohanar and many Kurds, and the Mojahedin is now active in supporting the Syrian opposition. And in some reports by the UNHCR it confirms that this is a movement which does not respect human rights. But Vidal- Quadras does not give credence to any of these charges and insists it is Iranian propaganda. A message that its leader, Maryam Rajavi, constantly repeats in all the parliaments that she visits. She does so in Europe two times a year when she visits and has done so in Spain in December 2012 during a flying visit to Madrid where she also took the opportunity to meet with the mayor, Ana Botella – interestingly the wife of one of the politicians the Mojahedin paid in exchange for public support.

Elsa S. Vejo Destrella Digital (Digital Star), Translated by Iran Interlink

May 11, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Embrace of MEK shocking, deplorable

Editor’s note: The following is a response to an op-ed by former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, "Team Obama keeps miscalculating Iran — ‘change’ under Rouhani is a mirage" that appeared in Fox News Opinion on May 7.

Mr. Guiliani’s warm embrace of the MEK terrorist organization is shocking and deplorable.

Journalists and think tanks across the world have sounded the alarm regarding the "cult-like" practices of the MEK, such as forcing members to give up their children in order to dedicate more time to the cause, and their decades long reign of terror and brutality has been well established by many including the U.S. Department of State when it designated it as terrorist organization in 1997 while describing it as a "repressive cult despised by most Iranians and Iraqis."

But through what the RAND Corp. called "cultic practices and its deceptive recruitment and public relations strategies" as well as giving millions of dollars to politicians and lobbyists in Washington — where it seems everyone has a price tag as campaign donation or "speakers fees," the MEK managed to get itself removed from the list.

It also should be noted that this group supported Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war and played a major role in the violent crackdown on the civilian uprising in the early 90s while living in Iraq as a private militia for Saddam Hussein.

The people of Iraq despise them and want them out, as well they should.

Hamid Babaei is counselor and head of the Press Office for the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations in New York.

By Hamid Babaei,

May 11, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization

The MEK’s Influence in EU Politics Matters

In a sign of re-emerging ties between the European Union (EU) and Iran, Edgars Rinkevics, Latvia’s minister of foreign affairs, visited Tehran on April 24. The visit was significant because Latvia will hold the EU’s rotating presidency in the first half of 2015. Issues pertaining to regional cooperation between the EU and Iran in Central Asia and Afghanistan were discussed during Rinkevics’ stay, indicating an EU desire to look beyond Iran’s nuclear program. This visit was another step in a string of reconnections that include trips to Iran by foreign ministers and parliamentarians from a number of EU countries including Austria, Sweden, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

Not everybody is pleased with these developments. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the front group for the exiled Iranian dissident organization, the Mujahadeen-e Khalq (known as the MEK, MKO, or PMOI), which was classified as a terrorist organization by the EU until 2009 and by the United States until 2012, denounced a trip last month to Tehran by Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz. The denunciation came two weeks after the so-called Friends of Free Iran (FoFi), an informal network of members of the European Parliament (MEPs) closely allied to the NCRI, organized a conference calling for regime change in Iran and lauding the NCRI-MEK as the democratic alternative.

This is the message that the NCRI and bedfellows like FoFi have been promoting for years in European countries where the MEK has had many more years to lobby for and promote its agenda than in the United States. While the notion of an irreconcilable enmity between the West and Iran was relatively easy to promote during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency (2005-13), the election of the moderate Hassan Rouhani and the meaningful progress in negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program challenge that narrative. So, the MEK, which detests the notion of rapprochement between Iran and the West, has shifted gears and chosen human rights as its casus belli against the Iranian regime.

[..]

The good news is that MEK lobbying efforts against diplomacy with Iran are unlikely to succeed. Even with the extravagant funds the MEK has spent on endorsements by political elites, the group’s prominence in the EU is confined only to one part of the EP. The foreign policy decision-making bodies of the EU — the Council of the EU and the External Action Service (EEAS) — do not consider the MEK a serious alternative to the current government in Tehran, as it has virtually no support among the Iranian population. The dominant EU line now clearly favors diplomacy with Iran, which will, hopefully, lead to a final deal over Tehran’s controversial nuclear program. The more the chances of success for diplomacy increase, the more irrelevant the MEK will become.

It would be a mistake, however, to completely disregard the capacity of the MEK to poison the present atmosphere of European-Iranian relations. Institutions like the European Parliament are by their very nature open to lobbying from different groups, and the MEK has proven very adept at recruiting supporters. Among the conservative right, the MEK is viewed as staunch defenders of Israel and Western values against Iran’s so-called “mad mullahs”; among the progressive left, the MEK is seen as victims of the American invasion in Iraq in need of protection (the MEK created its base, Camp Ashraf, in Iraq following its exile from Iran).

The MEK’s expensive lobbying and advocacy efforts have also promoted an image of the group as defenders of human rights, especially women rights, facing Iran’s alleged “medieval, barbaric mullah regime”. The group’s strong presence of women, including leader Maryam Rajavi, is sold as evidence of its commitment to gender equality and secularism. Never mind the irony of its members in Camp Ashraf — excluding, of course, Mrs. Rajavi — being invariably dressed in uniformed, almost military suits and headscarves, and never mind the documented human rights abuses by the MEK against its own members.

On the operational level, the MEK is extremely persistent and aggressive. MEK lobbyists maintain a constant presence in the coffee bars of EP buildings in Brussels and Strasbourg, or in front of the plenary room in Strasbourg. These are strategic locations from which to bombard MEPs and their staffers with requests to support the MEK. Sometimes, however, they overdo it — one MEP recounted to me about how she had to scream at an MEK activist until they exited the elevator she was using to get to her office. Even MEPs’ offices are targets: the MEK lobbyists have no qualms about entering them uninvited and distributing flyers against alleged “Islamo-fascist tyranny” in Tehran.

Yet there is a growing backlash in the EP against the MEK. In May 2011, a number of MEPs from across the political spectrum sent an open letter to their colleagues warning against legitimizing the MEK and its destructive agenda, including to heavyweights such as the powerful German chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, christian-democrat Elmar Brok, the leader of the social-democrats, Austrian politician Hannes Swoboda, the president of the party of the European liberal-democrats, Annemie Neyts, and many others. The last resolution of the European Parliament on Iran contained no references to the MEK or its demands. And the delegation for relations with Iran, while regularly offering the floor to various opposition groups, resisted giving a platform to the MEK.

However, more needs to be done to counter MEK propaganda, which can impede diplomatic efforts with Iran that can, arguably, allow the government to reform from within. Iranian diaspora organizations and individuals, the vast majority of whom do not sympathize with the MEK, may feel that confronting the MEK would give the group unwarranted importance, but the reality is that by being the only organized and constantly present Iranian opposition group in the West, the MEK gets its voice heard. The only way to prevent those MEPs who sincerely desire democratic change in Iran — but are uninformed about Iranian politics or the MEK — from falling into the MEK´s trap is to provide alternative sources of information.

Tehran can also play its part. The leaders of the MEK and the Iranian government may never get along — the Islamic government executed MEK members en masse in the 1980s following terrorist acts by the MEK against Iranian officials that also killed civilians, and the MEK sided with Saddam Hussein’s regime during the brutal Iran-Iraq war — but the Iranian government faces no current, tangible threat from this organization. By complaining about the group to foreign dignitaries, Iran appears weak and preoccupied with secondary concerns. For example, the EP’s ties with the MEK were raised at all meetings during the EP delegation’s visit to Iran in December 2013, but members of that particular delegation never supported the MEK. Denouncing the MEK to this group of people was akin to preaching to the converted.

Ultimately, a successful nuclear deal will make the MEK more irrelevant, and the EU is an important actor in this process. This deal should also make way for tangible improvements in Iran’s domestic environment. So far, the MEK has not presented a credible challenge to this process, but it must not be given the opportunity to parasite on the legitimate concerns of the international community over Iran’s nuclear program and its civil and human rights policies.

–Eldar Mamedov has degrees from the University of Latvia and the Diplomatic School in Madrid, Spain. He has worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia and as a diplomat in Latvian embassies in Washington D.C. and Madrid. Since 2007, Mamedov has served as a political adviser for the social-democrats in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament (EP) and is in charge of the delegation for inter-parliamentary relations between the EP and Iran.

Eldar Mamedov, Lobelog FP

May 10, 2014 0 comments

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