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Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

The Blood Stained Hands of a Terrorist Group ;MEK

The US State Department has clearly announced that it “does not overlook or forget the MEK’s past acts of terrorism”; it means a lot to many who have known Mojahedin Khalq Organization MKO, MEK, NCR, PMOI with a half century of recorded violence. And the only ones who refuse to face the reality that nothing can wash the innocents’ bloods off the criminals hands are the group’s own leaders. In an interview following MKO’s removal from the list of designated FTO, Maryam Rajavi brazenly said “It now has become evident for everyone that these (terror) allegations were untrue”.

As people say, a leopard cannot change its spots, but it seems that in this eccentric modern world that politics overshadow our lives, it is possible to contrive ways to whitewash the spots. That is true of MKO and its delisting. Being an armed group from its very day of formation, MKO can never renounce utilization of violence as the adopted means to achieve its non-democratic ends. Even the very same people who have delisted it say “We do not see the MEK as a viable opposition or democratic opposition movement. We have no evidence and we have no confidence that the MEK is an organization that could promote the democratic values that we would like to see in Iran”. But its paid American advocates insist to instill that the group is pro-democratic with potentiality of establishing democracy for Iranian people while Iranian people believe hardly the group can spell the term ‘democracy’ or is aware of its principles.

Based on many existing evidences, and because of its adopted strategy and ideology, MKO cannot possibly foreswear terrorism and has never publicized such a claim as the State Department amplifies the point. In spite of MKO’s widespread terrorist operations of bombing and assassination inside Iran and its later out-of-the-border organized hit and run operations perpetrated in the last three decades as well as its broadly launched military operation like that of the Eternal Light, it seems that the organization has never been considered a serious threat for the Iranian regime. But the consequence of such irrefutable charges of militarism and terrorist atrocities for MKO was to be globally recognized as a terrorist group.

However, the good part is that the history and the recorded facts can never be distorted. But some Western countries tried to when they made a sudden U-turn and decided to declare that MKO was no more a terrorist organization; they still continue their negligence and unclear stances toward MKO due to political considerations. People have eyes to see and intelligence to distinguish an unleashed, whitewashed leopard from a real one.

October 6, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

MEK;On Thursday They Were Terrorists; On Friday They Weren’t

As of last Friday, the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), a formerly violent Iranian opposition group once allied with Saddam Hussein, no longer appears on the State Department’s list of "foreign terrorist organizations" (FTOs). The delisting comes after years of lobbying, assisted by prominent political figures, and legal wrangling, culminating in an appeals court ruling ordering Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to act on the MEK’s petition by Monday. Clinton’s decision probably means the MEK’s supporters, who include former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, do not need to worry about being charged with providing "material support" to an FTO by helping the group shed that label. Theoretically, however, they could still be prosecuted if it can be shown that they "coordinated" their advocacy with the MEK prior to Friday.

Over at Popehat, Los Angeles attorney Ken White, a former federal prosecutor, recalls that in 1999 he helped convict a man "for helping terrorists who now aren’t terrorists." The defendant helped MEK members "secure legal residence in the United States through various forms of fraud, including fraudulent asylum applications." In addition to immigration fraud, his actions qualified as providing material support to an FTO—possibly the first conviction under that provision, White says. Looking back, he is ambivalent about his role in the case, recognizing the political considerations that determine which groups count as FTOs:

The six people the MEK killed in the 1970s are still dead. They were dead when the State Department designated the MEK as a foreign terrorist organization and they have been dead all the years since and they won’t get any less dead when the State Department removes the MEK from its FTO list. The MEK is the organization that once allied with Saddam Hussein; that historical fact hasn’t changed, although its political significance has. No — what has changed is the MEK’s political power and influence and the attitude of our government towards it.

More generally, White says, the MEK’s delisting shows how arbitrary the contours of the War on Terror are:

The scope of the War on Terror — the very identity of the Terror we fight — is a subjective matter in the discretion of the government. The compelling need the government cites to do whatever it wants is itself defined by the government.

The definition of the enemy then determines not only who can be charged with violating the ban on material support but who can be subject to warrantless surveillance, indefinite detention, and summary execution by drone. But don’t worry: The Obama administration is providing all the process it believes is due.

By Jacob Sullum,Reason Magazine

October 6, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Five Points About Removal Of MeK From US Terror Blacklist

The recent announcement by the United States Department of State about removing the notorious Mujahedin-e Khalq (MeK) Organization from its blacklist of terrorist organizations on September 28, 2012, has been followed by many analytical accounts. They ranged from many media analyses provided by the Western and Iranian experts who were opposed to the decision, to admiring accounts by former American politicians. The proponents of the move among former US politicians were mostly those whose palms had been greased by the MeK through accepting hefty financial contributions from the organization. They had, therefore, organized extensive campaigns and lobbies across the United States in order to take the name of the organization out of the list of terrorist organizations.

Iran
This article does not actually mean to put renewed emphasis on this grave mistake which has been committed by the US government. It is already too late and the United States has provided the group with considerable maneuvering room. (A secondary point here: given the behavior of the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and its government in the past years, especially in the past few months, it is almost certain that Ottawa will soon remove the MeK from its list of terrorist organizations in order not to lag behind the United States and the European countries in this regard!)

This paper only means to remind Western politicians of a few characteristics of this terrorist organization as defined by firsthand Western sources. Let’s hope that this would help the Americans to realize that delisting the MeK is not just a simple delisting of an organization from the long list of 52 organizations designated as terrorist entities by the US Department of State. This delisting, however, will have consequences and implications which may prove to be quite different from what they may seem at a first glance.

1. The issue of weird and cult-like conduct of the leaders of this organization and their bizarre treatment of other members has been acknowledged by many Western sources. A special case was a report released by RAND (Research and Development) Corporation in 2009, entitled “The Mujahedin-e Khalq in Iraq: A Policy Conundrum,” (1) in which a special part had been dedicated to “Cultic Characteristics of the MeK.” Under that title, the report says, “… [MeK’s] subsequent exile undermined its optimism and openness. In France, Masoud Rajavi dramatically changed the nature of the organization. In 1985, he announced that Maryam Azodanlu, the wife of his close associate Mehdi Abrishamchi and the younger sister of a senior MeK member, would assume the position of MeK co-leader. Rajavi divorced his second wife, the daughter of former Iranian president, Abol-Hasan Banisadr, Rajavi’s ally, and announced that Maryam would divorce her husband and marry him. These actions would advance a new “ideological revolution.”

The Rajavis claimed that their new revolution was meant to highlight the equality of women, an idea that the IRI [Islamic Republic of Iran] found threatening. Although the MeK did promote women to leadership positions, which constituted a reversal of tradition in Iranian society, the marriage and the subsequent aggrandizement of Masoud Rajavi’s leadership role marked the beginning of an organizational transformation into a cult of personality. Initial changes included increased mandated study, enforced communal living arrangements, and imposed supervision of the group’s membership in exile throughout Europe.”

Elsewhere in the same document, it says, “After the MeK moved to Iraq in 1986, the Rajavis created the NLA [National Liberation Army], which included nearly the entire MeK contingent in Iraq, and they used its militaristic structure to consolidate their control.

Following the failure of Operation Eternal Light, the Rajavis initiated a series of policy changes that continued the transformation of the increasingly insular organization into a cult. While rarely admitting total failure, Rajavi implied in his speeches that the operation had not achieved its goals due to insufficient devotion to the overthrow of the IRI among the MeK rank and file, who were instead distracted by sexual interests as a result of their coeducational housing. To enforce a new “military” discipline, rank-and-file members were instructed not just to move into gender-segregated housing but also to divorce their spouses, maintain complete celibacy, and even cut off communication with friends and family, both within and beyond MeK compounds. Love for the Rajavis was to replace love for spouses and family. In addition, the Rajavis used funding provided by Saddam to construct self-sufficient camps that included schools, medical clinics, training centers, and prisons (often called “reeducation centers”) so that the population had little need for contact with the society beyond its walls.”

Three years after the RAND report was released, that behavior still continues within the ranks of the organization. Many examples of it can be found in the weblogs run by ex-members who have succeeded to escape the clutches of this organization. The authors of the RAND report have also noted in the conclusion part of their report that, “MeK leaders and supporters … allege that former MeK members and critics of the MeK are either Iranian agents or their dupes. However, interviews with US military and civilian officials, information voluntarily furnished by former MeK members at the ARC, and visits to Camp Ashraf suggest that these denials are not credible.”

2. The MeK is also no favorite with major human rights organizations. A great number of documents on frequent instances of human rights violations within the ranks of this cultic organization can be found here: Human Rights Watch, No Exit: Human Rights Abuses inside the MKO Camps, New York, May 2005.

3. The United States, put the MeK, or as better known in Iran as ‘Monafeqin (hypocrites)’, on its list of terrorist organizations in 1997 and delisted them in 2012. The Council of Europe also listed the MeK as a terrorist organization in 2001 and delisted it in 2009. Britain, likewise, put the MeK on its terror list in 2001 and delisted it in 2008. Such periods of being “listed” and “delisted” have been seldom repeated for any other terrorist organization. Many such organizations have stayed on the terrors lists of the United States, the UK, or the European Union for many long years. It would be very ridiculous to assume that this development followed a decision by members of this group to really give up terrorism, regret their past deeds and try to go for more democratic approaches. Therefore no other explanation for this measure may occur to an analyst, except for the direct role of political decisions and expediencies, topped by the decision to use the MeK as a means of exerting pressure on Iran. The independent observers have, as such, considered this issue as a proof to the fact that the United States’ judiciary is not a truly independent power.

4. Last year, the UN special rapporteur on human rights for Iran, Ahmed Shaheed, submitted his first report to the UN Human Rights Council in which had had pointed to 17,000 names given to him by an Iranian nongovernmental organization in writing as the names of those killed in terrorist operations by the MeK. The Iranian nation will never forget two facts about this group. The first fact is countless cases of blind assassinations carried out by MeK members in early post-revolution years which were mostly carried out by members of this group in desolate streets and places and targeted people who were only suspected of being connected in some way to the nascent establishment of the Islamic Republic. They included many shoemakers, workers, bakers, teachers and civil servants. The second fact is their unbridled cooperation with the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during his imposed war against Iran. Without a doubt, it will be impossible for the Iranian nation, regardless of their political tendencies for or against the Islamic establishment, to imagine that the United States does not consider this group as a terrorist group anymore.

5. From 2003 onward and after this terrorist group lost its support from Saddam, its members lived in limbo at Camp Ashraf. The internal cult-like rules of the organization considered escaping to Iran by its members as a great treachery which was punishable by death. However, since 2005, many of them have returned to Iran voluntarily and through mediation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Perhaps, removing the MeK from the US Department of State’s list of terrorist organizations will make it possible for its members to interact more freely with the ICRC, or return to their families in Iran with more ease. In that case and if the MeK actually decided to stop its overt activities as well as covert terrorist operations against Iran and accept a more democratic structure in order not to be listed as a terrorist organization again, it would perhaps die in a few years. The reason is that the MeK owes its identity to its strange, clichéd, cultic, and inflexible rules and any kind of compromise in that regard will totally change its identity. There is a Persian proverb which says that “at times a remedy works just the opposite of what it is intended to do.”

By Mahmoud Reza Golshanpazhooh Executive Editor of Iran Review , Eurasia Review

Notes:

(1) http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG871.html

October 6, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Obama’s terrorist-list blunder

The French diplomatic genius Charles Maurice de Talleyrand once said: "It was worse than a crime; it was a mistake." This is perhaps the best way to describe the US State Department’s Obama's terrorist-list blunder recent decision to take the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK) off its notorious list of 52 foreign terrorist organizations. It was yet another setback in the negotiations between Iran and the West on the former’s nuclear program.

It is one of those cynical moves that will only exacerbate an already unfavorable diplomatic atmosphere, suffering from a dearth of goodwill and mutual trust. Iran and the US are already stuck in a dangerous game of chicken: Washington is pressing its advantage by increasingly tightening the noose around Iran’s economy, while Tehran is relentlessly pushing the boundaries of its nuclear-enrichment capabilities toward a fait accompli. Both sides are in essence locked in a precarious form of brinkmanship, bringing the world closer to a devastating confrontation. The Persian Gulf has been witnessing increased military tensions in recent months, with both the US and Iran fortifying their military presence and stepping up their military activities.

Meanwhile, sanctions have been biting into Iran’s increasingly vulnerable economy, embittering the Iranian population toward the West, especially the US. Instead of reaching out to the Iranian people, as he repeatedly promised, US President Barack Obama is not only imposing what can be termed in international law as collective punishment, but also accommodating an organization that most Iranians identify with treachery and deceit.

Obviously, the current deadlock could only be broken through sustained and meaningful diplomacy. However, diplomatic efforts have been in a protracted state of hiatus, with the Iranians postponing any major agreement until the US overcomes its cyclical diplomatic handicap – the inability to make a decisive and lasting concession until the conclusion of the presidential election.

The MEK decision is also a classic example of how domestic politics can derail high-stake diplomacy, with the fate of international security hanging in the balance. To secure his re-election bid, President Obama is trying hard to look tough on Iran. But what Obama ignores is how his short-term political calculations may carry long-term risks vis-a-vis the Iranian nuclear issue.

An ambivalent decision
The delisting of the MEK came ahead of a court-ordered October deadline, with US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sending a classified document to Congress earlier, detailing her department’s position on the matter.

In 1997, the State Department placed the MEK on its Foreign Terrorist Organizations List for its history of terrorist activities, especially against US citizens in the 1970s. However, ironically, Washington protected the MEK members in Iraq’s Camp Ashraf after toppling Saddam Hussein, the organization’s main patron. Later, when the group came under increasing pressure – ahead of US troop withdrawal – by the Tehran-backed government in Baghdad, Washington opposed any violent crackdown on the camp, while exploring means to transfer MEK members elsewhere. Finally, amid a logistical headache and rising political noise, Washington transferred some of the 3,000-strong MEK militia to Camp Liberty, a former US military base near Baghdad International Airport.

The State Department justified its delisting of the MEK on the grounds that the organization has publicly renounced violence, cooperated in the closure of Camp Ashraf, and has shunned terrorism for more than a decade.

Crucially, the move came in the midst of continuous vilification of Iran as an imminent nuclear threat that should be met with force, a narrative enthusiastically espoused by a wide spectrum ranging from hawkish Republicans in the US Congress to pundits in the mainstream media as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (and his powerful friends in the Israel lobby in the US). Netanyahu has already called for an explicit "red line" against Iran’s nuclear program, coaxing Washington to place the military option squarely on the table.

However, it is not clear whether Washington actually sees the MEK as a possible asset and a viable ally in the event of direct confrontation with Iran as the window for a diplomatic compromise rapidly narrows. The delisting was perhaps just an effort to annoy Tehran or, more important, to appease the anti-Iran establishment amid the current US presidential election campaign.

For its proponents, the recent move was just a logical extension of a broader Western accommodation of an organization that claims to represent the "legitimate democratic opposition" in Iran. Britain delisted the MEK back in 2008 and the European Union a year later. The group has significant presence in such places as Paris, which hosts its headquarters, and has staged major rallies in the French capital.

Maryam Rajavi, the organization’s Paris-based leader, welcomed the US move by stating: "This has been the correct decision, albeit long overdue, in order to remove a major obstacle in the path of the Iranian people’s efforts for democracy."

Anti-Iran hawks in the US hardly held back their enthusiasm. Republican Representative Dana Rohrabacher expressed his joy with the decision, because he believes "the MEK are Iranians who desire a secular, peaceful and democratic government", while Ted Poe, Republican member of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, described the decision as "long overdue".

The decision is a culmination of years of lavish and aggressive lobbying by the MEK – boosted by growing support from rich Iranian-American exiles opposed to the regime in Tehran – directed at (current and former) top US officials and leaders from both the Democratic and Republican camps.

The MEK spent US$1.5 million alone to hire three leading Washington lobby firms. It channeled millions of dollars in "speaking fees" to sympathetic American officials and leaders who graced the MEK’s high-profile events, rallies and campaign gatherings calling for the State Department to delist the organization.

The list of top-notch supporters is astonishing. The former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, Ed Rendell, has been among the group’s biggest beneficiaries, reportedly receiving up to $150,000 in speaking fees. For the Republican chairwoman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the figure stands at around $20,000. Former presidential candidates from both the Republican and Democratic parties, namely Bill Richardson, Howard Dean and Rudolf Giuliani, have also joined the fray.

With the speaking-engagement fees running in the territory of $15,000-$30,000, former top security/intelligence officials, namely ex-Federal Bureau of Investigation director Louis Freeh, former Central Intelligence Agency directors Porter Goss and James Woolsey, and Obama’s former national security adviser General James Jones, have lent their support too. Even Wesley Clark, a former North Atlantic Treaty Organization commander, is among the elite supporters.

What is clear is that the Obama administration has found it increasingly difficult to ignore an organization that has astutely exploited growing cynicism against Iran, staged numerous rallies and vigils outside the State Department, organized huge sit-ins in congressional hearings, and rallied the support of leading US figures. The administration has finally succumbed to the pressure. But this domestic concession could carry significant costs in the broader multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear conundrum.

Potential diplomatic fallout
In the initial years of the Islamic Revolution, its supporters had to contend with the MEK, an organization founded on an eclectic Marxist-Islamist-nationalist ideology, as a major rival in determining the fate of the new Islamic Republic. After all, during the 1979 revolution, the MEK was among the major players within the broad coalition of forces that deposed the Shah. After a series of violent confrontations in the immediate post-revolutionary years, a severely weakened MEK lost whatever measure of popular legitimacy it enjoyed when it sided with Saddam Hussein against Iran during the eight-year "imposed war" (Jang-e-Tahmili).

After its expulsion from Iran, much of its paramilitary capability was concentrated in Iraq, under the generous sponsorship of the Baathist regime. So it practically lost any significant presence within Iran. The MEK is an organization with few to no roots within Iran’s political landscape, so it is not clear how it could play a critical role in changing that landscape and/or Tehran’s nuclear posture to America’s advantage. This is precisely why successive US administrations have instead reached out to reformist elements within Iran, never seeing the MEK as a viable ally.

It must be noted that Washington’s 1997 decision to include the MEK in the list of terrorist organizations was part of its nascent diplomatic outreach to the newly empowered reformist government in Tehran under president Mohammad Khatami. After all, inclusion of groups in the Foreign Terrorist Organization list has been generally arbitrary, simply tuned to America’s short-term strategic interests.

In recent years the Obama administration, at least rhetorically, sided with Iran’s so-called Green Movement – a loose network of forces composed of certain reformist leaders and disenchanted sections of the society – that formed the backbone of post-election protests in 2009. However, there have never been institutionalized channels of communication between Washington and Iran’s leading reformists. So it seems that accommodating the MEK is somehow a desperate effort to build ties with alternative Iranian elements explicitly opposed to the regime.

Yet there may have been even more concrete reasons. Reports suggesting increased intelligence and security cooperation between the MEK on the one hand and Israeli and US agencies on the other in recent years provide the strongest hint behind Washington’s decision to delist the group.

In 2002, an MEK-affiliate group, the National Council of Resistance in Iran, revealed a laptop containing confidential information about Iran’s burgeoning enrichment activities in Natanz and Arak. Since the MEK does not possess an independent and credible intelligence-gathering capacity, it is widely believed that Israeli intelligence agencies were behind the leaked documents. The revelation marked the beginning of a decade of tense nuclear negotiations between Iran and world powers, which precipitated a severe set of sanctions and repeated threats of military intervention against Tehran.

In April this year, leading investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported that back in 2005, the Nevada-based Joint Special Operations Command trained "Iranians associated with the MEK" as part of the George W Bush administration’s broader "global war on terror". Commentators have also suggested that various Western intelligence agencies, especially Israel’s Mossad, have been working closely with the MEK in a "shadow war" ranging from sabotage against Iran’s key military and oil facilities to the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists and sabotage of nuclear installations.

Understandably, the Iranian authorities immediately lashed out against Washington’s decision to delist one of its most long-standing nemeses. Iran holds the MEK responsible for at least 12,000 deaths, including high-profile members of the regime in the early years of the revolution. Iranian state television accused the US of double standards by supporting "good terrorists" who serve its interests by working against Iran and its nuclear program. The Iranian Foreign Ministry warned that the decision would put on the US "responsibility for past, present and future terrorist operations by this group", just as Rajavi expressed her hopes that the delisting "will lead to the expansion of anti-regime activities within Iran".

Negotiations on the nuclear program are already in bad shape. Despite repeated overtures by Tehran – from decreasing enrichment activities to the 3-5% territory, to shipping out its stockpile of high-enriched uranium, and opening up of its whole nuclear infrastructure for inspection – to resolve the standoff, the Obama administration has repeatedly refused to meet Iran’s two basic demands: (1) An unequivocal recognition of Iran’s enrichment rights under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT); and (2) reversal of unilateral sanctions battering Iran’s entire economy.

Obama’s accommodation of the MEK will further undermine its nuclear diplomacy toward Iran. It will do nothing but strengthen the hands of Iranian hardliners – at the expense of pro-diplomacy pragmatists – who have called for a withdrawal from the NPT, an increase of enrichment levels to 60%, and preparations for a military confrontation with the West.

Beyond regime insiders, the Obama administration has also alienated ordinary Iranians and opposition elements who detest the MEK and view the latest move as another cynical ploy to retard Iran’s scientific progress and bring the country to its knees.

Richard Javad Heydarian is a Manila-based foreign-affairs analyst. He has reported for or been quoted in The Diplomat, UPI, Foreign Policy, Tehran Times, Russia Today and Foreign Policy In Focus, among others.

By Richard Javad Heydarian

October 6, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Iranian terrorist group now freedom fighters, in U.S. eyes

Hillary Clinton announces anti-Tehran group People’s Mujahedeen of Iran is no longer on State Department’s list of terror organizations
Iranian terrorist group now freedom fighters, in U.S. eyes
In Washington, it seems, the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is a multimillion-dollar public relations campaign.

Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the anti-Tehran group People’s Mujahedeen of Iran (MEK) will no longer be designated a terrorist group after having been placed on the American list 15 years ago for killing U.S. servicemen.

The administration’s change of heart comes after the MEK said it renounced violence in 2003 and recently got the backing of a U.S. Federal Court, which said it has seen no evidence the group is still involved in terrorist activities.

But Clinton’s decision, in part a response to the court’s finding, also comes after a multimillion-dollar campaign on behalf of MEK that has seen a long list of former senior officials and current members of Congress paid lavish fees to make speeches or appearances at MEK functions promoting an end to its terrorist status.

Among those who have been paid to speak on behalf of the MEK’s cause are former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, former U.S. attorney-general Michael Mukasey, former White House chief of staff Andrew Card, and former U.S. home-land security chief Tom Ridge.

Among those from the U.S. military who have put in appearances are former chair-man of the Joint Chiefs Peter Pace, former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe Wesley Clark, and President Barack Obama’s former national security adviser James Jones.

Former Central Intelligence Agency chiefs James Woolsey, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden have also been paid to speak on MEK platforms.

This, along with unresolved questions about whether MEK has indeed renounced violence – and if so, how recently? – raises the spectre that the Obama administration may be so keen to back Iranian groups opposed to the Tehran regime of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that it is not looking too carefully at their credentials or records.

Still fresh in Washington memories is the part Ahmed Chalabi played in feeding false or distorted information about his Iraqi homeland to the receptive audience within the administration of President George W. Bush. As the United States found out after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction, and the invading troops were not welcomed as liberators.

It seems unlikely that the Obama administration would fall for the same kind of blarney from the somewhat sinister husband-and-wife team of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi, who, if several U.S. government reports are to be believed, run MEK as a personality cult complete with brainwashing, brutal internal discipline, and the indoctrination of children.

If Obama is not about to be stampeded into war with Iran by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – with the aim of stopping the Tehran regime acquiring the ability to make nuclear weapons – he is unlikely to be impressed by the Rajavis.

Indeed, the history and record of the MEK is so tainted that taking it off the list of terrorist groups will likely do the reputation of the Obama administration no good among the main-stream reformist movement in Iran.

MEK was founded in 1965 by a group of university students as a Marxist Muslim opposition to the Shah of Iran.

Its first terrorist attacks were in 1971, and MEK made special targets of Americans, who were instrumental in keeping the Shah in power.

In 1973, U.S. army Col. Louis Lee Hawkins was shot and killed outside his home in Tehran. In 1975, two U.S. air force officers were killed in an attack on their car. And in 1976, three employees of Rockwell Inter-national were also shot and killed.

MEK joined enthusiastically in the 1979 revolution that ousted the Shah and brought the Islamic Republic to power. The group actively sup-ported the takeover of the U.S. embassy after the coup and the keeping of American diplomats as hostages.

But MEK quickly fell out with the new leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, and killed several of his senior officials in bomb attacks.

In 1986, MEK moved its headquarters to Iraq, where it came under the patronage of Saddam Hussein, fighting for him in his war against Iran and playing a lead role in his murderous campaigns against the Iraqi Kurds.

About 3,000 of the remaining MEK members in Iraq are now in a former American camp outside Baghdad awaiting placement in third countries.

MEK’s attempts to rehabilitate its image started in 2002, when it says it gave the U.S. and its allies the first information about Iran’s nuclear development program.

However, New Yorker magazine journalist Seymour Hersh says that the then-head of the United Nations’ nuclear watch-dog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, told him that the information about Iran’s nuclear program came from the Israeli government and was only channelled through MEK. Much of the evidence of MEK’s continued involvement in violence is circumstantial at best, but one persistent story is that the group’s operatives are working for the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad inside Iran.

In particular, there are many claims that the five Iranian nuclear scientists assassinated since 2007 and the destruction of a missile research centre were operations conducted by MEK for Mossad.

By Jonathan Manthorpe

October 4, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Removing Radical MEK Group from Terrorist List a Cynical Decision

Take a large dollop of Washington influence buying, a portion of hypocrisy and a dash of duplicity. Stir them in the cauldron of a presidential campaign and heat them with national security rhetoric. That’s the recipe that produced what looks like one of the most cynical decisions in current American policy.

No, I do not mean the debate over the US debt. I am talking about a more arcane matter — the removal of an Iranian opposition movement from the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO).

A few facts may be helpful, since most Americans know little or nothing about this curious decision. Even the numerous members of Congress and high ranking former US officials who backed it showed an apparent disregard for the facts.

The MEK, or Mujahedeen Khalq, was founded by Iranian students in the 1960s as a radical group that combined some of the worst aspects of Marxism and Islamic fanaticism, plus violent anti-Americanism. After helping to overthrow the Shah, they fought a bloody struggle with the Ayatollahs who seized power and murdered a number of them in terrorist explosions.

Expelled from their country, they eventually accepted the hospitality of Saddam Hussein, Iran’s aggressive neighbor who armed and used them against Iran. Most Iranians saw that as an act of treachery and still despise the MEK even more than they do their own government.

The Mujahadeen ran their camp in Iraq as tightly as a North Korean gulag. Couples were forced to divorce. Children were sent abroad. Sex was forbidden. It was, in effect, an extremist cult, devoted to its leaders

The State Department put the MEK on the Foreign Terrorist Organization list in 1997 because of their involvement in acts of terrorism including hostage taking and killing of several Americans.

In one of the slickest and most effective PR campaigns Washington has seen in years, the MEK has hired high-priced Washington lobbying firms, funnelled money through speech contracts and literally bought its removal from the terrorist list.

The list of supporters they recruited includes former US four-star generals, intelligence chiefs, governors and political heavyweights, according to a special investigation by the Christian Science Monitor.

The Monitor reported: “Many of these high-ranking US officials – who represent the full political spectrum — have been paid tens of thousands of dollars to speak in support of the MEK.”

They included General Peter Pace, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former US Homeland security chief Tom Ridge. For a more complete list of those who spoke at pro-MEK conferences and rallies, see the full Monitor story. Not all of them took the money, but all of them drank the MEK Kool-Aid in the belief that delisting them was good for America — or in the case of some such as Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz, apparently also good for Israel.

The Monitor noted, “They rarely mention the MEK’s violent anti-American past, and portray the group not as terrorists but as freedom fighters with “values just like us,” as democrats-in-waiting ready to serve as a vanguard of regime change in Iran. Some acknowledge that they knew little about the group before they were invited to speak and were coached by MEK supporters.”

The MEK even corralled a few journalists, including Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame, who took $12,000 to speak at a Waldorf Astoria meeting of MEK supporters, but explained later to ProPublica, “I was not there as an advocate.” Another prominent journalist who should have known better was syndicated columnist Clarence Page who spoke at a large MEK rally in Paris. After that was reported by ProPublica, he said he would reimburse the $20,000, and was reprimanded by the Chicago Tribune for violating its ethic code.

The concept of the terrorist list is highly political and riddled with hypocrisy. As pointed out by Foreign Policy Magazine, “some groups are designated for the right reasons (terrorism) and others are not labelled, despite clearly meeting the statute’s requirements.

For example, Saddam Hussein was put on the terrorist list when he was allied with Moscow in the 1960s, taken off in the 1980s when Washington wanted to him help him attack Iran, and put back on again later when the US wanted to attack Iraq. And in each instance, this was the same Saddam, a brutal Iraqi leader with a horrible human rights and war crimes record.

The MEK declares that it has been out of the terrorism business for almost a decade, but there is no reason to believe it. NBC News reported in February that the MEK has been assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists in broad daylight. There are numerous reports of collaboration between the MEK and Israel’s secret services. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” as the old saying goes.

Although it is a federal felony to give aid, direct or indirect, to an organization on the Foreign Terrorist List, Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker reports that the US Joint Special Operations Command conducted training of members of the MEK in Nevada from 2005 until sometime before President Obama took office. It was done secretly of course.

This would not be the first time the United States has made a mistake in the name of national security. Arming so-called Islamic freedom fighters to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan was a spectacular example of chickens that eventually came home to roost. Helping the MEK is small stuff by comparison. The group has almost no support inside Iran, and not much outside.

That’s a good thing. God only knows what kind of Iran they would create if they could actually take over the country.

By Tom Fenton,GlobalPost

October 4, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

The next pro-MEK lobbying effort is about to begin

‎The completely false claim that the MEK represents the legitimate Iranian opposition was one of the ‎principal reasons many of these advocates gave for removing the group from the list of The next pro-MEK lobbying effort is about to begin foreign ‎terrorist organizations.

No one could have ever seen this coming:‎

Members of Congress and supporters of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) are to press the ‎Obama administration to recognise it as the “legitimate opposition” to the Iranian government after ‎the group is removed from the US list of banned terrorist organisations in the coming days. ‎

Of course, this has been what many of the MEK’s American advocates have been calling for all along. ‎The completely false claim that the MEK represents the legitimate Iranian opposition was one of the ‎principal reasons many of these advocates gave for removing the group from the list of foreign ‎terrorist organizations. It’s absurd that any informed person could seriously believe an Islamo-Marxist ‎totalitarian cult represents a legitimate, much less democratic, alternative to the current Iranian ‎regime. This is the falsehood that many of the group’s advocates promote.‎

The reinvention of the MEK as a “democratic” political organization just demonstrates how ‎meaningless that label can be. It’s a reminder of how willing some Iran hawks are to work with any ‎group, no matter how disreputable, if it shares their hostility to the Iranian government. Anyone who ‎supports aligning the U.S. with this group is admitting that he isn’t interested in a more democratic Iran ‎or the success of the Iranian opposition. Now that the group will be removed from the list, the ‎supporters it has cultivated in Congress and elsewhere will be able to agitate on its behalf much more ‎freely, and its lobbying efforts will presumably increase. The coordinated campaign to remove the ‎MEK from the FTO list was a disgrace, and the sequel promises to be even more obnoxious.‎

By Daniel Larison

October 4, 2012 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

The MEK Is Bad News, But Delisting Them Was A Good Decision

Members of the Iranian dissident group known as the Mujahedin e-Khalq, or MEK, really don’t like me. I don’t trust them, either. I’ve been reporting on the MEK for the Huffington Post since last The MEK Is Bad News, But Delisting Them Was A Good Decision summer, and members of the group have threatened my house and hacked my email.

Still, I believe the State Department’s decision Friday to remove the MEK from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations was a good one.

Like many people who’ve researched how the MEK actually works, I don’t believe that they’re freedom fighters in exile as they claim to be. Nor do I believe their values are democratic, as they claim they are.

I believe the MEK is a militant cult of personality, whose leaders, Maryam and Massoud Rajavi, figured out in the 1980’s that they could survive by doing mercenary work on behalf of governments that hate Iran. Saddam Hussein was their first patron, and he granted them land in Iraq to build a walled, military compound, Camp Ashraf, where until a few months ago, more than 3,000 members lived.

There, they would wake up every day and worship images of Maryam Rajavi before commencing with the day’s Army base-type tasks. The MEK claims to subsist on foreign contributions, but that’s only partly true.

In America, their well-paid U.S. advocates, men like former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, wax on about how the MEK renounced violence a decade ago and just needs U.S. backing in order to topple the Iranian regime and seize power. I’ve watched these guys earn $40,000 for an eight-minute speech.

But the debate over whether or not the MEK is a terrorist group doesn’t matter. It never really did. After dozens of conversations and background briefings over the past year, I don’t believe Secretary of State Hillary Clinton decided to delist the MEK how and when she did because the secretary suddenly changed her mind on the question of whether or not they are terrorists.

I think the reason the MEK was delisted on Friday is, more importantly, because Clinton understands that they’re a dangerous cult, and that all the other potential outcomes of the 30-year standoff between the MEK and the outside world would have likely been much, much worse.

Near the top of that list was mass suicide, a possibility that kept more than a few U.S. diplomats up at night. After that, it was that the MEK’s leaders would deliberately provoke a confrontation with Iraqi security forces, many of whom would be happy to avenge the ethnic cleansing raids MEK soldiers carried out for Hussein back in the day. In France, where Maryam Rajavi lives, officials considered the unwelcome possibility of public self-immolations — a tactic the MEK has used there before.

Truth is, most of the world doesn’t really care what happens to the 3,200 people who used to live at Camp Ashraf.

But Secretary Clinton cares, despite years of daily MEK protests outside her office on C Street, N.W., where I’ve watched the same dozen or so people, all dressed in identical Maryam Rajavi t-shirts, banging drums and accusing Clinton of violating human rights, breaking international law, and callously leaving them to die at the hands of Iraqi soldiers.

Ironically, while they cursed the secretary from the sidewalk, inside the State Department, Clinton and her aides were quietly working on a plan to save thousands of brainwashed MEK foot soldiers in Camp Ashraf from their own leaders and from the Iraqi military.

The only way to do this is to split the 3,200 into small groups and transfer them out of Iraq a few at a time, as refugees. This being a cult, however, the leaders initially refused to let anyone leave Ashraf unless they all left as a group. But as one former U.S. diplomat said to me, "What the hell kind of country is going to agree to take in 3,000 militant cult members?"

Clinton only had one major bargaining chip. In exchange for leaving Camp Ashraf, the secretary agreed to delist the group from the U.S. list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, which she officially did on Friday. That afternoon, State Department officials presented us reporters with three reasons they said the decision was merited. None of the official reasons holds up to scrutiny, but the eventual outcome, the delisting, does.

Therein lies the difference between politics and diplomacy. The "reasons" given here didn’t win anybody over. They were more of a gesture meant to placate people like me, who have reported what everyone at the State Department already accepts, namely, that the MEK is dangerous and untrustworthy and capable of future violence.

But the question facing Secretary Clinton wasn’t whether the MEK could be trusted. Or even if the MEK’s members were still dangerous. Privately, U.S. officials don’t pretend to know the answer to either one.

The question at the heart of the MEK decision was whether Clinton would be willing to quietly save 3,200 lives. She was.

I may not trust the MEK or their tactics, but the year-long negotiation that culminated on Friday represents a bright point for U.S. diplomacy and humanitarianism.

By Christina Wilkie

October 3, 2012 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Now Focus Attention Back On Rajavi’s Hostages In Camp Liberty

Among humanitarian organisations and the estranged families of MEK members there is a sense of relief now that the US sideshow of speculation over MEK terrorist listing and who the MEK’s financial backers are has blown over. It means that attention can now properly be returned to the situation of the MEK in Iraq where the urgent problem is how to restore basic human rights to the former MEK fighters trapped in Camp Liberty. Because although UN inspectors and Diplomatic representatives have attested to the more than acceptable living conditions in the temporary transit camp, the residents continue to be denied their basic human rights by the MEK leadership. Since 2003 the Americans have been complicit in allowing the MEK to mistreat the membership. Unfortunately this situation has continued at Camp Liberty to where all but a handful of the former Camp Ashraf residents have been relocated.

Massoud and Maryam Rajavi run a personality cult which dictates to the members that only they should be worshipped and adored. There is no room for other relations, even friendships. In the MEK, members are not even permitted to maintain a relationship with other family members inside the group, such as siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins. Relations between individuals is severely restricted and constantly monitored for infringements. This state of affairs is maintained through a harsh, unremitting regime of daily confessions with infringements – or sins – punished by an escalating system of public humiliation, beatings and isolation. In Camp Liberty residents are billeted six to a bungalow even though enough space has been allocated to allow for two per housing unit. The cult leaders insist on more than two people sharing as a means to prevent dissenting views from being discussed behind closed doors.

In Iraq the estranged families of MEK members have maintained a vigil outside both Camp Ashraf – and now Camp Liberty – for nearly three years. These families have travelled to Iraq to try and get news of and contact with their loved ones who are being held hostage by the Rajavi cult. Massoud and Maryam Rajavi have imposed cruel conditions on their followers in which nobody is allowed to have contact with their families outside the cult without the permission of the leaders.

The Americans in Iraq have done nothing to help these families reach their loved ones. Instead they have apparently done everything possible to prevent the dissolution of the MEK as a single entity, in spite of being informed of the cult nature of the group.

However, because the US terrorism list has no relevance in Iraq, the Government of Iraq will not change its stance because of this action. Indeed, no government of any colour would be able or willing to keep any MEK in Iraq because of its history of violence against Iraqi citizens.

Since the US government no longer regards the MEK as terrorists the Americans should now make a real effort to remove them from Iraq for their own wellbeing. The State Department claims that the MEK has publicly renounced violence – even though there is no evidence that the MEK leader Massoud Rajavi has made any verbal or documented declaration to this effect. (Who do the State Department thinks actually runs the MEK? Lawyers?) As such the MEK should be expected to fully decommission its military personnel and reconfigure its internal structure to allow it to pursue exclusively peaceful and democratic opposition activities against the governments of Iran and Iraq, and possibly Syria.

The burning question then is what the MEK will do with its redundant former fighters in Camp Liberty in Iraq? As avowed enemies of the Iranian government they must presumably take refuge in the West. To qualify as refugees they must renounce their membership of the MEK as a political entity. Logically this should not present any difficulty as they are no longer needed as fighters. (Because the MEK is now a peaceful organisation with no need for any personnel trained in violence or military/terrorist style activity.)

The first step is to open up Camp Liberty to the outside world, to the families and humanitarian NGOs which are waiting to offer help to the residents. The residents must be given access to external information sources, internet, television, telephones, print media, etc. Conditions must prevail such that each resident is able to enjoy freedom of movement in the camp, freedom of association in the camp, including between the genders, and freedom to contact their families. This would represent a first, yet vital, step toward solving the problem of the MEK in Iraq.

October 2, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Who is Whose Terrorist?

Have you ever thought of the term ‘terrorist’ or the meaning of ‘democracy’? Thanks to the Internet, it may be easy to search and try to find the meanings of these words. Just compare their definitions with what is in practice these days. Whoever is against US or Israeli regime is considered to be a ‘terrorist’, ‘supporter of terrorism’, or ‘undemocratic’. Even if they are fighting for basic human rights, their life, honor, dignity, land or even if they were elected by a majority of their people.

Ironically, the most well-known terrorist groups are hand cooked by western intelligence services. Even drug cartels are controlled by their intelligence agencies. If you follow up any kind of black activity in the world from smuggling drugs, weapons, human beings (women, children), and human body parts to money laundering, killings and bombings all around the world, it is impossible not to find Israelis or Americans involved in them. Only those who are not in the circle are arrested and punished.

Watching American mafia movies could take you into a sphere of what is happening in the world. Those bands have developed into terrorist groups all around the world. When it was needed, Al-Qaeda was established to carry out terrorist acts against innocent people in Afghanistan. You never heard about their crimes when Al-Qaeda and Taliban were playing into the hands of Americans. Then an attack on innocent Americans is planned to justify America’s invasion of Afghanistan. Later, we see that drug production in this country goes up more than ten-fold.
Same thing happens around the world. In Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Syria Al-Qaeda is back in the America’s circle. It receives tax payers’ money and weapons to implement American policies around the world. Likewise, the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) terrorist sect is a copycat of Al-Qaeda. When it was formed, the UK, US, Israel, France and Iraq helped it against the shah’s regime which was considered to be their ally.

By Emad Abshenass Chief Editor of Iran Daily

October 2, 2012 0 comments

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