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MKO cult leader, imposes conditions for releasing his hostages

The respected MeK dissidents nowadays have reported receiving letters from Ashraf residents who are seeking to exit the camp but they have problems, the most important is the thorny treating of the MeK leadership.

Rajavi has declared to the forces who sought departure that if they announce that they are”frightened”,”desperate”, and”regretful of fighting with the regime”, he would let them to leave the camp through three ways:

1. Betimes he introduces them to an Iraqi police station.

2. Each individual’s family to come and remove him/ her.

3. After lifting the siege and in possible time, they would be allowed to go out to everywhere, provided that until then they must totally adhere to the organization and avoid”putting obstacle”.

For all these scenarios, MeK leadership has put the condition that exit accomplishment depends on”not being contaminated and associated with the regime”. However, he had already designated Iraqi police and the families as the Iranian government’s agents that attending them is an unforgivable sin and is deserving execution.

It means that the forces who seek departure actually have no option except choosing the third way and waiting until the leadership decides to evacuate the camp. Up to that time, based on the commitment to the group, they have no right to protest (or what is called”putting obstacle”in the cult).

Also, MeK supervisors in Camp Ashraf are fantasizing insecurities and risks that threaten each of the forces outside the camp, in order to expand the Atmosphere of inanition and panic of going out.

Now, it seems that MeK leadership instead of alarming the troops about the enemies, who are standing in lines at the Ashraf gates, should struggle with the force uprising within the gates.

February 4, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Who is MEK and why is the US funding terror?

American-backed Terrorists in Iran

US State Department tells bold lies regarding the latest assassination in Iran as it harbors MEK terrorists in Iraq.

While the fifth and latest assassination of an Iranian scientist in broad daylight has Iran pointing the finger at Israel and the United States, with at least the US State Department denying any involvement, there is no evidence yet to determine exactly who was behind the attack.

However, the US State Department complicated what would have otherwise been plausibly denied, by claiming no US involvement “in any kind of act of violence inside Iran.” This is a verified lie. The US has indeed conspired to carry out a campaign of covert violence against Iran and is on record already beginning operations against the Islamic Republic even before Obama came into office. These operations have continued up until present day with the US harboring, arming, funding, training, and providing diplomatic support for a US State Department listed “foreign terrorist organization,” the Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK).

Image: US State Department lists MEK as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization.” This page has since been taken down and replaced with this .pdf list.

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Who Is MEK and Why is the US Funding Terror?

The best profile of MEK is given to us by the Fortune 500 funded Brookings Institution in their report, “Which Path to Persia?” In their report, they also openly conspire to use what is an admitted terrorist organization as a “US proxy” (emphasis added):

“Perhaps the most prominent (and certainly the most controversial) opposition group that has attracted attention as a potential U.S. proxy is the NCRI (National Council of Resistance of Iran), the political movement established by the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq). Critics believe the group to be undemocratic and unpopular, and indeed anti-American.

In contrast, the group’s champions contend that the movement’s long-standing opposition to the Iranian regime and record of successful attacks on and intelligence-gathering operations against the regime make it worthy of U.S. support. They also argue that the group is no longer anti-American and question the merit of earlier accusations. Raymond Tanter, one of the group’s supporters in the United States, contends that the MEK and the NCRI are allies for regime change in Tehran and also act as a useful proxy for gathering intelligence. The MEK’s greatest intelligence coup was the provision of intelligence in 2002 that led to the discovery of a secret site in Iran for enriching uranium.

Despite its defenders’ claims, the MEK remains on the U.S. government list of foreign terrorist organizations. In the 1970s, the group killed three U.S. officers and three civilian contractors in Iran. During the 1979-1980 hostage crisis, the group praised the decision to take America hostages and Elaine Sciolino reported that while group leaders publicly condemned the 9/11 attacks, within the group celebrations were widespread.

Undeniably, the group has conducted terrorist attacks — often excused by the MEK’s advocates because they are directed against the Iranian government. For example, in 1981, the group bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, which was then the clerical leadership’s main political organization, killing an estimated 70 senior officials. More recently, the group has claimed credit for over a dozen mortar attacks, assassinations, and other assaults on Iranian civilian and military targets between 1998 and 2001. At the very least, to work more closely with the group (at least in an overt manner), Washington would need to remove it from the list of foreign terrorist organizations.”

– page 117-118 of “Which Path to Persia?” Brookings Institution, 2009

It should be noted that both the Brookings Institution and the RAND Corporation note that Iran, even upon possessing nuclear weapons is unlikely to use them or proliferate them to non-state actors. This is based on observations made of Iran’s long standing chemical and biological arsenals that have been under strict control for decades.

There is also recognition of the fact that despite the propaganda found throughout the corporate-media, Iran does indeed value self-preservation and conducts its foreign-policy aggressively but not irrationally. The real danger of Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons, as stated by the Brookings Institution (page 24 & 25), is that they may attempt to then subvert American allies and emboldened by the inability for the US to retaliate, allow them to overturn the Middle Eastern status quo, as currently dictated by Wall Street and London. In other words, it is not American or Israeli national security that is at risk, but rather their unchecked and unwarranted hegemony throughout the region.

It then seems that US support for MEK becomes all the more indefensible when one realizes it is for extraterritorial hegemony, not national security that America is sponsoring bonafide terrorists.

As revealed in Seymour Hersh’s 2008 New Yorker article “Preparing the Battlefield,” not only has MEK been considered for their role as a possible proxy, but the US has already begun arming and financing them to wage war inside Iran:

“The M.E.K. has been on the State Department’s terrorist list for more than a decade, yet in recent years the group has received arms and intelligence, directly or indirectly, from the United States. Some of the newly authorized covert funds, the Pentagon consultant told me, may well end up in M.E.K. coffers. “The new task force will work with the M.E.K. The Administration is desperate for results.” He added, “The M.E.K. has no C.P.A. auditing the books, and its leaders are thought to have been lining their pockets for years. If people only knew what the M.E.K. is getting, and how much is going to its bank accounts—and yet it is almost useless for the purposes the Administration intends.”

Seymore Hersh in an NPR interview, also claims that select MEK members have already received training in the US.

Incredibly, US forces in Iraq had provided MEK’s main camp with security, and with the recent “withdrawal” of US troops from Iraq, the US State Department and even the UN have been scrambling to find a new safe haven for the US listed terrorist organization. Even more unimaginable is the fact that many of the foremost fearmongers and proponents of the “War on Terror” are engaged in desperate lobbying efforts to get MEK delisted. In October of 2011, a full page ad was taken out in the Washington Post on MEK’s behalf.

Image: Full-page treason – US politicians, many the most prominent proponents of the “War on Terror,” appeal to the President of the United States to delist MEK as a terrorist organization. While hand-wringing humanitarian concerns are cited, what the ad fails to mention is that MEK has long been sought after to serve as an armed US-proxy to be turned on Iran and carry out a campaign of terror, as stated clearly in the Brookings Institution “Which Path to Persia?” report. (click image to enlarge)
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Among those signing the statement made in the ad were John Bolton, Howard Dean, Rudy Giuliani, Ed Rendell, and Tom Ridge. When reading the statement, it must be kept in mind that the Brookings Institution already confirmed that MEK was a terrorist organization and that it had verifiably killed US military personal and civilians. Also keep in mind that Brookings admitted that MEK’s targets in Iran included political and civilian targets. With MEK’s specialty being among other things, assassinations, they are also likely suspects behind the recent spat of targeted killings of Iranian scientists.

Conclusion

The Brookings Institution report, “Which Path to Persia?” confirms that indeed US policy makers have conspired to use MEK as an armed-proxy to commit acts of violence inside Iran, while Seymour Hersh’s 2008 New Yorker article “Preparing the Battlefield confirmed that MEK had already begun receiving weapons, training, and financing to begin their campaign. Foreign Policy’s most recent article, “State Department scrambling to move the MEK — to a former U.S. military base?“confirms that MEK is still receiving considerable support from the US to this very day.

The US State Department’s recent claim that it is not involved “in any kind of act of violence inside Iran,” is clearly false. The US is committing acts of violence inside of Iran to the extent of using not only special forces as noted by Hersh’s 2008 article, but also by using terrorists with a long history of attacking political and civilian targets in Iran.

January 30, 2012 0 comments

USA

State Department Documents Expose Terror Group MEK

An Iranian group that has attracted high-level support from former White House and senior national security officials, was dealt a body blow last week in its effort get off the terrorism list, when the State Department released a series of documents the group had sought under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

According to the documents the group, known as the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK, or MKO), supported the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in November 1979 – not a position to endear itself to U.S. diplomats – before its “gradual elimination from the ruling coalition” by Ayatollah Khomeini less than two years later.

The new documents describe the MEK terror campaign against the Islamic regime during the 1980s and 1990s, and the group’s alliance with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

According to hundreds of Iranians interviewed by State Department “Iran watchers” in Dubai, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Germany, the ties to Saddam were the most damning.

“Ordinary Iranians were almost uniformly dismissive of the MEK, reacting with either disdain or apathy,” a recent cable from the U.S. Consulate in Dubai states.

“The MEK are detested among the young and old in Iran, although many young Iranians don’t know much about them,” the cable quotes one Iranian as having told U.S. diplomats.

“They are hated among Iranians, since their hands are stained with the blood of their fellow countrymen,” another Iranian is quoted as saying in the just-released cable.

A host of former senior U.S. officials have come out in public in support of the group, including, most recently, President Obama’s former National Security Advisor, Gen. Jim Jones.

At pro-MEK event in Brussels on May 25, former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, former NATO commander Gen. Wesley Clark, former State Department counter-terrorism coordinator Ambassador Dell Dailey, and others, argued that the MEK should be treated as a legitimate Iranian opposition group.

As the U.S. and the European Union continued to ratchet up sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran this week, many members of Congress are pressing the State Department to remove the MEK from the terrorism list, as the European Parliament has recently done.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), former New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani, and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton have also staked out positions in favor of the group. All three are potential Republican presidential candidates in 2012.

But the newly declassified State Department cables paint a much darker picture of the group, starting with the victimization of its own members if they strayed from the party line or tried to leave the organization.

Several recent cables from the U.S. embassy in Baghdad detail interviews with MEK members who managed to escape from Camp Ashraf, a military base northeast of Baghdad that was assigned to the group by Saddam Hussein in the late 1980s.

Since the liberation of Iraq by the U.S.-led coalition in 2003, the group has been confined to quarters. Tensions with the Iraqi government have been building, and 34 MEK members were killed in April during clashes with Iraqi Army units.

The escapees – refereed to as “defectors” in the State Department cables – painted a harsh picture of repression in the MEK camp, and claimed that the group’s leader had issued standing orders that anyone caught trying to escape should be immediately executed.

“Many of the defectors alleged psychological and physical harm at the hands of the MEK, including solitary confinement in MEK jails in Ashraf,” one cable states.

Some of the MEK escapees said they had been “lured from Iran with promises of study abroad opportunities” or “by offers of travel abroad.” Others were Iranian POWs captured by the Iraqis during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war who were sent to Camp Ashraf with a promise they would soon be repatriated to Iran or resettled in a third country.

The defectors “reaffirmed existing perceptions of the MEK as a cult-like organization that thrives on maintaining control of its members and those lured to Ashraf under false pretenses,” the cable states.

Allan Gerson, a Washington, DC attorney representing the group in its efforts to get removed from the State Department’s list of international terrorist organizations, dismissed the new documents as “much ado about nothing” when he released them at a lavish Capitol Hill reception last Wednesday.

“The question is why, when every single Camp Ashraf residents were taken outside [sic], and interviewed by the U.S. military in American controlled facilities in 2003 and 2004, and each were given the choice to leave, none of those individuals had done so?” Gerson asked.

But the State Department cable that recounts the stories of the MEK escapees, flatly contradicts Gerson’s assertion.

“The defectors confirmed that this was their first encounter with any foreign mission and welcomed future visits,” the cable states. “The defectors were all unified in their desire to leave Iraq… Many accurately pointed out that their failed resettlement has offered little incentive for other residents to leave Ashraf, fearing similar hopelessness and ‘purgatory’ in Iraqi hotels.”

The undated cable, signed “Hill,” appears to have been written in 2009 or 2010, when Christopher Hill was the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad.

Already in 1994, the State Department sent a damning 41-page report to Congress, detailing why it considered the MEK a terrorist organization.

The “original sin” of the group was the murder of three U.S. officers and three civilian contractors working for the Shah’s government between 1973-1976.

MEK representatives claim that the murders were carried out by a “Marxist splinter group” before Massoud Rajavi became MEK leader in 1979. But Mujahedin newsletters published in Iran in 1980 celebrated the murders, calling the U.S. victims “criminal agents of U.S. Imperialism in Iran.”

During an FBI investigation code-named Operation Suture, an FBI agent who infiltrated Camp Ashraf and posed as an MEK member reported that the group continued to celebrate the anniversary of those murders in late 1980s.

The MEK says that it abandoned violence against the Islamic regime in Iran in 2001, after a campaign of mortar attacks and hit-and-run raids against Iranian military and law enforcement personnel failed to win it popular support inside Iran.

Kenneth R. Timmerman is Executive Director of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran and a Contributing Editor at Newsmax Media

January 29, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Smoking gun documents “Found” by US-backed MEK terror group

The people pushing for war against Iran are the same neocons who pushed for war against Iraq. (They planned both wars at least 20 years ago.)

The IAEA report being trumpted as a casus belli contains no new information, but is based on a re-hashing of old, debunked claims stemming from “laptop documents”.

State Department cables released by Wikileaks reveal that the new IAEA head was heavily backed by the U.S., based upon his promises of fealty to the U.S. Indeed, as we’ve seen in the nuclear energy arena, the IAEA is not a neutral, fact-based organization, but a wholly-captured, political agency.

But where did the documents come from originally?

As Gareth Porter noted in 2008:

The George W. Bush administration has long pushed the “laptop documents” – 1,000 pages of technical documents supposedly from a stolen Iranian laptop – as hard evidence of Iranian intentions to build a nuclear weapon. Now charges based on those documents pose the only remaining obstacles to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declaring that Iran has resolved all unanswered questions about its nuclear programme.

But those documents have long been regarded with great suspicion by U.S. and foreign analysts. German officials have identified the source of the laptop documents in November 2004 as the Mujahideen e Khalq (MEK), which along with its political arm, the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), is listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organisation.

Interestingly, the Bush Administration – and especially Dick Cheney – helped to fund the MEK.

And the New York Times, Washington Post and others are reporting that Rudy Giuliani, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, former national security adviser Fran Townsend and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey are supporting the MEK as well.

So the terrorist group which “found” the documents is funded by neoconservatives who want to overthrow Iran. What a coincidence!

And as Gareth Porter notes in the above-linked article, the Mossad may have created the documents in the first place:

There are some indications, moreover, that the MEK obtained the documents not from an Iranian source but from Israel’s Mossad.

One thing is clear: the U.S. and its allies have a long history of using forged documents as an excuse for war.

Washington’s Blog – Infowars.com

January 29, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

My day with a real Thrill Kill Cult: the MEK

During a recent rally in front of the White House, hundreds of members and supporters of the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) advocated for the MEK’s removal from the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. The MEK (which also goes by other names, such as the People’s Mujahedin of Iran) is a group of militants and activist front groups, composed largely of Iranian exiles, operating since the 1960s. Their flag-drenched rally featured guest speakers, a “die-in,” and many fliers and pictures, all to promote the group’s overall message: the MEK are freedom fighters and representatives of the aspirations of the Iranian people; their members at Camp Ashraf in Iraq are in mortal danger if the Iraqi government tries to relocate them; and the organization should be removed from the terrorist list. They were not counting on a two-man counter-leafleting team to arrive with a stack of fact sheets delivering a distinctly different message: the MEK is a personality cult with a long history of violence directed at Iranians, Americans, and Iraqi Kurds and Shi’a; they will shift their loyalties as it suits their delusional goal of taking power in Tehran; American neoconservatives (and others) have spoken openly of using the MEK as proxies for a war with Iran’s present government; and, as a result of the above factors, the MEK has no legitimacy within Iran, even among those who despise the current regime.

The MEK supporters who saw these fact sheets reacted with varying levels of outrage. I was accused of being in the pay of the Iranian government (and if not the regime in Tehran, then it surely had to be someone), and, somewhat paradoxically, I was also accused of spreading “Rush Limbaugh propaganda.” I suppose this was because the MEK is often said to be ideologically “Islamo-Marxist,” a label composed of two elements that find considerable disfavor among Limbaugh and his cohorts, even if he and his ilk are not usually averse to war with Iran. In any case, it made little sense. Shortly thereafter, in calmer but seemingly endless conversations with MEK supporters, I heard a repeated list of red herrings having to do with the malevolence of the Iranian regime and the plight of the MEK members at Camp Ashraf, who are apparently in many cases relatives and friends of those demonstrating in Washington. I assured my interlocutors that I shared their disdain for the regime in Tehran, and I did not want any misfortune to befall the residents of Camp Ashraf. They barely addressed the organization’s rap sheet…)

Surely enough, in recent weeks the United Nations and the Obama administration have moved ahead with a plan similar to the course of action I tried to promote to the MEK members/supporters in front of the White House: under UN supervision, the 3,200 residents of Camp Ashraf will be moved to Camp Liberty, a recently vacated American base in Baghdad. From there, they will be processed and resettled. Some members with little “political baggage” are apparently willing to return to Iran; others will build new lives in their adopted country of Iraq; and others will be resettled elsewhere in the world. The MEK’s Paris-based leadership seems to be reluctantly cooperating, as is the Iraqi government, though the situation is still very tense and unsettled.

All of this is probably a pragmatic move on the Obama administration’s part. If the MEK members are first moved away from the border with Iran, and then out of the country entirely, that lowers the possibility of an incident on the border exploding into uncontrollable violence. On top of that, the Iraqi government seemed determined to close Camp Ashraf by any means necessary by the end of 2011, thus presenting the administration with a fait accompli: Obama could not allow Republicans (and others) to blame his administration for the humanitarian catastrophe if a group of so-called “Iranian freedom fighters” were massacred by the new Iraqi government, acting without the oversight of American troops. It would matter not that the withdrawal date was decided upon by the Bush administration, as Obama’s opponents would doubtlessly condemn him for fecklessly abandoning a group of rebels who oppose the enemy du jour.

Proponents of the invasion of Iraq often referred to the oppression of Iraq’s Kurds (and, less often, Shi’a) as an example of why Saddam Hussein should be deposed by force. Now, some of the same people, and their ideological brethren, extol the virtues of an organization with a leader (Maryam Rajavi) who is on record as instructing her followers to “Take the Kurds under your tanks” during the MEK’s period of fighting alongside Saddam Hussein. Even if the MEK is entirely removed from Iraq, they will likely continue their aggressive and well-funded lobbying in the US and Europe for the time being. If their behavior and demeanor at their demonstrations is anything to go by, they are thoroughly convinced of the righteousness of their cause, delusional enough to believe they can one day hold power in Iran, and unlikely to care about any collateral damage they create.

(My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult is an industrial rock band from Chicago. — Ed.)
Scott Charney is a contributor to Foreign Policy in Focus.

By Scott Charney, FPIF.org

January 29, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

An alternative to war with Iran

Relations between Iran and the West, fraught with tension and conflict for decades, have in the past few months reached a fever pitch. There is talk of war on a daily basis from both sides. Hundreds of millions, if not billions, have been spent both to fuel the Iranian missile and nuclear program and the counter-measures taken by the West to frustrate it. Leaders on both sides have worked themselves into paroxysms of rage regarding the alleged homicidal intensions of the other side.

The situation is volatile and the danger of war real. But the premise of the Western approach to Iran has dangerous shortcomings.

There is a common conception of Western policy as based on a two-pronged, carrot and stick approach: one a diplomatic track and the other a military threat. There is certainly the guise of a real diplomatic track. Both sides have talked at various times of the need for negotiations, and for very short periods there have been talks. Recently, Iran expressed willingness to begin a new round of talks with its opponents about its nuclear program.

But by all appearances, the Western approach is solely designed to achieve Iranian capitulation to Western demands that it dismantle its nuclear research program. It is not designed as an open-ended negotiation in which both sides are open to compromise to achieve a mutually agreed-on objective. The United States and Israel are little interested in acknowledging Iran’s perceived interests or compromising over its nuclear program so that each side will end up with some of its key interests satisfied.

Bad Faith

To study the efficacy of the diplomatic track, let’s look at its history. In 2003, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami made his famous offer to discontinue Iran’s nuclear program in return for the full normalization of its relations with the United States, including an end to sanctions. In the run-up to the Iraq War and in the context of the Bush-Cheney “stand tough” approach to the Islamist militancy of that era, the United States not only spurned the offer, it soundly berated the Swiss diplomat representing U.S. interests in Iran for having the temerity to pass the proposal along.

Barack Obama came into office with some vague notions of pursuing talks with Iran, criticizing the unhelpful threats of the previous administration. Western powers, however, only held talks with Iran for a mere three weeks. At those talks, the West again presented demands on a more or less take-it-or-leave-it basis; this was again not a negotiation of equals. It was one side communicating to the other what it expected of them to end the impasse. That’s why the talks ended almost before they began.

In recent years, Brazil and Turkey successfully negotiated a compromise with Iran involving the transfer of the country’s enriched uranium to a third country. But the Obama administration dismissed the plan and wasn’t even willing to pursue further negotiations about it.

If the diplomatic track was truly what Western officials have claimed it to be, there would be a more flexible and less destructive sanctions regime in place. Even officials in the U.S. government told The Washington Post that U.S. policy toward Iran, including the sanctions plan, is designed to achieve regime change, rather than policy change. The administration later attempted to deny that its officials had made such a claim, but it’s no wonder that Iran understands the U.S. approach as unilateral and categorical, rather than open-ended.

One-Track Policy

So there is not a two-track policy regarding Iran. There is instead a one-track policy with two facets. On the one hand, there is a program of sanctions and covert war designed to intimidate and bloody Iran into capitulation. But if that doesn’t work (and it surely cannot), there is a military option designed to destroy Iran’s nuclear program. It’s no surprise, then, that the Iranians see their enemies closing in on them like a vise. An enemy who believes he has no options left is very dangerous. He is likely to lash out in unforeseen ways. Such desperation is precisely what could fuel not just a bilateral military conflict, but a full-scale regional war.

There is another misconception about Western policy. The liberals among us talk about a “military strike” as an option of last resort. The more clear-eyed, like the Brookings Institution’s Bruce Riedel, talk of a potential war against Iran. Neither is precisely right. As Israeli journalists have pointed out, there already is a war under way against Iran. It is bought and paid for by a $400 million allocation by the Bush administration in 2007. It has funded all the tools in the Mossad arsenal that were used to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program and foment general unrest inside the country.

Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan outlined Israel’s thinking in a Wikileaks cable in which he told the State Department’s Nicholas Burns that Israel planned to sow general discord inside Iran by acts of sabotage perpetrated by domestic minority groups like the Sunnis and Kurds:

Dagan said that more should be done to foment regime change in Iran, possibly with the support of student democracy movements, and ethnic groups (e.g., Azeris, Kurds, Baluchs) opposed to the ruling regime…Iran’s minorities are “raising their heads, and are tempted to resort to violence.”

Dagan urged more attention on regime change, asserting that more could be done to develop the identities of ethnic minorities in Iran. He said he was sure that Israel and the U.S. could “change the ruling regime in Iran, and its attitude towards backing terror regimes.” He added, “We could also get them to delay their nuclear project. Iran could become a normal state.”

Though the cable doesn’t mention the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), the Mossad clearly views it as a potent force with an extensive internal network within the country, whose muscle could be exploited to further Israeli interests.

Mark Perry recently published an expose of one particular Mossad project, a false flag operation in which it recruited the leader of Jundallah, a Sunni terrorist group operating in Iran, by posing as NATO and CIA agents. When the Bush administration discovered the nature of the program, it was furious. But ultimately it decided it had other fish to fry and would not make a major stink about the danger the duplicitous operation posed to U.S. agents in the region.

Such Israeli tactics suggest that Israel pursues its own interests with little or no regard for how its behavior will impact friend or foe. For example, it utilizes the MEK as a partner in many of its terror operations inside Iran, even though U.S. State Department officially designates the MEK as a terror group.

This, of course, doesn’t stop the MEK and its well-paid domestic allies in the United States from pursuing an aggressive campaign to delist it as a terror group. Millions of dollars have been spent to further this goal, including enlisting prominent figures on both the Democratic and Republican sides to shill for delisting. The MEK appears to believe that terrorist activities in which it may be engaged inside Iran will not have an impact on its delisting by the United States. This is all the more reason for journalists in Israel and outside to make known its cooperation with the Mossad, so that the U.S. government can make an informed judgment about whether or not the MEK has renounced terrorism as it claims.

Some analysts have called this a black ops campaign or covert war. Whatever we call it, it is war by another means. If the United States is serious about seeking a diplomatic solution with Iran, then why would it both encourage and fund such a powerful campaign of terror inside Iran?

The campaign has included the Stuxnet computer worm, most certainly developed by the Israel Defense Force’s cyber warfare Unit 8200 with some U.S. assistance. Israeli security correspondents and a former Israeli minister reported to me that the Mossad and the MEK have jointly engaged in numerous terror operations that have killed five nuclear scientists and resulted in an almost fatal attack on a sixth. There have been crashes of Revolutionary Guard military planes and two more recent explosions: one that wiped out a missile base and killed the Iranian Revolutionary Guard general directing the entire national missile program, and another that sabotaged an Isfahan uranium enrichment facility.

So how much credence should Iran’s leaders put in the claim that the West is pursuing a diplomatic track? If there is no such real option for negotiation to resolve this conflict, is there any other prospect than war?

An Alternative to War

After following Iranian-Western relations for years, I believe the diplomatic track is a mirage and that the sanctions regime, which the West has pursued without success for 30 years, will not gain Iran’s capitulation. That leaves only two options: war, or Western impotence in the face of Iran’s implacable determination to pursue a nuclear option. Either option is bad, but the first is far worse than the second.

The fallout from a war with Iran has been widely discussed. Iran might mine the Straits of Hormuz and activate its shore-based defenses to repel U.S. naval forces. The price of oil would skyrocket, imperiling a global economy already teetering on the brink of recession or worse. Iranian allies in Lebanon, Gaza, and Syria could make mayhem for Israel and the United States alike. Iran could activate elements inside Afghanistan and Iraq to make life even more miserable there than it already is.

Since the United States doesn’t appear prepared for a real negotiation with Iran regarding its nuclear program, there is only one real approach short of war: containment. The United States adopted this approach during the Cold War against the Soviet Union. Though it was never optimal, considering the dysfunction in the relationship between the superpowers, containment worked reasonably well until the Soviet collapse in 1989.

As former Defense Department Undersecretary Colin Kahl argues in his latest Foreign Affairs article, the United States already has the assets in place in the region to pursue a policy of containment: 40,000 troops are stationed in the Gulf, with 90,000 more in Afghanistan. There are two carrier task forces deployed in the Gulf, and various allies view Iran with deep suspicion. They could be a local bulwark against any possible Iranian aspirations that threaten the regional status quo.

Containment still isn’t an optimal approach, but it’s the least bad one considering the current dysfunction characterizing relations between Iran and the West. In the future, Iran may turn to a reformist, more democratic government that might approach these issues differently. Or the climate in the West may change so that it would be willing to seriously engage with Iran on a similar basis to the Khatami 2003 proposals. But given the almost lunatic tone of the Republican presidential debates concerning Iran, and the fact that Barack Obama appears convinced that he must maintain impeccable national security credentials to protect his right flank, the United States is unlikely to adopt a more reasonable, pragmatic approach to Iran.

Under the circumstances, containment is the only remaining option that doesn’t lead to regional war, stalemate, and deeper dysfunction.

Richard Silverstein, Roreign Policy In Focus

January 28, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Strange Bedfellows in the Conflict with Iran

As the European Union prepared to consider tough new sanctions against Iran on Monday, a group of eminent Americans was cozying up here to an exiled Iranian opposition group that the Washington's favorite terrorists, Mojahedin Khalq United States classifies as terrorists.

Even undeclared war makes strange bedfellows, and none more so than the former politicians, generals and spooks on the panel at a conference in Paris on Friday evening and their hosts, the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran.

In its checkered history, the P.M.O.I. has been accused of murdering American servicemen, was involved in not one but two invasions of the U.S. embassy in Tehran during the Iranian revolution, and allied itself with the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein.

More recently it claims to have provided information exposing details of Tehran’s attempts to produce a nuclear weapon, while vigorously denying widespread speculation that it might have assisted in recent unexplained assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists.

Western governments, including that of France where the group’s leadership is based, regard the Mujahedeen as more of a cult than a political movement.

Presiding over Friday’s conference in the old Bourse building in Paris was Mariam Rajavi, the movement’s leader and wife of its founder, Masoud Rajavi. He has disappeared from public view, perhaps emulating the Hidden Imam of the Shia Muslims .

Dressed in a familiar outfit of a modest but brightly colored suit and matching headscarf, she was greeted with chants of “Mariam, Mariam,” from the almost exclusively Iranian audience.

Americans on the international panel included General Hugh Shelton, former Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff; Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor; and Michael Mukasey, former U.S. Attorney General. Other panelists included Philippe Douste-Blazy, a former French foreign minister.

Gen. Shelton told Rendezvous he believed the U.S. had a sworn obligation to protect Mujahedeen refugees being evicted from Camp Ashraf in Iraq by a hostile government in Baghdad.

Camp Ashraf was a heavily armed encampment under Saddam Hussein from which Mujahedeen fighters attempted to invade Iran at the end of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. They were driven off. Today they enjoy little support in their home country, in spite of Mrs. Rajavi’s claims to lead the main resistance to the Islamic Republic, apparently because their efforts were seen as treacherous by many Iranians.

In the 2003 war that unseated Saddam Hussein, U.S.-led coalition forces attacked Mujahedeen military units but subsequently a ceasefire was arranged. Before the conflict, the Rajavis had repaired to their long-time base in the Paris suburb of Auvers-sur-Oise, which French anti-terrorism police raided in 2003, seizing millions of euros.

“There’s no longer any reason to keep these people on the terrorist list,” said Gen. Shelton, expressing an opinion that has won widespread bipartisan support in Washington, as my colleague Scott Shane has reported.

The P.M.O.I. — also known by its Persian title Mujahedeen-e-Khalq — has used a seemingly bottomless budget to push its case in the corridors of the U.S. Congress and to finance international meetings to maintain its profile.

Despite that, the State Department has adamantly refused to remove the group from its list of foreign terrorist organizations. A U.S court ruled in 2010 that the government must allow the PMOI a chance to rebut unclassified information the government used to justify its designation, Legal Times reported at the time.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has the matter under consideration.

The Mujahedeen fears the administration wants to keep a diplomatic line open to Iran in the escalating nuclear dispute. “Did you see those reports of Obama sending a secret letter to Tehran,” said a Mujahedeen insider knowingly.

Listing the P.M.O.I. as terrorists is the one thing on which Washington and Tehran agree and a delisting would be certain to derail any diplomatic initiative that might be under way.

As things stand, U.S. and European policy is to squeeze Iran economically until sanctions force it to yield on the nuclear issue.

The next step in that campaign will focus on Brussels, where European foreign ministers are moving toward a phased embargo of Iranian oil.

By HARVEY MORRIS

January 25, 2012 0 comments

The MEK; Baath Party Accomplice

MKO hanging in a vague future and past !!!! (Part3)

One important issue that should be noticed is about the organizations funds and expenses of which I obtained some films and documents of former Baath intelligence service. It was also mentioned in some of interviews I had [with former members of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization]. The former Iraqi Baath regime extensively supported the group both financially and militarily and funded it with hundreds millions of dollars and Iraqi Dinars. A dozen packages of 400 thousand dinars were paid to the MKO, according to a film recorded in 1986 by former Iraqi intelligence. We are well aware of the exchange rate of dinar versus dollar at that time. “Most of these funds were invested in large American and European firms and banks and the benefits resulted from those investment are spent for running the organization but the support from former Iraqi regime wasn’t limited to this,” says Mr. Hassan Azizi. "The families of MKO spies who worked for Iraq inside Iran and were arrested by Iranian MKO hanging in a vague future and past !!!! government were also paid monthly salaries (based on the documents obtained of former Iraqi intelligence service, issued on February 2nd, 2000). Besides Iraqi Baath regime, Arabic states of Persian Gulf including Saudi Arabia used to fund the organization. In one case when [Rajavi] returned from Iraq he said in a meeting,’ it was a prolific trip. "

One of the most important financial resources of the organization was “information selling”. This is done by a large spying network which is working under the supervision of the MKO. It sells the extensive intelligence it gains from all over the world to countries willing to have them.

Besides, they reach large amounts of funds for committing terrorist operations planned by certain authorities.

All former members whom I interviewd, speak of the legendry wealth of the organization and nobody is aware of the sources. Mr. Hassan Azizi and Mr. Abbas Sadeqi suggest:”if you have a detailed look at the MKO’s foreign policies, you can come to the idea that the organization shares one objective with countries such as Israel, the US and Arab states of the Persian Gulf and that is the overthrow of Iranian government which is considered as their biggest enemy, and regarding this common interest you can recognize the source of most of financial support the MKO enjoys.”

The Khalq Organization or the Cult of Rajavi has so far sustained terrible strokes that have led it to a cul-de-sac and a total bewilderment. The strokes were:
1. A large number of members left the group after it moved to Iraq (in 1980’s)

2. Shaabanieh revolution. It can be called the beginning of an end for the MKO. Mr. Mehdi Naderi, another defector of the group and Mr. Hassan Azizi and Mr. Abbas Sadeqi Nezhad, all confirm the fact:

“At the time of the first Gulf War in 1991, the leaders of the organization told us in a statement that a few brigades of Iranian forces disguised in Kurdish and Shiite clothes wanted to attack the organization’s bases. They allegedly intended to demolish the group. Thus, the group authorities distributed a large number of forces of the National Liberation Army in strategically crucial locations of Iraq such as Sulaimanbeig, Kefri, Jalula, Khaneqein and certain Shiite areas. As the result of the operation, 25000 of Iraqi children, women and men were massacred.

However, some of forces of the NLA who were told that these innocent people were Iranian revolutionary guards, abstained from the order consequently they were shot and killed by the organization’s artillery. Following Shaabanieh Revolution many of MKO members doubted about what had taken place in that operation. Some found out about the organization’s secret deals so they left the group and went to other countries.

3. After the collapse of the Baath Regime, American forces disarmed the group. You can definitely come to the conclusion that the organization that was completely dependent on its arms in all stages of its activities lost its existence. Thus, the MKO’s activities shifted to covert Iraqi politics. They paid big bribes to certain pro-Baath politicians, supporting them in their election debates. For instance I quote from Mr. Mehdi Naderi:”while the provincial council elections in Iraq, some of the candidates received their advertising posters from Camp Ashraf.”

By Mohammad Saad / Almurakeb-al-Iraqi – Translated by Nejat Society

January 21, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Romney Tied to MEK Terrorism

Links to radical group operating inside Iran a cause for concern

GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney looked like a deer caught in the headlights when he was asked if he supported an international, anti-American terrorist organization with a bloody record for killing innocent civilians thousands of times worse than al Qaeda. This “expert on international affairs” claimed he never had heard of them. Then, like a lying politician, he promised: “I’ll take a look at the issue.” Video taken at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire shows Romney quickly waving the issue aside and Romney Tied to MEK Terrorism hurrying on to another question.

Romney’s campaign counts on the fact that the public never hears of this group or his campaign’s covert connections to them. Few Americans—besides AFP readers who read about this in the Dec. 16, 2011, edition—have even heard of the fanatical, terrorist group, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (People’s Mujahedin of Iran; MEK or MKO). This is thanks to the big media’s general cover-up, and largely because it is an Israeli asset.

For months independent investigative journalists have asked Romney about his campaign’s ties to the MEK—but he never responds. No wonder, because if the American people ever found out about MEK, and the Romney campaign’s ties to it, they would demand he be tried for treason.

One of Romney’s chief advisers is neocon Mitchell Reiss. Reiss not only heads the 50-plus top neocons that lied America into the Iraq war—but he is also a leader in the stealth campaign for quietly removing MEK from the “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” (FTOs) list.

MEK was one of the first to be put on the FTO list because of its boasting of assassinations of U.S. servicemen, attacks on U.S. diplomats, murders of American citizens and suicide bombings. MEK was the only faction of Iranians who wanted to kill the American hostages in 1979. After the release of the Americans, the MEK went on a rampage and murdered possibly tens of thousands of Iranians in a decade-long terror campaign.

When George H.W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and other neocons gave germ warfare technology, poison gas and other chemical weapons to former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein so he would invade Iran, MEK joined Saddam in slaughtering its fellow Iranians.
After Saddam fell, Washington ordered U.S. troops to protect MEK from the wrath of the Iraqis. George W. Bush gave MEK hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars to commit terrorism in Iraq. Much of that money was spent on luxuries by MEK leaders in London and Paris.

MEK has bribed congressmen and other high officials with hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaker’s fees. Aiding and abetting MEK is still illegal. They get around this by using front groups and shells, laundering the money through speaker bureaus, high-dollar public relations outfits and law firms.

Another reason they want off the FTO list is they have thousands of followers in camps in Iraq and are no longer protected by U.S. troops, so they want to bring these trained killers and terrorists here.

By Ralph Forbes – American Free Press

January 17, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Baathist- MEK band’s plots fail

The plots that the Baathist- Mujahedeen band had been planned against Noori Maliki’s government are lost out; Iraqi government has remained sovereign and each of its opponents has fled to a corner.

However, the MeK yet hunt for Maliki’s withdrawal and kill the time hoping that their favorite option takes over Iraq. The MeK have ignored the fact that if another faction or person hold the fort of Iraq, the situation for them would be far worse. In addition, if Maliki’s ideological rivals or his foes could subvert him, they would not be satisfied with MeK expulsion, but they will begin the process to send them back to Iran.

Also, with Mek’s procrastination, the international organization, more than ever, became conscious of MeK’s cheating and offense, as the US officially announced the world that it had been deceived by the MeK, and the UN and the UNHCR authorities are criticizing MeK’s hypocritical manner.

Despite that MeK is looking for changing of the political arrangement in Iraq, there is one more important reason for them to procrastinate: fear. For years a deep fear of the world outside, damage, and imprisonment has encompassed MeK, especially MeK’s leadership. MeK Crawling in depth of Camp Ashraf, and actions such as stoning those who want visit them, origins from this fear.

Holding of numerous conferences roots in the MeK’s necessity for being constantly under projector of media and agencies, the fact that indicates their extreme fear of unknown future. MeK’s peak of fear manifests in their resorting to the US and Israel to invade Iran.

January 17, 2012 0 comments

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