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MEK play the role of wedge-driver in the Persian Gulf!

John Bolton has long been an active supporter of Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK). Will he use them to arrange the provocation he needs to trigger a war on Iran?

The United States has sent an aircraft carrier group to the Arabian Gulf. US”acting foreign president”John Bolton threatens war. The gunpowder is gathered around Iran. The question is whether anyone will now add fuel to the fire, that is, make the pretext that war cries need to trigger a war – and if so, who should.
Not only do we have the memory of the Tonkin Bay episode, the fake flag affair that was used as a pretext for starting the Vietnam War. There are several observers internationally who see the danger that something similar can happen here too. For example, it could take the form of an attack on US naval vessels in the Arabian Gulf or on strategically important installations in the area. Or it could be attacks on commercial vessels in the Persian Gulf. But who would do such a thing?
Iranian writer Massoud Khodabandeh, formerly a leading member of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) organization, believes that this particular organization could play such a role.

Khodabandeh writes in Iranian.com that such a false-flag attack is in preparation. He points out that MEK has a headquarters in Albania and that the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln visited Albania on 1 May 2019 on its way to the Persian Gulf. There the ship should have taken on board people who spoke farsi, he claims.

John Bolton has long focused on just MEK as his preferred tool for triggering a regime change in Iran. In July 2017, he told a MEK delegation that the Trump administration would embrace their regime change regime in Tehran and recognize them as a serious alternative.
MEK marketed itself in its time as Marxist-Leninist. According to a report from the US State Department of 2009, their ideology today is a mixture of Marxism, Islamism and feminism. While they were previously strong critics of Israel and Zionism, they are now allies with Israel. In 1993, Bill Clinton, in a private letter to MEK’s leader, expressed his support for the organization. John Bolton is also one of those who has long supported MEK.
See also the New York Times and The Guardian about MEK’s relationship with Bolton.
One can choose whether to add weight or not to Khodabandeh’s assessments, but MEK’s close relationship with the United States and John Bolton does not make it unlikely that precisely MEK can play the role of wedge-driver in the Persian Gulf and spark the fire that causes the region to explode.
steigan.no – Translated by Nejat Society

May 29, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Tick-Tock: Washington’s coming war on Iran

Author’s Note
This article is not ‘journalism’, or pretence at ‘journalism’. The author does not work for the BBC, the Guardian or any other MSM platform that once provided the former, but increasingly delivers the latter. It was not written by an ‘expert’, real or imagined, and the author has no connection with the Council on Foreign Regime-Change or any other ‘stink-tank’. The author is a retired British citizen with neither the resources nor the inclination to lie to you. What follows is ‘opinion’.

Backdrop
“In the coming months, we can expect to witness an increasing number of speeches and articles demonising Iran, along with a growing number of ‘serious incidents’, that will be used to justify reneging on the nuclear deal. The phoney war on Iran has entered a new phase. The Likud party led by Netanyahu, the Trump administration, supported by the Wahhabi backed princeling in Riyadh…have absolutely no interest in collaborative solutions in the Middle East. Their goal is regime change”
The Psychopath, the Puppet and the Princeling
I wrote that six months ago in September 2017. Since then a number of events have played out along the lines expected:
• The nuclear agreement was disowned by President Trump in October, and is now living on ‘borrowed time’. Ostensibly thrown back to Congress to get a better deal, this will not materialise. I see three possibilities: a) Congress will ‘take too long’, b) Congress will not be tough enough to satisfy the WH, or c) Congressional demands will be unacceptable to Iran. Any of these will give Trump the political cover he needs to rip up the agreement and create the conditions for escalation.
• The Iranian protests of December & January were given blanket media coverage in the west, and used by neoconservative ‘intellectuals’ to fuel the regime change agenda. Here’s Frederick Kagan in ‘The National Interest’:
“The protests rocking an unprecedented expanse of Iran do not, and probably will not, immediately threaten the regime’s survival despite the hopes and dreams of many here in Washington”
• The continued destruction of Yemen by Saudi Arabia, with the full support of the US and the UK, has received very little media coverage; in stark contrast to the rare occasions that the Yemenis have been able to strike back, which have been used by Washington as opportunities for the continued demonization of Iran. Here is UN Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley using an ‘Iranian Missile’ as the backdrop for a press conference:
• On December 28th 2017, the Times of Israel reported that the US and Israel have set-up mechanisms for dealing with ‘the Iranian nuclear threat’:
“Israel and the United States have secretly signed a far-reaching joint memorandum of understanding providing for full cooperation to deal with Iran’s nuclear drive, its missile programs and its other threatening activities…Citing both American and Israeli officials, the report said the document is designed to translate into “steps on the ground” the positions set out by US President Donald Trump in his October 13 speech on Iran, in which he decertified the Iran nuclear deal”.
None of this is surprising. Taken in isolation it may seem to be a slow process, but when set within the context of the geo-political landscape, things are moving quickly, especially given Washington’s defeat in Syria – which was supposed to ready for partition by now. The latest regime change operation has failed, due in no small part to the resilience of the Syrian government and its people, the overwhelming majority of whom do not want to live in a fundamental Islamic society, any more than they want to exist in order to serve the strategic interests of US, Israel & Saudi Arabia. However, even with such strong resistance, Syria would undoubtedly have fallen without the support of its three allies, Iran, Hezbollah and most importantly Russia. The survival of Syria as a sovereign independent state is vital to them all.

Latest Development
I am writing this update now because a major piece of the jigsaw has just been put in place, and as a result of that, I suspect that events will accelerate and become more visible to the general public.
On 22nd March 2018, President Trump announced that his new National Security Advisor will beJohn Bolton, former Ambassador to the UN under George W. Bush, ex-Fox News Analyst, leading advocate of the wars in Iraq and Libya; a man who has consistently called for regime change in North Korea and Iran.
To call Bolton a ‘hawk’ would be underestimating his lofty perch in Washington’s raptor house. The only war that he didn’t like was the one that required his own skin in the game: Bolton joined the National Guard to avoid the Vietnam draft. When asked why, this was his comment, as recorded in his 25th Yale Reunion Book: “I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy”
Since then, in common with other reluctant soldiers such as Bush Junior and Dick Cheney, Bolton has been very keen on sending other young people to kill and die overseas, albeit mainly to deserts rather than rice paddies. The following comment summarises his position on North Korea just over a month ago. On 28th February 2018, in the Wall Street Journal, Bolton wrote:
“The threat is imminent, and the case against pre-emption rests on the misinterpretation of a standard that derives from pre-nuclear, pre-ballistic-missile times…Given the gaps in US intelligence about North Korea, we should not wait until the very last minute. That would risk striking after the North has deliverable nuclear weapons, a much more dangerous situation. It is perfectly legitimate for the United States to respond to the current ‘necessity’ posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons by striking first”
However, let’s set aside his position on North Korea, and pose the question: what does his appointment tell us about the Trump administration’s plans for Iran?
Firstly, here’s a typical example of Bolton’s utterances on Iran, from the ‘Free Iran Gathering’ in Paris, 1st July 2017:
“So, for the first time in at least 8 years that I have been coming to this event, I can say that we have a President of the United States who is completely and totally opposed to the regime in Tehran…he completely opposes the Iran nuclear deal signed by his predecessor…there is a viable opposition to the rule of the Ayatollahs, and that opposition is centred in this room today…”
But the most disturbing part of his speech was kept for the crescendo:
“I have said for over ten years since coming to these events, that the declared policy of the United States of America should be the overthrow of the Mullah’s regime in Tehran. The behaviour and the objectives of the regime are not going to change and therefore the only solution is to change the regime itself. And that’s why before 2019, we here will celebrate in Tehran, thank you very much”
Of course, the comments that Bolton has made since his appointment have ‘softened’ to include statements like ‘I’m here to serve the wishes of the President…anything I said before was my personal view as an independent analyst…blah blah blah’. Even if you believe this, it still begs the question: why would a President intent on peace in the Middle-East appoint a guy who can’t wait to park his Cadillac on [Ayatollah]Khamenei’s lawn? He wouldn’t. The goal is regime change.

Bolton’s regime change credentials
Bolton has a long history of direct contact with an Iranian terror group known as Mujahideen-e Khalq, usually referred to by its acronym, MEK. Here is Jason Rezaian writing in the Washington Post on 24th March 2018:

“Bolton’s hawkish views on Iran mirror those of Israel, Saudi Arabia and one of his key ideological partners, the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK)…The MEK is the type of fringe group that sets up camp across the street from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and hands out fliers filled with unsubstantiated claims…I would never suggest that they be prohibited from doing that. But giving the MEK a voice in the White House is a terrible idea. In John Bolton they have someone who will do it for them…

The MEK was on the State Department’s list of terrorist organisations until 2012, when Bolton and a number of others successfully lobbied to have its designation removed. The group is loathed by the majority of Iranians, irrespective of their political affiliation, because of its role in fighting alongside Saddam’s forces in the Iran-Iraq war. According to Rezaian’s source at the State Department, the group hires prominent US officials to spread its regime change message:

“Very few former U.S. government officials shilled pro bono for the MEK,” said a former State Department official who worked on Iran. Among the long bipartisan list of people who have taken money from the group in exchange for speaking at its events are former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean. Bolton, the former official told me, was also paid”

So…we have Bolton arguing for regime change, taking money from an organisation advocating regime change…a group that was designated a terrorist group until Bolton managed to have it removed from the list.
What could these lovebirds possibly want with each other? Rezaian:

“To those who claim that the nuclear deal isn’t working, regime change remains the only solution. For the MEK, and Bolton, if his words are to be taken at face value, the only path to that could be war. The group has long been prepared to do whatever it takes to see that happen, including presenting fake intelligence about Iran’s nuclear program”

The fake intelligence referred to includes a 2015 ‘incident’ in which the political front for the MEK, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), ‘revealed’ the existence of a phoney underground centrifuge facility in the suburbs of Tehran: http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/03/that-secret-iranian-nuclear-facility-you-just-found-not-so-much/
So…now we have Bolton arguing for regime change, working with a re-designated terrorist group that is intent on war & happy to use false flags. Sounds like a perfect fit for Washington doesn’t it?
If you want more on the history of the MEK and its involvement with US military and intelligence, I suggest you read Seymour Hersh’s 2012 article in the New Yorker “Our men in Iran”
What next?
If Washington follows the playbook they have used in Libya and Syria, a ‘popular uprising’ will be fomented using the MEK or a re-branded version – as in Syria where al-Qaeda morphed into al-Nusra. Many of the protestors will have genuine grievances of course, but the violence that will be used to escalate the protests into a ‘revolution’ will be the work of US sponsored terrorist groups.
This will be presented by western media as a spontaneous democratic uprising, and will be reinforced by the twin strategies of demonization and virtue signalling. The neoconservative ‘right’ will go along with it because they always do; the liberal interventionist ‘left’ will go along with it because it will be presented as a ‘democratic revolt’. But let’s be clear: Nothing touched by the hands of the CIA & their proxies is remotely ‘democratic’ – it’s always about resources, money, and power. Uncle Sam is not the sweet, freedom-loving old guy he’d like us all to think. And neither is his handmaiden, Britannia.
If this were not so dangerous it would be truly funny. There is no effective opposition left in the US – ‘Russiagate’ has seen to that. The ‘left’ in America, for all its rhetoric about ‘progressive values’…is easier to play than a tambourine.

Final thought
I started this piece by taking a shot at the media. I make no apology for that. We are being taken to war by sociopaths, and the mainstream media are their collaborators.
I leave you with a quote, and a short film of Harold Pinter speaking on ‘the nature of truth’, from his Nobel acceptance speech in 2005. When you read it and/or view the film, bear in mind that none of this would be possible without collaboration from the media:
“Since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are not interested in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power, it is essential that people remain in ignorance. That they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies upon which we feed. The justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction…We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Qaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. The truth is something entirely different.
The truth is how the United States understands its role in the world, and how it chooses to embody it. I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist; unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies, is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision, we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us – the dignity of man”

By MarkGB, Renegadeinc.com

May 28, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Robert Azzi: Beware the Gulf of Tonkin, WMDs, Straits of Hormuz

In August 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Lyndon Johnson to “take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression” by the North Vietnamese.
The resolution, passed at Johnson’s insistence, was inspired by two alleged attacks on American destroyers by North Vietnamese patrol boats, turned out to be only partly true.

No War

Navy Cmdr. James Stockdale, who was flying recognizance over the Gulf at the time, doubted whether the second attack ever happened: “Our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets. … There were no (North Vietnamese) boats there … nothing there but black water and American firepower.”

History proved Stockdale correct: The resolution was a deadly fraud perpetrated by Johnson; by 1975, at war’s end, 58,318 American troops, 250,000 South Vietnamese troops, over 1 million Viet Cong and North Vietnamese fighters, and more than 2 million Vietnamese civilians had died.

Beware.

In October 2002, Congress, fueled by false claims that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002, authorizing President George W. Bush the use of American force against Iraq.

It, too, was based on manipulated and flawed intelligence assessments.

Donald Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, and Israel’s Bibi Netanyahu were two of the leading cheerleaders for that war – a war that broke the Middle East for generations, awarded Iran hegemony over the Persian Gulf, and precipitated the rise of al-Qaida in Iraq and ISIS.

That war killed almost 4,500 and wounded 32,000 American troops, It killed 100,000 Iraqis and displaced millions. It added $3 trillion to America’s national debt.

Beware.

Today, I fear that yet another American president will again manipulate circumstances and the media into believing that an attack is both necessary and imminent, this time on Iran.

Beware.

Once known as Persia, Iran’s a proud nation with a history that spans over two millennia. Any attack on its sovereignty and 81 million people will galvanize most Iranians – regardless of how they might feel about its government – in solidarity and further destabilize the entire region.

In solidarity, Iranians remember well a 1953 challenge to its sovereignty when America, serving colonial interests, overthrew its democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, and installed the shah.

Beware.

Iran controls access to the Straits of Hormuz, a narrow passageway into the Persian Gulf and any disruption there could cause global economic upheaval and a strategic challenge for thousands of American military personnel deployed in the Gulf.

Trump – fueled by his personal animus of President Barack Obama and opposed to anything Obama accomplished – by choosing to unilaterally violate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) not only undid one of the most significant arms control agreements of our time but chose to align himself against Iran, in possible military conflict, with the current leaders of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Emirates.

With allies like those, who needs enemies?

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in support of that agenda, is today trying to convince the world that a strategic alliance exists between Sunni al-Qaida (which took credit for a 2017 attack on Iran’s parliament building and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s tomb) and Shia Iran – a laughable intellectual exercise and contradicted by numerous intelligence agencies.

Beware.

For over a decade Bolton has been a well-paid supporter of the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MeK), a cultish Iranian terrorist organization that had first opposed the shah. MeK is responsible for the killing of six Americans in Iran, and it enthusiastically supported the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran before changing alliances and opposing the ayatollahs.

Consistent with MeK policy, John Bolton wrote in the Wall Street Journal in 2018 that American policy should be regime change and “ending Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution before its 40th anniversary.”

“Recognizing a new Iranian regime in 2019,” he wrote, “would reverse the shame of once seeing our diplomats held hostage for 444 days.”

Shame?

Shame is to dishonor diplomats. Shame is to put more American troops in harm’s way under false circumstances.

Shame is to deploy Americans to settle personal grievances.

There is much in Iran’s behavior – particularly its support of Hamas and Hezbollah – that needs to be confronted and moderated; moderated by negotiation in conjunction with our allies. JCPOA was designed to limit Iran’s nuclear program – and it worked.

Whatever “malign” behavior Iran engages in – whatever suppression of dissent, women’s rights, minorities, artists and homosexuals it engages in – should certainly be confronted, but not by recklessly placing Americans in harm’s way.

Trump’s confrontation with Iran evokes memories of President George W. Bush’s false assertions that al-Qaida had links to Iraq, suggesting even that bin Laden and Saddam Hussein might have cooperated in planning 9/11.

Bush’s illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq – a war of choice I vociferously feared and opposed – predictably fractured the Middle East, exacerbated sectarian tensions and provoked a rise in chaos, violence and terror that continues to this day.

Beware.

America is still deeply embedded in Afghanistan and Iraq, still supporting Saudi Arabia’s genocide against Yemen, still failing to hold Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman accountable for the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Trump’s America is increasingly distant from its professed values. Today we face, as Vali Nasr, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, recently said “a crisis that has entirely been manufactured by the Trump administration.”

This Memorial Day, as America remembers and honors those who have died while serving in the U.S. Armed Forces, let us pray and resolve to impress upon our leaders that no life should be sacrificed in vain, no life lost because of the false vanities of leaders, tyrants and autocrats, no crisis created that jeopardizes justice and peace.

(Robert Azzi, a photographer and writer who lives in Exeter, can be reached at theother.azzi@gmail.com. His columns are archived at theotherazzi.wordpress.com.)

By ROBERT AZZI, For the Monitor, concordmonitor.com

May 26, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

White House crumbling under the weight of Bolton’s ambitions

John Bolton, Donald Trump’s national security adviser in the White House (who was the US ambassador to the UN during the Iraq War in George Bush’s administration), along with Benjamin Netanyahu and Muhammad Bin Salman have for a long time been in a ‘warmonger club’ which has striven to drag the United States into a war with Iran, paid for by US citizens for the benefit of a small elite.

Bolton believes that Massoud (or Maryam) Rajavi of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK, MKO, Rajavi cult), just like Ahmed Chalabi during the war against Iraq, can be beneficial in creating excuses and repeating the White House’s wishes under the banner of a so-called opposition group. The Rajavi terrorist cult has always been ready to offer its treacherous services to any bidder. And Bolton, after Saddam Hussein, is eager to use them.

The Saudis provide the funds, the Israelis provide the propaganda means and lobbying, and Rajavi plays the role of the loudspeaker while Bolton lays claim to the ammunition – all to launch a new war no matter what the cost.

Bolton has repeatedly announced his desire for regime change in Iran through the imposition of severe sanctions followed by military action. This wish has been constantly publicized by the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization to prepare the world, and in particular western public opinion, for another disastrous war.

Trump has announced that a war with Iran would be the end of the country. This assessment is absolutely wrong. Apart from the trio of warmongers, no official in the world has agreed with that assessment. On the contrary they all advise that such a war would become the US’s tragedy.

When Trump took office, he rejected the Iran nuclear agreement – a UN Security Council resolution signed by 7 major countries. He promised to get a better deal with Iran and introduced 12 unacceptable demands thereby setting foot on the path of no return.

Bolton’s ambitions and Trump’s lack of knowledge and experience have put the United States in a situation of complete deadlock. As time passes the US administration sinks deeper into the swamp they have created themselves. Getting into a war or pulling back from their demands have both become impossible for them now.

The responsibility for all this rests on the shoulders of John Bolton and Rudi Giuliani and other warmongers who fed the president with false data and assessments and paved the ground for dragging the White House into the present deadlock.

The Bush administration entered into the war with Iraq in 2003 to bring peace and security to the region. How do they explain this to the families of over 4000 US servicemen and women killed in Iraq whose loved ones lost their lives in Iraq because some few individuals wanted to attack Saddam Hussein for supporting terrorist groups like the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization? The group which they are now supporting themselves.

US forces eventually pulled out of Iraq only to leave the situation much worse than before. In Syria the US intervention did not help anyone and Trump himself was a critic of his country’s military involvement there. In Afghanistan, US officials are negotiating with the Taliban after invading the country and changing their regime. The Israelis in Gaza and the Saudis in Yemen are involved in endless devastating wars which have no winners.

War with Iran is the dearest wish of John Bolton and other warmongers such as Rajavi, but none of them give a thought to the outcome for the US and do not care a jot about the country’s national interests.

But at the end of the day, Donald Trump should pay the price and be responsible toward his people. The American people have paid the price of all the US wars from Vietnam to Iraq.

It is the critical duty of the American nation and its elected representatives to stop John Bolton and remove him from the White House before it is too late, to go back to the nuclear deal and forget about the regime change policy, and lift the unjustified sanctions imposed on the people of Iran.

May 25, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Trump’s Retreat the end of MEK and Regime Change

Trump suddenly reverses course on Iran, says there is ‘no indication’ of threats

Trump has no coordinated strategy on Iran — and it’s obvious.

President Donald Trump spent the last week talking up possible military action against Iran, discussing the number of troops that would be involved, and threatening that war would mean the “official end of Iran.”

On Monday, he suddenly reversed course, claiming that there was “no indication” of threats from the country that would require such a response.

“They’ve been very hostile. They’ve truly been the no. 1 provocateur of terror,” Trump told reporters as he left the White House, before saying that there was, in fact, no threat. “We have no indication that anything’s happened or will happen, but if it does, it will be met, obviously, with great force. We will have no choice.”

That’s a huge about-face from his own tweet on Sunday, in which he wrote, “If Iran wants to fight, that will be the end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!”

A few days before that, Trump said he would send a “hell of a lot” more than 120,000 troops to the Middle East to counter Iran, referring to a New York Times report on an updated military plan should Iran attack U.S. forces or resume nuclear fuel production that it suspended under the 2015 nuclear agreement.

Experts say the mixed messages have to do with the administration’s lack of a coordinated Iran strategy in general.

“I oscillate between thinking the administration is being quite clever, and almost demonstrating irrationality in order to scare the Iranians into not doing anything stupid — or at least that’s what they think they’re doing — or just genuine total cluelessness, which is what I tend to lean towards,” said Dina Esfandiary, a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center and the Century Foundation’s Middle East Department.

“[Trump] wants to sound threatening and wants to basically demonstrate that the U.S. … will stand up to Iran, that the maximum pressure campaign is working,” Esfandiary said. “But he wants to do it up until the point where there’s a war, and he definitely wants to avoid war, to — I think — [National Security Adviser John] Bolton’s great dismay. I tend to lean towards that being the explanation for why there’s so much back and forth, they want to take them to the cusp of war and then basically reign it in and be like, ‘Wait, no actually, at the moment there’s no threat.’”

Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said the back and forth has to do with the fact that the administration “has not made up its mind on what it wants to get from its Iran policy.”

Trump withdrew from the 2015 Iranian nuclear agreement, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), last year. He called it a “horrible, one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made,” ignoring the fact that it was a multilateral agreement also signed by the United Kingdom, Russia, France, China, and Germany. Since then, Trump has reimposed sanctions on Iran that were lifted under the deal and designated the country’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization.

“What is clear is that by this stage the Trump administration had hoped that the historic sanctions would have brought the Iranians back to the table for a new set of talks,” Vatanka said. “That hasn’t happened, that’s unlikely to happen, and this new reality is creating an urgency for President Trump and his team in terms of Plan B.”

In his statement to reporters on Monday, Trump indicated that he would be open to negotiating with Iran. “If they called, we would certainly negotiate, but that’s going to be up to them,” he said.

But complicating any negotiations, said Vatanka, are two issues: Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal and the administration’s set of 12 demands that must be included in any future deal with Iran. Shortly after Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear agreement, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced this list of requirements, which includes demands that Iran stop all uranium enrichment entirely and give the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) “unqualified access to all sites throughout the entire country.” (The IAEA has already repeatedly verified Iran’s compliance with the 2015 agreement.)

“The problem with finding a Plan B is that it kind of could really amount to an uncomfortable position that the Trump administration has to adopt … You’ve got on the one hand the option of escalating, which I don’t think President Trump wants to do, for obvious reasons with his reelection in mind and the promises he has made in the past about getting out of wars in the Middle East,” Vatanka said. “And number two is to … deescalate, bite the bullet, which could be obviously humiliating. That isn’t a President Trump-style item.”

“Neither side has given the other side much room to maneuver,” he added. “On the U.S. side we have those 12 points, demands. And on the Iranian side the idea that Trump has to come back to the nuclear agreement before they talk to him… The real challenge right now, given that neither side wants to go to war, how do you find something you can talk about? It has to be something small, it has to be something that both sides can say, ‘Well that just makes common sense, we don’t want accidental war, maybe we should create some sort of a back channel.’ It remains to be seen what they can actually talk about.”

Meanwhile, talk of war is also coming from Trump’s allies in Congress. Rep. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said last week that Iran could be defeated with just “two strikes.” Cotton is a supporter of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group that both Iran and Iraq consider a terrorist group and that the United States did as well until 2012, and has been a vocal advocate of regime change inside Iran.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who has also called for regime change in the past, said Monday that Trump should “stand firm” against Iran and referred to a briefing from Bolton that revealed Iran “created threat streams against American interests in Iraq.”

Bolton has repeatedly called for regime change inside Iran — and was an architect of the 2003 invasion of Iraq — and Trump is reportedly growing frustrated with him.

Several U.S. officials told The Washington Post earlier this month that Trump is not convinced that now is the right time to attack Iran and is frustrated with Bolton and Pompeo’s Iran strategy.

“They are getting way out ahead of themselves, and Trump is annoyed,” one senior administration official told the Post. “There was a scramble for Bolton and Pompeo and others to get on the same page.”

The lack of a strategy could end badly, said Esfandiari.

“The only thing [this strategy] is doing is it’s worsening the situation, in terms of increasing the risk and likelihood of either miscalculation or accident leading to actual military confrontation, and it’s not working internally in Iran,” she said. “Because if the point is to foster some kind of regime change, well, all Trump’s maximum pressure campaign is doing is unifying the public behind its government and even unifying the system within Iran. Because like any other normal country, when you tend to have an external enemy, people tend to unify behind the flag.”

“Increasing the maximum pressure campaign, using sanctions as much as possible, threatening war, to them, it seems to be working,” she continued. “Because you know, when they talk about it … they seem to allude to the fact that we’ve reduced Iran’s oil imports, the Iranian economy is being severely squeezed, all of which is true.”

She added, “But again, as an analyst of international relations, you want to ask them, ‘Okay, but to what effect? What are you trying to achieve?’ And as soon as you ask people supportive of the policy that question, then the answer can begin to get a little bit more confused.”

By Adrienne Mahsa Varkiani, Think Progress

May 23, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

What is the MEK doing in the heart of Bolton’s war plans?

Amid rapidly growing tensions between the US and Iran, the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) is once again notoriously mentioned in the news lines.

Whenever, the journalists and analysts investigate the US warmonger campaign against Iran, the MEK is considered as part of the war plans. The recent escalating tensions following the dispatch of the US aircraft carrier to Persian Gulf, has brought up the case of the MEK as the tool for false flag operations to foment war. “Forces in the U.S. and Israel have been actively pushing for a U.S.-led war with Iran for years and have a track record that demonstrates little inhibition about using an “accident” or “false flag” to drag the country into a war with the Islamic Republic,” writes Whitney Webb of the Mint Press news comparing the case to the US invasion to Iraq in 2003 which was led by then-Vice President Dick Cheney based on fake intelligence on the so-called Weapons of Mass Destruction. [1]
The explosions of several oil tankers of Saudi Arabia and Emirates in Fujaira on May 12, was the desired accident for the US warmongers. Although the authorities of Saudi Arabia and the UAE tried to keep silent on the issue, the warmongers, or in better words, paid supporters of the MEK started fishing the troubled water.
Mint Press reported: “This past Thursday, the U.S. Maritime Administration — a division of the U.S. Department of Transportation — stated that “Iran or its proxies could respond by targeting commercial vessels, including oil tankers, or U.S. military vessels in the Red Sea, Bab-el-Mandeb Strait or the Persian Gulf.” The U.S. Department of Transportation is currently headed by Elaine Chao, who was paid $50,000 for a five-minute speech to the Iranian exile group, Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), known to actively seek regime change for Iran. Other top U.S. officials, such as Bolton, have also been paid hefty sums for appearances at MEK events, where they have openly advocated for the overthrow of the Iranian government.” [2]
The American’s anti-Iran propaganda is naturally supported by the Israeli plain resentment against Iran. “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose desire to goad the U.S. into a war with Iran is an open secret” actually leads the majority of these false flag plots by the help of the MEK operatives. Moreover, to fund the MEK, Israel is not alone. Saudi Arabia’s hefty dollars find its way to the MEK’s pocket when it comes to their common enemy: Iran.

“Danny Yatom, the former head of the Mossad, told the Jerusalem Post that Israel can implement some of its anti-Iran plans through MEK if a war were to break out,” Tele Sur English states. ”Saudi Arabia’s state-run television channels have given friendly coverage to the MEK, and Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief, even appeared in July 2016 at a MEK rally in Paris… Yet for the U.S., Israel, and Saudi Arabia, MEK represents an anti-Iranian voice that they so desperately need, and that on the surface didn’t come from them directly.” [3]

In order to bring more evidences on the MEK-Israeli plot against Iran, Tele Sur English refers to NBC News, citing two unnamed U.S. officials in 2012, who reported that the attacks against the Iranian nuclear scientist were planned by Israel’s Mossad and executed by MEK operatives inside Iran. [4]
The role of the MKO in the war plans of “B-team” gets definitely clear when you read Massoud Khodabandeh’s latest article on Iranian.com. He notices “the significance of a visit to the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1st by Albanian President Ilir Meta along with top Albanian military leaders and diplomats”. [5]
As he states Albania matters because it is now “home to the Iranian Mojahedin-e Khalq terrorist cult (MEK) and John Bolton has long believed he can use the MEK to facilitate regime change in Iran.” [6]

Khodabandeh writes, “An Albanian source told me off the record that alongside the delegation to the ship he witnessed the presence of Shish operatives taking some Farsi speakers on board the USS Abraham Lincoln who were not disembarked before the ship moved on. Kuwaiti media also reports that MEK operatives have been arrested attempting to buy speed boats in the Persian Gulf. Such a combination is highly concerning. MEK operatives were trained as suicide bombers by Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard and in the MEK’s camps in Iraq. They have transferred this training to their new closed camp in Albania.” [7]

“Bolton’s unrelenting drive to attack Iran and his unstinting support for the MEK can only lead to one conclusion: MEK operatives, brought from Albania, will be deployed to carry out false flag ops that can be blamed on Iran – such as a suicide attack,” Khodabandeh states.
Yes, time passed, Bolton did not succeed to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Iranian revolution in Tehran with the MEK so they have to endeavor harder together with other members of B-team to launch their war campaign against the Iranian nation.

Mazda Parsi

References:
[1] Webb, Whitney, With the US-Iran War Ball Now Rolling, Could an “Accident” or “False Flag” Serve as Pretext? , Mint Press News, May 14th, 2019.
[2] ibid
[3] Tele Sur English, Spain’s Far-right Vox Received Almost $1M from ‘Marxist-Islamist’ Iranian Exiles: Report, May 1st, 2019.
[4] ibid
[5] Khodabandeh, Massoud, Bolton’s False Flag Op Involving MEK, Iranian.com, May 12th, 2019.
[6] ibid
[7] ibid
[8] ibid

May 22, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

Source of MEK cash in London?

MEK ON THE DL

The Facebook pages appear to be a part of a larger effort to sway U.S. opinion on policy toward Iran.

As U.S. policymakers weigh responses to increasing Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf, a German national based in a small neighborhood of northwest London is quietly financing an ad campaign designed to stoke a more forceful U.S. policy toward Tehran.
The person behind the campaign, pushed in part under the guise of independent news and analysis, is Soheila Aligholi Mayelzadeh, who’s previously identified herself as a lobbyist for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a leading opposition group in the country. Since March, a company owned by Mayelzadeh has bought dozens of Facebook ads targeted at users in the United States promoting a more aggressive confrontation with Iran.
Those paid ads have run on two Facebook pages. One is the official page of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, a militant Marxist opposition group in the country with deep ties to the NCRI, and commonly known by its Farsi acronym, MEK. The other is the page of an ostensibly independent news organization called Iran Focus.
The previously unreported advertising campaign shows how some leading opponents of the present Iranian government are attempting to capitalize on U.S. momentum for a more aggressive policy toward Iran. And it reveals efforts to present that lobbying campaign not as the work of an organized political bloc but as supposedly independent foreign policy analysis.
Both Iran and Iraq consider the MEK a terrorist group. It was previously designated as such by the U.S., United Kingdom, Canada, and the European Union, all of which have since removed the group from their respective lists of foreign terrorist organizations. The U.S. did so in September 2012.
Since then, the MEK has won some critical U.S. allies in its push for regime change in Iran, most notably John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser. “There is a viable opposition to the rule of the ayatollahs,” Bolton told an annual MEK gathering in Paris in 2017. “And that opposition is centered in this room today.”
Bolton is currently one of the leading advocates in the Trump administration for a more aggressive confrontation with Iran, putting him squarely in line with the immediate U.S. policy objectives of the MEK and the NCRI, widely considered to be the MEK’s de facto political arm. The NCRI has pressed its case with other Trumpworld figures as well, according to foreign agent filings with the Justice Department, including Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich.
The Facebook pages for the MEK and Iran Focus appear to be a part of that larger effort to sway U.S. opinions on policy toward Iran.

Both pages began running ads on the same day in late March, according to Facebook’s archive of political ads. They’ve run dozens of ads since then, and while neither page is hugely popular—fewer than 4,000 “likes” between them—and the sums spent on those ads have been relatively small, about $7,500 total, they’ve managed to reach between 500,000 and 1.4 million U.S. Facebook users over the last two months.
All of the money for those ads, according to Facebook’s archive, has come from a single company called All for Freedom. The London-based company’s website says it “work[s] with charities and non-profit organisations to help them with events management and other services for them to achieve their charitable and humanitarian activities and goals.”
Corporate records in the U.K. list Mayelzadeh, a German national, as All for Freedom’s only officer. And she has ties to the NCRI going back decades. In 1995, Mayelzadeh donated to the campaign of former Rep. Jim Traficant (D-OH). She listed an address in the Virginia suburbs of DC, and her occupation as a “lobbyest” [sic] for the National Council of Resistance.

Attempts to reach Mayelzadeh were not successful. An email sent to the address listed on All for Freedom’s website was not returned.
The majority of the Facebook ads that the company has financed have simply promoted the pages and websites of the MEK and Iran Focus, all of which take a hard line on U.S. policy towards Tehran. Some ads, though, promote specific bits of content that advance the Iranian opposition’s views on the matter.
One recent ad on the MEK page recapped a NCRI press conference in early May and subsequent coverage of the event by the Washington Times. At the press conference, a top NCRI official called on the U.S. to designate Iran’s intelligence service as a foreign terrorist organization and generally to “take a firmer stance against the bloody and violent Iranian regime.”
The event also got a positive write-up in Iran Focus, which describes itself as “an independent non-profit news service provider that focuses on events in Iran, Iraq and the Middle East with a network of specialists.”

Its coverage of late has leaned heavily on the U.S. to step up a military confrontation with the Iranian government. “Iran seems to understand only the language, the language of force,” one recent piece declared. “They speak the universal language of bullies. And we all know what happens when you stand up to a bully… they back down.” Another piece last week said the Iranian government has “benefited from impunity for far too long and it must face the consequences. Whatever they may be.”
The website appears to be less independent than it claims. It’s favorably covered the MEK and NCRI for years, but it appears to have some overt ties as well. According to domain registration data, the Iran Focus website was maintained by Mohammad Hanif Jazayeri, whom the NCRI website identifies as a spokesperson, until at least 2015, when the site anonymized that registration information.
Neither Iran Focus nor Jazayeri responded to questions about the news outlet’s relationship with the NCRI and MEK.
The latter is renowned for its foreign media, propaganda, and lobbying capabilities. Stolen U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks show State Department staff repeatedly marveling at the MEK’s ability to promote its message abroad. One cable remarked on the group’s “extremely sophisticated international media and lobbying apparatus.”

The Daily Beast, By Lachlan Markay

May 21, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Bolton MEK Iran Policy at odds with Trump

As Trump calls for dialogue with Iran, his national security adviser is beating drums of war
National Security Advisor John Bolton has been calling for regime change in Iran for years (AFP)

Despite the drums of war resonating ever louder this week, President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he isn’t seeking a military conflict with Iran, instead urging the leaders in Tehran to engage in direct negotiations with Washington.
Still, Trump’s seemingly conciliatory posture has not stopped a stream of threats from members of his administration.
Nor has it stemmed the flow of US media reports about the United States’s alleged military plans, or purported Iranian schemes to attack American troops in the Middle East.
According to former US officials and analysts, the culprit behind the current crisis is most likely Trump’s top aide: National Security Advisor John Bolton.
“He’s been an advocate of regime change in Iran for decades, and that’s one of his main goals,”Peter Bergen, director of the national security studies programme at the New America Foundation, told Middle East Eye.
The latest round of escalation can be traced back to 5 May, when Bolton said Washington was sending a naval strike group to the Gulf with the aim of sending a”clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime”.
Bolton, who has served in every Republican administration since Ronald Reagan’s presidency, is known for his neo-conservative, hawkish foreign policy views.
He was a staunch supporter of the war in Iraq when he served in the State Department in the lead-up to the 2003 US-led invasion.
And as US ambassador to the United Nations between 2005 and 2006, he often defended then-president George W Bush’s foreign interventions.
Wherever there is a government seen as hostile to Washington, Bolton has adopted a hard line against it.
For example, weeks before Trump’s summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un in June 2018, Bolton drew Pyongyang’s ire by suggesting the”Libya model”for denuclearising North Korea.
Although the administration later clarified that Bolton was calling on Pyongyang to voluntarily give up its nuclear weapons as Tripoli did in the mid-2000s, the remarks were interpreted as a call for military strikes against North Korea.

Bolton”seemingly hasn’t met a war he doesn’t love,”Bergen wrote in a CNN column this week.

‘America only’
Still, Bolton’s fondness for military interventions remains at odds with Trump’s”America first”foreign policy and pledge to stop foreign wars and put an end to US-led”nation-building”.
“The world view of regime-change is that if anyone has a different foreign policy than we do, it must be because they’re wrong, and if they hold to it, they must be removed,”former US diplomat Christopher Hill said.
“So, it is a statement not only of ‘America first’ but ‘America only’.”
The inconvenient truth is that only military action … can accomplish what is required
– John Bolton wrote in 2015 in the NYT
Indeed, in a 1994 speech, Bolton said that the United States is”the only real power left in the world”.
Hill, who served as the head of the US delegation for multilateral negotiations with North Korea in 2005 and as US ambassador to Iraq in 2010, said the recent impasse with Iran is largely coming”from the US side”.
And Bolton in particular is”trying to whip up hysteria,”Hill told MEE.
“I would support the British general who said there was nothing new in the threat level. However, I do not rule out that Iran may be responding to some of this.”

Regime change in Iran
This month’s tensions come a year after Trump pulled the US from the multinational Iran nuclear deal that saw Tehran significantly scale back its nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
“The strategy seems to be to put additional sanctions on Iran to essentially tank the Iranian economy to produce some kind of popular uprising to replace the regime – or prepare some kind of military conflict,”Bergen said of the administration’s policy on Iran.
The Trump administration’s stated policy is to exert”maximum pressure”on Iran to force Tehran to change its regional behaviour and end its nuclear programme.
But Bolton has said in the past that sanctions alone do not work.
“The inconvenient truth is that only military action … can accomplish what is required,”he wrote in a 2015 column published in the New York Times.
The article, titled”To stop Iran’s bomb, bomb Iran,”did not only call for targeting Iran’s nuclear facility. It also advocated US-led efforts to topple the Iranian government.
“Such action should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran’s opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran,”Bolton wrote.
It wasn’t the first – nor would it be the last – time Bolton called for regime-change in Iran. In early 2017, days before Trump took office, Bolton backed the incoming president’s pledge to scrap the Iran nuclear deal and presented a different approach.

I don’t think you can ignore the fact that Bolton has made six-figure income from the [Iran opposition group] Mojahedin-e Khalq’
– Christopher Hill, former US diplomat

“The alternative policy is regime change in Iran,”he said in an interview with Fox News at the time.
Speaking at a 2017 gathering for Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group that was on the US list of terrorist groups as recently as 2012, Bolton went so far as to promise the Iranian government would fall by 2019 with Trump in office.
“I have said for over 10 years since coming to these events that the declared policy of the United States of America should be the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime in Tehran,”Bolton said.
“The behaviour and objectives of the regime are not going to change, and therefore the only solution is to change the regime itself. And that’s why, before 2019, we here will celebrate in Tehran.”
Bolton’s motives
Some of Bolton’s critics say his views on Iran may not be driven by only ideology.

The MEK paid him $40,000 for that 2017 speech, according to financial disclosures, and over the years, Bolton has reportedly received more than $180,000 from the Iranian opposition group.
“I don’t think you can ignore the fact that Bolton has made six-figure income from the Mojahedin-e Khalq and has publicly called for them as the successor regime,“Hill said.

“So I think it’s a little hard to sort out one’s personal interests with a national interest here.”

Regardless of Bolton’s motives, Trump ultimately remains in charge, and he appears to want dialogue – something that may not bode well for his senior adviser.
In fact, the New York Times reported on Thursday that Trump was”frustrated”by the perception that Bolton is leading the administration’s Middle East policy.
What that says about his future in the White House remains unclear, as the president has regularly disposed of close aides who are considered influential in his administration.
Eight months into his tenure, Trump fired his chief strategist Steve Bannon, while cabinet secretaries, chiefs of staff and top White House officials once seen as indispensable have come and gone. Bolton himself is Trump’s third national security adviser in less than three years.
Still, Trump’s invitations for Iranian leaders to call him to avoid a military conflict may not be effective, said Hill, who is currently the chief global adviser at the University of Denver.
“When you aggravate an agreement, calling it ‘the worst deal ever,’ and then say, ‘but I’ll just call them back and they’ll give me more concessions,’ you might be able to pull that off in the New York real estate market,”Hill said.”I’m just not sure the Iranian leadership wants to go along with this.”

By Ali Harb in Washington, Middleeasteye

May 20, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

What are the schemes that made Rudy Giuliani millionaire

Less than a year after Rudy Giuliani , the former mayor of New York, had the first page in the Romanian press after a letter addressed directly to the President of Romania , Bloomberg Businessweek entered in the backdrop of the international consulting business of the person who is Donald Trump’s personal advocate.

This article appeared in NewMoney’s 65th issue (May 13-26, 2019)

In November 2017, when Rudy Giuliani went to the Ukrainian city of Kharkov (one hour away from the Russian border) for a business meeting with Mayor Hennadiy Kernes, an unprecedented scene awaited him. In a big cage in the anteroom, he met with a”Privet!”(“Hello!”In Russian) even the petter of the mayor, parrot Johnny. In the same antechamber there was a diverse group of visitors. They were waiting silently to enter the office of Mayor Kernes, who for nine years led the second largest city in the country.
APPLICANT AND CONSULTANT. Giuliani was in Ukraine for the second time in less than a year as Kernes’ security adviser. At the same time, Giuliani was and still is a cyber security advisor to the President of America, Donald Trump, which is why a Ukrainian television has even marked the moment -“The Visit of a Trump’s Counselor.”In both visits, Giuliani also met with the acting Ukrainian President, Petro Poroshenko.
Mayor Kernes (59) is in a wheelchair in April 2014. While doing jogging somewhere on the outskirts of the city, an unknown shot him. Prior to the assassination attempt, the mayor had been very active on his Instagram account, where he exhibited his opulence – expensive holidays, clocks and even pictures from a meeting with Chechen leader Ramzan Ahmatovici Kadirov, an ally of the Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin . In 2017, Kadirov was sanctioned by the US for murder, torture and other human rights abuses. Kernes is also very close to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, forced by Kyiv Maidan in 2014 to flee to Russia.
Kernes quickly explained his collaboration with Giuliani – he wants to use the vast experience of the former mayor of New York. Giuliani advised him, for example, to set up an emergency service similar to 911.”Giuliani also met with President Poroshenko, who offered his support to complete the idea,”confesses Kernes. But how did a politician like Giuliani become the councilor of a mayor in eastern Ukraine? Kernes did not pay Giuliani, instead there is a one-year contract whose value is not public and which was largely funded by Ukrainian-Russian businessman Pavel Fuks.
In 2015, Fuks returned to Ukraine after 20 years in Moscow, where he has made wealth from real estate and banking. In the mid-2000s, the same Fuks had talks with the current US president to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, but they did not agree. At age 47, Fuks lives in Kiev, guarded by bodyguards, as well as Kernes. He says he hired Giuliani to give something back to his hometown.”Giuliani’s firm offers lobbying services and its asset is on security issues. He is a star,”he adds.
Collaboration in Ukraine is just a small piece of the global consulting business that Giuliani continued in parallel with Trump’s supporter in the Republican electoral campaign. He was followed by his adviser, as well as his personal attorney in the investigation by the special prosecutor, Robert Mueller, on the interference of Russia in the 2016 elections.
Following the verdict of General Prosecutor William Barr, according to which there is no evidence that Trump had any understanding with the Kremlin, Giuliani has overcome his name a victory that heavily hangs in his global consultant portfolio.
Known and appreciated for taking action as a prosecutor against New York Mafia, but also for managing New York after the tragedy of September 11, 2001, Giuliani is actively looking for clients like Kernes to advise on security issues. He made millions of dollars – 9.5 in 2017 and 5 in 2018, according to information in the context of the divorce of his third wife, Judith Nathan.
CONFLICT OF INTERESTS OR NOT? At age 74, Giuliani still prefers to remain in the spotlight as”what he does is extremely exciting,”he says. In addition to working in Ukraine, he has lectured and advised over the last two years in countries such as Armenia, Bahrain, Brazil, Colombia, Turkey and Uruguay.
In the context of Donald Trump’s unusual mandate at the White House, Giuliani’s role is even more out of the ordinary. His foreign contracts prompted seven democratic senators to ask the Ministry of Justice in September 2018 to check whether the former mayor should disclose his activities covered by the Law on the Registration of Foreign Agents (FARA). This normative act obliges the registration of individuals or organizations working as agents of foreign interests”in a political or quasi-political space”.
“As President Trump’s personal attorney, Mr. Giuliani communicates privately with the president and his staff on a regular basis,”wrote senators to the Ministry of Justice.”Without further analysis, it is impossible to know whether Mr. Giuliani is lobbying the US government for his foreign clients.”
Giuliani has always denied that he would do so, saying that most of his work is consulting for various countries of the world. Most often, contracts involve the delivery of security plans designed to improve crime rates, counseling on terrorism issues, or critical infrastructure issues. In Ukraine, he advised only on security issues, but he did not promote Kernes’ interests in the US, Giuliani said.
There is no conflict of interest between working so closely with the Trump Administration and working with foreign clients, says Giuliani,”I do not ask the President for any favor for them, nor do I represent these clients before the US government. I do not do trafficking because I have no reason to. I make a lot of money as a lawyer and a security consultant.”

However, the issue of a conflict of interest floats in the air, as the former editorial promotes ideas that resonate with the Trump’s foreign policy.”In order to have peace and stability in the Middle East, a major shift in the theocratic dictatorship in Iran is needed. It must come to an end quickly,”Giuliani told Warsaw, in front of hundreds of people flying Iranian flags, at an action by the National Resistance Council for Iran (NCRI, based in Paris), supported by the Iranian People’s Mujahedin Organization (Mujahedin-e Khalq, MEK).
Giuliani says that since 2008 he has been working with the MEK, a group that at that time the United States foreign ministry has classified her as a terrorist (in 2012, she removed it from this category).
Over the years, MEK has collaborated with several recognized American politicians, including the current presidential advisor for national security, John Bolton. The support that Giuliani offers is at sight. In January 2017, along with several former senior US officials, he signed a letter inviting President Trump to open the dialogue with the NCRI.
“It is quite inadequate that Giuliani continue to publicly associate with MEK,”says Suzanne Maloney, an Iranian expert at the Brookings Institution, arguing that the organization remains controversial. In addition, his anti-Iraqi rhetoric did not prevent him from working for Reza Zarrab, accused of orchestrating $ 1 billion in money laundering to help Iran avoid sanctions imposed by the US.
Dan Pickard, a partner at Wiley Rein LLP, a law firm in Washington, and a FARA specialist, did not want to refer specifically to the Giuliani case. However, Dan Pickard is of the opinion that if someone is paid by a foreign political group to support a speech in the United States that can influence certain policies, it should be labeled a foreign agent.
Giuliani says he is not paid directly by MEK, but by an American organization of Iranian dissidents.”Is the Organization of the Iranian-American Communities, which is allied with MEK?”Asked Bloomberg Businessweek reporter.”I do not remember the exact name. But there is no difference if you work for an Israeli-American group that has strong views on Israel,”he argues, trying to compare.

In February 2017, Rudy Giuliani went to Turkey, where he met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, hoping to help the Turkish-Iranian Reza Zarrab, arrested in the US on the charge that he had washed money in favor of Iran through a own company. Giuliani admits he tried to negotiate a deal for Zarrab, who pleaded guilty and became a witness in a federal file that targeted a banker.
Some shocked Giuliani’s involvement in this case.”I see a rupture between the old Rudy and the current Rudy, am astonished that he has been hired to be a bridge between President Trump and his Turkish counterpart in an attempt to resolve this case in some way,”says Judge Richard Berman, who also worked on this file.
As a rule, lawyers are exempted from applying for a foreign agent, but the exception may not apply, Ben Freeman, a specialist in intervention operations at the Center for International Policies in Washington. Quite irritated, Giuliani claims he is not the Turkish government,”but one man in detention and trying to get an exchange of prisoners with the Turkish government.”
Giuliani was promoted internationally as a New York super-officer who dramatically reduced the rate of crime in the US metropolis using the”broken windows”strategy. He was, however, strongly criticized for the brutality with which the New York police acted, especially against the African Americans. These critics scattered quickly when he made a discourse between the ruins of the Twin Towers still smoking. He was then appreciated by a whole world for the courage and cold blood he showed in those moments.
In fact, immediately after completing his mayoral mandate, he sought to capitalize this fame as quickly as possible. At the beginning of 2001, while Giuliani was in full divorce from his second wife, Donna Hanover, his lawyer said all his fortune was $ 7,000.
He founded several companies – Giuliani Partners LLC, a consulting firm for governments and companies, Giuliani Security & Safety LLC and Giuliani Capital Advisors LLC, an investment bank sold in 2007 to Macquarie Group Ltd In a few years, Giuliani made a fortune of several million dollars. In 2002, Mexico City drew $ 4.3 million from its budget to find out from Giuliani how you can fight crime as effectively as possible.
In 2004, the former president arrived for the first time in Ukraine. Then he went to Russia, where he met Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (it is not known whether he paid his own move). He also made a conference circuit, the commission being between 100,000 and 200,000 dollars per lecture. When in 2007 he filed his candidacy for the Republican presidential election, he had $ 11 million in revenue from commissions for talks last year and a half, according to federal data.
Since completing his mayoral mandate, he has supported over 1,000 speeches in 80 countries, he says. He convinced clients all over the world, from mayors to presidents, that what worked in New York works anywhere. In Brazil, in February last year, signed a $ 1.6 million contract with Giuliani Security & Safety to improve border security. The contract is now under investigation by a team of Brazilian prosecutors. The consulting activity helped Giuliani gain access to a global network of politicians who have lectured him especially since Donald Trump became president of the United States.
With the lifestyle that Giuliani now has, foreign customers may be more needed than ever. When he started working as Trump’s personal attorney in April last year, he agreed to do it pro bono. He gave up his position as chairman at law firm Greenberg Traurig LLP, where he had annual income between $ 4 million and $ 6 million.

By Mimi Noel
He has more than ten years of experience in journalism. He started at the Rompres national press agency, and in 2006 joined the team dealing with the Romanian edition of the US BusinessWeek. In 2007, he completed the team of journalists who started the Money Express business magazine. The covered areas ranged from retail to FMCG, pharmaceuticals, investment funds, mergers and acquisitions, IT & C. He interviewed the most prominent Romanian businessmen, local entrepreneurs and well-known foreign businessmen, such as Microchip executive Steve Sanghi, or former Sony executive director Michael Schulhof. Mimi Noel has been working as an Account Manager at AMICOM since 2012. At NewMoney, he is dealing with international issues.
Original article in Romanian newmoney.ro – Translated by Nejat Society

May 18, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

MEK terrorists pay Bolton Regularly

“I actually temper John,” Trump said, “which is pretty amazing.”

Fourteen months into his tenure as national security adviser, John Bolton has become a central figure in the run-up to what could be the most extensive American military offensive since the invasion of Iraq. Tensions between Iran and the United States have been high for weeks, beginning with a menacing video Bolton released in February targeting the Iranian supreme leader and reached a boil last week when, according the New York Times, he ordered the Pentagon to prepare to send as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East to counter Iran.
His saber-rattling in the Middle East comes on the heels of his recent and unsuccessful public campaign to topple President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, which left President Donald Trump complaining privately that Bolton wants to get him “into a war,” the Washington Post reported. Trump, long an opponent of America’s “endless wars” despite initially supporting the Iraq invasion, reportedly “prefers a diplomatic approach” to Iran as well and “wants to speak directly with Iran’s leaders,” a Post story noted Wednesday evening. The ensuing debate has left Trump, who once promised to “bomb the shit” out of Islamic State terrorists, in the unusual position of moderating his notoriously hawkish national security adviser.
“He has strong views on things but that’s okay,” Trump said during a White House press conference last week. “I actually temper John, which is pretty amazing.”
What’s also pretty amazing is how frequently Bolton has argued in favor of regime change in Iran, an enemy he has been fixated on for decades. As early as May 2002, Bolton considered Iran’s “ongoing interest in nuclear weapons” a threat to the United States on par with North Korea and Iraq. Then the top arms control official in the State Department, Bolton continued to emphasize the threat of Iran to American security and the security of Israel, even during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. In February 2003, he assured Prime Minister Ariel Sharon during a visit to Israel that “it would be necessary” for the United States to “deal with” threats from Iran, Syria, and North Korea after ousting Saddam Hussein. The prior year, a senior British official told Newsweek that President George W. Bush’s national security team was fixated on Iran even more than Iraq. “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad,” the official said. “Real men want to go to Tehran.”
But why does Bolton care so much about Iran, a country that for decades was a pariah in the international community and kept in check by the stranglehold of American sanctions? The none-too-simple answer resides in his understanding of America’s place in the world and opposition to any limits on American power.

The roots of Bolton’s warmongering against Iran
As a diplomat and national security official across four Republican administrations, from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump, Bolton has made the case for regime change in North Korea and Syria, among other places. But Iran remained a persistent concern for him, due to its alleged links to terrorism and burgeoning nuclear program. Once he left his position as ambassador to the United Nations in the Bush White House in 2006, he began more openly criticizing Bush’s Iran policy as too soft, calling it “four and a half years of failed diplomacy.” In an appearance on Fox News in 2008, Bolton argued in favor of bombing Iranian camps that the US said were training insurgents to oppose American troops in Iraq. “This is not provocative or preemptive—this is entirely responsive,” he said. “If we don’t respond, the Iranians will take it as a sign of weakness.”
His enmity was further inflamed when President Barack Obama began negotiating with Tehran to eliminate their nuclear program. Bolton dismissed the prospect of diplomatic solution in several opinion pieces. “The inescapable conclusion is that Iran will not negotiate away its nuclear program. Nor will sanctions block its building a broad and deep weapons infrastructure,” he wrote for the New York Times in March 2015, four months before Obama announced a deal with Iran that had broad international support in blocking the rogue state’s pathway to creating a nuclear weapon in exchange for partial sanctions relief.
Bolton rejected this outcome. Only a military strike “like Israel’s 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in Iraq or its 2007 destruction of a Syrian reactor” can do the job, Bolton wrote. He failed to mention that Israel’s premeditated strike on Osirak was condemned at the time by the United Nations and troubled US officials in the Middle East. Even Ronald Reagan confided to his journal that when this happened he believed “Armageddon is near.”
For Bolton, diplomacy with Iran has never been a realistic option. Last year, he argued that “America’s declared policy should be ending Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution before its 40th anniversary.” On the fortieth anniversary of the revolution that toppled Iran’s US-backed shah and led to the creation of modern Iran, Bolton released a video implying Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would not be in power for long. “I don’t think you’ll have many more anniversaries to enjoy,” he said.

He’s offered no less than a full-throated endorsement for regime change in other venues too. In 2016, he gave a speech in Paris to tens of thousands of supporters of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a group of Iranian exiles who were responsible for a series of bombings in Iran prior to the revolution, including one that killed six Americans. The MEK supported the Iranian Revolution and were cheerleaders for the takeover of the American embassy in Tehran, which led to the kidnapping of more than 50 American citizens for over a year, but ultimately broke with the ruling clerics and went into exile. The group is considered by some Iran experts to be a cult and, for more than a decade, was listed as a terrorist group by the United States. Bolton has been attending the MEK’s annual event for at least a decade, the New Yorker has reported.

“There is only one answer here: to support legitimate opposition groups that favor overthrowing the military theocratic dictatorship in Tehran,” he said. “Let me be very clear, it should be the declared policy of the United States of America and all its friends to do just that at the earliest opportunity.”

At the group’s rally the following year, in 2017, Bolton vowed to celebrate the fall of the regime “before 2019.”

#JohnBolton 8 months ago among MEK supporters tells them they will overthrow #Iran’s regime and celebrate in #Tehran with Bolton himself present, “before 2019” pic.twitter.com/H7oaaU3faU
— Bahman Kalbasi (@BahmanKalbasi) March 22, 2018

Once Trump took office but before Bolton joined the administration, he pursued his hawkish agenda by lobbying to rip up Obama’s nuclear deal. The agreement was “execrable” and should be abrogated “at the earliest opportunity,” Bolton wrote in August 2017 in the National Review. “We can no longer wait to eliminate the threat posed by Iran.”
The hawk in Trump’s Situation Room
Since joining the Trump administration last year as national security adviser, replacing HR McMaster, who urged Trump to maintain the Iran deal, Bolton has had some success in escalating the pressure on Tehran and reducing its sources of revenue through sanctions. Last year, his efforts to persuade Trump to leave the nuclear deal finally succeeded, although several European allies remained in it. He warned Iran of “hell to pay” if it crosses the US, and proclaimed that an American military presence would remain in Syria indefinitely until “Iranian proxies and militias” left the country. Even though Trump ignored that last promise when he announced the withdrawal of US troops from Syria in December, Bolton kept pursuing military solutions to challenge Iran.
“I am convinced that John Bolton has calculated that he has about 18 months to start a war with Iran or he’ll miss his chance,” says Joe Cirincione, an expert on nuclear weapons policy and the president of the Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation. “They want Iran to be like Japan at the end of World War II.”
Bolton reportedly asked the Pentagon in September for options to strike Iran after a Tehran-linked group fired mortar shells toward the American embassy in Baghdad, which “landed in an open lot and harmed no one,” the Wall Street Journal reported. Bolton’s request concerned US officials who spoke with the Journal.
“It definitely rattled people,” a former senior US administration official told the newspaper. “People were shocked. It was mind-boggling how cavalier they were about hitting Iran.”
That request was a prelude to what Bolton would ask of the Pentagon this month. In response to intelligence that Iran was planning to strike US military assets in the Middle East, Bolton announced the early deployment of an aircraft carrier and several Air Force bombers to the region. (The US routinely deploys carrier groups to the Gulf region and this particular one had already departed Virginia on April 1, well before Bolton’s statement about the Iranian threat.)
Sources with knowledge of the intelligence quickly threw cold water on the severity of the threat. “The administration blew it out of proportion, characterizing the threat as more significant than it actually was,” multiple anonymous Trump officials told the Daily Beast. In a briefing to reporters at the Pentagon, the second-ranking general in the US-backed coalition to fight ISIS suggested there had been no increase in threats toward American forces. “There are a substantial number of militia groups in Iraq and Syria, and we don’t see any increased threats from many of them at this stage,” the British general, Chris Ghika, said. (US Central Command later dismissed these comments in a rare rebuke of an allied general, insisting there are “credible threats available to intelligence from U.S. and allies regarding Iranian backed forces in the region.”) Nonetheless, US officials used the intelligence to justify removing nonessential diplomats from its embassy in Baghdad on Wednesday.
Now the US is considering another series of military options despite Trump’s apparent opposition. The New York Times reported Tuesday that “Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan presented an updated military plan that envisions sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American forces or accelerate work on nuclear weapons.” Trump denied the storyand said, if military action were taken against Iran, “we’d send a hell of a lot more troops than that.”
The newspaper said the plans were ordered by “John R. Bolton.”

By Mother Jones,

May 18, 2019 0 comments

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