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Elaine Chao, John Bolton paid by MEK, sending Americans to war

With the US-Iran War Ball Now Rolling, Could an “Accident” or “False Flag” Serve as Pretext?

Certain forces in the U.S. and Israel have been actively pushing for war with Iran for years and have a track record that demonstrates little inhibition about using an “accident” to start it.
As tensions between the U.S. and Iran threaten to boil over, the probability of a provocation or “accident” that would provoke hostilities between the two countries is higher than ever. U.K. Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt, after meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, openly stated as much on Monday, telling reporters in Brussels that the U.K. was worried of a conflict breaking out between the U.S. and Iran by “accident with an escalation that is unintended really on either side but ends with some kind of conflict.”
Yet, current and past events make it clear that such an “accidental” provocation is unlikely to be purely accidental in nature, as 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.
Notably, the state of Israel — in an event long since buried by the government and corporate media — has previously staged such a “false flag” by targeting an American naval vessel, killing 34 Americans, in order to blame the attack on Egypt and drag the U.S. into a war with several Middle Eastern nations in 1967. However, Israel is not alone in this, as the CIA as well as neo-conservatives serving in the Bush administration, led by then-Vice President Dick Cheney, have planned “false flags” that involved the murder of American servicemen and civilians in order to justify military action against U.S. adversaries.
In this two-part series, MintPress explores the troubling evidence that preparations for another such “false flag” are well underway. In this first installment, current events in relation to U.S.-Iran relations and the role of Israel in the ratcheting up of tensions will be examined, while the second installment will focus on Israel’s past of conducting “false flags” to goad the U.S. into wars on Israel’s behalf as well as efforts by former Vice President Dick Cheney to conduct a “false flag” pitting American sailors against American sailors disguised as Iranian naval forces to justify a conflict with Iran.
Bolton, taking a page from Iraq 2003 playbook, sets ball rolling
Since National Security Advisor John Bolton sent out a dramatic press release announcing the deployment of a U.S. carrier strike group as a warning to Iran on May 5, tensions between the U.S. and Iran have risen dramatically, a development that Bolton — who has long advocated regime change and a pre-emptive war against Iran — likely welcomes. As MintPress recently reported, that press release was intentionally vague, allowing justification for a military response to any number of incidents, whether committed by Iran or alleged “proxies” of Iran, including groups over which Iran’s government has no control.
Furthermore, it has since been revealed that the “intelligence” Bolton used to frame the deployment and the rationale for future U.S. military action against Iran was from the Israeli government — which has long pushed the U.S. towards war with Iran. In addition, several unnamed U.S. officials stated soon after that Bolton and other Trump administration officials had greatly exaggerated the nature of this intelligence and overreacted. MintPress has noted on several occasions Bolton’s history of distorting intelligence to conform with a specific narrative or in order to promote specific policy actions and this tendency of Bolton’s was also recently noted in a New Yorker profile on the current National Security Advisor.
It was subsequently revealed that a few days prior to Bolton’s press release, Bolton had made a “highly unusual” visit to CIA headquarters to discuss Iran. NBC News reported that the “extremely rare” choice to hold this meeting at the CIA instead of the White House’s Situation Room likely meant that the purpose of the meeting was “to brief top officials on highly sensitive covert actions, either the results of existing operations or options for new ones,” based on statements from five former CIA operations officers and military officials.
That meeting, as noted by the political and financial news site ZeroHedge, “hearkens back to the Bush-Cheney White House’s direct intervention over Iraq intelligence in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion, which involved the VP and his staff making multiple personal visits to CIA headquarters and the Pentagon to pressure the intel analysts into conforming to a preferred ‘narrative.’” Yet, the emphasis on “covert actions” in relation to Iran suggests that something much more sinister may be afoot.
Indeed, in the weeks since that press release and the “highly unusual” CIA meeting, the U.S. has deployed more military assets towards the Persian Gulf and Secretary of State Pompeo has made several abrupt schedule changes in order to discuss Iran with various countries. Notably, the Trump administration has also announced the end of waivers that have allowed some foreign companies to continue buying Iranian oil without facing U.S. sanctions.
The situation has forced Iran to respond, with Iran announcing that it would begin withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal — which the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from over a year ago — as the U.S.’ economic war against Iran shoots to another level.
Perhaps most telling of all is the fact that Western media, particularly U.S. media, have been heavily promoting the Iranian “threat” since soon after Bolton’s Mary 5 press release, in yet another striking parallel to the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Yet, particularly notable in this case is that much of the “intelligence” that has been used to justify these recent moves by the Trump administration has come from Israel’s government, led by the recently re-elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose desire to goad the U.S. into a war with Iran is an open secret.
One potential pretext already in play in the Persian Gulf
On Sunday, reports surfaced that several oil tankers were the victims of “sabotage” while sailing towards the Persian Gulf near Fujairah, one of the seven emirates that comprise the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which is located just outside the Strait of Hormuz. Fujairah’s government initially denied that any “sabotage” took place and maintained that its port facilities were operating normally after media reports from Iranian outlet PressTV and Lebanese outlet Mayadeen reported on a series of “explosions” on unidentified ships in the area.
The UAE’s foreign ministry later confirmed an incident in the area but said no casualties or spills occurred and notably did not provide details as to the number or nationalities of the ships involved nor the groups responsible for the alleged attack.
However, Saudi Arabia subsequently claimed that its tankers had been affected by this act of “sabotage” and that the targeted tankers had been approaching the Strait of Hormuz on route to load oil destined for the United States. Saudi Arabia, like the UAE, did not blame any country for the attack. A Norwegian-registered oil tanker experienced hull damage after striking “an unknown object,” potentially suggesting the attack was caused by an explosion of a sea mine or the result of a torpedo or other projectile launched underwater. Notably, the U.S., U.K. and France held a “mine warfare drill” in the Persian Gulf just last month and past Western media reports have characterized sea mines as “Iran’s favorite military asset.”
Iran rejected any responsibility for the attack and Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi warned against a “conspiracy orchestrated by ill-wishers” and “adventurism by foreigners.”
However, the timing of the sabotage came right on the heels of statements made by the U.S. and Israeli governments that have led some to blame Iran or suggest Iranian responsibility for the attacks — despite the lack of evidence made public and the decision by both the Saudis and Emiratis, long-time adversaries of Iran, from blaming any country for the incident or describing any specifics about the attack.
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.

In addition to warning from a U.S. department headed by an official with links to an Iranian opposition group actively seeking regime change, Israeli officials “leaked” information on Israel’s Channel 13 on Saturday that Iran was allegedly planning to target Saudi oil assets in the region. According to the unsourced report, as cited by the Times of Israel, the Iranians were “considering various aggressive acts” against American assets or those of its regional allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Israel. The report also claimed that Iran had considered targeting American bases in the Gulf, but rejected it as too drastic and instead had decided to target “Saudi oil production facilities.”
In light of recent events, as well as the corporate media’s willingness to suggest Iranian culpability despite little to no publicly available evidence, it appears that this recent attack — regardless of who was responsible — could be seized upon by officials in the U.S. or Israel eager to see tensions between the U.S. and Iran escalate.
Netanyahu: “America is easily moved”
It is an open secret that Israel’s government, particularly under Netanyahu, has been eager to see the U.S. engage in hostilities with Iran. The main driver for this is the fact that, while Israel has since forged alliances with several Arab-majority nations such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, Iran and its regional allies — namely Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Syria — oppose Israeli objectives for the region and those of its allies. More crucially, Iran is arguably the country that is most supportive of Palestine and the major barrier to Netanyahu’s plans to annex Palestine’s occupied West Bank, a promise on which Netanyahu rode to reelection last month. Now more than ever, Netanyahu wants Iran’s government out of the way.
Netanyahu has openly stated that he views the U.S. government as a vehicle for fulfilling Israeli objectives and believes that Americans are easily manipulated, by Israel in particular. For instance, in a video recorded in the early 2000s — later broadcast on Israeli TV and subsequently reported on by Consortium News — Netanyahu “brags about how he deceived President Bill Clinton into believing he [Netanyahu] was helping implement the Oslo accords when he was actually destroying them. The tape displays a contemptuous attitude toward, and wonderment at, a malleable America so easily influenced by Israel.”
In the video, Netanyahu states:
America is something that can be easily moved. Moved in the right direction. They won’t get in our way; 80 percent of the Americans support us. It’s absurd.”
Israeli journalist Gideon Levy later asserted that the video reveals Netanyahu to be “a con artist who thinks that Washington is in his pocket and that he can pull the wool over its eyes” and that the current Israeli prime minister’s attitude is unlikely to “change over the years.”
Now, with the Trump administration having shown its willingness to favor Israeli interests in the Middle East, Netanyahu has apparently sensed that the hour has come to push the U.S. towards war with Iran. For instance, the Trump administration organized a summit aimed at securing “peace and security in the Middle East,” to which Iran was not invited. The New York Timesdescribed that summit as follows:
…Leaders of Israel and Arab states met publicly again, at an international conference in Warsaw staged by the Trump administration. But the goal of this meeting, drawing officials of some 60 nations, was not peacemaking. It was to rally support for economic and political war with Iran, for which the United States has found little enthusiasm among allies since withdrawing from the 2015 deal that restricts Iran’s nuclear program.”
Notably, during that meeting, Netanyahu wrote in a since deleted tweet that the summit was “an open meeting with representatives of leading Arab countries, that are sitting down together with Israel in order to advance the common interest of war with Iran.”
In the wake of the Warsaw summit, Netanyahu has since claimed that he was responsible for the Trump administration’s decision to label Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terror group, a move that dramatically increased the risk of a military confrontation between the U.S. and Iran, especially given that Iran subsequently responded by declaring the U.S. military’s Central Command a terrorist organization.
Now, with Netanyahu feeding Bolton “intelligence” that Bolton has greatly exaggerated in order to justify their common goal — a U.S. war with Iran — and also “predicting” dubious “sabotage” attacks near the Persian Gulf, Israel’s government has revealed itself to be a driving force behind the spiking tensions between the two countries.
Equally troubling is the fact that world leaders are now openly positing that an “accident” or “false flag” provocation will be used to provoke such hostilities.
For Netanyahu, it’s now or never for a U.S.-Iran war
With the Iran nuclear deal in tatters, one consequence of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran has been to push Iran to renege on aspects of the deal, from which the U.S. has already long since withdrawn. The goal, by all appearances, is to use Iran’s plan to breach parts of the deal as justification for further aggressive actions against the country by claiming that such breaches, instead of a response to U.S.-led economic warfare, are a sign of an intention to develop nuclear weapons.
With waivers for the purchases of Iranian oil now ending and Iran’s president announcing that Iran will end compliance with some aspects of the deal if Europeans do not find a meaningful workaround for U.S. sanctions, the Trump administration — and the Iran hawks within — seem to have their ducks in a row.
While there has long been concern about a U.S.-Iran conflict, several situations have arisen that have made this push for a regime-change conflict with Iran of extreme importance to both U.S. and Israeli interests in the region.
For instance, Syria’s government is set to take the Idlib province, after which Syria will turn its attention towards the Israel-controlled Golan Heights and the U.S.-occupied area of northeastern Syria. Israel was revealed to be the “brains” behind the Syria conflict and has been actively preparing for hostilities with Syria and nearby Lebanon since last year, following the failure to overthrow Syria’s government. Syria holds a mutual defense pact with Iran, meaning that it will join a conflict with Iran if Iran is threatened, thus preventing Syria’s government from focusing its efforts on retaking areas occupied by the U.S. and Israel.
If the U.S. and Israel wait until Syria consolidates control over Idlib, they will be facing a much stronger adversary in Iran’s closest regional ally than one distracted by a pocket of Al Qaeda-dominated terrorist groups in its north.
Yet, the clearest indicator that the push for war is very much in earnest is the intention of Netanyahu to effectively destroy Palestine. Several analysts, including ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern, have long maintained that Israel’s and Netanyahu’s main reason for wanting a war with Iran is to “have Iran bloodied the same way we did to Iraq” so that Iran “would no longer be able to support Hamas and Hezbollah in Gaza, Lebanon, and elsewhere.” In other words, Netanyahu wants Iran out of the picture so it can no longer provide material or financial support to groups that resist Israeli occupation.
Having won reelection in part because of his promise to annex the occupied West Bank, Netanyahu worries that Iran and its regional allies will strongly oppose that annexation and may even go to war over it, particularly if the fate of the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem is threatened. Now, with the Trump administration’s “Deal of the Century” also set to be made public in less than a month, that deal’s push to enable the annexation is also threatened by the regional bloc led by Iran that still supports Palestine. If Netanyahu is able to eliminate Iran as a regional power, he will have eliminated the greatest single threat to both his plans for complete annexation and the enactment of the Trump administration’s “Deal of the Century.”
With top officials in the U.S. government and much of the media failing to push back, Netanyahu finally has a window of opportunity — albeit one that is shrinking — to push the U.S. to war with Iran and it appears that he, along with his allies in the Trump administration, plans on taking it.
As Part II of this series will show, Israel’s government and Bush-era neo-conservatives have a track record of enacting and planning “false flag” attacks to embroil the U.S. in foreign wars and that playbook would include provoking the U.S. into a war with Iran.

By Whitney Webb, Mint Press News
Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.

May 16, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Bolton’s Plans For A False Flag Op Involving MEK Are Already Underway

The United Arab Emirate’s foreign ministry did not issue details about an attack on four commercial vessels near its territorial waters on 12th May except to describe it as “sabotage operations”. However, with heightened tensions in the Persian Gulf Iran did not wait for allegations of Iranian involvement to take flight in western media and was quick to suggest that an international investigation should be launched.

Tensions increased when the scheduled return of the USS Abraham Lincoln to the Middle East on April 2nd was hyped by John Bolton as a “clear and unmistakable message” to Iran that the USA is ready for confrontation. The significance of Bolton’s wording has not been lost when he said the US would counter any attack [by Iran] with “unrelenting force”. Reporters and analysts were quick to contextualise Bolton’s rant against Iran in the demands of Israeli PM Netanyahu. In this respect, the fears of a false flag op which would be blamed on Iran are clear and present. But concerned observers do not appear to recognise 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.

Why Albania matters

Albania 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. One of those ways is to create false flag ops which can be blamed on Iran as a means to provoke a military response. One such event took place in Iraq when it was reported last year, falsely it turned out, that Iran had launched missiles against the US embassy in Baghdad.

In Europe, several unresolved incidents have been blamed on Iran. This author has warned that these are false flag ops meant to destabilise relations between Iran and the EU as well as to provoke Iranian reaction. This activity has now shifted to the Middle East.

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.

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.

Albanians aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln

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.

Their unique value is that as Iranians they can be passed off as Iranian naval personnel. This ties in with the attempted purchase of speed boats which are used by the Iranian naval forces. The attack on commercial vessels in the gulf for which no details are forthcoming hint that this was a trial run to see what Iran’s reaction would be. In this context, a false flag op that could trigger Bolton’s war in the Middle East is almost certainly already planned and underway.

May 14, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

MEK the most hated in Iran’s history

When I was young, I remember how much the communist ‘Tudeh’ party was hated by Iranians. Not just because they were communist and did not believe in Islam, but mostly because they did not care for Iran’s national interests. They were so-called Internationalists and believed all socialist revolutions must be led by the former Soviet Union.

Since I left the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK, MKO, Rajavi terrorist cult) and came back to Iran in 2003, I have realized that this cult is now much more hated by Iranians than the Tudeh Party, and these Iranians include every opposition to the Islamic Republic inside and outside the country. The MEK assassinated thousands of innocent people, they cooperated with the attacking enemy Saddam Hussein against the defenders of the borders, and far more than the Tudeh Party do not believe in Iran’s national security and interests.

Recently, in an interview with the American Fox News, the Iranian reformist foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif described a ‘B-Team’ pushing the US towards “disaster” by clashing with Iran, and the MEK typically is trying by every possible means to jump on this bandwagon with the hope of gaining something for its cultic goals.
But a loser is always a loser. No matter what the future of Iran might be, the MEK certainly will have no place in Iran’s political and social scene since the cult is the most hated in Iran’s history.

May 14, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

France holds MEK Mujahedin-e Khalq terrorists

“There Is No Room for Wishful Thinking in International Relations” – Prof
Alexander Azadgan,

On Wednesday, Iran announced its decision to partially discontinue its 2015 nuclear commitments a year after the US unilaterally left the accord. Tehran also threatened to enrich its uranium stockpile closer to weapons-grade levels in 60 days if world powers fail to negotiate new terms for the JCPOA.
Sputnik has discussed the latest developments of the JCPOA with Alexander Azadgan, professor of international policitical economy, a senior geopolitical analyst and Editor-at-Large with UWI (United World International).
Sputnik: Iranian state TV announced on Wednesday that the Islamic Republic would be suspending several commitments within the nuclear deal, adding that Iran is not exiting the agreement. What does this mean for the deal?
Alexander Azadgan: The deal for all means and purposes was really finished and over and done with when Mr. Trump reneged and got the United States out of it. What was left was a hodgepodge of European nations, [faithful] states to Washington. And of course, you have China and Russia on the other hand. Let’s go back and just briefly look at the sacrifices that Iran made in this deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. In July of 2015, Iran had almost 20,000 centrifuges. Under this JCPOA it was limited to 5,060. And this 5,060 are old and outdated centrifuges. Iran’s uranium stockpile was reduced by 98 percent, 300 kilograms only, from 10 tonnes or 10,000 kilograms. And according to the JCPOA, this figure cannot be exceeded; the 300 kilograms cannot be exceeded until 2031. It must also keep the stockpile’s level of enrichment at only 3.67 percent, low enrichment uranium which has a 3 to 4 percent concentration of Uranium-235. And that cannot be used to fuel the nuclear power plants; the weapons-grade uranium is 90 percent enriched. So basically they are telling the Iranians that you cannot even power your nuclear power plant in Bushehr, which was built by the Russians for Iran.
During this entire time, the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano has time after time verified and confirmed to the global community, the international community that Iran abided by all its commitments, in 13 consecutive reports, as a matter of fact. And the IAEA is the only legitimate body for nuclear regulations and inspections, not the US, not Germany, not France, and certainly not the UK.
Sputnik: So, let me get back to the European countries for a while. In your opinion, what agreements would satisfy Iran and prevent a further escalation of the situation?
Alexander Azadgan: After Rouhani got into power, he went to Italy and he went to France. He signed tens of billions dollars of lucrative contracts with the French; they have reneged from all of them. The (deal with) Renault, a strong car company, they reneged out of that. Total, the huge French oil company, reneged out of developing the Iranians’ South Pars natural gas field. They have reneged from everything. So JCPOA has been nothing but just a name, there is no substance to it. And the Europeans are just buying time. They couldn’t even implement their so-called Special [Purpose] Vehicle to bypass Washington’s draconian financial sanctions. They haven’t done a thing, and this was one of the easiest forecasts that my colleagues and I did. The Europeans always, their ships always, cast to the same direction as Washington. Nothing is going to disrupt the transatlantic alliance unless Germany shows more interest in [taking steps] closer to Russia. And we are already seeing that development happen.
Sputnik: You have already mentioned that about France. France has said that there is nothing worse than Iran’s exit from the deal and that the EU wants to keep the deal alive. What steps can we expect from Europe?
Alexander Azadgan: Nothing. We can expect nothing from Europe. And if anything, Europe is going to escalate their rhetoric as France has done during the past couple of days with Iran.

Let’s be frank here, France holds one of the worst terrorist groups in modern times. They are called MKO or MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization). They are based in Paris; they are an anti-Iran terrorist group who have been known to kill American citizens in the 1960s and 1970s in Iran. France has hosted them and to me, it is appalling that Iran is not raising this question during their negotiations.

One of the things that are very suspicious to the Iranian people at least in the wording of the JCPOA — some phrases –they call it the ‘spirit’ of the JCPOA. I think many of us believe that when they refer to the ‘spirit’ of the JCPOA, they are referring to Iran basically ending its revolution as it is: Iran no longer defending the Palestinian people; Iran no longer playing a real leadership role as it has been playing in defeating the terrorist in Iraq and in Syria. For all means and purposes, just sit back and join the trend of globalisation and become another client state for Washington in the region.
Washington is engaging in economic terrorism and it has taken a toll on the Iranians. And you know, that is how they are trying to foment regime change in Iran. There may not be a war, we are not forecasting a war, but they are going to economically crumble Iran and they are going to expect that. When that happens, the Iranian people will rise and have a regime change, very much similar to what is happening in Venezuela right now.
This is why the Venezuelan case is absolutely crucial. They just pick somebody to become the next president; Washington picks somebody to be the next president. They’ve actually declared him the president. If this precedent is set, the entire world, the entire non-aligned movement world is going to be in danger, because they are going to do the same thing in Iran. They are going to pick some lackey over there, some liberal lackey, they are going to announce: “He is the president”. And they are going to try to foment in Iran, as they did in 2009.
Sputnik: Is it possible to influence the USA to restart the negotiations?
Alexander Azadgan: It depends on who gets into power. The Democrats have openly said if they are back in power in 2020, they would want to rejoin the JCPOA. But I don’t think that the Iranian people and the Iranian militia would ever trust Washington again. How could you have international treaties, how could you be part of a multilateral treaty and then another administration comes in and within a few days does away with 20 years of negotiations between Iran and P5+1, right? And Mr. Obama was on record that “if Iran reneges, we know exactly where the crucial sites are so we can bomb them.” Mr. Kerry and Mr. Obama are on record, we can watch these videos on YouTube.
So there was never good faith. And restart what? How can Iran ever trust anybody? Iran is looking around, Iran saw how Trump was wooing the Korean leader. And we saw what happened with that. I mean it is absolutely ridiculous. There is no credibility left in Washington. International law, a big chunk of international law, and international relations per se rely on credibility, on trustability. Washington doesn’t have any of that left. And it is not just the JCPOA they are coming out of. They came out of the Paris Climate Accord and all sorts of other treaties that this man is trying to bring us out of.
Sputnik: What reaction can we expect from the US if the deal between the European countries and Iran is successful?
Alexander Azadgan: The second part of this question, “if the deal between the European countries and Iran is successful”, it is not, it hasn’t been. The UK’s political attitude, populism, is bringing it closer to Washington, which is 3,000 miles away instead of Europe, which is 30 miles away. In France, you have someone – you see what is going on in France with the trend of Mr. Emmanuel Macron. He has that Napoleonic tendency and arrogance. We have known for a long time about Israel’s tremendous influence within French politics. We look at Germany as a neutral power in this case, but they are going to stick with the European Union foreign policy apparatus. Mrs. Mogherini has been constructive in her rhetoric but nothing has come as a result of that rhetoric: nothing but cheap words, no abiding by contracts.
[Many are thinking] that Mr. Trump is surrounded by lunatics. But I think that another mistake, a miscalculation of the liberals in Iran is thinking they can drive a wedge between Mr. Trump and his closest advisors around him. This is another miscalculation that the liberals in Iran are making. Mr Trump cannot do anything right now. It is my personal belief that the neocon (associates) of Mr. Trump are blackmailing him in every which way. If he doesn’t go with war-expanding policies around the world, they are going to reveal even more information about him. And we all know Mr. Trump has quite a lot of skeletons in his closet, many of them of his own making. So he is stuck in this position.
I don’t think he can act independently in this situation. Well, I think the Iranian liberals that are still in power for the next two years I think are miscalculating once again, thinking they can separate Mr. Trump and they can influence the US to restart a negotiation. I don’t think that’s a possibility, I think it’s wishful thinking. And in international relations, there is no room for wishful thinking.

Sputnik International,
*The views and opinion expressed by the speaker do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.

May 13, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Spain’s Far-right Vox Received Almost $1M from ‘Marxist-Islamist’ Iranian Exiles: Report

It is unlikely that Vox’s hyper-nationalist voters know that their party scored a significant presence in Spain’s parliament mostly thanks to Zionists, Islamists and foreigners.
With the April 28 general elections in Spain over, the far-right party Vox gained about 10 percent of parliamentary seats, marking the far-right’s rising comeback into politics four decades after Francisco Franco’s dictatorship. While a less alarmist reading would say that the far-right was always there, hidden in the conservative People’s Party (PP), the fact that they are out in the open strengthens Europe’s wave of far-right xenophobic and anti-European advance.
The party appealed to voters in one of Spain’s most contested elections since its return to democracy, mostly basing its arguments against leftists politics, social liberals, migrants, charged mainly with an Islamophobic narrative. Emphasizing the return of a long lost Spain and pushing to fight what they refer to as an “Islamist invasion,” which is the “enemy of Europe.” One could summarize it as an Iberian version of “Make Spain Great Again.”
Yet while this definitely appealed to almost two million voters, many are unaware of where their party’s initial funding came from. Back in January 2019, an investigation made by the newspaper El Pais revealed, through leaked documents, that almost one million euros – approximately 80 percent of its 2014 campaign funding – donated to Vox between its founding in December 2013 and the European Parliament elections in May 2014 came via the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a self-declared “Marxist” organization and an Islamist group made up of Iranian exiles.
However, this is where things get complicated. The NCRI is based in France and was founded in 1981 by Massoud Rajavi and Abolhassan Banisadr, nowadays its president-elect is Maryam Rajavi (Massoud’s wife). The Rajavis are also the leaders of the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK). A reason for many to believe that the NCRI is just a front for the MEK, which over the past few decades has managed to create a complicated web of anti-Iranian, pro-Israel and right-wing government support from all over the world.
To understand MEK, it’s necessary to review the 1953 U.S. and British-backed coup which ousted democratically elected prime minister of Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh and instituted a monarchical dictatorship led by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
The oppression carried out by the Pahlavi royal family led to the creation of many radical groups, one which was MEK, whose ideology combined Marxism and Islamism. Its original anti-west, especially anti-U.S. sentiment pushed for the killing of six U.S citizens in Iran in the 1970s. While in 1979, they enthusiastically cheered the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. After the Iranian Revolution, its young leaders, including Rajavi, pushed for endorsement from the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, but were denied.
So Rajavi, allied with the winner of the country’s first presidential election, Abolhassan Banisadr, who was not an ally of Khomeini, either. Soon Banisadr and MEK became some of Khomeini’s main opposition figures and had fled to Iraq and later to France.

In the neighboring country, MEK allied with Sadam Hussein to rage war against Iran. In a RAND report, allegations of the group’s complicity with Saddam are corroborated by press reports that quote Maryam Rajavi encouraging MEK members to “take the Kurds under your tanks, and save your bullets for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.”

The organization was deemed a terrorist organization by the U.S. and European Union for the better part of the 1990s, but things changed after the U.S. invasion to Iraq in 2003. This is when the U.S. neoconservative strategist leading the Department of State and the intelligence agencies saw MEK as an asset rather than a liability. Put simply in words they applied the dictum of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

The U.S.’s dismissal of past crimes reinvigorated MEK’s intense lobbying campaign to have itself removed from terrorist lists in the U.S. and the European Union. MEK, which by the beginning of the 21 century had morphed into a cult-like group according to many testimonies from dissidents, moved from Camp Ashraf to the U.S-created Camp Liberty outside of Baghdad. And that’s when things rapidly changed.

According to the Guardian, between 2007 and 2012, a number of Iranian nuclear scientists were attacked. In 2012, NBC News, citing two unnamed U.S. officials, reported that the attacks were planned by Israel’s Mossad and executed by MEK operatives inside Iran. By 2009 and 2012, the EU and the U.S. respectively took it out of its terrorist organizations list.
Soon after it gained support from U.S. politicians like Rudy Giuliani and current National Security Advisor John Bolton, who now call MEK a legitimate opposition to the current Iranian government. As the U.S. neocon forefathers did before, MEK shed its “Marxism.” After the U.S.’s official withdrawal from Iraq, they built MEK a safe have in Albania, near Tirana, where the trail of money can be followed once again.

Hassan Heyrani, a former member of MEK’s political department who defected in 2018, and handled parts of the organization’s finances in Iraq, when asked by Foreign Policy where he thought the money for MEK came from, he answered: “Saudi Arabia. Without a doubt.” For another former MEK member, Saadalah Saafi, the organization’s money definitely comes from wealthy Arab states that oppose Iran’s government.

“Mojahedin [MEK] are the tool, not the funders. They aren’t that big. They facilitate,” Massoud Khodabandeh, who once served in the MEK’s security department told Foreign Policy. “You look at it and say, ‘Oh, Mojahedin are funding [Vox].’ No, they are not. The ones that are funding that party are funding Mojahedin as well.”
Meanwhile, Danny Yatom, the former head of the Mossad, told the Jersulamen Post that Israel can implement some of its anti-Iran plans through MEK if a war were to break out. 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.
With Israel and Saudi Arabia backing MEK, the question of why a far-right movement would take money from an Islamist organization clears up a bit. Israel’s support of European far-right parties has been public. In 2010, a sizeable delegation arrived in Tel Aviv, consisting of some 30 leaders of the European Alliance for Freedom, gathering leaders such as Geert Wilders of the Netherlands, Philip Dewinter from Belgium and Jorg Haider’s successor, Heinz-Christian Strache, from Austria.
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. It is unlikely that Vox’s hyper-nationalist voters know that their party scored a significant presence in Spain’s parliament mostly thanks to Zionists, Islamists and foreigners.
Telesurenglish.net

May 12, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

John Bolton has his own proxy force in MEK

Trump Is Getting Dangerously Close to War With Iran

The administration has drawn a dubious red line that could be easily crossed.
The United States is hurtling toward a conflict with Iran, and it’s not clear that President Donald Trump has an exit strategy.
In the year since he dumped the Obama administration’s prized nuclear agreement, Trump has pursued a policy of “maximum pressure” toward Iran with a series of increasingly bellicose moves. Last month, he designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite military group with vast economic influence in the region, a foreign terrorist organization. Weeks later, he bannedthe purchase of Iranian oil, in a blow to eight countries—including allies like Japan and South Korea—that had previously relied on US waivers to accept it.
Those actions were just a prelude to this week, during which Trump sanctioned another key Iranian export, industrial metals, and deployed an aircraft carrier to the Middle East two weeks earlier than planned in response to intelligence that Iran was targeting US troops in Syria and Iraq. “The United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime,” national security adviser John Bolton said in a statement announcing the move, “but we are fully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or regular Iranian forces.”
The statement hinted at “a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings” from Tehran, but the nature of this intelligence remains unclear. The Daily Beast reported Tuesday that “the administration blew it out of proportion, characterizing the threat as more significant than it actually was.” Israel, purportedly the source of the intelligence, acknowledged as much to Axios. “It is still unclear to us what the Iranians are trying to do and how they are planning to do it,” an Israeli official told the outlet.
More concerning is the role played in all of this by Bolton, who earned a reputation in the George W. Bush administration for exaggerating global threats by cherry-picking intelligence. Interagency meetings, which used to be a regular feature of the National Security Council, have all but disappeared during his tenure. The lack of a permanent secretary of defense—and the presence of an acting one with zero foreign policy experience—have increased the influence of Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, both of whom have expressed strong anti-Iran sentiments. (On Thursday, Trump announced his intention to nominate Patrick Shanahan, the acting Defense secretary, for the permanent job.)

Bolton once argued for a preemptive military strike to wipe out Iran’s nuclear program and received $40,000 in 2016 to speak before the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a radical anti-regime organization formerly designated as a terrorist group by the United States. “The regime in Tehran needs to be overthrown at the earliest opportunity!” he told attendees at one MEK event, according to The New Yorker. Pompeo considers Iran “the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism” and has made the questionable claim that the regime, which espouses a brutal form of Shiite Islam, has ties to al-Qaeda, the Sunni terrorist group that despises Iran.

Pompeo and Bolton see Iran’s fingerprints everywhere. That’s why the red line laid out in Bolton’s statement is so frightening to national security experts familiar with these men’s views. “The fact that those actions take place, if they do, by some third-party proxy, whether that’s a Shia militia group or the Houthis or Hezbollah, we will hold the Iranians—Iranian leadership—directly accountable for that,” Pompeo told reporters while traveling to Finland this week. The groups he identified often come into conflict with Saudi Arabia and Israel, the United States’ two strongest allies in the region. Whether their encounters qualify as a proxy attack on American interests is for presumably Trump and his advisers to decide.
“We’re closer to war with Iran now than we’ve been at any time since the summer of 2010,” says Joe Cirincione, the president of the Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation. “Any spark in the region could set off this fire.”
On Wednesday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced the country’s partial withdrawal from the nuclear deal unless its signatories arrived at a new compromise within 60 days. The move left Europe in an awkward position, stuck between letting the 2015 agreement collapse and incurring the wrath of Trump’s sanctions.
“I don’t think that the pressure is designed to bring the US to the negotiating table,” says Emma Ashford, who studies the Middle East and international security at the libertarian Cato Institute. “It’s designed to work around the US in a situation where the Iranian leadership doesn’t perceive any ability of working with the US.”
If Trump’s evolution on North Korea is any clue, he is not averse to abandoning “fire and fury” in pursuit of a breakthrough with a hostile regime. Once dictator Kim Jong Un agreed to meet with him last year in Singapore, Trump went from mocking him as “Little Rocket Man” to praising him as “very talented.” He’s laid the groundwork for a similar about-face with Rouhani. After threatening his Iranian counterpart with consequences “THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE” on Twitter, Trump invited him to meet eight times—Rouhani says he rejected every invitation—and called him, in another tweet, “an absolutely lovely man.”
The flexibility Trump so prizes in his negotiating style was missing in Hanoi, when the second Kim-Trump confab failed after the United States refused to grant partial sanctions relief in return for incremental action from North Korea. It would presumably be missing in any conversation with Iran, too. The moderate, incremental option went out the window when Trump abandoned the 2015 nuclear deal. The foundation of Trump’s rejection of that deal was the belief it didn’t go far enough.
Brian Hook, the US special representative to Iran, hinted at the Americans’ intransigent position during his remarks on Wednesday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a defense think tank in Washington, DC. He wouldn’t say whether there were any preconditions to talks with Tehran, but hanging over any future negotiation would inevitably be the 12 requirements Pompeo outlined last year as a framework for another American deal with Iran. No reasonable observer expects Iran to accede to all these demands, but Hook left no moderate options on the table. “We don’t want to give Iran veto power over our national security,” he said.
That’s a noble goal, but any deal is incumbent on Iranian involvement, and it’s not clear how Iran could expect its American interlocutors to be negotiating in good faith. “They want Iran to be like Japan at the end of World War II,” Cirincione says. “It’s the codification of regime change.” Pompeo privately denies this. In a closed-door meeting last month with Iranian-American leaders, he reportedly said the United States is “not going to do a military exercise inside Iran” to spur regime change, according to Axios. Bolton has struck a far harsher tone. In February, he filmed a menacing video on Twitter to mark the 40th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution. “For all your boasts, for all your threats to the life of the American president, you are responsible for terrorizing your own people,” he told Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. “I don’t think you’ll have many more anniversaries to enjoy.”

Dan Spinelli, Mother Jones,

May 11, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

US acted on vague Mossad tip-off when it sent strike group to Middle East – report

Mossad MEK Iran tip-off not trustworthy
A US aircraft carrier group and bomber task force were deployed to the Middle East after a tip-off on a “credible threat” from Iran, which came, conveniently vague and timely, from Israeli spy agency Mossad, it has been reported.

At an April 15 meeting in Washington, Israeli National Security Council chief Meir Ben-Shabbat passed along a warning to US National Security Advisor John Bolton, senior Israeli officials told Axios. The information Bolton received was left vague: the attack could hit a US target in the Persian Gulf, or maybe Saudi Arabia, or maybe the UAE.

“It is still unclear to us what the Iranians are trying to do and how they are planning to do it,” one of the senior officials said, but added it was “clear” that an unspecified event would take place sometime in the future, which would have unstated consequences.

The Axios report was corroborated by a separate report from Israel’s channel 13 journalist Barak Ravid, who claimed that Israel had handed over information to the US about an alleged Iranian plot to target US interests in the Gulf.

However elusive the bait, Washington eagerly dashed to bite, deploying the USS ‘Abraham Lincoln’ carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the Middle East, in a maneuver that just happens to play right into Israel’s hands.

Under the Trump administration, the US has been parroting Israel’s hardline policies towards Iran, the Jewish state’s regional archrival, first withdrawing from the landmark 2015 nuclear deal and then hitting Tehran with fresh rounds of sanctions. Last month, Washington went as far as to formally designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a “terrorist organization.” Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu laid bare his relationship with US President Donald Trump, saying the terrorist listing was done at Netanyahu’s “request.”

Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan did not specify from where he received the valuable intelligence, tweeting only that the deployment of the strike group “represents a prudent repositioning of assets in response to indications of a credible threat by Iranian regime forces.”

The Mossad doesn’t have the most trustworthy record when it comes to intelligence on Iran. It was likely the Mossad who, in 2004, passed fabricated documents to Iranian opposition group the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) which falsely portrayed Iran’s civilian nuclear energy program.

May 8, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Trump doesn’t want a war with Iran — but he might get one anyway

Today’s political climate in the United States is different from the pre-Iraq war era — but the ambitions of some of the people in Congress are the same

The chances of war between Iran and the United States have just increased again. A small mistake from either side could now lead to dangerous results — and easily escalate into a disaster for both sides, as well as the entire Middle East.
US National Security Advisor John Bolton announced that the US is deploying the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force to the Middle East in response to”troubling and escalatory indications and warnings”from Iran yesterday.
It is no secret that Bolton wants a war with Iran aimed at changing the country’s government. In March 2015, at the height of nuclear negotiations between Iran and the Obama administration, Bolton wrote an op-ed titled “To stop Iran’s bomb, bomb Iran” in the New York Times, where he suggested the United States or Israel should attack Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. He also added that military attacks should be combined with “vigorous American support for Iran’s opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran.”

Similarly, in 2017, at the gathering of Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen-e Khalq or MEK, Bolton said the policy of the United States should be “the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime in Tehran.”

John Bolton was one of the main architects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq by George W Bush. And today he seems to be playing a similar tune about Iran.
However, President Trump does not want another war in the Middle East. He constantly criticized his Republican and Democratic predecessors for waging costly conflicts in the region, and ran an election campaign on the promise of ending those wars and avoiding new ones.
Trump does not seem to have an obsession with regime change in Iran, either. What he really wanted was to tear up the Obama-era nuclear deal and negotiate a “better” deal (or perhaps just a new deal with his name on it, as some critics have suggested). But the current foreign policy team that surrounds the president may well push the president toward war anyway.
White House national security adviser John Bolton: ‘Iran is a rogue regime. It has been a threat throughout the Middle East.’
It is important to note that today’s political climate in the United States is different from the pre-Iraq war era. The Iraq war happened in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, when the American public was outraged and ready to take out all enemies. It was not hard to sell a war, even one partially built on misinformation about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.
That has all changed over the past decade. Today, Americans are tired of years of wars in the region, with thousands of casualties and billions of their tax dollars spent. Although hawks still hold some positions of power in the US administration and in Congress, their long-time war agendas do not hold much support. Media organizations and journalists have also learned a lesson from the Iraq war: that not all information and intelligence from the administration can be taken at face value, and should be treated with caution.
Another difference today is that Europe would be unlikely to follow the US Into a war. An important reason for that is the existence of the Iran nuclear deal. Although the United States has unilaterally exited the deal, Iran and America’s European allies have stuck to the deal until today and the agreement has survived. The deal provides a mechanism for systemic diplomacy and regular contacts between Iran and European powers, and makes it difficult for the United States to get Europe on board with a military attack on Iran. This is, of course, unless something extraordinary happens in the region or in Europe that changes attitudes. German MP Stefan Liebich told me today that he isn’t supportive of American “threats” towards Iran and that “we have asked our government to reject any possible requirement of the German Armed Forces as a part of this adventure.”
It is clear that even John Bolton knows that it is not easy to sell a full-on war with Iran to the American public today. But it’s also clear that he would be quick to strike in the case of any “accident” which occurs, thus plunging the US into conflict with its Middle Eastern counterpart — a conflict that would be much worse than the Iraq war and a disaster for both the Iranian and the American people.
The people of Iran are extremely dissatisfied with the leadership of their country. The economy is on a constant downfall, Iran’s regional adventures in the Middle East have isolated the country from the West, and now saber-rattling with Washington has increased the threat of war. But despite all their grievances with their government, the Iranian people are also afraid of conflict and don’t want their country to end up like their war-torn neighbors Iraq and Afghanistan, much less to see civil wars like the ones in Syria or Libya. American hawks should bear the interests of everyday Iranians in mind as they attempt to further their agendas.

Negar Mortazavi ,New York, independent.co.uk

May 8, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

MEK Iran and John Bolton regime change Noises

In an unusual statement for a national security adviser to make, John Bolton announced on Sunday night that an aircraft carrier strike group is being deployed as a warning to Iran:

In response to a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings, the United States is deploying the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force to the U.S. Central Command region to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force. The United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime, but we are fully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or regular Iranian forces.

This all sounds pretty alarming, but a couple of facts are worth keeping in mind. First, the White House probably did not actually decide to do this over the weekend. The Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group had already left in early April on what the Navy press release called a “regularly scheduled deployment.” As Rand Corp. analyst Becca Wasser tweets, “chances are this deployment has been long-planned. [White House] message is piggybacking on planned ops to make a point.” (Hopefully the ships are at least headed in the right direction this time.)

Second, it’s not clear what “troubling and escalatory indications” Bolton is referring to. According to the New York Times, citing an American military official, “as of late Friday, military analysts were not tracking any new, imminent or clearly defined Iranian or Iranian-backed threats against Americans in Iraq or the region.”

Update, May 6, 2019: U.S. Officials are now saying, according to CNN, that the move was ordered in response to “serious and credible” intelligence suggesting a threat to U.S. forces in Syria, Iraq, and at sea from Iranian forces and proxies.

So, there’s no sign that anything actually “happened” over the weekend. Iran didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, that we know of, and neither did the United States. But the escalating rhetoric could still be worrisome.

Bolton’s latest rhetorical volley follows a series of moves by the Trump administration to dial up the pressure on Tehran, including designating the regime’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization and ending sanctions waivers for countries importing Iranian oil.

Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, warned of unspecified “consequences” in response.

Iranian officials have suggested several times in recent weeks that they could retaliate by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial waterway through which 20 percent of the world’s oil flows, a move that would cause an immediate spike in global oil prices and significantly raise the risk of armed conflict. Iran has threatened to do this several times over the years and has never followed through, but the latest signals from Tehran may have been what prompted Bolton’s missive.

There have also been reports that Iran could announce later this week that it is withdrawing from at least some of its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal. This week will mark one year since the U.S. withdrew from the deal.

Bolton, who has given paid speeches to the controversial Iranian opposition group M.E.K., has long advocated regime change in Iran. As Dexter Filkins’ recent New Yorker profile of the national security adviser explained, President Donald Trump, a skeptic about military intervention, may be less enthusiastic about that strategy. (As one source told Filkins, “Bolton’s worst nightmare is that Khamenei will write Trump a letter saying, ‘Why don’t we get together and talk?’ Because he knows that Trump would jump at that opportunity.”)

Iran’s Zarif surmised this in a recent interview, describing Bolton, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed as the “B team” who were looking to provoke Iran into doing something that could provide a pretext for military action, as opposed to Trump, who wanted to pressure Iran into negotiation.

While Trump has often seemed less preoccupied with Iran than some of his advisers have, he clearly sees a hard line as politically advantageous and has been letting Bolton—as well as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo—set the aggressive tone. We may see the consequences very soon.

Joshua Keating, The Slate

May 8, 2019 0 comments

Missions of Nejat Society Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Iranian MEK pay John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani; NBC’s Engel

NBC’s Engel Accuses U.S. of Trying to ‘Provoke’ War With Iran

Appearing on MSNBC Monday morning, NBC’s chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel repeatedly accused the Trump administration of trying to “provoke” Iran into some sort of conflict by sending an aircraft carrier group to the region. He and anchors for the liberal cable channel portrayed the U.S. as a bully getting in Iran’s face.
During the 9:00 a.m. ET hour, Engel told host Stephanie Ruhle: “Well, if you look at the political chess board, right? I think what you’re seeing here with this aircraft carrier is just one piece, and it’s quite a troubling picture when you look at it as a whole.” Ruhle urged him on: “Paint it.” Engel continued: “It seems like this administration is trying to paint Iran into a corner, maybe even provoke some sort of conflict with Iran.”
The reporter argued that the U.S. ship deployment was “a very provocative action” and “very threatening” to Iran. Ruhle interjected: “Isn’t that like me going one inch away from your face going, ‘Hit me. Come on, hit me’?” Engel agreed with her school-yard characterization: “More or less, yes.” He reiterated her comments: “…it’s putting your face one inch from Iran and saying, ‘I’m doing this so that if don’t hit me – or if you hit me, I can hit you right back.’”
Referring to increased U.S. economic sanctions against Iran, Engel worried: “You’ve just taken Iran’s ability to earn a living, support itself, by tightening these sanctions.”
Wrapping up the discussion, Ruhle fretted: “On a one to ten scale, you being someone who has covered the Middle East for years, how concerned are you about the recent actions from our administration towards Iran, in terms of creating real conflict?” Engel replied by suggesting Trump would start a war for political benefit ahead of the 2020 election:
I think probably about a five at this stage. There’s a lot of time between now and the next elections, so just under two years we’re looking at. That’s enough time. That’s enough time to find some sort of provocation, go onto a conflict footing, which may have an impact on the political conversation in this country….it’s a troubling picture. I’d put it at a five, but we’ll see.
Appearing again in the 11:00 a.m. ET hour, Engel warned: “So then why is this aircraft group going there? Is it to deal with a specific threat?…Or is it for some other reason? Potentially to provoke Iran.” Fill-in host Yasmin Vossoughian eagerly seized on his comments: “Let’s go with that, let’s go with what you just brought up….this idea that this could be a provocation to provoke Iran, to have Iran walk in – sort of walk into a conflict.”
Engel began noting that Iranians were already seeing it that way, prompting Vossoughian to jump in: “That’s how they’re spinning it.” Engel objected to the term “spinning”: “They are perceiving it, I don’t know if they’re spinning it.” He then proclaimed:
…they think this is a trap that is being set for them. And they are not taking the bait….what they think is happening is that the United States is trying to pick some sort of fight, and is doing a provocative action, floating this flotilla right near Iran with the hopes, according to the Iranian interpretation, that it will incense them and start some kind of shooting conflict.
When the U.S. takes action against one of its enemies, and the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, the media still find a way to make Iran look like the victim.

Here is a full transcript of the May 6 exchange with Ruhle:

9:12 AM ET
STEPHANIE RUHLE: Now we need to head overseas. The U.S. sending an aircraft carrier, warships, and fighter jets to the Middle East as a, quote, “unmistakable message to Iran’s regime.” But so far the White House is not saying exactly what prompted the move. Here’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo talking about it overnight on a flight to Finland.
MIKE POMPEO: It’s something we’ve been working on for a little while. It is absolutely the case that we’ve seen escalatory actions from the Iranians and it is equally the case we will hold the Iranians accountable for attacks on American interests.
RUHLE: Richard Engel, NBC’s chief foreign correspondent, my lucky day, joins me here in New York. Richard, I’m so glad you’re here because this means a lot. What exactly is the White House doing?
RICHARD ENGEL: Well, if you look at the political chess board, right? I think what you’re seeing here with this aircraft carrier is just one piece, and it’s quite a troubling picture when you look at it as a whole.
RUHLE: Paint it.
ENGEL: It seems like this administration is trying to paint Iran into a corner, maybe even provoke some sort of conflict with Iran. So take it one piece at a time. So you’re seeing this aircraft carrier floating near Iran. That’s a very provocative action. If you’re in Iran, that’s a very threatening thing. Then, why –
RUHLE: Isn’t that like me going one inch away from your face going, “Hit me. Come on, hit me”?
ENGEL: More or less, yes. And then, the reason the White House is saying it, and anonymous defense officials, is that they say this is to prevent Iran from carrying out an attack. So to go back to your analogy, it’s putting your face one inch from Iran and saying, “I’m doing this so that if don’t hit me – or if you hit me, I can hit you right back.”
Then look at another piece on the chess board. The U.S. just increased sanctions on Iran, tightened sanctions on Iran, denying Iran to really sell its oil around the world, threatening Turkey, India, China with sanctions if they do any business with Iran. So you’re floating this aircraft carrier in front with the threat that, “Should anything happen to American interests in the region, we’re gonna whack you.” You’ve just taken Iran’s ability to earn a living, support itself, by tightening these sanctions. Even though the rest of the world says that Iran is complying with the old nuclear deal.
Then another chess piece. Look at the timing. This come right after the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu got reelected by the skin of his teeth. And the Saudis would like this and the Saudis are very close to the Trump administration. Bolton is an Iran hawk, who was giving speeches for the MEK –
RUHLE: Okay, stay on this for a moment. Help me understand John Bolton as he relates to Iran.
ENGEL: So there are several Iran hawks, people in this administration who have for years been speaking about, been advocating for a hard line against Iran, if not direct violence against Iran and regime change in Iran. Rudy Giuliani has been one of them. John Bolton has been another. And they have spoken at gatherings sponsored by the MEK. The MEK used to be a terrorist organization, it was taken off the terrorist list. Iran certainly considers it a terrorist organization. And you go to these speeches, generally the MEK gives you money to appear at these speeches, and you talk about regime change in Iran. And Bolton and Rudy Giuliani have both been deeply tied into the MEK, and both have said that they don’t – have not disclosed how much they’ve ever taken in financial remunerations from the group.
RUHLE: On a one to ten scale, you being someone who has covered the Middle East for years, how concerned are you about the recent actions from our administration towards Iran, in terms of creating real conflict?
ENGEL: I think probably about a five at this stage. There’s a lot of time between now and the next elections, so just under two years we’re looking at. That’s enough time. That’s enough time to find some sort of provocation, go onto a conflict footing, which may have an impact on the political conversation in this country. But if you look at this administration, which is so close to President Trump personally, so close to Israel, so close to Saudi Arabia, Bolton and others in the inner circle, this warship going there, tightening sanctions on Iran even though the rest of the region – the rest of the world said Iran didn’t do it, it’s a troubling picture. I’d put it at a five, but we’ll see.
RUHLE: Putting it at a five, a troubling picture. Again, we’re so fortunate that the expert is here, Richard Engel.

Newsbusters.org

May 8, 2019 0 comments

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