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The cult of Rajavi

How Terrorist Cults recruit their members, Part 1

We have had a report by an ex terrorist member of a dangerous Cult group, based in Iraq, which has been able to escape from the clenches of the Terrorists and disclosed some the tactics used by them to recruit young people.

The Terrorist Cult group is called Mujahidin-e Khalq Iran known also as MEK or PMOI. This Terrorist Cult organization is led by Masoud Rajavi which has gone to hiding since US led coalition forces occupied Iraq in 2003. MEK was financed, armed and supported by Saddam Hossein the Iraqi dictator. MEK’s terrorism was mainly targeted aims inside Iran and helped Saddam Hossein to suppress the Kurdish rebellion during the first Gulf war.

Mr. Yaser Ezati, now lives in Cologne Germany. He disclosed that his father took him and his mother to the MEK Cult when he was 5 years old.

“My father used to beat me and my mother, since my mother did not share my father’s line of thinking but she was forced to stay with the Cult until she was killed in the Cults suicidal attack to Iran from Iraq where 1400 cult members were killed.  “

Eight years old Yaser having lost his mother, lost his complete support and was sent to Europe to be brought up by some Cults members and supporters, which had very difficult time and reportedly was beaten up by the families.

A few years later to wash Yaser’s mind to convince him to go to Iraq and Join the Terrorism, MEK Forged a hand writing claiming his mother’s last will, demanding Yaser to take up arms and fight in Iraq.

With this mentality Yaser was taken to Auvers Sur Oise north of Paris the Headquarters of MEK, to meet to be briefed by Maryam Rajavi the Cult Co-Leader to go back to Iraq as Yaser’s mother demanded in her will. Yaser was sent to Iraq when he was 17.

In Iraq, Yaser soon found out that he has been deceived, especially that he witnessed the child abuse inside the Cult and demanded to leave MEK.

“My father used to beat me to death every time I demanded to leave MEK”, Yaser reported.” I told my father that I do not believe in Masoud Rajavi who claims to be Caliphe of the Muslim world. My father told me he will burn me to death if I decide to leave, and I responded, you can do anything you wish, as you do to other members of the Cult when they demand to leave the Cult, but I will not stay in Iraq,”

which resulted in his imprisonment. Yaser’s father is well known for torturing the dissident members who opposed Masoud Rajavi’s Caliphate rule.

Mr. Yaser luckily escaped MEK when Iraq was occupied by the allied forces and US took control of the MEK’s Camp Ashraf. Mr. Yaser also adds that this is the story of hundreds of Children that are being forced to stay inside the Cult. Some have committed suicides due to the great pressure inside the cult resulting from the daily brainwash.

Some have been used in the terrorist activities while they were under aged. Some have been used to commit suicide in London in front of French Embassy in 2003 when Maryam Rajavi was arrested by the French Judiciary for Terrorism and Money Laundry and human trafficking.

Judit Neurink a writer has written a book based on reports of Yaser Ezati form inside the MEK terrorist cult called, “Misled Martyrs: How Iranian terrorists became America’s best friends” (Persian Edition) (Persian) Paperback – January 12, 2009

She writes:

An Iranian woman sets herself alight outside of the French embassy in London. She sacrifices her life for the freedom of her leader, Maryam Rajavi, after her arrest by the French police on terrorism and fraud charges. She is one of at least ten members of Rajavi’s Iranian resistance group, the Mujahedin Khalq, who set themselves on fire in protest at the treatment of their adored leader. These events made me wonder how people reach the point where they believe that giving up their lives will benefit their leader. How did the political organization of God’s Fighters of the People become a sect? What happened to the members for them to allow this to happen? Since there has not been much independently published on the group, I spoke to former members, visited their meetings and tried to find out how a political organization changes into a cult. I also followed Yasser Ezati trying to get released from the tentacles of the Mujahedin Khalq and I researched modern terrorism; are the Mujahedin Khalq a terrorist group, how do they compare with the groups in the Al-Qaida network, why do people think they need violence and terror to assist their case, how can believers, obsessed with good and evil, become murderers?

By: D.B. Arshad, nototerrorism-cults.com

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Former members of the MEK

Ebrahim Khodabandeh: I was manipulated to tell lies

Ebrahim Khodabandeh the famous former member of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO) was arrested by the Syrian officials, in 2003. He was serving for the international relations committee of the MKO. After his arrest in Syria he was submitted to the Iranian government

In Iran, he was imprisoned in Evin prison where he began studying about cults. Khodabandeh has so far published articles and translated books and articles on the threat of destructive cults, particularly the MKO.

Esharat, an Iran-based journal is one of the numerous media that have interviewed him up to now. The following includes parts of the interview translated by Nejat Society.

–  Having been motivated by Islamic and anti-imperialistic ideas you joined the MKO but practically you observed another face of the group. As you stated you yourself used to work hard to portrait a secular pro-Western image of the group for your Western audience, wasn’t it provocative for you?

Good question! Yes, I have witnessed a 180-degree turn in the MKO’s positions and interests since the Islamic Revolution. For example, Rajavi who once offered gifts to Yaser Arafat and said that the only way to liberate the Palestinian nation is the armed struggle against Israel, today is proud of the Israeli company for his group.

… Cults have no unchangeable principal; they have only one fixed principal and that is: Everything must go around the leader’s interests and will. Maryam Rajavi told us:” You are not good enough unless you recognize Massoud’s interests and will and then you try to fulfill them”…

–  Does it mean that you officially told lies and deceived people?

In cults, lying and deceiving is formulated and indoctrinated by the system. Everything is based on lie and deception. The hierarchy tells lies from top to bottom.

I was deceived by the MKO so I was recruited by it. Then I was brainwashed under the mind-control system. I was manipulated to tell lies about the group’s cause as if it was a secular pro-western organization…

When you are a member of a destructive mind-control cult, you have no fixed and stable beliefs and thoughts. You are just asked to obey the absolute power of the leader. In a community where everyone thinks the same, in fact nobody thinks. The leaders thinks instead of everyone.

–  Didn’t you find it paradoxical or contradictory? For example, you joined the group with your anti-imperialistic ideas to fight the US, and now the MKO was acting the opposite?

Of course, Yes. I was faced with contradictions. Other members also had paradoxes in their minds but the cults have trickeries to encounter such contradictions that occur every day. Contradiction means that the data you were given does not seem logic. However, your contradiction would not be solved by debate or arguments but it was faced with psychological techniques or in better words, with peer pressure and mental suppression. Once you enter a destructive mind control cult, you are kept and controlled by psychological techniques.

–  If you were not arrested in Syria, would you stay in the MKO until now? And, didn’t you try to swallow a cyanide capsule after you were arrested?

Yes, I would have definitely been in the Cult of Rajavi in ignorance and under the mind-control manipulative system of the cult. I would have no way out to salvation…

In my mission to Syria, I didn’t have cyanide capsule. If I had one, I would eat it because being arrested alive and yeilded to the Iranian government was our red line.  

–  Do you really believe in the term salvation for your separation from the MKO?

Yes, exactly. Being released from the hands of a destructive mind control cult is in no way simple. This is possible if you are supported from outside of the cult, for example if you are aided by your family. That’s why the cult leaders forbid and control any contact with families.

–  What happened in Evin prison that your beliefs and thoughts changed?

I should notify that members of mind-control destructive cults have no determined ideas. They are dedicated to their leader. Massoud Rajavi was officially presented as the ideological leader. Our ideas were those of Massoud’s. If he changed his words every day we would change our words every day. Cults do not practice ideologies; they do practice psychological methodologies that control people’s minds…

When I arrived in Evin prison, I still saw myself as a devoted Mujahed-e Khalq under the order of Massoud Rajavi . I was ready for torture and execution but gradually I was faced with reality. I thought about the attitudes and interests of the cult of Rajavi so I increasingly faced contradictions. I simply found that I was not able to defend the MKO’s approaches even in my own mind. Logically I had no point to defend Massoud Rajavi whom I used to worship … 

About a year later, I started reading the book “Cults in our Midst” of Mrs. Margaret Tahler Singer. My brother Massoud Khodabandeh had sent it to me from England. It should be said that in the prison, I tried to keep myself behind the boundaries I allegedly had with the Islamic Republic. Even I did not want to read the Iranian books, newspapers and I avoided watching Iranian TV.

The book had nothing with the Iranian government nor the MKO but I was really moved by the book. Although, the writer had no idea of the MKO, the similarities between the MKO and the cults in the United States were so significant that you would think it was written about the MKO … For the first time after so many years, I let myself think freely and independently. Of-course, getting to this turning point took me two years in the prison.

–  Suppose that you are told that you submitted to the Islamic Republic and turned against the organization you embraced for 23 years due to the pressure of imprisonment or the risk of execution or for the sake your suffering mother, what is your answer?

This question seems rational. In response, I should say that one may regret his past or repent of his past under pressure, one may give information about his past organization and condemn it under pressure of the imprisonment but he is not able to argue, discuss and prove his arguments. All I say about the MKO is based on scientific arguments and reasons that are confirmed by other defectors of the cult. I am ready to argue it with everyone everywhere to prove that the most basic human rights are being violated in the Cult of Rajavi. The cult uses destructive fraudulent manipulation techniques to control members’ minds. It is not what it pretends.

It is not hung up to any principals. This is all I have said to this point. If a force wants to fight the Islamic Republic it doesn’t have the right to abuse its own members and to mentally suppress them…

–  Suppose that you are accused of having been brainwashed in Evin prison! What do you say?

I was liberated from the Cult of Rajavi over 12 years ago. During these years, I have been far from the atmosphere of the Cult and its indoctrination sessions and cult jargons. I have been studying the phenomenon known as “the threat of the third millennium”: Destructive Mind Control Cults. I have studied and translated and authored a lot of books and articles. In her book titled “Brainwashing”, Ms. Kathlyn Taylor specifically suggests that the main condition to become the target for brainwashing is to be unaware of its techniques. The MKO never permitted me to read something freely but in the Evin prison I read books. Regarding my studies and the information I got, there is no possibility to brainwash me now because I’m well aware of the techniques and tricks ….

Thus, it is very important to know about functions of destructive mind control cults…

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Massoud Rajavi

Corrupt Leadership led to MKO decline

Half a century after the foundation of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization ( the MKO/MEK), as an armed militant group against the Shah of Iran, the group’s critics including its defectors analyze the path that ended in the decline of the group and its transformation from an armed political organization to a cult of personality.

Mr. Sirous Ghazanfari, an ex- member of the MKO describes how Massoud Rajavi’s leadership brought about the collapse of the group. Ghazanfari was interviewed by Nejat Society, Eastern Azarbayjan office.

Mr. Ghazanfari divides the MKO’s history in to three parts. The first includes the foundation of the organization as an enormous step that was very crucial in the struggle to overthrow the Shah. The main founders were honest and devoted, according to Ghazanfari.

The second part of the group’s history was a turning point. First founders were executed by the regime of Shah. The absence of great leaders opened the way for deviated members and violent elimination of critics inside the organization.

Lack of noble leaders left the organization in the hands of Massoud Rajavi who according to Ghazanfari did not succeed to manage the group because of his ambitions and narcissist personality.

Ghazanfari suggests that Rajavi’s absolute power over the organization was a terrible coup against members; it was impossible to run such an organization under the dictatorship of Rajavi.

Rajavi’s despotic approach led him to declaration of armed struggle against Islamic Republic, even though his group was among the first who congratulated Ayatollah Khomeini after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. So third phase of the MKO history began.

Ghazanfari stresses that Rajavi‘s statement to declare armed struggle against the newly established Iranian government was an axe to the root of the group.   “The decision imposed heavy expenses on the group”, he says. It caused a separation between the group members and the average Iranian society and the collapse of the organization.

In 1981, Massoud Rajavi was sheltered by the enemy in war with Iran, Saddam Hussein. ”Rajavi who was not able to respond criticism,” says Ghazanfari,” proposed the ridiculous idea of “Maryam “as “Symbol of Salvation”! Since then the primarily Mujahedin Khalq Organization turned into a cult.

After the fall of Saddam Hussein, members of the Cult of Rajavi began questioning the leader’s strategy and attitude towards US forces who had disarmed the group and had signed an agreement with group leaders. Members who had once joined an anti-US organization based on armed struggle doubted the cult leaders.

“After the fall of Saddam”, Ghazanfari explained,”Rajavi was no more able to force members to stay in the cult but he was able to deceive them and he deceived them.”

He admitted that the organization was no more the one its founders founded. “It is Maryam’s organization and you should admit Maryam’s ideology,” Ghazanfari cites from Rajavi.

According to the Ghazanfari, in order to maintain his cult in Iraq instead of relocating it outside Iraq, Massoud Rajavi resorted to various means including hostility against families of cult members – who have been suffering a lot in their unsuccessful efforts to visit or contact with their beloved ones taken as hostages in the Cult or Rajavi.

Ghazanfari accurately suggests,” in my opinion, the MKO leader could not lead the group toward a stable secured situation. He was not skillful enough to save his organization in the political currents of Iraq.”

“The cult of Rajavi is drowning”, he says. “The crisis in the MKO is so deep that its leaders cannot find a way out. They always claim that they won but they never explain how!”

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Yuram Abdullah Weiler: Example of US support for terrorism is MEK

Yuram Abdullah Weiler, a Colorado-based writer and political critic, believes that the broad international coalition against ISIL is a massive media event to justify direct US intervention in Syria, underscoring that last year’s false-flag chemical attacks were not sufficient, but this year’s beheadings of western journalists seem to have sold intervention in Syria to the West.
 “The Washington regime has a history of using covert action to attain its geo-political goals. From the Philippines to Latin America to the Middle East, the US has intervened in so many countries that it is difficult to count them. And what some would call covert action, I would call state-sponsored terrorism, so in that sense, the US is the world’s leader in its support of terrorism,” he said in an interview with Fars News Agency.
 When asked about the formation of an international fact-finding commission to prosecute backers of the ISIL, he answered, “But realistically, the US is not a party to the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court (ICC) and has a veto in the UN Security Council, making the US practically immune from criminal prosecution. Certainly, a fact-finding commission should be formed, and perhaps some way could be found to prosecute US war criminals, such as Barack Obama, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and those from other countries such as Prince Bandar Bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia. If nothing else, evidence should be gathered and documented, then stored for prosecution when the opportunity presents itself.”
 Yuram Abdullah Weiler is a freelance writer and political critic who has written dozens of articles on the Middle East and US policy. A former engineer with a background in mathematics and a convert to Islam, he currently writes perspectives on Islam, social justice, economics and politics from the viewpoint of an American convert to Shiite Islam, focusing on the deleterious role played by the US in the Middle East and elsewhere. A dissenting voice from the “Belly of the Beast”, he lives in Denver, Colorado.
 What follows is the full text of the interview:
 Q: Many analysts believe that the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is the product of the US polices in the Middle East. What’s your take on that? Do you believe that the US and its allies have directly contributed to the creation of the ISIL?
 A: Absolutely, ISIL is a joint creation of the United States, Saudi Arabia and Qatar with logistical support from the Israeli entity, Turkey, Jordan and other regional actors. While its origin can be traced to former US arch enemy Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi, who formed al-Qaeda of Iraq (AQI) in response to the illegal 2003 US invasion of Iraq and later changed its name to the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). It lost membership when the US bribed Sunni tribes to participate in awakening councils, but bounced back with a vengeance when the US decided to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and Saudi and Qatari began pouring funding into it through Kuwait.
 Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan was heavily involved with arming Takfiri terrorists both in Syria and Iraq when he was head of Saudi intelligence from July 2012 until April 2014, as was Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Emir of Qatar until June 2013 when the strategic city of al-Qusayr was repatriated by the Syrian Army. As the chief logistical supplier to Takfiri extremists in Syria, Qatar has provided over 85 planeloads of weapons and supplies compared to only 37 for Saudi Arabia and lesser amounts for other actors such as Jordan. Turkey serves as the primary logistical base through which most munitions, materials and manpower are funneled to the foreign-backed militants in Syria.
 At first, ISI collaborated with other western-backed militants such as the Free Syrian Army, but in April 2013, parts of ISI split off and merged with its Syrian spinoff, Jabhat al-Nusra, to form the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). However, after the entry of Hezbollah into the conflict in Syria and Assad’s forces gaining the upper hand with the fall of al-Qusayr, Jabhat al-Nusra split off from ISIL in early 2014 to continue its western-endorsed mission of regime change in Syria. After repudiation by al-Qaeda, ISIL remained in Syria and, continuing to amass recruits and funding, made its move in June, capturing large swaths of Northern Iraq, and declaring a caliphate in July. The February 2014 disavowal of ISIL by CIA asset al-Qaeda may have indicated a breakdown in command and control, or perhaps it was a smoke screen.
 In any event, this ISIL blitz could not have been a surprise to Washington, since at least 8 US satellites–4 Lacrosse and 4 Key Hole–crisscrossing over the Persian Gulf for surveillance. Hence, Washington must have intended for ISIL to capture those armaments in Northern Iraq and send them to Syria, thus avoiding the need for US Congress to approve lethal aid for Syrian “rebels.” But because of the barbarity displayed by ISIL with beheadings, rapes and other atrocities, Obama has been forced to put on a show of opposition to demonstrate US “sincerity” in fighting against terrorism. Meanwhile, Washington’s ISIL Takfiri proxies continue with their regime change duties in Syria, but now with the benefit of US air support.
 Q: As you know NATO heads of state convened in the Welsh city of Newport on 4-5 September and US Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told foreign and defense ministers participating in the NATO summit that the US was forming a broad international coalition against ISIL. Ministers from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, Australia, Turkey, Italy, Poland and Denmark met in Wales to hammer out a strategy for battling ISIL, but the policy was questioned by many regional officials and political leaders.
 After the so-called US-led coalition against the ISIL declared its creation, scores of experts and a number of countries lashed out at the western states for pursuing a double-standard policy towards campaign against terrorism in various countries. What’s your perspective on that?
 A: The Washington regime has a history of using covert action to attain its geo-political goals. From the Philippines to Latin America to the Middle East, the US has intervened in so many countries that it is difficult to count them. And what some would call covert action, I would call state-sponsored terrorism, so in that sense, the US is the world’s leader in its support of terrorism.
 Iran has long been a target of US state-sponsored terrorism going back to the CIA-engineered 1953 coup ousting Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. A more recent example of US support of terrorism is the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), which has been taken off the list of designated terrorist organizations. Not only has this deadly extremist group claimed thousands of victims in Iran, but it has in the past killed a few Americans as well. Nevertheless, Washington took the terrorist group off its list as part of its ongoing efforts to destabilize Iran.
 Regarding Syria, if the US commander-in-chief were truly serious about fighting terrorism, he would collaborate with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has been battling foreign-backed extremists since early 2011. Not only has Obama refused to do that, but he has threatened Assad with retaliation if any US warplane is shot down over Syrian territory. So it should be clear that the broad international coalition against ISIL is a massive media event to justify direct US intervention in Syria. Last year’s false-flag chemical attacks were not sufficient, but this year’s beheadings of western journalists seem to have sold intervention in Syria to the West.
 Q: Many experts maintain that an international fact-finding Commission ought to be formed in order to prosecute the backers of the ISIL under international law. What do you think?
 A: The US has been in clear violation of international law in a number of instances: The 2003 invasion of Iraq; drone strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and other countries; the Guantanamo prison camp; the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan; the NATO bombing of Serbia; the use of napalm in Vietnam; support of the Zionist apartheid regime; torture of prisoners at Abu Graib; firebombing campaigns during World War II; the use of secret prisons; and we could go on and on. Supporting ISIL is just the latest outrage against international law committed by the US.
 But realistically, the US is not a party to the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court (ICC) and has a veto in the UN Security Council, making the US practically immune from criminal prosecution. Certainly, a fact-finding commission should be formed, and perhaps some way could be found to prosecute US war criminals, such as Barack Obama, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and those from other countries such as Prince Bandar Bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia. If nothing else, evidence should be gathered and documented, then stored for prosecution when the opportunity presents itself.
 Interview by Javad Arab Shirazi
 

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Former members of the MEK

A Former MEK Member Speaks About the ‘Cult’ of Extremism

Interview with Massoud Banisadr

 In 1979, Masoud Banisadr was a young postgraduate maths student at Newcastle University, watching political upheaval in his homeland of Iran on the nightly news. After the fall of the Western-backed Shah, wanting to play his part in a new society he joined Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), an Islamic Marxist revolutionary organisation.

 But a couple of years after the revolution, the MEK began to clash with Ayatollah Khomeini’s theocratic regime and were soon deemed an enemy of the new Iran. MEK suicide bombings and assassinations followed. In 1981, thousands of MEK members went into exile, and by 1986 had established a tight-knit paramilitary organisation in Iraq led by husband-and-wife team Masoud and Maryam Rajavi.

 Banisadr became the MEK’s PR man, moving between Camp Ashraf, their headquarters in Iraq, Geneva and Washington DC, trying to win over Western politicians. He finally left the group in 1996, went into hiding and now lives back in England.

The United States removed MEK from its list of terrorist organisations in 2012, but Banisadr still considers it a fanatical cult acting under the warped leadership of the Rajavis. He argues that any terrorist organisation is either a cult or “has no option but to become one in order to survive”.

 I spoke to Banisadr about the power of cults, and how this might help us understand why young men in the UK are vulnerable to joining the Islamic State and other extremist groups.

An MEK oath ceremony at Camp Ashraf in Iraq, taken around 2002 by a member who has since left and does not wish to be named.

VICE: You were once a high-ranking member of MEK. Why do you now see the organisation as a cult?

Masoud Banisadr: There was a charismatic leader, Rajavi. There was a black-and-white world view imposed; followers cutting themselves off from family; followers losing their personality. There was mind manipulation. At Camp Ashraf in Iraq there were talks lasting for days on end. I remember one task where we had to write down our old personality in one column on a board, and the new personality in a different column. I remember a guy who said, “My brother works in the Iranian embassy in London. Before I loved him as my brother, now I hate him as my enemy. I am ready to kill him tomorrow, if necessary.” And everyone applauded.

 How did you justify violence?

 I was fortunate not to be involved in any violence. But all group members accepted MEK suicide bombings and killings in Iran to be revolutionary acts. This was the brainwashing. And later, in my role as official representative, I would justify and explain these acts as the only means we had to defend ourselves. I was a nice person, well-mannered, and could argue very rationally with politicians. So I was a good salesman.

 Why did MEK members divorce their wives?

 In 1990, Rajavi said all members must divorce their spouses. My own wife had already left the group by then. All members accepted these terms, and it [applied to] everyone except the leader and his wife Maryam. In a single day, everyone became celibate. Someone asked, “What about sex in the afterlife?” He replied, “I know your trick – you want to fantasise about the afterlife. But no – you must be prepared to forget about sex, about spouses, about love.”

 No sex?

 No sexual thoughts. The idea was that we were in a war to take back Iran, so you cannot have a family until the war is won. This was the excuse the outside world would hear, but inside we were told your spouses are a barrier between you and the leadership. We were ordered to surrender our soul, heart and mind to Rajavi and his wife.

Masoud meeting trade union leaders at an International Labour Conference in Geneva in 1987 (published in an MEK newspaper).

How did you manage to leave the organisation?

What saved me was seeing my daughter. In 1996 I came to London to arrange some meetings. I saw my daughter, after many years of not seeing her. I had totally forgotten about the guy who was the father, the old Masoud. I only knew Masoud, the MEK member. The old Masoud wanted to hug her, but the group member – living under strict rules where men and women never interacted – knew he should not. I was fortunate that I had a bad back problem, so I was allowed to go and recuperate in hospital. And in those two weeks, being around ordinary people, seeing ordinary families, I allowed feelings for my own family to come back. And so, finally, I decided to leave the group.

Where did you go?

I had to go on the run for a time. I learned how to hide myself around the UK until they gave up looking for me.

What do you think it is that makes young people vulnerable to extremist causes?

 Well, terrorism is like a virus. It attacks us through our weaknesses. It kills our personality, our individuality, like a cult. I think there are three stages. The first stage is the injustice of the world. Young Muslims see injustice, become angry and want to react. Then comes along a powerful ideology, and the Wahabi ideology offers a very simple, black-and-white world view, and a very narrow-minded interpretation of jihad, offered as a solution to young Muslims. But both these stages are not enough to make someone a terrorist, a human bomb or a fighter for a caliphate. A third stage is required: the mind manipulation, which robs someone of their personality, makes them identify entirely with the group and cuts them off from their parents and society.

So radical ideas alone aren’t enough to go off and fight for, say, the Islamic State?

If you’re a young Muslim and you feel like a nobody, it’s appealing to hear that we can return to the time of Prophet Mohammed – [that] we will be powerful again and feel proud of ourselves. This can make you radical – even prepared to be violent – but you will not stay a fighter or become a martyr without being entirely cut-off from family and the values of the society you were brought up in. That requires the mind-manipulation that goes on in a destructive cult.

Where does the Islamic State fit in? Do you consider it a cult as well as a terrorist organisation?

The signs are there. The leader – Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – is charismatic and has unlimited ambition. He has been introduced as the leader of all Muslims, the Caliph. Normal leaders want political power. Cult leaders want something more than governing a city or country – they want to govern history. They want to change the structure of humanity. For a while they were calling themselves ISIL – Islamic State of Iraq and Levant.

They wanted control of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel. Now they call themselves the Islamic State. They want whatever they think was once part of the Islamic empire, so they claim Spain, Portugal, North Africa, India and part of China and Russia. They want the whole world, to make everyone Muslim. This is not normal leadership; this is heading towards cult. There is no limitation you can deal with, politically.

 What would you say to British parents who have children fighting in Syria or Iraq?

It’s very difficult, very delicate. If a parent says anything critical against a radical preacher, or about an organisation like Islamic State, that’s when a person’s mind becomes defensive. It is difficult to argue rationally. So if a parent has contact, they should not try to talk about politics or religion. They should show only kindness and love. This is the member’s weakness. Feelings do not die away, even if personality has changed. So the parent has to let them know they will be there, waiting. There has to be a pathway back to a life where family love is there, something that has nothing do with ideological thinking. Unconditional love unlocks the mind manipulation that has taken place.

 Thanks, Masoud.

Adam Forrest, Vice.com

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The cult of Rajavi

Comrades in Arms

Comrades in Arms, Cases of sexual abuse by MEK Leader Massoud Rajavi in Camp Ashraf

Synopsis:

People’s Mujahedin of Iran or the MEK is a terror entity responsible for thousands of civilian death in post revolution Iran. See how this group has been more of a dark CULT fraught with corruption and harassment.

to view the video file click here

 “Comrades in Arms” unfolds the story of those women who fell for deceptive slogans of the MEK. Looking for a brighter future these women ended up in Camp Ashraf, where a fate worse than death awaited them. Masoud Rajavi, the leader of the organization had come up with a new idea about marital life; it was detrimental to the future of the organization. For him, marital love was a shackle that could impede the progress of his plan.

Therefore, Rajavi called for a compulsory divorce according to which all MEK members had to get divorce. But that was not the end of the story. While he forbade his men from having sexual relations with their wives, he decided to take their place. As a result, he turned Camp Ashraf into a big harem where he could have his female comrades in arms night and day. Risking their lives, however, some of the sexual victims managed to escape from the camp to show the true colors of Rajavi, once their spiritual leader and now the most lecherous man in the world they know.

Transcript:

Batoul Soltani:

I’m Batoul Soltani, a resident of Germany. I was born in Isfahan. I’ve been living in Germany for more than four years. Before that, I was in the MEK for 20 years and before that I was in Iran for 20 years.

We were pursuing more ambitious goals and looking for a better tomorrow thinking that they – according to their slogans – would bring people more democracy or a brighter future. Looking for such ideals, we fell for their slogans and joined their organization. We had passed the point of no return.

What I saw in this organization was that women were merely tools in every level I witnessed. After all, 20 years is not a short period of time. And what we witnessed from the beginning – though my marriage conformed to social norms and was not an organizational marriage – I encountered women who were devoid of emotional involvement with their husbands but the organization had made them marry. For the first time, I saw compulsory marriages in the organization. It’s very difficult to love someone by force. I think that it’s very difficult for a woman to do so.

Zahra Goini :

I’m Zahra Goini. I was born in Tehran in 1968. In November 1986 I got married. On March, 25, 1987 I left Tehran for my honeymoon till now that I’m abroad.

It was the New Year, 1987. He said that we were going on our honeymoon. I told my family, “Look! He says that he has decided to go.” He said, “No, Zahra is lying. I don’t want to go. We are going on our honeymoon. Look! This is my ticket to the south and then we’ll make a pilgrimage to Mashhad, God willing.” As we arrived in Shiraz he told me that we might not return. We arrived in Pakistan, I think a few weeks later. It was a long journey. It took us a while to get there. We were taken to the MEK’s base. All of a sudden, an official there came and said – when my husband talked to him – my husband said, “You can return to Iran.” I was stunned, “Seriously, shall I return to Iran? Why have I come here? You’re my husband. I’ve come with you. Where shall I go alone? What shall I say? No, I’ll stay; even if you go to hell I will be with you.” Meanwhile, the organization had taken all of our money and gold. Anyway, we gave the money and two days later they told us that we would go to Iraq, albeit with new passports.

Batoul Soltani:

When we arrived in Iraq we were taken to the smartest hotels the organization was using as its bases and there was not the least sign of war there. We didn’t feel the war because Saddam had given the best hotels to the organization and the organization was using one of them as a school, one as a place for taking care of children, and one as a residential place for couples to see each other. At that time, organizational marriages were on the rise for four to five years. Of course the organization would not allow raw or junior recruits but those who were at least commanders of divisions to marry women. Everything was obligatory there: organizational obligations, organizational do’s and don’ts, organizational rules, and relations that would become tense and tenser every minute.

Nasrin Ebrahimi :

I’m Nasrin Ebrahimi. I’m 31 years old. I live in Switzerland. I’ve been living here for about eight years. Before that, I lost ten years that could have been the best years of my life in Iraq, in the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, an organization which was very easy to enter and very difficult to exit from.

As for Camp Ashraf, it’s very painful to talk about it. It’s like to be in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp for years and experience the sufferings and then talk about it.

Well, at that time he completely separated men and women from each other. We women moved to another center. We would never see a man, unless in our only street called 100 Street where we would see a man in the distance or in meetings held by Masoud Rajavi or Maryam Rajavi but we were not allowed to see them. They would sit on one side and we on the other side. If we looked at them we had to explain why. That’s why when walking we had to hold our head up or down. Our eyes shouldn’t meet a comrade’s eyes.

Zahra:

Suddenly, they said that Iran’s government had accepted UNSC resolution 598. Soon after, we had to prepare ourselves. Many forces joined us from abroad. What for? We wanted to go to Tehran. “Yesterday Mehran, today Tehran” became their slogan.

Not only weren’t the women prepared but also the men were not as well. They pushed all in Operation Eternal Light by force.

In Operation Eternal Light I was hit in the arm by shrapnel and since it was wrapped up badly – they said that you would see the doctor in ten minutes and he would unwrap it – my arm went blue because it wasn’t treated on time. After the operation, the doctor came up to me and said, “Look! They had sent a letter about you saying that this arm had to be cut off and we had to have your signature. I feel sorry for you who are a young woman to have your arm cut. It’s no problem if you were a man. But you are a young woman. I don’t know why they think so. You’ll have children in the future and have to carry your children in your arms. With one arm, it’s difficult for you. I didn’t cut your arm. I did the operation on my own initiative. You have only a three-day chance of recovery.”

It used to be much bigger. In an operation in Frankfurt they made it small. They performed a skin transplant as big as this and here they had sewn this way to here. My arm was always like this.

They threw us into Operation Eternal Light by force. They forced us to get divorced. Masoud used to say, “You who got stuck behind Charzevar Canyon, you woman or you man what were you thinking about? When you got stuck in the canyon you were thinking about the opposite sex. You as a woman were thinking about your husband and you as a man were thinking about your wife. That’s why you couldn’t advance towards Tehran. Now you must divorce all including your children.”

Masoud Rajavi:

I’m well aware. You brothers, what were you thinking about? Huh? Everyone must know well. And you sisters? We asked around hundreds – am I right, Maryam? – those who were in Operation Eternal Light in person and listened to them. Let’s remove all the obstacles in the way. This is a lesson of union and unity.

Batoul:

It was a very difficult process for me as it was a mental torture for me. I was with a group of people who kept talking about divorce and hate children and mutual life. It was not accepted for them to have children. It was a sin for the people I was with to sleep with their spouses. Divorces had begun from the upper echelons of the organization. The officials were divorcing their wives according to the plan formulated by Masoud Rajavi. The first one was Maryam Rajavi who had divorced Mehdi Abrishamchi and married Masoud Rajavi. They were expanding the scope of the plan into other women and men started from the leadership to other members.

Mehdi Abrishamchi:

In the name of God; in the name of Masoud and Maryam.

As an MEK member, as a little child of the MEK I have nothing to say except to congratulate Masoud and Maryam with all my heart and soul and that I’m brimming with ideological joys.

Batoul:

Suddenly, I saw my commander come up to me and said, “Well, this sister has charge of you.” I asked, “Sister, won’t my husband come here to see his baby?” She answered, “No, your husband has got divorced and he won’t come here. Don’t ask about him anymore.” Close to tear, I asked, “Divorce?! So what about me? So what about this baby? Why …?” She interrupted me, “No why, in the army you cannot ask why.”

Nasrin:

Is it possible not to think about love?! There used to be sessions in which we talked about love, affection, husband, wife, the past, which were called “era and weekly ablution”. When people talked you could realized that they thought about those issues. Personally speaking, I had a hair clip my boyfriend had given me in Iran. I had kept the hair clip and I held it dear. One may say that a hair clip is no big deal. But for me it was so valuable that even when I was to flee Ashraf Camp the first thing I took with me was the hair clip he had given to me. And when I got Tifu, he was the first person I called.

Masoud Rajavi:

This Maryam I’m writing equals the first in charge, which equals a full payment criterion, which in turn means 100 on 100. We chose her as a role model for you, which equals the connecting ring between you and what I want.

Batoul:

At this point, Maryam Rajavi would tell us, “You women, after divorcing your husbands, you should marry Masoud.” And we always considered her words as an ideological thesis. I could never imagine that her words would be put into practice some day and I would have to sleep with Masoud. I really thought that it was merely an ideological discourse. As for Maryam Rajavi herself, I couldn’t imagine that Masoud had sexual relationship with her. I couldn’t imagine it.

Maryam Rajavi:

Let me draw it in this diagram. Look, this is a diagram for every individual with gender on top and individuality immediately below it. I’ll explain it. Immediately individuality. This diagram has a dividing line with gender on one side and individuality on the other side. Here is the highest point of individuality. Below it there are all personal problems lined up.

Nasrin:

Maryam Rajavi used to hold many meetings for us, very long meetings. She would hold many meetings especially for women. She said, “We women all have only one husband who is Masoud Rajavi.” She even said, “You have the most handsome and the best man in the world. So what’s wrong with you?”

Maryam Rajavi:

… Here, the highest value is melting into the leadership, which means a perfect union whose fruit is getting rid of all personal shackles.

Nasrin:

She said, “Since women have mostly emotional problems you consider him as your husband.” But her words cut no ice with me. Not at all. For me it was just a talk. That’s all.

Batoul:

One day a ceremony was held – it was the wedding ceremony – in which Masoud Rajavi performed the marriage ceremony and the women stood up one by one saying, “Yes.” Before the ceremony, they had insisted that everybody should be clean and tidy and take a bath etc. Their insistence on being clean aroused my suspicions that what all that insistence was for; that why we had to have a clean, hairless body. “Are we supposed to strip naked in front of someone,” I ask myself. She even told us to perform our ablutions and be clean and tidy and wear our best, new clothes and clean socks. Before the ceremony once more they told us, “Anybody who is not clean enough or haven’t taken a bath or need to wash herself go and make herself clean.”

We were in Badizadegn Camp when informed of a pool meeting exclusively for the leadership council. At that time, I was a member of the leadership council. We attended the meeting and listen to music playing there. All of a sudden, Masoud and Maryam entered the hall. Masoud was in leisure clothes; he was wearing a T-shirt and Maryam had a soft, pink, silk dress on with her hair brushed. They entered the hall. Maryam stood behind Masoud. She didn’t sit down beside him. Masoud took a look at us and said, “Maryam, why have you brought them here again?” and that moment I realized that it was not something new. Maryam answered, “They’ve come here to unite you. They are your wives. They’ve tied the knot with you and want to be united with you. And these empty seats are for them.” I asked, “Sister Maryam, why don’t you take a seat there?” She said, “This is for each and every Masoud’s wife.” I wondered what was going on. When she said so I found some women with their headscarves fallen on the ground or some with no headscarves at all. I wondered why they had taken off their headscarves in front of brother Masoud. I told one of them about her headscarf. She said, “No problem! Who’s my nearest man than Masoud? “I love him so much. There’s no one nearer to me than Masoud.” I can remember all these scenes clearly.

Zahra:

One of the women stood at the podium saying, “Ladies, feel at home. Take your headscarves off. You dance for the leader.” I said, “We dance for the leader?! I used to be reproach for letting my hair out of the headscarf. Now you tell me to take my headscarf off and put on those clothes?!” That very woman, Batouleh Rajaee told me, “Haven’t you got divorced? You gave your hand to Masoud via Maryam. Now put Maryam aside and give your hand directly to Masoud. Now you must do your best dance for him.”

Nasrin:

They would give us freedom on purpose and encourage us to dance with music when played. The commanders would say, “Be at home! He’s your brother. Don’t you call him brother? Show your love and affection towards him.” They even liked us to kiss him. They prompted us to kiss Rajavi.

Zahra:

At first, we danced in uniform. Just two days later, that is the day we were supposed to dance – no one knew – they brought us silk fabrics. Now we had to see how those fabrics would go with our faces. Could the color brighten the complexion? After all, I was one of the candidates for dancing.

Batoul:

I suddenly realized that the senior members of the leadership council began to take their dresses off. When about 25 senior members of the leadership council began to take off their dresses and stripped naked other women who were of my rank followed suit and Maryam Rajavi and others were encouraging, “This is your pool. You should dive into it. Common on! Get undressed in front of the leader.” The meeting went on this way; for about three to four hours they were dancing. Masoud, though at first pretended to be discontent over our presence there, sat comfortably eyeing up us all.

Nasrin:

I can remember that Masoud Rajavi was staring me in the eyes. I didn’t know what I had to do at that moment. I began looking at somewhere else. That’s while we were told to say something to Masoud when he would look at us; something like “I love you” and to make a fuss over him. “The brother doesn’t look everybody in the eye.”

Rajavi would choose those who were pretty. That was overt. One could see that. It was not covert. He wasn’t even-handed with all. He would really handpick certain women, chat with them in front of other women. He would talk to them to go to him.

Batoul:

Masoud would hold the so-called “liberty dance session” with the help of Maryam reasoning that, “When you see Masoud and another woman making love it will cleanse you of jealousy. It will prevent you from being jealous for other women.”

Nasrin:

Rajavi would make us a gift of underclothes and towels. Maryam Rajavi used to stand beside him. We would pass by … At that moment you had to show how much you loved your leader or husband as Marayam Rajavi used to say. He would blow into our faces making some gestures. He would stare somebody in the eye. He did such things. Most of the time, he himself gave us underclothes or things like combs, towels and suchlike. Sometimes, Maryam Rajavi would rub them to her face and then gave them to Masoud and he gave them to us.

To get closer, he would come to our dormitories. We women were located in three separate units. To stimulate us he would say, “I’m going to unit 14 to stay the night there.” And commanders would make us ask him to come to our dormitories and be with us. “Oh brother, come and sleep with us for God’s sake. Don’t go there.” It was a childish thing; the scene was disgusting for a viewer from outside. But since we were involved in it we couldn’t realize its ugliness.

Zahra:

This was his old slogan that women were open to exploitation but we were exploited most in the organization. “You are women?”, “Yes”. “The same as men?”, “Yes”. “Men clean tanks, why don’t you women?” They sexually exploited us. We women were subjected to the worst kinds of exploitation under the name of giving women independence. They claimed that they were after equality for women and whatever they were deprived of through history.

Maryam Rajavi:

Yes, we believe that women and men are equal. We even believe that an exploited woman has more potential than an exploited man to progress and can achieved competence like him, but not haphazardly.

Batoul:

When I went to the place where Masoud’s bedroom was located in … it was a building in Badizadegan Camp the first time I went there. It was in the leadership’s residence. There was a room which was Masoud’s bedroom with a double bed in it and everything was ready for … but Masoud was not there then. I was there waiting from 8 p.m. until midnight when Masoud came. It was the first night we were together until morning. That night I saw another exploitative relations and an act that I could never imagine Masoud Rajavi doing.

It used to be done in Parsian Camp until the fall of Saddam. We would even go for a swim with Masoud and do anything. After the fall of Saddam, Parsian Camp closed down. I couldn’t imagine that such a thing would continue. I was stunned thinking that such a huge number of people were killed in the war … He made me sick. That was one thing. The other thing was that I always thought that he only had such a relationship with me. I never knew that he had the same relationship with many other women. It was after the fall of Saddam that I was informed by some women that he had had the same relationship with other women.

When Maryam Rajavi called me to see Masoud at night it didn’t mean that I was in love with Masoud waiting with bated breath to see him or that I had an overwhelming urge since I had no husband. No, that was not the case. The only reason was that I couldn’t stand up against the organization when I was there. I knew that if I had fought them they would have done away with me. I couldn’t fight with them. I thought, “If I say no to them, what would happen next? Would they leave me alone? No. and this is not a subject to be discussed in the leadership council.” Then it would come to my mind that such and such a member of the leadership council who had disappeared mysteriously might have been killed or whatever. Later on, I had no doubt that they would kill anyone who disagrees with them in the leadership council. So I decided to let him do whatever he wanted waiting for a moment to save my body. There was some Naghmeh Hakami. She wasn’t ill or whatsoever. She died all of a sudden when there was a talk about melting in the ideological leader those years. There was another woman called Seddigheh. She died too. We wondered why she died since she was healthy. Zahrah Fayyaz died. Just like that. Zahra Nouri died. At that moment I thought, “Suppose Batoul Soltani died.” By dying I mean being martyred. They even exploited corpses.

Well, he plays God. I could see Rajavi’s true colors when I looked in astonishment at what he was doing. I wondered why marriage and sexual satisfaction was banned for all men while he exempted himself. The moments I was looking at him he found me bewildered and said, “You eyeballs are sexy.”

Nasrin:

It appears that Masoud Rajavi slept every night with numerous women – at least as far as I know- with numerous, different women. On average, I would go every month or every two months to his bedroom.

It makes me sick when I hear the phrase “pure Mujahedins’ relations” because we saw the reality, because we know how a blatant lie it is. There are no pure relations in the organization. I haven’t seen relations so filthy as in the organization than in everywhere else. Isolated communities always have the filthiest relations. The more isolated, the filthier.

I attempted suicide because I had lost my hope completely. I made many pleas to them to let me leave the organization but they didn’t accept. I left no stone unturned but it was not possible. That’s why I attempted suicide. I liked to die because I couldn’t stand anymore. It was a difficult moment and my whole body was trembling when I was doing it. When I took the knife … I still can hear the sound of the knife when I put it on my wrist. I put the knife on my wrist and cut it and drop the knife. I had tied on an apron. My apron became soaked with blood. Because I was frightened and had lost a lot of blood I felt faint and fell on the ground. I had locked the door … I was terribly disappointed. I had locked the door but I didn’t know that the place I was in had another door from the street’s side and that door was open so a sister – as they used to say – called Shamsi came in and as she saw the scene she began screaming and others came in and took me to hospital by car.

After I survived the attempted suicide I felt as if I had been given another hope and had a new lease of life. I guess that I fled less than 20 days after my suicide. I fled immediately.

Batoul:

To be honest, the thought of escaping struck me the day I saw Masoud doing that in 2000. Before that, I thought that Masoud wouldn’t do that – even if he was under pressure from Maryam Rajavi, as he claimed – but that night, that is the first night I went to Masoud’s bedroom and saw that the organization was not the matter and what mattered was sex and nothing else. I made my final decision to escape there.

It was November 2006. The next month that is in December I feigned a headache and illness and slept in the dormitory and didn’t go to work saying that I felt sick and had a headache etc. and then I could make my escape. I threw caution to the wind saying that either I would be caught, taken and killed or I would escape sound and safe. I couldn’t stand being there anymore.

Right now, he’s paying the hush money to those who have left him. Therefore, it’s so important for him to protect his reputation that he’s prepared to pay the highest price to keep his former people silent. I’ve seen many of them over these recent years and I know.

– By the way, what happened that we accepted what they said? The divorce thing, the separation from our children …

– Operation Eternal Light while untrained …

– Yes.

– I think the main reason was that we were cut off from the outer world. We were not in touch with our families, friends. We were not even allowed to love each other. We had learned to accept what the organization would say without objection. But poor are those who are still there.

– That’s right. I’m thinking about that because when I told Hajar, that is Kobra Tahmasebi that I would like to experience the life outside here she asked me, “Do you know what awaits you?” I answered, “I don’t care what awaits me. I want to go outside to know how much the sexuality you’re talking about is true. I want to check whatever you talk about. I want to see if a woman including myself goes out of here will pursue a simple life or … you say that I’ll be lead astray. You know, when I left there I realized that no, it depends on how one wants to live.

– How are you?

– Are you fine?

– Yes, thanks.

– Have you brought tea?

Zahra:

I’ve got two children; one daughter, one son. I’m happy and I try to have the best for my children and give them the best not because they are my children but because I want them to learn to be honest. I teach my children to draw the line at any oppression; I teach my children to be as they are before they want to be for others. Every life has its ups and downs but I’m content with them all.

Nasrin:

Since I left the MEK I haven’t just been pursuing my personal life. The guys loom large in my mind; those who we know how got stuck there and we know that none of them wants to stay there. That’s why we have been trying to help them half of our lives. We’ve talked to members of Parliament in Europe and influential figures to show them the real face of the organization.

They appear good, happy and beautiful in public but they are rotten to the core. Only we who were there know their real characters and therefore hate their appearances. It makes us sick when Maryam Rajavi delivers a speech. It taxes our patience to listen to her speech word by words because we know that she’s lying through her teeth. It makes us puke when she talks about women.

There are some people in Auvers-sur-Oise, Paris, France which is the cradle of freedom, who haven’t take one step outside Auvers-sur-Oise for 25 years and the only thing they do is cooking. There are such women here. How can we stand Maraym Rajavi when she appears in public putting on beautiful dresses and uttering beautiful words?! It’s really disgusting for us when we know the other side of the story. We told the French, “You whose country is the cradle of freedom host a cult whose members haven’t come outside this castle, this very small place for 25 years and you don’t know what’s going on inside.”

Batoul:

That’s right that I have planned for my life and I’m living my own life and work or trying to earn good income to overcome my economic problems but as part of my job or what motivates me and I’d like to have it on my list of priorities and pursue it is that I want to be the voice of those friends and help them know the realities about the leader of the MEK, Masoud Rajavi who betrayed the trust of each and every member of the organization including my own husband, a person who himself may not know what has happened to him or that Rajavi has betrayed him but it’s my duty and the duty of those like me who left the organization. I’ve designed a website and try to make my voice and other women’s heard by the members or the public and let them know what we have gone through.

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Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

Cases of sexual abuse by MEK Leader Massoud Rajavi in Camp Ashraf

Comrades in Arms, Cases of sexual abuse by MEK Leader Massoud Rajavi in Camp Ashraf

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Synopsis:

People’s Mujahedin of Iran or the MEK is a terror entity responsible for thousands of civilian death in post revolution Iran. See how this group has been more of a dark CULT fraught with corruption and harassment.

“Comrades in Arms” unfolds the story of those women who fell for deceptive slogans of the MEK. Looking for a brighter future these women ended up in Camp Ashraf, where a fate worse than death awaited them. Masoud Rajavi, the leader of the organization had come up with a new idea about marital life; it was detrimental to the future of the organization. For him, marital love was a shackle that could impede the progress of his plan.

Therefore, Rajavi called for a compulsory divorce according to which all MEK members had to get divorce. But that was not the end of the story. While he forbade his men from having sexual relations with their wives, he decided to take their place. As a result, he turned Camp Ashraf into a big harem where he could have his female comrades in arms night and day. Risking their lives, however, some of the sexual victims managed to escape from the camp to show the true colors of Rajavi, once their spiritual leader and now the most lecherous man in the world they know.

 

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Transcript:

 Batoul Soltani:

I’m Batoul Soltani, a resident of Germany. I was born in Isfahan. I’ve been living in Germany for more than four years. Before that, I was in the MEK for 20 years and before that I was in Iran for 20 years.

We were pursuing more ambitious goals and looking for a better tomorrow thinking that they – according to their slogans – would bring people more democracy or a brighter future. Looking for such ideals, we fell for their slogans and joined their organization. We had passed the point of no return.

What I saw in this organization was that women were merely tools in every level I witnessed. After all, 20 years is not a short period of time. And what we witnessed from the beginning – though my marriage conformed to social norms and was not an organizational marriage – I encountered women who were devoid of emotional involvement with their husbands but the organization had made them marry. For the first time, I saw compulsory marriages in the organization. It’s very difficult to love someone by force. I think that it’s very difficult for a woman to do so.

 Zahra Goini :

I’m Zahra Goini. I was born in Tehran in 1968. In November 1986 I got married. On March, 25, 1987 I left Tehran for my honeymoon till now that I’m abroad.

It was the New Year, 1987. He said that we were going on our honeymoon. I told my family, “Look! He says that he has decided to go.” He said, “No, Zahra is lying. I don’t want to go. We are going on our honeymoon. Look! This is my ticket to the south and then we’ll make a pilgrimage to Mashhad, God willing.” As we arrived in Shiraz he told me that we might not return. We arrived in Pakistan, I think a few weeks later. It was a long journey. It took us a while to get there. We were taken to the MEK’s base. All of a sudden, an official there came and said – when my husband talked to him – my husband said, “You can return to Iran.” I was stunned, “Seriously, shall I return to Iran? Why have I come here? You’re my husband. I’ve come with you. Where shall I go alone? What shall I say? No, I’ll stay; even if you go to hell I will be with you.” Meanwhile, the organization had taken all of our money and gold. Anyway, we gave the money and two days later they told us that we would go to Iraq, albeit with new passports.

 Batoul Soltani:

When we arrived in Iraq we were taken to the smartest hotels the organization was using as its bases and there was not the least sign of war there. We didn’t feel the war because Saddam had given the best hotels to the organization and the organization was using one of them as a school, one as a place for taking care of children, and one as a residential place for couples to see each other. At that time, organizational marriages were on the rise for four to five years. Of course the organization would not allow raw or junior recruits but those who were at least commanders of divisions to marry women. Everything was obligatory there: organizational obligations, organizational do’s and don’ts, organizational rules, and relations that would become tense and tenser every minute.

 Nasrin Ebrahimi :

I’m Nasrin Ebrahimi. I’m 31 years old. I live in Switzerland. I’ve been living here for about eight years. Before that, I lost ten years that could have been the best years of my life in Iraq, in the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, an organization which was very easy to enter and very difficult to exit from.

As for Camp Ashraf, it’s very painful to talk about it. It’s like to be in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp for years and experience the sufferings and then talk about it.

Well, at that time he completely separated men and women from each other. We women moved to another center. We would never see a man, unless in our only street called 100 Street where we would see a man in the distance or in meetings held by Masoud Rajavi or Maryam Rajavi but we were not allowed to see them. They would sit on one side and we on the other side. If we looked at them we had to explain why. That’s why when walking we had to hold our head up or down. Our eyes shouldn’t meet a comrade’s eyes.

 Zahra:

Suddenly, they said that Iran’s government had accepted UNSC resolution 598. Soon after, we had to prepare ourselves. Many forces joined us from abroad. What for? We wanted to go to Tehran. “Yesterday Mehran, today Tehran” became their slogan.

Not only weren’t the women prepared but also the men were not as well. They pushed all in Operation Eternal Light by force.

In Operation Eternal Light I was hit in the arm by shrapnel and since it was wrapped up badly – they said that you would see the doctor in ten minutes and he would unwrap it – my arm went blue because it wasn’t treated on time. After the operation, the doctor came up to me and said, “Look! They had sent a letter about you saying that this arm had to be cut off and we had to have your signature. I feel sorry for you who are a young woman to have your arm cut. It’s no problem if you were a man. But you are a young woman. I don’t know why they think so. You’ll have children in the future and have to carry your children in your arms. With one arm, it’s difficult for you. I didn’t cut your arm. I did the operation on my own initiative. You have only a three-day chance of recovery.”

It used to be much bigger. In an operation in Frankfurt they made it small. They performed a skin transplant as big as this and here they had sewn this way to here. My arm was always like this.

They threw us into Operation Eternal Light by force. They forced us to get divorced. Masoud used to say, “You who got stuck behind Charzevar Canyon, you woman or you man what were you thinking about? When you got stuck in the canyon you were thinking about the opposite sex. You as a woman were thinking about your husband and you as a man were thinking about your wife. That’s why you couldn’t advance towards Tehran. Now you must divorce all including your children.”

 Masoud Rajavi:

I’m well aware. You brothers, what were you thinking about? Huh? Everyone must know well. And you sisters? We asked around hundreds – am I right, Maryam? – those who were in Operation Eternal Light in person and listened to them. Let’s remove all the obstacles in the way. This is a lesson of union and unity.

 Batoul:

It was a very difficult process for me as it was a mental torture for me. I was with a group of people who kept talking about divorce and hate children and mutual life. It was not accepted for them to have children. It was a sin for the people I was with to sleep with their spouses. Divorces had begun from the upper echelons of the organization. The officials were divorcing their wives according to the plan formulated by Masoud Rajavi. The first one was Maryam Rajavi who had divorced Mehdi Abrishamchi and married Masoud Rajavi. They were expanding the scope of the plan into other women and men started from the leadership to other members.

 Mehdi Abrishamchi:

 In the name of God; in the name of Masoud and Maryam.

 As an MEK member, as a little child of the MEK I have nothing to say except to congratulate Masoud and Maryam with all my heart and soul and that I’m brimming with ideological joys.

Batoul:

Suddenly, I saw my commander come up to me and said, “Well, this sister has charge of you.” I asked, “Sister, won’t my husband come here to see his baby?” She answered, “No, your husband has got divorced and he won’t come here. Don’t ask about him anymore.” Close to tear, I asked, “Divorce?! So what about me? So what about this baby? Why …?” She interrupted me, “No why, in the army you cannot ask why.”

 Nasrin:

Is it possible not to think about love?! There used to be sessions in which we talked about love, affection, husband, wife, the past, which were called “era and weekly ablution”. When people talked you could realized that they thought about those issues. Personally speaking, I had a hair clip my boyfriend had given me in Iran. I had kept the hair clip and I held it dear. One may say that a hair clip is no big deal. But for me it was so valuable that even when I was to flee Ashraf Camp the first thing I took with me was the hair clip he had given to me. And when I got Tifu, he was the first person I called.

 Masoud Rajavi:

 This Maryam I’m writing equals the first in charge, which equals a full payment criterion, which in turn means 100 on 100. We chose her as a role model for you, which equals the connecting ring between you and what I want.

 Batoul:

At this point, Maryam Rajavi would tell us, “You women, after divorcing your husbands, you should marry Masoud.” And we always considered her words as an ideological thesis. I could never imagine that her words would be put into practice some day and I would have to sleep with Masoud. I really thought that it was merely an ideological discourse. As for Maryam Rajavi herself, I couldn’t imagine that Masoud had sexual relationship with her. I couldn’t imagine it.

 Maryam Rajavi:

 Let me draw it in this diagram. Look, this is a diagram for every individual with gender on top and individuality immediately below it. I’ll explain it. Immediately individuality. This diagram has a dividing line with gender on one side and individuality on the other side. Here is the highest point of individuality. Below it there are all personal problems lined up.

 Nasrin:

Maryam Rajavi used to hold many meetings for us, very long meetings. She would hold many meetings especially for women. She said, “We women all have only one husband who is Masoud Rajavi.” She even said, “You have the most handsome and the best man in the world. So what’s wrong with you?”

 Maryam Rajavi:

 … Here, the highest value is melting into the leadership, which means a perfect union whose fruit is getting rid of all personal shackles.

 Nasrin:

She said, “Since women have mostly emotional problems you consider him as your husband.” But her words cut no ice with me. Not at all. For me it was just a talk. That’s all.

 Batoul:

One day a ceremony was held – it was the wedding ceremony – in which Masoud Rajavi performed the marriage ceremony and the women stood up one by one saying, “Yes.” Before the ceremony, they had insisted that everybody should be clean and tidy and take a bath etc. Their insistence on being clean aroused my suspicions that what all that insistence was for; that why we had to have a clean, hairless body. “Are we supposed to strip naked in front of someone,” I ask myself. She even told us to perform our ablutions and be clean and tidy and wear our best, new clothes and clean socks. Before the ceremony once more they told us, “Anybody who is not clean enough or haven’t taken a bath or need to wash herself go and make herself clean.”

We were in Badizadegn Camp when informed of a pool meeting exclusively for the leadership council. At that time, I was a member of the leadership council. We attended the meeting and listen to music playing there. All of a sudden, Masoud and Maryam entered the hall. Masoud was in leisure clothes; he was wearing a T-shirt and Maryam had a soft, pink, silk dress on with her hair brushed. They entered the hall. Maryam stood behind Masoud. She didn’t sit down beside him. Masoud took a look at us and said, “Maryam, why have you brought them here again?” and that moment I realized that it was not something new. Maryam answered, “They’ve come here to unite you. They are your wives. They’ve tied the knot with you and want to be united with you. And these empty seats are for them.” I asked, “Sister Maryam, why don’t you take a seat there?” She said, “This is for each and every Masoud’s wife.” I wondered what was going on. When she said so I found some women with their headscarves fallen on the ground or some with no headscarves at all. I wondered why they had taken off their headscarves in front of brother Masoud. I told one of them about her headscarf. She said, “No problem! Who’s my nearest man than Masoud? “I love him so much. There’s no one nearer to me than Masoud.” I can remember all these scenes clearly.

 Zahra:

One of the women stood at the podium saying, “Ladies, feel at home. Take your headscarves off. You dance for the leader.” I said, “We dance for the leader?! I used to be reproach for letting my hair out of the headscarf. Now you tell me to take my headscarf off and put on those clothes?!” That very woman, Batouleh Rajaee told me, “Haven’t you got divorced? You gave your hand to Masoud via Maryam. Now put Maryam aside and give your hand directly to Masoud. Now you must do your best dance for him.”

Nasrin:

They would give us freedom on purpose and encourage us to dance with music when played. The commanders would say, “Be at home! He’s your brother. Don’t you call him brother? Show your love and affection towards him.” They even liked us to kiss him. They prompted us to kiss Rajavi.

 Zahra:

At first, we danced in uniform. Just two days later, that is the day we were supposed to dance – no one knew – they brought us silk fabrics. Now we had to see how those fabrics would go with our faces. Could the color brighten the complexion? After all, I was one of the candidates for dancing.

 Batoul:

I suddenly realized that the senior members of the leadership council began to take their dresses off. When about 25 senior members of the leadership council began to take off their dresses and stripped naked other women who were of my rank followed suit and Maryam Rajavi and others were encouraging, “This is your pool. You should dive into it. Common on! Get undressed in front of the leader.” The meeting went on this way; for about three to four hours they were dancing. Masoud, though at first pretended to be discontent over our presence there, sat comfortably eyeing up us all.

Nasrin:

I can remember that Masoud Rajavi was staring me in the eyes. I didn’t know what I had to do at that moment. I began looking at somewhere else. That’s while we were told to say something to Masoud when he would look at us; something like “I love you” and to make a fuss over him. “The brother doesn’t look everybody in the eye.”

Rajavi would choose those who were pretty. That was overt. One could see that. It was not covert. He wasn’t even-handed with all. He would really handpick certain women, chat with them in front of other women. He would talk to them to go to him.

 Batoul:

Masoud would hold the so-called “liberty dance session” with the help of Maryam reasoning that, “When you see Masoud and another woman making love it will cleanse you of jealousy. It will prevent you from being jealous for other women.”

 Nasrin:

Rajavi would make us a gift of underclothes and towels. Maryam Rajavi used to stand beside him. We would pass by … At that moment you had to show how much you loved your leader or husband as Marayam Rajavi used to say. He would blow into our faces making some gestures. He would stare somebody in the eye. He did such things. Most of the time, he himself gave us underclothes or things like combs, towels and suchlike. Sometimes, Maryam Rajavi would rub them to her face and then gave them to Masoud and he gave them to us.

To get closer, he would come to our dormitories. We women were located in three separate units. To stimulate us he would say, “I’m going to unit 14 to stay the night there.” And commanders would make us ask him to come to our dormitories and be with us. “Oh brother, come and sleep with us for God’s sake. Don’t go there.” It was a childish thing; the scene was disgusting for a viewer from outside. But since we were involved in it we couldn’t realize its ugliness.

 Zahra:

This was his old slogan that women were open to exploitation but we were exploited most in the organization. “You are women?”, “Yes”. “The same as men?”, “Yes”. “Men clean tanks, why don’t you women?” They sexually exploited us. We women were subjected to the worst kinds of exploitation under the name of giving women independence. They claimed that they were after equality for women and whatever they were deprived of through history.

Maryam Rajavi:

Yes, we believe that women and men are equal. We even believe that an exploited woman has more potential than an exploited man to progress and can achieved competence like him, but not haphazardly.

Batoul:

When I went to the place where Masoud’s bedroom was located in … it was a building in Badizadegan Camp the first time I went there. It was in the leadership’s residence. There was a room which was Masoud’s bedroom with a double bed in it and everything was ready for … but Masoud was not there then. I was there waiting from 8 p.m. until midnight when Masoud came. It was the first night we were together until morning. That night I saw another exploitative relations and an act that I could never imagine Masoud Rajavi doing.

It used to be done in Parsian Camp until the fall of Saddam. We would even go for a swim with Masoud and do anything. After the fall of Saddam, Parsian Camp closed down. I couldn’t imagine that such a thing would continue. I was stunned thinking that such a huge number of people were killed in the war … He made me sick. That was one thing. The other thing was that I always thought that he only had such a relationship with me. I never knew that he had the same relationship with many other women. It was after the fall of Saddam that I was informed by some women that he had had the same relationship with other women.

When Maryam Rajavi called me to see Masoud at night it didn’t mean that I was in love with Masoud waiting with bated breath to see him or that I had an overwhelming urge since I had no husband. No, that was not the case. The only reason was that I couldn’t stand up against the organization when I was there. I knew that if I had fought them they would have done away with me. I couldn’t fight with them. I thought, “If I say no to them, what would happen next? Would they leave me alone? No. and this is not a subject to be discussed in the leadership council.” Then it would come to my mind that such and such a member of the leadership council who had disappeared mysteriously might have been killed or whatever. Later on, I had no doubt that they would kill anyone who disagrees with them in the leadership council. So I decided to let him do whatever he wanted waiting for a moment to save my body. There was some Naghmeh Hakami. She wasn’t ill or whatsoever. She died all of a sudden when there was a talk about melting in the ideological leader those years. There was another woman called Seddigheh. She died too. We wondered why she died since she was healthy. Zahrah Fayyaz died. Just like that. Zahra Nouri died. At that moment I thought, “Suppose Batoul Soltani died.” By dying I mean being martyred. They even exploited corpses.

Well, he plays God. I could see Rajavi’s true colors when I looked in astonishment at what he was doing. I wondered why marriage and sexual satisfaction was banned for all men while he exempted himself. The moments I was looking at him he found me bewildered and said, “You eyeballs are sexy.”

 Nasrin:

It appears that Masoud Rajavi slept every night with numerous women – at least as far as I know- with numerous, different women. On average, I would go every month or every two months to his bedroom.

It makes me sick when I hear the phrase “pure Mujahedins’ relations” because we saw the reality, because we know how a blatant lie it is. There are no pure relations in the organization. I haven’t seen relations so filthy as in the organization than in everywhere else. Isolated communities always have the filthiest relations. The more isolated, the filthier.

I attempted suicide because I had lost my hope completely. I made many pleas to them to let me leave the organization but they didn’t accept. I left no stone unturned but it was not possible. That’s why I attempted suicide. I liked to die because I couldn’t stand anymore. It was a difficult moment and my whole body was trembling when I was doing it. When I took the knife … I still can hear the sound of the knife when I put it on my wrist. I put the knife on my wrist and cut it and drop the knife. I had tied on an apron. My apron became soaked with blood. Because I was frightened and had lost a lot of blood I felt faint and fell on the ground. I had locked the door … I was terribly disappointed. I had locked the door but I didn’t know that the place I was in had another door from the street’s side and that door was open so a sister – as they used to say – called Shamsi came in and as she saw the scene she began screaming and others came in and took me to hospital by car.

After I survived the attempted suicide I felt as if I had been given another hope and had a new lease of life. I guess that I fled less than 20 days after my suicide. I fled immediately.

 Batoul:

To be honest, the thought of escaping struck me the day I saw Masoud doing that in 2000. Before that, I thought that Masoud wouldn’t do that – even if he was under pressure from Maryam Rajavi, as he claimed – but that night, that is the first night I went to Masoud’s bedroom and saw that the organization was not the matter and what mattered was sex and nothing else. I made my final decision to escape there.

It was November 2006. The next month that is in December I feigned a headache and illness and slept in the dormitory and didn’t go to work saying that I felt sick and had a headache etc. and then I could make my escape. I threw caution to the wind saying that either I would be caught, taken and killed or I would escape sound and safe. I couldn’t stand being there anymore.

Right now, he’s paying the hush money to those who have left him. Therefore, it’s so important for him to protect his reputation that he’s prepared to pay the highest price to keep his former people silent. I’ve seen many of them over these recent years and I know.

– By the way, what happened that we accepted what they said? The divorce thing, the separation from our children …

– Operation Eternal Light while untrained …

– Yes.

– I think the main reason was that we were cut off from the outer world. We were not in touch with our families, friends. We were not even allowed to love each other. We had learned to accept what the organization would say without objection. But poor are those who are still there.

– That’s right. I’m thinking about that because when I told Hajar, that is Kobra Tahmasebi that I would like to experience the life outside here she asked me, “Do you know what awaits you?” I answered, “I don’t care what awaits me. I want to go outside to know how much the sexuality you’re talking about is true. I want to check whatever you talk about. I want to see if a woman including myself goes out of here will pursue a simple life or … you say that I’ll be lead astray. You know, when I left there I realized that no, it depends on how one wants to live.

– How are you?

– Are you fine?

– Yes, thanks.

– Have you brought tea?

 Zahra:

I’ve got two children; one daughter, one son. I’m happy and I try to have the best for my children and give them the best not because they are my children but because I want them to learn to be honest. I teach my children to draw the line at any oppression; I teach my children to be as they are before they want to be for others. Every life has its ups and downs but I’m content with them all.

 Nasrin:

Since I left the MEK I haven’t just been pursuing my personal life. The guys loom large in my mind; those who we know how got stuck there and we know that none of them wants to stay there. That’s why we have been trying to help them half of our lives. We’ve talked to members of Parliament in Europe and influential figures to show them the real face of the organization.

They appear good, happy and beautiful in public but they are rotten to the core. Only we who were there know their real characters and therefore hate their appearances. It makes us sick when Maryam Rajavi delivers a speech. It taxes our patience to listen to her speech word by words because we know that she’s lying through her teeth. It makes us puke when she talks about women.

There are some people in Auvers-sur-Oise, Paris, France which is the cradle of freedom, who haven’t take one step outside Auvers-sur-Oise for 25 years and the only thing they do is cooking. There are such women here. How can we stand Maraym Rajavi when she appears in public putting on beautiful dresses and uttering beautiful words?! It’s really disgusting for us when we know the other side of the story. We told the French, “You whose country is the cradle of freedom host a cult whose members haven’t come outside this castle, this very small place for 25 years and you don’t know what’s going on inside.”

 Batoul:

That’s right that I have planned for my life and I’m living my own life and work or trying to earn good income to overcome my economic problems but as part of my job or what motivates me and I’d like to have it on my list of priorities and pursue it is that I want to be the voice of those friends and help them know the realities about the leader of the MEK, Masoud Rajavi who betrayed the trust of each and every member of the organization including my own husband, a person who himself may not know what has happened to him or that Rajavi has betrayed him but it’s my duty and the duty of those like me who left the organization. I’ve designed a website and try to make my voice and other women’s heard by the members or the public and let them know what we have gone through.

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France

ISIL terror alarms France to Mojahedin Khalq threat

Press TV has conducted an interview with Dr. Webster Griffin Tarpley, an author and historian from Washington, to discuss why the French Foreign Ministry has recently condemned the anti-Iran terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) for its acts of violence.

The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: The terrorist group has been active in France for years, and the French government has been aware of their tactics and activities all these years. But this statement by the Elyse just recently is somehow unprecedented. Why now?

Tarpley: There is a certain history of this. Back in 1986, the year when there were lots of bombs in the Paris subway, Jacques Chirac essentially kicked [out] the Mujahedin-e Khalq known in the US primarily as MEK. The MEK were kicked out but they attempted to make various comebacks and in 2003 there was a round-up of MEK that was piloted b Sarkozy, the Interior Minister who was on his way to becoming the premier.

I am afraid that the attempt of the French to get rid of these people was aborted about 2009 when the European Union said no, now you have got to be nice to them and probably the worst thing is Hillary Clinton in September 2012 took the MEK, Mujahedin-e Khalq off the terror list which was of course a mockery.

The reason why the French might be doing this now I would think has something to do with ISIS and the events in Syria and Iraq. When you see a group like ISIS which is similar in many ways to the terrorists of the MEK, obviously there is a feeling in the MEK I would guess that they have got to get involved, that they have got to contribute, they have got to make themselves heard or they are not going to get the funding that they are accustomed to getting. So, they have got to do something perhaps not against Syria but primarily against Iran which is their specialty.

And if you look at that bombing for example the Jewish museums in Brussels, that is tied to the ISIS in a number of ways. That might have frightened the French authorities so much that they have decided to start staking the ground for some measures against the MEK.

Press TV: How much is that a threat the West in general and of course some countries in particular, like France and the United States might experience what is happening in the Middle East on their own soil?

Tarpley: It’s of course extremely dangerous and the thing that the French point to, I think it shows the insidious methods that MEK has. It’s a very sinister group but here is what they are expert in. They buy officials, they essentially bribed them. I guess most people would say the formula they took here in the US was they would hold conferences and they would offer speaking fees to a lot of very important intelligence community type officials and these speaking fees were astronomical. Of course, the money was coming from the US taxpayer. It was a way to recycle US taxpayer money into the pockets of some of these corrupt officials.

In 2012, Seymour Hersh, well-known investigative journalist, concluded that the MEK was in effect a branch of the joint special operations command of the United States. In other words, “state-sponsored terrorism” I guess would be the word that would occur to many people. But the people that they had got in to speak in favor of them had included former Attorney General Mukasey, former Secretary of Homeland Security Ridge, former CIA Directors Woolsey and Goss, they had former Mayor Giuliani of New York, Howard Dean from the left-wing of the Democratic Party, the former head of the FBI Louis Freeh and John Bolton, the well-known Islamophobic neocon.

So, all of those endorsements together and the help of the Hillary Clinton got them off the list terror list in September 2012 and we can assume that the US government support to them is growing and growing and growing. But of course in this chaotic situation in the Middle East, the strange big fellows are finding themselves in unexpected conflict situations and I think since President Hollande of France is so unpopular, he doesn’t want to add some kind of terror wave to this or he may be getting ready to crack down, one would hope so on MEK.

Press TV: All in all, and concerning the current circumstances will there be any effort to, for France, to kick the MEK out of France?

ley: I guess that depends on the French. That’s a little bit hard to judge from here but there is generally speaking in the Western intelligence community a kind of frisson – a shudder of alarm – about the terrorists that are being minted in the ISIS but also in the Nusra Front inside Syria and in this entire situation.

And whatever happens in Iraq and Syria in the coming months, a lot of them are going to be coming back to Western Europe and the United States. So, we see the policy of meddling and promoting terrorism necessarily courts this idea of blowback that the people that you have unleashed against certain geostrategic enemies are eventually going to come back and play a very damaging role vis-à-vis your own societies.

So, it’s a very short-sighted policy and we could say this on the hundredth anniversary of the assassination that started World War I. How much more of this is that the world is going to put up with?

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Historian: Israel gave fake Iran dossier to MKO

In an interview with Press TV, Gareth Porter said he has evidence of MKO’s submission of documents to the German intelligence in 2004, claiming that Iran has been seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

“And the MKO undoubtedly got them from Israel – A document that connects the MKO and Israel that the MKO had been laundering intelligence for the Israelis for years,” he said.

Porter, author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of Iran Nuclear Scare, said there is “absolutely convincing evidence” that the MKO documents were “fabricated.”

He said Israel and the United States started in 1983 fabricating documents against the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program by raising claims that Iran is running a “covert nuclear weapons program.”

The investigative journalist said under former US President W. George Bush (2001-2009), the Israeli regime moved to “essentially create a set of documents that would indict Iran as pursuing nuclear weapons.”

However, he said, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) made it clear that it had “not established the authenticity of those documents.”

“[The IAEA then director Mohamed ElBaradei] insisted they should not be used as evidence in regard to Iran’s nuclear program,” said Porter.

In his book, Porter wrote that the international hype created over Iran’s nuclear energy program has been in fact a scenario orchestrated by the Israeli spy agency Mossad and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Was the Iranian threat fabricated by Israel and the U.S.?

In a new book and in a conversation with Haaretz, U.S. historian Gareth Porter charges that U.S. and Israeli policies on Iran have been based on fabricated evidence.

A narrative is a story that we tell ourselves, and not necessarily what happened in reality. For example, the “Iranian threat” narrative, which has become the common wisdom in Israeli public discourse. A new book by Gareth Porter, an American historian and researcher specializing in U.S. national security, shows how the actual state of the Iranian nuclear program does not match the Iranian threat narrative.

The book’s title, “Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Nuclear Scare” (Just World Books), already tells us that it is going against the current. Porter appears to be the only researcher who has read with an unprejudiced eye all the reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency from the past decade. He also had access to American intelligence reports on the Iranian issue from recent decades. In addition, Porter interviewed generations of American officials and analyzed the testimony of senior officials before Congress.

The result is a highly detailed and well-documented book for all interested in understanding how we arrived at the Iranian nuclear crisis, and the “attack scenarios,” and invented facts and intelligence reports whose purpose was to support the preconceptions. At the same time, the book is invaluable for those wishing to understand what is being discussed in the intensive nuclear talks that have been taking place Iran and the superpowers (or, more accurately, Iran and the U.S.) since the signing of last November’s interim agreement, which surprised many Israelis.

According to Porter, it was a hidden political agenda of U.S. decision makers (from long before Israel entered the picture) that gave rise to the Iranian nuclear crisis. This is one of the book’s main subjects, and the starting point for a discussion with which we in Israel are unfamiliar.

The story begins with U.S. support for the Iraqis during the 1980s Iraq-Iran war. The critical point comes with the collapse of the Soviet empire. According to Porter, that event and the end of the Cold War pulled out the rug from under the CIA’s raison d’être. The solution the Americans found to continue providing the organization with a tremendous budget was the invention of a new threat – the merging of weapons of mass destruction (an ambiguous term in itself) and terror. Iran, which rose to the top of the list, provided the threat that “saved” the CIA.

The empowering of the CIA’s organizational interests was reinforced by the gallant neoconservatives, led by ideologues Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and John Bolton, who had in the meantime reached senior positions in the government. They launched a campaign to delegitimize the Islamic Republic with the aim of toppling the regime (using the sanitized term “regime change”).

Running through Porter’s book is the well-substantiated claim that U.S. and Israeli policies on Iran derived from their political and organizational interests, and not necessarily from careful factual analysis of the Iranian nuclear program, which was subject to IAEA monitoring, or of the intentions of the Iranian leadership.

According to Porter, no systematic analysis was made of the goals of the Iranian nuclear program, and neither U.S. nor Israzeli policy makers devoted any thought to why all of Iran’s official declarations on the subject were in line with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Furthermore, in U.S. discussions until 2007, and in Israel until today, hovering overhead is the nuclear “axiom” that Iran is dashing toward a bomb via the route of uranium-enrichment centrifuges. Porter and the IAEA found no proof of the dash to the bomb.

Following is Haaretz’s interview with Porter, conducted via email.

You have spent years of research analyzing IAEA reports, intelligence reports and interviewing officials about the Iran nuclear issue. What motivated you to write your latest book?

“It was the realization that a narrative about the Iranian nuclear issue had gained unchallenged credence, but that I had discovered over the years a number of major ‘anomalies’ – important facts that could not be reconciled with the narrative. I also came to realize that I was the only journalist who was closely tracking the evidence surrounding the issue. And finally – and perhaps most importantly – I realized that it  was impossible to convey the truth … in an article or series of articles; I had to write a book.”

Is it fair to say that your book shows us that the whole nuclear crisis as it has unfolded over the past 10 years is about U.S. and Israeli attempts to prevent Iran from developing a non-militarized nuclear program, even though such a program is permitted under the NPT, and that this obscured the fact that Iran never intended to develop nuclear weapons?

“Yes, I put considerable emphasis on the early history of the interaction between Iran’s nuclear program and policy, and the policies of the United States and Israel toward the program. I show how the Reagan administration’s intervention, beginning as early as 1983, to pressure Germany and France to refuse to cooperate with Iran in completing the Bushehr reactor, and to refuse to provide the enriched uranium reactor fuel for Bushehr, meant that Iran had to either give up its nuclear rights under the NPT altogether or go to the black market, in defiance of U.S. policy, to get its own independent enrichment capability. And despite subsequent U.S. and Israeli charges that Iran was interested in enrichment for nuclear weapons, there was and is no evidence whatever to support that charge.”

In my Haaretz blog, I emphasize the paradigm change of the 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, and still valid today, which concluded that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003. The Israeli public is unaware of this halt. Furthermore, many commentators believe that U.S. intelligence “corrected” itself and that the 2007 estimate has been annulled. Could you enlighten our readers about the important 2007 NIE?

“The 2007 NIE broke with previous NIEs [in 2001 and 2005], which had concluded that Iran was then running a nuclear weapons program. It concluded instead, with ‘high confidence,’ that Iran had halted its work on nuclear weapons. That conclusion was of course opposed by the Bush administration and Israel, because it had been the charge that Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons that justified the threat of military force against Iran. And it did indeed make the ‘military option’ irrelevant to U.S. policy for the rest of the Bush administration and for much of the Obama administration.” 

According to the 2007 NIE, however, some nuclear weapons research was carried out in Iran until 2003. Could you elaborate on what kind of research was undertaken; when, where and by whom, and what its scope was?

“Precisely who was carrying out research and what kind of research is still completely unclear, despite my effort to get any additional information on the subject from Thomas Fingar, who was in charge of the estimate. What was said by U.S. intelligence officials to be ‘snippets of conversation’ intercepted by U.S. intelligence in 2007 appears to indicate that some research related to nuclear weapons was being undertaken. But how many people were involved remains entirely unclear. And the testimony of the French ambassador to Tehran, as well as other evidence presented in my book, strongly suggests that the Supreme National Security Council had not authorized it and was not happy that it was going on.

“Not only did [Iran’s then-president] Hassan Rouhani order it halted in October 2003, when he was named the first coordinator of Iran’s nuclear policy, but Rouhani prevailed on the Supreme Leader to declare any work on nuclear weapons illicit under Islam in order to compel the researchers to give up their work on weapons. Understanding that episode correctly is clearly necessary to comprehending Iran’s nuclear policy accurately. 

“Unfortunately, as I argue in my book, the evidence indicates that the team of intelligence analysts, who had been wrong about the existence of a nuclear weapons program in 2005 and again in an early draft of the 2007 estimate, got it wrong in their conclusion that the Iranian government had an actual nuclear weapons program [before] late 2003.”

In your book, you explain in great detail the sought-after “smoking gun,” i.e. the mysterious “laptop studies” and the Parchin “bomb test chamber.” The Israeli public is unfamiliar with the details of these “cases.” Could you explain the “possible military dimensions” and comment on the credibility of the “evidence”?

“I devote an entire chapter to the ‘mysterious laptop documents’ and show that they were actually fabricated by Israeli intelligence and given to the Mujahedin-e-Khalq [a militant Iranian opposition group] to pass on to German intelligence in mid-2004. The ‘giveaway’ that they were fabrications is the fundamental error in a series of studies depicting efforts to integrate a nuclear weapon into the Iranian intermediate-range missile, which shows the Shahab-3 that Iran had abandoned in 2000 in favor of a much-improved model that was first tested in August 2004 – too late to correct the mistake before the papers were passed to the MEK. 

“Among the indicators that the documents originated in Israel is the fact that the MEK is not sophisticated enough to have fabricated such a large number of documents, and the well-known history of the terrorist organization’s close working relations with Israeli intelligence. Equally important is the fact that former IAEA director general ElBaradei revealed in his memoirs that Israel had passed on documents and intelligence reports to the IAEA directly in 2008 and 2009, which depicted Iran work on nuclear weapons even after 2003 – obviously prompted by the 2007 NIE.

“Those documents included information alleging that Iran had built a large metal cylinder to carry out tests of nuclear weapons designs at its Parchin military base. The IAEA made that allegation a major news theme by publishing it in its November 2011 report.  But no other evidence except the Israeli intelligence report has ever been produced to support that highly dubious charge. “

The emphasis in your book is on the centrifuges and the “enrichment track to the bomb.” Can you comment on the Arak heavy water reactor that is linked in Israel to the “plutonium track” and is behind the preemptive scenarios that have been developed in the Israeli press.

“The main weakness of the argument that Arak is an Iranian scheme for a ‘plutonium track’ to a nuclear weapon is simple: Iran has already agreed to arrangements under which it would be prevented from maintaining control of the plutonium produced by the reactor. In other words, all of the plutonium would be exported to another country. But there is a second major reason that it is not the threat that is being claimed: To build a plutonium reprocessing plant requires extensive construction as well as time, and it cannot be concealed.”

What is your assessment of the current negotiations between Iran and the P5+1? Is a final agreement to close the Iranian file on the table?

“I am pessimistic about the outcome of these talks, in the coming months at least, because the Obama administration – influenced by the false narrative surrounding the issue and overconfident about its ability to pressure an Iran it assumes has been significantly weakened by the sanctions – is planning to demand that Iran give up all but a very few thousand of its 19,000 centrifuges for many, many years. That demand, based on a notion of Iranian ‘breakout’ that is quite divorced from reality, is an obvious deal-breaker. Iran cannot and will not agree to give up its ability to provide nuclear fuel for more nuclear plants, for which it is planning. In my view, this demand will lead to a much higher level of tensions unless and until it is substantially altered.”

In your view, what is behind the Israeli-Iranian rivalry? Is there a chance for Israeli-Iranian détente following the achievement of a final agreement in the Vienna talks and the possibility of new openings in U.S.-Iran relations?

“In my view there have been political considerations on both sides of the Iran-Israel relationship that have stood in the way of a detente over the past 15 years: On the Israeli side, the first Netanyahu government in 1996 was actually willing to give detente a try, so there is no inherent reason why it could not happen again. It was the opportunity to use the U.S. to put intense pressure on Iran, if not to use force for regime change, that swayed successive Israeli governments to take the ‘existential threat’ approach to Iran. If and when the U.S. pursues a truly independent policy toward Iran, that Israeli motive will disappear.  

“On the Iranian side, the main obstacle to softening of its attitude toward Israel, in my view, has been the degree to which taking a hard line toward Israel makes Iran popular in the Sunni Arab street and counterbalances, at least to some extent, the anti-Iran policy of the Sunni regimes. So Iran-Israel detente has become hostage, to a great extent, to both the pro-Israel stance of the U.S. and the Sunni-Shi’a cold war.”

A final question: Is there a possibility that you are wrong, that you have been misled by some optimistic and naïve theories?

“My operational principle as an investigative journalist is that if there is a single verifiable fact that conflicts with my general understanding of an issue, I need to look more closely to understand why that anomaly exists. In the case of Iran’s nuclear program, I have found an unbroken string of anomalies that undermine the credibility of official U.S.-Israeli narrative, but I have yet to find a single fact that would invalidate my reconstruction of the history of the issue.”

By Shemuel Meir

The writer, a former IDF analyst and associate researcher at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, is an independent researcher on nuclear and strategic issues, and author of Haaretz’s “Strategic Discourse” blog (in Hebrew).

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