Page 117 – Nejat Society

A Deranged Cult called MEK and Our Warped Foreign Policy

Every year the notorious cult and “former” terrorist group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) holds a political conference to promote its propaganda and call for regime change in Iran, and every year many current and former American, Canadian, and European officials and elected representatives line up to pay homage to the group and their leader, Maryam Rajavi. Members of both major parties in the U.S. have either traveled to the group’s compound in Albania or spoken remotely through video messages in exchange for hefty speaking fees for the last ten years. The annual parade of prominent officeholders and policymakers that offer up effusive praise to such a wretched group is an ongoing disgrace for the United States and its allies, and it is a symptom of deeper problems with our foreign policy.

This show of support for the MEK reflects the extent to which our foreign policy debates are distorted and corrupted by the lobbying efforts of foreign groups and governments alike. No one knows for sure where the MEK gets its money, but there is reason to believe that it may be coming from the Saudi government and/or Saudi individuals. In recent years, prominent Saudis have begun participating in MEK events, and that coincided with the kingdom’s intensifying hostility towards Iran in the last decade. Our Iran policy debate is being influenced to an alarming degree by an extremist cult and an increasingly repressive authoritarian client state, and none of that can be good for American interests or democratic accountability in our foreign policy.

American support for the MEK reminds us that bipartisanship in foreign policy usually means rallying behind exceptionally bad causes. This year’s conference was described in one report as a “rare moment of bipartisan unity,” as if this somehow made cheering on a deranged cult better. The pro-MEK boosterism also shows that there are far too many people in and around our government that will make common cause with absolutely anyone if they are in favor of regime change in Iran. That in turn is a measure of just how irrational our government’s fixation on Iran is.

Photo MEK have been the US’ and Israel’s terrorists for some time

The MEK was originally an armed group opposed to the Iranian monarchy before the revolution, and during that period it was also responsible for killing several Americans. The MEK supported taking and keeping US diplomats hostage. After the group fell out with Khomeini and were brutally purged, the group relocated to Iraq where they joined with Saddam Hussein to attack their own country. Their participation in Iraq’s attack on Iran has earned them the enduring loathing of almost all Iranians everywhere, and for that reason and others they have virtually no support in Iran or in the diaspora. While the MEK was officially removed from the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2012 after an extensive lobbying campaign, it remains a totalitarian, cultish organization that abuses its own members. There is good reason to believe that members of the group still act as cat’s paws for Israeli intelligence in carrying out assassinations and acts of sabotage inside Iran. As part of the group’s effort to remake its image, it uses a political front organization, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), to create the impression that the MEK has changed and committed itself to democracy.

The MEK has not changed. They remain at their core the same militant and extremist organization they have been for decades. Cheering on the MEK is as crazy and irresponsible as endorsing the Lord’s Resistance Army or defending the Khmer Rouge, and it is not an accident that the group has sometimes been likened to the latter. Unfortunately, because they hate the Iranian government and make the right noises about democracy, they are given a free pass and Iran hawks embrace them as allies. In the past, participants in MEK summits have ranged from Newt Gingrich, John Bolton, and Rudy Giuliani to Joe Lieberman, Tom Ridge, and John McCain. This year it included former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy, the current Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Menendez, his fellow New Jerseyan Sen. Cory Booker, and many other members of Congress. The speakers routinely declare that the MEK and its allies are the “real” opposition working towards “secular democracy,” they denounce the Iranian government, and they call for some form of regime change.

Former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy

Flournoy’s participation in the conference this year proved to be especially controversial since she is a major figure in Democratic national security circles and had frequently been mentioned as a possible Biden nominee for Secretary of Defense earlier in the year. In her remarks, she expressed hope for “internal regime change” in Iran, and congratulated the assembled audience for their work: “we must continue to applaud and support the important work of Diaspora groups like yours that keep alive the vision of a secular, free, and democratic Iran.”

Faced with a swift backlash online, Flournoy now claims that she didn’t know that she was speaking at an MEK event and wouldn’t have participated had she known, but it strains credulity that she was unaware of the nature of the event and its sponsor. A simple web search would have shown the relationship between the NCRI and the MEK, as well as the violent and disturbing history of the cult. Frankly, it is impossible to believe that she didn’t know who she was addressing.

The language that Flournoy used in her speech sounds too much like the standard pro-MEK talking points that other speakers have used for the last decade, and the MEK’s lobbying efforts are too well-known and have been going on too long for her to plead ignorance. It is notable that Flournoy felt the need to concoct a cover story to excuse her participation, since most pro-MEK shills take pride in what they do, but her excuse isn’t credible. Even if her explanation were true, it doesn’t excuse the horrible lack of judgment that she displayed here. If she didn’t understand that she was addressing an MEK event, she shouldn’t be offering advice on Iran policy or holding forth on the political future of Iran.

The MEK is a dangerous and disreputable group. They ought to be so politically radioactive that no one would want to be associated with them, but that has not happened because Iran hawks from both parties and in many other Western countries find the MEK useful to their agenda. Supporting the MEK allows them to mislead ignorant audiences into falsely believing that their hard-line policies enjoy support from the Iranian Diaspora No one who knows anything about Iran thinks that the MEK deserves support or has any support back in Iran, so whenever someone celebrates the group that is all the proof you need that nothing else that person says about Iran and Iran policy should be taken seriously.

Iran hawks and the MEK are both obsessed with regime change in Iran. Since they cannot achieve it from within Iran, it is just a matter of time before the cult’s yes-men in Washington push for military action aimed at toppling the government. Just as they sided with Saddam Hussein to attack their own country over forty years ago, the MEK wants to rope the US into fighting another war against Iran. If we want to prevent that war from happening in the future, the MEK’s cheerleaders need to be exposed to ridicule and criticism over their willingness to support a group that has both American and Iranian blood on its hands.

Daniel Larison is a contributing editor and weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.

by Daniel Larison ,

July 14, 2021 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Michele Flournoy ‘unaware’ her hosts background calls for regime change!

Biden-linked expert backs regime change at event sponsored by Iranian militant group
Michele Flournoy claims she was ‘unaware’ her hosts are part of a well-known former terrorist organization.

Former defense official Michèle Flournoy called for regime change in Iran at a conference on Saturday sponsored by the Mojahedin-e Khalq — an Iranian militant group once listed as a terrorist organization.

A spokesperson for Flournoy’s consultancy, WestExec Advisors, which she co-founded with President Joe Biden’s now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken, attempted to walk back her appearance, telling both The Daily Beast and Responsible Statecraft:

When she agreed to the engagement, Ms. Flournoy was unaware of the affiliation. She would not have participated had she known of it, and she refused payment for the engagement once she learned of it. She has no affiliation with the MEK and will never appear at their conference again.

But at the MEK-sponsored conference, Flournoy referred to her hosts as an “important” diaspora group and called for “internal regime change” in Iran.

Former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy

“When there is an internal regime change — when a government comes to power that renounces its revolutionary aims and terrorism — the United States will be the first in line to engage it,” Flournoy told this year’s Free Iran World Summit. “In the meantime, we must continue to applaud and support the important work of diaspora groups like yours that keep alive the vision of a secular, free, and democratic Iran.”

That position isn’t shared by experts at the Center for a New American Security, which Flournoy founded and whose board she continues to chair. A 2020 CNAS paper, “Reengaging Iran: A New Strategy for the United States,” described the MEK as irrelevant and ineffective.

The paper proposed diplomatic measures the next administration should undertake to, among other objectives, “de-escalate regional tensions that perpetuate instability and proxy-fueled competition in the Middle East,” and recommended exploring an “agreement on noninterference in internal affairs” which “may set a useful precedent for how regional actors can deal with one another.”

“The benefit of this agenda item is that the non-state groups involved are relatively ineffective and are not major threats to the governments in question,” said the paper. “However, these groups create deep bitterness and suspicion. For example, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) has little chance of playing a meaningful role in destabilizing or overthrowing the Islamic Republic, but international support for it absolutely infuriates Iran’s leadership.”

CNAS took an even more mocking tone toward the MEK in a 2008 blog post, writing:

Iran hawks in the U.S. can be a funny bunch, especially when they start arguing for terrorist groups opposed to the regime in Tehran to be de-listed as terror groups simply because they’re the enemies of our enemies. Because the rest of the world certainly wouldn’t see that as hypocritical in any way, shape or form. Oh no.

The MEK participated in the Iranian revolution of 1979, assassinating several Americans working in Iran and mocking Iranian leaders as soft for failing to execute their American hostages. But the organization soon fell out with the revolutionary regime and defected to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

The MEK was listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department until 2012. It has been accused of torturing and abusing its own members in exile.

However, the MEK has rehabilitated its image through its Paris-based political branch, the National Council of Resistance of Iran. Numerous Democratic and Republican politicians have appeared at NCRI conferences, sometimes in exchange for speaking fees as high as $50,000.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez (D–N.J.) and former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Donna Brazile also spoke at Saturday’s conference. So did former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who said that the MEK should be “blessed and protected.”

In a Twitter statement on Saturday, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh accused these politicians of selling “themselves cheap for a Europe-hosted circus arranged by a once Saddam-backed terrorist cult with Iranian blood on its hands.”

Flournoy’s voice was perhaps the most significant, as she had nearly been appointed to President Joe Biden’s cabinet earlier this year. Numerous high-profile Democrats had urged Biden to nominate Flournoy for secretary of defense, and Biden had been widely expected to do so before instead choosing General Lloyd Austin to run the Department of Defense at the last minute.

“Since 1979, every U.S. administration has had to deal with the threat posed by Iran’s revolutionary regime,” Flournoy said at the MEK-sponsored conference. “Iran’s use of terrorism abroad is paired with its systemic torture and oppression at home.”

She warned that the Iranian government “should not expect an easy ride from this administration or Congress.”

Flournoy did not respond to questions about why she chose to speak at the event or how much she was offered as payment for speaking.

Written by Eli Clifton and Matthew Petti ,Responsible Statecraft

July 14, 2021 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

Biden Fave ‘Unaware’ She Was Talking to Notorious Iran Group; MEK

OH? Michèle Flournoy claims she didn’t realize this weekend’s conference where she was a featured speaker on regime change was put on by the once-terror-listed MEK.

An Obama-era Pentagon official who was at one point under consideration to be President Joe Biden’s secretary of defense called for “internal regime change” in Iran at an event held by a shadowy group designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. government until 2012. But she claims she didn’t know anything about the group’s notorious past when she agreed to appear.

Former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy, who heads up a consulting firm upon which the Biden administration has drawn heavily to fill top White House positions, appeared virtually on Sunday at the “Free Iran World Summit 2021.” The confab was put on by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the diplomatic wing of the People’s Mojahedin of Iran, or Mojahedin-e Khalq. Known commonly by its Farsi acronym, MEK, the dissident group was put on the U.S. terror list in 1997—only to be removed from the list 15 years later with support from disgraced former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy

“When she agreed to the engagement, Ms. Flournoy was unaware of the affiliation,” a Flournoy spokesperson told The Daily Beast. “She would not have participated had she known of it, and she refused payment for the engagement once she learned of it. She has no affiliation with the MEK and will never appear at their conference again.”

Flournoy is the rare Democratic A-lister who’s publicly linked themselves to the MEK, which has historically enjoyed support from right-wing neoconservative allies such as Giuliani, former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton, former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich, retired Gen. Jack Keane, who is a regular on Fox News, and others. On the other side of the aisle, former Vermont governor, Democratic National Committee chairman, and also-ran presidential candidate Howard Dean has made paid and unpaid speeches for the MEK.

“[W]hen there is an internal regime change, and a government comes to power that renounces its revolutionary aims and terrorism, the United States will be the first in line to engage it,” Flournoy told the summit audience. “In the meantime, we must continue to applaud and support the important work of diaspora groups like yours that keep alive the vision of a secular, free, and democratic Iran.”

Matt Duss, foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT), tweeted, “I’m tempted to say that this is horrible staff work from Flournoy’s team in letting her do this, these invitations can often be deceptive, but at this point no former nat sec official really has any excuse for not knowing what the MEK is.”

“Social media has been abuzz with words of condemnation from journalists and other users who said it was both ‘shocking’ and ‘embarrassing’ for Michele Flournoy, former U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy, to address the annual summit of the notorious anti-Iran [MEK] terrorist group,” Iranian state media crowed.

The speaker’s list at this year’s summit included a mixed bag of names, from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) to Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) to Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).

While the MEK began in 1963 as a revolutionary movement agitating for human rights and democracy in Iran, it has more recently been described as “a secretive, cult-like group that resembles a militant, Islamist version of the Church of Scientology.”

In the 1970s, the MEK “staged terrorist attacks inside Iran and killed several U.S. military personnel and civilians working on defense projects in Tehran,” according to the State Department, and supported the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in the capital city. In the early 1990s, State says the MEK “conducted attacks on Iranian embassies in 13 different countries, demonstrating the group’s ability to mount large-scale operations overseas.” In June 1998, MEK planted bombs in Tehran that killed three people.

The group also fought against the U.S. in the early stages of the Iraq War. According to the U.S. Army’s official history of the conflict, “by 2003 the MEK has become an elite element in the Iraqi Army and had fought against Coalition forces in March and April of that year.” MEK forces later surrendered to American special operations forces and the U.S.-led coalition provided security for the group members detained in Camp Ashraf facing attacks by Iranian-backed militias. MEK members were subsequently evacuated from Iraq to Albania.

Interviews with MEK dissidents conducted by Human Rights Watch in 2005 included testimony from ex-members about “abuses ranging from detention and persecution of ordinary members wishing to leave the organization, to lengthy solitary confinements, severe beatings, and torture of dissident members.” A 2009 study by the RAND Corporation alleged that MEK displayed various “cult characteristics,” such as “intense ideological exploitation and isolation,” “sexual control,” “emotional isolation,” and other such tactics.

In April, Facebook exposed a troll farm run by the MEK. However, the illicit initiative “achieved little to no audience visibility,” largely failing to gain significant numbers of new followers, according to Facebook.

By Justin Rohrlich, The Daily Beast

July 13, 2021 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization members' families

Azim has been a hostage in MEK under a dirty deal

Ameneh Khatoon is an elderly mother from Fooman, a town in the North of Iran. She lost two sons in the eight years war imposed by the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein against the Iranian nation. The first son was killed but the second one is Azim who has been a hostage for over 35 years now. “My son was taken as a hostage in a dirty, inhuman deal”

Azim MohammadAlizadeh was an Iranian soldier serving in the Iran-Iraq war when he was taken as a war prisoner by Iraq forces. He was captive in the horrible jails run by the regime of Saddam Hussein. And, Saddam was the financial and military sponsor of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi). Eventually. The agents of the MEK were permitted by Saddam Hussein military commanders to show up in the camps of POWs to recruit Iranian soldiers.

Azim Alizade family at Nejat Society office of Gilan Province

MEK agents succeeded to deceive several tortured and labored Iranian soldiers, including Azim, who were fed up with the awful situation of Iraqi camps. However, their arrival in the MEK camps was the start of a long-life physical and mental torture under the Cult of Rajavi.

The mother of Azim in front of Camp Ashraf

Ameneh Khatoon and her family have taken any legal action possible in order to find a way to visit their beloved son. When the MEK was located in Iraq, they traveled to the country and picketed in front of the group’s notorious base, Camp Ashraf, but they were not allowed to visit Azim. They have so far written several letters of complaints against the leaders of Mujahedin Khalq calling for the international community to aid them contact Azim.
“I ask the Albanian authorities to take action to help me contact my son, at least through a video call”, Ameneh Khatoon writes. “I appreciate any action in this way and I hope no family suffer such a separation.”

July 13, 2021 0 comments

Iran

Slovenia’s Envoy to Iran Summoned over PM’s Participation in MKO-Arranged Event

Iran’s Foreign Ministry summoned the ambassador of Slovenia to Tehran to voice protest at the Slovenian prime minister’s participation in an anti-Iran virtual gathering organized by the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO) terrorist group.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iran said on Sunday that Slovenian Ambassador Christina Radi has been summoned to the ministry to receive an official letter of protest in response to the Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa’s “unacceptable and undiplomatic” move to take part in a virtual gathering arranged by the MKO terrorist group.

In the meeting with the Slovenian envoy, the Iranian foreign minister’s assistant and director-general of the Foreign Ministry’s department of the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe expressed the Islamic Republic’s “strong protest at the baseless allegations raised against Iran” by handing the letter of protest to the ambassador, it said.

The envoy was notified that the Slovenian premier’s participation in an event organized by a terrorist group that is abhorred by the great Iranian nation as well as his wrong and groundless remarks run counter to the diplomatic norms and to the spirit of the bilateral relations and are totally condemned, the statement added.

The ambassador of Slovenia has been also reminded that supporting a terrorist group is in violation of the UN Charter, the internationally-recognized principles, and the human rights values, and are not acceptable by any means.

The government of Slovenia has been asked to provide an explanation for the anti-Iranian move, the statement added, noting that the envoy has pledged that she would convey Tehran’s protest to Ljubljana.

Slovenian Prime Minister Jansa and former US state secretary Mike Pompeo were among speakers at a gathering of the MKO terrorist group, held in Berlin on Saturday.

The MKO -listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community- fled Iran in 1986 for Iraq and was given a camp by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

They fought on the side of Saddam during the Iraqi imposed war on Iran (1980-88). They were also involved in the bloody repression of Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq in 1991 and the massacre of Iraqi Kurds.

The notorious group is also responsible for killing thousands of Iranian civilians and officials after the victory of the Islamic revolution in 1979.

More than 17,000 Iranians, many of them civilians, have been killed at the hands of the MKO in different acts of terrorism including bombings in public places, and targeted killings.

July 13, 2021 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Gathering together with terrorists to advocate freedom?!

In the latest sign of Western double standards in dealing with the issue of terrorism, a slate of former and current Western officials participated in a gathering held by a widely detested Iranian opposition group that is known for its role in carrying out thousands of targeted assassinations inside Iran in the 1980s.

The group, Mojahedin-e-Khalq, also known by its initials MEK or MKO, began its annual three-day conference online on Saturday with several former and current American and European officials delivering paid speeches via videoconference. The officials mostly launched into worn-out tirades about Iran’s internal and foreign policy.

About 30 members of U.S. Congress are expected to participate in this year’s conference of MEK, including Senator Bob Menendez, Chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Republican Senator Ted Cruz, and Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, as well as former ministers and officials from Europe, the United States and Canada.

Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa also delivered a speech at the conference, drawing harsh criticism from Iran and promoting the Iranian Foreign Ministry to summons the Slovenian ambassador to Tehran.

In a statement on Sunday, the ministry called Jansa’s move “unacceptable and undiplomatic.”

“After the presence of Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa in the virtual meeting of Mojahedin-e-Khalq terrorist grouping, the Iranian foreign minister’s assistant and director general of the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe department of the Foreign Ministry summoned Slovenia’s ambassador to Tehran Ms. Christina Radi and after conveying Iran’s strong protest against this move and the baseless accusations leveled against the Islamic Republic of Iran, gave her Iran’s official notice of protest against the government of Slovenia,” the ministry said in a statement.

“During the meeting, it was emphasized that Iran condemns the virtual presence of Slovenia’s premier in the gathering of a terrorist group, loathed among the great Iranian nation, as well as the official’s false and nonsensical remarks, which run counter to diplomatic norms and the atmosphere of bilateral relations,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry said, noting, “This is besides the fact that supporting a terrorist grouping violates the UN charter, recognized international principles and human rights values and is, under no pretext, acceptable.”

The Western officials’ participation in the MKO conference reflects a deeply flawed understanding of Iran on the part of the West. Every year, dozens of these officials flocked to Paris to deliver furious speeches to the cheers of a mostly hired audience. They kept participating, though virtually, in the MEK gatherings even during the coronavirus pandemic. Of course, most of these officials do so for the sake of money. At the end of the day, MEK offers irresistible lump sums for short appearances and thus one can make a quick buck within a few minutes by reading an already prepared text or regurgitating what had been said by others all the time.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh pointed to this issue in a tweet on Saturday, saying, “Bought western politicians (incl #LyingCheatingStealing Pompeo) sell themselves cheap for a Europe-hosted circus arranged by a once Saddam-backed terrorist cult with Iranian blood on its hands. Insatiable thirst for $$ & anti-Iran obsession is driving shameful western hypocrisy.”

But some participants appear in MEK gatherings with different goals. It is difficult to imagine that some influential former and current officials show up at these gatherings simply to make money. For Example, former Saudi spy chief Turki al-Faisal is by no means in need of the money of a group facing growing accusations of being on the Saudi payroll.

This type of officials often sees MEK as their last hope of bringing about fundamental political change in Iran while falsely believing that the group is capable of bringing down the Iranian government. But this is wishful thinking simply because MEK has no constituency in Iran and its propaganda of being “the most organized Iranian opposition group” rests only on its ability to pay off hapless refugees and adventurous college students to fill in for real Iranians.

The lack of popularity among ordinary Iranians begs the question of why MEK has been confined to the dustbin of history in Iran. MEK’s unpopularity among the Iranians stems from two things: First, the group had been implicated in many terrorist attacks and assassinations in Iran in the 1980s. Second, while the group was going on a killing spree in Iran its leaders colluded with Iran’s number one nemesis, Saddam Hussein, the former dictator of Iraq who gave them many military bases near Baghdad. With the military support of Saddam, MEK mounted a devastating military attack on Iran that led to its forever eradication in the country. Iranians have never forgotten, nor have they forgiven, this act of treason by MEK.

This may explain why the Iranian people feel offended when they see Western officials advocate for “freedom” in Iran to be achieved by a group having the blood of thousands of Iranians on its hands. The main reason why Iran usually accuses the West of sponsoring terrorism is their continued, brazen support for MEK, which has been on the blacklist of the U.S. and the European Union until recently.

Iran has always complained that the West supported terrorism. And Western participation in MEK “circus” gives Iran all the more reason to repeat this complaint. For Iran, the Western support of terrorism represented by MEK is not an exception. Instead, it’s a tradition deeply rooted in Western hypocrisy and is a habit the West finds difficult to kick.

July 13, 2021 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

US supporting MEK terrorists

This edition of the program is about the MKO terrorist organization and the West’s support for the group. The program discusses the fundamental cultic roots of the group, their modus operandi, dynamics, western support for them, and their current status in Albania.

https://dlb.nejatngo.org/Media/Interview/Presstv-Spotlight.mp4

To download the video file click here

July 12, 2021 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Women in the Mujahedin Khalq cult

The following brief note examines international standards of women’s rights within the Mojahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MeK), namely the cult of Rajavi, by referring to international documents, testimonies of members who managed to escape from the MEK, and speeches and videos released from the cult’s leaders.

Following the Operation “Eternal Light”, the Mojahedin-e-Khalq’s largest military movement against the Islamic Republic of Iran in July 1988, which led to the killing of more than 2,500 MeK members, , Massoud and Maryam Rajavi, in a meeting with members of the organization, said that the reason for this failure was the lack of focus of members due to affection between men and women, and since then, forced divorces and separation of children from the arms of parents became part of the organization’s ideology.

The women of the organization no longer have the right to marry or even think about men from thirty-three years ago. They must suppress all their sexual desires, and if they think about these desires for a moment, they are doomed to confess to the leaders and members of the organization and to be insulted and humiliated by them, in order to be forgiven. For thirty-three years, no woman in the organization has had the right to marry, think about her sexual desires, become a mother, communicate or even see their children who were taken away. But some of the women who managed to escape, including Batool Soltani, testified that they were raped by Massoud Rajavi during an operation called “Dance of Liberation.”

The leaders of the MEK did not stop there; they began sterilizing women in an operation they called the “Ideal Peak”, in order to kill any hope in women so that they would never think about the future in which they want to become mothers. Nasrin Ebrahimi, another member who managed to escape from the organization, spoke about the forced sterilization of women in MEK on September 9, 2008, at a meeting in the European Parliament with the presence of the members, and asked the parliamentary delegation to send specialists and doctors to the organization for investigating in this field.

The forcible removal of wombs can bring a disability for women who want to have children. A type of organ defect that cannot be treated or compensated. There are many human rights laws that place special emphasis on the physical and mental health of women. The ban on marriage and sterilization of women is practically an attempt to cut off the generation of MEK members. In fact, this is a genocide. In international law, any deliberate attempt to prevent the birth of a group, tribe, or ethnicity constitutes genocide.

Zahra Sadat Bagheri, another member who managed to escape, said that till she was in the organization, she knew 95 women who had been sterilized and announced the names of all of them. She said Massoud and Maryam Rajavi congratulated each of the women after the operation: “Congratulations to you who reached the peak of liberation from gender.”

The truth of the situation of women in the organization is exactly what its leaders declare; Separation from gender. The women of the organization are forcibly separated from their gender, but at the same time, they have to wear a scarf to cover their hair and have to cover their body with special uniforms, and are not even free to choose the style and color of their clothes.

Women’s uniforms are mandatory in the organization. Majid Mohammadi, a current member of the organization, explains the type of compulsory clothing for women: “The red color of the scarf in the MEK uniform has been borrowed from Marxism. The coats are green and symbolize the revolutionary wars of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in Cuba. Fewer photos have been published of MEK women with a variety of colors and clothing.”

Women have been forcibly separated from their gender by the organization’s leaders, but at the same time, gender segregation in the organization is rampant. The RAND Corporation report describes this gender segregation in a field study as follows:

“Despite claims by the Mujahedin-e Khalq and the National Council of Resistance to support gender equality and to place women in leadership positions, men and women are kept separate in the organization’s camps. They are segregated by gender, and in some buildings, lines are drawn in the middle of the community halls that separate men from women.

Men and women below the leadership level are barred from communicating with each other; Unless they have received official permission in each specific case. It is forbidden for men and women to shake hands, even the gas station in Camp Ashraf has separate hours for men and women to use.”

These contradictions show that women in the organization are merely ideological tools of leaders and have no right to object to any of them.

July 12, 2021 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

MEK intolerance towards Dissents and Critics

The type of interaction that the Mojahedin-e Khalq organization has with its critics and opponents is very unique among political organizations.

The group’s ideology is political totalitarianism which means it aims to eliminate all other political groups and critics who constantly challenge their ideologies.

This trait of the MEK is rooted in their belief that the existence of and activity of all Iranian opposition groups whether inside or outside of the country is dependent on the MEK and it seeks to bring them under control and dictate its legitimacy and hegemony.

How the group’s leader, Massoud Rajavi, defines the defectors from this group clearly show his thoughts. He said that, any organism absorbs and produces wastes and the defectors are the wastes of the MEK. They take a similar stance towards critics and dissenters.

Additionally, to establish their hegemony, the MEK has resorted to other tools as well including assault on rallies, falsification of news, making accusations and threats, and intimidation.

A list of the MEK’s actions in this regard follows:

1. Making threats to assassinate and exerting political pressure on and imprisonment of dissenters, critics and defectors;

2. Assaults on rallies and threatening the lives of opponents and critics through email

3. Launching propaganda against defectors in order to disturb their lives

4. Getting up petitions against critics and opponents of the group

5. Introducing their opponents as terrorists

6. Instructing lobbies in Western countries’ parliaments to prepare reports against the dissidents of the organization and sending it to Foreign Ministries of those countries as undesirable elements

7. Meeting with people in judicial system, police, parliamentarians and lobbies in a given country to provide them with information against the group’s dissenters in that country.

How the MEK treated opponents and critics according to international documents

Harassing the group’s dissenters

In a document released by the US Embassy and a WikiLeaks in Baghdad on the MEK in 2011, it is stated that the dissenters of the group were being harassed. These documents were based on interviews with defectors from the group where the US State Department paints a disturbing picture of the repression of MEK members by the cult leaders. The report also claims that any member of the group who is witnessed while on the run from the camp must be executed immediately.

Many of the defectors claimed that the organization had inflicted mental and physical damage on them in solitary confinement at Camp Ashraf.

Human rights violations in the MEK’s camps

The Human Rights Watch published a report named No Exit where seven former members of the MEK testify that they were beaten, insulted, tortured and held in solitary confinement during their years in the Mojahedin camp in Iraq.

“Inside the MEK camps, examples of human rights violations committed by the group leader to the dissenters inside the camp include long-term imprisonment with no contact with the outside world, beatings, psychological and verbal harassment, forced confessions, death threats and tortures which led to the death of 2 people. Statements of ex-members indicate that the MEK had three types of prisons inside its camps in Iraq:

According to them, the first type was small residential units known as guest houses. Those who had intended to leave the group were held in these units alone. They were not allowed to leave their units to talk and meet anyone inside the camp or to contact relatives and friends in the outside.

The second type of imprisonment in the MEK camps was confinement in small solitary cells. Imprisonment in such cell was a way of punishing the dissenters. While in the cells, these members had to cogitate and criticize what they did.

The third type reported by witnesses includes detention, physical torture, and interrogation in secret prisons of the MEK’s camps of which, according to the Human Rights Watch interview with those detained, no one in the camp was aware.

Physical abuse, imprisonment and no permission to leave

Regarding how the MEK treated the dissenters, the RAND corporation said, “recent findings showed that punishment of the those who opposed the group’s policies ranged from forcing members to make written confessions about disloyalty to imprisonment in specific locations in camp Ashraf. Former members have also reported torture and long-term confinements as a method of punishment for disloyalty.

July 12, 2021 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Israel Uses MKO Terrorists In Albania

Albanian historian and journalist Olsi Jazexhi (L) and journalist Syed Mohsin Abbas (R) join Press TV’s News Review program on July 10, 2021 to discuss the upcoming annual meeting of the anti-Iran Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO) terrorist group.

An Albanian historian and journalist tells Press TV that Israel’s secret services use the anti-Iran Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO or MEK) terrorist group to impair Iran’s security and to pressure the Islamic Republic to end its support for Palestine.

“The thing is that the MEK is being used by Israeli secret services and certain groups in the United States to harass the security of Iran,” Olsi Jazexhi said in an interview with Press TV’s News Review program on Saturday, ahead of the annual meeting of the terrorist group, which is usually attended by top US officials.

“Many of the people who are going to speak in their conference today are die-hard Israeli Zionists – people who support Israel and want the extinction of the Palestinian people,” Jazexhi said, noting that the MKO is being used as a tool to pressure Iran to stop its support for Palestine.

He maintained that the MKO needs a big budget for its survival, which “we suspect comes from Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates.”

He also described the MKO as a “cultish organization” that keeps slave soldiers, including the prisoners of Iraq’s imposed war on Iran in the 1980s, during which the group joined forces with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to massacre Iranians.

https://dlb.nejatngo.org/Media/Interview/Presstv-News-Reveiw.mp4

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According to the Albanian journalist, the group organizes money laundering and human trafficking in Europe, in addition to its gross human rights violations against its members.

“They are surviving, but this is their last breath,” he said, adding that in spite of the group’s campaign of death and destruction against the Islamic Republic, “they cannot do anything to Iran” as a powerful, independent country.

After it was founded more than 50 years ago, the MKO launched a campaign of bombings and assassinations in Iran. Out of the nearly 17,000 Iranians killed in terrorist attacks over the past four decades, about 12,000 have fallen victim to the group’s acts of terror.

The ill-famed terror group is currently based in Albania, where it enjoys freedom of activity after being delisted by the European Union and the United States in 2009 and 2012 respectively.

Regardless of its disrepute around the world, the MKO has in recent years held numerous big events, attended by senior American, Israeli and Saudi officials, including former US Senator John McCain, former mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani, former US national security advisor John Bolton, former US Senator Joe Lieberman, and former director of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency Turki bin Faisal Al Saud.

‘Fakhrizadeh assassination said to have MKO involvement’

During the News Review program, journalist Syed Mohsin Abbas also told Press TV that the high-profile assassination of Iran’s nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh last year is said to have had MKO involvement along with Israel’s Mossad spy agency.

“The MEK have no credibility in Iran. They’ve been carrying out these assassinations even to this day, even the assassination of the nuclear scientist Fakhrizadeh is said to have had MEK involvement along with Mossad,” he said.

Abbas said the MKO is effectively an extension of the “Anglo-Zionist deep state,” and is basically involved in only killing, murdering and maiming Iranians.

He also criticized Western countries’ hypocrisy in supporting the terrorist group, saying, “I think that the rest of the world, which gets cowed by American vetoes, by American sanctions, need to really grow a backbone” to come to terms with such hypocrisy.

“One would hope that such terrorist organization should be pulled up by the international community instead of being the absolute hypocrites that the Western regimes have shown themselves to be in case of MEK,” he said.

He added that the West is funding the MKO, helping them with their planning, and also giving them intelligence to carry out their operations.

‘All Western states support MKO’

Mohammad Marandi, a professor of international studies at the University of Tehran, also told Press TV that the MKO receives support from all Western countries – including Canada, the United States, the EU and Australia – rather than just some European countries.

“All of them support this terrorist organization. Just as they supported al-Qaeda in Syria and ISIS (Daesh) in Syria, these countries have been supporting terrorists that have been active in Iran,” Marandi said.

He explained that when the MKO began its bombing campaign in Iran in the early 1980s, they had offices in Europe, in France in particular, and when they joined Saddam Hussein’s army and became a part of his military, they gained even further support from Western regimes.

“The MEK terrorist organization receives funding from European governments and the United States, and the murders … they carry out and the espionage they carry out are fully backed by Western regimes,” the Iranian professor stressed.

He also maintained that one should not focus on the participation of certain American officials, including Bolton, when analyzing the group’s links to the US.

“There’s no difference between Bolton and [Barack] Obama,” he remarked. “They are all the same. They all support terrorism. They all support killing Iranians. They all support regime change [in Tehran].”

July 11, 2021 0 comments

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