Page 189 – Nejat Society

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

A decisive defeat for the Mujahedin-e Khalq

On 27 July 1988, Mersad operation[Eternal Light] which took place in a narrow passageway named Mersad in Kermanshah province, western Iran, was a decisive defeat for Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MKO) terrorist group.

The leadership of MKO was deluded in thinking that members of their terror group will face little or no resistance in Kermanshah province and will quickly reach Tehran in short period, and with the support of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi dictator, they decided to attack Kermanshah province in western Iran.

Forces of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Iranian Army surrounded and destroyed the terrorist group in the Mersad operation.

July 27, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

The Magic Formula to Turn MEK Terrorists to Proxies for False Flag Ops

“Slimy with MEK blood money”, this is the logic Kurt Nimmo presents to explain why some of former American officials, politicians, and retired military officers have been cheerleading for the MEK over the past decade. [1]
Ali Harb of the Middle East Eye also wonders about the contradictions over the sponsorship of certain American figures for the formerly terror designated group, MEK.

“Beyond Giuliani and Bolton, lawmakers from both major American political parties have lauded the MEK as a pro-democracy movement despite its checkered past,” he writes. [2]

However, he gets the answer in the comments of Barbara Slavin the director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council, on the MEK.

“It’s just ridiculous that they’ve been able to get the influence that they have had in the US,” Slavin told Harb, “I think that’s primarily due to the money … that they pay lobbyists to press their case. They’ve had some very influential people like John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani who have taken their side.” [3]

When a few weeks ago, Ilan Berman of the National Interest published a piece titled “Making sense of the MEK”, Daniel Larison of the American Conservative responded with an investigated report on the true nature of the MEK criticizing Berman for “whitewashing” the MEK. An example of whitewashing the MEK’s bloddy history is accurately denounced by Larison.

“For instance, he talks about the MEK’s efforts to cultivate U.S. politicians and former officials, including John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani, but he leaves out the part where they have paid their newfound supporters for their endorsement to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars per speech,” he states. [4]

In November 2016, the New York Times, “In one year — 2006 — Mr. Giuliani reported in a financial disclosure report that he had made 124 speeches, for as much as $200,000 each, and had earned a total of $11.4 million. He often made extravagant demands in return for agreeing to make a speech, including that the private plane that flew him to the engagement be a certain size.” [5]
The sums that Bolton has received from the MEK is as hefty as Rudy Guilliani’s.

“Bolton has always been the star of the show,” according to the Open Secrets News website. “Records show that the M.E.K has paid Bolton at least $180,000 in speaker fees to attend the group’s annual Paris conference for more than a decade.” [6]

The US warmongers, Saudi Arabia, the Israeli Mossad are all interlinked with the MEK—no matter the MEK was formerly considered a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the US State Department. Some magic formula, is now considered to be made up to turn former terrorists into Iranian pro-democracy patriots. MEK agents which are being brought in from Albania are organized in troll farms and may be used to carry out some false flag and blame it on Iran. Money seems to be the catalyst of these interactions. But where does the MEK’s money come from?
To be continued

By Mazda Parsi

References:
[1] Nimmo, Kurt, Pockets stuffed with terrorist cash to be MEK’s Guys, kurtnimmo.blog, July 13th, 2019.
[2] Harb, Ali, How Iranian MEK went from US terror list to halls of Congress
MiddleEastEye.net, July 17th, 2019.
[3] ibid
[4] Larison, Daniel, Whitewashing the MEK Makes No Sense, The American Conservative, July 7th, 2019.
[5] Landler, Mark & Lipton, Eric & Becker, Jo, Rudolph Giuliani’s Business Ties Viewed as Red Flag for Secretary of State Job, The New York Times, November 15th, 2016.
[6]Champlin, Reid, As tensions rise, moneyed interests pushing for hard line against Iran, Open Secrets News, May 22nd, 2019.

July 25, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization

MEK member reveals the group’s secret meeting content

Exclusive: In Leaked Audio, Unfaithful MKO Leader Calls US Presidents ‘Criminal’

A top leader of the Mujahedhin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) calls the US an imperialist regime, and accuses its presidents – from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama – of committing crimes against the terrorist cult, a leaked audio released by the Iran Front Page reveals.

Mehdi Abrishamchi, a founding member of the anti-Iran terror group, made the remarks in a secret intra-organizational meeting, whose contents have been leaked by an MKO member.

After carrying out a chain of terrorist attacks in Iran, Abrishamchi fled the country along with a number of his comrades, including his wife Maryam Qajar-Azodanlu. However, he was later forced to divorce his wife at the request of then MKO leader Masoud Rajavi, who later married Maryam. Abrishamchi even surprised observers by attending their wedding ceremony.

The leaked audio of Abrishamchi’s speech at a gathering of the most trusted members of the Rajavi cult indicates his deep dissatisfaction with the regional approach adopted by many of US presidents, from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

One of the reasons for his dissatisfaction is the US’ invasion of Iraq, which resulted in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and according to Abrishamchi, the growth of Iran’s influence in the Arab country.

He also blasts Bill Clinton for designating the MKO as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, arguing that committing acts of terrorism inside Iran is their “right”.

Without referring to the US support for the terrorist cult, the senior MKO member lashes out at the US presidents with a humiliating tone, and does not even exclude Donald Trump, whose administration has become known as a staunch supporter of the MKO.

In his remarks, he does not point to his organization’s friendly relations with Trump’s national security advisor John Bolton, his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and a number of other notorious US hawks who earlier delivered speeches at the MKO gatherings.

Even in one of his MKO speeches, Bolton promised they would celebrate their victory in Tehran in 2019.

Despite the explicit support of senior Trump administration officials for the MKO at their gatherings, Abrishamchi says he does not pin any hope on Trump, and just wishes the US president would not harm them.

The MKO group, known in Iran as the Monafiqeen (‘the hypocrites’), are known to be divided in their political, social, and organizational behaviours.

What follows is the leaked audio of Abrishamchi’s remarks:

https://dlb.nejatngo.org/Media/Report/IFP_Abrishamchi_US.mp4

By IFP Editorial Staff

July 24, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Maryam Rajavi in Tel Aviv

MKO’s Maryam Rajavi visit to Tel Aviv planned by Trump’s advocate

According to tweets of the French consul general for Alquds (Jerusalem) Pierre Cochard, the Ring leader of the terrorist Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) Maryam Rajavi has traveled to Tel Aviv to negotiate anti-Iranian measures with the Israeli regime’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu.

“I was surprised today by the news received from a former colleague with whom I worked in Tehran; Maryam Rajavi, the co-leader of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) visited Israel,” he tweeted on July 17.

“On July 17, Mrs. Rajavi left Tirana to join Tel Aviv.

This trip was arranged through Rudy Giuliani, the personal advocate of President Trump and Boaz Rodkin, the Israeli Ambassador to Albania,”

he added.

“Mrs. Rajavi is likely to meet Yossi Cohen, the director of Mossad who has already cooperated with the Mujahideen on the Iranian nuclear issue. During her trip to Tel Aviv, Mrs. Rajavi will also meet with the Prime Minister of Israel,” the French diplomat wrote on the same day.
“Mrs. Rajavi holds the title of Political Refugee in France. Her talks with the Jewish State have not been authorized by the French Chancellery in Israel,” he noted.
“Mr. Netanyahu announced a few days ago that he will soon reveal news about the nuclear activities of the Islamic Republic,” Cochard continued.
The MKO which is said to be a cult which turns humans into obedient robots, turned against Iran after the 1979 Revolution and has carried out several terrorist attacks killing senior officials in Iran; yet the West which says cultism is wrong and claims to be against terrorism, supports this terrorist group officially.
After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the MKO began its enmity against Iran by killings and terrorist activities.
Maryam Rajavi has been the leader of the sect for more than 25 years, and during these years, no elections, even based on formality, has been held to select the new leader. The sect is ruled through dictatorial arrangements and far from democratic mechanisms. Some members have launched aborted attempts to escape the Liberty Camp, and generally faced with failure, they have committed suicide.
Recently many reports have been revealing the close cooperation between the Saudi and the terrorist MKO officials, too.

July 24, 2019 0 comments

Albania

Why no other country agreed to allow the MEK into their soil

Terrorism and Corruption: Albania’s Issues with EU Accession
Albania has been longing for joining the European Union for years, but the tiny Balkan nation still faces major challenges to its hopes of joining the bloc.
Extensive economic and administrative reforms, noninterference in the judicial procedures by the government, Election transparency and combating corruption are among Brussels’s top demands from Albania before its annexation to the EU.
However, corrupt political leaders and their alleged links to organized crime which have triggered protests by people from time to time, have played a key role in turning Albania’s wish for joining the EU into an unrealized dream.

For instance, German tabloid “BILD” leaked six wiretapped conversations in June indicating collusion between Socialist Party officials and members of a notorious criminal organization regarding coercing voters in the upcoming election.
The controversial audio file has sparked rage among the opposition parties leading to calls for Prime Minister Edi Rama’s resignation and an earlier general election. Albania’s opposition parties have accused the governing party of corruption and of doctoring the results of the 2017 parliamentary election. Leader of the opposition party, Lulzim Basha, accused the Socialists of coming into power “through the votes of the crime and the mafia.” Basha’s Democratic Party relinquished their seats in Parliament in protest, and declared a boycott of the June 30 vote.

The presence of the Mujahedin-e Khalq organization (MEK, a.k.a MKO, NCRI, PMOI), an exile Iranian group perceived by many experts as a terrorist cult, in a base around Tirana could also make Albania’s situation more complicated in its EU accession talks. The MEK was relocated to Albania under the U.S. pressure after no other countries took the group in following its expulsion from Iraq.

Listed for 17 years as a terrorist organization in the United States and the European Union, with various reports published about its violations of Human Rights and acts of violence and terror, the MEK enjoyed a significant increase in its activities during the first term of Prime Minister Edi Rama’s cabinet. Despite he was expected to limit MEK’s activities to its bases in Tirana, Edi Rama allowed the group to act freely in Albania and provided it with a huge land in Durres to construct its fortified headquarters.

MEK’s generous donations to the Albanian Police, journalists and political figures have been regularly reported by the local media. Making a name for itself in the government of Edi Rama, the MEK has been able to pay a number of Albanian political figures and Parliament members to advocate for the group in its events.
A recent tweet from PM Edi Rama in which he blames Iran for fueling tensions in the Middle East, indicating his support for Iran’s adversaries including Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the U.S., resembles MEK’s stance against Iran. Considering these facts, MEK’s aids to Rama against his political opponents must be thoroughly investigated ahead of the upcoming election in Albania.
Albania should have understood in the first place why no other countries, including MEK’s top sponsor, the United States, agreed to allow the group into their soil after its relocation from Iraq. Wherever it has been, the MEK has been involved in conducting illegal activities and sabotage acts. The group’s dark past and a long list of its misconducts including violating the human rights of hundreds of its members in Albania, could cause many troubles for Tirana in the near future.
After 5 years of residence in Albania, the MEK has now become a part of the corruption process in this country and a link to its corrupted authorities. It is not unlikely at all to see MEK promote the ruling party, with which it shares common thoughts and interests, in the upcoming Albanian election. The experiences of MEK’s numerous overt and covert interventions in the Iraqi Parliamentary elections in favor of specific people through spending huge sums of money, could easily repeat in Albania and mark a more controversial situation than the 2017 Parliamentary election in Albania.
Finally, it is the Albanian people who will be the true victims of their government’s friendly policies towards the infamous MEK which has been known as a terrorist group for a long time; The policies that could negatively impact Albania’s already complicated accession negotiations with the EU.
By Reza Alghurabi, Ahtribune.com

Reza Alghurabi is an Arab journalist who lives in Iran. He is a former researcher at the Beirut Center for Middle East Studies and an independent researcher and journalist writing in Iranian newspapers including the Khorasan daily.

July 23, 2019 0 comments

Albania

MEK’s presence makes Albania more vulnerable than ever

“Will the Presence of Iran’s MEK Threaten Albania’s Already Shaky Stability?” wonders Frida Ghitis of the World Politics Review.

Frida Ghitis who is a world affairs columnist, a former CNN producer and correspondent and a regular contributor to CNN and The Washington Post warns about the threat of the presence of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) in Albania as a part of the already tremulous region of the Balkans:
It might have seemed like a barely consequential item amid another torrent of breaking news. But word that President Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, just attended the annual gathering of a controversial Iranian opposition group at its unlikely base in Albania should raise flags for many reasons, not least of which are concerns for Albania’s troubled and fragile democracy.

If Albania is now unexpectedly drawn into one of today’s most dangerous geopolitical conflicts—the one pitting Iran against the United States, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states—the timing couldn’t be worse. The country is in the midst of a full-blown political crisis that has at times turned violent and whose outcome is still uncertain. A member of NATO, Albania has also been trying unsuccessfully to join the European Union for years; its current domestic turmoil makes that goal even more distant. To make matters worse, Albania’s infighting has turned it into an inviting target for malicious actors seeking to take advantage of a distracted, divided nation.
Giuliani, along with some other prominent figures, including former U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman and British Conservative MP Matthew Offord, attended the annual “Free Iran” conference of the group known variously as the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran and Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MEK. A shadowy outfit committed to the overthrow of Iran’s theocratic regime, the MEK is often described as a cult and used to be classified by the State Department as a terrorist organization. Now, some of its leading backers work for Trump and his administration, putting Albania in the middle of the Iran file. Perhaps its biggest booster is John Bolton, Trump’s hawkish national security advisor, who wants the MEK to govern Iran.
The MEK has a strange and contentious history. It emerged as an Islamist-Marxist organization and militia in Iran in the 1960s and was staunchly anti-American. It killed members of the Shah’s police and played a key role in toppling him during the 1979 revolution. But it fell out with Iran’s new Islamist authorities after they took power, and was exiled from the country in the early 1980s. When Iraq under Saddam Hussein then went to war against Iran, the MEK—now fervently opposed to the Islamic Republic—sided with Baghdad and ended up building a base of operations in Iraq near the Iranian border, from which it staged attacks inside Iran.
Ghitis is concerned on the capacity of the MEK to turn into a tool in the hostile policies of Donald Trump against the Iranian Government despite the group’s unpopularity inside Iran. According to her analysis, this will draw Tehran’s attention to Tirana which is vulnerable enough to foreign meddling:
Since moving to Albania, the MEK had received only minor international attention. That changed with the Trump administration. Key administration figures have advocated for the group, some as paid supporters, others out of ideological conviction. Bolton and Giuliani in particular have promoted it as a legitimate government-in-exile that should eventually replace the Islamic Republic, even though it has little support inside Iran.
The Trump administration’s spotlight on the MEK is undoubtedly drawing the attention of Tehran at a perilous political moment in Albania. The Albanian government was plunged into crisis earlier this year when opposition parties withdrew from Parliament and demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama, accusing him of corruption, election-rigging and ties to organized crime. Rama’s center-left Socialist Party holds a majority in Parliament, while the opposition is made up of parties to his left and right. Corruption has been endemic in Albania since the end of communist rule, but Rama generally enjoys the support of the U.S. and much of Europe.
Tensions in Tirana erupted last month after Bild, a German newspaper, leaked conversations from prosecutors’ wiretaps that suggested Rama and the Socialist Party were plotting with criminal groups to manipulate elections in 2016. Rama and his party deny any wrongdoing.
But their opponents took to the streets. Pitched battles ensued, with protesters lobbing Molotov cocktails and the police responding with water cannons. The situation got worse when the opposition declared it would boycott June’s municipal elections. President Ilir Meta then announced he was cancelling the vote and rescheduling it for October; without the opposition, he said, the elections would not be democratic.
Rama’s governing party, however, refused to accept the president’s move and said it would launch impeachment proceedings against him for it. Then it went ahead with the ballot. The turnout, unsurprisingly, was minuscule. With the elections’ winners ready to take their new posts across the country, some outgoing mayors refused to relinquish their offices.
The political scene remains tumultuous, full of tension, hyperbole and conspiracy. Meta has accused Rama of being a tool of the “deep state,” working with billionaire philanthropist George Soros to destabilize Albania and even establish a “dictatorship” encompassing Albania and Kosovo, “serving underground agendas.” The Albanian people, he told an interviewer, do not want to be a “colony in servitude of money-laundering and organized crime.” Instead, they want to be part of the democratic West, “to join NATO and the European Union.”
A deadline is looming for Albania: In October, the European Council will make a decision about formally launching accession talks with Albania. The street battles, the name-calling and the conspiracy theories all support the views of skeptics who say Albania’s democracy is not mature or stable enough to join the EU.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, trouble with Iran may be brewing over the MEK’s compound in Albania’s countryside, raising the risk of Iranian interference. Iran took notice of the gathering that Giuliani and others attended in Albania this week, with its state-backed media chastising the U.S. and other Western countries for siding with what it calls a terrorist organization…
The WPR correspondent finds the MEK and its violent approach against Iran a potential threat to democracy in Albania:
The MEK’s goal remains the overthrow of the Iranian regime, although it now says it has sworn off violence. The group’s rise in visibility amid the Trump administration’s standoff with Iran could make Albania more vulnerable than ever to outside meddling. The potential for a new crisis in Europe and within NATO, centered on Albania of all places, is very real.

World Politics Review

July 23, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

MEK Sell Fake News to Buy War

“If it seems like fake news is everywhere, that may be because it is”, suggested NBC News in March 2018, quoting researchers that “Falsehoods spread like wildfire on social media, getting quicker and longer-lasting pickup than the truth”. [1]

This capacity of social media and mass media has been well used by the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) to spread disinformation against the Iranian government. But what will the group gain in exchange?
The MEK launched its propaganda campaign in 2002 when it first published the alleged information on the Iranian nuclear weapon program. The campaign has been working aggressively for the past two decades. The disinformation fabricated by the MEK has so far been used by the US and its allies as a pretext to take the most hostile policies against Iran.
On July 4th, 2019 Gareth Porter, a historian, investigative journalist, and analyst specializing in US national security policy, told Radio Sputnik’s Loud & Clear that the US’ claim that Iran had a nuclear weapons program is based on false ideas bolstered by the US intelligence community and that China is unlikely to succumb to the US’ anti-Iran campaign. [2] Porter had previously published several investigated articles on the very subject.

“The problem in part is that the US intelligence community completely muffed it – they blew this even more thoroughly than they blew the questions of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,” Porter told Sputnik. [3]

“It was based on a series of false ideas that the intelligence communities began with and some maneuvering by high-ranking CIA officials … who interfered with the process of the assessment of Iran’s nuclear program within the CIA,” Porter explained. “It culminated in the approval of this set of documents that came from the Mujahedin-e-Khalq [MEK] that was aligned with and did work with the Israelis” to allegedly prove that Iran had an active nuclear weapons program. [4]
The peak of the MEK’s successful deal –to sell fake news and buy war drums—was the case of the fictional persona named Heshmat Alavi that was revealed by the Intercept, a few weeks ago. “His purported work has appeared in a wide variety of journals over the years, write Robert Fantina of the Global Research. “However, on closer scrutiny, we learn that Mr. Alavi simply doesn’t exist! He is a creation of the political wing of the terrorist organization known as Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), which exists for the sole purpose of overthrowing the government of Iran.” [5]
Fantina clarifies: “This raises even more questions: why does the U.S. need invented ‘journalists’ to sell its anti-Iran story? Could it be, possibly, because the truth is nothing like the U.S. says, and so relying on a made-up writer for made-up stories is the best it can do?” [6]
“Most journalists (this writer included), don’t hide from the public. In addition to writing, they speak at public forums, and their faces may be almost as well-known as their names,” he continues scrutinizing the MEK and its supporters over Alavi. “Where has the illusive Mr. Alavi been? Was he too busy writing all those articles for Forbes to crawl out of whatever hole he lived in to speak publicly about issues important to him? No, that is not the case; he was unable to speak at any conference, symposium, rally, etc., because he doesn’t exist.” [7]

“This is the ‘writer’ whose ‘work’ Donald Trump cited to justify violating international law, and to bring the threat of a devastating war to an area of the world that his predecessor had made significant progress in calming. This is the ‘writer’ that not only Forbes, but The Hill, the Daily Caller, the Diplomat and other so-called responsible news outlets gave a platform to.” [8]

Assal Rad writes on Lobelog that Trump and his regime-change cabinet are now touting the MEK as a viable alternative to the current government in Iran. “Despite these parallels, the mainstream media continues to give a platform to radical groups like the MEK, which are weaving together a questionable story to build a case for regime change and war with Iran,” She asserts. [9]
Comparing the MEK with Iraqi National Congress, Rad warns about the fraudulent part of the of the MEK in leading the West to another war in the Middle East. “Also similar to the INC, which claimed that it did not seek power in Iraq, the MEK pretends to work for democracy in Iran in the name of the Iranian people”, she states. “Though both organizations have used fabrications to push their agenda, the tools of disinformation have evolved over time and the MEK has mastered the art of false narratives.” [10]
She refers to the MEK as a pro-war entity that is skilled manipulator of mass media: “Revelations have come to light on the role of the MEK in magnifying efforts at misrepresentation through inauthentic social media accounts aimed at manufacturing “Iranian” support for the Trump administration’s pro-war policies. The MEK also utilizes promoted content on news sites. For instance, The Hill is running a 10-week mini-series on Iran sponsored by the Organization of Iranian-American Communities (OIAC), a front group for the MEK.” [11]
As the MEK and its sponsors in the US government continue to push for an all-out war with Iran, remember that these same people and their peers have been repeatedly lying in order to start nearly every war in US history. War and its natural consequence, violence, cannot be excluded from the history of the Mujahedin Khalq as well.
Mazda Parsi

References:
[1] Fox, Maggie, Fake News: Lies spread faster on social media than truth does, NBC News, March 8th, 2018.
[2] Sputnik News, US Intelligence Has ‘Muffed’ Proof on Iran’s Alleged WMD Programs for Decades, July 4th, 2019.
[3] ibid
[4] ibid
[5] Fantina, Robert, America’s War against Iran: The Insidious Role of the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) Terrorist Entity, Global Research, June 19th, 2019.
[6] ibid
[7] ibid
[8] ibid
[9] Rad, Assal, Propaganda War to Real War: The MEK’s Treacherous Operation, Lobelog, July 1st, 2019.
[10] ibid
[11] ibid

July 22, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Americans will die if John Bolton gets his way

Bolton giving Trump poor advice on Iran

Americans will die if John Bolton gets his way. Slowly but surely, the ultra-hawkish National Security Advisor is dragging President Trump into a war with Iran. If you’re feeling déjà vu watching the news, you’re not alone. It’s the run-up to the Iraq disaster all over again — and Bolton is a big reason why.

Taking a page out of the Dick Cheney playbook, Bolton is manipulating intelligence before it reaches President Trump’s desk in an effort to inflate the Iran threat. Throughout his career in government, Bolton has been notorious for sidelining views that contradict his own. Now, as President Trump’s top security advisor, he’s bypassing the intelligence community and their diligent methods of providing the president with well-informed and reasoned analysis, and is instead funneling in assessments that align with his hawkish strategy.

In another echo of Iraq, Bolton is championing a fringe diaspora group, the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK) that is telling us we’ll be greeted as liberators once we overthrow the Iranian regime. Bolton has received tens of thousands of dollars from the MEK, despite the State Department having previously designated them as a foreign terrorist organization for their role in assassinating American contractors and fighting on behalf of Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile, the group is nearly unanimously despised in Iran.

America first vs America only: How John Bolton is fuelling Iran ‘hysteria’

Just as he did prior to the Iraq war, Bolton is also downplaying how devastating a conflict would be. He believes that the Iranian government will likely back down when faced with maximum pressure but, if all else fails, some limited air strikes are sure to put them back in their place. However, that’s not what history tells us. In the 1980s, Iran fought off an eight-year attack from Saddam, losing half a million Iranians in the process. Decades later, crushing sanctions weren’t enough to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear program. Only when Washington showed a willingness to make a deal did Tehran agree to limit its uranium enrichment. Instead of cowing Iran, the administration’s decisions to pull out of the nuclear deal, strangle the country through sanctions, and empower hawks like Bolton have sent the message that President Trump is out to get the Iranians no matter what they do. In this siege environment, we shouldn’t be surprised when Iran attacks U.S. drones or oil tankers and increases its levels of enriched uranium.

Iran’s activities in the Middle East are undoubtedly problematic. Just ask the people of Syria, or the Iranian people for that matter. Iran, as well as our allies in the region, should be pressed to promote stability and human rights. But Bolton’s current strategy is manufacturing a crisis, goading Iran into taking actions that can justify his desire for war. Despite its anti-American rhetoric, the Islamic Republic isn’t out to attack the United States directly — unless its leaders feel they have no other option. Iran has prepared for a defensive war against the United States for the past 40 years, and Iran’s population is over three times larger than Iraq’s was when we invaded. A war with Iran will kill thousands of Americans and put an end to our economic recovery.

The president is getting dangerous advice. To protect the thousands of brave New Mexican men and women in uniform, our representatives in Congress must speak with one voice and say, John Bolton must go.

By Ali G. Scotten,lcsun-news.com
Ali G. Scotten heads the New Mexico Chapter of the National Iranian American Council and is a Security Fellow with the Truman National Security Project. Opinions are his own.

July 22, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

Newest MEK terror festival in Albania

A few incumbents among the mass of former officeholders

On the last Saturday, 13 July 2019, the annual”Free Iran”conference was held for the first time at Ashraf 3 in Albania, the headquarters of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK or MKO), a notorious terrorist cult known by several other different names and acronyms, including People’s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI), National Liberation Army of Iran (NLA), and National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).

Terrorist-genocidal past
Founded in the 1960s by a group of Iranian leftists opposed to the country’s pro-Western Shah, later it developed into the largest and most militant group opposed to the Islamic Republic of Iran. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, the group was driven from its bases on the Iran-Iraq border and resettled in Paris, where it began supporting Saddam’s Iraq in its eight-year war against Iran.

Due to the terrorist attacks committed by the Mujahedin-e Khalq, more than 16,000 people have been killed in Iran alone, not counting their atrocities against Iranian and Iraqi civilians during the Iran-Iraq war and the 1991 uprisings in Iraq. Their tactics included bomb attacks, targeted assassinations, aircraft hijackings, and so on. For comparison, around 14,000 Iraqi and Syrian civilians have been killed by the ISIL terrorist attacks. The MEK has also conducted attacks against numerous Western targets, both in Europe, North America and elsewhere.

In 1986, the MEK accepted Saddam’s offer of alliance and moved its headquarters to Iraq where it received its primary support to attack the targets in Iran. This decision was viewed as treason by virtually all of Iranians and it irretrievably destroyed the MEK’s appeal in its homeland. Furthermore, the MEK assisted Ba’athist government in systematic attacks against the Kurdish fighters (Iran’s allies) in northern Iraq, and the result of their action was a genocide that killed between around 100,000 Kurdish civilians. Former MEK members remember Maryam Rajavi’s infamous command at the time:”Take the Kurds under your tanks, and save your bullets for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.”

Balkans as terrorist safe haven

The MEK is designated as a terrorist organization by Iran and Iraq, but their former headquarters at Iraqi Camp Ashraf still enjoyed the US protection after the fall of the dictatorship. Until the 2008–2012 period when long-term lobbying efforts by their Neocon, Zionist and Saudi sponsors gave results, the MEK was officially designated a terrorist organization by the UK, the EU, the US and Canada. Nevertheless of official designation, the MEK leadership freely lived and operated in the EU.

In 2012, the MEK headquarters have been relocated from Camp Ashraf to former US military base Camp Liberty, also in Iraq, and finally in 2016 the headquarters have been relocated again, this time to Ashraf 3 in Albania. A poor Balkan country, encircled by the EU member states and ruled by the US puppet regime, proved to be a safe haven. The transfer of hundreds of MEK members was carried out by US military aircraft.

Today, the gates to the MEK compound, situated on a gently inclined hillside in rural Albania, are usually firmly closed, guarded by two sculpted lions atop stone pedestals and a large team of Albanian security guards. Unannounced visitors are not welcome at the fenced-off, secretive site, where more than 2,000 MEK members live. With no passports or other documents, they remain in limbo, unable either to work or to leave the country. Besides clapping in the audience at fanciful terror festivals, their only activity is spreading anti-Iranian propaganda on social networks.

According to the recent interviews, given to journalists by a dozen men in Tirana who had fled the MEK compound, life inside the compound was of a cult-like atmosphere in which mobile phones and contact with relatives were banned, all interactions between men and women were prohibited, and days were spent sitting at computers firing out tweets and other online messages in support of the MEK. An investigation by the Intercept recently found that an anti-Iranian activist, who had written extensive media columns about Iran, in fact appeared to be an invented persona created by MEK trolls.

Terror festival

The last Saturday’s conference”Free Iran”has no political significance, nor does it differ in any way from similar terror festivals that were previously held in Paris. We could see the same personalities from the neoconservative & Zionist circle, like Joe Lieberman and Rudy Giuliani, representatives of the Saudi dictatorship, and numerous former or obscure politicians.

From all of them, we could hear the same slogans about”freedom, democracy, justice and gender equality,”but the only true message is”we hate Iran,”more precisely”we hate it so much that we’ll publicly lie and celebrate the terrorist-genocidal organization.”Taking into account the well-known moral values of the US neoconservatives, the Zionists and the Saudi regime, as well as their cheap mercenaries, such messages are not surprising.

Participants and organizers of the conference are perfectly aware that their words are empty and the MEK can never gain ground in Iran, so the gathering is far from being political in practical sense. Its only purpose is a desperate attempt of spreading Iranophobic hate around the world. Evidence for this is the fact that most of participants do not have real political role, only influential names, thus the media publicity is guaranteed. The names of these terror supporters deserve to be mentioned here.

Formers and incumbents

Looking at the list of participants, there’s an astonishing amount of former officeholders. These’re former US Vice Presidential candidate (Joe Lieberman), former Mayor of New York (Rudy Giuliani), former US Congressmen (Ted Poe and Dana Rohrabacher), former US Senator (Robert Torricelli), former US Assistant Secretary of State (Lincoln Bloomfield), former US Homeland Security Secretary and Governor (Tom Ridge), former US Special Envoy for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security (Robert Joseph), former US Ambassador to Morocco (Marc Ginsberg), former FBI Director (Louis Freeh), former commander of the Multi-National Forces in Iraq (George W. Casey Jr.), former Commandant of the US Marine Corps (James T. Conway), former Canadian Prime Minister (Stephen Harper), and former Canadian Foreign Minister (John Baird).

The list of former officeholders does not end in North America, in the EU these’re former Foreign Minister of France (Bernard Kouchner), former Foreign, Defense, Interior and Justice Minister of France (Michèle Alliot-Marie), former French Minister of Human Rights (Rama Yade), former German Deputy Interior Minister (Eduard Lintner), former Vice President of the European Parliament (Alejo Vidal-Quadras), former UN special representative to Iraq (Ad Melkert), former Norwegian MP (Lars Rise), and former Minister of Transport and Communications of Finland (Kimmo Sasi). The list also includes former Albanian Prime Minister and President (Sali Berisha), former Albanian Prime Minister (Pandeli Majko), former UN Special Rapporteur (Yakin Ertürk), former Minister of Culture and Publicity of Jordan (Saleh al‐Qalab), former Algerian Prime Minister (Sid Ahmed Ghozali), former Colombian presidential candidate (Ingrid Betancourt), and former head of the International Association of Women Judges (Susana Medina).

Ironically, the introductory speech at the conference was held by the former MEK Secretary-General Fahimeh Arvani, the 30th former officeholder on this list. If we exclude above-mentioned individuals with ended careers, the list is reduced to a third and literally all political celebrities are gone. Among the incumbent ones, all are relatively unknown and belong to the opposition parties, including Congressman Lance Gooden (United States), MP Matthew Offord, MP Bob Blackman, Lord Temporal Sandip Verma (United Kingdom), Senator Roberto Rampi, MP Giuseppina Occhionero, MP Anotonio Tasso (Italy), MP Michèle de Vaucouleurs, Mayor of Paris’s 1st District Jean-François Legaret (France), MP Martin Patzelt (Germany), Senator Gerry Horkan (Ireland), Deputy Attorney General Maria Candida Almeida (Portugal), MP Ben-Oni Ardelean (Romania), and Chairman of the Republican Party Fatmir Mediu (Albania). A handful of others also include South Asian activists Ranjana Kumari and Bandanda Rana, as well as Syrian terrorist activist Nazir Hakim.

Summing up, if we put aside all figures without any real political influence, only two or three will remain. Namely, influential pro-Israeli lobbyist Joe Lieberman, Donald Trump’s cybersecurity adviser Rudy Giuliani, and Saudi lobbyist Salman al-Ansari. The latter one is founder and president of the Saudi American Public Relation Affairs Committee (SAPRAC), a Washington DC-based lobby organization which advocates strengthening relations between Saudi Arabia and the United States, whitewashing of Saudi regime’s crimes, collaborative alliance with Israel, and aggressive foreign policy against Iran, Syria, Yemen and Qatar. Therefore, the answer to the question of who financed this lavish terror festival, seems more than obvious.
Balkanspost

July 21, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

The MEK have very little support within Iran, if any

US Politicians Speak At Iranian Opposition Conference

Controversial Group MEK Suspected Of Being a Cult

The controversial Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq(MEK), held their annual “Free Iran” conference at their headquarters Ashraf 3 in Tirana, Albania on Saturday. They call their Iranian opposition coalition the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). The NCRI’s “president elect” is the MEK’s leader Maryam Rajavi. Among the many speakers were several former US politicians, most notably former mayor of New York City and one of President Trump’s personal lawyers Rudy Giuliani.

The MEK are often referred to as a cult by critics. The group was based out of Iraq for many years and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the US government commissioned a report on the MEK from inside their former headquarters at camp Ashraf, Iraq. The report said, “many of the typical characteristics of a cult, such as authoritarian control, confiscation of assets, sexual control (including mandatory divorce and celibacy), emotional isolation, forced labour, sleep deprivation, physical abuse and limited exit options.”

Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, his pockets stuffed with terrorist cash, tweeted on Saturday that MEK is a viable alternative to the rule of the mullahs in Iran.

Giuliani addressed the accusations of the MEK being a cult, “These are people who are dedicated to freedom, and if you think that’s a cult then there is something wrong with you.” In the video posted to the NCRI’s twitter after Giuliani made these comments, the camera panned to hundreds of women wearing matching outfits and red hijabs, clapping in the audience.

Giuliani called for regime change in Tehran and made it clear he thinks the MEK is the group that should take over. He also expressed his support for Trump’s policy of aggression towards Iran, “I’m proud of my government to tear up that nuclear deal. We don’t put nuclear weapons in the hands of murderers. When you put money in the hands of murderers, you are supporting murderers. When a German company makes business with Iran, they are helping to kill people in Syria, or kill us here in Albania. You are funding murderers. That makes you complicit in murder. We don’t allow people to fund murder. Wake up. When you buy oil from Iran you are funding murder. Face it and stop it.”

Former Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman spoke at the event and also expressed his support of Trump’s Iran policy, “I say this as a Democrat. President Trump has been heroic and historic in taking the actions he has to break the Iran nuclear agreement, to impose sanctions on the Iranian government.” Lieberman voiced his support for MEK’s leadership, “Maryam Rajavi is a principled, visionary, selfless leader and cares for every one of you… Ashraf 3 is the best proof that this movement is a viable alternative to the ruling mullahs in Iran.”

Other American politicians who spoke were former Pennsylvanian Governor Tom Ridge, who also served in George W. Bush’s White House in the Department of Homeland Security, former FBI director Louis Freeh, former US House Representative for California Dana Rohrabacher and former US House Representative for Texas Ted Poe. They all called for regime change in Tehran and expressed their support for the MEK.

Current US House Representative for Texas, Lance Gooden, was the only American politician currently in office who spoke. Gooden assumed office in January of this year, after winning the election in November 2018. Gooden said, “The first thing I learned about Iran is that the most respected individual among the Iranian community is Madame Rajavi… We have to have regime change in Iran.”

Despite Gooden’s comments, the MEK have very little support within Iran, if any. The MEK have a violent history and started out as opposition against the US installed Shah, killing scores of his police throughout the 1970’s. When Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took power in Iran, he quickly deemed the MEK a threat to his efforts of turning the country into an Islamic Republic.

After an MEK bombing killed the Iranian president and several other senior leaders of the Islamic Republic, the Ayatollah began to arrest and execute members of the MEK. The remaining members of the group fled to Iraq, where Saddam Hussein gave them refuge in a military base called Camp Ashraf. The MEK took Hussein’s side in the brutal eight-year war between Iran and Iraq, causing them to lose what little support they may have still had in Iran.

Rajavi’s husband was the group’s leader until he disappeared after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Rajavi ran a lavish lobbying campaign inside Washington to get the group removed from the US terror list when she took over. The Obama administration took them off the terror list in 2012.

Security Advisor John Bolton has reportedly received $180,000 from speaking at various MEK events before gaining his position in the Trump administration. Trump has said he is not seeking regime change in Tehran, but the group has money and a lot of influence inside Washington. If Trump does end up going to war with Iran they may be the group the US tries to install in Tehran.
By Dave DeCamp

July 21, 2019 0 comments

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