Immediately after the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 Massoud Rajavi, guru of the Mojahedin Khalq cult went into hiding. After three years incommunicado, a statement was issued in 2006 in his name. In it Rajavi announced his timescale for toppling the Iranian regime: "in the next two years". Little attention was given at the time. Rajavi has made this kind of claim frequently over the past 30 years without effect.
Information from inside the cult, however, indicates that the specific deadline of January 2009 is part of a more sinister plan by the cult leaders. Following the announcement of this date, every member was required to sign a piece of paper giving their oath that they will not leave the cult until January 2009 – by which time, according to Rajavi, the regime must be toppled.
Rajavi’s message states that when the deadline of January 2009 arrives: ‘anyone who wants to can leave, and I will myself throw out all the useless ones. I will keep the rest who are pure, and I will tell them then what they have to do for me’. Experts on the MKO’s cult jargon interpret this as Rajavi’s intention to have his followers ‘wreak havoc’; the most predictable scenarios being mass suicide in Camp Ashraf and/or attacks on external interests with suicidal intensity in other parts of the world where the MKO cult has bases. That is, the ‘pure’ MKO operatives will kill all Rajavi’s opponents in Europe and then kill themselves.
The 2006 US State Department Country Reports on Terrorism, which describes the Mojahedin as a terrorist entity with cult-like characteristics, warned: "Many MEK leaders and operatives, however, remain at large, and the number of at-large MEK operatives who received weapons and bomb-making instruction from Saddam Hussein’s regime remains a source of significant concern."
A similar plan was previously exposed by Iran-Interlink [see links below]. On November 3rd 2001 in response to 9/11, Rajavi announced the Black Phase – if US forces attacked Iraq, the MKO would launch an all-out attack on Iran.
http://www.iran-interlink.org/files/child%20pages/pending_human_rights_disaster.htm
http://www.iran-interlink.org/files/info/brief_3.htm
Over thirty years, Rajavi has consistently sought conflict and chaos to keep his cult alive. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 Rajavi has tied his fate to the US neo-conservative/far-right Israeli agenda of regime change. The MKO has repeatedly and emphatically offered itself to be used as an agent for regime change.
Banking on an aggravated standoff between Iran and the USA, Rajavi had hoped the US (or Israel) would attack Iran before the end of the Bush administration. But by 2006 the MKO leadership had grasped that after January 2009 the current Bush Administration would lose any possibility of starting a war with Iran, and any successor would be unlikely to start a war soon after. Ordering his followers to adhere to his deadline serves to ensure that the cult does not disintegrate from within before that date. The deadline is also a warning to western governments, the MKO will wreak havoc in the cities of Europe if I, and my cult, are not supported.
Now with the US National Intelligence Estimate report on December 3rd effectively removing any reason for war with Iran for the foreseeable future, there is nothing left for Rajavi to fill the void between now and January 2009. His deadline for destruction appears to have arrived sooner than he anticipated.
ENDS
Contact
Anne Singleton, Iran-Interlink
editor@iran-interlink.org
www.iran-interlink.org
Iran-Interlink
PO Box 148
Leeds LS16 5YJ
UK
Iran Interlink Brief, December 08, 2007