Day after day, dimensions of the MKO’s role as a proxy force of the United States and Israel government gets more and more clear. Seymour Hersh, the venerable American journalist wrote 
another enlightening story in the New Yorker on April6, 2012. According to Hersh’s inquiry, not only Israel but the US have been training, financing, and harboring the Mujahedin Khalq Organization. Hersh reports that during the Bush administration, the joint Special Operation Command (JSOC) trained, funded and armed MKO operatives at Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site. The training in the far mountainous arid area in South of Nevada began in 2005. [1]
Hersh’s revelations come a few months after NBC News exposed that the Israeli Intelligence Mossad trained the MKO agents to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists.[2]
The US started housing and protecting the MKO in 2003 after the group’s main military and financial sponsor Saddam Hussein, fell off power. "The MEK’s ties with Western intelligence deepened after the fall of Iraqi Regime in 2003,and JSOC began operating inside Iran in an effort to substantiate the Bush administration’s fears that Iran was building the bomb at one or more secret underground locations,” according to Seymor Hersh. "funds more covertly passed to a number of dissident organizations, for intelligence collection and ultimately for anti-regime terrorist activities.”[3]
Hersh affirms that US-sponsored operations in Iran continue until today.
It is documentedly clear that the US and Israel are waging a covert war against Iran and the MKO is their stimulating tool to facilitate warmongers’ approach to attack Iran. Hersh quotes a retired US general that the group members got the standard training in communication, cryptography, small –unit tactics, and weaponry that went on for six months. [4]
The advocacy for the MKO-although listed as a foreign terrorist organization – in the US is both logistical and congressional. Several former American political figures, who have intensified their lobbying effort to delist the group, claim that it is fully in line with American foreign-policy and is well positioned to assist the US in the so-called future military confrontation with Iran.
The MKO advocates suggest the group’s role in the alleged revelations about Iranian nuclear program as a good excuse to trust it in the war campaign against IRI. On the alleged intelligence gathering by the MKO, Jeremiah Goulka ,an American lawyer and analyst who also assisted to write the report on the MKO in Rand Corporation, believes: ”Maryam trumpets the dangers of Iran’s nuclear program and gives the NCRI credit for discovering Iran’s Natanz facility. That self-serving claim is doubtful, as is the NCRI’s posture as a democratic government-in-waiting. While its propaganda arm espouses Western values to Western audience, the MEK continues to force-feed its doctrine to members who may not criticize the Rajavis and are not free to leave the Ashraf compound.”[5]
Scott Horton of the Harpers Magazine also asserts:” These claims might be true, but they don’t convincingly address the MEK’s historic use of terrorist tactics, its pattern of human rights abuses, and its culture of violence.”[6]
Horton advises US administration to remember the lesson they learned from Iraq war that was waged based on fake intelligence, too. “Moreover, the Iraq war should have left Americans wiser about émigré groups who peddle evidence of weapons programs as a rationale for the invasion of their homeland and for their eventual installation as a new and friendly government,” he writes.[7]The neo-cons are apparently building another case of war just as a repeat of history.
Despite the subpoenas the US Treasury department issued to investigate the speaking fees these US former politicians received for speaking on behalf of the MKO in its conferences and rallies, the Justice Department hasn’t taken legal action against them for crime of material support they offered a terrorist designated group.
“The Obama Administration may be caving into the political pressure brought by the MEK’s well compensated Beltway friend,” Scott Horton writes.[8]
If this happened and the MKO was delisted, it would eventually seek power in Iran. Then an MKO government in Iran would create a terribly dangerous threat for the West. It would create an official al-Qaida style regime that would doubtlessly turn back against the US. Hopefully, this will never happen.
By Treasury Department starting investigations on the MKO advocates, the Obama Administration might want to convince us that their anti-terrorism motto is not just a “laughing matter”. And, warmongers in the US government may realize that there is no convincible reason to embrace a terrorist group. As Jeremiah Goulka suggests: ”ignorance, profit and the dreams of a terrorist –cult group are lousy reasons to start a war.”[9]
By Mazda Parsi
References:
[1]Hersh, Seymour, Our Men in Iran, The NewYorker, April 5, 2012
[2] Engel, Richard& Windrem, Robert, Israel teams with terror group to kill Iran’s nuclear scientists, US officials tell NBC News, MSNBS, February 9, 2012
[3] Hersh, Seymour, Our Men in Iran, The NewYorker, April 5, 2012
[4]ibid
[5] Goulka Jeremiah, the Iran War Hawks’ Favorite Cult Group, Salon.com, March 28, 2012
[6]Horton Scott, For Official Washington, Terrorism is a Laughing Matter, Harper’s Magazine, April 9, 2012
[7]ibid
[8]ibid
[9] Goulka Jeremiah, the Iran War Hawks’ Favorite Cult Group, Salon.com, March 28, 2012