++ Two weeks ago an active MEK member was involved in an accident in Baghdad. He was arrested and imprisoned to await trial. Iraqi officials stated that pending his trial he was free to be released on bail. The MEK preferred not to pay this, but instead created a brouhaha for publicity purposes claiming that he had been kidnapped by ‘agents of the Iranian regime’, even writing to Ban Ki Moon. But when a group of families arrived in Baghdad trying to get contact with for their loved ones in Camp Liberty the MEK panicked. Fearing their member might run away the MEK suddenly paid the bail and welcomed him back in the camp with flowers and cheers of ‘victory, victory’. Following this MEK publicity several former members write that this person whom the MEK call Safar Zakeri is actually Safar Ali Zamanian. Writers say the MEK uses false names and has certainly done so for some of those going to Tirana and America. They point out different reasons: 1. To prevent the families of these people from finding them; 2. To hide the trail of criminal activities; 3. Historically Rajavi claimed money for fictional forces from Saddam Hussein; 4. Several disaffected members have been killed and their names used by other members to hide the fact.
Others ridicule this event saying the MEK have been reduced from claiming to free the whole world to celebrating bailing one member from prison.
Massoud Khodabandeh on Facebook says that at the root of the issue is that this person will never be trusted inside the MEK again. Anybody who undertakes an unsupervised absence – whether in prison or hospital or other reason – for a few days will be treated as an infiltrator by Massoud Rajavi. And like many before him, this person will be treated like this for the rest of his life. According to Khodabandeh it doesn’t stop there because sooner or later, after being treated like this, the person will rebel. And at that point the MEK will be forced to get rid of him, like many others. Khodabandeh says, if you look deeply into the photograph of the man with the flowers it looks not like a celebration but like his funeral. It hasn’t unfolded yet, but it will.
++ This week Iran Interlink published a list of several high ranking MEK who have arrived in Tirana, gathered together from various places. Some are from the leadership ranks, most are top level intelligence and military commanders of the MEK. Among them is Mahmoud Atai who signed the treaty of surrender with the American army in Camp Ashraf on behalf of Massoud Rajavi. Most have false passports and documents which Iran Interlink has listed along with their real identities. One of the missions is to buy large amounts of land and real estate in order to create a new cult camp. But the main and immediate objective is to silence or eliminate the former members who no longer obey the MEK commanders by whatever means possible. The sources of this information – who are known to Iran Interlink- are afraid for their lives; these are highly trained and ruthless intelligence operatives from the time of Saddam Hussein. Some are known to be Massoud Rajavi’s personal bodyguards. Rumours circulating among those in Tirana anticipate that this combination of activities – buying land, removing disaffected members – indicates that they are preparing a place to bring Rajavi. This matches with the new situation in Iraq; the defeat of ISIS and the killing of Al Douri in Tikrit have signalled the loss of hope in the Saddamists.
++ The Commentariat poured scorn and ridicule on the MEK for going into overdrive to support Saudi Arabia’s attack on Yemen. The MEK, they say, is more Saudi then the Saudis themseleves.
++ Another activity which the MEK has embarked on in its websites it to publish the letters of Said Masouri from inside prison in Iran. Masouri has been affiliated with MEK on and off for years and this is not the first time the MEK have tried to take ownership of him, or someone, anyone. But this pose becomes ridiculous when the MEK publishes Masouri’s letters from inside prison in praise of terrorism and yet nobody is stopping them. And the MEK claim he has visits every week even though he is charged with murder and terrorism. Commentators point out that on the contrary, families of the residents in Liberty can’t even have a letter or phone call after twenty years let alone a visit. They point out that the MEK is saying the prisons in Iran are ten times better than the camp in Iraq.
++ Camp Liberty resident Jalal Abedini has died in hospital after an operation on a tumour. The MEK as usual have written a letter to President Obama and other leaders claiming that ‘agents of Iranian regime’ [the Iraqi authorities] have laid siege to Camp Liberty and don’t allow them to access medical treatment. They say that for months they have asked Jane Holl Lute of the UN to allow them to take him out of Iraq and she refuses. (This, of course, is not true and this news is only published in Farsi.) Already internal critics including Atefeh Eghbal have questioned “if you knew he was ill for a long time as you say, why is it we only find out after he died that you tried to save him? Why do people die before you plead for help, why not before?”
In English:
++ Fareed Zakaria in Newsmax ‘Iran Is Methodical and Rational’. Zakaria writes that Iran is denounced as irrational by some enemies who, at the same time, say Iran will bow to the pressure of sanctions; a rational response. Others say Iran is rational but not reasonable. The article argues that Iran is acting rationally and reasonably in line with its geopolitical interests: “Seymour Hersh has reported extensively for The New Yorker on America’s covert support for groups within Iran that seek not only to topple the regime but also dismember the country. Some of these groups, like the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq and Jundallah, are regarded by some as pretty nasty terrorist outfits. For a decade starting in 2001, Tehran watched as 200,000 American troops massed across its eastern and western borders in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Bush administration openly talked about the need for “regime change” in Tehran, which was branded as part of the globe’s “axis of evil.” I am not making the case that any of these policies should have been altered — international politics is a rough business — but given these realities, is it so bizarre that Iran has behaved as it has? Or that it has sought to build a nuclear industry that could give it a pathway to a nuclear weapon? Would a secular, hyper-rational country facing this same array of threats have acted differently?”
++ Mazda Parsi, Nejat bloggers ‘Concerns of False Prophets after Nuclear Deal’. The article deals with why the long term alliance between the Zionist regime, war mongers and the MKO is so deep. MEK pays for support from people like John Bolton and Robert Menendez to keep the group alive. “Furthermore, John Bolton is a senior fellow at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute and the chairman of the Gatestone Institute, a right-wing “pro-Israel” activist group that has been accused of fomenting anti-Muslim sentiment. He is a steadfast supporter of the right-wing Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Exactly like the MKO and its Israeli ally Netanyahou, he is a vocal opponent of President Obama’s diplomatic approach regarding Iran. About the MKO-Israeli alliance it is worth mentioning that terrorist attacks against the Iranian nuclear scientists that ended in with the death of five of them was actually done in collaboration with a team of MKO operatives who were all trained by Mossad Intelligence Service.” The article concludes: “The MKO and its American and Israeli supporters are false prophets. They all have “an interest in creating a panic about Iran’s nuclear capabilities”.”
++ The title of Michael Luciano’s blog in Daily Banter really says it all: ‘Rudy Giuliani Supports a Mujahedin Group With a Hammer-and-Sickle Logo Because He’s Been Paid To’.
++ Ebrahim Khodabandeh writing for Iran Interlink exposes increasing infighting and disaffection inside the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which is based in Paris (although its life-term Chair, Massoud Rajavi has been in hiding since March 2003). Interestingly, Khodabandeh receives communications from a wide spectrum of current and former MEK members and supporters who know him personally. Collectively their communications reveal a picture of disintegration and dissent over the undemocratic practices inside the NCRI where even non-MEK members are expected to unquestioningly obey MEK dictates.
++ Anne Khodabandeh (Singleton) has written an Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi warning her not to allow the MEK to hijack her name. The MEK’s Farsi sites have appropriated her name and attributed to her words and political stances which are not only fictional but are far from her real position in relation to the MEK. Khodabandeh points out that in Farsi even the anti-Iran Neoconservative members of Congress have been misrepresented as attending an Iranian Nourouz celebration specifically to support the MEK.
++ In a long and detailed analytical article in Truthout, Gareth Porter exposes the myths fuelling the ‘The “Possible Military Dimensions” Bomb That Could Blow Up the Iran Deal’. The article exposes how the MEK was instrumental in information laundry for the Israelis to derail the nuclear negotiations with manufactured information. “Information now available shows that the documents were created in Israel. According to a senior German office official, those documents were given to Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, in 2004 by the Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK), the armed exile Iranian opposition group that had been an Israeli client organization for several years. A popular Israeli history of the most successful covert operations by Israel’s Mossad, originally published in Hebrew in Israel, asserts that Mossad provided some of the documents to the MEK that later become the centerpiece of the case against Iran.”
++ Caleb Maupin’s article in RT says ‘US can’t afford more war and aggression, people want peace with Iran’. He says Iranians and Americans want peace, but a small but very wealthy and powerful group of oil corporations and military contractors in alliance with Israel want further hostilities throughout the Middle East. “All throughout the Middle East there are many countries with complex political situations. There are many people throughout the region who don’t like living under US-backed autocracies like the Saudi Arabia monarchy, or the regimes that they prop up throughout the region and they may be in rebellion. But this is not because Iran told them to. There are people all throughout the Middle East who are upset about the fact that Wall Street controls their oil resources and that people throughout the Middle East are hungry and starving while they have so much oil. These are very wealthy countries. Yet, the wealth of these countries is not under the control of their people. To characterize Iran as sponsoring terrorism is outrageous, especially when the US government and Israel are in alliance with the Mojahedin-e-Khalq which is a vile terrorist organization that has assassinated and murdered people. And the US and the Israeli government are working with them to destabilize Iran.
“The US is also working with Jundallah which is the terrorist organization that has been attacking Iran as well. Terrorist attacks have been taking place in Iran by US backed forces. Yet, Iran has attacked no one. Iran hasn’t attacked any of its neighbors, Iran want to live in peace. It is a country that is trying to survive. This is a country that was born in a revolution and in which the forces of wealth and power and Wall Street were kicked out, and they began with nationalized oil resources to develop independently. And of course that is a threat to any of the rich and powerful countries in the West because if one country can break free, other countries can break free, as well. The attack on Iran is an attempt to stifle independent economic development.”