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MEK try to cover up involvement in failed coup attempt

MEK and its Western backers try to cover up involvement in failed coup attempt in Baghdad

After last week’s failed coup d’etat by Saddamist Baathists the Mojahedin-e Khalq now tried to MEK and its Western backers try to cover up involvement in failed coup attempt in Baghdad erase evidence of its involvement by removing from its own websites and media all the material against al-Maliki’s government and the incitement to violence against the government which it had copied from Baathist websites and media.

The Mojahedin-e Khalq terrorist cult has long enjoyed strong support and backing from some members of the European Parliament, specifically Struan Stevenson and Alejo Vidal Quadras, who are both members of the Iraq Delegation. They warn against Iraqi interference in the situation of the MEK headquarters Camp Ashraf which is known as the last Saddamist Baathist stronghold in Iraq.

Over time, the government of Al-Maliki has complained both directly and through its diplomatic representatives, of Western and specifically European interference in the internal affairs of Iraq. Some of this was linked to evidence of MEK involvement.

With the arrest of 615 Saddamist Baathists in the middle and south of Iraq charged with activities that threatened the safety and security of the state, it may be that the dots are finally being joined up.

Up until yesterday the MEK’s websites and media were forcefully promoting the views of several Iraqi politicians who are among those arrested. Today their names have been carefully expunged from the site. Also among the prominent names which have been removed are Heydar Molla, and Saleh Mutlaq.

Saleh Mutlaq was linked with financial support for the MEK prior to the last election. He was based in Brussels working closely with the MEK lobby against the de-Baathification process.

Interestingly, articles promoting the position of Struan Stevenson and Alejo Vidal Quadras still feature on the MEK site. As well as his well-known support for the MEK, Stevenson, in his capacity as Chair of the Iraq Delegation, has made several visits to Jordan in addition to those he made to Iraq. Jordan, of course, is where many prominent Saddamist Baathists relocated after 2003, including Saddam’s daughter. Between 2003 and 2009 the MEK’s base, Camp Ashraf in the Diyala province of Iraq was used as a secret gathering and training base for Saddamist Baathists as well as indigenous and foreign insurgents, under the protection of the American military.

October 31, 2011 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Iran Claims U.S.-Sponsored MKO Terrorists Conceived Saudi Ambassador

Since news broke that there was an alleged plot by Iran to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Adel A. Al-Jubeir (left), and destroy a number of embassies, Iran has adamantly denied the accusations. Likewise, skeptics questioned whether the plot could have been staged by Iran, who would have had little to nothing to gain from such an endeavor, and claimed that the plot was uncharacteristic of Iranian terror. Others have asserted that the entire plot was in fact manufactured by American law enforcement agencies as an impetus for war against Iran. Adding yet another layer to this news story, Iran has come out and said that the plot was in fact planned by the French/Iraqi-based Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK), which is actually funded and supported by the United States.

Last week, the United States charged American-Iranian Mansour Arbabsiar, a used car salesman, for his role in an alleged plot to murder Ambassador Adel Al-Jubeir and attack Saudi installations in the U.S. in a plan reportedly plotted earlier this year. According to the Justice Department, Arbabsiar conspired with Gholam Shakuri, a member of Iran’s Qods Force — an arm of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Iran immediately denied the accusations, with the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast declaring, “These attitudes, which are based on the age-old and hostile policies of the American-Zionist axis, are a ridiculous show in line with a scenario that aims to divide and that emanates from enemies of the region.”

A number of experts across the globe came forward and questioned the claims that the plot had been sponsored by the Iranian government. They argued that the Qods Force is far too methodical and effective in its choice of proxies to have chosen a used car salesman and member of a Mexican drug cartel. Others assert that it is unlikely that Iran would sponsor such an act of terror as it does not serve Iranian interests in any way.

Iran has now raised accusations against another party, which they claim to be responsible for hatching the plot. The British paper The Guardian reports, “Tehran has pointed the finger at a dissident group it considers a ‘sworn enemy’ in an attempt to distance itself from US accusations that the Islamic regime in Iran conspired to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington.”

According to Iran’s news agency Mehr, one of the two suspects that the United States asserted was involved in the plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador is a “key member” of MEK. "The person in question has been travelling to different countries under the names of Ali Shakuri/Gholam Shakuri/Gholam-Hossein Shakuri by using fake passports, including forged Iranian passports," said Mehr.

MEK has been declared a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. Listed as number 28 on the Department’s list of terrorist organizations, MEK has been responsible for terrorism against both the United States and Iran for years.

Yet MEK was considered by the Brookings Institution as a prime candidate for U.S. backing to remove the Iranian government. A 2009 report by the Brookings Institution, entitled “Which Path to Persia?” reads:

Perhaps the most prominent (and certainly the most controversial) opposition group that has attracted attention as a potential U.S. proxy is the NCRI (National Council of Resistance of Iran), the political movement established by the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq). Critics believe the group to be undemocratic and unpopular, and indeed anti-American.

In contrast, the group’s champions contend that the movement’s long-standing opposition to the Iranian regime and record of successful attacks on and intelligence-gathering operations against the regime make it worthy of U.S. support. They also argue that the group is no longer anti-American and question the merit of earlier accusations. Raymond Tanter, one of the group’s supporters in the United States, contends that the MEK and the NCRI are allies for regime change in Tehran and also act as a useful proxy for gathering intelligence. The MEK’s greatest intelligence coup was the provision of intelligence in 2002 that led to the discovery of a secret site in Iran for enriching uranium.

In the 1970s, however, MEK was responsible for the death of three American officers and three civilian contractors in Iran. The group also voiced significant support for Iran’s taking of hostages during the Iranian hostage crisis, and some reports indicate that members of the group celebrated the 9/11 attacks, though the organization publicly condemned the attacks.

MEK has conducted a number of other terrorist attacks as well, but most have been excused because they were directed against the Iranian government. In 1981, MEK bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, killing approximately 70 officials. The organization has also taken credit for dozens of Iranian civilian and military attacks between the years 1998 and 2001.

Still, the United States has reportedly supported the organization. In a 2008 New Yorker article entitled “Preparing the Battlefield,” Seymour Hersh revealed,

“The M.E.K. has been on the State Department’s terrorist list for more than a decade, yet in recent years the group has received arms and intelligence, directly or indirectly, from the United States. Some of the newly authorized covert funds, the Pentagon consultant told me, may well end up in M.E.K. coffers. “The new task force will work with the M.E.K. The Administration is desperate for results.” He added, “The M.E.K. has no C.P.A. auditing the books, and its leaders are thought to have been lining their pockets for years. If people only knew what the M.E.K. is getting, and how much is going to its bank accounts — and yet it is almost useless for the purposes the Administration intends.”

Hersh also appeared on National Public Radio and indicated that the United States had trained a number of MEK members.

There has been an effort in the United States to remove MEK from the list of terrorist organizations, presumably so that the federal government could provide even more funding to the group.

For some, information such as this is enough to convince them that the entire war on terror is fraudulent and should be approached with skepticism. One popular blog wrote of the war on terror:

From the beginning, even for those wanting to believe the fairy tale that 9/11 was carried out by cave dwellers carrying box cutters directed by Osama Bin Laden, who by all accounts was dying or already dead from kidney failure in 2001 — "unfortunate blunders" in US foreign policy can still be blamed for the creation and perpetuation of the ubiquitous, unceasing terror organization known as Al Qaeda. However, in light of recent events in Libya, Syria, Iran, and Algeria, there is exposed a truth, many have known for over 10 years, and many more are catching onto now — that the "War on Terror" is an absolute fraud, started, fueled and simultaneously fought against by the same handful of corporate-financier interests for the sole purpose of spreading Wall Street and London’s hegemony across the globe.

According to Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it is this type of fraud that has led the U.S. government to accuse Iran of the plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador. Comparing it to assertions that Iraq maintained weapons of mass destruction, Ahmadinejad said that the U.S. simply “fabricated a bunch of papers” to support its claims at the time. “Is that a difficult thing to do?” he asked.

by Raven Clabough – The new American

October 30, 2011 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

The MEK’s Propaganda Machine

The National Interest will be running on Monday a response to Raymond Tanter’s missive on behalf of the Iranian cult/terrorist group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq. Given that Tanter goes out of his way to raise my name a couple of times, it would be appropriate for me as well to point out a couple of the more glaring misdirections in his piece.

Tanter’s premise, as reflected in his title, is that anything bad you ever heard about the MEK is a product of propaganda from the Iranian regime. Evidently this means that anyone, either inside or outside of Iran, who has ever been critical of the group must have been brainwashed by the propaganda. If that were true, those responsible for U.S. public diplomacy have a lot of valuable lessons to learn from the Iranians; their propagandists must be doing something right.

The Iranian regime flings propaganda as freely as any other regime. And it certainly has had a lot of unfavorable things to say about the MEK. Some of those things may be exaggerated or even outright lies. But one could erase completely everything the Iranian regime has ever said on this subject, and there would remain the large, long, sordid record of what the MEK has done, what it has stood for, and the abhorrent cult it still is. The record extends from the days it was killing Americans while opposing the shah, through when it was in league with the clerical regime and supporting further anti-American acts such as the hostage-taking at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, through the long period during which it was working for the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. The record is not based just on what is said by the State Department or an intelligence agency or any governmental component with a policy to support, much less on anything the Iranian regime might say. If you want a recent independently reported portrait of the group, see, for example, this article by Elizabeth Rubin.

Tanter tries to smear critics and criticism of the MEK, including some of the contents of an open letter to which I was a signatory, by saying it “resembles regime propaganda against the MEK.” The MEK has conducted terrorism and other violent acts against U.S. interests and against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Is it any surprise that some of the critical things said about the group from the standpoint of U.S. interests resemble some of what the Iranian regime puts out? (And if it’s not brainwashing, then just what is Tanter suggesting is the reason for the resemblance?)

One of the respects in which Tanter’s piece diverges most widely from reality is his attempt to argue that the MEK has any support to speak of within Iran. He notes that the group was the source of some revelations about Iran’s nuclear program. True—and we ought to remember our reliance on the accident of this weird sourcing when we think about how much confidence we ought or ought not to have in our knowledge of this program—but what does that have to do with popular support? It only takes one person to serve as a source. The most telling indication of the MEK’s unpopularity in Iran, as pointed out in the aforementioned open letter, is that the Iranian regime uses that unpopularity as a way to discredit the democratic opposition in Iran, by trying to associate it with the MEK. For the same reason, the leaders of the Green Movement have emphatically said that they want nothing to do with the MEK. Tanter also mentions attendance at pro-MEK rallies in the United States as a measure of support, without mentioning that the MEK campaign has resorted to such measures—used in a rally outside the State Department this summer—as padding attendance by busing in homeless people who don’t know squat about the MEK or Iran but come for the free food.

Tanter precedes a reference to me with the odd statement that “Intelligence communities are targets of Iran’s disinformation.” Odd because I have been out of the intelligence business for more than six years, and anyone who views my thinking as having any connection with judgments that an intelligence agency would reach today will be disappointed and wasting their propaganda resources. Tanter later mentions me again as someone who ought to be concerned about the “political motivation” for having the MEK on the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, or FTOs. It is true that the listing process is not immune to policy considerations, but that has been much more a matter of avoiding the listing of a group that really ought to be on the list (the Provisional Irish Republican Army of fifteen years ago is the example that comes to mind), than of including on the list a group that should not. Not listing someone means simply not initiating the listing process. Listing a group requires a lengthy process of review by the Departments of State, Justice, and Treasury and the intelligence community, according to the criteria specified by law.

Tanter seems to believe that a group has to have committed terrorist acts within the previous two years to be kept on the list. Not true. (Having been directly involved in the laborious process of compiling the required administrative records for the initial listings after enactment of the law in 1996 that created the FTO list, I know a thing or two about this subject.) Two years used to be the interval between recertifications of listed groups, and it is now the period after which a group can petition for delisting. But no terrorist acts have to have been committed during that period; retaining the capability and presumed intent to commit them is sufficient to stay on the list. If performing terrorist acts recently was a requirement to stay on the list, many of the 49 groups currently on the list would have to come off. Lebanese Hizballah, for example, probably would be one of them. I expect that many of the pro-MEK campaigners would be among the first to scream if that happened.

There is indeed a large amount of political influence that is being exerted in an effort to affect a decision about the FTO list, and it is almost all coming in the form of the large and well-funded campaign to delist the MEK. In fact, the campaign is extraordinary, and nothing remotely resembling it has ever been waged on behalf of any other group on the FTO list. Whatever is being said in the opposite direction is only a modest reaction to the pro-MEK campaign itself. Here is what I said on the subject two months ago, after that rally outside the State Department:

The secretary of state should pay no heed to what Melvin Santiago and the other hungry homeless outside her office window are saying, or to what the high-paid hired guns are saying, about the MEK. Nor does she need to pay any attention to what people like me are saying about the group. She should keep the windows closed and just pay attention to the terms of the law and to what officials in the departments and agencies involved say about whether the terms of the law still apply in this case.
If Raymond Tanter really wanted to inform us about political influence being exerted on what ought to be administrative and legal decisions, he could shed more light on the campaign of which he is a part. In particular, he could help us understand where all that funding is coming from. It evidently is coming from quarters who would like to stoke ever more tension and animosity between the Iran and the United States. I have a guess who that might be, but so far it is only a guess.

Paul R. Pillar, The National Interest

October 30, 2011 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

Do not Trust MKO Fabrications

Following the allegations on the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to Washington, the prominent journalist, Michael Rubin wrote a commentary on the Commentary Magazine on October 18, titled ”Iran Says Plot was Mujahedin Put-Up Job”.

He points out the new Iranian government’s assertion that "Gholam Shakuri, the deputy to the cousin in the Qods Force who Mansour Arbabsiar allegedly telephoned, is actually a member of the Mujahedin al-Khalq.”

Notifying that he is neither a supporter of Islamic Republic nor a supporter of Mujahedin khalq, he asserts that US intelligence fails to have enough information on the MKO. As he calls it "an elaborate hoax", he criticizes the American Intelligence agencies and media for being confused by the MKO propaganda. He believes:
”It would be useful for the Islamic Republic to provide some proof to the allegation, but at the same time it would behoove the Department of Justice and Department of State to disprove the Iranian claim. Certainly, we can add a lack of information about Iranian MKO members to the list of our intelligence failures regarding Iran."

Regarding the MKO’s previous baseless forged claims on Iran Rubin concludes:
"It will be interesting to see how this plays out. It would not be the first time the Mujahedin al-Khalq has forced intelligence agencies and the press to scramble with an elaborate hoax. And, even if the evidence against the Islamic Republic is overwhelming, the fact that Iranian leaders can seize on past Mujahedin al-Khalq fabrications is ample reason not to trust anything the MKO says today either, no matter how many American and European officials are willing to embrace them.”

October 24, 2011 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Why is There such Widspread Support in DC for Mojahedin Khalq?

Glancing over the invitations to briefings and rallies from organizations with names like the Iranian-American Community of Kansas, and the Iranian-American Community of North Texas—which include broad references to the "Iranian opposition" and looming "humanitarian catastrophes"—it’s fair to assume that these organizations represent a broad set of issues that face Iranians living here in the United States and back in their native country.

However, attending these events reveals that all of these groups have one primary, and rather narrow, aim: removing an organization known as the as the Mujahedin el-Khalq (MEK) or People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI) from the State Department’s foreign terrorist organization list, where it was placed in 1997. While advocacy groups that support the MEK assiduously cultivate an image as both the face of the Iranian émigré community in the United States and of the opposition to Supreme Leader Ali Khameini back in Iran, a range of Iran experts and members of the Iranian American community in the United States say they are neither. In fact, other Iranian Americans have felt compelled to launch a counter-campaign to oppose the MEK’s removal from the State Department’s list.

Thanks to an appeals court ruling, the State Department has been required to review the MEK’s inclusion on that list, and both sides anticipate a ruling by year’s end. But while the review has attracted a flurry of recent news coverage of the MEK and its alleged terrorist ties, what has been less examined is the impact this whole debate has had on American policy towards Iran and its people. MEK allies’ remarkably sophisticated and well-connected lobbying effort has sown confusion in Washington about the interests of the Iranian-American community as well as of the current generation of dissidents back in Iran. One expert on Iran—who declined to be quoted on the record given the heated nature of the current debate—told me that MEK lobbying efforts had managed only to produce “a distraction.”

Indeed, MEK supporters—including current and former U.S. government officials—often refer to the group as “the Iranian opposition,” or a symbol of “an uprising for the freedom of the Iranian people,” to quote recent statements by lawmakers, but that’s a very questionable assumption. And it prompts a set of policies that, however much they benefit the MEK, are at odds with what many experts say can best help the people of Iran.

THE MEK FORMED in the 1960s as one of a number of opposition groups that supported the overthrow of the Shah. Its early ideology was heavily influenced by Marxism, as well as the anti-colonial fervor then sweeping the globe. The MEK initially supported the Iranian Revolution in 1979 but soon had a falling out with the new regime under Ayatollah Khomeini, after which most of its supporters were either massacred or fled Iran in the 1980s. Many members of the group went to Iraq, and their cooperation with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war has since alienated much of the population in their native country.

Like the dissidents in Iran and its many expatriates, MEK members oppose the current regime in Tehran led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini. And the plight of MEK members since fleeing Iran in the 1980s certainly raises ongoing human rights concerns, particularly for the more than 3,000 members living as refugees in Iraq’s Camp Ashraf. Just this year, Amnesty International called on the Iraqi government to launch an investigation after violent clashes between Iraqi security forces and MEK members in Ashraf left more than 30 MEK exiles dead.

But according to a range of U.S. experts on Iran and Iranian Americans without personal ties to MEK members overseas, neither activists in Tehran nor the average Iranian American share MEK supporters’ top priorities. As Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Ray Takeyh put it flatly to a House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee in July, “Despite its activism in Western capitals, the MEK commands very little support within Iran,” due, in particular, he said, to the past alliance with Saddam.

In justifying its foreign terrorist organization listing, the State Department cited terrorist attacks MEK members committed in the 1970s, which included the murder of Americans, as well as attacks within Iran in the 1990s. MEK supporters argue the listing was politically motivated and that the group’s members have since renounced violence. They also say the Islamic Republic and its allies are behind much of the negative portrayals of their movement.

Despite their designation, the backers of the MEK have long enjoyed an elevated status largely by virtue of being the best organized and, for a while, the sole Iranian-American group involved in national politics. While Iranian Americans have some of the highest rates of education and voting participation of any immigrant community, their fragmentation, as well as a general skepticism about government among first-generation Iranian Americans, allowed allies of the MEK to long have the run of Washington.

In the last decade, however, a second generation of Iranian Americans has begun to take a keen interest in the policy-making process, particularly on issues that affect their community and their relatives back in Iran. That was what generated the impetus for the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), an Iranian-American advocacy group that was founded nine years ago. The NIAC now boasts 4,000 dues-paying members and a mailing list of over 40,000. But Abdi and his colleagues have found that one of their challenges has been breaking through the monopoly MEK activists have enjoyed for so long, particularly on Capitol Hill. “The only interactions with the Iranian-American community” many in Congress had ever had before NIAC, Abdi recalled, “was with these MEK activists.” When it first began reaching out to congressional staffers, its members were surprised by how much confusion they encountered over their agenda and identity. Some staffers would cut them off mid-pitch, saying they had just spoken to their members in weeks prior, or they made assumptions about the sort of issues the group wanted to discuss.

Longevity alone does not fully explain the reach of the MEK’s allies—then and now. The group’s activists have also conducted what even their critics readily acknowledge has been a tremendously savvy and effective lobbying and grassroots campaign, driven in part by the sheer dedication of their members and in part by significant amounts of money from undisclosed sources. One Senate staffer recounted to me how, for a period of about five months, his office “heard from people in the state all the time, and I do mean all the time,” about the human rights abuses suffered by MEK members. “It was clear they were traveling the entire state trying to meet with every state leader trying to plead their case in order to get a meeting with the senator,” the aide recounted. Other congressional staffers have told me about similarly persistent outreach to their Washington and district offices.
Despite these anecdotes, it is very hard to measure the exact scope of grassroots and financial support the MEK and its de-listing campaign enjoy in the United States. The group’s supporters have had a presence on Capitol Hill for years, but it was only in 2010 that lobbying registration reports began to appear for groups advocating the removal of the MEK from the State Department’s terror list. The Iranian-American Community of Northern California, for example, paid the lobbying firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP $100,000 for that purpose through the first half of 2011. Various other groups, meanwhile—with monikers like the Iranian-American Community of Kansas, the California Society for Democracy and Human Rights, and Democracy International—have organized Capitol Hill briefings and other roundtables featuring high-profile paid speakers; rallied at the State Department and across the country; and taken out full page print ads in The Washington Post and banner ads on The New York Times website.
The press contact for a number of those organizations, however, could not provide any details on how the various groups are related, who their leadership is, or how many members they have, explaining he was just a summer intern. No one else at these organizations responded to my inquiries. Past conversations I’ve had with MEK activists have yielded similarly vague explanations of their membership and financing. But they consistently maintain, as the intern said in an e-mail, that “of the active Iranian Americans in this country, the largest number support the cause of Camp Ashraf.”
What is quantifiable is the impact their outreach has had. 51 Democrats and 45 Republicans have signed onto a House resolution introduced this year calling on the State Department to remove the MEK from its list of foreign terrorist organizations. As has been widely reported, the group has also attracted a long list of high-ranking former officials and politicians—including former FBI Director Louis Freeh, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, and former Democratic National Committee Chairman and Vermont Governor Howard Dean—to their cause. Many, like Dean, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, and former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, have acknowledged being paid substantial speaker fees to appear at MEK events, but they maintain that their support for the de-listing campaign is independent of financial considerations.
Thus a large cadre of American public figures regularly takes to the floor of Congress, the airwaves, and the op-ed pages to draw attention to the human rights concerns at Camp Ashraf and the reasons for removing the MEK from the foreign terrorist organization’s list, as Freeh did just this week in The New York Times.

UPSTART GROUPS LIKE NIAC have sought to expand the number of Iranian Americans participating in national political advocacy, as well as the range of issues they bring before policymakers. But increasingly, they have spent their time pushing back against the MEK, rather than advocating for a more robust dialogue with Iran, for example, or opposing broad-based sanctions that hurt average Iranian citizens, which top their list of priorities.

In the past nine months, the group has launched its own full-on campaign to oppose lifting the MEK’s terrorist designation, including a series of briefings, grassroots outreach, and a media blitz. “We would love to sidestep it,” Abdi said of the issues raised by the MEK, “and for a long time we did.” But, he said, the group’s leaders became worried this year that the State Department would give into the pressure to remove the MEK from its terror list, which they believe would send the wrong signal to Iranian citizens.

Regardless of where they stand on the MEK’s terror listing, U.S. public officials across the political spectrum profess a desire to support the Iranian people and their democratic aspirations, even as relations with the Iranian government sink to a new low. They would be better able to pursue that agenda if they distinguish between different segments of Iranian Americans, recognize the limits of the MEK’s reach, and determine how best to promote dialogue with the Iranian people, accordingly.

Emily Cadei, The New Republican

Emily Cadei covers foreign policy for Congressional Quarterly.

October 23, 2011 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Former MEK Leader Confirms Terror Conspirator Affiliated with the group

You’ll recall that the U.S. claimed that the Iranian alleged conspirator in the terror plot against the Saudi ambassador, Gholam Shakuri, was a Revolutionary Guard (IRG) official. Though many Iranians have scoured every resource they could think of, none have found evidence of such a person with any IRG affiliation. If the U.S. has such evidence it ought to produce it if it Richard Silverstein wants to be believed. Yesterday, the well-placed Alef site, run by an Iranian majlis member who’s run for president twice, alleged that Shakuri is in fact a high level Mujahadeen al Khalq (MEK) leader. It offered evidence to support the charge.

Today, the official MEK leadership has denied that Shakuri is a member and the U.S. has also denied the charge. But in fact, a former high-ranking MEK leader, Massoud Khodabandeh (he has allowed me to use his name), writing in the Gulf2000 listserv, confirmed that Shakuri is in fact an MEK member. He cautions that there may be more than one Gholam Shakuri, and the one who is the MEK member may not be the same Shakuri the U.S. has named. While this may be true, this new development moves Shakuri a lot closer to being MEK than being IRG. And moves the entire U.S. account of this supposed crime closer to the trash heap.

In its story containing the U.S. denial, the NY Times quotes U.S. sources responding to the Iranian charge that Shakuri held or holds a U.S. passport:

Mr. Shakuri is not a United States citizen and does not have an American passport.
I have no doubt that Shakuri is not a U.S. citizen and also that he may not currently have a U.S. passport. But this statement, at least as portrayed by Scott Shane, does not say the U.S. never issued such a passport in his name. There are many ways and reasons a non-U.S. citizen may obtain a U.S. passport including fraud and the possibility that Shakuri was performing a task for the U.S. government or CIA and needed such a document. I am speculating, but in light of the paucity of evidence the U.S. has offered to support its claims, we must parse the information it has distributed to try to determine credibility and accuracy.

There is another intriguing element that the Alef story added to the mix. It claimed that Interpol had released information allowing confirmation of Shakuri as an MEK official. The NY Times says this:

An Interpol spokeswoman declined to comment. But an American official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Interpol had discovered no link to the opposition group, calling the Iranian news report “pure fiction.”

While I do not know the protocols that Interpol follows in making public statements, I’d think that if the organization had been portrayed falsely by Iran, that it would want to say so. I’d also think that the U.S. would be a far more important national partner to Interpol than Iran and that Interpol would also want to deny this story if it were false because the U.S. would benefit from this. The fact that it refuses to do so raises if not a red, then surely a yellow flag for me.

The fact that a U.S. official seeks to speak on behalf of Interpol and under the cloak of anonymity is highly dubious. If they want us to believe what they claim, then I’m afraid it will have to be Interpol speaking on its own behalf.

Tikun Olam

October 22, 2011 0 comments

MEK Camp Ashraf

MEK Terror group Supporters Demand Delay in Closure of Iraqi Camp Ashraf

Fresh off Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s statement to the United Nations insisting that MEK Terror group Supporters Demand Delay in Closure of Iraqi Camp Ashraf Mujahedin e-Khalq (MeK)’s Camp Ashraf should be closed by year’s end has sprung the State Department-listed Foreign Terrorist Organization into action, with a series of condemnations from both them and their supporters.

A gathering of hundreds of MeK supporters rallied in Brussels, today, with former US Senator Howard Dean condemning the idea of closing the camp and demanding that the US force Iraq to postpone the closure before ending the occupation.

“The US remains morally responsible for the people of Ashraf,” Dean insisted. The camp was established by Saddam Hussein as a headquarters for his allies in the MeK in 1986. The US seized the camp during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the group negotiated a ceasefire.

But while the MeK is enjoying something of a renaissance among US officials as a group of “freedom fighters” the group’s open hostility toward Iran and history as a Saddam ally has earned it considerable scorn among the Maliki government, which is determined to see the camp closed.

Jason Ditz

October 22, 2011 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Former Insider exposes MEK link with CIA and Mossad

Mark Dankof Interview with the Habilian Association: On Israel, the MEK, and Iran

Mark Dankof: "The Mujahedeen-e-Khalq: The Intersection of the CIA-Mossad-Saudi Nexus Against Iran"

The Habilian Association of Iran talks to American conservative and Taft-Buchanan Republican Mark Dankof about Israel, American foreign policy in the Middle East and Asia, and the role of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK/MKO/PMOI) in both. A past Republican Party District Chairman in Seattle, Washington; U. S. Senate candidate in Delaware in 2000 for Howard Phillips’s Constitution Party; and radio voice in recent years with Lebanese-American Mark Glenn of The Ugly Truth, Dankof also serves as a Lutheran clergyman in San Antonio, Texas and theological graduate student. His last academic degree’s thesis will deal with the subject of Christian Zionism and the latter’s role in shaping a pro-Israel American foreign policy. Mr. Dankof’s recent appearances on Iran’s Press TV are augmented by his opinion-editorials, which include, “The Red Ladies: Sara Flounders and Debra Sweet,” “Mark Dankof’s Final Word on Michael Collins Piper’s ‘Final Judgment’ on Israel and the Assassination of JFK,” “The Bank Markazi Blacklist Proposal: Straight out of the McCollum Memorandum and the FDR Playbook for War,” “2012 Options for The Real Right: But is it Too Late? ,” and “Rapture Rick Perry of Texas: Israel’s Stealth GOP Presidential Candidate? “

Habilian Association: Tell us about Intelligence collaboration between the MKO and the Israeli Mossad over Iran’s nuclear case.

Mark Dankof: Information from non-classified sources is circumstantial but overwhelmingly strong. Dr. Paul Sheldon Foote of Cal-State Fullerton, probably the leading authoritative source in the United States on the MEK, and its presently functional relationship with the Israeli Mossad and elements in the American intelligence community, has publicly stated via his own sources that the MEK is the leading tool of Israeli intelligence and American Neo-Conservatives in the latter’s espionage agencies in launching acts of destablization and violence directed at Iran’s current government and conducted illegally within Iranian borders. Foote identifies the PJAK, the offshoot of the Kurdish separatist PKK, and the Jundallah, as the other elements in this dangerous game. The MEK’s fingerprints in Tehran are joined by what seems to be a cooperative relationship with PJAK directed against the Iranian government in efforts launched from northeast Iraq and the Qandil Mountains and directed against Iranian Azerbaijan. And suspicious terror activities in Khuzestan and Diyala Provinces in recent years seem to be augmented by bomb blasts and terror killings in Balochistan Province in Iran where it appears that the MEK’s partner-in-crime is the Jundallah based in Pakistan. But again, the Hidden Hand is comprised of the obvious, bigger ultimate players and assets. The increase in PKK attacks on Turkey since May 2009 coincides exactly with the corresponding time frames of the Turkish government’s public beefs with Israel over the Mavi Marmara shoot-up and other formal Erdogan government protests against the actions of the Netanyahu regime in Gaza and elsewhere. What does this tell any of us? But for the Israeli Mossad, the American CIA, the British MI6, and their respective Commanders-in-Chief, the operative concept is “plausible deniability.”

Mainstream American governmental and media sources confirm publicly that the MEK is the source of the information being used by pro-Israeli American Neo-Conservatives to argue for a military attack on Iran to preemptively strike the latter’s alleged weaponized nuclear program and its supposed desire to use it against Israel. It is noteworthy that this “information” contradicts the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report prepared by the 16 intelligence agencies of the American national security establishment regarding Iran and its nuclear program. Worse yet, there have been repeated allegations in the international press corroborated by Israel’s critics in the American intelligence community that these MEK-generated reports and the lies in them being repeated incessantly by every War Party news agency from CNN to Fox News, World Net Daily, The Weekly Standard, NewsMax, and National Review, are in fact nothing more than the Israeli government’s brokering of deliberate agitation-propaganda to the voluminously gullible and ignorant consumers of these well-packaged charades which employ the MEK as the broker. I believe Philip Giraldi of the Council for the National Interest and Buchanan’s The American Conservative, and former CIA station chief in a couple of different places over the years, is among those making this charge. In essence, it would appear to be the case beyond a shadow of a doubt that the MEK is playing the same Judas Goat role for the American and Israeli intelligence establishments that the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and Ahmad Chalabi did with their brokered nonsense before the last American invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein possessed “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” This is a critical angle to this present story involving the MEK. Why should the people of the United States and honest policy makers in Washington (all 10 of them?) now believe sources on Iran in 2011 with every motive for lying and a past record of doing so, especially in the last ten years?

After the last assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist in Tehran, Newsweek magazine all but confirmed the role of the Mossad and the MEK in that murder (and the previous episodes as well). The coverage was preposterously positive regarding these killings. To put into perspective just how this ruthless game is played, your readers may find it interesting that when the late Sidney Harman owned Newsweek, his wife was California Democratic Congressman Jane Harman, a member of the House Intelligence Committee. According to Pat Buchanan, Mrs. Harman was overheard on an American National Security Agency (NSA) wiretap assuring some Israelis at the other end of the conversation that she would use her considerable and covert influence on Capitol Hill to have American prosecutors drop their espionage case against Weissman and Rosen of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) for illegally obtaining classified National Security Council (NSC) documents on Iran from one Larry Franklin, so-called NSC expert on Iran. This is just one example of how American financial, political, and media power always seems to intersect when it comes to the subject of Israel. And since Israel and the MEK are now full business partners in directing their animus at Iran, the MEK will draw an increasingly free pass in the American media and government, as long as they are doing the Mossad and Israeli Lobby’s bidding.

All of this of course, increases the moral bankruptcy of this policy mix exponentially, when considered in conjunction with the clearly established fact that Israel is the weaponized nuclear monolith of the Middle East; has never and presumably will never submit to any form of international inspection of its nuclear program, not to mention its known stockpile of every biological and chemical warfare agent known to humanity; while the Zionist State’s policies in Occupied Territories and Gaza, as evidenced by its military assault on the civilian Mavi Marmara humanitarian flotilla in international waters in May of 2009, and the earlier Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, are the acts of an increasingly desperate entity led by a criminal cabal of sociopaths. If the United States is worrying about nuclear weapons in the hands of the wrong people, it should start with taking a hard look at our leading “ally” in the region. But the money trail will keep that from ever happening. . . .

Habilian Association: What do you know about further Israeli support for Mujahedin-e Khalq, I mean financially, logistically…?

Mark Dankof: One presumes that the Israeli and American money trails going to and from the MEK are closely guarded black-operational intelligence secrets not necessarily even known in details and numbers by the denizens of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. Or shall we say, at least not known to anyone on those Committees of Alleged Oversight not in the back political and financial pocket of the Israeli Lobby. That in and of itself, raises a related issue—the amount of PAC money going into American elections from approximately 30 PACS known to have direct or disguised links to the Israeli monolith in this country, as chronicled by Janet McMahon and Hugh Galford of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA).
One recent news article is most suggestive, however. That is Elizabeth Rubin’s New York Times op-ed of August 13th, “An Iranian Cult and its American Friends.”

This article, in the most Corporate Establishment, pro-Zionist newspaper in America (along with The Washington Post), underscores that the MEK is exactly what the Habilian Association, Mark Dankof, Ed Blanche of The Middle East desk in Beirut, and the RAND Corporation say it is: a totalitarian cult which not only possesses a warped ”Islamic-Marxist” ideology that is inherently contradictory, but is led by Miryam and Masoud Rajavi in a fashion reminiscent of that which governed the Reverend Jim Jones’ leadership of his demonic religious cult at Jonestown a generation ago in Guyana. Even more significantly, the Elizabeth Rubin expose provides a laundry list of people in the American military, intelligence, and political establishments who are fraudulently working to have the MEK removed from the State Department terrorist organization list and subsequently legitimized. This would be bad enough, but they are doing it for money—plenty of it, to the tune of $25,000 to $50,000 a speaking engagement on the MEK’s behalf. (see the excellent RAND Corporation report on the MEK at RAND_MG871 MEK PAPER )

Most critically, Rubin’s essay is potent for what it doesn’t say, and is patently obvious to anyone familiar with the subject: These paid American denizens of pro-MEK activities and plans have Israel’s fingerprints all over them. The names in her article overlap with the Israeli oriented think tanks Inside the Beltway, and the Israeli money on Capitol Hill documented by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA). One does not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what is going on here. This is ultimately the Israeli Lobby and the government of Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman at work for apocalyptically nefarious purposes.

The Elizabeth Rubin New York Times expose also mentions the “millions” at the disposal of the MEK for its current public relations campaign in the United States, using these bought-and-paid for players in the American establishment. It begs the question: Where do Miryam and Masoud Rajivi and the MEK get this kind of money? On what basis does Elizabeth Rubin cite the ambiguous but potent term “millions” to describe their financial power? How many “millions” are we talking about specifically? And what rag-tag “Islamic-Marxist” cult presently camped out in Paris and Camp Ashraf can have “millions” to dispense on political hired guns in America without major outside sources of funding? And who are these outside sources of this kind of cash? Oil and banking come to mind as possible places to look. Beyond that, one doesn’t have to look too much further to find Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Israel Lobby in the United States, and international oil consortiums, as the chief targets of suspicions as to who and what really constitutes the force behind the attempted renovation of the MEK’s image and fortunes in the West.

Rubin’s New York Times piece of August 13th is also noteworthy for what it doesn’t mention or explain: The MEK’s most well-heeled and connected American power broker is the Iran Policy Committee of Dr. Raymond Tanter of Georgetown University, his colleague Clair Lopez of the Central Intelligence Agency, and the assortment of Israeli oriented think tanks and individuals who shadow the Iran Policy Committee, including the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) strongly linked to Dr. Tanter. This picture is abundantly clear, despite the reticence of The New York Times, at least to this point, to cover the real players and angles in the story.

Perhaps the most spicy and inflammable aspect of the story of Dr. Raymond Tanter, Clair Lopez, and the Iran Policy Committee involves the explosive divorce of Raymond Tanter from his ex-wife, Constance Tanter. Mrs. Tanter alleges a most incredible tale of international intrigue that resulted in the targeted demise of her marriage, career, and personal life, up to and including the specific charge that at the direction of her ex-husband, the MEK and Clair Lopez forcibly held Constance Tanter captive; transported her against her will to Paris, France; and subjected the Georgetown University professor’s wife to a coercive interrogation in the French capital designed to extort a signed capitulation to a divorce settlement characterized by Mrs. Tanter as literal robbery at gunpoint. If Constance Tanter is telling the truth, Madam Rajavi was personally present for her interrogation and forced capitulation to a dictated divorce decree introduced into the American court system after the fact.

Constance Tanter: Targeted by Raymond Tanter, Israeli Intelligence, and the MEK/MKO/PMOI in divorce settlement proceedings?

Are the charges true? Outsiders who have heard the allegations are at one level incredulous, yet uncommitted because of the cultic history of the Rajavis chronicled by Ed Blanche of The Middle East and other internationally credible sources.

One thing is crystal clear: Mrs. Tanter is taking her allegations to The New York Times and other outlets who have already covered the MEK’s activities up to this point. Her allegations are buttressed by a thick file of papers, diary notes, photostatically reproduced copies of Iran Policy Committee documents, and a complete list of the Iran Policy Committee’s e-mail contacts by name and accompanying e-mail addresses. That list represents a virtual Who’s Who of the American Neo-Conservative, pro-Zionist Right; major figures in the Israeli government and intelligence community; MEK assets around the globe; and major players in a number of world governments and media outlets who seem to have more than a passing involvement with what Elizabeth Rubin terms, “An Iranian Cult.” This story continues to unfold.

Habilian Association: What’s the role of Israel in the Iranophobia project and the creation of a false dichotomy between Iran and its neighboring countries? What would Israel find beneficial in playing a role in this ?

Mark Dankof: This one is easy. Any Internet search on the Iranophobia and Islamophobia projects internationally leads straight to Israel and its assets in the American Neo-Conservative Right. The Center for American Progress report is among those that lead straight to the key players in the creation, funding, and dissemination of the Iranophobia and Islamophobia seeping out of Daniel Pipes, Pamela Geller, Frank Gaffney, Kenneth R. Timmerman, Stephen Emerson, and the Israeli foundations, PACS, and media outlets. This is a no-brainer. The way these jokers spun the Breivik murders in Norway is a primer for the way they do business in virtually everything else. I keep waiting for these kosher Ken and Barbie Dolls to explain Zionism’s history with the United States going back to the relationship of the Meyer Lansky Crime Syndicate to the Jewish Haganah’s blowing up of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the Lavon Affair, the Kennedy Assassination, the USS Liberty attack, the PROMIS affair, the Pollard spy case, and the recent AIPAC spy cases. Frankly the Pipes, Geller, Gaffney, Emerson crowd reminds me of the old Colt 45 malt liquor TV commercials in the United States, where the guy sitting at the cafe table by himself in the middle of the bullfighter ring is oblivious to the real wars taking place all around him that constantly get closer to enveloping him while he quietly sips his drink. The pro-Zionist American Right and Left are just like this: focusing on an exaggerated and falsified threat, while ignoring the major player in the destruction of their national security, culture, political integrity, and economy. It is pathetic.

This is a $42 million dollar industry, the production and dissemination of the constant stream of anti-Iranian, anti-Islamic propaganda in the United States and Europe. Someone is paying for it, and finds it profitable to continue paying for it.
By the way, the classic example for our discussion is this: Who produced and paid for the anti-Iranian propaganda film, Iranium, being promoted by Eric Cantor, Sam Brownback, Joseph Lieberman, and the usual suspects on Capitol Hill? I don’t yet have the facts, but the promotional film available on the Internet is connected to Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy. The television spokesperson for the film is none other than Clair Lopez of the Iran Policy Committee and the Central Intelligence Agency. Get the picture?

Habilian Association: What is your estimation of the recent American accusation of Iran’s attempt to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador to US?

Mark Dankof: I believe the accusation is absurd on its very face. As I told Press TV the other night, the nature of this alleged plot presupposes that the Supreme Leader of Iran, the Guardians Council, President Ahmadinejad, and the leadership of the Islamic Republican Guard Corps are all idiots. They clearly are not. There is no way that anyone acquainted with the intelligence and shrewdness of these Iranian leaders would buy for one minute the notion that they would commission a plot as reckless as this one, with two Iranian individuals representing the unstable profiles of the accused, and in conjunction with an unproven asset in a Mexican drug cartel (who proved to be an American DEA informant). This is straight out of the Keystone Cops.

And when we ask who might have benefited by a false-flag operation of this type pinned on Iran, the clear answer is Israel and its Neo-Conservative agents of influence in the American government angling for a wider war in the Middle East. Israel does not want any regional power in the Middle East threatening its absolute hegemony in the region, especially Iran. Simultaneously, they need an international PR diversion from their illegal activities in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and elsewhere, where the Zionist State is clearly losing catastrophically in international opinion in every known venue outside that of the United States. Even in the case of the latter, there are evidences of cracks in the canvas where the Netanyahu government is concerned. And between the ominous downturn in the American national economy, and the upcoming Presidential election in 2012 where Obama and his GOP opponents are tripping over each other to demonstrate which has the most absolute fealty to American Jewry and the Israeli Lobby’s entrenched position on the Hill, the aggregate picture suggests the identity of the leading candidates for using this so-called Saudi Envoy Assassination Plot for their own non-publicly-advertised purposes and agendas.

And now that there is a published allegation that Interpol in France has established an MEK-link and affiliation for the second terror suspect now in custody, the odor becomes even more pungent. Yesterday’s New York Times made reference to this allegation, but only in a small strip column on page A8. Where is Elizabeth Rubin on this one? Or is the Israeli scent to the trail one her bosses have told her not to follow? We shall see. Mrs. Rubin’s July 13th, 2003 essay, “The Cult of Rajavi,” taken in tandem with her story of August 13th this year on the MEK, fills in many blanks. Will she fill in the rest of them, and connect the rest of the dots for the composite portrait on the canvas? If she should do so, some sordid people will run pell mell for the exits. If she doesn’t, American Corporate/Zionist media will have failed the acid test one more time.

Habilian Association: After all these many years, you should visit in Iran again.

Mark Dankof: Time and political developments will determine whether or not God will grant me that special privilege. If I do get the chance to come, it is my intention to also visit Yerevan and some of the Christian monsteries in Armenia, maybe in conjunction with another pilgrimage to the Armenian Christian Festival of St. Thaddeus at the Church of St. Stephanos in Azerbaijan Iran. My own feelings about your country are best expressed by your 10th century poet, Ferdowsi. I understand that chiseled on his stone tomb at Tus is an inscription of his immortal words which state, “Let not this body live if there is no Iran.”

Mark Dankof’s America

October 22, 2011 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Who is Really Behind It? The Implausibility of an Iranian Plot

On October 11, Attorney General Eric Holder, flanked by the FBI Director and the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, accused the government of Iran, specifically the elite Quds battalion of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), of plotting to assassinate the ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the U.S, Adel Al-Jubeir.

So what do we know about this alleged conspiracy? And what are the facts pertinent to this explosive charge? Who is Really Behind It? The Implausibility of an Iranian Plot

1) The alleged conspirator, Mansour Arbabsiar, is a 56 year old naturalized American of Iranian descent. He has been living in several Texas communities since the late 1970s when he arrived to the U.S. as a student. By all accounts, Arbabsiar led a disorderly life marked by constant failure, whether as a student, husband, father, or businessman.

For over two decades the alleged “mastermind” left behind a trail of successive failed businesses, including a used car lot, a restaurant, a convenience store, and a finance company. One of his friends told the Washington Post that he is “a goofy guy who always had a smile on his face.”

Arbabsiar was neither an ideologue nor religious. His nickname among his close friends was “Jack” because of his affinity for Jack Daniel’s whiskey. Last year, he was arrested for felony possession of a narcotic. According to public documents, his former wife accused him of spousal abuse and filed a protective order against him in 1991.

2) The complaint (so far it is not even an indictment by a grand jury) charges that Arbabsiar allegedly conspired with a high official of the Quds battalion of the IRGC. According to the complaint he was recruited by this official – who is also supposedly his cousin – when he visited Iran earlier this year.

[..]The Quds force has been publicly supporting the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance organizations in their struggle with Israel. These activities have earned it the label of “supporter of terrorism” by most Western nations, including the U.S.

But according to Robert Baer, a 21-year veteran CIA operative and analyst, the Quds Force is one of the most professional and disciplined (though deadly) organizations in the Middle East. As reported by CNN, the Quds Force “has never been publicly linked to an assassination plot or an attack on U.S. soil.”

Baer confirmed this fact when he said that “in its 30-year history of attacking the West, the Quds Force went out of its way never to be caught with a smoking gun in hand. It always used well-vetted proxies, invariably Muslim believers devoted to Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution.”

He then questioned whether the plot was genuine by asking, “Why didn’t the Iranians use tried and tested Hizbullah networks and keep Iranian nationals, much less unknown Mexican narcos, out of it?”

3) We know from the complaint that the U.S government was actually directing the plot (target, location, method of attack, setting the price of the assassination, bank account information, etc.) Pete Williams, NBC’s DOJ correspondent, said that the plot was in fact “a sting operation” directed by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the FBI. A recent report published by New York University Law School showed that in the past decade federal agencies have relied heavily on sting operations, not only in drug busts, but also most significantly in dozens of national security cases “that were planned, financed and executed by the FBI.”

4) According to the official story, we are to believe that, although the price set for the Saudi Ambassador’s assassination by a member of a Mexican drug cartel (who was actually a DEA informant) was $1.5 million, the Iranian handlers expected the assassin to carry it out by advancing him only $100,000 (less than 7 percent of the total amount.)

Moreover, as Baer argued in Time magazine, in three decades of external operations in many countries, the IRGC fingerprints or money transfers were never traced back to Iran, but that Iran has always “enjoyed plausible deniability.” Baer further told CNN that, “it would be completely uncharacteristic for Iran to be caught red-handed.”

Therefore, such sloppy behavior through traceable money transfers and phone intercepts is simply not credible. It appears to be a deliberate attempt to leave behind as many clues as possible to pin this alleged egregious act on Iran.

5) Another hole in this puzzle concerns the possible motive Iran could have by sponsoring such a provocative act. Strategically, Iran has never been stronger in the region. It has been the greatest beneficiary of the U.S. debacle in Iraq and its difficulty in Afghanistan. Furthermore, despite the successive international sanctions imposed on Iran, its nuclear and other military programs have been progressing at an increasingly steady pace, while asserting a growing and dominant role in the region.

Hillary Mann Leverett, an adviser on Iran in former President George W. Bush’s administration, told CNN that this act made no sense, and contradicted Iran’s national security strategy. She stated, “There’s no benefit; there’s no payoff in them pursuing this kind of hit against Adel Al-Jubeir. And it runs contrary to their entire national security strategy.”

If Iran wanted to punish Saudi Arabia it had a plenty of targets in the region, including in Saudi Arabia itself, Iraq, Afghanistan, or the Persian Gulf region in general. If it wanted to target a diplomat, the worst choice would be on U.S. soil where such an act would be easily uncovered and would not go unpunished. It is not clear why Iran would even target a small functionary of the Saudi diplomatic core. Al-Jubeir is neither royalty nor a significant player in Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy.

Since at least 2003, the Iranian national security strategy has been to de-escalate regional tensions and avoid any confrontation with the U.S. or its regional allies, especially Saudi Arabia. It has been in the middle of unprecedented build-up of its military power, especially its navy, nuclear power, and long-range missile programs. Experts believe that it needs at least five more quiet years to finish this phase of its build-up.

6) Ironically, in 2004 the U.S. uncovered an alleged assassination plot by another U.S. national against King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia himself, not his ambassador. In that plot, the U.S. asserted that it confiscated more than $340,000 payoff from former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddhafi for the killing of the Saudi monarch.

The Bush and Blair administrations, which were in bed with Gaddhafi at the time, negotiating the surrender of his nuclear programs, did not threaten or impose any sanctions on the former Libyan regime because of the plot. Although the U.S. sentenced the alleged U.S. conspirator to 23 years in prison, the Saudi king pardoned the alleged assassin who was arrested in Saudi Arabia.

However, this time the reaction by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia was not only swift and harsh, but threatening and escalating.

7) Since the inception of the Arab Spring, Saudi Arabia has been very nervous. It has sent its army to Bahrain to crack down on the popular protests, while bribing its citizens and inviting the monarchs of Jordan and Morocco to join the GCC alliance in order to halt any movements in these countries towards a constitutional monarchy.

Meanwhile, throughout this year the Saudi media has been relentless in its attacks against Iran, presenting it as a “Shi’a” nation and a “Persian” power set on taking over the Arab Sunni countries in the region. It is an old tactic used by authoritarian regimes to focus the public’s attention on an external enemy to deflect from the popular demands for democracy and civil rights and against repression and corruption as demonstrated by the Arab uprisings throughout the region. This alleged plot plays into the hands of those who want to escalate the confrontation with Iran inside Saudi Arabia.

8) But the clear winners of any escalation with Iran are those who want to attack Iran militarily in the region, namely Israel and Saudi Arabia. In one of the Wikileaks documents released recently, the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia cabled back to the State Department that King Abdullah wanted a U.S-led military confrontation with Iran. He said that the Saudi monarch wanted to “cut the head of the snake” in the region.

Moreover, former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, who resigned a year ago, described the current Israeli government as “dangerous and irresponsible.” Last spring he told the Israeli Haaretz newspaper that Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu would attack Iran and that doing so would be “the stupidest thing.” When asked about what would happen in the aftermath of an Israeli attack, Dagan, said that: “It will be followed by a war with Iran. It is the kind of thing where we know how it starts, but not how it will end.”

According to The Forward, twelve of the eighteen living ex-chiefs of Israel’s two security agencies (Mossad and Shin Bet), have been opposing an open war with Iran and are “either actively opposing Netanyahu’s stances or have spoken out against them.”

So the trick for the right wing Israeli government has been how to drag the U.S. into this war and make it an American-Iranian confrontation rather than an Israeli-Iranian conflict.

To sum up, this alleged plot actually raises more questions than it answers. It’s supposedly led by a “goofy”, unsuccessful U.S-Iranian dual citizen, who is neither religious nor ideological; manipulated by an informant of a U.S. law enforcement agency fronting as an assassin for a Mexican drug cartel; recruited without vetting by one of the most elite and disciplined organizations in the world, while paying only 7 percent of the contract to assassinate the ambassador to a country (Saudi Arabia) with which Iran is trying to have a good relationship, in a country (the U.S) with which it is trying to avoid any confrontation, while leaving money transfers, telephone intercepts, and clues behind.

If this sounds illogical, then who is behind this amateurish plot?

It is unlikely that there are so-called rouge elements within the IRGC that want to drag the U.S. into a confrontation with Iran. That would amount to virtual suicide within the Iranian establishment. There is no history of such behavior even when the country was militarily much weaker and politically unstable.

Thus, to best answer the question is to identify those who would benefit the most from a confrontation between the U.S. and Iran. Clearly those who have the most to gain from such a clash are Israel and the Iranian opposition, particularly the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO).

While the former seeks to cripple Iran’s nuclear program, the later has been in a deadly confrontation with the Islamicly-oriented government for decades, and wants to weaken the regime so it could be toppled. Both entities have tried over the years to sponsor terrorist operations and covert actions within Iran and outside to damage the regime or implicate it in external terrorist acts.

It is not beyond the realm of possibilities that the Israeli Mossad or the MKO were able to recruit an idiot or his cousin or both in a plot that involved assassinating the Saudi Ambassador, while leaving a trove of evidence behind to be found in order to implicate the Iranian government.

But assuming the U.S. was not privy to it, despite the plot being a sting operation, the more important question is then why the U.S. government took the bait and escalated the incident to a dangerous course with uncalculated consequences?

The U.S, Israel, and Saudi Arabia can certainly start a war with a more assertive Iran. But they certainly cannot end it. One only has to look at the recent U.S. adventures on either side of Iran’s borders to learn that lesson.

Esam Al-Amin, Global Research, Canada

October 20, 2011 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Iran: DC Plot Suspect a High Profile MeK Member

State News Agency Speculates Plot Was Effort to Frame Iran.

Adding to the growing intrigue over last week’s DC assassination plot, the Iranian government State News Agency Speculates Plot Was Effort to Frame Iran revealed today that Gholam Shakuri, who US officials claimed was a member of the Quds Force, is actually a “key member” of the Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MeK), a State Department listed terrorist organization hostile to the Iranian government.

Shakuri was accused of being behind the plot along with the much more widely covered Mansour Arbabsiar, a US citizen and failed used car salesman from Texas who officials speculated was brought into the plot because a history of living in Texas meant he might be able to find Mexican drug cartel leaders to recruit.

Shakuri was charged, but never actually arrested, and the Justice Department insisted that he is “still at large.” Iran appears to have been looking for him for awhile as well, and says he has used forged Iranian passports with the names Ali Shakuri or Gholam-Hussein Shakuri as well.
Iran’s state news agency Mehr speculated that the plot was actually an MeK effort to implicate Iran, and if this is the case it appears to have worked quite well since even though a number of experts have shrugged the plot off as nonsensical US officials continue to rail against Iran and vow revenge.

by Jason Ditz

October 19, 2011 0 comments

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