News received from within Camp Liberty, base of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO, MeK, Rajavi cult) forces in Iraq, indicates that the MKO is training its members to make Molotov Cocktails and that subsequently some of these hand make bombs have been produced and stored underneath their residential containers.
The individuals are briefed that there is a danger that Iranian forces will attack the base under the cover of the families of the residents. Therefore they must be ready to defend themselves. Thus the members of the MKO have been mentally prepared to violently oppose the families.
The truth is that the Rajavi cult was alarmed when some families of members trapped in Camp Liberty approached the camp to visit their loved ones and that is why they react like this. Rajavi, like any other cult leader, considers the families as the major threat to its mind manipulation techniques and control over the members.
When the families’ showed their presence at the gates of Camp Liberty, the Rajavi cult started its widespread propaganda against them as though they are organized armed forces who have planned to attack the base and abolish it! This is while the families, who are all empty-handed and without any propaganda tools, approached the camp to hear from their loved ones.
Sahar Family Foundation, which was aware of the families visit to Iraq beforehand, kept its promise to the Iraqi and UN officials by not mentioning anything publicly and kept a low profile in order not to give the MKO leaders any excuses. But the MKO announced the news with extreme propaganda and fabricated lies since it had no intention of allowing the families to visit their loved ones quietly, and made up excuses that there are conspiracies against the camp by the Iranian regime.
Everyone remembers that in the past the families were stationed outside the gates of Ashraf Garrison for about 4 years where they peacefully demanded to visit their relatives. In return the MKO members, indoctrinated by the cult leaders, pelted them with stones and metal pieces which cut their arms and heads and called them all kinds of names and accused them of being the spies of the Iranian regime. But the families patiently tolerated the situation and simply repeated their demands of the leaders peacefully that they just want to know about their loved ones.
The Rajavi cult claimed in the past that they would allow the families to visit their relatives provided it takes place inside the camp with the presence of the MKO officials. The families accepted this condition, but the cult leaders, who are frightened of any contact of their followers with the outside world, in particular with their relatives, broke their promises and did not allow any visits.
Massoud Rajavi, like all cult leaders, considers the presence of the families outside the camp as a threat to his cult and like all dictators is against any information reaching the followers.
There is also another fact that some considerable numbers of members are old or sick or discontented and are not of any use to the cult. If they are dismissed or they defect in large numbers there would be a political damage to the organization. Therefore the best option for Rajavi is to get them killed as he planned in the past in the Ashraf Garrison in order to use them for propaganda purposes. In this way he would be able to kill two birds with one stone.
Rajavi is preparing his forces and arming them with Molotov Cocktails to wage battle against the Iraqis. He is using the excuse of the families’ presence at the camp gates in order for those who he considers no longer have any use for him to be killed.
Follow the Money
Why Argentina is in the War Party’s sights
The brouhaha 
over an alleged 1994 Iranian plot to bomb a Jewish community center in Argentina, of all places, has been in and out of the news for years. Hysterical headlines, fantastic allegations, simmering intrigue, a mysterious suicide that some are claiming was a murder – it all sounds like a fourth-rate made-for-television thriller. That may be because its source – the weird neo-Marxist cult known as the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), which seems to have bought half the Congress and any number of well-known political figures and pundits – is prone to melodrama of the crudest sort.
An Iranian exile group headed up by a woman who calls herself the “President” of Iran, the MEK has an extensive international network, with its fanatic members running a bewildering array of frontgroups – the Iranian American Community of North Texas, the National Council of Resistance, Iran Zamin Cultural Association, the Organizing Committee for Convention for Democracy in Iran, the Human Rights Center in Wisconsin, Association of Iranian Women in America, to name a few. These groups ceaselessly lobby for two main causes: 1) Getting the group delisted as a terrorist organization, and 2) Moving the West to attack Iran.
They succeeded in their first goal, at least here in the US, with Hillary Clinton’s decision to take the MEK off the list of terror groups after a very well-financed and persistent campaign. MEK was listed in the first place because they had launched attacks on US assets and personnel in the late 1970s, murdering six Americans. MEK supported the Iranian revolution that brought the Ayatollah Khomeini to power, only breaking with the regime when Tehran decided to release the US embassy hostages – and after being decisively defeated in subsequent elections.
MEK launched terrorist attacks on the Islamist regime, killing scores of civilians in bombings, and establishing a base in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, whose regime sheltered and supported them. They played a key role in suppressing revolts against Saddam’s rule, brutally suppressing a Shi’ite rising in the south and a Kurdish rebellion that resulted in the death of thousands.
After Saddam’s fall, they began their rebirth into a “pro-democracy” exile group, reportedly with aid from the Israelis. When a number of neoconservative organizations in the US took up their cause, MEK became the Iranian analogue of the Iraqi National Congress, the group headed up by international intriguer Ahmed Chalabi who provided the Bush administration – and New York Times reporter Judith Miller – with much of the erroneous “intelligence” that led the US to invade Iraq.
Over the years, MEK has carried out a persistent campaign to foment a similar US invasion of Iran, their mainstay being various attempts to document Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. Virtually all of these attempts have been debunked as either outright forgeries or else half-truths based on outdated and dubiously sourced information. Their only success has been the revelation of the Iranian nuclear facility at Natanz, and even there they didn’t garner the intelligence on their own: it was reportedly given to them by the Israelis.
Now they have tried a different tack: accusing Tehran of sponsoring an international terrorist conspiracy, one tentacle of which is the alleged 1994 plot to bomb a Jewish community center in Argentina. And their neoconservative cheerleaders have taken up the cry, with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Israel Project, and the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group, all promoting MEK’s indictment.
That indictment was summarized and published by Argentina’s chief prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, who relied exclusively on MEK “experts” to justify his charges against top Iranian officials supposedly involved in the attack on the Jewish center. The head of the National Council of Resistance “intelligence” division, Reza Zakeri Kouchaksaraee, testified that a 1993 two-hour meeting resulted in a decision to bomb the center: he gave the meeting date as August 14. Another National Council of Resistance official, Hadi Roshanravani, gives the date as August 12.
How did MEK know about this alleged meeting, and even the precise agenda, when none of these “experts” were in Iran at the time, nor did they work for or have any contact with the Iranian government when the alleged plot was hatched? Nisman does not say in his report: he only cites MEK-affiliated “defectors” who defected well before the bombing took place. MEK has long traded on its supposed secret connections to mysterious sources inside Iran, but this claim has worn rather thin over the years as their “revelations” turn out to be utter junk. Nisman, however, swallowed them whole in this case, citing no evidence for his charges other than MEK’s bare assertions.
Nisman cites yet another Iranian defector, Aboghasem Mesbahi, who repeats MEK’s claims. Mesbahi’s credibility may be measured by his statements to the 9/11 Commission averring that Iran was behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon: he knew this because he read secret messages in newspapers.
So what’s really behind the international campaign trying to link Iran to the bombing, which killed 85 people and injured 300?
The evidence points to hedge fund chief Paul Singer, one of the richest men in the world, whose financial interests and devotion to Israel combine to produce what can only be characterized as a singular obsession.
In 2001, Argentina defaulted on its debt payments, the inevitable result of years of big government programs, incompetence, and outright corruption. But that didn’t deter Singer from buying up Argentina’s bonds on the cheap. His plan: to pursue Argentina in court and demand full payment. A court victory – which he achieved in the summer of last year, when the Supreme Court ruled in Singer’s favor – would reward him with over $2 billion in pure profit. The “vulture,” as financial publications like Forbes describe Singer and other investors who buy up bonds of desperately poor countries in hopes of making a killing, is now free to seize Argentine’s assets around the world. Argentina is also forbidden to settle with other bondholders who may be willing to accept partial payment until Singer and his fellow vultures are paid in full.
Singer helped found the American Task Force Argentina (ATFA), which has been running newspaper ads in support of Singer’s legal efforts as well as demonizing Argentina as part of a vast Iranian terrorist network operating throughout South America. Singer gave half a million dollars to The Israel Project, which has been frenetically promoting this conspiracy theory. FDD, which has signed on to the anti-Argentina campaign in a big way, received over $3 million from Singer. A whole panoply of Republican members of Congress in the forefront of the anti-Argentina jihad – including presidential candidate Marco Rubio,who introduced a resolution in the Senate demanding an investigation into Argentina’s alleged ties to Iran — have been beneficiaries of Singer’s largesse. AIPAC, which has been more circumspect in is promotion of the Jewish center bombing “connection” to Iran, has been similarly rewarded: its fundraising arm was given over $1 million by Singer and his associates.
A $2 billion payoff – and the smiting of Israel’s principal enemy: that’s the double-barreled motive behind Singer’s anti-Argentina holy war.
Ideology and moolah have always coincided in the world of the neoconservatives: remember Richard Perle’s Trireme Partners, a “security” firm set up to profit off the Iraq war? And of course, as Rand Paul pointed out, Dick Cheney’s connection to Halliburton – and the windfall profits they made off the invasion of Iraq – are emblematic of the neocons’ ability to make mucho dineros off their penchant for conquest. The links of key neoconservative activists with big military contractors like Lockheed-Martin are a matter of longstanding public record.
Not that these people aren’t sincere in their belief that war is indeed the answer: they just aren’t averse to making a few billion in profit along the way.
When prosecutor Nisman committed suicide a day before he was supposed to formally present his charges of a “cover up” by Argentina of Iran’s alleged culpability in the bombing plot, the hysterics in neoconservative circles reached fever pitch. The same people who denounce any arguments that they are trying to push us into war as a kooky “conspiracy theory” were quick to evoke a conspiracy by the Argentine government to commit murder. Yet Nisman’s death was clearly self-inflicted: a gun he had borrowed from an associate was found next to his body, and there were no signs of a struggle or forced entry. No evidence has emerged to show that he was killed by something other than his own hand: but evidence, or the lack of it, has never stopped the neocons from constructing elaborate arguments touting their own “theories.”
And they have no lack of means to publicize these theories: the campaign to tar Iran with the “terrorist” brush is fueled by the multi-millions of billionaires like Singer, Sheldon Adelson, and Norman Braman, whose insistence on 100 percent loyalty to Israel in the candidates and causes they support is remaking the political discourse in the US when it comes to foreign policy.
The forces driving us to war with Iran have billions of dollars to spend. They represent a minority of the population – but that doesn’t deter them. Their strategy is to present both sides of the same coin to the American people, come election time, and then ask them to make a “choice” – a Republican who will take us to war against Iran, or a Democrat who will take the same road.
So what can stop them? If the deck is stacked, how can we prevent the next war in the Middle East – which promises to make the Iraq war look like a mere skirmish?
The answer is a mass mobilization by the American people against the drive to war – and, no, that’s not a pipedream. We did it when President Obama decided he wanted to bomb Syria and then gave Congress the last word. Congressional switchboards were soon inundated with calls opposing a new war one-hundred-to-one. Members of Congress who said they would vote yes for war backed down, and those on the fence came over to our side – until it was clear the administration wouldn’t have the votes. Obama backed off in the face of massive opposition: and, yes, Antiwar.com was a big part of that memorable mobilization.
We did it before – and we can and will do it again.
But we can’t do it without your help.
You can see, from the above, how outgunned we are when it comes to financial resources. The War Party has billions, and money is no object. But I’ll let you in on a little secret: they need those billions, and more, because they represent nothing and no one but themselves. Their support is almost exclusively in Washington, D.C., and New York City, the political and media centers that profit from perpetual war. We, on the other hand, have the overwhelming majority of the American people on our side – if only we can rally them to the banner of peace in time.
Paul Singer’s billions are feeding America a diet of lies. Our answer to him and his confreres is the unalloyed truth – and we don’t need billions, or even millions, to educate the American people about the forces pushing us into war. We just need a basic minimum to keep this web site going.
We’ve been fighting the War Party’s lies since 1995, with the invaluable help of our readers and supporters – and we’ve been doing it on a shoestring budget! What we spend in an entire year is what groups like the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the American Enterprise Institute spend in less than a week.
We need your help to counter the well-financed lies that are poisoning the national discourse around foreign policy issues. Your tax-deductible donation goes to counter the Paul Singers, the Sheldon Adelsons, and their friends in what Dwight Eisenhower called “the military-industrial-congressional” complex – and every penny counts.
Today is the first day of our Spring fundraising campaign, and I’m on pins-and-needles, as I am every time we have to go through this process. We’re asking for your vote of confidence – your vote for a more peaceful world. And I believe we deserve that vote of affirmation – because this is the one and only self-sustaining and relatively successful institution the peace movement has. Please help us continue our work on behalf of the cause of peace and liberty. Please make your tax-deductible donation today.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.
I’ve written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and David Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).
You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here.
by Justin Raimondo,
Appearance of the self-claimed president of National Council of Resistance, Maryam Rajavi in a hearing in US Congress indicates the absurdity of the claim of fighting against terrorism. Although the credibility of this so 
called leader is questionable getting support among some US congressmen for her presence in the congress is interesting and creates doubts in everybody’s mind.
The support is basically due to multi—million dollar lobbying campaign over years which includes paying good money for speaking and providing first class flights plus fancy hotel for those congressmen who support this terrorist organization. These are the true motivation behind supporting this cult like group.
The hearing was hosted by Congressman Ted Poe, chairman of the congressional subcommittee on the threats posed by ISIS. Why did Poe and the Republican majority on the terrorism subcommittee decide to invite Maryam Rajavi while main victims of ISIS terror acts are mostly among Iraqi Yazidis. However, no one of the Yazidi community was invited to the hearing! The reason is crystal clear since we know that Yazidis do not have such financial resources to attract any congressman.
“Poe received $17,900 in campaign contributions from supporters of the MEK between 2009 and 2014, according to an analysis I conducted of campaign finance data,” Eli Clifton writes. ”Surprisingly, nearly half—or $8,600—of the total flowed into his campaign while the group was still on the State Department’s terrorism list between 2009 and its delisting in 2012.”
Clifton adds,” In 2013 and 2014, the group also paid for $19,671 in travel expenses (including business-class plane fare) for Poe’s travel to MEK events in France.”
Indeed, it is so unusual to have Maryam Rajavi to testify in a hearing about ISIS. It is as if bringing Stalin to testify about Fascism, or asking Hitler to testify about Nazism. It seems money is everything in the US Politic. “Money talks” is an appropriate phrase here.
Shaylyn Hynes, a spokeswoman for Poe, told Joshua Keating by email that Rajavi has a “long history of speaking against what she calls ‘Islamic fundamentalism,’” and “can speak to how ISIS’ ideology is both similar to and different from the mullahs leading Iran.” Asked if there were any concerns given the MEK’s history, Hynes replied, “the administration does not consider them a terrorist group and neither do we.”
Hynes might be right to say that Rajavi has a “long history of speaking against what she calls ‘Islamic fundamentalism,’” but he should notice that “actions speak louder than words”. In other words, this does not mean that she herself is a moderate Muslim or she is pro-democracy. As it has manifested in her cruel treatment of its own members.
As Sean Nevins of Mint Press News asserts, “the MEK is a kind of cult, according to the FBI, Human Rights Watch, the Rand Corporation, and just about every other organization which has investigated the group.” He correctly writes that the MKO is “precisely the kind of organization that should not testify about Islamic extremism.”
Jeremiah Goulka, author of “The Mujahedin-e Khalq in Iraq: A Policy Conundrum,” a report published by the Rand Corporation in 2009, told MintPress, “At the MEK camps, there’s a whole set of practices that are all textbook out of cult theory – sleep deprivation, make-work projects… forced celibacy, forced divorce, [and] gender segregation.”
Nevins also interviews Masoud Banisadr, a former member of the MKO, who had served as the group’s representative to the United Nations and the U.S. Banisadr confirmed that forced divorces were common in the group. Banisadr told MintPress: “All members were forced to divorce their spouses, and later they have to send their children abroad to Europe and United States to be adopted by supporters and other members.”
This is Eli Clifton’s description of the MKO: “The group has long faced criticism from Iran specialists and rights groups such as Human Rights Watch that it has devolved into a cult based on devotion to Maryam and her long-missing husband, Massoud Rajavi. According to numerous accounts, the group exerts a high degree of control over its followers, going so far as to mandate divorces and celibacy for their soldiers.”
According to the report by Julian Pecquet the congressional correspondent at Al Monitor, “Other lawmakers, including ranking member William Keating, D-Mass., ignored Rajavi and directed their questions only at the other witnesses. Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., who also isn’t a committee member, was the only one to challenge her to explain why the United States should put its trust in a group that was kicked out of Iran in the early 1980s and fought alongside Saddam Hussein against Tehran.
"Over the past 30 years, the United States has been drawn into some serious diplomatic and military dead-ends in the Mideast by mistakenly backing individuals and organizations claiming popular support, which turned out to be exaggerated and somewhat manufactured," Davis told Rajavi. "Would you please tell us about the role of the [MEK] … and its place in the current Iranian political life?"
Rajavi’s reasoning in responding to Davis just included the same old fallacy that “regime’s "fear" of the group and its efforts at "demonizing" was a strong indication of the MEK’s "strength." However, her claim has been numerously rejected by international investigated report that clearly acknowledge that MKO has hardly any support among Iranians.
By the way, could the event organizers really define the enemy and the threat of ISIS by listening to the MKO cult leader? In conclusion, what can be achieved by listening to the MKO’S cult leader? Can the threat of ISIS be eliminated?
Mazda Parsi
In what one member of Congress called a “historic hearing” yesterday, Maryam Rajavi, leader of the controversial Iranian dissident group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or MEK, testified via satellite before a congressional subcommittee on the threats posed by ISIS and Iran, which she sees as one and the same. The MEK is 
considered a dangerous cult by many, and until three years ago was labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. government. But after years of concerted lobbying, it enjoys a surprising amount of support on Capitol Hill. And yesterday the MEK displayed its growing influence in U.S. foreign policy debates.
It’s been a long and winding road for the MEK. Ideologically, the MEK originally sought to fuse revolutionary Marxism with Islam, but it has largely abandoned that rhetoric today for something more palatable to Western supporters. The group was formed in the 1960s by leftist Iranian students opposed to the Shah’s regime. During the 1970s it carried out attacks that killed several Americans working on defense projects in Iraq, and supported the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in 1979. After the Iranian Revolution, the group fell out with the new Islamic state and went underground, carrying out a series of high-profile attacks against the Iranian government while its leaders fled to Paris. During the 1980s and 1990s, the MEK fought as a private militia on behalf of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
But things changed after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, when the MEK renounced violence (after being disarmed by the American military) and cast itself as supporters of the democratic opposition in Iran. Not everyone bought the group’s transformation into defenders of liberty, secularism, and women’s equality. Critics say the group began to transform into a cult centered around its leaders, the married couple Massoud and Maryam Rajavi, after the Iran-Iraq War, when thousands of its fighters were killed.
In 2003, New York Times reporter Elizabeth Rubin visited the group’s Iraqi compound at Camp Ashraf and described it as resembling a “fictional world of female worker bees … dressed exactly alike, in khaki uniforms and mud-colored head scarves, driving back and forth in white pickup trucks, staring ahead in a daze as if they were working at a factory in Maoist China.” Followers at Ashraf were reportedly cut off from the outside media, required to attend regular self-criticism sessions, and barred from personal friendships and emotional relationships.
But the group played its cards well as Western concerns grew over Iran’s nuclear program, reportedly passing information from its supporters within the Islamic Republic on nuclear facilities to the U.S. and, according to some reports, cooperating with Mossad to assassinate Iranian scientists. It also began a multiyear, multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign to remove itself from the terrorist list, including paying American figures like Rudy Giuliani and Howard Dean to give speeches on its behalf. It worked, and in 2012, Hillary Clinton took the MEK off the list.
Since then, the group’s influence has been growing. Its supporters regularly crowd hearings on Capitol Hill dealing with Iran and its increasing influence in Iraq. The Iraqi government has long viewed the MEK with hostility and has carried out several brutal attacks on its compound. U.S. officials also believe Iranian troops participated in a 2013 attack that killed at least 50 MEK members in 2013. One of its staunchest supporters on Capitol Hill, Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, held up a planned arms sale to former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government in part over concerns about the treatment of the MEK.
Ted Poe, R-Texas, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade, which held Wednesday’s hearing, is another prominent MEK backer. Shaylyn Hynes, a spokeswoman for Poe, told me by email that Rajavi has a “long history of speaking against what she calls ‘Islamic fundamentalism,’” and “can speak to how ISIS’ ideology is both similar to and different from the mullahs leading Iran.” Asked if there were any concerns given the MEK’s history, Hynes replied, “the administration does not consider them a terrorist group and neither do we.”
Rajavi was certainly feeling the love from Congress on Wednesday, testifying before an overflow crowd at the hearing, which was titled “ISIS: Defining the Enemy.” Rep. Brad Sherman, D-California, compared her appearance to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s address to Congress that day, noting that Japan had also once been an enemy of the United States. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, is not a member of the subcommittee but dropped in to refer to Rajavi as a “great leader.”
Still, not everyone was as welcoming. Former State Department counterterrorism director Daniel Benjamin, who had been scheduled to testify, dropped out of the hearing rather than appear with Rajavi. Another, former ambassador to Syria and prominent administration critic Robert Ford, told Foreign Policy he was “shocked” to learn she was on the panel and demanded that the subcommittee “put me on a panel without the MEK or I wouldn’t appear.” He wound up speaking earlier in the day.
Suspect groups playing on American naiveté by telling gullible politicians exactly what they want to hear. Anybody remember that great band Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi Expatriates? They sure were reliable sources, weren’t they… More…
In her appearance, via satellite from Paris, Rajavi made a case familiar to anyone who listened to Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress in March: that ISIS and Iran are two sides of the same coin, despite the fact that Iranian-backed militias are fighting the group in Iraq. “The Mullahs regime is not part of any solution to the current crisis. Instead, it is the heart of the problem,” she said, referring to the Iranian government as the “Godfather of ISIS.” She referred to the current fight between ISIS and Iran as merely an “internal power struggle” within Islamic fundamentalism and warned that “fundamentalism of the Shiite kind is more dangerous than the Sunni one” because Shiites already have a state, Iran, which is projecting its power in Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere.
While the support for Rajavi was a bipartisan affair, her message seemed to resonate in particular with critics of the Obama administration’s Iran policy. Hynes denied to me that the timing of the hearing had anything to do with the ongoing debate over nuclear diplomacy and Iran sanctions, saying “There is no relation. Ms. Rajavi is an expert on radical Islamist extremism and is being called to testify in that capacity.” Still, Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-New York,, who praised Rajavi and the MEK as the legitimate democratic opposition of Iran, said during the hearing that when he listens to the administration’s rhetoric on the Iranian regime, “I honestly do not know if my president is on the same team as I am.”
By Joshua Keating, Slate.com
A controversial foe of the Iranian government sought to tie the rise of the Islamic State terrorist group to the regime in Iran before Congress on Wednesday — a link that President Obama and many foreign policy experts have rejected but one that has gained traction on Capitol Hill as Obama continues nuclear talks with Iran.
A House foreign affairs subcommittee’s decision to invite Maryam Rajavi, a longtime leader of Mujaheddin-e Khalq, had generated objections before the hearing. The exile group, also known as MEK, was listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department as recently as 2012 and had been known to ally itself with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein against Tehran.
But since the group formally renounced violence, the most aggressive U.S. foes of the Iranian regime have embraced MEK as an ally. With Wednesday’s hearing on the Islamic State, that alliance has been extended to discussions of the Sunni extremist group now attracting the attention of lawmakers as it wreaks havoc in the Middle East.
“The mullahs’ regime is not part of the solution to the current crisis,” Rajavi said, referring to the Iranian government. “It is indeed the heart of the problem.”The regime in Tehran is the “godfather” of the Islamic State, she said, adding that “the ultimate solution to this problem is regime change by the Iranian people and resistance.”
At a Senate hearing last month, Secretary of State John F. Kerry said it was a grave mistake to link the Shiite regime in Iran with the Sunni-led Islamic State. In fact, he said, the group has given the United States reason to make common cause with Iran.
“They want us to destroy ISIS; they want to destroy ISIS,” Kerry said, using an alternative name for the group. “ISIS is a threat to [Iran]; it’s a threat to the region.”
Rajavi testified as president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, MEK’s political affiliate. She appeared before the subcommittee on terrorism, nonproliferation and trade via video link from Paris.
Her appearance prompted another scheduled witness, former State Department counterterrorism official Daniel Benjamin, to withdraw.
“Congress can invite anyone it wants to testify, but I don’t understand why a group with a history like this should be accorded this treatment,” Benjamin, now a Dartmouth College scholar, said in an e-mail, citing MEK’s role in Iran’s 1979 revolution, and international terror attacks to which the group has been linked.
He asserted that MEK is chiefly interested in overthrowing the Iranian regime. “The notion that it has any particular insights into ISIS is absurd,” he said.
Shaylyn Hynes, a spokeswoman for the subcommittee’s chairman, Rep. Ted Poe (R-Tex.), said Rajavi was invited to testify on the basis of her “personal knowledge of the prejudices inherent in radical Islamist ideology” as well as her knowledge of the plight of MEK members living as refugees at a Baghdad camp.
Greg Miller contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — MEK leader Maryam Rajavi told lawmakers on April 29 that the path to defeating the Islamic State (IS) runs through regime change in Tehran.
Testifying by teleconference from the exiled group’s headquarters in Paris, Rajavi urged the United States to stand up to Iran throughout the region. Her appearance has sparked controversy because the MEK was listed as a terrorist group until 2012, but several lawmakers defended her right to testify and held up her organization as a viable democratic alternative to the mullahs.
"Since [1979], the regime in Tehran has acted as the driving force for, and the epicenter of, this ominous phenomenon regionally and worldwide," Rajavi testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s panel on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade. "The ultimate solution to this problem is regime change by the Iranian people and resistance."
The hearing drew a crowd of MEK supporters, including a who’s who of lawmakers who have long supported — and taken money from — the MEK and its Iranian-American affiliates. They include Reps. Judy Chu, D-Calif., and Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, who aren’t on the committee but stopped by to praise Rajavi.
"This is a very historic hearing," said Jackson Lee, who along with panel Chairman Ted Poe, R-Texas, actively pressed the State Department to take the MEK off its terrorism list. "This is one of the few times that the voice of the opposition [to] the government of Iran has been part of an official discussion. And that’s very important for the American people."
Other lawmakers, including ranking member William Keating, D-Mass., ignored Rajavi and directed their questions only at the other witnesses. Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., who also isn’t a committee member, was the only one to challenge her to explain why the United States should put its trust in a group that was kicked out of Iran in the early 1980s and fought alongside Saddam Hussein against Tehran.
"Over the past 30 years, the United States has been drawn into some serious diplomatic and military dead-ends in the Mideast by mistakenly backing individuals and organizations claiming popular support, which turned out to be exaggerated and somewhat manufactured," Davis told Rajavi. "Would you please tell us about the role of the [MEK] … and its place in the current Iranian political life?"
Rajavi said it was impossible to gauge support for the MEK because the mullahs would never allow free and fair elections. But she said the regime’s "fear" of the group and its efforts at "demonizing" was a strong indication of the MEK’s "strength."
Freshman Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., left little doubt that he believed in her.
"I honestly do not know if my president is on the same exact team that I am," he told Rajavi. "Because there are individuals like you, who are willing to rise up and take control of your country’s future."
Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., said the MEK’s terrorism designation belonged in the past and compared Rajavi’s appearance to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s address to Congress earlier in the day. He said the media had "attacked" the MEK’s inclusion in the hearing because she was advocating for a certain policy — namely, regime change — but argued that most if not all other witnesses do the same.
"I’ve never heard a witness that wasn’t providing information to further their public policy interests," Sherman said.
Other witnesses, however, took a much different view, arguing that Rajavi’s testimony detracted from the fight against IS. Former State Department counterterrorism coordinator Daniel Benjamin pulled out of the panel after finding out that Rajavi was testifying, and former Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford demanded to be seated on a separate panel.
"I wanted to have an in-depth discussion of the Islamic State in great detail, because, precisely, we have American servicemen and women in harm’s way," Ford told reporters after leaving the hearing before Rajavi’s appearance. "It’s really important to get the strategy right. And that requires a detailed discussion."
By: Julian Pecquet, Congressional Correspondent for Al-Monitor
"She knows more about what’s taking place at Camp Liberty than any person, anywhere," Congressman Ted Poe said about Maryam Rajavi the leader of the Mujahedin khalq Organization (the MKO) who is supposed to testify before a hearing in the US Congress next week. "And that’s why she’s testifying." [1]
Yes, Congressman Poe is right. Maryam Rajavi is the most informed person about what is really going in the MKO camps in Iraq or France but she is not the most reliable person at all. She is not reliable because of the long history of fraud and Goebbels -like propaganda of her group.
Maryam Rajavi, the self-claimed president of National Council of Resistance of Iran (the propaganda arm of the MKO), will testify via video conference on April 29 at a House Foreign Affairs terrorism panel on "ISIS: Defining the Enemy”. Surprisingly, the organizers of the event are supposed to define the threat of ISIS terrorists via testimonies of Maryam Rajavi while she has never taken any position against ISIS. [2]
Ann and Massoud Khodabandeh, are the couple who happened to be the disassociated members of the MKO and also the experts on the organization explain why Congress should not rely on Rajavi’s testimony to discuss the threat of the Islamic State:
“She won’t. She can’t. Because the MEK are friends of the Islamic State (IS), they support the Islamic State. Maryam Rajavi has spoken in Farsi in favour of the Islamic State. The Islamic State do not pose any danger to the MEK in Camp Liberty. In fact, before the Iraqi army and militias drove IS back from its encroachment, it was clear to all those who know the MEK that the leaders were hoping that when IS reached Baghdad, the MEK would be liberated from Camp Liberty and join the terrorist forces.” [3]
It is well known that any disassociated member who tells the truth about the organization and denounces the MKO and exposes the abuse by its leader will be branded by the group as the agent of the Iranian intelligence service. Hence, the US officials should be cautious about letting the MKO’S leader to attend a Congressional hearing.
According to Al Monitor, Daniel Benjamin, formerly the State Department’s counter terror coordinator, also was slated to testify at the House hearing. But on Monday, Benjamin declared that “I will not appear at a hearing” about the Islamic State with the MEK’s defacto leader, because “I know of no substantive expertise that the MEK has developed on ISIS.” News of Benjamin’s cancellation was first mentioned on Twitter by ALM Congress Pulse. [4]
Benjamin told committee staff that he "did not believe the MEK had anything to contribute to a discussion of [IS], and that this would be a distraction from an important issue," he told Al-Monitor. "I said the story of the day would be the rehabilitation of the MEK, and I did not want to be associated with that in any way." [5]
Foreign Policy also quoted from Benjamin that the MEK’s “exclusive focus” of concern has for decades been Iran. “So one has to wonder what the purpose of Rajavi’s presence on this panel is,” Benjamin told FP. [6]
“Being delisted as a Foreign Terrorist Organization — a decision I took part in — doesn’t mean that this group … has suddenly … become trustworthy or worthy of engagement,” he said. [7]
Besides Daniel Benjamin, Robert Ford former US ambassador to Syria who was also invited to testify at the hearing declined to attend the event. According to Al Monitor, Ford said he would not testify at the same time as Maryam Rajavi". The committee handled this abysmally," Ford told Al-Monitor in a phone call late Monday. "What the fuck do the MEK know about the Islamic State?" [8]
A very comparable reaction was made by Ahmed Shahid UN Special Reporter on Human Rights last year. Shahid who had been invited to address in a similar event in Canadian Parliament withdrew from the program because Maryam Rajavi was supposed to deliver speech too. [9]
However, Congressman Ted Poe who is on top of the MKO pay roll, still defends his invitation despite Benjamin’s considerations on the MKO’s violent history. Definitely, Congressman Poe might not be so naïve to get misled by the propaganda of a cult of personality but he might be paid enough to cover the truth. The untrustworthy background of the MKO to deal with the International Community is so well reported and documented that you may find a case of the group’s deceitful approach on Ted Poe’s own website on House of Representatives.
Ardavon Niami’s article which had been originally published on NIAC website on December 12 2011, was available on Poe’s page the following day. The article was focused on the destiny of residents of Camp Ashraf before its closure in 2013. Niami reports that the relocation process of Ashraf residents was obstructed by their leaders.” U.S. officials testified before the House Foreign Affairs Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee last week that efforts to peacefully resolve the standoff are being rebuffed by MEK leadership”, He wrote. “U.S. Special Adviser on Camp Ashraf Daniel Fried said MEK leadership has impeded a refugee resettlement process and interfered with the UN’s ability to conduct interviews with individuals at the encampment.” [10]
Ted Poe’s web page says, “Fried told Congress that the Administration’s efforts have been met intransigence by Camp Ashraf leadership to agree to any relocation plan other than en masse relocation outside Iraq.” [11]
Although, the relocation of Ashraf residents was finally accomplished in 2013 –after over a decade of international efforts—about 100 of its high ranking members of the group who stayed in the Camp under the order of the leadership faced a deadly attack in September 2013, following which 53 members were killed!
Furthermore, the relocation process from Iraq Camp Liberty to Europe is very slow due to obstacles made by the MKO leaders. Based on testimonies of former members and various documented and investigated reports, the most crucial threat to residents of the MKO’s camps, is caused by the group’s leaders who do not have any consideration for the members. They only care for their own interests.
By Mazda Parsi
References:
[1] Pecquet, Julian, MEK leader to testify before Congress, Al Monitor, April 23, 2015
[2] ibid
[3]Khodabandeh, Ann & massoud, Congress cannot rely on Rajavi’s testimony, The Iran Interlink, April26, 2015
[4 ] Pecquet, Julian, Congressional invite to MEK sparks furious backlash, Al Monitor, April 28, 2015
[5]ibid
[6] Francis, David, Renowned U.S. Arabist Is Second Witness to Refuse to Appear With MEK Leader, Foreign Policy , April28, 2015
[7]ibid
[8] Pecquet, Julian, Congressional invite to MEK sparks furious backlash, Al Monitor, April 28, 2015
[9] Gharib, Ali , Controversial Iranian Exile Shakes Up Canadian Parliament’s Human Rights Program, The Nation, May 14, 2014
[10] Niami , Ardavon, U.S. Officials Warn that MEK is Obstructing Humanitarian Solution in Ashraf, NIAC, December 12, 2011
[11] ibid
Why is a Texas Congressman inviting the political leader of a former Iranian terrorist group to testify about ISIS and Islamic Extremism before a House subcommittee on terrorism?
WASHINGTON — Maryam Rajavi, acting president of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), will address the House Foreign Affairs’ Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade about the Islamic 
State of Iraq and Syria ( Islamic State of Iraq and Syria).
The NCRI is the political wing of the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, also known as the MEK in its Persian acronym. The group is a former terrorist organization, which, according to the FBI, killed American citizens in Iran in the 1970s, was involved in the 1979 hostage crisis, and attempted to overthrow the Iranian revolutionary government with the help of Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War.
Al Monitor reports Rajavi was invited by Texas Rep. Ted Poe, the chair of the subcommittee, to testify about the dangers ISIS poses to MEK members at Camp Liberty in Iraq. Poe is quoted as saying about the hearing: “This hearing will explore what drives ISIS and how we can use ISIS’ ideology against it.”
The MEK rose to fame in Washington in 2002, when it publically revealed that Iran was enriching uranium at a secret location called Natanz. However, it has since been revealed that the U.S. was already aware of the site and had even provided details about it to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The group’s most recent foray into the international spotlight came in February, when they claimed to have revealed another secret nuclear site near Tehran called Lavizan-3. Yet this revelation has garnered little attention, as nuclear nonproliferation experts do not believe the NCRI’s claims are credible. Further, there is a stronger understanding now that the MEK intends to upset the nuclear negotiations between the P5+1 countries and Iran by any means necessary.
Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, wrote last month in Foreign Policy: “[T]here is every reason to think the latest allegations by NCRI represent a politically motivated effort to derail the engagement of Iran over its nuclear program.”
Likewise, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told a Februar press briefing: “We don’t have any information at this point in time to suggest the [NCRI’s] conclusions are accurate.”
The MEK was removed from the State Department’s terrorism list three years ago after a concerted lobbying campaign, which featured some of the most prominent politicians and officials in the U.S., including John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; Tom Ridge, former director of Homeland Security; and Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York City.
A MintPress News investigation into this campaign revealed that claims made by the MEK and their supporters in the U.S. government are not grounded in truth and are laden with legalistic terms to confuse basic historical facts.
Despite this, Raymond Tanter, a former member of the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan, recently wrote an article in Townhall praising the subcommittee for selecting Rajavi as a witness for the hearing. He wrote: “As a prodemocracy woman with a moderate view of Islam, Rajavi represents the opposite of the misogynous Iranian regime’s rulers.”
Tanter added that Rajavi is a good candidate to testify because the subcommittee members will be able to ask how her how she’s dealt with Islamic extremists in the past and how to counter radical Islam.
The problem with this reasoning is that the MEK is a kind of cult, according to the FBI, Human Rights Watch, the Rand Corporation, and just about every other organization which has investigated the group. It is precisely the kind of organization that should not testify about Islamic extremism.
Jeremiah Goulka, author of “The Mujahedin-e Khalq in Iraq: A Policy Conundrum,” a report published by the Rand Corporation in 2009, told MintPress, “At the MEK camps, there’s a whole set of practices that are all textbook out of cult theory – sleep deprivation, make-work projects… forced celibacy, forced divorce, [and] gender segregation.”
Masoud Banisadr, a former member of the MEK, who had served as the group’s representative to the United Nations and the U.S., confirmed that forced divorces were common in the group. Banisadr told MintPress: “All members were forced to divorce their spouses, and later they have to send their children abroad to Europe and United States to be adopted by supporters and other members.”
The group currently has an office on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, where they launch campaigns related to Iran, attend congressional legislative hearings about the country, and attempt to influence public perception of the current regime.
Former Iranian Terrorist Group, MEK, To Testify Before Congress
By Sean Nevins , Mint Press News
Long serving Agent victimized for MKO- Mossad mutual scenario
An Israeli court sentenced an Iranian-born Belgian to seven years in prison on Tuesday April 21, 2015 after 
convicting him of spying for Tehran.
In September 2013 Israeli security forces announced for the first time the arrest of Ali Mansouri who was accused of spying.
Ali Mansouri was arrested on charges of having photographs of the US Embassy in Tel Aviv and other sites. However, pretty soon he was found to be a veteran member of the terrorist Mujahedin Khalq group.
The Belgium Newspaper Le Soir reported that the alleged Iranian spy had identified himself as a supporter of the MKO.
Besides, Mohammad Razzaghi , a former member of the terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) identified him as a long serving member of the MKO.
Mr. Razzaghi said Mansouri was a close member of the MKO for at least 30 years and had been working as a mediator for the Mujahedin Khalq and Mossad. He added that Mansouri, who lived in Turkey between 1980 and 1998, travelled to Iran regularly posing as a businessman to gather information for Mossad and the MKO leaders.
Razzaghi indicated:” Many ordinary members of the Intelligence Section of the MKO remember him because every now and then they were tasked to do things for him”.
Razzaghi recalled:” I remember clearly a few times that I was tasked to go to see him to collect some pictures and documents about Mehrabad Airport and Jamaran H.Q. and to bring them to our safe house and hand them over to my commanders.”
MKO’s propaganda system desperately tried to whitewash the Organization of the accusations. The NCR published a statement and identified the arrestee to be a once infiltrator to the group. However, the statement itself was a proof of Mansouri’s link to the MKO.
The arrest seemed to be politically motivated since it was coincided with Netanyahu’s effort to convince Obama not to engage in diplomacy with Iran.
Actually it was one of the Mossad-MKO mutual scenarios. By arresting and accusing Mansouri as an Iran spy they tried to get rid of an expired agent and to derail diplomacy between Iran and the West in order to encourage a war with Iran on the other hand.
The MKO – Israel collusion is now known to everyone since it has been corroborated many times by different sources and individuals in the past. According to NBC, Israel provides funding, training, and weapons for the MEK to assassinate Iranian scientists. The award-winning, independent investigative journalist and writer of the Book : Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of The Iran Nuclear Scare” ,Gareth Porter has several times put The MEK as a client of the Mossad, serving to launder Israeli intelligence’ claims that the Israelis did not want to attribute to themselves.
A. Sepinoud
Camp Liberty residents must be taken to safety now
Al-Monitor’s Congression
al Correspondent Julian Pecquet writes that the “leader” of the controversial Mojahedin Khalq is going to testify before Congress next week. The subject of the House Foreign Affairs terrorism panel is “ISIS: Defining the Enemy”.
A careful reading of this informative article reveals just how wrong it is for anyone in the American political establishment to be associated with the Mojahedin Khalq (MEK) – masquerading here as the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) – in any way and for any reason.
Firstly, for the record, the MEK is still led by fugitive leader Massoud Rajavi who is the cultic mastermind behind the group. Maryam Rajavi, his wife, is not particularly clever or politically minded and has acted essentially as her husband’s public mouthpiece in the west since she arrived back in France in 1993. She will now testify to Congress by videoconference rather than in person. After trying for two decades to obtain a visa to visit the USA and/or the UK, wise people in those countries still refuse her entry, for good reason.
The fundamental contradiction the article exposes is the assumption of the House Foreign Affairs terrorism panel that “Maryam Rajavi will discuss the threat the Islamic State poses to members of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) at Camp Liberty.” She won’t. She can’t. Because the MEK are friends of the Islamic State (IS), they support the Islamic State. Maryam Rajavi has spoken in Farsi in favour of the Islamic State. The Islamic State do not pose any danger to the MEK in Camp Liberty. In fact, before the Iraqi army and militias drove IS back from its encroachment, it was clear to all those who know the MEK that the leaders were hoping that when IS reached Baghdad, the MEK would be liberated from Camp Liberty and join the terrorist forces.
Instead of condemning the Islamic State, Maryam Rajavi will speak about how the Iranian government wants to kill the people in Camp Liberty and is plotting every day to find ways to massacre them all. This is an old script. It has been the MEK script for thirty years. Does Ted Poe think the MEK has suddenly flipped sides and will line up with Iran against the Islamic State?
Whatever threats are faced by the residents of Camp Liberty, one thing is certain. The reason they cannot leave is because the MEK leaders refuse to allow them to leave. Members of Congress should robustly question Maryam Rajavi about that. They need to ask why the UN is unable to progress its work with these vulnerable people. Why, if they are in such direct danger, she doesn’t allow the Iraqi authorities to remove them to separate accommodation. The Iraqis have offered to place the MEK in various secure hotels and apartments in order to make life safer and more comfortable for them. The MEK have refused. Congress needs to ask Maryam Rajavi why the residents of Camp Liberty are not able to make contact with their relatives. Hundreds of families have travelled to Iraq since 2003 attempting to make contact with their loved ones. The MEK have accused them all of being ‘agents of the Iranian regime sent to kill them’. Is this plausible? Most of the family members are old people; the parents and siblings and in some cases the children of people trapped in Camp Liberty. Are they really desirous of massacring their loved ones?
If this is not enough to convince members of Congress that this is a group which lies and deceives, and only follows its own agenda, then there is plenty more evidence to help convince them. It is easy to debunk the myths.
Certainly the MEK has never made a public statement in English or in Farsi that it has renounced violence. If anyone knows of such a public statement, they should urgently produce it. Indeed, Maryam Rajavi’s speeches all revolve around the need for ‘regime change’. Nobody in the American political establishment is naïve enough to believe that this would not involve a violent intervention. Nor can they interpret Rajavi’s speech as other than an advertisement for her own group to undertake that violent intervention.
Sadly, for Rajavi and her supporters, happily for the rest of us, the MEK is incapable of undertaking any such task. Massoud Rajavi is, however, and this is where the danger lies, not only capable of training and advising groups like Al Qaida and IS on manipulating their own forces in terrorism, but is expert in how to spin this through deceptive media and internet campaigns to manipulate and eventually win grudging western support. He is an expert cult manipulator.
The Rajavis’ agenda may coincide today with efforts by some in America and Israel to derail the nuclear negotiations, but investigative journalist Gareth Porter has already revealed that most of what the MEK said against Iran was simply fabricated. Knowing that the Rajavis will obey no other needs except their own for their own survival, this must surely signal that any reliance on Rajavi’s evidence is profoundly misguided.
Let’s hope that Congress does its job and asks searching questions rather than acting as cheerleaders for a deeply unpopular and totally unrepresentative terrorist cult.
Anne Khodabandeh and Massoud Khodabandeh,