Mujahedin Khalq Terror group

Iraqi victims of MKO to collect signatures to expel the group

Chairman of the Committee for the defense of Iraqi victims of Mojahedin Khalq working to collect signatures to expel MKO (MEK, Rajavi cult) from Diyala, Iraq

The head of the Special Committee to defend the victims of the crimes of Mojahedin Khalq, Mr. Nafee-Issa, said the Committee is working to collect signatures for the expulsion of the Mojahedin from the province of Diyala, and from Iraq.

In a statement to All-Iraq News Agency on Tuesday, Mr. Nafee-Issa said that "the Committee is working to collect a large number of facts that show the crimes of this organization and what caused the killings of civilians in Iraq since 1986 till 2003."

He added that "organized crime continued after 2003 as a result of political interference in the affairs of Iraq by creating sectarian strife between Iraq’s people and in addition working to destabilise the security situation in the province of Diyala and the country in general."

Camp Ashraf, or as it is now known camp New Iraq, houses thousands of Iranian fighters of the MKO, an Iranian opposition faction, which based the headquarters for its Chairman at the camp nearly three decades ago.

All Iraq News, Translated by Iran Interlink

August 27, 2011 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

The two-sided demonstration of MKO terrorists

The yellow flags of well-funded Mujahedin Khalq’s supporters will be fluttered in front of the State Department on Friday August 26th following the calls the group has made for several weeks and the dollars it has spent for its usually artificially magnified demonstrations. The agenda is to call the DOS to delist MKO which has been on the list since its creation in 1997. The gathering will be surely accompanied by speakers whose pockets are filled with the MKO dollars. The coincidence is that it is the International Quds Day ; an annual event on the last Friday of Ramadan in which people rally to express solidarity with the Palestinian people and opposing Zionism .

If these efforts made by the MKO and propaganda campaign and its lobby in the US administration end with its being delisted, it will be a remarkable transformation; MKO was a terrorist Marxist cult with the blood of Americans on its hands, it turns into a friend, an ally for the US in its animosities against Iranian government, big change.

Elizabeth Rubin, a contributor to the New York Times Magazine who visited the MKO’s Camp Ashraf in 2003, believes that American supporters of the group are two groups.” in fact, an unlikely chorus of the group’s backers – some of whom have received speaking fees, others of whom are inspired by their conviction that the Iranian government must fall at any cost,” she writes in her new article.[1] as a person who has been eye witness of what is really going inside the MKO, Rubin describes her experiences of visiting an authoritarian cult closely, warning the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.”Mrs. Clinton should ignore their P.R. campaign,”she states.[2]

Removing the MKO from the list will not make it a good, reliable friend. Reza Nasri of Iranian.com asserts that as a “radical” group, MKO’s “fanatical ideology, pugnacious discourse, undemocratic structure, leadership mission and agenda”, signify it as a terrorist designated organization. Nasri uses a very dramatic simily to explain the unchangeable nature of Mujahedin. He writes, “a mere change of designation is as absurd as removing a snake from the list of reptiles and expecting it to act as peaceful dove.”[3]

The message that delisting the MKO will send to the public is on the one hand, the fact that you can buy everything in the US. You are able to consider a group a friend or a freedom fighter or a pro-democratic movement rather a terrorist communist cult, just if you are well paid by the group. On the other hand, removing the MKO from the list opens the door for other terrorist group’s lobbying efforts in the US government. ”just imagine what sort of message such laxity could send to both the defenders and violators of international criminal law,” Reza Nasri concludes.

Another side of MKO demonstration
As I mentioned Friday is also the day of Quds annual rally – a day of protest against illegal occupation of Palestinian land and the city of Quds (Jerusalem) by Israel. As the new patron of Mujahedin Khalq the Israel lobby has employed the MKO agents to bring over 5000 people to a counter rally against the Quds rally, according to Iran-Interlink.

An insider of the National Council of Resistance has told Iran-Interlink that some operatives of the group have already arrived in Washington to prepare the ground for the arrival of the other thousands.[4] the MKO’s gathering on Friday will serve the needs of their new Zionist friends besides what it will bring to their own agenda.

The history never forgets that the Mujahedin Khalq Organization started its struggle as an anti-Zionist, anti-Imperialist movement. Its operatives received military training in PLO camps and Israelis interests, were among their first targets of assassination and bombing during the 1970’s.

You may feel dizzy. No surprise. The history of the MKO is overflowed with controversies.

By Mazda Parsi

References:

[1] Rubin, Elizabeth, nytimes , An Iranian Cult and Its American Friends, August 14, 2011
[2] ibid
[3] Nasri, Reza, iranian.com, Radical by Nature – The MEK will never become a moderate political force, August 20,2011
[4] Iran-Interlink, Growing International support for Palestinians prompts desperate measures from Israeli lobby – Mojahedin Khalq (MEK) mercenaries used to counter pro-Palestinian rally in America, August 18,2011

August 25, 2011 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Why Are Prominent Americans Lobbying for MKO Terrorists ?

It is not hard to imagine how Americans would react if they learned that Al Qaeda had hired top lobbyists to help promote its agenda in Congress. Or if they heard that influential active and retired government officials were being paid to attest to Hezbollah’s good character. They would be appalled.

But, amazingly, a group similar to Al Qaeda and Hezbollah is doing just that. It is the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian exile group that is on the Department of State’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations alongside other more prominent groups such Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Al-Shabaab.

The MEK wants to be removed from the terrorist list because, by law, its presence there prevents it from directly promoting its agenda in Washington, and most importantly, from fundraising. So it has recruited some of officialdom’s biggest names to convince Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to "delist" MEK and free it from the current limitations on its activities. News reports predict that Clinton is seriously considering the move and will make a decision by month’s end.

According to the New York Times, among the "luminaries" promoting "delisting" are former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani; former Vermont governor Howard Dean; former NATO commander Wesley K. Clark, President Obama’s former national security adviser Gen. James Jones; former F.B.I. director, Louis Freeh; former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson; former attorney general Michael B. Mukasey; and Lee H. Hamilton, the former congressman who was co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission. The Times report notes that the MEK endorsers are paid handsome sums (up to $100,000) for speaking out in its behalf.

The MEK’s hired guns say that it does not belong on the list because it long ago abandoned its violent ways. But its record is so long and so bloody that only the very credulous can believe that it turned a new leaf. And there is doubt whether the MEK is even a peaceful movement today. An FBI report from 2004 noted that the agency had reason to believe that the group was still "planning and executing acts of terrorism."

It is hard to keep up with the MEK, which changes its positions and alliances as often as a teenager changes baseball caps. That is, in part, because it is more like a cult than a political organization. (Even its supporters agree with that.) Its members are required to lay aside all personal desires and devote themselves completely to the MEK leader in a manner eerily similar to the Jim Jones Jonestown cult.

The Mujahedin-e Khalq started out supporting the Iranian revolution that drove out the Shah and replaced him with the Islamic Republic of Ayatollah Khomeini. That was in the 1970’s, a decade during which the MEK assassinated six U.S. military advisers and civilians in Iran and then participated in the seizure and hostage taking at the American embassy in 1979. It was among Ayatollah Khomeini’s most militant supporters and opposed any compromises with the United States which it called "the satanic force threatening the world…."

But it soon broke violently with the Ayatollah Khomeini regime and dedicated itself to overthrowing it. It relocated to, of all places, Iraq and allied itself with Iran’s then arch enemy, Saddam Hussein. Saddam gave the MEK a military base inside the country, from which to conduct its war against Iran and Saddam’s other enemies.
During the Iran-Iraq war, the Times notes, MEK "served as Mr. Hussein’s own private militia….For two decades he gave the group money, weapons, jeeps and military bases along the border with Iran." In 1991, the MEK helped Saddam crush the Shiite uprising in the south and eradicate the Kurds in the north. Reports of Iranian dead at the hands of the MEK range from several hundred to thousands.

Following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, American forces disarmed the MEK camp, although some 3,400 MEK members remain there today despite the natural determination of the current government to get a pro-Saddam encampment out of the country. (Most observers believe that a large percentage of the people at the camp are being held against their will, with no means to escape or place to escape to.)

And that brings us back to the current effort to "delist" the MEK. One of the ostensible reasons MEK’s advocates use is that "delisting" would allow innocent people in the camp to get out and seek refuge in other countries. But freeing the captives can be accomplished through the combined efforts of the U.S. military, the International Red Cross and the United Nations who can go in and separate out the hostages from the terrorists, who should be prosecuted. Delisting is irrelevant in that context.

So why the effort to delist? The MEK wants to be free to ensconce itself in Washington and other world capitals and play the role of a legitimate Iranian opposition, similar to what Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress did prior to the Iraq war. Also like the Chalabi group, the MEK seeks to align itself with American neoconservatives (many of whom already support it) and agitate for a U.S. invasion of their home country.

That analogy is an especially telling one because the MEK is despised in the nation it would like to "liberate." According to Ray Tayekh, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations, the MEK has absolutely no standing whatsoever to play a role in Iran, and not just because Iranians hate the organization for having joined Saddam’s war against the country.

At a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing last month, he testified that the group’s "alliance with Saddam and its cult-like dispositions have alienated even the radical segments of intelligentsia that once found its ideological template attractive. … The Iranian populace is seeking ways of liberalizing its society and not embracing yet another ideological movement with totalitarian tendencies."

Given all this, it is amazing that any American would ally himself with the MEK. After all, what end does delisting serve other than to liberate a former terrorist group so that it might more effectively promote U.S. involvement in another Middle East war. That is, in fact, precisely why prominent neocons support delisting, just as they supported Chalabi.

"If the group is taken off the list, not as a result of an objective review, but by virtue of their lobbying prowess, several repercussions can be envisioned," Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, a pro-democracy group, wrote earlier this year.

Some of these serious repercussions would be felt by the Iranian people. Because the group is despised by Iranians across the ideological, political and social spectrum, legitimizing it here might delegitimize the democracy movement there. [..]

It is likely that most of the people who lend their names to the MEK’s campaign have no idea what the group is and simply accepts money from it as an honorarium for making a speech, as if the MEK was like any other group that opposes the Iranian regime and supports U.S. policy goals. It isn’t. The MEK is indeed an enemy of the Iranian regime. But it is also our enemy. In other words, sometimes the enemy of our enemy is not our friend.

By MJ Rosenberg

August 25, 2011 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

The MEK will never become a moderate political force

Radical by Nature
The MEK will never become a moderate political force
The presumption that the MEK would transform itself into a “moderate” political group if delisted is flawed. The MEK did not become “radical” as a result of being “listed” as a terrorist organization in 1997. It was an extremist group way before that date. What fuels its radicalism and taste for terrorism is not how it is termed by the State Department or the nature of its relationship with the U.S, but its fanatical ideology, pugnacious discourse, undemocratic structure, leadership, mission and agenda. So unless the act of delisting provokes by itself a miraculous mutation in the group’s genetic fabric (something that proponents of delisting have to prove), there is absolutely no reason to believe that the MEK would or even could go against its own nature and fundamentally change its behavior solely because of a new legal status. Expecting an inherently violent and erratic organization to relinquish its raison d’être and become pragmatic because of a mere change of designation is as absurd as removing a snake from the list of “reptiles” and expecting it to act as peaceful dove.

Delisting the MEK would more likely allow it to advance its agenda with more freedom and with much more funding and act out its twisted vision with a credibility bestowed upon it by a U.S stamp of approval.

Of course, no one denies that an unconventional political group, a paramilitary or any other non-state actor could potentially moderate itself if it is engaged in a conventional political process. But the conversion from an eccentric actor to a rational one is not automatic. And not every group is capable of it. It requires a minimum of rationality and reasonableness amongst the group’s leadership. It takes some element of moderation – eventually represented by a faction within the group – that can be enhanced and boosted through engagement and recognition. But with the MEK, we’re talking about a senseless monolithic cult – with absolutely no voice or seeds of moderation inside – with a violent mentality and language that has not evolved one bit since 1980 (they still shout “death to Khomeini” in their rallies 22 years after the former leader’s demise). We’re talking about a cult that did not hesitate to go as far as instructing its own members to set themselves ablaze for the sheer purpose of attracting media attention when it wanted to coerce France to release Maryam Rajavi after she was detained by a French judge for a few days in Paris in 2003.

So, the subject of debate is not a normal political group that has at one point made few bad choices, then reformed and now deserves a second chance to integrate. But an inherently spiteful and unbridled cult in which members are still expected to show an excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to their immovable leaders, where mind-altering practices (such as group chanting, collective rituals, denunciation sessions) are daily routine and where violence and coercion have been deeply engrained as very legitimate tools of achieving the end. Therefore, it is very unlikely that removing the MEK from the FTOs list would suddenly make its guru-style leaders change their ways (the only ways they know) or awaken the dormant forces of compromise and rationality within it so that it can act as a rational political actor.

Moreover, even if we accept the improbable assertion that delisting the MEK may somehow moderate its future behavior, it is still not a solid reason to do so. The State Department’s mission is not to close its eyes on the realities, history and current nature of an organization under review and to forgo all statutory criteria for designation in hope of taming or pacifying it. Its mission is to assess the current state of the organization and make a decision based on what it sees. A mere hypothetical prospect – or hope – of “moderating” the group in the future should not counterbalance all the actual and real facts supporting its designation as a FTO. If a group qualifies as a “terrorist organization” under U.S law based on its past actions, nature, ideology and material capacity to act violently then it should simply be called a “terrorist organization”. In other words, the process of designation is not about how we hope a particular group would act if delisted; but about what the group is or isn’t in its current form. Not calling a demonstrably dangerous organization what it so to induce it to change is not exactly a prudent or wise policy. Besides, it would send a terrible message to all other terrorist organizations about the United States’ resolve to fight terrorism.

Finally, among the State Department’s list of FTOs, the MEK is in one grim sense one of the few exceptions: The current leaders of the MEK, unlike the leaders of many other listed FTOs, are suspected with very probable cause of the highest and most serious crimes under international law – especially of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Whilst the members and/or leaders of many other FTOs – vicious and violent as they may be – are considered common criminals, outlawed rebels or simply “terrorists” liable for criminal prosecution under their respective domestic jurisdictions, the seriousness, nature and gravity of the crimes imputable to the MEK leadership is such that it makes them prone to prosecution in just any territory that they could be found. In other words, we’re not just talking about “terrorists” or “corrigible terrorists” that some proponents may, by a stretch of logic, even call “freedom fighters” but about alleged perpetrators of the most heinous and wanton crimes known to mankind. For this reason, it would be both irresponsible as a political act and disastrous as a legal precedent for U.S officials to take the risk of legalizing and legitimizing a group accused of the highest crimes, simply in hope of “moderating” its future behavior. Just imagine what sort of message such laxity could send to both the defenders and violators of international criminal law.

by Reza Nasri

August 24, 2011 0 comments

Iraq

Baghdad conference discusses legality of MKO presence

In this gathering organized by the Iraqi Justice association, many Iraqi officials, tribal leaders and ordinary people voiced their support for the MKO victims that are calling for expulsion of the organization from their country.

These people have come together to discuss about the legality of the presence of the terrorist group of Mujahedin Khalgh Organization on their soil.

During the conference the organizers and the attendees stated that they have sent a request to Iraqi government to expel the MKO saying that they launched a campaign to collect one million signatures to be attached to the request.

They also reminded the Iraqi policy makers of what they called the crimes committed by MKO against the Iraqi citizens under Saddam regime.

After the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, American troops disarmed MKO members based at the training base of the terrorist group at Camp Ashraf — about 60km north of Baghdad.

There are many in Iraq saying that despite the disarment, the US and its allies delay evacuation of the camp.

They stressed that the US intentions in this regard cannot be peaceful as they have emphasized that they have plans to use Iraq as a primary base to launch attacks against the neighboring countries.

The United States, Canada, Iraq and Iran have all designated the MKO as a terrorist organization.
Iraqi security forces took control of the camp, housing 3,500 people, on July 28.

The group is especially notorious in Iran for siding with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

Wisam al-Bayati, Baghdad
Download Baghdad conference discusses legality of MKO presence

August 23, 2011 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization

What is Iran’s MEK and why is it so popular among American leaders?

It’s been quite a year for the Mujahedeen Khalq. The organization, known by its initials MEK, seeks regime change in Iran and is on a determined big-money campaign to get off the U.S. terrorism list.

The state department review of their status is due in a matter of weeks.

Iranians protested when the EU took Mujahedeen Khalq off its terrorist list in 2008.

The organization, accused of having a cult-like culture, bought a full page ad in the Washington Post and has purchased the support of dozens of American politicians and national security experts. The Huffington Post lists 31 prominent people from both sides of the political aisle who have appeared at Mujahedeen Khalq-related events.

We get analysis from Narimon Safavi, a Worldview regular and president of the Pasfarda Arts & Culture Exchange.

Listen to the interivew

by Worldview on WBEZ.org

August 21, 2011 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

MEK mercenaries used to counter pro-Palestinian rally in America

Growing International support for Palestinians prompts desperate measures from Israeli lobby

An NCRI insider (National Council of Resistance of Iran is also on the US terrorism list as an alias of the MEK) has revealed that the Israeli lobby has employed the Mojahedin Khalq (aka; MKO, MEK, Rajavi cult) terror group to bring thousands of rented crowd fillers to Washington in order to counter the day of Qods annual rally on Friday 26th August. Qods day is an annual day of protest against the illegal occupation of Palestinian land and the city of Qods (Jerusalem, the second most important city for Muslims after Mecca) by Israel.

Leaders of the Washington-backed terrorist cult have been allocated a budget to bring over 5,000 people to the counter rally, but so far the MEK has only been able to gather around a thousand participants (too much money not enough brains?) The group has already organised the travel arrangements (plane tickets, visas, hotels etc) to fly around 1,000 people from Europe and elsewhere. The travellers are promised a free two week holiday with pocket money in return for participating for a couple of hours in the counter demonstration. Organisers and agencies that will be in charge of the shipments are offered considerably more.

The MEK operatives have promised guarantees that participants in the rally will not be under any pressure or scrutiny from law enforcement agencies – which have already given written permission for the terrorist group to gather under the flag of the Mojahedin Khalq (an FTO according to the USG), and they will not face prosecution for any reason, under any circumstances. The leaders of the terror cult openly tell their forces that the group has secured extrajudicial protection from the highest authorities in the American political, judicial and law enforcement circles. (Presumably through affiliation with AIPAC and other Israeli connected organisations.)

Of course, it is clear that they cannot do this without some kind of official support. MEK backers in the US House of Representative are providing lawyers for legal advice to facilitate ways to circumvent the ban on entry to the US of anyone who has links, past or present, to a designated FTO. The MEK supporters will fly via various airports in the US and Canada over several days before arriving in Washington for the rally.

(At the same time, genuine refugees who have escaped the MEK are harassed by the US and its embassies across the world when they try to secure help and succour.)

According to the NCRI insider, some operatives have already arrived in Washington D.C. to prepare the ground for the arrival of the other thousand. Mojahedin Khalq have increased their safe house capacity in Washington by two more blocks of apartments and their US representatives (including former Saddam Hussein’s private army commanders Alireza Jafarzadeh and Ali Safavi) are currently heading a few teams of operatives while liaising with their backers in the corridors of the House of Representative and the Senate. According to a high ranking politician in Washington, the American government, the FBI and other so called security agencies are no match for the Israeli lobby and would not even attempt to stop the influx of these mercenaries to the city.

The Mojahedin Khalq (aka Saddam’s private army) started its terror campaign with the assassination of 6 Americans in Tehran and have, since then by its own admission assassinated over 16000 Iranians, 25000 Iraqis and scores of individuals of American, European, Pakistani, African and even Chinese descent.

While we do not expect or even find the American government capable of intervening and halt the influx of Mojahedin Khalq operatives into their capital city, we warn the countries officials against any failure to prevent harm the critics of the terrorist group in the US, particularly the genuine Iranian opposition groups who have been vocal against the neoconservative and Zionist use of terrorist groups under the guise of supporting opposition groups.

August 20, 2011 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

CBC radio on Mujahideen-e-Khalq

A banned Iranian Terrorist group has been mounting a persistent and expensive lobbying campaign in both Canada and the United States to have its ban lifted. The Mujahideen-e-Khalq has a violent past. Some describe the group as an authoritarian cult. But the group has supporters, including high profile current and former politicians who see MEK as a possible instrument of regime change in Iran.

Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) – Elizabeth Rubin

On April 5, 1992, a large group of Iranians attacked the Iranian embassy in Ottawa. No one was seriously hurt, but the place was ransacked. The attacks were claimed by the Mujahideen-e-Khalq or MEK as they’re often called.

The MEK is on the list of terrorist groups in both Canada and the United States. Ottawa reviewed the group’s status in December, but Public Safety Canada decided the MEK should remain on the list.

Not surprisingly, the MEK is not happy with that status. MEK has mounted an intensive and expensive lobbying effort aimed at politicians in Canada and the U.S. The group’s status is up for review in Washington and a decision is imminent.

To start off our conversation, we spoke with Elizabeth Rubin, a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine who has investigated MEK and its activities. She joined us from Brooklyn, New York.

Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) – Carolyn Bennett

The MEK spends a lot of cash lobbying in the U.S. – tens of thousands of dollars on speaker fees at million dollar conferences. The group’s efforts in Canada have been more subdued. But it has sponsored trips for Canadian members of Parliament to attend its annual rally in Paris.

Our next guest, Carolyn Bennett, is an MP who’s attended one of those rallies. Carolyn Bennett joined us in studio in Toronto.

Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK)

Well, Carolyn Bennett is not the only Canadian parliamentarian who has met the MEK close up. In 2006, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney – then Parliamentary Secretary to Prime Minister Stephen Harper – spoke at a rally in Ottawa organized by a MEK-controlled group. Mr. Kenney later said he had no idea there was any such connection.

We requested an interview with Minister Kenney but received no response. We also put in a request to the National Council of Resistance of Iran, MEK’s political wing, to provide a spokesperson to appear on the show. So far they have not responded.
Download CBC radio on Mujahideen-e-Khalq

August 20, 2011 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Call for Action against MKO delisting

Despite rising concerns about the impact of Mujahedin Khalq’s lobbying campaign to get removed from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations of the State Department, the group’s well-paid advocates in Washington D.C do not bother to know about the group more closely.
Regrettably, the MKO’s propaganda and its fierce lobby did succeed to get delisted from the European list in 2009 thanks to the funds they had paid European parliamentarians for many years.

It’s now time to take action against the group’s deceitful propaganda in the U.S.
Fortunately,the MKO is seriously getting hammered in US media. And, as people who suffered the worst experience within the cult of Rajavi, we call all freedom lovers from all over the world to leave their comments on US State Department website to prevent the removal of the MKO from the black list. Let’s illuminate the minds of US authorities about the true substance of this destructive cult.

Link of the related page on the US State Department Website:

contact-us.state.gov/app/ask/
session/L3RpbWUvMTMxMzU2Mj
E3My9zaWQvdzNtZ3ZLQms%3D

You may want to leave your comment under the topic of “U.S. Foreign Policy “and Subject of “Stop delisting the MEK”

August 17, 2011 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

From Terror Group to ‘Our Friends’

The Mujahedin-e Khalq might be gaining popularity outside Iran but many of their claims warrant serious scrutiny. Why aren’t the powerful supporters of this exiled group looking more closely?

For a group seeking the recognition and patronage of the United States, there’s possibly no worse place to be than on the US State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organisations. For Iranian exile group the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), being officially labeled terrorists is a major hindrance to hefty political ambitions. But thanks to a multi-million dollar lobbying effort — including large payments to prominent former US government officials — and an astute remodeling of their image, they are on the cusp of being removed from that list.

If the MEK succeeds — a decision by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected any day now — it will be the culmination of a remarkable transformation; in a little under a decade, they’ve gone from a violent, cult-like, Marxist-Islamist group, with ties to Saddam Hussein and an anti-imperialist, anti-American agenda — to one described last month by a US Congressmen as "our friends".

The ambitions of the MEK don’t stop with their delisting though. What the group really wants is recognition and support for its claim to be the sole, legitimate, Iranian opposition. This claim is spectacularly false; the group has little to no public support within Iran. But that’s not standing in the way of the growing number of influential US politicians and political players embracing them.

The phenomenal lobbying and propaganda juggernaut of the MEK has already swept through Europe. After the recruitment of significant numbers of European parliamentarians to their cause, and dozens of court battles, they were delisted as a terrorist group in the UK and the European Union in 2008 and 2009 respectively.

Last year a Washington court ordered the State Department to reconsider the MEK’s status on the FTO list. The decision now lies with Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, and her deliberations have been against the backdrop of a fierce lobbying campaign, ramped up in the last eight months.

Key to this effort has been an impressive parade of former US government officials, wheeled out to support the group at MEK arranged press conferences in Paris, Washington and Brussels. More than 40 have appeared, with star recruits including former CIA head James Woolsey, President Obama’s former national security advisor Jim Jones, former Commander in Chief of US Central Command Anthony Zinni, president Bush’s Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, Obama’s former director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, former mayor of New City Rudy Giuliani, and former Democrat presidential hopeful Howard Dean.

Investigations by Financial Times journalist Anna Fifield have revealed that dozens of these former officials have been paid handsomely for their appearances. Fifield reports "a sliding pay scale of $20,000 to $100,000 per speech, plus travel costs, and that four-speech packages were common". A former Pennsylvanian Governor Ed Rendell told Fifield he was paid $20,000 for an 11 minute speech.

The message delivered at these events follows a consistent narrative; it says that Iran is developing a nuclear weapons program and is an imminent threat to the United States, that dialogue with the Iranian regime is futile, and the only solution is to delist and support the MEK who will take on and remove the Iranian regime. (Just how the MEK would "remove" the Iranian government is never made clear. Because they are at the same time arguing to be removed from the list of terrorists because they have renounced the use of violence, they clearly can’t advocate a violent overthrow.) The political wing of the MEK says it even has a provisional government in exile waiting for when "the mullahs are toppled", complete with a president, currently based in Paris.
(As I first reported for SBS’s Dateline program in 2006, the MEK has been a key player in promoting the belief that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon, by publicising so called "intelligence revelations" — of which many have subsequently shown to be exaggerated or wrong. The MEK continues to assert Iran is developing a bomb, despite US intelligence assessments consistently saying there is no evidence of this.)[…].

The MEK has played no real role in Iranian political or civic life for three decades. They were active participants in the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Shah, but soon fell out with the new Islamic government, and thousands of their members were brutally executed by the new regime. They fled Iran in the early 1980s and went to Iraq, where they formed a relationship with Saddam Hussein. In a move that sounded the death-knell for any lingering support they may have had in their home country, the MEK sided with Iraq against their countrymen during the brutal Iran-Iraq war. In Iran today, where people still openly grieve the hundreds of thousands of Iranian men and boys killed in this war, it is unfathomable to ever image the MEK being welcomed back.

Today the MEK — and its political wing, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) — presents itself as an organisation with democratic and secular ideals. But many experts are sceptical the group has really shed its violent pedigree. Ray Takeyh, from think tank the Council on Foreign Relations says "terror has always been a hallmark of MEK’s strategy for assuming power". Within the region, the MEK is remembered for its craven act of brutally suppressing the 1991 uprising of Iraqi Shia and Kurds, on behalf of their benefactor Saddam Hussein. This operation was carried out by the current leadership of the MEK.

Testimony of numerous former members also throws into doubt claims of being a democratic organisation, with the MEK exhibiting many characteristics of a cult. According to these accounts, members are brainwashed into devotion of the group’s leaders, have been forced to cut family ties, divorce spouses, and give away children. Human Rights Watch has documented cases of psychological and physical abuse against MEK members who dared dissent.

You’d think that after the Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi helped goad the United States into its disastrous misadventure in Iraq, US politicians would be a little wary of dissidents bearing gifts. Chalabi — with his manufactured Iraqi "opposition group" the Iraqi National Congress — gave false assurances about the ease of "regime change", and wrongly asserted that Iraq was full of WMDs. The parallels with Chalabi and the MEK are striking.

But it appears the lure of a slick, cooperative, "opposition group" is once again proving irresistible. More than 100 members of Congress — both Democrat and Republican — are co-sponsors on a resolution to delist the MEK, and the number of former officials prepared to speak on their behalf is growing. While the MEK’s powers of persuasion are no doubt great — a report from independent research group RAND called them "skilled manipulators of public opinion" — it still raises the question of how can so many otherwise well-informed people overlook the obvious flaws and dubious background of the MEK?

When Inter Press Service journalist Barbara Slavin questioned Lee Hamilton — a former Chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee and head of a major think tank — about his support for the MEK, he said he wasn’t aware of the cult-like nature of the group. Really?

Closer to the truth, is not that the MEK’s Western supporters don’t know, it’s that they don’t care. It’s as simple as the proposition that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The MEK is attractive because it offers to provide a neat solution to the problem of a belligerent Iran.

At a recent Congressional hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Democratic Congressman Bob Filner — one of the MEK’s biggest supporters in Congress — was told by an expert witness that the MEK had a "discursive ideology with violent elements". Filner replied, "So what, so what!" He went on to say, "I don’t care what religion they are, what ideology they have … these are our friends. We should be getting out of their way and delist them, and let them do what they can". When the witness — an academic — pointed out that the MEK is generally hated in Iran, Filner said: "I don’t agree … even if you’re right, so what?"

The Iranian people do care though. Representatives of the Green Movement are aghast at the growing American support for the MEK. From their point of view the MEK is one gigantic fraud[…].

One of the MEK’s key supporters in Washington, Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, only heightened these fears when he said of the MEK last month: "I will have to admit, that one of the things that attracts me to this movement is that it is willing to fight". [..]

By Bronwyn Adcock – New Matilda.com.au

August 16, 2011 0 comments

Newer Posts

Older Posts