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Mujahedin Khalq Terror group

Albania

Open letter to the Archbishop Anastasios of Tirana, Durrës and All Albania

Mir Bagher Sedaghi

……………….gasse26

2500 Biel/ Bienne

Switzerland

Orthodox Cathedral of Tirana

Rruga Deshmoret e 4 Shkurtit

Tirana 1001, Albania

Your Beatitude,

My name is Mir Bagher Sedaghi, a long serving member of the Mojahedin Khalq cult (aka, MKO, MEK, PMOI, …) who has now left this organization. I have been informed that the Rajavi cult has been trying to organize a meeting in your central church in Tirana under the pretext of “defending the lost rights of women”. I was delighted to hear that due to the whistleblowing of the local media during the last month the governmental officials have intervened and the show has been cancelled.

As a victim of this anti-women and anti-family cult I am happy and thankful to the Albanian officials who have stopped this misuse of Women’s Day.

Your Beatitude,

I have spent nearly 20 years of my life with this cult in Iraq. The cult leaders have denied us the right to marry, and the right to contact our families. My brother Mir Vaghef Sedaghi, who is still trapped in Rajavi cult even though he has now been transferred from Iraq to Albania, has not had any contact with our mother or father for over 27 years.

During the time I have been with Mojahedin Khalq I have witnessed their constant encouragement of violence. Their teachings included how to carry cyanide pills and how to break them in our mouth to kill ourselves and of course trained us how to effectively and efficiently kill others. This is no more than a violent terrorist group which has claimed the lives of thousands of civilians in Iran using indiscriminate bombings and mortar attacks. This is not an organization which would even remotely support the rights of women, even though it is now desperately trying to portray itself as such in your country.

Your Beatitude,

Critics and ex members of this cult know many women who have testified that they have been raped by the cult leader Massoud Rajavi. The related documents are available and many of these women are willing to testify in person in any court of law.

I would ask you to be vigilant and take care not to tarnish the reputation of the good church of Albania by letting these dirty inhuman people misuse it. This cult of course is hated by the majority of Iranians inside and outside Iran.

Other ex-members of this cult, like me, are more than happy to help should the church of Tirana like to know more or to receive documents and evidence.

Yours sincerely,

Mir Bagher Sedaghi,

Switzerland 09,03,2016

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Albania

Can Albania deradicalise Mojahedin Khalq Rajavi cult

Can Albania Meet its Obligations and De-radicalize an Influx of Terrorists into Europe?

Situated on the east of Europe, Albania applied for membership of the European Union in 2009. As the poorest country in Europe and designated the most corrupt, there is a lot of work to be done before this country of 3 million people is accepted into the Union. A recent visit by US Secretary of State John Kerry does indicate that this work is well underway. But Albania’s efforts to reform and strengthen its political, security, judicial and civic institutions after years of dictatorship, could be drastically undermined if the country ignores or underestimates the threat posed by the arrival of the Mojahedin Khalq (MEK) from Iraq.

Albania is the target location for the transfer of the notorious terrorist organization Mojahedin Khalq into Europe. Currently based in Iraq, the MEK is now being transferred to Albania under a deal struck with America in 2013.

Since the 1980s the MEK were paid and trained in terrorism by Saddam Hussein to effect regime change in Iran. After his ouster in 2003 the MEK aligned itself variously with the US army – during Senator Kerry’s visit to Albania, the MEK was described as “a group that has supported the US in military operations in the Middle East and in its fight against terrorism” – as well as former Saddamists headed by Ezzat Ibrahim and more recently Al Qaida insurgents and Daesh in Iraq. Each successive government of the newly sovereign Iraq tried repeatedly to evict the group from their country, but the MEK leader Massoud Rajavi – himself a fugitive from justice – ordered his followers to put up violent resistance.

Even if they would agree to go willingly, the United Nations refugee agency has struggled to find third countries to take them in. It seems that, although Western countries have benefitted openly from the MEK’s sometimes violent anti-Iran activities, and found the group particularly useful as a thorn in Iran’s side through the period of nuclear negotiations, the MEK is deemed too dirty for them to willingly host any of them even as refugees.

In an attempt to encourage other countries to take some of the MEK, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton persuaded the then Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha in 2013 to take just over 200 MEK members on humanitarian grounds. That process got underway, but in 2016 Albania is now expected to take up to 3,000 MEK after the President of Romania, Traian Basescu, refused to take them in 2014.

This agreement has attracted surprisingly little attention from either inside Albania or even from a world media sensitive to terrorism and organized crime. The reason is partly because the transfers are taking place in small groups of around twenty at a time in a piecemeal fashion as the UNHCR is forced to defer to Massoud Rajavi’s demands in order to circumvent threats of violence. Rajavi hand-picks the members he allows to be transferred, many using false identities. He ensures that each group of ordinary MEK members is accompanied by minders and enforcers to keep them under control and prevent them breaking loose. In order to accomplish their mandate to remove the MEK from Iraq, UN officials have had to accede to transferring the refugees under such conditions even though it reinforces the concept that the members belong to the MEK in conditions of modern slavery.

Once they arrive in Albania, the MEK leadership takes charge of the transferees. Although the US made a donation of $20 million to the UN refugee agency to help resettle the MEK, and according to a State Department official the US has provided the Albanian government with “security and economic development assistance, to help the country build up its physical capacity to house the refugees”, none of this benefits the individual refugees. In Tirana the MEK has purchased an abandoned university campus into which it has corralled the new arrivals and recreated the conditions of isolation and cultic control which have always prevailed for the membership. What started out as a humanitarian gesture has turned into the mass relocation of a terrorist group to Europe. The MEK has created a de facto enclave in Albania which is outside the law, just as they did in Iraq.

This has put the refugees out of the reach of the Albanian authorities and because they are not free to mingle with Albania’s citizenry, the influx of over a thousand trained terrorists has cleverly avoided detection and therefore controversy.

However, even though it appears that the MEK are somehow quietly contained, the citizens of Albania are entitled to ask whether the new refugees pose any actual threat to their civic life, to their security and to their ambitions to accede to membership of the European Union.

To answer this, we must ask why the Iraqi government is so desperate to expel them and why other Western countries are so extremely reluctant to accept them.

As a violent criminal organization, the MEK thrives where the rule of law is weak – in countries like Iraq and Albania which are emerging from past turmoil and troubles. In such conditions the MEK can be dangerous through criminal activity and violence.

As expert propagandists and manipulative persuaders, the MEK leaders have no problem making connections with and bribing government officials, power brokers and media types – let’s be clear, the MEK has always been well financed. Former MEK have also reported that the MEK leaders are already vigorously pursuing links with Albania’s mafia-like gangs. The MEK will work with these gangs for mutual benefit as they did with Saddam Hussein’s regime. In the long run, if the MEK organization does become established Albania – with the quiet collusion of political circles who benefit from the cult’s track record of terrorism – they will be better placed to do from Tirana what they can’t do from Paris.

The CIA characterizes Albanian corruption as a ‘transnational’ problem involving drugs, money laundering and illegal aliens. In this sense it is the very location of the country which makes it attractive to international criminal organizations and thereby creates huge problems for law enforcement agencies. Albania essentially acts as a gateway into Europe from the rest of the world.

Now, while the various routes to Turkey, Syria and Iraq are under stringent scrutiny, terrorist commanders from any mercenary group can slip beneath the radar and seek training and logistical support in Tirana. What better location to establish a clandestine terrorist training camp than in Albania? It is in Europe, but not in the EU and therefore not so open to scrutiny by the international community.

With the changed political mood following the nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1, the MEK is looking for new friends and benefactors. The group has already aligned itself with the Syrian Free Army and has offered to help the Saudis fight against the Shias in Yemen. The MEK has over forty years of experience in terrorist activities. The real danger posed by this group is not only that they can re-arm themselves in Albania, but they can invite other groups in for training.

The worry is that the MEK has branched out and is open to do business with any terrorist group.

It is impossible to ignore the fact that MEK members are radicalized to the core. They are not ordinary refugees. Enough of them have been trained in Iraq by the former Saddam regime for terrorist activities as well as forgery, intelligence, military operations and even torture methods, to make them extremely dangerous. Above all, the nature of the MEK leadership style is cultic. This means the followers are not able to resist the orders of the leaders even if they wanted out. So there is a danger they will be used for a variety of criminal activities without their real consent. There are already examples of people trafficked by the MEK from Albania to Western Europe and used for money laundry activities in Germany.

However, the refugees could also be described as extremely vulnerable. Another reason they have not attracted attention is that the MEK can easily be dismissed as a defunct fighting force; the average age of its fighters is sixty years old and many of them are ailing with mental and physical disease after years of punishing training in the Iraqi deserts. But while this is true of the majority, there are still many among them who are expert terrorist recruiters and trainers, people who know how to train others for suicide missions; strangely transferrable skills in today’s world of global terrorism.

Not all the members who arrive in Albania do stay with the MEK. There is a growing community of formers – around two hundred to date – who have turned their back on the group and want to return to their families and to normal life. Interestingly, it is from this pool of former members that the US has carefully selected a quota of eighty individuals to be given asylum in America. They have undergone rigorous interviews to ascertain that they have completely rejected the MEK and so no longer pose any danger. Some others have been accepted by other European countries under the same conditions but the rest remain in Albania under conditions of hardship.

With the stakes set very high, Albania’s authorities will need to stop this organization from covertly establishing a terrorist base in Europe. The first step would be to remove the MEK members from the source of their radicalization. If this doesn’t happen, the problem will simply have been moved instead of being solved.

The authorities in Tirana can ensure that all the newly arrived refugees are treated as individuals, not as belongings of the MEK leader. They should be given protection and helped with accommodation and financial support as people entitled to determine their own future paths. Experience in Iraq has already shown that once these people are physically removed from the coercive atmosphere imposed by the MEK leaders and reinforced by their peers, they very quickly find that their commitment to terrorism evaporates and the de-radicalization process can begin.

De-radicalization is greatly helped when they have contact with their families. There are numerous examples of former MEK who managed to leave the cult and establish new and successful lives. Some now live in various western European countries because they have family there who have been able to help them. Some have returned to Iran – even though Iran doesn’t want them back – where they have been granted amnesty and lead normal lives under the supervision of the UN and ICRC. Some others now live in Iraqi Kurdistan and have transferred their family assets there from Iran there so they can set up in business.

Once they are out of the ‘pressure-cooker’ of the cult their lives can be sorted out through humanitarian organizations. As a Red Cross official told the authors, ‘As individuals, three thousand is nothing, we sort out millions every year. But as a group, neither us nor any other organization can deal with or help them.’ It is a choice the Albanian government cannot ignore, for to do nothing is to risk everything.

Massoud & Anne Khodabandeh

Co-authored by Anne Khodabandeh

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

PCG’s readers are ill-served on Mujahedin-e Khalq

PCG Mentioning the Mojahedin-e-Khalq

In 1994 Gerald Flurry, leader of the Philadelphia Church of God, proclaimed Iran to be the King of the South. Ever since PCG has continuously demonized Iran. But PCG has been so hostile to Iran that they have failed to alert their readers about the controversies and disturbing authoritarian behavior of one group opposed to the current governmental in Iran, namely the Mojahedin-e-Khalq.

The Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) was established in Iran as a left wing party dedicated to overthrowing the Shah in 1965. But following the overthrow of the Shah and the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini to power the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, led by Masoud Rajavi and his wife Maryam Rajavi, proceeded to wage an armed insurgency against Iran from 1981 onward. According to Iran’s Press TV the Mojahedin-e-Khalq killed 12,000 people during the course of their armed insurgency to overthrow the government.

Over time the organization also became well known for authoritarian behavior imposed upon their members causing many observers to describe them as being like a cult. Noted anti-cult author Steven Hassan mentions the Mojahedin-e-Khalq on his website. According to one ex-member in 1990 Masoud Rajavi ordered MEK members to divorce their spouses.

The US State Department regarded the Mojahedin-e-Khalq as a terrorist organization from October 8, 1997 till September 28, 2012.

These unsavory facts about MEK are not to be found in PCG’s writings aside from one vague reference to them as a "radical group" dating from 2014 that does not mention any of the specific troubling facts surrounding MEK.

Below we see PCG mentioning the Mojahedin-e-Khalq. It is described as an "opposition party". In one September 13, 2008 article it is even mentioned that Iran regards MEK as a terrorist organization and it is not mentioned that at that time the US State Department also listed MEK as a terrorist organization. With just one unusual exception MEK tends to be portrayed quite favorably by PCG’s leaders.

***[..]

On September 28, 2012 US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton removed the US State Department’s designation of the Mojahedin-e-Khalq as a terrorist organization. Since then the Mojahedin-e-Khalq is no longer viewed by the US State Department in that way. But PCG has never mentioned that it was ever viewed that way by the US government in their writings. [..]

But while PCG tended to portray the Mojahedin-e-Khalq sympathetically and sometimes even as an authority that can be trusted regarding Iran’s alleged moves in August 2014 PCG’s Robert Morley mentioned MEK in an unflattering way as a "radical group" and compared them with "Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, ISIS, Tamil Tigers [and] Babbar Khalsa". He mentioned them while scare mongering about protests in Canada concerning the war in Gaza in 2014.

 “How long before Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, ISIS, Tamil Tigers, Babbar Khalsa, Mojahedin-e-Khalq and other radical groups’ family members introduce jihad to Canada? (Robert Morley, ‘Kill the Jews’ in Canada, August 7, 2014.)”

And so it may be seen that PCG has tended to portray the Mojahedin-e-Khalq quite favorably. PCG’s readers are ill served by not being informed of the facts surrounding this organization.

Living Armstrongism weblog, Posted by Redfox712,

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Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Rajavi’s top military commandant on top of his elimination list

  Elimination Projects in the MKO – Mehdi Eftekhari

“Stalin killed over fifty members of the soviet communist party who opposed his plans for reform in one night and nothing happened,” asserted Massoud Rajavi in a public meeting inside the Mujahedin Khalq. This way, he justifies the removal of each and every person who disagrees with him.

Mehdi Eftekhari (commandant Fathollah) was one of the key members of the MKO’s central committee and its political office. He was the group’s top military commandant who operated certain terrorist acts of the MKO against the Islamic Republic. He was the one who managed Rajavi’s flight to flee Iran for Paris but three decades later, he was demoted to growing vegetables in a his small garden in the corner of Camp Ashraf. Rajavi eliminated all those high-ranking members of the MKO with whom he shared his rank. Since then, he became the absolute power of the cult. 

Mehdi Eftekhari was an active member of the MKO who lost his first wife in the group’s disastrous operation against Iran, the “Eternal Light”. Then, Massoud Rajavi ordered him to marry another female member of the group but not so long after the second marriage, he was forced to divorce his wife. This was an organizational order to the entire members of the group, who according to Massoud were not enough dedicated to the group’s cause and because of that they were responsible for the failure of the Eternal Light! Through his so-called Ideological Revolutuon, Massouid forbid marriage and made celibacy mandatory. Practically he turned the group into a cult.

According to a defector’s weblog, bandrajavi.blogfa, Massoud Rajavi made all members sign a bond under this title “we have no exit”. In the meeting, Massoud threatened his rank and file, “those who want to leave will be faced with the iron fist!”. However, Mehdi Eftehkhari expressed his determination to leave the group. “I want to leave the organization, what should I do?” he asked Massoud Rajavi. Eventually, Mehdi was summoned to the scene by Rajavi who was awfully angry with him. Rajavi humiliated him in front of his lower ranks in the hall severely.

 Based on several articles and testimonies of MKO defectors, he was then under the sever peer pressure in the group’s meetings. Certain defectors remember a meeting in 1991, in which Massoud Rajavi suppressed Eftekhari accusing him of different charges, verbally abusing him…but Mehdi’s reaction was silence!

Since then Commandant Fathollah turned into a depressed and isolated walking dead! He suffered the constant suppression and peer pressure in the group’s indoctrination sessions.  He was diagnosed with cancer but he did not receive proper medical treatment. He died in Camp Ashraf in 2011.

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Mujahedin Khalq 's Terrorism

Elimination Projects in the MKO – Mehdi Katiraei

The second part of the series on the assassinations committed by the MKO authorities, contains the elimination of another high-ranking member of the group named “Mehdi Katiraei” whose pseudonym was “commandant Sasan”.

Former member of the MKO, Mohammad Karami introduced Mehdi Katiraei in his interview with Mardom TV: “He was the deputy commandant of the June 20th protest which marks the start of the MKO’s armed struggle against Islamic Republic. He was then in charge of training partisans in Iraqi Kurdistan.”

After the so-called ideological revolution that turned the MKO into a destructive cult, Katiraei was a member of the group’s political office. Like Ali Zarkesh, he was opposed to the establishment of the National Liberation Army. “He was strictly against the establishment of the NLA so Massoud Rajavi was very angry with him,” says Mohammad Karami.” Because of his critics against the group’s strategy, he was demoted to rank and files.”

Then, Mehdi was brought to trial and sentenced to death by Massoud. He was imprisoned in the SouthWestern side of Camp Ashraf. Later, Massoud Rajavi launched his Eternal Light operation against Iran. It was a great opportunity for him to get rid of dissatisfied members such as Ali Zarkesh, Majid Hariri, Mehdi Katiraei and many others.

During that catastrophic operation, Mehdi was shot to death from behind.

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Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Elimination projects in the MKO – Ali Zarkesh

In a dictatorship maintaining of absolute power requires one important action: elimination of opponents. As a totalitarian cult of personality, the Mujahedin Khalq Organizaion (the MKO) could not survive for over three decades without eliminating the opponents and critics inside the group. According to various reports and testimonies, there have been numerous cases of assassination of dissident members of the Cult of Rajavi. Some of these assassinations were then reported by the group’s media as suicide or even martyrdom.

These series of editorials will cover certain cases of internal eliminations in the MKO which are more significant in the group’s history and have been confirmed by several witnesses although there must be many more secret murders in the cult that few people might know about them.

Ali Zarkesh Yazdi in prison before revolutions

 Ali Zarkesh might be the most important figure in the MKO whose removal from the group has been very controversial. Ali Zarkesh was the second person of the MKO and actually Massoud Rajavi’s rival. In 1986 Zarkesh was sentenced to death penalty by Massoud and Maryam Rajavi.

. Mohammad Hossein Sobhani, former member of the MKO, wrote a book on his life in the MKO, titled “Dark Days of Baghdad” in which he recounts the case of Ali Zarkesh in details. According to the book, Zarkesh’s death sentence was then reduced to imprisonment.

As Massoud Rajavi wrote in a letter to one of the group’s high-ranking member, Saeed Shahsavandi, Zarkesh was punished because he had “repositioned”! What kind of repositioning deserves death punishment?

Based on the testimonies of former members the answer was never revealed. But again based on facts witnessed by former members, Zarkesh criticizes Massoud Rajavi’s armed struggle policy for it doesnot result in the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. He is against the establishment of the so-called National Liberation Army (Saddam’s Private Army) because he sees it as a mistaken failed strategy.

Despite his opposition against military invasion, Ali Zarkesh is treated as an ordinary soldier in the MKO’s military operation across Iranian borders “Eternal Light” (Forough Javidan). He is simply killed in that disastrous operation in which a large number of the group forces were sent to death.

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Howard Dean Says He’s Not a Lobbyist But He Sure Acts Like One

Last week, we reported that Howard Dean, former presidential candidate and current supporter of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, had attacked Bernie Sanders for supporting a single-payer health plan, claiming that having the government pay for everyone’s health care would “undo people’s health care” and result in “chaos.” In our story, we noted that Dean, once a proponent of single-payer, now works for the lobbying practice of Dentons, a law firm retained to lobby on behalf of a number of pharmaceutical and for-profit health care interests.

In response, Dean tweeted: “I continue to support Single pay or [sic] and I do not Lobby.”

He tweeted the next day: “The Intercept=The Daily Caller of the left. Same propaganda techniques.”

Dean did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Dentons’ director of communications, Bennett Kleinberg, wrote to us to say, “Howard Dean is a senior advisor with Dentons in our Public Policy and Regulation practice. However, he is not a registered lobbyist and does not lobby public officials on behalf of clients of the Firm.”

Since joining the lobbying industry, Dean has oddly argued on multiple occasions that he does “not lobby.” But he engages in virtually every lobbying activity imaginable, helping corporate interests reach out to lawmakers on legislation, advising them on political strategy, and using his credibility as a former liberal lion to build public support on behalf of his lobby firm clients.

In his new career, he has helped drug companies maintain monopoly power, reversed his old positions on Medicare prices, and worked to undermine a critical component of the Affordable Care Act. Though known for his anti-war rhetoric in 2004, Dean has accepted money from Mojahedin-e Khalq, an extremist group seeking regime change in Iran and has criticized President Obama’s negotiations with Iran.

The fact that Dean is not a registered lobbyist reflects a distinction that is largely meaningless in today’s Washington. Thousands of other professionals in the lobbying business have either never registered or de-registered and lobby registration law has almost never been enforced. Newt Gingrich, who was widely criticized in 2011 for acting as a lobbyist for various clients without registering, was hired last year by Dentons’ lobbying practice, where he works closely with Dean to consult with clients on political strategy. As Legal Times reported, the Dean-Gingrich team is now a selling point for Dentons as the “pair aims to become another Washington-based bipartisan tag team who can act as political soothsayers for whichever corporate clients call upon them.”

Helping keep drugs expensive

In 2009, Dean joined the lobbying division of the law firm McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP, which represents a number of health care interests. Through the firm, he was retained that year to work for Biotechnology Industry Organization, or BIO, a lobbying group for biotech and pharmaceutical companies.

After being retained by BIO, Dean authored an opinion column for The Hill newspaper arguing in support of a bill backed by his client that called for extending the exclusivity period for drugs made from living organisms, such as vaccines or Herceptin/trastuzumab, a treatment for breast cancer.

Dean claimed in the piece that a “commonsense and fair approach, similar to the process and timeline currently in place for generic versions of chemical-based medicines, would allow the original developer of the biologic to protect the proprietary data used to develop the medicine for at least 12 years.”

Dean’s call for extending the exclusivity period for biologics — a move that would boost prices for life-saving drugs — shocked patient and consumer advocates. Dean did not initially disclose that he was working for BIO in his column, although The Hill later updated his byline to note that Dean’s law firm represented biotech companies.

The inside story of Dean’s work for the biotech lobby was revealed in an article by BioCentury, a trade publication. According to the report, Dean and his former campaign manager Joe Trippi were hired by BIO to help move forward the biologic legislation backed by the industry. Jim Greenwood, the president of BIO, told BioCentury that Dean was brought on to help with messaging, strategy, and even to contact lawmakers on Capitol Hill on behalf of the industry. BIO made clear that Dean was hired specifically for his reputation as a liberal. “As a physician clearly focused on health care, a Democrat leader and clearly to left of center, his efforts were impactful,” Greenwood said.

Dean defended his efforts to BioCentury by saying, “I do not lobby.”

In the end, a version of the biologic legislation was folded into the Affordable Care Act.

“Howard Dean navigated around the lobbying rules to push Democrats to back big drug companies on the term of the monopoly for biologic drugs,” said Jamie Love, the director of Knowledge Ecology International, a nonprofit organization that addresses human rights aspects of intellectual property rights and medical innovation. “His ‘trust me, I’m a doctor’ routine was worth billions to Roche and the other companies he represented on this. Now it is very hard to undo the damage.”

Screen grab of Dentons’ website with Howard Dean’s bio.

 Photo: Dentons.com

Bashing PhRMA, then parroting it

On the 2004 campaign trail, Dean criticized the role of health care lobbyists in setting prescription drug policies, such as the deal engineered by drug companies that prevents Medicare from using its bargaining power as the Veterans Administration does to negotiate for lower drug prices. Such a change would save over $116 billion over 10 years. Dean told the Associated Press: “As president, a high and early legislative priority of my new administration would be to improve the prescription drug benefit to create one that is affordable, federally administered, and for all of America’s seniors; uses the government’s buying power on behalf of 41 million seniors to negotiate and drive down drug prices; contains meaningful cost containment including reimportation of safe, effective medicines.”

But Dean, whose new employer, Dentons, represents the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the powerful drug lobby group known as PhRMA, has now changed his tune. During a discussion with Gingrich last year, Dean reversed his position and said he is now against allowing Medicare to bargain for lower drug prices. Dean told the audience that some expensive drugs, like those used to treat hepatitis C, could eventually save money long term, a claim Inside Health Policy noted closely echoed drugmakers’ arguments.

In September of last year, Dean took his newfound love of drug companies to the pages of the New York Times. In a letter to the editor opposing an op-ed that proposed to allow Medicare to bargain for cheaper prices, Dean wrote that “schemes to launch a federal attack on one of the last growing, innovative industries in America are in the long run counterproductive for both job creation and, more important, for the health of human beings around the world.”

Working to undermine Obamacare

In 2013, Dean again surprised health care advocates by publishing a Wall Street Journal opinion column criticizing a key component of the Affordable Care Act: the Independent Payment Advisory Board, also known as IPAB. The board is designed to allow a group of experts to make recommendations on how Medicare can save money, but only in ways that do not reduce benefits and low-income subsidies or raise premiums. Dean, repeating GOP arguments against the board, called IPAB “essentially a health-care rationing body,” and he said it should be repealed.

Health policy experts reacted furiously. The New Republic writer Jonathan Cohn noted that it was quite puzzling that Dean, supposedly a supporter of government programs designed to use evidence-based approaches to set provider payment rates, would suddenly decide to oppose IPAB. “Or maybe it’s not so strange to hear Dean say this,” Cohn wrote. “Since his career in politics ended, Dean has found a home in the K Street establishment he once held in such disdain.”

“Shame on Howard Dean,” wrote economist J. Bradford DeLong, who noted that it appears as though Dean was “being mendacious to try to protect the profits of the clients of McKenna Long & Aldridge.”

Dean conceded to Time that his firm has clients that oppose IPAB, but refused to disclose them.

And in December 2009, as the Affordable Care Act nearly died as conservative opposition grew to a fever pitch and Democratic leaders struggled to find enough votes to move it forward, Dean appeared on national network news programs to call for President Obama to scrap the legislation and start over, a process that would have doomed any chance for health care reform.

Paid by Iranian extremist group, bashing Iran negotiations

The Mojahedin-e Khalq, an exiled Iranian group that has attempted for years to overthrow the government of Iran, paid Dean to help in its campaign to be delisted as a U.S.-recognized terrorist group. In 2011, the Wall Street Journal reported that Dean was receiving speaking fees from the group. Around that time, Dean began vociferously arguing on behalf of the MEK, even though he conceded that he had known little about the group before joining its cause.

That year, Dean traveled along with other paid MEK supporters, including Rudy Giuliani, to appear in Berlin with the group and demand that Western nations recognize the MEK leader Maryam Rajavi as the president of Iran. In addition to carrying out a campaign of terrorism against Iran, the MEK helped Saddam Hussein after the Gulf War crush rebellions in Iraq’s Shiite and Kurdish communities. “Take the Kurds under your tanks, and save your bullets for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards,” Rajavi once said.

In 2014, Dean came out against President Obama’s policy of engagement with Iran, declaring that the U.S. negotiations failed to account for the interests of the MEK. (Dean even spoke on Capitol Hill on behalf of an MEK-affiliated group, which posted the video online.) Last year, Dean continued to advocate against a nuclear accord with Iran, calling Secretary of State John Kerry and Obama “far, far too eager for a deal with Iran.”

Dean’s success on the other side of the revolving door rests in part on his credibility as a left-wing icon. And yet, despite his fiery rhetoric on the campaign trail in 2003, Dean by most accounts governed Vermont as a business-friendly, moderate Democrat. Even his record on single-payer is far less supportive than what he has attempted to project.

In 1991, as the lieutenant governor of Vermont, Dean testified in support of single-payer. But as governor, he quickly backtracked, claiming that single-payer would be too expensive for the state.

John McClaughry, Dean’s Republican opponent for governor during the 1991 election, recalls that Dean continually shifted the goal posts for single-payer. “I don’t know that Howard has any fixed principles about this issue — it’s what sells at the moment,” McClaughry said.

Dean’s evolution as a politician is discussed at length during the first Huffington Post podcast Candidate Confessional. During the interview, Dean explains that he knew well before the infamous post-Iowa caucus scream that he had little chance of becoming president as an insurrectionist populist. He yearned to be regarded as a serious, establishment-friendly politician, but was too slow in making the transition as a candidate.

“I couldn’t make the turn to become an establishment candidate,” he lamented.

Contact the author:

Lee Fang, the intercept

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Using Mojahedin Khalq made the Americans look extremely hypocritical

‘US needs help to disentangle from Syrian misadventures’

Iran nuclear talks drew to a close and a historic agreement was reached between Iran and P5+1 and the deal was implemented, but the opponents, from the Israeli Prme Minister and Saudi Arabia to Iran hawks in US congress to the Iranian terrorist groups functioning unhindered in the West, went out of their ways to sabotage the agreement from the very beginning.

A Beirut-based commentator and analyst covering Middle East geopolitics says Saudi Arabia and Israel were desperate to strike a blow at Iran’s further international ‘rehabilitation’. Holding a master’s degree in International Relations from Columbia University, Sharmin Narwani says the deal was also struck as the US and its allies “desperately needed the support of rational, capable parties within the Middle East to help disentangle from their Syrian misadventures.”

In the following interview with Habilian Association, Narwani speaks about those who’ve failed to influence the deal. Having a great knowledge of Iranian society, she also touches upon the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK, a.k.a. MKO) and describes them as “useful to the deal spoilers” who lacks any kind of support in Iran.

1. What is your take on the opponents of Iran nuclear deal before the agreement was reached between Iran and P5+1?

The primary opponents of the P5+1-Iran negotiations were Saudi Arabia and Israel – these two states were on the forefront of a large-scale propaganda campaign intended to derail the talks and prevent a deal from being struck. Their motivations were entirely political as both states actively seek to undermine Iranian influence in the Middle East and beyond. Both states view growing Iranian clout as a direct and existential threat to their nations, and to their ability to manipulate the region to advantage. During the one and a half years of negotiations, the Islamic Republic was in ascendency in the region, while Saudi Arabia and Israel were hemorrhaging credibility – even with their western allies. Their desperation to therefore strike a blow at Iran’s further international ‘rehabilitation’ was even more urgent than usual, and they were successful, on the surface at least, of gaining public support from at least one P5 member state, France. The French took some very hardline public postures – they managed to secure some large weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and Qatar during this period – but behind the scenes and at the actual negotiating table, I am told they barely made a peep.

2. How do you assess such activities after the agreement was reached? What are their post-Iran-deal plans?

Of course the French came into line immediately post-deal, mainly to try to gain a piece of the Iranian post-sanctions-relief economic pie. I believe France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius may have even been the first P5+1 official to visit Iran. You can see from the slew of western officials and business delegations making pilgrimages to Tehran in the immediate aftermath of the Vienna deal, that commerce is of paramount importance to these states suffering from stagnant economies.

Economic considerations aside, this deal was also struck because the US and its allies desperately needed the support of rational, capable parties within the Middle East to help disentangle from their Syrian misadventures. By mid-2012, the US and its western allies suddenly realized that Syria would not be a quick ‘regime-change’ operation and were starting to grow concerned about the proliferation of jihadis and other extremists outside of their control, most of them armed, funded and supported by western allies in the Persian Gulf and Turkey. That’s when the US reached out to Iran in a secret meeting in Oman. So I think another consideration for the P5+1 is definitely to gain Iran’s assistance in helping to put out some of these fires. Iran will help, in the sense that eradicating political violence, re-stabilizing states and halting extremism is high on its priority list, but it is important to understand that western goals are not the same. The west is perfectly happy with weakened Mideast states – it just doesn’t want the extremism it has spawned to breach its own borders. At the present moment, the nuclear deal has been helpful in that the US can openly work in the same military theaters (Syria, Iraq) with Iran without a confrontation breaking out between the two. This is a direct result of Vienna.

3. Please tell me what do you think of Netanyahu’s March 2015 address to the US Congress over Iran accord?

I didn’t watch the speech – Netanyahu never has anything interesting or truthful to say. I did, however, watch the circus around it, and I have to say that if I was an American I would be seriously appalled at the pandering of my elected officials to a foreign official. I do think Netanyahu was a net loser by giving that speech. He created a contentious split in the American body politic and gained acrimony instead of galvanizing support. Clearly he lost, as the Iran nuclear agreement is a reality today. But it would be a mistake to write off Netanyahu. He – and his allies in the US and elsewhere – intend to exploit every opportunity, at every turn of this agreement, to put a wrench in the works. One way to do this is to undermine the ‘spirit’ of this deal, which we are seeing at the moment with further sanctions talk, threats about Iran’s missile program, and the ridiculous visa restriction measure that was signed into law by Obama a few weeks ago…

4. What is your opinion about the activities of Iranian groups such as the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK, aka MKO) against this agreement?

I was in Vienna covering the final round of talks and there were some MEK people around with their usual stunts. I don’t really see this group as significant in any way. They are useful to the deal spoilers only insofar as they provide them with token ‘Iranians’ to parrot more anti-Iran propaganda. The MEK’s main interest is in constant demonization of the Iranian government because it enhances their funding opportunities and gives them access to some rather shifty ‘policymaking’ rooms in the west. So Vienna was a valuable platform for them – it probably earned them a few extra dollars. They make good parrots, but nothing more.

5. What is your take on the MEK which was until recently listed as a foreign terrorist organization in the US and is now functioning unhindered in the US and European countries?

Look, the MEK doesn’t really figure into any serious analyst’s calculations on anything to do with Iran. They are an extremely marginalized group within Iran – in all my visits to the country over the years, I have never heard a supportive word for the MEK from a single Iranian. On the contrary, Iranians tend to view them as traitors for fighting alongside Saddam Hussein’s military in an aggressive 8-year war that saw hundreds of thousands of Iranians die. So there is no love lost for the MEK inside Iran. Furthermore, the group’s support comes almost exclusively from foreign adversaries of Iran, which adds to the perception of MEK treachery.

Even when the organization was listed as a terrorist group in the west, it continued to function under different aliases, with the tacit approval of its western hosts. It has only ever been used as a tool by the west, to be pulled out when these states want a ‘lever’ against Iran. Look at the delisting in the US…it took place in late 2012, a few months after Washington had initiated quiet meetings in Oman with Ahmadinejad’s government which ultimately was the ‘opening’ that led to this nuclear deal. The Americans delisted MEK so they could have a pressure ‘card’ in their hand – to show the Iranians the US was willing to escalate if the Iranians didn’t fall into line. But Iran is well-versed in US tactics. I can’t imagine this bothered them much – though it did make the Americans look extremely hypocritical on their “War on Terror.” After all, the MEK had killed US citizens in Iran in the 1970s, attacked US soil in 1992, and continues to abuse its own members. This was the State Department’s very language when they delisted the group.

Listed or delisted, the MEK remains exactly the same. It always enjoyed western cover of sorts. Like many other western-groomed ‘opposition’ groups based outside the Middle East, it will be employed opportunistically by its hosts, and cut off when it is no longer of use.

Sharmine Narwani,

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Beware of Exiles and Their Promises

Emma Ashford points out some of the dangers of making policy with the guidance of self-interested exiles:

Policymakers in Washington are not blameless in this. A recent invitation by Congress to the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group, to testify before the House Subcommittee on Terrorism on issues relating to Iran and ISIS highlights how little scrutiny such groups sometimes face. Though certainly a vocal opponent of the regime in Tehran, MEK was only removed by the State Department from the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2012, after heavily lobbying Congress. The group is communist and is often described as a cult. It is so extreme and so unrepresentative of the Iranian opposition in general that other regional experts testifying before Congress refused to appear on the same panel.

Ashford is right about all of this, and she had more to say along these lines in her excellent presentation at our conference in November. I would just add that the failure of policymakers goes beyond the lack of scrutiny applied to exile groups and individuals. Many policymakers are so preoccupied with hostility towards a certain regime that they will be go out of their way to find and promote the exiles that share their position, and they will do so knowing that the exiles aren’t what they claim to be. They will then boast that a position held by a few Westerners and an extremely unrepresentative exile group represents “the will” of the nation in question. The support of the exiles “legitimizes” the hawks’ desire for regime change by providing “evidence” that U.S. interference will be welcomed (useful for P.R. purposes if for nothing else), and the hawks’ backing gives the exiles a stamp of approval in Washington.

The ongoing rehabilitation of the MEK is a good example of this. Most Iranians in Iran and around the world detest the MEK for good reason, but to listen to their many fans in and out of government one would think that they area democratic government-in-waiting and that cult leader Maryam Rajavi is Liberty incarnate. That allows many Iran hawks to align themselves openly with a group that is rejected by Iranians everywhere while presenting themselves as champions of the “Iranian people” against their government. The views and preferences of the people in the other country are of no concern for the hawks except insofar as they can be misrepresented to support their preferred policy. The exiles pretend to speak for their country, and their patrons here pretend to believe them. Maybe a few are genuinely gullible enough to believe that a totalitarian cult is Iran’s real “secular, democratic opposition,” but most can’t be that clueless and are cynically indulging a horrible organization for their own reasons.

Something similar happens with political oppositions in other countries that don’t have much representation in Washington. Instead of accepting the promises of exiles, many interventionists will claim to know the goals of a foreign opposition movement because those happen to be their goals. They will cite the opposition’s imaginary preferences in our policy debates to insist that the U.S. ought to be doing what they claim the opposition wants. Iran hawks adopted the Green movement protests because they wrongly saw them as an opportunity to destabilize and even topple the regime, and they faulted Obama for “missing” that opportunity by not “doing more” to support them. It didn’t matter to them that most protesters didn’t want U.S. help, and it also didn’t matter that the protesters weren’t seeking regime change. Iran hawks deemed the protests worthy of U.S. support in large part because they perceived them to have the potential to bring down the regime, and once it became clear that this wasn’t going to happen they lost interest in the Iranian opposition until it was time to draft them into the campaign against the nuclear deal very much against their will.

In all of this, U.S. interests are entirely neglected, and more often than not the interests of the exiles’ country are also ignored, and both countries end up being ill-served by the ambitions of exiles and the delusions of hawks.

By Daniel Larison,

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France

Open letter to Bernard Cazeneuve ;Rajavi supports ISIS from France

The honorable French Minister of Interior Mr. Bernard Cazeneuve ,

greetings

The unfortunate incidents which happened in Paris , and as a result of that many innocent people ,women and men , lost their lives , have brought sorrow and sadness for all freedom loving people and this sorrow and sadness has opened our eyes and ears about these horrible incidents and we should ask the humane conscience this question , for what reason those innocent people lost their lives and were murdered ?

Mr. Minister I am Zahra Moeini , a German citizen , who had been a captive in Iraq in Ashraf Garrison for many years and i had experienced the life in people’s mojahedin organization ruled by Massoud and Maryam Rajavi . In 1992 when Maryam Rajavi called herself the president of national council of resistance of Iran !! i became a member of her security team and i left Iraq to Paris with her and after a while i went to Germany. the Rajavi’s terrorist cult told me that ;Germany is a very good country in Europe for asylum and we can fool the German government for our activities easily ; . After a while i found out about their ominous intentions and their crimes , so i decided to separate from them and right now i am a human rights activist in Germany. I had witnessed their crime such as money laundering and theft of the operatives of this organization .

Mr. Minister In the beginning of 1987 , the French government which was ruled by Mr. Jacques Chirac had incarcerated some of the pmoi officials because of violence and terrorist activities and extortion and send them to exile in Gabon . When it happened , Massoud and Maryam Rajavi both were in Iraq and Massoud Rajavi one year before it happened left France to Iraq . They both were angry and were saying that they wont forget this work of the French Government and they vowed that they will retaliate against the French government when they overthrow the Iranian government and they mentioned that it will be a good lesson to the world not to interfere in Iranian resistance affaires.

In 2003 when Maryam Rajavi and some of pmoi operatives got arrested in France , 11 million dollars was found in their headquarter in Auvers sur Oise . The PMOI leadership forced some of their followers and members in France and in Europe in front of the French Embassy and in USA to set themselves on fire to show their anger about the arrest of Maryam Rajavi . the leadership of pmoi wanted to create panic and fear among the French people to force The French government to release Maryam Rajavi as soon as possible . unfortunately two of those who set themselves on fire died of severe burning. those two were Mrs. Sedigheh Mojaveri and Miss Neda Hassani.

Mr. Minister As you see despite of huge amount of money which this terrorist cult spends for its shows and its existance in France , the leader of this terrorist cult , Maryam Rajavi , does not do anything to rescue the residents of Camp liberty from the hell hole of Iraq . This cult has a very dangerous essence and it is run by cultish rules . The main leader of this dangerous cult(the guru) , Massoud Rajavi has threatened all his critics and separated members to death, he wants to create a wave of fear and horror among his critics and separated members but his threat against his critics and separated members will begets panic and fear among the people of France and other European countries as well.

Mr. Minister do you think the leaders of this terrorist cult are suitable to run the government in Iran ? you should know that Maryam Rajavi has not been elected as president of the national council of resistance by the Iranian people who live in foreign countries or the captive members of this notorious cult in Iraq , for that reason she is not the representative of Iranian people and she can not represent Iranian people .

Mr. Minister I wrote a letter to the mayor of Auvers sur Oise while ago and i thanked her because she hosted two families of those captive members in camp liberty in Iraq . I urge you to stop their activities before witnessing another crime which they will perpetrate. Mr. Minister I have requested Maryam Rajavi many times to have a debate with me in a TV even in their own TV program but i have not received any answer except the death threat which i and others received from them.

Mr . Minister i share with you some of the crimes of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi : In 1989 Massoud and Maryam Rajavi ordered all pmoi members to separate from their husband or wife (compulsory divorce). By the direct order of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi all children ranging from 6 months old to the age before maturity were separated from their parents and they were sent away to an unknown destiny and future , some of those children got lost or were sent back to Iran or some of them got raped which was mentioned by some of Rajavi cult followers . The separated and divorced women in Rajavi cult by the direct order of Maryam Rajavi had to sleep with Massoud Rajavi for their own salvation !!! and they were ordered to go under surgical operation to take off their womb before sleeping with him.

Mr. Minister People’s mojahedin organization , PMOI, as the speaker of French external affaires explained , is a violent cult and its existance in France is illegal . i would like to reiterate that all the iranian members who are in the cult’s headquarter in Auvers sur Oise are the top officials of this cult and they are all commanders of the war and terrorist missions in Iraq and Iran. There is no difference between their thoughts and ideology with ISIS (Daesh) but because they are defeated and many of their members have separated from them and they have lost their popularity among Iranian People , the leaders of this cult in western countries specially in France are trying their best to show themselves as freedom lovers and pro-democracy organization and they pretend that they are against terrorism to wash their bloody hands and hide their real essence behind the mask of democracy and freedom . Supporting ISIS (Daesh) by Massoud and Maryam Rajavi goes to 9/11/ 2001 and in that day when the terrorists attacked the twin towers in New York city by the airplanes which they had hijacked and killed 3000 innocent American men and women , Massoud and Maryam Rajavi ordered to show the horrible scenes of those terrorist attacks many times in the gathering in Bagherzadeh garrison in Iraq and while they were clapping their hands , Massoud Rajavi said, I adore Islam which in this fanatic form has created such a damage to USA and imperalism, now wait and see what is going to happen to imperalism when our revolutionary Islam comes on power, .

There is no doubt that the reason behind their happiness and satisfaction about the terrorist attacks in 9/11 was their violent essence and their crave for bloodshed ,violence and armed struggle . There is no doubt that on the basics Rajavi , Daesh and Al ghaedeh have the same violent and fanatic thoughts and during the years i was in that cult ,all Rajavi’s interpretations of Ghoran were in support of violent and fanatic thoughts . Last year when Daesh took over the city of Mosel in Iraq and began its terrorist actions on Iraq soil , this cult and its leadership began supporting Daesh in its official websites and mentioned them as the revolutionary people of Iraq , the revolutionary tribes of Iraq !!. http://www.mojahedin.org/news/139413 (Le site de l’OMPI: Les révolutionnaires et les nomades révolutionnaires de l’Irak ont saisi toute la ville de Mossoul) in this link which is the pmoi official website you can see their support of Daesh with French translation .

Mr. Minister With all those facts mentioned above , for security and safety of your country , you should put an end to their cultish activities in Europe and in France , because they have supported Daesh in their official websites many times and their thoughts and cultish and terrorist behaviours during past 40 years substantiate that they have the same thought and behaviour as Daesh has . We should not forget that Rajavi cult carried out the suicidal operation in Iran in 1980,s and in 2003 suicidal operation on French soil by setting themselves on fire on streets of paris and they mentioned it proudly in their official websites . Those years which pmoi was carrying out those bloody suicidal operations and attacks against its targets , Daesh did not exist and i believe that Daesh had learned those suicidal operations from Rajavi cult.

All the best,

Zahra Moeini Germany, Iran Zanan Association,

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