Mujahedin Khalq Terror group

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Iranian terror victims tell story at UN Human Rights Council

The Association for Defending Victims of Terrorism, ADVT is an Iranian non-governmental organization. It’s members are all victims of – or have lost loved ones to terrorism. At the 27th United Nations Human rights council in Geneva they held this panel on terrorism and human rights.

Speakers from Iran, Britain and the United States are here. Shia, Sunni and Christian. Also here are Iranian victims of terrorism to tell their story. Like Mansoureh Karami, whose husband Massoud AliMohammadi was the first Iranian nuclear scientist to be assassinated in Tehran. Today, the world’s attention is on the violence and terrorism of ISIL in Syria and Iraq. A statement read on behalf of Iraqi Assyrians, warned that the entire population risks being wiped out of the Nineveh province. NGOs warn of a catastrophe, where the story of the victims are lost. The stories heard here will sadly not be the last – but they hope by sharing their experiences they can somehow help.

Also:

Association for Defending Victims of Terrorism (ADVT) Holds a Panel on: Terrorism and Human Rights

Link to the source

Panelists:

Dr. Hamid Sajadi, Chief Executive of Association for Defending Victims of Terrorism (ADVT)

Ms. Rubab Mehdi Rizvi, Chairperson of Markazi Imam Hussain Council

Dr. Mohammed Serkal, the UN Coordinator on Minorities Rights, Alkhoei Foundation

Ms. Janet McElligott, Activist, Former US White House staffer and Counterterrorism Expert

Ms. Mansoureh Karami, Wife of Assassinated Nuclear Scientist, Massoud Alimohammadi

Ms. Masoumeh Eskandari, Daughter of Terror Victim

Mr. Ali Alssarray, President of International Organization against Terror and Religious Intolerance

Mr. Nineb Lamassu, Research Assistant, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge

Date: September 17, 2014

Time: 11:30- 13:00

Venue: Room XXIV, Palais des Nations. Geneva, Switzerland

Themes:

· Examining the reasons for the increasing ability of terrorist groups in recruiting new members from around the world;

· Analyzing the role of civil society and victims of terrorism in countering terrorism;

· Drawing the attention of the world people to a return to traditional for of slavery which is carries out by hostage-takings of terrorist groups of ISIS and Boko Haram;

· Evaluating the international responses specially the Resolution 2170 of the UN Security Council in which victims of terrorism and long-term impacts of terrorist attacks on them are not considered.

The Association for Defending Victims of Terrorism, ADVT, Geneva

September 22, 2014 0 comments

Iraqi Authorities' stance on the MEK

Iraqi MP: The MEK counted on ISIL to help them stay in Iraq

Razak Abdul A’imma al-Haidari, Iraqi MP, from the Badr Parliamentary bloc said that the Mujahedin Khalq Terrorist Organization was counting on the ISIL in Iraq to collude with them to keep its members at Camp Liberty (Temporary Transit Location) and then to take them back to Camp Ashraf.

‘The MEK is ready to cooperate with any terrorist party hostile to Iraqi government and the people’, the MP Al-Haidari told Ashraf News reporter.

He emphasized that since the MKO is considered a threat for the future of the country, the newly established government of Iraq as well as Iraqi people are serious in removing them from Iraqi soil.

The member of Iraqi National Alliance asserted: Navigating the MKO media, one could see the organization hailing the crimes and savagery committed by the ISIL in Iraq.

He also noted that the leadership of the terrorist Organization in France believed that the Prime Minister Maliki’s stepping down would pave the way for their organization’s stay in Iraq. However Mr. Haidar al-Abadi putted an end to their illusions and at his first press conference emphasized on the expulsion of all terrorist groups – including the Mujahedin Khalq Organization – from the Iraqi territory.

Translated by Nejat Society

September 21, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Ironically, only Iran can help America really take control of ISIS

President Obama’s short speech to the nation on September 10, addressed the urgent need to take action against the Islamic State (aka ISIS or ISIL). The speech began with a description of ISIS and the danger it poses. Of course Obama used his own potent words to talk about ISIS, but the organisation which he described has the characteristics of a group that:

•Recruits by deception; pretends to embrace religious precepts but in reality pursues an extremist political ideology.

•Holds such simplistic and erroneous beliefs that it can only prevent its members from seeing through them by preventing them from thinking and therefore fills every minute of their day with activity, whether military training or peeling carrots or cleaning latrines.

•Indoctrinates recruits with thought stopping fears and certainties so as to create a stark, unassailable ‘us and them’ mentality, a sense of innate superiority which obliges followers to ruthlessly eliminate all enemies.

•Uses cruel, arbitrary punishments, extra-judicial killings, and example killings to warn against disobedience.

•Demonstrates its abilities through terrorising acts, then boldly advertises that it has killed tens of thousands of people.

•Has a leader who arrogates all rights and knowledge to himself, who dictates the sexual behaviour of his followers and has a hareem of women for his own use.

•A leader who dictates the minutiae of the followers’ lives and operates a strict hierarchy of control with obedience to his whims as the guiding principle for promotion or demotion.

•Is universally hated by ordinary people.

This, however, is not a description of ISIS, it is a description of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), the exiled Iranian terrorist group. While ISIS claims to be Sunni, and the MEK claims to be Shiite, there are such significant similarities they can both be defined as destructive cults. The major distinguishing difference of course is the incomprehensible savagery of ISIS, which even the MEK never aspired to.

The MEK operates as a totalitistic, destructive mind control cult which harms its own members as much as its victims. Its past is littered with death and destruction; the MEK has publicly boasted of killing 12,000 during its terrorist campaign against Iran, and it also killed 25,000 Iraqis for Saddam Hussein during its 30 year sojourn in that country. But in spite of this history the MEK now has some high profile advocates in Washington. Some, like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Hillary Clinton, choose to ignore the unsavoury aspects of the group’s behaviour and embrace its vehemently anti-Iran stance instead.

This was only possible because the MEK were brought under control during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. The militant group were bombed, then disarmed and corralled into a single camp, effectively rendering it impotent as an armed force. The MEK’s means of surviving this was to focus on a new identity and present itself under the guise of a political opposition. Fronting Maryam Rajavi as a democratic, feminist leader the MEK used its apparently unlimited financial resources to court western policy makers with a vague promise of engineering regime change in Iran by acting as the vanguard of a counter revolution. The MEK’s advocates support it not because of its potential as a terrorist force or even because of its numbers which at present comprise fewer than a thousand loyal, active members. Instead, it is as a cult that it has value. The MEK’s ability to deceptively recruit and manipulate people into doing just about anything is its chief asset; an asset that could not be bombed out of them or confiscated along with their weapons. The fact too that MEK followers are not paid and are effectively enslaved, makes it even better value.

This is also why the IRI is still cautious of the group. Observers express themselves puzzled by the sensitivity shown by successive Iranian governments to this apparently toothless tiger. But Iran has a sophisticated understanding of the dangers posed by cultic terror groups born from experience. Iran also understands that simply waging war on such a group, fighting fire with fire, will not destroy it. Iran has been successful in reducing the MEK to nothing more than a lobbying group because its approach to the MEK is as a cult, not just a terrorist organisation. Inside Iran, a country wide attempt is made to educate against the dangers of such cults and controlling groups. It is their way of inoculating the population against deceptive recruitment.

There can be no doubt that ISIS at present is like a mad dog running wild. There can be no comparison between the old defunct MEK and the 30,000 young fanatics who are ISIS. It must be either destroyed completely or brought under control. Like the MEK, ISIS has made sophisticated use of the internet to create a massive cyber presence for itself, on its own terms, which then translates into mainstream media coverage becoming part of its recruiting tool. The immediate concern of western governments is that ISIS must be stopped because it poses a threat to their own populations as much as regional ones; a lesson bitterly taught by Al Qaida.

As a consequence, President Obama has gathered a coalition of forty countries willing to take on IS militarily. But, for all their bravado, the central, unspoken dilemma for all of them is that ISIS has the potential to do precisely what most of these coalition countries want – oust the Assad regime in Syria and push back Iranian influence in Iraq by strengthening the Sunni tribes in the north. This is why, behind the belligerent threats of bombing, the will to actually destroy the group completely is weak. This is why, instead of negotiating a tough pax with the Syrian government, America proposes to flout international law to launch illegal aerial bombing raids into that sovereign country.

In northern Iraq, Iran has shown itself as the US’s natural ally in any effort to contain ISIS. Iran is the one country with the greatest experience of dealing with this kind of cultic terrorist threat, and could perhaps help formulate a comprehensive plan to bring ISIS under control just as the MEK is now under control. Yet Iran remains the US’s greatest nemesis.

What is preventing cooperation on this vital issue is the continued enmity between America and Iran. But the stark fact is that an American policy of threats and sanctions have yielded nothing in the way of stopping or reducing Iran’s regional standing.

Realistically, if America and Israel together could have defeated Iran and forced the country to submit either through sanctions or war, then this would have happened by now. This has not and cannot now happen – not through pre-emptive strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, not through engineering civic riots and insurgency, and certainly not through proxy terrorist groups. But American policy toward Iran, based on what Gareth Porter describes as a manufactured crisis, has ensured that the US is incapable of acknowledging that after Israel, Iran is her natural strategic partner in the Middle East. This is not to say that America has to like the Islamic Republic of Iran, or to stop criticism of its policies or to not drive a hard bargain on nuclear issues. But to continue the hopeless pursuit of regime change at the expense of diplomatic engagement and potential cooperation is self-defeating to say the least.

Already as a result of this misconstrued policy, Iran will certainly enter the next round of nuclear negotiations significantly stronger, rather than weaker. American leverage will be practically null: America’s belligerence toward Russia over the Ukraine has severely, if not permanently, alienated the two countries; Congressional sanctions have forced both Russia and China to pursue separate trade deals with Iran; Germany and France are coolly weighing their economic losses against any political gains in continuing to follow America’s intransigent position toward Iran. Even the plucky, loyal little UK may keep at arms length an American negotiating team which has gone behind their backs before. Without lifting a finger itself, Iran will benefit from these fractures in the P5+1. On top of that, its popular (in the rest of the world), support for the Palestinian cause, its success in helping Iraqi Shia militia repel ISIS, and its principled insistence on Iran’s inalienable right under the terms of the NPT to a civic nuclear power program, will all lend the Iranian negotiators gravitas on the world stage. Perhaps the only option left is for the talks fail, for one side or the other to be forced to walk away from the table. In that case, everyone loses.

Clearly it is controversial to attempt even a neutral description of the Iranian position. To go further and suggest that the US needs to find a way to cooperate with Iran in order to find a way to curtail the horrors of ISIS, is perhaps beyond the pale for many. But when this overwhelming and self-defeating enmity prevents sound political analysis from understanding and acknowledging the real problem, and when this prevents the creation of real, effective solutions, then we need to question where American interests really lie, and who is prepared to serve them.

Iranian.com, About Anne Khodabandeh (Singleton):Middle East Strategy Consultants,

September 20, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

The MKO part of the Middle East crisis and threats

The propaganda arm of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization held the alleged Paris Conference on “Middle East in Crisis Threats and Solutions”! The self-claimed president of the MKO, Maryam Rajavi gave herself credit to advise Western Politicians about “the situation in the entire Middle East and the policies of Europe and the U.S.”!

This is not the first time that the cult of Rajavi endeavors to show off. Their so-called grand gathering this year was another effort by the cult to get itself recognized in the regional relations despite reports on its cooperation with forces of Islamic State terrorist extremists.

In her speech Maryam Rajavi “stressed that the terrorism that has engulfed the Middle East today is the outcome of inaction by the West in face of tyrants, especially the Iranian regime” but she failed to notice that her cult-like group is part of the terrorism that has engulfed the Middle East.

As a matter of fact, the atrocities of terrorists of the Islamic State in Iraq ring the alarms for the West. For example French Foreign Ministry has recently condemned the MKO for its violent, nondemocratic activities. Because of long-time MKO’s presence in France, the government might be one of the most exposed Western countries to the threat of the cult of Rajavi. The French warning came immediately after the MKO held its so-called annual grand gathering where the group leader praised the “uprising” of what it called ”Iraqi revolutionaries”.

Dr. Webster Griffin Tarpley told Press TV, “The reason why the French might be doing this now I would think has something to do with ISIS and the events in Syria and Iraq. When you see a group like ISIS which is similar in many ways to the terrorists of the MEK, obviously there is a feeling in the MEK I would guess that they have got to get involved, that they have got to contribute, they have got to make themselves heard or they are not going to get the funding that they are accustomed to getting. So, they have got to do something perhaps not against Syria but primarily against Iran which is their specialty.” []

This is Dr. Griffin’s account of the MKO: “It’s of course extremely dangerous and the thing that the French point to, I think it shows the insidious methods that MEK has. It’s a very sinister group but here is what they are expert in. They buy officials, they essentially bribed them. I guess most people would say the formula they took here in the US was they would hold conferences and they would offer speaking fees to a lot of very important intelligence community type officials and these speaking fees were astronomical. Of course, the money was coming from the US taxpayer. It was a way to recycle US taxpayer money into the pockets of some of these corrupt officials.”[]

The paid American politicians may not know that Iranians loathe the MKO and the violent substance of the MKO under the leadership of the Rajavis could be a potential ISIS under Abubakr Al Baghdadi. They seem to think it is more admirable to speak on behalf of a formerly terrorist designated group when it is motivated by a desire to help them overthrow the Islamic Republic but they do not seem to ponder the threat the region is faced by the side of cult-like terrorist groups.

US presidential candidate Mitt Romney was one of those MKO-paid speakers who confessed that he had no information on the true nature of the Cult of Rajavi. Ralph Forbes of the American Free Press Newspaper wrote in January 2012,” GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney looked like a deer caught in the headlights when he was asked if he supported an international, anti-American terrorist organization with a bloody record for killing innocent civilians thousands of times worse than al Qaeda.” Forbes ironically notices,”This “expert on international affairs” claimed he never had heard of them.” []

The MKO has always been part of Iraqi crisis. It was Saddam’s Private Army in massacring the Shiits and Kurds Uprisings in 1991. Maryam Rajavi’s famous quote approves the group’s outrages against Iraqi civilians: “Take the Kurds under your tanks. Save your bullets for Iranian soldiers.”

Besides, the group’s propaganda campaign has been very active in influencing Iraqi political relations. They try to buy the support of Sunni tribal leaders and politicians. They also try to bribe them in order to target the publically elected Shite officials.

Today, the MKO makes its utmost effort to cause more crisis in Iraq only because it has no other way to maintain its cult structure. More chaos in the region helps the group leaders to buy more time to distract the attention of the international community towards their abusive attitude against their own members and to prolong the survival of Rajavi’s cult of personality in Iraq, not so far from the Iranian border.

The international community should beware of the risk of ignoring the threat of such destructive groups in the region otherwise another Islamic State would emerge under another Abubakr Al Baghdadi. It would be no surprise if the name of the new extremist leader would be Maryam Rajavi.

Mazda Parsi

September 17, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

America supports terrorism

In 1998, five Cuban counterterrorism agents were arrested in Miami and held in solitary confinement for 17 months. Then — after a dubious seven-month-long trial in which no hard evidence was ever presented — the group was convicted and given the equivalent of more than four life sentences.

The agents were then shipped off to five different maximum-security prisons spread across the United States so as to eliminate any possibility for communication.

What did these five Cubans do to deserve this sentence?

The Cuban Five, as they have become known, were in pursuit of known terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, who was responsible for the 1997 hotel bombings in Havana.

But as it turned out, Posada was a CIA operative. In order to protect its valuable asset and cover up the job, the U.S. government arrested the Cuban Five and denounced them as spies.

Exiled Cubans like Posada have a long and bloody history of terrorism against Cuba. Likewise, America has a long and bloody history of actively supporting those terrorist attacks.

After Posada escaped from Cuba, the CIA trained him in explosives and sabotage. He remained a CIA operative for many years, even helping to organize the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.

Posada is also widely assumed to be the mastermind behind the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner. Seventy-three civilian passengers died on that plane. Posada was eventually allowed to walk free.

Meanwhile, three of the five Cubans who were trying to catch Posada remain locked in maximum-security prisons.

None of this guarantees that the Cuban Five weren’t spies. It’s possible that their imprisonment was entirely justified, and that the sensitive nature of the case warranted classifying the incriminating evidence.

But the more likely explanation is that since the United States had an economic and political interest in toppling the Castro regime, and since terrorism from Cuban exiles advances that goal, the U.S. government had made it a priority to thwart Cuban counterterrorism agents at any cost.

And so it goes for U.S. foreign policy around the world. America picks and chooses which terrorists to condemn and which to support, often wavering between the two depending on the prevailing incentives.

The case of the Cuban Five was not an isolated incident. The United States supports terrorism wherever and whenever it’s strategic to do so.

Back in 1959, some sources say, the CIA hired a young Iraqi assassin to eliminate Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim. The assassin was a then-unknown thug named Saddam Hussein. When Hussein botched the job, the United States supposedly set him up with money and protection within the Ba’ath Party. Then in 1963, the Ba’ath Party organized a CIA-backed military coup that would eventually place Hussein in power. At the time, America sought to bolster its position in the Cold War by exerting control over Iraq, even if it may have meant forging an alliance with Hussein, a known terrorist and newly established dictator.

America was consistently one of the staunchest supporters of the Hussein regime, even going so far as to provide Iraq with vital military intelligence that was used to administer chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq War. Not only did the U.S. government know Hussein was using lethal chemical weapons like nerve gas and sarin, we actively supported him. With the help of American intelligence, Hussein’s wanton usage of chemical weaponry killed thousands and won the war for Iraq.

The alliance with Hussein ended abruptly once he invaded Kuwait. Hussein became more useful as an enemy than an ally, so the American propaganda machine took Hussein and turned him into the terrorist and dictator we know him as today. Though America’s aim in aiding terrorist activity is often regime change or political upheaval, U.S. politicians are sometimes willing to support terrorism just for the extra campaign money.

Iranian terrorist group Mojahedin-e-Khalq has largely been beyond reproach from American politicians, despite the widely held belief that the group was responsible for the assassination of several Iranian nuclear scientists. A host of top-ranking U.S. officials, including the likes of Rudy Giuliani, Frances Townsend and Howard Dean, have all publicly defended MEK. Why? MEK has been funneling tens of thousands of dollars into their pockets in exchange for their support. And following America’s lead on the issue, Israel’s secret service has also provided MEK with extensive financing, training and weapons.

Which leads me to what is perhaps the most well-documented and notorious case of U.S.-sponsored terrorism: funding for Israel’s military.

By America’s own definition, Israel is perpetrating acts of terrorism against Palestine. Israeli airstrikes have purposefully targeted Palestinian hospitals and schools in a crusade to crush the Palestinian people in a barbaric war of expansion. This is “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets,” as the U.S. State Department defines terrorism.

While there is no doubt that Palestine also commits acts of terrorism, as Noam Chomsky has put it, Palestinian terrorism is “very small as compared with the U.S.-backed Israeli terrorism. Quite typically, violence reflects the means of violence. It’s not unusual. State terror is almost always much more extreme than retail terror, and this is no exception.”

To date, Israel’s aggressive invasion of the Gaza Strip has killed more than 2,100 Palestinians — around 75 percent of whom were civilians — while fewer than 80 Israelis have died.

And behind the scenes is America: Israel’s generous benefactor who watches from the sidelines as Palestinian women and children are brutally murdered.

In 2013 alone, the United States gave a whopping $3.1 billion in military aid to Israel. That amounts to nearly a quarter of Israel’s entire defense spending, which includes F-16 fighter jets, smart bombs, Apache helicopters and white phosphorous munitions.

America has no moral justification for this, only a political motivation. Simply put, American politicians support Israeli terrorism because American voters are overwhelmingly pro-Israel.

These examples are by no means the only instances of U.S.-backed terrorism. If the price is right, the United States has shown that it will support any amount of terrorism, anywhere in the world. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In America, it’s not dictators and tyrants that are supporting terrorism. It’s elected officials, and their power is vulnerable every election year. So while they’re the ones bankrolling terrorism, we’re the ones keeping them in office.

But, as of right now, the evidence is undeniable: America supports terrorists. Unless we do something about it, America will continue to support terrorists. And at some point, the lines start to blur, and if you squint just right, it starts to look an awful lot like America itself is the terrorist.

Sam Hillestad, The Brown Daily Herald

September 14, 2014 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

A Former MEK Member Speaks About the ‘Cult’ of Extremism

Interview with Massoud Banisadr

In 1979, Masoud Banisadr was a young postgraduate maths student at Newcastle University, watching political upheaval in his homeland of Iran on the nightly news. After the fall of the Western-backed Shah, wanting to play his part in a new society he joined Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), an Islamic Marxist revolutionary organisation.

But a couple of years after the revolution, the MEK began to clash with Ayatollah Khomeini’s theocratic regime and were soon deemed an enemy of the new Iran. MEK suicide bombings and assassinations followed. In 1981, thousands of MEK members went into exile, and by 1986 had established a tight-knit paramilitary organisation in Iraq led by husband-and-wife team Masoud and Maryam Rajavi.

Banisadr became the MEK’s PR man, moving between Camp Ashraf, their headquarters in Iraq, Geneva and Washington DC, trying to win over Western politicians. He finally left the group in 1996, went into hiding and now lives back in England.

The United States removed MEK from its list of terrorist organisations in 2012, but Banisadr still considers it a fanatical cult acting under the warped leadership of the Rajavis. He argues that any terrorist organisation is either a cult or “has no option but to become one in order to survive”.

I spoke to Banisadr about the power of cults, and how this might help us understand why young men in the UK are vulnerable to joining the Islamic State and other extremist groups.

An MEK oath ceremony at Camp Ashraf in Iraq, taken around 2002 by a member who has since left and does not wish to be named.

VICE: You were once a high-ranking member of MEK. Why do you now see the organisation as a cult?

Masoud Banisadr: There was a charismatic leader, Rajavi. There was a black-and-white world view imposed; followers cutting themselves off from family; followers losing their personality. There was mind manipulation. At Camp Ashraf in Iraq there were talks lasting for days on end. I remember one task where we had to write down our old personality in one column on a board, and the new personality in a different column. I remember a guy who said, “My brother works in the Iranian embassy in London. Before I loved him as my brother, now I hate him as my enemy. I am ready to kill him tomorrow, if necessary.” And everyone applauded.

How did you justify violence?

I was fortunate not to be involved in any violence. But all group members accepted MEK suicide bombings and killings in Iran to be revolutionary acts. This was the brainwashing. And later, in my role as official representative, I would justify and explain these acts as the only means we had to defend ourselves. I was a nice person, well-mannered, and could argue very rationally with politicians. So I was a good salesman.

Why did MEK members divorce their wives?

In 1990, Rajavi said all members must divorce their spouses. My own wife had already left the group by then. All members accepted these terms, and it [applied to] everyone except the leader and his wife Maryam. In a single day, everyone became celibate. Someone asked, “What about sex in the afterlife?” He replied, “I know your trick – you want to fantasise about the afterlife. But no – you must be prepared to forget about sex, about spouses, about love.”

No sex?

No sexual thoughts. The idea was that we were in a war to take back Iran, so you cannot have a family until the war is won. This was the excuse the outside world would hear, but inside we were told your spouses are a barrier between you and the leadership. We were ordered to surrender our soul, heart and mind to Rajavi and his wife.

Masoud meeting trade union leaders at an International Labour Conference in Geneva in 1987 (published in an MEK newspaper).

How did you manage to leave the organisation?

What saved me was seeing my daughter. In 1996 I came to London to arrange some meetings. I saw my daughter, after many years of not seeing her. I had totally forgotten about the guy who was the father, the old Masoud. I only knew Masoud, the MEK member. The old Masoud wanted to hug her, but the group member – living under strict rules where men and women never interacted – knew he should not. I was fortunate that I had a bad back problem, so I was allowed to go and recuperate in hospital. And in those two weeks, being around ordinary people, seeing ordinary families, I allowed feelings for my own family to come back. And so, finally, I decided to leave the group.

Where did you go?

I had to go on the run for a time. I learned how to hide myself around the UK until they gave up looking for me.

What do you think it is that makes young people vulnerable to extremist causes?

Well, terrorism is like a virus. It attacks us through our weaknesses. It kills our personality, our individuality, like a cult. I think there are three stages. The first stage is the injustice of the world. Young Muslims see injustice, become angry and want to react. Then comes along a powerful ideology, and the Wahabi ideology offers a very simple, black-and-white world view, and a very narrow-minded interpretation of jihad, offered as a solution to young Muslims. But both these stages are not enough to make someone a terrorist, a human bomb or a fighter for a caliphate. A third stage is required: the mind manipulation, which robs someone of their personality, makes them identify entirely with the group and cuts them off from their parents and society.

So radical ideas alone aren’t enough to go off and fight for, say, the Islamic State?

If you’re a young Muslim and you feel like a nobody, it’s appealing to hear that we can return to the time of Prophet Mohammed – [that] we will be powerful again and feel proud of ourselves. This can make you radical – even prepared to be violent – but you will not stay a fighter or become a martyr without being entirely cut-off from family and the values of the society you were brought up in. That requires the mind-manipulation that goes on in a destructive cult.

Where does the Islamic State fit in? Do you consider it a cult as well as a terrorist organisation?

The signs are there. The leader – Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – is charismatic and has unlimited ambition. He has been introduced as the leader of all Muslims, the Caliph. Normal leaders want political power. Cult leaders want something more than governing a city or country – they want to govern history. They want to change the structure of humanity. For a while they were calling themselves ISIL – Islamic State of Iraq and Levant.

They wanted control of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel. Now they call themselves the Islamic State. They want whatever they think was once part of the Islamic empire, so they claim Spain, Portugal, North Africa, India and part of China and Russia. They want the whole world, to make everyone Muslim. This is not normal leadership; this is heading towards cult. There is no limitation you can deal with, politically.

What would you say to British parents who have children fighting in Syria or Iraq?

It’s very difficult, very delicate. If a parent says anything critical against a radical preacher, or about an organisation like Islamic State, that’s when a person’s mind becomes defensive. It is difficult to argue rationally. So if a parent has contact, they should not try to talk about politics or religion. They should show only kindness and love. This is the member’s weakness. Feelings do not die away, even if personality has changed. So the parent has to let them know they will be there, waiting. There has to be a pathway back to a life where family love is there, something that has nothing do with ideological thinking. Unconditional love unlocks the mind manipulation that has taken place.

Thanks, Masoud.

Adam Forrest, Vice.com

September 6, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Pro-Israeli American Billionaires Helped by the White House “Make War on Iran”

Pro-Israeli American Billionaires Helped by the White House “Make War on Iran”, Law Suit Reveals

There is a group of Jewish American billionaires who are apparently doing their best to make sure than negotiations with Iran go nowhere in the mistaken belief that they are doing what is best for Israel. And they would also appear to be assisted in their efforts by the White House, which is at the same time claiming that it wants the talks to be successful. The odd relationship is currently playing out in a Manhattan courtroom where the Justice Department is seeking to squash a lawsuit that it fears might expose the extent to which the government has hypocritically played fast and loose with classified information while simultaneously sending journalists and whistleblowers to jail over allegations that they have done the same.

The power and wealth of the anti-Iran groups as well as their unrivalled access to the United States government means that a policy of détente with Iran, which would be a no brainer based on both American and Iranian interests, only proceeds by fits and starts with the US Congress and much of the media lined up solidly to stop the effort. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its affiliated educational foundation, which have focused on the “Iranian threat” over the past three years, have a combined budget of more than $90 million while AIPAC’s spin-off the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) has $8.7 million.

The American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) efforts are more diversified but uniformly hawkish when it comes to the Middle East. It has a budget of $45 million. Identified multi-million dollar donor/supporters of AIPAC, AEI, and WINEP include Sheldon Adelson of Las Vegas Sands, Paul Singer of Elliot Management hedge fund and Bernard Marcus of Home Depot.

Other right wing think tanks including Heritage and Hudson in Washington also support unrelenting pressure directed against Iran. Even the more centrist Brookings Institute is hard core when it comes to Middle Eastern politics by virtue of its Saban Institute funded by Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban. And then there are the mainstream Jewish organizations to include the Anti Defamation League, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations and the American Jewish Congress, all of which have vast resources and unparalleled access to the White House, Congress and the media.

All the pro-Israel anti-Iran groups engage in pressure tactics on Capitol Hill and have been effective in dominating the political debate. Of thirty-six outside witnesses brought in to testify at seven Senate hearings on Iran since 2012 only one might be characterized as sensitive to Iranian concerns. The enormous lobbying effort enables the anti-Iran groups to define the actual policies, move their drafts of legislation through congress, and eventually see their bills pass with overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate. It is democracy in action if one accepts that popular rule ought to be guided by money and pressure groups rather than by national interests.

Less well known is United Against Nuclear Iran, which has a budget just shy of $2 million. UANI is involved in the New York lawsuit. The group, which has somehow obtained a 501[c]3 “educational” tax status that inter alia allows it to conceal its donors, has offices in Rockefeller Center in New York City. It is active on Capitol Hill providing “expert testimony” on Iran for congressional committees, to include “help” in drafting legislation. At a July Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Iran all three outside witnesses were from UANI. It is also active in the media but is perhaps best known for its “name and shame” initiatives in which it exposes companies that it claims are doing business with Tehran in violation of US sanctions.

UANI is being sued by a Greek billionaire Victor Restis whom it had outed in 2013. Restis, claiming the exposure was fraudulent and carried out to damage his business, has filed suit demanding that UANI and billionaire Thomas Kaplan turn over documents and details of relationships regarding UANI donors who it is claimed are linked to the case. Kaplan, a New York City resident, made his initial fortune on energy exploration and development. More recently he has been involved in commodities trading in precious metals. His wife Daphne is Israeli and his involvement in various Jewish philanthropies both in the US and in Israel have invited comparison with controversial deceased commodities trader Marc Rich, who reportedly worked closely with the Israeli government on a number of projects.

The Justice department would like to the see the UANI lawsuit go away as it is aware that what is being described as “law enforcement” documents would include both privileged and classified Treasury Department work product relating to individuals and companies that it has investigated for sanctions busting. Passing either intelligence related or law enforcement documents to a private organization is illegal but the Justice Department’s only apparent concern is that the activity might be exposed. There is no indication that it would go after UANI for having acquired the information and it perhaps should be presumed that the source of the leak is the Treasury Department itself.

Who or what provided the documents to a private advocacy group that is also a tax exempt foundation supported by prominent businessmen with interests in the Middle East is consequently not completely clear but Restis is assuming that the truth will out if he can get hold of the evidence. The lawsuit claims that UANI intimidates its targets by defaming their business practices as well as by demanding both examination of their books and an audit carried out by one of its own accountants followed by review from an “independent counsel.”

Kaplan is named in the suit as he appears to be the gray eminence behind UANI. He once boasted “we’ve (UANI) done more to bring Iran to heel than any other private sector initiative.” Kaplan also employs as a director or officer in six of his companies the Executive Director of UANI Mark Wallace and reportedly arranged the awarding of the Executive Director position at Harvard’s Belfer Center to its President Gary Samore.

Kaplan is a business competitor to Restis, whose lawyers are apparently seeking to demonstrate two things: first, that the US government has been feeding sometimes only partially vetted information to UANI to help in its “name and shame” program and second, that UANI is itself supported by partisan business interests like Kaplan as well as by foreign sources, which apparently is meant to imply Israel. Or even the Israeli intelligence service Mossad. Meir Dagan, former head of Mossad, is on the UANI advisory board, which also includes ex-Senator Joseph Lieberman and former Senior Diplomat Dennis Ross, both of whom have frequently been accused of favoring Israeli interests and both of whom might well have easy access to US government generated information.

And then there is the Muhadedin-e-Khalq, the Iranian terrorist group that has assassinated at least six Americans and is now assisting the Israeli government in killing Iranian scientists, a prima facie definition of what constitutes terrorism. The group was on the State Department terrorist list from 1997 until 2012, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton de-listed it in response to demands coming from friends of Israel in Congress as well as from a large group of ex government officials, many of whom were paid large honoraria by the group to serve as advocates. The paid American shills included former CIA Directors James Woolsey and Porter Goss, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Louis Freeh and former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton. The promoters of MEK in congress and elsewhere claimed to be primarily motivated by MEK’s being an enemy of the current regime in Tehran, though its virulent anti-Americanism and terrorist history make it a somewhat unlikely poster child for the “Iranian resistance.”

Supporters of MEK also ignore the fact that the group is run like a cult, routinely executes internal dissidents, and has virtually no political support within Iran. But such are the ways of the corrupt Washington punditocracy, lionizing an organization that it should be shunning. MEK’s political arm is located in Paris and it has long been assumed that it is funded by the Israeli government and by at least some of the same gaggle of billionaires, possibly including their Israeli counterparts, who support the anti-Iranian agenda in the United States.

Iranian negotiators have accepted that their country should have only limited uranium enrichment capabilities coupled with a rigorous inspection regime but the talks in Geneva drag on and on as the United States continues to hesitate, raising new objections regularly in spite of claims that it operates in good faith and seeks a settlement. That an agreement is within reach is undoubtedly true and it would even be good for Israel as it would remove the regional nuclear option while making much less likely another pointless and devastating war. But the men who write the checks do not see it that way and, unfortunately, they are the ones who all too often both pay the piper and call the tune.

Philip Giraldi,

September 1, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

Beware of the MEK

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Based on news reports, a number of U.S. officials and former officials have adopted this motto in recent months. They seem to believe the prospect of the nuclear issue being solved and rapprochement with Tehran so threatening that they have rushed to Iran’s great foe: the People’s Mojahdein Organization (MEK).

The MEK is a cult-like dissident group, based outside of Iran, primarily in Iraq and France for much of the past three decades. It was considered a terrorist group by the United States until 2012 and by the European Union until 2009, when it was removed from the list of terrorist organizations and became increasingly viewed as an alternative to Iran’s current regime. This shows that the MEK’s campaign to galvanize support in the West has been relatively successful.

A more careful examination of the MEK provides evidence of the group’s problematic nature.

First, the MEK has no viable chance of seizing power in Iran. If the current government is not Iranians’ first choice for a government, the MEK is not even their last—and for good reason. The MEK supported Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War. The people’s discontent with the Iranian government at that time did not translate into their supporting an external enemy that was firing Scuds into Tehran, using chemical weapons and killing hundreds of thousands of Iranians, including many civilians. Today, the MEK is viewed negatively by most Iranians, who would prefer to maintain the status quo than rush to the arms of what they consider a corrupt, criminal cult.

Second, what Iranians understand, but the American MEK supporters choose to ignore, is the MEK’s track record of human-rights abuses. The MEK controls every aspect of its members’ lives and tortures them. Some of these human-rights abuses include: mass, compulsory divorces, beatings and torture, costing some members their lives, and solitary confinements so extreme that some members preferred to take their lives than be subjected to them.

Third, to understand the origins of anti-Americanism in pre-revolutionary Iran, look no further. The MEK was responsible for the assassination and failed attempts to kidnap and assassinate Americans in Iran in the 1970s. It was also the MEK that pressured the Islamic revolutionaries to take a stronger stance against the United States. The MEK further supported the 1979 U.S. embassy hostage crisis in Tehran.

Fourth, on the surface, the MEK has evolved since the ‘70s into a democratic alternative to the Islamic Republic and a potential ally for the West and Israel. However, the organization is merely manipulating the West, hoping it will rush to it for fear of the greater enemy: the Islamic Republic. To do so, the MEK has teamed up with Israel, while it is as anti-Israeli as the Iranian regime, criticizing the Shah’s support for Jerusalem as much as the Islamic revolutionaries. This is not a real ideological shift, but rather a smart, tactical move by the MEK.

Fifth, the MEK may appear as a modern organization on the surface, but it is, in fact, a crypto-Shiite Communist group. In effect, it is the product of the Leninist-style party and the eleventh-century Ismaili order, the Assassins: a religious, Communist cult based around the myth of an invisible leader, Massoud Rajavi, who has not been seen for years (and who is said to be dead or hiding).

Sixth, the MEK claims that it would dismantle Iran’s nuclear program, which has led some in the United States to believe its empowerment to be a viable solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis. Even if the MEK had a real chance of coming to power in Iran, which it does not, it would most likely not dismantle the nuclear program. In fact, it would have even more incentive to pursue nuclear weapons and would be less likely to engage with the international community. The MEK is a far less accountable organization than the Islamic Republic is, as, unlike the latter, it is a cult-like organization, rather than an established government that has certain checks and balances. As such, sanctions and deterrence would be less effective on the MEK than on the current government.

The voices supporting the MEK are ignoring the lessons of some of the most catastrophic U.S. foreign-policy mistakes in the past few decades, urging Washington to repeat history. Overhyping the threat of an adversary and blindly supporting groups opposing it led to the creation of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Supporting the MEK is neither in accordance with American values, nor beneficial to U.S. interests. Instead, the United States should pursue the diplomatic track, which is what most Americans favor. Diplomacy will not only promote U.S. interests in the Middle East, but also help empower Iranians to improve their lives by normalizing the Iranian political climate.

Ariane Tabatabai, The National Interest

Ariane Tabatabai is a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Follow her on Twitter @ArianeTabatabai.

August 25, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

MEK Muck-up

It may seem a bit late, but ex-San Diego mayor Bob Filner, who quit office following revelations of sexual harassment last summer, has just received a warning from California’s Fair Political Practices Commission. In a letter dated July 23, commission senior counsel Neal Bucknell calls out Filner for accepting what it calls an “unlawful gift” of travel from an Iranian-American group that provided an all-expenses-paid trip to Europe beginning on June 21 of last year.

“As Mayor of the City of San Diego, you accepted a gift from the Organization of Iranian-American Communities in the approximate amount of $9,839 in the form of a paid trip to Paris, France,” Bucknell notes. “In a letter to the FPPC dated January 20, 2014, you acknowledged that this was an over-the-limit gift, claiming that you ‘immediately wrote a personal check to [the Organization of Iranian-American Communities] for the total cost of the trip…’ However, it appears from your bank records that you did not make your payment until August 2013.” If the ex-mayor ever finds himself again in a position to be offered a similar deal, Bucknell warns he should be mindful that “the information in this case will be retained and may be used against you should an enforcement action become necessary due to newly discovered information and/or failure to comply with the Act in the future. Failure to comply with the provisions of the Act in the future may result in monetary penalties of up to $5,000 per violation.”

As first reported here back in November 2007, Filner, then a congressman, had long been accepting Parisian freebies from backers of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, also known as the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization, or MEK for short. That June, Filner and GOP congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado co-authored an op-ed piece in the editorial pages of the conservative Washington Times demanding that the Bush Administration stop labeling the group as a terrorist organization. Though Filner never returned calls seeking an explanation of his fervid MEK support, wealthy Iranian expatriates were often fingered as cash underwriters of the effort, which included the lobbying services of Republican ex-House majority leader Dick Armey. The Obama administration’s then–secretary of state Hillary Clinton finally took the group off the government’s terrorist list in September 2012.

By Matt Potter, Sandiego Reader

August 21, 2014 0 comments

USA

ISIS a pretext for US-sponsored regime change in Iraq

The ousting of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is part of a broader US plan for Iraq and the Middle East as a whole.

Against the backdrop of the war against the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), Washington has managed to kill two birds with one stone, as the saying goes. Not only has the US removed a political leader who had proven to be problematic due to his opposition to US military presence in Iraq, as well as his staunch support for Syria and President Assad, they have also created the conditions for the dismemberment of the Iraqi state.

The US and its allies are supporting de facto ‘independence’ for the Kurdish region in the north of the country, using the IS as a convenient pretext for openly arming and supporting Kurdish forces. Naturally, one should not look for altruism in Washington’s motives. Rather, this strategy is to benefit western oil companies with dollar signs in their eyes, licking their lips in anticipation of being able to deal directly with Kurdish President Barzani.

Additionally, Maliki’s ouster deprives Syrian President Assad of a key ally, thereby emboldening the IS and the other militants waging war against Syria. It provides further evidence, as if more were needed, that the political future is bleak for any Iraqi leader who dares to break from the script written for him by Washington. Perhaps most importantly, it allows the US and its allies to be the leading force politically in the war against the IS, an organization created by US policy and covert operations in the region.

In the sales and marketing industry, there is a term known as ‘solution selling’ whereby the salesperson either creates or exaggerates a problem, then presents his or her product as the invaluable solution. Indeed, this sort of sales strategy is precisely the approach Washington has taken in the region, and specifically in Iraq.

The IS disease

The IS has only very recently become an internationally recognized epidemic of militant Islamist extremism that must be eradicated at all costs. That international recognition came only when the organization began taking control of territory in Iraq, threatening Western oil and gas interests. While the IS was waging its brutal and vicious war against the Syrian people and government however, the IS was merely an afterthought, simply a group of extremists fighting the ‘brutal dictator’ Assad.

It seems then that the danger of ISIS and the necessity to eradicate it is directly correlative to US interests. Put another way, the IS is a useful tool in Syria and southern Lebanon where it creates chaos to the detriment of Assad and Hezbollah respectively, while in Iraq, the IS is dangerous where it threatens the US client regime in Kurdistan and Western oil interests. But of course, the detail consistently left out of most analysis of the IS problem is the simple fact that it is a creation of US intelligence and its covert war on Syria.

As early as 2011, the US CIA was involved in an elaborate and widespread program to covertly arm militant extremists in Syria in order to overthrow the government of President Assad. As the New York Times and other media outlets reported in 2012, the CIA was working with the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups along the Turkish-Syrian border to funnel weapons, communications equipment, and other military materiel to terrorist groups at war with Damascus. Despite vehement claims by Washington that only ‘moderate rebels’ were receiving such support, it is an open secret that much of those supplies ended up in the hands of then-ISIS, which already by 2012 was beginning to establish itself as a dominant fighting force in the Syrian war.

Perhaps it should then begin to make sense why, when ISIS launched its allegedly ‘surprise’ attack on the critical Iraqi city of Mosul in June, they were so well armed and equipped with everything from matching pickup trucks to anti-tank weapons, RPGs, and a host of other US-made equipment. Naturally, in the days and weeks following the attack, ISIS armed itself even further with confiscated Iraqi military equipment, also provided by the US. So it would be fair to say that, consciously or unconsciously, the United States helped to create and unleash the IS we know today.

No longer simply another militant organization among many, the IS has grown, thanks to US sponsorship, into the premier terrorist fighting force in the region, capable of engaging national militaries (Iraq, Syria) and other well-organized armed groups such as Hezbollah. In effect, the IS has become the enforcer of US foreign policy, a proxy force that furthers the US agenda without any significant US military presence needed. And yet, the IS is presented in the mainstream media as the greatest threat in the Middle East. Why so? Why were they no threat at all in Syria, but have become the great menace in Iraq?

Iraq, Maliki & Western interests

The US waged an aggressive war and occupation of Iraq for nearly a decade for the purposes of establishing a puppet government that would be amenable to Western economic and geopolitical interests. In many ways, that project failed as PM Maliki emerged as a strong, nationalistic leader who was unwilling to accede to the demands of the occupiers.

Washington wanted to permanently base US troops in the country, and Maliki rejected this proposal, demanding the permanent withdrawal of all US forces by the end of 2011. Maliki purged Iraq of the US-sponsored terrorist organization the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) which had waged a decades-long campaign of terrorism against Iran by closing down Camp Ashraf, the base from which the organization operated. Maliki also sacked two key figures in Iraq’s banking establishment, both of whom were close associates of neocon darling, and failed Iraqi presidential candidate, Ahmed Chalabi, thereby earning him the ire of Washington, which sought to maintain its grip on the purse-strings of Iraqi wealth.

But of course, these were by no means Maliki’s only ‘crimes’ in the eyes of the US. He also challenged Western oil companies looking to make massive profits off of Iraq’s vast energy deposits. Perhaps the best-known instance occurred in 2012 when ExxonMobil signed an oil exploration deal with the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region in northern Iraq. Maliki rejected the validity of the deal, noting that any oil contracts must be negotiated with the central government in Baghdad, rather than Barzani’s US-aligned government in Arbil. Maliki’s spokesman noted at the time that:

“Maliki views these deals as representing a very dangerous initiative that may lead to the outbreak of wars… [and] breaking up the unity of Iraq…Maliki is prepared to go to the highest levels for the sake of preserving the national wealth and the necessary transparency in investing the wealth of the Iraqis, especially oil… [He] sent a message to American President Barak [sic] Obama last week urging him to intervene to prevent ExxonMobil from going in this direction.”

It is no secret that Maliki’s strong-willed resistance to this deal, in addition to his refusal to pay ExxonMobil upwards of $50 million to improve production at one major southern oilfield led directly to the oil company pulling out of the lucrative West Qurna-1 project. Essentially then, Maliki took on the very powerful oil corporations (BP is no friend of Maliki either), seeking to get a better deal for Iraq. It would be safe to assume that the endemic corruption in Iraq would have made it easier for Maliki and his associates to enrich themselves by skimming off the top and/or receiving payouts from other oil interests. However, this is secondary to the primary ‘crime’ of challenging the hegemony of oil companies in Iraq.

And it is here that we see quite clearly why the US has been so keen on protecting their Kurdish puppet government, which really should be understood as a ruling clique centered on President Barzani and ex-President of Iraq Talabani, their families, and cronies. Since as early as 2011, Western oil companies sought to bypass Maliki and the legal government in Baghdad by making independent deals with the Kurds. Not only did they not want to pay the taxes that would be used to fund the recovery of Iraq from more than a decade of war, they attempted to play the Iraqi and Kurdish authorities off one another in a cynical ploy to more effectively and efficiently exploit the corruption and competition that exists in both.

Of course, it should be noted that the US, Israel, and other Western powers have long maintained very close ties with Barzani and the Kurds. A valid argument could be made that Kurdistan represents a forward base for US military power projection in Iraq and, particularly against Iran. Additionally, Israel has long maintained close ties with Kurdish authorities, both in terms of political support as well as covert intelligence and espionage-related activities. As Israeli scholar Ofra Bengio recently wrote in the pro-US, pro-Israeli publication the Middle East Quarterly:

“From the 1990s on, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) maintained relations with Kurdish officials since ‘pro-Israel Jewish activists viewed support for the Kurds, a small nation struggling for self-determination in a hostile Arab neighborhood, as helping Israel reach out to a natural ally.’ According to Morris Amitay, AIPAC’s executive director from 1974 to 1980, ‘Our Israeli friends always appreciated our friendship with the Kurds.’ Amitay’s son, Mike Amitay, also served as executive director of the Washington Kurdish Institute (WKI) from 1996 to 2005.”

Naturally, the Israeli connection is not strictly a benevolent one. Rather, Israeli intelligence and special forces have been deeply intertwined with their Kurdish counterparts as far back as 2003 and the commencement of the second US war in Iraq (though likely decades before that). As Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh noted in 2004:

“The Israelis have had long standing ties to the Talibani and Barzani clans [in] Kurdistan and there are many Kurdish Jews that emigrated to Israel and there are still a lot of connection. But at some time before the end of the year, and I’m not clear exactly when, certainly I would say a good six, eight months ago, Israel began to work with some trained Kurdish commandoes, ostensibly the idea was the Israelis — some of the Israeli elite commander units, counter-terror or terror units, depending on your point of view, began training — getting the Kurds up to speed.”

So, as should be self-evident, Washington’s decision to use military force against ISIS is a cynical ploy to protect intelligence assets, economic interests, and create a nominally independent Kurdish state which will become integrated into the US-Israeli sphere of influence in the region. In order to achieve these strategic objectives, first and foremost, Maliki had to be gotten rid of.

And so, regime change has once again come to Iraq, this time through the backdoor. By arming ISIS in Syria, the US unleashed a monster in Iraq, which it now uses as the pretext for fulfilling the long-standing goal of de facto partition of Iraq. With Kurdish independence robbing Iraq of vital oil resources, it is unlikely that any ruling coalition consisting of Sunnis and Shia will effectively govern the country, regardless of the individuals at its helm. And this is precisely the point. Sadly, in the interests of the West, Iraq will now endure yet another civil war and period of misery and despair. There will be no economic development, no political progress, no peace. Exactly what Washington wanted.

Eric Draitser, RT

(Eric Draitser is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City and the founder of StopImperialism.com.)

August 19, 2014 0 comments

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