There is a strange ritual in Washington whenever Iran is discussed. The language begins with democracy, women’s rights, non-proliferation and regional stability. It then somehow ends with sanctions, threats, aircraft carriers, television panels and, eventually, bombs. Since Washington withdrew from the 2015 nuclear agreement, coercion has been sold as concern. In May 2026, even as a U.S. peace proposal circulated, Trump was still threatening renewed attacks and demanding that Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The gap between vocabulary and policy is no longer hidden inside power. It is power.

This is the ethical collapse at the heart of America’s Iran policy. The ordinary Iranian is invoked as the object of compassion, then made to live under policies designed to squeeze the country until daily life becomes the battlefield. Sanctions tighten through banks, shipping, medicine, food prices, import costs and family savings.

Washington may insist that pressure is targeted, but the consequences do not remain inside a ministerial office. They travel through ports, exchange rates, hospitals and kitchens. A policy that claims to stand with Iranians while making the horizon narrower for them has lost the right to call itself humane.

War is not born only when a missile leaves a launcher. It is prepared in hearings, studio interviews, think-tank papers, donor meetings and headlines. The public is taught that diplomacy is naive, then told that force is inevitable. That pattern is visible again in the current Strait of Hormuz crisis. A waterway through which a significant share of global energy moved before the war has now become the stage for threats, sanctions and bargaining. Trump has even discussed whether to lift sanctions on Chinese firms buying Iranian oil, not as a moral question, but as a bargaining chip in a larger great-power transaction.

This is where lobbying and money matter. AIPAC describes its mission as helping pro-Israel candidates win and defeating critics of the U.S.-Israel relationship. That is legal politics, but legality is not moral neutrality. Outside groups, including AIPAC, poured roughly $70 million into six open congressional races in Illinois in 2026. The problem is not that voters hear arguments about Israel or Iran.

The problem is that a foreign-policy consensus can be purchased, disciplined and enforced until elected officials learn which red lines may end their careers. Iran policy is debated after it has already been financed.

Iran International and the Mujahedin-e Khalq reveal another layer of the same machine: the conversion of exile politics into a Western theatre of legitimacy. Iran International has long faced serious questions about opaque Saudi-linked funding, while the channel has denied government influence. The MEK was removed from the U.S. terrorism list in 2012 and later courted by former U.S. officials as a possible interlocutor. The deeper issue is not simply funding or history. It is substitution. Complex Iranian society, with all its classes, memories, losses and political instincts, is flattened into English-language soundbites and conference-stage slogans. The exile microphone becomes useful precisely when it confirms what Washington already wants to hear.

Human rights language should protect people from being instrumentalised. In the American debate on Iran, it too often does the opposite. Iranian women, students, workers and families are invoked as moral witnesses, but they are rarely allowed to define the remedy. Their suffering becomes portable: carried into congressional speeches, cable-news segments and donor dinners, then used to justify policies they did not choose. Solidarity would mean lowering the temperature, opening diplomatic space and refusing to turn a nation into a laboratory for coercion. What Washington offers instead is pity with a policy memo attached.

The domestic politics are also revealing. As the war and blockade pushed oil toward $109 a barrel, Americans were asked to absorb the cost as proof of resolve. Neutral ships became bargaining symbols in a conflict sold as humanitarian management. New sanctions on buyers of Iranian oil moved through the same logic: punish the channels of survival, then call the pain leverage. Even diplomacy is framed as pressure by other means, not as a recognition that regional security cannot be built over the heads of the people who live there.

A serious Iran policy would separate the Iranian people from the uses others make of their suffering. It would return diplomacy to the centre, recognise the limits of force, and stop treating sanctions as a painless alternative to war. Above all, it would admit that democracy cannot be delivered by networks that profit from fear, exile spectacle and regime-change fantasy.

America’s crisis is not only strategic. It is ethical. It has learned to speak the language of human rights while building the infrastructure of coercion. That is why war with Iran is manufactured first in Washington’s money, media and moral imagination.

Jenny Williams, Middle East Monitor

The post How Washington profits from Iran’s pain appeared first on Nejat Society.

For more than two decades, the United States has engaged in a series of military operations far from its borders. These interventions have generated mixed strategic outcomes, imposed significant fiscal burdens, and contributed to persistent instability in several regions. A recurring feature of this pattern is the elevation of partial, politicized, or externally sourced intelligence to the status of policy driver. If Washington intends to reduce the likelihood of open-ended commitments, it must reform how it evaluates threats, validates information, and calibrates the use of force.

How questionable intelligence becomes policy

In the early 2000s, the Iraq case demonstrated how quickly contestable claims can become conventional wisdom. Exiled opposition figures—most prominently Ahmed Chalabi—advanced a narrative of imminent danger centered on weapons of mass destruction. Those assertions informed high-level debate and public messaging. After the invasion, the Iraq Survey Group concluded there were no active stockpiles of WMD. The central premise that had justified war did not stand when tested. The policy correction arrived only after the commitment was made and costs were sunk.

A similar dynamic can surface when exile organizations steer attention in other theaters. In the case of Iran, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) publicized details of undeclared nuclear facilities, prompting inspections and diplomacy. The point is not to dismiss every disclosure; rather, it is to note that actors with regime-change incentives can be accurate on a fact while simultaneously advancing escalation. Outsourcing threat assessment to such actors increases the risk that selective truths are translated into strategic overreach.

Strategic, fiscal, and societal costs

Interventions justified on weak or disputed premises tend to produce ambiguous objectives and expanding mission sets. Strategically, they can entangle the United States in state-building tasks for which there is limited local legitimacy and insufficient allied burden-sharing. Ambiguity about end-states invites incremental escalations designed to “buy time,” even as political conditions deteriorate.

The fiscal effects are substantial. Expenditures associated with expeditionary operations do not end when combat ends; they continue through veteran care, equipment recapitalization, and interest on wartime borrowing. Opportunity costs compound the problem. Resources allocated to sustain distant missions are resources unavailable for modernizing infrastructure, strengthening public health, or improving educational outcomes.

There are societal costs that are less visible in budget documents. Repeated deployments impose strain on service members and families. Public confidence erodes when official justifications are later revised or withdrawn. Credibility—often cited as a reason to act—can be damaged by acting on claims that do not withstand scrutiny.

The role of media and oversight

A resilient policy process relies on institutional “speed bumps”: adversarial analysis within the intelligence community, rigorous congressional oversight, and journalistic scrutiny that distinguishes between assertion and evidence. When the policy timetable compresses and dissenting views are relegated to annexes, the probability of error rises.
Several reforms are straightforward. Intelligence products that inform potential uses of force should state confidence levels and key gaps up front. Red-team reviews should test core assumptions and explore disconfirming evidence. Where classified material shapes debate, unclassified summaries should be produced to permit informed public discussion without compromising sources and methods. In parallel, Congress should restore regular order on war powers and insist on clearly defined objectives, metrics, and reporting.

Case evidence: Iraq’s WMD narrative and Iran’s nuclear file

The Iraq WMD narrative moved from allegation to orthodoxy with unusual speed. Post-invasion findings did not validate the pre-war premise, yet the conflict—and its regional effects—could not simply be unwound. The lesson is not that intelligence is unnecessary; it is that confidence must be earned, not assumed.
In Iran’s nuclear file, disclosures regarding facilities at Natanz and Arak catalyzed inspections and negotiations. That sequence shows the value of verifiable facts and formal channels. It also demonstrates the danger of allowing externally driven narratives to leapfrog verification and dictate strategy. Facts may recommend engagement, monitoring, and diplomacy; they do not in themselves mandate coercion or promise favorable political outcomes. Intelligence should inform policy; it should not substitute for it.

A framework for restraint

Restraint is a strategic method, not an abdication. A practical framework would include four elements.

First, raise the evidentiary bar. Claims with the potential to move the United States closer to the use of force should meet heightened standards: multiple independent sources, explicit confidence statements, and adversarial testing. Assertions originating from actors with regime-change agendas should trigger automatic skepticism.

Second, prioritize diplomacy and burden-sharing. Where facts are disputed and escalation pathways are short, verification and dialogue should precede coercive steps. When coercive tools are used, they should be nested within clear political aims, realistic timelines, and allied participation.

Third, legislate limits and accountability. Any authorization for the use of military force should include sunsets, defined objectives, and regular reporting. If missions expand or conditions change materially, mandates should be revisited rather than allowed to drift.

Fourth, price the long term. Decision-makers should see the full lifecycle cost of operations—immediate outlays, long-term obligations, and financing costs—alongside domestic trade-offs. Transparent pricing improves choices and aligns policy with public consent.

Why this matters now

Large-scale occupations have receded, but the risk of miscalculation has not. Limited strikes, proxy engagements, special operations, and cyber activity each carry escalation potential. The information environment is faster and noisier than it was two decades ago, making it easier for motivated actors to inject claims that align with prevailing anxieties. Process discipline—asking what is known, what is assumed, and what the exit looks like—reduces the likelihood of avoidable error. It does not preclude necessary action; it ensures that action serves defined ends.

There is also a credibility dimension. Partners and adversaries alike track whether Washington binds the use of force to evidence and strategy or to momentum and rhetoric. A posture that privileges verification and diplomacy while maintaining capable deterrent power is more likely to produce durable outcomes than one that equates resolve with speed.

Conclusion

Strength is not the number of fronts on which the United States can fight simultaneously. It is the capacity to decide when force is necessary and when it is not. The experience of Iraq’s absent WMD and the externally driven narratives surrounding Iran’s nuclear program argue for a higher threshold before military options are placed on the table. By elevating evidentiary standards, empowering oversight, and privileging diplomacy and burden-sharing, Washington can protect American lives and resources while offering partners a steadier basis for cooperation. Endless wars are not inevitable. They are the foreseeable result of choices about evidence, incentives, and oversight—choices that can be improved.

Jenny Williams – Modern Diplomacy 
Jenny Williams is an independent American journalist and writer focusing on foreign policy, human rights and conflict. She aims to bring clarity to complex security debates and to foreground the domestic consequences of overseas engagement. Contact: jennywilliams9696[at]gmail.com | Twitter: @Jenny9Williams

The post From Misjudged Intelligence to Endless Wars: A Call to Reassess US Strategy appeared first on Nejat Society.

According to her own claim, Maryam Rajavi has been proposing the “third option” since 2006. She reiterated this claim last week in a hall she had rented at the European Parliament with some people in attendance.

What is the third option?

The third option, according to the MEK, is the only option for confronting the Iranian government. The other two options are what the MEK refers to as “appeasement and foreign military attack.” Maryam Rajavi says that appeasement –negotiations with the Islamic Republic– has only served to strengthen Tehran and develop its nuclear program. The MEK also claims that they do not support foreign military intervention. They say war is not the answer to the “Iran problem.”
According to Maryam Rajavi, the MEK’s third option involves “democratic” change by Iranian “people” and the “resistance”. The term “resistance” refers to the MEK and its political front, National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).
Presenting the third option confronts Maryam Rajavi with at least one fundamental question: How can the “Iranian Resistance” guarantee that this option is democratic?

MEK Seeking Legitimacy

The MEK has never been seen as the legitimate resistance of the Iranian people. This is because they lack credibility and trust in the eyes of Iranians. The contradictions in their strategies and actions contribute to their discrediting, and as a result, they not only lose their legitimacy but also appear hypocritical. Therefore, it is difficult for the MEK to gain the support of Iranians and the international community and to convince them of the effectiveness of their ideas.
The little support the MEK receives among Western politicians seems to be based on the concept of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” The reality is that they provide the “right” answers for politicians seeking to justify their radical, violent policy against Tehran.

The MEK’s violent past and terrorist attacks undermine their claim of legitimacy based on their past struggles, and their reluctance to respond to criticism exacerbates this. They have never responded to criticisms for their collaboration with Saddam Hussein and killing their own compatriots in terrorist attacks. The MEK leaders are generally seen as short-sighted and despotic.

Legitimacy or charisma of the Rajavis?

Maryam’s charisma, especially in the international community, is effective to a certain extent. She presents herself as a representative of peace, freedom, and democracy. An appearance that would not seem typical for the leader of a terrorist group. However, the special and unattainable position that both she and Massoud have in the organization completely undermines their claim to be democratically elected, and thus reinforces the fact that the MEK is a cult of personality.
Although the MEK’s political institutions have some international momentum, they lack credibility. The so-called National Council of Resistance was supposed to be run on democratic principles, but the leadership—Maryam Rajavi as the president of the council—has far more power than all the council members. The structure of the council is absolutely authoritarian.
The MEK cannot prove its democratic intentions simply by declaring them through words. They must prove that the principles they claim to uphold apply to them as well, but to date they have failed to prove this.

The obvious failure of the third option

The MEK ideology has failed to gain popular support. Their radical actions, both at the organizational and external relations levels, prevent political reform, and as a result, they lose potential supporters rather than reaching a wider audience.
Their totalitarianism, which bases their arguments and actions on black and white, completely right or completely wrong, completely good or completely bad, contributes to their political isolation.
The contradictions in the MEK’s words and actions have led to their failure to gain legitimacy. They continue to struggle for recognition. Despite more than forty years of talking about the imminent overthrow of the Iranian government, their future remains uncertain and complex.

The Problem with the third option

The third option is problematic. It is presented as an answer to the “Iran problem,” but it raises more questions than it answers. The third option promises a lot, but it is difficult to understand how to implement it and how to reconcile it with reality.
Contrary to the severe and complex problems that the MEK claims Iran is facing, their solution is oversimplified and seems impossible to achieve. They give black and white ultimatums. They are caught up in good or bad, right or wrong thinking. In the real world, nothing is “either or.” The world has many shades of gray.
When Maryam Rajavi promises to realize her dream for a future Iran through third option, she is denying reality. The “Iranian resistance” is not real. The MEK’s legitimacy in the Iranian public is not real. The Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) has failed to gain legitimacy, and consequently the third option proposed by Maryam Rajavi is meaningless.

Mazda Parsi

The post On Maryam Rajavi’s Welcome to the Ceasefire and Reiteration of the Third Option appeared first on Nejat Society.

The opposition groups, including the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/ MEKL/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) not only support the sanctions but also, they try to push for the military option against Iran. Regarding the inability of the United States and its allies to succeed in the military campaign, the group has to count on sanctions more than ever.

As during the eight years of Iran-Iraq war, the MEK was the spying arm of the Ba’ath Party and Saddam Hussein to gather intelligence on Iranian interests, in the present economic war against Iran, MEK has devoted a considerable part of its power to intensifying economic shocks on Iranian. As Saddam’s private army the MEK launched cross border operations against its country fellow men and provided Iraqi army with intelligence on Iranian fronts and cities, today the group makes efforts to exacerbate the effects of sanctions and pressures on Iranian nation.

The MEK’s well-paid lobbying campaigns work closely with certain American politicians on the issue of sanctions to help boost the effects of sanctions by the Americans. Through espionage in neighboring countries of Iran, and especially those with good relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran, they also try to discover and provide the United States with methods the Islamic Republic use to circumvent the sanctions.

Spying on governmental, semi-governmental and private-economic institutions and organizations in Iran, as well as attempts to influence Iran’s economic networks with other countries, are the actions that MEK agents have taken to discover Iranian systems to circumvent sanctions. Also, MEK seeks to find the areas in which the Iranian government has had some progress in domestic production that directly eliminated the effects of sanctions.
Foreign companies under the contract of the Islamic Republic of Iran are other targets of MEK operatives to discover Iran’s business relations with other countries, which seek to explore possible ways to circumvent the sanctions. The agents of the MKO in this area are generally seeking intelligence on Iranian parties by contacting law offices, shipping companies, insurance companies and brokers.

According to some sources, MEK is paid by the intelligence services of the US and Israeli governments to gather intelligence on trade routes between Iran and other countries and to discover possible ways to circumvent the sanctions.
MEK focuses on calculating the results and effects of sanctions on Iranian society. To gain information on such issues, they directly use telephone and superficial information on various sectors of the Iranian society, which is not necessarily economic! Some of this information is accessible in the cyberspace, but for others, they need to spy under the coverage of surveying institutions from ordinary people. The classified information is sold to the enemies of the Iranian nation.

These spywares are intended to determine how much sanctions are being imposed on the Iranian people and how much tolerance the people can bear on this process.
Besides, the propaganda machine of MEK in the cyberspace and social networks works hard to persuade the audience inside the country to protest against the economic pressure caused by sanctions. Elements of MEK in social networks try to introduce sanctions as a result of the behaviors of the Iranian system, and thus make people’s protests as a result of economic pressures. They fabricate fake news and fake analysis on economic issues and the impact of political issues on the economic field. They produce a variety of contents including clips, photographs and articles to stimulate social networking users.

In total, the performance of MEK is aimed to exacerbate the effects of sanctions on the Iranian people. This is in fact a source of income for the group. As noted at the beginning of this article, the American economic wars against the Iranian nation have created a space, for the MEK traitors, similar to Saddam Hussein’s invasion on Iran.

The post MEK’s efforts for more sanctions against Iranians appeared first on Nejat Society.

By providing information about that specific matter, they try to show themselves as a member of the very group and then they play the role of a leading protester. In case of any physical protest, there are always some deceived individuals paid or manipulated by the MEK trolls who take part as an enthusiastic protester.

This is not a new tactic for MEK, in the early years after the 1979 revolution in Iran, MEK activists used to work hard to influence students and workers. Each of these people was tasked with missionary roles as the leader of a protest and ultimately led the group to the streets, strikes, and clashes.

It is worth to note that after the onset of MEK’s terror acts in the 1980s, these same individuals were armed with weapons. They killed a large number of students, workers and normal citizens in the streets. In fact, the assassinations were kind of revenge against the lack of public’s company for MEK agents.

The post MEK troll farms in cyberspaces appeared first on Nejat Society.

Based on the Geneva Convention relative to the “Treatment of Prisoners of War” no detaining power is allowed to use POWs for political or military purposes.
Though the Mujahedin-e Khalq cult leaders committed this crime against several prisoners and violated the rules of the convention, why haven’t been prosecuted so far?!

The post Prosecute MEK leaders for killing my brother appeared first on Nejat Society.

Their argument was that the fate of the Islamic Republic was first of all linked to the outcome of Iran-Iraq war and secondly, the other superpowers do not want Iran to win in the war, and thus Iraq will not lose the battle. Therefore, Rajavi decided to formally sit next to Saddam Hussein and to link the whole entity of his organization to the Iraqi Ba’ath regime.

Rajavi arrived in Baghdad from Paris to sign treaties with Tariq Aziz, the then Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq, on June 7, 1986. As a result, the strategy of urban guerrilla warfare turned into the strategy of the liberation army.

Rajavi’s analysis included the followings:
1. Regional warfare is not stable, its activity and inactivity are relative and sporadic
2. Urban guerrilla warfare with the goal of killing the regime’s agents, although it is linked to the regional warfare in a progressive phase, takes a lot of time and prompts the enemy’s full cover so it is futile in short-term. When someone kills an agent of the Iranian revolutionary guard, he believes that the system is still stable. In this case, rapid and fast overthrow do not work.

3. The Liberation War is a completely new experience in the contemporary history of the world and it’s with more subtle and more perfect than any military strategy. With the aim of breaking spells in the short run, and by resorting to the golden principle of maximum invasion, total warfare and absolute mobility, it manifests itself in revolutionary warfare.

Rajavi’s ostensible analysis survived the collapse of Saddam Hussein, and the eventual expulsion of the MEK from Iraq, and ultimately, its relocation in Tirana in Albania. It is still considered as the main strategy of the group.
For years, however, there has been no war of this kind, but the priority for the MEK leaders is to launch a new war against Iran. They spend millions of dollars in their lobbies in the US government to obstruct any possible negotiations between Iran and the US.
The question is that, exactly what kind group is the MEK which is ready to make all its efforts to rebuild a new war with Iran? The priority of military invasion to Iran is so crucial for the MEK that they are ready to admit the disgrace of their wish against the Iranian nation!

Stay in war conditions
The two main dimensions of this important issue are the maintenance of forces within the organization and the use of the group as a proxy force against the Islamic Republic of Iran for Western government like US and Israel. More precisely, the leaders of the MEK can only promise to their victory to their members in a direct conflict with Iran after 40 years of frustration and failure. On the other hand, the experience of the group in Saddam’s war against Iran will be appreciable inside the group, only during the repetition of the war on Iran.

Subversion only with war
Today, the political estimates of the world show that in the current stability and security of Iran there is no sign of the collapse. Iran is one of the most powerful countries in the region and it can even impose its will on the region and even the world – an incident that has actually occurred.
This estimate for Iran is so clear that MEK can understand even with all that mistaken analysis and strategies of Massoud Rajavi, they have to admit that their 40 years of their work will bear no fruit. So the only option left for them to collapse the Islamic Republic is a military warfare. Aside from the fact that over the past decade no power in the world has been willing to launch a war on Iran because of its risks, but the MEK leaders still hope that the conditions will reach a stage where this option will be implemented.

Living in an insecure environment
A survey on 40 years of MEK’s activities and possible achievements show that at the peak of its power and capabilities due to the lack of the least popular base, the group has never been a source of social movements in Iran, and has only been able to move into insecure slots. In fact, a stable and secure Iran risks the existence of the group.

Stability and progress of Iran mean death to the MEK, so they struggle to obscure the media atmosphere in the absence of military options against Iran. This psychological act is not just limited to the media of the group, the elements of the group try to induce a military strike against Iran in an extreme manner in the various media spaces and social networks in which they are active.

The arrival of the Lincoln Aircraft Carrier to the Persian Gulf or the dispatch of an American bomber into the region are examples of news headlines in the MEK-run media.
The MEK makes efforts to insecure the mental space of the Iranian society. This way, they provide justification for members who are no longer in control of the group leaders to stay in Camp Ashraf 3 in Albania.

The post The advantages of war for Massoud Rajavi appeared first on Nejat Society.

The situation is serious because the deceased was practically the head of the Iranian nuclear program, ie the equivalent of Openheimer in the Manhattan Project, or Igor Kurcatov for the Soviets or Zholjo Kyrisw for the French. Iran is not North Korea, where when Kim says that America is the devil, tens of millions of North Koreans in the choir say that America is the devil, but when this Kim says that America is like the tens of millions of North Korean “robots” in the choir, it means America is an angel.

Iran has a public opinion! It is such a public opinion that will hold the Iranian security forces accountable for this failure. The only way to avoid paying the bill of failure is for Iran (Supreme Leader Khamenei even promised strong revenge) to retaliate sufficiently for such a flagrant, public and insulting hit to national security. I emphasize that Iran is a country that takes national security extremely seriously.

Judging by open sources, the killing was carried out by Israel’s Mossad using at least preliminary US CIA intelligence. The Israelis have maintained a “No Comment” stance on the killing, while the Americans have at least formally denied involvement in the killing. More and more information is being published in various media about the involvement of the MEK (Mojahedin-e Khalq) in this murder.

One of the many articles accusing the MEK of being accomplice in Dr Mohsen Fakhrizadeh’s death is also in this link: https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/new-details-revealed-about-iranian-nuclear-scientists-relationship-with-syria-hezbollah-hamas-report/. There are several dozen such articles, mainly in the minor media, accusing the MEK of such murders.

The geopolitical clash between Iran (Russia + China and possibly + Turkey) against Israel (US + Saudi Arabia + Bahrain + UAE) is a titanic clash. My homeland Albania is neither a world nor even a regional power. Albania is a small and relatively poor country, which even in the Balkans is a lightweight. To enter into a conflict of titans with a geopolitical and military weight like Albania (when neither side threatens the borders) is madness; at least an extreme megalomania! Unfortunately, my Homeland by sheltering the MEK (Camp Ashraf 3 in Manez) has become part of such a possible global clash between the two aforementioned camps.

When they came to Albania, the MEK were officially given refuge for humanitarian reasons as endangered persons. Outgoing Prime Minister Berisha, who received the first 200-300 MEK in Albania, officially promised in a conversation with the new Iranian ambassador to Albania, that these people (fewer than 200 MEK) would not be a threat to anyone. The subtext was clear that the MEK in Albania would simply take refuge, live, but would not carry out any political activity, not to mention online propaganda activities or even military sabotage! During the following years, when the Prime Minister of Albania was Edwin Rama, the MEK moved from the outskirts of Tirana (in rented premises) to Manez, where they set up a complex surrounded by a fence (a gated compound) guarded by armed guards from a private company.

The MEK spread its ‘metastases’ in Albanian politics, in the security services and to some extent in the Albanian judiciary more or less like the cancer cells which attack the healthy cells of the human body. Due to the coverage of prestigious international media, Camp Ashraf 3 in Manez immediately turned into an anti-advertisement for Albanian tourism. Then with the conversion of senior police officers up to the rank of director general, senior officials of the Albanian Secret Service (SHISH), mayors, MPs, deputy ministers and ministers (stooges) into the cell of a former terrorist (apolitical and stateless) like Maryam Rajavi, Camp Ashraf 3 became a real and present threat to the national security of my Homeland.

The MEK with virulent online anti-Iran propaganda, recruiting Albanians (mostly teenagers), establishing working contacts with Wahhabi individuals (involved in recruiting Albanians to send as cannon fodder to the Jabat al Nusra Front in Syria), in conjunction with every enemy of Iran, turned Albania into a “red rag” in front of the horns of the Iranian “bull”. Segments of the Albanian government and politics, turning into servile charlatans for the former terrorist Rajavi, went so far as to carry out almost every one of her orders, from making MEK dark operations possible through Rinas, the only civilian airport in Albania, to expelling the employees of the Iranian Embassy in Tirana as many times as Rajavi likes!

In conditions where there is reasonable suspicion and indications are that the murder of Dr Fakhrizadeh involves not just the finger, but also the hand of the MEK (so it is practically proven that the MEK has not given up terrorism such as the killing of high-profile characters), it remains to be seen how Iran will retaliate for this assassination. I reiterate that Iran is a country that takes its national security extremely seriously, quite differently from my poor homeland, Albania.

As the good Christian that I am, today I will go to the Church of St. Asti in Durres and light a candle and pray to my Lord Jesus Christ to protect the lives and health of Albanians, the property, goods and the blood of Albanians from any possible revenge of Iran. I pray to God that Albanians and their property should pay zero for the inferiority complex (viz the MEK) of the collaborationist elements in Albanian politics and the administration.

Albanians should not have to worry too much about paying the bills for a few dozen scum, who sit from morning to night licking the boots of a bloodthirsty former terrorist, who does not sit comfortably on her ass, but still because of the “liberation” of the people, wants to repaint her hands with blood!

I emphasize that the European Union, where we want to integrate, officially condemned the assassination of Dr Fakhrizadeh. Peter Santo, head of the Foreign Affairs Division (EU foreign ministry), on behalf of the EU, publicly denounced the act of such an assassination of a prominent scientist. Albanians have to choose between the official EU position and the bloody hands of Maryam Rajavi. I have chosen the EU for myself. I believe I have made the right choice!

Oh God, protect the lives of Albanians as well as their money, goods and property!

Gjergji Thanasi, Translated by Iran Interlink

The post When Iranians and Israelis Quarrel appeared first on Nejat Society.

There is at least one more foreign policy opinion writer from the Mujahideen-eKhalq (MEK) whose existence is dubious, based on a study by a social media analyst and statements from a defector from the group. Amir Basiri, who contributed to Forbes 9 times, the Washington Examiner 52 times, OpenDemocracy, Algemeiner, and The Hill once also appears to be a fabrication.

The MEK is an Iranian exile group for which John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani, and other foreign policy luminaries have given paid speeches. Dems like Joe Lieberman and Howard Dean have also spoken on their behalf. But the group has American blood on its hands, has been accused of practicing forced sterilization, and their belief system has been described as a mixture of Marxism and Islamism. Its supporters claim they, and their front group the National Council of Resistance of Iran, are a sort of government-in-exile, despite nearly nonexistent support for the group within Iran. They also have waged a substantial disinformation campaign in the Western press, in particular targeting conservative media.

“Amir Basiri and Heshmat Alavi are two fake accounts,” Hassan Heyrani, an MEK defector told TAC.

“At Camp Liberty, near the BIAP airport in Iraq, I was in the political unit of the organization with some of the persons who grew up in America and Canada. We worked as a team to write the articles analyzing the Iranian regime. The MEK put them in The Washington Post and all the newspapers in Western countries.”

Basiri’s op-eds focus on the need for regime change in Iran which he claimed is “within reach.” The thrust of Basiri’s writing – last placed at the Examiner in October of 2018 – is to encourage American readers to take an interest and sympathize with the plight of Iranian protesters and dissidents. Basiri consistently argued against the Iran nuclear deal, downplayed terrorism against Iran, called for tougher sanctions as a method of regime change and highlighted the necessity of Trump working with the Iranian opposition.

“We are currently looking into the matter, so I won’t comment on this specific byline,” Philip Klein, Executive Editor and Commentary Editor of the Washington Examiner told TAC. “But I will say that we have recently instituted more rigorous vetting of outside contributors, including but not limited to asking for photo identification if necessary. We are especially on guard when it comes to unsolicited foreign policy commentary.”

A request for comment from OpenDemocracy, a site greatly concerned about disinformation campaigns, has not been returned as of press time. Basiri’s articles on Forbes are no longer online. (Update: Julian Richards, managing editor of OpenDemocracy, writes, “This article was submitted to us through our normal process and our editor corresponded with Amir Basiri about the text. In light of the allegations you have made, we have removed the article text from our site for the time being and I have written to the email address that Amir Basiri used to ask for confirmation of his identity.”)

The list of MEK disinformation tactics also includes fake online since-deleted sites such as PersiaNow and ArabEye and questionable sites such as Iran Focus whose domain was formerly registered under the name of an NCRI spokesperson and is now anonymously held.

MEK’s recent influence campaign on Facebook spearheaded by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) was recently reported on last year by Lachlan Markey at the Daily Beast. Markey explained how NCRI lobbyist Soheila Aligholi Mayelzadeh has helped place paid ads on Facebook reaching between 500,000 to 1.4 million users as part of the campaign to sway US public opinion in favor of MEK and intervention in Iran.

The list of outright fakes recently in the realm of foreign policy analysis is significant: there is the apparent Emirati fabrication Raphael Badani to MEK sock puppet Alavi, first revealed by The Intercept, to deepfake non-existent anti-Palestinian activist Oliver Taylor, whose work was placed at highly-respected publications in the United States and Israel.

As Adam Rawnsley wrote for the Daily Beast, “Badani is part of a network of at least 19 fake personas that has spent the past year placing more than 90 opinion pieces in 46 different publications. The articles heaped praise on the United Arab Emirates and advocated for a tougher approach to Qatar, Turkey, Iran and its proxy groups in Iraq and Lebanon.”

Geoff Golberg is the founder of Social Forensics, which tracks and monitors online social media networks and disinformation campaigns. Golberg’s run-in and exposure of various pro-MEK personas, sock puppets and boosters came just prior to his Twitter suspension in July of 2019, the official reason for which was calling an account he believed to be fake and interfering in Canada’s elections a “moron.”

“Rather than suspending accounts that blatantly violate Twitter Rules, Dorsey instead opted to silence my voice. Specific to Iranian-focused platform manipulation, along with The Intercept, I helped out ‘Heshmat Alavi’ as a sockpuppet propaganda operation run by the MEK. Remarkably, despite initially suspending the fake account, ‘Heshmat Alavi’ has been reinstated by Twitter and continues to disseminate propaganda,” Golberg said, adding that Basiri – whose account is currently suspended by Twitter – is another fake persona which has been on his radar for some time. He produced the following graphic demonstrating the interconnectedness of the two accounts:

Golberg said he knows little of geopolitics or political aspects and was led to investigate sock puppet accounts fomenting war with Iran because he noticed many oddities about their networks, followers and tweeting patterns. His further research and analysis led him down a rabbit hole of connections and resulted in death threats, mass reporting of his account and accusations that he sympathized with the Ayatollah’s regime.
Rather than the hype over Russian bots, the real danger on platforms like Twitter is fake accounts and troll farm accounts which amplify hashtags, spread lies and bolster the desired propaganda of their paymaster, Golberg says.

“Despite media coverage that tends to focus on ‘bots,’ which simply means fully-automated accounts, Twitter’s much larger problem is actually fake accounts. There are more than 100K fake accounts that exist solely to create the illusion of widespread sentiment that the US should go to war with Iran,” Golberg told TAC, adding, “Take ‘Sheldon,’ @patrick_jane77, for example, an account that reflects having nearly 120K Followers. Very few of the account’s Followers are authentic accounts, yet given Twitter refuses to enforce their own rules, it is easy to mistake “Sheldon” for being a popular account. Twitter’s entire platform is propped up by misleading or inflated Followers/Following counts. Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, has built a house of cards and continues to commit ad fraud at a massive scale.”

MEK members run online information operations from France, Albania: Murtaza Hussain

Golberg sued Twitter earlier this year, alleging that the platform engaged in “deceptive practices” and hasn’t stood by its own terms of service.

Accusations from MEK supporter Hanif Jazayeri that The American Conservative itself and senior editor Daniel Larison act as a mouthpiece for the mullahs are part of a broader campaign aimed at maligning the reputation and integrity of anyone who opposes regime change in Iran. Tweets calling for investigations of TAC also came from noted MEK sock puppet Alavi, MEK spokesman Shahin Gobadi and NCRI’s Ali Safavi.
A barrage of accounts retweeted Jazayeri’s accusations, many with only a few followers and which solely tweet boosting the MEK and supporting regime change in Iran.

It’s worth noting that Heshmat Alavi was following Amir Basiri prior to his suspension, as were others closely connected to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies such as Jerusalem Post Iran hawk Seth Frantzman, @sfrantzman, Jazayeri and a number of other pro-MEK shills. It is a hall of mirrors amplifying the case for war with Iran, and the ad money from NCRI and pro-MEK accounts seems to have dampened Twitter’s desire to crack down. A request for comment from Twitter was not returned as of press time.

As a matter of journalistic ethics any organization engaging in systematic dishonesty like this has provided a very good reason to blacklist them. Failing to do so will encourage other foreign interests to do the same in the future, so conservative publishers should decline all content and interviews from the MEK in the future. This is not a matter of foreign policy differences: if you wish to see the U.S. pursue regime change in Iran, the MEK does not help make that case. Any publishers or think tanks who are aware of this dishonesty and still treat them like a legitimate opposition group should be considered part of a campaign not wholly different from the last time we were lied into a Mideast war.

By Paul Brian and Arthur Bloom

Arthur Bloom is the managing editor of TAC.

Paul Brian is a freelance journalist. He has reported for the BBC, Reuters, and Foreign Policy, and contributed to The Week, The Federalist, and others. You can follow him on Twitter @paulrbrian or visit his website www.paulrbrian.com.

The post The danger of MEK troll farm bolstering the propaganda of their paymaster appeared first on Nejat Society.

On September 25, during the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI)—a pro-Israel, anti-Iran lobby group—held a “summit” in New York that was attended by, among others, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer, and Sigal Mandelker, the outgoing Under Secretary of Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, as well as diplomats from Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. As usual, tough rhetoric was uttered by all the speakers, and threats were made.

The day before the summit, another meeting was held that had allegedly been organized by Mark Wallace, the CEO of UANI, although it is widely believed that UANI was behind the meeting. The participants in the meeting were supposedly representatives of various Iranian opposition groups in exile, as well as ethnic secessionist groups. The meeting was, however, dominated by the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), a group that until 2011 was listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization and is despised by all Iranians due to its alliance with the regime of Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War and other acts viewed by virtually all Iranians as treason. Also present were the National Council of Resistance of Iran, MEK’s political arm, and the Organization of Iranian American Communities, another MEK front group. A fourth group, the U.S. Foundation for Liberty and Human Rights, appears to be linked with MEK, as the content of its website uses the same rhetoric as the MEK. Representatives of six ethnic groups also attended the meeting, none of which has any significant support inside Iran as best one can tell.

One of the groups participating in the gathering was the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz (ASMLA). Ahwaz, or Ahvaz, is the provincial capital of Khuzestan, the oil-rich province in southwestern Iran near the border with Iraq. ASMLA claims to represent the minority Iranian Arabs in Khuzestan who are supposedly suppressed by Tehran. The group, founded in 1999, has carried out several terrorist attacks in Iran over the past fifteen years, including in January 2006, in May 2015, in June 2016, in January 2017, and in October 2018.

“This is the first time in history, since the Iranian revolution in 1978 and 1979, that such a broad cross-section of the leaders and delegates from Iranian dissident … groups have gathered in a convention for Iran’s future.” Wallace boasted despite the fact that those same “leaders” are either little known or are virtually universally despised in Iran.

This is not the first time that the U.S. far right has tried to exploit Iran’s diverse ethnic population in order to stir trouble in the country and advance its anti-Iran agenda. In fact, this practice has a long history that goes back to practically the 1979 revolution and the hostage crisis of 1979-1981. Since April 1980, when Washington cut diplomatic relations with Iran, successive U.S. administrations and the U.S. far right have seen exploiting ethnic grievances in Iran as a key route toward destabilizing the country.

The Clinton administration imposed a package of sanctions against Iran in 1996 that the Bush administration renewed in 2001 and again, indefinitely, in 2006. After preventing the European trio of Britain, France, and Germany from reaching an agreement with Iran over its nuclear program in summer of 2005, the Bush administration launched its efforts to exploit Iran’s ethnic minorities and the dissident groups that supposedly represent them, in order to either break up Iran into multiple weak states, or, at the very least, to stir up trouble and destabilize the country.

That strategy has a long history in the Middle East. Washington, for example—acting at the behest of the Shah of Iran—backed a Kurdish insurgency in Iraq until 1975. It has been best exemplified in the ways in which Israel has applied it to some of its Arab neighbors. In February 1982, three months before Israel invaded Lebanon in support of the Christian Falange militia, the Likud strategist Oded Yinon published an article [in Hebrew, whose translation was published by Israel Shahak, the Israeli academic and civil-rights advocate] in which he called on Israel’s leadership to adopt a policy of fragmenting the Arab world into a mosaic of ethnic and confessional groupings. “Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation would prove to be advantageous to Israel,” he argued, urging that Israel must reconfigure its geo-political environment through the Balkanization of the surrounding Arab states into smaller and weaker states.

Building on Yinon’s analysis ten years later, neoconservative historian Bernard Lewis—who would become a key informal adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney in the run-up and immediate aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq—wrote in an essay in the journal Foreign Affairs:

Another possibility, which could even be precipitated by [Islamic] fundamentalism, is what as of late has become fashionable to call ‘Lebanonization.’ Most of the states of the Middle East – Egypt is an obvious exception – are of recent and artificial construction and are vulnerable to such a process. If the central power is sufficiently weakened, there is no real civil society to hold the polity together, no real sense of common national identity or overriding allegiance to the nation-state. The state then disintegrates – as happened in Lebanon – into a chaos of squabbling, feuding, fighting sects, tribes, regions and parties. If things go badly and central governments falter and collapse, the same could happen, not only in the countries of the existing Middle East, but also in the newly independent Soviet republics…

In their infamous “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” the policy document written in 1996 for Benjamin Netanyahu, the then-newly elected Prime Minister of Israel, Richard Perle et al. suggested that Israel should “work closely with Turkey and Jordan to contain, destabilize, and roll-back some of its most dangerous threats [meaning Iran and Iraq].” David Wurmser, one of the authors of the same report who served on Cheney’s national security staff from 2003 to 2007, went further, writing in a lengthier report that Syria and Iraq could easily fragment into separate ethno-sectarian segments, “a development that would enhance the security of Israel and the West.”

These ideas were clearly picked up by the Bush administration and later applied to Iran. “In the past six months, Israel and the United States have also been working together in support of a Kurdish resistance group known as the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan [known as PJAK or PEJAK],” Seymour Hersh reported in November 2006. “The group has been conducting clandestine cross-border forays into Iran, I was told by a government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon civilian leadership, as `part of an effort to explore alternative means of applying pressure on Iran.’”

In February 2007, the Telegraph of London reported that:

CIA officials are understood to be helping opposition militias among the numerous ethnic minority groups clustered in Iran’s border regions. In the past year there has been a wave of unrest in ethnic minority border areas of Iran, with bombing and assassination campaigns against soldiers and government officials… Funding for their separatist causes comes directly from the CIA’s classified budget but is now ‘no great secret,’ according to one former high-ranking CIA official in Washington.

In the same month, Cheney himself traveled to Pakistan and met with its then-president, General Pervez Musharraf. Pakistani government sources said at the time that the secret campaign against Iran by Jundullah was on the agenda when the two met. Jundallah was a Baluch terrorist group that for years staged terrorist attacks in Iran from its bases in Pakistan. In an interview later that month, Cheney referred to the Jundallah terrorists as “guerrillas” in an apparent effort to lend them legitimacy.

In April 2007, ABC News reported that, according to Pakistani and U.S. intelligence officials, Jundallah had been secretly encouraged and advised by U.S. officials since 2005.

In an interview with National Public Radio in June 2008, Hersh explained how the Bush Administration’s policy of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” led it to support Jundallah and MEK. The next month, Hersh quoted Robert Baer, a former CIA clandestine officer who had worked for nearly two decades in South Asia and the Middle East, as saying, “The Baluchis [a small ethnic minority group residing in Iran’s and Pakistan’s provinces of Baluchistan] are Sunni fundamentalists who hate the regime in Tehran, but you can also describe them as Al Qaeda. These are guys who cut off the heads of nonbelievers—in this case, it’s Shiite Iranians. The irony is that we’re once again working with Sunni fundamentalists, just as we did in Afghanistan in the nineteen-eighties.” Baer repeated those assertions in the fall of 2008 at a symposium co-organized by this author on U.S.-Iran relations at the University of Southern California.

In the same article, Hersh also stated that the MEK received arms and intelligence, directly or indirectly, from the U.S., and that PJAK, “which has also been reported to be covertly supported by the United States,” operated against Iran from bases in northern Iraq for at least three years. PJAK used Iraqi Kurdistan as its base to carry out multiple raids into Iran that killed many civilians, as well as soldiers and policemen. At the time, the Bush administration denied helping PJAK, despite the fact that the group’s chief, Rahman Haj-Ahmadi, had traveled to Washington around the same time, reportedly to gain financial and military support for his militia. In 2009, the Obama administration declared PJAK a terrorist organization.

PJAK is still active in the border area between Iran, Turkey, and Iraq. When in December of 2017 there were scattered demonstrations in several Iranian cities against the terrible state of the Iranian economy, PJAK issued a statement asking people to rise up. It carried out terrorist attacks inside Iran on 27 July 2019 that killed and injured scores of people.

In December 2009, Selig Harrison reported in the New York Times that the Bush administration had provided support to Jundallah, as well some Kurdish groups operating in western Iran. According to his report, that assistance was sent through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, while the Kurdish groups received their support through Israel’s Mossad.

The Bush administration was not the only one that was trying to exploit the dissatisfaction of some of Iran’s ethnic groups to destabilize the country. Israel and Saudi Arabia were also participants. In January 2012, Mark Perry reported how Mossad agents, using U.S. passports and posing as CIA agents, tried to recruit members of Jundallah to fight their covert war against Iran.

Jundallah’s leader, Abdolmajid Rigi, was captured by Iran’s security forces and executed in June 2010. The Obama administration put Jundallah on the terrorist list in November 2010. The group then split into Pakistani and Iranian branches. The former attacks Shiites in Pakistan, while the Iranian branch, known as Jaish ul-Adl, continues to carry out terrorist attacks and kidnappings in Sistan and Baluchistan province in southeastern Iran, near the border with Pakistan. It is widely believed in Iran that Jaish ul-Adl is supported by Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.

The Kurds and Baluchis are not the only ethnic groups that the Bush administration and its allies tried to exploit. In a July 2008 article, Hersh also mentioned possible U.S. support for separatists in Khuzestan province. As already pointed out, over the past 15 years, Iranian-Arab separatists have carried out bombing and terrorist attacks in Khuzestan, the latest of which took place in October 2018, when they attacked during a military parade. An armed group, Ahvaziya, claimed responsibility for the attacks. Ahvaziya is part of the ASMLA group that participated in the Washington meeting of Iranian separatist groups.

Iran has accused Saudi Arabia of funding, arming and training the group. After the attacks, Abdulkhalegh Abdulla, a former adviser to the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, wrote in a tweet that the attack was not terrorism because it was against Iran’s military, and that the attacks were part of what Mohammad bin Salman, the crown prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, had threatened in May 2017, namely, that Saudi Arabia is “not waiting until there becomes a battle in Saudi Arabia,” and so it “will work so that it becomes a battle for them in Iran.” His tweet created deep anger in Iran.

As the author recently reported, the Trump administration has decided to continue what the Bush administration began. Before he was appointed as Trump’s national security adviser, in his “manifesto” for getting the U.S. out of the nuclear agreement with Iran, John Bolton advocated U.S. support “for Kurdish national aspirations, including Kurds in Iran” and providing “assistance to Balochis, Khuzestan Arabs, Kurds, and others…” After his appointment, Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Brian Hook—who is the State Department’s Special Representative for Iran and directs its “Iran Action Group”—met with some of the leaders of Iran’s Kurdish groups. Last June, Abdullah Mohtadi and Mustafa Hijri—who lead, respectively, the Iranian Communist Kurdish group Komala and the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran [KDPI]—travelled to Washington, with Mohtadi reportedly meeting with Pompeo and Hijri meeting with State Department officials. Komala’s office in Washington has registered with the Justice Department as a lobbying group to “establish solid and durable relations” with the Trump administration.

Both groups have carried out terrorist attacks inside Iran, and, under the guise of calling for a federal system, both have separatist tendencies. The separatist nature of the KDPI became clear when, back in 2012, Hijri asked the U.S. to declare Iran’s Kurdistan province a “no-fly zone,” so that his forces could attack government forces freely and eventually secede from Iran. Hijri has also called for “regime change” in Iran, and has declared the Islamic Republic “a common enemy” of the Kurds and Israel, asking the Jewish state for support.

The attempt by UANI, a group that reportedly receives a lot of its funding from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to provoke ethnic strife in Iran may well lead to more bloodshed, but it will likely ultimately fail. Iranians of diverse backgrounds have lived together side-by-side and have preserved their nation for thousands of years. Iran’s true opposition inside the country—the reformists, religious-nationalists, secular leftists, labor groups, human rights activists, and others—and its supporters in the diaspora reject discrimination against minorities, ethnic tensions, economic sanctions, military threats, and foreign intervention. In the democratic Iran that the true opposition will eventually achieve, all Iranians, regardless of their ethnicity, religion, or gender, will be equal.

Muhammad Sahimi is a Professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

The post MEK and War Agenda in Trump Admin appeared first on Nejat Society.