Fake Iranian activist ‘Heshmat Alavi’ exposed
The White House has used a completely made-up Iranian journalist to justify sanctions.
Fake Newsman: Anti-Iran Forbes “Writer” is a People’s Jihadi Front
“Heshmat Alavi” who has published anti-Iran screeds in Forbes, the Daily Caller and other substandard rightwing venues, does not, according to The Intercept, actually exist.
The name is a front propaganda efforts of the People’s Jihadis (Mojahedin-e Khalq or MEK). The MEK has committed numerous acts of terrorism in Iran and then collaborated with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. It was listed as a terrorist organization the the US until a few years ago and it is mysterious why it was ever taken off the list. My own suspicion is that bribes were taken or influence peddling was practiced.
NBC news once reported that the People’s Jihadis has links to the Israeli intelligence organization, Mossad. Others have alleged Saudi money and support.
Rudi Giuliani, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, who now make US foreign policy, have taken large bribes from this terrorist organization.
The idea of blacklisting the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organization (nonsensical because it is a national guard, not a non-state actor) was first recently floated by the non-person “Heshmat Alavi” in the non-news-source “Daily Caller.” Then Trump followed through. Putin’s hold on the Trump administration is feeble as a kitten’s compared to that of People’s Jihadi cult leader Maryam Rajavi in Albania.
The Young Turks interview the Intercept Washington Bureau Chief on the story:
Outrage on Capitol Hill over ‘completely unacceptable’ US-funded scheme to shape Iran debate
‘This is something that happens in authoritarian regimes, not democracies’
United States officials say they are outraged by a government-funded troll campaign that has targeted American citizens critical of the administration’s hardline Iran policy and accused critics of being loyal to the Tehran regime.
State Department officials admitted to Congressional staff in a closed-door meeting on Monday that a project they had funded to counter Iranian propaganda had gone off the rails. Critics in Washington have gone further, saying that the programme resembled the type of troll farms used by autocratic regimes abroad.
“It’s completely unacceptable that American taxpayer dollars supported a project that attacked Americans and others who are critical of the Trump administration’s policy of escalation and conflict with Iran,” a senior Congressional aide told The Independent, on condition of anonymity.
“This is something that happens in authoritarian regimes, not democracies.”
One woman behind the harassment campaign, a longtime Iranian-American activist, has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the State Department over the years to promote “freedom of expression and free access to information.”
The campaign relentlessly attacked critics of the Iran policy on social media, including Twitter and Telegram messaging app, accusing them without evidence of being paid operatives of the regime in Tehran.
A spokeswoman for the State Department told reporters on Monday that funding for the “Iran Disinformation Project” had been suspended and is under review after it was reported that it went beyond the scope of its mandate by veering from countering propaganda from Iran to smearing domestic critics of White House policy.
State Department officials disclosed to lawmakers they had granted $1.5 for Iran Disinfo, which repeatedly targeted, harassed and smeared critics of Trump’s tough stance against Iran on social media.
Among those targeted were American activists, scholars, and journalists who challenged the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure campaign” against Iran.
The revelation that US taxpayer money was being used to attack administration critics has now sparked a flurry of queries.
“There are still so many unanswered questions here,” Congresswoman Ilhan Omar wrote on Twitter. “What rules are in place to prevent state-funded organisation from smearing American citizens? If there wasn’t public outcry, would the Administration have suspended funding for Iran Disinfo?”
Cold War-era US rules barring the use of government-funded propaganda against American citizens have been flouted for decades.
Congresswoman Barbara Lee accused the State Department of giving taxpayer money to operatives “accused of intimidating and harassing U.S. human rights activists, journalists, and academics who’ve criticized their hawkish policies on Iran.”
She added: “This is unacceptable and we will not stand for it.”
State Department officials speaking at the closed-door meeting admitted the project was out of bounds, according to Congressional staffers speaking to The Independent on condition of anonymity.
Both Democratic and Republican Congressional staffers were highly critical of the project and questioned whether US officials should continue to work with the contractor, E-Collaborative for Civic Education. The State Department spokeswoman declined to outline steps to prevent such an operation in the future.
Some have said the harassment campaign resembles those launched by the Iranian regime against its critics, as well as clandestine troll farms run by Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other autocracies in attempts to shape online debate and intimidate critics.
In a twist, Iran Disinfo has even attacked journalists deemed insufficiently supportive of the Trump administration’s policies at US-funded news outlets including Voice of America, Radio Farda, and RFE/RL.
The harassment campaign is one aspect of an Iran policy that critics have warned was overly politicised, incoherent and risky.
Defying American allies, the United Nations Security Council, and the advice of his own intelligence mandarins, Mr Trump voided the 2015 Iran nuclear deal last year and launched an unprecedented campaign of sanctions and threats against Tehran, vowing to pressure the country into cutting a “better deal” than the one it forged with his predecessor, Barack Obama.
Seeking evidence that its policies were working and popular, the administration has relied an unconventional information sources, often citing obscure right-wing news outlets and think tanks.
E-Collaborative for Civic Education, co-founded by Iranian American activist Mariam Memarsadeghi, is a long-time State Department contractor.
It purports to promote democratic political life and empower civil society inside Iran, but it appears to have no presence inside the country and instead confines itself to engaging with Iranians in the Diaspora.
Congressional officials also confirmed to The Independent that one individual working for the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, an influential Washington organisation with hawkish views on Iran, is part of the E-Collaborative for Civic Education’s Iran Disinformation Project.
One Congressional staffer said he expected the State Department would examine “the extent of coordination” between Iran Disinfo project and “pro-war think tanks like the Foundation for Defence of Democracies.”
Over the weekend, The Intercept revealed that a purported Iranian activist, who had published dozens of articles on Iran in prominent outlets such as Forbes and The Hill, does not exist and is a fake persona run by a team of operatives connected to a bizarre Iranian political cult.
The “Heshmat Alavi” persona had a strong presence on Twitter and harassed Iranian journalists, academics, and activists who are critical of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq organisation, a one-time armed guerilla group now holed up in Albania. There is no known link between the Iran Disinfo programme and the fake persona.
At least one was cited by the Trump administration as proof against the effectiveness of the Obama-era nuclear deal. Some of the MEK articles were also picked up by US government funded Voice of America’s Persian-language service.
Both the Alavi account and the US-funded account frequently accused Iranian Americans sceptical about the Trump administration of being dupes of the Tehran regime.
“It’s an outrage that the Trump Administration was funnelling taxpayer dollars to a smear campaign accusing US citizens of dual loyalty to a foreign regime,” Dylan Williams, vice president of the left-leaning Jewish-American organisation J Street, told The Independent.
“Decent people wouldn’t tolerate such state-sponsored defamation if the target was Jewish Americans and we shouldn’t when the target is Iranian-Americans.”
Negar Mortazavi and Borzou Daragahi ,
Why does the U.S. need trolls to make its Iran case?
This weekend, a new wrinkle was added to the ongoing saga about the information war over Iran policy: the stunning revelation that an online persona that was cited by the Trump administration to justify leaving the Iran nuclear deal is likely not a real person, after all.
On Sunday, the Intercept published an investigation into “Heshmat Alavi,” a rabid supporter of the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), a controversial Iranian opposition group. Since 2014, he had amassed a large Twitter following, which he apparently leveraged to attract interest in freelance submissions.
But according to the Intercept report, it turns out Alavi, the self-proclaimed “Iranian activist with a passion for equal rights” who claims to be “in contact with sources that provide credible information about the mullahs’ regime in Tehran,” was a team of MEK members producing the content in Albania.
That didn’t stop Forbes, the Hill, Daily Caller and even the Voice of America from amplifying Alavi’s platform as a voice on Iran policy. All of these outlets, and several more, have published articles by Alavi that claimed the MEK is the main opposition to the current Iranian regime.
More disturbing than the articles, however, were the Twitter tirades that Alavi directed at established journalists who write on Iran — including me — referring to us “lobbyists,” “agents” and “collaborators” of the Islamic republic. These efforts actively sought to undermine our credibility about the best approach to deal with Iran and resorted to personal attacks in order to do so.
Apparently, libel isn’t a concern if you’re not actually a person.
After the report, Twitter appears to have suspended the account.
But the MEK, the organization that “Team Heshmat Alavi” represents, has a nasty history. It was on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations for years before being removed in 2012. These days, it has no discernible popular support in Iran and egregiously mistreats its members.
Despite its history and negligible influence among Iranians, the MEK happens to have the support of many U.S. officials, including Trump advisers John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani, both of whom have appeared as paid speakers at the group’s events.
The new revelations come less than two weeks after reports that the State Department had been funding an initiative called the Iran Disinformation Project, which was outed last month by Iran watchers for targeting and spreading lies about knowledgeable and experienced Iran commentators. The State Department suspended the funding to that initiative temporarily, but a full accounting of how taxpayer money may have been used against U.S. citizens — a crime under U.S. law — has not happened yet.
The Heshmat Alavi saga does not appear to be directly linked with the Iran Disinformation Project. But both operations raise similar concerns.
In both instances, the U.S. government — knowingly or not — aided in the flow of falsehoods perpetuated by opaque sources targeting U.S. citizens and attempting to discredit journalists and other commentators. And in both cases, the administration seemed to care more about advancing their views on Iran than about verifying the truth.
In the current atmosphere, any discussion of Iran that doesn’t explicitly advocate for the most severe measures against Iran — and, by extension, all people inside Iran — is branded apologia by supporters of President Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign. The MEK and Iranian Disinformation Project talking points have a captive audience here in the capital. So, too, do the rants of others echoing the most hawkish elements of the Trump administration’s Iran rhetoric.
But this is the United States of America. In this country, at least, we can and must have these conversations in the light of day, and maintain an atmosphere where we can openly debate and defend dissenting views without spreading falsehoods or slander. This is critical, not just for our democracy, but also for long-term peace and stability.
Political commentators have pointed to this rhetorical buildup against Iran as similar to the George W. Bush administration’s case for war with Iraq. But the comparison isn’t entirely apt: We are not at the same informational disadvantage we were as a nation in the lead-up to the Iraq War.
The current Iranian American population is much bigger than the Iraqi American population of the early 2000s. It’s better positioned economically in the society and has more political representation. And crucially, there is a flow of Iranian Americans who still routinely travel to the country. Social media is rich with images from inside Iran telling myriad stories.
So, instead of resorting to false narratives and personal attacks, we should cultivate our Iran policy — because there still isn’t a coherent one — the old-fashioned way: by making real arguments, backing them up with actual evidence and prioritizing real people over the tactics of manipulation and fraud preferred by authoritarians.
Jason Rezaian,
Murtaza Hussain has reported an important story on the ongoing propaganda campaign sponsored by the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) cult. This is the group of discredited Iranian exiles that has been building up its support in the West over the last decade by cultivating ties with and paying many Iran hawks, including the current National Security Advisor John Bolton.
Hussain has found that a prominent online figure, Heshmat Alavi, is a fake persona created by the MEK’s troll farm in Albania to harass and attack journalists and analysts that criticize the cult and oppose war and regime change in Iran:
There’s a problem, though: Heshmat Alavi appears not to exist. Alavi’s persona is a propaganda operation run by the Iranian opposition group Mojahedin-e-Khalq, which is known by the initials MEK, two sources told The Intercept.
“Heshmat Alavi is a persona run by a team of people from the political wing of the MEK,” said Hassan Heyrani, a high-ranking defector from the MEK who said he had direct knowledge of the operation. “They write whatever they are directed by their commanders and use this name to place articles in the press. This is not and has never been a real person.”
Heyrani said the fake persona has been managed by a team of MEK operatives in Albania, where the group has one of its bases, and is used to spread its message online.
The MEK has long been harassing and attacking journalists and analysts that oppose their fanatical regime change agenda and their creepy, abusive organization.
On occasion, I have also been subjected to some of this same treatment on Twitter when I have pointed out the group’s past and its current abuses against its own members, but others have had to endure much worse harassment and threats for a long time. The Alavi case goes beyond unleashing the usual army of bots against the group’s critics.
In this case, the fake persona was able to publish dozens of articles in Western news and opinion outlets promoting the MEK as the main Iranian opposition group and advocating for regime change in Iran:
Alavi, whose contributor biography on the Forbes website identifies him as “an Iranian activist with a passion for equal rights,” has published scores of articles on Iran over the past few years at Forbes, The Hill, the Daily Caller, The Federalist, Saudi-owned al-Arabiya English, and other outlets.
The problem here is not just that the MEK has managed to spread its poison in Western media using this fake persona, but that so many of these outlets readily accepted submissions from a pro-MEK trolling operation. It isn’t surprising that a creepy cult intent on rehabilitating its image in the West would resort to trickery and lies, but it is disturbing how willing so many of these outlets were to lend legitimacy to that effort and broadcast outright propaganda. It is equally troubling how long the MEK was able to get away with this before the deception was uncovered.
The Alavi case is an important piece of a larger story about how advocates of regime change in Iran have been resorting to harassment, intimidation, and smears of Iranian and Iranian-American journalists, analysts, and genuine activists for years. It is similar to the recent scandal involving U.S. government funding of the so-called Iran Disinformation Project that engaged in similar smear tactics and harassment against many of the same people, and it is part of the same phenomenon of shouting down credible opponents of regime change and war in an attempt to control the debate. Fortunately, thanks to Hussain’s story, Twitter has suspended the Alavi account and the fake persona has been outed to the entire world. No doubt the MEK will keep trying to promote their message in Western media outlets, and some will be happy to oblige them, but an important part of their campaign of deception and intimidation has been exposed and stopped.
An Iranian Activist Wrote Dozens of Articles for Right-Wing Outlets. But Is He a Real Person?
In 2018, President Donald Trump was seeking to jettison the landmark nuclear deal that his predecessor had signed with Iran in 2015, and he was looking for ways to win over a skeptical press. The White House claimed that the nuclear deal had allowed Iran to increase its military budget, and Washington Post reporters Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly asked for a source. In response, the White House passed along an article published in Forbes by a writer named Heshmat Alavi.
“Iran’s current budget is funded largely through ‘oil, taxes, increasing bonds, [and] eliminating cash handouts or subsidies’ for Iranians, according to an article by a Forbes contributor, Heshmat Alavi, sent to us by a White House official,” Rizzo and Kelly reported. The White House had used Alavi’s article — itself partly drawn from Iranian sources — to justify its decision to terminate the agreement.
“Heshmat Alavi is a persona run by a team of people from the political wing of the MEK. This is not and has never been a real person.”
There’s a problem, though: Heshmat Alavi appears not to exist. Alavi’s persona is a propaganda operation run by the Iranian opposition group Mojahedin-e-Khalq, which is known by the initials MEK, two sources told The Intercept.
“Heshmat Alavi is a persona run by a team of people from the political wing of the MEK,” said Hassan Heyrani, a high-ranking defector from the MEK who said he had direct knowledge of the operation. “They write whatever they are directed by their commanders and use this name to place articles in the press. This is not and has never been a real person.”
Heyrani said the fake persona has been managed by a team of MEK operatives in Albania, where the group has one of its bases, and is used to spread its message online. Heyrani’s account is echoed by Sara Zahiri, a Farsi-language researcher who focuses on the MEK. Zahiri, who has sources among Iranian government cybersecurity officials, said that Alavi is known inside Iran to be a “group account” run by a team of MEK members and that Alavi himself does not exist.
Alavi, whose contributor biography on the Forbes website identifies him as “an Iranian activist with a passion for equal rights,” has published scores of articles on Iran over the past few years at Forbes, The Hill, the Daily Caller, The Federalist, Saudi-owned al-Arabiya English, and other outlets. (Alavi did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment by Twitter direct messages or at the Gmail address he used to correspond with news outlets.)
The articles published under Alavi’s name, as well as his social media presence, appear to have been a boon for the MEK. An opposition group deeply unpopular in Iran and known for its sophisticated propaganda, the MEK has over the past decade turned its attention to English-language audiences — especially in countries like the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom, whose foreign policies are crucial nodes in the MEK’s central goal of overthrowing the Iranian regime.
Alavi’s persona is said to be managed by a trio of MEK members. Heyrani, who at one time helped coordinate online operations for the group, named the individuals and a commander from MEK’s political wing who have been responsible for writing English-language articles and tweets under Heshmat Alavi’s name, and shared their photographs and names with The Intercept. “They were my friends. We were close friends,” Heyrani said. “We were working together.”
Heyrani explained that the MEK leadership would not look kindly on the fluent English speakers who operate the persona writing under their own names. Rank-and-file members, he said, are discouraged from having prominent public profiles — a reflection of what many critics have said is the MEK’s cult-like operating principles. “The leader of the organization doesn’t allow any person to use their real name,” said Heyrani, “because the leader is the first man in the organization, and everything should be under their shadow.”
The MEK conducts relentless online information campaigns, using an army of bots to flood online debates about Iran with the group’s perspective. One of the goals of the MEK team that manages the Hesmat Alavi account, Heyrani said, is to get articles under Alavi’s name published in the American press. The Intercept’s requests for comment to the MEK’s political wing, along with interview requests to the alleged operators of Alavi’s persona, went unanswered.
Another former MEK member now living in Canada, Reza Sadeghi, confirmed that the trio identified by Heyrani was involved with the group’s online information operations. Sadeghi was a member of the MEK until 2008, involved in lobbying activities in the United States, as well as operations at the MEK’s former base at Camp Ashraf in Iraq. He described a growing online propaganda center run by the group, intended to sway online discourse about Iran.
“We were always active in making false news stories to spread to the foreign press and in Iran,” Sadeghi said. “At Camp Ashraf, there were computers set up to do online information operations. Over the years, this activity got more intense with the introduction of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.”
The MEK is among the most controversial groups seeking to depose the Iranian government. Although today it is mainly involved in political activism and lobbying, the group also has a history of violence. From 1997 until 2012, the MEK was listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. State Department, a status that was finally revoked as part of a diplomatic deal struck by the Obama administration. The group’s last claimed violent attack was in 2001.
The MEK initially sided with the Islamic Revolution but fell out of favor shortly after the establishment of the clerical-led Islamic Republic. The subsequent crackdown forced the group into exile, operating between France and Iraq — where, thanks to Saddam Hussein’s largesse, the group occupied Camp Ashraf, used as a staging ground for its participation on Iraq’s side of the brutal Iran-Iraq War.
The years following the U.S.’s invasion of Iraq were harrowing for the MEK, complicated by the terrorist listing. As the Americans withdrew their military forces, they handed over security at the MEK’s Iraqi base to the Iraqi government; another round of violent crackdowns ensued. The 2012 deal to remove the MEK from the U.S. terror list facilitated the movement of thousands of MEK members from Iraq to Albania, where the group would be housed in a new secretive compound. It is from this base in Albania where, according to the MEK defector Heyrani, some of the MEK members managing the Alavi persona were said to be working.
Alavi’s articles tend to mix scathing denunciations of the Iranian government with not-so-subtle suggestions that it might be replaced by the MEK and its leader, Maryam Rajavi. The group seems to have had great success with Alavi, particularly at Forbes.
The Intercept reached out to editors at the outlets that Alavi has published articles with over the past several years. None of these outlets were able to confirm that they ever spoke with or met Alavi. He was not paid for his writing at Forbes, the Daily Caller, or the Diplomat, according to spokespeople for those publications.
Although Alavi has published articles about Iran in a number of predominantly right-leaning publications, by far the most frequent publisher of his articles is Forbes. In a span of a year, between April 2017 and April 2018, Alavi published a staggering 61 articles for the Forbes website.
A Twitter account created under Alavi’s name in 2014 boasts over 30,000 followers, including a number of journalists and D.C.-based conservative think tank employees. The account frequently shares articles and hashtags praising Rajavi and shares footage of protests and events held by the MEK.
Alavi seems to have gained some purchase in right-wing circles in Washington. In addition to his many articles published by Forbes and other sites, Alavi also appears to run a blog called “Iran Commentary,” which describes its mission as focusing on “issues related to Iran and the Middle East.” One of its reports was recently cited as a source in an article from the Washington Free Beacon, a neoconservative site that takes an ultra-hawkish view on Iran.
The body of work published under Alavi’s name takes a consistently hawkish line toward the Iranian government and President Hassan Rouhani. Alavi’s articles also mixed criticisms of Iran and U.S. policy with overt advocacy for the MEK. His pieces in the Daily Caller, The Hill, and other outlets — though less numerous than his contributions to Forbes — employed a similar mix of advocacy against the Iranian regime and praise for the MEK. Though the MEK is known to be widely loathed among Iranians, Alavi described the group as the “main Iranian opposition group” in a 2017 Daily Caller article.
The Diplomat, a foreign policy website that published a handful of Alavi’s pieces in 2017, said that Alavi sent drafts from a Gmail account. Alavi pitched the outlet dozens of articles, though only a small number were accepted. The Diplomat stopped accepting pitches from Alavi after determining that his articles were not meeting publication standards, said a source who asked for anonymity to discuss internal matters.
The Daily Caller also told The Intercept that the outlet stopped publishing Alavi’s articles over concerns about the quality of his submissions. The Hill, al-Arabiya English, and The Federalist did not respond to requests for comment.
“We terminated our relationship with Heshmat Alvi in early 2018,” a Forbes spokesperson said in a statement to The Intercept. “For your background, all contributors to Forbes.com sign a contract requiring them to disclose any potential conflicts of interest. If we discover a contributor has violated these terms, we investigate the case fully and end our relationship if appropriate.”
The MEK uses a number of means to gain influence in Washington. The group has paid prominent political figures to give speeches and press conferences, donated money to politicians, and disseminated its messages through these interlocutors’ appearances in media, as well as its own robust social media presence. In 2018, its social media operations were the subject of an Al Jazeera “Listening Post” documentary.
The group has used these public relations efforts to pursue its policy goals. Up until 2012, the MEK was mostly focused on getting itself off the U.S. terror list. In the years that followed, the group focused on attacking nuclear diplomacy between Iran and the U.S., and, after 2015, attacking the deal itself. Throughout, the MEK’s messaging has emphasized regime change — and attempted to present the MEK as a viable alternative to the Islamic Republic’s leadership, offering Rajavi, who has been the group’s public face for a decade and a half, as a potential figure to lead the country.
Alavi’s articles often track closely with these objectives. In his stories, Alavi has included positive references to Rajavi, as well as the MEK’s political wing, the National Council of Resistance of Iran. In an article in Forbes effectively calling for international support for regime change in Iran, Alavi wrote:
The time has come to set aside the “reformist” mirage in Iran. For decades, Maryam Rajavi, as President of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, is providing the sole, realistic alternative for Iran with a ten-point plan that enjoys the support of thousands of elected officials across the globe.
Like his focus on the MEK’s goal of elevating Rajavi, Alavi’s messaging has also lined up with the group’s efforts to attack the Iran nuclear deal. During the period between 2017 and 2018, when Alavi’s articles appeared in Forbes, the Trump administration was taking steps to extricate the U.S. from the deal, despite objections from European allies and former Obama administration officials. Alavi’s articles egged the administration on, with items such as “Iran Feeling The Heat From Trump On Nuclear Deal” and “How Trump Can Correctly Approach Iran’s Nuclear Deal.” In May 2018, Trump announced that the U.S. would be withdrawing from the agreement — one month after Alavi’s last article was published in Forbes.
The MEK’s messaging emphasizes regime change — and Alavi’s articles often track closely with this objective.
The Alavi article that the White House offered to the Washington Post in 2018 to justify withdrawing from the nuclear deal cited semiofficial Iranian government sources to demonstrate increased military spending by Rouhani government. It concluded with a rhetorical flourish typical of Alavi’s articles, praising the Trump administration for ending “appeasement” policies toward Iran and chastising Europe for “standing alongside the murderous mullahs’ regime against the will of the Iranian people.”
Alavi’s tack — exerting pressure on political discourse in the United States, rather than in Iran itself — appears to be part of the MEK’s strategy.
“The group barely produces content in Farsi. They seem to have given up on having a domestic audience in Iran. Their point now is to influence people in the English-speaking world,” said Massoud Khodabandeh, a former member of the MEK’s intelligence department who left the group in 1996. “Their online strategy works in Washington; it doesn’t work in Tehran.”
Alongside its social media strategy and periodic articles, the MEK involves itself in higher-stakes information campaigns. In 2002, the MEK helped reveal the existence of a covert Iranian nuclear facility near the city of Natanz. But according to arms control experts, the MEK got crucial details wrong. A 2006 article in the New Yorker also suggested that the intelligence may have been handed to the group by Israeli intelligence, calling into question the MEK’s claims that it operates a potent espionage network inside Iran.
In other instances, the MEK’s information has been less than reliable, causing skepticism among many Western national security analysts. During a 2015 press conference, MEK officials claimed to have evidence of a secret nuclear facility under construction in Iran, complete with clandestine photographs of the site. This claim was partly debunked by a blogger from the liberal website Daily Kos. A reverse image search of a picture of the purported door to the nuclear site revealed that it had actually been taken from a commercial website in Iran that advertised safe boxes.
The MEK has had the most success influencing the debate over Iran policy online through its aggressive social media presence. Any remarks about the group or even Iranian politics in general can be expected to be met by scores of MEK-supporters commenting through replies on Twitter and other social media. Many of the pro-MEK accounts will repeat the same messages, often word for word, swarming the mentions of any commentator.
Geoff Golberg, an expert on social media manipulation and founder of SocialCartograph, a social media mapping firm, took particular note of Alavi’s Twitter account, which appears to act as a node in an online campaign to boost the MEK’s profile. The account is heavily promoted by other pro-MEK accounts, as well as supporters of the group’s policy of confrontation toward Iran. To casual observers, these swarms of online activity can make it seem as though a large number of Iranians are enthusiastic about whatever it is that the MEK is promoting.
“The Heshmat Alavi account is part of a group of accounts, which, for years, have engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior,” said Golberg. “The account is connected to thousands of inauthentic MEK-focused accounts, many of which regularly engage with the account’s tweets. The goal of these efforts is to create the illusion of a larger support base than exists in reality.”
Alavi has left few traces online — aside from his social media, his articles, and his emails to editors. One single photo, a heavily filtered side profile, is used for all of Alavi’s author profiles, his LinkedIn page, and Twitter account. The photo’s origins are unclear.
At a minimum, there are strong indications that the Alavi persona is not what it claims to be. The use of fake identities to conduct political propaganda has become common in recent years. The 2016 U.S. presidential election saw the use of innumerable bots and fake accounts to spread misinformation and paranoia among the public.
A 2018 BBC News investigation looked into another prominent online persona alleged to be false: a Twitter account operating under the name “Sarah Abdallah” that was mixed up heavily in the online debate over the war in Syria. The Sarah Abdallah account was in some ways on the opposite side of the political spectrum as Alavi: Abdallah was a vocal supporter of the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, a close Iranian ally. An online research firm determined Abdallah’s account to be “one of the most influential social media accounts in the online conversation about Syria.”
Although the BBC investigation raised serious concerns about the influence of a shadowy online account that was being followed by hundreds of real journalists, it stopped short of concluding that Abdallah was fake or being operated by a front organization.
For all her influence, however, Sarah Abdallah was never able to achieve the success of Heshmat Alavi, whose articles were published in U.S. media outlets and read in the White House.
“The Mojahedin wants to show to the world that their narrative has support, even from people who are not directly members of the group.”
To those unfamiliar with the internal politics of Iran, Alavi could come across in his writings as what he simply claimed to be: “an Iranian activist with a passion for equal rights.” The former MEK member Heyrani says that this framing is exactly what the group was hoping to create with the persona. To the extent that publications like Forbes were indifferent or amenable to Alavi’s message, it seems to have worked.
“The Mojahedin” — the Iranian name for the MEK — “wants to show to the world that their narrative has support, even from people who are not directly members of the group,” Heyrani said. “They want to show that other independent people — writers and activists — support their approach and believe that freedom and democracy will come to Iran through the work of this group.”
By Murtaza Hussain, the intercept
Anti-Iran Terrorists Making Inroads into US Lobby Groups
The MKO terrorist organisation is spreading Iranophobia by making inroads on certain lobby groups inside the US administration, an Iranian newspaper says, warning US President Donald Trump about consequences of being influenced by such groups.
The MKO terrorist organisation is a militant and political group that teaches suicide attacks, and in the past have committed self-immolation, and even held demonstrations in front of international bodies to disrupt Iran’s relations with other countries.
Now, such opportunities in the present situation in the region are used to create conflicts and unwanted battles between Iran, the United States and other countries of the region. They want to turn this into a battlefield to topple what they called the “Iranian regime” to secure their own interests.
Editor-in-chief of Etemad newspaper’s online website, Mojtaba Hosseini, has in a recent piece argued that the terrorist group, which Iran says has killed over 17,000 people so far, is using lobby groups inside the US administration to trigger a war against Iran.
Here is the full text of the article by Hosseini:
The conditions of the region and the constant developments, as well as the publication of controversial news by global sponsors has made the issue very complicated and strange. In order to understand what is going on in the wake of all these developments and conflicts, it is enough to evaluate and analyse the publication of the news by the media networks affiliated with world powers.
The New York Times’ news of deployment of 120,000 US troops to the region in May, which was widely covered by US, European, Arab, domestic and Persian-speaking media abroad, was among the news that were basically fake. However, this fake news was immediately published by Reuters, Voice of America and the French Radio to fan the flames of war against Iran.
The coverage of a fake news by the American, European, Arabic and Persian-language media continued until Donald Trump explicitly announced the news of the deployment of 120,000 US troops to the region was false.
The monitoring of such news and information in the current situation clearly shows that there are active elements with a specific strategy in these media who are after turning these domestic and foreign news agencies into their own news station.
The management of information and media alerts is carried out in an organised way by the United States, Israel and the neighbouring countries of the region against Iran.
This suggests that an intelligence unit opposed to regional security and the national interests of Iran and the United States, which considers itself to be a rival to the United States and the party which wants to overthrow the current ruling body of Iran, is carrying out destructive operations.
The actions of terrorist militants in sabotage operations against UAE ships and Katyusha attack near the US embassy in Baghdad were steps to wage a war between Iran, the United States and the countries of the region; a war to lead to downfall of the Islamic Republic.
The MKO terrorist organisation is the main culprit behind such actions. They are a militant and political group who teach suicide attacks, and in the past they have committed self-immolation, and even held demonstrations in front of international bodies to disrupt Iran’s relations with other countries.
At the moment, such events in the present situation in the region are used to create conflicts and unwanted battles between Iran, the United States and other countries of the region. They want to turn this region into a battlefield to topple the so-called “regime” of Iran to achieve their own interests.
If the Americans want to resolve their problems with Iran, first, it is better to resolve their problems with their international rivals without putting Iran in the middle of the story. Secondly, in order to better understand the conditions in Iran, it is necessary to close the file of such groups as the MKO. At the same time the Americans must look at them as a threat that challenge their security and intelligence.
The MKO’s sabotage, espionage, and intelligence services are not exclusive to Americans; they have done the same for states like France.
Accordingly, it’s enough for the Americans to read a little bit of history and recall how once they were the target of their number-one source of information:
– Eavesdropping at US embassy
– Assassination of US military personnel, such as Colonel Hawkins, Colonel Turner, Donald J. Smith, Robert R. Krongrad and William C.
– Explosion of bombs at more than a dozen sites throughout Tehran, including the Iran-America Society, the offices of Pepsi Cola, General Motors, Pan-American Airlines, and Shell Oil Company
– Attack on the US Embassy before the embassy takeover by revolutionary students
– Cooperation with KGB in the case of Major General Moqqarebi
Of course, the anti-US measures of the organisation are not only these five cases.
– They even asked for the interrogation of US embassy personnel in 1979.
However, their request was turned down by the Revolution Council. The organisation also called for extradition of the Shah, cutting off of relations with US imperialism, stopping the export of oil to the United States, and abolishing all political-economic and military agreements with the United States. It also disclosed the CIA and SAVAK spy networks in Iran, and stressed that outright anti-authoritarian and anti-imperialist policy must be mentioned in the constitution.
Americans should answer the following questions: why the MKO, which is currently playing the role of the intelligence agent of the B-Team, even after leaving Iran did not seek shelter in the US, and instead chose France as their command centre to launch campaign against the Islamic Republic?
Don’t the Americans know the MKO has initiated an uninterrupted communication with representatives of the socialist and communist parties of Europe, at the same time, to secure their political life to find a way to gain power in Iran through the world powers?
Have the US authorities forgotten that when the MKO returned to France, Masoud Rajavi and other leaders of the organisation did not withdraw from their anti-American positions and uttered swearwords against US Ambassador William Sullivan who condemned the assassination of Ayatollah Beheshti?
Have the Americans been able to understand the root cause of the total change of organisation’s approach towards Washington? Is it possible that the Americans have not understood the reality of the war between Iran and Iraq and the loss of the organisation’s assassination machine in the Mersad Operation was the main reason for Masoud Rajavi change of mind and the MKO’s anti-imperialist and anti-American slogans?
If the Americans read a little bit about Iran’s recent history, it will be well known that the MKO, based on its mission in Europe, apparently put aside its leftist approach and became a friend of the United States. The organisation’s strategy with this goal was launched and the new values of the organisation were announced by its leadership: “We as a revolutionary force benefited from the conflict between imperialism and the reactionary (Islamic Republic) to achieve power!”
The funny point was that the leadership of the organisation had already said to its members and sympathisers that the Islamic Republic should be destroyed to eliminate imperialism. But then argued that to destroy the Iranian ‘regime’ they must get help from imperialism!
Although the Americans did not immediately accept the organisation’s change of approach, but eventually some Republican senators, who had good connections with the French Social Democrats, propagated this argument that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” and therefore the MKO, which was on the list of US terrorist groups, was supported and used by Americans as one of its service providers. The presence of figures such as John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani at the annual MKO conferences was in line with such a policy.
The MKO, by paying money to people like Bolton and Giuliani, is making inroads in the US Congress and State Department, spreading Iranophobia by fabricating news. They are also trying to impose themselves on Americans as a powerful, efficient organisation and an alternative to the Islamic Republic.
Undoubtedly, the ruling administration of the United States, especially the White House, is subject to great deception. This great deception can be seen from the very moment that the organisation and Maryam Rajavi condemned Trump’s decision to relocate the US embassy to Jerusalem. The organisation’s opposition to Trump’s decision was in line with France’s interests, and perhaps this behaviour implies that the MKO still gets its main services from countries such as France, which, for historical reasons, still defines Palestine in its sphere of influence.
If Trump pays attention to the statements of Iran’s Leader on July 30, 2018, in which he named France and Britain as the parties receiving the organisation’s services, he will understand that the MKO terrorist organisation has provided more services for the US international rivals including French and European socialists rather than the US itself.
This may be enough to let Trump know that his foreign policy body with people like John Bolton is playing in MKO’s court.
By IFP Editorial Staff
The U.S. military’s guided bombs brought “shock and awe” to Baghdad in 2003 when American forces invaded Iraq 16 years ago to hunt for weapons of mass destruction. They never found any. Many observers, today, consider that war a failure.
Now, half of all Americans believe the U.S. will go to war with Iran “within the next few years,” according to a Reuters/Ipsos public opinion poll released in late May amid increased tensions between the two countries, longtime geopolitical foes.
The escalating Tehran-Washington crisis comes as the White House claims, without providing detail or public evidence, that Iran poses an increased threat to American forces and facilities in the Middle East – one year after Trump withdrew from an accord between Iran and world powers aimed at limiting Tehran’s nuclear capabilities.
Trump’s hawks: Bolton amps up Iran sabotage claims, desire for nuclear weapons
Is Iran doomed to be an Iraq redux? This is just one of the questions raised by a crisis that has eerie parallels to the missteps that led to the Iraq War in 2003, where the buildup to conflict was precipitated by faulty intelligence and confrontational foreign policymakers such as John Bolton in President George W. Bush’s administration.
To make sense of what’s happening now, here’s what happened then:
Operation Desert Storm – the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War – came to an end 42 days after a U.S.-led offensive was launched in response to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s invasion of neighboring Kuwait. Iraq’s dictator accused Kuwait and Saudi Arabia of conspiring to keep oil prices artificially low for western consumers. President George H.W. Bush declared a ceasefire on February 28, 1991, as Iraqi forces in Kuwait surrendered or fled back to Iraq. About 700,000 American service members were deployed to the Gulf for the short war; 383 were killed.
When President George W. Bush became president in 2001, Hussein was back on the agenda. “There were a number of people in the Department of Defense who wanted to pursue a certain policy course. I don’t think they ever took their eyes off of Iraq,” former CIA Director John Brennan said in a 2007 National Geographic documentary about the 2003 Iraq War. “There was still a great deal of residual feeling that we should not have stopped the first Persian Gulf War when we did, but rather continue into Baghdad and topple Saddam Hussein,” ex-Senator and ex-Florida governor Bob Graham said in the same documentary.
Among the figures Brennan and Graham were referring to: Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Bolton, who had worked as a lawyer for the Bush campaign to block recount efforts in Florida that led to state officials awarding the 2000 election to Bush over Democratic candidate Al Gore.
Bolton was a lifelong staunch conservative with hawkish views on foreign policy. For a start, he abhorred multilateralism. “There is no United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world, and that’s the United States,” he said of the international organization in 1994, adding: “The secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If you lost 10 stories today, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” Years later, Bolton’s nomination to be U.S. Ambassador to the UN was blocked because of his hardline views. He would also call for the U.S. to make pre-emptive strikes against North Korea.
The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York City and Washington shifted the Bush administration’s focus to hunting Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan, where the ruling Taliban had given shelter to the al-Qaeda’s leader, who masterminded the attacks. But Iraq was also on the radar of the Pentagon’s military planners, who feared that Hussein might try to support or orchestrate an equally, or worse, catastrophic assault on U.S. soil “We’re also working to prepare our nation for the next war,” Rumsfeld said at a briefing on Afghanistan in late 2001, referring to Iraq.
In January 2002, Bush branded Iraq part of an “axis of evil” for harboring, financing and aiding terrorists, and for its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Also members of the club: Iran and North Korea. These countries, Bush said, “are threatening the peace of the world.” He cast aside more dovish voices in his cabinet who urged him to pursue a diplomatic path in Iraq, saying “we can’t wait for the final proof, the smoking gun, that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”
Around the same time, Bolton, then serving as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs in Bush’s administration, was becoming a key player in pushing for a military confrontation with Iraq, saying in a BBC radio debate that he was “confident” that Iraq had “hidden” weapons of mass destruction, including chemical weapons and production facilities. “The U.S. has already decided the outcome of this story – Saddam will be left with no weapons of mass destruction – but how that point is reached is up to Saddam Hussein,” Bolton said in the debate in London. He was also making unverified claims about other countries he wanted included in Bush’s “axis of evil,” testifying to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs that Cuba was secretly developing a biological weapons program that could be used in warfare against American forces and civilian targets by “rogue states.” Bolton provided no details when questioned. A subsequent Senate investigation found no evidence supporting his assertions.
In the months leading up to the Iraq War in 2003, Cheney appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” with a further warning: “The situation, I think, that leads a lot of people to be concerned about Iraq has to do not just with their past activity of harboring terrorists, but also with Saddam Hussein’s behavior over the years and with his aggressive pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.”
Despite not being able to produce clear “smoking gun” evidence of Hussein’s “hidden” program to acquire weapons of mass destruction, Bush, buoyed by key advisors such as Bolton, opted for war with Iraq. When he was not able to get an express United Nations Security Council mandate to do so he pursued a “coalition of the willing” that included Australia, Britain, Japan, Spain and others.
After the U.S. invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003, Hussein spent nine months on the run before he was found hiding in an eight-foot-deep hole near his hometown of Tikrit. An Iraqi court convicted Hussein of crimes against humanity, for using deadly gas against Iraqi Kurds and other transgressions, and he was later executed by hanging. No evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was found. The war was viewed as a fiasco, not only of intelligence, but because it further destabilized the region, contributed to the formation of the Islamic State terrorist group and led to the violent deaths of more 200,000 Iraqi civilians and at least 4,500 American troops. It added more than $1 trillion to U.S. government debt. Iraq’s economy, security and government remain in a fragile state.
In an opinion article in The Guardian in 2013, Bolton wrote: “Overthrowing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003 achieved important American strategic objectives. Our broad international coalition accomplished its military mission with low casualties and great speed, sending an unmistakable signal of power and determination throughout the Middle East and around the world. Despite all the criticism of what happened after Saddam’s defeat, these facts are indisputable.”
Meanwhile, with the failed outcome of the 2003 Iraq War still plain to see, Bolton started ramping up his outspoken criticism of Iran’s Islamic Republic. In 2009, as President Barack Obama’s administration entered into what would turn out to be almost five years of negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, Bolton said: “Ultimately, the only thing that will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons is regime change in Tehran.” As the deal entered its final stages, Bolton advocated in a New York Times opinion piece that the U.S. join forces with Israel: “Time is terribly short, but a strike can still succeed. Such action should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran’s opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran,” he wrote. The articled was headlined: “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.”
Also troubling: The Iranian opposition group Bolton was referring to in his New York Times opinion article is the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a controversial Paris-based political organization also known as the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or MEK. Along with Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, Bolton is long-time supporter of the exiled opposition group and has been paid to speak at its annual rallies. The MEK is often described by observers of its activities, including by humanitarian groups and even a U.S. government research document from 2012, as displaying “cultlike behavior.” The MEK’s reported abuses – vigorously denied to USA TODAY by its senior leadership who claim they result from a vicious and protracted “disinformation campaign” by Iran’s clerical rulers – range from torture and forced celibacy to holding members against their will, sometimes in solitary confinement. The MEK says its critics are often spies for the Iranian regime. Bolton’s first encounters with the MEK took place in Iraq, where for a period it had aligned itself with Hussein’s government, which was fighting a war with Iran.
When Bolton joined the Trump administration as national security adviser in 2018, replacing seasoned former Army officer Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, he continued his public saber rattling and criticism of Iran by releasing a video on the 40th anniversary of the Iranian revolution via the White House’s official Twitter channel. In the video, Bolton calls Iran “the central banker of international terrorism” and accuses Tehran of pursuing nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them and of “tyrannizing its own people and terrorizing the world.” The video ends with a direct threat to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader: “I don’t think you’ll have many more anniversaries to enjoy,” Bolton says.
Iran’s interest in nuclear technology dates to the 1950s, when it received help from a U.S.-backed program promoted by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who wanted to share U.S. nuclear expertise with other countries for peaceful purposes, such as energy production. But after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution and a U.S. hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran effectively ended relations between the two nations, U.S. intelligence agencies have long suspected, without explicit evidence, that Iran has attempted to use its civilian nuclear program as a cover for clandestine weapons development. Obama’s 2015 nuclear accord was designed to prevent that and the UN’s nuclear watchdog has repeatedly verified through inspections and other safeguards that Iran has been complying with the terms of the agreement, even after the U.S. withdrew from it and Washington re-imposed sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy. Bolton has regularly decried those inspections as ineffectual, believes the nuclear accord was a sham and has advocated for a far bolder Iran policy that aggressively addresses Iran’s support for anti-American shia militias and Tehran’s ballistic missile program.
Most Iran experts, political scientists and many U.S. lawmakers believe that it is this – Bolton’s desire, like in Iraq, to confront Iran – that underpins a still-unexplained decision by the Pentagon to deploy warships, B-52 bombers and missiles to the Persian Gulf earlier this month in response to unspecified threats from Iran in the region. The U.S. also plans to send 900 additional troops to the Middle East and extend the stay of another 600 who are part of tens of thousands of others on the ground there. “The previous administration appeased the Islamic Republic of Iran. So we are pushing back. And when you push back, tension does increase,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, another Iran hawk in the Trump administration, said in response to efforts to get clarity over the moves.
In recent days, Bolton also has accused Iran of being behind a string of incidents in the Persian Gulf, including what officials allege was sabotage of oil tankers off the coast of the United Arab Emirates and a rocket that landed near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, while Yemen’s Iranian-aligned Houthi rebels launched a string of drone attacks targeting Saudi Arabia. Iran has mostly avoided addressing the allegations, although it has said it doesn’t fear a war with the U.S. It has also signaled that its patience with the nuclear deal is wearing thin and threatened to resume uranium enrichment at levels higher than the accord permits. Speaking in Abu Dhabi, Bolton said Wednesday that there had been a previously unknown attempt to attack the Saudi oil port of Yanbu as well. “Who else would you think is doing it? Somebody from Nepal?” Bolton said that there was “no reason” for Iran to back out of the nuclear deal other than to seek atomic weapons.
As for Trump’s position on Iran, nobody seems to know the president’s mind, not even, perhaps, the president. Trump has oscillated between overtly aggressive rhetoric and seemingly conciliatory statements. “We have no indication that anything’s happened or will happen, but if it does, it will be met obviously with great force,” Trump said last week at the White House. While on a four-day visit to Japan, Trump denied he wants regime change in Iran and said it’s not the goal. Some national security experts believe that Bolton’s role in pushing for war with Iran has been exaggerated, and that his influence on the president has been overstated. Still, there have been few Iran-related denials from Bolton, although just hours after the publication of this story, Bolton told a group of reporters while on a trip to London: “The policy we’re pursuing is not a policy of regime change. That’s the fact and everybody should understand it that way.”
Trump says he doesn’t want war: Is Bolton driving the U.S. into a conflict anyway?
Inside Iran: America’s contentious history in Iran leads to anger, weariness, worry
Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY
John Bolton has long been an active supporter of Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK). Will he use them to arrange the provocation he needs to trigger a war on Iran?
The United States has sent an aircraft carrier group to the Arabian Gulf. US”acting foreign president”John Bolton threatens war. The gunpowder is gathered around Iran. The question is whether anyone will now add fuel to the fire, that is, make the pretext that war cries need to trigger a war – and if so, who should.
Not only do we have the memory of the Tonkin Bay episode, the fake flag affair that was used as a pretext for starting the Vietnam War. There are several observers internationally who see the danger that something similar can happen here too. For example, it could take the form of an attack on US naval vessels in the Arabian Gulf or on strategically important installations in the area. Or it could be attacks on commercial vessels in the Persian Gulf. But who would do such a thing?
Iranian writer Massoud Khodabandeh, formerly a leading member of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) organization, believes that this particular organization could play such a role.
Khodabandeh writes in Iranian.com that such a false-flag attack is in preparation. He points out that MEK has a headquarters in Albania and that the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln visited Albania on 1 May 2019 on its way to the Persian Gulf. There the ship should have taken on board people who spoke farsi, he claims.
John Bolton has long focused on just MEK as his preferred tool for triggering a regime change in Iran. In July 2017, he told a MEK delegation that the Trump administration would embrace their regime change regime in Tehran and recognize them as a serious alternative.
MEK marketed itself in its time as Marxist-Leninist. According to a report from the US State Department of 2009, their ideology today is a mixture of Marxism, Islamism and feminism. While they were previously strong critics of Israel and Zionism, they are now allies with Israel. In 1993, Bill Clinton, in a private letter to MEK’s leader, expressed his support for the organization. John Bolton is also one of those who has long supported MEK.
See also the New York Times and The Guardian about MEK’s relationship with Bolton.
One can choose whether to add weight or not to Khodabandeh’s assessments, but MEK’s close relationship with the United States and John Bolton does not make it unlikely that precisely MEK can play the role of wedge-driver in the Persian Gulf and spark the fire that causes the region to explode.
steigan.no – Translated by Nejat Society
Author’s Note
This article is not ‘journalism’, or pretence at ‘journalism’. The author does not work for the BBC, the Guardian or any other MSM platform that once provided the former, but increasingly delivers the latter. It was not written by an ‘expert’, real or imagined, and the author has no connection with the Council on Foreign Regime-Change or any other ‘stink-tank’. The author is a retired British citizen with neither the resources nor the inclination to lie to you. What follows is ‘opinion’.
Backdrop
“In the coming months, we can expect to witness an increasing number of speeches and articles demonising Iran, along with a growing number of ‘serious incidents’, that will be used to justify reneging on the nuclear deal. The phoney war on Iran has entered a new phase. The Likud party led by Netanyahu, the Trump administration, supported by the Wahhabi backed princeling in Riyadh…have absolutely no interest in collaborative solutions in the Middle East. Their goal is regime change”
The Psychopath, the Puppet and the Princeling
I wrote that six months ago in September 2017. Since then a number of events have played out along the lines expected:
• The nuclear agreement was disowned by President Trump in October, and is now living on ‘borrowed time’. Ostensibly thrown back to Congress to get a better deal, this will not materialise. I see three possibilities: a) Congress will ‘take too long’, b) Congress will not be tough enough to satisfy the WH, or c) Congressional demands will be unacceptable to Iran. Any of these will give Trump the political cover he needs to rip up the agreement and create the conditions for escalation.
• The Iranian protests of December & January were given blanket media coverage in the west, and used by neoconservative ‘intellectuals’ to fuel the regime change agenda. Here’s Frederick Kagan in ‘The National Interest’:
“The protests rocking an unprecedented expanse of Iran do not, and probably will not, immediately threaten the regime’s survival despite the hopes and dreams of many here in Washington”
• The continued destruction of Yemen by Saudi Arabia, with the full support of the US and the UK, has received very little media coverage; in stark contrast to the rare occasions that the Yemenis have been able to strike back, which have been used by Washington as opportunities for the continued demonization of Iran. Here is UN Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley using an ‘Iranian Missile’ as the backdrop for a press conference:
• On December 28th 2017, the Times of Israel reported that the US and Israel have set-up mechanisms for dealing with ‘the Iranian nuclear threat’:
“Israel and the United States have secretly signed a far-reaching joint memorandum of understanding providing for full cooperation to deal with Iran’s nuclear drive, its missile programs and its other threatening activities…Citing both American and Israeli officials, the report said the document is designed to translate into “steps on the ground” the positions set out by US President Donald Trump in his October 13 speech on Iran, in which he decertified the Iran nuclear deal”.
None of this is surprising. Taken in isolation it may seem to be a slow process, but when set within the context of the geo-political landscape, things are moving quickly, especially given Washington’s defeat in Syria – which was supposed to ready for partition by now. The latest regime change operation has failed, due in no small part to the resilience of the Syrian government and its people, the overwhelming majority of whom do not want to live in a fundamental Islamic society, any more than they want to exist in order to serve the strategic interests of US, Israel & Saudi Arabia. However, even with such strong resistance, Syria would undoubtedly have fallen without the support of its three allies, Iran, Hezbollah and most importantly Russia. The survival of Syria as a sovereign independent state is vital to them all.
Latest Development
I am writing this update now because a major piece of the jigsaw has just been put in place, and as a result of that, I suspect that events will accelerate and become more visible to the general public.
On 22nd March 2018, President Trump announced that his new National Security Advisor will beJohn Bolton, former Ambassador to the UN under George W. Bush, ex-Fox News Analyst, leading advocate of the wars in Iraq and Libya; a man who has consistently called for regime change in North Korea and Iran.
To call Bolton a ‘hawk’ would be underestimating his lofty perch in Washington’s raptor house. The only war that he didn’t like was the one that required his own skin in the game: Bolton joined the National Guard to avoid the Vietnam draft. When asked why, this was his comment, as recorded in his 25th Yale Reunion Book: “I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy”
Since then, in common with other reluctant soldiers such as Bush Junior and Dick Cheney, Bolton has been very keen on sending other young people to kill and die overseas, albeit mainly to deserts rather than rice paddies. The following comment summarises his position on North Korea just over a month ago. On 28th February 2018, in the Wall Street Journal, Bolton wrote:
“The threat is imminent, and the case against pre-emption rests on the misinterpretation of a standard that derives from pre-nuclear, pre-ballistic-missile times…Given the gaps in US intelligence about North Korea, we should not wait until the very last minute. That would risk striking after the North has deliverable nuclear weapons, a much more dangerous situation. It is perfectly legitimate for the United States to respond to the current ‘necessity’ posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons by striking first”
However, let’s set aside his position on North Korea, and pose the question: what does his appointment tell us about the Trump administration’s plans for Iran?
Firstly, here’s a typical example of Bolton’s utterances on Iran, from the ‘Free Iran Gathering’ in Paris, 1st July 2017:
“So, for the first time in at least 8 years that I have been coming to this event, I can say that we have a President of the United States who is completely and totally opposed to the regime in Tehran…he completely opposes the Iran nuclear deal signed by his predecessor…there is a viable opposition to the rule of the Ayatollahs, and that opposition is centred in this room today…”
But the most disturbing part of his speech was kept for the crescendo:
“I have said for over ten years since coming to these events, that the declared policy of the United States of America should be the overthrow of the Mullah’s regime in Tehran. The behaviour and the objectives of the regime are not going to change and therefore the only solution is to change the regime itself. And that’s why before 2019, we here will celebrate in Tehran, thank you very much”
Of course, the comments that Bolton has made since his appointment have ‘softened’ to include statements like ‘I’m here to serve the wishes of the President…anything I said before was my personal view as an independent analyst…blah blah blah’. Even if you believe this, it still begs the question: why would a President intent on peace in the Middle-East appoint a guy who can’t wait to park his Cadillac on [Ayatollah]Khamenei’s lawn? He wouldn’t. The goal is regime change.
Bolton’s regime change credentials
Bolton has a long history of direct contact with an Iranian terror group known as Mujahideen-e Khalq, usually referred to by its acronym, MEK. Here is Jason Rezaian writing in the Washington Post on 24th March 2018:
“Bolton’s hawkish views on Iran mirror those of Israel, Saudi Arabia and one of his key ideological partners, the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK)…The MEK is the type of fringe group that sets up camp across the street from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and hands out fliers filled with unsubstantiated claims…I would never suggest that they be prohibited from doing that. But giving the MEK a voice in the White House is a terrible idea. In John Bolton they have someone who will do it for them…
The MEK was on the State Department’s list of terrorist organisations until 2012, when Bolton and a number of others successfully lobbied to have its designation removed. The group is loathed by the majority of Iranians, irrespective of their political affiliation, because of its role in fighting alongside Saddam’s forces in the Iran-Iraq war. According to Rezaian’s source at the State Department, the group hires prominent US officials to spread its regime change message:
“Very few former U.S. government officials shilled pro bono for the MEK,” said a former State Department official who worked on Iran. Among the long bipartisan list of people who have taken money from the group in exchange for speaking at its events are former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean. Bolton, the former official told me, was also paid”
So…we have Bolton arguing for regime change, taking money from an organisation advocating regime change…a group that was designated a terrorist group until Bolton managed to have it removed from the list.
What could these lovebirds possibly want with each other? Rezaian:
“To those who claim that the nuclear deal isn’t working, regime change remains the only solution. For the MEK, and Bolton, if his words are to be taken at face value, the only path to that could be war. The group has long been prepared to do whatever it takes to see that happen, including presenting fake intelligence about Iran’s nuclear program”
The fake intelligence referred to includes a 2015 ‘incident’ in which the political front for the MEK, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), ‘revealed’ the existence of a phoney underground centrifuge facility in the suburbs of Tehran: http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/03/that-secret-iranian-nuclear-facility-you-just-found-not-so-much/
So…now we have Bolton arguing for regime change, working with a re-designated terrorist group that is intent on war & happy to use false flags. Sounds like a perfect fit for Washington doesn’t it?
If you want more on the history of the MEK and its involvement with US military and intelligence, I suggest you read Seymour Hersh’s 2012 article in the New Yorker “Our men in Iran”
What next?
If Washington follows the playbook they have used in Libya and Syria, a ‘popular uprising’ will be fomented using the MEK or a re-branded version – as in Syria where al-Qaeda morphed into al-Nusra. Many of the protestors will have genuine grievances of course, but the violence that will be used to escalate the protests into a ‘revolution’ will be the work of US sponsored terrorist groups.
This will be presented by western media as a spontaneous democratic uprising, and will be reinforced by the twin strategies of demonization and virtue signalling. The neoconservative ‘right’ will go along with it because they always do; the liberal interventionist ‘left’ will go along with it because it will be presented as a ‘democratic revolt’. But let’s be clear: Nothing touched by the hands of the CIA & their proxies is remotely ‘democratic’ – it’s always about resources, money, and power. Uncle Sam is not the sweet, freedom-loving old guy he’d like us all to think. And neither is his handmaiden, Britannia.
If this were not so dangerous it would be truly funny. There is no effective opposition left in the US – ‘Russiagate’ has seen to that. The ‘left’ in America, for all its rhetoric about ‘progressive values’…is easier to play than a tambourine.
Final thought
I started this piece by taking a shot at the media. I make no apology for that. We are being taken to war by sociopaths, and the mainstream media are their collaborators.
I leave you with a quote, and a short film of Harold Pinter speaking on ‘the nature of truth’, from his Nobel acceptance speech in 2005. When you read it and/or view the film, bear in mind that none of this would be possible without collaboration from the media:
“Since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are not interested in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power, it is essential that people remain in ignorance. That they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies upon which we feed. The justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction…We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Qaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. The truth is something entirely different.
The truth is how the United States understands its role in the world, and how it chooses to embody it. I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist; unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies, is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision, we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us – the dignity of man”
By MarkGB, Renegadeinc.com