Mujahedin Warmongers

MEK Iran and John Bolton regime change Noises

In an unusual statement for a national security adviser to make, John Bolton announced on Sunday night that an aircraft carrier strike group is being deployed as a warning to Iran:

In response to a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings, the United States is deploying the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force to the U.S. Central Command region to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force. The United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime, but we are fully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or regular Iranian forces.

This all sounds pretty alarming, but a couple of facts are worth keeping in mind. First, the White House probably did not actually decide to do this over the weekend. The Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group had already left in early April on what the Navy press release called a “regularly scheduled deployment.” As Rand Corp. analyst Becca Wasser tweets, “chances are this deployment has been long-planned. [White House] message is piggybacking on planned ops to make a point.” (Hopefully the ships are at least headed in the right direction this time.)

Second, it’s not clear what “troubling and escalatory indications” Bolton is referring to. According to the New York Times, citing an American military official, “as of late Friday, military analysts were not tracking any new, imminent or clearly defined Iranian or Iranian-backed threats against Americans in Iraq or the region.”

Update, May 6, 2019: U.S. Officials are now saying, according to CNN, that the move was ordered in response to “serious and credible” intelligence suggesting a threat to U.S. forces in Syria, Iraq, and at sea from Iranian forces and proxies.

So, there’s no sign that anything actually “happened” over the weekend. Iran didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, that we know of, and neither did the United States. But the escalating rhetoric could still be worrisome.

Bolton’s latest rhetorical volley follows a series of moves by the Trump administration to dial up the pressure on Tehran, including designating the regime’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization and ending sanctions waivers for countries importing Iranian oil.

Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, warned of unspecified “consequences” in response.

Iranian officials have suggested several times in recent weeks that they could retaliate by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial waterway through which 20 percent of the world’s oil flows, a move that would cause an immediate spike in global oil prices and significantly raise the risk of armed conflict. Iran has threatened to do this several times over the years and has never followed through, but the latest signals from Tehran may have been what prompted Bolton’s missive.

There have also been reports that Iran could announce later this week that it is withdrawing from at least some of its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal. This week will mark one year since the U.S. withdrew from the deal.

Bolton, who has given paid speeches to the controversial Iranian opposition group M.E.K., has long advocated regime change in Iran. As Dexter Filkins’ recent New Yorker profile of the national security adviser explained, President Donald Trump, a skeptic about military intervention, may be less enthusiastic about that strategy. (As one source told Filkins, “Bolton’s worst nightmare is that Khamenei will write Trump a letter saying, ‘Why don’t we get together and talk?’ Because he knows that Trump would jump at that opportunity.”)

Iran’s Zarif surmised this in a recent interview, describing Bolton, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed as the “B team” who were looking to provoke Iran into doing something that could provide a pretext for military action, as opposed to Trump, who wanted to pressure Iran into negotiation.

While Trump has often seemed less preoccupied with Iran than some of his advisers have, he clearly sees a hard line as politically advantageous and has been letting Bolton—as well as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo—set the aggressive tone. We may see the consequences very soon.

Joshua Keating, The Slate

May 8, 2019 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

World catching on to Bolton’s chronic warmongering

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif highlights again how the US National Security Advisor John Bolton has been feverishly trying to push Washington towards war with Iran.
Tweeting on Tuesday, Zarif wrote, “Today, the world’s catching on to Amb. John Bolton’s chronic warmongering.”
The top diplomat cited many evidenced revelations across the US media and elsewhere to exemplify his remarks.
The tweet incorporated a snapshot of a 2018 article in The New York Times that showed how Bolton had been promoting the notorious and deadly anti-Iran terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) as “viable opposition” and an alternative to the establishment in the Islamic Republic.
Zarif also attached another image captured from a profile published by The New Yorker on Monday that detailed Bolton’s idiosyncrasies, including by citing a former senior advisor to the US administration’s remarks that “John wants to bomb everyone.”
“But Iranians didn’t need to read a 10,000-word New Yorker profile to be convinced,” Zarif chided.
“We’ve seen him (Bolton) shill for a cult terror group,” he tweeted. The Iranian foreign minister was referring to evidence showing how Bolton had received a $40,000 “speaking fee” to address the MKO’s annual gathering in Paris.
“…and—along with his B-Team accomplices—target Iranians with Economic Terrorism,” he added.
Zarif was echoing remarks he had made to Fox News on Sunday, in which he identified the B-Team as Bolton, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
The US has been pursuing a policy of “maximum pressure” against Iran under US President Donald Trump, which has Bolton as its top security aide. The policy has seen Washington reinstating draconian economic sanctions targeting the Islamic Republic.
Washington has been enlisting the assistance of its regional allies in implementing the policy. Recently, it said that it would target every country potentially buying Iran’s oil as of May 2 with “secondary sanctions.”
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates immediately reported that they would be making up for potential shortages of the Iranian crude.

May 2, 2019 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Iranian “Khalq” for MEK, Pompeo and Bolton

More good news for the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ the Cult of Rajavi): “The Trump administration will sharply accelerate its goal of driving Iran’s oil exports to zero, ending sanctions exemptions that it previously granted to some of the Islamic Republic’s biggest customers.” [1]
The “maximum pressure” campaign by the White House, Treasury Department, and State Department is welcome by the Mujahedin Khalq Organization who claim to be holly warriors for the Iranian people.( Khalq is the Arabic term for people)
This is while the group’s most prominent American supporter John Bolton bluntly admits that the sanctions against Iran “only hurts the Iranian people”. He posted on his tweeter account on April 22nd after Secretary Pompeo announced that the United States would force China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Turkey to cease all imports of Iranian oil or face severe U.S. sanctions. “The Iranian regime should understand that it must change its behavior now or continue to pay the cost for its destabilizing behavior, which only hurts the Iranian people”, Bolton tweeted.

But, the MEK’s propaganda figure, Maryam Rajavi once more teams up her cult-like violent group with the Iranian people claiming that the Iranian people welcome such detrimental sanctions against their life, well-being and health. “The Iranian people and Resistance have been demanding the imposition of an oil and arms embargo on the mullahs’ anti-human, anti-Iranian regime since 4 decades”, she tweets.

The MEK’s false claims had been also denounced in a closed-door meeting with Iranian-American community leaders last Monday when Pompeo was asked how he could guarantee that the Trump administration’s tough new sanctions wouldn’t hurt the people of Iran, he replied:”There are no guarantees.”Pompeo implied that the Iranian people are not separated from the Iranian government. [2]
Besides, the meeting had bad news for the MKO. “Pompeo also distanced the administration from the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, or MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq), an anti-regime group that the U.S. once designated as a foreign terrorist organization,” Axios reported. “ Several people in the room told Pompeo they worried about what message it sent for close Trump allies — National Security Adviser John Bolton and Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani among them — to appear friendly with the MEK, whom some in the room described as worse than the current regime.” [3]
And this was the secretary’s response:”Ambassador Bolton spoke at an MEK rally. President Trump and I have not.”
“He acknowledged that John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani had connections or ties, whatever you want to call it … with the MEK, but he did say that he and the president did not,”Texas attorney Michael Payma –another person who was in the room– told Axios. [4]
Furthermore, whether the MEK is embraced by the US administration or not, one thing is for sure. The MEK is not the representative of the Iranian “Khalq” but it is against the khalq. It is always supporting the most hostile policies and actions against Iranian nation.
During the 1980s, the MEK formed “Saddam’s private army” and fought against its countrymen in the eight years of Iran-Iraq war. Following the collapse of the Iraqi dictator, it turned into the henchmen of the Israeli and US intelligence. The MEK agents were Mossad’s operational arms to assassinate the Iranian nuclear scientists in the 2000s. And, today the MEK is in all fronts against the Iranian people, no matter the enemies of Iran want it or not.
Mazda Parsi
[1] DiChristopher, Tom, Trump aims to drive Iran’s oil exports to zero by ending sanctions waivers, CNBC, April 22nd, 2019.
[2] Swan, Jonathan, Scoop: Trump administration opposes military intervention in Iran, AXIOS, April 22nd, 2019.
[3] ibid
[4] ibid

April 28, 2019 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

The Iran Hawks’ Creepy Embrace of the MEK

Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge resumes his discrediting advocacy for the Mujahideen-e Khalq:

Which is why I include myself among an incredible cadre of men and women from across every spectrum of life and political affiliation, in Europe and here in America, who have decided to embrace publicly the viable alternative to the clerical regime, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), and the 10-point Plan advocated by the NCRI’s leader, Maryam Rajavi.

It is rather incredible that so many former government officials and retired officers have embraced a totalitarian cult as the “alternative” to another country’s government, but it has been going on for the better part of a decade now. All of the MEK’s American boosters have proven that they have such extraordinary bad judgment that they should have no business talking about Iran policy (or any other foreign policy issue), and their continued advocacy on behalf of this awful organization is proof of how easily corrupted our foreign policy debates are. The MEK probably does still engage in terrorism, since its members were reportedly the ones responsible for murdering Iranian scientists a few years back, but there is absolutely no question that they are not and never could be a “viable alternative” to the current government. It is an indictment of Ridge and others like him, including the National Security Advisor, that they are so gullible or so obsessed with regime change that they are willing to make such ridiculous claims in public.

Ridge unsurprisingly doesn’t mention that almost all Iranians everywhere hate the MEK and want nothing to do with it. They certainly don’t want them to take over Iran, and I think it’s safe to assume that any attempt to force this group on the people would be met with overwhelming resistance. So much for being “viable.” It is a reflection of many Iran hawks’ ignorance of the country and its people that they think this could possibly work. He omits that Rajavi is a cultish leader who used to fight on the side of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and he leaves out the group’s long history of abusing its members that continues to this day in their creepy compound in Albania. Every time that a prominent American shills for the MEK, it is an insult to the genuine Iranian opposition and another reminder that Iran hawks have nothing but contempt for the Iranian people.

In addition to shilling for the cult, Ridge urges the Trump administration to be merciless in its application of sanctions in order to strangle Iran’s economy even more than it already has:

President Trump’s views on Iran are both clear and appropriate, but frankly, I would like to see zero exports of energy. Some say that means the Iranian people will suffer, but they are suffering now. Inflation is at 40 percent, unemployment at 50 percent. The rial has lost 70 percent of its value. And the recent devastating floods engulfing 27 out of 31 provinces are a damning indictment of the mullahs for their 40 years of mismanagement, incompetence and the looting of Iran’s national wealth. We must encourage the president, the administration and Congress to sustain the pressure.

Existing sanctions are responsible for causing much of the suffering that Iranians are already experiencing, and Ridge’s answer to that is to cause even more harm in the vain hope that this will lead to regime change. Toppling the government in Tehran seems to be the only thing that matters to these fanatics, and they don’t care how many millions of people have to be punished along the way.

By Daniel Larison ,

April 15, 2019 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

America Is Wide Open for Foreign Influence

If you’re an outsider with a political agenda, there’s no better country to target than the United States.

Ever since the Treaty of Westphalia, the idea of territorial sovereignty has been central to how most of us think about international politics and foreign policy. Although a huge amount of activity occurs across state borders, one of the chief tasks of any government is to defend the nation’s territory and make sure—to the extent it can—that outsiders are not in position to interfere in harmful ways. But for all the effort and expense devoted to keeping harmful influences out, sometimes countries wind up locking and bolting the windows while leaving the front door wide open.
Take the mighty United States, for example. It has a vast Department of Homeland Security, whose job is to defend its borders from international terrorism, illegal migration, drug smuggling, customs violations, and other dangers. The United States has intelligence agencies monitoring dangerous developments all over the world to keep them from harming Americans at home. It has spent trillions of dollars on a sophisticated nuclear arsenal designed to deter a hostile country from attacking the U.S. homeland directly, and it’s spent additional hundreds of billions of dollars pursuing the holy grail of missile defense. Americans now worry about cyberthreats of various kinds, including the possibility that foreign powers like Russia might be interfering in U.S. elections or sowing division and false information via social media. And then there’s President Donald Trump’s obsession with that southern wall, which he declares is necessary to keep the Republican base riled up—oops, sorry, I meant to say “is necessary to protect us from impoverished refugees or other undesirables.”
Given all the time, effort, and money the United States devotes to defending the realm against outside intrusions, it is ironic that the United States may also be the most permeable political system in modern history. More than any great power’s that I can think of, America’s political system is wide open to foreign interference in a variety of legitimate and illegitimate ways. I’m not talking about foreign bots infecting the national mind via social media—though that is a worrisome possibility. I’m talking about foreign governments or other interests that use a variety of familiar avenues to shape U.S. perceptions and persuade the U.S. government to do things that these outsiders want it to do, even when it might not be in America’s broader interest.
Suppose you were a foreign government, or perhaps an opposition movement challenging a foreign regime. Suppose further that you wanted to get America on your side, or maybe you just wanted to make sure that the United States didn’t use its considerable power against you. What avenues of influence are available to achieve your goal?
Obviously, you can use traditional diplomatic channels. You can tell your official representatives (ministers, ambassadors, consular officers, envoys, etc.) to meet with the relevant U.S. counterparts and plead your case. While they’re at it, your official representatives could also shmooz with other members of the executive branch and try to win them over too. There’s nothing remotely dodgy here; it’s just the usual workings of the normal diplomatic machinery. And sometimes that’s all you’ll need, especially when your interests and America’s interests really do coincide.
But you don’t have to stop there. For example, you could also take your case up to Capitol Hill. There are 435 representatives and 100 senators, and that’s an awful lot of potential points of access. Most of them don’t care a fig about foreign policy (and know even less), but some of them do care and a few of them have real clout. If you can win over a respected and well-placed representative or senator—or even just persuade one of their top aides—there’s a good chance a lot of the other lawmakers will follow their lead. Back in the 1950s, for example, Sen. William Knowland (R-Calif.) was often derided as the “Senator from Formosa” because of his consistent opposition to communist China and ardent support for Taiwan. More recently, Beltway denizen Randy Scheunemann was both a paid lobbyist for the government of Georgia and a top foreign-policy aide to the late Republican Sen. John McCain during his 2008 presidential campaign, which may help explain why the latter was such an ardent defender of Georgia during its 2008 war with Russia.
On top of that, there are plenty of politicians outside Congress who might be enlisted to your cause as well. Over the past decade or more, for example, Democrats including former Vermont governor and Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean and Republicans such as former New York mayor (and Trump apologist) Rudy Giuliani or current National Security Advisor John Bolton have spoken at rallies sponsored by the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) an Iranian exile group that was listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department from 1997 to 2012. The MEK is despised within Iran for its past collaboration with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, but that didn’t prevent it from recruiting a wide array of prominent Americans to its side, many of whom received lucrative speakers’ fees. See how easy this is?
But wait, there’s more! Foreign governments, corporations, and opposition movements can also hire public relations firms and professional lobbyists to clean up their public image, lobby politicians directly, and try to get influential Americans to see them as valuable partners. In his amusing but disturbing book Turkmeniscam: How Washington Lobbyists Fought to Flack for a Stalinist Dictatorship, the journalist Ken Silverstein showed how eager D.C. PR firms were to serve as the paid agents of a ruthless Central Asian dictator, along with the various ways that savvy spin doctors can scrub a despot’s reputation and get them access to influential people in Washington. The sad news is that Silverstein’s saga is far from atypical.
And don’t forget the rest of the Blob. In recent years, for example, we’ve learned that several prominent D.C. think tanks took millions of dollars from foreign governments eager to enhance their visibility, presence, and influence in Washington. The receiving organizations predictably denied that the money had the slightest influence on what they did, said, wrote, or believed, but former employees tell a different story. And yes, I know: Universities are not immune to temptation either.
The influence of self-interested foreigners increases even more when they can partner with domestic groups that share their objectives, and that will use their testimony to sell whatever course of action they are trying to promote. The most notorious recent example of this phenomenon was the infamous Iraqi schemer Ahmed Chalabi, who joined forces with American neoconservatives to help sell the Iraq War in 2003. Foreign voices like Chalabi’s often exercise disproportionate influence because they are (falsely) perceived as objective experts with extensive local knowledge, making uninformed, gullible, or mendacious Americans more likely to heed their advice. It is usually a good idea to listen to what foreign witnesses have to say about conditions far away provided that one never forgets that they may be telling Americans what they think they want to hear or feeding Americans false information designed to advance their interests at America’s expense.

Notice I haven’t said a word about espionage, bribery, or more ordinary forms of corruption, though each can be another way for foreign powers to advance their aims inside America’s borders. After all, when the U.S. president continues to defy the emoluments clause of the Constitution, and when his son-in-law and White House advisor is still financially connected to a real estate firm that recently got bailed out by a Qatari-backed investment company, one may legitimately wonder whether key foreign-policy decisions are being influenced by the personal financial interests of the president or his entourage. Trademarks in China, anyone?

By Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy

April 11, 2019 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Netanyahu and Maryam Rajavi thank Trump for accepting their request

On the Eve of Israel’s Election, Netanyahu Thanks Trump for Sanctioning Iran at His Request

ON THE EVE of Israel’s election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took credit for President Donald Trump’s decision to impose sanctions on Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, by designating it a foreign terrorist organization.
“Thank you, my dear friend, President Donald Trump,” Netanyahu tweeted in Hebrew, “for answering another one of my important requests.”
As the Telegraph correspondent Raf Sanchez noted, Netanyahu’s choice of words seemed to imply that Trump’s earlier decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, Syrian territory Israel seized by force in 1967, was also a gift given at the request of the embattled Israeli prime minister.
Netanyahu is taking credit for Trump’s decision to designate the Revolutionary Guard as terrorists. “Thank you for responding to another important request of mine,” Bibi says.
He got the Golan 2 weeks ago and now this 1 day before Israel’s election. https://t.co/PAvX22o4Y5
— Raf Sanchez (@rafsanchez) April 8, 2019
One day before Israelis go to the polls, Netanyahu is pulling out all the stops, since he faces both an immediate electoral challenge from Israel’s former military Chief of Staff, Benny Gantz, and the prospect of a post-election indictment on corruption charges.
Joe Dyke, an Agence France-Presse correspondent, pointed out that Netanyahu omitted the claim that Trump’s move was made at his request in a subsequent tweet in English. That left the prime minister open to the charge often leveled at Palestinian leaders by Israelis, that they placate the international community in English and then say something quite different for domestic consumption in their native tongue.
File this one away for the next time an Israeli official says “The Palestinians say one thing in English and another in Arabic” https://t.co/1OjAtWKGCH
— Joe (@joedyke) April 8, 2019
Trump is popular with Israel’s right-leaning, nationalist electorate for a string of concessions to Israeli claims, including the de facto recognition of Israel’s illegal annexation of occupied East Jerusalem as well as the Golan Heights. Netanyahu’s warm relations with the American president have featured heavily in his re-election campaign.
נתניהו – ימין. חזק. pic.twitter.com/Yqj1qkYKHH
— Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) March 6, 2019
On Sunday, Netanyahu also shared a segment from Fox News in which Sean Hannity called Gantz “his crazy opponent,” for suggesting that Trump was meddling in Israel’s election.
צפו בקטע מתוך תוכנית החדשות הנצפית ביותר בארה״ב.
יועצו הקרוב של נשיא ארה״ב דונלד טראמפ, רודי ג׳וליאני, תוקף את גנץ על כך שתקף את הנשיא טראמפ על שהכיר בריבונות ישראל ברמת הגולן. pic.twitter.com/q1lTu7oPjB
— Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) April 7, 2019
Soon after Trump’s decision to sanction the Revolutionary Guard Corps was announced, Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, tweetedthat Trump’s action was the result of lobbying by “Netanyahu Firsters,” including John Bolton, who made paid speeches advocating regime change in Iran before he became the national security adviser, and Sheldon Adelson, a financial supporter of both the American president and the Israeli prime minister who once suggested a nuclear strike on Iran would be the best way to start negotiations.

It was, Zarif added, another “misguided election-eve gift to Netanyahu.”
A(nother) misguided election-eve gift to Netanyahu. A(nother) dangerous U.S. misadventure in the region.
— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) April 8, 2019

After Netanyahu’s Hebrew-language tweet taking credit for the decision, Zarif tweeted a screenshot of a report from the Israeli press with the letters “Q.E.D.” a Latin phrase used at the end of a mathematical proof, indicating that the truth of a proposition has been demonstrated.
#NetanyahuFirsters who have long agitated for FTO designation of the IRGC fully understand its consequences for US forces in the region. In fact, they seek to drag US into a quagmire on his behalf.@realDonaldTrump should know better than to be conned into another US disaster. pic.twitter.com/i4bcfgxybT
— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) April 7, 2019
Senior Pentagon and C.I.A. officials opposed Trump’s decision to impose sanctions on the military unit and affiliated companies and individuals, arguing that it would “allow hard-line Iranian officials to justify deadly operations against Americans overseas,” The New York Times reported. Trita Parsi, founder of the National Iranian American Council, offered this as proof that Netanyahu now seems to have more sway over the president’s decisions than his own military and intelligence officials.

Once again, Trump dismisses American military and intelligence officials, and instead listens to Netanyahu and Saudi crown Prince MBS. #IRGC https://t.co/6jwPPCfjF8
— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) April 8, 2019

Maryam Rajavi, the leader of an Iranian exile group known as the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or People’s Mujahedeen — which successfully lobbied to be removed from the official State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations with the help of paid supporters like Bolton — also took credit for the new sanctions against the Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The terrorist designation of the repressive Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has been the enduring and the righteous demand of the Iranian people and Resistance and an imperative for regional and global peace and security. #Iran #BlackListIRGC
— Maryam Rajavi (@Maryam_Rajavi) April 8, 2019
Iran retaliated, as the BBC Persian correspondent Bahman Kalbasi noted, by designating The United States Central Command a terrorist organization and naming the U.S. government a supporter of terrorism.
Iran Supreme National Security Council has issued a statement saying it now considers CENTCOM and all the groups affiliated with it as a “terrorist organization” and US Gov. as a supporter of terrorism….good day for warmongers in DC, Tehran, Tel Aviv, as well as UAE/Saudi. https://t.co/vxtWVlZtW7
— Bahman Kalbasi (@BahmanKalbasi) April 8, 2019

Robert Mackey, The Intercept,

April 10, 2019 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Hawks Clamoring to Attack Iran

As Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, National Security Advisor John Bolton, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Saudi crown prince and de facto ruler Mohammad bin Salman clamor for a war against Iran, they seem to have conveniently forgotten the destruction and mayhem wrought by the American invasion of Iraq 16 years ago.
These war drummers are underestimating the potential negative consequences of the war and overestimating the Iranian people’s dislike of their theocratic regime. They, like the advocates of the Iraqi invasion in the winter of 2002 and early spring 2003, are confusing Iranians’ dislike of the ayatollahs with their potential embrace of a foreign invader.
On the eve of the Iraq war, former President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, the Vice President Chief of Staff and Assistant to the President David Addington all claimed that the Iraqi invasion aimed at liberating the country from the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein. Removing Saddam from power, they maintained, would eliminate the threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and bring stability, security, and democracy to Iraq.
As developments unfolded over the past 16 years, the “liberation” claims proved to be bogus. The invasion and the decision to de-Ba’athify Iraq and dissolve the Iraqi military created an environment conducive to sectarianism, insurgency, and terrorism. The vacuum that followed the regime collapse, the incompetence of the American administration in the “Green Zone,” and the pervasive corruption of the new Iraqi governing councils was quickly filled by pro-Iranian militias, al-Qaeda, and later the Islamic State. The promise of stability and security was replaced by chaos, bloodshed, and mayhem.
The massive destruction of Iraq and the horrendous human and material cost the American “liberation” caused for the country will be child’s play compared to what could happen if Trump and his Israeli and Saudi allies decide to attack Iran. Unlike Iraq—which the British cobbled together after World War One out of the Shia, Sunnis, and Kurds under a minority Sunni rule— Iran has been in existence for centuries with a vast territory and a huge population. If attacked, Iran has the capability to retaliate against its neighbors, especially Saudi Arabia. Its air and missile forces could quickly destroy the oil and gas facilities and the water and power grids on the Arab side of the Gulf. A war against Iran could easily spread to the Gulf and the Levant. The entire region could go up in flames.

Hubris and Ignorance
The Bush administration was not willing or interested in answering the “morning after” questions regarding the post-Saddam future of Iraq. Whenever I and others urged policy makers to consider the law of unintended consequences and what could go wrong in Iraq following the invasion, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld dismissed our concerns and arrogantly claimed that the U.S. military and civilian administration following the invasion would be able to control the situation in Iraq. Their hubris regarding America’s power and ignorance of Iraqi realities on the ground led to a total breakdown of Iraqi society following the demise of the Saddam regime.
The Trump administration seems to be equally arrogant and ignorant about Iran. It has displayed a similar disregard for strategic thinking about the future of Iran beyond the clerical regime. The Iranophobes within the administration seem to be more obsessed with Iran than the Bush administration was ever with Iraq.
Instead of relying on calm, expert-based analysis, Secretary of State Pompeo has made a series of trips to the region that have involved bullying, threats, and hilarious, if not tragic, mischaracterizations. In a recent conversation with Christian broadcasters in Jerusalem, Pompeo waxed eloquent about God’s presumed divine plan designating Trump as a possible savior of the “Jewish people,” Sunni Islam, Maronite Lebanon, Alawite Syria, and the rest of the world from the perceived modern-day Persian “Hamans.”
The American foreign policy process is in serious trouble if Pompeo truly believes that Trump could be the twenty-first-century version of Queen Esther or Hadassah and that this religious vision could chart the path to a grand strategy in the Middle East. When warped religious interpretations are offered as a substitute for rationally debated policy, whether by a radical Wahhabi Salafist, an evangelical Christian, or an ultra-Orthodox Jew, democratic governments should fear for their future. Invoking the divine as an inspiration or a justification for violence against another country, much as Osama bin Laden did on the eve of 9/11, is a rejection of rational discourse and a return to the barbarism of previous epochs.
Pompeo’s imagined “shuttle diplomacy” in the Middle East has been reduced to supporting Netanyahu’s upcoming election bid, threatening Hezbollah in Lebanon, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and lambasting any state that does business with Iran. His ambassador-designee to Saudi Arabia, John Abizaid, told Congress that the threat from Iran supersedes concerns for human rights in Arab autocracies.
Furthermore, Trump administration policy operatives, including John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani, have treated an Iranian group called the Mujahedin-e Khalq or MEK as a legitimate alternative to the clerical regime in Iran. The MEK, however, is a terrorist cult that has received funding from all sorts of dubious sources and is often used as a tool by outside groups, states, and organizations, including intelligence services of regional and international state actors, to further an anti-Iran agenda.
Similarly, the Bush administration viewed Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi émigré, and the organization he founded, the Iraqi National Congress, as the legitimate alternative to the Saddam regime in Iraq. Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld fully bought into Chalabi’s snake-oil sales. Chalabi was instrumental in instigating America’s invasion of Iraq at the cost of trillions of dollars and thousands of American and Iraqi lives. Iraq has never recovered from that ill-fated, unnecessary war. Bolton and Giuliani are as susceptible to MEK’s claims as Cheney and Rumsfeld were to Chalabi’s.
For the sake of whipping up regional animus toward Iran and preparing the ground for a war against the “Persian menace,” Pompeo in effect has told Arab autocrats that so long as they keep mouthing anti-Iran rhetoric, Washington will ignore their despicable human rights record and the continued repression of their people. The thousands of political prisoners in Egyptian, Saudi, and Bahraini jails will have to wait for another day.
Arab regimes have become masters in the art of communicating with their American benefactors. During the Cold War, they received American aid as long as they brandished anti-Communist slogans. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and with the rise of terrorism, these same strongmen were happy to adopt an anti-terrorism rhetoric in order to continue receiving American military and economic aid. Their current anti-Iran public posture is the latest phase in their communication with Washington and is as equally profitable as the previous two phases.
When some regional politicians demurred about getting tough with Iran, as happened during Pompeo’s recent visit to Lebanon, he did not hesitate to threaten them with a panoply of economic sanctions. Vice President Mike Pence used similar language at the recent meeting in Warsaw to berate and even threaten America’s European allies if they dared to take a conciliatory posture toward Iran. The European reaction to Pence’s speech showed that his pathetic performance backfired. Pompeo’s Warsaw meeting ended in utter failure.

Iran Nuclear Deal
Managing Iran’s malign behavior through the Iran nuclear deal or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was a stroke of diplomatic genius, which former Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz negotiated. The Obama administration placed Iran’s objectionable behavior in two baskets—a nuclear basket, which they addressed through the Iran deal, and a non-nuclear one, which the Obama administration was to address once the nuclear inspection became operational and Iran fully compliant. That approach would have worked: most experts judged Iran to be in compliance with the conditions of the nuclear deal. Unfortunately, President Trump decided not to recertify the agreement.
Trump’s decision contradicted the judgment of most nuclear and intelligence experts about Iran’s compliance. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), for example, affirmed Iran’s compliance in more than a dozen of its successive quarterly reports and as recently as earlier this month.
In his open testimony to Congress in January, the Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats stated that Iran continued to comply with the deal even after Trump announced his intention to scuttle it. Coats said, “We do not believe Iran is currently undertaking activities we judge necessary to produce a nuclear device.” Iran was of course cheating in other areas, according to the DNI’s testimony, but not on the nuclear agreement.
In a statement issued April 25 of last year, over two dozen Israeli senior military and intelligence officials judged that it was “in Israel’s best interest that the United States maintains the nuclear agreement with Iran.” The Israeli statement went on to say that “The current deal is better than no deal” and that “Iran’s destructive regional policies and actions, its support for acts of terrorism, its presence in Syria, and its ballistic missiles program should be dealt with outside the framework of the agreement.” This was precisely the position of the Obama administration when it negotiated the deal in the first place.

The Path Forward
Fifty-plus retired American generals and diplomats, in a statement published earlier this month, urged the Trump administration to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal and work on resolving outstanding concerns with Iran diplomatically. They advised against a war because they saw no good outcome. The statement did not seek to exonerate Iran’s destabilizing behavior and its involvement in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, or Lebanon. Nor did the retired senior leaders ignore Iran’s link to terrorism. The statement, however, pointed out, among other things, that the 2015 nuclear deal “put limitations on Iran’s nuclear program that provided assurances that it would not be used to develop weapons, improved American intelligence about potential future development and significantly improved the security of the United States and our allies.”
Additionally, the retired generals and diplomats emphasized that Iran is complying with the agreement and that, under the JCPOA, Iran is barred from engaging in nuclear weapons development program, which prevents it from producing a nuclear device. “Reentering the agreement and lifting the sanctions will greatly enhance United States’ ability to negotiate improvements and enable us to address concerns with the existing agreement.”
Coming from these military and policy realists, who are dedicated to the security of this country, Israel, and America’s allies, this advice is grounded in sane strategic analysis, not in theological whimsy.

by Emile Nakhleh,

April 6, 2019 0 comment

Iran

No; Islamic Republic Not Months Away from Collapse

Iran celebrated the 40th anniversary of its revolution on Monday, with people marching to honour an unexpected victory that birthed the Islamic Republic.

Packed crowds of Iranians were on the streets in Iranian cities to commemorate the sweeping away of the US-backed rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, defying a prediction that few in Iran are in celebration mood considering rising unemployment and inflation exacerbated by US sanctions.
But this was not the only prediction proven false. The celebrations left unfulfilled the latest prophecy of the hawkish US national security advisor John Bolton, who hoped last year “the Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1979 revolution will not last until its fortieth birthday.”
In his speech to a conference of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), the notorious group behind biggest terror attacks in Iran, Bolton also said they would hold celebrations in Tehran before 2019.
Even at that time, the statement appeared more like a case of wishful thinking.

It’s All Illusion

In fact, the US politicians have long been talking of the Islamic Republic’s imminent demise.
The US pressure campaign against Tehran was launched just months into the revolution, after US officials were convinced the Islamic Republic was not something they could stand.
Western governments could live without Iran’s petrodollars and its highly profitable economic opportunities, but they couldn’t afford to see Mideast people ruled by similar dictatorships to follow in Iranians’ footsteps and copy this model in the region’s oil kingdoms.
Throughout the years since the 1979 revolution, US officials and their propaganda mouthpieces have periodically asserted the Islamic Republic is merely months away from collapse.
In fact, Bolton’s friends at MKO are a big victim of such mentality, losing thousands of forces in a plainly ridiculous operation to take Tehran and other Iranian cities in 1988.
Before them, the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had tried to bring an end to the Islamic Republic in weeks, taking advantage of Iran’s post-revolutionary chaos in the 1980s.
However, despite generous financial and arms support provided by wealthy Arab governments and the west, the Iraqi war machine failed to achieve tangible achievements after eight years of relentless war.

Manufactured Revolution

The last time we were told the end is near for the Islamic Republic was 2009, when allegations of widespread fraud in the presidential elections that year ignited street protests in Tehran and other cities.
Such claims could hardly be credible, as the victor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had won by an 11-million lead over his nearest rival and it was impossible for him to collude with hundreds of thousands of election organisers to steal so many votes.
But facts were no important to western media and politicians, who portrayed a nation tired of the revolution which had stood up to finish off a decaying regime.

For a few months, the uprising was heroically advancing, and the so-called Green Movement was to take over the country soon.
However, despite the hopes of overexcited commentators in the western press, things didn’t go as their audience would have expected.
With the predictions of the western dreamers proven untrue, then US president Barack Obama appeared to start admitting the reality about Iran, beginning with the recognition of Iran’s right to peaceful atomic energy.
The Obama administration concluded the nuclear deal with Iran and exchanged prisoners with the country, believing that the experience of decades of US hostility towards Tehran provided the Iran problem is not just another nail to be tapped by the strong US hammer.

Illusions Make Comeback

Then Donald Trump came to power and pulled out of the nuclear deal, alleging that his predecessors had not been tough enough with Tehran, mocking Obama for being too soft on Iran.
People inside the new US administration claimed there are many parallels between Iran and the former Soviet Union, believing the current president could play a part similar to former president Ronald Reagan by taking an uncompromising position towards Iran.
Soon, western governments’ propaganda mouthpieces took up the Soviet analogy as their watchword and started repeating a nearly forgotten mantra: Iranians want change.
The narrative was set up skilfully: Iran’s youth, particularly the army of the unemployed, have been hit hard by the economic downturn and other challenges and are fed up with a regime full of mischief.
The western mainstream media’s audience were endlessly told that Iranians have grown wary of the regime’s corruption and are yearning from within for transformation.
According to this narrative, the US and other western governments have a humanitarian duty to intervene and help Iranians realize their hope.

Soviet Analogy in Action

Before the 40th anniversary of the revolution, western media were publishing mountains of commentary and strident headlines raising the familiar theme of Iran’s need for change.
Reuters ran the story of a former judge who is frustrated with the revolution; the Daily Telegraph remembered “horrors” of the post-revolution Iran; and Bloomberg assertedIranians have endured 40 years of “terror, deprivation and cruelty” under the Islamic Republic.
Moreover, the Wall Street Journal said the Revolution has failed to fulfil promises; The Washington Post believed the “decaying” Islamic Republic is “showing its age” and the Christian Science Monitor claimed the country has reached a turning point.
Likewise, Financial Times reported many of those born since the 1979 Revolution want reform, France 24 quoted an expert saying the Iranian state represses its people and deprives them of the country’s wealth, and Deutsche Welle predicted the Islamic Republic is likely to be toppled in the near future.
But the noisy celebrations on Monday showed once again that the stories by narrated the dreamers in the western press and fantasies woven by hawks in the US government have little to do with reality.
The case was too big to ignore, and the western agencies had no choice but to cover the celebrations, although they sought to play down the annual event.
The celebrations were frequently referred to as “state-organized” marches that saw tens of thousands or at best hundreds of thousands of people in Iran’s 31 provinces in attendance.

Pipe Dreams

The reaction of the US government was even more interesting.
Presumably, the size of crowds in the February 11 celebrations could be the first indicator of the success of the so-called “maximum pressure” campaign, designed to bring Iran to its knees.
Trump and Bolton were so annoyed by the popular celebrations that they issued separate messages hours later, with the advisor denouncing the “Iranian regime” which “has failed to fulfil its promises.”
They seem to be convinced that the Iranian government is vulnerable to collapse and tough US sanctions could hasten its demise.
But Iran has been under sanctions for over forty years. Why should we believe the new round of US sanctions will bring a collapse of the Islamic Republic now?
The reason why the Islamic Republic survives such undue pressure is a story for another day, but it seems safe to conclude that the current US pressure campaign is doomed.
There is no doubt that the Iranian government faces a series of unnerving domestic and foreign challenges. But the 40-year-old Islamic Republic is different from the one that emerged in 1979.
Iran has now secured itself, boosted its regional influence and established a buffer zone between its borders and hostile powers.
It has grown domestically, too, trying to keep up with a dynamic society.
More importantly, many Iranians are now convinced they have to stand on their feet and bear US pressures, having experienced first-hand that the US is a hopeless case.

Alireza Hashemi, Iran Front Page,
Alireza Hashemi is an Iranian political journalist with several years of experince working for Iran’s English and Persian-Language media who regularly contributes to IFPnews. He previosly served as a staff writer at Financial Tribune.

February 16, 2019 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Trump allies hijack Warsaw summit with calls for Iran war, regime change

WASHINGTON — An international conference US officials had insisted was not about demonizing Iran got off to an awkward start in Warsaw today thanks to two close allies of US President Donald Trump.

First, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer in the Russia investigation, called for Iran regime change at a rally in Warsaw of the controversial Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group until recently designated as a terrorist group by the United States, and widely reviled by Iranians both inside and outside of Iran as a cult that fought with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war.
Then, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his spokesman tweeted comments whose English translation said the Warsaw meeting was important for bringing Israel together with Arab countries “to advance their common interest of war with Iran.” Those tweets were subsequently deleted and reposted with the translation of Israeli-Arab common interest being in “combatting” Iran, but not for over an hour from the Israeli prime minister’s official Twitter account.
State Department officials had already had a hard time convincing other allied nations to send their foreign ministers to the two-day supposedly ministerial conference on promoting peace and stability in the Middle East. (Netanyahu also serves as Israel’s foreign minister.) In the end, only two foreign ministers came from Western Europe to Warsaw.
British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt came for one day to chair a “quad” meeting on Yemen, with his counterparts from the United States, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, along with UN Yemen envoy Martin Griffiths. But Hunt was expected to depart before the proceedings Thursday. France and Germany, the other two European nations that helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal that Trump withdrew from last year, sent their political directors.
Israel’s Netanyahu was the only head of state who came from abroad to the conference; US Vice President Mike Pence also attended. That made for an awkward “family photo” of the attendees in which the Polish president and foreign minister, Pence, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Netanyahu were some of the only recognizable figures in the front row of some 50 nations’ representatives.
US envoy on Iran Brian Hook, in an interview with the BBC Persian service, said repeatedly that the United States does not have a relationship with the MEK, and said Giuliani does not represent the US government. But the fact that the president’s personal lawyer, as well as his national security adviser John Bolton, are or have been longtime lobbyists for the controversial group has made many other countries wary of the Trump administration’s hard-line policies on Iran and where they are heading.
“I don’t think there’s any hiding the fact that despite the label being changed, the US very much has an agenda here in terms of creating this alliance that is anti-Iran,” Ellie Geranmayeh, deputy director of Middle East programs at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Al-Monitor.
“The messaging from European capitals has been so clear that they don’t want to be associated with that kind of meeting,” Geranmayeh said. “It’s a big snub that the German and the French foreign ministers haven’t gone. And the only reason Hunt’s going can be put down to Brexit next month and the country being in limbo.”
On the agenda for Thursday, the US undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, Sigal Mandelker, is expected to lead discussions at a special session on finance and terrorism.
“To be honest, even today, speaking to some of the Europeans, they have no clue what is coming out of this tomorrow,” Geranmayeh said. “The impression they had is the agenda is still a mess.”
“I think the US has still been pushing for follow-up working groups to continue on some of these issues,” she said. “But one diplomat said it really depends on how the US handles the discussions in Warsaw. If they really go into full Iran-bashing mode, it is going to be so unhelpful.”
The fact that Trump’s personal lawyer is meeting with the MEK “makes everyone in Europe very skeptical of the intent behind this meeting,” Geranmayeh said.
Laura Rozen, Al Monitor
Laura Rozen is Al-Monitor’s diplomatic correspondent based in Washington, DC. She has written for Yahoo! News, Politico and Foreign Policy. On Twitter: @LRozen

February 16, 2019 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Gingrich considered registering as a lobbyist for Iran regime change

The former House speaker sought advice late last year on whether to register as a foreign agent for the Iranian opposition.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich attends the”Free Iran 2018 — the Alternative”event organized by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an exiled Iranian opposition group, on June 30, 2018, in Villepinte, north of Paris.
Former US House speaker and Donald Trump ally Newt Gingrich asked the Justice Department for advice last year on whether he should register as a foreign agent amid deepening involvement with groups seeking regime change in Iran.
Gingrich asked the department in mid-September whether he should register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) after an undisclosed person asked him to urge a foreign ambassador in Washington to seek funding from that ambassador’s country to “promote democracy” in Iran. Gingrich declined to respond to Al-Monitor’s requests for comment and it’s not clear if he ever went through with the person’s request.
The request is spelled out in an Oct. 19 advisory opinion posted to the FARA web site. While Gingrich isn’t named in the redacted document, descriptive details are a perfect match for his Virginia-based Gingrich Productions firm (Al-Monitor was able to independently confirm the request came from Gingrich).
In his letter to the Justice Department, Gingrich also seeks guidance on whether he should register as a lobbyist for a “foreign political party” after making “a number” of “paid appearances” sponsored by the group’s US affiliate both inside and outside the United States. While the foreign party isn’t named, it appears to be a clear reference to the pro-regime change National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI-US); Gingrich has attended the group’s annual gathering just outside of Paris several times.
In its advisory opinion, the Justice Department says Gingrich, who has not registered as a foreign agent, may need to do so if the US affiliate “is acting in any way on behalf of” the parent party. Interestingly, the NCRI’s US office itself has been registered under FARA as a foreign agent of the NCRI since 2012. A spokesman for the group said it had nothing to do with Gingrich’s potential outreach to the unnamed foreign ambassador.
Gingrich was an adviser to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and remains close to the president, who sought his advice on how to avoid a Democratic “blue wave” ahead of the 2018 mid-term elections. His wife, Callista Gingrich, was tapped as ambassador to the Vatican in May 2017.
But he isn’t the only Washington insider in the president’s orbit who’s close to the Iranian opposition. Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani has also long been a fixture at NCRI events. And Al-Monitor first reported that national security adviser John Bolton had disclosed being paid $40,000 for his appearance at the group’s rally in France in 2017 before he joined the government.
Gingrich’s stepped-up political activity on behalf of the Iranian opposition is particularly noteworthy as the Donald Trump administration sponsors a Middle East conference in Poland this week that was originally billed as an anti-Tehran summit. Giuliani is slated to appear at an NCRI rally in Warsaw coinciding with the summit.
Julian Pecquet , Al-Monitor
Julian Pecquet is Al-Monitor’s Washington Editor. He was previously Congressional Correspondent from 2014 through May 2017 and most recently before that headed up The Hill’s Global Affairs blog. On Twitter: @JPecquet_ALM, Email: jpecquet@al-monitor.com.

February 16, 2019 0 comment

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