Paid advocacy for MKO

Michael Rubin: Yes, Mujahedin al-Khalq is a dishonest cult

Michael Rubin writer of the famous article “Monsters of the Left “wrote an article on commentary magazine titled ” Yes, Mujahedin al-Khalq Is a Dishonest Cult “in which he declared the deep opposition of Iranian people against the Mujahedin-e Khalq and the group’s lack of credibility among their own nation whatever their political views may be.

Bellow is an excerpt of the Article:

“… Iranians are politically engaged—even if not within the system—and did not hesitate to talk. Many spoke of their desire for alternatives. Some asked about the son of the late shah, living in exile in the United States. Others would speak more theoretically about a desire for a republic or other alternative. The only thing on which Iranians agreed was their dislike of the Mujahedin al-Khalq Organization (MKO). Several years ago, I wrote a piece outlining their history and ideological evolution. Long story short, the group’s involvement in terrorism that killed not only regime officials but ordinary Iranian citizens, as well as their willingness to accept aid and shelter from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the years after Iraq’s invasion of Iran, delegitimized the group in the face of the public they claim to represent.

The Clinton administration designated the MKO to be a terrorist group, but after years of lobbying—and buying support by paying huge honoraria to a bipartisan array of senior officials—the MKO was delisted in 2012. No longer being considered a terrorist group does not make the MKO democratic, however, as anyone who has ever studied their internal workers can attest. It is against this backdrop that this diary, written by a Kyrgyz student recruited to attend an MKO rally in Paris, is so interesting. It seems that the MKO leaders must now not only pay speakers to sing their praises at their rallies, but also the audience members. The MKO is not only a creepy cult, and willing to say anything to buy support regardless of the group’s record, but an empty shell as well. Let us hope that one day their remaining congressional supporters will recognize that if they truly want to bring change to Iran’s odious regime, they would best reach out to the Iranian people and not associate with groups which repel them.

By Michael Rubin , Commentary Magazine

July 8, 2013 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Why Is There Bipartisan Support for the MEK?

Why Is There Bipartisan Support for the MEK? Because Politicians Like Getting Paid

Benny Avni hails the bi-partisan support for the Iranian cult group MEK and their cries for regime change in Iran:

Want to see US bipartisanship on Iran? Go to Paris and attend a rally led by Maryam Rajavi, the charismatic head of the best-organized anti-regime group of Iranian exiles.

Where else can you hear former lefty congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee calling Rajavi “my sister” and soon after listen to righty Rudy Giuliani saying she’s the best alternative to “that killer,” Iran’s President-elect Hassan Rouhani? Where else can a one-time Democratic presidential candidate, Bill Richardson, be on the same foreign-policy page as a Republican wannabe, Newt Gingrich? Or a former Obama adviser, dovish retired Gen. George Jones, support the same cause as Bushie hawks like former UN Ambassador John Bolton and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey?

Gee, what would unite Washington’s political class around a cause? Maybe, I don’t know, money? Let’s see:

Scores of former senior officials have been paid up to $40,000 to make speeches in support of the MEK’s delisting. Those who have received money include the former chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, General Hugh Shelton; ex-FBI director Louis Freeh; and Michael Mukasey, who as attorney general oversaw the prosecution of terrorism cases.

The former Pennsylvania governor, Ed Rendell, has accepted more than $150,000 in speaking fees at events in support of the MEK’s unbanning. Clarence Page, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, was paid $20,000 to speak at the rally. Part of the money has been paid through speakers bureaus on the US east coast.

Others accepted only travel costs, although in some cases that involved expensive trips to Europe.

In June, Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the US House of Representatives and Republican presidential candidate, flew to Paris to address a pro-MEK rally and meet its co-leader, Maryam Rajavi. He was criticised for bowing to her.

That was last June, but Gingrich evidently re-upped for 2013. And good for him, the economy’s tough and everyone needs to make a living. But reading Avni’s piece, you’d never know of these lavish funding efforts. (You can read more about them here.)

Avni ends his piece with this eye-opener:

Even if detractors are right that the group’s support in Iran is much less significant than in DC, Rajavi may have a key role to play. Mostly, she can help convince Americans that the best future for relations with Iranians — and for the Mideast — is regime-change in Tehran. If she succeeds, her habit of collecting fans among former US pols would end up being a worthy cause indeed.

Right. One of the reasons relations between the U.S. and Iran have been contentious is because the U.S. took it upon itself to change the Iranian regime once before. There are certainly many people in Iran who would like to see the current system fall or be systemically reformed — but the people rejoicing in the streets after the election of Rouhani are unlikely to cheer efforts to install an MEK cultist as a temporary president of Iran.

For a more serious appraisal of the MEK you can read this RAND study on the group.

By Greg Scoblete ,RealClearWorld.com

July 7, 2013 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

What’s remained of the MKO?

The June22 gathering of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) in Paris was first of all a multi-national rally despite what the group’s propaganda labels it: “the Greatest Iranian Gathering”.

The alleged dozen thousands of attendees who participated the gathering actually included 500 parliamentarian What’s remained of the MKO? and politicians from over 50 countries,” but also Russian and polish immigrants not very aware of their struggle and taking advantage of free bus trip from Germany, hailed the “mother” of the movement, President of the National Council of Resistance of Iran [Maryam Rajavi],” reported Christophe Ayad of Le Monde. [1]

The Le Monde journalist notifies American leading role at the event: "Saturday at Villepinte, the Mojahedin could rely on the support of French personalities: Michele Alliot-Marie. Ingril Betancourt, Christine Ockrent. But the show was primarily American. on the attendance sheet, you could list four generals, including a former national security advisor to Barack Obama, James Jones ,a former head of FBI, Louis Freeh, a former director of the CIA, Porter Goss, and four members of Congress, including the conservative Newt Gingrich, former candidate for the Republican nomination. Not to mention the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. A very neo-conservative Areopagus in fact. Former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero was also present.”[2]

Bob Filner former US congressman and the new mayor of San Diego, was among the dozen MKO’s American sponsors who has been advocating for the group in response to the group’s generous offers of speaking fees, first-class trips and luxurious hotels . Trent Seibert of UT San Diego puts, "Mayor Bob Filner just returned from Paris but declined on Thursday to answer questions about the travel or who paid for it." The author reports that the new mayor seemed reluctant to clarify the reasons of his trip," Filner briefly told reporters at a news conference that the trip was not a “junket,” but a “business trip which is to get jobs to San Diego.”[3]

Dean Calbreath of the Daily Transcript also notes that Filner has not responded to requests for information about the event, but in two previous trips –taken while he was a congressman – he has described it as a “grand meeting of Iranians in support of human rights and democracy“, where he could meet Iranian advocates of greater religious freedom and women’s rights. [4]

But why is a US prominent figure so scared of revealing the motivations for his participation in an Iranian opposition’s rally? It seems that following the June 14 presidential election in Iran where near 72 percent voted and chose their president elect; Mr. Filner himself finds it odd to attend an anti-Iran event. Besides, if he explains about his motivations, He will have to reveal the fee he was paid by the group for the expenses of his trip to the French Capital.

The Daily Transcript criticizes the Mayor Bob Filner for “spending a couple of days with groups hoping to topple the current government of Iran” instead of being present at San Diego City Hall. The author of the article warns about the threat of the group that is embraced by Mr. Mayor referring to Maryam Rajavi’s address in the event. “And in her speech on Saturday, Rajavi also made clear that she was not afraid of bloodshed in the struggle to achieve those goals”, he suggests.[5]

Speaking of the MKO agent in Clorado, T.Mehdi Qaemi a real estate broker, Calbreath gives accounts of large amounts of money US figures are paid for the group’s advocacy. He states: “The push to get the MEK off the list, which occurred in July 2012, included a well-funded lobbying campaign that brought US politicians to the group’s headquarters in France. Ghaemi a broker with the Alborz Real Estate Co. in Greenwood Village, Col., paid $7,487 for Filner’s first class airfare and hotel accommodations in a 2007 trip and $7988 in 2011, although he never contributed to political campaigns.”[6]

Besides numerous government officials who were generously received at the MKO rally, the group launched a massive campaign to make the Villepinte hall look bursting by Iranian –actually non-Iranians – waving flags, chanting slogans. On June 27, Radio Free Europe published the diary of a Kyrgyz student studying in Prague, Alina Alymkoulova who was recruited by the group propaganda arm to attend Villepinte gathering. Alina reveals facts about the MKO’s rent-a-crowd assembly. “Most of the “protesters” were young and obviously students like me” she recounts. “I met many Russians, Ukrainians, Czechs, and students from Asian countries who were all recruited via the Internet.”[7]

About the atmosphere of the deceitful MKO-run rally in the suburb of Paris she says, "As we exited the bus, I resigned myself to the idea that running away was not an option — people were guarding the area.”[8]

Alina and his companions on the bus were not the only non-Iranians who were brought to the MKO Show. “The endless sight of buses from many different countries was somewhat alarming”, she notices. There were a lot more travelers from all over Europe who did not even agree about whether they were going to a rally "in support of human rights" in Iran or Iraq! [9]

Although the MKO spokesman, Shahin Qobadi severely denies Alina’s report on his group’s fraudulent methods to rent a crowd calling it as "suspicious". Alina’s story is not the only one to reveal details about lack of MKO’s popularity among Iranians. There are also numerous photos and videos on the presence of non-Iranian especially Africans on MKO rallies in previous years – that were widely reported following the MKO’s earlier rallies.

The past experiences of Villepinte rally have taught the MKO to be more careful about the non-Iranian participants. As Alina States this year “cameras were not allowed” and non-Iranians were seated on the black rows of that hall.

Definitely the MKO show in Paris was not an Iranian demonstration at all. The major authorities speaking at the hall were mostly American; the attendees were deceived to take a trip in Paris almost for free. Not a single Iranian except the she-guru of the cult, Maryam Rajavi addressed the crowd because none of the Iranian intellectuals –even those who oppose Islamic Republic – care about the MKO if they do not hate it.

By Mazda Parsi

References:

[1]Ayad, Christophe and Imbert, Louis, Show à l’américaine pour les Moudjahidine du people, Le Monde, June 26, 2013

[2]ibid

[3]Seibert,Trent, LITTLE FROM MAYOR ABOUT TRIP TO PARIS, UT San Diego, June 28, 2013

[4]CalBreath, Dean,Filner visits Iranian resistance in Paris, The Daily Transcipt, June 27,2013

[5]ibid

[6]ibid

[7]Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty, Diary of an MKO Rent-A-Crowd Demonstrator, June27, 2013

[8]ibid

[9]ibid

July 2, 2013 0 comments

Bob Filner

Bob Filner mum on his paid trip to MEK terror group rally

Mayor is mum on trip to Paris

Filner says only that the trip was to get San Diego jobs

San Diego Mayor Bob Filner just returned from Paris but declined on Thursday to answer questions about the travel or who paid for it.

Filner briefly told reporters at a news conference that the trip was not a “junket,” but a “business trip which is to get jobs to San Diego.”

He deferred further questions until a news conference he said he would hold Friday. U-T Watchdog has submitted public records requests for documents related to the trip, including the cost of travel for Filner’s city security detail.

A news release from the National Council of Resistance of Iran said Filner attended a group rally in Villepinte, France, near Paris.

“My first question is who is paying for all this?” Councilman Scott Sherman said. “I don’t get why a mayor of the city of San Diego would need to be there. I think he was beating feet as quick as he could to get out of town because of all the negative news media.”

Filner left town late last week amid several controversies, including his use of a bodyguard to remove a City Attorney’s Office representative from a council meeting last week.

Filner was also facing questions over a donation to the city from developer Sunroad Centrum Partners. Filner vetoed the builder’s request to modify a Kearny Mesa development plan and then later dropped his objection after the company gave $100,000 to the city for a veterans plaza and a bicycling event — pet projects of Filner.

Filner has previously accepted travel from groups that are part of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. He went to Paris in June 2011, as a member of Congress. He also took a similar trip in June of 2007, federal records show.

His 2011 trip cost $6,589 and was paid for by Colorado’s Iranian American Community, a group tied to the Mujahideen-e Khalq or MEK, the militant — and largest — arm of the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

That trip included a first class flight and a stay at a Marriott. Legistorm, a nonpartisan Washington DC-based organization that compiles information about Congress, including Congressional travel, noted, “This trip included unusually expensive hotel charges.”

The 2007 trip to France, also paid for by Colorado’s Iranian American Community, cost $7,949. The plane ticket in that case was business class.

During the mayoral campaign last year, Filner was criticized for accepting 16 free trips as a congressman, totaling $40,000. U-T Watchdog determined his travel was at the median for the county’s congressional delegation, that is, third highest out of five legislators.

He said at the time, “I plead guilty to doing my job as a congressman, informing myself about world issues, building relationships with world leaders and fighting for human rights.”

Filner is not alone in accepting travel from the Iranian groups. Others who have gone include former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Rep. Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island.

In large part, the trips were part of a lobbying campaign to remove the MEK from the U.S. State Department’s foreign terrorist organizations list. In a speech to the group, Filner compared their plight to the U.S. civil rights movement.

“This will happen,” Filner said in a speech to the group in 2011. “This will happen. The laws, the facts, are on our side.”

The de-listing effort succeeded last year.

U-T San Diego , By Trent Seibert

June 30, 2013 0 comments

USA

Far from Iran election, former guerrillas lobby Washington

WASHINGTON – For decades, an Iranian dissident group has seemed to be on the wrong side of history. Suppressed by both the Shah of Iran and then the ayatollahs who deposed him in 1979, its supporters have faced prison, death and exile, and were shunned in the United States as members of a cult-like terrorist organization.
The Mujahadin-e-Khalq (MEK) former guerrilla movement began to shake off its painful past last year when the State Department took it off the official U.S. list of terrorist organizations. The European Union made a similar decision in 2009 after a prolonged court battle.
But as Iran elects a new president on Friday, the MEK has no discernible role in politics at home, where it is mistrusted – even by government critics – for having been allied with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war.
Yet Iran’s clerical rulers remain obsessed with a perceived threat from the group, frequently warning Western governments against any giving the MEK shelter or support, diplomats say.
Unable to operate openly in Iran, the MEK is instead waging some of its battles in Washington. It opened an attractive new office in April just a five-minute walk from the White House.
Long active as an advocacy group in the United States and Europe, the MEK is now formalizing its campaign to pressure the Obama administration to maintain a hard line – including in multilateral nuclear talks – with the Islamic Republic, which it hopes will one day crumble.
Now that it is no longer on the U.S. blacklist, the MEK can hire registered lobbyists and raise funds on its own, rather than rely on wealthy Iranian-American sympathizers.
Democratic former Senator Robert Torricelli signed up as a lobbyist earlier this year for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the Paris-based political arm of the MEK.
"They (the MEK) deserve to have a voice in Washington, to be heard, and to (show) what the Iranian people are actually looking for in the future of Iran: a non-nuclear Iran, a government that is based on democratic values," said Soona Samsami, the U.S. representative of the NCRI.
Once one of Capitol Hill’s biggest fund raisers, Torricelli pulled out of the race for a second Senate term in 2002 amid an ethics scandal.
His lobby registration form says he will be "meeting with U.S. government and congressional officials, and advising on general strategy."
Other notable backers of the MEK include former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell and ex-CIA director James Woolsey.
A TOUGH SELL
Even though it has renounced violence, the MEK is a tough sell in the United States, which for many years has blamed it for the killing of six Americans in Iran in the 1970s.
A 2009 study by the RAND Corporation think tank depicted the MEK as a cult-like movement run with military-style discipline, gender separation and "near-religious devotion" to its Paris-based leaders – a description the MEK denies.
"I can’t believe the U.S. government is going to be particularly excited about working with them … because in the U.S. government, I would hope there would be people who would understand that this is not where the political future of Iran lies," said Patrick Clawson, director of research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Some U.S. policymakers are mistrustful of Middle East exile groups following Washington’s reliance on Iraqi expatriates who pushed America toward war in Iraq in 2003.
Calls from MEK representatives for "regime change" in Iran remind some of Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress, which helped convince the administration of former President George W. Bush that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.
"They’ll deny it, but I think it’s pretty simple: their goal is to keep pushing the politics in America to lead to an invasion, some kind of major unsettlement of Iran, that they can sweep into as a new government," said Jeremiah Goulka, author of the RAND study.
Some in the U.S. government also share that suspicion – but the MEK resents comparisons to Iraqi exiles of 10 years ago.
"We’ve never been in favor of a war. We’ve never tried to push things towards that direction," said Alireza Jafarzadeh, the deputy U.S. representative of the NCRI. The MEK is "not the U.S. creature that Chalabi was," he said.
Attempts to make over the MEK’s image have been boosted by a report from a former senior State Department official who questions whether the group really committed the killings of six Americans in Iran in the 1970s that are often blamed on it.
The killings, during a guerrilla campaign against the U.S.-backed Shah, were actually the work of a faction that later broke away from MEK, said Lincoln Bloomfield, whose report has just been published as a book by the University of Baltimore.
"Not a single person you could name in the MEK had any knowledge of it or had anything to do with it," he said.
The study grew out of a 2011 memo Bloomfield wrote as a consultant for a law firm that lobbied to remove MEK from the terrorism list on behalf of the Iranian-American Community of Northern California. The author said he had no financial interest in the book, and proceeds are going to the university.
The MEK still has some 3,000 members in Iraq, many of whom were invited by Saddam in the 1980s. The group fell out of favor after his 2003 downfall and current Iraqi officials have applied pressure for them to leave.
After clashes with Iraqi security forces in 2011 in which 34 people were killed, the residents were moved last year as part of a plan in which the United Nations intends to process them for refugee status in other countries.
But progress has been slow, and their temporary home at a former U.S. military compound in Baghdad known as Camp Liberty came under fire in February when eight people were killed in a rocket attack by unknown assailants.
U.S. officials have tentatively identified a handful of Camp Liberty residents who may be allowed to move to the United States. But they would be expected to renounce their membership in MEK, the officials told Reuters.
Forty-four residents of the camp have left over the last month for Albania, which has offered to take up to 210 of them.
Susan Cornwell (Editing by Alistair Bell and Jackie Frank)

June 16, 2013 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Obama, Neocons openly back terrorism

The tragic comedy of the phony War on Terror is being exposed as never before for the sham that it is. Press TV reported yesterday the opening of the MKO terrorist organization office a block away from the White House. Jim W.Dean What a message that sends to the world…that we look out for our terrorists and take good care of them, but it just might take a little time to do it.

This is the group who inflicted four 911’s on Iran by murdering 12,000 in terrorist attacks, much of it under Saddam, and then under US protection when we took over Iraq. Israel was involved, also…no surprise there.

We had no boots on the ground inside Iran for Intel collection so the War on Terror stopped at the border of the MKO Camp Ashraf. Terrorists who worked for us were given effect immunity while keeping them on the terrorist list, I assume until a day when maybe nobody would remember what they did. We did not forget, about MKO, or the others.

So the powers that we think they have slipped this one by on us. Here we have our Nobel Peace Prize winner President effectively pardoning the killing of four times the 911 victims when he has no authority to do so because the MKO are not American citizens. I did not mention aiding and abetting terrorism because that obviously was not a concern to his administration or the NeoCons.

We are all put at risk if terrorist groups with well connected big bad brothers can provide them with not only material support but protect them from prosecution. The status of a country doing so is lowered to that of a Mafia chief, Murder Incorporated. This is not a fitting robe to wear for America…or is it?

I was shocked, but not too much so, to find John Bolton and retired general Jim Jones, a Bush regime national security adviser, welcoming the MKO to Washington, DC. Does this mean that Jones was running a terror operation out of the White House? Aren’t there some big laws against that…where even a former government official can be prosecuted for crimes against humanity?

I can only think that they felt that with the public’s attention on the big terrorist training camp going up in the Middle East, the one also under US protection and allowed to train with live fire weapons and actually kill people that no one would notice. This training camp is Syria, of course. We have a repeat of the Afghanistan Mujahedin fiasco in the works going on here, but in a powder keg region.

Oh yes, we have reports that the only reason that the CIA is handling the arms shipments to the rebels is to try to make sure they do not fall into the hands of these extremist terrorists. But using the Saudi Arabia and Qatari terrorist regimes as proxies is a very thin veil indeed.

Americans know they are supporting these groups in Syria because they are good killers. They are even taking heads to prove it and bringing young teens into their ranks to use as future cannon fodder. Strategically, they know they cannot topple Assad without them so they are shedding crocodile tears over their false concerns about unleashing a new wave of terror on the regime.

Assad has not been an angel and might himself see the inside of a court room, but it would be a huge injustice if the dock did not contain at least a hundred others from the leadership of those we know who have been engaged in terrorism but claim diplomatic immunity. That did not work for the WWII Germans, the Serbians, nor any of the Africans.

If the world is going to give out free passes for terrorism, I would at least like to see some kind of vote so the rest of us can participate in playing God regarding who gets to kill and who does not. The reputation of Western jurisprudence, what is left of it, is squarely on the line.

This was a hot topic at the UN this week with the Thematic Debate on International Justice. This issue of certain countries issuing themselves free terrorism passes while seeking punishment for those doing the same was viewed as possibly needing a bit of reform. Imagine that. If the UN in its infinite non-wisdom would not mention who these countries were, but we all know.

Iran’s conference representative, Gholam Hossein Dehqani said, “Iran believes that the prosecution and punishment of aggressors and perpetrators of horrific international crimes will promote international peace and security and bring peace and tranquility to world nations.”

Dehqani is right of course. But our current international justice, or injustice system…depending on the case, which is corrupted and outdated, requires a complete overhaul.

Right off the bat the first improvement I would make is that any country giving itself a free pass from terrorism prosecution would go to the top of the list for being prosecuted. And you can forget the ICC. It moves at a snail’s pace where we will all be dead and buried before they finish. They can be used for the slow motion cases…maybe the older ones.

In America, we have a statute called the Speedy Trial Act that once you are arrested the government has to take you to trial within a reasonable period or in effect you are serving a conviction for a crime when you have not been found guilty. And no, Guantanamo does not have this.

Syria provides us a perfect example. The crime is happening now. We don’t want a trial initiated ten years down the road. We want investigators and prosecutors in the field collecting evidence while it is fresh so those aiding and abetting in terrorism can be quickly identified and arrested to stop the crimes in progress.

If such an entity were found to be a country, then they would be subject to sanctions, and something called asset confiscation, starting with all the hidden offshore accounts. When drug dealers are arrested all of their cash and property are seized so ill gotten gains cannot be used by the defense. In the US they will go to a drug dealer’s house and even collect up the children’s toys and clothes.

As always, some would say this could never be possible as those most guilty would not go along with it. But then that would just trigger a dual justice system development…the older corrupted one and then a new one that can…yes, issue arrest warrants, capture, detain, and put on trial those guilty of these crimes.

Let’s invent a new reason for having wars, a better one, to arrest and prosecute crimes against humanity people. War would be popular overnight. And all of those who protect the guilty would then become accessories after the fact. We have all these empty FEMA camps over here. Let’s use them toward a good purpose.

Oh, and one other thing. No multinational corp. has ever been brought into court for crimes against humanity…nor a single bank. Do you really think that not one ever committed these crimes? Of course they have. But they also have put themselves on the immunity list, other than fines that their stockholders pay. Financial crimes against humanity should warrant the death penalty for the lives they destroy.

So laugh all you want at my ideas, and don’t feel bad either. I am laughing at all of you who think you have some system of justice to punish mega crimes against humanity where those countries doing the judging give themselves immunity. I laugh not out of disrespect for their victims but at the silliness of it all for those who think they are involved in international justice when they are really providing cover for the bad guys.

Huge numbers of lives are at stake and Syria is going to be the big demonstrator. General Breedlove was going through his confirmation hearings yesterday as the new NATO cmdr. and said he supports giving lethal weapons to the rebels. Because we all know they already have them I suspect he meant heavy weapons.

His only concern was their not falling into the wrong hands. OK Mr. Breedlove, if you think that is such a cool idea, what if you, your family, grand kids and parents all had to die if you are wrong…just like the Syrians? Would you still think it was a cool idea?

Syria would become a wasteland of death and destruction if that happened and maybe some other places, also. There have already been enough crimes committed to keep the gallows going for a long time. Such crimes require an industrial scale justice system, not the slow motion shake and bake kind we have now.

We need to replace or convert General Breedlove’s command to a new ICC Justice NATO…called JATO, maybe. Let us save the heavy lethal weapons for them as we will all get a bigger bang for our buck. And rather than watching the innocent on TV die, let us watch the guilty ones for a change. It won’t be so sad.

By Jim W.Dean

April 18, 2013 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

The “Rehabilitation” of the MEK

The Christian Science Monitor reported on the opening of the MEK’s office in Washington last week:

An Iranian dissident group that languished on the US list of terrorist organizations for more than a decade under both Democratic and Republican administrations marked its full rehabilitation Thursday when it opened sleek new offices – complete with floors covered by plush Persian carpets – within sight of the White House.

The article doesn’t explain that the de-listing of the MEK was mostly a quid pro quo to get most of the group’s members in Iraq to relocate from its old base at Camp Ashraf. It also fails to mention that many of the people at Camp Ashraf were being held there against their will. Taken together with the many disgraceful displays of support by members of Congress and various former officials, all of this creates the impression that the group’s “rehabilitation” is much more meaningful than it is.

The group remains hated in Iran for its long period of collusion with Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war and afterwards, and it remains in its own organization a totalitarian quasi-Marxist cult, so the idea that it represents the aspirations of most Iranians is absurd on its face. If reports on the assassinations of Iranian scientists are to be believed, the group continues to engage in acts of terrorism inside Iran, but as far as some Iran hawks are concerned this is “useful” terrorism and therefore not something that needs to worry us. Few things better express the hostility that some Iran hawks have for the country and people of Iran than the warm embrace they have given the MEK.

The MEK is an awful group all on its own, but what makes it potentially so dangerous is that it has been embraced by so many prominent foolish Americans that want to treat it as a leading opposition group. Of course, the de-listing campaign was always just the beginning of a lobbying effort to try to get U.S. support for the MEK in the future. One passage from the Monitor article reveals just how deluded the group’s American supporters can be:

Senator Torricelli compared the NCRI in 2013 to when the “Free French” opened an office in London in 1940. “Maybe a lot of people didn’t notice,” he said, but the French resistance would go on to play a crucial role in France’s liberation.

The NCRI, with a new office in Washington, can start down that same path, he said, adding, “I’m proud to be a soldier in that struggle.”

There’s something especially perverse about likening the MEK to the Free French. The MEK was a group that collaborated with the invader of their own country, and they wanted to impose themselves on Iran with the backing of that invader. If the MEK had succeeded in its goals in the 1980s, it would have been the puppet leadership installed by Hussein to replace the Iranian leadership of the time.

By Daniel Larison

April 17, 2013 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Wiped from terrorist list, Iranian group hires former senator as lobbyist

An Iranian opposition group that was once considered a terrorist front by the State Department has hired an ex-senator to lobby for them. Wiped from terrorist list, Iranian group hires former senator as lobbyist

Former Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) has registered to represent the National Council of Resistance of Iran at his lobby firm Rosemont Associates, according to lobbying disclosure records.

The council’s members include the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), which was removed last year from the State Department’s terrorist organization list after an aggressive lobbying campaign by its supporters.

Torricelli has been lobbying for the council since April 2, according to his registration. The ex-senator has been providing consulting services and strategy advice while meeting with “other supporters of the Iranian resistance in the United States” and “U.S. government and congressional officials.”

The lobbying registration also says Torricelli “provides public speaking services abroad for the client, as requested.”

Speeches by high-profile Washington figures like Torricelli played heavily in the campaign to delist the MEK. The push included legal action, television ads and lobbying by Iranian-American groups.

Speaking fees paid by MEK supporters to former government officials — including ex-Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) and Gen. Hugh Shelton, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — reportedly attracted the attention of federal investigators. Taking payments from a terrorist group is against the law.

The MEK was blamed by the State Department for several attacks in the 1970s that killed Americans in Iran. But the group’s supporters say it has since renounced violence and worked to promote democracy. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton removed the MEK from the terrorist list last year.

On Thursday, the council re-opened its Washington office after the U.S. government closed it down a decade ago. Several prominent Washington names attended the opening ceremony, including Torricelli.

By Kevin Bogardus

April 13, 2013 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Iranian ‘ex-terrorists’ open downtown Washington, DC office

The National Council of Resistance of Iran has opened shop just a stone’s throw from the White House — and only months after being removed from a US State Department list of designated terrorist groups.

The Washington Post reports that the NCRI, an organization of Iran exiles considered terrorists by the State Department between 1997 through 2012, has officially begun operating out of a downtown Washington, DC office building.

“Once-banned Iran exile group opens office a block from White House,” reads the Post article from Thursday afternoon.

The NCRI had been barred from operating within the United States since 2003, but a campaign that drew the attention of some high-profile American politicians in recent years helped have their name removed from the same Department of State roster that contains foreign organizations including al-Qaeda, Hamas, the Palestine Liberation Front and the Army of Islam.

Critics of the NCRI have called the group a front for the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, or MEK, the group of Islamic Marxists that helped violently overthrew the Pahlavi Shah during a 1979 revolution in Iran and was credited with killing six American citizens that decade. As recently as 2002, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation told the State Department that ‘‘[i]t is the unanimous view of the FBI personnel who are involved in and familiar with the FBI’s investigation of the [MEK] that the NCRI is not a separate organization, but is instead, and has been, an integral part of the MEK at all relevant times.’’

“Contrary to NCRI’s portrayal of itself as an umbrella organization, of which the MEK was just one member, the FBI concluded that it is NCRI that is ‘’the political branch,’” the agency found at the time.

A decade later though, a group of influential politicians including former UN ambassador John Bolton, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-California), presidential candidates Newt Gingrich (R), Rudy Giuliani (R) and Howard Dean (D) rallied on behalf of the NCRI to have their name removed from the State Department list.

"Have you ever seen a more bipartisan disciplined group as the one that supported this issue?" asked lobbyist Victoria Toensing of DiGenova & Toensing when she weighed in on the NCRI to US News & World Report last year.

Now that the organization formerly considered terrorists has been given the go-ahead to operate in the US, they’ve opened their doors alongside the rest of the powerful lobbying groups that litter downtown DC’s K Street district.

“The MEK are Iranians who desire a secular, peaceful, and democratic government,” Rep. Rohrabacher told the Post last year as the State Department considered their appeal. “Nothing threatens the Mullah dictatorship more than openness and transparency.”

Others haven’t been as certain, though, and cite a number of incidents credited to MEK throughout the 1980s and ‘90s, including an attempted attack in 1992 against the Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York City.

NCRI officials speaking to the Post confirmed that Bolton and a handful of others — including former Obama National Security Adviser Jim Jones — attended the grand opening of the group’s new DC office, styled as “Iran’s Parliament-in-exile.”

April 13, 2013 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

For former Iranian ‘terrorists,’ a warm Washington welcome

With Washington luminaries in attendance, the Iranian dissident group NCRI and its formerly armed wing MEK inaugurated their sleek new offices Thursday, within sight of the White House.

An Iranian dissident group that languished on the US list of terrorist organizations for more than a decade under both Democratic and Republican administrations marked its full rehabilitation Thursday when it opened sleek new offices – complete with floors covered by plush Persian carpets – within sight of the White House.

Just how stunning the reversal of fortunes has been for the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and its formerly armed wing, the Mojahedin-e Khalq, or MEK, was underscored by the long list of Washington luminaries who attended the office inauguration.

From prominent former members of Congress to former national security officials and high-profile diplomats, the caliber of the American advocates on hand for the ribbon-cutting demonstrated how effective the Iranian opposition organization has been at transforming its image – from that of a fringe group with a violent past to one in which it is the embodiment of the democratic aspirations of the Iranian people.

Referring to the NCRI’s platform, which states as its goal the fall of the ayatollahs’ regime and the establishment of “a free, secular, democratic, and non-nuclear Iran,” Gen. James Jones, who served as President Obama’s first national security adviser, described the objectives as “completely in sync with our core [American] values.”

That is a remarkable turnaround for a group that President Clinton placed on the list of terrorist organizations in 1997 – ostensibly as a result of the one-time Marxist group’s violent acts, including against Americans, but by some theories as part of a campaign to pave the way to negotiations with the Iranian regime.

Whatever the reason, the terrorist designation stuck through the Bush administration and was only lifted by former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton last September after a long court battle.

Others on hand to fete the Iranians’ new status included former US ambassador to the United Nations and Bush administration diplomat John Bolton, former Sen. Robert Torricelli (D) of New Jersey and former US Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D) of Rhode Island, and P.J. Crowley, a former assistant secretary of State for public affairs who served under Hillary Clinton.

Several Republican members of Congress who have lobbied on the group’s behalf sent their regrets at being unable to attend but sought to mark the occasion through letters or by dispatching staff to the opening.

Mr. Crowley, now a teacher of diplomacy and global communications at George Washington University, hailed the NCRI as the “better option’ for “democratic change” in Iran when stacked up against the alternatives.

“When change comes to Iran,” Crowley said, “it will be the NCRI that brings in that change.”

Yet despite the group’s Washington makeover, not everyone is convinced that the Paris-based organization, which some critics slam as a cult enthralled with leader Maryam Rajavi, is the opposition that many Iranians see as the ideal alternative to the Islamic revolution.

The MEK’s fighters are still hated by many Iranians for living in exile in Iraq under the protection of Saddam Hussein – and for having allegedly fought on Iraq’s side in the Iran-Iraq war. Hundreds of those fighters still live precariously in camps in Iraq, with their security and well-being a passionate issue for prominent advocates like General Jones.

Some US critics of the NCRI say there are no grounds for believing the group has anything of a positive image, let alone actual support, in Iran. Going further, they point to the high speaking and lobbying fees that some of the group’s prominent American advocates have reportedly been paid as evidence of Washington support that is only dollars-and-cents deep.

But the dignitaries at Thursday’s inauguration – described by Ambassador Bolton as “a distinguished bipartisan group, a rare occasion in Washington these days” – said they were on the NCRI’s side because they see it as Iran’s best hope for attaining freedom.

The NCRI, with a new office in Washington, can start down that same path, he said, adding, “I’m proud to be a soldier in that struggle.”

By Howard LaFranchi, Staff writer

April 13, 2013 0 comments

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