Paid advocacy for MKO

Delisting MKO: U.S. shooting the last bolt

In an attempt which can be seen as the newest effort to put pressure on Iran and push it toward isolation, the United States removed the name of exiled anti-Iranian group Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MKO) from its list of foreign terrorist organizations.

The move which astounded the world and came as a great surprise to many Iranians is apparently one of the last cards which the U.S. has decided to play in order to isolate Iran, derail its international position and undermine its growing power in the Middle East.

MKO is said to be responsible for the killing of more than 40,000 Iranians following the Islamic Revolution of 1979. They have assassinated several high-ranking Iranian officials including former President Mohammad Ali Rajaei, Prime Minister Mohammad Javad Bahonar and judiciary chief Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti. In the recent years, they have also cooperated with Mossad and CIA in assassinating Iran’s nuclear scientists in a bid to thwart Iran’s scientific progress and ruin its peaceful nuclear program.

American investigative journalists Seymour Hersh and Glenn Greenwald have revealed in some of their articles that MKO has received training, funding and military equipment from the United States, Israel and even Saudi Arabia.

Some of the defected members of MKO such as Qorban Ali Husseini Nezhad and Maryam Sanjabi who fled Camp Ashraf since last year revealed the underground ties between MKO and Saddam Hussein, and the U.S. government after the occupation of Iraq in 2003.

MKO is extremely unpopular among the Iranians, even among those who live abroad. The atrocities this group has committed seem to be unforgivable, and although the Iranian government has always demanded that the members of MKO return to the country to be put on a fair trial and even enjoy Islamic clemency, they refused to leave their horrendous cult.

Being headed by the Paris-based Maryam Rajavi, this group has not only killed hundreds of Iranians during the 8 years of war which Saddam Hussein imposed on Iran, but has also spilled the bloods of many Iraqis and even high-ranking U.S. military officials such as Lieutenant Colonel Louis Lee Hawkins, Colonel Paul Shaffer and Lieutenant Colonel Jack Turner.

The terrorist operations carried out by this Western-funded organization have been widely discussed even by the U.S. mainstream media, but it’s not clear that how the American government will justify its controversial and bizarre decision in delisting MKO.

MKO has demonstrated that it does not show mercy even to its own members, and reports have leaked to the media on how the high-ranking MKO officials have mistreated and threatened the low-level members of the organization so as to dissuade them from escaping or giving up their mission.

According to the American journalist Tony Cartalucci, former MKO members have revealed that the organization bans marriage, use of radios, internet and holds many members against their will with the threat of death if ever they are caught attempting to escape. It also uses dangerous psychological methods to brainwash the members and make them committed to "martyrdom" for the sake of the group’s objectives, holding them obedient and compliant to the orders of their major commanders.

In the recent years, MKO spent millions of dollars in order to persuade the neo-conservative members of the Congress to lobby for the delisting of the organization. Some of the prominent figures in the U.S. who have voiced their support to this organization simply because of its opposition to the Iranian government include the New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, former FBI Director Louis Freeh, retired General Wesley Clark, former Obama National Security Adviser General James Jones and American Jewish lawyer Alan Dershowitz.

The removal of MKO’s name from the list of foreign terrorist organizations allows this organization to follow its anti-Iranian policies under the umbrella of a peaceful civilian group. The senior figures in the group have constantly announced that their ultimate goal is a regime change in Iran, and from now on, they will have the official and unrestricted backing and support of the U.S. government toward this end.

Although nothing about the nature and reality of MKO changes by removing its name from the U.S. Department of State’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, it is now clear that the United States has never been sincere in its claims of being opposed to terrorism.

The U.S. politicians divide the terrorists into two groups: friendly terrorists and bad terrorists. Of course MKO falls under the first category and the recent decision made by the U.S. government is a testimony that it’s not terrorism and violence which the White House is truly concerned about. MKO will be exempted from accountability before the international community because of the felonies it has committed in the past three decades, simply because it strides on a path which the White House likes. This is nothing but a flagrant parade of double standards.

Kourosh Ziabari

October 2, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization

The MEK Lobby: Chumming with Terrorists No More

People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK)
last updated: September 27, 2012

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The People’s Mujahedin of Iran (Mojahedin-e Khalq-e Iran, or MEK) is an Islamic- and Marxist-inspired militant organization that advocates the overthrow of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The group was founded in 1963 as an armed guerrilla group after the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi violently suppressed opposition to his regime.

Over the years, the group developed a track record of violent opposition to the Iranian regime—both against the monarchy and the Islamic government that succeeded it—and countries deemed supportive of it, including the United States. For years, the group was considered a proscribed terrorist organization by the United States. But on the heels of an aggressive and well-funded lobbying campaign supported by a bipartisan cast of high-profile former public officials, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced in September 2012 that she was removing the group from the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, where the MEK had been listed since 1997.[1]

The group’s origins are eccentric and its history tumultuous. According to the U.S. State Department: “The group participated in the 1979 Islamic Revolution that replaced the Shah with a Shiite Islamist regime led by Ayatollah Khomeini. However, the MEK’s ideology—a blend of Marxism, feminism, and Islamism—was at odds with the post-revolutionary government, and its original leadership was soon executed by the New regime. In 1981, the group was driven from its bases on the Iran-Iraq border and resettled in Paris, where it began supporting Iraq in its eight-year war against [Ayatollah] Khomeini’s Iran. In 1986, after France recognized the Iranian regime, the MEK moved its headquarters to Iraq, which facilitated its terrorist activities in Iran. Since 2003, roughly 3,400 MEK members have been encamped at Camp Ashraf in Iraq.”[2]

As of late 2012, most of the residents of Camp Ashraf had been relocated to another facility in Iraq to await resettlement in third countries. The MEK’s cooperation in the relocation—which had previously sparked concerns of a planned mass suicide by group members resistant to the move [3]—was reportedly a key factor in Clinton’s decision to delist the group.[4]

Because of the MEK’s cult-like organization under leader Maryam Rajavi, its support for Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war, and its participation in Saddam Hussein’s crackdowns on Iraqi Shiites and Kurds, the group has been described by the New York Times as “a repressive cult despised by most Iranians and Iraqis.”[5]

U.S. officials have recognized this reputation. “While they present themselves as a legitimate democratic group worthy of support, there is universal belief in the administration that they are a cult," one official told CNN after the decision was made to delist the group. "A de-listing is a sign of support or amnesia on our part as to what they have done and it does not mean we have suddenly changed our mind about their current behavior. We don’t forget who they were and we don’t think they are now who they claim to be, which is alternative to the current regime."[6]

Despite its murky reputation, MEK has presented itself to western backers as a popular and democratic Iranian opposition group that could lead the Islamic Republic to democracy—often even referring to Rajavi, who lives in exile in Paris and has never run for office in Iran, as the country’s “president-elect.”[7] [..]

Other analysts warned that the decision could cause U.S.-Iranian relations to deteriorate even further. “The decision will no doubt make the Iranian leadership even more distrustful of U.S. intentions regarding the future of Iran, particularly given the congressional support for the MEK to spearhead regime change,” wrote Iran expert Farideh Farhi. “Less trust will make compromise less likely, presumably a preferred outcome for the high profile supporters of the MEK in Congress and elsewhere.”[9]

Divisive Impact on U.S. Politics

The MEK has had a divisive impact in the United States. While it has garnered supporters from across the U.S. political landscape, it has also spurred negative reactions from representatives of nearly all political factions. Neoconservatives are a case in point. For example, after news agencies reported in early 2012 that the MEK—with support from Israel—had allegedly been involved in the assassination of Iranian scientists, a number of neoconservative mouthpieces hailed the group. The Ruport Murdoch-owned New York Post ran an editorial stating: “Were the MEK to play the critical role in derailing an Iranian bomb, it would be far more deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize than a certain president of the United States we could mention.”[10]

Similarly minded ideologues like Raymond Tanter, a member of the Committee on the President Danger, have called the MEK “the best source for intelligence on Iran’s potential violations of the nonproliferation regime,” arguing that delisting the group “would allow regime change to be on the table in Tehran.”[11] At a rally for the group in Paris, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani proclaimed, "Appeasement of dictators leads to war, destruction and the loss of human lives. For your organization to be described as a terrorist organization is just really a disgrace."[12]

On the other hand, many neoconservatives view the group with antipathy, largely because they think that an alliance with it is short-sighted with respect to the goal of achieving regime change in Iran. An example is Michael Rubin, who has been sharply critical of MEK supporters. Responding to the news about the MEK’s alleged role in assassinating Iranian scientists, Rubin wrote: “By utilizing the MEK—a group which Iranians view in the same way Americans see John Walker Lindh, the American convicted of aiding the Taliban—the Israelis risk winning some short-term gain at the tremendous expense of rallying Iranians around the regime’s flag. A far better strategy would be to facilitate regime change. Not only would the MEK be incapable of that mission, but involving them even cursorily would set the goal back years.”[13]

Mojahedin Khalq (MKO, MEK, Rajavi cult) continued terror campaign

Lobbying Campaign

Organizations sympathetic to MEK garnered an impressive array of establishment supporters inside Washington to speak in favor of delisting the group. The effort, according to the New York Times, “won the support of two former C.I.A. directors, R. James Woolsey and Porter J. Goss; a former F.B.I. director, Louis J. Freeh; a former attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey; President George W. Bush’s first homeland security chief, Tom Ridge; President Obama’s first national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones; big-name Republicans like the former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Democrats like the former Vermont governor Howard Dean; and even the former top counterterrorism official of the State Department, Dell L. Dailey.”[14] Mitchell Reiss, a top foreign policy advisor to Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan presidential campaign, also spoke on behalf of the group.[15]

One potential explanation for this diverse list of supporters are the large speaking fees the MEK network has offered to big-name public figures. “Your speech agent calls, and says you get $20,000 to speak for 20 minutes,” said a State Department official quoted by the Christian Science Monitor. “They will send a private jet, you get $25,000 more when you are done, and they will send a team to brief you on what to say.”[16] Pro-MEK individuals and organizations also reportedly donated thousands of dollars to the campaigns of several sitting members of Congress, including Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Bob Filner, Ted Poe, Mike Rogers, and Dana Rohrabacher.[17]

Underlying MEK’s more mainstream backing has been a bedrock of support from foreign policy hawks. In addition to Woolsey and other former Bush administration officials, the group has enjoyed the avid backing of Iran hawks like former ambassador John Bolton and groups like the Iran Policy Committee (IPC), a right-wing U.S.-based outfit whose putative goal is “empowering Iranians for regime change.”

In a 2005 Iran policy paper, IPC placed the delisting of MEK at the forefront of its proposals for U.S. policy toward Iran. The "continued designation since 1997 of the main Iranian opposition group, Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK), as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department assures Tehran that regime change is off the table,” wrote the report’s authors. “Removing the MEK’s terrorist designation would be a tangible signal to Tehran and to the Iranian people that a new option is implicitly on the table—regime change.”[18]

MEK’s critics have likened the organization’s advocacy campaign to that of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an Iraqi exile group led by Ahmed Chalabi that worked to drum up U.S. support for an invasion of Iraq in the 1990s and early 2000s. By presenting itself to Western supporters as an Iraqi government-in-waiting, INC enabled Iraq hawks in the United States to claim that there was Iraqi support for the U.S. action. For Iran hawks, write Ali Fatemi and Karim Pakravan of the National Iranian American Council, “Maryam Rajavi, the MEK leader and self-proclaimed president of Iran, is their new Chalabi.”[19]

IPC in particular has embodied the link between pro-MEK groups and pro-INC groups. A 2010 investigation by the U.S. foreign policy blog LobeLog found that “through 2006, IPC shared an address, accountants, and some staff with multiple organizations that either fronted for or had direct ties to the INC, even sharing staff members with those groups. Some of those ties have continued through today.”[20]

History

Founded in 1963, MEK was one of the many Iranian factions that supported the overthrow of the shah in 1979.[21] However, according to a report by the Christian Science Monitor, it was the only one that used violence against Americans in the run-up to the revolution, launching a string of assassinations and attacks against American military and diplomatic officers in Iran in the 1970s.

The group was expelled from Iran in 1981 when it fell out of favor with Ayatollah Khomeini in a post-revolutionary power struggle.[22] Since then, it has launched thousands of attacks against Iranians it has deemed “agents of the regime,” peaking at a rate of three assassinations per day in the 1980s, and staged high-profile raids on Iranian diplomatic offices all over the world—including an orchestrated set of attacks on 12 diplomatic facilities in 10 countries on a single day in 1992.[23]

In the mid-1980s, MEK settled in Iraq as a guest of Saddam Hussein, who offered the group use of Camp Ashraf, an encampment and army base north of Baghdad. There, not only did MEK fight on the Iraqi side of the Iran-Iraq war, but it also helped Saddam crush the CIA-instigated Iraqi Kurdish and Shiite uprisings that came on the tail of the 1991 Gulf War, leading to the precipitous erosion of its support in Iran and Iraq alike.[24]

MEK’s fighters at Ashraf were disarmed by the United States following the fall of Saddam’s government in 2003. In the following years, the camp was subject to occasionally violent raids by the new Iraqi government, which sparked concerns about further violence or a humanitarian crisis when it ordered the camp closed by the end of 2011. Although the Ashraf issue is separate from the issue of MEK’s status as a terrorist organization, MEK’s backers in the West used the conditions at the camp to garner sympathy for the group’s broader agenda in Washington and to argue that its continued listing as a terrorist group is the cause of its mistreatment.[25]

MEK’s lobbying efforts were foreshadowed in a 1994 report by the U.S. State Department, which concluded that the group was unlikely to be serious about its democratic overtures. According to the Christian Science Monitor: “Noting the MEK’s ‘dedication to armed struggle’; the ‘fact that they deny or distort sections of their history, such as the use of violence’; the ‘dictatorial methods’ of their leadership; and the ‘cult-like behavior of its members,’ the State Dept. concluded that the MEK’s ‘29-year record of behavior does not substantiate its capability or intention to be democratic.’ “That report describes tactics that foreshadow the MEK’s lobbying campaign today, 16 years later. It notes a ‘formidable Mojahidin outreach program,’ which ‘solicits the support of prominent public figures,’ and the ‘common practice … to collect statements issued by prominent individuals.’”[26]

The group formally renounced the use of violence in 2001, but an FBI investigation found MEK members to be “actively involved in planning and executing acts of terrorism” as recently as 2004. In February 2012, NBC News reported that the Israeli government had coordinated with MEK to launch a series of assassinations against Iranian nuclear scientists.[27] The group’s delisting may open the door to future cooperation with the United States as well.

People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK)

Founded

1963

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Sources
[1] Elise Labott, “Clinton to remove Iranian exile group from terror list,” CNN.com, September 21, 2012,
http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/21/clinton-
to-de-list-iranian-exile-group-from-terror-list/.

[2] U.S. State Department, “Country Reports on Terrorsm 2010: Chapter Six: Foreign Terrorist Organizations,” August 2011,
http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2010/index.htm.

[3] Barbara Slavin, “Mass Tragedy Feared as Closure of MEK Camp Looms,” Right Web, December 19, 2011,
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/articles/display/mass_
tragedy_feared_as_closure_of_mek_camp_looms.

[4] Elise Labott, “Clinton to remove Iranian exile group from terror list,” CNN.com, September 21, 2012,
http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/21/clinton
-to-de-list-iranian-exile-group-from-terror-list/.

[5] Scott Shane, “For Obscure Iranian Exile Group, Broad Support in U.S.,” New York Times, November 26, 2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/us/politics/lobbying-support
-for-iranian-exile-group-crosses-party-lines.html?pagewanted=all.

[6] Elise Labott, “Clinton to remove Iranian exile group from terror list,” CNN.com, September 21, 2012,
http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/21/clinton-
to-de-list-iranian-exile-group-from-terror-list/.

[7] See Matt Duss, “The MEK Are Not Iran’s ‘Democratic Opposition,” Middle East Progress, July 19, 2011,
http://middleeastprogress.org/2011/07/the-mek-a
re-not-irans-democratic-opposition/.

[8] Ali Gharib, “Enemy Of My Enemy: Delisting The MEK,” Daily Beast, September 25, 2012,
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/0
9/25/enemy-of-my-enemy-delisting-the-mek.html.

[9] Quoted in Jasmin Ramsey, “Analysts Respond To Expected US Decision To Delist MEK From FTO List,” LobeLog, September 22, 2012,
http://www.lobelog.com/analysts-respond-to-e
xpected-us-decision-to-delist-mek-from-fto-list/.

[10] New York Post, “Loose Lips,” February 10, 2012,
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/e
ditorials/loose_lips_7xvSwHsWqSoIjyXIWl8nmI.

[11] See Right Web, Raymond Tanter profile,
http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile
/Tanter_Raymond.

[12] Edward Cody, “GOP leaders criticize Obama’s Iran policy in rally for opposition group,” Washington Post, December 23, 2010,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
content/article/2010/12/22/AR2010122205180.html.

[13] Michael Rubin, “Re: Israel’s Iranian Allies of Convenience,” Commentary Magazine, Contentions blog, February 13, 2012,
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012
/02/13/israel-iran-allies/.

[14] Scott Shane, “For Obscure Iranian Exile Group, Broad Support in U.S.,” New York Times, November 26, 2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/us/politics/lobbyin
g-support-for-iranian-exile-group-crosses-party-line
s.html?pagewanted=all.

[15] Eli Clifton, “Romney Adviser Advocating For Controversial Iranian Terrorist Group,” ThinkProgress, August 23, 2011,
http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/08
/23/302480/romney-adviser-mek/.

[16] Scott Peterson, “Iranian group’s big-money push to get off US terrorist list,” Christian Science Monitor, August 8, 2011, p. 3,
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/20
11/0808/Iranian-group-s-big-money-push-to-get-
off-US-terrorist-list/%28page%29/3

[17] Chris McGreal, “MEK decision: multimillion-dollar campaign led to removal from terror list,” Guardian, September 21, 2012,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/
21/iran-mek-group-removed-us-terrorism-list.

[18] Iran Policy Committee, “U.S. Policy Options for Iran,” February 10, 2005,
http://www.iranpolicy.org/uploadedFiles/U
SPolicyOptions_for_Iran_Feb2005.pdf.

[19] Fatemi and Karim Pakravan, “War With Iran? US Neocons Aim to Repeat Chalabi-Style Swindle Ali,” Truthout, July 15, 2011.

[20] Ali Gharib and Eli Clifton, “Neocon Iran Policy Committee tied to disgraced Iraqi National Congress,” LobeLog, September 10, 2010,
http://www.lobelog.com/neocon-iran-policy-committe
e-tied-to-disgraced-iraqi-national-congress/.

[21] U.S. State Department, “Country Reports on Terrorsm 2010: Chapter Six: Foreign Terrorist Organizations,” August 2011,
http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2010/index.htm.

[22] U.S. State Department, “Country Reports on Terrorsm 2010: Chapter Six: Foreign Terrorist Organizations,” August 2011,
http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2010/index.htm.

[23] Scott Peterson, “Iranian group’s big-money push to get off US terrorist list,” Christian Science Monitor, August 8, 2011, p. 7,
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/08
08/Iranian-group-s-big-money-push-to-get-off-US
-terrorist-list/%28page%29/7.

[24] Scott Peterson, “Iranian group’s big-money push to get off US terrorist list,” Christian Science Monitor, August 8, 2011, p. 8,
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011
/0808/Iranian-group-s-big-money-push-to-get-off
-US-terrorist-list/%28page%29/8

[25] See, for example, Eli Clifton, “Defending MEK, Mukasey, Ridge & Freeh Attack Obama For Hastily Exiting Iraq, While Admitting He’s Trying To Stay,” ThinkProgress, August 15, 2011, http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/08/15
/296188/mukasey-ridge-freeh-obama-iraq-mek/.

[26] Scott Peterson, “Iranian group’s big-money push to get off US terrorist list,” Christian Science Monitor, August 8, 2011, p. 8,
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011
/0808/Iranian-group-s-big-money-push-to-get-off-
US-terrorist-list/%28page%29/8

[27] Richard Engel and Robert Windrem, “Israel teams with terror group to kill Iran’s nuclear scientists, U.S. officials tell NBC News,” NBCNews.com, February 9, 2012, http://rockcenter.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/02/08/10354
553-israel-teams-with-terror-group-to-kill-irans-nuclear
-scientists-us-officials-tell-nbc-news.

——–
Right Web

October 1, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

MKO terrorists masked as freedom fighters to pressure Iran

The United States arrays “yesterday’s terrorist” anti-Iran Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) and ‎honors them as “today’s freedom fighters” to use them against the Islamic Republic, says Franklin Lamb an analyst.‎

‎On September ‎‏28‏‎, the terrorist group was taken off the US State Department’s blacklist a week after ‎US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent the US Congress a classified communication about the move.‎

The US claimed that the decision was made because the MKO has not carried out any acts of terror ‎over the past ‎‏10‏‎ years.‎

Meanwhile, a September ‎‏21‏‎ New York Times article reaffirms that the support of prominent US ‎politicians for the MKO organization has undoubtedly played a role in the de-listing of the MKO ‎organization as a terrorist group.‎

The article said the long list of high-ranking US politicians supporting the MKO includes: former CIA ‎Directors, R. James Woolsey and Porter J. Goss; former FBI director Louis J. Freeh; former US President ‎George W. Bush’s homeland security secretary, Tom Ridge; Attorney General, Michael B. Mukasey; ‎and President Barack Obama’s first national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones.‎

Many of MKO’s American supporters, yet not all, are said to have received fees of up to ‎‏15‏‎,‎‏000‏‎ to ‎‏30,000‏‎ dollars to give speeches to the group, in addition to travel expenses to attend MKO rallies in ‎Paris. The former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, Edward G. Rendell, admitted in March that he ‎had received a total of ‎‏150,000‏‎ to ‎‏160,000‏‎ dollars, the US daily article added.‎

Press TV has conducted an interview with Beirut-based international lawyer and director of the ‎Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace movement, Franklin Lamb, to further shed light on the ‎issue.‎

Press TV: Mr. Lamb thanks for being with us. Let’s just first look at the statement that’s being given ‎out by the US State Department on its decision. It says that in view of the group’s public renunciation ‎of violence, the absence of confirmed acts of terrorism for more than a decade and their cooperation ‎in the closure of their paramilitary base in Iraq we’ve decided to delist them.‎

Now legally speaking at least the question is where is the issue of accountability for the crimes and the ‎terrorist activities that the group has carried out before these years that they haven’t carried out ‎terrorist activities according to the US?‎

Lamb: Yes, well let me just say that the rationale that you just iterated from the American government ‎is frankly nonsense. These aren’t the issues.‎

‎ The issue is as we saw a recall in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Libya and now in Syria, yesterday’s terrorists ‎can be today’s freedom fighters even if they are going to be tomorrow’s terrorists. This is a thinly, ‎thinly disguised effort to ratchet up the pressure on Iran. I think that’s clear.‎

Even acknowledged sources in the US Congress what we can say is that the MEK has been I think well-‎tutored politically on how the American system works. Look who they’ve had endorse them: former ‎FBI director [Louis J.] Freeh, former head of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, Howard Dean of the ‎Democratic National Committee and five or six important members, former members of Congress.‎

What do these people have in common? They are out of office. They missed the government perks ‎and they’re paid ‎‏100‏‎ thousand dollars each by the MEK to give speeches. So it’s not much for them to ‎endorse this initiative which is aimed at opening up the American system to the MEK now based in ‎Paris.‎

‎ Count the days before their headquarters is in Washington. Count the days before the Zionist lobby ‎joins them and funds them and the American intelligence agency supports them in order to do what?‎

‎ In order to create a hopeful, viable opposition to the government of the Islamic Republic in time for ‎next year’s election. These will be billed to the public and the world as the new Jeffersonian ‎Democrats of the Middle East. Whatever it takes to dress them up in respectability. So that’s what we ‎see here. Forget history. Forget terrorism. Forget who killed who on American soil that used to stand ‎for something. We have a political agenda. We want them. We need them.‎

We’re going to squeeze Iran in the coming months. I think we’ll bear this out.‎

Press TV: You say the issue of cooperation between the MKO and the US administration. We know for ‎one that following the fall of Saddam, there was cooperation between the US and the members of ‎this group when they were stationed in Camp Ashraf in Iraq. So what you’re concluding is that this is a ‎continuation of that cooperation but now legally acceptable at least for the United States.‎

Lamb: Absolutely, that was ‎‏30‏‎ years ago that we supported the MEK as part of our support of Saddam ‎against Iran. That’s three decades ago. We weren’t all that interested in this group until recently we ‎see an opportunity, another layer of sanction if you will, another way to pressure the regime, hoping ‎that it will implode in some way. I don’t know that we have a big future with the MEK but they’re very ‎useful instrument today.‎

October 1, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Our (New) Terrorists the MEK: Have We Seen This Movie Before?

Yes, and what kind of mind-boggling corruption — of the worst kind — influence peddling by a “foreign power” (as defined by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to include foreign Our (New) Terrorists the MEK: Have We Seen This Movie Before? terrorist groups) — lies hidden behind the curtain? Could some members of the MEK “foreign terrorist organization,” their murderous history magically erased, be sent to a nice suburb somewhere to live as your next door neighbor as happens with the organized crime “witness protection program?” Or will the soon-to-be-legalized “terrorism” of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (or Mojahedin-e Khalq, usually referred to as MEK) find more utilitarian function in the mode of how U.S. neoconservative officials plotted with and used convicted con artist Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi expatriate group to gin up the false “intelligence” that served to launch the unjustified and counter-productive war on Iraq? Even worse, might this new MEK operation end up resembling the sequel to Charlie Wilson’s War?

Since we cannot seem to learn from history and therefore seem doomed to repeat our mistakes, all of the above could be true. In any event, the old movie script will require few changes.

From MAK to MEK

The popular 2007 movie Charlie Wilson’s War found a way to glorify a rather derelict Texas congressman’s exploits and secret appropriations to fund CIA covert assistance to Mujahideen “rebels” (one faction recruited and trained by Osama Bin Laden himself) based on the repeatedly discredited notion that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” As John Hanrahan points out, Hollywood and Tom Hanks also found a way to edit out the real truth: “that the U.S.-aided Mujahedeen’s ouster of the Soviets in 1989 ultimately led to civil war and the ultra-orthodox Islamic Taliban coming to power in 1996, an event that also enabled anti-Soviet fighter Osama bin Laden and his fledgling al Qaeda to set up a base from which to plan the 9/11 attacks.”

…Osama bin Laden arrived in the country…sent by then-Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faisal, where he set up the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) which helped finance, recruit and train mujahidin fighters. Bin Laden, the MAK, and the Afghan mujahidin in total received about half a billion dollars a year from the CIA, and roughly the same from the Saudis, funneled through Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI)

…Continued US sponsorship of the al-Qaeda-Taliban nexus in Afghanistan was confirmed as late as 2000 in Congressional hearings. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on South Asia, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher — former White House Special Assistant to President Reagan and now Senior Member of the House International Relations Committee — declared that ‘this administration has a covert policy that has empowered the Taliban and enabled this brutal movement to hold on to power’. The assumption is that ‘the Taliban would bring stability to Afghanistan and permit the building of oil pipelines from Central Asia through Afghanistan to Pakistan’ — From “Our Terrorists” by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed in New Internationalist Magazine.

In other words, Charlie Wilson’s War seriously backfired and was a significant factor that gave rise to the 9-11 attacks. (Incidentally — and a big reason why there’s so little hope of anyone having learned from this sordid history — is that Dana Rohrabacher happens to be one of the main Congressmen who has now taken big sums of money from the MEK front groups!)

An October 2010 report (“Restoring Afghanistan’s Tribal Balance”) for the New World Strategies Coalition described U.S. covert support of the Mujahideen as follows:

During the ‘jihad’ against the Soviets, the Judeo-Christian West teamed up with violent Islamic radicals of the worst sort, against the Soviets, because they shared a common hatred for the godless communists. The same people American leaders once called ‘freedom fighters’ throughout the 80′s are now [in the current war] violent extremist jihadist terrorists who commit immoral acts and heinous human rights violations that all Americans should find deplorable. Of course, before 9/11 when these ‘terrorists’ were fighting against the Soviets, they were ‘our terrorists’ and such human rights violations and war crimes hardly ever made the press. Today, people aren’t really supposed to remember nor point out this interesting historical irony, especially within the media.

By fast forwarding 30 years and changing one vowel, (MAK to MEK) we see history repeating almost exactly. There’s ample evidence that Iranian MEK terrorists, “our new terrorists,” are responsible for conducting assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. U.S. officials confirmed the charges leveled by Iran’s leaders as well as the fact that the killings and bombings in Iran were financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service. In an exclusive report, NBC reported that:

The group, the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, has long been designated as a terrorist group by the United States, accused of killing American servicemen and contractors in the 1970s and supporting the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran before breaking with the Iranian mullahs in 1980. The attacks, which have killed five Iranian nuclear scientists since 2007 and may have destroyed a missile research and development site, have been carried out in dramatic fashion, with motorcycle-borne assailants often attaching small magnetic bombs to the exterior of the victims’ cars. — From NBC Rock Center exclusive report February, 2012.

In April of this year, Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker article “Our Men in Iran” that members of MEK were also being trained in Nevada by U.S. Joint Special Operation Command for covert actions to topple the Iranian government.

The following comments are from former U.S. security experts Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett’s excellent analysis of the highly politicized flip-flop, “By Delisting the MEK, the Obama Administration is taking the Moral and Strategic Bankruptcy of America’s Iran Policy to a New Low“:

We have seen too many times over the years just how cynically American administrations have manipulated these designations, adding and removing organizations and countries for reasons that have little or nothing to do with designees’ actual involvement in terrorist activity… Yet, precisely because we know how thoroughly corrupt and politicized these designations really are, we recognize their significance as statements of U.S. policy.

Today, the Obama administration made a truly horrible statement about U.S. policy toward Iran… Just this year, U.S. intelligence officials told high-profile media outlets that the MEK is actively collaborating with Israeli intelligence to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists, see here; Iranian officials have made the same charge. Since when did murdering unarmed civilians (and, in some instances, members of their families as well) on public streets in the middle of a heavily populated urban area (Tehran) not meet even the U.S. government’s own professed standard for terrorism?

…Here, the Obama administration is taking an organization that the U.S. government knows is directly involved in the murder of innocent people and giving this group Washington’s “good housekeeping seal of approval.”… Count on this: once the MEK is formally off the FTO list — a legally defined process that will take a few months to play out — Congress will be appropriating money to support the monafeqin as the vanguard of a new American strategy for regime change in Iran.

In the 1990s, similar enthusiasm for Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress — who were about as unpopular among Iraqis as the MEK is among Iranians — led to President Bill Clinton’s signing of the Iraq Liberation Act, which paved the way for George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003. The chances for such a scenario to play out with regard to Iran over the next few years — with even more disastrous consequences for America’s strategic and moral standing — got a lot higher today.

Flynt Leverett served as a Middle East expert on George W. Bush’s National Security Council staff until the Iraq War and worked previously at the State Department and at the Central Intelligence Agency. Hillary Mann Leverett was the NSC expert on Iran and — from 2001 to 2003 — was one of only a few U.S. diplomats authorized to negotiate with the Iranians over Afghanistan, al-Qaeda and Iraq.

Governmental Influence Peddling Barely Hidden

A steady flow totaling in the millions of dollars during these last years has been revealed, funneled through various front groups to latter-day Charlie Wilson U.S. congresspersons, Washington lobbying firms and former high level Department of Justice, Homeland Security, military and U.S. counter-terrorism officials. Check out the excellent reports — here and here — of Chris McGreal, a Guardian investigative journalist based in Washington who really did some good research attempting to trace the sordid money trail, writing:

US policy change on banned Iranian group came after extraordinary fundraising operation to transform its image. Only a few years ago, US authorities were arresting pro-MEK activists. To the US government, the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (MEK) was a terrorist group alongside al-Qaida, Hamas and the Farc in Colombia. The MEK landed on the list in 1997 with American blood on its hands and by allying itself with Saddam Hussein along with a long list of bombings inside Iran.

But the organization is regarded very differently by a large number of members of Congress, former White House officials and army generals, and even one of the US’s most renowned reporters, Carl Bernstein. They see the MEK as a victim of US double dealings with the regime in Tehran and a legitimate alternative to the Iran’s Islamic government.

That difference is in no small part the result of a formidable fundraising operation and campaign to transform the MEK’s image led by more than 20 Iranian American organisations across the US. These groups and their leaders have spent millions of dollars on donations to members of Congress, paying Washington lobby groups and hiring influential politicians and officials, including two former CIA directors, as speakers.

In a highly sensitive political game, MEK supporters have succeeded in pressing the state department into removing the group from the list of terrorist organisations after winning a court order requiring a decision to be made on the issue before the end of this month. But its supporters were forced to tread a careful path so as not to cross anti-terrorism laws.

Only a few years ago, the US authorities were arresting pro-MEK activists and freezing the assets of front groups for “material support for a terrorist organisation”. Now members of Congress openly praise the group in apparent contradiction of the anti-terrorism legislation many of them supported. Nearly 100 members of the House of Representatives backed a resolution calling on the US government to drop the MEK from the terrorist list.

Most of the damning details, however, of what would probably be otherwise considered “material support for terrorism” will probably lie buried and stamped “Top Secret” in Treasury Department files forced closed when the presumptive targets of the investigation turned out to include over three dozen top U.S. officials and even many of the federal investigators’ former bosses and cronies: former Attorney General Michael Mukasey; former Assistant Attorney General and Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff; two former CIA Directors; former DOJ Attorney and Homeland Security Advisor to the President Frances Townsend; former U.S. Attorney and NYC Mayor Rudy Guiliani; former FBI Director Louis Freeh; former Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge, etc. Clearly such powerful “political considerations” can trump the law and easily subvert even the U.S. terrorism laws constantly promoted since 9-11 as all-important but now turned on their head. So unless a brave whistleblower or two steps forward, we probably won’t know much more about the presumably forced closure of these criminal terrorism investigations for another 20 years or so until a federal judge finally rules in agreement with a FOIA request. Or unless new movie producers can force some leaks out to jazz up the old script.

“Terrorism” Propaganda: How to Play it Up or Play it Down

The last 11 years have seen almost uninterrupted, cynical exaggerating and distorting of the threat of Mid-east “terrorism” by our mainstream media (to scare us into doing dumb things like launching war on countries like Iraq that had no connection to 9-11) so it was strangely out of the norm for the Washington Post article to frame the de-listing of the MEK Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) as humanitarian intervention. Interestingly, the Post reporter also chose the term “label” to minimize the importance of the U.S. government’s designation-undesignation of a “FTO” in the case of the MEK.

So it’s just a “label” when Michael Mukasey and three dozen other high level political figures flaunted the law in support of a “foreign terrorist organization.” But would the Post say mere FTO “labels” justify launching thousands of US government investigations and prosecutions of ordinary, non-powerful, non politically-connected people for “material support”? There are 23 anti-war activists in the Mid-west who are still under Department of Justice investigation two years after their homes were raided by the FBI; and there are thousands of people serving long prison terms or, even worse, on “kill lists” to be summarily executed due, the Government would allege, to even a fleeting or tenuous connection to someone or some group on the US FTO list. Furthermore, no transparency, no judicial process has seemingly existed — until MEK’s big money lobbying campaign came along — to dispute the accuracy of such FTO “labels.”

An article at the Bill of Rights Defense Committee’s “Peoples Blog for the Constitution” entitled “Terrorist designation a problem? Befriend a politician” points out this terrible double standard:

The severe ramifications of this law have resulted in solitary confinement and a fifteen year sentence for US citizen Fahad Hashmi, who allowed a suitcase of raincoats at his apartment, and a 17 year sentence for Tarek Mehanna, who translated a text by a Saudi religious scholar. The removal of the MEK from the FTO list demonstrates not only the double-standard for enforcement of material support laws, but also the over-broad and heavy-handed criminalization of constitutionally protected activity.

When the overbroad law resulted in investigations of prominent politicians and former officials, the law was not modified to address First Amendment concerns, but instead maintained, while a specific organization was removed from the terrorist list to accommodate those politicians’ activities. The material support law should be changed so that it doesn’t criminalize association, expression, or other activity protected by the First Amendment, or efforts aimed to advance humanitarian goals.

Finally, consider how unbelievable and in-congruent for the MEK to have such a powerful lobby that it can reach its tentacles into U.S. political “leadership” like this, spending millions of dollars in exchange for political endorsements and yet be portrayed at the very same time, as the Post and other media does, as a poor group of refugees trapped in Iraq enemy territory in need of humanitarian intervention. Where would this refugee group which (for 15 years) has been designated a “foreign terrorist organization” get the millions it paid to U.S. officials and politicians for their assistance and influence-peddling? News articles do allude to the fact that the payments and the political pressure were in violation of U.S. law, but these articles fail to go into how and why federal investigators were apparently forced to drop their investigation of officials who received huge payments from the MEK.

The big money model for lobbyist success has paved the way for the coalition of MEK front groups to corrupt U.S. Government by funneling millions of dollars from who-knows-where to elected and appointed political figures to turn dark into light. Certainly there will now be other foreign-based front groups following this example in ever more flagrant disregard of what Justice Brandeis long ago warned us, about how government wrongdoing and contempt for (and subversion of) the law functions.

Contrast the portrayal of the need for “humanitarian intervention” on behalf of what was portrayed as defenseless women and children refugees in the MEK Camp in Iraq with the millions of dollars that have gone into PR propaganda firms, corrupt U.S. congresspersons and former high level DOJ, Homeland Security and counter-terrorism officials to essentially re-write the history of a violent terrorist group that worked for Saddam Hussein — who some of these same officials were, only a decade before, falsely implying was responsible for 9-11. Why did these millions of dollars not go to helping the MEK women and children move from Iraq if they are in such danger instead of going into corrupt U.S. political figures’ pockets?

If only the American people would wake up to this corruption, they might find themselves, at the very least, extremely confused that some of the same U.S. political figures who were so hell-bent to take out Saddam Hussein are now sponsoring one of Saddam’s main “terrorist” underlings. Don’t they remember Charlie Wilson’s War? Or what Friedrich Nietzsche said: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”

by Coleen Rowley

September 29, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Lobbying campaign takes Iranian dissident group off US terror list

A group with a history of bombings and murders, including the killing of US citizens, which also happens to oppose the current Iranian government, has paid its way off of a US blacklist, Lajos Lobbying campaign takes Iranian dissident group off US terror list Szasdi, an international affairs analyst told RT.

The US Secretary of State announced the removal of the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MKO) from its list of terrorist organizations on Friday. Originally one of the main participants of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, it is now in opposition to the government in Tehran, and with the help of Israeli special forces carries out “assassinations of nuclear scientists in Iran and obtains information on the Iranian nuclear program,” Szasdi says.

RT: Why has Washington chosen now to remove Mujahadeen-e-Khalq from its list of terrorist organizations?

Lajos Szasdi: This group, the MKO, has been apparently very successful in gaining the support of both the Republican and Democratic parties, civilians, as well as retired members of the military, senior officers included. So apparently, there has been a very successful lobbying campaign before the government to overturn the government’s decision, made in 1997, to place the MKO on the terrorist list of the Treasury Department.

There is also another issue. Washington might find this group highly useful. It seems that they have made use of it since 2007, in trying to destabilize the internal situation in Iran, and apparently with the cooperation of the Israeli secret service, the Mossad. They have used this group to conduct, it is said by some authors, assassinations of nuclear scientists in Iran and obtain information on the Iranian nuclear program. And they’ve carried out some acts of sabotage – they caused the explosion of a missile factory as well. There is some strategic interest in terms of current and ongoing, bad relationships, to say the least, to put it mildly, between the United States on one side and Iran on the other.

And this group has also been carrying out a highly successful lobbying campaign, which is very interesting because according to some sectors in the press, if you spoke for ten minutes in favor of the group in a speech, you could have gotten twenty thousand dollars. And they have been paying for speeches defending their cause, so they would be removed from the list of being terrorists, between ten and fifty thousand dollars. So, it is quite interesting.
RT: Do you think this will influence the upcoming Iranian elections, is that the intention?
LS: The Iranian candidates will try to portray this event, the fact that the US government removed this group from the list of terrorists … it would be a further justification of any hardening of the position that the United States has no interest in finding a negotiated solution, but on the contrary – they are supporting its enemies.
It is going to, in any case, work to the detriment of the relationship between the West and Iran, and in particular the United States and Iran. It is going to favor taking hardening positions towards the West and the United States. I think it is quite inevitable in light of the rhetoric coming from Washington, alongside that coming from Tel Aviv regarding Iran and the Iranian nuclear program. It might not make much difference, but it certainly is going to be ammunition for those that would try to suppress the idea of any dialogue with Washington, because after all, Washington is not offering any olive branch for such a kind of dialogue.

September 29, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Terrorists No More: MEK

An Iranian group’s lobbying campaign to get removed from the U.S. list of terror organizations looks to be a success. But what does that say about the state of politics in Washington?

It’s no secret how a group gets designated as terrorists in the eyes of the U.S. government. Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act enumerates the authorities of the secretary of state in listing a group as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO). The act references the existing statutory definitions of terrorism, provides avenues for appeal of the classification, and otherwise lays out various processes for review.

Nowhere, however, does the act lay out the options for buying your way out of a designation. Luckily, the Iranian expat group Mojahedin e-Khalq (MEK) soon to be "delisted" as an FTO, according to multiple reports, has provided us with a roadmap. But first, a little background.

The MEK, an anti-shah, Islamist, Marxist Iranian opposition group that fell afoul of the Islamic Revolution early on, was designated — put on the terrorist list — in 1997. It earned the designation fair and square, having been involved in numerous attacks, including the hostage-taking and Terrorists No More: MEK murder of Americans, according to a State Department report. Indeed, it was at times more hardline than the Ayatollahs: The group reportedly condemned the new Iranian government’s decision to release the American hostages in 1980 as "surrender."

More recently, the MEK has restricted its attacks to Iranian nationals. Those curious can check out this lengthy FBI report for all the gory details. Suffice it to say that these erstwhile Marxists have proven themselves remarkably adaptable: The leadership moved with ease from the shah’s Iran, onward to France and, once ousted from Paris, to a congenial perch in Baghdad, where the MEK was reportedly involved in Saddam’s extermination campaign against the Kurds and repression of Iraq’s Shia.

But the world is now a different place — Saddam is gone and the MEK claims it has reformed. Certainly, the embassy takeovers and the anti-American, anti-Israel rhetoric are gone. Now it appears that the MEK is merely a cult-like organization — intensely devoted to its leaders Massoud and Maryam Rajavi and virulently opposed to the Islamic Republic. Reports from former members suggest that followers require permission from the Rajavis to marry, that parents are separated from children, that communication with outsiders is banned, and that more senior followers are required to divorce to commit themselves more fully to the fight.

The State Department has long resisted efforts to remove the MEK from the terrorist list. As of 2004, the FBI had evidence that the group was still planning attacks against Iranian targets around the world. In addition — and this is no small caveat — successive secretaries of state in both Republican and Democratic administrations have recognized that delisting the MEK could throw a monkey wrench into efforts toward rapprochement with Iran. …

Setting aside the fact that the MEK worked hand in glove with other masterminds of the Islamic Revolution, Iranians are rightly wary of the fact that the MEK sided with the hated Saddam in his war against Iran. Indeed, the MEK has never appeared as the voice of democratic hope for the Iranian people, but merely a dictatorship in waiting. Washington, however, has been more suggestible.

The recent history of the MEK — also known in other guises such as the National Council of Resistance, the National Liberation Army, and the People’s Mojahedin of Iran — has featured various front groups that have lobbied aggressively for the removal of the MEK’s terrorist designation. These lavishly resourced groups have pursued a sophisticated and multi-dimensional campaign that reached from the state-by-state field offices to the toniest K St. lobbying shops. And their efforts have gained substantial momentum in recent years, leaning on former senior government officials and journalists to make their case.

On Capitol Hill, the MEK emphasizes its credentials as an opponent of the Iranian regime, allowing wannabe masters of the "great game" to imagine that this enemy of our enemy is our friend. Among Republicans and Democrats alike, there is seemingly little curiosity as to the MEK’s nature or its plans for Iran should it ever should come to power.

A who’s who of former government officials have led the way in advocating for the MEK in Washington’s corridors of power. There’s former New York City mayor and presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, former Vermont governor and Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean, President Barack Obama’s former National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones, and the former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Democrat Lee Hamilton. There’s also Mitt Romney advisor Mitchell Reiss and former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. Who says bipartisanship is dead in Washington?

Is every one of these men and women a principled supporter of the MEK, dedicated to the liberation of Iran? Seems doubtful. As their own records in government will attest, most did nothing for the MEK when in a position to do so. The more likely explanation is that at least some of these folks have been persuaded with money, most of it coming in the form of speaking fees. And there is lots of it. Where does it come from? The FBI won’t tell those on Capitol Hill who have asked; the MEK insists the money is from its donors.

The ethics of accepting money for a speaking gig from a designated terrorist group is dubious — but if it’s happening through non-designated fronts, it’s likely to be legally kosher. On the other hand, the Washington Postreportedin July that some of these speakers are also taking part in regular briefings and negotiations regarding the fate of Camp Ashraf, the MEK camp inside Iraq that the government in Baghdad is disbanding.

According to State Department sources, participants in those calls were advocates on behalf of the MEK, and were being used to relay messages to and from the group. If so, these individuals were acting as unregistered foreign agents for the MEK. The law is specific on this question: Acting on behalf of a foreign organization without properly registering with the U.S. government is a crime. The Justice Department is reportedly investigating former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell for his MEK ties, but few are sanguine the probe will go anywhere.

So what’s the lesson here? Pretty simple. Announce you’ve renounced terrorism. Buy a bunch of supporters. Lobby to get off the terrorism list. ET voila.

The tale of the MEK reflects poorly on all involved, from the State Department to Capitol Hill to undeclared lobbyists. Unfortunately, the designation of foreign terrorist organizations has become a highly politicized exercise in which some groups are designated for the right reasons (terrorism) and others are not labeled, despite clearly meeting the statute’s requirements. For example, the Haqqani network in Pakistan was only designated in September despite its long association with other terrorist groups and its own terrorist activities. At the very least, however, we will soon find out whether, freed of the opprobrium of its terrorist designation, the MEK will make any difference in our long-running battle with Iran. Somehow, I doubt it.

By Danielle Pletka, Foreign Policy

September 29, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

US Formally Removes Rajavi cult from Foreign Terror List

The U.S. State Department said Friday it removed Mujahedin-e Khalq, an Iranian group, from its list of foreign terror organizations. S Formally Removes Rajavi cult from Foreign Terror List

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came to the decision, which was reported last week, as a result of what she said was the group’s renunciation of violence, the absence of confirmed acts of terrorism for more than a decade and its cooperation in closing Camp Ashraf, its paramilitary base in Iraq.

“The [State] Department does not overlook or forget the MEK’s past acts of terrorism, including its involvement in the killing of U.S. citizens in Iran in the 1970s and an attack on U.S. soil in 1992,” it said in a statement. It “also has serious concerns about the MEK as an organization, particularly with regard to allegations of abuse committed against its own members.”

With the delisting effective Friday, the group’s property is no longer blocked and Americans can engage in transactions with it without a license to do so, the State Department said.

The MeK was placed on the list of foreign terror organizations in 1997 because of its alliance with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and an assassination campaign it launched against U.S.officials in Tehran prior to the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979.

MeK engaged in an aggressive lobbying campaign in Washington over the past two years — enlisting officials from both major political parties – to win its removal from the State Department’s list.

An NBC News report from February said the group, working alongside Israel, is behind the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists. The group flatly denied the allegation.

A U.S. appeals court ruled in June that the State Department had to decide by October whether to keep or remove MeK from the list, or it would be delisted by the ruling.

UPDATE: Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of the National Council of Resistance, a Paris-based group of which MeK is the principal member, said in a statement the group intends to better introduce itself and its goals to the American people now that it has been removed from the foreign terror list.[..]

Correction: The delisting decision came Friday, not Thursday. The National Council of Resistance is Paris-based, but not French.

Samuel Rubenfeld, Wall Street Journal

September 29, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Has the MEK changed?

We examine why the US has decided to de-list the Iranian group Mujahedin-e-Khalq as a terrorist organisation.

TO VIEW THE VIDEO FILE CLICK HERE

The US has designated the Iranian group Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) as a terrorist organisation since it began keeping a terrorist list in 1997.

The group’s supporters say it represents Iran’s democratic opposition, and is working for a nuclear-free Iran. But critics argue it has a violent history that dates back to the reign of Shah Reza Pahlavi.

“What may have happened in the past few months is the US essentially cut the best deal to relieve this headache of having the MEK in Iraq, that is to get the members out of Camp Ashraf and into Camp Liberty, and as many of them as possible resettled into third countries.”

– Ali Gharib, a senior editor of Open Zion blog

The group was sheltered by Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s former leader, as it carried out attacks against Iran during the Iran-Iraq war.

In fact, as the US made its case for invading Iraq in 2003, it cited the Iraqi leader’s support for the MEK as evidence of his support for terrorism.

But now, after a two-year lobbying campaign that enlisted many prominent US politicians and former military officers, the group will no longer be considered a terrorist organisation.

Former US officials have received tens of thousands of dollars to give speeches to and on behalf of the MEK.

Millions of dollars have been spent on a campaign to get the MEK dropped from the banned list of terror groups.

Three top Washington lobby firms have been paid a total of nearly $1.5m over the past year to press the US administration and legislators to support the de-listing if the group.

The US treasury department is believed to be investigating whether speaking fees paid to MEK supporters are restricted by a law that prohibits Americans from doing business with designated terrorist groups.

Ed Rendell, the former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, has accepted more than $150,000 in speaking fees at events in support of the MEK’s unbanning.

Tom Ridge, who served as secretary of homeland security under George Bush, has also received speaking fees.

“They certainly appeared on the list at a time which was politically very convenient for the US government which was trying to reach out to Iranian government … it was the Iranian government that brought to their [US] attention that the MEK was not on the list.”

– Patrick Clawson, the research director at the Washington Institute

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Republican chair of the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee, has accepted at least $20,000 and has spoken out against the ban.

Other prominent American politicians who have spoken in favour of the MEK include Democratic governors and former presidential candidates Howard Dean and Bill Richardson. Another Democratic support is NATO commander Wesley Clark.

And Republican Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York mayor, has also called for the ban to be dropped.

In addition to the MEK, the US state department lists 52 foreign terrorist organisations including al-Qaeda, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, as well as the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA.

So what is the MEK and why is it being removed from the US terrorist list now? Has the group really changed?

Joining Inside Story Americas for the discussion with presenter Shihab Rattansi are guests: Ali Gharib, a senior editor for the Daily Beast’s blog, Open Zion; Patrick Clawson, the director of research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; and Jeremiah Goulka, the lead author of The Mujahedin-e-Khalq in Iraq: A Policy Conundrum, and a former justice department lawyer.

“After the Iran-Iraq war the leaders of the MEK Massoud and Maryam Rajavi turned the group into a cult, partly because they were unable to get new recruits from Iran … the move to join Saddam Hussein ended any legitimacy that the MEK had among the Iranians.”

Jeremiah Goulka, a former US government lawyer

——————————————————————————–

WHO IS THE MEK?

•Founded in 1965 by Islamic-Marxist students, the group helped to overthrow the Iranian government in 1979, prompting a clampdown following the revolution
•The group began an armed struggle against the US-backed Shah of Iran in 1971
•Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi leader, used them for attacks against Iran and the Kurds
•In 1981, the group launched a bombing campaign attacking the Islamic Party headquarters, killing Iran’s president and the prime minister
•The US disarmed them following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which the MEK agreed to in exchange for protection.
•The US turned over MEK refugees to the Iraqi government in 2011
•Massoud Rajavi led the group since 1972 but has not been seen since 2003. His wife Maryam Rajavi is the group’s public face now
•Many members are refugees in both Iraq and France, and the group’s leaders continue to live and operate in France
902

Inside Story Americas,Aljazeera.com

Download Has the MEK changed?

September 27, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Working the magic the ‘terrorcrat’ way

The terrorist outfit Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK, MKO, Rajavi Cult) is now a ‘democratic organisation’. Here’s how they did it.

The Bush administration’s war on terror is the gift that keeps on giving – in not exactly mysterious Working the magic the'terrorcrat' way ways.

In the same week of the UN General Assembly in New York – buzzing with competing fiery speeches by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu – the US government is bound to formally delist the Iraq-based anti-Iranian outfit Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) as a terrorist group.

Jamal Abdi, policy director for the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) didn’t need many words to put it in perspective:

"The decision opens the door to Congressional funding of the MEK to conduct terrorist attacks in Iran, makes war with Iran far more likely, and will seriously damage Iran’s peaceful pro-democracy movement as well as America’s standing among ordinary Iranians."

… No question; millions of Iranians despise the cult-like MEK, especially because it was aligned with Saddam Hussein during the 1980 to 1988 Iran-Iraq war.

In-depth coverage of a growing regional debate

During the war, the MEK’s one and only obsession was to destroy Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini. Not that they had any chance, with a ragtag army assembled in Iraq launching a pathetic offensive inside Iran in 1988.

After the Tehran-Baghdad UN-brokered ceasefire of 1988, the MEK remained active in Saddam’s Iraq during the 1990s – now reconverted to go after Iraqi Kurds. That’s when the Clinton administration labelled them as "terrorists" – responsible for the assassination of US citizens in Iran before the Islamic revolution.

Hanging with the Mossad crowd

One of the key reasons for the current upgrade is that the MEK seems to have agreed to leave its Iraqi base at Camp Ashraf and are about to relocate to a new US-built camp near Baghdad.

In spite of a torrent of denials, every shisha house all across the Middle East knows the MEK is trained – and funded – by Washington and Tel Aviv, and that includes training on US soil.

The MEK and its self-defined "political section" – the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) – are notorious (extremely unreliable) US intel sources on Iran’s nuclear programme.

In February, NBC News admitted, "deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists" were being carried out by the MEK, "financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service". Predictably, NBC was careful not to investigate any US connection.

Unsurprisingly, the popularity-deprived US Congress erupted in joy to salute the State Department’s decision – especially usual suspects such as Dana Rohrabacher (Republican from California), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Republican from Florida – the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee), and Ted Poe (Republican from Texas). They all have repeatedly hailed the MEK as a "democratic organisation".

So how do you land an upgrade from terrorist to democrat? That’s a no-brainer; you hire the best lobbying money can buy – and invest in effective PR.

In MEK’s case, that’s been the job of three top Washington firms; DLA Piper; Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld; and DiGenova & Toensing. These three have bagged nearly $1.5 million over the past year to legitimise MEK at all costs.

Once more this is the true and tested way to bury a bloody history of bombings and assassinations that killed not only US businessmen and Iranian politicians, but also thousands of unaccounted for Iranian civilians.

There’s nothing like a cool PR touch – in English, of course – to reconstruct a bunch of nutcases as loyal US allies fighting the "evil" Tehran regime. Congressmen and the proverbial armies of "former officials" – ubiquitous in the media – are suckers for this kind of stuff.

How come the mighty al-Qaeda never thought about it?

The ‘terrocrat’ way

MEK’s money – donations from the Iranian diaspora channelled through a web of shady organisations in Florida, Texas, Colorado and California – bought a muscular bipartisan portfolio.

That includes everyone from former mayor of New York and eternal 9/11 raconteur Rudy Giuliani to journalist Carl Bernstein; at least two former CIA directors; former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell; former NATO chief Wesley Clark; former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson; and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Hugh Shelton.

It has been established, for instance, that Shelton, former FBI director Louis Freeh and former attorney general Michael Mukasey (who oversaw terrorism cases), among others, definitely profited from it. This is a decent roll call of most who joined the bandwagon.

In June, former Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich went to Paris for a pro-MEK rally alongside the cult outfit co-leader, Maryam Rajavi.

The Treasury Department did begin an investigation of "speaking fees" – some of them up to $40,000 a pop – collected on behalf of MEK.

Yet it’s unclear whether this particular investigation will have legs. In cases involving Hamas and Hezbollah, people did go to jail for providing indirect financial support. But then again both Hamas and Hezbollah have not been "upgraded" to "democratic" status in the US.

Then, there’s the curioser and curioser Clinton angle.

The MEK was added to the terror list during the Clinton administration because Bill Clinton was trying to charm former Iranian President Muhammad Khatami. Now, as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton has disclosed "classified" information about MEK to Congress, certainly involving the identity of Iranian nuclear scientists.

So from Saddam’s puppets, MEK have finally graduated to CIA and Mossad puppets. Expect from now on the usual rash of unnamed "US officials" insisting the upgrade does not mean the US government is an official supporter of MEK. That will be yet another stance of "leading from behind". […]

It goes without saying this also works as a priceless PR coup for the military dictatorship of the mullahtariat in Tehran – who will take no prisoners in depicting Washington to be in bed with a terrorist outfit that even US intelligence admits is a facilitator of Mossad-style assassinations of Iranian scientists.

Terrorist groups of the world, unite; you have nothing to lose but your non-access to an ace Washington PR firm. It’s time for all of you to be rebranded as "terrocrats".

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times. His latest book is named Obama Does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

bY Pepe Escobar

September 27, 2012 0 comments

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