The MEK and the Iranian People

The MKO disappointed by Mossad?

Binyamin Netanyahu’s dramatic declaration to world leaders in 2012 that Iran was about a year away from making a nuclear bomb was contradicted by his own secret service, according to a top-secret Mossad document, reported the Guardian on Monday February 23rd.

The report suggested that the leaked documents of the Israeli intelligence agency is one of the biggest spy leaks in recent times. According to the Guardian, a few weeks after the Israeli Prime Minister showed the ostensible cartoon at the UN, a secret report was shared with South Africa in which intelligence agency concluded that Iran was “not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons”.

The revealing report was published by the Guardian while the Israeli leader Netanyahu is making efforts to obstruct the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the West. Of-course to achieve such an objective the Zionist regime is not alone. The Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/ MEK/ the Cult of Rajavi) have been closely cooperating with Israel for years. It was an operative arm for Israel to launch spying and terrorist operations against Iran.

Ismael Salami of the Global research wrote on January 8th,”The terrorist Mujahedin Khalq Organization AKA MKO or MEK seems to be a ubiquitous agent any time there is an assassination in Iran. “ He notifies that the MKO works in league with Kidon, the assassination unit within the Mossad.

Salami reveals the link between the MKO and Mossad based on testimonies of an arrested Israeli spy:

“In 2011, Mohamed Ali Lobnani, a Lebanese national, who was arrested on charges of spying for Mossad confessed that he had spied for Israel under the cover of a Shiite cleric in Lebanon.

“In a court hearing session, Lobnani said he had phone contacts with Mohammad Alizadeh, an MKO ringleader, claiming that had no idea that the number was a Mossad contact number.

“Asked about the link between MKO and Mossad, he noted, “As far as I know, the group (MKO) has been collaborating with Israel for several years and has massive interactions with Mossad.”

By the way, the hostile policies of the Israeli government against Islamic Republic and the violent background of the MKO terrorist against Iranian people makes them friends against a common enemy, regardless of the document of Israel’s own secret service on Iranian nuclear program.

Maryam Rajavi and Netanyahu are pursuing the same path to obstruct any deal between Iran and the US. “In April 2012, a former head of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, accused Netanyahu of “messianic” political leadership for pressing for military action, saying he and the then defense minister, Ehud Barak, were misleading the public on the Iran issue”, writes the Guardian. This is exactly what Maryam Rajavi has been seeking for many years. She has always been in accordance with her new master, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Mazda Parsi,

February 25, 2015 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

The Terror Bombing, the Prosecutor, the Spy and Mossad

The apparent murder of Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman last month has given rise to two opposing theories. One is that the government of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was responsible for Nisman’s death, to prevent him from indicting the president and foreign minister for an alleged conspiracy to lift the accusation against Iran for the 1994 terror bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people and injured 300.

The other theory, from Kirchner government officials, is that it was the most powerful figure in the country’s intelligence service, Horacio Antonio Stiuso, better known as "Jaime Stiuso," who had the motive to kill Nisman. The argument holds that having "manipulated" Nisman to bring the indictment against Kirchner and foreign minister Hector Timerman – and then having been fired from his position as chief of operations of the intelligence agency – Stiuso hoped to get revenge against Kirchner by provoking suspicion that her administration was responsible for the murder.

However Nisman died, his fate was deeply intertwined with that of Stiuso. From the time Nisman took over the AMIA investigation in 2004, he relied heavily on the shadowy intelligence official for secret information in putting together his indictment of Iran for the bombing. The story of Nisman’s reliance on Stiuso, which has shaped the narrative on the terror bombing, reveals both the enormous power that Stiuso has wielded over that narrative as well as the overweening influence of Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, Mossad, on Stiuso’s position on the issue.

It also shows how the crucial elements of that narrative were falsified.

"The Man Whom Everyone Fears"

Jaime Stiuso entered what was known for decades as the Secretaría de Inteligencia de Estado, or SIDE, in 1972 at the age of 18. When the "dirty war" began in 1976, SIDE became an arm of the Argentine military dictatorship, deployed against domestic leftist enemies. Thousands were killed, and thousands more disappeared during the war, which targeted Jewish intellectuals based on an anti-Semitic theory prevalent in the Argentine military and intelligence services.

In 1980, in the midst of that repressive war, Stiuso joined the counterintelligence directorate and became an expert in the use of telephone wiretaps. He rose to become head of counterintelligence. But Stiuso’s expertise was not only applied against those considered subversives, foreign spies and criminals. Over the years, he began to acquire a reputation for keeping files on large numbers of prominent figures in Argentine politics and society and for making clandestine videos of political figures in compromised situations.

In July 2004, then-Minister of Interior Gustavo Beliz learned about details of illegal activities allegedly carried out by Stiuso. Beliz met with then-President Nestor Kirchner about what he had learned. But one of the things Beliz had discovered about Stiuso’s operations was that Kirchner’s 2003 presidential campaign had been financed in large part by secret funds from the $100 million that had been added to SIDE’s budget that year, according to an account by Jorge Rosales in La Nacion, Argentina’s leading conservative daily.

Within a few hours of the meeting with the president, Beliz was ordered to sign a letter of resignation. But Beliz shocked the entire country by going on a television show to announce that he had been dismissed from the government. He went on to denounce SIDE as a "parallel security ministry." He said the intelligence agency had become the secretariat of a "secret police state" over which there were no controls.

Beliz held up a black-and-white photograph of Stiuso – the only image of him ever seen by the public up to that time – and referred to him as "the real power in the SIDE" and "the man whom everyone fears."

Well before the AMIA terror bombing, Stiuso had begun tapping Iranian embassy phones and carrying out systematic surveillance of Iranian diplomats and the new Iranian head of the local mosque in Buenos Aires, Mohsen Rabbani. And Stiuso was sharing all the data he collected on the Iranians with Mossad in Israel, according to the author of the most detailed account of Stiuso’s career, SIDE, La Argentina Secreta, by journalist Gerardo Young of the daily Clarin.

After the July 1994 explosion, Stiuso had control over the AMIA investigation. But the three top US Embassy officials and the head of the FBI’s Hezbollah office, James Bernazzani, all told this writer in 2007 that SIDE had found no evidence of Iranian involvement in the bombing in the first few years. In 1996, the lead role in the investigation at SIDE was taken away from Stiuso and given to another group, called "Sala Patria," which had been cooperating with CIA and Mossad on trying to penetrate what were assumed to be terrorist cells in the "Triple Frontier" area where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet.

Responsibility for the AMIA case was shifted back to Stiuso, however, after an internal power struggle between counterintelligence and the "Sala Patria" group resulted in the firing of Patricio Pfinnen, the "Sala Patria" official who had been in charge of the investigation, in December 2001. "Stiuso regained control over all the files," Gerardo Young told me in a 2007 interview.

"Boy, You Are Going to Work With Him"

In September 2004, after four suspects accused of being part of the AMIA bombing plot had been acquitted, President Kirchner created a new special prosecutor’s unit for the AMIA investigation and named General Prosecutor Nisman to lead the unit.

But it was understood from the beginning that Nisman would take his cues from Stiuso. In a meeting with Nisman and Stiuso, later reported in the Argentine press, Kirchner pointed to Stiuso and told Nisman, "Boy, you are going to work with him."

Stiuso had worked closely with both the CIA and Mossad, but Mossad had been more aggressive in providing intelligence implicating the Iranians in the bombing. And, as Young observed in his book, Stiuso "had a weakness for Mossad."

In 2002, Stiuso had begun compiling a 1,000-page final report on the AMIA investigation, according to Young, based in crucial respects on intelligence supplied by Mossad.

The most important information he got from Mossad was a series of reports claiming that the "suicide bomber" was a Lebanese member of Hezbollah, Ibrahim Hussein Berro. Stiuso testified in the AMIA court case in September 2003 that as early as 1995, an unidentified "collateral" intelligence service had given SIDE information that an individual named "Brru" had traveled from Lebanon to the "triple frontier" area and had participated in the AMIA bombing.

That "collateral" service was Mossad. Nisman used a lot of the details he had gotten from Stiuso’s report. Young told this writer in 2007 that a Mossad agent had revealed to him shortly before our conversation that the Israeli service had been unhappy about the intelligence relating to Berro that had been included in Nisman’s report. "There was a lot of information they had transmitted [to SIDE] that they wouldn’t want in a public report," Young said.

Stiuso testified that information from the "collateral" agency had prompted SIDE to send a spy to get more detailed information in Lebanon on the AMIA bombing. The spy, who apparently had ties to Mossad, claimed to SIDE officials that a former Hezbollah militant had revealed to him that Berro, a Hezbollah member who had been reported killed in an attack on Israel troops in Southern Lebanon, had actually been killed carrying out the AMIA bombing.

But the creator of "Sala Patria," Patricio Pfinnen, who had been in charge of that operation before being fired in late 2001, told the court that when SIDE got back to the spy with questions about what he called "gaps" in the story, it "fell apart." He suggested that the spy may have been "lying to us" and declared, "I have my doubts about [Berro] being [the] person who was immolated."

Stiuso had chosen to ignore the questionable end of the operation and instead accepted Mossad’s claims about Berro. One of those was a story that Mossad had a recording of the telephone call Berro had made to his family shortly before carrying out the bombing, according to reports by Haaretz military affairs correspondent Ze’ev Schiff and El Diario del Juicio in Buenos Aires.

That story would imply that Mossad had been sitting on the recording of a call by the suicide bomber to his family for nearly a decade rather than turning it over to the Argentine prosecutor from the beginning.

Nisman nevertheless cited Stiuso as the authority for the conclusion in his 2006 request for the arrest of senior Iranian officials that the bombing had been carried out by Berro.

The other sensational claim that Nisman’s report made was purported evidence that the entire senior Iranian government leadership, including the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, had made the decision on the AMIA bombing at a mid-August 1993 meeting. Nisman quoted court testimony by four officials of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (People’s Mujahedeen, or MEK), the exile Iranian organization trying to use the West to overthrow the regime.

The MEK officials claimed to know the exact day, hour, place and agenda of the meeting (although two different dates were mentioned). But an exile group, which had been at war with the Islamic regime for 13 years, obviously was not in a position to obtain such information. And the MEK had long been a client of the Mossad, which the Israelis used to put out information about Iran that it did not want to be linked to Israel itself. And Mossad leaked to Haaretz the claim that it had its own account of that meeting.

Nisman and Stiuso turn against Kirchner

Nisman adopted the Israeli accusation of Iranian responsibility for the AMIA bombing, at least in part, because President Nestor Kirchner’s government had decided to go along with Bush administration pressure to blame the bombing on Iran. A May 2008 WikiLeaks cable reveals that, when Nisman was preparing a request for the arrest of former President Carlos Menem for allegedly covering up the "local connection" with the bombing, both an Argentine foreign ministry official and a political adviser to the umbrella organization of the Jewish community, DAIA (Delegacion de Asociaciones Israelitas) observed that Nisman was doing so because he was "completely beholden" to Kirchner’s chief of staff, Alberto Fernandez. The US Embassy agreed with that assessment.

But having tied his career to the accusation of Iranian responsibility, Nisman became passionately attached to that position. When Fernandez de Kirchner reached an agreement with Iran in 2013 for a "truth commission" on AMIA, Nisman reportedly viewed the agreement as a dismissal of his 900-page indictment of Iran. His first response was to release a 502-page report arguing that Iran had been building a network of terrorist cells throughout Latin America, in which the central evidence was the tendentious claim that Iran had been directly involved in a half-baked plot to blow up fuel tanks at JFK airport.

Stiuso, who had loyally served Nestor Kirchner up to that moment, also saw a threat to his own career. He had been tapping the phones of everyone who had contact with the Iranians, including government officials, and he made the transcripts available to Nisman. So for the second time in his career, Nisman began drafting a long, rambling indictment based on material from Stiuso. This time, he aimed at showing that Kirchner and Timerman had secretly reached an agreement with Iran to clear the Iranians of the AMIA bombing. Like his 2006 indictment of Iranian officials, it contained many pages – quotes from the wiretaps that didn’t prove his thesis.

In late 2014, the Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner government learned about the Stiuso-Nisman collaboration and fired Stiuso and two other top SIDE officials known to be allied with him. The stage was set for Nisman’s mysterious death on January 18.

The Kirchner government’s argument that Stiuso "manipulated" Nisman is far too pat. Nisman used Stiuso’s information because it suited his interests. Whether the interests of Nisman and Stiuso ever diverged before January 18 remains to be seen.

Truthout,

Gareth Porter (@GarethPorter) is an independent investigative journalist and historian writing on US national security policy. His latest book, Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, was published in February 2014.

February 24, 2015 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

The Iranian Mojahedin-e Khalq and Its Media Strategy

The Iranian Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) and Its Media Strategy: Methods of Information Manufacture

In his book Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare (Porter, 2014b), American journalist Gareth Porter identifies the role played by the Iranian Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) organization in Israel’s decade-long attempts to prevent a negotiated settlement between Iran and the P5+1 (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, and Germany), on the former’s nuclear program. When the negotiations hit a difficult phase in Vienna in May 2014, Porter suggested in an article for Al Jazeera that “If the talks fail … it will be the result of the toxic combination of wilful U.S. self-deception and deliberate falsification of intelligence by the Israelis” (Porter, 2014a).

In this context, this overview seeks to demonstrate how and why, through a sophisticated and persistent media campaign, the MEK has created a place for itself on the Iranian political scene totally disproportionate to its capabilities and support base; and how from this aggrandized position the MEK has exerted a negative influence over Western opinion and policymaking toward the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and Iraq, which began long before and reaches far wider than its role in Tehran’s nuclear dossier. Also, this review seeks to indicate that while this propaganda campaign has been highly successful for the MEK, it has been deliberately detrimental to the growth of a civil opposition movement in Iran as well as significantly affecting Western foreign policy toward the IRI in adverse ways.

The MEK stands out as perhaps a unique example of a belligerent entity that exploits to the maximum a range of propaganda methods and outlets in the West to project itself in the international community as a constructive, almost benign, force. Far from avoiding publicity, the MEK has done everything in its power to maximize what can be described as its virtual presence. In addition to its native Farsi, the group disseminates information about and projects an image of itself in English, French, German and Arabic, in print, in broadcast and on Internet media. But insofar as it has no popular support among indigenous or diaspora Iranians, its image as a popular resistance movement has been largely invented.

Historically the group’s leader, Massoud Rajavi, as the MEK’s spokesman, enjoyed a reputation as a charismatic speaker. As such, he was fully cognizant of the power of publicity in shaping a public image. After the MEK was forced into exile to Paris in 1981, Rajavi assumed sole leadership and appointed his wife, Maryam Rajavi, second-in-command. Since then, the MEK’s raison d’être has remained in its own words “the downfall of the mullahs’ regime in its entirety and the establishment of a democratic republic based on the separation of the church and the state” (Rajavi, 2014), under a Rajavi government. Rajavi understood that he would depend on both political and financial support from the West. He established public relations departments in MEK bases in the major Western capitals. With help from sympathizers, an increasingly sophisticated and expensive propaganda strategy was devised with multiple aims. Primarily, it was used to market the MEK as the “main opposition” and the “only alternative” to the IRI to attract sponsorship. But to ensure the MEK was the only group to garner this support, Rajavi also needed to eliminate all other exiled Iranian opposition groups. This was achieved in the 1980s through physical intimidation and character assassination. This ranged from ostracizing former Iranian president, Abolhassan Bani Sadr (Gessler, 2004), to gate crashing meetings of other groups such as the communist Fedayeen, and beating up attendees. It was also necessary over the years to continuously demonize the Islamic Republic to prevent any possibility of rapprochement. MEK propaganda sculpted Western perceptions of Iran as evil and incapable of reform or moderation.

In its quest to solicit Western support, the MEK morphed its public persona several times to appeal to various Western foreign policymakers and sponsors, but maintained as pivotal its claim to be the main opposition and only alternative. While helping Saddam Hussein’s war effort during the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), the glossy print magazine NLA Journal promoted the National Liberation Army; photographs of combatants and armaments projected an image of military might. After losing support during the First Gulf War, a replica of Iran’s Majlis populated by these same combatants posing in Western clothing was advertised as a parliament-in-exile in The Lion and The Sun magazine (print edition in Iran-Interlink archive) and distributed to parliaments and press in the 1990s. Over time, the MEK’s image building was upgraded through emailed PDF publications like Iran Liberation and Iran Liberty Association Newsletter, which reflect the current incarnation of the group. This PDF-manufactured reputation as a democratic opposition enabled the MEK to undertake information laundry for Israel as purveyors of nuclear intelligence on Iran (Nuclear Control Institute, 2014). By extension, this adaptive, mercenary role proved persuasive among American neoconservative regime change pundits who campaigned to remove the group from the U.S. terrorism list (Symonds, 2012). This in turn, after the 2013 election of President Rouhani introduced the possibility of a negotiated settlement of Iran’s nuclear status, allowed for the MEK to be promoted as human rights advocates (Iran News Update, 2014).

The MEK’s ability to maintain its public relations platforms through the vagaries it has suffered over three decades is based largely on one propitious factor: its target audience. Western power brokers have been sympathetic and arguably myopic. Western parliamentarians, if not governments, were looking for “evidence” that the IRI was dangerous and unpleasant—whether as a state sponsor of terrorism or later as a nuclear weaponized state. They were also looking for an opposition to promote as an antithesis to the Iranian government. The MEK, a listed terrorist group for much of this time, used its chameleon-like ability (Bahari, 2007) to adapt its image to mirror Western concerns. That it did this purely for its own survival does not detract from the fact that the MEK has provided a very palatable narrative for those wanting to depose and attack the IRI.

While the Iran-Iraq War was under way, Rajavi was expelled from France but was welcomed in Iraq by Saddam Hussein to help his war effort against Tehran. Saddam provided training for MEK members to form a National Liberation Army, an adjunct to the Iraqi army, and also a generous propaganda budget. Saddam’s purpose was to bolster support for his own war effort by having the MEK present itself as a military force capable of overthrowing the Iranian regime. This became the MEK’s unique selling point, singling it out from among the remaining Iranian opposition groups.

Rajavi micro-managed the MEK’s public relations from his headquarters in Baghdad. International media were monitored for coverage, and he ranked this activity according to how important he believed it was, with “A” bearing any mention of him, “B” if the MEK was mentioned, “C” for Iranian opposition and so on. In addition, the MEK gleaned news published inside Iran for information such as numbers of arrests and executions, which it would then claim to have gathered covertly through its own network of supporters. Although this information was publicly available, the MEK claimed to a non-Farsi-speaking audience to have informants inside the IRI system. In this way, it was able to build a reputation among Western reporters, which would finally draw them to the MEK’s press conference in 2002 to expose Iran’s secret nuclear enrichment site at Natanz (Nuclear Control Institute, 2014). Indeed, it was the group’s media and political contacts that made it an ideal conduit for intelligence originally garnered by the Israeli intelligence organization Mossad on Iran’s nuclear program, not its credibility as an opposition group. The revelation led the United States to push for a United Nations (UN) investigation and subsequent sanctions against Iran. After 2003, having lost Saddam Hussein’s patronage, the MEK abandoned any attempt to build popular support with Iranians and chose instead to work for Israeli and neoconservative interests. Alejo Vidal Quadras, a former member of the European Parliament, admitted that the Friends of a Free Iran group in the European Parliament had benefited from association with the MEK whose “ ‘lobbying activity’ performed for more than 20 years … has been fundamental” (Vidal Quadras, 2014) in promoting its agenda.

A media campaign-employed lobbyists such as the Iran Policy Committee, generously paid speakers (Wilkie, 2011), and took photographs with politicians to try to recast MEK history and present itself as a democratic alternative to an exclusively Western audience. Underpinning any understanding of the MEK’s media strategy is that, according to Steve Hassan’s BITE Model (Freedom of Mind, 2014), it operates as a cult and can therefore utilize an unpaid, dedicated labor force willing to spend every waking hour in pursuit of fulfilling its leader’s requirements. Far from alienating support, this aspect has been instrumental in the creation of an indispensable tool for regime-change pundits in the West. With this free labor, the MEK was able to inundate political and media circles with a continuous flood of literature, information, films, statements, and press releases. Currently, the group ensures a daily presence in PR Newswire and engages in “Google wars,” with its forces performing keystrokes to push MEK items up the search engine scale. It also maintains a physical presence in Western parliaments characterized as “extremely persistent and aggressive” by Eldar Mamedov (2014), who is in charge of the delegation for inter-parliamentary relations between the European Parliament and Iran.

A recent example of the MEK’s efforts to control the narrative of an event through its cyberspace presence came in 2013 with the tragic attack on 101 MEK members based in Camp Ashraf in Iraq (Sen, 2013). Within hours the MEK began to take control of the media narrative by sending real-time video of the attack filmed by the MEK themselves (YouTube, 2013), to newsrooms. On the ground, however, the MEK were uncooperative with UN and Iraqi government investigators. Crucially, 42 survivors who were moved to another MEK base (U.S. Department of State, 2013), were subsequently prevented from speaking to investigators (Khodabandeh, 2013), and the investigating process stalled. Instead, mirroring the agenda of MEK advocates in the European Parliament, the MEK blamed the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al Maliki (NCRI Foreign Affairs Committee, 2013), for the attack. An Internet search of the event now throws up a variety of articles, resolutions, and statements published by the MEK, which variously attribute blame for the massacre to the Iraqi government of al Maliki, the Iraqi army, President Rouhani of Iran and Iranian special forces, which have taken on the aspect of factual reporting simply through repetition.

In the autumn of 2013 when the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 got under way, the regime-change narrative shifted to attacks on Iran’s human rights record. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen now specifically referred to Maryam Rajavi as a “human rights advocate” (Ros-Lehtinen, 2014). On May 8, 2014, the MEK paid for a quarter-page advertisement in the British print edition of The Guardian in which a smiling Maryam Rajavi accuses Iranian President Rouhani’s government of “massacring 56 Iranian opponents in Camps Ashraf & Liberty in Iraq” (print edition in Iran-Interlink archive).

The MEK’s media and cyberspace presence is manifest in both positive and negative terms. What is most remarkable is that this group’s narrative is so pervasive and persuasive. The MEK has been instrumental in the manufacture of a false but dominant narrative concerning Iran, but other exiled opposition groups and individuals depict Iran in a very different manner, which is arguably more nuanced and closer to reality. Iranian writer and activist Akbar Ganji, imprisoned in Tehran between 2000 and 2006, describes “How the West gets Iran wrong” (Ganji, 2014). Any indigenous Iranian opposition has two fronts to fight. Not only do they have to challenge the IRI on civil rights, religious freedom, human rights, etc., but will also have to distinguish themselves with a different identity and a different narrative from the MEK’s “regime change” discourse and persuade a skeptical West to listen to them. And while Iran certainly has problems with civil and political freedoms and with its economy, the country has made many advances in important fields, such as literacy, polio eradication, aids education, birth control, and prevention of drug trafficking, which rarely get reported by a skeptical Western media. The root of this hostility deserves greater examination and exposure to enable negotiators, foreign policymakers and the media to dismantle the “wilful US self-deception” (Porter, 2014b) and to approach dialogue and diplomacy with greater realism.

References

Bahari, Maziar. (2007). Cult of the chameleon.
Freedom of Mind. (2014). The BITE model.
Ganji, Akbar. (2014). How the West gets Iran wrong.
Gessler, Antoine. (2004). Autopsy of an ideological drift: Analysis and background of the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran. Translated by Thomas Robert Forstenzer.
Iran News Update. (2014). Maryam Rajavi: At the UN in Geneva.
Khodabandeh, Massoud, (2013). Where are the 42 missing Mojahedin Khalq eye witnesses from Camp Ashraf?
Mamedov, Eldar. (2014). The MEK’s influence in EU Politics matters.
NCRI Foreign Affairs Committee. (2013). Iraq: Sham investigation to whitewash Maliki’s crimes in Camp Ashraf.
Nuclear Control Institute. (2014).
Porter, Gareth. (2014a). Demonising nuclear Iran.
Porter, Gareth. (2014b). Manufactured crisis: The untold story of the Iran nuclear scare. Charlottesville, VA: Just World Books.
Rajavi, Maryam. (2014). Hundreds of Iranian associations support Maryam Rajavi Ten-Point Plan for future Iran.
Ros-Lehtinen, Ileana. (2014) The security situation in Camps Ashraf and Liberty is getting worse every day; The Iraqi government and the UN must keep their promises and provide adequate security, says Ros-Lehtinen.
Sen, Ashish Kumar. (2013). 52 Iranian exiles killed at Iraq’s Camp Ashraf.
Symonds, Peter. (2012). US Removes Iranian MEK from terrorist list.
U.S. Department of State. (2013). Relocation of remaining individuals from Camp Ashraf to Camp Hurriya in Iraq.
Vidal Quadras, Alejo. (2014). Alejo Vidal-Quadras, el mejor amigo de los muyahidines.
Wilkie, Christina. (2011). Mujahideen-e Khalq: Former U.S. officials make millions advocating for terrorist organization.
YouTube.com. (2013). The bravest cameraman in 2013 Camp Ashraf.

First published on onlinelibrary.wiley

February 5, 2015 0 comments

Maryam Rajavi

Maryam Rajavi – Cheerleader for Israel

The Mojahedin Khalq’s exclusively Western backers and admirers like to present themselves as totally unaware that the terrorist cult and its leaders Massoud and Maryam Rajavi are held in absolute contempt and

are regularly ridiculed by all Iranians – outside and inside of Iran – except for a few hundred of their brainwashed followers.

Perhaps it is this astounding – or practiced – ignorance which allows the Council of Europe to allow use of their buildings as a platform to introduce Maryam Rajavi as an ‘Iranian opposition leader’ who speaks as some kind of expert on the danger of only one specific source of terrorism while at the same time, without any sense of irony, she demands that the Americans re-arm her own illegal terrorist group in Iraq. Clearly she says what the Europeans want to hear or they wouldn’t invite her to speak. (In English she claims that the reason Daesh (ISIS) exists at all is because the Islamic Republic of Iran managed to repress the remnants of Saddam Hussein’s regime – Saddamists – and deny them power in Iraq. In Farsi she blames America for killing Saddam Hussein and praises Daesh (ISIS) as ‘tribal revolutionaries’.)

Still it cannot be established whether all her eager hosts are aware of Maryam Rajavi’s long dark history of terrorism – cunningly masked apparently by a skirt and a grin. Nor whether they know, or care, that even last month she not only spoke out in support of Daesh (ISIS), but threatened to assassinate her critics in Europe as well.

(Interestingly, the only outlets which covered this meeting are some far right newspapers in Iran which cited it as further evidence to dismiss Western claims to be fighting terrorism.)

For the rest of us, it is no longer necessary to listen to Rajavi speak to know what she is saying because her basic repeated message is identical to that of Israel’s PM, Netanyahu. That is: ‘Iran is the West’s number one enemy; don’t talk with Iran; only bomb Iran’.

Meanwhile in Washington, Rajavi’s henchman Ali Safavi – who is also culpable for terrorist crimes – has also been wheeled out for the same purpose: to say to a Western audience that ‘in order to show support for Israel you have to bomb Iran’. Safavi sets the scene with a bit of scaremongering to get the word nuclear in: Iran’s long-range missiles are super threatening “whether they are nuclear or not”! Before dismissing Iran’s missile capacity as irrelevant because Iran is just very, very threatening.

Unfortunately he doesn’t go on to explain how, as Rajavi demands, giving small arms to the sick and needy former MEK combatants – currently being held incommunicado by their own leadership in the MEK’s camp in Iraq – will help stave off this dire threat. Even Israel with all its weaponry now finds Iran too strong to bomb and must be satisfied with attempts to slow down rather than prevent Iran from becoming the next major regional power.

Parading this deeply unpopular and defunct terrorist group to convey a defunct message demonstrates that Israel is scraping around the bottom of an empty tool box. Instead of a screwdriver Netanyahu found a hairbrush, and is wielding that in the hopes somebody somewhere will take the MEK and their flaky representatives seriously.

When none of the protagonists have any principles or morals, there will inevitably be negative repercussions. Europe and America have yet to see how damaging these kinds of shows are for their national interests.

January 31, 2015 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Four ways the West got the Iran nuclear issue wrong

First denying Iran’s nuclear rights and then using suspect intelligence to build a false picture of its programme

For more than three decades, the United States and its European allies have committed one fundamental error after another in the process of creating a commonly held narrative that Iran was secretly pursuing a nuclear weapons programme. The story of how suspicions of the Iranian programme hardened into convictions is a cautionary tale of political and institutional interests systematically distorting the judgments of both policymakers and intelligence analysts.

Too many of these basic errors have been committed along the way to cover them all in a single article. But four major failures of policymaking and intelligence represent the broad outlines of this systematic problem.

1. Denial of Iranian rights, followed by denial of the truth

The first failure, which set in train all the others, involved the US trying to strangle the nuclear programme of the Islamic Republic in its cradle and then blithely acting as though it bore no responsibility for the resulting shift in Iranian nuclear policy. It all started with a decision by the Reagan administration early in the Iran-Iraq war in 1983 to put diplomatic pressure on its allies to stop all nuclear cooperation with Iran. France was pressed to forbid a French-based multilateral consortium from providing the nuclear fuel that Iran had counted on for its lone nuclear reactor at Bushehr.

The US State Department acknowledged at the time that it had no evidence that Iran was working on or even wanted nuclear weapons. That US effort to choke off any nuclear assistance to Iran thus represented an extremely serious violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which guaranteed Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear technology.

Not surprisingly Iran responded to that US denial of its nuclear rights by defying US wishes and acquiring the technology to enrich uranium for nuclear fuel itself on the black market and later through negotiations with China and Russia. US aggressiveness toward Iran’s nuclear programme had backfired.

But instead of recognising that it had made a serious error, Washington compounded the original policy blunder by treating the Iranian response as prima facie evidence of nuclear weapons intent. In 1995 Secretary of State Warren Christopher, in the course of explaining an order by President Bill Clinton banning all US trade and investment in Iran, accused Iran of having an “organised structure dedicated to acquiring and developing nuclear weapons.” That was an obvious reference to the Iranian efforts to acquire centrifuge and other enrichment technology. The Clinton administration thus acted as though there was no relationship between Iran’s interest in obtaining gas centrifuge technology and the US denial policy that preceded it.

2. The intelligence goes wrong

The CIA and other Western intelligence agencies began to drift away from reality on the Iran nuclear issue in the early 1990s, when Western intelligence agencies were gleefully poring over intercepted telexes from Sharif University in Tehran seeking various “dual use” technologies – those that could be used either for a nuclear programme or for non-nuclear applications. They had found that the telex number on many of the messages was that of the Physics Research Centre, which was known to do research for the Iranian defence ministry. That was enough to convince them that Iran was pursuing a covert nuclear weapons programme.

The telexes ultimately turned out to be false positives, however. In late 2007 and early 2008, Iran turned over detailed documentation showing that every one of the “dual use” procurement items sought in those telexes had been requested by various faculties of Sharif University for faculty and student research. And the Physics Research Centre’s telex number was on the telexes because the former head of the organisation was teaching at the university and had been asked to help in the procurement of the items. The intelligence analysts had wrongly interpreted the inherently ambiguous “dual use” evidence as confirming pre-existing suspicions of Iran’s intentions.

That analytical failure was a template for a series of four intelligence assessments of the Iranian nuclear programme by the CIA’s Nonproliferation Center and later by the US intelligence community as a whole that falsely concluded that Iran had an active nuclear weapons development programme as of the time of the assessment. That string of false positives raises serious questions about the 2007 US national intelligence estimate by a team of analysts that had just repeated the same mistake in a draft estimate only a few months earlier.

3. Ignoring the Fatwa against chemical weapons

The belief of Western governments that Iran must have pursued nuclear weapons has been based on their ignorance of a pivotal historical episode that should have caused them to question that belief. During the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, Saddam’s troops attacked Iran with chemical weapons many times, killing 20,000 Iranians and severely injuring 100,000. Yet Iran never retaliated with its own chemical weapons, as Joost Hiltermann’s A Poisonous Affair, the authoritative source on chemical attacks in that war, has documented.

That fact poses a fundamental challenge to the Western narrative on the Iran nuclear issue, because there is no credible explanation for the Iranian failure to retaliate with chemical weapons other than the fact that supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had forbidden the possession and use of all weapons of mass destruction as illicit in Islam. The Revolutionary Guards acted on their own to acquire the capability to produce mustard gas weapons, as the wartime Iranian Minister for military procurement has confirmed in a recent interview. But his account of his meetings with supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini also confirms that Khomeini pronounced a fatwa against such weapons early in the war and repeated it in 1987.

The implications of that historical episode for an understanding of the politics of WMD policy in Iran are obviously far-reaching. It lends strong credibility to the Iranian claim that the current supreme leader’s fatwa against nuclear weapons is an absolute bar to Iran possessing such weapons. But the news media has continued to dismiss the problem by clinging to an old narrative, which was based on false information that Iran not only had possessed chemical weapons but also had used them.

4. Refusing to acknowledge the weaponisation evidence is tainted

For nearly a decade, the international politics of the Iran nuclear issue have revolved around intelligence documents and reports of Iran nuclear weapons work. A 1,000-page cache of documents that surfaced in 2004 showed the redesign of Iran’s Shahab-3 missile to accommodate a nuclear weapon and high explosives experiments that could only be used for nuclear weapons. More incriminating intelligence documents followed in 2008-09. The IAEA has now been investigating them for nine years.

But Western governments, abetted by compliant news media coverage, have chosen to ignore the considerable evidence that these documents were of very dubious origins. Contrary to the cover story that the documents were passed on to Western intelligence by a participant in a covert Iranian programme or by a German spy, a former senior German foreign office official has now revealed that the German intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst, obtained them from a sometime source who was a member of the Iranian exile terrorist organisation Mujahedeen E-Khalq (MEK). The MEK was then serving Israel’s Mossad as a means of laundering alleged intelligence, so it is safe to assume that the documents came from Israel.

IAEA director general Mohamed El Baradei (1997-2009), who insisted that the documents had not been authenticated, recalled in his memoirs, “No-one knew if any of this was real.” Against the wishes of the Bush administration, he refused to use them as evidence against Iran.

Major contradictions between information in the papers and the independently verifiable timelines of Iran’s missile and nuclear programmes indicated that the authors were not Iranian specialists. The re-entry vehicle depicted in the studies, for example, was not the one that Iran was redesigning at the time and that was revealed to the world only after the documents were handed over.

El Baradei also revealed that a subsequent series of intelligence documents, which included the claim that Iran had installed a large cylinder at Parchin to test atomic weapons designs, had been passed on to the IAEA directly by Israel. That intelligence proved to be equally problematic: former IAEA nuclear weapons expert Robert Kelley found the Parchin cylinder claim technically implausible.

The US government and its Western allies have all closed their eyes, however, to the evidence that these documents were designed to justify US action by the United States against the Islamic republic. The political convenience of the accepted narrative of the Iran nuclear issue has continued to suppress any active interest in learning the truth.

– Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and historian writing on US national security policy. His latest book, “Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare,” was published in February 2014.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Middle East Eye

January 12, 2015 0 comments

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

The MKO Adore Hypocrisy on Human Rights

From time to time, the UN issues a resolution condemning violation of human rights in Iran. This makes the Mujahedin khalq Organization to get some fuel to run its propaganda machine against the Islamic Republic despite its own horrendous human rights record. The MKO Adore Hypocrisy on Human Rights

The self-claimed president of the group, Maryam Rajavi uses this opportunity to describe the 61st resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 18, 2014, “as another decisive document on illegitimacy of having economic and political relationship with the ruling clerical regime in Iran.”

Prior to the recent resolution, in November Dr. Ismail Salami wrote on the Global Research, “The not-very-independent UN body has made a mockery of justice by soldering a resolution on the so-called human rights violations in Iran.” He suggests that the double standard over human rights has led the UN to ignore severe violation of human rights by some countries like Israel. [1]

Dr Salimi considers Canada — one of the main sponsors of Israel—behind the resolution against Iran. In May 2014, Canadian Liberal MP Irwin Cotler who served as the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada from 2003 until 2006 embarked on a series of programs known as Iran Accountability Weeks in which they heard “testimonies highlighting Iranian political prisoners and other victims of Iranian human rights abuses.” Among those who testified was the notorious terrorist MKO leader Maryam Rajavi accompanied by a UN rights official and pundits from a hawkish American think tank. [2]

To comprehend the link between the two sides of the Canadian campaign of advocate both the MKO and Israel, it is worth to read Gareth Porter’s piece on the Middle East Eye that once more exposes warm relationship between the MKO and Israel.

Porter explains how the propaganda against the Iranian nuclear program was first fabricated by Israel and then handed over to the MKO. ” We now know that the documents did not come from an Iranian participant in the alleged project, as the media were led to believe for years; they were turned over to German intelligence by the anti-regime Iranian terrorist organization, Mujahedeen E Khalq, (MEK)” , He writes.” I first reported this in 2008 and have now confirmed from an authoritative German source in my book on the Iran nuclear issue. The MEK was well known to have been a client of the Mossad, serving to launder Israeli intelligence claims that the Israelis did not want attributed to themselves.” [3]

The MKO-Israeli cooperation is not restricted to intelligence laundering and spying operations. “Over the past three decades, the MKO has initiated a series of deadly attacks on Iran and the Iranian population and has so far assassinated 12000 Iranians including the nuclear scientists”, writes Dr. Salimi. “It is interesting to note that the assassinations of prominent Iranian characters including the politicians and scientists are basically conducted in cahoots with Israeli Kidon, the assassination unit within Mossad.”[4]

While the UN ignores serious violation of human rights in Gaza, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and particularly in camps of the cult-like MKO, the Australian Government maintains the MKO and its affiliates in its consolidated list updated on December 15th, 2014. This took place a few weeks after the bloody hostage taking in a cafe in the Australian Capital Sydney.

Although the cult leader Mrayam Rajavi vainly tries to wear the mask of humanity by laying flowers at the floral memorial of the victims of the incident in Sydney, the history will never forget the atrocities of the Cult leaders toward its own members, and the victims’ memories will be always alive.

Mazda Parsi

References:

[1] Salami, Ismail, Human Rights and Double Standards: UN Resolution on Iran Mockery of Justice

Global Research, November 21, 2014

[2] ibid

[3] Porter, Gareth, Guess who credits the Mossad with producing the ‘laptop documents?’, Middle East Eye, Thursday 18 December

[4] Salami, Ismail, Human Rights and Double Standards: UN Resolution on Iran Mockery of Justice

Global Research, November 21, 2014

December 25, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

MKO along the lines of Western hardliners

As the co-leader of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization, Maryam Rajavi, calls on the West for more sanctions against Iran, her leading sponsor in the US Congress is demanding new sanctions to pressure Iranian government. The US-MEK campaign is paired with Israeli propaganda against Iran.

Immediately after a seven-month extension in talks between P5+1 was announced, Maryam Rajavi started to blame the West for not being firm on Iran. According to Rajavi “Exercising firmness and tightening the sanctions” is the only option to deal with Islamic Republic that should be followed with supporting the MKO as the alternative for the Iranian regime.

On the other side of the world, Rajavi’s paid advocates also launched their own campaign to obstruct nuclear talks. Even before the ink dried on the extension agreement in Vienna, skeptics in Washington were demanding new sanctions to pressure Iran`s rulers, reported Reuters. [1]

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, long regarded as one of the most effective lobbying groups in Washington, called on Congress to take up sanctions legislation.[] Members of AIPAC are mostly found among advocates of the MKO in the US government. You can find certain names on both lists of recipients of the MKO and AIPAC contributions such as Robert Menendez, Lindsey Graham and Carl Levin. [http://maplight.org/us-congress/interest/J5100/view/all]

Senator Robert Menendez, Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator Carl Levin are three of the long list of the MKO supporters who receive large amounts of speaking fees to speak on behalf of the group. They are paid for their luxurious trips to attend the MKO’s rallies around the world. News and videos of their advocacy for “the cult of Rajavi” are available on the group’s websites.

Reuters reported that Sen. Robert Menendez, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from Obama’s Democratic Party stopped short of calling for new sanctions immediately, but said: "The cycle of negotiations, followed by an extension, coupled with sanctions relief for Iran has not succeeded.” [2]

Opponents of the Iranian government including the MKO and American-Israeli warmongers disrespect the fact that the alleged Iranian nuclear program was basically a forged story made by Israeli Intelligence service and published by the MKO propaganda arm. The investigative journalist Gareth Porter studied the case and included that the key “evidence” of an Iranian nuclear weapons program came via the MKO cult and was produced by Israel. [3]

Porter suggests, “The MEK role in transferring the documents indicates that they originated in Israel, because the MEK had been serving as a client of Israel for several years, including the “laundering” of Israeli intelligence reports by presenting them to the IAEA and the press as coming from the MEK itself.” [4]

Moreover, in November 2007, National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of the US reported that Iran had “halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.” [5] However, Iran never had a weapons program—at least not one that has been confirmed by U.S. Thus that the unproven MKO-Israeli, nuclear weapons claim has become the source of all deceptive propaganda of the group.

While the MKO leader makes efforts to show off her cult of personality as a secular democratic alternative for Islamic Republic, critics found out the opposite. Holly Dagres of the Huffington Post refers to Rand report to prove dishonest of Maryam Rajavi and her supporters,” Despite denials, its [the MKO’s] conduct tells otherwise as cited by a RAND report: deceptive recruitment, emotional isolation, extreme degrading peer pressure, forced labor, imprisonment, lack of exit options, sexual control, sleep deprivation, and physical abuse.” [6]

Dagres remarks that the MKO has no public support inside Iran and despite its claims its slogans never reflect the aspirations of the Iranian nation. He writes,” Not only has the Mojahedin-e Khalq lost its support because of its alliance with Saddam during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s–an insult to the Iranian people’s nationalism–but also for its position against Iran’s nuclear program, something the average Iranian sees as their legitimate right.” [7]

Maryam Rajavi and her sponsors must understand that their determination to obstruct nuclear talks and engagement with Iran is not in line with the Iranian people’s longing for independence and security.

Mazda Parsi

References:

[1] Reuters, Domestic pressures in U.S., Iran threaten slow-moving nuclear talks, Nov 25, 2014

[2] ibid

[3] Porter, Gareth, How US Policy on Iran Came to Be Based on Fabricated Documents, the Nation, June 9, 2014

[4] ibid

[5] Key Judgments From a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s Nuclear Activity, the New York Times

December 4, 2007

[6] Dagres, Holly, Dear Washington: Kick Out This Iranian Militant Cult, Huffington Post, December 14 2014

[7] ibid

December 18, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization

Iranian People or Iranian Resistance?

The MKO’s claims for solidarity with Iranian people or animosity with them?

The Mujahedin-e-Khalq is a title for followers of Maryam Rajavi. The term “Mujahedin” is an Arabic word meaning “freedom fighters”. The Mujahedin has been allegedly fighting against the late shah of Iran and consequently the Islamic Republic that was established after the 1979 revolution in Iran. They claim that they want to liberate the Iranian “People”; the Arabic term “Khalq” means “people”. But do the leaders of the MKO – the Rajavis – care for the Iranian people?

Maryam Rajavi’s speech in city hall of 2nd district of Paris for her paid supporters is remarkable because whenever she speaks of her cult-like organization as the “Iranian Resistance”, she uses the phrase “the Iranian people” too. She tries to convince her audience that the so-called Iranian Resistance represents the Iranian people but Is this claim true?

As she starts her speech she expresses her anger on the extension of the deadline for the nuclear talks with Iran. She suggest that the extension of talks gives “the regime yet more time to push global and regional peace and security to the edge of catastrophe.”

Maryam Rajavi who is all the time forecasting a regime change in Iran in near future, criticizes the West for not being firm on the Islamic Republic. She asks for full implementation of the UN Security Council resolutions imposing sanctions that prohibit export and import of a long list of items from Iran. The economic sanctions eventually increase the suffering of civilians and the level of poverty in Iran.

While Maryam Rajavi and her so-called Resistance call for more sanctions, the majority of Iranians hope that sanctions relief following the nuclear deal will improve their standards of living, and will bring concrete change on the ground.

The majority of the Iranian people do not aspire for escalating tension between the West and Iran. Pushing hard for more sanctions and beating on war drums to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, are far from aiding the Iranian people’s desire for a better life.

Maryam Rajavi claims that a policy of firmness and resolve against the IRI must include the recognition of “the Iranian people’s resistance” for regime change. She claims the Iranian people as the possessors of “the resistance” while the majority of Iranian public may have no idea of who the Mujahedin are!

Moreover, she salutes all the Iranian women who are according to her, “Waging resistance against the Mullah’s barbarity.” I, in my turn, would like to salute all women in the MKO camps who are enduring a modern slavery under the Rajavis.

Not only Rajavi abuses the controversial acid attacks against a few Iranian women to show off her own deceptive opportunist slogans, but also she manipulates her audience minds by misusing Iranian people’s gathering to mourn the death of a popular singer Morteza Pashaei. Fans of Pashaei who were holding candles and singing his songs in the streets of Iranian cities did not know that their love for their deceased favorite singer is used by the MKO leader as the support of the “Iranian People” for the “Iranian Resistance”!

Claiming solidarity with Iranian people shows the hypocrite nature of this cult like organization. The purpose in using the term “people” is to save the organization from collapse after the relocation process from camp liberty to European countries has been on the rise during the past weeks.

Mazda Parsi

December 10, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Israeli agents training Mojahedin Khalq terrorists in Jordan

Israel is training members of the anti-Iran terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) in Jordan along the border with Saudi Arabia in order to carry out acts of terror inside Iran and neighboring Iraq, Press TV has learnt.

According to sources, who declined to be named, the MKO terrorists are undergoing training on how to conduct terrorist operations in Iran and Iraq and receiving technical as well as information technology (IT) training from Israeli agents.

This is the first time it is revealed that anti-Iran MKO terrorists are being trained in Jordan along the border with Saudi Arabia.

Earlier reports had revealed that radical extremists are receiving terror training in Jordan before being sent into Syria and Iraq to carry out bomb attacks and join the ranks of the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front, ISIL Takfiri militants and other terrorist groups operating inside both violence-plagued Arab countries.

The MKO fled to Iraq in 1986, where it enjoyed the support of Iraq’s executed dictator Saddam Hussein, and set up its camp near the Iranian border.

The group is also known to have cooperated with Saddam Hussein in suppressing the 1991 uprisings in southern Iraq and carrying out the massacre of Iraqi Kurds.

The MKO has carried out numerous acts of violence against Iranian civilians and government officials.

Out of the nearly 17,000 Iranians killed in terrorist attacks since the victory of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, 12,000 have fallen victim to the acts of terror carried out by the MKO.

December 2, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

The MKO happy with GOP victory

Less than a week after the US midterm elections– in which Republicans snatched control of the Congress– the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO) sounds hopeful for its ambitions for power in Iran. It seems pretty obvious that the MKO is dreaming of failure of nuclear talks between Iran and West and eventually the imposition of more sanctions against Iran and finally military invasion.

The takeover of Republicans over the US Congress may narrow the path for Obama and his foreign policy makers who tend to engagement and diplomacy with the Iranian Government and this is exactly what the MKO wants. The group’s advocates in the Congress mostly belong to the GOP party. However, it has been successful to buy the support of some Democrats too.

The MKO’s multimillion-dollar campaign of lobbying in the corridors of the Capitol Hill ultimately ended in the removal of the group from the List of Foreign Terrorist Organizations of the State Department in September 2012. A few months after its delisting, the MKO reopened its office in Washington a block away from the White House, eating cake with some of its congressional sponsors.

In fact, the MKO has a long list of advocates among republicans. The group has hired the most powerful republican lobbying firms such as Akin Gump to run its agenda in the US government. Rep. Ileana Ros-lehtinen, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher are two of most vocal supporters of the MKO in the Congress. They often appear in the group’s rallies to speak on behalf of the group and its warmonger belief. Also, former republican figures and hardliners have deep pockets of the MKO dollars. Tom Ridge, Rudy Guiliani, Fran Townsand, Patrick Kennedy and Micheal Mukasey are other formerly high profiles in the MKO campaign who have been beating on war

drums against Iran for years.

The MKO hopes that the republican majority could be able to stop nuclear talks while the last round of the talks is now taking place in Oman. It means that before next January and the start of republicans’ rule over the Congress the talks will be done. Therefore, it is clear that the result of the midterm elections is not going to affect the negotiations, at least for the time being. However, President Obama has promised that he would try to convince Republicans in case of reaching any agreement with Iran.

Today, the MKO propaganda office has found itself with new supporters of war in the Congress. Thus, the timing to launch the old repeated propaganda against the Iranian nuclear program seems appropriate for the group.

Last Friday, the office of the MKO’s propaganda arm, the so-called National council of Resistance held a press conference show to claim that Iran has installed explosive chambers in Parchin site. Yet, the so-called revelation of the NCR has hardly ever gained attention in the media.

Seemingly the efforts of the MKO’s lobby and huge expenses it paid will not simply bear fruit. By the way, any agreement with Iran that is defendable by Obama and his party can very probably satisfy the Republicans, considering that the US public opinion extensively oppose a new war.

Regarding the current crisis of the Middle East and the threat of terrorists of the Islamic State group, and the Iranian good will to reach an agreement with the West, any agreement between the two sides is considered as a win-win deal, regardless of who won the US congressional elections.

The only loser of the entire story is the MKO and its warmonger opportunist drive that is seeking to overthrow the Iranian government at any cost.

By Mazda Parsi

November 10, 2014 0 comments

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