The MEK and the Iranian People

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Proceeding That Contradicts Assertions

I think that we don’t have the benefit of an accurate measure of terrorism to stop its threats. The existing gap in the laws grants terrorists the opportunity of propagating their violent policies just in the heart of the modern and democratic world. It well indicates that the world lacks the needed seriousness to combat terrorism. If we are really serious about fighting terrorism, we also have to start getting serious about accurately measuring its threats and take precautionary measures rather than awarding them with more than adequate accommodations to gather together or roam in the lobbies of the Western countries parliaments as Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK) is doing.

I wonder that while it is a blacklisted terrorist group on many countries lists, including the US and the EU, and its terrorist as well as cult charges are still open and investigated in France, it has the freedom of organizing a claimed gathering of 70,000 in northern Paris to demand removal of terrorist tag. Isn’t it legally prohibited to engage in any form of activity in the countries where it is blacklisted?

There is a much more surprising case concerning MEK I draw your attention to. Once in October 2006 the present UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, then the Chancellor, gave a speech to the Chatham House think-tank on "Meeting the Terrorist Challenge". The first words went as: “There should be no safe haven anywhere in the world for terrorists. Equally there should be no hiding place anywhere for those who finance terrorism”.

Nice words said and many felt relieved because hopes were fostered that at last the terrorism was beginning to face a real challenge. The next expressed ideas were even more promising. Here is a part:

And today I want to announce the framework of a new regime we are developing nationally and internationally for rooting out terrorist finance. In the last century, the main province of foreign policy was that nations had to guard against threats from other nations. And these threats still remain – demonstrated clearly yesterday by North Korea’s irresponsible action, which our Government and the whole world condemn completely.

But now also we see how small groups of terrorists can cause carnage:

enemies who do not need great armies nor, in practise, large amounts of money, weapons, or technology to put lives at risk; enemies without even a recognised formal chain of command, but enemies who can inspire imitators in the heart of our communities.

And so in addressing these new threats for whom there is no real precedent we are forced to consider every means, every necessary resource – all methods of diplomacy, all means of intelligence, all tools of law, policing and our security and military forces – in order to discharge our first duty: to protect our citizens.

Alas! His ideas and the new measure showed wide differences with that spectrum soon after he was elected the Prime Minister. Now we see he has taken the first step to make England a safe haven for MEK by bringing it out from the terror list. The move is encouraging other proscribed groups, and Al-Qaeda of course, to start defending their rights! I in my turn congratulate Prime Minister for his initiative measure and seriousness to discharge his first duty, as he has said, to protect British citizens.

July 21, 2008 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq as an Opposition Group

Military action ‘would destabilise Iraq’

American tools -Mojahedin Khalq or Rajavi cult- were on the payroll of Saddam Hussein

Iraq will be plunged into a new war if Israel or the US launches an attack on Iran, Iraqi leaders have warned. Iranian retaliation would take place in Iraq, said Dr Mahmoud Othman, the influential Iraqi MP.

The Iraqi government’s main allies are the US and Iran, whose governments openly detest each other. The Iraqi government may be militarily dependent on the 140,000 US troops in the country, but its Shia and Kurdish leaders have long been allied to Iran. Iraqi leaders have to continually perform a balancing act in which they seek to avoid alienating either country.

The balancing act has become more difficult for Iraq since George Bush successfully requested $400m (£200m) from Congress last year to fund covert operations aimed at destabilising the Iranian leadership. Some of these operations are likely to be launched from Iraqi territory with the help of Iranian militants opposed to Tehran. The most effective of these opponent groups is the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), which enraged the Iraqi government by staging a conference last month at Camp Ashraf, north-east of Baghdad. It demanded the closure of the Iranian embassy and the expulsion of all Iranian agents in Iraq. "It was a huge meeting" said Dr Othman. "All the tribes and political leaders who are against Iran, but are also against the Iraqi government, were there." He said the anti-Iranian meeting could not have taken place without US permission.

The Americans disarmed the 3,700 MEK militants, who had long been allied to Saddam Hussein, at Camp Ashraf in 2003, but they remain well-organised and well-financed. The extent of their support within Iran remains unknown, but they are extremely effective as an intelligence and propaganda organisation.

Though the MEK is on the State Department’s list of terrorist groups, the Pentagon and other US institutions have been periodically friendly to it. The US task force charged by Mr Bush with destabilising the Iranian government is likely to co-operate with it.

In reaction to the conference, the Iraqi government, the US and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have started secret talks on the future of the MEK with the Iraqi government pressing for their expulsion from Iraq. Dr Othman, who speaks to the MEK frequently by phone, said: "I pressed them to get out of Iraq voluntarily because they are a card in the hands of the Americans."

An embarrassing aspect of the American pin-prick war against Iran is that many of its instruments were previously on the payroll of Saddam Hussein. The MEK even played a role in 1991 in helping to crush the uprising against the Baathist regime at the end of the Gulf war. The dissidents from Arab districts in southern Iran around Ahwaz were funded by Saddam Hussein’s intelligence organisations, which orchestrated the seizure of the Iranian embassy in London in 1980 which was supposedly carried out by Arab nationalists from Iran.

The one community in Iran most likely to oppose the Tehran government is the Iranian Kurds. There have been an increasing number of attacks by PJAK, the Iranian wing of the Turkish PKK, which claims to be a separate party. Based in the Kandil mountains in Iraqi Kurdistan, PJAK has carried out frequent raids into Iran and has reportedly been able to win local support. But it would be extremely dangerous for the US to be seen as a supporter of PJAK as this would offend the Turks who have a military co-operation agreement with Iran against terrorism.

Independent

July 7, 2008 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Arming Mojahedin Khalq Terrorists

Iran: west is arming Mojahedin Khalq Terrorists (Saddam’s private army or Rajavi cult) for target assassination in the Middle East and Europe

‘Attempt on Ahmadinejad’s life failed’

An Iranian presidential aide says Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been the target of an assassination plot at the UN food summit in Italy.

President Ahmadinejad’s adviser for human resources, Ali Zabihi, said Monday that measures taken over the past three years by the Iranian Chief Executive have jeopardized the ‘illegitimate interests’ of global powers.

"Such measures have prompted certain parties to try and assassinate or force the president to leave office," Zabihi added.

Earlier on Thursday, President Ahmadinejad said the enemy had planned to assassinate him during his March visit to Iraq, adding that last-minute changes in his schedule had foiled the plot.

"The plots to assassinate the president in Iraq and at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) conference have both failed," Zabihi continued.

He maintained that the attempts on Ahmadinejad’s life were in line with a secret directive issued in March by US President George W. Bush ordering ‘the assassination of targeted Iranian officials’ as part of efforts to destabilize the Iranian government.

According to a report by Counterpunch magazine, the US president signed a secret finding in March authorizing a covert offensive against Iran which called for the arming and funding of terrorist groups, such as the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) and Jundallah (Army of God).

Press TV, June 24, 2008

http://www.presstv.ir/Detail.aspx?id=61154&sectionid=351020101

June 24, 2008 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

U.K., U.S. and Israel have a duty to grant safe haven to Mojahedin-e Khalq

The Iraqi administration issued a statement on June 17, 2008 designating the Mojahedin-e Khalq as a terrorist organization and calling on the U.S. to stop supporting the militant group.

June 19, Al Alam television aired a discussion on the issue on its ‘Iraq Today’ programme. The programme titled ‘Mojahedin-e Khalq terrorists and American support’ was presented by Ali Al Sadi.

The participants were:

Sheikh Mazen Al Saedi, Managing director of the Sadr office in Baghdad.

Mr. Ali Al Alagh, Member of Parliament.

Mr. Ebrahim Khodabandeh, Terrorism and Cult expert from Tehran, Iran.

Excerpts:

Ebrahim Khodabandeh said, “It is important to recognise that these people have been working against the Iranian and Iraqi people for the last three decades in line with the interests of the U.K., U.S. and Israel – during Saddam’s war against Iran and against his own people. Although the organisation is a terrorist entity by nature, many retired individuals need to be rescued by those who have used them. It is not the duty of Iran or Iraq to help these people but the U.K., U.S. and Israel should grant safe haven and retirement opportunities for their cohorts.”

Sheikh Mazen Al Saedi condemned the support of America, Israel and Britain for MKO terrorists and said, “this is a clear indication of enmity against the people of Iran and Iraq”.

Mr. Ali Al Alagh, MP was asked “now that parliament has asked the government to deport these people, is it going to be a legal requirement for the government to do so?” He responded, “it did not need parliament to pass a new law as the presence of terrorists has been banned by our constitution and it is a normal government responsibility to make sure they don’t stay in Iraq.”

Full discussion can be viewed in Arabic at the following link:

http://www.alalam.ir/site/mokhtarat/iraqalyom0.htm

June 19, 2008 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Questions over American policy toward MEK in Iraq

If, as seems likely, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MKO, MEK, PMOI) is de-proscribed in the UK, this ought to be good news for the group’s 3,300 members in Iraq. I reported on the situation there back in February and concluded that since the Iraqi Government is adamant that the MKO be expelled from the country as a foreign terrorist entity, the only practical solution was for a western government (most probably the UK) to de-proscribe the group so that the members currently trapped in Camp Ashraf could gain safe refuge there.

I am looking to see whether the MKO’s western backers will now push for this solution.

But I don’t hold much hope of that. If I am able to read the situation correctly, the MKO members in Camp Ashraf will be direct victims of the UK court ruling. By now they will have been ‘congratulated’ on their victory against the Iranian regime and told they will ‘soon be in Tehran’, although they will not be told how this is to be achieved.

It is clear that the group has deliberately been kept intact for five years and the obvious reason this would be done is so the group can be re-armed at Terrorists being rearmed - a threat to all some point and re-deployed against Iran – this time not by Saddam Hussein but by the US Administration. Last December American forces removed half the MKO dissidents from the TIPF adjacent to Camp Ashraf. (One of them drowned recently in a border incident in Turkey, others are still missing, some are in Iraqi Kurdistan and some clandestinely in Turkey. A few have gained safe refuge in Europe.)

Dahuk On Friday May 2, 2008 American forces completely closed TIPF and transferred the remaining people to Dahouk in Kurdistan. They have been housed for two months and have food rations, but have been told they will then be given over to the UN refugee agency. This leaves many, many questions, and to date no official American answer has been forthcoming.

I would like to know:

Now TIPF has been removed, where can MKO members go if they want to leave the organisation? Are they condemned to stay and serve as "good terrorists" whether on the terrorist lists or not?

Now TIPF has been removed, what are American forces protecting (after 5 years of blaming others for allegedly supporting terrorists)? A terrorist camp? (It must not be forgotten that even if the whole western world removes the MKO from the terrorist lists, they are still regarded – and with good reason – as foreign terrorists in Iraq.)

If, as I have been told, the uniformed militants in Camp Ashraf are free to leave anytime they want, why are MNF forces there ‘protecting’ them?

If, as has been rumoured, the Americans will hand over Camp Ashraf to the Iraqis by the end of the year, what will happen to the uniformed militants who are now protected there?

Will the likes of Lord Corbett and company, who have been supporting terrorism in Iran and Iraq under the banner of the MKO’s Klashinkov for the past thirty years, now at least sponsor a handful of those same people who have been abused by his cult and bring them to safety? Some of them surely are ready to retire on even a small pension!

Have efforts to have the MKO de-proscribed been so that the cult’s leaders, including cult guru Massoud Rajavi, can take up residence in London but the members stay to kill and be killed in Iraq and Iran?

At the invitation of Ms Batul Soltani (representative of Sahar NGO in Baghdad) I have visited Turkey to attend various meetings concerning the situation of former MKO people (from TIPF) who are trying to leave Iraq and Turkey. After talking with some of them, it is becoming clear they are facing obstacles and counter measures so that they fail (and even get killed in the way).

The repeated accusation – from a wide range of observers, not only the direct victims – is that the American approach to the MKO has been to deliberately stop people leaving this terrorist cult; that the MKO is maintained by interests who play the card of ‘taking them off the list’ with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Ultimately, those who had the power but who have failed or been unable or refused to dismantle a tiny foreign terrorist camp and its military structure in Iraq – despite continued requests by the Iraqi government to do so – are responsible for whatever disaster befalls its victims there.

By Massoud Khodabandeh – Iran-Interlink – May 11, 2008

May 11, 2008 0 comments

Iran

Iran slam US for supporting Iraqi based terrorist Mojahedin Khalq

While US issued no direct rebuttal onthe comments An Iranian envoy also addressed the council, accusing the United States of supporting the Iraq-based People’s Mujahideen (MKO) guerrilla group. The MKO is banned as a terrorist group in Iran, the United States and the European Union. “Its elements and members continue to enjoy support and receive safe haven in the US and some European countries, including some member states of the EU,”the envoy said. The MKO’s political wing, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), is banned in the United States as a terrorist organisation but remains legal in the EU. The MKO advocates overthrowing the Islamic leadership of Iran. Washington issued no direct rebuttal of the comments. But Richard Grenell, a spokesman for the US mission to the United Nations, responded by referring to the Security Council’s March 3 adoption of a third round of UN sanctions against Iran for refusing to halt its enrichment work. “Our response to the Iranians was the … Security Council resolution in which the international community said again Iran was in violation of international (nuclear) demands,”he said. Washington also accuses Iran of supporting Middle Eastern militant organisations including Hezbollah and Hamas. The NCRI first revealed the existence of Iran’s clandestine uranium enrichment program in August 2002. The United States and other Western countries fear it is part of a plan to get the capability to produce atomic weapons but Tehran says is at the heart of a peaceful civilian nuclear energy program. By Louis Charbonneau at the UN Security Council meeting | March 20, 2008

March 30, 2008 0 comments

Raymond Tanter

Raymond Tanter’s Quest to Free Iran

Irving Kristol, a founder of neoconservatism, once said that a neoconservative is a liberal who’s been mugged by reality. At Georgetown, we have Raymond Tanter, a conservative who’s had his bike stolen. After the theft, he got a new chain intended for motorcycles, which looks more appropriate in the hand of a wrathful Hell’s Angel than a dapper Georgetown professor.

“That’s a heavy bike. The lock is over here, you’re not even reaching the lock, he said before leaving campus to bike to Capitol Hill to talk with members of Congress (he wouldn’t reveal their names) about his plan for solving America’s problems in Iran and Iraq: relying on a group the State Department calls terrorists.

As the president of the Iran Policy Committee, a non-profit organization that promotes using Iranian oppositionists against Iran, Tanter is a tireless booster for the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), an armed group of Iranian exiles that seeks to overthrow the Iranian government. Its efforts are hampered by its placement on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, a classification Tanter says should be reversed so the MEK can counter Iran. Still, dressed in a matching plaid blazer, pants and bow tie, Tanter doesn’t look like a Washington lobbyist. Only the phone clipped to his belt suggests that he is tied to a worldwide effort to change U.S. policy on a controversial army that the Council on Foreign Relations estimates has 10,000 members. Tanter does not consider himself a lobbyist”because the MEK is considered a terrorist group, advocacy on their behalf is illegal. The Thinker Professor Raymond Tanter says the Iranian rebel group Mujahedin-e-Khalq can reduce Sunni terrorism in Iraq and counter Iran’s ayatollah regime. EMILY VOIGTLANDER “I’m not an advocacy group either, I’m 501©(3),” he said, referring to the tax provision for non-profit groups. The Iran Policy Committee is a 501©(3). We educate the public, we don’t advocate.” Tanter has been busy educating people on both sides of the Atlantic in the past year. In addition to meeting with Congress, Tanter spoke in the British Houses of Lords and Commons last year and met with members of the European Parliament in Belgium. At the beginning of February, he held a press conference in France calling for the delisting of the MEK-linked National Council. I’m on a roll, don’t you think he said of his recent activities abroad. The MEK has been on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations since 1997 and has been blamed for killing civilians and American military personnel before the 1979 Iranian Revolution. A one-time ally of Iran’s religious government, the MEK was exiled and fought on the Iraqi side in the Iran-Iraq War. The group, which has a largely female officer corps, has been tied to numerous violent incidents; a 1981 bombing attack of the Iranian government killed 70 high-ranking officials. The MEK also allegedly helped Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the bloody suppression of Kurdish and Shia rebellions in 1991, though the group denies involvement. Recently, the MEK has provided the United States with information about sites suspected to be involved in an Iranian nuclear program. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the American military bombed the MEK camp until a ceasefire was reached with the group that allowed it to keep its camp in exchange for not fighting Coalition forces. The MEK was not disbanded after the war, avoiding the fate of much of the Iraqi military, and Human Rights Watch reported in 2005 that the MEK’s base was used to hold prisoners for the U.S. government. While the United States and the MEK coexist in Iraq, their relationship is different in this country. In 2002, the State Department shut down the Washington offices of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an umbrella group to which the MEK belongs. According to Tanter, treating the MEK like terrorists is counterproductive to American interests. In his evocatively-titled books Baghdad Ablaze and Appeasing the Ayatollahs and Suppressing Democracy, he promises a plethora of benefits to come from removing the MEK from the terrorist list: it would wean Sunnis from the insurgency and break the cycle of sectarian violence in Iraq and help democratic forces establish liberty in Iran.

Alireza Jafarzadeh at the National Press Club. Next to him (l to r) are Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney (ret.), Bruce McColm and Professor Tanter.

Courtesy ALIREZA JAFARZADEH

When he taught at the University of Michigan, Tanter helped convince prospective athletic recruits to choose the Wolverines. Now that he’s at Georgetown, he insists he’s not trying to recruit his students to his school of thought. “I’m not a preacher, I’m a scholar,” he said. In his class, Terrorism and Proliferation, Tanter uses an aggressive cold calling technique, imploring some students to “be Googling!”, others to challenge their classmates and one girl to smile. Tanter uses his connections with special guests to surprise his students, he once made them present threat assessments to Iranian dissident Alireza Jafarzadeh and former Spanish president JosÃ© MarÃa Aznar.

during another class, former Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski discussed threats from Iran and Russia, and complimented the class on their presentations (he offered to send one student’s analysis to the Polish foreign minister).

“I’m probably in over my head,” Devon Cohen (SFS “˜10), one of Tanter’s students this semester, said, “But I love the class.” Tanter is aggressive about his views in class, according to Cohen. “It’s kind of his way or the highway in his perspective,” she said. Tanter runs his class imperiously, telling students and presidents alike to speak louder or stand up when they talk. “I do sound like a general, don’t I? Maybe a colonel,” he said, adding that despite his work on Iran he remains dedicated to teaching. Tanter and his students frequently refer to his books about Iran and the MEK in class, though some question his estimate of the MEK’s power to change Iraq and Iran. Russ Greene (SFS “˜09) critiqued Tanter’s optimistic assessment of the group’s abilities in class, noting that It kind of sounds like [Tanter is] a lobbyist for the MEK.” “I forgive you for calling me a lobbyist,” he replied. Once, while Tanter was a professor at Michigan, pro-Palestinian activists disrupted a speech he was giving. “The protesters laid down on the ground and forced the security people to pick them up,” he said. “They put on YouTube that this was violence against students.” While nothing similar has happened at Georgetown, some on campus, like Daniel Byman, the director of Georgetown’s Center for Peace and Security Studies, oppose Tanter’s positive view of the MEK. 50,000 Strong for the MEK Last June, 50,000 Iranians rallied in Paris for Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the MEK. Courtesy THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF RESISTANCE OF IRAN “I generally agree with the U.S. government’s view that it is a terrorist organization,” he said, adding that he did not think the MEK should be taken off the Foreign Terrorist Organizations list. “It would anger some Shia groups we’re having trouble with.” Byman did not discount Tanter himself, though, saying that despite their different views, he considers Tanter “serious.” “I work in hot topics,” Tanter said, trying to explain the breadth of issues he has covered in his government and teaching jobs. Tanter’s career plays like a highlight reel of American foreign policy crises: he has written books about Lebanon, Vietnam and rogue states, and was the personal representative for Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger at multiple arms control meetings. Tanter came to Washington after 9/11 because he “wanted to be closer to the action.” Here in D.C., besides teaching and running the Iran Policy Committee, Tanter has worked with the Department of Justice on terrorism issues.

“I think Professor Tanter has played an important role in igniting a debate in Washington about a policy option that was before him limited to Congress,” Alireza Jafarzadeh, a former spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the umbrella group that includes the MEK which had its Washington office closed, said. In 2002, Jafarzadeh gave the United States information which he said demonstrated a budding Iranian nuclear program.

“There was a lot of talk in the U.S. Congress supporting the idea of regime change through relying on the Iranian opposition,” Jafarzadeh said. “But Professor Tanter made that an academic debate, a debate among the think tanks, the experts doing research on it, giving it much more depth than it was before.”

Tanter can’t remember when he started wearing bow ties, which have become, like the MEK, linked to his public persona. “I’ve been bow-tieing forever, “ he said. The bow ties have contributed to Tanter’s reputation as a snappy dresser””in an article on the MEK, MSNBC called him “nattily dressed.”

After working for the Department of Defense and teaching at several American universities, Tanter was appointed to Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council in 1981 (he also worked on Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign). Asked if he knows anything about rumored negotiations between Ronald Reagan’s campaign staff and the Iranian government to hurt Jimmy Carter’s chances in the election, Tanter laughed and said he didn’ t work in that part of the campaign””then pointed out that he didn’t deny or confirm the rumor.

Journalist Yvonne Ridley thinks Tanter’s claims about the MEK are ridiculous. Courtesy YVONNE RIDLEY During the campaign, Tanter worked with Zalmay Khalilzad, the current U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Tanter called Khalilzad his friend, then backtracked, saying “When someone is a friend who goes higher [professionally], you can’t really call them a friend anymore.” Watching Khalilzad deliver a speech about the Middle East in Gaston Hall in November, Tanter knit his fingers under his chin, pointing out when the Ambassador echoed a point Tanter made in Baghdad Ablaze. When Khalilzad mentioned “internal elements in Iran,” Tanter leaned over excitedly and whispered “Did you hear that? Internal elements in Iran.” Despite this possible nod to the MEK, Tanter said he does not think his opinions have been adopted by the Washington foreign policy establishment. Working in the Reagan administration gave Tanter access not only to Khalilzad, but also other influential Republicans who continue to influence foreign policy. In the acknowledgments chapter of his book Who’s At the Helm?: Lessons of Lebanon, he thanks Ronald Reagan, Donald Rumsfeld, and George Bush for being “supportive of [his] professional development.”

Still, Tanter’s connections and history with Republicans haven’t been able to get him a meeting with the woman who could most help him get the MEK delisted: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

“I’m trying to get a “˜date’ with her,” he said, “But her staff is keeping me away.” Since the State Department decides what groups are designated as foreign terrorist organizations, one good meeting with Secretary Rice could mean new resources and status for the MEK and vindication for Tanter.

Tanter last visited Iran in 1975 when it was still ruled by the pro-Western Shah. After the Shah’s repressive regime was overthrown by a coalition of bourgeois intellectuals and fundamentalist Shia ayatollahs, the ayatollahs gained the upperhand and turned against the Shah’s foreign backers, including the United States.

“I’ve gotten invitations from the Iranian regime to come, which I consider to be””gick!” Tanter said, drawing his hand across his neck and making a noise like his throat was being cut. “They ask me to come on Iranian television all the time. No, I don’t want to give them the legitimacy.”

At least some in Iranian television aren’t eager to give him legitimacy, either.

“You’d have more chance of seeing the Pope’s b**ls [sic] than seeing this lot being taken seriously by anyone,” journalist Yvonne Ridley wrote in an e-mail. Ridley hosts a show on Press TV, an international television channel funded by the Iranian government. Ridley also questioned Tanter’s claim that the MEK can bring change to Iran. “The Iranian Government hates them, the pro-Shah/return-the-Peacock-Throne lobby hate them. Saddam loved them and they were part of the famous “˜Saddam’s Tank Girls,’” she wrote, referring to the large number of women in the MEK army. Tanter’s personal conversation continually echoes his professional interest; he lists Lawrence of Arabia, a film whose hero gains his government’s support for a rebel movement in the Middle East, as one of his favorite movies, and he can turn anything into a metaphor about Iran. He plays tennis twice a week, and is quick to draw an analogy between this hobby and his passion. “In tennis, stroke the ball leaning forward, not on your backfoot,” he wrote in an e-mail, “Similarly, the Iranian regime is leaning forward by building the Bomb, destabilizing Iraq and threatening its neighbors.” Even the air he breathes is fodder for a metaphor””Iranian meddling in Iraq “is like oxygen fanning the flames of conflict in Iraq.” Despite his relentless focus on Iran and the MEK, Tanter says he will not let his work as an educator suffer. “I’m still committed to my teaching, even though I’m involved in all this transformational business,” Tanter said. Whether in the classroom, Congress, or Europe, Tanter’s work is teaching. Speaking about his research on Iran, Tanter said, “You don’t have to buy mine, just do yours.” Will Sommer – georgetownvoice – March 5, 2008

March 9, 2008 0 comments

USA

CIA budget to supply and train MKO(Proscribed as a terrorist organisation in US!) in Iraq

The United States is clandestinely funding militant groups within Iran’s borders to destabilize the country, The Daily Telegraph says.

According to the daily, CIA officials are secretly funding militias among the numerous ethnic minorities clustered in Iran’s border regions in order to mount pressure on the country to give up its nuclear program.

Funding for their separatist causes comes directly from the CIA’s classified budget but is now”no great secret”, according to one former high-ranking CIA official in Washington speaking anonymously to The Sunday Telegraph.

“The latest attacks inside Iran fall in line with US efforts to supply and train Iran’s ethnic minorities to destabilize the Iranian regime,”said Fred Burton, a former US State Department counter-terrorism agent.

Some of the groups have resorted to terrorist methods. These include the notorious Mujahedin Khalq Organization [MKO] which has a long and bloody history of targeting Iranian civilians and government officials alike.

Another group claimed to be supported by the CIA is the Jundullah organization known for attacking high-profile Iranian targets, especially government and security officials.

Although Washington officially denies involvement in such activity, Tehran has long maintained that it has detected the hand of both US and Britain in guerrilla attacks on internal security forces.

Daily Telegraph, reported by Press TV, February 24, 2008 -http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=44463&sectionid=351020101

February 26, 2008 0 comments

USA

Key figures in the Israel lobbies support a terrorist group that has fired on US troops

I’m very excited and pleased to introduce today’s guest poster, Danny Postel, who comes to us with some absolutely chilling revelations about the bad faith of the neoconservatives’ supposed dedication to”freedom”(I know, I know: you’re shocked). Danny is the author of Reading “Legitimation Crisis” in Tehran: Iran and the Future of Liberalism and is co-coordinator of the Committee for Academic and Intellectual Freedom of the International Society for Iranian Studies. —Rick Perlstein By Danny Postel During the week of October 22-26, an official announcement effuses, “The nation will be rocked by the biggest conservative campus protest ever – Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, a wake-up call for Americans on 200 university and college campuses.” Ringmastered by David Horowitz, this circus will be performing under the tent of something called the”Terrorism Awareness Project.” The purpose of this ballyhoolooza, we are told, is to confront the “Big Lies” of the Left regarding terrorism and militant Islam. Worthy subjects, to be sure. Indeed I would like to help the sponsors of the “wake-up call” promote awareness of them. Toward this end, let’s consider the American Right’s “special relationship” with one group of terrorists. The U.S. State Department officially considers the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK) a Foreign Terrorist Organization. While those honors date back to 1994, they’ve been renewed during the Bush years. Indeed in 2003 Foggy Bottom went further, including the National Council of Resistance of Iran — an MEK alias — under the terrorist designation. (The MEK is also known as the People’s Mujahedeen.) To make a long and bizarre story short, the MEK got its start in early 1960s Iran, helped overthrow the Shah in 1979, but quickly turned on the revolutionary government it helped bring to power. Employing an ideological blend of Stalinism and Islamism, the tactics of a paramilitary guerilla faction, and the organizational structure of a cult, the group went into exile, eventually making their home in Iraq in the mid-1980s. Not only did Saddam give the organization cover: he armed, funded, and utilized them for a variety of ends over two decades. The group’s wicked political brew was on spectacular display on the old MEK flag (see below; since abandoned) [editor, Iran-Interlink – this is still the official MEK logo], with its sickle and Kalashnikov positioned atop ofbeneath a Koranic verse. (Not — to state the obvious — that the mere presence of a Koranic verse in and of itself implies Islamist political commitments, but in this case the shoe very much fits.) Here you have virtually everything the Right claims to oppose all rolled into one: Islamism, Marxism, terrorism, and Saddam. Naturally, then, neoconservatives would utterly deplore the MEK and everything it stands for, right? The MEK would in fact make an ideal target for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week and Terrorism Awareness efforts, no? Well, no. At least one of the carnival’s acts, it turns out, is rather fond of the Islamo-Stalinist-terrorist cult group, and has repeatedly argued for the removal of the MEK from the State Department’s list of terrorist groups and indeed urged the U.S. government to embrace it. Daniel Pipes, who will be speaking at Tufts on October 24th as part of the Horowitz high jinks, has made the MEK a recurring theme in his writings going back several years. Pipes has also gone to bat for the MEK right in the pages of Horowitz’s house organ. But Pipes is far from alone on the Right in championing the MEK. He co-authored the first piece linked to above with Patrick Clawson of the right-wing Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Right-wing commentator Max Boot has argued not merely for the removal of the MEK from the terrorist list but for funding and unleashing it to do battle with Iranian forces — this while casually acknowledging that it is a “political cult.” (More on Boot’s disfigured views .) In some cases the MEK plays a stealth role in the media machinery of the American Right. What the FOX News Channel tells viewers about Alireza Jafarzadeh when he appears on its airwaves is that he is an “FNC Foreign Affairs Analyst.” What you have to go to the FOX News website to discover, however, is that Jafarzadeh served “for a dozen years as the chief congressional liaison and media spokesman for the U.S. representative office of Iran’s parliament in exile, the National Council of Resistance of Iran.” But it is scarcely known that the sonorous-sounding National Council of Resistance of Iran is in fact a front name for the MEK. Now, it’s true that Jafarzadeh discontinued his post with the National Council of Resistance of Iran—but only when (and only because) its Washington office was forced to close in 2003 as a result of the State Department decision about it being a front for the MEK. It’s not like he had a change of heart. If you attend an “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week” event, you might want to ask the speakers about this terrorist cult and whether they condemn it. Some of them might — not all neoconservatives agree on the MEK. But the fact that several prominent American conservatives have cozied up to an Islamist-Stalinist cult that was on Saddam’s payroll and the State Department considers a terrorist organization — this raises serious questions (to put it mildly) about the Right’s bedfellows and the calculus that determines them. It suggests the need for a little more terrorism awareness. CRIMES AND CORRUPTION OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS –infowars.net

February 10, 2008 0 comments

USA

Financing MEK, a cause of enmity between US-Iran

The Libertarian Party seems to know how to get its own message out to a politically sensitized electorate who are really fed up with Bush’s irrationality and seek for something better. Bush is said to deliver his annual State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress next week and Libertarian Steve Kubby delivered his own version directly to the American people via Internet video in advance.

In part of his speech that he referred to as offering “an assessment of our nation’s situation and answers to the question, Steve Kubby said he had a pretty good idea of what Bush was going to say and leave many things untold. In respect to Iran and financing terrorist groups like MKO he said:

President Bush is going to tell you that IRAN represents yet another military challenge to US power and that “all options remain on the table” for dealing with that threat. What he’s not going to tell you is that neither the International Atomic Energy Agency nor our government’s very own intelligence services agree with his claim that Iran is actively seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Nor is he going to tell you that enmity between Iran and the US is and always has been almost entirely a function of US intervention in the Middle East, including financing the bombing and murder campaigns of terror groups like the MEK within Iran’s borders.

President Bush will tell you none of these things, because telling you those things might lead you to ask yourself what the hell you were thinking when you consented to allow him, his party, and those who pretend to be his opponents in Congress, to exercise power over yourself, your family, your friends and your neighbors in the first place.

January 26, 2008

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