This edition of the program is about the MKO terrorist organization and the West’s support for the group. The program discusses the fundamental cultic roots of the group, their modus operandi, dynamics, western support for them, and their current status in Albania.
Albanian historian and journalist Olsi Jazexhi (L) and journalist Syed Mohsin Abbas (R) join Press TV’s News Review program on July 10, 2021 to discuss the upcoming annual meeting of the anti-Iran Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO) terrorist group.
An Albanian historian and journalist tells Press TV that Israel’s secret services use the anti-Iran Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO or MEK) terrorist group to impair Iran’s security and to pressure the Islamic Republic to end its support for Palestine.
“The thing is that the MEK is being used by Israeli secret services and certain groups in the United States to harass the security of Iran,” Olsi Jazexhi said in an interview with Press TV’s News Review program on Saturday, ahead of the annual meeting of the terrorist group, which is usually attended by top US officials.
“Many of the people who are going to speak in their conference today are die-hard Israeli Zionists – people who support Israel and want the extinction of the Palestinian people,” Jazexhi said, noting that the MKO is being used as a tool to pressure Iran to stop its support for Palestine.
He maintained that the MKO needs a big budget for its survival, which “we suspect comes from Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates.”
He also described the MKO as a “cultish organization” that keeps slave soldiers, including the prisoners of Iraq’s imposed war on Iran in the 1980s, during which the group joined forces with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to massacre Iranians.
to download the video file click here
According to the Albanian journalist, the group organizes money laundering and human trafficking in Europe, in addition to its gross human rights violations against its members.
“They are surviving, but this is their last breath,” he said, adding that in spite of the group’s campaign of death and destruction against the Islamic Republic, “they cannot do anything to Iran” as a powerful, independent country.
After it was founded more than 50 years ago, the MKO launched a campaign of bombings and assassinations in Iran. Out of the nearly 17,000 Iranians killed in terrorist attacks over the past four decades, about 12,000 have fallen victim to the group’s acts of terror.
The ill-famed terror group is currently based in Albania, where it enjoys freedom of activity after being delisted by the European Union and the United States in 2009 and 2012 respectively.
Regardless of its disrepute around the world, the MKO has in recent years held numerous big events, attended by senior American, Israeli and Saudi officials, including former US Senator John McCain, former mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani, former US national security advisor John Bolton, former US Senator Joe Lieberman, and former director of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency Turki bin Faisal Al Saud.
‘Fakhrizadeh assassination said to have MKO involvement’
During the News Review program, journalist Syed Mohsin Abbas also told Press TV that the high-profile assassination of Iran’s nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh last year is said to have had MKO involvement along with Israel’s Mossad spy agency.
“The MEK have no credibility in Iran. They’ve been carrying out these assassinations even to this day, even the assassination of the nuclear scientist Fakhrizadeh is said to have had MEK involvement along with Mossad,” he said.
Abbas said the MKO is effectively an extension of the “Anglo-Zionist deep state,” and is basically involved in only killing, murdering and maiming Iranians.
He also criticized Western countries’ hypocrisy in supporting the terrorist group, saying, “I think that the rest of the world, which gets cowed by American vetoes, by American sanctions, need to really grow a backbone” to come to terms with such hypocrisy.
“One would hope that such terrorist organization should be pulled up by the international community instead of being the absolute hypocrites that the Western regimes have shown themselves to be in case of MEK,” he said.
He added that the West is funding the MKO, helping them with their planning, and also giving them intelligence to carry out their operations.
‘All Western states support MKO’
Mohammad Marandi, a professor of international studies at the University of Tehran, also told Press TV that the MKO receives support from all Western countries – including Canada, the United States, the EU and Australia – rather than just some European countries.
“All of them support this terrorist organization. Just as they supported al-Qaeda in Syria and ISIS (Daesh) in Syria, these countries have been supporting terrorists that have been active in Iran,” Marandi said.
He explained that when the MKO began its bombing campaign in Iran in the early 1980s, they had offices in Europe, in France in particular, and when they joined Saddam Hussein’s army and became a part of his military, they gained even further support from Western regimes.
“The MEK terrorist organization receives funding from European governments and the United States, and the murders … they carry out and the espionage they carry out are fully backed by Western regimes,” the Iranian professor stressed.
He also maintained that one should not focus on the participation of certain American officials, including Bolton, when analyzing the group’s links to the US.
“There’s no difference between Bolton and [Barack] Obama,” he remarked. “They are all the same. They all support terrorism. They all support killing Iranians. They all support regime change [in Tehran].”
Hassan Zadeh Zine el-Abidine; one of MEK victims : They fired twelve bullets in my back
Hassan is 47. He lives alone in a modest neighborhood in Isfahan, in southern Iran. He gets around by wheelchair since 1980.in that year, a member of the Mojahedin shot him several times in the back. He never recovered.
As he described it:” At the time, I was a simple worker in a mosaic workshop. In the evening, toward eight o clock, I was on my way home. I parked my car and had taken a few steps toward my house when a gunman, hidden in the dark, fired at me from point blank range. I had no time to react. From the first bullet wound, I was on the ground. The gunman, who had two revolvers, riddled my body with twelve shots. He emptied them both in me.”
Hassan was treated for several months in Tehran Hospital. He was lucky: many other people shot by the Mojahedin did not survive. His disability has not kept him from his studies. With his degree in Theology, he teaches at Isfahan’s Teacher Training College.
Hassan remembers:” it was during the first months of the revolution. Everybody was involved. but I was no more active than many others. And I had not joined any political party”. He sill cannot understand why the Mojahedin chose him as a target. His assailant was arrested soon thereafter in Sabzebar, in Khoram province in northeastern Iran. He was tried and executed. Hassan states:” I would have liked so much to hear him explain why he did it”.
Why did the Mojahedin choose violence? Hassan’s philosophical answer: “They could not take power through peaceful and democratic means in a system of universal suffrage. No human being can agree with the violent strategy they adopted”.
From the book: The People’s Mojahedin of Iran: A Struggle for what? “By Victor Charbonnier
“The only thing tragic about the death of Donald Rumsfeld is that it didn’t occur in an Iraqi prison.”
Donald Rumsfeld, the former U.S. congressman, aide to several Republican presidents, and two-time defense secretary whose torture-laden tenure and ruinous legacy were defined by his lies in service of an unending war that’s killed at least hundreds of thousands of people, died Tuesday at age 88.
By the time he was chosen as then-President George W. Bush’s secretary of defense, Rumsfeld had already been a Navy veteran, four-term Republican U.S. congressman, and adviser to former Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford—for whom he had served as defense secretary.
In the early 1980s, President Ronald Reagan repeatedly dispatched Rumsfeld as a special envoy to Iraq, whose brutal dictator Saddam Hussein was at the time an important U.S. ally. An infamous handshake between Rumsfeld and Hussein led to the transfer of deadly chemical and biological materials from the U.S. and allies to Iraq. Hussein subsequently weaponized the components and unleashed weapons of mass destruction on both Iranian troops—with the assistance of the Reagan administration—and Iraqi Kurds during the genocidal (pdf) Anfal campaign.
As Bush’s defense secretary, Rumsfeld—who served as CEO or chairman of companies including General Instrument and Gilead Sciences—recruited an inner circle of former corporate executives to oversee Pentagon operations, including Air Force Secretary James G. Roche (Northrop Grumman), Navy Secretary Gordon England (General Dynamics), and Army Secretary Thomas E. White (Enron). So great was the influence of the arms industry in the department during Rumsfeld’s tenure that one commentator described it as “Department of Defense, Inc.”
Given his passing today, let’s do some of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s greatest hits (add your own below).
Here he is, in 2002, being asked about his 1983 meeting with Saddam Hussain. Rumsfeld’s “isn’t that interesting…there I am” lives in my head rent free. pic.twitter.com/h4PifdOe1r
— Sana Saeed (@SanaSaeed) June 30, 2021
An ardent imperialist, Rumsfeld was a leading luminary of the neoconservative movement and a prominent leader of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), whose other members included Bush administration officials such as Dick Cheney, John Bolton, Elliott Abrams, and Paul Wolfowitz.
PNAC hawks—who envisioned and strategized regime change in Iraq and elsewhere even before 9/11—lobbied vigorously for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, even though they knew the country had no connection with the September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S. or weapons of mass destruction. When pressed on this last point, Rumsfeld offered perhaps his most infamous explanation:
As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.
In the rushed run-up to invade Iraq, Rumsfeld dutifully disseminated Bush administration lies about Hussein’s nonexistent nuclear program, while laughably asserting that the Iraq invasion had “literally nothing to do with oil.”
This is Donald Rumsfeld’s legacy:
“We know they have weapons of mass destruction. We know they have active programs. There isn’t any debate about it.
6 months later, the US invaded #Iraq. pic.twitter.com/8TRKdlkNd7
— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) June 30, 2021
The invasion of Iraq, at first called Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL) began in the dark of night with a Navy SEAL raid on two offshore Iraqi oil platforms. The New York Times—which parroted many of the administration’s Iraq lies—hailed this as the first “victory in the battle for Iraq’s vast oil empire.”
Rumsfeld predicted a quick and easy war in Iraq. “Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn’t going to last any longer than that,” he declared in November 2002 with cocksure miscalculation. Although former President Barack Obama officially ended the Iraq War in December 2011, U.S. troops are still stationed there today—and President Joe Biden bombed the country earlier this week.
When U.S. forces conquered Baghdad, one of the first sites they secured was the Oil Ministry headquarters. Meanwhile, the Iraqi National Museum, which housed priceless ancient artifacts spanning Mesopotamia’s 5,000-year history, was being looted. Thousands of statues, manuscripts, and countless other treasures, some of them among the oldest objects created by civilized humans, were stolen while nearby U.S. troops did nothing.
“Stuff happens,” Rumsfeld flippantly replied when faced with images of the looting. “The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over and over, and it’s the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times, and you think, ‘My goodness, were there that many vases? Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?’”
Thousands of U.S. troops would die during the course of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of the country, along with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. The latter were practically ignored by Bush officials. When Rumsfeld was asked why the public only hears about the number of American war dead and not about Iraqi casualties, he cooly replied that “we don’t do body counts on other people.”
Donald Rumsfeld was war criminal. He didn’t merely “oversee” Iraq War. He was an architect, who backed extrajudicial executions and systematic torture at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Guantanamo Bay and other prisons. He approved torture plans for Mohamedou Slahi and Mohammed al-Qahtani
— Kevin Gosztola (@kgosztola) June 30, 2021
Rumsfeld was also an instrumental figure in the Bush administration’s torture program. He signed off on torture techniques used by U.S. troops at Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere—places where prisoners were sometimes tortured to death. He also issued a directive allowing torturers to withhold medical care to prisoners under interrogation who had injuries as serious as gunshot wounds. Later, Rumsfeld would require doctors to certify that detainees slated for torture were certified “medically and operationally” fit for abuse.
The torture memo signed by Donald Rumsfeld, 12/2/02, authorizing 20-hour interrogations, removal of clothing, the use of phobias, and stress positions for up to 4 hours.
Note his handwriting at bottom: “However, I stand for 8-10 hours A day. Why is Standing limited to 4 hours” pic.twitter.com/F34zbkJ5HQ
— George Zornick (@gzornick) June 30, 2021
When the Abu Ghraib torture photo scandal broke, Rumsfeld—after outing the courageous soldier who exposed the abuse—lied about what he knew.
Gen. Antonio Taguba, author of an Army report (pdf) on U.S. torture at Abu Ghraib, said he met with Rumsfeld and other Pentagon brass just before the defense secretary testified to the Senate about abuse at the notorious prison. Taguba, who had seen thousands of photos of detainee abuse, says Rumsfeld asked him if what was happening in the Iraqi prison was abuse or torture.
“I described a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum and said: ‘That’s not abuse. That’s torture.’ There was quiet,’” the general recalled.
#DonaldRumsfeld is responsible for thousands and thousands of deaths and enriching himself in the process. The least we can do is to forever link his name with “war criminal”.
— Veterans For Peace (@VFPNational) June 30, 2021
Yet Rumsfeld testified before the Senate that nobody in the Pentagon had seen the Abu Ghraib torture photos.
However, a Senate Armed Services Committee investigation concluded that “Rumsfeld’s authorization of interrogation techniques… was a direct cause of detainee abuse.”
The senators additionally asserted that it was “unconscionable and false” for leading Bush officials to blame a “few bad apples” in the military for detainee abuse in order to avoid accountability.
Neocon #WaronTerror, #Iraq war and #torture #architect #DonaldRumsfeld has passed away. His legacy of death, destruction, murder and abuse will be remembered by those who experienced it. But, his appointment with dawn has come. pic.twitter.com/v0egPcpMi4
— Moazzam Begg (@Moazzam_Begg) June 30, 2021
While fighting a war purportedly meant to defeat terrorism in some parts of the world, Rumsfeld supported terror elsewhere. Pursuing allies in the so-called War on Terror, Rumsfeld courted dictators including Uzbekistan’s Islam Karimov—who boiled political opponents alive—and the Iranian exile militants Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), a State Department-designated terrorist organization.
CIA personnel wait as President George W. Bush visits CIA Headquarters, March 20, 2001, Langley, VA. Photo by Brooks Kraft – Corbis for Time dcfeed
Meanwhile, a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report concluded that Rumsfeld let bin Laden escape in December 2001. The report also said Rumsfeld’s failures ultimately left Americans more vulnerable to terrorism.
It wasn’t as if Rumsfeld did not understand the real root causes of anti-U.S. terrorism. In 2004, he commissioned a task force to study the subject. It concluded that “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather, they hate our policies.” The task force report cited “American direct intervention in the Muslim world,” U.S. support for dictators in countries including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and, most of all, “the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Yet Rumsfeld remained an unrepentant cheerleader for war and empire until the end. Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of the women-led peace group CodePink who famously confronted the former defense secretary over his war crimes, tweeted that “his legacy of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan lives on.”
Here’s the day we introduced Donald Rumsfeld as a war criminal at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Of course, he got to eat the nice dinner and we got booted out. Crime pays. https://t.co/6OWFL39MPA
— Medea Benjamin (@medeabenjamin) July 1, 2021
“Donald Rumsfeld was a merciless war criminal who presided over systemic torture, massacres of civilians, [and] illegal wars,” tweeted journalist and The Intercept co-founder Jeremy Scahill. “That’s his legacy and how he should forever be remembered.”
Daily Beast senior national security correspondent Spencer Ackerman wrote, “The only thing tragic about the death of Donald Rumsfeld is that it didn’t occur in an Iraqi prison.”
On the bright side, Donald Rumsfeld gets to shake hands once again with Saddam Hussein AND Nixon.
— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) June 30, 2021
“Do not mourn the defense secretary,” said Ackerman. “Mourn his victims. There were nearly too many to tally, but his Pentagon refused to count anyway.
BRETT WILKINS, STAFF WRITER, commondreams
Naturally using violence against the enemy such as bombing at Islamic Republic Party Office is easier than using violence against its own members like self-immolations in June 2003. The difference shows that the basis of “hidden and visible violence” in the Mujahedin-e Khalq has become more profound and complex.
Violence is violence. One who kills another, can burn oneself too. violence and Terror in any form or cover ,with any motivation, with plenty of sincerity has no result except strengthening violence and dictatorship .You may be able to change a dictator regime by terror and violence weapon but you would definitely replace a more completed and complicated dictatorship. The one who burns himself, will burn his rival doubtlessly, without hesitating.
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei speaks at a meeting with the chief and officials of Iran’s Judiciary in Tehran on June 28, 2021.
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has censured certain Western countries for turning into safe havens for terrorists while continuing their claim of championing human rights.
Members of the Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) terrorist group are walking free in France and other European countries, Ayatollah Khamenei said on Monday, addressing a meeting with the chief and officials of Iran’s Judiciary.
“The French government and others shamelessly preach human rights despite hosting these killers, supporting them, and even giving them the podium in their national parliaments,” the Leader said. “That is to say, the brazenness of these Westerners is really an extraordinary and strange thing.”
to download the video file click here
The Leader also commemorated Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, the head of Supreme Judicial Council of the time, who was assassinated in a bombing carried out by the MKO in Tehran on June 28, 1981.
He said the MKO committed a great crime against the Iranian nation by assassinating “this prominent figure” along with 70 other Iranian figures on this day forty years ago.
Ayatollah Khamenei also thanked Judiciary Chief Ebrahim Raeisi for bringing about a great change to the Judiciary since he assumed office more than two years ago.
“In these two years and a few months that he was in charge of the Judiciary, he really worked hard, he strove, and good things were achieved in the Judiciary,” the Leader said.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Ayatollah Khamenei hailed the June 18 presidential election as “truly an epic”, saying no one can take the magnificence of the election away from the country.
“Where in the world is it common to see that all members of the opposition propaganda apparatus get actively involved to scare people away from voting in the election,” the Leader said.
“Attempts are still made – they (the opposition) write letters and speak via the cyberspace – to deny the greatness of this election, but to no avail,” Ayatollah Khamenei said.
“This effort is in vain. Analysts who had their eyes fixed on this election understand what has happened.”
Anti-Iran groups led a campaign of intimidation and bullying to force potential voters not to participate in the election. Nonetheless, nearly 49% of the eligible voters turned out to cast their ballots in an election that Raeisi won with over 18 million or 72% of the votes.
Drawing a comparison between Iran’s election and the 2020 presidential election in the US, Ayatollah Khamenei said the Americans are not a role model to follow when it comes to political issues.
“One must speak with courtesy and observance of ethical and religious dimensions, without insulting and slandering, rather than using the cursing and insulting methods of the Americans and [former US President Donald] Trump,” he said.
The Leader noted that the US presidential election became a scandal in the eyes of the world people, adding American rulers have ironically begun to criticize Iran’s election only a few months after having a scandalous election themselves.
Ayatollah Khamenei praised the Iranian candidates who lost in the election for their decorum and warm congratulatory messages to the president-elect.
The real winners of the election, the Leader said, are the Iranian people and all those who helped bring excitement to the polls.
“Therefore, the candidates who didn’t secure votes are among the winners as well, and on the contrary, the losers of the election are those who put all their efforts to drive the people away from the ballot box, but the people, with their presence, rejected them and dashed their hopes.”
False claimants of democracy with terrorist backgrounds and their affiliation with foreigners, brutally injured a respected woman who just wanted to vote, Mehdi Hosseini tweeted on Friday, noting that the Iranian embassy will pursue the assault.
The presidential election was staged at 11 polling stations across the UK. Meanwhile, some counter-revolutionary groups gathered in front of polling stations trying to disturb the voting process.
Protestors have gathered in front of the Iranian consulate office in London and forced voters not to vote by pouring paint on them, according to IRNA.
to download the video file click here
Tehran Times Reported that some members of the terrorist Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO), also known MEK, gathered around in Wellington, New Zealand, to harass the voters. They also gathered in Sydney, Australia, and London, Britain, insulting and throwing stuff at voters coming out of the Iranian embassy.
MEK members also attacked voters in Birmingham (Britain), severely injuring voters. Reports say that some had to go to hospitals for treatment.
Iranian Chargé d’affaires in London in a message said the attack on an Iranian national by counter-revolutionary elements will be pursued.
False claimants of democracy with terrorist backgrounds and their affiliation with foreigners, brutally injured a respected woman who just wanted to vote, Mehdi Hosseini wrote in his Twitter account on Friday.
As a result of the brutal attack, The Iranian woman who was participating in the polling station to cast her vote was seriously injured on the head.
Iran presidential election started in 11 polling stations in the UK.
Counter-revolutionary groups have gathered in front of polling stations trying to disturb the voting process.
Protestors have gathered in front of the Iranian consulate office in London and forced voters not to vote by pouring paint on them.
Having lost over 17,000 people in terror attacks, Iran is a major victim of terrorism. Press TV has visited an Iranian family that was exposed to a terror attack carried out by a formidable US-backed terror group, known as the MKO.
The saying goes that oblivion is a bliss, but to 29-year-old Mohammad, it’s hard to forget a dark memory that not only left him handicapped, but took away all his childhood dreams.
Some 22 years ago, Mohammad and his parents were on a motorbike in a bustling neighborhood in Iran’s southwestern city of Ahwaz, when a shell fired by a terrorist group landed next to them, injuring the whole family.
Mohammad, who was only seven back then, lost his left leg and developed cardiac problems.He still lives with the pain, both physically and mentally.
Mohammad is one of thousands of Iranians who have fallen victim to terrorist attacks, mostly carried out by the MKO terror group.
The terrorist organization is responsible for the killing of 12,000 Iranians out of a total of 17,000 victims of terror attacks in the country.
Since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, the MKO has carried out a series of bombings and assassinations against Iran and fought alongside Iraqi forces in the eight-year Iraq- Iran war in the 1980s.
In 2012, the terror group was relocated from an American military base in Iraq to Albania and France, after the US and Europe delisted the group as a terrorist organization.
Ten years ago, Mohammad filed a lawsuit against the terrorist group at a French court, but to no avail.
It’s so painful to recount one’s agonies, especially when it comes to mothers seeing their children suffer; that’s why I preferred not to ask Mohammad’s mom for comment.
But she says she’s been trying to find an answer to this question through all these years; no word other than “terrorists” can describe those who deprived a child of his childhood.
Yusef Jalali
Alireza Esfandiari was welcome by the authorities of the Mujahedin Khalq (MEK/ MKO/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) when he joined the group after the death of his sister. His sister, Fereshteh had suspiciously died in Iraq
Fereshteh was the presenter of the MEK’s TV channel. In 1995, Her death was announced as being assassinated in a terror attack in Iraq! Alireza joined the group two years later but shortly after his arrival in Camp Ashraf, he got to know that he was on the wrong path. Consequently, he began to express his dissent.
Alireza Esfandiari’s disagreement with the MEK’s cult-like regulations turned him into the topic of long-term meetings. The group commanders held uninterrupted 8-hour-long sessions for several successive days to coerce him to stay in the group. During the meetings he was under severe mental and physical pressure by the side of commanders, in particular Zhila Deihim and also his peers. However, Alireza was courageous enough to insist on his demand to leave the group.
MEK ‘s announcement on the death of Fereshteh Esfandiyari
Farid, former member of the MEK who witnessed Alireza’s brainwashing courts, recalls that Zhila Deihim called Alireza “a coward who pees in his pants because he is scared” and “he wants to embrace the regime” (the Iranian government)!
Farid and Mobayen testify that Alireza was severely beaten in the so-called court of Zhila Deihim. “We did not see Alireza after the court for a few days,” Mobayen writes. “One day we were eating lunch in the eating place when Alireza rushed in. His clothes were torn and dirty. He was crying asking for help. He was horribly scared. Reza Jebeli wanted to help him but Mahmoud Fakhr, Mohamad Karimi and Jamileh Feizi and a few of other commanders hit and beat him and took him out.”
Alireza was no more seen in the MEK. Alireza Esfandiari was disappeared in the MEK in the Summer of 2001, according to Ardeshir Parhizkari, former member of the MEK who, in 2003, signed an appeal to Amnesty International and the UN High Commissioner of Human rights, calling for the trial of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi.
