The Third View on Mujahedin Khalq

US Formally Removes Rajavi cult from Foreign Terror List

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Samuel Rubenfeld, Wall Street Journal

September 29, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Working the magic the ‘terrorcrat’ way

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

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

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

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

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

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

In-depth coverage of a growing regional debate

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

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

Hanging with the Mossad crowd

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The ‘terrocrat’ way

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

bY Pepe Escobar

September 27, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Mark Dankof Warns: MEK Alliance With Israel Could Lead to World War III

Iran’s Habilian Association Talks to Mark Dankof: The MEK Delisting and the Zionist War Party Agenda

Iran’s Habilian Association has documented the blood-stained history of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK/MKO/PMOI) since its inception as a Marxist-oriented student-group-turned-terrorist-organization during the Pahlavi Dynasty era of the 1960s and 1970s. In light of the recent decision of the Hillary Clinton-led American State Department to remove the MEK from a list of groups recognized by the United States Government as International Terrorist Organizations, the Association again solicited the opinions of Mark Dankof in this burgeoning controversy. What is behind this move? What are the global implications yet to unfold?

Habilian Association: Mr. Dankof, what is your opinion of this decision?

Mark Dankof: It is a horrible, reprehensible decision. It is also a decision entirely predictable, given the actions of the Zionist War Party in making it happen. I discussed that in my last chat with you fine folks. The subject also came up briefly in my last conversation with Press TV last week.

Habilian Association: Will this decision worsen American-Iranian relations?

Mark Dankof: Absolutely. But that is the Master Plan of the International Bankers; the Zionist War Party led by Netanyahu and an American Congress once referred to by Pat Buchanan as “Zionist Occupied Territory“; a Corporate Media in this country owned lock-stock-and-barrel by these interests; and last, but not least, the Multinational Energy Consortiums.

It is because of these forces that the United States and the West are already at war with Iran, a totally immoral and illegitimate endeavor. The economic sanctions directed at Iran’s banks and its energy sector are draconian. Its airspace continues to be violated from time to time. Covert black operations in Iranian Azerbaijan, Khuzestan Province, and Balochistan Province, have the fingerprints of Israel, the United States, and Britain all over them. The Washington Post admits to a supposedly “unexplained five-fold increase” in bomb blasts in Iran in the last two years, at military depots, nuclear plants, and energy related pipelines. And then there are the assassinations of the Iranian nuclear scientists in recent years. It is an open secret that the MEK/MKO/PMOI has been working as a surrogate black operational force with Israel’s Mossad in these unsavory, criminal efforts. Plausible deniability of knowledge or involvement in these international crimes on the part of the American Administration simply cannot be maintained. Even Newsweek smugly offers virtual confirmation that this is what the game involves, even in offering its Zionist approval of such terrorist plots and operations.

Dr. Philip Giraldi of the Council for the National Interest, and Dr. Paul Sheldon Foote of Cal State-Fullerton University, remain as two trustworthy sources of inside information for the American public on what is going on with Israeli and American utilization of the MEK. It is a sordid and increasingly tragic business. We are likely to see just how evil all of this is in the next year.

And make no mistake about it. The RAND Corporation report on the MEK is still solid. They are a terrorist organization, a totalitarian cult for indoctrinated members, led by clinically evil people.

The Mossad and the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK/PMOI): Will Israel employ them in a False Flag Operation against the United States falsely pinned on Tehran? Is World War III the Endgame?

The signals being sent by the American Government on this are clear. Terrorist organizations are fine, as long as their criminal activities are being conducted by the Zionist State of Israel and on behalf of the other core constituencies we have already mentioned which drive American foreign policy. Take al-Qaeda, for instance. The United States allegedly invaded Afghanistan to destroy this Islamic militant organization held responsible for the events in New York on September 11, 2001. There are two problems with this. First, how can al-Qaeda be an implacable foe of the United States in Afghanistan, while being in alliance with American/NATO/Israeli operations in Libya, and now Syria? In the case of Syria, it is obvious that the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) States are recruiting foreign mercenaries and supplying arms and cash in trying to overthrow an Alawite/Shiite regime and replacing it with a Sunni-oriented one. The endgame here is to further isolate Iran and to set the table for coming military operations against Tehran. If the so-called Free Syria Army (FSA), or other similar Sunni black operational groups with clear al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood connections succeed in overthrowing the Assad regime in Damascus, Iran would lose its strongest supporter in the Arab world. The Shiite Crescent of Iran-Syria-Hezbollah would be severely damaged. The stage would be set for the deployment of American/NATO and Israeli military forces in that country.

The second problem is this: I and many others believe that Israel was behind the 9-11 attacks in New York. I shared this belief and the reasons for it, with Kourosh Ziabari of the Fars News Agency recently.

Israel’s history of involvement in False Flag operations is critically important. Look at the Lavon Affair of the 1950s; the involvement of the Meyer Lansky crime syndicate’s Cuban connections in the Kennedy Assassination; the role of Operation Cyanide in Israel’s deliberate attack on the USS Liberty on June 8th, 1967; and now, in my opinion, 9-11. When you add to this their history of stealing the United States blind in espionage operations, ranging from purloining American nuclear materials at the NUMEC plant in Apollo, Pennsylvania to the PROMIS-engineered theft of American nuclear technology at Los Alamos and the Pollard/AIPAC spy cases, the pattern is obvious.

A key question then, is how all of this relates to the relationship of American Neo-Conservatives and the Israeli Mossad with the MEK. An organization called the Iran Policy Committee is at the intersection of this relationship.

This issue is especially relevant in unraveling why the United States Central Command would have been providing secret military training to MEK operatives at a secret location in Nevada as documented by Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker. First, Mark Glenn of The Ugly Truth and I postulate that these MEK operatives were a part of some of the aforementioned MEK terror operations in Iran being directed by the Israeli Mossad.

But there may be an even darker future angle to this story. Given Israel’s history of False Flag Operations directed against the United States, what would prevent them from utilizing the MEK in an operation against American interests abroad, or in the continental United States itself, in something falsely pinned to Tehran? This would be the quintessential “catastrophic and catalyzing event–like Pearl Harbor” to get the American public behind the launching of a preemptive war with Iran, the war Netanyahu and his Eretz Yisrael crowd desperately want, the war polls indicate would not presently be supported by an American electorate disenchanted with perpetual American military involvement in Central Asia and the Middle East. Reading the Israeli-driven Project for the New American Century (PNAC) releases of 1996 and 2000 on using the American military as a perpetual Janissary force for the Zionist State, in conjunction with Robert Stinnett’s book on FDR and Pearl Harbor entitled, “Day of Deceit,” and Pat Buchanan’s review of Herbert Hoover’s diary on FDR and Pearl Harbor, should contextualize how ominous the possibilities are for an Israeli/MEK plot to launch World War III.

Habilian Association: Elements in the United States seem to be selling the idea of such a war as essential to America’s national security interest. How do you react to that notion?

Mark Dankof: That notion is idiotic. In the case of Iraq, we invaded that country allegedly because of Saddam Hussein’s possession of “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” That charge was transparently fraudulent. Thousands of American dead and trillions of dollars later, we can be less than proud of having killed over 600,000 Iraqis and displacing 2 million others. In Afghanistan, we have killed thousands of Afghanis, and have spent about a trillion dollars. For what? Absolutely nothing. Afghanistan is proving once again to be the Graveyard of Empires, as the recent success of the Taliban asymmetrical attacks has demonstrated. The loss of the 6 Marine Corps Harrier jets the other day was the greatest single day loss of American aircraft since the Vietnam debacle. The subsequent suspension of our military cooperation and training effort in Afghanistan because of the proliferation of Green On Blue attacks is the tipping point. In both of these countries, the United States is running out of manpower and money as its ill-fated occupation and the inability to stabilize the political situation in either venue is crystal clear. We are arrogant enough that we failed to learn the lessons of the British and Soviet Empires. Now we shall pay the price.

What we are doing to Libya and Syria is self-evident. And when it comes to Iran, a signatory to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the United States is perilously close to joining an overt Israeli preemptive military campaign against Tehran, even as Israel is a non-signatory to the NPT and is the chief nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons power in the region, even as Israel continues its brutal occupation of Palestine and Gaza, and demonstrates its ongoing criminal character through time with stunts like the Rachel Corrie murder and the Mavi Marmara incident. This is all impending despite the fact that our support of the Zionist Enterprise is draining this country financially, politically, and morally. We are becoming universally hated around the world because of these policies, even as our domestic economic situation continues to plummet. The $17 trillion dollar on-line national debt is accompanied by a $222 trillion dollar unfunded liability for Social Security and Medicare. We have an actual unemployment rate of 22% in this country. The American Dollar’s status as the reserve currency of the globe is imperiled by this war spending, the foreign borrowing, and the Federal Reserve Board’s fiat money printing press. What would a regional military escalation in the Middle East achieve for the United States in this context, especially with credible threats of Russian and Chinese retaliation for such recklessness?

And the real bottom line is this: Iran represents no military threat to the United States. It has invaded no one else in centuries. If Zionist Talmudic racial supremacy theories, the crackpot eschatology of the Scofield Reference Bible Dispensationalist Christian Right, and the global banking system of the New World Order ceased to be the basis for our foreign policy stance with Tehran, we might well discover that whatever our differences with the present regime, a workable relationship and mutual respect can be restored.

In this regard, the latest actions of the United States Senate to pass a resolution which seems to employ Netanyahu’s Red Line in the Sand on Iranian nuclear technology is deemed especially irresponsible. In the first place, someone needs to tell these idiots that the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) gives the force of international law to Tehran’s legitimate insistence that it can enrich uranium up to 20%. The idea of people like John McCain, Joseph Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham that we should be attacking Iran for merely exercising its rights under international law is absolutely simian. Second, with the overt threats of the Zionist War Party to begin a Third World War, Iran might well be forgiven for a future decision to obtain a nuclear weapon. One could actually argue that it would stabilize the situation in the Middle East, especially if the United States Senate understood that Israel is the chief threat to regional peace in that part of the world, and arguably to global peace with people like Avigdor Lieberman in the Likud government. An especially chilling prospect to me is that the Likud regime and the Temple Mount crowd might use a war with Iran as a pretext not simply to achieve the Eretz Yisrael dream of expanding the modern Zionist State’s borders from the Nile to the Tigris and Euphrates, but to step up policies of racial genocide against Palestinians specifically, and Arabs generally. Why? Pat Buchanan’s latest book, Suicide of a Superpower, demonstrates that the greatest threat to the Zionist State is demographic in nature, not military. The birth rate differentials guarantee numerical minority status for Jews in Palestine, minus a catastrophic event to reduce the population of their perceived adversaries. Would a war with Iran be the pretext for a Final Solution for goyim in Palestine, and between the Nile and the Tigris and Euphrates? Think about that one for a while and one might lose some sleep this evening.

Habilian Association: Where is American public opinion on all of this?

Mark Dankof: The American public is too stupid to even have an opinion in these matters. Despite Elizabeth Rubin’s article on the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) in the New York Times op-ed of August 13th, 2011 entitled, “An Iranian Cult and its American Friends,” and her earlier July 13th, 2003 essay, “The Cult of Rajavi,” not one American in one hundred could even identify this organization or anything about its history. And Rubin is clearly tripping over herself not to state what is abundantly obvious to anyone who examines the list of American politicians and national security figures who have been illegally taking MEK money in exchange for successful PR efforts to have them delisted and legitimized. They are all working at the behest of the Israeli Lobby in the United States and the Israeli intelligence community interwoven in the darkest corners of the American national security establishment.

That the government of the United States is involved with these murderers, both the MEK and the Israeli regime, and that these relationships threaten what remains of the American Republic, not to mention the planet’s innocent globally, is of no consequence to the average American citizen. He or she is far more upset at the $150 million dollars that changed hands last night when the Green Bay Packers were robbed of victory over the Seattle Seahawks in the NFL Monday Night Football game because of incompetent officiating by replacement referees. It is of paramount importance to such people that the dispute between the league’s owners and the Officials Union be resolved, in order that competent officiating be restored to the Empire’s gridiron ritual for the masses on Sunday afternoons and Monday nights.

With such priorities, who can be made to care that a foreign government and its Lobby are buying American elections, corrupting our news media, and rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of yet another War for Israel and Global International Capital?

This is where it is. It is grim.

And the nature of the demonstrations today in New York against President Ahmadinejad’s presence at the UN tell the tale of the tape. The MEK alliance with Israel was up front and center. Can one American in ten thousand understand what this means, or where it is leading? I think not.
Mark Dankof’s America, 25 September 2012

September 27, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Has the MEK changed?

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

TO VIEW THE VIDEO FILE CLICK HERE

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

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

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

– Ali Gharib, a senior editor of Open Zion blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– Patrick Clawson, the research director at the Washington Institute

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jeremiah Goulka, a former US government lawyer

——————————————————————————–

WHO IS THE MEK?

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

Inside Story Americas,Aljazeera.com

Download Has the MEK changed?

September 27, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Obama Decision on Islamo-Marxist Terror Cult Will Lead to U.S. Funding

After a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign that unlawfully enlisted top members of the bipartisan U.S. political class, the Obama administration decided that the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Obama Decision on Islamo-Marxist Terror Cult Will Lead to U.S. Funding (MeK), an Islamo-Marxist terror cult notorious for murdering Americans, should no longer be on the State Department’s list of designated terrorist organizations. Experts say the decision paves the way to begin openly showering U.S. taxpayer money on the anti-American outfit in its bid to overthrow the Iranian regime.

The controversial decision to formally "delist" the organization came in the wake of reports charging that the federal government was already arming and training the cult-like Iranian MeK in violation of U.S. terror laws. The purpose of the alleged support, according to multiple sources, was to help wage a proxy war against Iran. Criticism of the administration’s recent decision, however, erupted quickly and forcefully.

Also known as the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran, the MeK was founded in an effort to advance a hybrid system incorporating communism and Islam. It officially landed on the U.S. government’s terror list some 15 years ago for perpetrating numerous terror attacks against civilians and more than a few senior American military personnel. The group was also allied with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, helping him to wage a brutal war against Iran while suppressing dissidents within Iraq.

“The U.S. Department of State took the moral and strategic bankruptcy of America’s Iran policy to a new low,” observed Iran expert Flynt Leverett, a professor at Pennsylvania State University’s School of International Affairs. “Since when did murdering unarmed civilians (and, in some instances, members of their families as well) on public streets in the middle of a heavily populated urban area (Tehran) not meet even the U.S. government’s own professed standard for terrorism?”

Despite federal statutes defining as a felony the provision of any “material support” to designated terrorist organizations, the MeK managed to buy die-hard support from numerous senior U.S. politicians and former officials on both sides of the aisle. Advocates for the terror cult range from neo-conservative terror-war cheerleaders like Rudy Giuliani and Michael Mukasey to liberals like Howard Dean and Gen. James Jones. Former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, ex-CIA and FBI bosses, and many others jumped on the pro-MeK bandwagon, too.

The paid lobbyists for the terror cult unlawfully earned massive sums of money — often tens of thousands of dollars or more. But the administration’s decision, supposedly based on “humanitarian” concerns to get the group’s members out of Iraq, sets a troubling precedent, according to analysts. “The delisting of the MEK, following a well-funded political lobby campaign, creates the dangerous impression that it is possible for terrorist organizations to buy their way off the [terrorism] list,” Mila Johns of the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism was quoted as saying by Wired magazine.

But there is undoubtedly more to the decision to delist the group than the fact that it showered money on former U.S. officials — funds that were probably extracted from American taxpayers at some point. While well-paid shills for the group claim that the MeK has not been engaged in much terrorism recently — at least not against American targets — numerous reports indicate that the cult has been as busy as ever. As recently as 2009, for example, the U.S. State Department warned that “MEK leadership and members across the world maintain the capacity and will to commit terrorist acts in Europe, the Middle East, the United States, Canada and beyond.”

More recently, U.S. officials have even admitted that the murders of Iranian scientists over the past several years were being conducted by the MeK — apparently with support and training from the Obama administration and the Israeli government. Journalist Seymour Hersh with the New Yorker reported that members of the cult were actually receiving training from the U.S. government on American soil, a severe violation of federal law.

However, for now at least, the group’s terror campaign appears to be largely directed at Iran, which is ruled by a regime that both the Western establishment and the MeK hope to depose. So, because the Iranian regime is now the terror cult’s primary target for terrorism — it used to be capitalism, America, and the West, and probably will be again at some point — war-mongering U.S. officials have apparently found an ally.

“When these criminal politicians start speaking about the ‘war against terrorism,’ spit on your television screen, as they are the terrorists,” fumed liberty-minded analyst Daniel McAdams after the decision was made public. “They are wealthy terrorists who steal your tax dollars to send overseas and recoup to lobby in favor of bloody killers of civilians in Iran.”

Experts predict with relative certainty that U.S. taxpayer money will soon begin openly flowing to the Marxist terror cult, too. However, observers argue that collaborating with the dangerous group at all would be a terrible plan — let alone openly arming and funding it to wage a war against a foreign government.

“To limit the damage from its decision, the State Department needs to make it powerfully clear that the United States does not support the MEK,” wrote analyst Jeremiah Goulka, who studied the MeK in Iraq for the RAND Corporation. “The White House should consider making it policy for the government not to fund, employ, or otherwise collaborate with the group. The MEK is not our ally. Its interests are its own, not ours.”

Analysts also said the delisting of the terror cult would be counterproductive on multiple fronts even for goals the Obama administration purports to support. For one, it reinforces Tehran’s narrative that the lawless U.S. government intends to destroy Iran and the Iranian people no matter what — and that it has nothing to do with non-existent nuclear weapons. It also makes war more likely.

Meanwhile, the MeK, unsurprisingly, is widely despised within Iran, partly because it worked with Saddam Hussein to massacre Iranians with American support before the Iraqi tyrant found himself on the U.S. government’s enemy list. The fact that the Obama administration is now seen as openly supportive of the terror cult and may even begin openly funding it soon will decimate the genuine movement for political reform inside Iran as well.

The decision will also allow the Islamo-Marxist group to have an even larger say in U.S. government policy toward Iran as it seeks to overthrow the government and seize the reins of power. Former DNC boss Howard Dean even called for recognizing the mass-murdering cult, which, again, has virtually no support outside of Washington, D.C., as the legitimate government of Iran.

Iranians opposed to the Islamist regime, however, say that would be a terrible idea. “The MEK does not represent the Iranian-American community or the pro-democracy movement in Iran,” noted the National Iranian American Council. “We do not support the use of violence and war to replace Iran’s undemocratic regime that abuses human rights with the MEK’s undemocratic cult that tortures its own members.”

According to analysts, the controversial decision to delist the MeK has also exposed once again the lawless and hypocritical nature of U.S. government policy makers. In recent decades, no matter which political party has been in power, the U.S. government has routinely backed dictators and terrorist groups before turning against them. Critics of the latest example of such outrageous behavior say the MeK’s victory fits into that pattern perfectly.

“This MEK scam more vividly illustrates the rot and corruption at the heart of America’s DC-based political culture than almost any episode I can recall,” observed popular analyst Glenn Greenwald in the U.K. Guardian, adding that the U.S. government often “favors” terrorism despite purporting to oppose it. “The history of the U.S. list of designated terrorist organizations, and its close cousin list of state sponsors of terrorism, is simple: a country or group goes on the list when they use violence to impede U.S. interests, and they are then taken off the list when they start to use exactly the same violence to advance U.S. interests.”

Activists are still hoping that federal terror laws will be applied consistently so former U.S. officials and politicians bought by the MeK can be held accountable for providing “material support” to a designated terrorist organization. Even more important, however, are the consequences of having the U.S. government work with yet another terror group, in this case an anti-American Islamo-Communist cult. The blowback will undoubtedly come back to haunt the world — probably sooner rather than later.

by Alex Newman

September 26, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Washington clears MEK for covert war

Here’s a thought experiment: imagine that there is a terrorist network in the USA that has been responsible for hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths over several decades. The group Washington clears MEK for covert war declares itself dedicated to destroying the US government and has been involved in car bombing urban centres, kidnapping and murdering members of the country’s security forces, and assassinating government scientists, as well as perpetrating countless random murders on businessmen and ordinary families.

Now imagine that the Iranian government announces a new policy in which it does not consider the above clandestine group a terrorist entity. That policy means that the network is free to raise money in Iran to fund its terror campaign against US citizens and to lobby for political support among Iranian lawmakers and ambassadors.

We can safely conclude that in such a far-fetched scenario, the US government would immediately declare war on Iran and proceed to carpet bomb that country mercilessly – with the Western corporate news media blasting righteous endorsements of vengeance.

Yet this scenario of aiding and abetting terrorism is far from far-fetched when it comes to actual US policy towards Iran. Just last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton officially de-listed the Iranian Mujahideen e-Khalq (MEK) from its official terror watch list.

That the MEK is a terror group is beyond dispute, despite the US government’s apparent change of opinion. The term “terror group” applies objectively and accurately. It is not just a pejorative propaganda label used by the Iranian government to blacken some dissident group. Since the 1980s, the MEK network itself claims that it has killed 40,000 Iranians whom it considers legitimate targets because they are “loyal” to, that is because they are citizens of, the Islamic Republic. Lower estimates of fatalities are put at around 17,000. Proportionate to its population that would give an upper equivalent of 150,000 dead Americans – a death toll suffered by Iran which is 50 times greater than that ascribed to 9/11.

The MEK, also known as MKO, has colluded with foreign powers for the stated goal of destroying the Islamic Republic of Iran. Most notably, between 1980 and 1988 when Iran was facing a US-backed war of aggression by Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, the MEK functioned as subversives and shock troops operating “behind enemy lines” to betray their own people.

For that reason, the group has negligible, if any, popular support within Iran. It cannot claim the slightest modicum of popular mandate that might otherwise serve to give its activities a veneer of legitimacy as an “insurgency” or “freedom struggle.” Indeed, it is more accurate to call the group a sort of terrorist cult rather than a political movement. Since 2003, the MEK has not even had a base within Iran, operating clandestinely out of Iraq.

Such is the organisation’s fringe status, that even Iranian political opponents of the government in Tehran deprecated the US government move to officially de-list it as a terror group. That indicates how extreme the network is viewed by the Iranian population.

The Western mainstream media claim that Washington’s clearance of the MEK was given because the group “has renounced violence.” That renunciation was officially made 10 years ago. That is also allegedly why the European Union and the British government removed the network from their terror lists in 2009 and 2008.

How these Western governments can maintain this charade with a straight face is rather astounding. The MEK and other Iranian terror gangs, such as the al-Qaeda-linked Jundallah, have been actively plying violence unabated against the citizenry over the past decade. Even Washington officials admit it. Following the murder of Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan on 11 January earlier this year with a magnetic bomb attached to his car in northern Tehran, anonymous US officials disclosed to American mainstream media that the killing was the work of the MEK in collusion with Israel’s Mossad.

Since 2007, five Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated. The MEK and Mossad are strongly implicated in all these murders and much worse.

Why US officials should have authoritative knowledge of such MEK activities is quite simple. It is because the US government and its military intelligence support these very terrorist activities, along with Mossad and Britain’s MI6. During the George W Bush presidency, congressional leaders secretly approved a budget of $400 million to arm and fund the MEK and Jundallah. According to investigative American journalist Seymour Hersh, US Joint Special Operations Command trained members of the MEK at a secret site in Nevada between 2005 and 2009. Training included use of weapons and explosives in the black arts of sabotage, or, in short, terrorism. During the American illegal occupation of Iraq following 2003, the MEK was given protection and immunity at a dedicated facility, known as Camp Ashraf, in Iraq from where they would launch operations into Iran. The camp has since been closed down following the large-scale American troop withdrawal from the country.

So, the “ceasefire” pretense is a bad joke. However, a substantial reason why the US has de-listed the MEK is the powerful lobbying for such a decision over many years by senior American political and military figures. They include former CIA director James Woolsey, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, ex-New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and past US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton. All of these senior figures, and more, of the American ruling class have called for Washington to give clearance to the MEK – at a time when even US officials are acknowledging that the group is involved in assassinations in Iran.

The move by Washington last week is, in effect, giving full approval to the MEK’s terror and assassination campaign in Iran. It is a stark reminder of Washington’s unwavering warpath towards Iran. Recently, some commentators have tended to misread Washington as giving a rebuff to Israel’s war rhetoric against Iran. But the clearance by Washington of a terrorist campaign in Iran – one that the US government is materially assisting – is a sobering sign that war is still the order of the day. The recent alleged spats between Washington and Tel Aviv are more likely a reflection of tactical variance due to the forthcoming US presidential election than any substantive difference in aggression towards Tehran.

It is hardly a coincidence that Washington’s MEK announcement was made only days before Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed the 67th summit of the UN General Assembly in New York. The Washington regime also took the unprecedented step of denying some 20 Iranian diplomats travel visas to attend the UN assembly ¬ this week – this despite an historic agreement by the US, as host nation to the United Nations, to refrain from such obstruction of diplomats from any country regardless of bilateral disputes.

The obstructive snub to Iran’s sovereignty comes in the wake of the successful hosting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) last month in which some 120 member states gathered in Tehran. And it beggars belief that such a diplomatic mugging by Washington this week is not related to Iran’s new presidency of the NAM emphasizing the urgent need for an overhaul of the UN Security Council and greater democracy within the UN General Assembly to end the abusive political domination by the US. Such an overhaul is glaringly obvious now especially in light of the American member of the “security council” supporting terrorism in Iran and denying the victims of terrorism a full hearing. (That other has-been security council power, Britain, is also a disgrace for the same reason.)

Washington’s sinister relationship with Iranian MEK terror group points up the fact of who really is the “rogue state.” White House rhetoric has long tried to paint Iran as such. But in the real world, the MEK joins the phalanx of Washington’s terror proxies and mercenaries, from the Contra to al-Qaeda, who do America’s dirty work around the world. Like the MEK, it’s probably only a matter of time before al-Qaeda is also given official clearance by Washington. Yes, the contradictions are perverse, but such is America’s real relationship with world terrorism and its rogue status par excellence.

By Finian Cunningham

September 26, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Our Favorite Terrorists

On September 21st, Hillary Clinton signed a finding that the MEK, Muhajadin E-Khalil, or Peoples Muhadejin of Iran was in the process of no longer being considered a terrorist group. You should Our Favorite Terrorists know that MEK was only taken off of the US’ terrorist list after years of high pressure lobbying by a veritable galaxy of the some of the biggest and most expensive stars in Washington. Bill Clinton placed them on the terrorist list in 1997, and this decision was reaffirmed by the Bush administration in 2007.

It’s a sad commentary on the way things get done in DC, but it’s extremely doubtful whether the terrorist designation change on MEK could have been accomplished any other way. Political celebrities were hired by the dozens to sing the praises of MEK. If you want Democrats, you could find Howard Dean, former Congressman Patrick Kennedy, or Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell. For Republicans some of the hired guns include former GOP Speaker of the House Denny Hassert, Rudy Guiliani, Dick Armey, Bush II Attorney General Michael Mukasey, just to name some of the bigwigs.

Did they hire any national security types? The answer is "Yes — from both parties!" For the Democrats MEK hired former Clinton CIA chief James Woolsey. And W’s CIA chief Porter Goss got a stipend for supporting MEK, too. Other national security nabobs include former FBI director Louis Freeh, Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge, and Obama’s former National Security Advisor Jim Jones. And don’t forget the ever lovable Richard Perle.

How about journalists? Well Chicago Tribune Clarence Page was on board for some buckolas, as was Washington Post figure Carl Bernstein. Congressmen no doubt got in on the gravy train as well, but only Democrat Deborah Ros-Lehtinen and Republican Dana Rohrbacher made major appearances. Who knows how many other lesser lights received cash from MEK while it was still classified as a terrorist organization? The only thing that we know for sure is that none of these people come cheap. We’re probably talking about tens of millions of dollars being spent by MEK to get itself off of the terrorist list.

WHAT PUT MEK ON THE TERRORIST LIST IN THE FIRST PLACE?

We have to go back all the way to 1970s Iran for that answer. Originally MEK was fighting to eliminate the Shah, and they were aligned with the Ayatollah Khomenei. It was during this time that they killed six US military men and defense contractors. However, they had a falling out with the new Iranian government, and they quickly aligned themselves with Saddam Hussein. MEK personnel fought on the side of Saddam in the Iran-Iraq War including assisting Saddam in the rape of Kurdistan after the Gulf War. It’s been an open secret that since then MEK has been stationed in Iraq at US military bases.

To be charitable, both the Iraqi and Iranian government hate their guts. Even the Green Revolution in Iran wants nothing to to with them. The Iranian American Council has denounced MEK, saying that recognition of MEK by the United States will actually increase the chance of war between the two countries

In 2005, Donald Rumsfeld used MEK to carry out various reconaissance and sabotage operations in Iran after they had been equipped and trained at a base in Nevada. More recently, they have been directly linked to the assasination of Iranian military scientists, now supposedly by being trained and armed by the Israeli Mossad. If this is true, it would certainly put to the lie the US finding that MEK has denounced terrorism. But the background of MEK is even stranger and sleazier than that.

According to a report issued by the RAND corporation in 2009, Maryam Rajavi, the leader of MEK is in actuality the leader of a cult. After a disastrous raid into Iran during the Iran-Iraq War, Rajavi and her late husband decided that the reason Operation Eternal Light had failed was because there was too much love in MEK between fighters and their spouses. They then ordered mass divorces, mandatory celibacy, complete cutoffs from non-MEK family members, sleep deprivation and other manipulative techniques to enforce displine.

Seven small fry supporters came under Justice Department investigation for supporting a terrorist group when they collected donations at Los Angeles International Airport on behalf of the Committee for Human Rights, a MEK front organization. No Justice Department investigation has been undertaken of the myriad big public fish like Guiliani or Howard Dean for their support of MEK to get it kicked off of the US terrorist list. The very fact that someone would be lobbying the US government for a group on the terrorist list is classified as a crime. All in all, this represents the worst kind of example of how things get done in Washington, DC.

The only mysteries that remain about this still-terrorist organization is where their ultimate financial and other support is really coming from. Is it Israel, Saudi Arabia, the CIA, or right wing neocons? And is MEK really seen as a legitimate tool to be used against Iran, or only a distraction — supplying dupes who are willing to go on suicide missions to be used as a cat’s paw in American-Iranian (and Israeli) relations?

Regardless of the answers to these questions, it’s obvious that the MEK incident ranks high on the disgust factor.

September 26, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Taming the Crocodile: Reasons to Doubt U.S. Decision to De-List MEK

The New York Times, among other news organizations, published a remarkable story over the weekend: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has purportedly sent to Congress a classified letter indicating her intent to remove the Mujaheddin-e-Khalq organization (MEK or MKO) from the list of designated terrorist organizations. (The English spelling of the organization is inconsistent, and is sometimes seen as Mojahedin-e Khalq or other variants. It is also sometimes referred to as the People’s Mujaheddin Organization of Iran (PMOI).) Taming the Crocodile: Reasons to Doubt U.S. Decision to De-List MEK

Such a list is authorized by Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1189. That section of law was inserted into the INA in early 1996 after a variety of terrorism-related outrages in the years preceding the amendment, such as the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. Members, associates, and affiliates of listed organizations are subject to criminal prosecution for material support of a terrorist organization and also to deportation and exclusion from the United States.

The first list was published in the Federal Register some months after Section 219 came into being, and the MEK was among the first organizations to be listed, in 1997.

The MEK was a Marxist organization formed to oppose the regime of the Shah of Iran — and the United States, which supported the Shah in ways both obvious and covert. From the start, violence formed a part of its strategy and tactics, as is evident even from their organizational logo, which depicts a raised arm bearing a rifle crossed with a sickle.

During the 1970s, leading up to the Shah’s deposition, MEK operatives engaged in, and claimed credit for, a series of bombings and assassinations that included six Americans, some of whom were military officers posted to Iran in a diplomatic capacity. The violence was calculated to destabilize society and undermine the regime. Imagine their surprise then, when the Iranian revolution in 1979 gave birth to a hardline Islamic Republic that had no use for godless communists. Forced to flee the country, the MEK made a devil’s bargain for sanctuary — the devil in this case being embodied by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. From the safety of Iraq, they engaged in a series of cross-border violent acts against the ayatollahs; no doubt Saddam derived great pleasure in using the MEK to figuratively shove his thumb into the eye of his regional nemesis.

MEK cadres even fought on the side of Iraq during the long-enduring and shockingly murderous Iran-Iraq war from 1980-1988, in which over half a million soldiers and civilians from both sides were killed.

But that was not all they did; apparently there were other strings attached to their Faustian bargain with Saddam. Many credible human rights groups, analysts, and scholars believe that they also acted as a kind of mercenary killing force on the regime’s behalf in Saddam’s brutal campaigns against suspect domestic ethnic groups — the Kurds in the north of Iraq, and the Shi’a "marsh Arabs" in the coastal waterways of south Iraq — and even of viciously abusing the organization’s own dissident members.

The MEK claims to have abandoned violence and disarmed in the early 2000s. This appears to have occurred about the same time that the U.S. military was engaged in "shock and awe" carpet bombing preparatory to invading Iraq and, ultimately, disarming the Baathist regime’s military. Looked at from this perspective, the MEK’s claim of disarmament appears to be necessity draped in virtue’s clothing and nothing more. What choice did they have, post-invasion, faced with overwhelming American military force?

According to the Christian Science Monitor, in 2004 — substantially after the MEK "change of heart" — the FBI reported, using "data corroborated by French and German wiretaps — that MEK cells in the United States, Europe, and Camp Ashraf were ‘actively … planning and executing acts of terrorism.’"

How did they manage to stage this coup of being "de-listed"? The answer seems to lie in three things we in modern American society are all too familiar with: a savvy intermingling of

•money,
•litigiousness,
•politics, and
•public relations
First came the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) — a front group that appears to have the same function that Sinn Fein did when the Irish Republican Army was most active (and violent). You know the type, populated by men and women in business suits, speaking in well-modulated tones, sounding like the voice of reason. The NCRI also took advantage of a provision in Section 219 that permits filing of a federal lawsuit to have an organization removed from the list. They did so. As late as 2009, the State Department’s own filings in the case to sustain the listing asserted that the MEK had trained women at Ashraf to conduct suicide attacks in the Iraqi city of Karbala, holy to Iraqi and Iranian practitioners of Shi’a Islam.

So why has this happened?

The NCRI, with a strong presence in our nation’s capital, has relentlessly raised funds, which it was smart enough to use to hire well-paid, politically connected public relations consultants, including former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former national security adviser James Jones, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, and Rudolph Giuliani. (Remember him? The man-who-would-be-president and mayor of New York City during the nation’s most significant terrorist attack.) Some prominent members of Congress have also stood behind the MEK. The Christian Science Monitor published a 10-page special report in August 2011 outlining the big names of both political parties (and the big money) involved in this burnishing of the group’s reputation. It is well worth taking the time to read the report, which serves as both primer and indictment on the corrupting influence of money on even such fundamental matters as our national security interests.

It would seem that big money and big influence are having their way. Of course, there is the added benefit that, just as with Saddam, there is that extra little bit of satisfaction at kidney punching the Islamic Republic by de-listing the MEK. And who knows what additional shadowy deals have been struck? The organization has exhibited a surprising ability to survive and even prosper in the worst circumstances, and has of course also shown its willingness to engage in devil’s bargains. But is it worth it to the United States?

I have serious misgivings about the current course of action. This is a bloody-minded, bloody-handed organization with a past history of assassination and involvement in ethnic cleansing, murder, and human rights abuses on a large scale.

Does the United States really think it can adopt its own extremist organization, domesticated and house-trained like a well-mannered pet to be used against Iran, without consequence? That’s the equivalent of trying to tame a crocodile. Treat it as kindly as you like, feed it choice chicken carcasses daily, and even give it exclusive access to your backyard pool. There is every reason to believe that, sooner or later, when you reach your hand out to pat that ugly snout, it’s going to snap down and sever it from your wrist. It’s in the beast’s nature.

By W.D. Reasoner,

September 26, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

MEK Still Isn’t OK

The group is set to be taken off the foreign terrorist organization list, but it remains an unwelcome bedfellow on the Iran issue.

This past Friday, the State Department announced that it will remove the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK)—a fringe Iranian dissident group that has been criticized for its cultish practices—from its list of terrorist groups. The State Department may have satisfied a court-imposed deadline and could help the group’s members escape their current stateless limbo, but the decision will enable the MEK to put more effort into pushing the United States toward war with Iran in its campaign to become the new government in Tehran.

The court’s deadline comes from a lawsuit brought by the MEK arguing that its designation as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO)—which it has held since 1997—is no longer appropriate because it claims to have abandoned violence in 2002; in 2003, when its members in Iraq were disarmed by the U.S. military, the group signed documents promising to use only peaceful means of protest to advocate for its goals. In June, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit gave Secretary of State Hillary Clinton until October 1 to decide whether the group still belonged on the list or the court would delist the group.

Whether the MEK still belongs on the FTO list presents a legal question. If it has abandoned violence—including the capability and intent to commit terrorism—then perhaps it’s earned removal. The group’s many critics point to rumors that the MEK has been collaborating with the American and Israeli militaries and intelligence services (for example, here). But the FTO statute counts only terrorism or terrorist activity that “threatens the security of United States nationals or the national security of the United States”; even if unsubstantiated rumors about MEK’s collaboration with the U.S. military are true, they would not qualify the MEK for FTO status under the statute. This highlights the problem: The law as written gives a pass to groups whose activities are viewed as useful to the United States, just as it could fail to apply to unsavory groups that do not pose a danger to the country.

Aside from highlighting problems with the way U.S. law classifies terrorist organizations, the MEK decision creates a few practical problems. First, though, let’s look at two potential benefits. The Iraqi government wants the MEK out of the country—in part because it is close to the Tehran regime and in part because Iraqi Kurds and Shias despise the MEK for helping Saddam Hussein suppress their uprisings after the 1991 Gulf War. Iraq has demonstrated an unwillingness to respect its responsibility under international law to protect people who are essentially refugees; Iraqi security forces killed some 49 members during clashes with the group after the United States turned responsibility of Camp Ashraf over to the Iraqi government in 2009. The MEK can’t just be sent home to Iran because it is a crime to be a member of the group there. They need to go somewhere else, but no country was willing to welcome MEK members so long as the group was on the U.S.’s FTO list, and the MEK wouldn’t cooperate in the resettlement process until the State Department held out the carrot of delisting. This decision brings some hope, however limited and tenuous, that they may be able to find new, permanent homes, bringing an end to their stateless limbo.

Should members be resettled, another possible humanitarian benefit of the decision could be that they might then be able to engage with the wider world, and some might even consider leaving the cult. This is particularly relevant to the 70 percent or so of the group’s membership who joined after the MEK allied itself with Saddam Hussein, lost its support in Iran, transformed into a highly insular organization, and took up deceptive recruitment practices.

Those are the potential benefits. Now we turn to the problems with the decision. In light of the unprecedented lobbying effort made to get the MEK delisted, in which prominent former officials received tens of thousands of dollars to speak on the group’s behalf, it looks highly politicized. The MEK will make it look like delisting was a symbol of U.S. approbation. With regards to our complicated relationship with Iran, Tehran will see the decision as—in the words of CIA veteran and Georgetown University professor Paul Pillar—“one more indication that the United States is interested only in hostility and pressure toward the Islamic Republic, rather than coming to terms with it.” Some fear that it will undermine American credibility as a force for democracy in Iran (to the extent that the U.S. has such credibility).

The most significant concern is how it will unleash the MEK to further ratchet up the probability of violent conflict with Iran. As I have written here and here, the MEK has had two major goals: an immediate one of getting off the FTO list and a long-term one of taking power in Tehran (it already has a “parliament in exile” and a “president-elect” in its National Council of Resistance of Iran). Now that it has accomplished its short-term goal of getting off the list, it can focus on its core objective.

If the MEK were really what it claims to be—“the largest peaceful, secular, pro-democratic Iranian dissident group” and it didn’t need our help—we wouldn’t need to worry much. But it’s not. The MEK has almost no support among the Iranian people, who vilify the group for signing up with Saddam Hussein, killing Iranians, and then becoming a cult—or see it as a joke. There are only two ways that the MEK could achieve its goal: money or arms. Both options would likely involve the United States, and it is hard to imagine the MEK getting into power by money alone.

The MEK has been pumping up fears of Iran for years. I don’t want to discount the risks of Iran building a nuclear weapon someday, but the MEK plays up the issue for its own uses. The MEK will continue to encourage fear of Iran on Capitol Hill, maintain its ongoing public-relations campaign that promotes wildly exaggerated fears of Iran among the American public, and likely offer its services as a proxy-force ally against Iran, as it has for years.

We should worry that removing the MEK from the FTO list will open the door to a repeat in Iran of what we experienced in Iraq thanks to the embrace of Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress. It started with us funding the Iraqi émigré banker-turned-politician, and it ended with us invading Iraq and putting him in charge of the interim governing council. Even if it was just a relatively small bunch of neocons in the Bush administration and Congress who bought Chalabi’s rosy picture of having huge support in Iraq and a ready-made government, it wasn’t as if the rest of Congress or the media put a stop to their push for war. It was more like full speed ahead.

To limit the damage from its decision, the State Department needs to make it powerfully clear that the United States does not support the MEK. That will take a lot of work, because the MEK will flaunt the delisting.

More important, the U.S. government should not engage with the MEK going forward. Congress should ignore the group. Some officials will inevitably think that working with the MEK makes sense or is convenient. They will be wrong. The White House should consider making it policy for the government not to fund, employ, or otherwise collaborate with the group. The MEK is not our ally. Its interests are its own, not ours. The State Department’s decision may be legally sound, and it’s good to help MEK members find a new home, but when it comes to American policy, the group is not to be trusted. To quote Ambassador John Limbert, former embassy hostage and the first deputy assistant secretary of state for Iran, the MEK has “a very dubious history and a similarly dubious present.” Let’s have nothing to do with its dubious future.

By Jeremiah Goulka ,Prospect.org

September 26, 2012 0 comments

Newer Posts

Older Posts