The Third View on Mujahedin Khalq

Smoking gun documents “Found” by US-backed MEK terror group

The people pushing for war against Iran are the same neocons who pushed for war against Iraq. (They planned both wars at least 20 years ago.)

The IAEA report being trumpted as a casus belli contains no new information, but is based on a re-hashing of old, debunked claims stemming from “laptop documents”.

State Department cables released by Wikileaks reveal that the new IAEA head was heavily backed by the U.S., based upon his promises of fealty to the U.S. Indeed, as we’ve seen in the nuclear energy arena, the IAEA is not a neutral, fact-based organization, but a wholly-captured, political agency.

But where did the documents come from originally?

As Gareth Porter noted in 2008:

The George W. Bush administration has long pushed the “laptop documents” – 1,000 pages of technical documents supposedly from a stolen Iranian laptop – as hard evidence of Iranian intentions to build a nuclear weapon. Now charges based on those documents pose the only remaining obstacles to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declaring that Iran has resolved all unanswered questions about its nuclear programme.

But those documents have long been regarded with great suspicion by U.S. and foreign analysts. German officials have identified the source of the laptop documents in November 2004 as the Mujahideen e Khalq (MEK), which along with its political arm, the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), is listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organisation.

Interestingly, the Bush Administration – and especially Dick Cheney – helped to fund the MEK.

And the New York Times, Washington Post and others are reporting that Rudy Giuliani, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, former national security adviser Fran Townsend and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey are supporting the MEK as well.

So the terrorist group which “found” the documents is funded by neoconservatives who want to overthrow Iran. What a coincidence!

And as Gareth Porter notes in the above-linked article, the Mossad may have created the documents in the first place:

There are some indications, moreover, that the MEK obtained the documents not from an Iranian source but from Israel’s Mossad.

One thing is clear: the U.S. and its allies have a long history of using forged documents as an excuse for war.

Washington’s Blog – Infowars.com

January 29, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

My day with a real Thrill Kill Cult: the MEK

During a recent rally in front of the White House, hundreds of members and supporters of the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) advocated for the MEK’s removal from the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. The MEK (which also goes by other names, such as the People’s Mujahedin of Iran) is a group of militants and activist front groups, composed largely of Iranian exiles, operating since the 1960s. Their flag-drenched rally featured guest speakers, a “die-in,” and many fliers and pictures, all to promote the group’s overall message: the MEK are freedom fighters and representatives of the aspirations of the Iranian people; their members at Camp Ashraf in Iraq are in mortal danger if the Iraqi government tries to relocate them; and the organization should be removed from the terrorist list. They were not counting on a two-man counter-leafleting team to arrive with a stack of fact sheets delivering a distinctly different message: the MEK is a personality cult with a long history of violence directed at Iranians, Americans, and Iraqi Kurds and Shi’a; they will shift their loyalties as it suits their delusional goal of taking power in Tehran; American neoconservatives (and others) have spoken openly of using the MEK as proxies for a war with Iran’s present government; and, as a result of the above factors, the MEK has no legitimacy within Iran, even among those who despise the current regime.

The MEK supporters who saw these fact sheets reacted with varying levels of outrage. I was accused of being in the pay of the Iranian government (and if not the regime in Tehran, then it surely had to be someone), and, somewhat paradoxically, I was also accused of spreading “Rush Limbaugh propaganda.” I suppose this was because the MEK is often said to be ideologically “Islamo-Marxist,” a label composed of two elements that find considerable disfavor among Limbaugh and his cohorts, even if he and his ilk are not usually averse to war with Iran. In any case, it made little sense. Shortly thereafter, in calmer but seemingly endless conversations with MEK supporters, I heard a repeated list of red herrings having to do with the malevolence of the Iranian regime and the plight of the MEK members at Camp Ashraf, who are apparently in many cases relatives and friends of those demonstrating in Washington. I assured my interlocutors that I shared their disdain for the regime in Tehran, and I did not want any misfortune to befall the residents of Camp Ashraf. They barely addressed the organization’s rap sheet…)

Surely enough, in recent weeks the United Nations and the Obama administration have moved ahead with a plan similar to the course of action I tried to promote to the MEK members/supporters in front of the White House: under UN supervision, the 3,200 residents of Camp Ashraf will be moved to Camp Liberty, a recently vacated American base in Baghdad. From there, they will be processed and resettled. Some members with little “political baggage” are apparently willing to return to Iran; others will build new lives in their adopted country of Iraq; and others will be resettled elsewhere in the world. The MEK’s Paris-based leadership seems to be reluctantly cooperating, as is the Iraqi government, though the situation is still very tense and unsettled.

All of this is probably a pragmatic move on the Obama administration’s part. If the MEK members are first moved away from the border with Iran, and then out of the country entirely, that lowers the possibility of an incident on the border exploding into uncontrollable violence. On top of that, the Iraqi government seemed determined to close Camp Ashraf by any means necessary by the end of 2011, thus presenting the administration with a fait accompli: Obama could not allow Republicans (and others) to blame his administration for the humanitarian catastrophe if a group of so-called “Iranian freedom fighters” were massacred by the new Iraqi government, acting without the oversight of American troops. It would matter not that the withdrawal date was decided upon by the Bush administration, as Obama’s opponents would doubtlessly condemn him for fecklessly abandoning a group of rebels who oppose the enemy du jour.

Proponents of the invasion of Iraq often referred to the oppression of Iraq’s Kurds (and, less often, Shi’a) as an example of why Saddam Hussein should be deposed by force. Now, some of the same people, and their ideological brethren, extol the virtues of an organization with a leader (Maryam Rajavi) who is on record as instructing her followers to “Take the Kurds under your tanks” during the MEK’s period of fighting alongside Saddam Hussein. Even if the MEK is entirely removed from Iraq, they will likely continue their aggressive and well-funded lobbying in the US and Europe for the time being. If their behavior and demeanor at their demonstrations is anything to go by, they are thoroughly convinced of the righteousness of their cause, delusional enough to believe they can one day hold power in Iran, and unlikely to care about any collateral damage they create.

(My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult is an industrial rock band from Chicago. — Ed.)
Scott Charney is a contributor to Foreign Policy in Focus.

By Scott Charney, FPIF.org

January 29, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

An alternative to war with Iran

Relations between Iran and the West, fraught with tension and conflict for decades, have in the past few months reached a fever pitch. There is talk of war on a daily basis from both sides. Hundreds of millions, if not billions, have been spent both to fuel the Iranian missile and nuclear program and the counter-measures taken by the West to frustrate it. Leaders on both sides have worked themselves into paroxysms of rage regarding the alleged homicidal intensions of the other side.

The situation is volatile and the danger of war real. But the premise of the Western approach to Iran has dangerous shortcomings.

There is a common conception of Western policy as based on a two-pronged, carrot and stick approach: one a diplomatic track and the other a military threat. There is certainly the guise of a real diplomatic track. Both sides have talked at various times of the need for negotiations, and for very short periods there have been talks. Recently, Iran expressed willingness to begin a new round of talks with its opponents about its nuclear program.

But by all appearances, the Western approach is solely designed to achieve Iranian capitulation to Western demands that it dismantle its nuclear research program. It is not designed as an open-ended negotiation in which both sides are open to compromise to achieve a mutually agreed-on objective. The United States and Israel are little interested in acknowledging Iran’s perceived interests or compromising over its nuclear program so that each side will end up with some of its key interests satisfied.

Bad Faith

To study the efficacy of the diplomatic track, let’s look at its history. In 2003, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami made his famous offer to discontinue Iran’s nuclear program in return for the full normalization of its relations with the United States, including an end to sanctions. In the run-up to the Iraq War and in the context of the Bush-Cheney “stand tough” approach to the Islamist militancy of that era, the United States not only spurned the offer, it soundly berated the Swiss diplomat representing U.S. interests in Iran for having the temerity to pass the proposal along.

Barack Obama came into office with some vague notions of pursuing talks with Iran, criticizing the unhelpful threats of the previous administration. Western powers, however, only held talks with Iran for a mere three weeks. At those talks, the West again presented demands on a more or less take-it-or-leave-it basis; this was again not a negotiation of equals. It was one side communicating to the other what it expected of them to end the impasse. That’s why the talks ended almost before they began.

In recent years, Brazil and Turkey successfully negotiated a compromise with Iran involving the transfer of the country’s enriched uranium to a third country. But the Obama administration dismissed the plan and wasn’t even willing to pursue further negotiations about it.

If the diplomatic track was truly what Western officials have claimed it to be, there would be a more flexible and less destructive sanctions regime in place. Even officials in the U.S. government told The Washington Post that U.S. policy toward Iran, including the sanctions plan, is designed to achieve regime change, rather than policy change. The administration later attempted to deny that its officials had made such a claim, but it’s no wonder that Iran understands the U.S. approach as unilateral and categorical, rather than open-ended.

One-Track Policy

So there is not a two-track policy regarding Iran. There is instead a one-track policy with two facets. On the one hand, there is a program of sanctions and covert war designed to intimidate and bloody Iran into capitulation. But if that doesn’t work (and it surely cannot), there is a military option designed to destroy Iran’s nuclear program. It’s no surprise, then, that the Iranians see their enemies closing in on them like a vise. An enemy who believes he has no options left is very dangerous. He is likely to lash out in unforeseen ways. Such desperation is precisely what could fuel not just a bilateral military conflict, but a full-scale regional war.

There is another misconception about Western policy. The liberals among us talk about a “military strike” as an option of last resort. The more clear-eyed, like the Brookings Institution’s Bruce Riedel, talk of a potential war against Iran. Neither is precisely right. As Israeli journalists have pointed out, there already is a war under way against Iran. It is bought and paid for by a $400 million allocation by the Bush administration in 2007. It has funded all the tools in the Mossad arsenal that were used to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program and foment general unrest inside the country.

Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan outlined Israel’s thinking in a Wikileaks cable in which he told the State Department’s Nicholas Burns that Israel planned to sow general discord inside Iran by acts of sabotage perpetrated by domestic minority groups like the Sunnis and Kurds:

Dagan said that more should be done to foment regime change in Iran, possibly with the support of student democracy movements, and ethnic groups (e.g., Azeris, Kurds, Baluchs) opposed to the ruling regime…Iran’s minorities are “raising their heads, and are tempted to resort to violence.”

Dagan urged more attention on regime change, asserting that more could be done to develop the identities of ethnic minorities in Iran. He said he was sure that Israel and the U.S. could “change the ruling regime in Iran, and its attitude towards backing terror regimes.” He added, “We could also get them to delay their nuclear project. Iran could become a normal state.”

Though the cable doesn’t mention the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), the Mossad clearly views it as a potent force with an extensive internal network within the country, whose muscle could be exploited to further Israeli interests.

Mark Perry recently published an expose of one particular Mossad project, a false flag operation in which it recruited the leader of Jundallah, a Sunni terrorist group operating in Iran, by posing as NATO and CIA agents. When the Bush administration discovered the nature of the program, it was furious. But ultimately it decided it had other fish to fry and would not make a major stink about the danger the duplicitous operation posed to U.S. agents in the region.

Such Israeli tactics suggest that Israel pursues its own interests with little or no regard for how its behavior will impact friend or foe. For example, it utilizes the MEK as a partner in many of its terror operations inside Iran, even though U.S. State Department officially designates the MEK as a terror group.

This, of course, doesn’t stop the MEK and its well-paid domestic allies in the United States from pursuing an aggressive campaign to delist it as a terror group. Millions of dollars have been spent to further this goal, including enlisting prominent figures on both the Democratic and Republican sides to shill for delisting. The MEK appears to believe that terrorist activities in which it may be engaged inside Iran will not have an impact on its delisting by the United States. This is all the more reason for journalists in Israel and outside to make known its cooperation with the Mossad, so that the U.S. government can make an informed judgment about whether or not the MEK has renounced terrorism as it claims.

Some analysts have called this a black ops campaign or covert war. Whatever we call it, it is war by another means. If the United States is serious about seeking a diplomatic solution with Iran, then why would it both encourage and fund such a powerful campaign of terror inside Iran?

The campaign has included the Stuxnet computer worm, most certainly developed by the Israel Defense Force’s cyber warfare Unit 8200 with some U.S. assistance. Israeli security correspondents and a former Israeli minister reported to me that the Mossad and the MEK have jointly engaged in numerous terror operations that have killed five nuclear scientists and resulted in an almost fatal attack on a sixth. There have been crashes of Revolutionary Guard military planes and two more recent explosions: one that wiped out a missile base and killed the Iranian Revolutionary Guard general directing the entire national missile program, and another that sabotaged an Isfahan uranium enrichment facility.

So how much credence should Iran’s leaders put in the claim that the West is pursuing a diplomatic track? If there is no such real option for negotiation to resolve this conflict, is there any other prospect than war?

An Alternative to War

After following Iranian-Western relations for years, I believe the diplomatic track is a mirage and that the sanctions regime, which the West has pursued without success for 30 years, will not gain Iran’s capitulation. That leaves only two options: war, or Western impotence in the face of Iran’s implacable determination to pursue a nuclear option. Either option is bad, but the first is far worse than the second.

The fallout from a war with Iran has been widely discussed. Iran might mine the Straits of Hormuz and activate its shore-based defenses to repel U.S. naval forces. The price of oil would skyrocket, imperiling a global economy already teetering on the brink of recession or worse. Iranian allies in Lebanon, Gaza, and Syria could make mayhem for Israel and the United States alike. Iran could activate elements inside Afghanistan and Iraq to make life even more miserable there than it already is.

Since the United States doesn’t appear prepared for a real negotiation with Iran regarding its nuclear program, there is only one real approach short of war: containment. The United States adopted this approach during the Cold War against the Soviet Union. Though it was never optimal, considering the dysfunction in the relationship between the superpowers, containment worked reasonably well until the Soviet collapse in 1989.

As former Defense Department Undersecretary Colin Kahl argues in his latest Foreign Affairs article, the United States already has the assets in place in the region to pursue a policy of containment: 40,000 troops are stationed in the Gulf, with 90,000 more in Afghanistan. There are two carrier task forces deployed in the Gulf, and various allies view Iran with deep suspicion. They could be a local bulwark against any possible Iranian aspirations that threaten the regional status quo.

Containment still isn’t an optimal approach, but it’s the least bad one considering the current dysfunction characterizing relations between Iran and the West. In the future, Iran may turn to a reformist, more democratic government that might approach these issues differently. Or the climate in the West may change so that it would be willing to seriously engage with Iran on a similar basis to the Khatami 2003 proposals. But given the almost lunatic tone of the Republican presidential debates concerning Iran, and the fact that Barack Obama appears convinced that he must maintain impeccable national security credentials to protect his right flank, the United States is unlikely to adopt a more reasonable, pragmatic approach to Iran.

Under the circumstances, containment is the only remaining option that doesn’t lead to regional war, stalemate, and deeper dysfunction.

Richard Silverstein, Roreign Policy In Focus

January 28, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

US and Israel use MEK to commit terrorism-by-proxy

Scott Horton of Antiwar Radio interviewed Philip Giraldi on December13, 2011. In this interview, produced for KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles, Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi reprises and expands on his previous interview about his article “Washington’s Secret Wars,” Obama’s newly signed “findings” that authorize covert operations to destabilize the Iranian and Syrian governments, how the US and Israel use the Baluch Jundallah, Kurdish PJAK and MEK groups to commit terrorism-by-proxy, and the MEK’s energetic and well funded campaign to get de-listed as a terrorist group.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is a contributing editor to The American Conservative and executive director of the Council for the National Interest. He writes regularly for Antiwar.com.

Below is a brief report on the interview published by Habilian Association.

Philip Giraldi, former CIA counter-terrorism officer and executive director of the Council for the National Interest was interviewed by Scott Horton on Antiwar Radio and elaborated on US and Israeli efforts to destabilize Iran above all the latest assassination.

"I think that’s people who have been recruited by either CIA or Mossad and have been trained and sent back into Iran," said Philip Giraldi regarding the assassins of Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, Iranian scientist assassinated in Tehran on Wednesday, January 11, 2012, Habilian Association database (families of Iranian terror victims) reported on Wednesday.

The contributing editor to the American Conservative Magazine added that, "I suspect they (assassins) were recruited out of MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq) which is why we’re seeing so much stuff in support of MEK coming out of various politicians and other interest groups."
"Because MEK is kind of their boys, their cutting edge in terms of getting inside Iran and carrying out these kinds of operations," Giraldi further explained.

"Because MEK is kind of their boys, their cutting edge in terms of getting inside Iran and carrying out these kinds of operations," included Giraldi, adding that having been an experienced CIA case officer, "I understand how the stuff works a lot better than somebody in a newspaper."

He went on to say that a Mossad or CIA officer does not have the ability to go inside Iran and carry out an operation, concluding that they have acquired somebody else who can do it for them "and in this case there are some obvious candidates, MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq, MKO) would be I think the most prominent."

He made reference to US and Israeli actions against Syria and Iran and emphasized that in the case of Iran they know they cannot overthrow the regime, adding that, "it’s the question of setting up a bunch of relationships and employing various covert actions to destabilize (and) to make the Iranian government waste a lot of resources on dealing with these problems."

Former CIA agent Philip Giraldi also described the assassinations of Iranian scientists as "to be somewhat ineffective."

January 26, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Strange Bedfellows in the Conflict with Iran

As the European Union prepared to consider tough new sanctions against Iran on Monday, a group of eminent Americans was cozying up here to an exiled Iranian opposition group that the Washington's favorite terrorists, Mojahedin Khalq United States classifies as terrorists.

Even undeclared war makes strange bedfellows, and none more so than the former politicians, generals and spooks on the panel at a conference in Paris on Friday evening and their hosts, the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran.

In its checkered history, the P.M.O.I. has been accused of murdering American servicemen, was involved in not one but two invasions of the U.S. embassy in Tehran during the Iranian revolution, and allied itself with the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein.

More recently it claims to have provided information exposing details of Tehran’s attempts to produce a nuclear weapon, while vigorously denying widespread speculation that it might have assisted in recent unexplained assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists.

Western governments, including that of France where the group’s leadership is based, regard the Mujahedeen as more of a cult than a political movement.

Presiding over Friday’s conference in the old Bourse building in Paris was Mariam Rajavi, the movement’s leader and wife of its founder, Masoud Rajavi. He has disappeared from public view, perhaps emulating the Hidden Imam of the Shia Muslims .

Dressed in a familiar outfit of a modest but brightly colored suit and matching headscarf, she was greeted with chants of “Mariam, Mariam,” from the almost exclusively Iranian audience.

Americans on the international panel included General Hugh Shelton, former Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff; Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor; and Michael Mukasey, former U.S. Attorney General. Other panelists included Philippe Douste-Blazy, a former French foreign minister.

Gen. Shelton told Rendezvous he believed the U.S. had a sworn obligation to protect Mujahedeen refugees being evicted from Camp Ashraf in Iraq by a hostile government in Baghdad.

Camp Ashraf was a heavily armed encampment under Saddam Hussein from which Mujahedeen fighters attempted to invade Iran at the end of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. They were driven off. Today they enjoy little support in their home country, in spite of Mrs. Rajavi’s claims to lead the main resistance to the Islamic Republic, apparently because their efforts were seen as treacherous by many Iranians.

In the 2003 war that unseated Saddam Hussein, U.S.-led coalition forces attacked Mujahedeen military units but subsequently a ceasefire was arranged. Before the conflict, the Rajavis had repaired to their long-time base in the Paris suburb of Auvers-sur-Oise, which French anti-terrorism police raided in 2003, seizing millions of euros.

“There’s no longer any reason to keep these people on the terrorist list,” said Gen. Shelton, expressing an opinion that has won widespread bipartisan support in Washington, as my colleague Scott Shane has reported.

The P.M.O.I. — also known by its Persian title Mujahedeen-e-Khalq — has used a seemingly bottomless budget to push its case in the corridors of the U.S. Congress and to finance international meetings to maintain its profile.

Despite that, the State Department has adamantly refused to remove the group from its list of foreign terrorist organizations. A U.S court ruled in 2010 that the government must allow the PMOI a chance to rebut unclassified information the government used to justify its designation, Legal Times reported at the time.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has the matter under consideration.

The Mujahedeen fears the administration wants to keep a diplomatic line open to Iran in the escalating nuclear dispute. “Did you see those reports of Obama sending a secret letter to Tehran,” said a Mujahedeen insider knowingly.

Listing the P.M.O.I. as terrorists is the one thing on which Washington and Tehran agree and a delisting would be certain to derail any diplomatic initiative that might be under way.

As things stand, U.S. and European policy is to squeeze Iran economically until sanctions force it to yield on the nuclear issue.

The next step in that campaign will focus on Brussels, where European foreign ministers are moving toward a phased embargo of Iranian oil.

By HARVEY MORRIS

January 25, 2012 0 comments

The MEK; Baath Party Accomplice

MKO hanging in a vague future and past !!!! (Part3)

One important issue that should be noticed is about the organizations funds and expenses of which I obtained some films and documents of former Baath intelligence service. It was also mentioned in some of interviews I had [with former members of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization]. The former Iraqi Baath regime extensively supported the group both financially and militarily and funded it with hundreds millions of dollars and Iraqi Dinars. A dozen packages of 400 thousand dinars were paid to the MKO, according to a film recorded in 1986 by former Iraqi intelligence. We are well aware of the exchange rate of dinar versus dollar at that time. “Most of these funds were invested in large American and European firms and banks and the benefits resulted from those investment are spent for running the organization but the support from former Iraqi regime wasn’t limited to this,” says Mr. Hassan Azizi. "The families of MKO spies who worked for Iraq inside Iran and were arrested by Iranian MKO hanging in a vague future and past !!!! government were also paid monthly salaries (based on the documents obtained of former Iraqi intelligence service, issued on February 2nd, 2000). Besides Iraqi Baath regime, Arabic states of Persian Gulf including Saudi Arabia used to fund the organization. In one case when [Rajavi] returned from Iraq he said in a meeting,’ it was a prolific trip. "

One of the most important financial resources of the organization was “information selling”. This is done by a large spying network which is working under the supervision of the MKO. It sells the extensive intelligence it gains from all over the world to countries willing to have them.

Besides, they reach large amounts of funds for committing terrorist operations planned by certain authorities.

All former members whom I interviewd, speak of the legendry wealth of the organization and nobody is aware of the sources. Mr. Hassan Azizi and Mr. Abbas Sadeqi suggest:”if you have a detailed look at the MKO’s foreign policies, you can come to the idea that the organization shares one objective with countries such as Israel, the US and Arab states of the Persian Gulf and that is the overthrow of Iranian government which is considered as their biggest enemy, and regarding this common interest you can recognize the source of most of financial support the MKO enjoys.”

The Khalq Organization or the Cult of Rajavi has so far sustained terrible strokes that have led it to a cul-de-sac and a total bewilderment. The strokes were:
1. A large number of members left the group after it moved to Iraq (in 1980’s)

2. Shaabanieh revolution. It can be called the beginning of an end for the MKO. Mr. Mehdi Naderi, another defector of the group and Mr. Hassan Azizi and Mr. Abbas Sadeqi Nezhad, all confirm the fact:

“At the time of the first Gulf War in 1991, the leaders of the organization told us in a statement that a few brigades of Iranian forces disguised in Kurdish and Shiite clothes wanted to attack the organization’s bases. They allegedly intended to demolish the group. Thus, the group authorities distributed a large number of forces of the National Liberation Army in strategically crucial locations of Iraq such as Sulaimanbeig, Kefri, Jalula, Khaneqein and certain Shiite areas. As the result of the operation, 25000 of Iraqi children, women and men were massacred.

However, some of forces of the NLA who were told that these innocent people were Iranian revolutionary guards, abstained from the order consequently they were shot and killed by the organization’s artillery. Following Shaabanieh Revolution many of MKO members doubted about what had taken place in that operation. Some found out about the organization’s secret deals so they left the group and went to other countries.

3. After the collapse of the Baath Regime, American forces disarmed the group. You can definitely come to the conclusion that the organization that was completely dependent on its arms in all stages of its activities lost its existence. Thus, the MKO’s activities shifted to covert Iraqi politics. They paid big bribes to certain pro-Baath politicians, supporting them in their election debates. For instance I quote from Mr. Mehdi Naderi:”while the provincial council elections in Iraq, some of the candidates received their advertising posters from Camp Ashraf.”

By Mohammad Saad / Almurakeb-al-Iraqi – Translated by Nejat Society

January 21, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Romney Tied to MEK Terrorism

Links to radical group operating inside Iran a cause for concern

GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney looked like a deer caught in the headlights when he was asked if he supported an international, anti-American terrorist organization with a bloody record for killing innocent civilians thousands of times worse than al Qaeda. This “expert on international affairs” claimed he never had heard of them. Then, like a lying politician, he promised: “I’ll take a look at the issue.” Video taken at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire shows Romney quickly waving the issue aside and Romney Tied to MEK Terrorism hurrying on to another question.

Romney’s campaign counts on the fact that the public never hears of this group or his campaign’s covert connections to them. Few Americans—besides AFP readers who read about this in the Dec. 16, 2011, edition—have even heard of the fanatical, terrorist group, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (People’s Mujahedin of Iran; MEK or MKO). This is thanks to the big media’s general cover-up, and largely because it is an Israeli asset.

For months independent investigative journalists have asked Romney about his campaign’s ties to the MEK—but he never responds. No wonder, because if the American people ever found out about MEK, and the Romney campaign’s ties to it, they would demand he be tried for treason.

One of Romney’s chief advisers is neocon Mitchell Reiss. Reiss not only heads the 50-plus top neocons that lied America into the Iraq war—but he is also a leader in the stealth campaign for quietly removing MEK from the “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” (FTOs) list.

MEK was one of the first to be put on the FTO list because of its boasting of assassinations of U.S. servicemen, attacks on U.S. diplomats, murders of American citizens and suicide bombings. MEK was the only faction of Iranians who wanted to kill the American hostages in 1979. After the release of the Americans, the MEK went on a rampage and murdered possibly tens of thousands of Iranians in a decade-long terror campaign.

When George H.W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and other neocons gave germ warfare technology, poison gas and other chemical weapons to former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein so he would invade Iran, MEK joined Saddam in slaughtering its fellow Iranians.
After Saddam fell, Washington ordered U.S. troops to protect MEK from the wrath of the Iraqis. George W. Bush gave MEK hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars to commit terrorism in Iraq. Much of that money was spent on luxuries by MEK leaders in London and Paris.

MEK has bribed congressmen and other high officials with hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaker’s fees. Aiding and abetting MEK is still illegal. They get around this by using front groups and shells, laundering the money through speaker bureaus, high-dollar public relations outfits and law firms.

Another reason they want off the FTO list is they have thousands of followers in camps in Iraq and are no longer protected by U.S. troops, so they want to bring these trained killers and terrorists here.

By Ralph Forbes – American Free Press

January 17, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

When is a terrorist not a terrorist? & War with Iran or not?

In the case of the assassination of Iranian scientists, the Mossad’s assets are almost certainly members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) also known as The Peoples’ Mujahedin of Iran, which is committed to overthrowing the Iranian government.

The longer and complete form of the first question in the headline is – When is a terrorist not a terrorist in the eyes of the Obama administration (not to mention all of its predecessors) and the governments of the Western world?

Answer: When he or she is an Israeli Mossad agent or asset.

In the case of the assassination of Iranian scientists, the Mossad’s assets are almost certainly members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) also known as The Peoples’ Mujahedin of Iran, which is committed to overthrowing the Iranian government. Many of its activists are based in Iraqi Kurdistan where Mossad has a substantial presence. It does the training there, selects the targets in Iran and provides the bombs and other weapons, and MKO members do the actual killing.

It’s reasonable to presume that Mossad is more comfortable operating out of Iraqi Kurdistan with Iranian MKO assets than it was when its own agents were posing as CIA officers to recruit members of Jundallah, a Pakistan-based Sunni extremist organization, to carry out assassinations and attacks on installations and facilities in Iran.

Some of the essence of that Israeli false flag operation has been revealed by Mark Perry in an article for Foreign Policy. His report is based on information he acquired about memos buried deep in the archives of America’s intelligence services which were written in the last years of President George “Dubya” Bush’s administration, plus conversations he had with two currently serving U.S. intelligence officials and four retired intelligence officers who worked for the CIA or monitored Israeli intelligence operations from senior positions inside the U.S. government.

According to Perry’s sources, one of whom has seen the memos, the Mossad agents who were posing as CIA agents to recruit Jundallah operatives had American passports and were “flush” with American dollars.

The memos tell the story of an investigation which debunked reports from 2007 and 2008 accusing the CIA, at the direction of the White House, of covertly supporting Jundallah. The investigation apparently showed that the U.S. “had barred even the most incidental contact with Jundallah.”

The memos also gave details of CIA field reports on Mossad’s recruitment of Jundallah operatives, mainly in London and “under the nose of U.S. intelligence officials.”

Perry’s sources confessed to being “stunned by the brazenness of Mossad’s efforts.” And one of them said: “It’s amazing what the Israelis thought they could get away with. Their recruitment activities were nearly in the open. They apparently didn’t give a damn about what we thought.”

I take issue with the first part of that statement. What is really amazing is not what Mossad and almost of Israel’s political and military leaders think they can get away with, but what they KNOW they can get away with because of the Zionist lobby’s control of Congress on all matters relating to policy for the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel.

And that in turn is why, generally speaking, Israel’s leaders don’t give a damn about what American administrations think, They come and go but the Zionist lobby’s control of Congress is a permanent fixture. (In private conversation with General Moshe Dayan when he was Israel’s defence minister, I once summed up Israel’s unspeakable but implicit message to the governments of the world in the following way. “We know we shouldn’t have done this but we’ve done it because we also know there’s nothing you can do about it.” Dayan didn’t comment but the look on his face said something like, “You’re right but I’m not going to say so.”)

Though Israel doesn’t usually comment on reports about Mossad’s activities, a senior government spokesman described Perry’s account of Mossad agents posing as CIA agents as “absolute nonsense.” As I was reading the denial I used a Jimmy Carter expression – “BS” (Bull Shit).

After the latest assassination of an Iranian scientist, Rick Santorum, the right-wing religious joker in the pack of Republican presidential hopefuls, said this: “On occasions scientists working on the nuclear program in Iran turn up dead. I think that’s a wonderful thing.”

A different view was offered by Jewish American journalist Richard Silverstein. For his weblog Tikun Olam he wrote this: “These are shameful acts by a shameful Israeli government exploiting Iranian terrorists for their own ends. I find it disgusting that Israel can get away with such acts with impunity.”

Disgusting it certainly is but there’s no mystery about why Israel can commit crimes including acts of naked state terrorism without fear of being called and held to account for them by the UN Security Council. When after the 1967 war it refused to label the Zionist state as the aggressor and require it to withdraw from the newly occupied Arab lands without conditions, it effectively created, at the insistence of the U.S., two sets of rules for the behaviour of nations – one set for all the nations of the world minus Israel and the other exclusively for Israel. That was the birth of the double standard which is the cancer at the heart of Western foreign policy.

Now let’s pause for a moment to imagine what the response would have been if Iranian agents or assets had assassinated an Israeli scientist (just one) in the Zionist state.

Led by America, Western governments would have bellowed their condemnation of the terrorism and pledged full support for all efforts to hunt the terrorists down and bring them to justice. And they would, of course, have blamed the government of Iran even if there was not one shred of evidence of its authorization. The assassination of an Israeli scientist might even have tipped the Washington decision-making balance in favour of the mad men who want the U.S. either to attack Iran or give Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu the green light to go, with or without nuclear tipped, bunker-busting bombs.

And Israel? How would it have responded? With or without a green light from President Obama it almost certainly would have bombed selected targets in Iran, even if doing so was likely to set the region on fire and do vast damage to Western interests in the region and the whole Muslim world. (As I note in my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, in the chapter headed The Liberty Affair – “Pure Murder” on a “Great Day”, the lesson of the cold-blooded Israeli attack on the American spy ship was that there is nothing the Zionist state might not do, to its friends as well as its enemies, in order to get its own way).

Now… At the risk of inviting a charge from some and perhaps many readers that I am naive in the extreme, I have to say I am inclined to the view that the Obama administration was telling the truth when it strongly denied any American complicity in the latest Israeli/MKO assassination. The New York Times put it this way:

“The assassination drew an unusually strong condemnation from the White House and the State Department, which disavowed any American complicity… ‘The United States had absolutely nothing to do with this,’ said Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the National Security Council. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared to expand the denial beyond Wednesday’s killing, categorically denying any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran.”

The NYT report then quoted Mrs. Clinton as saying this:

“We believe that there has to be an understanding between Iran, its neighbours and the international community that finds a way forward for it to end its provocative behaviour, end its search for nuclear weapons and rejoin the international community,”

That in my opinion is code for something very like: “This administration is not completely mad. We know that an attack on Iran could have catastrophic consequences for the region and the world. Despite the mounting and awesome pressure we are under from Netanyahu and those who peddle his propaganda here in America, we know that the nuclear problem with Iran must be solved by jaw-jaw and not war-war.”

How catastrophic the consequences of an Israeli attack on Iran could be for the region and the world has been put into words by Philip Giraldi, currently the executive director of the Council for the National Interest and a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer. The scenario he presents under the headline What War With Iran Might Look Like takes us all the way to World War III. His article can be found at http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org/news/the-cost-of-israel-to-the-us/item/1319-what-war-with-iran-might-look-like

So I believe NYT reporter Scott Shane was on the right track when he wrote that the statements by U.S. officials appeared to reflect serious concern about the (Israeli/MKO) assassinations of Iranian scientists because they could “backfire” and make Iran’s leaders less willing to talk. And, I add, more willing to give in to those forces in Iran, the Revolutionary Guards in particular, who might well be saying that Iran must possess nuclear weapons for deterrence.

My guess is that U.S. officials are also concerned by the possibility that more assassinations could provoke an Iranian response which would give Israel the pretext to attack. (It’s by no means impossible that the main purpose of the assassinations is to provoke an Iranian response to give Israel the pretext for an attack).

That brings me to my own speculation about what is really going on behind closed doors in the Obama administration. At executive level it is, I think, in a state of something close to total panic about what to do to prevent an Israeli attack on Iran if Netanyahu is not bluffing.

My reading of Obama’s latest turn of the sanctions screw on Iran is that it’s his way of not only putting more pressure on the ruling government. It’s also his way of saying to Netanyahu something like, “Give me more time to solve the Iranian nuclear problem by all means other than war.”

Obama needs more time not only to try to get serious and substantive talks with Iran going but also to establish beyond any doubt whether Israeli threats to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities are a bluff (to put pressure on the U.S.) or not. In an article for Ha’aretz under the headline Israel and U.S. at odds over timetables and red lines for Iran, Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel wrote:

“Do Barak and Netanyahu really intend to attack on their own, or is Israel only trying to prod the West into more decisive action? That is the million-dollar question. It has been discussed intermittently for the past three years and it seems that Washington does not have a satisfactory answer to it.”

In a few days time General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, is scheduled to arrive in Israel for talks with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Chief of Staff Lt. General Benny Gantz and other senior Israeli defense and intelligence officials.

Dempsey knows that when U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta met with Netanyahu and Barak last November, they refused to give him a commitment that Israel would not attack Iran without informing America of its intention to do so.

If I am right about the panic in the Obama administration, my guess is that Dempsey will try to obtain the commitment Panetta failed to get. What if Dempsey does not succeed?

My guess is that whatever he may say in public after his meetings, Dempsey will tell the Israelis in private that if they go to war with Iran they will be on their own. The U.S., I can almost hear him saying, will not become engaged except to defend its own national interests if and as necessary “because the American people, most of them, are tired of war.” He could add “and we don’t have the money to pay for it.”

An interesting question for the coming days is something like this: What if Dempsey returns to Washington without being able to give behind-closed-doors assurance that Israel (despite what it might continue to say to the contrary in public for propaganda purposes) will not go it alone with an attack Iran?

In theory there is a card President Obama could play. He could put Israel on public notice that if it attacked Iran and if as a consequence America’s own bests interests were harmed, the U.S. would have to rethink its relationship with the “Jewish state”. A statement to that effect would imply that the days of America’s unconditional support for Israel right or wrong could be coming to an end.

But that’s not a statement Obama could make this side of November’s presidential election. So if Netanyahu is not bluffing, and if he was determined to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities before November’s election, there’s nothing Obama could do to stop him, even knowing that the end game could be, as Giraldi speculated, World War III.

My own view has always been that Netanyahu is bluffing to the extent that he even he is not crazy enough to order an Israeli attack on Iran without a green light from the U.S. and American cover and participation,

I hope I am right. If I am it could be that General Dempsey will return to Washington with the news Obama wants and needs – that without a green light from the U.S, Israel will not bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities.

By Alan Hart – Salem-News

January 16, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Israelis and Americans use MKO terrorists for assassinations

Dangerous games

Interview with Gennady Yevstafiev, retired Lieutenant General of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service.

We should tackle this issue on the basis of statements which have been made recently by different military and political leaders of Israel and the United States. And if we are not going to be naïve, we should understand that the secret war against Iran has been going already for two dozen of years and in this war there were so many casualties, and the pattern of action of this special services of the United States, of Israel, especially Israel, is so well known that I’m damn sure that the recent killing, the fifth killing of Iranian scientist, is a chain in the long ago devised operation of undermining the Iranian nuclear program.

So, you ask who could do this. Yes, there is a force, which officially is considered by the United States as a terrorist organization – Mujahedin-e Khalq. Unfortunately, these were many years ago a well minded people, young people, revolutionary people with leftwing ideas for the restructuring of Iran. But when Ayatollah kicked them out, they moved first of all to Iraq and were used by Saddam Hussein, who didn’t care about the lives and the ideas of these people, he simply used them against Iran as a force. This force has roots in Iran, it has followers inside Iran, and it is the only force knowing the methods of intelligence operations. It is the only force which could be really summoned for this kind of operations.

Under circumstances this force – Mujahedin-e Khalq became a reactionary group of people, who are more and more inclined for operating terrorist attacks. And they operate for that and there are secret ties, which are not on the surface, of Mossad and other Israeli secret services, between these services and Mujahedin-e Khalq and similar organizations. It is not the only organization of this sort, there are some other too, and their people are constantly used by the Israelis especially, and by the Americans in the second place, to operate against the regime of Ayatollah.

It is a very dangerous game, because we are now in the situation, which is very tense in the Persian Gulf, Hormuz Strait and in the neighbouring of Pakistan. And every negligence of responsibilities, especially on the part of such great powers as the United States, with responsibilities as a guarantor of peace, every attempt to be aggressive and to use force in the area right now is probed with the most terrible consequences.

I hope the Noble Prize winner, which is Mr. Obama, will have enough courage not to act in this kind of situation aggressively, and he will have enough courage to stop those guys in his Administration, I’m quite sure that behind it is Mr. Biden, he has very serious reactionary force, he will not act aggressively in this kind of circumstances, and he will not allow the military operations under any kind of pretext to be taken in the Gulf.

Voice Of Russia, Kudashkina Ekaterina

January 15, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Former Pentagon official:US, Israel back terrorists in Iran

Interview with Michael Maloof, former Pentagon official

Following the deadly terrorist attack, leading to martyrdom of Iranian prominent scientist, many experts have raised critical questions on the issue of the assassinators identity.

Many experts believe that it could be a joint terrorist assassination attack, carried out by Mossad and MKO, trying to delay the country’s progress in its peaceful nuclear program.

Press TV has talked with Michael Maloof, former Pentagon Official to further discuss the issue.

Following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: What is your evaluation of the report? How do so-called false flags work in the Mossad-Jundullah nexus?

Maloof: Well, thanks for having me. I think that they act as proxies. And Jundollah has been known for some time to be associated with the CIA and FBI In fact their two leaders that were ultimately caught have admitted that they had connections with US law enforcement and intelligence officials.

I might add in addition to Jundollah, you might also want to consider that the MKO [ Mojahedin al Khalq Organization] or the MEK as it is also called, which has been in Iraq for years and which is also against the Iranian regime, also might have been involved as well. They would blend in very well, very easily. So it could be a combination of Jundollah and MEK.

Press TV: It seems that the US and Israel are already engaged in a war with Iran through this particular method in killing scientists that is. So, how far can it go? I mean [can they] kill all the scientists?

Maloof: I think that they are trying to be surgical about it. I think that they are trying to go after those critical scientists that are making the program work. I don’t think that they can kill all of them – I hope they do not, but I also think that it is also misplaced that they want to engage in this kind of activity.

How far will they go? I think it is already a subtle war that is underway because they know they cannot invade, successfully, Iran, so they are going to be much more surgical about it and go after those elements that are critical to Iran’s nuclear development program.

Press TV: What image will this give to the rest of the world, I mean the fact that what we are seeing, what is apparent was the fact that they actually cooperate with terrorist organizations, groups which the US claims to be fighting. How contradictory is this?

Maloof: Well, the Jundollah and certainly the MEK have been on the US terrorist list for years. But that doesn’t preclude the US when it suits their national interests to engage and work with elements of these groups. After all, they are anti-Iranian, so they are going to be employed as much as they can and I do know that there has been an effort underway to remove the MEK [MKO] certainly from the US terrorist list.

Press TV: And so, how do you relate this recent terrorist attack in Tehran to this whole story?

Maloof: I think it is hand in glove. I think that it is part of an effort by the Israelis to undertake a very quiet behind the scenes engagement against the Iranian regime in an effort to cripple the program itself; hitting those critical choke points in an effort to try to delay the program. I think it is unrealistic to believe that they think that they are going to be able to eliminate the program altogether.

In fact, it is my personal view that Iran has every right to enrich, as a signatory to the Nuclear Non Proliferation treaty [NPT].

Press TV: And finally, what can Iran do to pursue the case legally?

Maloof: Well, I think they can undertake maximum exposure to the international organizations, making that very clear and plain that this is illegal; that the United States and Israel are engaged in a subtle engagement of warfare and that they ought to take it to the International Court of Justice and certainly keep and make it public to keep an eye on it, so that the world’s public is viewing this and that it is absolutely wrong.

January 15, 2012 0 comments

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