The Third View on Mujahedin Khalq

Iran Says U.S. Plot Suspect Belongs to MKO Exiles

Iran has affirmed to the U.N. chief that one of the suspects in an assassination plot on U.S. soil belongs to an Iranian exile group that is seeking to overthrow its Islamic regime, media reports said Saturday.

A police probe into one of the suspects, following an Interpol request, suggested the individual "is a member of the Mujahedeen-e Khalq Organization," the Tehran mission in the United Nations said in a letter to U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon on Friday, the official IRNA news agency reported.

The letter did not explicitly identify or give the whereabouts of the suspect, but was apparently referring to Gholam Shakuri.

However, it said the new revelation proves that "U.S. claims about the involvement of the Iranian government (in the alleged plot) do not border reality."

The United States alleges Shakuri is an Iranian official in the elite Quds unit, a shadowy special operations outfit in the Islamic republic’s Revolutionary Guards, and that he co-conspired with an Iranian-American car salesman, Manssor Arbabsiar, to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington.

While Arbabsiar is in U.S. custody, American officials say they believe Shakuri is in Iran, and they have called on Tehran to turn him over to face charges.

Tehran has vehemently denied any involvement in the alleged plot, and accused Washington of seeking to divert attention from domestic economic woes and foreign policy failures in the Middle East and attempting to fuel tensions between Iran and its neighbors.

The Mujahedeen-e Khalq Organization, also known as the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, is the main armed Iranian exile group that aims to overthrow Iran’s Islamic regime.

The United States and Iran consider the group to be a terrorist organization but it was removed from a list of 50 banned militant groups compiled by the European Union in January 2009.
On October 27, Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi confirmed an Interpol request concerning Gholam Shakuri, hinting the suspect was a member of the Mujahedeen group.

"There are 150 Gholam Shakuris (in Iran). Interpol sent us a question about this name, and our investigation showed a certain Gholam Shakuri who lives in the United States and is a member of the Mujahedeen-e Khalq Organization," Salehi was quoted in Iranian media as saying in Saudi Arabia.

November 6, 2011 0 comments

The MEK Expulsion from Iraq

Iraqis united: Get Out of Here, Curse You

According to Iraqi al-Qanun independent news agency, 750 people participated in a seminar titled ‘Get Out of Here, Curse You’ on Tuesday. Academics, intellectuals, activists, elders and elders of the province of Diyala gave their support to the government’s decision to expel the Mojahedin-e Khalq from Iraq and that the MEK must obey Iraqi law. The participants agreed that the land occupied by the MEK should be restored in order to revive the economic and agricultural prosperity of the region.

Director of the greater Khalis region, Abdul-Jabbar Ahmed al-Obeidi, said many victims of MEK terrorism have filed complaints with Iraq’s Judiciary.

Secretary General of the Association of Justice to defend the victims of Mojahedin Khalq in Iraq, Dr. Nafie Isa, described how the MEK used occupied land to attack Iraq’s citizens. He said the media should expose the MEK’s crimes and interference in the internal affairs of Iraq and support the efforts of the government to expel the MEK by the end of 2011.

many victims of MEK terrorism have filed complaints with Iraq’s Judiciary.

The Mayor of Khalis, Uday Alkhaddran, described how the MEK launch false accusations and create anonymous groups on the Internet which have no reality on the ground in the province of Diyala.

The police chief of Diyala province, Brigadier General Jamil Kamel Shammari, stressed that the UN Fourth Geneva Convention does not apply to the MEK. He also stressed that under Iraqi law MEK terrorists cannot be granted political asylum in Iraq.

Brigadier General Jamil Kamel Shammari, stressed that the UN Fourth Geneva Convention does not apply to the MEK.

The seminar exposed the names of fake groups created by the MEK and foreign intelligence services in order to condemn the government of Iraq. Participants reiterated their support to remove the MEK, as a terrorist organization which participated in killing Iraqi civilians, from Iraq in its entirety by the end of 2011.

Iraqi al Qanun news, Khalis, Iraq,Translated by Iran Interlink

November 3, 2011 0 comments

Iraqi Authorities' stance on the MEK

The file of Camp Ashraf will be closed by year end

Following is an extract from the statement issued by the Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights in Arabic following the meeting between Iraq’s Human Rights Minister Mr. Mohammed Shi’ya’ al-Sudani with the Swiss Ambassador Mr. Martin Ashbacher.

Human Rights Minister: The file of Camp New Iraq (formerly Camp Ashraf) will be closed by the end of the year

(…)
With regard to the issue of Camp New Iraq (formerly Camp Ashraf), the Minister said "that the Iraqi government is seriously engaged in closing this file during the rest of the year, through the Committee, headed by the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and members of the Ministries of Justice, Human Rights and Defense for the purpose of reaching a solution and a legal way out for these people. He added "that the ministry was able to successfully repatriate a large number of members of the Mojahedin organization between 2004 and 2005 who were subsequently visited in inside Iran for the purpose of making sure they are able to integrate and return to work without any harassment".
(…)

Ministary of Human Rights, Baghdad, Translated by Iran Interlink

October 31, 2011 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Iran Claims U.S.-Sponsored MKO Terrorists Conceived Saudi Ambassador

Since news broke that there was an alleged plot by Iran to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Adel A. Al-Jubeir (left), and destroy a number of embassies, Iran has adamantly denied the accusations. Likewise, skeptics questioned whether the plot could have been staged by Iran, who would have had little to nothing to gain from such an endeavor, and claimed that the plot was uncharacteristic of Iranian terror. Others have asserted that the entire plot was in fact manufactured by American law enforcement agencies as an impetus for war against Iran. Adding yet another layer to this news story, Iran has come out and said that the plot was in fact planned by the French/Iraqi-based Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK), which is actually funded and supported by the United States.

Last week, the United States charged American-Iranian Mansour Arbabsiar, a used car salesman, for his role in an alleged plot to murder Ambassador Adel Al-Jubeir and attack Saudi installations in the U.S. in a plan reportedly plotted earlier this year. According to the Justice Department, Arbabsiar conspired with Gholam Shakuri, a member of Iran’s Qods Force — an arm of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Iran immediately denied the accusations, with the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast declaring, “These attitudes, which are based on the age-old and hostile policies of the American-Zionist axis, are a ridiculous show in line with a scenario that aims to divide and that emanates from enemies of the region.”

A number of experts across the globe came forward and questioned the claims that the plot had been sponsored by the Iranian government. They argued that the Qods Force is far too methodical and effective in its choice of proxies to have chosen a used car salesman and member of a Mexican drug cartel. Others assert that it is unlikely that Iran would sponsor such an act of terror as it does not serve Iranian interests in any way.

Iran has now raised accusations against another party, which they claim to be responsible for hatching the plot. The British paper The Guardian reports, “Tehran has pointed the finger at a dissident group it considers a ‘sworn enemy’ in an attempt to distance itself from US accusations that the Islamic regime in Iran conspired to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington.”

According to Iran’s news agency Mehr, one of the two suspects that the United States asserted was involved in the plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador is a “key member” of MEK. "The person in question has been travelling to different countries under the names of Ali Shakuri/Gholam Shakuri/Gholam-Hossein Shakuri by using fake passports, including forged Iranian passports," said Mehr.

MEK has been declared a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. Listed as number 28 on the Department’s list of terrorist organizations, MEK has been responsible for terrorism against both the United States and Iran for years.

Yet MEK was considered by the Brookings Institution as a prime candidate for U.S. backing to remove the Iranian government. A 2009 report by the Brookings Institution, entitled “Which Path to Persia?” reads:

Perhaps the most prominent (and certainly the most controversial) opposition group that has attracted attention as a potential U.S. proxy is the NCRI (National Council of Resistance of Iran), the political movement established by the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq). Critics believe the group to be undemocratic and unpopular, and indeed anti-American.

In contrast, the group’s champions contend that the movement’s long-standing opposition to the Iranian regime and record of successful attacks on and intelligence-gathering operations against the regime make it worthy of U.S. support. They also argue that the group is no longer anti-American and question the merit of earlier accusations. Raymond Tanter, one of the group’s supporters in the United States, contends that the MEK and the NCRI are allies for regime change in Tehran and also act as a useful proxy for gathering intelligence. The MEK’s greatest intelligence coup was the provision of intelligence in 2002 that led to the discovery of a secret site in Iran for enriching uranium.

In the 1970s, however, MEK was responsible for the death of three American officers and three civilian contractors in Iran. The group also voiced significant support for Iran’s taking of hostages during the Iranian hostage crisis, and some reports indicate that members of the group celebrated the 9/11 attacks, though the organization publicly condemned the attacks.

MEK has conducted a number of other terrorist attacks as well, but most have been excused because they were directed against the Iranian government. In 1981, MEK bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, killing approximately 70 officials. The organization has also taken credit for dozens of Iranian civilian and military attacks between the years 1998 and 2001.

Still, the United States has reportedly supported the organization. In a 2008 New Yorker article entitled “Preparing the Battlefield,” Seymour Hersh revealed,

“The M.E.K. has been on the State Department’s terrorist list for more than a decade, yet in recent years the group has received arms and intelligence, directly or indirectly, from the United States. Some of the newly authorized covert funds, the Pentagon consultant told me, may well end up in M.E.K. coffers. “The new task force will work with the M.E.K. The Administration is desperate for results.” He added, “The M.E.K. has no C.P.A. auditing the books, and its leaders are thought to have been lining their pockets for years. If people only knew what the M.E.K. is getting, and how much is going to its bank accounts — and yet it is almost useless for the purposes the Administration intends.”

Hersh also appeared on National Public Radio and indicated that the United States had trained a number of MEK members.

There has been an effort in the United States to remove MEK from the list of terrorist organizations, presumably so that the federal government could provide even more funding to the group.

For some, information such as this is enough to convince them that the entire war on terror is fraudulent and should be approached with skepticism. One popular blog wrote of the war on terror:

From the beginning, even for those wanting to believe the fairy tale that 9/11 was carried out by cave dwellers carrying box cutters directed by Osama Bin Laden, who by all accounts was dying or already dead from kidney failure in 2001 — "unfortunate blunders" in US foreign policy can still be blamed for the creation and perpetuation of the ubiquitous, unceasing terror organization known as Al Qaeda. However, in light of recent events in Libya, Syria, Iran, and Algeria, there is exposed a truth, many have known for over 10 years, and many more are catching onto now — that the "War on Terror" is an absolute fraud, started, fueled and simultaneously fought against by the same handful of corporate-financier interests for the sole purpose of spreading Wall Street and London’s hegemony across the globe.

According to Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it is this type of fraud that has led the U.S. government to accuse Iran of the plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador. Comparing it to assertions that Iraq maintained weapons of mass destruction, Ahmadinejad said that the U.S. simply “fabricated a bunch of papers” to support its claims at the time. “Is that a difficult thing to do?” he asked.

by Raven Clabough – The new American

October 30, 2011 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

The MEK’s Propaganda Machine

The National Interest will be running on Monday a response to Raymond Tanter’s missive on behalf of the Iranian cult/terrorist group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq. Given that Tanter goes out of his way to raise my name a couple of times, it would be appropriate for me as well to point out a couple of the more glaring misdirections in his piece.

Tanter’s premise, as reflected in his title, is that anything bad you ever heard about the MEK is a product of propaganda from the Iranian regime. Evidently this means that anyone, either inside or outside of Iran, who has ever been critical of the group must have been brainwashed by the propaganda. If that were true, those responsible for U.S. public diplomacy have a lot of valuable lessons to learn from the Iranians; their propagandists must be doing something right.

The Iranian regime flings propaganda as freely as any other regime. And it certainly has had a lot of unfavorable things to say about the MEK. Some of those things may be exaggerated or even outright lies. But one could erase completely everything the Iranian regime has ever said on this subject, and there would remain the large, long, sordid record of what the MEK has done, what it has stood for, and the abhorrent cult it still is. The record extends from the days it was killing Americans while opposing the shah, through when it was in league with the clerical regime and supporting further anti-American acts such as the hostage-taking at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, through the long period during which it was working for the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. The record is not based just on what is said by the State Department or an intelligence agency or any governmental component with a policy to support, much less on anything the Iranian regime might say. If you want a recent independently reported portrait of the group, see, for example, this article by Elizabeth Rubin.

Tanter tries to smear critics and criticism of the MEK, including some of the contents of an open letter to which I was a signatory, by saying it “resembles regime propaganda against the MEK.” The MEK has conducted terrorism and other violent acts against U.S. interests and against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Is it any surprise that some of the critical things said about the group from the standpoint of U.S. interests resemble some of what the Iranian regime puts out? (And if it’s not brainwashing, then just what is Tanter suggesting is the reason for the resemblance?)

One of the respects in which Tanter’s piece diverges most widely from reality is his attempt to argue that the MEK has any support to speak of within Iran. He notes that the group was the source of some revelations about Iran’s nuclear program. True—and we ought to remember our reliance on the accident of this weird sourcing when we think about how much confidence we ought or ought not to have in our knowledge of this program—but what does that have to do with popular support? It only takes one person to serve as a source. The most telling indication of the MEK’s unpopularity in Iran, as pointed out in the aforementioned open letter, is that the Iranian regime uses that unpopularity as a way to discredit the democratic opposition in Iran, by trying to associate it with the MEK. For the same reason, the leaders of the Green Movement have emphatically said that they want nothing to do with the MEK. Tanter also mentions attendance at pro-MEK rallies in the United States as a measure of support, without mentioning that the MEK campaign has resorted to such measures—used in a rally outside the State Department this summer—as padding attendance by busing in homeless people who don’t know squat about the MEK or Iran but come for the free food.

Tanter precedes a reference to me with the odd statement that “Intelligence communities are targets of Iran’s disinformation.” Odd because I have been out of the intelligence business for more than six years, and anyone who views my thinking as having any connection with judgments that an intelligence agency would reach today will be disappointed and wasting their propaganda resources. Tanter later mentions me again as someone who ought to be concerned about the “political motivation” for having the MEK on the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, or FTOs. It is true that the listing process is not immune to policy considerations, but that has been much more a matter of avoiding the listing of a group that really ought to be on the list (the Provisional Irish Republican Army of fifteen years ago is the example that comes to mind), than of including on the list a group that should not. Not listing someone means simply not initiating the listing process. Listing a group requires a lengthy process of review by the Departments of State, Justice, and Treasury and the intelligence community, according to the criteria specified by law.

Tanter seems to believe that a group has to have committed terrorist acts within the previous two years to be kept on the list. Not true. (Having been directly involved in the laborious process of compiling the required administrative records for the initial listings after enactment of the law in 1996 that created the FTO list, I know a thing or two about this subject.) Two years used to be the interval between recertifications of listed groups, and it is now the period after which a group can petition for delisting. But no terrorist acts have to have been committed during that period; retaining the capability and presumed intent to commit them is sufficient to stay on the list. If performing terrorist acts recently was a requirement to stay on the list, many of the 49 groups currently on the list would have to come off. Lebanese Hizballah, for example, probably would be one of them. I expect that many of the pro-MEK campaigners would be among the first to scream if that happened.

There is indeed a large amount of political influence that is being exerted in an effort to affect a decision about the FTO list, and it is almost all coming in the form of the large and well-funded campaign to delist the MEK. In fact, the campaign is extraordinary, and nothing remotely resembling it has ever been waged on behalf of any other group on the FTO list. Whatever is being said in the opposite direction is only a modest reaction to the pro-MEK campaign itself. Here is what I said on the subject two months ago, after that rally outside the State Department:

The secretary of state should pay no heed to what Melvin Santiago and the other hungry homeless outside her office window are saying, or to what the high-paid hired guns are saying, about the MEK. Nor does she need to pay any attention to what people like me are saying about the group. She should keep the windows closed and just pay attention to the terms of the law and to what officials in the departments and agencies involved say about whether the terms of the law still apply in this case.
If Raymond Tanter really wanted to inform us about political influence being exerted on what ought to be administrative and legal decisions, he could shed more light on the campaign of which he is a part. In particular, he could help us understand where all that funding is coming from. It evidently is coming from quarters who would like to stoke ever more tension and animosity between the Iran and the United States. I have a guess who that might be, but so far it is only a guess.

Paul R. Pillar, The National Interest

October 30, 2011 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq 's Terrorism

How to Kill an Ambassador

|An increasing number of former intel officer that I network with are convinced that the alleged plot to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington is not only completely implausible as How to Kill an Ambassador described by the Justice Department and White House but also possibly the contrivance of an intelligence or security service other than that of Iran. There is a consensus that the Iranian government has no motive for carrying out the attack, as it would have only further isolated Tehran internationally and could easily have led to massive retaliation. The “rogue element” theory that Iran’s fractured politics might mean that someone in the Quds group was actually trying to embarrass someone else in the government has a certain plausibility, but no one who knows anything about Iran actually believes it to be true. Nor is it likely that Iran mounted the complicated operation to avenge the assassinations of several of its nuclear scientists. The scientists were killed by the Israelis, who would have been the target if that had been the case. So the only question becomes, who is doing what to whom and why?

The speculation by Gareth Porter that the whole affair might have been a drug deal that morphed or was manipulated by an FBI sting into yet another terrorism story is compelling. If that was the case, then the U.S. government is guilty yet again of taking a vulnerable individual and turning him to make him into what will pass muster as a genuine terrorist. Nearly every terrorism case since 9/11 has been precisely that — finding a disgruntled individual or group through communications intercepts, inserting an informant into the process, and developing the case to enhance its terrorism potential.

Another possibility that has been mentioned is that it might have been an operation planned by the Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MEK, the Iranian opposition group supported by a number of U.S. lawmakers. But the MEK would not have the resources or technical expertise to carry out such a deception, unless it were working in cooperation with the CIA or the Mossad, which raises the possibility that this has been from the start the work of an intelligence agency rather than law enforcement.

Law enforcement normally begins with some kind of case and then allows it to grow, whereas an intelligence operation would be phony from start to finish. If it is indeed an intelligence operation, there are three principal suspects: the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. All three countries have highly sophisticated intelligence services capable of the technical measures required to carry out what is essentially a false-flag operation, in which they would be portraying themselves as representatives of the Iranian government in order to obtain the cooperation of an expat Iranian living in the United States. All three intelligence organizations are highly knowledgeable of Iranian intelligence service operations, and all three have easy access to Farsi speakers capable of role playing. The operation would be tricky to execute but far from impossible if the right resources were dedicated to the problem and the right spin were put on the narrative used to initiate contact with and then develop Mansour Arbabsiar or someone like him.

The United States would have the simplest task in mounting such a false-flag operation. As immigrants to the U.S. are required to identify close relatives in foreign governments as part of their visa process, it would be easy to come up with a candidate for the plot who has a relative in Iran’s security services through inspection of the immigration records. I am certain that the CIA and the FBI both have been exploiting such records since 9/11. Once you have your candidate, you set up a scenario for him in which he receives a phone call quite possibly innocuous in nature, money is dangled in front of him, and your plot to assassinate and bomb gradually takes shape. After you introduce your own informant into the operation, you then run it like the classic FBI sting operation, which we have seen so many times over the past 10 years. You monitor and guide your target, going step by step, getting him more involved and committed. You provide him with money that comes out of an overseas account that you have set up, which is no problem at all for a sophisticated intelligence agency. You can even redirect calls using a switch so that when your target thinks he is dialing Tehran he is actually connected to a listening post in Washington. When the operation is ready to go, you arrest him, claiming as Preet Bharara, the federal attorney for the southern district of Manhattan recently did, that “no one was ever actually in any danger.” You time the arrest and the revelation of the case to the media to obtain maximum possible advantage from it.

Israel would run the operation in precisely the same fashion, assuming that it has access to U.S. immigration records, which may or may not be true, either with the consent of the federal government or clandestinely through one of its many friends in the bureaucracy. The rest of the operation would proceed just as if the CIA were running it. Indeed, one should not rule out the possibility that Israel might have run the operation jointly with the CIA.

Saudi Arabia would likely not have any access to U.S. immigration records, but it is possible that it could come up with a candidate using other resources, including work and travel records from the nearby Emirates, which are much frequented by Iranian travelers.

Given the fact that all three countries’ intelligence services could have run the false-flag operation, who would have the strongest motive? Cui bono, who benefits? Undoubtedly Israel would. Tel Aviv has been demanding military action against Iran for many years. A terrorist plot to assassinate a friendly ambassador in Washington would be considered a godsend by the Benjamin Netanyahu government, which has stated repeatedly that Iran is a threat and Washington should be taking the lead against it.

The United States has much less motive to create a new crisis with Iran, even accepting that the president would like to appear to be strong against terrorism and what he chooses to call state sponsors of terror in the lead-up to elections. If an armed conflict were somehow to start and go wrong, there would be considerable downside, making this far too risky to contemplate. The White House has several times warned Israel against starting a war with Iran, most recently three weeks ago when Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta visited Tel Aviv. President Obama might be willing to push hard against the Iranians to satisfy demands from Congress, the media, and the Israel Lobby, but he appears unwilling to employ military force.

The Saudis have no love for Iran but would be fearful of the consequences of what could quickly become a major war escalating on their doorstep, so their motivation for heightening tension is also very questionable, even if they would welcome someone else dealing with what they see as the Iranian threat.

The final question: Was it a conspiracy that was designed to fail? It would be a mistake to assume that just because the plot appears idiotic it could not be the product of a sophisticated intelligence service. In my own experience in the CIA, many operations were poorly planned and executed, and often something that appears implausible might be driven by its own perverse logic. In this case, the involvement of an identifiable DEA informant in the plot, if that was done deliberately, suggests that exposure was desired, perhaps due to some laudable

squeamishness about blowing up a restaurant or killing an ambassador in cold blood. That might mean that whoever constructed the operation was willing to have it become public knowledge because the publicity itself would be nearly as damaging as success, which is frequently how covert intelligence operations are designed. Would Israel be bold enough to stage a major terror operation in the United States capital? The Lavon Affair, the USS Liberty, Jonathan Pollard, and the still unexplained actions of Israel before 9/11 suggest that it might. If an Iranian plotter had killed the Saudi ambassador in Washington while blowing up a restaurant full of people, it would have been an act of war, a Pearl Harbor moment. If Tehran had apparently plotted to do so and failed because the plot was discovered, it could still be construed as an act of war by those willing to see it that way (Sen. Carl Levin, for instance). Either way it is blamed on the Iranian government, not on the actual false-flag perpetrator.

I am not suggesting that the above scenario necessarily took place, just describing how it might have been accomplished. My account differs in several details from the information that the U.S. government has either revealed through its court filing, stated in press briefings, or leaked to the media to bolster its case. At least some of the leaked material, most notably the information provided to The Washington Post’s Peter Finn, might reasonably be described as disinformation. Above all, the Obama administration and the FBI have made no effort to explain the role of the informant, who might have been an instigator or enabler of the terrorist plot, if such a plot ever existed, nor will they be generous in releasing information when Arbabsiar is tried. Of course, if the entire affair was a broadly based conspiracy orchestrated by the White House for political reasons, it would have been easy to carry out, as all the evidence and corroboration could have been fabricated from start to finish. That is perhaps the scariest possibility of all, a “homegrown” answer to the question “Whodunit?”

By Philip Giraldi

October 27, 2011 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Withdrawal of US Troops From Iraq Highly Suspect

Think-tank designs for Iran leave only Israeli attack & coaxed provocation for total war on table.
For ten months the Obama administration has presided over the "Arab Spring," a geopolitical Withdrawal of US Troops From Iraq Highly Suspect gambit years in the making, and executed simultaneously in multiple nations throughout the Middle East and North Africa in the beginning of 2011. The regional conflagration was stoked by a steady stream of first, denial, even feigned surprise, with covert support for US-backed opposition groups, then more overt support, and finally NATO airstrikes, weapons, training, and special operations forces lent to the rebellion in Libya and weapons and support sent to Syria’s militants. These collective efforts stretching from Tunisia and leading up to Iran’s doorstep serve a singular agenda -that is, to contain and ultimately overturn the reemergence of Russia as well as containing the rise of China.

Toppling Iran

Integral to this stated agenda, is the toppling of Iran’s government and its integration into the Wall Street-London "international order." Efforts to topple Syria’s government by US-backed and now apparently armed opposition groups aim to isolate and even provoke the Islamic Republic into a suitable justification for US or Israeli (or both) retaliation. As reported on extensively, the literal playbook from which these stratagems are drawn is the Fortune 500-funded Brookings Institution’s "Which Path to Persia?" report. In it, it specifically states:

"…it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.) "

The 2009 "Green Revolution" was just such an attempt at "covert regime change" to "goad Iran into such a provocation" though it ignominiously failed. It appears that in addition to funding, arming, and harboring the terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK), the US has also taken to entirely fabricating "such provocations." The recent DEA-Saudi bomb plot announced by Attorney General Eric Holder stands on tenuous grounds, even more so now that Iran has counterclaimed that the supposed Quds Forces member the US implicated may in fact be a member of the above stated US-backed MEK terrorist organization. The US has done all in its power to coax Saudi Arabia into taking a harder line against Tehran. The Brookings report had this to say about that in 2009:

"For instance, Saudi Arabia is positively apoplectic about the Iranians’ nuclear program, as well as about their mischief making in Lebanon, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories. Yet, so far, Riyadh has made clear that it will not support military operations of any kind against Iran. Certainly that could change, but it is hard to imagine what it would take."

"…it is hard to imagine what it would take." Perhaps MEK terrorists posing as Quds Forces, entrapping a drug addicted used-car salesman to arrange a bomb plot against a Saudi ambassador and then blaming it on Iran.

With the fate of Libya hanging in the balance, with US troops still occupying both Iraq and Afghanistan, and with renewed vigor aimed toward Syria after the alleged fall of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, it is incredibly unlikely that the US has abandoned its plans to ultimately topple the Iranian regime as the crescendo to this ongoing regional campaign. In fact, many amongst Obama’s own administration have been the most rabid supporters of executing the final leg of this long-term strategy started under the Bush administration. The 2008 presidential runner-up John McCain, and of course the same collection of unelected, corporate-funded policy makers from the halls of Brookings Institution, the Foreign Policy Initiative and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) have also been more than eager in pushing this agenda along.

That these policy makers, who have helped engineer and support the current course Obama is on, are now sulking over Obama’s decision to pull troops out of Iraq when in fact Obama doesn’t, never has, and never will make such decisions, is highly suspect. Kenneth Pollack, one of the co-authors of the "Which Path to Persia?" report, recently expressed dismay in his article titled, "With a Whimper, Not a Bang." Frederick Kagan, the corporate-funded AEI architect behind the Iraq "troop surge" also lamented in a piece titled, "Obama abandons Iraq." Kagan explicitly claims that the withdrawal would be "giving Tehran the single most important demand it has pursued for years—the complete withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Iraq."

Possible Scenarios

The US is at least peddling the illusion it is clearing out its holdings in Iraq, leaving a symbolic force for a reason – a reason that has to do with a final gambit to be played against Iran, the last domino to fall in the US-contrived "Arab Spring." These are two possible scenarios:

1. Leave a small symbolic force for the Iranians to attack in Iraq after a "unilateral" Israeli airstrike. Whatever Iran decides to do, it may not be able to do sustainably, but will do viciously in the opening phases. By leaving a symbolic force in Iraq, the US can garner the necessary sympathy and anger politically at home to launch a wider operation against Iran in "retaliation."

2. Feign as if the US is disengaging from the Middle East so when a false flag terror attack or other provocation is perpetrated against the US, it will look like an egregious act of war by Iran. While a shrinking US presence in the Middle East would logically engender even more patience in Tehran, the script writers of the latest DEA-Saudi bomb plot took special care to ensure the "Iran has become bolder" talking-point made it repetitively on air and into the minds of unsuspecting Americans.

This is more than mere idle speculation. In the Brookings Institution report, "Which Path to Persia?" nearly all but the most extreme measures proposed in the report have been executed. The only options left on the table unused include a unilateral Israeli airstrike designed to provoke a significant retaliation thus bringing the US into war with Iran and a variety of options to provoke a full-scale invasion.

In a section of the report titled, "Leave it to Bibi: Allowing or Encouraging an Israeli Military Strike," (page 89, page 102 of the .pdf) it appears that Israeli intelligence is also working with the terrorist organization MEK:

"Israeli intelligence operations against Iran were stepped up even earlier and have included use of third parties to publicize the Iranian threat without revealing the Israeli hand. Iran’s secret enrichment and heavy-water reactor programs were publicly exposed in August 2002 by an Iranian dissident group (the Mujahedin-e Khalq), which reportedly was unwittingly fed the information by Israeli intelligence."

The report goes on to say of an American approved Israeli airstrike:

"However, as noted in the previous chapter, the airstrikes themselves are really just the start of this policy. Again, the Iranians would doubtless rebuild their nuclear sites. They would probably retaliate against Israel, and they might retaliate against the United States, too (which might create a pretext for American airstrikes or even an invasion.)"

Allowing the Israelis to attack by air, and sacrificing US troops on the ground in Iraq as a pretext for greater war is most certainly a possibility. The report continues on by stating the necessity of maintaining a certain level of plausible deniablity regarding the Israeli airstrikes. US troops in Iraq would by default implicate America in any Israeli airstrike that would need to pass over Iraqi airspace. US troops "in retreat" in Iraq could possibly mitigate such implications as well as make an Iranian retaliation seem all the more "outrageous, deadly, and unprovoked."

We can be sure that after years of carrying forth an agenda that proceeded his presidency, Obama has not all the sudden decided to unilaterally pull troops from Iraq. His administration’s duplicity and eagerness throughout the US-contrived "Arab Spring" all but assure us that the overarching agenda still includes encircling and toppling the government in Iran. It has not escaped the attention of the White House that a withdrawal from Iraq would give Iran its greatly desired breathing room and would greatly diminish America’s influence throughout the Middle East.

Just like the false rapprochement of the West with Libya’s Qaddafi before the US rearmed, reorganized, and let loose the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), when the West returns to torment Tehran, it will come back with a vengeance. Keep an eye on Israel for their attack and the complicit United States waiting to once again "lead from behind." And if you have someone you know in the US military stationed in Iraq staying behind, prepare for the absolute worse. As Henry Kissinger once so bluntly stated, "military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy." (Woodward and Bernstein The Final Days in chapter 14). Certainly, a few dead G.I.s in Iraq after an Iranian retaliation for an Israeli airstrike would be just the pawns needed for "foreign policy" to move forward.

One can only hope this pessimistic analysis is entirely wrong, and that the US has overreached and has simply decided to withdraw from the battlefield and ultimately from empire. However, if unrest continues to unfold in Syria, which is essentially a low-intensity US proxy war against Damascus, and in turn against Tehran, we can be sure any optimism will be quickly dashed against the rocks by the Wall Street-London corporate-financier oligarchs.

Landdestroyer

October 25, 2011 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Why is There such Widspread Support in DC for Mojahedin Khalq?

Glancing over the invitations to briefings and rallies from organizations with names like the Iranian-American Community of Kansas, and the Iranian-American Community of North Texas—which include broad references to the "Iranian opposition" and looming "humanitarian catastrophes"—it’s fair to assume that these organizations represent a broad set of issues that face Iranians living here in the United States and back in their native country.

However, attending these events reveals that all of these groups have one primary, and rather narrow, aim: removing an organization known as the as the Mujahedin el-Khalq (MEK) or People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI) from the State Department’s foreign terrorist organization list, where it was placed in 1997. While advocacy groups that support the MEK assiduously cultivate an image as both the face of the Iranian émigré community in the United States and of the opposition to Supreme Leader Ali Khameini back in Iran, a range of Iran experts and members of the Iranian American community in the United States say they are neither. In fact, other Iranian Americans have felt compelled to launch a counter-campaign to oppose the MEK’s removal from the State Department’s list.

Thanks to an appeals court ruling, the State Department has been required to review the MEK’s inclusion on that list, and both sides anticipate a ruling by year’s end. But while the review has attracted a flurry of recent news coverage of the MEK and its alleged terrorist ties, what has been less examined is the impact this whole debate has had on American policy towards Iran and its people. MEK allies’ remarkably sophisticated and well-connected lobbying effort has sown confusion in Washington about the interests of the Iranian-American community as well as of the current generation of dissidents back in Iran. One expert on Iran—who declined to be quoted on the record given the heated nature of the current debate—told me that MEK lobbying efforts had managed only to produce “a distraction.”

Indeed, MEK supporters—including current and former U.S. government officials—often refer to the group as “the Iranian opposition,” or a symbol of “an uprising for the freedom of the Iranian people,” to quote recent statements by lawmakers, but that’s a very questionable assumption. And it prompts a set of policies that, however much they benefit the MEK, are at odds with what many experts say can best help the people of Iran.

THE MEK FORMED in the 1960s as one of a number of opposition groups that supported the overthrow of the Shah. Its early ideology was heavily influenced by Marxism, as well as the anti-colonial fervor then sweeping the globe. The MEK initially supported the Iranian Revolution in 1979 but soon had a falling out with the new regime under Ayatollah Khomeini, after which most of its supporters were either massacred or fled Iran in the 1980s. Many members of the group went to Iraq, and their cooperation with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war has since alienated much of the population in their native country.

Like the dissidents in Iran and its many expatriates, MEK members oppose the current regime in Tehran led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini. And the plight of MEK members since fleeing Iran in the 1980s certainly raises ongoing human rights concerns, particularly for the more than 3,000 members living as refugees in Iraq’s Camp Ashraf. Just this year, Amnesty International called on the Iraqi government to launch an investigation after violent clashes between Iraqi security forces and MEK members in Ashraf left more than 30 MEK exiles dead.

But according to a range of U.S. experts on Iran and Iranian Americans without personal ties to MEK members overseas, neither activists in Tehran nor the average Iranian American share MEK supporters’ top priorities. As Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Ray Takeyh put it flatly to a House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee in July, “Despite its activism in Western capitals, the MEK commands very little support within Iran,” due, in particular, he said, to the past alliance with Saddam.

In justifying its foreign terrorist organization listing, the State Department cited terrorist attacks MEK members committed in the 1970s, which included the murder of Americans, as well as attacks within Iran in the 1990s. MEK supporters argue the listing was politically motivated and that the group’s members have since renounced violence. They also say the Islamic Republic and its allies are behind much of the negative portrayals of their movement.

Despite their designation, the backers of the MEK have long enjoyed an elevated status largely by virtue of being the best organized and, for a while, the sole Iranian-American group involved in national politics. While Iranian Americans have some of the highest rates of education and voting participation of any immigrant community, their fragmentation, as well as a general skepticism about government among first-generation Iranian Americans, allowed allies of the MEK to long have the run of Washington.

In the last decade, however, a second generation of Iranian Americans has begun to take a keen interest in the policy-making process, particularly on issues that affect their community and their relatives back in Iran. That was what generated the impetus for the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), an Iranian-American advocacy group that was founded nine years ago. The NIAC now boasts 4,000 dues-paying members and a mailing list of over 40,000. But Abdi and his colleagues have found that one of their challenges has been breaking through the monopoly MEK activists have enjoyed for so long, particularly on Capitol Hill. “The only interactions with the Iranian-American community” many in Congress had ever had before NIAC, Abdi recalled, “was with these MEK activists.” When it first began reaching out to congressional staffers, its members were surprised by how much confusion they encountered over their agenda and identity. Some staffers would cut them off mid-pitch, saying they had just spoken to their members in weeks prior, or they made assumptions about the sort of issues the group wanted to discuss.

Longevity alone does not fully explain the reach of the MEK’s allies—then and now. The group’s activists have also conducted what even their critics readily acknowledge has been a tremendously savvy and effective lobbying and grassroots campaign, driven in part by the sheer dedication of their members and in part by significant amounts of money from undisclosed sources. One Senate staffer recounted to me how, for a period of about five months, his office “heard from people in the state all the time, and I do mean all the time,” about the human rights abuses suffered by MEK members. “It was clear they were traveling the entire state trying to meet with every state leader trying to plead their case in order to get a meeting with the senator,” the aide recounted. Other congressional staffers have told me about similarly persistent outreach to their Washington and district offices.
Despite these anecdotes, it is very hard to measure the exact scope of grassroots and financial support the MEK and its de-listing campaign enjoy in the United States. The group’s supporters have had a presence on Capitol Hill for years, but it was only in 2010 that lobbying registration reports began to appear for groups advocating the removal of the MEK from the State Department’s terror list. The Iranian-American Community of Northern California, for example, paid the lobbying firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP $100,000 for that purpose through the first half of 2011. Various other groups, meanwhile—with monikers like the Iranian-American Community of Kansas, the California Society for Democracy and Human Rights, and Democracy International—have organized Capitol Hill briefings and other roundtables featuring high-profile paid speakers; rallied at the State Department and across the country; and taken out full page print ads in The Washington Post and banner ads on The New York Times website.
The press contact for a number of those organizations, however, could not provide any details on how the various groups are related, who their leadership is, or how many members they have, explaining he was just a summer intern. No one else at these organizations responded to my inquiries. Past conversations I’ve had with MEK activists have yielded similarly vague explanations of their membership and financing. But they consistently maintain, as the intern said in an e-mail, that “of the active Iranian Americans in this country, the largest number support the cause of Camp Ashraf.”
What is quantifiable is the impact their outreach has had. 51 Democrats and 45 Republicans have signed onto a House resolution introduced this year calling on the State Department to remove the MEK from its list of foreign terrorist organizations. As has been widely reported, the group has also attracted a long list of high-ranking former officials and politicians—including former FBI Director Louis Freeh, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, and former Democratic National Committee Chairman and Vermont Governor Howard Dean—to their cause. Many, like Dean, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, and former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, have acknowledged being paid substantial speaker fees to appear at MEK events, but they maintain that their support for the de-listing campaign is independent of financial considerations.
Thus a large cadre of American public figures regularly takes to the floor of Congress, the airwaves, and the op-ed pages to draw attention to the human rights concerns at Camp Ashraf and the reasons for removing the MEK from the foreign terrorist organization’s list, as Freeh did just this week in The New York Times.

UPSTART GROUPS LIKE NIAC have sought to expand the number of Iranian Americans participating in national political advocacy, as well as the range of issues they bring before policymakers. But increasingly, they have spent their time pushing back against the MEK, rather than advocating for a more robust dialogue with Iran, for example, or opposing broad-based sanctions that hurt average Iranian citizens, which top their list of priorities.

In the past nine months, the group has launched its own full-on campaign to oppose lifting the MEK’s terrorist designation, including a series of briefings, grassroots outreach, and a media blitz. “We would love to sidestep it,” Abdi said of the issues raised by the MEK, “and for a long time we did.” But, he said, the group’s leaders became worried this year that the State Department would give into the pressure to remove the MEK from its terror list, which they believe would send the wrong signal to Iranian citizens.

Regardless of where they stand on the MEK’s terror listing, U.S. public officials across the political spectrum profess a desire to support the Iranian people and their democratic aspirations, even as relations with the Iranian government sink to a new low. They would be better able to pursue that agenda if they distinguish between different segments of Iranian Americans, recognize the limits of the MEK’s reach, and determine how best to promote dialogue with the Iranian people, accordingly.

Emily Cadei, The New Republican

Emily Cadei covers foreign policy for Congressional Quarterly.

October 23, 2011 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Former MEK Leader Confirms Terror Conspirator Affiliated with the group

You’ll recall that the U.S. claimed that the Iranian alleged conspirator in the terror plot against the Saudi ambassador, Gholam Shakuri, was a Revolutionary Guard (IRG) official. Though many Iranians have scoured every resource they could think of, none have found evidence of such a person with any IRG affiliation. If the U.S. has such evidence it ought to produce it if it Richard Silverstein wants to be believed. Yesterday, the well-placed Alef site, run by an Iranian majlis member who’s run for president twice, alleged that Shakuri is in fact a high level Mujahadeen al Khalq (MEK) leader. It offered evidence to support the charge.

Today, the official MEK leadership has denied that Shakuri is a member and the U.S. has also denied the charge. But in fact, a former high-ranking MEK leader, Massoud Khodabandeh (he has allowed me to use his name), writing in the Gulf2000 listserv, confirmed that Shakuri is in fact an MEK member. He cautions that there may be more than one Gholam Shakuri, and the one who is the MEK member may not be the same Shakuri the U.S. has named. While this may be true, this new development moves Shakuri a lot closer to being MEK than being IRG. And moves the entire U.S. account of this supposed crime closer to the trash heap.

In its story containing the U.S. denial, the NY Times quotes U.S. sources responding to the Iranian charge that Shakuri held or holds a U.S. passport:

Mr. Shakuri is not a United States citizen and does not have an American passport.
I have no doubt that Shakuri is not a U.S. citizen and also that he may not currently have a U.S. passport. But this statement, at least as portrayed by Scott Shane, does not say the U.S. never issued such a passport in his name. There are many ways and reasons a non-U.S. citizen may obtain a U.S. passport including fraud and the possibility that Shakuri was performing a task for the U.S. government or CIA and needed such a document. I am speculating, but in light of the paucity of evidence the U.S. has offered to support its claims, we must parse the information it has distributed to try to determine credibility and accuracy.

There is another intriguing element that the Alef story added to the mix. It claimed that Interpol had released information allowing confirmation of Shakuri as an MEK official. The NY Times says this:

An Interpol spokeswoman declined to comment. But an American official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Interpol had discovered no link to the opposition group, calling the Iranian news report “pure fiction.”

While I do not know the protocols that Interpol follows in making public statements, I’d think that if the organization had been portrayed falsely by Iran, that it would want to say so. I’d also think that the U.S. would be a far more important national partner to Interpol than Iran and that Interpol would also want to deny this story if it were false because the U.S. would benefit from this. The fact that it refuses to do so raises if not a red, then surely a yellow flag for me.

The fact that a U.S. official seeks to speak on behalf of Interpol and under the cloak of anonymity is highly dubious. If they want us to believe what they claim, then I’m afraid it will have to be Interpol speaking on its own behalf.

Tikun Olam

October 22, 2011 0 comments

MEK Camp Ashraf

MEK Terror group Supporters Demand Delay in Closure of Iraqi Camp Ashraf

Fresh off Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s statement to the United Nations insisting that MEK Terror group Supporters Demand Delay in Closure of Iraqi Camp Ashraf Mujahedin e-Khalq (MeK)’s Camp Ashraf should be closed by year’s end has sprung the State Department-listed Foreign Terrorist Organization into action, with a series of condemnations from both them and their supporters.

A gathering of hundreds of MeK supporters rallied in Brussels, today, with former US Senator Howard Dean condemning the idea of closing the camp and demanding that the US force Iraq to postpone the closure before ending the occupation.

“The US remains morally responsible for the people of Ashraf,” Dean insisted. The camp was established by Saddam Hussein as a headquarters for his allies in the MeK in 1986. The US seized the camp during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the group negotiated a ceasefire.

But while the MeK is enjoying something of a renaissance among US officials as a group of “freedom fighters” the group’s open hostility toward Iran and history as a Saddam ally has earned it considerable scorn among the Maliki government, which is determined to see the camp closed.

Jason Ditz

October 22, 2011 0 comments

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