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The Third View on Mujahedin Khalq

Mujahedin Khalq Organization members' families

Iraqi Newspaper on families of MKO hostages

Following the recent trip of the third group of Liberty residents’ families to Iraq, the Iraqi mass media widely covered the news of the event.

Iraqi newspapers and websites published reports on grieves of families of residents, who are not allowed to visit their loved ones taken as hostages by leaders of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/the cult of Rajavi).

Iraqi official newspapers such as Kul al Akhbar and news websites like Babil News, Ketabat fil Mizan and Wikileaks Baghdad published letters written by the families and reported on their efforts to visit their loved ones in Camp Liberty.

In a full-page report, Kul al Akhbar reported on the activities of the picketing families in front of Camp Liberty, interviewing some of them. The report included photos of the picketing families under the title: “A number of Iranian families told Kul al Akhbar the tragic story of their grieving children.”

 “Parents who are awaiting the visit of their dear ones despite all troubles”, the report describes the families. “Who help their desires come true?”

The newspaper calls Iraqi Government, the United Nations and all human rights bodies to pressure the MKO leaders to evacuate Camp Liberty.

Kul al Akhbar reported that in Camp Liberty human rights are violated; people are terribly deprived of freedom. Hostages are not allowed to contact their families and families – who come from different towns of Iran- are not permitted to meet their children even for an hour. Instead, families are verbally abused and attacked by the brainwashed members of the group.

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Howard Dean Says He’s Not a Lobbyist But He Sure Acts Like One

Last week, we reported that Howard Dean, former presidential candidate and current supporter of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, had attacked Bernie Sanders for supporting a single-payer health plan, claiming that having the government pay for everyone’s health care would “undo people’s health care” and result in “chaos.” In our story, we noted that Dean, once a proponent of single-payer, now works for the lobbying practice of Dentons, a law firm retained to lobby on behalf of a number of pharmaceutical and for-profit health care interests.

In response, Dean tweeted: “I continue to support Single pay or [sic] and I do not Lobby.”

He tweeted the next day: “The Intercept=The Daily Caller of the left. Same propaganda techniques.”

Dean did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Dentons’ director of communications, Bennett Kleinberg, wrote to us to say, “Howard Dean is a senior advisor with Dentons in our Public Policy and Regulation practice. However, he is not a registered lobbyist and does not lobby public officials on behalf of clients of the Firm.”

Since joining the lobbying industry, Dean has oddly argued on multiple occasions that he does “not lobby.” But he engages in virtually every lobbying activity imaginable, helping corporate interests reach out to lawmakers on legislation, advising them on political strategy, and using his credibility as a former liberal lion to build public support on behalf of his lobby firm clients.

In his new career, he has helped drug companies maintain monopoly power, reversed his old positions on Medicare prices, and worked to undermine a critical component of the Affordable Care Act. Though known for his anti-war rhetoric in 2004, Dean has accepted money from Mojahedin-e Khalq, an extremist group seeking regime change in Iran and has criticized President Obama’s negotiations with Iran.

The fact that Dean is not a registered lobbyist reflects a distinction that is largely meaningless in today’s Washington. Thousands of other professionals in the lobbying business have either never registered or de-registered and lobby registration law has almost never been enforced. Newt Gingrich, who was widely criticized in 2011 for acting as a lobbyist for various clients without registering, was hired last year by Dentons’ lobbying practice, where he works closely with Dean to consult with clients on political strategy. As Legal Times reported, the Dean-Gingrich team is now a selling point for Dentons as the “pair aims to become another Washington-based bipartisan tag team who can act as political soothsayers for whichever corporate clients call upon them.”

Helping keep drugs expensive

In 2009, Dean joined the lobbying division of the law firm McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP, which represents a number of health care interests. Through the firm, he was retained that year to work for Biotechnology Industry Organization, or BIO, a lobbying group for biotech and pharmaceutical companies.

After being retained by BIO, Dean authored an opinion column for The Hill newspaper arguing in support of a bill backed by his client that called for extending the exclusivity period for drugs made from living organisms, such as vaccines or Herceptin/trastuzumab, a treatment for breast cancer.

Dean claimed in the piece that a “commonsense and fair approach, similar to the process and timeline currently in place for generic versions of chemical-based medicines, would allow the original developer of the biologic to protect the proprietary data used to develop the medicine for at least 12 years.”

Dean’s call for extending the exclusivity period for biologics — a move that would boost prices for life-saving drugs — shocked patient and consumer advocates. Dean did not initially disclose that he was working for BIO in his column, although The Hill later updated his byline to note that Dean’s law firm represented biotech companies.

The inside story of Dean’s work for the biotech lobby was revealed in an article by BioCentury, a trade publication. According to the report, Dean and his former campaign manager Joe Trippi were hired by BIO to help move forward the biologic legislation backed by the industry. Jim Greenwood, the president of BIO, told BioCentury that Dean was brought on to help with messaging, strategy, and even to contact lawmakers on Capitol Hill on behalf of the industry. BIO made clear that Dean was hired specifically for his reputation as a liberal. “As a physician clearly focused on health care, a Democrat leader and clearly to left of center, his efforts were impactful,” Greenwood said.

Dean defended his efforts to BioCentury by saying, “I do not lobby.”

In the end, a version of the biologic legislation was folded into the Affordable Care Act.

“Howard Dean navigated around the lobbying rules to push Democrats to back big drug companies on the term of the monopoly for biologic drugs,” said Jamie Love, the director of Knowledge Ecology International, a nonprofit organization that addresses human rights aspects of intellectual property rights and medical innovation. “His ‘trust me, I’m a doctor’ routine was worth billions to Roche and the other companies he represented on this. Now it is very hard to undo the damage.”

Screen grab of Dentons’ website with Howard Dean’s bio.

 Photo: Dentons.com

Bashing PhRMA, then parroting it

On the 2004 campaign trail, Dean criticized the role of health care lobbyists in setting prescription drug policies, such as the deal engineered by drug companies that prevents Medicare from using its bargaining power as the Veterans Administration does to negotiate for lower drug prices. Such a change would save over $116 billion over 10 years. Dean told the Associated Press: “As president, a high and early legislative priority of my new administration would be to improve the prescription drug benefit to create one that is affordable, federally administered, and for all of America’s seniors; uses the government’s buying power on behalf of 41 million seniors to negotiate and drive down drug prices; contains meaningful cost containment including reimportation of safe, effective medicines.”

But Dean, whose new employer, Dentons, represents the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the powerful drug lobby group known as PhRMA, has now changed his tune. During a discussion with Gingrich last year, Dean reversed his position and said he is now against allowing Medicare to bargain for lower drug prices. Dean told the audience that some expensive drugs, like those used to treat hepatitis C, could eventually save money long term, a claim Inside Health Policy noted closely echoed drugmakers’ arguments.

In September of last year, Dean took his newfound love of drug companies to the pages of the New York Times. In a letter to the editor opposing an op-ed that proposed to allow Medicare to bargain for cheaper prices, Dean wrote that “schemes to launch a federal attack on one of the last growing, innovative industries in America are in the long run counterproductive for both job creation and, more important, for the health of human beings around the world.”

Working to undermine Obamacare

In 2013, Dean again surprised health care advocates by publishing a Wall Street Journal opinion column criticizing a key component of the Affordable Care Act: the Independent Payment Advisory Board, also known as IPAB. The board is designed to allow a group of experts to make recommendations on how Medicare can save money, but only in ways that do not reduce benefits and low-income subsidies or raise premiums. Dean, repeating GOP arguments against the board, called IPAB “essentially a health-care rationing body,” and he said it should be repealed.

Health policy experts reacted furiously. The New Republic writer Jonathan Cohn noted that it was quite puzzling that Dean, supposedly a supporter of government programs designed to use evidence-based approaches to set provider payment rates, would suddenly decide to oppose IPAB. “Or maybe it’s not so strange to hear Dean say this,” Cohn wrote. “Since his career in politics ended, Dean has found a home in the K Street establishment he once held in such disdain.”

“Shame on Howard Dean,” wrote economist J. Bradford DeLong, who noted that it appears as though Dean was “being mendacious to try to protect the profits of the clients of McKenna Long & Aldridge.”

Dean conceded to Time that his firm has clients that oppose IPAB, but refused to disclose them.

And in December 2009, as the Affordable Care Act nearly died as conservative opposition grew to a fever pitch and Democratic leaders struggled to find enough votes to move it forward, Dean appeared on national network news programs to call for President Obama to scrap the legislation and start over, a process that would have doomed any chance for health care reform.

Paid by Iranian extremist group, bashing Iran negotiations

The Mojahedin-e Khalq, an exiled Iranian group that has attempted for years to overthrow the government of Iran, paid Dean to help in its campaign to be delisted as a U.S.-recognized terrorist group. In 2011, the Wall Street Journal reported that Dean was receiving speaking fees from the group. Around that time, Dean began vociferously arguing on behalf of the MEK, even though he conceded that he had known little about the group before joining its cause.

That year, Dean traveled along with other paid MEK supporters, including Rudy Giuliani, to appear in Berlin with the group and demand that Western nations recognize the MEK leader Maryam Rajavi as the president of Iran. In addition to carrying out a campaign of terrorism against Iran, the MEK helped Saddam Hussein after the Gulf War crush rebellions in Iraq’s Shiite and Kurdish communities. “Take the Kurds under your tanks, and save your bullets for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards,” Rajavi once said.

In 2014, Dean came out against President Obama’s policy of engagement with Iran, declaring that the U.S. negotiations failed to account for the interests of the MEK. (Dean even spoke on Capitol Hill on behalf of an MEK-affiliated group, which posted the video online.) Last year, Dean continued to advocate against a nuclear accord with Iran, calling Secretary of State John Kerry and Obama “far, far too eager for a deal with Iran.”

Dean’s success on the other side of the revolving door rests in part on his credibility as a left-wing icon. And yet, despite his fiery rhetoric on the campaign trail in 2003, Dean by most accounts governed Vermont as a business-friendly, moderate Democrat. Even his record on single-payer is far less supportive than what he has attempted to project.

In 1991, as the lieutenant governor of Vermont, Dean testified in support of single-payer. But as governor, he quickly backtracked, claiming that single-payer would be too expensive for the state.

John McClaughry, Dean’s Republican opponent for governor during the 1991 election, recalls that Dean continually shifted the goal posts for single-payer. “I don’t know that Howard has any fixed principles about this issue — it’s what sells at the moment,” McClaughry said.

Dean’s evolution as a politician is discussed at length during the first Huffington Post podcast Candidate Confessional. During the interview, Dean explains that he knew well before the infamous post-Iowa caucus scream that he had little chance of becoming president as an insurrectionist populist. He yearned to be regarded as a serious, establishment-friendly politician, but was too slow in making the transition as a candidate.

“I couldn’t make the turn to become an establishment candidate,” he lamented.

Contact the author:

Lee Fang, the intercept

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Two, Three, Many Chalabis

Exiles bend Washington’s ear—and drag us into conflict.

Ahmad Chalabi’s death on November 3rd brought him back to public prominence for the first time in years. As the avalanche of editorials exploring Chalabi’s life showed, Americans are still divided about his motivations—conniving or noble—and the extent of his role in misdirecting Middle East policy. But whether he was a master manipulator or merely manipulated, Chalabi was little different from any archetypal Westernized, pro-democratic exile. His life and influence in Washington should serve as a warning to U.S. policymakers: beware exiles who promise much but possess their own agendas.

Chalabi was the face of American policy toward Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, cultivating strong ties with the U.S. military and intelligence agencies. Though he had been an exile for much of his life, his influence was predicated on his supposed knowledge of and connections inside Iraq. Indeed, his Iraqi National Congress was a vehicle for U.S. opposition to Saddam Hussein throughout the 1990s, receiving millions of dollars from both the CIA and directly from Congress.

Yet Chalabi’s sway within Iraq was less than he implied to policymakers. Despite U.S. financial support, his attempted coup against Saddam in 1995 collapsed when the Iraqi army failed to fold as he expected, leading to the deaths of a number of his own men. Though the CIA largely stopped supplying Chalabi after this debacle, his influence in Washington continued to grow, in particular among a subset of influential neoconservative politicians—including Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld—who were receptive to Chalabi’s pro-democratic pronouncements.

After the 9/11 attacks, these relationships were to prove key in the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Though many point to Chalabi’s role in providing flawed intelligence—the Iraqi National Congress was behind the defectors whose unsubstantiated claims pointed to Saddam’s supposed weapons of mass destruction—his quiet conversations with policymakers may have been more instrumental. He convinced administration insiders that the takeover of Iraq would require few American troops, that Iraqis themselves would rise up, and that the country would transition easily to democracy.

There is little to be gained from further recriminations about Chalabi’s role in the Iraq War. But policymakers could certainly learn from this episode. Though Chalabi was perhaps the most prominent example in recent history, the role of exiles on the political scene is not new. Nor is their influence limited to Washington: groups such as Boris Berezovsky’s London-based group of Russian exiles have attempted to influence British policymakers to oppose the Putin regime. The appeal of such exiles to Western policymakers is obvious: these individuals promise insider information about some of the world’s most closed regimes, like the Soviet Union of old, Libya, or North Korea.

As Chalabi proved, however, exiles also have a strong incentive to mislead. The role of exiles in U.S. Cuba policy during the 1960s was similarly catastrophic. Among the most prominent of these exiles was José Miró Cardona, a former confidante of Fidel Castro. Under his leadership, the Cuban Revolutionary Council cooperated closely with the Kennedy administration in its anti-Castro activities, culminating in the Bay of Pigs disaster. Like Chalabi’s 1995 coup, that operation failed in part because the Cuban exiles dramatically overestimated their support within Cuba.

From Chiang Kai-shek in the 1960s to Garry Kasparov today, U.S. policymakers have often looked favorably on opposition politicians when they visit Washington, regardless of their actual levels of support at home. And with the possibility of American taxpayer aid of millions or billions of dollars in the balance, the incentive for foreign dissidents to overrepresent their own support and underestimate the difficulties associated with regime change is high.

Policymakers in Washington are not blameless in this. A recent invitation by Congress to the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group, to testify before the House Subcommittee on Terrorism on issues relating to Iran and ISIS highlights how little scrutiny such groups sometimes face. Though certainly a vocal opponent of the regime in Tehran, MEK was only removed by the State Department from the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2012, after heavily lobbying Congress. The group is communist and is often described as a cult. It is so extreme and so unrepresentative of the Iranian opposition in general that other regional experts testifying before Congress refused to appear on the same panel.

In today’s Syrian conflict, the lack of a well-connected opposition-in-exile has made it somewhat easier for policymakers to resist calls to overthrow the Assad regime. If there were a Syrian Chalabi, it might well be the case that the U.S. would be attempting regime change in Damascus rather than concentrating on ISIS.

What Chalabi’s story highlights is the need for skepticism among policymakers. Machiavelli once warned: “How vain the faith and promise of men who are exiles. Such is their extreme desire to return to their homes that they naturally believe many things that are not true, and add many others on purpose … they will fill you with hopes to that degree that if you attempt to act upon them, you will incur a fruitless expense or engage in an undertaking that will involve you in ruin.” Ahmad Chalabi epitomized this problem—and there are many more like him.

By Emma Ashford

Emma Ashford is a visiting research fellow at the Cato Institute.

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Beware of Exiles and Their Promises

Emma Ashford points out some of the dangers of making policy with the guidance of self-interested exiles:

Policymakers in Washington are not blameless in this. A recent invitation by Congress to the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group, to testify before the House Subcommittee on Terrorism on issues relating to Iran and ISIS highlights how little scrutiny such groups sometimes face. Though certainly a vocal opponent of the regime in Tehran, MEK was only removed by the State Department from the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2012, after heavily lobbying Congress. The group is communist and is often described as a cult. It is so extreme and so unrepresentative of the Iranian opposition in general that other regional experts testifying before Congress refused to appear on the same panel.

Ashford is right about all of this, and she had more to say along these lines in her excellent presentation at our conference in November. I would just add that the failure of policymakers goes beyond the lack of scrutiny applied to exile groups and individuals. Many policymakers are so preoccupied with hostility towards a certain regime that they will be go out of their way to find and promote the exiles that share their position, and they will do so knowing that the exiles aren’t what they claim to be. They will then boast that a position held by a few Westerners and an extremely unrepresentative exile group represents “the will” of the nation in question. The support of the exiles “legitimizes” the hawks’ desire for regime change by providing “evidence” that U.S. interference will be welcomed (useful for P.R. purposes if for nothing else), and the hawks’ backing gives the exiles a stamp of approval in Washington.

The ongoing rehabilitation of the MEK is a good example of this. Most Iranians in Iran and around the world detest the MEK for good reason, but to listen to their many fans in and out of government one would think that they area democratic government-in-waiting and that cult leader Maryam Rajavi is Liberty incarnate. That allows many Iran hawks to align themselves openly with a group that is rejected by Iranians everywhere while presenting themselves as champions of the “Iranian people” against their government. The views and preferences of the people in the other country are of no concern for the hawks except insofar as they can be misrepresented to support their preferred policy. The exiles pretend to speak for their country, and their patrons here pretend to believe them. Maybe a few are genuinely gullible enough to believe that a totalitarian cult is Iran’s real “secular, democratic opposition,” but most can’t be that clueless and are cynically indulging a horrible organization for their own reasons.

Something similar happens with political oppositions in other countries that don’t have much representation in Washington. Instead of accepting the promises of exiles, many interventionists will claim to know the goals of a foreign opposition movement because those happen to be their goals. They will cite the opposition’s imaginary preferences in our policy debates to insist that the U.S. ought to be doing what they claim the opposition wants. Iran hawks adopted the Green movement protests because they wrongly saw them as an opportunity to destabilize and even topple the regime, and they faulted Obama for “missing” that opportunity by not “doing more” to support them. It didn’t matter to them that most protesters didn’t want U.S. help, and it also didn’t matter that the protesters weren’t seeking regime change. Iran hawks deemed the protests worthy of U.S. support in large part because they perceived them to have the potential to bring down the regime, and once it became clear that this wasn’t going to happen they lost interest in the Iranian opposition until it was time to draft them into the campaign against the nuclear deal very much against their will.

In all of this, U.S. interests are entirely neglected, and more often than not the interests of the exiles’ country are also ignored, and both countries end up being ill-served by the ambitions of exiles and the delusions of hawks.

By Daniel Larison,

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

IAEA Intelligence Acquisition Practices

Tariq Rauf, a former Canadian diplomat, and Robert Kelley, a former US nuclear weapon scientist, have published an assessment of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) handling of the Iranian case on the website of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Both were working in the IAEA secretariat during the years that followed Iran’s 2003 admission that it had failed to declare certain nuclear material and activities, Rauf in the external relations division and Kelley in the safeguards department. So their assessment benefits from first-hand knowledge gained on the inside.

The following passage concludes their assessment:

A structural weakness of the IAEA is that there is no transparent process for the supply of intelligence information and confirmation of its authenticity. The usual process is for a Member State(s) to provide the intelligence information either in documentation or electronic form to a special assistant in the Director General’s office and/or to the Deputy Director General for Safeguards, alternatively to give a closed briefing in its embassy/mission. The IAEA then deals with the information as described in an earlier section above. There is no established process to share such information with the accused State or with the Board of Governors….

The supply and use of intelligence information is a sensitive yet complex issue…. The IAEA cannot serve as a feedback loop to intelligence agencies on the veracity of information provided by them…. Nor can or should the IAEA rely on such information without confirming its authenticity. This obviously leaves the IAEA in a difficult position as is clearly evidenced by the Iran PMD file where the Agency seems to have been caught short.

The authors recommend that the Board put in place a methodology for the acceptance and use of intelligence information drawing from the practices of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO). In these two organizations, allegations of non-compliance can be raised by any State Party which provides information to the Director General, who in turn shares it with the Executive Council. The Executive Council is convened; the Accuser State puts forward its case on allegations of non-compliance or suspicious activities in another State along with supporting information/evidence. The Accused State has the opportunity to present its defence. Following deliberations, the Executive Council can stop a challenge inspection in the case of the OPCW or authorize an on-site inspection in the case of the CTBTO. Such a practice could serve the IAEA well…. In fact, the JCPOA contains a somewhat similar provision for the Joint Commission in paragraph 36 on dispute resolution…

It is essential that the IAEA Board expeditiously come up with a mechanism governing the provision and handling of intelligence information to the IAEA Secretariat. There is great potential for misuse of such information and of suborning the independence of the Agency in the absence of such a mechanism, as abundantly demonstrated by the cases of Iraq, Iran and Syria in recent times.”

A Lack of Confidence

This passage contains echoes of an intervention by the Russian Federation’s governor to the IAEA, Grigory Berdennikov, at an IAEA safeguards symposium in October 2014:

The Secretariat has the right to use for safeguards implementation all safeguards relevant information available to the Agency about a State. This information includes, inter alia, data from open sources and data provided by third parties. It should be noted that third parties include not only States that provide information with regard to another State but also organizations and even private individuals. 

No  proper  mechanism  that  could  guarantee  the accuracy and  authenticity  of information  used for safeguards purposes  is  provided for [in the report under consideration].  In essence it  is suggested that  all analysis  should  be done by the Secretariat as decisions on whether certain  data  can  be  used  for  safeguards purposes are left entirely with the Secretariat. Member States, according to this approach, should simply trust the Secretariat’s choice of information.

The risk here is obvious. False allegations generated by interested parties in order to exercise political pressure on a State unfortunately remain part of the current international landscape.  They  are  quite  common  in  many  areas, including  non-proliferation,  and  one  should  admit  could  be  very  important,  sometimes involving issues of war and peace.  

We think that if the Secretariat decides to use any information, except for data obtained through its own inspection activity, it should duly disclose its origin and be ready to defend its credibility in an open discussion at the Board of Governors. Every State should have the right  to  publicly  defend  itself  against  false  allegations  and accusations generated by interested  third  parties  or  by  the  media.”

These passages reflect a lack of confidence in the authenticity of some of the intelligence material on Iran submitted to the Agency by member states. There is no proof that any of this information was fabricated. But that lack of confidence is not unreasonable, because motives for fabrication can be imagined without straying far into the thickets of conspiracy theory.

Grounds for Doubt

Gareth Porter has written in A Manufactured Crisis that, according to a former German foreign ministry official, German intelligence obtained the “alleged studies” that underpinned the PMD case against Iran from a member of the Mujahideen E-Khalq (MEK) in 2004. MEK hostility to the Islamic Republic is well-documented. Is it inconceivable that this source forged or fabricated that material? The material was never shown to Iran in full and it contains factual inaccuracies and anomalies for which a satisfactory explanation has never been offered.

In autumn 2007, the US, UK, France, and Israel were furious with the Agency’s then Director General Mohamad El Baradei because he had agreed to a work-plan with Iran and was well on his way to clearing the Agency’s last remaining “issues of concern.” Those issues cleared, these states would be bereft of sources of pressure on Iran to submit to their demands.

In that situation there could have been a temptation to produce information that would appear to corroborate aspects of the “alleged studies.” Initially El Baradei and some of his advisers had doubted the authenticity of these studies. But in early 2008 the studies, apparently corroborated by fresh information, metamorphosed into a “possible military dimension.” From then on they were the West’s instrument of choice for keeping Iran under international pressure. In November 2011, they formed the core of an IAEA assessment that persuaded EU member states to adopt harsh economic sanctions against Iran, and Asian states to comply with US secondary sanctions.

Was any temptation to fabricate resisted? One would like to think so. But, given the Stuxnet program to sabotage Iran’s centrifuge machines, and hints that a hostile intelligence agency commissioned the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, one has to wonder whether certain states would have hesitated to resort to fabrication to get themselves out of a spot of difficulty in autumn 2007.

Such speculations explain the lack of confidence implicit in the recommendations of Rauf and Kelley, and the intervention of Berdennikov. The IAEA Board of Governors can ignore that lack of confidence—and may well choose to do so. But that will be short-sighted. Over time allowing distrust in the Agency’s intelligence-acquisition practices to fester can weaken international acceptance of the Agency as an impartial and objective verifier of compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Rauf and Kelley recommend drawing lessons from OPCW and CTBT practices and provisions. No doubt there are other options. Reconciling source protection with transparency and due process may not be easy. But a collective Board effort to find a solution can heal some of the divisions within the IAEA membership that perceptions of Western lack of scruples in prosecuting the case against Iran have helped to cause.

About the Author

Peter Jenkins was a British career diplomat for 33 years, following studies at the Universities of Cambridge and Harvard. He served in Vienna (twice), Washington, Paris, Brasilia and Geneva. He specialized in global economic and security issues. His last assignment (2001-06) was that of UK Ambassador to the IAEA and UN (Vienna). Since 2006 he has represented the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership, advised the Director of IIASA and set up a partnership, ADRgAmbassadors, with former diplomatic colleagues, to offer the corporate sector dispute resolution and solutions to cross-border problems. He was an associate fellow of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy from 2010 to 2012. He writes and speaks on nuclear and trade policy issues.

by Peter Jenkins

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

The IAEA’s “Final Assessment”

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) assessment has cleared the way for the board of governors to end the Agency’s extraordinary investigation into accusations of Iran’s past nuclear weapons work. But a closer examination of the document reveals much more about the political role that the Agency has played in managing the Iran file.

Contrary to the supposed neutral and technical role that Director General Yukiya Amano has constantly invoked and the news media has long accepted without question, the Agency has actually been serving as prosecutor for the United States in making a case that Iran has had a nuclear weapons program.

The first signs of such an IAEA role appeared in 2008 after the Bush administration insisted that the Agency make a mysterious collection of intelligence documents on a purported Iranian nuclear weapons research program the centerpiece of its Iran inquiry. The Agency’s partisan role was fully developed, however, only after Amano took charge in late 2009. Amano got U.S. political support for the top position in 2009 because he had enthusiastically supported the Bush administration’s pressure on Mohammed ElBaradei on those documents when Amano was Japan’s permanent representative to the IAEA in 2008.

Amano delivered the Agency’s November 2011 report just when the Obama administration needed additional impetus for its campaign to line up international support for “crippling sanctions” on Iran. He continued to defend that hardline position and accuse Iran of failing to cooperate as the Obama administration sought to maximize the pressure on Iran from 2012 to 2015.

When the Obama administration’s interests shifted from pressuring Iran to ensuring that the nuclear agreement with Iran would be completed and fully implemented, Amano’s role suddenly shifted as well. In late June, according to Iranian officials involved in the Vienna negotiations, Secretary of State John Kerry reached agreement with both the Iranians and Amano that the “possible military dimensions” (PMD) issue would be resolved through a report by Amano before the end of the year.

Based on that agreement, Amano would write a report that would reach no definitive conclusion about the accusations of nuclear weapons work but nevertheless bring the PMD inquiry to an end . The report was still far from even-handed. It could not be, because Amano had embraced the intelligence documents that the United States and Israel had provided to the IAEA, around which the entire investigation had been organized.

Dodgy Intelligence Documents

Iran had insisted from the beginning that the intelligence documents given to the IAEA were fraudulent, and ElBaradei had repeatedly stated publicly from late 2005 through 2009 that the documents had not been authenticated. ElBaradei observes in his 2011 memoirs that he could never get a straight answer from the Bush administration about how the documents had been acquired. Different cover stories had been leaked to the media over the years suggesting that either an Iranian scientist involved in the alleged weapons program or a German spy had managed to get the documents out of Iran. But in 2013, former senior German foreign office official Karsten Voigt revealed to me in an interview that German intelligence had obtained the documents in 2004 from a sometime source whom they knew to be a member of the Mujahideen E-Khalq (MEK). A cult-like Iranian exile terrorist group, MEK had once carried out terror operations for the Saddam Hussein regime but later developed a patron-client relationship with Israeli intelligence.

Quite apart from the unsavory truth about the origins of the documents, the burden of proof in the IAEA inquiry should have been on the United States to make the case for their authenticity. There is a good reason why U.S. judicial rules of evidence require that “the proponent must produce evidence sufficient to support a finding that the item is what the proponent claims it is.”

But instead Amano has required Iran, in effect, to prove the negative. Since it is logically impossible for Iran to do so, that de facto demand has systematically skewed the entire IAEA investigation toward the conclusion that Iran is guilty of the covert activities charged in the intelligence documents. And the Agency has reinforced that distorted frame in its final assessment by constantly making the point that Iran possesses technology that could have been used for the development of a nuclear weapon. Every time Iran produced evidence that a technology that the IAEA had suggested was being used for the development of nuclear weapons was actually for non-nuclear applications, the Agency cast that evidence in a suspicious light by arguing that it bore some characteristics that are “consistent with” or “relevant to” work on nuclear weapons. The “final assessment” uses that same tactic to frame not only Iranian development of various technologies but its organizations, facilities, and research activities as inherently suspicious regardless of evidence provided by Iran that they were for other purposes.

Another tactic the IAEA had used in the past to attack Iran’s credibility is the suggestion that the government actually made a partial confession. In May 2008, the IAEA had claimed in a quarterly report that Iran “did not dispute that some of the information contained in the documents was factually accurate but said the events and activities concerned involved civil or conventional military applications.” That statement had clearly conveyed the impression that Iran has admitted to details about activities shown in the documents. But in fact Iran had only confirmed information that was already publicly known, such as certain names, organizations, and official addresses, as the IAEA itself acknowledged in 2011. Furthermore, Iran had also submitted a 117-page paper in which it had pointed out that “some of the organizations and individuals named in those documents were nonexistent.”

The IAEA resorted to the same kind of deceptive tactic in the final assessment’s discussion of “organizational structure.” It stated, “A significant proportion of the information available to the Agency on the existence of organizational structures was confirmed by Iran during implementation of the Road-map.” That sentence implied that Iran had acknowledged facts about the organizations that supported the purported intelligence claims of a nuclear weapons research program. But it actually meant only that Iran confirmed the same kind of publicly available information as it had in 2008.

On the issue of whether an Iranian organization to carry out nuclear-weapons research and development had existed, the final assessment again uses suggestive but ultimately meaningless language: “[B]efore the end of 2003, an organizational structure was in place in Iran suitable for the coordination of a range of activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device.”

Similar language implying accusation without actually stating it directly can be found in most of the assessments in the document. In the section on “procurement activities,” the report refers to “indications of procurements and attempted procurements of items with relevance, inter alia, to the development of a nuclear device.” That language actually means nothing more than that Iranians had sought to purchase dual-use items, but it preserves the illusion that the procurement is inherently suspicious.

EBW and MIP

The use of “relevance” language was, in fact, the IAEA’s favorite tactic for obscuring the fact that it had no real evidence of nuclear weapons work. On the issue of the purported intelligence documents showing that Iran had developed and experimented with Exploding Bridge-Wire (EBW) technology for the detonation of a nuclear weapon, Iran had gone to great lengths to prove that its work on EBW technology was clearly focused on non-nuclear applications. It provided detailed information about its development of the technology, including videos of activities it had carried out, to show that for the objective of the work was to develop safer conventional explosives.

The IAEA responded by saying “ that the EBW detonators developed by Iran have characteristics relevant to a nuclear device.” By that same logic, of course, a prosecutor could name an individual as a suspect in a crime simply because his behavior showed “characteristics relevant” to that crime.

A similar tactic appears in the assessment of the “initiation of high explosives” issue. The 2011 IAEA report had recorded the intelligence passed on by the Israelis that Iran had done an experiment with a high explosives detonation technology called multipoint initiation (MIP) that the Agency said was “consistent with” a publication by a “foreign expert” who had worked in Iran. That was a reference to the Ukrainian scientist Vyacheslav Danilenko, but he was an expert on producing nanodiamonds through explosives, not on nuclear weapons development. And the open-source publication by Danilenko was not about experiments related to nuclear weapons but only about measuring shock waves from explosions using fiber optic cables.

The 2011 report also had referred to “information” from an unnamed member state that Iran had carried out the “large scale high explosives experiments” in question in the “region of Marivan.” In its final assessment, the Agency says it now believes that those experiments were carried out in a “location called ‘Marivan’,” rather than in the “region of Marivan.” But although Iran has offered repeatedly to allow the IAEA to visit Marivan to determine whether such experiments were carried out,the IAEA has refused to carry out such an inspection and has offered no explanation for its refusal.

The Agency relies on its standard evasive language to cover its climb-down from the 2011 assessment. “The Agency assesses that the MPI technology developed by Iran has characteristics relevant to a nuclear device,” it said, “as well as to a small number of alternative applications.” That wording—combined with its refusal to make any effort to check on the one specific claim of Iranian experiments at Marivan—makes it clear that the Agency knows very well that it has no real evidence of the alleged experiments but is unwilling to say so straightforwardly.

The Agency did the same thing in regard to the alleged “integration into a missile delivery system.” A key set of purported intelligence documents had shown a series of efforts to integrate a “new spherical payload” into the existing payload chamber of the Shahab-3 missile. The final assessment avoids mention of the technical errors in those studies, which were so significant that Sandia National Laboratories found through computer simulations that not a single one of the proposed redesign efforts would have worked. And it later became apparent that Iran had begun redesigning the entire missile system—including an entirely different reentry vehicle shape from the one shown in the drawings—well before the start date of the purported nuclear weapons work.

But the IAEA was only interested in whether the workshops portrayed in the purported intelligence were in fact workshops used by the Iranian government. Iran allowed the Agency to visit two of the workshops, and the final assessment declares that it has “verified that the workshops are those described in the alleged studies documentation” and that “the workshop’s features and capabilities are consistent with those described in the alleged studies documentation.”

Flawed Computer Modeling

One of the most egregious cover-ups in the assessment is its treatment of the alleged computer modeling of nuclear explosions. The agency recalled that it had “received information from Member States” that Iran had done modeling of “nuclear explosive configurations based on implosion technology.” Unfortunately for the credibility of that “information,” soon after that 2011 report was published someone leaked a graph of one of the alleged computer modeling efforts attributed to Iran to Associated Press reporter George Jahn. The graph was so similar to one published in a scholarly journal in January 2009 that Scott Kemp, an assistant professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said he suspected the graph had been “adapted from the open literature.”

Furthermore the information in the graph turned out to be inaccurate by four orders of magnitude. In response to that revelation, a senior IAEA official told Jahn that the Agency knew that the graph was “flawed” as soon as it had obtained it but that IAEA officials “believe it remains important as a clue to Iranian intentions.” In fact the official revealed to Jahn that the Agency had come up with a bizarre theory that Iranian scientists deliberately falsified the diagram to sell the idea to government officials of a nuclear explosion far larger than any by the United States or Russia.

That episode surely marks the apogee of the IAEA’s contorted rationalizations of the highly suspect “information” the Agency had been fed by the Israelis. In the final report, the Agency ignores that embarrassing episode and “assesses that Iran conducted computer modeling of a nuclear explosive device prior to 2004 and between 2005 and 2009,” even though it describes the modeling, enigmatically, as “incomplete and fragmentary.

The assessment further “notes some similarity between the Iranian open source publications and the studies featured in the information from Member States, in terms of textual matches, and certain dimensional and other parameters used.” Unless the Agency received the “information” from the unidentified states before the dates of the open-source publications, which one would expect to be noted if true, such similarities could be evidence of fraudulent intelligence rather than of Iranian wrong-doing. But the assessment provides no clarification of the issue.

Nuclear Material

On the issue it calls “nuclear material acquisition,” however, the Agency makes a startling retreat from its previous position that has far-reaching implications for the entire collection of intelligence documents. In its 2011 report, the IAEA had presented a one-page flow sheet showing a process for converting “yellow cake” into “green salt” (i.e., uranium that can be enriched) as a scheme to “secure a source of uranium suitable for use in an undisclosed enrichment program.”

But the final assessment explicitly rejects that conclusion, pronouncing the process design in question “technically flawed” and “of low quality in comparison with what was available to Iran as part of its declared nuclear fuel cycle.” In other words, Iran would have had no rational reason to try to seek an entirely new conversion process and then turn the project over to incompetent engineers. Those were precisely the arguments that Iran had made in 2008 to buttress its case that the documents were fabricated.

The assessment carefully avoids the obvious implication of these new findings—that the anomalies surrounding the “green salt” documents make it very likely that they have were fabricated. To acknowledge that fact would cast doubt on the entire collection. But the surprising backtracking on the “green salt’ evidence underlines just how far the IAEA has gone in the past to cover up awkward questions about the intelligence at the center of the case.

Now that the Obama administration has settled on a nuclear agreement with Iran, the IAEA will no longer have to find contorted language to discuss Iran’s past and present nuclear program. Nevertheless, the Agency remains a highly political actor, and its role in monitoring and reporting on the implementation of the agreement may bring more occasions for official assessments that reflect the political interest of the U.S.-led dominant coalition in the IAEA board of governors rather than the objective reality of the issue under review.

Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for journalism. He is the author of the newly published Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.

Counter punch,

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Camp Liberty

Update on camp Hurriya Temporary Transit Location (TTL)

Update No. 13

Update on the implementation of solutions for residents of Hurriya Temporary Transit Location (TTL)

1- 2015 has seen the largest number of relocations out of Iraq in a calendar year since the international community and the Government of Iraq began efforts to find relocation opportunities for residents of the Hurriya Temporary Transit Location (TTL) in 2011.

2- By the end of 2015, more than 1,100 residents will have been relocated to a situation of safety in third countries. This represents more than a third of the residents registered by UNHCR. By the beginning of 2016, it is expected that fewer than 1,970 residents will remain in the TTL.

3- The situation with relocations is at its most buoyant since efforts began. Almost half of all relocations have taken place in the latter half of 2015. These outcomes have been achieved with the cooperation and flexibility of the residents who have proceeded with the relocation process despite difficult circumstances, including rocket attacks on 29 October 2015 which resulted in the deaths of 24 residents and injuries to dozens of others.

4- UNHCR strongly condemned the rocket attacks; the High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, stating: “This is a most deplorable act, and I am greatly concerned at the harm that has been inflicted on those living at Camp Liberty. Every effort must continue to be made for the injured and to identify and bring to account those responsible.”

5- UNHCR deeply appreciates the measures taken by some countries to relocate residents to situations of safety and security. Albania’s exceptional contribution to this humanitarian endeavour merits special note. Albania has received more than three-quarters of the residents who have been relocated. Its efforts have contributed greatly to international efforts to find solutions for this group of people.

6- Central to the recent success is the residents’ commitment to meeting the bulk of costs associated with relocations to Albania. This commitment to meet travel costs and living expenses is crucial to the ongoing implementation of solutions for the group.

7- UNHCR urgently renews its calls upon states to find ways to offer long term solutions for the residents who remain at the Hurriya TTL. This appeal for help should be read in light of the potential for more attacks on the Hurriya TTL. As well as the attack of October 2015, the residents have been subjected to several rocket attacks, both in the Hurriya TTL and in Camp New Iraq (the former Camp Ashraf), which also resulted in deaths and injuries. These attacks, coupled with the current conflict in Iraq, leave residents of the Hurriya TTL open to significantly heightened security risks. This emphasizes the need for quick and pragmatic action on the part of States to ensure that these people are relocated to a situation of safety and security.

8- UNHCR continues to call upon the Government of Iraq to take all possible measures to ensure the safety and well-being of residents, including ensuring access to life saving medical treatment and assistance with the provision of good and services to enable the residents to make arrangements for their own protection.

9- UNHCR also recalls the Memorandum of Understanding between the Government of Iraq and the United Nations explicitly recognizes that residents benefit from the principle of non-refoulement.

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Mujahedin-e Khalq: propaganda against Iran sponsored by the US

At the same time as thousands of small and medium-sized Italian companies are about to sign trade agreements with the Islamic Republic of Iran and Imam Khamenei, Supreme Leader of the Iranian state, is launching a decisive and merciless struggle against terrorism of Daesh, the Italian government, irresponsibly (but intentionally), continues to grant full political freedom to the clearly anti-Shia and anti-Iranian organization Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) and its related acronyms. A serious choice that proves the short-sightedness of a government policy, to Renzi, totally subordinate to the imperialist American and Israeli foreign policy.

What is the MEK, what is its history?

The MEK was founded in the ’70s as an islamo-socialist organization, it participated in the struggle against the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, only to later do not recognize the new government of Khomeini. When the war broke out between Iran and Iraq – in which the two countries devastated one another, these (new) jihadists made the disastrous choice of siding with Saddam Hussein, at the time considered by most leftist Muslims as a watchdog of the United States. The National Liberation Army (NLA) was founded with the help of Hussein as their armed wing. Because of this choice the MEK’s path antagonized the majority of the Iranian people who considered him ”guilty of having helped to kill the children of Iran ”. After the US invasion of Iraq, the MEK became in fact to be at the service of Washington beginning with its leaders Massoud and Maryam Rajavi.

The MEK’s anti-Shia and anti-Iranian hatred transformed its substance, into abandoning its original socialist inspiration. The Mojahedin-e Khalq obtained coverage and support of Israel and its intelligence service (Mossad); moreover the approach if not the enslavement against Tel Aviv was the obligatory path to be able to continue their plainly anti Iranian activities.

Mohammad Javad Larijani, a close associate of Khamenei, in an interview with NBC revealed that "According to the Iranian government many recent attacks (such as explosions in military depots) and terrorist attacks (such as those against Iranian scientists) are conducted through a collaboration between Israel and the Mojahedin." This thesis could be considered until recently as Iranian propaganda but – as noted by an article published in Linkiesta – now the evidence of its truthfulness seems unexceptionable and accessible to all.

We read the online Italian newspaper that "Journalists have NBC continued its investigation in the United States, investigating the information gathered by the CIA. On February 9 of this year three public officials, in three separate interviews, have confirmed this link. Israel provided weapons, training and money to the MEK, for terrorist actions that were carried out in Iranian territory”. [1]

The sources have emerged: those who kill Iranian scientists? Bibi (Netanyahu), responds Linkiesta. The interesting thing, nailing Israel and anti-Iranian propagandists in Europe, is that the Israeli government has never denied his involvement. On the contrary, Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz was allowed to say that Iran should expect more “unnatural" events. [2]

Although, the MEK was formally listed as terrorist organizations by the US State Department, in 1997 (from 1997 until 2012), Seymour Hersh has revealed the continued support of the Republican administration for this organization. In 2008, the great journalist wrote an article entitled "Preparing the battlefield" where he explained that "The MeK was on the terrorist list of the State Department for more than a decade, but in recent years the group has received arms and intelligence, directly or indirectly, from the United States. Some of the secret funds for a new permit, said the Pentagon consultant, could end up in the coffers of the MeK." US poured money into the coffers of the Mujahedin, certainly not for humanitarian purposes. The script seems to be the same as always: to eliminate the enemies of the US.

In the same opinion is Ismail Salami of the GlobalResearch. His analysis seems to leave no room for doubt "The terrorist Mujahedin Khalq Organization aka MKO or MEK Seems to be a ubiquitous agent any time there is an assassination in Iran. A shadowy cult with myriad of financial, military and intelligence connections to Tel Aviv and Washington, the MKO works in league with Kidon, the assassination unit within the Mossad. There are firm reports indicating that the MKO members have received military and intelligence training both from the US forces as well as from the Mossad ‘’. [3] In the same article a report by Richard Engel and Robert Windrem of the NBC News was quoted, "cites two anonymous senior US Officials with two interesting claims: 1) That it was MEK Which perpetrated the string of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and 2) the terrorist group "is FINANCED, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service." I know the report testifies the veracity of what Iranian officials have asserted about the involvement of Israel with MEK and the killing of Iranian nuclear scientists on the soil.

In 2009, the MEK (or MKO) tried to assassinate former President Ahmadinejad. The news was picked up by many international media including also Il Sole 24 Ore 4, although the incident was not reported in its severity (Il Sole 24 Ore edulcorò the news with the typical attitude of the Western media). The statements of Ahmadinejad were moving: "The stupid Zionists have hired mercenaries to assassinate me." It would seem obvious that this organization is in direct hetero effects.

After this ‘enterprise’, fortunately failed, the jihadists intensified their relations with the US, France and Israel.

A year later, it organized a demonstration in Paris against the legitimate government of Tehran in June 26, 2010. While Obama distanced himself from these terrorists, the neocons continued to support them; the various French governments, even continued to host their sites. On that occasion "About 30,000 people from all over Europe, have heard the speeches of former Prime Minister of Spain, José Maria Aznar and former US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, who have just founded with the Friends of Israel Initiative- asking the State Department not to consider the People’s Mujahedeen a terrorist organization, and the European Union to strengthen the unilateral sanctions against Iran " 3. At that episode, certainly, the group represented the prelude to something more dangerous: the CIA was preparing to give the MEK qualified trainers as well as a wider network coverage intelligence. Said and done.

Journalist Seymour Hersh has reported the presence of jihadist training camps connected to MEK in Nevada. Hersh writes: "They got the standard training in commo, crypto [cryptography], small-unit tactics, and weaponry-that went on for six months [and] they were kept in little pods." 4 The neocons have put the anti-government Iranian group in terms of hard hitting, and to provide even serious damage to the civilian Shiite population.

2012 was the year in which the Mujahedin ceased to be terrorists in Washington. On January 6, they organized a conference in Paris which was attended by members of the US elites including Tom Ridge, John Bolton, Howard Dean and French high profiles such as Philippe Douste-Blazy, Andre Vivien.

At this point a question is raised: Do the Mujahedin-e Khalq have relationships with Daesh and Al Qaeda?

Certainly the MEK has collaborated with the US in the destruction of Iraq Baathist, his former patron, and shares with the same anti-Shia hatred that Daesh does. The hypothesis of a collaboration between the two jihadi groups is certainly founded and it is very likely that the Mujahedin militants could be transformed to Daesh (or vice versa?).

Again, it is necessary to say that the evidences are not lacking: when Daesh began his bloody raids in Iraq, members of the MEK argued that any anti-terrorist measures would represent a violation of the Security Council of the United Nations.

While the men of Al Bagdadi were massacring Christian communities, Shia and Kurdish in Iraq and Syria, Saudi Arabia and Israel intensified their support for the MEK. The website of Iran’s Press TV quoted Iran-Interlink that "According to sources, who declined to be named, the MKO terrorists are undergoing training on how to conduct terrorist operations in Iran and Iraq and are receiving technical as well as information technology ( IT) training from Israeli agents ". [7]

And ‘he same as many members of the Iraqi Ba’th, after 2008, who have passed into the ranks of Daesh, it is very likely that the MEK / MKO has followed the same parable, in fact many weapons belonging to the anti-government Iranians were found in supplies of mercenaries of Al Bagdadi.

Yet, despite this, the leaders of the Mujahedin continue to give instructions in the EU institutions on democratic rights, especially civil and political.

How does the MKO make a living?

The MEK is an ‘organization of a dubious purpose with strong connections with the most militaristic right-wing American imperialist sectors. The Washington’s high- profiles enjoy the MEK’s donations whose men are allowed to move freely, organizing activities and events planned to delegitimize what they call “the anti-democratic governments in Iran”. The figures in these donations are large, the New York Times has a precious revelation: "Many of the American supporters, though not all, accepted fees of $ 15,000 to $ 30,000 to give speeches to the group, as well as travel expenses to attend MEK rallies in Paris. Edward G. Rendell, the former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, said in March he that had been paid a total of $ 150,000 to $ 160,000 ". [5]

The strategy of the Mujahedin is to disguise themselves: they are sometimes as Marxist and Islamic organization managed to convince large sections of the left Eurocentric; sometimes they create artificial acronyms such as the Association of Democratic Women in Iran. The behavior of a representative, Davood Karim, who repeatedly took part in the campaigns of the Zionist right Islamophobic Roman, is somewhat ambiguous.  [9]

In Italy, some acronyms related to the MEK have also seized attention of several verbal anthropologists     

such as Tiziana Ciavardini – some visible also on her facebook page – that intentionally and  clearly intimidate  and slow down the cross-cultural and inter-religious dialogue that the Ciavardini herself  has been pursuing so meritoriously,  for years.

In conclusion, I think we can say that despite attempts to disguise themselves behind usual ideological and political cover, the real nature and purpose of this organization is the destabilization of the Islamic Republic of Iran. A goal which, as we know, the various US administrations pursued for decades now.

By Stefano Zecchinelli , Translated by Nejat Society

References:

Israel Gunpoint  http://www.linkiesta.it/it/blog-post/2012/02/12/la-cia-svela-mek-mano-armata-disraele-leuropa-riveda-le-sue-posizioni/4249/

Iranian Scientists   http://www.linkiesta.it/it/blog-post/2012/01/11/chi-uccide-gli-scienziati-iraniani-elementare-bibi/3648/

Israel sponsored terrorist http://www.globalresearch.ca/mujahedin-khalq-organization-mko-us-israel-sponsored-terrorist-entity-directed-against-iran/5423450

Failed assassination of Ahmadinejad   http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/notizie/2010-08-05/attacco-fallito-ahmadinejad-080042_PRN.shtml

voltaire.net     http://www.voltairenet.org/article166095.html

Iran interlink    http://iran-interlink.org/wordpress/?p=6884ù

Iran interlink    http://iran-interlink.org/wordpress/?p=5709

Iranian Opposition     http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/world/middleeast/iranian-opposition-group-mek-wins-removal-from-us-terrorist-list.html?_r=0

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Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

It is time to declare an information world war on terrorism

It is time to declare an information world war on terrorism

Introduction by Kevin Barrett, Veterans Today Editor

Thirty-four years ago – on August 30th, 1981 – a bloodthirsty terrorist group assassinated the most popular President in history. You say you haven’t heard about it? Maybe that’s because it was “their” president … and “our” terrorists.

The MEK terrorists who murdered Iranian President Rajai (and thousands of other Iranians) still enjoy the protection and support of Western authorities. As the West moves to normalize relations with Iran in the wake of the P5+1 nuclear deal, accept the existence and legitimacy of the Islamic Republic, and cooperate against takfiri terrorists including ISIL, maybe it’s time to declare an “information war on terrorism.” It’s long past time to tell the truth about terrorism: Beginning with the undeniable fact that the vast majority of terrorism since World War II has been perpetrated or supported by Western governments.

For the bloody details, read On Western Terrorism by Vltchek and Chomsky, which puts the death toll from Western terrorism at roughly 60 million since World War II. William Blum’s Killing Hope fills in key details and documentation. And my own Questioning the War on Terror (endorsed by Blum and other luminaries) deconstructs the received notion of “terrorism” by asking the hard questions.

So as we mourn President Rajai, let’s spread the truth about terrorism – and work to stop such things from ever happening again. -KB

The President who was Assassinated

An Essay about Mohammad Ali Rajāī, the second President of [the Islamic Republic of] Iran. Written by the editors at the monthly magazine Rāh, which is the organ of the Cultural Front of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, on the occasion of the martyrdom of Shahīd Rajāī. Translated by Arash Darya-Bandari

__________________________

On the 8th of Shahrīvar 1360 (30 August 1981), at around three in the afternoon, the tremendous sound of an explosion shocked the residents of Tehran.  The country was at war and Saddam’s warplanes targeted a different area of the city every day, but the explosion of the 8th of Shahrīvar was different. A large pall of smoke rose up in the Tehran sky and people rushed toward where the smoke and flames were jetting out. It was the Prime Ministry building that had exploded and was being consumed in the fire that ensued.

The first question that was on the anxious minds of the people concerned the well-being of President Rajāī and Prime Minister Bāhonar. 39 days earlier, Rajāī had gained the votes of the majority of Iranians in an early election and had become the second President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, after Abol-Hasan Banī-Sadr who had fled to Europe after being removed from his post by the Majles (parliament).

After his dismissal from the presidency, Bani-Sadr’s supporters within the militia group of the Mojāhedīn-e Khalq Organization (MKO, which later came to be known as the Hypocrites), officially declared war on the Islamic Republic and attempted to seize power by means of targeted assassination and random acts of terror. On the 7th of Tīr, 1360 (28 June 1981) a large number of parliamentarians, academics and revolutionary leaders including Dr. Mohammad Beheshtī were killed when a large explosion destroyed the headquarters building of the Islamic Republic Party.

It had only been two months since that terrorist attack when the president and prime minister were assassinated. On the 8th of Shahrīvar 1360 (30 August 1981) there was a session of the National Security Council which was attended by the president, prime minister and other high officials. One of the members of the Mojāhedīn-e Khalq Organization (the Hypocrites) had managed to sneak a bomb into the building and to leave shortly thereafter, thereby ensuring that the flames of their counter-revolutionary hatred would arise from the Prime Minister’s office as well.

Mohammad Ali Rajāī had won the presidency after having earlier gained popularity among the people during his tenure in the office of Prime Minister. Prime Minister Rajāī’s simple life-style, his popular policies, and his authority and effectiveness provoked the envy of the West-oriented President (Banī-Sadr) to the point where the latter would openly malign his Prime Minister on numerous occasions in an effort to drive him away from the government.

But the support of the people and the Majles (parliament) precluded the success of these efforts. Unlike Banī-Sadr, who had returned to Iran after the victory of the revolution, having lived in Paris for many years while the revolution was taking shape, Rajāī was a revolutionary with a long record of struggle against the regime of the Shah which included having been arrested and imprisoned and tortured in the dungeons of that regime on numerous occasions.

Although he was a teacher (and not a member of the clergy), he struggled for the liberation of the country from the domination of the United States with a special devotion and love toward Imām Khomeinī. He was arrested for the first time in 1342 (1963) by SAVAK (the Shah’s secret police) and imprisoned for fifty days, and re-entered the field of battle upon his release.

When he was arrested again in 1353 (1974), it took four years before he gained his freedom. During this time, no effort was spared to get him to confess to working with (and giving up the names of) his co-conspirators. He spend nearly twenty months in solitary confinement, which is a span of time that is rarely used for solitary confinement (which is a form of torture) and which was reserved for special cases of hardened revolutionaries. When this treatment met with failure, they transferred Shahīd Rajāī to the Anti-Subversion Taskforce and subjected him to the harshest possible tortures:

“The year that I underwent [the tortures of] the Taskforce was truly a living Hell where they would beat me for twenty days on end without even bringing up what it was that they wanted, saying only things like “Start talking!” or they would double me over (as if I was bowed down in prayer) and tie my head to my feet and tell me to run in place, or they would tie me to a post and suspend me until I talked. I endured this treatment day and night for fourteen months.”

The effects of this torture remained on Shahīd Rajāī’s body for years. He carried these effects with him to the United Nations as living evidence of what he had endured and when he was being interviewed by journalists who had gathered there on the occasion of a meeting of the Security Council and asked him about the condition in which the US hostages were being treated, he took off his shoes and socks, put his feet on the table and said:

“For several years I was the prisoner of Carter and the United States in the torture dungeons of the accursed Shah; the effects of the torture that I was subjected to can still be seen after four years… For two straight years, I felt the blows of Carter’s whips on the soles of my feet, but this notwithstanding, we treat the hostages from the Den of Spies perfectly humanely.”

This trip was in Mehr of 1359 (September 1980). In those days, Rajāī was the Prime Minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and appeared as its first high-ranking official to give a speech about Iraq’s invasion of Iran. He endeavored to reveal what was taking place behind the scenes of Saddam’s invasion of Iran, and exposed the role or the United States and its allies in the invasion.

Rajāī’s speech was at one and the same time a bestowal of glad tidings to the oppressed and downtrodden of the world, a plaintiff call for justice and restitution, and the announcement of the revolution’s intention to continue its resistance and struggle in the international arena:

“Let the deprived and downtrodden people of the world and all those who have suffered at the hands of the hegemonic powers of East and West know that our Islamic Revolution has forged a new path for the oppressed of the world. Our revolution has attained to independence by way of the power of the people and shall ensure its survival and longevity by sacrificing those same people, and is thus not in need of others for this assurance.

We have learned by way of experience, and believe: that which is decisive in battle is the faith and conviction of those engaged in the struggle, not arms and ammunition. Thus we hereby announce unequivocally that in this Imposed War, and revolutionary and Islamic faith of the people will be the real winner, not American AWACS or Russian Topolov [fighter jets]… We shall prove to the world, without having to take refuge from Western colonialism into the arms of the East, that we can stand on our own feet and maintain our independence [even if] we have to pay the highest price.”

The man who spoke such bold and unchecked words in the face of United States aggression in the heart of America, and spoke of America’s imperial aggression against other nations, is the same person who stated elsewhere:

“If America and her allies tell us, ‘submit to us and we will give you the wheat you need’, we will divide what little bread we have among 36 million people, but we will not submit to your yoke of abjection.”

The 48-year-old president did not feel a need to stand on ceremony or to hold back any punches as he had himself tasted the bitterness of poverty. He had lost his father at the age of four and had started working as a peddler when he was still a teenager. The teenage peddler of yesteryear won the presidential election of 1360 (1981) with a majority of 90 percent of Iranian voters and was assassinated and attained to martyrdom on the 8th of Shahrīvar 1360 (1981).

Rajāī enjoys extraordinary popularity among Iranians because of his simple life-style, because of his having come from the oppressed sector of society and because of his strong popular and anti-imperialist thirst for social justice. Rajāī’s assassins – the heads of the MEK militia – are currently living freely in Europe and every once in a while even appear in Western parliaments and are given standing to speak of the supposed support that the Islamic Republic gives to terrorists, and for the need to pay attention to the supposed violations of human rights – all to the applause of American and European statesmen and politicians.

Veterans Today,Kevin Barret

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Mujahedin Khalq Organization

Who are the Iranian dissident group MEK?

The Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) is an exiled opposition group that backs the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.

 Founded in 1965 as a left-wing Muslim group, it staunchly opposed the Shah of Iran and was involved in the protests that led to his downfall and the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979.

It initially endorsed the republic’s founder Ayatollah Khomeini but, after its leader Massoud Rajavi was barred from standing in the first presidential election, the MEK turned against the government.

It launched an armed struggle to topple the Islamic Republic, claiming responsibility for the assassination of several high-profile figures.

The authorities launched purge of supporters of the MEK, also known as the People’s Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI), and Mr Rajavi fled to Paris.

MEK members relocated to Camp Liberty in Baghdad

He later relocated to Camp Ashraf in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, near the Iranian border, with most of his followers. There the movement steadily acquired the characteristics of a cult, with veneration of Massoud Rajavi and his wife, Maryam.

During the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, the MEK carried out several armed attacks on Iran in coordination with Saddam’s army, losing much of its domestic support in the process.

The MEK’s relations with the West have been complex. The United States and European Union listed the group as a terrorist organisation during the pro-reform presidency of Iran’s Mohammad Khatami, only to reverse the decision under his hardline successor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

 The MEK scored a propaganda coup in 2002, when it revealed the existence of Iran’s major nuclear facilities. This led to a long standoff between the Islamic Republic and the West.

Maryam Rajavi, the MEK’s leader is referred to by followers as “Iran’s president in exile

In post-Saddam Iraq the group disarmed and eventually relocated to Camp Liberty, a former US military base near Baghdad, fearing for the safety of its members under Iraq’s Shia-dominated government.

There are estimated to be over 2,000 followers in the camp, while the MEK’s leaders are based in France. They refer to Maryam Rajavi as “Iran’s president in exile”. Massoud Rajavi himself has not been seen in public for years.

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