Mujahedin Khalq Organization

Italian professor: MKO has no place in Iran

A professor in Rome University and Chairman of World Study Institute Nicola Pedde, who has written a book about the activities of MKO terrorist group, says the group will never have a place in Iran.

The Italian author in his book ‘MEK’ has, in details, underlined the terrorist nature of MKO and has written about their historical background and development of the group since 1965.

Pedde believes that seditious role of the MKO against Iran during the 8 years of imposed war is totally evident for Iranian society.

Because of their hostile acts against Iran’s officials and innocent people, there is a feeling of hatred among people of Iran at the group, says the author.

He has also made interviews with a number of ex-members of the group, who once had key roles in the organization, and has revealed criminal acts of the group as well as developments inside the group.

Professor Pedde says he has tried to make Italian politicians understand that before signing any document in support of any group or society, they should have some information about their activities.

October 11, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization

Media: MKO Terrorists to be Moved to Iraqi Kurdistan Region

Reports coming out of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region suggest that members of the anti-Iran terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) are going to be transferred to the autonomous region in the north MKO Terrorists to be Moved to Iraqi Kurdistan Region of the Arab country.

The MKO representatives and the president of the Iraqi Kurdistan region Masoud Barzani, have reportedly agreed on the transfer.

The Kurdistan Change Movement (Gorran) claimed on its website on Friday that the MKO intends to move its forces from Baghdad to Kurdistan.

Based on the report, the issue had been discussed by Barzani and the president of the Syrian National Coalition Ahmad Jarba during their France meeting earlier in May.

The MKO – listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community – fled Iran in 1986 for Iraq and was given a camp by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. They fought on the side of Saddam during the Iraqi imposed war on Iran (1980-88). They were also involved in the bloody repression of Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq in 1991 and the massacre of Iraqi Kurds.

The notorious group is also responsible for killing thousands of Iranian civilians and officials after the victory of the Islamic revolution in 1979. More than 17,000 Iranians, many of them civilians, have been killed at the hands of the MKO in different acts of terrorism including bombings in public places, and targeted killings.

June 22, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization

Rajavi’s drums of war silenced by trade envoy Baroness Nicholson

The Mojahedin Khalq (MEK) is busy preparing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on an annual ‘June 21st’ rally which celebrates its failed coup d’état in 1981. This year, as every year, the MEK will be paying for both audience and speakers alike to attend. The show convinces nobody. For years the MEK has survived solely on a hollow propaganda campaign which tracks and mirrors Neoconservative and Israeli interests. To please its Western backers the MEK has, over the years, supported Saddam Hussein and more recently Saddamists and insurgents in Iraq, played a part in manufacturing a nuclear crisis for Israel, acted as a loudspeaker for the Israeli/Neoconservative ‘bomb Iran’ narrative and, when all these failed, most recently postured as human rights advocates.

After thirty years, the MEK’s promise of regime change and the establishment of a pro-West Iranian government has come to nothing. Even during the 2009 post-election unrest, the Iranian people showed no inclination to start another revolution or to overthrow their government and especially didn’t resort to violence; such designs exist only in Massoud Rajavi’s personal grandiose delusions. Clearly the Iranian people, assessing the Rajavi cult as an alternative, overwhelmingly prefer the governance they currently have, even with all its faults to that of a mind control cult.

But worse for the defunct MEK is that since President Rouhani’s election a seemingly irreversible and fundamental shift in approach has taken hold on both sides of the Iran-West confrontation and the MEK is being firmly shoved off the bandwagon. The MEK are rapidly losing what specious ground they held in the world of Iran bashing. Significantly, since the beginning of nuclear negotiations last Autumn, a wave of government representatives and businesses have visited Iran from all over the globe, not just Western countries, keen to do business. These changes are characterised in the opening paragraph of an article in the Washington Post on May 28: “For the first time in decades, businesspeople from the United States are visiting Iran in significant numbers, exploring the possibility of future partnerships as Iranian and American entrepreneurs begin to envision a reopening of long-closed commercial channels.”

Nothing could be more toxic to the MEK’s role as purveyors of chaos and violence than the establishment of trade and economic ties. But it is not only on the issue of Iran that the MEK has lost. Since 2003, the group had made itself indispensable to the Saddamists and pro-war and pro-Israel elements who tried to claw back power in Iraq through exactly that continuation of chaos and violence. Now the successful elections in Iraq at the end of April have turned the tide irrevocably against them in that country too. Nor did the MEK fare any better from the European Parliament elections either, losing its two key lobbyists Struan Stevenson and Alejo Vidal Quadras from the Iraq Delegation of the European Parliament.

So the British Prime Minister’s personal appointment of Baroness Emma Nicholson of Winterbourne as his Trade Envoy to Iraq with the mandate to ”increase trade and economic co-operation between the UK and Iraq”, was certain to provoke a fierce reaction from the MEK. Baroness Nicholson is an old adversary of the MEK, as she was of the entire Saddam Hussein regime. In a MEK-fed blog, Samuel Westrop questions her appointment because of “Her pattern of support for the Iranian regime” before asking “Exactly whose interests will Baroness Nicholson be serving?” For a group which operates on the basis of corruption, deception and exploitation, naturally this would be their primary question. But the naïve answer to their own rhetoric, ‘Iran’, shows total lack of comprehension about the real world and politics. Emma Nicholson, whose ‘British Establishment’ credentials run through her veins, will work for the interests of Britain of course, and not even party political agendas or partisan groups.

This is not the real issue though. The precursors to economic and trade links are stability and security.

Mindful of its urgent need to establish security in the country, the Iraqi government formally asked the United Nations to fulfil its obligations to expel members of the MEK and transfer them to other countries to protect Iraq’s national security and that of its neighbours. The Iraqi Cabinet goes further, however, and suggests scrapping the 2009 agreement between the US, the GOI and UNAMI because of the inordinate delays and stalling by the UN in fulfilling its obligations. This would allow Iraqi security forces to close Camp Liberty and scatter its occupants as well as bringing some of the MEK to justice for crimes committed in Iraq in the same judicial manner that other elements of the Saddam regime were brought to justice.

It is no wonder then that the MEK is panicking as it faces the dissolution of rank and file members on which it bases its claim to be the “main opposition” or “only alternative” to the IRI. The group is rapidly losing its unique position as a proponent of regime change and war because the world has moved on. It is occupying an increasingly isolated position, one which has fewer and fewer customers. Even so, grooming the MEK for use in the armoury of tactics to attack the IRI began some years before the current impasse was reached. After the MEK was removed from the US terrorism list in 2012, Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen began her promotion of the group, introducing Maryam Rajavi as a human rights advocate. Toward the end of 2013, as the manufactured nuclear crisis began to lose its potency as a platform for more sanctions and threats of war and bombs, the MEK tried hard to re-fashion itself to suit the anti-Iran agenda pursued by Ros-Lehtinen and Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu – that of attacking Iran’s human rights record.

But the debacle in the Canadian Parliament revealed that inclusion of the MEK in a human rights forum only exposes the politicised nature of this platform and the anti-humanitarian agenda of its proponents. Maryam Rajavi, a woman who personally dispatched thousands of untrained, badly armed civilian MEK supporters to fight the battle hardened Iranian army and IRG in the 1988 Eternal Light operation resulting in around 2000 futile deaths, and who stands accused by tens of hundreds of former MEK members of violating their rights and abusing them, cannot ever be held up as an advocate of human rights.

In Israel itself there is a backlash against Prime Minister Netanyahu over this use of the MEK in an increasingly desperate attempt to derail the nuclear negotiations. It seems that Netanyahu and the MEK stand alone while the rest of the world has moved on.

The fresh economic vision for the Middle East which is increasingly beginning to take hold in the imagination of Western governments depends on peace and security. When these conditions are established not only do trade links improve and economic prosperity grow, but when a country is thereby able to open itself up to greater engagement with the international community this helps improve the human rights situation for its citizens too. In direct contrast to Maryam Rajavi and the MEK’s destructive role, Baroness Nicholson’s involvement in Iraq as Britain’s Trade Envoy will not only be helpful for the British economy but will also help in improving human rights in Iraq.

June 9, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization

MKO calls on US to hinder their trial

The Mujahedin-e Khalq terrorist group (a.k.a. MEK and MKO) has asked the US and UN "to condemn" Iran’s demand for extradition of MEK criminals in Camp Liberty to Iran.

Earlier the week and prior to the 4-day visit of a delegation of Iraqi judiciary officials, Habilian Association (families of Iranian terror victims) asked the Iranian officials to pursue the extradition of MKO criminals to Iran.

Later in a meeting on Monday with his Iraqi counterpart Medhat Al-Mahmoud, the Iranian Judiciary Chief Sadeq Amoli Larijani called on Baghdad to extradite the MKO members to stand a fair tribunal in Tehran.

"Most of these (MKO) people have admitted to their crimes and we expect the friendly and brotherly country of Iraq to extradite them to Iran within a legal framework to undergo a fair trial," Amoli Larijani said during the meeting.

In its statement, the MKO described the demand as an "absurd request" and called on the US government and the United Nations to "immediately condemn" the statements and to "adopt urgent and effective measures" to protect these individuals.

May 24, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization

Controversial Iranian Exile Shakes up Canadian Parliament’s HR Program

A weeklong series of events in Canadian parliament on Iran’s human rights record caused worry among some human rights advocates who fear that the activities could harm their efforts. The controversy centers around Iran Accountability Week, a program of hearings at the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Human Rights and other events organized by members of parliament from the three major parties, with Liberal MP Irwin Cotler taking the lead. The program runs through Thursday.

A human rights lawyer and pro-Israel figure, Cotler has organized three Iran Accountability Weeks. In the past, the events included testimonies highlighting Iranian political prisoners and other victims of Iranian human rights abuses. This year’s lineup, however, was different: Maryam Rajavi, the leader of a controversial exiled Iranian opposition group called the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), appeared in the program along with a UN rights official and pundits from a hawkish American think-tank.

One human rights advocate working on Iran, who asked not to be named, raised the issue of other advocates sharing a platform with the head of the MEK, which the activist called “toxic and irrelevant”—a view widely held among Iranians of all political stripes, save members of the MEK itself.

The MEK, which until two years ago was listed as terrorist organization by the United States and Canada, has a tortuous history that carried it from its founding in the mid-1960s as an Islamo-Marxist anti-Shah group to its current position as a vocal opponent of the Islamic Republic. Many critics say the group exhibits cult-like behavior. In addition to its history of violence, the MEK has, notably, been accused of its own human rights abuses.

In a phone interview, Cotler, the Canadian MP whose office spearheaded the multiparty Iran Accountability Week, said the invitation to Rajavi was only to give “issue-specific testimony”—specifically the alleged killings of MEK members by Iraqi security forces.

The MEK moved its operations to Iraq in the 1980s, to fight alongside Saddam Hussein in the bloody Iran-Iraq war, taking up in a desert military base called Camp Ashraf. In September 2012, nine years after the fighters had been disarmed following the US invasion, Iraqi forces evacuated Ashraf. Those MEK members and fighters who remained in country moved into Camp Liberty—an erstwhile American military installation. At various points since Hussein’s overthrow, both Liberty and Ashraf had come under attack, mostly by Iraqi security forces, and disarmed MEK members have been killed.

When asked why a notice for the event sent around by his office, obtained by The Nation, said Rajavi would discuss more broad “violations of the rights of the Iranian people”—a category that expands beyond the Ashraf/Liberty incidents—Cotler repeated that the invitation was “issue-specific,” though he noted Rajavi may speak on or be asked about other matters. (In 2012, Colter reportedly joined a campaign to get the MEK removed from terror rolls in the United States and Canada.)

The association with the MEK, however, raised red flags for another participant, Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran. Since 2011, when his mandate was initiated, the Maldivian diplomat has been a main address for credible information about Iran’s alleged human rights abuses. Shaheed was scheduled to address the subcommittee on Thursday, May 8 by video link in an open hearing.

According to his office, however, Shaheed requested to withdraw from the official Iran Accountability Week proceedings. He agreed, an assistant said, to brief lawmakers “in a different context than Accountability Week.” Asked why, Shaheed’s representative responded, “He just didn’t think it was appropriate.”

The assistant explained that Shaheed felt the event’s framing “made it feel less like a briefing and more of something that encroached upon what he believes is his independence on the issue” of human rights in Iran.

Cotler confirmed that, fifty minutes before he was set to go on, Shaheed phoned and requested his testimony be delivered on camera, or in a closed-door session. But the Canadian parliamentarian denied Shaheed withdrew from Iran Accountability Week: “He was not taken off the program. His appearance was in camera,” Cotler said, adding that Shaheed did not request in their phone call to withdraw.

Divining whether Shaheed was indeed withdrawn from the program proved difficult. Cotler’s office referred The Nation to the bureaucrats who run the subcommittee, but none would comment on whether Shaheed remained part of Iran Accountability Week. Asked if Shaheed was on the public program, Miriam Burke, the subcommittee clerk, said, “I can’t tell you.” Shaheed’s name did not appear in a May 8 press release on Cotler’s official website.

Several sources said the MEK’s involvement spurred Shaheed’s request to be removed from the program. One source with knowledge of the decision said several human rights groups reached out to Shaheed’s office, “and it didn’t take long for them to make this decision.” Two other sources confirmed the account. “From our understanding he was unaware he was part of this broader program,” said a rights activist. “Once it was discovered, the MEK issue was a critical concern.”

The issue is particularly fraught because Shaheed has, over the years of his UN mandate, attempted to negotiate with the Iranian government for access to the country. The Islamic Republic rejected Shaheed’s latest report in March. One Iranian MP remarked that “the intelligence sources for Ahmed Shaheed’s reports are the hypocrites”—the way Iran refers to the MEK—”and the Islamic Republic of Iran’s opposition.”

Cotler said he would explicitly renounce any connections made between various witnesses at hearings in a press conference marking Iran Accountability Week’s closing. “We will not make any association between Dr. Shaheed and the MEK,” he said. “The last thing any of us would want to do would be to hurt Dr. Shaheed’s work or testimony. Not that [the Iranians] need any excuse to do that.”

May 17, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization

The MEK’s Influence in EU Politics Matters

In a sign of re-emerging ties between the European Union (EU) and Iran, Edgars Rinkevics, Latvia’s minister of foreign affairs, visited Tehran on April 24. The visit was significant because Latvia will hold the EU’s rotating presidency in the first half of 2015. Issues pertaining to regional cooperation between the EU and Iran in Central Asia and Afghanistan were discussed during Rinkevics’ stay, indicating an EU desire to look beyond Iran’s nuclear program. This visit was another step in a string of reconnections that include trips to Iran by foreign ministers and parliamentarians from a number of EU countries including Austria, Sweden, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

Not everybody is pleased with these developments. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the front group for the exiled Iranian dissident organization, the Mujahadeen-e Khalq (known as the MEK, MKO, or PMOI), which was classified as a terrorist organization by the EU until 2009 and by the United States until 2012, denounced a trip last month to Tehran by Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz. The denunciation came two weeks after the so-called Friends of Free Iran (FoFi), an informal network of members of the European Parliament (MEPs) closely allied to the NCRI, organized a conference calling for regime change in Iran and lauding the NCRI-MEK as the democratic alternative.

This is the message that the NCRI and bedfellows like FoFi have been promoting for years in European countries where the MEK has had many more years to lobby for and promote its agenda than in the United States. While the notion of an irreconcilable enmity between the West and Iran was relatively easy to promote during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency (2005-13), the election of the moderate Hassan Rouhani and the meaningful progress in negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program challenge that narrative. So, the MEK, which detests the notion of rapprochement between Iran and the West, has shifted gears and chosen human rights as its casus belli against the Iranian regime.

[..]

The good news is that MEK lobbying efforts against diplomacy with Iran are unlikely to succeed. Even with the extravagant funds the MEK has spent on endorsements by political elites, the group’s prominence in the EU is confined only to one part of the EP. The foreign policy decision-making bodies of the EU — the Council of the EU and the External Action Service (EEAS) — do not consider the MEK a serious alternative to the current government in Tehran, as it has virtually no support among the Iranian population. The dominant EU line now clearly favors diplomacy with Iran, which will, hopefully, lead to a final deal over Tehran’s controversial nuclear program. The more the chances of success for diplomacy increase, the more irrelevant the MEK will become.

It would be a mistake, however, to completely disregard the capacity of the MEK to poison the present atmosphere of European-Iranian relations. Institutions like the European Parliament are by their very nature open to lobbying from different groups, and the MEK has proven very adept at recruiting supporters. Among the conservative right, the MEK is viewed as staunch defenders of Israel and Western values against Iran’s so-called “mad mullahs”; among the progressive left, the MEK is seen as victims of the American invasion in Iraq in need of protection (the MEK created its base, Camp Ashraf, in Iraq following its exile from Iran).

The MEK’s expensive lobbying and advocacy efforts have also promoted an image of the group as defenders of human rights, especially women rights, facing Iran’s alleged “medieval, barbaric mullah regime”. The group’s strong presence of women, including leader Maryam Rajavi, is sold as evidence of its commitment to gender equality and secularism. Never mind the irony of its members in Camp Ashraf — excluding, of course, Mrs. Rajavi — being invariably dressed in uniformed, almost military suits and headscarves, and never mind the documented human rights abuses by the MEK against its own members.

On the operational level, the MEK is extremely persistent and aggressive. MEK lobbyists maintain a constant presence in the coffee bars of EP buildings in Brussels and Strasbourg, or in front of the plenary room in Strasbourg. These are strategic locations from which to bombard MEPs and their staffers with requests to support the MEK. Sometimes, however, they overdo it — one MEP recounted to me about how she had to scream at an MEK activist until they exited the elevator she was using to get to her office. Even MEPs’ offices are targets: the MEK lobbyists have no qualms about entering them uninvited and distributing flyers against alleged “Islamo-fascist tyranny” in Tehran.

Yet there is a growing backlash in the EP against the MEK. In May 2011, a number of MEPs from across the political spectrum sent an open letter to their colleagues warning against legitimizing the MEK and its destructive agenda, including to heavyweights such as the powerful German chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, christian-democrat Elmar Brok, the leader of the social-democrats, Austrian politician Hannes Swoboda, the president of the party of the European liberal-democrats, Annemie Neyts, and many others. The last resolution of the European Parliament on Iran contained no references to the MEK or its demands. And the delegation for relations with Iran, while regularly offering the floor to various opposition groups, resisted giving a platform to the MEK.

However, more needs to be done to counter MEK propaganda, which can impede diplomatic efforts with Iran that can, arguably, allow the government to reform from within. Iranian diaspora organizations and individuals, the vast majority of whom do not sympathize with the MEK, may feel that confronting the MEK would give the group unwarranted importance, but the reality is that by being the only organized and constantly present Iranian opposition group in the West, the MEK gets its voice heard. The only way to prevent those MEPs who sincerely desire democratic change in Iran — but are uninformed about Iranian politics or the MEK — from falling into the MEK´s trap is to provide alternative sources of information.

Tehran can also play its part. The leaders of the MEK and the Iranian government may never get along — the Islamic government executed MEK members en masse in the 1980s following terrorist acts by the MEK against Iranian officials that also killed civilians, and the MEK sided with Saddam Hussein’s regime during the brutal Iran-Iraq war — but the Iranian government faces no current, tangible threat from this organization. By complaining about the group to foreign dignitaries, Iran appears weak and preoccupied with secondary concerns. For example, the EP’s ties with the MEK were raised at all meetings during the EP delegation’s visit to Iran in December 2013, but members of that particular delegation never supported the MEK. Denouncing the MEK to this group of people was akin to preaching to the converted.

Ultimately, a successful nuclear deal will make the MEK more irrelevant, and the EU is an important actor in this process. This deal should also make way for tangible improvements in Iran’s domestic environment. So far, the MEK has not presented a credible challenge to this process, but it must not be given the opportunity to parasite on the legitimate concerns of the international community over Iran’s nuclear program and its civil and human rights policies.

–Eldar Mamedov has degrees from the University of Latvia and the Diplomatic School in Madrid, Spain. He has worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia and as a diplomat in Latvian embassies in Washington D.C. and Madrid. Since 2007, Mamedov has served as a political adviser for the social-democrats in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament (EP) and is in charge of the delegation for inter-parliamentary relations between the EP and Iran.

Eldar Mamedov, Lobelog FP

May 10, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization

Diplomacy is underway; Domino of MKO failures has no end

“Give Diplomacy a Chance” was the title of a call circulated on Capitol Hill to sign a Letter to Barack Obama. The letter opposing new Iran sanctions legislation while talks underway was drafted by U.S. Diplomacy is underway; Domino of MKO failures has no end Reps. Lloyd Doggett and David Price have garnered the bipartisan support of over 100 members of House of Representatives. [1]

“At present, however, we believe that Congress must give diplomacy a chance. A bill or resolution that risks fracturing our international coalition or, worse yet, undermining our credibility in future negotiations and jeopardizing hard-won progress toward a verifiable final agreement, must be avoided.” said the letter sent to President Obama on Wednesday February12. [2]

The letter is bad news for the Mujahedin Khalq Organization who spent substantial sums of cash to rent paid advocates to organize a pressure campaign aimed at waging war against Iran and curtailing U.S. diplomatic efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear dispute.

The pro-diplomacy campaign came out when the White House criticized the sanctions supporters and promised to veto any bills calling for new sanctions since they clearly violate the interim P5+1 agreement.

"If certain members of Congress want the United States to take military action, they should be up front with the American public and say so," Bernadette Meehan, National Security Council spokeswoman, said in a statement.[3]

The MKO warmongering apparatus which is after violent regime change in Iran and works hard to push war against Iran got disappointed once more as AIPAC which for months had been lobbying lawmakers hard to push the Iran sanctions bill reversed course on the issue and retreated in the face of resistance from the White House and key Democratic Lawmakers.

Nonetheless serving as puppet of the Israeli regime and becoming tool of Israel and American Neo-Conservatives in launching acts of espionage and violence directed at Iran and unabashedly betraying their own nation — along with their deep pockets- brought nothing good for the group.

Nuclear talks between Iran and world powers move to the next level Tuesday with negotiators due to begin work on transforming an interim deal into an ambitious lasting accord.

MKO lost their old strategic Camp Ashraf. Nobody took serious their show of hunger strike – which the Cult leaders forced members to hold under the pretext of saving 7 allegedly missing Camp Ashraf residents after the September Camp Ashraf clashes – and the Cult leaders pressed to order its end allegedly because of a Spanish court’s ruling against the Iraqi Prime Minister’s Advisor. Iraq is serious in expelling them from the country. No country is willing to let in 3000+ former terrorists. The West prefers not to derail diplomacy with Iran engaging with a trivial terrorist Cult. Neither paid advocates, nor offering themselves as mercenaries of the Iranian nation enemies work anymore.

The MEK has no way to win or better to say to survive. The domino of MEK failures is continuing and the countdown for the group’s complete collapse has started.

By: A.Sepinoud

References:

[1]Algemeiner, Closed-Door Deals May Undermine Iran Sanctions Effort, February 12, 2014

[2] Win Without War, Over 100 Members of Congress Call for Diplomacy with Iran, February12, 2014

[3] Brown, Hayes, White House Challenges Congress: ‘Be Up Front With The American Public’ On War With Iran, Think Progress, January10, 2014

February 18, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization

MEK: deep pocket, relentless lobbying, still no progress

The MKO’s million dollar champagne in the US Congress has always got the attention of Western media. Hannah Allam of the Miami Herald is one of many American journalists who report on the

well funded MKO lobbying efforts in the Congress and its problematic situation as a foreign force in Iraq. The herald piece "Iran’s MEK has friends in Congress, but that hasn’t eased problems in Iraq" , quotes an MKO activist Shirin Nariman who admits that the group’s "deep pocket" and " relentless lobbying" against Islamic Republic is the key to buy US high profiles although she claims that the paid sponsors’ motivation is human :

“ The congressional hearing earlier this week was to have focused on al Qaida’s resurgence in Iraq, but lawmaker after lawmaker veered off topic to ask about another problem left from the U.S.-led war there: what to do with a group of Iranian dissidents stuck in a besieged camp in Baghdad.

The plight of the former militant group known as the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq dominated the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing Wednesday. Critics of the group consider it a cult and note that only a year and a half ago it was still listed as a U.S.-designated terrorist group. They’re outraged at what they call the disproportionate amount of attention the group receives in Congress.

Yet despite all the powerful friends won by the MEK’s deep pockets and relentless lobbying, the group has seen relatively little progress in efforts to relocate the 2,500 or so members who remain in Iraq, where they’re vulnerable under the Iran-friendly government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. Since September, attacks on Camp Liberty, the former U.S. base where the group is housed under the watch of the Iraqi military, have killed more than 50 people and wounded many more.

American supporters of the group – including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich – say the United States has abandoned its pledge to protect the group, which was disarmed after the U.S.-led invasion of 2003. A few hundred MEK members were relocated recently to Albania and Germany, but there’s no word yet on a broader resettlement program in accordance with a 2011 agreement between the Iraqi government and the United Nations.

Eight members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee – six Republicans and two Democrats – lambasted the U.S. government for failing to do more to protect the virtual prisoners at Camp Liberty.

The most forceful was Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., who called Maliki a “murderer” and said the United States had no business helping him on other issues, such as the fight against jihadists in western Iraq. Another Republican, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, complained that the residents “still have very little protection” and demanded “extra effort in saving lives there.”

Brett McGurk, the deputy assistant secretary of state for Iraq and Iran in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, had been called to testify about al Qaida but found himself answering as many if not more questions about the MEK. McGurk, who visited Camp Liberty on a trip to Baghdad this month, said talks were ongoing about resettling the residents and getting them more protections in the meantime.

“I told them I promise I would do everything I could,” McGurk said of his talks with MEK members in the camp.

An investigation by Britain’s Guardian newspaper found that Rohrabacher had received thousands of dollars in donations from MEK supporters in 2012 alone. The paper’s report added that Ros-Lehtinen has accepted at least $20,000 in campaign donations from Iranian-American groups, or their leaders, that support the MEK. Other members of Congress have been flown to France to address pro-MEK events, and a Washington lobbying firm received nearly $1 million to work on getting the MEK off the terrorist list, according to The Guardian.

Shirin Nariman, a Virginia-based MEK activist, acknowledged that some of its political allies had received money from MEK supporters. But Nariman said that more important than campaign donations and speaker fees was the time the group had spent knocking on the doors of politicians, making them aware of the MEK’s cause.

[…]

February 9, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization

The 40-year-old MKO’s New Year Resolution: Regime Change!

It’s been near 4 decades that the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO) embraces the Regime The 40-year-old MKO's New Year Resolution: Regime Change! Change Option against the Iranian government. The group names every New Year –whether according to Iranian calendar or the Christian calendar – as "the year of the overthrow of the regime".

In order to accomplish its so-called objective – the overthrow of the Islamic Republic of Iran—the MKO has had various bed fellows including Saddam Hussein the deposed Iraqi dictator. The group was Iraqi Baath’s intelligence and military aid during the eight years of a destructive war between Iran and Iraq. They perpetrated countless random terror acts to assassinate Iranian officials and civilians.

Immediately after the cease fire was signed by Iran and Iraq, the MKO leaders launched the notorious "Eternal Light Operation" ( Forough e Javidan) across Iranian borders in the vain hope of reaching Tehran in three days– Massoud Rajavi the leader of the MKO had planned a three-day operation to seize Tehran and change the Regime!

The operation was like a mass suicide. A large number of the group members were killed. The group was harshly defeated and forced back in the arms of its Iraqi landlord Saddam Hussein. Then, in 1991, the MKO continued offering services to the land lord by aiding him with suppressing Kurdish uprising and Shiite Intifada in Iraq where most former members of the group recall the infamous Maryam Rajavi’s quote "Take the Kurds under the tanks and save your bullets for the Iranian soldiers."!

However, the MKO’s long time loyalty to the enemy of Iranian people did not accomplish anything at the end. Following the American led invasion of Iraq, the Iraqi dictator fell off power. The MKO was disarmed by the American army. The group leaders now had to answer a large number of questions in the mind of the rank and files who were promised an armed –violent— regime change in Iran.

Faced with an ambiguous dreadful fate in camps in Iraq members of "the cult of Rajavi" witnessed the collapse of the mirage –Regime Change in Iran– the Rajavis had painted for them in many years. Defection from the group was on the rise and Iraqi newly established government didn’t want Saddam’s mercenaries on its territory.

The leaders of the MKO strived to make new allies in the region ranging from Saudi Arabia to Israel. The new mutual teamwork included terrorist and spying operations against Iran in exchange for receiving financial, military, and intelligence support. Meanwhile the group’s propaganda played its leading part in derailing the West’s diplomatic efforts to engage in negotiations with the Iranian government.

Conversely, despite the MKO’s hard work to gain the world’s support for its so-called desire for regime change in Iran the situation of the group as a cult of personality deteriorated , day after day. The process of the group’s expulsion from Iraq has started and is ongoing although a bit slowly. There is an increasing growth in the number of defectors from the group’s cult-like structure. Therefore, today the main issue for the group leaders is to maintain the structure of the cult which guarantees its survival.

At least during the past decade, the MKO has resorted to different powers in the world not for the sake of regime change but for its own survival. "Regime Change" is not a promise anymore; it has been reduced to a New Year resolution on the MKO propaganda websites even if it is repeated three times.

By Mazda Parsi

January 9, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization

The MKO struggle to survive or to topple the IRI

The Mujahedin Khalq Organization failed to function properly as a real opposition group during its controversial so called struggle life.

The group has been struggling to survive rather than opposing the Islamic Republic and through this challenge it has passed different phases.

After the overthrow of Pahlavi Regime, the MKO turned against the newly established Islamic Republic and put up a violent resistance. Failed in the armed struggle from within the country, it fled to Paris and then to Iraq and sided with the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein as the Iran-Iraq war escalated in 1981.

Since then the MKO had to use its energy and time to role as Saddam’s Private Army as named truly by Ann Singleton, a former member of the group. Saddam accommodated them in Iraq and provided them with millions of dollars of funds as well as tanks, artillery pieces and other weapons. The MKO in return cooperated with the Iraqi military on intelligence and other warfare affairs. The Mujahedin also aided the Iraqi dictator to crush the Kurdish and Shiite uprisings. By siding with its own nation’s enemy the MKO ended any popular support it had inside Iran. It was also designated as a terrorist organization for conducting terrorist operations in Iran, Iraq and European countries.

Considering its long, black history of violence and terror, the MeK was blacklisted as a terrorist organization first by the US Government in October 1997, and then by the UK in March 2001 and the EU in May 2002. The Mujahedin Khalq Organization spent several years attempting to get itself off terrorist lists. The group spent millions of dollars lobbying politicians, journalists and packing rallies hiring people from different nationalities to participate.

Although the well-funded campaign succeeded in the group’s delisting, they lost their long stayed Camp. The US agreed to delist the group in exchange for leaving Camp Ashraf.

As Camp Ashraf had been a good bastion for the MKO leaders to preserve their cult-like structure and hold members, leaving the camp was a disaster for them. Now Camp Ashraf is evacuated completely and all the members have been transferred to Camp Liberty as a Temporary Transit Location. The manipulation practices cannot be conducted authentically and the cult leaders have difficulty to keep members in. A large number of Camp Liberty residents have managed to escape, despite restricting regulations which are implementing within the Camp Liberty as reported by former U.N. special envoy to Iraq, Martin Kobler:

"Hundreds of daily monitoring reports suggest that the lives of Camp Hurriya members are tightly controlled", Reuters reported.

The organization has also difficulty to maintain its cult hegemony over members who have been relocated in third countries. Some 70 out of 159 members have parted ways with the group after being transferred from Iraq to Albania, as PressTV quoted a defected leader of the group.

Thus the MKO delisted in cost of losing members.

The other side of the MKO’s strategic failures is its desperate efforts on hanging on Iranian enemies as it was the case with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and after him allying the US and Israel.

Witnessing the enhanced relations between Iran and the US and the progress in P5+1 talks on Iran’s nuclear case, the MKO Cult leaders so hastily tried to toss out new accusations on Iran’s nuclear program . However the new allegations were taken seriously neither by International media nor by the politicians and its’ so called previous Iran enemies allies, as Jim White puts:

“Reuters clearly was unmoved by the accusation, as they immediately pointed out that NCRI is biased and politically motivated.”

Failed on distributing false revelations this time the MKO tried to disrupt the talks in Geneva by staging rallies which were prevented by the Swiss police as Iran Interlink reported.

The talks between Iran and six world powers over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions ended on a promising note as CNN quoted the participants:

"For the first time, we had very detailed technical discussions," a senior U.S. State Department official said. A spokesman for the EU’s foreign policy chief called Iran’s presentation "very useful."

The most recent scandal of the group is the propaganda show they instigated on the arrest of Iranian national Ali Mansouri on spying charges in Israel which was counterproductive, as soon was disclosed by several former members as being a veteran high-ranking member of the Mujahedin. Mohammad Razaghi, a former member of the MKO reveals his personal experience with Ali Mansouri:

“Ali Mansouri has been a long serving member of the organisation who acted as a go between for the MEK with Mossad, and who travelled to Iran to gather information for them…. I remember clearly a few times that I was tasked to go to see him to collect some pictures and documents about Mehrabad Airport and Jamaran H.Q. and to bring them to our safe house and hand them over to my commanders. …”

It seems that the sequence of the MKO failed tactics and its futile efforts to wipe them off have no end.

The Mujahedin-e Khalq is a broken group that is reaching its Expiry date.

By: A. Sepinoud

References:

[1] Charbonneau,Louis, U.N. envoy accuses Iran group’s leaders in Iraq of rights abuses, Reuters, July16, 2012

[2] PressTV, 70 more MKO members defect in Albania, October19, 2013

[3]White, Jime, MEK Makes Desperate New Iran Nuclear Accusation, Reuters Yawns, Empty Wheel, October10, 2013

[4] Smith-Spark, Laura and Sciutto, Jim , ‘Substantive’ talks over Iran’s nuclear program, CNN, October 16, 2013

[5] Iran Interlink, Swiss police prevent Mojahedin Khalq disruption in Geneva, October17, 2013

[6] Razaghi,Mohammad, Israel’s Iranian spy belongs to Mojahedin Khalq, Iran Interlink, October18, 2013

October 21, 2013 0 comments

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