Iran Interlink Weekly Digest++ Maryam Rajavi’s idea to hold the March 8th Women’s Day celebration on the 28th February raised a few eyebrows. Several people described it as a desperate attempt to draw attention away from how disastrous Iran’s elections had been for her. First she had told the people of Iran to boycott the election, then she said it was America’s fault that they didn’t stop it. Then immediately after the election she fell silent as though it had never happened. Some commentators pointed out that any use of Maryam Rajavi to discredit Iranian elections is doomed to fail. Here is a woman who was appointed as ‘Interim President’ seventeen years ago by her husband – who has never since thought to suggest any other candidate let alone hold an election. Maryam Rajavi wouldn’t accept a proper election on anything.
++ The fourth series of families visiting Camp Liberty this year have returned to Iran and are furiously writing to the UNHCR and anywhere else they can think of to find out how it is possible that a decade since Saddam’s regime has gone they still can’t meet with their relatives. They blame the UN office in Baghdad which is in charge of Camp Liberty for giving in to the American embassy which doesn’t want to allow contact. They blame the government of Iraq, saying they are surely responsible for their own country, yet the families can’t get access to their loved ones. This visit attracted widespread coverage in Iraqi newspapers and this has prompted Rajavi to respond by spending a lot of money paying writers to write against the families. But the writing is the same as ever – accusing an eighty-year old woman of being an agent of the Iranian regime and coming to Iraq to kill her own son. Some Iraqi readers have replied to such articles by commenting that the MEK talk rubbish.
++ An interview with former MEK member Ehsan Bidi in Tirana and an article by Anne and Massoud Khodabandeh in the Huffington Post have been translated into Arabic, Farsi and Albanian/English. What the MEK wanted to do clandestinely is now being exposed and this has made them panic and start reacting. They have clearly ordered all their lobbyists to drop everything else and try to stop this news from being repeated anywhere but in the Albanian media in particular. The MEK leaders have given the go-ahead to their agents in Albania to spend unlimited funds in order to stop the story that the MEK is getting together with illegal gangs in Albania. Ehsan Bidi has announced that he fears for his life as the MEK are making direct threats against him.
March 04, 2016