While former New York mayor and the current attorney of the US president Rudy Giuliani was performing–symbolically tearing the Iran deal– on the scene of the Mujahedin Khalq’s event in Washington, most people could expect Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran deal on Tuesday. The cheering MKO-led audience praised him for his call for “regime change” in Iran but Giuliani was widely questioned for his financial ties with the strange cult with the blood of American citizens in its hands.
Jonathan Vankin of the INQUISITR website writes about MKO-Giuliani connections, ”Specifically,“America’s Mayor” has long-standing financial ties to a shadowy anti-government and anti-American Iranian group that spent 15 years on the United States government list of “foreign terrorist organizations,” and is known to be responsible for numerous attacks on Americans — including the murders of three U.S. military officers and three independent civilian U.S. contractors. The same group, known as the MEK, supported and may have even taken part in the seizure of American hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979.” [1]
Vankin details the financial dealings between the MKO and its supporters in the United States quoting the Politico. “The MEK, or Mujahidin e-Khalq, paid Giuliani an annual fee of at least $20,000 for many years, for what a report by Politico magazine called “brief appearances before the group and for lobbying to have it removed from the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations,” he writes. “But in addition to its long history of anti-American violence, the MEK is generally considered a cult, with members fanatically devoted to the group’s leader, Massoud Rajavi, and his wife, Maryam Rajavi.” [2]
The MKO is very welcomed by the US warmongers like John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani. This mostly seems to be the issue of money. Once designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the US state Department and currently considered as a violent Cult of personality by various American or international bodies the MKO would not be embraced so warmly in Washington unless there is a beneficial deal.
”When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, the MEK was designated as a “hostile force,” due to its support for then-Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.” asserts the INQUISITR’s contributor. “The group also took part in Saddam’s bloody suppression of a Kurdish uprising after the first Gulf War in 1991, according to the RAND study.” [3]
Besides, as a successful businessman Donald Trump has indicated that profitable financial deals with wealthy Saudi Arabians is worth risking the international peace. More wars in the Middle East results in more weapon deals with the Saudis. According to a last year’s report on the Independent, “Donald Trump has signed the largest arms deal in history with Saudi Arabia despite warnings he could be accused of being complicit in war crimes and after blaming Saudi Arabia himself for producing the terrorists behind 9/11.” [4]
Thus, terrorists are good as long as when they help you make more money no matter how dangerous they are. As Vankin accurately puts, “The MEK took Iraq’s side in the bloody, eight-year Iran-Iraq War that dragged on from 1980 to 1988, fighting against the military of its own home country. As a result,the group is said to be widely despised even today inside Iran.” [5]
He cites the RAND report describing the “cultic practices” of the MKO, “which had Giuliani on its payroll” and saying that MKO members must recite “an oath of devotion to the Rajavis on the Koran,” and pledge themselves to a practice of “mandatory divorce and celibacy” with “love for the Rajavis to replace love for spouses and family.” [6]
“But the Rajavis themselves were exempt from these strict rules governing their followers’ loyalty and sexual behavior,” he adds. [7]
Josh Marshal of the TPM website also write, “Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) is a notorious cult-like group of Iranian exiles which appears to have close to literally zero support inside Iran but has for years cultivated significant ties to DC Iran “regime change” advocates as well as a bipartisan list of shills willing to take their money (of which they have quite a lot).” [8]
It’s been many years that a large number of US journalists and foreign policy experts have warned about the MKO-US deals. Daniel Larison of the American Conservative has always been one of the critics of the American promoters of the MKO. “It bears repeating that the MEK is widely hated in Iran because the group fought against Iran in the Iran-Iraq war, and the vast majority of Iranians wants nothing to do with them,” he states. “Treating this group or any of its fronts as a legitimate or serious Iranian opposition movement is a horrible mistake, and the former and current officials that support the MEK should be held accountable for helping to promote an awful group in the service of a bad cause that most Iranians don’t support.” [9]
However, the American sponsors of the MKO ignore the facts that about the MKO’s true violent nature. They prefer to use the group as a means for their war plans. Preferring to see the group as a tool for their war plans. In response the MKO is so excited and happy to see it is being used as a proxy force for US war plan in the Middle East. This is because its leaders are aware that they do not have any base in Iran and they are not wanted and welcome by Iranians. The MKO in its turn is so excited that it is used as a proxy force in the US war plans in the Middle East because its leaders are certainly disillusioned when they find out that they are not welcome by the Iranian people at all. Instead, they have to totally depend on the US in order to get on the US-led war machine to achieve what they oddly call “peaceful regime change”. Of course they are disillusioned about this achievement.
By Mazda Parsi
Sources:
[1] VankinJohnathan, The Rudy Giuliani Iran Connection: Trump Lawyer’s Ties To Shadowy Iranian ‘Cult-Like’ Group Now In Question, INQUISITR, May 6, 2018
[2] ibid
[3] ibid
[4] Revesz, Rachael, Donald Trump signs $110 billion arms deal with nation he accused of masterminding 9/11 Arms deal with a country accused of repeatedly violating international law is set to be worth $380 billion within a decade, The Independent.co.uk, May 21, 2017
[5] ibid
[6] ibid
[7] ibid
[8]Marshall, Josh, Rudy Went to Albania to Hang Out with A Iran Regime Change Cult(Really), Talking Points Memo, May 5, 2018
[9]Larison,Daniel, Giuliani’s MEK Pandering and Trump’s Iran Obsession, The AmericanConservative, May 5, 2018