The news of the expulsion of two Iranian diplomats caught everybody by surprise in Tirana on December 20. The Iranian embassy and its ambassador Gholamhossein Mohammandia have kept a very low profile in Tirana in the past months. While Iran has been very upset with Albania, which since 2013 is hosting on its soil a violent Iranian jihadi organization, the Mojahedin e Khalq (MEK), its embassy and ambassador who understand that Albania is not an independent state, but a puppet of the U. S., has kept a very low profile. The most that the embassy has done is to politely ask Albania to respect Iran which has always respected Albania, to distance itself from MEK’s terrorism and to warn Albania about this terrorist organization.
The Iranian Mojahedin who started to come to Albania as war refugees since 2013, have since the election of Donald Trump in the White House become very aggressive in the country. The MEK which runs a paramilitary camp in the village of Manza outside Durres, have been accused by various Albanian and Western media outlets of running illegal activities in Albania. MEK, which breaks many Albanian and international laws, calls on a daily basis for violent jihad against Iran. They keep many of their members in slave-like conditions, who are brainwashed and radicalized with the idea of violent jihad. If an Albanian were to do in Albania what MEK and their cult leader Maryam Rajavi does, he or she would have ended up in jail as a terrorist and imprisoned for up to 15 years. However, Albania does not implement its laws on MEK, since they are ordered not to do so by the Americans.
From its paramilitary camp in the village of Manza, MEK carries out daily twitter attacks, fake news production and espionage against Iran, but not only this. The people who are familiar with their websites and publications know that MEK attacks even Albanian and Western media outlets which do not support the stance of the Trump administration regarding Iran or question the ‘democratic’ credentials of this terrorist jihadi organization. Through its paid writers MEK has attacked in recent months many Western news outlets, like the MSNBC, Al-Jazeera English, Britain’s Channel 4 News, The Guardian, and The Independent. It has also attacked many media and personalities in Albania, including Albania’s former president, Rexhep Mejdani, by claiming that they work for Iran against the ‘democratic opposition’ of Madame Maryam Rajavi.
MEK which does not use and does not accept democracy and criticism has never accepted a public debate about its past and present crimes, its cultish organization and the enslavement of its members. Anyone who dares to criticize them is viciously lynched and attacked as an Iranian agent, advocate of the Mullahs of Tehran or as someone who is part of Tehran’s influence operations.
Thanks to the total American control over Albania, MEK has established a state within a state. In its paramilitary camp in Manez, MEK keeps many of its members as slaves, does not allow them to walk out of the camp, talk to their families, marry, have families, find a job and live a free life. By psychological coercion and brainwashing it threatens anyone who dares to question the existence of this violent paramilitary cult with either direct violence as they did with the journalist of Channel 4 or the Canadian Mostafa Mohammadi, the father of Somayeh Mohammadi (a radicalized jihadi woman whom they keep in isolation), or else they launch slander and verbal attacks.
“Thanks to the total American control over Albania, MEK has established a state within a state.”
The verbal and slander attacks that MEK conducts against the free media in Albania, have created a climate of fear in the country. In July 2018 when Mostafa Mohammadi was in the country and sued MEK for abduction and radicalization of his daughter who has abandoned Canada and joined the jihad of MEK, few Albanian media outlets dared to publish his story. Stories have emerged of how MEK paid many media outlets in the country in order to buy their silence regarding the abduction of Somayeh Mohammadi. MEK commanders like Behzad Saffari, Farid Totounchi (Mahoutchi), Jila Deyhim visited all major media outlets in Albania to ‘convince’ them not to publish anything against MEK and their ‘holy’ supreme leader, Maryam Rajavi.
MEK has managed to terrorize not only the media but even many Albanian MPs. An Albanian MP who takes part in the meetings that MEK and Maryam Rajavi holds every year in Paris under the banner of Free Iran, told the writer of this article that “We know who the MEK are. They are a terrorist organization, whom the Americans killed themselves. But the Americans have told us to protect them, and we are protecting them.”
Since their arrival in Albania in 2013, MEK which acts like Al-Qaeda in the Taliban’s Afghanistan, has continuously asked the Albanian government to close the Iranian embassy in Tirana and expel the ‘Mullah’s diplomats’, since according to MEK the government of Iran is not the one based in Teheran, but is Maryam Rajavi and her jihadis. The Albanian government which was forced by the Americans to host these ex-terrorists as war refugees has found itself in a very difficult position in the last years. The Iranian refugees of MEK are not acting like the refugees from Syria, Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan to whom Albania has offered asylum. They do not integrate but dictate their own policies to their host country. The Albanian government which has dealt with the issue of violent extremism in the past is very upset to see how MEK breaks many laws in Albania, keeps their members as slaves, beats their opponents in the streets of Tirana, harasses journalists, and according to an Albanian police report they harass, blackmail and can even kill their own members.
The pro-MEK MP who sits on Albanian National Security Council with whom I spoke in August 2018, told me: “We are in a very difficult position with MEK. We go to Paris to support Maryam Rajavi, because our British and American friends tell us to do so. MEK is very unhappy with the Rama government because they are not doing what MEK is asking him to do. But the opposition (Democratic Party) MPs are supporting them. We make sure that they do not keep guns in their hands. I told them to open their camp and deradicalize, but on the other hand we have the Iranian embassy here. With MEK, we do what the Americans tell us to do. I have told MEK that they must integrate themselves into Albanian society, open their camp but I do not know if they will listen to me.”
While Albania is in very difficult situation with the MEK and Albanian public opinion is very upset with the Edi Rama government for bringing these terrorists in the country, MEK are offered a high class treatment by the Trump and Israeli administrations and are used as a major carrot by the U.S. administration against the European Union and its policies towards Iran. The E.U. and many other governments are upset with Albania for hosting MEK, but they do understand the difficult situation of the corrupt government of Edi Rama which is accused of cooperating with major drug trafficking organizations.
The announcement on Twitter by John Bolton, the U.S. National Security Advisor of President Trump, that the Prime Minister of Albania, Edi Rama had expelled the Iranian ambassador from Albania caught everyone by surprise in Tirana. Edi Rama, who most probably was not aware of what the Americans were up to, has not made a single statement about this event and it seems that he did not know what was going on, until Bolton communicated to Tirana and the world the news on December 19. When MEK organized a propaganda meeting in Manez on December 15, they asked Pandeli Majko, Minister of the Diaspora in the Rama government ‘why does Albania still host an Iranian Embassy in Tirana’. Majko who is a major supporter of MEK and has previously supported the Bush administration in its rendition and torture programs in Afghanistan and Iraq, told the MEK that we keep the Iranian embassy in Tirana because of international law.
Albanian government officials, contrary to what John Bolton claimed, had not expelled any Iranian diplomat and had no idea what was going to come. The Iranian embassy did not know anything as well and had not received anything from the Albanian government. When news of the expulsion of the Iranian diplomats broke, many Albanian journalists who deal with issues of security, terrorism and crime contacted the Albanian Foreign Ministry to ask what was going on and who were the people that Albania was planning to expel. The Foreign Ministry had no answer since they did not know. PM Edi Rama, who is facing major scandals and public protests in the country, also seemed confused by the expulsion story.
The whole history of the expulsion of the Iranian diplomats from Albania seems like a Trump – Netanyahu desperate affair which uses poor, corrupt and obedient Albania for their global confrontation with the European Union and other major world powers against Iran. The Americans and Israelis know that Edi Rama and his corrupt government will not dare to say no to the Americans. After the announcement, Rama was congratulated by the Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump and others in the U.S. administration for the ‘brave act’ that Albania and he probably did not know was coming. Israeli and U.S. media outlets are producing amazingly outrageous fake news stories about the expulsion of the Iranian diplomats. They now are accusing Iran for planning an attack on the Israeli football team which played in Albania in 2016, even though the Israelis and the Americans back in 2016 accused ISIS for this falsely claimed attack. Back in 2016, the government of Edi Rama, which does anything to appease Israel and America, created a major embarrassment against the Muslim community in Albania by detaining and terrorizing 200 Muslimsthroughout the country, while the governments of Albania and Kosovo jailed dozens of Muslims and Imams without any proof. These people who have been held in incarceration without any facts for more than two years for their alleged plan to attack Israelis, up to this moment have not been convicted, since Albanian prosecutors have not managed to find a single piece of evidence of the intended attack that Israel claimed in 2016.
The fantastic fake news story that the Israeli Mossad produced in November 2016 against the Muslims of Albania and Kosovo is now being twisted again. The Trump administration and their Israeli friends, who for some very strange reasons ordered the Albanian government via Twitter to expel two Iranian diplomats, are now accusing Iran of planning to kill the Israelis in 2016. Shpend Kursani, a Kosovar deradicalisation expert and Fatjon Mejdini an investigative journalist who were commenting on Tim Judah’s Twitter account on 20 December 2018 wrote:
Which would mean, charges against those who were locked in the prison because, as their court proceesings suggest, of their links to ISIS, should be dropped, and prosecution should restart, perhaps by replacing”ISIS”with”Iran”in charges. What a contradiction would that be
— Shpend Kursani (@ShpendKursani) December 19, 2018
I would suspect so for MEK as well. Now they can twist if they way not us to know otherwise they. But the citizens in Albania alao have the right to know the truth. So look fwd if you learn smth new
— Shpend Kursani (@ShpendKursani) December 20, 2018
The comments of Kursani and Mejdini above show the confusion and amazement that exists in Albania regarding the expulsion of the Iranian diplomats and the claim that Iran and not ISIS planned to attack the Israelis back in 2016. Albanian journalists, many of whom were trained by the Americans and Israelis themselves on issues of extremism and violent jihad are shocked by what they read from the U.S. administration and Israeli officials. Every decent human being on this planet knows that Iran has nothing to do with terrorism in Albania and its ambassador has been expelled not by Albania but by the American dictate. The request for his removal is a fulfillment of the demands that MEK has been making to Albania and many European governments for many years. While MEK and the Americans have been unsuccessful in forcing the Europeans to join John Bolton and Netanyahu’s crusade against Iran, the removal of the Iranian ambassador from Albania seems like a last desperate attempt by Trump administration against the EU.
PM Edi Rama, who should feel very nervous about the way that Israel, the U.S. and MEK have taken control over the foreign policy of his country, has not commented on the event yet. He understands that the old terrorist lady Maryam Rajavi and her jihadi soldiers whom Edi Rama welcomed generously in Albania in 2015, have now managed to take hostage the foreign policies of his country. Edi Rama whose government has voted against Israel and Trump in the United Nations on the question of Jerusalem, in order to appease the Europeans, knows that the Europeans are angry about what is going on with his country’s foreign policy. The expulsion of the Iranian diplomats will not sound good in Brussels. MEK, Israel and the U.S. are using Albania as a prostitute in their confrontation with Europe and Iran. However, Madam Maryam Rajavi, who claims to her jihadi radicals that she is the president-elect of Iran, should be smiling now. The Americans and Israelis have now set her to act as the Foreign Minister of Albania even though Edi Rama welcomed her in Albania in 2015 as a war refugee and not as a member of his government.
Dr. Olsi Jazexhi, Tirana, Albania, Iranian.com