Hot Topics

Five lessons from the de-listing of MEK as a terrorist group

A separate justice system for American Muslims, the US embrace of terrorism, and other key political facts are highlighted

The Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), or People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, is an Iranian dissident group that has been formally designated for the last 15 years by the US State Department as a "foreign terrorist organization". When the Bush administration sought to justify its attack on Iraq in 2003 by accusing Saddam Hussein of being a sponsor of "international terrorism", one of its prime examples was Iraq’s "sheltering" of the MEK. Its inclusion on the terrorist list has meant that it is a felony to provide any "material support" to that group.

Nonetheless, a large group of prominent former US government officials from both political parties has spent the last several years receiving substantial sums of cash to give speeches to the MEK, and have then become vocal, relentless advocates for the group, specifically for removing them from the terrorist list. Last year, the Christian Science Monitor thoroughly described "these former high-ranking US officials – who represent the full political spectrum – [who] have been paid tens of thousands of dollars to speak in support of the MEK." They include Democrats Howard Dean, Ed Rendell, Wesley Clark, Bill Richardson, and Lee Hamilton, and Republicans Rudy Giuliani, Fran Townsend, Tom Ridge, Michael Mukasey, and Andrew Card. Other prominent voices outside government, such as Alan Dershowitz and Elie Wiesel, have been enlisted to the cause and are steadfast MEK advocates.

Money has also been paid to journalists such as The Washington Post’s Carl Bernstein and the Chicago Tribune’s Clarence Page. Townsend is a CNN contributor and Rendell is an MSNBC contributor, yet those MEK payments are rarely, if ever, disclosed by those media outlets when featuring those contributors (indeed, Townsend can go on CNN to opine on Iran, even urging that its alleged conduct be viewed as "an act for war", with no disclosure whatsoever during the segment of her MEK payments). Quoting a State Department official, CSM detailed how the scheme works:

"’Your speech agent calls, and says you get $20,000 to speak for 20 minutes. They will send a private jet, you get $25,000 more when you are done, and they will send a team to brief you on what to say.’ . . . The contracts can range up to $100,000 and include several appearances."

On Friday, the Guardian’s Washington reporter Chris McGreal added substantial information about the recipients of the funding and, especially, its sources. As he put it, the pro-MEK campaign "has seen large sums of money directed at three principal targets: members of Congress, Washington lobby groups and influential former officials", including the GOP Congressman who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers.

What makes this effort all the more extraordinary are the reports that MEK has actually intensified its terrorist and other military activities over the last couple of years. In February, NBC News reported, citing US officials, that "deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by [MEK]" as it is "financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service". While the MEK denies involvement, the Iranian government has echoed these US officials in insisting that the group was responsible for those assassinations. NBC also cited "unconfirmed reports in the Israeli press and elsewhere that Israel and the MEK were involved in a Nov. 12 explosion that destroyed the Iranian missile research and development site at Bin Kaneh, 30 miles outside Tehran".

In April, the New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh reported that the US itself has for years provided extensive training to MEK operatives, on US soil (in other words, the US government provided exactly the "material support" for a designated terror group which the law criminalizes). Hersh cited numerous officials for the claim that "some American-supported covert operations continue in Iran today." The MEK’s prime goal is the removal of Iran’s government.

Despite these reports that the MEK has been engaged in terrorism and other military aggression against Iran – or, more accurately: likely because of them – it was announced on Friday the US State Department will remove MEK from its list of terrorist organizations. This event is completely unsurprising. In May, I noted the emergence of reports that the State Department would do so imminently.

Because this MEK scam more vividly illustrates the rot and corruption at the heart of America’s DC-based political culture than almost any episode I can recall, I’ve written numerous times about it. But now that the de-listing is all but official, it is worthwhile to take note of the five clear lessons it teaches:

Lesson One: There is a separate justice system in the US for Muslim Americans.
The past decade has seen numerous "material support" prosecutions of US Muslims for the most trivial and incidental contacts with designated terror groups. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that any Muslim who gets with sneezing distance of such a group is subject to prosecution. Indeed, as I documented last week, many of them have been prosecuted even for core First Amendment activities: political advocacy deemed supportive of such groups.

When they’re convicted – and marginalized Muslims, usually poor and powerless, almost always are – they typically are not only consigned to prison for decades, but are placed in America’s most oppressive and restrictive prison units. As a result, many law-abiding Muslim Americans have become petrified of donating money to Muslim charities or even speaking out against perceived injustices out of fear – the well-grounded fear – that they will be accused of materially supporting a terror group. This is all part of the pervasive climate of fear in which many American Muslims live.

Yet here we have a glittering, bipartisan cast of former US officials and other prominent Americans who are swimming in cash as they advocate on behalf of a designated terrorist organization. After receiving their cash, Howard Dean and Rudy Giuliani met with MEK leaders, and Dean actually declared that the group’s leader should be recognized by the west as President of Iran. That is exactly the type of coordinated messaging with a terrorist group with the supreme court found, in its 2010 Humanitarian Law v. Holder ruling, could, consistent with the First Amendment, lead to prosecution for "material support of terrorism" (ironically, numerous MEK shills, including CNN’s Townsend, praised the supreme court for its broad reading of that statute when they thought, correctly, that it was being applied to Muslims).

Yet other than a reported Treasury Department investigation several months ago to determine the source of Ed Rendell’s MEK speaking fees – an investigation that seems to have gone nowhere – there has been no repercussions whatsoever from this extensive support given by these DC luminaries to this designated terror group. Now that MEK will be removed from the terror list, there almost certainly never will be any consequences (as a legal matter, the de-listing should have no impact on the possible criminality of this MEK support: the fact that a group is subsequently removed from the list does not retroactively legalize the providing of material support when it was on the list).

In sum, there are numerous American Muslims sitting in prison for years for far less substantial interactions with terror groups than this bipartisan group of former officials gave to MEK. This is what New York Times Editorial Page Editor Andrew Rosenthal meant when he wrote back in March that the 9/11 attacks have "led to what’s essentially a separate justice system for Muslims". The converse is equally true: America’s political elites can engage in the most egregious offenses – torture, illegal eavesdropping, money-driven material support for a terror group – with complete impunity.

Lesson Two: The US government is not opposed to terrorism; it favors it.
The history of the US list of designated terrorist organizations, and its close cousin list of state sponsors of terrorism, is simple: a country or group goes on the list when they use violence to impede US interests, and they are then taken off the list when they start to use exactly the same violence to advance US interests. The terrorist list is not a list of terrorists; it’s a list of states and groups which use their power to defy US dictates rather than adhere to them.

The NYU scholar Remi Brulin has exhaustively detailed the rank game-playing that has taken place with this list: Saddam was put on it when he allied with the Soviets in the early 1980s, then was taken off when the US wanted to arm and fund him against Iran in the mid-1980s, then he was put back on in the early 1990s when the US wanted to attack him.

And now, with the MEK, we have a group that, at least according to some reports, appears to have intensified its terrorism, and yet they are removed from the list. Why? Because now they are aligned against the prime enemy of the US and Israel – and working closely with those two nations – and are therefore, magically, no longer "terrorists". As the Iran experts Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett wrote on Friday:

"Since when did murdering unarmed civilians (and, in some instances, members of their families as well) on public streets in the middle of a heavily populated urban area (Tehran) not meet even the US government’s own professed standard for terrorism?"

They answered their own question: "We have seen too many times over the years just how cynically American administrations have manipulated these designations, adding and removing organizations and countries for reasons that have little or nothing to do with designees’ actual involvement in terrorist activity." In other words, the best and most efficient way to be removed from the list is to start engaging in terrorism for and in conjunction with the US and its allies (i.e. Israel) rather than against them.

Lesson Three: "Terrorism" remains the most meaningless, and thus the most manipulated, term in political discourse.
The US government did not even pretend that terrorism had anything to do with its decision as to whether MEK should be de-listed. Instead, they used the carrot of de-listing, and the threat of remaining on the list, to pressure MEK leaders to adhere to US demands to abandon their camp in Iraq. But what does adhering to this US demand have to do with terrorism? Nothing. This list has nothing to do with terrorism. It is simply a way the US rewards those who comply with its dictates and punishes those who refuse.

Terrorism, at least in its applied sense, means little other than: violence used by enemies of the US and its allies. Violence used by the US and its allies (including stateless groups) can never be terrorism, no matter how heinous and criminal.

Lesson Four: Legalized influence-peddling within both parties is what drives DC.
MEK achieved its goal by doing more than merely changing the beneficiaries of its actions from Saddam to the US and Israel. It also found a way – how it did so remains a mystery – to funnel millions of dollars into the bank accounts of key ex-officials from both parties, a bipartisan list of DC lobbyist firms, and several key journalists. In other words, it achieved its policy aims the same way most groups in DC do: by buying influence within both parties, and paying influence-peddlers who parlay their political celebrity into personal riches.

So pervasive is this scam that most people have become utterly numb to it (that’s because people are willing to acquiesce to most evils when they become perceived as common; that acquiescence is often justified as worldly sophistication). As a result, there was no pretense here to hide these sleazy transactions. The very idea that Ed Rendell suddenly woke up one day and developed an overnight, never-before-seen passion for the MEK and Iran policy is just laughable. But the former Pennsylvania governor is a key advocate to enlist – he remains well connected within the Democratic Party and now has an important platform on MSNBC – so on the payroll he went.

Once the bipartisan list of DC officials receiving cash from MEK became known, it became almost impossible to imagine any outcome other than this one. As one person tweeted after reading this State Department decision: any American billionaire could easily have his birthday declared a national holiday by simply spreading the cash around enough to DC political and media figures on a bipartisan basis.

Lesson Five: there is aggression between the US and Iran, but it’s generally not from Iran.
Over the last decade, the US has had Iran almost entirely encircled, thanks in part – only in part – to large-scale ground invasions of the nations on its eastern and western borders. Some combination of Israel and the US have launched cyberwarfare at the Iranians, murdered their civilian scientists, and caused explosions on its soil. The American president and the Israeli government continuously and publicly threaten to use force against them.

And now, the US has taken a key step in ensuring that a group devoted to the overthrow of the regime, a group that sided with Saddam in his war against Iran, is able to receive funding and otherwise be fully admitted into the precincts of international respectability. Just imagine if Iran took steps to legitimize an American rebel group that has long been devoted to the overthrow of the US government and which has a long history of serious violence on US soil.

Not just the Iranian government, but also most of its citizens, are likely to perceive this de-listing as exactly what it is: yet another act of aggression toward their nation. As the Christian Science Monitor said of the group, it is "widely despised inside Iran". But the US has now officially offered a clear gesture of legitimization, if not support, for this group, one that only exacerbates the war-threatening tensions between the two nations.

UPDATE
Several commenters have raised questions about the motives of Dershowitz and Wiesel in supporting MEK. While motives can never be known with certainty – one can attempt only to make inferences based on conduct and circumstances – it was the JTA, the self-described "global news service of the Jewish people", which reported their involvement, and they suggested the motive was not any receipt of money but rather MEK’s alignment with Israel:

"The names on the growing list of influential American advocates to de-list the Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MEK — known in English as the National Council of Resistance of Iran — suggest an effort to give the bid a pro-Israel imprimatur. . . .

"On the record, the people involved insist there is no Israel element to what they say is a humanitarian endeavor to remove the movement’s followers from danger.

"’I don’t see any Israel issue at all,’ Dershowitz told JTA in an interview, instead casting it in terms of Hillel’s dictum, ‘If I am only for myself, who am I?’

"Off the record, however, figures close to the campaign use another ancient Middle Eastern dictum to describe the involvement of supporters of Israel: ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’"

"A source close to the effort to bring pro-Israel voices into the initiative cited reports that Israel has allied with the MEK, which reportedly maintains agents in Iran and in the past has published details of Iran’s nuclear weapons program."

A separate JTA article reporting on the de-listing noted that "Iranian Americans sympathetic to the plight of MEK enlisted the support of a number of pro-Israel figures, including Nobel Peace laureate and Holocaust memoirist Elie Wiesel; Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz; and Irwin Cotler, the former Canadian justice minister." The original sentence has been clarified to reflect this report.

By Glenn Greenwald

September 24, 2012 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

American-Killing Terror Cult: US Delists Mujahedeen e-Khalq

Continuity of Agenda: Neo-Cons and Obama administration sponsor global terror against Iran.

As the US government confirms that terrorists involved in the Benghazi, Libya US consulate attack

Image: MEK is just one of many terrorist organizations, that despite being listed by the US State Department as such, still receives weapons, training, cash, and political support from the US government. This is a pattern seen repeated in Libya and most recently in Syria – each case spun and excused with a myriad of lies wrapped in false, constantly shifting narratives.

were indeed the very militants funded, armed, and provided air support in last year’s bid to overthrow the government of Libya, yet another disturbing announcement has been made. Terror organization Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK) will be delisted by the US State Department in order to clear legal obstacles in the way of overtly arming and funding the terrorists in pursuit of a proxy war with Iran, the LA Times reported in their article, “U.S. to remove Iranian group Mujahedin Khalq from terrorist list.”
….
The LA Times states specifically:

Some current and former U.S. officials have called for arming the MEK to conduct attacks against Iran, which experts say could tip the United States and Iran closer to war.

The lobbying effort to delist MEK has been led by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Howard Dean, first “Secretary of Homeland Security” Tom Ridge, John Lewis, Ed Rendell, former FBI Director Louis Freeh, retired General Wesley Clark, Lee Hamilton who farcically oversaw the 9/11 Commission, former US Marine Corps Commandant and former Obama National Security Adviser General James Jones, and Alan Dershowitz. There are also members of the British Parliament including David Amess of the Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom, speaking on MEK’s behalf.

The US Has Already Been Arming MEK For Years

The delisting of MEK is merely a technicality to make more overt arming and funding for the group possible. In reality, and despite being long recognized as a dangerous, extremist organization with both innocent Iranian and American blood on their hands, the US has been arming, training, and funding MEK for years, beginning under the Bush administration and continuing unabated under Obama.

Covert support for the US-listed terrorist group Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK) has been ongoing since at least 2008 under the Bush administration, when Seymour Hersh’s 2008 New Yorker article “Preparing the Battlefield,” reported that not only had MEK been considered for their role as a possible proxy, but that the US had already begun arming and financing them to wage war inside Iran:

“The M.E.K. has been on the State Department’s terrorist list for more than a decade, yet in recent years the group has received arms and intelligence, directly or indirectly, from the United States. Some of the newly authorized covert funds, the Pentagon consultant told me, may well end up in M.E.K. coffers. “The new task force will work with the M.E.K. The Administration is desperate for results.” He added, “The M.E.K. has no C.P.A. auditing the books, and its leaders are thought to have been lining their pockets for years. If people only knew what the M.E.K. is getting, and how much is going to its bank accounts—and yet it is almost useless for the purposes the Administration intends.”

Seymour Hersh in an NPR interview, also claims that select MEK members have already received training in the US.

More recently, the British Daily Mail published a stunning admission by “US officials” that Israel is currently funding, training, arming, and working directly with MEK. The Daily Mail article states, “U.S. officials confirmed today that Israel has been funding and training Iranian dissidents to assassinate nuclear scientists involved in Iran’s nuclear program.” The article continues by claiming, “Washington insiders confirmed there is a close relationship between Mossad and MEK.”

In 2009, an extensive conspiracy was formulated within US policy think-tank Brookings Institution’s 2009 “Which Path to Persia?” report, proposing to fully arm, train, and back MEK as it waged a campaign of armed terror against the Iranian people.

In their report, they openly conspire to use what is an admitted terrorist organization as a “US proxy” (emphasis added):

“Perhaps the most prominent (and certainly the most controversial) opposition group that has attracted attention as a potential U.S. proxy is the NCRI (National Council of Resistance of Iran), the political movement established by the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq). Critics believe the group to be undemocratic and unpopular, and indeed anti-American.

In contrast, the group’s champions contend that the movement’s long-standing opposition to the Iranian regime and record of successful attacks on and intelligence-gathering operations against the regime make it worthy of U.S. support. They also argue that the group is no longer anti-American and question the merit of earlier accusations. Raymond Tanter, one of the group’s supporters in the United States, contends that the MEK and the NCRI are allies for regime change in Tehran and also act as a useful proxy for gathering intelligence. The MEK’s greatest intelligence coup was the provision of intelligence in 2002 that led to the discovery of a secret site in Iran for enriching uranium.

Despite its defenders’ claims, the MEK remains on the U.S. government list of foreign terrorist organizations. In the 1970s, the group killed three U.S. officers and three civilian contractors in Iran. During the 1979-1980 hostage crisis, the group praised the decision to take America hostages and Elaine Sciolino reported that while group leaders publicly condemned the 9/11 attacks, within the group celebrations were widespread.
Undeniably, the group has conducted terrorist attacks—often excused by the MEK’s advocates because they are directed against the Iranian government. For example, in 1981, the group bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, which was then the clerical leadership’s main political organization, killing an estimated 70 senior officials. More recently, the group has claimed credit for over a dozen mortar attacks, assassinations, and other assaults on Iranian civilian and military targets between 1998 and 2001. At the very least, to work more closely with the group (at least in an overt manner), Washington would need to remove it from the list of foreign terrorist organizations.”

– page 117-118 of “Which Path to Persia?” Brookings Institution, 2009

The latest lobbying effort to delist MEK, led by some of the most adamant proponents for the West’s “War on Terror” is simply the latest move in a long-ago decided conspiracy to build up an armed terrorist group with which to fight a proxy war against Iran. That the conspiracy has been dutifully carried out over the course of two presidencies indicates a continuity in agenda, divorced from the alleged agendas and ideologies of each respective presidency…..

MEK is a Listed Terror Organization for a Reason

The delisting, funding, arming, and training of MEK is an indefensible crime against humanity, standing in direct violation of both United States law, as well as international accords agreed upon to stem the state sponsorship of terrorism.

MEK has carried out decades of brutal terrorist attacks, assassinations, and espionage against the Iranian government and its people, as well as targeting Americans including the attempted kidnapping of US Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II, the attempted assassination of USAF Brigadier General Harold Price, the successful assassination of Lieutenant Colonel Louis Lee Hawkins, the double assassinations of Colonel Paul Shaffer and Lieutenant Colonel Jack Turner, and the successful ambush and killing of American Rockwell International employees William Cottrell, Donald Smith, and Robert Krongard.

Admissions to the deaths of the Rockwell International employees can be found within a report written by former US State Department and Department of Defense official Lincoln Bloomfield Jr. on behalf of the lobbying firm Akin Gump in an attempt to dismiss concerns over MEK’s violent past and how it connects to its current campaign of armed terror – a testament to the depths of depravity from which Washington and London lobbyists operate.

To this day MEK terrorists have been carrying out attacks inside of Iran killing political opponents, attacking civilian targets, as well as carrying out the US-Israeli program of targeting and assassinating Iranian scientists. MEK terrorists are also suspected of handling patsies in recent false flag operations carried out in India, Georgia, and Thailand, which have been ham-handedly blamed on the Iranian government.

MEK is described by Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Ray Takeyh as a “cult-like organization” with “totalitarian tendencies.” While Takeyh fails to expand on what he meant by “cult-like” and “totalitarian,” an interview with US State Department-run Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty reported that a MEK Camp Ashraf escapee claimed the terrorist organization bans marriage, using radios, the Internet, and holds many members against their will with the threat of death if ever they are caught attempting to escape.

Conclusion

Clearly, all involved, from the Bush administration to Obama’s, are complicit in an overarching agenda to willfully arm terrorists to deploy against Iran. MEK’s history and even its current state is one of couching militant terrorism within the tenuous trappings of political activism – and provides a transparent comparison with which to use against Libyan and Syrian terrorists also armed, trained, funded, and supported by the West in pursuit of long since planned regime change.

Whether it is the US funding and arming Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) terrorists in Libya and in Syria, or delisting the already heavily US-armed and funded MEK in Iraq to carry out attacks across the border against Iran, the West itself is the premier purveyor of state sponsored global terror.

It is support that originates not within the alleged political ideologies of “Neo-Cons” or the current “liberal-Democrat” president, but from corporate-financier interests, articulated within their think-tanks, and merely rubber-stamped and sold to the public by troupes of proxy politicians using false paradigms to manipulate public perception. It is a singular, continuous agenda that will carry forth no matter who is elected into office in 2012, 2016 or beyond. Until the balance of power can be shifted from the corporate-financier interests on Wall Street and in the City of London, back into the hands of the people and their communities, such agendas will continue on.

Global Rresearch

September 23, 2012 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Terror delisting the MEK is a cynical sham

The dissident group’s lavish lobbying has paid off: hoping to look tough on Iran, the Obama administration has enlisted the MEK in a proxy war

US officials leaked to several news outlets Friday an impending decision by the Obama administration that it intends to remove the Iranian dissident group Mujahadeen e-Khalq (MEK) from the treasury department’s terror list.

Historically, the group joined together with Islamists to topple the Shah in 1979. But after it assassinated an Iranian president, prime minister and supreme court justice, Ayatollah Khomeini turned on its members and approved the massacre of hundreds of them.

At that point, the MEK set itself the mission of overthrowing the Iranian Islamist regime. It went into exile to France and Saddam Hussein also offered it refuge in Iraq. It is also known for assassinating US diplomats, military personnel and others.

It now claims it has renounced terror and devotes itself to establishing an Iranian democratic form of government that would replace the rule of the Ayatollahs. But former leaders and members of the MEK have noted the ruthlessness and duplicity of the group. They believe that the Iran it envisions would be a dictatorship rather than a democracy. These dissident former members decry the MEK’s slavish worship of its leader Maryam Rajavi in a cult of personality not unlike that of North Korea and other Communist regimes.

The Iranian dissidents have plotted for years to be removed from the terror list. They enlisted numerous Republican and Democratic officials to lobby on its behalf. Instead of paying lobbying fees to them, it offered honoraria ranging from $10,000-$50,000 per speech to excoriate the US government for its allegedly shabby treatment of the MEK.

Among those who joined the group’s gravy train are former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, Rudy Giuliani, Alan Dershowitz, and former FBI director Louis Freeh. Many of them profess to have little interest in the money they have collected. Instead, they claim they are sincerely moved by the group’s suffering in Iraq and wish to correct an injustice. I’m sure the money doesn’t hurt.

Analysts writing about the MEK and alienated members reject the group’s claim that it has renounced terror. Seymour Hersh recently published an expose reporting that as late as 2007, US special forces had offered Iranians training at a secret Nevada facility in covert operations. It provided them arms and communications equipment and black ops training for their anti-regime terror activities inside Iran.

A confidential Israeli source who is a former senior minister and IDF officer reported to me that the Mossad has used the MEK over many years, both to leak purported Iranian government documents of questionable provenance and engage in acts of sabotage against key figures in the Iranian regime. My source and other journalists have reported the MEK assassinated four nuclear scientists and caused an explosion that obliterated an Iranian Revolutionary Guard missile base.

Last week, the director of Iran’s nuclear program reported an August explosion disrupted the power lines to the new Fordo uranium enrichment facility. My source says this sabotage was also a product of the Mossad-MEK collaboration.

The US delisting of the group is a sham. The Obama administration isn’t even claiming the MEK has renounced terrorism. If it did, it knows that it’s likely such a statement would rebound should the MEK’s activities become exposed. The chief argument offered in defense of the change of heart is that the group has agreed to relocate from Camp Ashraf, where it’s been a thorn in the side of the Iraqi Shi’ite led government, to a US facility, from which the residents would be relocated to foreign countries.

So, we’re removing a terror group from the list not because it’s stopped being a terror group, but because it’s agreed to leave Iraq, where it had been a destabilizing influence. That’s not a principled position. It’s a position based on pure political calculation.

The MEK is useful in the covert war the US and Israel are waging against Iran’s nuclear program. It is our proxy, much as the Cuban rebels involved in the Bay of Pigs operation served our interests in the fight against Fidel Castro; and the Afghan mujahideen fought a dirty war for us against the Soviets.

In fact, Alan Dershowitz has argued that the MEK should be removed from the treasury list not because it has stopped being terrorist, but because it collaborated with US covert activities inside Iran, meaning that it was serving US interests. Or put more simply: the MEK may be terrorists, but they’re our terrorists.

Delisting the MEK serves several goals for President Obama. He can flex his muscles in the face of both the Iranians and Republicans. To the Iranians, he’s implicitly saying he will make alliance with their worst enemy as long as they resist him at the negotiating table. To Mitt Romney, he’s saying he’s willing to get tough with the Iranians. This inoculates him from campaign attacks claiming he’s soft on Iran or that he’s willing to let Iran get the bomb.

You can bet that one of the president’s campaign talking points will be that he delisted the MEK. It will establish his anti-Iran bona fides when the TV ads paid for by Sheldon Adelson’s anticipated $100m start airing in the coming weeks.

Just as President Obama’s anti-terror policies, including targeted assassinations and drone strikes, have betrayed his previous denunciations of such violations of constitutional principles, so his granting a seal of approval to the MEK marks a further erosion of his commitment to diplomacy and negotiation as the means for resolving international disputes, including the one with Iran.

guardian.co.uk

September 23, 2012 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Taking Bankruptcy of America’s Iran Policy to a New Low

By Delisting the MEK, the Obama Administration is Taking the Moral and Strategic Bankruptcy of America’s Iran Policy to a New Low

The U.S. Department of State took the moral and strategic bankruptcy of America’s Iran policy to a new low today, by notifying Congress that the Obama administration intends to remove the mojahedin-e khalq (MEK) from the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs).

At a macro level, we are disdainful—even scornful—of the U.S. government’s lists of both FTOs and state sponsors of terrorism. We have seen too many times over the years just how cynically American administrations have manipulated these designations, adding and removing organizations and countries for reasons that have little or nothing to do with designees’ actual involvement in terrorist activity. So, for example, after Saddam Husayn invaded the fledgling Islamic Republic in 1980—on September 22, no less—and starting killing large numbers of innocent Iranians, the Reagan administration (which came to office in January 1981) found a way to remove Iraq from the state sponsors list, in order to remove legal restrictions prohibiting the U.S. government from helping Saddam prosecute his war of aggression as robustly as the administration wanted. (During that war, the MEK—after having tried but failed to bring down the Islamic Republic through a bloody campaign of terrorist bombings and assassinations conducted against the new Iranian government’s upper echelons—ended up collaborating with an Iraqi government regularly carrying out chemical weapons attacks against targets, civilian as well as military, inside Iran.) But, when the same Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990, the George H.W. Bush administration couldn’t get Iraq back on the state sponsors list fast enough. We are very skeptical that Saddam’s ties to groups that the United States considers terrorist organizations changed all that much during this period.

Yet, precisely because we know how thoroughly corrupt and politicized these designations really are, we recognize their significance as statements of U.S. policy. Today, the Obama administration made a truly horrible statement about U.S. policy toward Iran.

The statement is horrible even if one wants to believe that FTO designations have some kind of procedural and evidentiary integrity about them. (We don’t, but we also recognize that letting go of illusions is often not easy.) Just this year, U.S. intelligence officials told high-profile media outlets that the MEK is actively collaborating with Israeli intelligence to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists, Iranian officials have made the same charge. Since when did murdering unarmed civilians (and, in some instances, members of their families as well) on public streets in the middle of a heavily populated urban area (Tehran) not meet even the U.S. government’s own professed standard for terrorism? Of course, one might rightly point out that the United States is responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent civilians across the Middle East. But Washington generally strives to maintain the fiction that it did not intend for those innocents to die as a (direct and foreseeable) consequence of U.S. military operations and sanctions policies. (You know, the United States didn’t really mean for those people to die, but, as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once said, “Stuff happens.”) Here, the Obama administration is taking an organization that the U.S. government knows is directly involved in the murder of innocent people and giving this group Washington’s “good housekeeping seal of approval.”

But, to invoke Talleyrand’s classic observation that a certain action was “worse than a crime—it was a mistake,” delisting the MEK is not just a moral abomination; it is a huge strategic and policy blunder. It is hard to imagine how the Obama administration could signal more clearly that, even after the President’s presumptive reelection, it has no intention of seeking a fundamentally different sort of relationship with the Islamic Republic—which would of course require the United States to accept the Islamic Republic as a legitimate political entity representing legitimate national interests.

Count on this: once the MEK is formally off the FTO list—a legally defined process that will take a few months to play out—Congress will be appropriating money to support the monafeqin as the vanguard of a new American strategy for regime change in Iran. In the 1990s, similar enthusiasm for Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress—who were about as unpopular among Iraqis as the MEK is among Iranians—led to President Clinton’s signing of the Iraq Liberation Act, which paved the way for George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003. The chances for such a scenario to play out with regard to Iran over the next few years—with even more disastrous consequences for America’s strategic and moral standing—got a lot higher today.

By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, Race For Iran

September 23, 2012 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

State Department Officially Removing MEK From US Terror List

After a few months of will-they-won’t-they tension, the US State Department decided on Friday to officially remove the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) from the Foreign Terrorist Organizations list, State Department Officially Removing MEK From US Terror List which the Iranian exile group has been on for the past 15 years.

CNN broke the story:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to notify Congress as early as Friday that she intends to take the [MEK]…off a State Department terror list, three senor administration officials told CNN…MEK was placed on the US terrorism list in 1997 because of the killing of six Americans in Iran in the 1970s and an attempted attack against the Iranian mission to the United Nations in 1992. However, since 2004, the United States has considered the residents of Camp Ashraf [in Iraq] "noncombatants" and "protected persons" under the Geneva Conventions. The group is in the final stages of moving from a refugee camp in Iraq where they’ve lived for more than 25 years is nearing completion under the auspices of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq.

The Paris-based MEK—which enjoys a solidly low level of popular support among Iranians—is also called the The People’s Mujahideen of Iran, and was founded in Tehran in the mid-1960s as a synthesis of Islamic principle, left-wing populism, and violent resistance to the Shah. It has since been blasted by critics as a totalitarian, hero-worshipping cult with a history of engaging in indiscriminate mass murder (a particular sore spot is the allegation that MEK fighters acted as a death squad for Saddam Hussein during the 1991 Shiite and Kurdish uprisings in Iraq). Today, the group is reportedly on the frontlines of assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists, and has a long, bipartisan list of powerful friends in the US who pitch the group as the Western-friendly and pluralistic antidote to the Islamic republic.

The bizarro patchwork of high-profile advocates includes John Bolton, Gen. Wesley Clark (Ret.), at least two Romney campaign advisor, Rudy Giuliani, Howard Dean, Ed Rendell, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, and ex-FBI director Louis Freeh. Some of these top supporters received subpoenas from the Treasury department last March during an investigation of speaking fees for pro-MEK events—something that could potentially amount to providing material support to a designated terror organization.

As I reported last year, well-funded MEK backers also received a lobbying assist from high-powered international PR firm Brown Lloyd James—a company that has something of a reputation for sanitizing the records of dictators with names like Qaddafi and Assad. (Other clients have included AARP, the state of Qatar, the Washington embassy of Ecuador, Al Jazeera English, Russia Today, Forbes, and the famous composer Andrew Lloyd Webber.)

By Asawin Suebsaeng

September 22, 2012 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Iranian exiles, DC lobbyists and the campaign to delist the MEK

US policy change on banned Iranian group came after extraordinary fundraising operation to transform its Images

To the US government, the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (MEK) was a terrorist group US policy change on banned Iranian group came after extraordinary fundraising operation to transform its Images alongside al-Qaida, Hamas and the Farc in Colombia. The MEK landed on the list in 1997 with American blood on its hands and by allying itself with Saddam Hussein along with a long list of bombings inside Iran.

But the organisation is regarded very differently by a large number of members of Congress, former White House officials and army generals, and even one of the US’s most renowned reporters, Carl Bernstein. They see the MEK as a victim of US double dealings with the regime in Tehran and a legitimate alternative to the Iran’s Islamic government.

That difference is in no small part the result of a formidable fundraising operation and campaign to transform the MEK’s image led by more than 20 Iranian American organisations across the US. These groups and their leaders have spent millions of dollars on donations to members of Congress, paying Washington lobby groups and hiring influential politicians and officials, including two former CIA directors, as speakers.

In a highly sensitive political game, MEK supporters have succeeded in pressing the state department into removing the group from the list of terrorist organisations after winning a court order requiring a decision to be made on the issue before the end of this month. But its supporters were forced to tread a careful path so as not to cross anti-terrorism laws.

Only a few years ago, the US authorities were arresting pro-MEK activists and freezing the assets of front groups for "material support for a terrorist organisation". Now members of Congress openly praise the group in apparent contradiction of the anti-terrorism legislation many of them supported. Nearly 100 members of the House of Representatives backed a resolution calling on the US government to drop the MEK from the terrorist list.

At the forefront of the campaign are several Iranian American organisations across the US. They are:

• The Iranian American Society of Texas. It paid more than $110,000 in fees last year to a Washington lobby firm, DiGenova & Toensing, to campaign for the lifting of the ban on the MEK and the protection of its supporters still in camps in Iraq.

The Texas group’s president, Ali Soudjani, has personally donated close to $100,000 to members of Congress and their political campaigns over the past five years because, he told the Guardian, of their positions on the MEK and Iran. Among the beneficiaries were Ted Poe, a member of the House foreign affairs committee, and Sheila Jackson Lee, who have been vocal supporters of delisting the MEK. The pair appeared at a House event at Congress earlier this year also attended by Soudjani at which Poe gave support to the MEK in calling for "freedom-loving Americans [to] support a regime change in Iran". Jackson Lee described the group as the "voices of freedom". Soudjani also gave to John Boehner, speaker of the House of Representatives as well as the National Republican Congressional Committee and the Obama Victory Fund.

• Colorado’s Iranian American Community. One of its leaders, Saeid Ghaemi, paid close to $900,000 of his own money to a Washington lobby firm, DLA Piper, for its work to get the MEK unbanned, the protection of its members in Iraq and human rights issues. Ghaemi’s brother, Mehdi, who is president of the Colorado group, paid $14,000 to fly a member of Congress, Bob Filner, to meet MEK leaders in Paris and attend the group’s rallies. In the weeks before Filner spoke at an event in support of delisting the MEK last year he was the recipient of several thousand dollars in donations from Iranian Americans living outside his district.

• The Iranian American Community of Northern California. It paid $400,000 over the past year to a Washington lobby group, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, to work on Capitol Hill to work for the removal of the MEK from the list of foreign terrorist organisations. The company assigned several former members of Congress to the account. The IACNC has also organised events in support of unbanning the MEK with appearances by Ros-Lehtinen and other prominent members of Congress as well as former White House officials.

Its director, Ahmad Moeinimanesh, has made personal financial donations to Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the chair of the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee even though her congressional district is on the other side of the country in Florida, as well as to her reelection committee. She has accepted more than $20,000 in political contributions from activists who support the MEK’s delisting.

The IACNC’s registered address is at a photocopying shop in Albany, California, owned by Behnam Mirabdal who has made financial donations to Ros-Lehtinen and Dana Rohrabacher, a subcommittee chairman who is among the most vigorous proponents of unbanning the MEK.

• The Iranian Society of South Florida (ISSF). The group came to the notice of US authorities eight years ago as one of the sponsors of a fundraiser in Washington ostensibly to help victims of the Bam earthquake which killed 30,000 people. The FBI concluded it was a front for raising funds for the MEK.

The ISSF’s president and vice-president, Bahman Badiee and Akbar Nikooie, have for years made regular donations to Ros-Lehtinen. The Florida congresswoman boasts on her website of receiving an award from the ISSF.

Nikooie also spent at least $130,000 in 2009 to pay a lobby firm, DLA Piper, to promote "human rights" in Iran, including pressing for the unbanning of the MEK in the US. Badiee contributed $3,200 to Ros-Lehtinen. He gave $2,000 to congressman Mario Diaz-Balart in March the day after he made a speech in Congress in support of the MEK.

The principal lobbyist on the account was the former leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, Dick Armey, who a decade ago wielded considerable power and played a major role in the Republican takeover of Congress. He went on to head the Tea Party-supporting group, Freedom Works.

Armey used his relationship with sitting members of Congress five years ago to press them to urge the then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice to unban the MEK and to support legislation that would effectively have resulted in US sponsorship of the group. He also lobbied the Pentagon, the White House and the state department in support of unbanning the MEK.

• The California Society for Democracy in Iran. Its founder and president is Nasser Sharif who has called for the US government to "engage the Iranian people and their organized resistance". Sharif is listed as donating thousands of dollars to Rohrabacher and Filner.

Sharif called the MEK’s banning an "injustice" in an article in the Orange Country Register in which he quotes Rohrabacher in support of his cause. He has organised events at which the speakers include Ros-Lehtinen, Rohrabacher, Filner and Poe.

Several of the groups also poured money into persuading leading politicians and former administration officials to speak on behalf of unbanning the MEK. Among those who have addressed meetings arranged by the Iranian American Community of Northern California are the former Democratic presidential candidate, Howard Dean; the former FBI director, Louis Freeh; the ex-attorney general, Michael Mukasey; and Tom Ridge, the former homeland security secretary. They have been joined by members of Congress including Ros-Lehtinen, Poe and Jackson Lee.

Sharif’s California Society for Democracy in Iran has organised meetings at which John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the UN; Andrew Card, President George W Bush’s chief of staff; Mukasey, Ros-Lehtinen, Rohrabacher and other members of Congress have spoken. Several prominent former officials have acknowledged being paid significant amounts of money to speak about the MEK. The former Pennsylvania governor, Ed Rendell, has accepted more than $150,000 in speaking fees at events in support of unbanning the MEK.

Among others who have spoken in support of delisting the group are two former CIA directors, James Woolsey and Porter Goss. Some speakers have been flown to Paris and Brussels.

The US authorities have at times scrutinised efforts in support of unbanning the group, including launching investigations in to whether they breached laws against financial dealings with banned organisations or legislation barring material support for terrorism.

Three years ago, seven people in California pleaded guilty to "providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organisation", and a parallel conspiracy charge, after fundraising for the MEK. Among other things the seven admitted to raising several hundred thousand dollars in collections at Los Angeles airport and other public locations in the name of a charity, the Committee for Human Rights.

Following an investigation by the FBI’s joint terrorism task force and the convictions, the US attorney’s office said "the CHR was simply a front organisation for MEK fund-raising operations in the United States" and that the money was going in part to support the group’s "terrorist activities".

"We cannot allow any terrorist organisation to fundraise on our shores or to steal money from our own citizens so that they can finance their own terrorism operations," said the prosecuting US attorney, Thomas O’Brien.

In 2004 Bush administration officials examined whether a fundraising event at a Washington DC convention centre, ostensibly on behalf of victims of the Bam earthquake, was in fact a cover for collecting money for the MEK. The organisers, the Iranian-American Community of Northern Virginia, described the $35 a head event as a "night of solidarity with Iran" and a "referendum for regime change in Iran".

Among those paid to speak at the event was Richard Perle, at the time a defence adviser to the Bush administration and a strong advocate of invading Iraq. Perle later said he was unaware of any connection to the MEK.

The organisers claimed the money was going to the Red Cross but even before the event was held the Red Cross said it did not want the proceeds because the fundraiser was political. The FBI concluded that the Iranian-American Community of Northern Virginia was a front for the MEK and the treasury department froze the funds raised by the event.

Those groups cosponsoring the fundraiser included several that the FBI described as MEK front organisations or as linked to prominent supporters. These included Iranian Society of South Florida, the Iranian-American Society of Texas and Colorado’s Iranian-American Community.

The Iranian-American Society of Northern Virginia is now defunct.

Soudjani pointedly said that the money was not intended to support the MEK but it’s unbanning "in the name of freedom and justice".

"The MEK is supporting a free Iran. That is what we are supporting," he said.

Sharif makes a similar argument.

"None of us are involved in illegal activities. All we’re doing is bringing the issue to the attention of members of Congress," he said.

Asked if his donation to Filner, who has a district about 2,500 miles from where Sharif lives, was because of his position on Iran and the MEK, Sharif said that it was.

"Yes. If you see members of Congress with a good position on Iran, you can support them. This is a voluntary thing. Members of the community do this. If they feel like members of Congress have a good position in supporting these issues they are willing to support those members of Congress".

Moeinimanesh and several other leaders of Iranian American organisations did not respond to questions. Neither did Ros-Lehtinen and other members of Congress did not respond to questions. But Rohrabacher did speak to the Guardian.

The California congressman said he is comfortable accepting donations from MEK supporters.

"If they want to contribute to me because I believe strongly in human rights and stand up in cases like this, that’s fine. I don’t check their credentials," he said.

Rohrabacher said he is not concerned at potentially being at odds with the law.

"When you have a person or an organisation that has been legally labelled something that is not just then you should take that label off. It doesn’t undermine efforts to label terrorists when they are indeed committing acts of terrorism," he said.

The congressman also denounced the treasury investigation of payments to speakers in support of the MEK.

"It seems to be me this is an example where somebody’s challenging a government policy and the government is trying to intimidate those who don’t believe in the policy into closing their mouths. Because someone is advocating a certain position, and it goes against government policy, it doesn’t mean the government should start focussing on them and try to find something they can hurt them with. That’s a damper on freedom of speech," he said.

Chris McGreal in Washington

September 22, 2012 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

MEK decision: multimillion-dollar campaign led to removal from terror list

Revealed: the steady flow of funds to members of Congress, lobbying firms and former officials in support of Iranian group

Supporters of a designated Iranian terrorist organisation have won a long struggle to see it unbanned in the US after pouring millions of dollars into an unprecedented campaign of political donations, hiring Washington lobby groups and payments to former top administration officials.

A Guardian investigation, drawing partly on data researched by the Centre for Responsive Politics, a group tracking the impact of money in US politics, has identified a steady flow of funds from key Iranian American organisations and their leaders into the campaign to have the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran removed from the list of terrorist organisations.

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, is expected to notify Congress that the MEK will be removed from the terrorism list in the coming days.

The campaign to bury the MEK’s bloody history of bombings and assassinations that killed American businessmen, Iranian politicians and thousands of civilians, and to portray it as a loyal US ally against the Islamic government in Tehran has seen large sums of money directed at three principal targets: members of Congress, Washington lobby groups and influential former officials.

Prominent among the members of Congress who have received fund is Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the chair of the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee. She has accepted at least $20,000 in donations from Iranian American groups or their leaders to her political campaign fund.

Other recipients include Congressman Bob Filner, who was twice flown to address pro-MEK events in France and has pushed resolutions resolutions in the House of Representatives calling for the group to be unbanned. More than $14,000 in expenses for Filner’s Paris trips were met by the head of an Iranian American group who also paid close to $1m to a Washington lobby firm working to get the MEK unbanned.

A Texas Congressman, Ted Poe, received thousands of dollars in donations from the head of a pro-MEK group in his state at a time when he was a regular speaker on behalf of its unbanning at events across the US, describing the organisation as the ticket to regime change in Iran.

Mike Rogers, chairman of the House of Representatives intelligence committee, has also received the backing of individuals and groups that support the unbanning of the MEK. Rogers has been among the strongest supporters in Congress of delisting the group, sponsoring resolutions and pressing other members of Congress to support the cause.

A leading advocate of unbanning the MEK and chairman of the foreign affairs committee’s oversight subcommittee, congressman Dana Rohrabacher, has received thousands of dollars in donations from supporters of the banned group this year alone.

The Guardian sought comment from Ros-Lehtinen, Rogers, Filner, Poe and Rohrabacher. Only Rohrabacher responded.

He said he was comfortable accepting donations from MEK supporters but that the money has no influence on his position that it should be unbanned.

"I wouldn’t doubt that people would donate to my campaign if it’s something that they see as beneficial to them, to what they believe in, whether it’s the MEK or whether it’s anybody else," he said.

"The question is whether it’s the right position to take or not and whether it’s a benefit to the people of the United States as a whole. In this case I’ve no doubt that supporting the MEK under this brutal attack from the Mullah regime [in Tehran] is in the interests of what I believe in but also in the interests of the people of the United States."

Rohrabacher said the MEK’s past attacks on Americans, its bombing campaign in Iran that killed top politicians and civilians, and its support of Saddam Hussein were history and the group has turned its back on violence. He also denied that public support for a designated terrorist organisation might put him in conflict with the law.

"This isn’t a bad group. A long time ago, in their history, they certainly had a questionable time – 20, 30, 40 years ago. But I don’t know of any evidence they’ve engaged in terrorism for many, many years," he said. "They’re not a terrorist group simply because some bureaucrats in the state department say so."

Three top Washington lobby firms – DLA Piper; Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld; and DiGenova & Toensing – have been paid a total of nearly $1.5 million over the past year to press the US administration and legislators to support the delisting of the MEK and protection for its members in camps in Iraq.

Two other lobby groups were hired for much smaller amounts. The firms employed former members of Congress to press their ex-colleagues on Capitol Hill to back the unbanning of the MEK.

Scores of former senior officials have been paid up to $40,000 to make speeches in support of the MEK’s delisting. Those who have received money include the former chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, General Hugh Shelton; ex-FBI director Louis Freeh; and Michael Mukasey, who as attorney general oversaw the prosecution of terrorism cases.

The former Pennsylvania governor, Ed Rendell, has accepted more than $150,000 in speaking fees at events in support of the MEK’s unbanning. Clarence Page, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, was paid $20,000 to speak at the rally. Part of the money has been paid through speakers bureaus on the US east coast.

Others accepted only travel costs, although in some cases that involved expensive trips to Europe.

In June, Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the US House of Representatives and Republican presidential candidate, flew to Paris to address a pro-MEK rally and meet its co-leader, Maryam Rajavi. He was criticised for bowing to her.

Congressman Rohrabacher has described the lobbying campaign as one of the most effective he has seen on Capitol Hill. It has galvanised powerful support for delisting the MEK far beyond those receiving political contributions, lobbying fees or other payments.

Ros-Lehtinen has been a vigorous proponent of recognition of the MEK, flying around the country to speak in support of unbanning the group and pressing the issue among fellow members of Congress. She has accepted an award from one group funding the campaign to delist the MEK. Other recipients of political donations, including Rogers, Filner and Rohrabacher, have also lobbied other members of Congress to support the unbanning. As a result, nearly 100 members of Congress have co-sponsored a resolution demanding the Obama administration to delist the MEK.

Last month, 17 former senior officials and US generals called on the state department to remove the group’s terrorist designation. Among them were General James Jones, Barack Obama’s former national security adviser; Tom Ridge, the former homeland security director; as well as Mukasey, Freeh and Rendell.

Some of the same politicians and former officials have also targeted newspapers and online publications in a campaign of opinion articles and letters aimed at changing the image of the MEK as a terrorist group.

The campaign has in part been funded by substantial donations from Iranian Americans and a web of organisations they lead from Florida to Texas and California.

The most generous benefactors include:

• Saeid Ghaemi, head of Colorado’s Iranian American Community, who paid close to $900,000 of his own money to a Washington lobby firm for its work to get the MEK unbanned.

• Ali Soudjani, president of the Iranian American Society of Texas. He gave close to $100,000 over the past five years to congressional campaign funds. His organisation paid more than $110,000 in fees to lobbyists last year.

• Ahmad Moeinimanesh, leader of the Iranian American Community of Northern California. The group paid $400,000 to a lobby firm. Moeinimanesh made personal donations to Ros-Lehtinen’s campaign even though her constituency is several thousand miles from where he lives.

Some of the payments have prompted an investigation by the US treasury department. It is examining the fees paid to Shelton, Freeh, Mukasey and Rendell, and possibly others, to see if they breach laws against "material support for a terrorist group". In cases involving links to other banned organisations, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, individuals have received long jail sentences for indirect financial support.

The original source of the considerable sums involved is not always clear as groups making political donations or funding lobby firms are not required to declare their origin. Previously the MEK has relied in part on funding from Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

Soudjani told the Guardian that the moneys were raised from Iranian Americans in the US. "The Iranian community is wealthy. It has more than $600bn in the United States. This is pennies for supporting freedom," he said.

Asked if his own donations to members of Congress was specifically because of their positions on the MEK, he replied: "Yes, it is."

However, Soudjani was careful to say that the support is not for the MEK as an organisation, which could open donors to investigation under anti-terrorism laws.

"We are not giving material support to the MEK. We are supporting freedom of speech for justice and peace in Iran," he said.

Chris McGreal in Washington

September 22, 2012 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

State Dept to Remove Iranian Rebel Group From Terror List

Years of Pricy Lobbying Gets Inaugural Group Off Foreign Terrorist Organization List

Adding hope to every other group that had found itself labeled a terrorist organization after a Years of Pricy Lobbying Gets Inaugural Group Off Foreign Terrorist Organization List decade of bloody anti-US attacks and killing a number of US military officers, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MeK), one of the inaugural members of the US State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, has been ordered removed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The MeK was founded in the 1960′s as a Marxist-Islamist sect, called a cult by many, with designs on ousting the Shah of Iran and replacing him. After the Shah was ousted, they allied with Saddam Hussein in his invasion of Iran, and remained in exile in Iraq for decades.

How did this group manage to turn around its fortunes and find a way off the US terror list? Money, and lots of it. The MeK has been soliciting top US officials for years to give them paid endorsements, and has been quite successful in buying praise, though former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell’s endorsement did get him investigated for terrorist ties.

In the end, with so many officials not only excusing the MeK’s past attacks but openly endorsing them as a replacement regime in the event of a war with Iran, officials said it was “politically difficult” for Clinton not to sign off on their removal.

Reflecting just how successful the “advertising” campaign has been for the group, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R – CA) praised the move, saying the group desires a “secular, peaceful, and democratic government.”

by Jason Ditz

September 22, 2012 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Americans to remove Mojahedin Khalq from terror list

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to notify Congress on Friday that she plans to take Iranian exile group Mujahedin-e-Khalq, or MEK, off a State Department terror list, three senior Americans to remove Mojahedin Khalq from terror list Obama administration officials told CNN.

Notification will be followed by formal removal in coming days from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, which includes more than 50 groups like al Qaeda and Hezbollah. Clinton recently designated the Pakistani-based Haqqani network a foreign terrorist organization.

Such a listing attaches a certain stigma and allows the United States to legally go after financing and take other steps against individuals associated with these groups.

MEK was put on list in 1997 because of the killing of six Americans in Iran in the 1970s and an attempted attack against the Iranian mission to the United Nations in 1992.

However, the United States has since 2004 considered the group, living for more than 25 years at a refugee camp in Iraq, "noncombatants" and "protected persons" under the Geneva Conventions.

MEK’s move from Camp Ashraf is nearing completion under the auspices of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq. The members are relocating to a temporary site there before being re-settled in third countries.

The United States has been working with the U.N. High Commissioner of Refugees to re-settle the group.

Clinton is under a court order to decide by October 1 whether to remove MEK from the terror list. She has said several times that her decision would be guided, in part, by whether it moves peacefully.

"We don’t love these people but the secretary’s decision is merited based on the record of facts that we have," one U.S. official said. "This was not done casually and it’s the right decision."

Officials acknowledge the decision was the subject of a contentious debate within the administration.

MEK is considered by many in the administration to be a bizarre cult-like organization, prompting concerns about its behavior. Officials say these concerns factored heavily in the debate.

"While they present themselves as a legitimate democratic group worthy of support, there is universal belief in the administration that they are a cult" one official said. "A de-listing is a sign of support or amnesia on our part as to what they have done and it does not mean we have suddenly changed our mind about their current behavior. We don’t forget who they were and we don’t think they are now who they claim to be, which is alternative to the current regime."

MEK denies that it supports terrorism and supporters rally daily in front of the State Department, demanding the United States remove it from the terrorism list.

Many members of Congress have pressured Clinton to do the same.

Moreover, MEK has paid well-known former U.S. politicians and former administration heavyweights to speak out on its behalf, including former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, former U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy, former FBI Director Louis Freeh, and former National Security Advisor James Jones.

The last major convoy of 680 members of the MEK arrived on Sunday at the temporary relocation site at a former U.S. military base near Baghdad International Airport, the U.N. mission for Iraq said.

The State Department said at the time that the arrival marked "a significant milestone in efforts to achieve a sustainable humanitarian solution to this issue."

"The big test now is to start getting these people out of Iraq through the UNHCR and that is where we should return. Our ability to succeed on this is based on many factors, especially how the MEK behaves because countries will be determining whether they will take a large amount of refugees from this group," another official said.

"If they think the notion of de-listing means they can run wild, that isn’t true. If they want to leave Iraq, they have to behave," the official said.

MEK leaders have been reluctant to complete the move from Camp Ashraf to Camp Hurriya, formerly an American facility known as Camp Liberty. They complained about conditions at the new camp, calling it more a prison than a home after the first convoy arrived in February.

Camp Ashraf was established in 1986 after former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invited members of MEK to relocate to Iraq in an effort to undermine the Iranian government, which was then at war with Iraq. Iran also considers the group to be a terrorist organization.

By Elise Labott

September 22, 2012 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq as an Opposition Group

MP Unveils Key Iraqi Political Party’s Link with Terrorist MKO

An Iraqi parliamentarian disclosed that the country’s al-Iraqiya alliance, headed by former Iraqi MP Unveils Key Iraqi Political Party's Link with Terrorist MKO Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, has tight cooperation with the anti-Iran terrorist group, Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO).

"The organization (the terrorist cult) has strong links with a number of al-Iraqiya leaders and is directly supported by these (political) leaders," Member of National Iraqi Alliance at the Iraqi parliament Qassem al-A’raji told FNA on Wednesday.

He also said the MKO (also known as MEK, NCR and PMOI) most likely has tight ties with fugitive Iraqi Vice-President Tareq al-Hashemi.

As regards the recent evacuation of MKO’s main training camp in Iraq, the Iraqi lawmaker called it "a victory for the Iraqi nation and government’s will and determination".

He added that the greater victory would be the trial of all criminals for their crimes against Iraqi people.

Earlier this year, the Iraqi government set a new deadline for the MKO to evacuate its members from Camp Ashraf by October this year.

The MKO cannot find a shelter outside Iraq as it is blacklisted by much of the international community, including the United States.

Earlier in July, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the UN Secretary-General’s Representative in Iraq Martin Kobler agreed to put an end to the dossier of MKO’s presence in Iraq in accordance with the deadlines announced last year.

The MKO is blacklisted by much of the international community, including the United States.

Before an overture by the EU, the MKO was on the European Union’s list of terrorist organizations subject to an EU-wide assets freeze. Yet, the MKO puppet leader, Maryam Rajavi, who has residency in France, regularly visited Brussels and despite the ban enjoyed full freedom in Europe.

The MKO is behind a slew of assassinations and bombings inside Iran, a number of EU parliamentarians said in a recent letter in which they slammed a British court decision to remove the MKO from the British terror list. The EU officials also added that the group has no public support within Iran because of their role in helping Saddam Hussein in the Iraqi imposed war on Iran (1980-1988).

Many of the MKO members abandoned the terrorist organization while most of those still remaining in the camp are said to be willing to quit but are under pressure and torture not to do so.

The group, founded in the 1960s, blended elements of Islamism and Stalinism and participated in the overthrow of the US-backed Shah of Iran in 1979. Ahead of the revolution, the MKO conducted attacks and assassinations against both Iranian and Western targets.

The group started assassination of the citizens and officials after the revolution in a bid to take control of the newly established Islamic Republic. It killed several of Iran’s new leaders in the early years after the revolution, including the then President, Mohammad Ali Rajayee, Prime Minister, Mohammad Javad Bahonar and the Judiciary Chief, Mohammad Hossein Beheshti who were killed in bomb attacks by MKO members in 1981.

The group fled to Iraq in 1986, where it was protected by Saddam Hussein and where it helped the Iraqi dictator suppress Shiite and Kurd uprisings in the country.

The terrorist group joined Saddam’s army during the Iraqi imposed war on Iran (1980-1988) and helped Saddam and killed thousands of Iranian civilians and soldiers during the US-backed Iraqi imposed war on Iran.

September 20, 2012 0 comment

Newer Posts

Older Posts