Paid advocacy for MKO

Pompeo must understand that MEK has built a modern slavery in Abania

In a meeting with Maryam Rajavi, leader of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), on Friday, October 6th , Mike Pompeo, former US Secretary of State said that Ashraf 3 is home to thousands of MEK members who have built “a modern community” in the Balkan state in the past few years. Referring to a destructive cult as a modern community indicates the extent of deviation of the MEK’s paid supporters.

Maryam Rajavi’s muti-million lobby campaigns have been acting successfully to buy the support of US warmongers. In his flattering speech on behalf of the MEK, Pompeo also described the MEK as “those who seek freedom and democracy in Iran”. It seems that the Rajavi’s dollars for Pompeo’s speaking fee and for his first-class flight and visit to Paris have been hefty enough to close his eyes to the bizarre world he saw at Ashraf 3 last year.

On May 16, 2022, Mike Pompeo and his wife, visited Ashraf 3, the headquarters of the MEK in Manez, Albania. The military-like, uniform worn, gender segregated members — female members with forced hijab– could not ring the bells for the US former official to beware that the MEK is not a normal community, let alone “a modern community”.

The MEK is a “modern slavery” in which the rule of Massoud Rajavi’s cult of personality dominates. Members of Ashraf 3 are treated as slaves who are deprived from their most basic rights in the heart of modern democratic Europe.

Modern slavery often occurs in isolated locations where victims enjoy the least level of communication with the outside world. This is what Pompeo witness at Ashraf 3 but chose to ignore.
MEK members have been taken as hostages since they were recruited or deceived to or kidnapped to join the group. They have not been allowed to contact their family and friends from the very day they entered the Cult of Rajavi.

They are kept in the barred, guarded area near a remote village in north of Tirana, highly restricted to communicate with locals. They do not own identity papers. They lack language skills. They can hardly ever leave the group. They are literally modern slaves who have to fight for their own freedom, not freedom of Iran.

By Mazda Parsi

October 9, 2023 0 comments

Canada

MEK goes from terrorist list to Canadian politicians’ best buddy

Canada’s political establishment has become increasingly close to a group it once banned as a terrorist organization. Reports that the violent cult Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) may set up shop here reflects this country’s increasingly conflictual relations with Iran.

Recently Iranian government aligned media reported that the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) is considering a move to Canada. The Albanian government has begun to restrict the group’s operations. In June, a camp inhabited by over a thousand MEK members was raided by the Albanian police and MEK leader Maryam Rajavi has been blocked from entering the country. As a result, there’s speculation the group wants to leave Albania, which has hosted it since 2016. The MEK denies it plans to relocate to Canada, which would be geographically and logistically, if not politically, difficult.

Liberal MP Judy Sgro speaks at an MEK-aligned Canadian Friends of a Democratic Iran and National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) event, on February 4, 2023. Image credit: NCRI site.

A Global Affairs spokesperson responded to an inquiry by The Canada Files’ Editor-in-Chief, Aidan Jonah, on the matter by writing: “Canada continues to be gravely concerned with the systematic discrimination and harassment that women, men and youth face in Iran, and stands in solidarity with the courageous people of Iran, especially the women and girls of Iran, who are at the forefront of a powerful call for change based on equality, respect, and justice. With respect to the MeK, Canada does not recognize the Mek as being a credible political actor, does not endorse it, and does not engage in any communications with it.”

MEK’s history

According to US government sources, the MEK has teamed up with Israel to assassinate Iranians. In 2012, NBC News reported that the MEK was “financed, trained, and armed by Israel’s secret service” to assassinate Iranian scientists.
During the Iran-Iraq war the MEK fought with Saddam Hussein’s forces. In the mid-1980s Iraq armed and equipped a 7,000 strong MEK force. A World Beyond War article by Robert Fantina highlighted that, according to one report, by early 2016, ‘…out of the nearly 17,000 Iranians killed in terrorist assaults since the victory of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, about 12,000 had fallen victim to MKO’s (MEK’s) terrorist attacks.’”

Until a decade ago, MEK was listed as a terrorist group in the US and Canada. Their impact was felt in Canada, even during that era. In 2003, a 22-year old Iranian-Canadian woman, Neda Hassani, set herself on fire while in London, on the orders of MEK leaders, to protest Maryam Rajavi’s arrest.

MEK in Canadian politics since removal from Canadian terror list

In 2012, prominent pro-Israel activists worked with Iranian dissidents to convince the State Department to remove the MEK from the US terrorism list, which paved the way for Ottawa to follow suit. Two years after working to delist the organization then MP Irwin Cotler invited MEK leader, Maryam Rajavi, to speak at Iran Accountability Week on Parliament Hill. Cotler subsequently attended many events organized by the MEK-aligned Canadian Friends of a Democratic Iran and National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).

So has Stephen Harper since he was defeated in the 2015 election. Last month Canada’s former prime minister travelled to France to participate in the MEK’s Free Iran World Summit.
Canadian politicians are increasingly willing to openly identify with the MEK. In July of last year seven MPs attended the MEK’s Free Iran World Summit in Albania. Thought to be funded by Saudi Arabia, the group paid for the Canadian politicians travel and accommodation.

Each of the seven Canadian MPs who attended the summit were contacted by TCF EIC Jonah, to get their opinions on the GAC statement saying Canada’s government doesn’t recognize MEK as a credible political actor. None responded to the emails sent.

Melissa Lantsman, who is now deputy Conservative leader, participated in the delegation to Albania. During September 2022, Lantsman spoke at an NCRI event at Queen’s Park in Toronto.

During February 2023, former ministers John Baird and Tony Clement, as well as a half dozen sitting MPs and two senators, attended a Toronto event put on by the MEK-dominated NCRI. At the event Liberal MP Judy Sgro applauded “MEK, the NCRI and other movements trying to finally get rid of an oppressive group of Mullahs that do not deserve to be there.” A former immigration minister, Sgro even labeled MEK leader Maryam Rajavi’s 10–point plan a “model for the world”.
Sgro was also part of the Canadian delegation at last month’s Free Iran World Summit in Paris. According to a transcript, she gushed that “Madam Rajavi, your Ten-Point Plan is a true example of democracy, and I’m so happy to see so many countries have recognized that.”

Canadian officialdom’s growing dalliance with the reactionary group reflects the aggressiveness of Canadian policy towards Iran. Despite de-escalation in its first few years in office, the Liberals have reignited Harper’s low-level war on Iran.

Before being elected in 2015, Justin Trudeau promised to restart diplomatic relations with Iran that Harper severed in 2012. But Israeli nationalist forces scuttled the Liberals’ bid to restart diplomatic relations and there was never any serious bid to remove Iran’s designation as a state-sponsor of terror, which Harper imposed.

Nonetheless, there was still significant political support for restarting diplomatic relations with Iran through 2019. That year some 15,000 individuals signed an Iranian Canadian Congress petition sponsored by NDP foreign critic Helene Laverdiere calling for restarting relations.

But anti-Iranian sentiment grew sharply in January 2020, after the US assassinated top Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp General Qassem Suleimani and nine others at the Baghdad airport. In retaliation to the Trump administration’s brazen violation of international law, Iran launched a dozen ballistic missiles at US-bases in Iraq. On heightened alert for a US response, the Iranian military mistakenly downed Ukraine Airlines flight PS752, killing 57 Canadian citizens.

Relations soured greatly as a result. Israel lobbyists and long-standing opponents of the regime effectively drove grieving families to place all the blame for the tragedy on Tehran.

Relations have deteriorated even further over the past year since the government suppressed a protest movement. Canada has adopted over a dozen rounds of sanctions, targeting hundreds of Iranians and entities including media outlets and universities. Ottawa has also banned 10,000 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp from Canada, condemned the country in various international forums and brought Iran to the International Court of Justice. Canadian courts have also seized tens of millions of dollars in Iranian assets and rendered judgments that would take even more.
In response, Iran recently took Canada to the International Court of Justice accusing Ottawa of illegally seizing its diplomatic assets.

Canada’s hostile policies and dalliance with the MEK take place as Washington seeks to destroy Iran economically. In April, the US seized an Iranian oil tanker and recently began unloading over $50 million USD of its fuel. Tehran responded by seizing two ships traveling through the Strait of Hormuz. Washington then dispatched more naval vessels to the region and is mulling placing armed personnel on commercial vessels traveling through the Strait of Hormuz.

Reports that the MEK is moving to Canada may well be Iranian government disinformation, but the fact such a move is plausible highlights a remarkable turnaround for a group once listed as a terrorist organization.

Mujahedin-e Khalq’s growing respectability among politicians also demonstrates how much Canada follows in lockstep with the US Empire and its Israeli subsidiary.

THE CANADA FILES – by Yves Engler

September 13, 2023 0 comments

Europe

MEK misled members of European Parliament

A report by the European Parliament has said that the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) terrorist organization has committed many non-transparent actions in dealing with the members of the European Parliament.

“Iran’s Mujahideen, an organization Human Rights Watch has accused of intimidating, torturing and sometimes murdering members of the Iranian diaspora, has been using aggressive and shady practices to meet MEPs, including by hiding their real affiliation,” said the report.

It added, “MEPs have been included by this organization as co-signatories of letters they had not co-signed or named as co-hosts of conferences they never endorsed.”

The report further said, “they were registered using over 45 different pseudonyms, such as ‘MEK’, ‘NCRI’, ‘ISJ’, ‘APA’, in order to mislead MEPs and the Transparency Register.”

The MEK group adheres to extremely opaque guidelines in their internal interactions, something that led many observers to liken the group to a cult.

The group has run into troubles with the Albanian government due to the non-transparent actions of its members which included hacks and other illegal activities.

The Albanian government has recently blocked the access of the MKO members to the Internet in their camp near Tirana.

The Albanian government has turned off Internet access at the Ashraf-3 camp outside Manze, a small hill hamlet 30 kilometers west of Tirana.

It is the latest restrictive measure by the Albanian government in the face of MKO cyberattacks.

According to an informed security source, the notorious cultish members have been compelled to use mobile Internet or illicit techniques for cyber operations since Albania is firm to keep a lid on the terrorist activities of the group also called MEK.

As a result of the MKO’s involvement in “terror and cyber-attacks” against international institutions, the Albanian police forces conducted a raid on the camp in June.

They seized 150 computer devices used for sabotage attacks.

During the clashes at the camp, at least one MKO terrorist was killed and several more were injured.

On August 12, Kazem Gharibabadi, secretary of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights, said Tehran had filed a huge case against more than 100 members of the cultish organization, which has killed tens of thousands of Iranians.

September 12, 2023 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Rudy Giuliani, MEK’s paid supporter charged with 13 crimes.

As the Western support for the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) is in decline, the group’s paid supporter Rudy Giuliani surrendered on charges in the Georgia election subversion case. As Donald Trump’s key election lawyer, Rudy Giuliani together with two other lawyers, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis are under trial.

On August 23, 2023, CNN reported, “The scene of Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and a notable former federal prosecutor, walking into the Fulton County jail represented another remarkable moment in the ongoing investigation into Trump and his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.”

According to the report, as one of Trump’s most outspoken attorneys in 2020, Giuliani was charged with 13 crimes, including breaking the state’s racketeering act, engaging in various criminal conspiracies, and soliciting a public officer in the state to violate their oath.

For more than a decade, Giuliani has pushed the agenda of the MEK, giving paid speeches and writing newspaper op-eds expressing support for a group linked to the deaths of six Americans in the 1970s.

In October 2019, NBC News warned about Giuliani’s material support for the Cult of Rajavi. The article was titled “Giuliani’s work for Iranian group with bloody past could lead to more legal woes”.
NBC News quoted Daniel Benjamin, a State Department counterterrorism coordinator from 2009 to 2012. He has focused extensively on the network of American politicians who have been paid by MEK, including Giuliani.

“I found it pretty distasteful that they were shilling for this group even if it was delisted,” Benjamin told NBC. “This is a group that has American blood on its hands, and it’s never owned up to that.”

“Look at those who have gone on their gravy train and then go to their events and say MEK is going to bring democracy and peace to Iran,” Benjamin said. “Basically, these guys bring aboard their pals. Especially among the hardest line anti-Iran folks, this is the place to go. Though plenty of people become much more hard line once their pockets are filled with MEK money.”
The authors of NBC New also quote from Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Sadjadpour describes the organization as a fringe group with mysterious sponsors that garners slight support in its home country. “Their population in Iran hovers between negligible and nil,” Sadjadpour said.

Today, in August 2023, after the MEK’s headquarters was raided by the Albanian Police, the group’s base among its paid supporters is much more devastated than before. Regarding that Albania is a loyal ally of the United States, the move by the Albanian authorities to confiscate the MEK’s computers and other digital tools of its cyber army must have been granted approval of the American authorities.

The group’s paid supporters among the US warmongers like Giuliani seem to have to leave the group alone to help their notorious background.

August 26, 2023 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

A darling of US conservatives, Iran’s top opposition group may face an uncertain future

Its annual conferences have attracted the who’s-who of right-wing and hawkish, conservative politicians from the West, including former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former United States National Security Adviser John Bolton and ex-Vice President Mike Pence.

But recent setbacks for the most powerful Iranian opposition group have some observers wondering whether its glory days are numbered.

A shadowy dissident group in exile, the Mujahadin-e Khalq (MeK) was once a US-designated terrorist group but today counts prominent anti-Iran Western politicians as key allies. Iran accuses it of terrorism, saying it carried out a series of attacks in the 1980s. The MeK denies those charges.

It is one of the best-organized opposition groups confronting the Islamic Republic, but it has little support among Iranians, largely due to its violent past and for having supported Iraqi President Saddam Hussein during his almost decade-long war with Iran.

However, analysts say that recent diplomatic activity between Iran and its foes however may not bode well for the group.
In the span of one week, the MeK last month witnessed a rare raid on its sprawling base in Albania, where it is headquartered, as well as a brief ban on a planned annual rally in France, where it has held such events for several years.
The MeK believes these actions were part of a “policy of appeasement” of the regime in Tehran, a top representative from the group told CNN in an email interview.

“It became clear that the security concerns were simply a pretext to placate the clerical regime,” Shahin Gobadi, a Paris-based member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the political arm of the MeK, told CNN, referring to the French ban.

Albanian police said the June raid on the MeK’s Ashraf 3 camp near the capital Tirana was due to suspicions that the group was involved in political activity, according to local media. Political activity is banned under the agreement that allows them to stay in Albania. One person was killed in the raid, and police denied they were responsible for the death.

Iran welcomed the raid, and last week an Iranian official said that some of the seized hard drives arrived in his country, and that Iranian experts were working on data recovery to identify the group’s agents and sabotage cells, according to Iranian state media.

The MeK called on Albania to clarify whether any of the hard drives were indeed sent to Iran.
Gobadi told CNN the raid “was carried out at the behest or under pressure” from Iran.

‘Illegal and subversive activity’

An Albanian foreign ministry coordinator told CNN by email that the country has not provided any seized material to Iran. All the equipment seized is with the authorities and will be used for investigations, the coordinator said.

In the same week, French authorities banned a planned MeK rally in Paris citing “attack threats.” The ban was later reversed by a judicial order, and the rally took place on Saturday coinciding with an annual MeK meeting on the outskirts of Paris that hosted some of the most prominent right-wing figures.

A French diplomatic source told CNN that Paris police had ordered a ban on the demonstration “due to risks of public order disturbances.”

“This decision was quashed by the administrative courts, a decision which it is not for the government to comment on,” the source told CNN in an email, adding that “we have no relations with this organization (MeK), which we cannot endorse.”
Gobadi said the MEK’s activities in Albania and elsewhere have “aligned with the laws of their host countries.”

The Albanian foreign ministry coordinator told CNN that the MeK had broken an agreement not to engage in “illegal and subversive activity,” adding that Albania has paid a high price for hosting it, the worst of which was the July 2022 cyberattack on the country that it blamed on Iran. That attack, the coordinator said, “had dramatic consequences for Albania and its citizens, because 95% of public services in Albania are offered online.”

Albania severed diplomatic ties with Iran as a result, but Tehran denied involvement.

The coordinator said it was “deeply insulting” to be accused of appeasement given that Albania “welcomed and provided humanitarian protection to the MeK, when no other country in the world would accept them.”
The setbacks for the MeK also follow a landmark deal between Iran and Saud Arabia in March, which saw diplomatic ties re-instated after almost eight years of tensions.

Iran has for years accused Saudi Arabia of supporting the MeK. Speculation about the kingdom’s alleged support for the group was further fueled by the appearance of Prince Turki al-Faisal, a prominent Saudi royal and former ambassador to the US and the UK, at an MeK summit in Paris. In his speech in 2016, al-Faisal declared: “I, too, want the downfall of the regime.”

But in a sign of changing winds, Al Faisal in March told the France24 news channel that he wasn’t aware of an imminent normalization pact between Tehran and Riyadh and that he was surprised by it.

The prince has insisted that he plays no official government role, but his public endorsement of the MeK has enraged Iran, which called the group the Saudis’ “adopted children.”

The MeK denies receiving any funds from Saudi Arabia or any government, and insists that it “is an independent movement, standing on its own feet both politically and financially,” Gobadi told CNN.

CNN has reached out to the Saudi foreign ministry for comment.

The brief French ban on the MeK rally also came just days after a 90-minute phone call between French President Emanuel Macron and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on June 10.

It is unclear whether the recent diplomatic activity between Iran and its foes is directly responsible for the developments in France or Albania, but analysts say they’re unlikely to be coincidental, especially as Western states hope to restart nuclear talks with Iran.

‘Hardened neo-cons’

The MeK’s support overwhelmingly comes from the countries that have tensions with Iran, said Trita Parsi, vice-president of the Quincy Institute in Washington, DC.

“As a result, as those tensions with Iran go up or down, it directly affects the fate of the MeK,” he told CNN, adding that since Riyadh and Tehran have patched up, the MeK is “a lesser utility to Saudi Arabia.”

Politicians who have attended its conferences also include former Donald Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, and former British Prime Minister Liz Truss.

At least one speaker at the event reportedly received tens of thousands of dollars from the dissident group.

Iran’s Crown Prince Mohammad Reza Pahlavi marries Egyptian Princess Fawzia, March 30, 1939. L-R: Queen Farida and King Farouk of Egypt, Princess Fawzia and Crown Prince Mohammed Reza, and Queen Mother Nazli.
After Saudi Arabia, Iran may be patching up with its oldest Arab foe

Ali Ahmadi, an executive fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, says those who go to support the MeK are “usually a lot of hardened neo-cons” as well as “retired politicians who are happy to take a really big cheque.”

“A lot of right wingers have this kind of infatuation with small right-wing groups that they dream of someday being able to put in charge of a country like Iran,” Ahmadi told CNN.

Gobadi told CNN that speakers or attendees have never received payments from the MeK.

As the US and EU attempt to reach new agreements with Iran, they may be “throwing in the future of the MeK in the mix” to see if a broader comprise can be found, said Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC., adding that removing the group from the picture could be a Western concession to Iran.

Analysts say however that the MeK is unlikely to disappear anytime soon, having survived over the past six decades despite shifting geopolitics.

“They are gradually becoming weaker I think,” Vatanka said. While the Saudi-Iran rapprochement will weaken them further, it will not spell their demise, he said.

By Nadeen Ebrahim

July 24, 2023 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

MEK does not speak on behalf of the Iranian people; member of the Swedish Parl.

The Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) is notoriously known among Iranian opposition. Once an Islamic-Marxist anti-West group in Iran and later an ally of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, it has a long history of violent acts in Iran and Iraq. The European Union listed it as a terrorist organization until 2009. The U.S. and Canada also listed it as a terrorist entity until 2012. However, since its removal from terror list, it has been endeavoring to portrait itself as a democratic alternative to the Iranian government, but it is still unpopular among Iranians inside Iran and the Iranian diaspora.

As an example of the outcome of the MEK’s multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign, the leader of the MEK, Maryam Rajavi, was received in an event at the Italian Parliament, last week. Eventually, the Iranian foreign ministry summoned Italy’s Ambassador to Tehran Giuseppe Perrone to protest the Italian parliament’s hosting of the ringleader of “the anti-Iran terrorist Mujahedin Khalq Organization”. Iran called on Italy to respect its international obligations in the fight against terrorism.

On the other side was an Iranian opposition figure, Alireza Akhondi, the Swedish politician who had warned the world politicization in particular the ones of Italy to beware that the MEK does not represent the aspirations of the Iranian people. Akhondi was born in Iran and is of Iranian descent.

On July 5th, 2023, a few days before Maryam Rajavi’s meeting with the Italian parliamentarians, Akhondi twitted, “It is necessary to convey to world politicians that the People’s Mojahedin Khalq organization does not speak on behalf of the Iranian people.”

Regarding the recent “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement in Iran, He wrote, “The People’s Mojahedin Organization, previously on the terrorist list in Western countries, has made increased efforts to attract support from various European and American politicians, primarily by focusing on its lesser-known political branch, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). However, it is crucial to emphasize that they do not truly reflect the desires of the Iranian people for a future Iran characterized by a secular democratic system and respect for human rights in the Integrated Iran.”

Akhondi asserted that the MEK has attempted “to seize control and hijack the revolution from the brave people of Iran”. This Iranian_Swedish politician made it clear to politicians “that their current support for the People’s Mojahedin Khalq as a representative of the Iranian people is unacceptable.”
He promised to illuminate the Italian politicians about the true nature of the MEK in his trip to Italy. “During my upcoming trip to Italy, where I will meet with political parties, including the Radical Party, I will emphasize this point and raise awareness about the unrealistic claims of the People’s Mojahedin Khalq as representatives of Iranians,” he stated.

July 17, 2023 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

The damage by accepting MEK largesse is not limited to the Iran matter

Partisan battles are a contact sport in Washington. Few people expect congressmen to reach across the aisle as they did just a couple of decades ago. At first, public perception of politicians decreased. Then, respect for media hemorrhaged as journalists abandoned even the pretense of neutrality and as the line between reporting and editorializing disintegrated.

Increasingly, would-be students and their families question whether higher education is worth it, given the combination of soaring prices and indoctrination under the guise of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Corporations also find themselves at the epicenter of competing boycotts as executives realize political virtue signaling has a price.

The FBI and intelligence community, too, allowed themselves to descend the partisan rabbit hole at the expense of their credibility as they allowed political operatives to hijack them and as recent retirees tweeted or signed partisan letters, each of which eroded their decades-earned reputation for neutrality.

As American institutions tore themselves apart or allowed politics to infiltrate everything, the military initially stood apart. Even though a decreasing proportion of people serve or even know those who do, the military’s professionalism and studious efforts to avoid even the appearance of partisanship long enabled the military to stand alone as an institution widely respected across the partisan spectrum.

Endorsing MEK cult leader for cash by military retirees

One of the most deleterious legacies of the Trump administration, though, was growing efforts to politicize the service. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, erred when he walked with President Donald Trump through Lafayette Square after police used tear gas to clear the area adjacent to the White House of Black Lives Matter protesters. To Milley’s credit, he readily acknowledged the error, but the damage was done.

Nor was Milley alone in his stumble into partisanship. Democratic and Republican organizations gathered retired flag officers to sign letters meant to endorse certain positions or vilify others. Each letter made headlines but became a chip in the credibility of the institution.

Such letters are bad enough, but they are minor compared to the poor judgment of retired flag officers who endorse the Mujahedin al Khalq Organization, or MEK, a cultlike group of Iranian exiles complicit in past terrorism against Americans.

In recent years, the group has collected extensive endorsements, usually in exchange for generous donations or honoraria. Gens. Hugh Shelton and Peter Pace, both former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Wesley Clark, former supreme allied commander Europe; Gen. Anthony Zinni, former commander of U.S. Central Command; Gen. James Jones, former national security adviser; Gen. James Conway, former commandant of the Marine Corps; and Gen. Jack Keane, a former Army vice chief of staff have each signed onto statements or endorsed MEK leader Maryam Rajavi.

Rather than encourage freedom for Iran or an end to Iranian terror, each sets back the cause due to the hatred ordinary Iranians have for a group that first allied with Ayatollah Khomeini and then defected to the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

As top military retirees endorse a cult leader for cash, not only does the United States lose credibility in the eyes of ordinary Iranians, but the Iranian regime uses the endorsements to rally ordinary Iranians around the nationalist flag.

The damage retired officers do by accepting MEK largesse is not limited to the Iran matter. Taking money from the MEK corrupts the reputation of the U.S. military. Rajavi or the various organizations she controls do not offer honoraria or plane tickets to Shelton and Jones because she respects them or their knowledge of Iran. Rather, she wants to rent associations with the positions they held in the military.

In effect, there is little difference between allowing Rajavi’s organization to ghostwrite op-eds and former national security adviser Michael Flynn turning his pen over to Turkey’s regime. Strictly speaking, it might be legal, but it is deeply unethical and smells like corruption.

Those accepting MEK cash may believe there is no price to pay for an easy reward, but they are wrong: The price extracted from the military’s reputation is huge.

By Michael Rubin – Washington Examiner

June 18, 2023 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

How MKO, Israeli regime lure European MPs with money for lobbying

A short verbal exchange recently between a TV presenter and a low-profile politician and former lawmaker from a small country on the periphery of the European Union laid bare a long-standing problem of non-transparent lobbying in the highest EU institutions in Brussels.

A TV host on a popular Croatian talk show asked a guest how she copes with the growing European inflation of 13 percent since she has savings of 700-800,000 Euros in publicly available bank accounts.

This financial data was known to him because the Croatian anti-corruption institutions require that leading Croatian politicians must make their assets publicly available online every year, in order to prevent conflict of interest.

Croatian MP Marijana Petir, the guest on the show, was visibly rattled by the unexpected question.

Croatian MP Marijana Petir

She was not disturbed by inflation and the loss of around one hundred thousand Euros, but by the fact that this little-known information was presented in an extremely popular show watched by over half a million people, roughly a quarter of the Croatian adult population.

So, instead of answering about inflation, she immediately changed the subject and stated that her savings are a private matter, that she earned everything fairly and that she regularly and transparently submits her financial data to the relevant institutions.

Public reactions

Her dark forebodings turned out to be correct because the information about the bank account overshadowed the rest of the interview and was a hot topic in the Croatian media and public for days.

Soon, many interesting data emerged like skeletons out of a closet.

For example, of the 151 representatives of the Croatian parliament, which includes prominent businessmen and wealthy heirs, Petir has the largest independent savings: roughly 700 thousand Euros.

Her savings are roughly twice as large as this year’s reported assets of Zoran Milanović, the incumbent Croatian president who has held coveted political positions for two decades, including the mandate of prime minister and the position of leader of the second largest party in Croatia.

Furthermore, the available property data show that Petir did not inherit anything, is not married and has no joint property, and has no loans or debts.

In other words, the entire amount is the result of her political career spanning only 17.5 years, in addition to less than two years of work in the real sector.

Calculations

Few investigative journalists have tried to reconstruct her career and the sum of all salaries, arriving at the same conclusion that her claims of “fair earnings” do not hold water.

The most fruitful period is certainly her mandate as a member of the European Parliament when she received a net salary of 4,500 Euros during the five years from 2014 to 2019.

This still constitutes approximately a third of her total savings.

Petir was also a member of the Croatian Parliament for six years, where her net salary was twice as low, giving a quarter of her savings. If we also include minor jobs in her younger days, we get an amount of barely two-thirds of her total savings.

This superficial calculation of course implies that she hasn’t spent a cent in two decades, which is simply impossible considering her well-known lavish lifestyle.

Despite the fact that these contradictions were made public, no one managed to answer the key question – where did the money really come from?

Concealments

Petir herself avoids answering the question – where do her staggering earnings come from?

“My savings come from 20 years of work in different workplaces, which were not only related to the European Parliament or the Croatian Parliament,” she was quoted as saying in the media.

“Salaries for official positions are public and available, while the amount of salaries for other positions, based on the contract, cannot be disclosed to the public,” she hastened to add.

Neither the Croatian nor the European Parliament provides an answer.

Although their rules dictate that they are required to report the amount of savings and interest group affiliations, they are apparently not required to report the full source of money and lobbying policies; for whom, and against whom.

The website of the EU Parliament only briefly reveals that she is chair of the Croatia-Israel friendship group, while the website of the Croatian Parliament lists her membership in the inter-parliamentary friendship groups with Hungary, Israel, North Macedonia, and the United States.

Finally, there is not a single Croatian or European media outlet, newspaper article, not even a blog, that writes about her true employers and lobbying activities.

Not only for Petir, but also for most of the dozens of similar cases in the EU Parliament.

Revelations

The answer to the question of how a little-known peasant politician accumulated hundreds of thousands of Euros is yet quite simple – it comes from anti-Iranian and anti-Palestinian lobbying for the Albania-based terrorist group MKO and the Israeli regime in the EU parliament.

Just two weeks after entering the EU parliament, she boasted on her private website that she is the only Croatian member of the delegation with close relations with the Israeli regime, and her Zionist rampage was evident throughout her five-year mandate, in the form of tens of examples.

In her speeches, she repeatedly promoted the lie that Palestinians use “human shields,” thus whitewashing the Israeli regime’s war crimes. She also claimed that the EU’s humanitarian aid to Palestine “finances terrorism”, equating criticism of Israeli policy viz a viz Palestine with anti-Semitism, and demanding that Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement be put on the EU terror list, etc.

She has traveled to the Israeli-occupied territories at least three times, from where she proudly opposed EU labeling of products originating from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Golan Heights, Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Petir thus ardently defends the apartheid regime responsible for the ethnic cleansing of millions of Palestinian Muslims and hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Christians, but at the same time paradoxically presents herself as a great Catholic concerned about the violations of the rights of Christians in the world.

In one of her freaky rants, she named Iran, Syria and Turkey as allegedly “the most aggressive anti-Christian countries.”

MKO ties

There is also ample evidence that points to her close ties with the MKO, a notorious anti-Iranian terrorist organization based in Albania that is responsible for the killings of tens of thousands of Iranians, which Petir indirectly refers to as “Iran’s human rights organization” on her website.

She held meetings with Maryam Rajavi, promoted MKO propaganda on her Twitter page, and most importantly, used their disinformation for anti-Iranian presentations in the EU Parliament.

Among numerous anti-Iran speeches is a particularly bizarre one in which she says: “It is well known that the position of women has declined after the revolution,” and goes on to cite various fake data from MKO pamphlets, including the alleged “denial of education to girls.”

This is while, before the Islamic revolution, more than three-quarters of women were illiterate, while today literacy is almost 100 percent and the number of female university students is 50 percent higher than in Germany and some other European countries.

Astonishingly, no one among 700 EU representatives confronted Petir or her ignorance, while High Representative/Vice-President Federica Mogherini said she was aware of the “worrying situation.”

Most of Petir’s other activities in the EU Parliament are limited to marginal agricultural and Balkans-related regional issues, so the possibility that she profited from other types of lobbying can be ruled out.

Lobbying octopus

Petir is not an isolated case. Out of a total of 11 representatives from Croatia in the EU Parliament from 2014 to 2019, three more participated in pro-MKO anti-Iranian activities: Jozo Radoš, Željana Zovko and Ruža Tomašić. Tomašić’s replacement Ladislav Ilčić has also been active since 2021.

A similar phenomenon exists in neighboring Slovenia, which also has five representatives who have actively lobbied for MKO terrorist group in recent years: Franc Bogovič, Ljudmila Novak, Patricija Šulin, Romana Tomc and Milan Zver.

Overall, there are between 40 and 50 individuals who have participated in such activities in the EU Parliament in recent years. More than half come from the Eastern EU countries, the rest mainly from the marginal parties of the Western EU.

The MKO’s purchasing a prominent MEP of a major Croatian party obviously represents an issue, not only due to the accompanying cost but also international repercussions. On the other hand, dealing with cheap marginal figures from the European periphery does not pose any problem.

The Petir case is also reminiscent of the well-documented case from Spain where the MEK financed the European campaign of the radical right-wing party Vox with several hundred thousand Euros.

Again, everything happened discreetly and legally, without an anti-corruption process or major controversies.

So, with the relatively cheap cost of a few million Euros given by their Zionist sponsors, the anti-Iranian terrorist group managed to gather the same number of representatives in the EU Parliament as Poland.

This is not an Iranian problem alone, but also a European problem.

European citizens, experts believe, should ask themselves if the highest EU institution is so vulnerable to the lobbying influence, how prone is it to ultra-rich corporations, let alone an overseas master?

By Ivan Kesic

May 27, 2023 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

To know the MEK’s paid lobbyist

Liam Fox, former Secretary of State for International Trade of Britain and a member of the Conservative Party, is one of the paid lobbyists of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (the MEK/ PMOI) who frequently advocates for the terrorist cult as an alternative for the Iranian government. Let’s take a look at his background.

According to his comrades, Fox hardly ever attends the parliament sessions and even if he is present, very few representatives are willing to sit by his side. Last month, the Guardian published a revealing report about Fox and his carrier as a parliament member including the lefty fees he is paid for lobbying.

the Guardian published a revealing report about Fox

The report reveals:

“Fox is separately paid £10,000 every six months as a retainer by WorldPR, a company based in Panama, despite working no hours for them to date. WorldPR’s clients have previously included the late Chilean dictator Augustus Augusto Pinochet, a team of lawyers working for the Libyan government to secure the release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, and the Kazakh and Azerbaijani governments.”

According to the information received by Nejat Society, WorldPR or World Public Relations is the very company used by the MEK to pay Liam Fox. The speaking fees were previously settled in the bank accounts of the group lobbies via the group’s front organizations in the United States but today WorldPR does all the works for Maryam Rajavi including the expenses of the group’s guests in Albania. The same firm is paid by Israeli and Saudi companies in tax haven countries such as Albania and Azerbaijan.

April 8, 2023 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

This free trip to Albania was an offer all MPs should refuse

The Mujahedeen-e-Khalq was once an Islamic-Marxist revolutionary group in Iran and later an ally of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The U.S. and Canada listed it as a terrorist entity until 2012. Now, it is a cult-like organization.

And last year, seven Canadian MPs travelled to Albania to attend one of its events, paid for by a Canadian MEK organization, the Iran Democratic Association.

The MPs, from three different parties, collectively accepted $27,975 for travel to an event called the Free Iran World Summit 2022, according to the list of sponsored travel released last week. In a strange twist, the conference didn’t actually take place. The summit was cancelled at the last minute after guests arrived, because of security concerns, but meetings were organized for politicians at another location.

Still, something disturbing happened here. Canadian politicians accepted free trips the MEK offers to whitewash itself as a credible voice for democratic resistance to the Iranian regime. But the MEK is not that.

Political sect from Albania fights against Tehran

The MEK does go out of its way to court politicians, and trumpets their participation. Politicians who travel to their Free Iran summits are not helping to free Iran.

“We should be worried because the MEK is a cult,” said University of Ottawa professor Thomas Juneau, a Middle East specialist and former analyst with the Department of National Defence. “It is thuggish, it is not democratic at all, it is not an alternative to the current regime in Iran,” he said. “It has no legitimacy at all inside Iran.”

The sums these MPs accepted for a trip to Europe were not very large by the standards of MP junkets, which often pay for MPs to go to Israel or Taiwan. Several of the MPs claimed a very low $280 for five days accommodation.

But you have to wonder if MPs would have gone if the cost came from their budget, or pocket.

MPs aren’t allowed to accept other gifts. There is no reason they should be allowed to accept free travel.

The seven MPs who attended include Liberal MP Judy Sgro, Bloc Québécois MP Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, and five Conservatives: Michael Cooper, Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Dan Muys, Lianne Rood and Melissa Lantsman, now one of the party’s deputy leaders.

None of them returned messages left on Friday, or in the case of Mr. Cooper, on Sunday, except for Ms. Lantsman’s office, which e-mailed a comment: “She has been an advocate of a free Iran and believes only the people of Iran will choose its own future. She has also met with other groups fighting for the cause of a free Iran.”

Perhaps politicians don’t know that the MEK is not a credible advocate for a democratic Iran. Some in the U.S. seem to embrace its vocal opposition to the Iranian regime, and figure the enemy of their enemy is their friend. And some U.S. politicians are believed to have accepted large speaking fees.

“The only way I can explain why there are American politicians who support the [MEK] is ‘Follow the money,’” said Ervand Abrahamian, professor of Middle East history and politics at the City University of New York, and author of a 1992 book about the MEK, Radical Islam: The Iranian Mojahedin.

In the 1970s, he said, they were Islamic Marxists known simply as the Mujahedeen who fought for the overthrow of the Shah. Later, the mullah-led Islamic regime cracked down on the MEK, which assassinated a number of Iranian regime leaders. In the 1980s, the MEK moved to Iraq, and fought alongside Saddam Hussein’s forces in the Iran-Iraq war. That earned them hate inside Iran, Mr. Abrahamian said.

“Even people who hate the Islamic Republic hate the Mujahedeen even more,” he said.

After Saddam Hussein fell, the new Iraqi government wanted them out, and the U.S. delisted the group as a terrorist organization before it was relocated to Albania.

Along the way, Mr. Abrahamian said, the MEK gave up ideology and became a cult-like organization, centred around leader Massoud Rajavi and now his presumed widow, Maryam Rajavi – although her husband is believed to have been dead for roughly 20 years but that has never been confirmed.

In 2009, the RAND Corporation, in a report commissioned by a U.S. government research institute, reported the MEK used cult-like practices “such as authoritarian control, confiscation of assets, sexual control (including mandatory divorce and celibacy), emotional isolation, forced labour, sleep deprivation, physical abuse, and limited exit options.”

The MEK, in short, is not the hope for a new Iran. Western politicians who associate with it will at best alarm real Iranian reformers. Its events don’t advance the cause of a Free Iran. And Canadian politicians shouldn’t jet off to them – even if the trip is free.

Campbell Clark, The globe and mail

April 4, 2023 0 comments

Newer Posts

Older Posts