Fake Iranian activist ‘Heshmat Alavi’ exposed
The White House has used a completely made-up Iranian journalist to justify sanctions.
Fake Newsman: Anti-Iran Forbes “Writer” is a People’s Jihadi Front
“Heshmat Alavi” who has published anti-Iran screeds in Forbes, the Daily Caller and other substandard rightwing venues, does not, according to The Intercept, actually exist.
The name is a front propaganda efforts of the People’s Jihadis (Mojahedin-e Khalq or MEK). The MEK has committed numerous acts of terrorism in Iran and then collaborated with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. It was listed as a terrorist organization the the US until a few years ago and it is mysterious why it was ever taken off the list. My own suspicion is that bribes were taken or influence peddling was practiced.
NBC news once reported that the People’s Jihadis has links to the Israeli intelligence organization, Mossad. Others have alleged Saudi money and support.
Rudi Giuliani, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, who now make US foreign policy, have taken large bribes from this terrorist organization.
The idea of blacklisting the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organization (nonsensical because it is a national guard, not a non-state actor) was first recently floated by the non-person “Heshmat Alavi” in the non-news-source “Daily Caller.” Then Trump followed through. Putin’s hold on the Trump administration is feeble as a kitten’s compared to that of People’s Jihadi cult leader Maryam Rajavi in Albania.
The Young Turks interview the Intercept Washington Bureau Chief on the story:
Outrage on Capitol Hill over ‘completely unacceptable’ US-funded scheme to shape Iran debate
‘This is something that happens in authoritarian regimes, not democracies’
United States officials say they are outraged by a government-funded troll campaign that has targeted American citizens critical of the administration’s hardline Iran policy and accused critics of being loyal to the Tehran regime.
State Department officials admitted to Congressional staff in a closed-door meeting on Monday that a project they had funded to counter Iranian propaganda had gone off the rails. Critics in Washington have gone further, saying that the programme resembled the type of troll farms used by autocratic regimes abroad.
“It’s completely unacceptable that American taxpayer dollars supported a project that attacked Americans and others who are critical of the Trump administration’s policy of escalation and conflict with Iran,” a senior Congressional aide told The Independent, on condition of anonymity.
“This is something that happens in authoritarian regimes, not democracies.”
One woman behind the harassment campaign, a longtime Iranian-American activist, has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the State Department over the years to promote “freedom of expression and free access to information.”
The campaign relentlessly attacked critics of the Iran policy on social media, including Twitter and Telegram messaging app, accusing them without evidence of being paid operatives of the regime in Tehran.
A spokeswoman for the State Department told reporters on Monday that funding for the “Iran Disinformation Project” had been suspended and is under review after it was reported that it went beyond the scope of its mandate by veering from countering propaganda from Iran to smearing domestic critics of White House policy.
State Department officials disclosed to lawmakers they had granted $1.5 for Iran Disinfo, which repeatedly targeted, harassed and smeared critics of Trump’s tough stance against Iran on social media.
Among those targeted were American activists, scholars, and journalists who challenged the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure campaign” against Iran.
The revelation that US taxpayer money was being used to attack administration critics has now sparked a flurry of queries.
“There are still so many unanswered questions here,” Congresswoman Ilhan Omar wrote on Twitter. “What rules are in place to prevent state-funded organisation from smearing American citizens? If there wasn’t public outcry, would the Administration have suspended funding for Iran Disinfo?”
Cold War-era US rules barring the use of government-funded propaganda against American citizens have been flouted for decades.
Congresswoman Barbara Lee accused the State Department of giving taxpayer money to operatives “accused of intimidating and harassing U.S. human rights activists, journalists, and academics who’ve criticized their hawkish policies on Iran.”
She added: “This is unacceptable and we will not stand for it.”
State Department officials speaking at the closed-door meeting admitted the project was out of bounds, according to Congressional staffers speaking to The Independent on condition of anonymity.
Both Democratic and Republican Congressional staffers were highly critical of the project and questioned whether US officials should continue to work with the contractor, E-Collaborative for Civic Education. The State Department spokeswoman declined to outline steps to prevent such an operation in the future.
Some have said the harassment campaign resembles those launched by the Iranian regime against its critics, as well as clandestine troll farms run by Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other autocracies in attempts to shape online debate and intimidate critics.
In a twist, Iran Disinfo has even attacked journalists deemed insufficiently supportive of the Trump administration’s policies at US-funded news outlets including Voice of America, Radio Farda, and RFE/RL.
The harassment campaign is one aspect of an Iran policy that critics have warned was overly politicised, incoherent and risky.
Defying American allies, the United Nations Security Council, and the advice of his own intelligence mandarins, Mr Trump voided the 2015 Iran nuclear deal last year and launched an unprecedented campaign of sanctions and threats against Tehran, vowing to pressure the country into cutting a “better deal” than the one it forged with his predecessor, Barack Obama.
Seeking evidence that its policies were working and popular, the administration has relied an unconventional information sources, often citing obscure right-wing news outlets and think tanks.
E-Collaborative for Civic Education, co-founded by Iranian American activist Mariam Memarsadeghi, is a long-time State Department contractor.
It purports to promote democratic political life and empower civil society inside Iran, but it appears to have no presence inside the country and instead confines itself to engaging with Iranians in the Diaspora.
Congressional officials also confirmed to The Independent that one individual working for the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, an influential Washington organisation with hawkish views on Iran, is part of the E-Collaborative for Civic Education’s Iran Disinformation Project.
One Congressional staffer said he expected the State Department would examine “the extent of coordination” between Iran Disinfo project and “pro-war think tanks like the Foundation for Defence of Democracies.”
Over the weekend, The Intercept revealed that a purported Iranian activist, who had published dozens of articles on Iran in prominent outlets such as Forbes and The Hill, does not exist and is a fake persona run by a team of operatives connected to a bizarre Iranian political cult.
The “Heshmat Alavi” persona had a strong presence on Twitter and harassed Iranian journalists, academics, and activists who are critical of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq organisation, a one-time armed guerilla group now holed up in Albania. There is no known link between the Iran Disinfo programme and the fake persona.
At least one was cited by the Trump administration as proof against the effectiveness of the Obama-era nuclear deal. Some of the MEK articles were also picked up by US government funded Voice of America’s Persian-language service.
Both the Alavi account and the US-funded account frequently accused Iranian Americans sceptical about the Trump administration of being dupes of the Tehran regime.
“It’s an outrage that the Trump Administration was funnelling taxpayer dollars to a smear campaign accusing US citizens of dual loyalty to a foreign regime,” Dylan Williams, vice president of the left-leaning Jewish-American organisation J Street, told The Independent.
“Decent people wouldn’t tolerate such state-sponsored defamation if the target was Jewish Americans and we shouldn’t when the target is Iranian-Americans.”
Negar Mortazavi and Borzou Daragahi ,
Why does the U.S. need trolls to make its Iran case?
This weekend, a new wrinkle was added to the ongoing saga about the information war over Iran policy: the stunning revelation that an online persona that was cited by the Trump administration to justify leaving the Iran nuclear deal is likely not a real person, after all.
On Sunday, the Intercept published an investigation into “Heshmat Alavi,” a rabid supporter of the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), a controversial Iranian opposition group. Since 2014, he had amassed a large Twitter following, which he apparently leveraged to attract interest in freelance submissions.
But according to the Intercept report, it turns out Alavi, the self-proclaimed “Iranian activist with a passion for equal rights” who claims to be “in contact with sources that provide credible information about the mullahs’ regime in Tehran,” was a team of MEK members producing the content in Albania.
That didn’t stop Forbes, the Hill, Daily Caller and even the Voice of America from amplifying Alavi’s platform as a voice on Iran policy. All of these outlets, and several more, have published articles by Alavi that claimed the MEK is the main opposition to the current Iranian regime.
More disturbing than the articles, however, were the Twitter tirades that Alavi directed at established journalists who write on Iran — including me — referring to us “lobbyists,” “agents” and “collaborators” of the Islamic republic. These efforts actively sought to undermine our credibility about the best approach to deal with Iran and resorted to personal attacks in order to do so.
Apparently, libel isn’t a concern if you’re not actually a person.
After the report, Twitter appears to have suspended the account.
But the MEK, the organization that “Team Heshmat Alavi” represents, has a nasty history. It was on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations for years before being removed in 2012. These days, it has no discernible popular support in Iran and egregiously mistreats its members.
Despite its history and negligible influence among Iranians, the MEK happens to have the support of many U.S. officials, including Trump advisers John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani, both of whom have appeared as paid speakers at the group’s events.
The new revelations come less than two weeks after reports that the State Department had been funding an initiative called the Iran Disinformation Project, which was outed last month by Iran watchers for targeting and spreading lies about knowledgeable and experienced Iran commentators. The State Department suspended the funding to that initiative temporarily, but a full accounting of how taxpayer money may have been used against U.S. citizens — a crime under U.S. law — has not happened yet.
The Heshmat Alavi saga does not appear to be directly linked with the Iran Disinformation Project. But both operations raise similar concerns.
In both instances, the U.S. government — knowingly or not — aided in the flow of falsehoods perpetuated by opaque sources targeting U.S. citizens and attempting to discredit journalists and other commentators. And in both cases, the administration seemed to care more about advancing their views on Iran than about verifying the truth.
In the current atmosphere, any discussion of Iran that doesn’t explicitly advocate for the most severe measures against Iran — and, by extension, all people inside Iran — is branded apologia by supporters of President Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign. The MEK and Iranian Disinformation Project talking points have a captive audience here in the capital. So, too, do the rants of others echoing the most hawkish elements of the Trump administration’s Iran rhetoric.
But this is the United States of America. In this country, at least, we can and must have these conversations in the light of day, and maintain an atmosphere where we can openly debate and defend dissenting views without spreading falsehoods or slander. This is critical, not just for our democracy, but also for long-term peace and stability.
Political commentators have pointed to this rhetorical buildup against Iran as similar to the George W. Bush administration’s case for war with Iraq. But the comparison isn’t entirely apt: We are not at the same informational disadvantage we were as a nation in the lead-up to the Iraq War.
The current Iranian American population is much bigger than the Iraqi American population of the early 2000s. It’s better positioned economically in the society and has more political representation. And crucially, there is a flow of Iranian Americans who still routinely travel to the country. Social media is rich with images from inside Iran telling myriad stories.
So, instead of resorting to false narratives and personal attacks, we should cultivate our Iran policy — because there still isn’t a coherent one — the old-fashioned way: by making real arguments, backing them up with actual evidence and prioritizing real people over the tactics of manipulation and fraud preferred by authoritarians.
Jason Rezaian,
Prominent Anti-Iran ‘Writer’ Not Real Person, Mouthpiece of Shady Iranian Group
Iran’s opposition pro-U.S. MEK created a fake persona named Heshmat Alavi who writes for right-wing media against the Iranian government.
The pro-West Iranian opposition group Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) is using a fake profile to push for their anti-Iran agenda according to a report.
The organization is managing the social media profile of Heshmat Alavi, a person who had supposedly written for various right-wing media outlets.
“Heshmat Alavi is a persona run by a team of people from the political wing of the MEK,” Hassan Heyrani, former member of MEK’s political department who defected in 2018, affirmed, apparently having direct knowledge of the operation.
As of Monday, Twitter has suspended Alavi’s account. Forbes has also deleted all articles pertaining to Alavi.
“They write whatever they are directed by their commanders and use this name to place articles in the press. This is not and has never been a real person.”
Twitter has suspended Alavi’s user, while Forbes has deleted his article entries on the website.
MEK was originally an anti-west, especially anti-U.S. organization and pushed for the killing of six U.S citizens in Iran in the 1970s. While in 1979, they enthusiastically cheered the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. After the Iranian Revolution, its young leaders pushed for endorsement from the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini but were denied.
So Massoud Rajavi, its young leader, allied with the winner of the country’s first presidential election, Abolhassan Banisadr, who was not an ally of Khomeini, either. Soon Banisadr and MEK became some of Khomeini’s main opposition figures and had fled to Iraq and later to France.
In the neighboring country, MEK allied with Sadam Hussein to rage war against Iran.
The organization was deemed a terrorist group by the U.S. and European Union for the better part of the 1990s, but things changed after the U.S. invasion to Iraq in 2003. This is when the U.S. neoconservative strategists leading the Department of State and the intelligence agencies saw MEK as an asset rather than a liability. Put simply in words they applied the dictum of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
Soon after it gained support from U.S. politicians like Rudy Giuliani and current National Security Advisor John Bolton, who now call MEK a legitimate opposition to the current Iranian government, as MEK shed its “Marxism.” After the U.S.’ official withdrawal from Iraq, they built MEK a safe haven in Albania, near Tirana.
From this safe haven in Albania, MEK started spreading fake news and online campaigns against the Iranian goverment. They also created a fake persona to spread their propaganda.
“We were always active in making false news stories to spread to the foreign press and in Iran,” Reza Sadeghi, a former MEK member, explained.
Alavi’s persona is managed by three MEK members according to the former MEK operative, Heyrani.
“They were my friends. We were close friends,” Heyrani said. “We were working together.”
Alavi’s articles have been published by media houses like Forbes, The Hill, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, Saudi-owned al-Arabiya English, among others.
All his articles denounce the Iranian government and often suggests that it should be replaced by MEK and its leader Maryan Rajavi, wife of Massoud Rajavi.
His social media followers comprise of right-wing journalists, think tank employees and Alavi is often cited by neoconservative publications.
In fact, when U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal with Iran in 2018, the White House claimed that an article by Alavi was cited as the reason for this decision. Alavi wrote in Forbes that the nuclear deal has allowed Iran to increase its military budget, hence Trump’s decision to withdraw and sanction the country.
“The Mojahedin” — the Iranian name for the MEK — “wants to show to the world that their narrative has support, even from people who are not directly members of the group,” Heyrani said, adding that “they want to show that other independent people — writers and activists — support their approach and believe that freedom and democracy will come to Iran through the work of this group.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Prominent-Anti-Iran-Writer-Not-Real-Person-Mouthpiece-of-Shady-Iranian-Group-20190610-0011.html
The Suspicious Twitter Network Trolling for Regime Change in Iran
An American non-profit says it’s been the victim of a harassment campaign.
As the Trump administration has ramped up economic sanctions against Iran and aimed increasingly threatening rhetoric at the country, an influence network has popped up on Twitter pushing similar messages.
Networks comprising over four hundred Twitter accounts composed of likely bots along with real accounts and “cyborg” accounts—accounts run by real people, but augmented with software to push posts faster and more frequently—have consistently released messaging opposing the Iranian government.
Coordinated attempts to manipulate discourse on Twitter are explicitly against the platform’s rules.
The accounts often tweet messages backing regime change in Iran and calling for an end to the rule of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Many of the accounts also frequently voice their support for the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), a militant opposition group that some have called a terrorist organization, and its leader Maryam Rajavi. The accounts also frequently criticize the National Iranian American Council (NIAC)—a non-profit representing Iranians in the U.S.—claiming it advocates in support of Iran’s current religious authorities. There is no evidence to suggest this is true, and NIAC firmly denies the assertion. In 2008 the group filed a defamation suit against a writer who alleged they had lobbied on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran; a federal judge found that the defendant’s actions didn’t amount to defamation, but made no ruling on the truth of his allegations.*
The full impact of the networks is hard to gauge, but one set of over 350 accounts has collectively tweeted over 5 million times to nearly 500,000 followers, according to numbers collected by independent researcher Geoff Golberg, who first flagged the accounts to Mother Jones. Golberg, who founded the social media manipulation research project SocialCartograph, says that he has no specific interest in Iranian geopolitics and stumbled onto the accounts amid broader research into social media influence campaigns.
Another set of 75 accounts found by researcher Ben Decker, who runs the media and tech investigations consultancy Memetica, also post pro-regime change and anti-NIAC content. Decker, who is a former researcher at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, says the accounts exhibit signs that suggest they are possibly either not real or are being augmented. Beyond accounts posting at a superhuman pace on a 24 hour a day, seven day a week schedule, Decker noted that “the network of accounts had a massive spike in followers, totaling around 125.2k users, during the last week of February”—a “red flag as far as inorganic network activity is concerned.”
While coordinated attempts to manipulate discourse on Twitter are explicitly against the platform’s rules, NIAC says it has been a victim of such attacks and complains the company hasn’t taken enough action to protect them. The organization claims that it was targeted by a coordinated social media attack over Memorial Day weekend, when accounts critical of NIAC tweeted out the hashtag #NIACLobbies4Mullahs in droves, to push the notion of NIAC’s supposed ties to Iran’s religious authorities. Jamal Abdi, the NIAC’s president, believes the efforts are an attempt to undermine his organization’s credibility and effectiveness.
“The goal of these attacks is simple: to divide and weaken our community. To ensure that Iranian Americans do not have a voice, do not hold influential positions in Washington D.C., do not run for office and build political power, and shy away from civic engagement,” he wrote in a piece for The Iranian. Golberg’s work has caught the attention of NIAC and he has publicly communicated with it his findings, but he says he is not being paid by the organization.
The networks are made up of a mix of legitimate and false accounts, and it can be difficult to definitively say which are bots, cyborgs, or normal posters augmented via other means. But some of the profiles’ behavior echoes patterns that experts use to judge if accounts are not being run organically. The five most prominent accounts in the network have tweeted hundreds of thousands of times in the several years since they were created, averaging over 100 tweets a day. That speed alone doesn’t confirm that the accounts are inauthentic or engaging in artificial coordination, but to Golberg it’s a clue, along with the interconnectedness of the network’s accounts and their similarities in the users they retweet, follow and interact with, as well as the sometimes nearly identical content of their tweets.
Twitter has deleted thousands of Iranian accounts in the past several months, including some of the over 350 accounts that appear to be a part of the influence campaign identified by Golberg. Over 200 of the accounts he flagged remain, pumping out content in support of regime change in Iran.
It’s unclear who is behind the accounts, but their positions mirror the positions of the MEK and what is seen as its international political arm, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). Both have consistently pushed for regime change in Iran, earning allies in and close to the Trump administration, despite the organization formerly being labeled by the State Department as a terrorist group, a designation some experts believe it should still have.
Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton, called the MEK “a viable opposition to the rule of the ayatollahs” at an MEK event in 2017. Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who has taken payments from the group, called for Iran’s current ruling regime to be replaced by the armed group at a 2018 rally hosted by the organization in Paris.
The MEK has a history of running online disinformation campaigns. Al-Jazeera has documented a Russian Internet Research Agency-style troll operation run out of Albania, interviewing former MEK members who detailed how the organization controlled thousands of accounts to spread propaganda about regime change and other political aims. And according to the Daily Beast, a former lobbyist for the NCRI, Soheila Aligholi Mayelzadeh, ran an influence campaign on Facebook in support of more aggressive confrontation with Iran.
It’s unclear what action Twitter is taking on the accounts. Golberg has for many months repeatedly flagged the network to Twitter employees, and had direct message conversations with the company about his disinformation research more broadly.
“Platform manipulation is a violation of the Twitter Rules,” a company spokesperson wrote after being asked about the accounts. “For accounts that we can reliably link to a nation state, we disclose every information operation down to the Tweet to a dedicated public archive—the largest of its kind in the industry. We have disclosed activities linked to Iran in the past and will remain vigilant.”
While news of Russian attempts to use social media platforms to influence politics both in the U.S. and elsewhere have dominated headlines, more and more examples of influence efforts related to Iran have surfaced. In addition to the online campaigns being carried out by people sympathetic to the MEK’s perspective, Iran’s ruling regime also appears to have engaged in its own political manipulation attempts.
Late last month, both Facebook and Twitter announced that they had deleted thousands of Iranian accounts that were engaged in what Facebook’s chief of security Nathaniel Gleicher called “coordinated inauthentic behavior.” The accounts appeared to have been created to mislead by posing as news organizations, journalists, and under other false identities, and to spread information about “political and social issues in Iran and globally,” according to Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of site integrity. Both companies had previously deleted batches of accounts originating in Iran that they identified as being a part of a network trying to influence political discourse.
While the Trump administration has been wary of potential Iranian social media manipulation efforts, it seems their focus has been on content pushed by the current regime—and not by allies of a political group that, like the United States, is working against it.
“I can say definitively that it’s a sufficient national security concern about Chinese meddling, Iranian meddling, and North Korean meddling that we’re taking steps to try and prevent it,” Bolton told ABC News in August.
This article has been revised with additional information about the 2008 case.
Ali Breland, Motherjones.com
Murtaza Hussain has reported an important story on the ongoing propaganda campaign sponsored by the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) cult. This is the group of discredited Iranian exiles that has been building up its support in the West over the last decade by cultivating ties with and paying many Iran hawks, including the current National Security Advisor John Bolton.
Hussain has found that a prominent online figure, Heshmat Alavi, is a fake persona created by the MEK’s troll farm in Albania to harass and attack journalists and analysts that criticize the cult and oppose war and regime change in Iran:
There’s a problem, though: Heshmat Alavi appears not to exist. Alavi’s persona is a propaganda operation run by the Iranian opposition group Mojahedin-e-Khalq, which is known by the initials MEK, two sources told The Intercept.
“Heshmat Alavi is a persona run by a team of people from the political wing of the MEK,” said Hassan Heyrani, a high-ranking defector from the MEK who said he had direct knowledge of the operation. “They write whatever they are directed by their commanders and use this name to place articles in the press. This is not and has never been a real person.”
Heyrani said the fake persona has been managed by a team of MEK operatives in Albania, where the group has one of its bases, and is used to spread its message online.
The MEK has long been harassing and attacking journalists and analysts that oppose their fanatical regime change agenda and their creepy, abusive organization.
On occasion, I have also been subjected to some of this same treatment on Twitter when I have pointed out the group’s past and its current abuses against its own members, but others have had to endure much worse harassment and threats for a long time. The Alavi case goes beyond unleashing the usual army of bots against the group’s critics.
In this case, the fake persona was able to publish dozens of articles in Western news and opinion outlets promoting the MEK as the main Iranian opposition group and advocating for regime change in Iran:
Alavi, whose contributor biography on the Forbes website identifies him as “an Iranian activist with a passion for equal rights,” has published scores of articles on Iran over the past few years at Forbes, The Hill, the Daily Caller, The Federalist, Saudi-owned al-Arabiya English, and other outlets.
The problem here is not just that the MEK has managed to spread its poison in Western media using this fake persona, but that so many of these outlets readily accepted submissions from a pro-MEK trolling operation. It isn’t surprising that a creepy cult intent on rehabilitating its image in the West would resort to trickery and lies, but it is disturbing how willing so many of these outlets were to lend legitimacy to that effort and broadcast outright propaganda. It is equally troubling how long the MEK was able to get away with this before the deception was uncovered.
The Alavi case is an important piece of a larger story about how advocates of regime change in Iran have been resorting to harassment, intimidation, and smears of Iranian and Iranian-American journalists, analysts, and genuine activists for years. It is similar to the recent scandal involving U.S. government funding of the so-called Iran Disinformation Project that engaged in similar smear tactics and harassment against many of the same people, and it is part of the same phenomenon of shouting down credible opponents of regime change and war in an attempt to control the debate. Fortunately, thanks to Hussain’s story, Twitter has suspended the Alavi account and the fake persona has been outed to the entire world. No doubt the MEK will keep trying to promote their message in Western media outlets, and some will be happy to oblige them, but an important part of their campaign of deception and intimidation has been exposed and stopped.
An Iranian Activist Wrote Dozens of Articles for Right-Wing Outlets. But Is He a Real Person?
In 2018, President Donald Trump was seeking to jettison the landmark nuclear deal that his predecessor had signed with Iran in 2015, and he was looking for ways to win over a skeptical press. The White House claimed that the nuclear deal had allowed Iran to increase its military budget, and Washington Post reporters Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly asked for a source. In response, the White House passed along an article published in Forbes by a writer named Heshmat Alavi.
“Iran’s current budget is funded largely through ‘oil, taxes, increasing bonds, [and] eliminating cash handouts or subsidies’ for Iranians, according to an article by a Forbes contributor, Heshmat Alavi, sent to us by a White House official,” Rizzo and Kelly reported. The White House had used Alavi’s article — itself partly drawn from Iranian sources — to justify its decision to terminate the agreement.
“Heshmat Alavi is a persona run by a team of people from the political wing of the MEK. This is not and has never been a real person.”
There’s a problem, though: Heshmat Alavi appears not to exist. Alavi’s persona is a propaganda operation run by the Iranian opposition group Mojahedin-e-Khalq, which is known by the initials MEK, two sources told The Intercept.
“Heshmat Alavi is a persona run by a team of people from the political wing of the MEK,” said Hassan Heyrani, a high-ranking defector from the MEK who said he had direct knowledge of the operation. “They write whatever they are directed by their commanders and use this name to place articles in the press. This is not and has never been a real person.”
Heyrani said the fake persona has been managed by a team of MEK operatives in Albania, where the group has one of its bases, and is used to spread its message online. Heyrani’s account is echoed by Sara Zahiri, a Farsi-language researcher who focuses on the MEK. Zahiri, who has sources among Iranian government cybersecurity officials, said that Alavi is known inside Iran to be a “group account” run by a team of MEK members and that Alavi himself does not exist.
Alavi, whose contributor biography on the Forbes website identifies him as “an Iranian activist with a passion for equal rights,” has published scores of articles on Iran over the past few years at Forbes, The Hill, the Daily Caller, The Federalist, Saudi-owned al-Arabiya English, and other outlets. (Alavi did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment by Twitter direct messages or at the Gmail address he used to correspond with news outlets.)
The articles published under Alavi’s name, as well as his social media presence, appear to have been a boon for the MEK. An opposition group deeply unpopular in Iran and known for its sophisticated propaganda, the MEK has over the past decade turned its attention to English-language audiences — especially in countries like the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom, whose foreign policies are crucial nodes in the MEK’s central goal of overthrowing the Iranian regime.
Alavi’s persona is said to be managed by a trio of MEK members. Heyrani, who at one time helped coordinate online operations for the group, named the individuals and a commander from MEK’s political wing who have been responsible for writing English-language articles and tweets under Heshmat Alavi’s name, and shared their photographs and names with The Intercept. “They were my friends. We were close friends,” Heyrani said. “We were working together.”
Heyrani explained that the MEK leadership would not look kindly on the fluent English speakers who operate the persona writing under their own names. Rank-and-file members, he said, are discouraged from having prominent public profiles — a reflection of what many critics have said is the MEK’s cult-like operating principles. “The leader of the organization doesn’t allow any person to use their real name,” said Heyrani, “because the leader is the first man in the organization, and everything should be under their shadow.”
The MEK conducts relentless online information campaigns, using an army of bots to flood online debates about Iran with the group’s perspective. One of the goals of the MEK team that manages the Hesmat Alavi account, Heyrani said, is to get articles under Alavi’s name published in the American press. The Intercept’s requests for comment to the MEK’s political wing, along with interview requests to the alleged operators of Alavi’s persona, went unanswered.
Another former MEK member now living in Canada, Reza Sadeghi, confirmed that the trio identified by Heyrani was involved with the group’s online information operations. Sadeghi was a member of the MEK until 2008, involved in lobbying activities in the United States, as well as operations at the MEK’s former base at Camp Ashraf in Iraq. He described a growing online propaganda center run by the group, intended to sway online discourse about Iran.
“We were always active in making false news stories to spread to the foreign press and in Iran,” Sadeghi said. “At Camp Ashraf, there were computers set up to do online information operations. Over the years, this activity got more intense with the introduction of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.”
The MEK is among the most controversial groups seeking to depose the Iranian government. Although today it is mainly involved in political activism and lobbying, the group also has a history of violence. From 1997 until 2012, the MEK was listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. State Department, a status that was finally revoked as part of a diplomatic deal struck by the Obama administration. The group’s last claimed violent attack was in 2001.
The MEK initially sided with the Islamic Revolution but fell out of favor shortly after the establishment of the clerical-led Islamic Republic. The subsequent crackdown forced the group into exile, operating between France and Iraq — where, thanks to Saddam Hussein’s largesse, the group occupied Camp Ashraf, used as a staging ground for its participation on Iraq’s side of the brutal Iran-Iraq War.
The years following the U.S.’s invasion of Iraq were harrowing for the MEK, complicated by the terrorist listing. As the Americans withdrew their military forces, they handed over security at the MEK’s Iraqi base to the Iraqi government; another round of violent crackdowns ensued. The 2012 deal to remove the MEK from the U.S. terror list facilitated the movement of thousands of MEK members from Iraq to Albania, where the group would be housed in a new secretive compound. It is from this base in Albania where, according to the MEK defector Heyrani, some of the MEK members managing the Alavi persona were said to be working.
Alavi’s articles tend to mix scathing denunciations of the Iranian government with not-so-subtle suggestions that it might be replaced by the MEK and its leader, Maryam Rajavi. The group seems to have had great success with Alavi, particularly at Forbes.
The Intercept reached out to editors at the outlets that Alavi has published articles with over the past several years. None of these outlets were able to confirm that they ever spoke with or met Alavi. He was not paid for his writing at Forbes, the Daily Caller, or the Diplomat, according to spokespeople for those publications.
Although Alavi has published articles about Iran in a number of predominantly right-leaning publications, by far the most frequent publisher of his articles is Forbes. In a span of a year, between April 2017 and April 2018, Alavi published a staggering 61 articles for the Forbes website.
A Twitter account created under Alavi’s name in 2014 boasts over 30,000 followers, including a number of journalists and D.C.-based conservative think tank employees. The account frequently shares articles and hashtags praising Rajavi and shares footage of protests and events held by the MEK.
Alavi seems to have gained some purchase in right-wing circles in Washington. In addition to his many articles published by Forbes and other sites, Alavi also appears to run a blog called “Iran Commentary,” which describes its mission as focusing on “issues related to Iran and the Middle East.” One of its reports was recently cited as a source in an article from the Washington Free Beacon, a neoconservative site that takes an ultra-hawkish view on Iran.
The body of work published under Alavi’s name takes a consistently hawkish line toward the Iranian government and President Hassan Rouhani. Alavi’s articles also mixed criticisms of Iran and U.S. policy with overt advocacy for the MEK. His pieces in the Daily Caller, The Hill, and other outlets — though less numerous than his contributions to Forbes — employed a similar mix of advocacy against the Iranian regime and praise for the MEK. Though the MEK is known to be widely loathed among Iranians, Alavi described the group as the “main Iranian opposition group” in a 2017 Daily Caller article.
The Diplomat, a foreign policy website that published a handful of Alavi’s pieces in 2017, said that Alavi sent drafts from a Gmail account. Alavi pitched the outlet dozens of articles, though only a small number were accepted. The Diplomat stopped accepting pitches from Alavi after determining that his articles were not meeting publication standards, said a source who asked for anonymity to discuss internal matters.
The Daily Caller also told The Intercept that the outlet stopped publishing Alavi’s articles over concerns about the quality of his submissions. The Hill, al-Arabiya English, and The Federalist did not respond to requests for comment.
“We terminated our relationship with Heshmat Alvi in early 2018,” a Forbes spokesperson said in a statement to The Intercept. “For your background, all contributors to Forbes.com sign a contract requiring them to disclose any potential conflicts of interest. If we discover a contributor has violated these terms, we investigate the case fully and end our relationship if appropriate.”
The MEK uses a number of means to gain influence in Washington. The group has paid prominent political figures to give speeches and press conferences, donated money to politicians, and disseminated its messages through these interlocutors’ appearances in media, as well as its own robust social media presence. In 2018, its social media operations were the subject of an Al Jazeera “Listening Post” documentary.
The group has used these public relations efforts to pursue its policy goals. Up until 2012, the MEK was mostly focused on getting itself off the U.S. terror list. In the years that followed, the group focused on attacking nuclear diplomacy between Iran and the U.S., and, after 2015, attacking the deal itself. Throughout, the MEK’s messaging has emphasized regime change — and attempted to present the MEK as a viable alternative to the Islamic Republic’s leadership, offering Rajavi, who has been the group’s public face for a decade and a half, as a potential figure to lead the country.
Alavi’s articles often track closely with these objectives. In his stories, Alavi has included positive references to Rajavi, as well as the MEK’s political wing, the National Council of Resistance of Iran. In an article in Forbes effectively calling for international support for regime change in Iran, Alavi wrote:
The time has come to set aside the “reformist” mirage in Iran. For decades, Maryam Rajavi, as President of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, is providing the sole, realistic alternative for Iran with a ten-point plan that enjoys the support of thousands of elected officials across the globe.
Like his focus on the MEK’s goal of elevating Rajavi, Alavi’s messaging has also lined up with the group’s efforts to attack the Iran nuclear deal. During the period between 2017 and 2018, when Alavi’s articles appeared in Forbes, the Trump administration was taking steps to extricate the U.S. from the deal, despite objections from European allies and former Obama administration officials. Alavi’s articles egged the administration on, with items such as “Iran Feeling The Heat From Trump On Nuclear Deal” and “How Trump Can Correctly Approach Iran’s Nuclear Deal.” In May 2018, Trump announced that the U.S. would be withdrawing from the agreement — one month after Alavi’s last article was published in Forbes.
The MEK’s messaging emphasizes regime change — and Alavi’s articles often track closely with this objective.
The Alavi article that the White House offered to the Washington Post in 2018 to justify withdrawing from the nuclear deal cited semiofficial Iranian government sources to demonstrate increased military spending by Rouhani government. It concluded with a rhetorical flourish typical of Alavi’s articles, praising the Trump administration for ending “appeasement” policies toward Iran and chastising Europe for “standing alongside the murderous mullahs’ regime against the will of the Iranian people.”
Alavi’s tack — exerting pressure on political discourse in the United States, rather than in Iran itself — appears to be part of the MEK’s strategy.
“The group barely produces content in Farsi. They seem to have given up on having a domestic audience in Iran. Their point now is to influence people in the English-speaking world,” said Massoud Khodabandeh, a former member of the MEK’s intelligence department who left the group in 1996. “Their online strategy works in Washington; it doesn’t work in Tehran.”
Alongside its social media strategy and periodic articles, the MEK involves itself in higher-stakes information campaigns. In 2002, the MEK helped reveal the existence of a covert Iranian nuclear facility near the city of Natanz. But according to arms control experts, the MEK got crucial details wrong. A 2006 article in the New Yorker also suggested that the intelligence may have been handed to the group by Israeli intelligence, calling into question the MEK’s claims that it operates a potent espionage network inside Iran.
In other instances, the MEK’s information has been less than reliable, causing skepticism among many Western national security analysts. During a 2015 press conference, MEK officials claimed to have evidence of a secret nuclear facility under construction in Iran, complete with clandestine photographs of the site. This claim was partly debunked by a blogger from the liberal website Daily Kos. A reverse image search of a picture of the purported door to the nuclear site revealed that it had actually been taken from a commercial website in Iran that advertised safe boxes.
The MEK has had the most success influencing the debate over Iran policy online through its aggressive social media presence. Any remarks about the group or even Iranian politics in general can be expected to be met by scores of MEK-supporters commenting through replies on Twitter and other social media. Many of the pro-MEK accounts will repeat the same messages, often word for word, swarming the mentions of any commentator.
Geoff Golberg, an expert on social media manipulation and founder of SocialCartograph, a social media mapping firm, took particular note of Alavi’s Twitter account, which appears to act as a node in an online campaign to boost the MEK’s profile. The account is heavily promoted by other pro-MEK accounts, as well as supporters of the group’s policy of confrontation toward Iran. To casual observers, these swarms of online activity can make it seem as though a large number of Iranians are enthusiastic about whatever it is that the MEK is promoting.
“The Heshmat Alavi account is part of a group of accounts, which, for years, have engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior,” said Golberg. “The account is connected to thousands of inauthentic MEK-focused accounts, many of which regularly engage with the account’s tweets. The goal of these efforts is to create the illusion of a larger support base than exists in reality.”
Alavi has left few traces online — aside from his social media, his articles, and his emails to editors. One single photo, a heavily filtered side profile, is used for all of Alavi’s author profiles, his LinkedIn page, and Twitter account. The photo’s origins are unclear.
At a minimum, there are strong indications that the Alavi persona is not what it claims to be. The use of fake identities to conduct political propaganda has become common in recent years. The 2016 U.S. presidential election saw the use of innumerable bots and fake accounts to spread misinformation and paranoia among the public.
A 2018 BBC News investigation looked into another prominent online persona alleged to be false: a Twitter account operating under the name “Sarah Abdallah” that was mixed up heavily in the online debate over the war in Syria. The Sarah Abdallah account was in some ways on the opposite side of the political spectrum as Alavi: Abdallah was a vocal supporter of the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, a close Iranian ally. An online research firm determined Abdallah’s account to be “one of the most influential social media accounts in the online conversation about Syria.”
Although the BBC investigation raised serious concerns about the influence of a shadowy online account that was being followed by hundreds of real journalists, it stopped short of concluding that Abdallah was fake or being operated by a front organization.
For all her influence, however, Sarah Abdallah was never able to achieve the success of Heshmat Alavi, whose articles were published in U.S. media outlets and read in the White House.
“The Mojahedin wants to show to the world that their narrative has support, even from people who are not directly members of the group.”
To those unfamiliar with the internal politics of Iran, Alavi could come across in his writings as what he simply claimed to be: “an Iranian activist with a passion for equal rights.” The former MEK member Heyrani says that this framing is exactly what the group was hoping to create with the persona. To the extent that publications like Forbes were indifferent or amenable to Alavi’s message, it seems to have worked.
“The Mojahedin” — the Iranian name for the MEK — “wants to show to the world that their narrative has support, even from people who are not directly members of the group,” Heyrani said. “They want to show that other independent people — writers and activists — support their approach and believe that freedom and democracy will come to Iran through the work of this group.”
By Murtaza Hussain, the intercept
US-Iran: Inverted Reality, Real War. America’s Al Qaeda Mercenaries. Iran is Fighting the Largest State Sponsor of Terror
In its march toward yet another war, the United States accuses Iran of using military force to establish itself as a “regional hegemon.” It accuses Iran of being the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world. It accuses Iran of aiding rebels in Yemen, the government in Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
But what the United States leaves out about Iran is just as important as what it accuses Iran of.
Familiar Lies
For one, the Middle East already has a regional hegemon – the United States. Even the wildest accusations against Iran regarding state sponsored terrorism pale in comparison to Al Qaeda and the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS) whose terrorism spans the globe, including standing armies operating in Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan – several of which Iran itself is specifically fighting.
The US also supports terrorist organizations within Iran including the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK). MEK enjoys the support of National Security Adviser John Bolton – who lobbied for them for years while they were listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the US State Department itself.
Thus, Iran finds itself involved in Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon precisely to stave off openly declared intentions by the US to include Iran next under its already expansive hegemony over the Middle East.
During Washington’s slow-motion blitzkrieg across North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia, now decades of lies have continued generating excuses, pretexts, and artificial threats to justify America’s unending wars and Washington’s march toward its next target – Iran.
Iran is Resisting Regional Hegemony
The US invasion of Afghanistan along Iran’s eastern borders in 2001, then the US invasion of Iraq along Iran’s western borders in 2003 left the nation surrounded by US military forces. The invasions, followed by extended occupations were only two of the most extreme examples of Washington’s aggressive military encirclement of Iran itself.
US proxy wars against Libya, Syria, and Yemen also sought to eliminate political and military blocs allied to Tehran. Coupled with deliberate, crippling economic sanctions and a campaign of admitted and concerted political subversion aimed at Iran itself – the US has all but declared war against Iran.Iran finds itself on the US regime change “hit list,” dubbed the “Axis of Evil” by US President George Bush who presided over the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. On the list alongside Iran was Libya – now a divided and destroyed failed state after US military intervention there in 2011 – as well as Syria which still faces US-backed militants and a still-ongoing US military occupation of its territory.
Iran has been surrounded by an openly hostile United States and its allies for now nearly two decades. What the US characterizes as “Iranian aggression” is merely the rational steps any government surrounded by hostile forces would take to defend itself, its territory, and its people.
The Middle East is already subject to a regional hegemon – the United States – presided over by a government thousands of miles away. And if the US would be bold enough to presume dominion over an entire region of the planet so far from its own shores, it should come as no surprise that it would also shift responsibility for the disruptive consequences of its hegemony onto the nations still resisting it from within the region.
Iran is Fighting the Largest State Sponsor of Terror
In a recent interview with The Epoch Times, US Congressman Van Taylor of Texas called Iran “the largest state sponsor of terror in the world.” He cites Iranian support for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah as examples. It is a claim being repeated throughout America’s pro-war establishment.
However – it is not entirely true, and it omits mention of state sponsored terrorism that eclipses it even if it were.Groups like Hamas actually fought against Damascus and its Iranian allies during the recent conflict in Syria – calling into question claims of “Iranian state sponsorship” of Hamas.
Hezbollah – on the other hand – does enjoy close ties with Iran. But it also dedicated large amounts of resources and manpower – not creating terrorism across the Middle East – but fighting it – specifically in taking on ISIS and Al Qaeda in Syria and Iraq.
It was Iran and Hezbollah who aided Syrian forces on the ground while Russia provided air support that began rolling back ISIS and Al Qaeda from 2015 onward.
ISIS and Al Qaeda – ironically – persist in Syria only in areas under the protection of US-NATO forces. This includes in Al Qaeda-held Idlib where the US has repeatedly warned Damascus and its allies not to retake under threat of military retaliation.
While US accusations against Iran regarding “state sponsorship of terror” remain nebulous, US intelligence agencies themselves have admitted the US and its allies’ role in the creation of terrorist organizations like ISIS.The US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) – for example – as early as 2012 had noted (PDF) a Western and Persian Gulf-led conspiracy to create what it called at the time a “Salafist” [Islamic] “principality” [State] precisely in eastern Syria where ISIS would eventually find itself based.
The DIA document would explain (emphasis added):
If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).
On clarifying who these supporting powers were, the DIA memo would state:
The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime.
The US and its allies have also been shipping weapons and supplies to Al Qaeda’s other affiliates in Syria. Along with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the US has provided thousands of tons of weapons to militants in Syria – while also conceding that Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, Jabhat al-Nusra is the best armed, most well equipped militant front in the conflict.
Attempts to claim “moderate rebels” defected over to al-Nusra along with their US arms to explain the terrorist organization’s prominence doesn’t explain who was giving al-Nusra more arms and cash to attract such large-scale defections in the first place.The US has also been caught using Al Qaeda in Yemen to wage proxy war there. The Associated Press in an article titled, “AP Investigation: US allies, al-Qaida battle rebels in Yemen,” would report (emphasis added):
Again and again over the past two years, a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and backed by the United States has claimed it won decisive victories that drove al-Qaida militants from their strongholds across Yemen and shattered their ability to attack the West.
Here’s what the victors did not disclose: many of their conquests came without firing a shot.
That’s because the coalition cut secret deals with al-Qaida fighters, paying some to leave key cities and towns and letting others retreat with weapons, equipment and wads of looted cash, an investigation by The Associated Press has found. Hundreds more were recruited to join the coalition itself.
The US has also since been caught transferring weapons systems to Al Qaeda in Yemen.
CNN in its article, “Sold to an ally, lost to an enemy,” would admit (emphasis added):
Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners have transferred American-made weapons to al Qaeda-linked fighters, hardline Salafi militias, and other factions waging war in Yemen, in violation of their agreements with the United States, a CNN investigation has found.
It is clear – by the US government’s and the US media’s own admissions – that the US is the “largest state sponsor of terror,” literally arming Al Qaeda across the region – then calling forces raised by nations like Iran “terrorists” for arraying themselves against them.
Then there is MEK – a US-backed terrorist organization previously listed as such by the US State Department itself – now openly hosted in Washington and spoken for by current US National Security Adviser John Bolton – who by no coincidence is also the leading voice advocating war with Iran.
MEK was listed as a terrorist organization for a reason. It 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 similar narrative has now been predictably adopted by the Western media.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 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.
MEK was delisted by the US State Department as a foreign terrorist organization after extensive lobbying efforts – not because evidence indicated they no longer belonged on the list. They were delisted specifically to allow the US to more openly support MEK’s efforts to undermine and overthrow the Iranian government including through the use of continued violence.
If Al Qaeda and MEK are the sort of “allies” the US has enlisted to confront “Iranian aggression” in the Middle East, how is Iran rather than Washington the true threat to regional or even global peace and stability?
Inverted Reality, Real March to War
It is upon these feet of clay that the US builds its case against Iran – with catastrophes from Washington’s many other wars of aggression in the region still burning in the background.
Iran lacks the economic and military might to pose a real threat to the world even if it wanted to. It only poses a threat to distant nations closing in around it, seeking conflict with Iran, and domination over a region Iran itself is geographically located in.
Conversely, the United States still possesses the largest economy and military on Earth and has a demonstrated track record of falsely accusing nations of various provocations to initiate devastating wars of aggression.
The US – even if it does not resort to war – is imposing economic damage not only on Iran but on nations the world over who – without coincidence – do not perceive Tehran as a threat and do a considerable amount of trade with Iran.
US aggression toward Iran and its allies – even if total war does not break out – have demonstrably destroyed the region – from Syria to Yemen – miring even America’s own allies in protracted, costly wars and setting the entire region back decades in terms of economic and social development.
Were peace to break out in the Middle East tomorrow – nations like the US and its NATO allies would have the least to do with developing the region. That role would go instead to China who is already attempting to foster stability as a condition to extend its global infrastructure building spree into the Middle East.
Even in terms of selling weapons to Middle Eastern nations – Russia and China have competitive systems US allies are even now considering.
Thus chaos is the only environment in which US primacy over the region can continue to thrive – justifying military bases and the billions of dollars needed to build, occupy, supply, and expand them, justifying military interventions – direct and by proxy – pressuring governments to either join or defend against them, and justifying immense weapon sales to allies like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to keep those interventions going.It is a multi-trillion dollar industry, and one only Washington is shameless enough to openly and continuously promote. There is no lie too big or disgraceful to keep America’s last major export of chaos profitable.
*
The original source of this article is Global Research
By Tony Cartalucci, Global Research
The Trump Administration’s Iran Fiasco
Pompeo tries to please his boss, while Bolton pursues a corrupt and dangerous escalation.
Until recently, what passed for “Iran policy” in the Trump administration originated in the president’s obsession with his predecessor. If President Barack Obama was going to open dialogue with the Islamic Republic, then this president would shut it down, and return to 40 years of futile exchanges of threats, insults, and accusations.
If President Obama and five other nations made an agreement (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for limited sanctions relief, then this president would tear up the agreement, ignore our partners, and impose more sanctions. Trump disliked the JCPOA not because of anything in it, but because Obama had made it, and he—the world’s greatest negotiator—had not.
Trump’s new secretary of state, similarly named to the ill-fated Roman triumvir Pompeius Magnus, understands his chief’s obsessions very well. At a January 2019 speech in Cairo, where ten years earlier President Obama had spoken of a “new beginning” with the Muslim world, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo shocked his audience and flattered his boss by publicly trashing Obama’s efforts to find a more productive diplomatic path with Iran. He did the same at a May 11 Claremont Institute event, continuing to denigrate his predecessors’ work and claiming, in a message to State Department employees, that “now we’re back to where we should be—more clear-eyed than ever.”
Pompeo’s pointless fulminating against Iran has at least the motivation of flattering his boss and feeding the president’s fixation with his predecessor. There is no policy goal except to be self-righteous. There are no means except denunciations, ultimatums, and insincere expressions of sympathy for ordinary Iranians. In a strange twist, in a July 2018 Reagan Library event, the secretary accused the Iranian leadership of being a “mafia.” I guess Pompeo doesn’t do irony.
Feeling good and flattering the boss may not be the most worthy objectives of an Iran policy, but they are at least understandable—and have nothing to do with Iran.
Our secretary of state seems to care nothing for history. He shows no knowledge of or interest in what has led to today’s U.S.-Iran impasse, which could now escalate into open warfare through misreading the other side’s actions. Nor is there any sense that diplomacy can achieve what 40 years of chest-beating has not. There is no talk of “open doors,” mutual interest, or win-win outcomes. The only thing offered to Iranians is surrender.
Nor does Pompeo have any appreciation for the ignorance, deception, greed, and self-interest that led the United States into earlier fiascos in Vietnam and Iraq. Those misadventures have done irreparable damage both to those unfortunate countries and to American society. As a West Point graduate and former U.S. Army officer, he should be at least aware of the lies and incompetence that sent his fellow soldiers to Vietnam and killed and maimed so many there. The U.S. Army is famous for conducting “lessons learned” reviews whether operations go well or badly. Was Pompeo paying attention to the session on Vietnam? On Iraq? Is he going to remain silent or be a cheerleader while events with Iran follow a similar path into a swamp?
But one cannot accuse National Security Adviser John Bolton of having no goal with Iran. His goal is clear: the downfall of the Islamic Republic, by war if necessary, and its replacement by his paymasters, the bizarre cultists of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq organization, or MEK.
The group, whose logo features a red star, a Quranic verse, and a rifle, began in the 1960s as so-called “Islamic-Marxists.” With a militant, anti-American reinterpretation of Shia Islam, they fought alongside Ayatollah Khomeini against the Iranian monarchy. Two years after the revolution, the Islamists in Khomeini’s coalition turned on the group and crushed it after bloody street battles and assassinations.
Following those defeats, the MEK transformed itself into a bizarre cult, with an ideology combining the practices of Jonestown and the Khmer Rouge. Today it would be only a historical curiosity with a few aging followers if it had not invested so much and so wisely in Bolton. Despite the MEK’s dubious past, including terrorism against Americans and support for the 1979–1981 occupation of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, it has an even more dubious present, with welfare fraud, forced divorces, self-criticism sessions, and a range of other cult practices. As odious as it is, its paid shill now occupies one of our country’s highest national-security positions.
The MEK pays its speakers generously. Figures range from $25,000 to 50,000 and sometimes more. Since Bolton, by his own admission, has been speaking for the group for at least ten years, he has made serious money—around $180,000 by one estimate. His most recent financial disclosure includes a $40,000 payment for a 2017 speech he delivered at an MEK rally in Paris.
The group’s success—despite its aberrant beliefs—is testimony to the power of money spread generously. The MEK has bought support from bipartisan quarters. Its paid American cheerleaders include a former House Speaker (Newt Gingrich), a former cabinet secretary (Bill Richardson), retired generals (Jim Jones, Peter Pace), a former mayor of our largest city (Rudy Giuliani), and a former governor of one of our most progressive states (Howard Dean). They have spoken both at rallies in Europe and at events in Washington.
The MEK has made no secret of its goals: to provoke a war between the U.S. and Iran. In the aftermath, it calculates it would move into the wreckage and pick up the pieces.
I recently spoke about the group and its influence to a highly educated audience in Washington—graduates of three of the world’s best universities. Most of the Americans present were unaware of the MEK and its payments to the bellicose national security adviser. All of the Iranian Americans at the meeting, however, knew the group well and detested it. They knew its murderous history in Iran: They knew that in 1979–1980 it supported Iran’s religious extremists in their campaign to silence voices calling for democracy and women’s rights; they knew it called for more executions in the early days of the revolution; they knew it fought alongside the hated Iraqis during the long and bloody Iran-Iraq war; they knew it even launched an armed invasion of Iranian territory in 1988—an invasion stopped with heavy losses.
Although the Iranian Americans present expressed no love for the rulers of the Islamic Republic, they knew that an MEK-ruled Iran would be far worse. It would bring them all the horrors of Stalinism—gulags, one-man (or -woman) rule, confiscations, and executions for being a member of the wrong social class. The current regime has killed thousands. The MEK would kill millions.
By all reports, much of Iran’s population—whatever its view of the Islamic Republic—shares this deep hatred of the MEK. Most Iranians are not deceived by its claims of being democratic. They know its history.
A U.S.-Iran war would inflict heavy damage on Iran’s infrastructure, economy, and population. It would also involve Americans in yet another fiasco in the Middle East. We would again find ourselves in a quagmire that would make Iraq look simple. We should reject the self-serving assumption that military action against Iran will be easy and without cost. It will be neither.
Finally, we must never stop asking, “Who is pushing for war with Iran and why?” The answer should make it very clear we have no business provoking this conflict to serve the interests of an Iranian cult and its paid spokesman.
John Limbert, prospect