Win and a nod: Hilary Clinton walks past MEK activists
Specifically, the US officials stated that Israel's Mossad was financing, training and arming an Iranian dissident group that goes by many names, but which we'll call the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) for now. In return, the MEK is "providing Israel with information." Speaking through NBC, these unknown officials confirmed what Larijani and the Iranian government have been saying for years: that Israel, through the MEK, carried out the attacks in which motorcycle-borne assailants attached sophisticated magnetic bombs to the exterior of the victims' cars. The US officials further stated that the Obama administration is aware of the assassination campaign but has no direct involvement.
No sooner had the story been leaked than a series of car bombings took place outside Israeli embassies in India, Georgia and Singapore. The same types of bombs used in the assassinations of Iranian scientists were used to blow up vehicles near Israeli diplomats. The Israelis never actually intended to kill any of their own, because the Mossad warned the embassies ahead of time. Israel of course blamed Iran for the bombings. But these stunts were clearly intended to deflect attention from the US government's confirmation that Israel is murdering Iranian scientists through its surrogate, the MEK, and, once again, portray Israel as the eternal victim.
The Obama administration may not have had direct involvement in the assassination of Iranian scientists, but it is the height of hypocrisy for the US government to pretend that it isn't involved in subverting Iran's civilian nuclear program. The CIA was kidnapping Iranian scientists and bribing them to 'defect' as recently as 2010 and as far back as 2007. Since at least 2005, the US regime has been up to its neck in dealings with multiple terrorist organisations based in countries encircling Iran, of which Jundullah, in the region of Balochistan on the Pakistani border, is arguably the most notorious.
Have a listen to this NBC commentary on the Israeli assassinations program 'leak' and take note of the 'expert view' at the end:
...specifically the exchange where Engel says:What gives here? Someone or some group within the US government appears to have 'outed' their Israeli counterparts' machinations at the risk of drawing attention to their own involvement running terror campaigns against Iran. Everyone already knew that Israel was behind the assassinations, so that in itself isn't the key information here. The key seems to lie in the specific and deliberate focus being given to just one of the proxy terror groups being used against Iran; the MEK.
What is the MEK?
The 1979 revolution in Iran
One of the MEK's most militant activists, Massoud Rajavi was imprisoned in Iran from 1972-1979 but nonetheless remained influential within the group and rose to command it in 1975 after the Mojahedin experienced an internal schism. From his release from prison until today, he has maintained absolute control of the MEK and its associated groups. The MEK partnered with Ayatollah Khomeini to overthrow the Shah but fell out out of favour with the Iranian clergy when the dust settled in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Khomeini blocked MEK leaders from running in the first post-revolution presidential elections. The MEK responded by staging anti-Khomeini demonstrations, which provoked a violent backlash from the new government and ignited a vicious cycle of attack and reprisal that led to the imprisonment, torture and death of thousands of Iranians in the early 1980s, predominantly anyone of left-leaning persuasion.
Altogether, some 10,000 Iranians have been killed by the MEK in its war against the Mullahs. Among their high-profile victims in devastating bombings were top Iranian officials, including President Rajai and Premier Mohammad Javad Bahonar in 1981. A number of MEK leaders were arrested and executed. Rajavi and his supporters fled into exile in France. Along with other Iranian opposition figures, they formed the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), ostensibly an umbrella group comprising dissidents of the Islamic Iranian regime, which Rajavi's MEK soon came to dominate.
Massoud Rajavi and Saddam Hussein (inset)
The Iran-Iraq War cost the lives of over a million people. The MEK is naturally vilified by most in Iran because of its collaboration with an invading force. Iranian officials refer to the movement as Munafiqeen, 'Hypocrites', a pun on Mujahideen The MEK is positioning itself as The Opposition to the Iranian government, with Maryam Rajavi being referred to as The President of Iran. Yet even the Green Movement, which amassed fairly significant support in Iran in the run-up to the 2009 presidential elections (albeit with the dubious support of Western intelligence agencies) has moved to distance itself from the cult. Zahra Rahnavard, wife of reformist presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, has stated categorically that "Mr. Mousavi, Mr. Khatami, and Mr. Karroubi and all of us within the Green Movement do not consider the MEK a part of the Green Movement."
Rajavi 'devotees' at camp Ashraf
This bizarre move was echoed a series of extreme measures that transformed the organisation into the cult it has become today. All married couples were told they must divorce. Well, officially, all married couples 'voluntarily' agreed to divorce. Their children were sent into foster care with MEK members in cells abroad. The sexes were physically kept apart, both in Iraq and in France, including all the children from birth. Eye contact between the sexes was forbidden. Daily and weekly sessions were organised at which members would confess their most intimate thoughts, including their feelings towards other members. All emotions were to be channelled towards adoration of their leaders, the Rajavis, and 'the revolutionary struggle to free Iran.'
If you thought Jonestown was bad, wait till you hear about what has been going on inside Camp Ashraf.Our kind of terrorist
MEK tanks in Iraq in the early 90s
With Saddam Hussein falling out of favour with the West in the First Gulf War, the Rajavis reconfigured their standing army. They began to present a more benign image to the West, focusing their energy on the dissemination of propaganda and lobbying Western officials. At the same time, their military wing carried out violent attacks against Iranian government targets in the West, the most spectacular of which was a wave of coordinated attacks on 5 April 1992. MEK true-believers stormed Iranian diplomatic missions, took hostages and heavily vandalised premises in New York City, Canada, Germany, France, Britain, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Australia.Buying Off Congress and the White House
Shortly after the US State Department placed MEK on its list of terrorist organisations in 1997, an illuminating report appeared in The Iran Brief, a private monthly publication read in Washington, DC intelligence circles. The report describes some of the findings of Operation Suture, an FBI investigation of MEK activities in the US.That US Congressmen were taking bribes isn't anything out of the ordinary, but taking campaign contributions in cash from a terrorist organisation that was extremely cosy with and funded by Saddam Hussein at a time when US media was painting Saddam as 'The New Hitler' is pretty extraordinary! Congressmen were apparently taken in by the Rajavis' slick efforts to distance their bloody war against Iran from their 'new-found mission' to raise awareness of human rights violations in Iran. But not everyone was taken in by it at the time.
MEK Terrorist HQ, Auvers-sur-Oise, northwest Paris, France
This mattered to the FBI because 5 years previously in 1997, despite having bribed then Vice-President Al Gore in 1992, the MEK was officially listed as an 'FTO' (Foreign Terrorist Organization) by the US State Department because it had assassinated three US military officers and three defence contractors in Iran in the 1970s, was suspected of numerous other assassination attempts on American citizens and was attacking Iranian targets in the US and Europe. In 2004 the FBI launched a criminal investigation (Operation Eastern Approach) into now-illegal MEK activities in the US.
Washington's favorite terrorists at camp Ashraf
The FBI further found that the organisation was procuring equipment and false passports throughout the US and Europe for fellow members to commit acts of terrorism in Iran. The organisation designates military-style ranks to members based on their loyalty, uses complex communication methods designed to hide their traces and operates very much like the reputed Al Qaeda terrorist network does, with cells within cells and the resources to get things done. But unlike the contrived 'al Qaeda network' where FBI double-agents infiltrate groups of unemployed Muslims, pays them large sums of money, gives them bomb-making equipment, then entraps them by suggesting they blow up public landmarks, the MEK network is real.France Harbors Terrorists
The MEK's Parisian camp, where the leadership currently resides while the rank-and-file remain in Iraq, is no less weird than Camp Ashraf. Essentially a series of buildings knocked into one complex, these operational headquarters are heavily guarded with armed security checkpoints. We're meant to believe this is to protect its members from 'the Iranian threat', but I rather suspect that it's required to keep cult members from escaping. In an interview Massoud Rajavi gave to the Corriere della Sera in 2002, the journalist described the level of security he witnessed there:
MEK cells across North America and Europe whirled into action, busing their devotees to coordinated protests. 40 cult members went on hunger strike. Assisted by fellow devotees, another 16 set themselves on fire, two of them fatally. Maryam Rajavi and the rest of the French MEK leadership were immediately released. Whatever was said to French president Jacques Chirac, he backed down immediately. The MEK has been left alone by the French government since then.
How the Myth of Iran's Nukes Began
Three months prior to that, in March 2003, the US launched Operation Iraqi Freedom. While Bush was prancing around the USS Lincoln in a codpiece declaring 'Mission Accomplished' in Iraq, something very interesting was taking place in the background, something which was onlyrevealed four years later in 2007, on a BBC Newsnight program. Realising that it was in its interest to prevent Iraq from sliding into all-out civil war, the Iranian government sent a letter to the White House offering the following:
- Iran would use its influence to support stabilization in Iraq
- Iran would open its civilian nuclear energy program to full international inspections
- Iran would end its support of Hamas and Hezbollah
- A halt to US hostile behavior
- Abolition of all economic sanctions
- Most specifically, the pursuit of the MEK leadership and the repatriation of their members
It was all there; Iran was prepared to cooperate with the US in Iraq, cooperate with Israel and the US in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, and allow full transparency of its nuclear program... if only the US would help them dismantle the MEK. The US State Department wanted to pursue it, but the Neocons torpedoed the deal.
Posters of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi at Camp Ashraf
But what is really twisted here is that the three specific offers made by Iran in 2003 later became the very same conditions the US said Iran must meet if it is to avoid increased sanctions and the threat of airstrikes on its nuclear installations by the US and allies, followed by certain all-out war.
So why don't the Iranians and Americans just revisit the original offer and shake on it?
Because since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003, the duplicitous MEK has been busy selling the world the Iranian equivalent of the Big WMD Lie. Undoubtedly with the connivance of the CIA. It was the MEK who told the Bush White House that Iran was secretly building nuclear weapons. That's right, the incessant barrage of propaganda about Iran's intentions vis a vis its nuclear program stems from false information provided to the Bush administration by this vehemently anti-Iranian organisation. In fact, at least 20 'startling revelations about Iran's nuclear weapons program' in the past 10 years have all come through the MEK. In case you were wondering, that's exactly how the rationale for the invasion of Iraq was manufactured: through the peddling of baseless claims by Iraqis in exile with a power lust disguised a personal grudge.
"We Don't Speak to Evil"
When the US invaded Iraq, it bombed the MEK camps and killed some of its fighters. Former MEK member Anne Singleton has reported that when it became obvious to Rajavi that Saddam was history, he reached out to the Americans and promised full cooperation in exchange for protection. Bombing the MEK camps was most probably stage-managed so the group could surrender to the US without arousing Iraqi suspicions. In April 2003, the US publicly announced that it had brokered an agreement with the Rajavis whereby the MEK switched allegiances from Saddam Hussein to the US government, although the MEK is credited with providing the Bush-Cheney White House with 'intelligence' on Iran's non-existent nukes as early as the summer of 2001.
A fanatical MEK devotee at Camp Ashraf
With breathtaking hypocrisy, Donald Rumsfeld declared US-designated MEK terrorists to be "protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention", while thousands of innocent Muslims at home and abroad were rounded up, tortured and 'renditioned', justified under the pretext that the Geneva Convention did not apply to them because they were 'enemy combatants'.
Such is life under Orwellian pathocratic rule in the post-9/11 world; terrorists become 'our allies', and innocent civilians become terrorists.
In spite of countless reports from US government agencies stating the contrary, the Bush administration chose to believe the MEK's 'intelligence' that Iran was secretly building a nuclear arsenal.
© Google Earth
Aerial view of Camp Ashraf (click to enlarge).
"Ashraf is 14 square miles of ungenerous desert surrounded by aprons of barbed wire, gun towers and guards in trough-like bunkers, shaded by camouflage netting and dehydrated palm trees, their trunks thickened by dust. As you pass the checkpoints and dragons'-teeth tire crunchers into the tidy military town, you feel you've entered a fictional world of female worker bees. Of course, there are men around; about 50 percent of the soldiers are male. But everywhere I turned, I saw women dressed in khaki uniforms and mud-colored head scarves, driving back and forth along the avenues in white pickups or army-green trucks, staring ahead, slightly dazed, or walking purposefully, a slight march to their gaits as at a factory in Maoist China."
'The Cult of Rajavi', Elizabeth Rubin, The New York Times, July 13, 2003
Aerial view of Camp Ashraf (click to enlarge).
"Ashraf is 14 square miles of ungenerous desert surrounded by aprons of barbed wire, gun towers and guards in trough-like bunkers, shaded by camouflage netting and dehydrated palm trees, their trunks thickened by dust. As you pass the checkpoints and dragons'-teeth tire crunchers into the tidy military town, you feel you've entered a fictional world of female worker bees. Of course, there are men around; about 50 percent of the soldiers are male. But everywhere I turned, I saw women dressed in khaki uniforms and mud-colored head scarves, driving back and forth along the avenues in white pickups or army-green trucks, staring ahead, slightly dazed, or walking purposefully, a slight march to their gaits as at a factory in Maoist China."
'The Cult of Rajavi', Elizabeth Rubin, The New York Times, July 13, 2003
In exchange for surrendering its arms to the American occupation forces, the US military guarded Camp Ashraf, ostensibly to protect it from Iranian attack, but in reality because the US had plans for the MEK in its future confrontation with Iran. Journalist Seymour Hersh wrote in the New Yorker in April 2012 that the Mossad-MEK leak to NBC News in February this year came from the White House. Hersh's report also blew the lid on the US government position that they were "not involved with this group". From 2005 until 2008 the US Joint Special Operations Command (a.k.a. the CIA) conducted training for cult members of this "foreign terrorist organization" at a "counterintelligence training facility" in the desert north of Las Vegas. Hersh's source told him the purpose of disrupting Iran's nuclear energy program was not to "take out Einsteins" but to "affect Iranian psychology and morale" by "demoraliz[ing] the whole system." This extended to attacking oil and gas pipelines, oil refineries, transport infrastructure and targeting civilians through indiscriminate bombings. The operations were "primarily being done by M.E.K. through liaison with the Israelis." Even the Israeli Stuxnet virus which crippled Iranian IT systems was delivered by an MEK agent.
Buddying Up With Terrorists
© Veterans Today
The MEK in turn was catapulted into pole position among Washington powerbrokers as the organisation to take over Iran once the nuclear showdown came to a head and regime change demolished the Mullahs' rule (or so it wishfully thinks). The MEK provides perfect cover for Israeli antagonism because both the Zionist entity and the MEK are sworn enemies of Iran.
Now we can begin to understand how this relatively small player came to be the organisation that broke the news that Iran had been 'secretly hiding' uranium enrichment facilities from the IAEA for two decades. Capitalising on the issue du jour, Iran's purported nuclear weapons, the MEK network focused on telling the Necocon chicken-hawks in Washington exactly what the Israelis wanted them to hear. Taking outward form as either the NCRI or the PMOI, the cult has been freely holding press conferences at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, in London, New York, Paris and Brussels, where they cite their 'unnamed sources' (Mossad) and dish out the latest 'intelligence' on Iran. This despite their designation as a terrorist organisation and despite the FBI knowing full well that its multiple sub-groups, acronyms and front organisations are one and the same MEK terrorist cult.
Relatives of the cult members wrestle with Iraqi guards at the main entrance to Camp Ashraf.
Deadlines for the disbandment of Camp Ashraf have been repeatedly extended because the Iraqis are under tremendous pressure from the CIA and the Israelis to keep them there. Massoud's whereabouts are unknown although he is rumoured to have been airlifted out of the camp by helicopter when American forces arrived in 2003. In the meantime, Maryram has become the public face of the organisation in the West and has been welcomed into Western 'high society'. Camp Ashraf has been turned into a 'cause celebre' by the MEK leadership, who are extremely proactive in garnering political interest in 'resolving' the rank-and-file's stateless predicament. I put 'resolving' in quotes because the Rajavis are not really interested in the well-being of their members. They are only interested in leveraging their plight (a plight theycreated) in order to promote the MEK's political ambitions to replace the incumbent regime in Iran. In fact, the way they have manipulated gullible Westerners into taking pity on them has remarkable similarities to the way the Israeli government holds its own people psychologically captive.Cult-ivating Political Psychopaths
Show me the colour of your money: Former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani, one of hundreds of high-level paid advocates on behalf of the MEK terror-cult
Other who have given rousing speeches on the MEK's behalf at that event in Paris in January include: former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani; François Colcombet, a senior French judge and founder of the French Committee for a Democratic Iran; Philippe Douste-Blazy, UN Deputy Secretary-General and former French Foreign Minister, outed as a pedophile by another former French Minister; US General Hugh Shelton, former chair of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff; Judge Michael Mukasey, former US Attorney General; Ingrid Betancourt, Columbian presidential candidate; Yves Bonne, former head of French Counter-terrorism; John Sano, former CIA National Clandestine Service's Deputy Director; General David Phillips, former Commander of US Military Police; Geir Haarde, former Icelandic Prime Minister; Aiham Samarrae, former Iraqi cabinet minister; Carlo Ciccioli, member of Italian parliament; Lord Ken Maginnis, member of UK House of Lords; André Glucksmann, member of New France Philosophers; and William Bourdon, a prominent French jurist.
That's the list of speakers at just one recent conference; there have been many more, countless videos of which are posted on YouTube.
Snake in a suit: Maryam Rajavi speaking about the evils of the Iranian government at yet another conference in which she is flanked on either side by high-level paid advocates and her every word cheered by adoring cult followers.
But let's not kid ourselves, no action will be taken against the MEK because the MEK is now a well-entrenched US and Israeli asset. The Obama administration isn't about to prosecute an organisation (terrorist or not) when a whole cast of prominent politicos in the West are falling over themselves to show their support. The fawning is eerily reminiscent of the displays these types put on when the Israel Lobby rolls into town. Some 400 MEK members have already been relocated from Camp Ashraf to Camp Liberty, the enormous US military base north of Baghdad. The MEK has been doing everything in its power to stall the relocation of the remaining cult members.To create the illusion that they have broad popular support, the MEK is even enticing homeless and unemployed people to attend their colour-coordinated rallies and inflate their numbers. People are bussed and flown in at no personal cost, receiving transportation and in some cases lodging and meals. Bear in mind that, as an FTO, the MEK is legally barred from organising at all. Reflecting on the intensifying atmosphere of hysteria and paranoia in the US since 9/11, the favourable treatment the MEK receives is all the more bizarre when we compare it with the arrests of Muslims accused of "aiding and abetting terrorism" when all they wanted to do was raise money for their local mosque or to support emergency flood relief to desperate people in inundated Pakistan.
Dupe: Surrounded by MEK devotees at a protest at the State Department last August, former Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) called for the US government to take the MEK off its list of foreign terrorist organizations.
"One of the greatest moments was when my uncle, President Kennedy, stood in Berlin and uttered the immortal words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner,'" Kennedy exclaimed. "Today, I'm honored to repeat my uncle's words, by saying 'I am an Iranian, I am an Ashrafi.'"
France's Favourite Suicide Cult
The list of speakers at this conference included one Alain Vivien. You may remember him from MIVILUDES cult-hunting fame. This guy is obsessed with protecting children from 'cultic deviance' in France and at the same time he is advocating on behalf of a real terrorist cult with headquarters in Paris for the past 30-something years and a list of damning human rights abuses to its name - including against children.
When you look into it, you realise that it is the nefarious influence of state intelligence agencies that lies behind all the 'suicide-cults' that have surfaced in recent decades.Mind control experimentation, drugs/weapons smuggling and secret armies all go hand in hand, providing perfect cover for deep state actors to manipulate the course of political events and the lives of billions of people
MIVILUDES' stock response to criticism from the UN and other international organisations that remind the French government that France is a signatory to international laws protecting human rights is that "they are critical [of us] because they have been infiltrated by 'the Cults'." Yet here we have a totally nutzoid organisation operating largely out of France, committing gross psychological manipulation and extreme violence on its members, and killing and maiming thousands of people in Iran and Iraq in the name of the power ambitions of its two leaders. And all the while, French parliamentarians, French intelligence officials, French intelligentsia and French mayors are lining up with their US and European counterparts to promote this cult which relies on terror to police its members and achieve its goal of taking power in Tehran.
Although their compound outside Paris was raided in 2003, that's all water under the bridge now. No doubt it was 'just a misunderstanding'. With friends like the Mossad, the CIA, French intelligence, Rudolf Giuliani, Philippe Douste-Blazy, 5-star Pentagon generals, US Congressmen and EU dignitaries, you can be sure that MIVILUDES and the witch-hunters would sooner crack open the champagne and lay out the red carpet for their ideological brethren in the MEK than chase them out of town.
Earlier this week US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton indicated that the MEK will soon be delisted as a terrorist organization. Once this happens, the way will be open for its official recognition as the Iranian government-in-waiting, a move that will leave no way back for US-Iranian relations and could set the world on an unalterable course for global conflagration.
Recommended viewing for more background on the People's Mujahedin of Iran
'Cult of the Chameleon', 2007 Al Jazeera report
'Espionage: Struggle for Survival' (or How the MEK became an information laundry for the Mossad), 2010 Press TV report
Part 1
Part 2
US rejects Iranian peace overtures in favour of supporting MEK Terrorist Cult, 2007 BBC Newsnight report
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
'Former US Officials Investigated for Receiving Payments to Promote Designated Terror Group', 2012 Real News Network report
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