Associated Press
April 29, 2003
By Nicole Winfield

CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar (AP) The U.S. cease-fire with an Iranian exile group it considers a terrorist organization allows the Mujahedeen Khalq to defend itself from Iranian-sponsored attacks and keep its artillery and other weapons, U.S. military officials said Tuesday.

The cease-fire signed April 15 appears to be a way for the United States to increase pressure on Iran, which Washington has accused of meddling in Iraq after the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

But it represents a conundrum of sorts for the United States, which has classified the Iraq-based group as a terrorist organization. The United States went to war against Iraq in part to dismantle what it said were terrorist networks supported by Saddam’s regime.

U.S. officials had said they were working out a capitulation by the left-leaning group, also known as the People’s Mujahedeen. But on Tuesday, a U.S. military official said the deal doesn’t require the group’s fighters to surrender to coalition forces at least for now.

It allows the Mujahedeen Khalq to use military force against what the United States says are Iranian infiltrators entering Iraq, such as the Badr Brigade, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Independent newspaper of Britain has reported that armed members of the Badr Brigade had crossed into Iraq from Iran and were holding sway in Baqubah, a town 25 miles northeast of Baghdad. The brigade is the military wing of the Iran-based anti-Saddam group the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

The U.S. official said the Mujahedeen Khalq also ”reserves the right of self-defense against the Iranian regime’s attacks.”

The National Council of Resistance of Iran, an umbrella group that includes the Mujahedeen, says members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard have crossed into Iraq and fought Mujahedeen fighters in recent weeks.

A top official in the council, Mohammad Mohaddessin, praised the agreement and said anything short of allowing Mujahedeen fighters to defend themselves would have only benefited the Tehran regime.

”It would only be natural that the Mujahedeen … would be able to keep their weapons against such a common enemy,” he said in a telephone interview from Paris.

When asked how the United States could make deals with groups classified as terrorists, the U.S. military official said the cease-fire was a battlefield agreement that coalition commanders were entitled to negotiate.

”Like all other parties in Iraq we will use U.S. influence and power to establish and maintain a secure and stable environment,” the official said.

Mohaddessin said the agreement showed that the Mujahedeen should not be considered a terrorist group. He said he expected the Mujahedeen would negotiate another ”agreement of mutual understanding” with the United States about the eventual status of their forces in Iraq in the near future.

U.S. officials have charged that Shiite Muslim-controlled Iran was sending operatives into neighboring Iraq to destabilize the country further and promote an Iranian-style theocracy among Iraq’s predominantly Shiite population.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has ruled out a theocracy for Iraq. On Monday, in an interview with the Qatar-based satellite channel Al-Jazeera, he said Iran’s meddling was problematic.

”That type of external influence I don’t think is helpful,” he said. ”I don’t know anyone who does think it’s helpful except the few people from Iran that run that country, a small clique of clerics.”

Shiites make up over 60 percent of Iraq’s population, and there are concerns that free elections might produce an Islamic-oriented government with close ties to the historically anti-American Shiite clerics who have governed Iran since the 1979 revolution.

Iran has denied meddling in Iraq. On Monday, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said Tehran wants to see an Iraqi government that is chosen by the people.

”For us the most important thing is that the Iraqi people independently choose their leadership and that the new government depends on the will of all the ethnic strata of Iraq,” Kharrazi said while visiting Azerbaijan.

The U.S. military official outlined the scope of the cease-fire deal, which he said was signed by a coalition forces commander and Mahdi Baraie of the Mujahedeen Khalq to ”ensure a complete cessation of hostilities.”

Under the agreement, the official said, the Mujahedeen agreed to ”not fire upon or commit any hostile act toward any coalition forces; not destroy or damage any government or private property, for example public infrastructure, oil pumping, refining, storage, or transportation facilities, and … place all towed artillery and air defense artillery in a passive travel mode.”

In return, coalition forces agreed to not damage any of the group’s vehicles or equipment and not fire upon or commit any hostile act toward its forces.

”Additionally the agreement does not surrender or capitulate troops under the command of the (Mujahedeen Khalq) commander,” the official said.

During the 1970s, the group staged attacks that killed several U.S. military personnel and civilians working on defense projects in Iran. It supported the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 but later broke with the Iranian government.

Agence France Presse
April 22, 2003

NICOSIA (AFP) – The leader of the Iraqi-based Iranian armed opposition, the People’s Mujahedeen, welcomed a “ceasefire agreement” he said had been reached with US forces.

In a statement received here by AFP, Massoud Rajavi said: “We welcome the signing of a ceasefire agreement with the US forces … although, we have not been firing at anyone and were in fact not a party to this war.”

The statement gave no details of the accord, and a People’s Mujahedeen spokesman in Paris was not immediately able to provide any.

Separately, the Arabic news channel Al-Jazeera reported that a deal had been reached and that talks were still underway on the future of the group in Iraq (news – web sites).

Rajavi said in his statement that “our presence in Iraq was conditional upon our independence. From now on, we will try to secure an understanding and agreement on this very basis.

“The Iranian Resistance has not been and is not involved in Iraqi affairs.

“Our only concern has been and will continue to remain the illegitimate regime ruling Iran. Thus, we have not had and will not have any hostility towards, or quarrel with, any group or current in Iraq, whether Shiite, Sunni, Kurd or Arab. For this reason, we welcome any understanding and friendship.”

Last week, Brigadier General Vincent Brooks said at the US Central Command in Qatar that US-led forces were trying to organize a ceasefire with the People’s Mujahedeen.

“There’s work that’s ongoing right now to secure some sort of agreement that will lead to a ceasefire and capitulation,” Brooks said.

Contacted Tuesday on the reported deal, officials at Central Command said they had no information.

The People’s Mujahedeen has been labeled a terrorist organization by Iran, the United States and the European Union, although it says it targets only the military and other elements of Tehran’s clerical regime.

The group was given sanctuary by Saddam Hussein (news – web sites) in 1986, when he was in the thick of a bloody war with his neighbour, after being driven out of Iran in the wake of the 1979 Islamic revolution.

In his statement, Rajavi remained defiant against the Iranian government, and welcomed demonstrations by Iranian exiles in several cities around the world Saturday to protest reported Iranian attacks on Mujahedeen bases in Iraq.

“In a series of savage attacks,” he said, “the mullahs and their mercenaries killed scores” of Mujahedeen. In some cases, they decapitated or mutilated” them and “also wounded 50 more.

“Our struggle has been and remains only with the mullahs’ illegitimate regime. If the mullahs deny this Resistance’s righteousness and the Iranian people’s vast support for it, they could immediately test their chances against the Iranian people and Resistance by accepting a free election for a constituent assembly and presidency under the supervision of the United Nations (news – web sites).”

As to what he said was a reward offered for his capture, Rajavi said: “My life is not any more precious than the 120,000 Mojahedin executed by the regime so far.”

On Monday, the head of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards demanded that the United States extradite Rajavi, whose whereabouts are unknown, to show it was sincere in combating terrorism.

“We know that the US has listed the MKO (People’s Mujahedeen) as a terrorist organization, so in order to prove it is sincere in the war against terrorism, the US has to hand over the MKO’s leader to us,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Yahya Rahim Safavi as saying.

Iran military chief demands US extradite Mojahedin Leader

Agence France Presse

APRIL 21, 2003

TEHRAN, April 21 (AFP) – The head of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards on Monday demanded the US extradite the head of the Iraq-based People’s Mojahedin to show it is sincere in combating terrorism, IRNA reported.

“We know that the US has listed the MKO as a terrorist organization, so in order to prove it is sincere in the war against terrorism, the US has to hand over the Mojahedin’s leader to us,” the official news agency quoted Yahya Rahim Safavi as saying.

“Since the US has trapped them and until the time the US hands them over to us, anything they (theMojahedin) do against Iran, the US bears responsibility,” he added.

US-led forces in Iraq have targeted several Mojahedin camps and are trying to negotiate the group’s surrender. However the whereabouts of the group’s leader, Massoud Rajavi, is unclear.

The People’s Mojahedin has been labeled a terrorist organization by Iran, the United States and the European Union, although it says it targets only the military and other elements of Tehran’s clerical regime.

The group was given sanctuary by now deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in 1986, when he was in the thick of a bloody war with his neighbor, after it was driven out of Iran in the wake of the 1979 Islamic revolution.

https://www.delistmek.com/212/

Associated Press
April 18, 2003

TEHRAN (AP)–Iranian legislators have welcomed the U.S. bombing of guerrilla camps of the Iranian opposition in Iraq, but there is uncertainty over what the attack means for relations with Washington.

“We are not unhappy that the United States has targeted terrorist bases inside Iraq, but it does not signal a reward for Iran,” the deputy speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Reza Khatami, said Friday.

Khatami is a younger brother of President Mohammad Khatami, who has nudged Iran toward better relations with Washington, but stopped far short of restoring the diplomatic ties severed in 1979.

The U.S.-led coalition forces bombed bases of the Mujahedeen Khalq in Iraq earlier this week and pursued the group’s fighters on the ground. The U.S. and European Union consider the Mujahedeen Khalq a terrorist organization.

Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, the deputy operations director of U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar, said Thursday that the Mujahedeen fighters could surrender within days.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein allowed the Mujahedeen to run training camps and bases in eastern Iraq in retaliation for Iran’s support of Iraqi dissident groups.

“The attack does not necessarily support Iran’s national interests. The United States considers this terrorist group as part of the Iraqi army and has dealt with them as remnants of Saddam’s regime,” said Khatami.

Khatami – who leads the Islamic Iran Participation Front, Iran’s largest reformist party – was speaking to The Associated Press.

But fellow lawmaker, Elaheh Koulaee, said that although the attack was an anti-terrorist operation, it could close the gap between Iran and the U.S.

“The attack shows that Iran and United States share common interests on some points,” said Koulaee.

An outspoken reformist, Koulaee is one of 11 female legislators in the 290-seat parliament. She is a member of the legislature’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee.

Mujahedeen officials have not commented on the attacks.

Iran and the U.S. have had no formal relations since Iranian militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and kept the occupants of the embassy hostage for more than a year.

Pledge to Target the Group Was Made Early to Assure Tehran of War’s Benefits
The Wall Street Journal
April 17, 2004
By DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON — In a move to persuade Iran not to meddle in Iraq, U.S. forces have bombed the camps of Iranian opposition fighters on the Iraqi side of the border and have reached a surrender agreement with the group’s remaining fighters, U.S. officials said.

The dismantling of the Iranian opposition force in Iraq, known as the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, or MEK, fulfills a private U.S. assurance conveyed to Iranian officials before the start of hostilities that the group would be targeted by British and American forces if Iran stayed out of the fight, according to U.S. officials. The effort was part of broader strategy aimed at reassuring Tehran that the war in neighboring Iraq held out the prospect of benefits, the officials said.

Eliminating the MEK’s Iraqi base of operations, from which the group has mounted hit-and-run operations along the border and violent terrorist attacks in Tehran for decades, has long been a major Iranian goal.

The U.S. has designated the MEK as a terrorist organization, which is another reason for disarming it, officials said. By carrying out the strikes, Washington and London are trying to keep Iran neutral or at least not actively opposed to broader U.S. aims in Iraq.

Although Tehran denounced the invasion and even lobbed artillery and rocket shells into Iraq in recent weeks, bombing the MEK camps has removed one justification for Iranian forces to mount incursions into Iraq. Still, U.S. officials remain concerned about less-conspicuous efforts by Iran to impede reconstruction efforts, using allies among the Iraqi Shiites in the south.

The capitulation agreement signed in recent days by MEK commanders requires the group’s forces, which once numbered more than 6,000 fighters, to move within 48 hours to the Iraqi town of Baqubah, northeast of Baghdad, according to U.S. officials. U.S. officials say it is too early to know whether all of the MEK fighters would comply.

The agreement also specifies the vehicles that survived the brief but intense bombing will be turned over to coalition forces. Earlier this month, U.S. forces hit some of the group’s roughly 200 tanks and armored personnel carriers in camps northeast and south of Baghdad.

Worried about appearing to attack the MEK on Tehran’s behalf, U.S. military commanders have justified the bombing of MEK camps as necessary for protecting U.S. troops. In an interview last week, Vice Adm. Timothy Keating said the MEK units were targeted because the U.S. had reason to think they might fight on Baghdad’s behalf. Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, confirmed Tuesday that the U.S. had bombed the MEK and said “some of them may surrender very soon.”

Mohammad Mohadessin, an official with MEK’s political arm, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, called the U.S. airstrikes on MEK camps “astounding and regrettable.” The strikes caused casualties, but he didn’t have details.

Before the war, the group had moved its units from camps in the south to other camps near the towns of Khalis and Miqdadiyah, northeast of Baghdad. The U.S. had attacked those locations even though the Iranian forces “had not fired a bullet at the coalition forces,” he said. “These bombs were dropped as a result of the request of the Iranian regime.” The organization accused Iranian Revolutionary Guards of crossing into Iraq and attacking its units.

Reporters who have visited the MEK’s headquarters compound in the Iraqi town of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, in recent days report that it is deserted, except for armed looters roaming the facility. Several buildings were destroyed, possibly by U.S. bombs.

U.S. Bombs Iranian Fighters On Iraqi Side of the Border
The decision to inform Tehran that the U.S. intended to attack the MEK was a controversial one within the Bush administration, according to one official involved. Some hard-liners who favor isolating Tehran said that it shouldn’t be given any warning and that the U.S. should announce that any fighters from Iran who entered Iraq during hostilities would face attack.

But National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell contended that Tehran could be persuaded to remain neutral toward the U.S. invasion next door, especially if it knew the MEK would be attacked and prevented from harassing Iran in the future, the official said.

That message was conveyed by British officials before hostilities began. Foreign Minister Jack Straw informed his Iranian counterpart Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi in a meeting in London in February.

Britain’s Iranian Ambassador Richard Dalton repeated the message in March in a meeting with Hassan Rowhani, the cleric who heads the Supreme National Security Council, Iran’s chief foreign policy-making body.

The U.S. doesn’t have diplomatic relations with Tehran, but the Bush administration used international forums, including a United Nations meeting on Afghanistan, to inform the Iranians of the plan. U.S. officials also warned that Iran shouldn’t let fighters from the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, an anti-Saddam Hussein group of Iraqi Shiites supported and given refuge by Tehran, cross into Iraq. If that happened, they warned, the fighters would be struck, just as the MEK forces were.

Iran has announced it will grant amnesty to any MEK fighter who returns to Iran as long as authorities don’t have “private complaints” against the individual. According to Iran’s official news organization, IRNA, more than 100 MEK fighters have accepted the offer. Others have fled to Jordan.

The New York Times
Douglas Jehl
April 17, 2003

WASHINGTON, April 16 — American forces have bombed the bases of the main armed Iranian opposition group in Iraq, a guerrilla organization that maintained thousands of fighters with tanks and artillery along Iraq’s border with Iran for more than a decade.

The group, the Mujahedeen Khalq, has been labeled a terrorist organization by the United States since 1997, and Bush administration officials said the group had supported Saddam Hussein’s military. Still, the biggest beneficiary of the strikes will be the Iranian government, which has lost scores of soldiers in recent years to cross-border attacks by the guerrillas seeking to overthrow Iran’s Islamic government.

Defense department officials who described the air attacks, which have received scant public attention, said they had been followed in recent days by efforts by American ground forces to pursue and detain members of the group and its National Liberation Army. Some members of the group were expected to surrender soon, the officials said today.

A senior American military officer said the United States had “bombed the heck” out of at least two of the Mujahedeen group’s bases, including its military headquarters at Camp Ashraf, about 60 miles north of Baghdad.

The only public acknowledgment of the attacks came on Tuesday, when Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with foreign reporters. In answer to a question, General Myers acknowledged bombing some camps, and said that American forces were “still pursuing elements” of the group inside Iraq.

“We’re still interested in that particular group,” he said. “How that will affect U.S.-Iranian relationships, I think we’re going to have to wait until more time goes by.”

The attacks could well anger the more than 150 members of Congress from both parties who have described the Iranian opposition group as an effective source of pressure against Iran’s government. In a statement last November, the group urged the Bush administration to remove the organization from its terrorist list.

“We made it very clear that these folks are pro-democracy, antifundamentalism, antiterrorism, helpful to the U.S. in providing information about the activities of the Iranian regime, and advocates of a secular government in Iran,” said Yleem Poblete, staff director for the House International Relations Committee’s subcommittee on the Middle East and Asia.

“They are our friends, not our enemies,” she said. “The fact that they are the main target of the Iranian regime says a lot about their effectiveness.”

It was not clear today whether the attacks were intended in any way as a thank-you gesture by the United States for Iran’s policy of noninterference in the war in Iraq.

At the White House and elsewhere, senior administration officials said today that the group had been bombed because its forces served as an extension of the Iraqi military and as a de facto security force for the old Iraqi government.

“These forces were fully integrated with Saddam Hussein’s command and controls and therefore constituted legitimate military targets that posed a threat to coalition forces,” a White House official said. A second administration official said that the attacks had not been intended as a gesture to the Iranian government, calling the camps “a logical and rational military target.”

Still, the Bush administration has expressed relief at what it has generally described as Iran’s path of noninterference in the American war in Iraq. American officials are believed to have met secretly with Iranian officials in the months before the war to urge Iran’s government to maintain its neutrality.

In a telephone interview from Paris, Mohammad Mohaddessin, a top official of an Iranian opposition coalition that includes the Mujahedeen, confirmed that the bases had been attacked by the United States in what he called “an astonishing and regrettable act.”

“It is a clear kowtowing to the demands of the Iranian regime,” said Mr. Mohaddessin.
Last August, a senior Iranian official, Mohsen Rezai, a former commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, was quoted by the official Iranian news service as urging American attacks on the group’s bases.

“If the Americans spare the Mujahedeen’s bases in Iraq during their general attacks on Iraq, then it shows a clear bias in their approach to terrorism,” Mr. Rezai was quoted as saying. “On the other hand, if the Americans attack the Mujahedeen bases, this would in turn be considered a goodwill gesture toward us.”

In a 1996 visit to one of the group’s bases, a reporter saw evidence of a formidable force with an arsenal that included American-made armored personnel carriers and Chieftain tanks from Britain, secured from raids deep inside Iran in 1988.

In addition to Camp Ashraf, the group has two other bases in the general vicinity of Baghdad: Camp Alavi, near the city of Miqdadiyah, about 65 miles northeast of Baghdad; and Camp Anzali, near the city of Jalula, about 80 miles northeast of Baghdad, and about 20 miles from the Iranian border. At least one of those bases was also hit in the American strikes, officials of the group said.
Recent estimates by the United States government have put the Mujahedeen Khalq at “several thousand fighters,” nearly all of them based in Iraq.

Mr. Mohaddessin, the opposition official, said the group had abandoned four bases in southern Iraq before the American attack began, to demonstrate that it did not intend to interfere with American military operations. He said the group had been assured by “proper U.S. authorities” that its other camps would not be targets.

Mr. Mohaddessin declined to provide detailed information about the timing and extent of the American attacks, but he said there had been repeated air strikes. In recent days, he said, they had been followed by cross-border attacks on the group’s fighters inside Iraq by Iranian forces, in which he said at least 28 of the organization’s guerrillas had been killed.

Mr. Mohaddessin said hundreds of Iranian soldiers were now operating in Iraq, but offered no evidence to corroborate that claim.

The Mujahedeen Khalq was formed in the 1960’s and expelled from Iran after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. In its most recent annual listing of terrorist groups, the State Department said of the group that “its history is studded with anti-Western attacks as well as terrorist attacks on the interests of the clerical regime in Iran and abroad.” During the 1970’s, the report noted, the group killed several American military personnel and civilians working in Iran.

The decision by the Clinton administration to add the group to its list of terrorist organizations in 1997 was widely interpreted as a goodwill gesture to the Iranian government.

Reuters
October 14, 1999

WASHINGTON, Oct 14 (Reuters) – The United States renewed its offer of unconditional dialogue with the Iranian government on Thursday but said it could not approve U.S. investments or international loans until Iran makes some policy changes.

In what looked like a goodwill gesture, Washington also announced a crackdown on the activities in the United States of the main Iranian opposition group, the Mujahedin-e Khalq.

Martin Indyk, the State Department official responsible for the Near East, made the appeal for dialogue at the Asia Society, the same forum at which Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made a landmark speech on Iran in June of last year.

“It is time for the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran to engage each other as two great nations — face to face and on the basis of equality and mutual respect. When the government of Iran is ready to engage, we will be too,” said Indyk, an assistant secretary of state.

Albright offered to explore new confidence-building steps with Iran, ultimately aiming for normal relations. Indyk repeated that offer, but with evident frustration that the attempts of the past 18 months appear to have fallen on deaf ears in Tehran, at least among Iranian hardliners.

“Unfortunately the Iranian government’s response to this overture has been, for the most past, hide-bound and unimaginative, insisting that the U.S. must first take a number of unilateral steps” as a precondition for dialogue, he said.

Iran and the United States have not had diplomatic relations since the crisis over the U.S. diplomats held hostage in Tehran after the Islamic revolution of 1979.

The U.S. position is that U.S. and Iranian officials should sit down and bring up whatever concerns them.

The U.S. side would want to talk about Iran’s opposition to Arab-Israeli peace talks, its support for violent organisations in the Middle East, its ballistic missile programme and U.S. suspicions that it seeks nuclear weapons.

Iran is demanding the United States end economic sanctions, stop preventing Caspian oil and gas export pipelines from crossing Iran and lift a freeze on Iranian assets.

“It would be much more beneficial to both countries if we had a chance to actually sit down and work out arrangements that could meet each other’s concerns,” Indyk said.

He added: “We will continue to oppose investment in the development of Iran’s energy sector, bilateral debt rescheduling, Paris Club debt treatment for Iran and the extension of favourable credit terms by Iran’s principal foreign creditors. We will also continue to oppose loans to Iran by the international financial institutions.

“But we stand ready to change all of these policies as soon as Iran changes its practices in our areas of concern.”

The one practical concession Indyk made to Iran was to announce new restrictions on the Iranian opposition in exile, one of Tehran’s longstanding grievances against Washington.

He said the State Department had added the National Council of Resistance (NCR) as an alias for the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), a group which has assassinated Iranian officials.

The NCR, which has offices in downtown Washington, has acted as the civilian front for the MEK and was not previously subject to restrictions imposed on the Mujahedin.

Indyk said this meant the United States will no longer issue visas to NRC officials, that it cannot raise funds in the United States and U.S. banks will block its assets.

He also praised internal changes in Iran, which has seen gradual political liberalisation since the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, which accelerated after the election of President Mohammad Khatami in 1997.

Indyk said recent municipal elections were “remarkable for their openness and the level of participation,” that the country had a vigorous and assertive press and that Iranian leaders had made worthy statements on human rights.