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Top US Security Officials Write Open Letter to President Obama: Delist MEK Now, Protect Camp Ashraf

October 16, 2011 by

FoxNews

Fox News: More than a dozen of countries top security officials wrote an open letter to President Obama last week in the New York Times about a group they say has been falsely designated as terrorist. Former Secretary of Homeland Security,TomRidge, and former Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, were two of the authors of the letter who have joined us now to explain this.

Judge Mukasey and Governor Ridge on Fox News

Gentlemen, this is an interesting group of leaders that came together to write a letter. They were Republican like yourself, along with Rudy Giuliani plus Democrats like Howard Dean and Governor Ed Rendel … What was so important that you all wanted to write to President Obama?

Mukasey: This group was designated as a terrorist group back in 1990s as a kind of strategic device trying to open dialogue with the Iranian regime, and obviously that has not worked.

They were kept on the list afterwards in the belief that if they were taken off the list the Iranian regime would get upset and would do things like support the terrorists inIraqand send IEDs intoIraq, and of course the regime is doing it anyway.

This group has been persecuted inIran. They have a group of 3400 of them who are living in acampIraqand are now in danger of being obliterated by the Iraqi Army.

Fox News: In fact we have seen some evidence that may already be happening. I just want to define for our viewers what this is? This is a group called MEK. They are committed to a secular, democratic and non-nuclearIran. They sound important toIran’s future.

Tom Ridge: They certainly are. This designation has lasted for almost 15 years with the naive hope that keeping them on the terrorist list would encourageIran to negotiate with theUS around many issues. But the real terrorist organization frankly is the State of Iran.

It is the world’s leading exponent and export of terrorism. The regime is responsible for a lot of de-stabilization and death not only in their own country but in theMiddle East.

Frankly, these 3400 man and women atcampAshrafhave been vetted by the FBI and Justice back in 2003 and 2004. They found no evidence of any terrorist connections whatsoever.

We promised them, theUSgovernment promised them, that we would protect them. Yet, in spite of our promise, in 2009 and 2011, Iraqi forces using equipments, vehicles, weapons, and unfortunately training from theUS, have invaded the camp, killed 36 people and wounded 300 others.

They have to be taken off this list. We have to get Blue Helmets from the UN to protect them. We have to live up to our promise. Our creditability is at stake here.

Fox News: Absolutely.  That video that we were just watching, I believe, is from the day in 2009 from the clashes there with Iraqi forces.

What happened? Why we have not kept our promise to the 3400 women, children, and men who we believe in to keep them out of the harms way? 

Mukasey: The Iraqi government is more and more adjusting its policies to please its neighborIran because our presence there is diminishing.

The Iranian regime obviously wants these people stamped up. As the result, the Iraqis have been cracking down on them, and we are not in a position to do anything about it.

Fox News: Have you got a response to your open letter to President Obama yet?

Secretary Ridge: We have not got a response and frankly what we hear from the State Department on a regular basis is that it continues to be under advisement.

We need to understand that the EU looked at the available evidence. TheUKassembled a group of jurists who said that the designation of this group as a terrorist organization is perverse.

Our DC Court of Appeal here in theUSsaid about 15 months ago that we see no evidence of any kind that these individuals should be listed as a terrorist organization.

Frankly, it has been a license to kill these people, because the designation is the rational that the Iraqi government uses to wind on the two assaults in the 2009 and 2011.

We are fearful that there will be an assault within the next couple of weeks, because the Iraqi government has already blocked the main road in, and is denying some of the UN official access to the camp.

We need to delist them. We need to get monitors there. We need to live up to our promise. We promised personally to the 3400 people that theUSwould protect them. It is naive and morally bankrupt for us to think that we can continue to negotiate with 3400 lives at stake.

Fox News:TomRidge and Michael Mukasey. Gentlemen, thank you so much for coming in and bringing this to all of our attention, and we hope you get a response to this soon.

http://video.foxnews.com/#/v/1220813454001/iran-opposition-group-friend-or-foe-to-us/?playlist_id=87485

 

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Bi-Partisan Members of Congress Deplore 450-Day Delay by State Department in Completing Court-Mandated Review of MEK Designation

October 14, 2011 by

PRNewswire

WASHINGTON, Oct. 14, 2011 /PRNewswire-iReach/ — In a Congressional briefing on Wednesday, several Members of Congress deplored the State Department’s unjustified 450-day delay in completing the Court-mandated review of the designation of Iran’s main opposition, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), according to California Society for Democratic Iran.

In a Congressional briefing on October 12, 2011, several Members of Congress deplored the State Department's unjustified 450-day delay in completing the Court-mandated review of the designation of Iran's main opposition, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK).

The briefing, moderated by Dr. Allan Gerson, former Chief Counsel to the U.S. delegation to the United Nations and Deputy Assistant Attorney General (for Office of the Legal Counsel), featured Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Chair of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation, John Lewis (D-GA), Bob Filner (D-CA), Co-Chair, Iran Human Rights and Democracy Caucus, Judy Chu (D-CA) and Ted “Judge” Poe (R-TX). Congressional staffers and delegations representing Iranian-American communities in the United States also attended the conference.

As the first speaker, Rep. Chu said, “450 days have passed, and yet the state department still has not given a response, every day of delay, means another day where peaceful democratic leaders and activists are at risk… It’s well past the time to heed the federal courts order and to remove Iran’s largest opposition group from that terrorist list.”

Rep. Bob Filner concurred, adding, “I don’t know what the State Department is scrambling around with. They are still working on this thing after 450 days now.  This is irresponsible; it’s countered the law. You can announce it [delisting] today, you can announce it tomorrow, you could have announced it a year ago.”

“It has been 450 days since our government was given the mandate to explain why they have designated the MeK as a terrorist organization and our government has not responded. What’s the hold up? What’s holding things up is the fact that our government is treating a gangster regime in Iran with kid gloves… We are afraid to actually conduct ourselves honestly and openly here for fear of someway insulting or enraging the mullah regime in Iran. What can be more ridiculous than that?… The first way to show that we stand strong is to back those people in the MEK who are right on the border of Iran and who are standing tall telling the Iranian people that there is an alternative to this brutal regime that’s stamping out your freedom,” emphasized Rep. Rohrabacher

John Lewis, the distinguished representative from Georgia added his voice to the delisting campaign. “450 days after court ruling. Why did the delay? Justice delayed is justice denied,” Mr. Lewis said, stressing, “We cannot wait, we cannot be patient. We want our freedom and we want it now.”

Rep. Poe added, “We must make sure that we also create safety, long term safety, for the good folks in Camp Ashraf… Those who continue to delay and delay and delay, they are not going to wear us down, and make us give up.  The delay, if anything should cause us to be more encouraged and more passionate about the safety of the folks in Camp Ashraf and the delisting of the MeK.”

“If you have criminal penalties the rule of law requires due process, and it’s not only the US constitution that requires it, but it is also the past decisions of the US court of appeals, so one has to ask the question why would the state department, with all of its legion of lawyers, refuse to comply with something so elementary that we learned in high school civics,” Dr. Gerson said.

Media Contact: Nasser Sharif California Society for Democracy in Iran, 562 221 8000, nsharif@californiasdi.org

News distributed by PR Newswire iReach: https://ireach.prnewswire.com

 SOURCE California Society for Democracy in Iran

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bi-partisan-members-of-congress-deplore-450-day-delay-by-state-department-in-completing-court-mandated-review-of-mek-designation-131896283.html

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Ending hypocrisy of terrorist designation

October 14, 2011 by

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Friends are branded as enemies while real enemies are appeased

As two current high-profile cases demonstrate, the U.S. government’s practice of listing “foreign terrorist organizations” (FTOs) has become an increasingly dangerous and hollow political exercise rather than a sober assessment of the real threats to America.

llustration: Terrorist by Linas Garsys for The Washington Times

Last month, Afghanistan’s ruthless Haqqani Network reportedly staged a brazen attack against the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. The Haqqanis, who conduct grisly terrorist attacks on hotels, embassies and other targets to advance their agenda to become power brokers in a future political settlement, reportedly are responsible for hundreds of American deaths since 2001. Some American military officers apparently are furious that the Obama administration decided not to designate the Haqqani Network as a terrorist organization because it was feared that listing the group would make it harder for the Afghan government to negotiate with the Haqqanis.

At the same time, the United States continues to list the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), Iran’s main opposition group and a declared democratic ally, as an FTO even though it meets none of the criteria and long ago renounced violence. Importantly, the group was the first to reveal Iran’s 20-year clandestine nuclear program and provided invaluable intelligence to the U.S. military in Iraq, which not only helped identify and neutralize Iran’s proxy terrorist groups operating in that country but undoubtedly saved American lives in the process.

What gives? Listing organizations like the MEK and not listing groups like the Haqqanis sends the wrong message to friends and foes alike.

In the case of the MEK, the group was put on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations in 1997 to appease the Tehran regime. The mullahs, who hate and fear the MEK, demanded that the group be listed as a precondition for potential negotiations with the United States. Those negotiations never materialized, and today, Iran remains the most dangerous player in the region. Ironically, the misguided FTO designation has given Iran and its proxies in Iraq a license to kill thousands of MEK members, including a massacre on April 8 that killed or wounded hundreds of unarmed men and women in their Iraqi base known as Camp Ashraf. The current drawdown of protective U.S troops in Iraq means that almost certain annihilation awaits a group that has dedicated itself to a democratic, non-nuclear Iran.

There is a growing movement to delist the MEK. It includes a bipartisan group of 96 members of Congress, including chairmen of the House Select Intelligence and Armed Services committees and an impressive roster of former high-level intelligence, law enforcement and security officials from the Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama administrations.

As for the Haqqanis, sources indicate that during high-level discussions last year, Obama administration officials debated listing the group as an FTO, which would have allowed for assets to be frozen and could help dry up the pool of financial donors supporting the group. Though some political leaders and military commanders pushed for the designation in response to the group’s escalating attacks on Americans, the administration decided that such a move might alienate the Haqqanis and drive them away from the negotiating table. It also would have been perceived as another “provocation” in the already tenuous U.S.-Pakistani relationship. In late September, Adm. Michael Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made a compelling case for Pakistani complicity in the attack against the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

What began as a coordinated effort to identify, list, delegitimize and defang terrorist groups has instead become a symbol of appeasement: America put the MEK on the list to appease the Iranians and has kept the Haqqanis off the list to appease Pakistan as well as Afghanistan, which will have to deal with the network long after Americans leave.

Today, there is once again a fierce debate inside the Obama administration on whether to put the Haqqani Network on the terrorist list. At the same time, a debate rages over whether to delist the MEK. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has ordered the U.S. State Department to evaluate the designation as pressure mounts within the department for a new strategy for dealing with the Iranian regime, which it acknowledges is the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism.

It appears we are dangerously inconsistent when it comes to the FTO list. Potential friends are branded as terrorists, and avowed enemies avoid a stigmatized identity that could help sap their mystique, funding and support. Both decisions should be reversed immediately, and the whole FTO strategy needs to be examined. The FTO list should be an instrument for counterterrorism, not a tool of negotiation in which hundreds of lives – not to mention American prestige – are used as leverage.

Gen. Hugh Shelton is a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/oct/13/ending-hypocrisy-of-terrorist-designation/

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Tehran’s Foes, Unfairly Maligned

October 13, 2011 by

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Click on the image to view the commentary in the paper

Washington – As the United States tries to halt Iran’s nuclear program and prepares to withdraw troops from Iraq, American voters should ask why the Obama administration has bent to the will of Tehran’s mullahs and their Iraqi allies on a key issue: the fate of 3,400 unarmed members of the exiled Iranian opposition group, Mujahedeen Khalq, who are living in Camp Ashraf, north of Baghdad.

The government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite Muslim, has brazenly murdered members of the Mujahedeen Khalq. Mr. Maliki justifies his attacks by noting that the group is on the United States’ official list of foreign terrorist organizations.

In April, Iraqi forces entered Camp Ashraf and fatally shot or ran over 34 residents and wounded hundreds more. Mr. Maliki has now given the Mujahedeen Khalq until Dec. 31 to close the camp and disperse its residents throughout Iraq.

Without forceful American and United Nations intervention to protect the camp’s residents and a decision by the State Department to remove Mujahedeen Khalq’s official designation as a terrorist group, an even larger attack on the camp or a massacre of its residents elsewhere in Iraq is likely.

This situation is the direct result of the State Department’s misconceived attempt to cripple the Mujahedeen Khalq by labeling it a terrorist organization, beginning in 1997. At the time, I was director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I concluded that this was part of a fruitless political ploy to encourage a dialogue with Tehran. There was no credible evidence then, nor has there been since, that the group poses any threat to the United States.

Tragically, the State Department’s unjustified terrorist label makes the Mujahedeen Khalq’s enemies in Tehran and Baghdad feel as if they have a license to kill and to trample on the written guarantees of protection given to the Ashraf residents by the United States. And Tehran’s kangaroo courts also delight in the terrorist designation as an excuse to arrest, torture and murder anyone who threatens the mullahs’ regime.

For better or worse, the State Department often makes politically motivated designations, which is why the Irish Republican Army was never put on the list (despite the F.B.I.’s recommendation). Similarly, Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Iraq and the Haqqani terrorist network in Pakistan — both of which have murdered many Americans — have successfully avoided being listed.

During my tenure as F.B.I. director, I refused to allocate bureau resources to investigating the Mujahedeen Khalq, because I concluded, based on the evidence, that the designation was unfounded and that the group posed no threat to American security.

I did, however, object to the State Department’s politically motivated insistence that the F.B.I. stop fingerprinting Iranian wrestlers, and intelligence operatives posing as athletes, when the wrestlers were first invited to the United States in a good-will gesture. And the F.B.I. did try, unsuccessfully, to focus the Clinton administration on the threat posed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which exported terrorism and committed or orchestrated acts of war against America, including the 1996 Khobar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 American airmen. We learned from prosecutors on Tuesday that a unit of the corps plotted to murder the Saudi ambassador in Washington.

Some critics call the Mujahedeen Khalq a dangerous cult. But since leaving office, I have carefully reviewed the facts and stand by the conclusion that the Mujahedeen Khalq is not a terrorist organization and should be removed from the State Department’s list immediately. Many of the most knowledgeable and respected terrorism experts in the world have come to the same conclusion. (Though I have on some occasions received speaker’s fees or travel expenses from sympathizers of the Mujahedeen Khalq, my objective analysis as a career law enforcement officer is the only basis for my conclusions.)

Britain and the European Union have already acted on the evidence, removing the Mujahedeen Khalq from their sanctions lists in 2008 and 2009, respectively. The British court reviewing the Mujahedeen Khalq dossier went so far as to call the terrorist designation “perverse.”

The Mujahedeen Khalq is now led by a charismatic and articulate woman, Maryam Rajavi, who enjoys significant support in European governments. In 2001, the Mujahedeen Khalq renounced violence and ceased military action against the Iranian regime. And in 2003, the group voluntarily handed over its weapons to American forces in Iraq and has since provided the United States with valuable intelligence regarding Iran’s nuclear weapons program. By the State Department’s own guidelines, Mujahedeen Khalq should be delisted.

Yet Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the White House have balked at delisting the group and protecting its members at Camp Ashraf, despite bipartisan calls for action.

Incredibly, as our duty to protect the camp’s residents reaches a critical stage, the State Department offers only silence and delay. The secretary is still “reviewing” the designation nearly 15 months after the United States Court of Appeals in Washington ruled that the department had broken the law by failing to accord the Mujahedeen Khalq due process when listing it as a terrorist group. Mrs. Clinton has not complied with the court’s order to indicate “which sources she regards as sufficiently credible” to justify this life-threatening designation. The reason is clear: there is no evidence.

Louis J. Freeh was director of the F.B.I. from 1993 to 2001.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/opinion/tehrans-foes-unfairly-maligned.html

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New York Times: Delist MEK (PMOI) Now, Protect Camp Ashraf

October 11, 2011 by
(Click on the image for the PDF version of the letter)
 

NEW YORK TIMES: 14 Senior US National Security and Policy figures write an open letter to President Obama to Delist MEK (PMOI) and Protect Camp Ashraf

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Taking Iranian Opposition Group Off U.S. Terror List

October 10, 2011 by

THE NEW YORK TIMES

It is a valid observation that a majority of Iraqis, including Shiites, hate the Iranian regime (“Vacuum Is Feared as U.S. Quits Iraq, but Iran’s Deep Influence May Not Fill It,” news article, Oct. 9). Yet Tehran, worried about the consequences of the Arab Spring and faced with a growing domestic crisis and isolation, still seeks to manipulate Iraq by controlling its security apparatus and supporting paramilitary groups.

Under the circumstances, the regime and the pro-engagement crowd are paranoid over the likelihood of the removal of the principal Iranian opposition movement, the Mujahedeen Khalq, or MEK, from the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organizations list.

In July 2010, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that there was no legal basis for the designation. And a bipartisan Congressional initiative and a growing roster of former senior political, military, and national security officials have urged delisting of the MEK. In a demonstration in August in front of the State Department, thousands of Iranians echoed the Iranian people’s disdain for the designation. The European Union and Britain delisted MEK in 2009 and 2008.

“An Iranian Cult and Its American Friends,” by Elizabeth Rubin (Sunday Review, Aug. 14), repeated discredited allegations against the MEK in urging maintenance of the designation, which senior American officials acknowledged had been a good-will gesture to Tehran in 1997.

Scores of independent reports, including those by several delegations of the European Parliament, the Iran Policy Committee in Washington and Dick Armey, the former majority leader of the House of Representatives, clearly show that these allegations, particularly those implicating MEK in suppressing Iraqi Kurds in 1991, are unfounded.

Despite repeated denials by the Iranian resistance, the Op-Ed writer claimed that the Iranian resistance’s president-elect, Maryam Rajavi, ordered crushing the Kurds under tanks. This is another desperate attempt to discredit the person who is a point of hope for Iranians seeking freedom, and a major part of Tehran’s demonizing campaign against the MEK.

Hoshyar Zebari, foreign minister of Iraq, stipulated in an affidavit in 1999, when he was the head of international affairs for Iraq’s Kurdistan Democratic Party, that MEK had no role in suppressing Iraqi Kurds.

SHAHIN GOBADI
Paris, Oct. 10, 2011

The writer is spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which includes the MEK.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/opinion/taking-iranian-opposition-group-off-us-terrorist-list.html

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Washington Times: 42 Prominent Iranian Personalities Call for the Delisting of the PMOI/MEK

October 10, 2011 by

Condemn Smear Campaign against Iranian Opposition

(Click on the image for the PDF version of the letter)
 

Washington Times: 42 Prominent Iranian Personalities Call for the Delisting of the PMOI/MEK; Condemn Smear Campaign against Iranian Opposition

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Why Tehran Cannot Stop Nuclear Enrichment

October 10, 2011 by

 OfficialWire.com

Iran has posed the most serious nuclear challenge to the international community, and experts believe that it is only steps away from getting the nuclear weapons capability. Yet, international efforts have to date failed to stop the mullahs and evidence shows that they are carrying out secret work to further enrich uranium.

It is also too clear that Tehran does not need nuclear energy. Iran is the second-largest crude producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) after Saudi Arabia. The country’s Deputy Oil Minister Ahmad Qalebani said that Iran’s oil reserves has reached 155 billion barrels following the recent discovery of new onshore oil and gas fields in southern and western Iran with reserves of 500,000 million oil barrels and five trillion cubic feet gas respectively.

Sounding worried about Iran’s nuclear activities, this is what the former deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Olli Heinonen, said in an interview with Spiegel on October 6th, explaining how he felt they were tricked and misled:

“It’s undeniable that Iran’s nuclear program is far more advanced than it was in 2003, when the discovery of the Natanz facility brought it to the IAEA’s attention. At the time, uranium enrichment tests were being carried out in secret on a small scale. But at the end of 2003, the Iranians admitted they were also planning to set up a heavy-water reactor in Arak to generate plutonium.

Today the facts are as follows: The conversion plant in Isfahan has produced 371 tons of uranium hexafluoride. Some 8,000 centrifuges in Natanz are being used to enrich this raw material. In February 2010, Iran began increasing enrichment to 20 percent. That’s a significant step closer to making an atomic bomb because it takes only a few months to turn that into weapons-grade material.”

 In september, the  head of the United Nations nuclear agency announced plans to publish new information backing up his belief that Iran may be working on a nuclear warhead—developments that leaves his organization “increasingly concerned.” 

There are two important questions that need to be answered:

One. Why does Tehran not accept to stop nuclear enrichment?

Two. Does Iran have an Achilles’ heel to force it stop its drive to become a nuclear power?          

To answer the above questions, we need to look inside Iran.

First: The mullahs are facing a very young population (more than 70% below 30 years of age), who are almost entirely against the regime. The protests in the Iranian streets two years ago, showed the threat facing Tehran. The demonstrations have to date been stopped by brutal crackdown and wide spread torture of those arrested in the prisons, but the wind of changes in the Arab world is certainly not blowing against the regime in Iran.

The mullahs utterly need a way out. Capability to produce nuclear weapons is being seen as a solution to create crisis and survive. Tehran is too weak and is surrounded by too many problems to be able to negotiate stopping nuclear enrichment, no matter how many carrots it is offered.

Second: Tehran has a very hurt able Achilles’ heel that it has to be attentive of. The weakness, which is well recognized by the mullahs themselves, is their main opposition group, the MEK.

Shackling the MEK is a must for the mullahs as they feel the threat facing them inside country and they experienced it two years ago on the streets of the capital. The opposition must be kept under maximum pressure no matter what and that is the reason why the mullahs lobbies in Europe and the US, have clear-cut outlines to work with. The MEK was put in the FTO list in 1997 when the Clinton administration, keen on placating Tehran’s regime through various “goodwill gestures,” designated the group as a terrorist organization. Since then, the MEK has won every legal challenge it filed, whether in the United States, the United Kingdom, France or the European Union. Eight European courts have reviewed thousands of pages of classified and unclassified materials and have concluded that the MEK is simply not involved in terrorism.

The correct policy towards the mullahs in Iran is to recognize their Achilles’ heel. Tehran’s threat is too real but it does not need to be stopped by a war. The impasse can be opened by unshackling the mullahs’ opposition and delisting the MEK before it is too late.

Kambiz Assai is a scholar of Iranian politics living in exile in Britain and a former political prisoner of the religious dictatorship in Iran. He writes about Iranian current events and human rights issues extensively and dreams of returning to a free and democratic Iran.

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Tehran’s Slick Way of Demonizing its Opponents

October 8, 2011 by

INTELLECTUAL CONSERVATIVE

Barbara Slavin, who has been highly critical of the Iranian opposition organization MEK, has an awfully cozy relationship with the Iranian government.

Barbara Slavin is proud to have maintained a close relationship with Iranian officials. In fact, one reason she has a claim on being an Iran expert is her “access” to such officials. Anyone with remote familiarity with the ruling theocracy in Iran knows that the high-ranking officials in national security and foreign affairs have previously held positions in the intelligence services and the Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Barbara Slavin, as an “Iran expert,” knows well that the transition from the intelligence units and the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) to government positions intensified during Ahmadinejad’s tenure and many of the key governmental positions are now run by former IRGC commanders.

Slavin herself has underscored the Iranian regime’s expediency in recognizing and maintaining their interests. Given the above background, one wonders what interest the Iranian regime has in allowing Slavin to visit Iran, not once or twice, but seven times? It is imperative that if Slavin’s visits would not serve its interests, the Iranian regime would not allow a repeat.

So far as it pertains to developments in Iran and Western policy on Iran, Ms. Slavin was for a while nostalgic about the Khatami and Rafsanjani eras (the regime’s former presidents) as though there was some moderation at work and the opportunity has been missed.

More intriguing is Slavin’s claim that the West and in particular the US are to blame for not offering the Iranian regime more concessions, and had they offered more, the Iranian regime would be more reasonable and logical to deal with and would show better cooperation with the rest of the world and treating its people.

When drawing such a rosy picture of Iran (which is far from the reality), Slavin intentionally ignores the fact that Iran is a theocracy and that its supreme leader always has the last word. What about the IRGC domination of all key governmental positions as well as Iran’s economy? What about the medieval court rulings, e.g., stoning to death? And what about the regime’s persecution of its opposition as mohareb (God’s enemies)?

The truth is that Khatami had an essential role in playing the “bad cop, good cop” game with the West, in order to acquire certain concessions and, in particular, having the main Iranian opposition, the MEK, put on the list of terrorists. He neither could facilitate a change in Iran nor was he really interested in doing so, as his best interests were in securing the very regime.

A few years later, when Ahmadinejad was appointed (elected?), it became very clear that the Iranian regime had planned to confront the international community and that the so-called moderation was only a myth, but Slavin encouraged the U.S. to be more “realistic.” She also has been very active in protecting the Tehran regime by participating in the campaign to defend Iran from economic sanctions and diplomatic isolations. Indeed, Slavin not only promoted the Iranian regime as a strong regional power but taunted the U.S. for not recognizing and respecting its hegemony in the region. Less than a year later, internal uprisings in Iran shook the regime’s foundations to the verge of collapse.

Slavin’s super-friendly relationship with the Iranian regime is best reflected in her rants against the main Iranian opposition, which often echo the regime’s itself.

During Rafsanjani’s and Khatami’s era, when Slavin made most of her high-level visits to Iran, the Iranian Intelligence Ministry devised its 80–20 percent formula.

According to this scheme, the Iranian regime’s contacts were encouraged to rant about non-serious allegations against the Iranian government 80% of the time and spend 20% making very serious accusations against the principal Iranian opposition, The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). The rationale was: tell the truth 80% of the time and lie 20%, thus avoiding detection and giving a false image of opposing both while keeping the best interests of the regime in mind.

When reviewing Slavin’s writings against the MEK (e.g., her September 28 Inter Press Service [IPS] piece), one can see many similarities between her claims and the Iranian regime’s official propaganda.

Slavin’s biggest criticism of the MEK is that it is a sect. She complemented her claim with the mullahs’ favorite rhetoric – that the MEK does not have a popular support in Iran.
 
The essence of this message is very simple: the Iranian people are not interested in an organized opposition, and they’d be happy with some reforms within the existing theocracy. That is precisely a key 20% claim that makes Slavin and those like her very profitable for the Iranian regime.
 
The sectarianism label first was leveled against the MEK by the Iranian regime. In a Le Figaro interview in December 2008, an Iranian diplomat revealed that the label was invented during Khatami era and was repeated in diplomatic circles to characterize the MEK as a dangerous sect, not a political party.
 
In fact, last June, multiple high-ranking Iranian regime intelligence officials reiterated in TV interviews that they invented and widely propagated the sectarianism characterization as a means of reducing the MEK’s impact on the society.
 
The fact is that the Iranian regime has used every resource and lobbying campaign at its disposal to throw dirt at its main opposition and has spent millions on “research” and “think tank” firms during the past 30 years to draw an evil image of the MEK. The sect label against the Iranian resistance is one result of such campaigns.
 
With respect to the popular base of the MEK in Iran, suffice it to say that it is the oldest and most popular political organization in contemporary Iran that has fought two dictatorships in more than 46 years. Some 120,000 of its members and supporters have been executed throughout Iran, attesting to its widespread base. After the 2009 uprising in Iran, 11 were condemned to death and all were accused of MEK connections. Those condemned to death were executed precisely because of their MEK affiliations. Many are currently imprisoned in Iran because of their MEK sympathies or family connections in Camp Ashraf.
 
The MEK’s social network in Iran is by far the biggest nongovernmental network through which the MEK has been able to reveal more than 80 of Tehran’s nuclear programs, confidential sites, and secret projects.
 
Outside Iran, MEK gatherings have attracted tens of thousands of Iranians in the diaspora. In a gathering in Paris last June, some 100,000 participated, an unprecedented event in modern history. MEK has offices in most European countries and has sympathizers throughout the world. Its supporters are among the best educated and intellectual of the Iranians abroad, who have an extensive communication network.

Those have a deep understanding of the term sect know that it does not fit the MEK and is used against it to justify repression, killings, and restrictions of Camp Ashraf residents.
 
The above said, let me ask Slavin a few questions about the popularity or lack thereof the MEK:

• On what poll or survey is your opinion based? Is it possible under the Iranian regime for the people to freely express their opinion about the opposition? Don’t the Iranian constitution and its supreme leader make it a crime (“mohareb”) punishable by death to have any connection or affiliation with the MEK? Have you conducted a free survey on the campuses during her seven trips to Iran? Or do you expecting your contacts in the Iranian regime to offer a fair assessment of the MEK and its popular support? The main issue in Iran has been and continues to be freedom of expression. That’s is precisely why the Iranian regime resorts to widespread imprisonment, torture, rape, executions, has established so many oppressive units, and spends millions of dollars because it cannot tolerate freedom of expression.

• If the MEK does not have a popular base in Iran, why do high level Iranian regime officials continually warn about the MEK’s threats and its impact on the youth? According to the Wall Street Journal of May 7, 2008, the Western diplomats dealing with Iran have stated that Iran’s number one demand during the meetings has been restricting the MEK.

• If the MEK does not have a popular base in Iran, why are mullahs so concerned about Camp Ashraf and constantly conspiring against it? Didn’t Slavin characterize the Iranian regime as logical? Is it logical to campaign so hysterically against camp Ashraf? How does she explain the contradictions here?

The personality cult charge leveled against Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the Iranian resistance President-elect, has been one of the anchors of Tehran’s propaganda against the Iranian resistance, one that Slavin repeats.
 
Doesn’t Slavin recognize the right of resistance against the mullahs? If she you do agree that resistance against a tyranny is a right, then an organized resistance will have leader to represent it. Mrs. Rajavi represents the Iranian people’s hope for a regime change and symbolizes a democratic Iran, just as de Gaulle symbolized the French resistance against Nazism.
Another propaganda charge that Slavin levels against the Iranian resistance is that the Ashraf residents are kept in camp against their will. This is an absolute lie propagated by the Iranian regime and its agents in Iraq.
 
How could these individuals be forcefully kept under most horrible and inhuman conditions imposed on Camp Ashraf by Tehran’s Iraqi agents and under a 24/7 emotional torture via 300 loudspeakers deployed around the camp? The truth is that these individuals have made a decisive personal choice to live in a most democratic and modern environment that Ashraf has provided for them, despite all external risks.

All Camp Ashraf residents have been interviewed multiple times by various U.S. officials and government units and were given an opportunity, with U.S. and Iraqi officials present, to exit Ashraf; each and every individual in the camp chose to – indeed insisted – to stay.
 
At the official hearing of the U.S. Congress on July 7,2011, retired Army Colonel Wesley Martin, former base commander, Camp Ashraf for 2005 t0 2006, testified: “One perpetual rumor worthy of specific address concerns members of the MEK being held against their will. I was able to validate through specific occurrences anyone wishing to leave has that choice.”
 
Colonel (now General) David Philips wrote on May 27, 2005: “I am the commander of the 89th Military Police Brigade and in that role was responsible for the safety and security of Camp Ashraf from January-December 2004. Over the year long period I was apprized of numerous reports of torture, concealed weapons and people being held against their will by the leadership of the Mujahedin-e-khalq. I directed my subordinate units to investigate each allegation.  In many cases I personally led inspection teams on unannounced visits to the MEK/PMOI facilities where the alleged abuses were reported to occur. At no time over the 12 month period did we ever discover any credible evidence supporting the allegations raised” … I would not have sanctioned any acts on the part of the MeK/PMOI to hold people against their will. The MEK/PMOI in fact notified us on a routine basis of people who desired to leave the organization and then transported them to our gate … I’ve visited male and female units on a routine basis. Sometimes these visits were announced, but most frequently they were unannounced inspections … Not one time did they (my subordinate units) discover any improper conduct on the part of the MeK/PMOI.” At the end of his letter he stated: “I would like my own daughters to someday visit these units for the cultural exchange.”
 
Col. Julie Norman, the U.S. Commander responsible for protection of Ashraf in 2006, in a Memorandum For Record on August 24, 2006, wrote: “There exists no prison or any obligation to stay in Ashraf; everyone is free to leave PMOI anytime he/she wishes to.” She added: “Normally, PMOI members invite their families, friends, and colleagues who live in Iran or foreign countries to Ashraf for visits.”
 
The above three official statements by three US commanders in charge of Camp Ashraf during 2004–2006 are very telling and contradict that of Slavin.
 
While Camp Ashraf was accessible to outsiders, six Europeans parliamentarian delegations visited Ashraf and documented their observations and talks with the individual camp residents, and all of them contradict Slavin’s baseless claims.

Slavin further blames the MEK for a lack of access by the camp residents to the UNHCR. But the truth is the opposite. The Red Cross did visit the camp and interviewed hundreds of its residents. Lastly, while the camp has been under the Iraqi blockade during the past three years, it has been the camp officials who repeatedly have called for a visit by international organizations, news media, parliamentarian delegations, and camps residents’ families.

As an Iran “expert,” Slavin knows that her reporting on the Iranian resistance best fits the 80–20 formula.

Antonio Stango, a political scientist, lecturer in International Law and Human Rights, is the founder and the Secretary General of the Italian Helsinki Committee, member of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights. In 2003 he served also as an expert for the EU / TACIS Project “The Legal Protection of Human Rights in the Russian Federation.”

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It could be another Srebrenica if MeK is not delisted

October 5, 2011 by

StopFundamentalism.com

According to the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, the Iranian people don’t want democracy of the Western kind.   They want Sharia law.  

I know who would agree with him:  the taxi driver who, a few weeks ago, drove me from the Iranian resistance demonstration outside the State Department in Washington D. C.   “Iran is a free country,” he said.   “The mullahs are good.   I’ve lived in Iran so I know.”   When was that, I asked.   “In the Shah’s time.”  

When the Shah died the Iranian people may have had reason to hope the mullahs would free them, but they were quickly disappointed, and there has been no improvement since.   To give just one example, there were at least 62 executions in Iran during September.   A free country?

One of the obstacles to making it really free is that the main opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin of Iran, also known as the Mojahedine-e-Khalq, is still on the US list of terrorist organisations, three years after it was removed from the UK list, two and a half years after it was removed from the EU one, and fourteen months after the Court of Appeal in the District of Columbia ruled that there was no justification for keeping it there.

This makes it harder to bring about regime change in Iran, which in turn makes the whole of the Middle East less likely to be stable in the near future.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has granted the status of asylum seekers to the 3,400 Iranian refugees now living in Camp Ashraf, in Iraq.   Now it is time for the Secretary General to take action.  

A UN monitoring force needs to be stationed at the camp, full time.   As long as these innocent people, of whom 36 were murdered and 345 wounded last April, are classified as terrorists, the High Commissioner has admitted that it is hard to find them homes in third party countries, where their safety can be guaranteed.  

The Iraqis, whose forces were responsible for the April attack, have used the terrorist label to justify it.   Meanwhile, at a rally outside the UN Headquarters in New York on 22 September, the former Secretary for Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, declared that the PMOI/MEK surrendered all weapons and pose no threat whatever to the security of the US or anyone else.  

The President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, Mrs Maryam Rajavi, is prevented as a “terrorist” from entering the United States, while President Ahmadinejad, a former torturer at Evin Prison, who claims never to hurt a fly but is happy to order six-year-old children to be hanged, speaks at the United Nations Headquarters.   As Mrs Rajavi told the New York rally by video link, “It is no place for a murderer.”

Camp Ashraf is due to be closed at the end of this year; it could be another Srebrenica if Mek is not delisted. Time is running out. 

Carolyn Beckingham, a British writer and translator of a book called “Eye to Eye of a Monster”, and a human rights activist 

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