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.

Justice: Label triggers law freezing assets, denying visas and punishing Americans for financial, arms support.

The Los Angeles Times
Thursday, October 9, 1997
By NORMAN KEMPSTER

WASHINGTON–Secretary of State Madeleine Albright designated 30 foreign organizations as terrorist groups Wednesday, triggering a law that freezes their financial assets in the United States, denies U.S. visas to their members and subjects Americans who give them money or weapons to 10 years in prison…

Newly listed organizations include the People’s Moujahedeen, an anti-Iranian guerrilla group based in Iraq that maintains an office in Washington and has parlayed its anti-Tehran activities into substantial support on Capitol Hill.

One senior Clinton administration official said inclusion of the People’s Moujahedeen was intended as a goodwill gesture to Tehran and its newly elected moderate president, Mohammad Khatami. The People’s Moujahedeen was once accused of anti-American terrorism but in recent years has concentrated on paramilitary attacks on Iranian targets. Iranian warplanes invaded Iraqi airspace last month to bomb the group’s bases…

U.S.-Iran Relations Since Khatemi’s Election
Updated January 14, 2000
CRS Report for Congress

On October 8, 1997, the State Department officially designated the Iranian opposition People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) as a terrorist group, in accordance with the provisions of the Anti- Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-132). Two years later, the Administration designated the PMOI’s umbrella group, the National Council of Resistance (NCR), as an alias of the PMOI, thus applying the same restrictions on the NCR as apply to the PMOI (a ban on contributions by U.S. persons to the group, and a ban on entry into the United States by group members, and a freezing of group assets in the United States). However, the NCR continues to operate in the United States. Some in Congress consider the PMOI/NCR a legitimate organization fighting the regime in Tehran, and that the U.S. terrorist designation represented an unwarranted concession to Tehran.

The Washington Times
May 28 2003
Arnold Beichman

….”The Great Con-Game” has been responsible for one of the most mysterious chapters in the making of American foreign policy over the past two decades. I am referring to the what-the-hell-is-going-on secret diplomacy between the State Department and Iran, a country that President Bush included as part of the “axis of evil.”

……PMO actions enlisted the enthusiastic support of a majority of members of Congress and many members of European parliaments. Despite all evidence to the contrary, the State Department put the PMO on a list of terrorist organizations. This designation was a Chamberlainesque act of appeasement, the successful triumph by the ayatollah regime as part of “The Great Con-Game.”

…..”The Great Con-Game” appeasement policy began with the Clinton administration which put the PMO on the State Department list of terrorist organizations. An unnamed senior Clinton official told the Los Angeles Times (Oct. 9, 1997): “The inclusion of the People’s Mujaheedin was intended as a goodwill gesture to Tehran and its newly elected moderate President Mohammed Khatami.” Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Martin Indyk told Newsweek on Sept. 26, 2002, that the terrorist designation of the Mujaheedin was part of the Clinton administration’s strategy and was due to “the White House interest in opening up a dialogue with the Iranian government.”

Arnold Beichman, a Hoover Institution research fellow, is a columnist for The Washington Times.

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.

New York Times
October 13, 1997
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

The French oil company Total, the Russian oil company Gazprom and the Malaysian oil company Petronas just signed a $2 billion contract with Iran to jointly explore its South Pars offshore gas field. The deal was strongly endorsed by the French, Malaysian and Russian Governments and is a direct challenge to the U.S. law that orders sanctions on any companies that do big energy business with Iran. Here’s my guess at what Secretary
of State Madeleine Albright and President Clinton are now saying to each other.

Clinton: “What a mess. France, Russia and Malaysia all together in one deal to stick a finger in my eye. [French President] Jacques Chirac just won’t forgive me for not giving France that southern command of NATO, and he’s using this to get his revenge. Jacques Chirac — that guy is the Janet Reno of diplomacy. With allies like him, who needs enemies?”

Albright: “Sure, what does France care? Iranian terrorists aren’t attacking their troops in Saudi Arabia. They don’t threaten Russians or Malaysians. What I’d really love to do is sell Iran some long-range missiles with the targeting already programmed to hit Paris, Moscow and Kuala Lumpur. Then we could say to ol’ Jacques: ‘Hey, Jacques, it’s just business, you know, nothing personal. We’re just trying to make a few bucks, and by the way, we’re still out of Iran’s missile range and you’re not anymore. But we’ll hold your coat while you do something about it.”

Clinton: “That would make my day. But we can’t. So what do we do? If we impose the sanctions on these oil companies, their Governments will just sanction our companies and we’ll be in a trade war. But if we waive the sanctions, Al D’Amato will scream that we’re wimps. On top of that, Mobil and Conoco, which I barred from doing business in Iran, are going to demand whatever we give the French or Russian oil companies.”

Albright: “Let’s face it, our Iran policy is coming apart. We need an adjustment. Here’s what I’m thinking: First, we have to impose our sanctions on Total, Gazprom and Petronas, even though none of them have much business in the U.S. to sanction. They have to feel our pain. We would have no credibility if we didn’t. But we also won’t have any credibility if we don’t test whether this new President of Iran, Mohammed Khatami, who was elected by a landslide precisely because the Iranian public thought he would be a moderate, can forge a different relationship with us. Some people say Khatami is just a puppet, and the bad guys are still in charge.

Some say he’s for real. Let’s find out. Let’s sanction the oil companies but announce at the same time that we will review the sanctions in six months. We’ll watch to see if there is any change in Iran’s hostile behavior. If there is, we will consider waiving the sanctions. This way we give the Europeans, Iran and the oil companies an incentive to show that Iran is changing, and we also show we are serious about responding to change.

Clinton: “Do you think the Iranians saw the signal you sent Wednesday?”

Albright: “The U.S. press missed it, but the Iranians won’t. When the State Department issued its list Wednesday of “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” Americans cannot support, you can bet the first thing the Iranians did was look for their own groups. Imagine their surprise when they saw that I also put on the list the Iraqi-based anti-Iranian terrorist group “Mujahedeen Khalq.” The Iranians will get the point: We’ve just made it illegal for Americans to support the Mujahedeen — a group dedicated to overthrowing the Iranian Government. We also approved that gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Turkey, via Iran. Those are enough signals from us. It’s time for Teheran to send some back.”

Clinton: “Look, I’m dubious about Khatami’s prospects. I fear that Iran is like the Soviet Union — a totalitarian system that can’t be reformed. It either stays as it is or crumbles. I also fear that even if the so-called moderates in Iran do respond, the extremists will kill some Americans just to prevent any rapprochement. Still, it’s worth a try. With a normal relationship with Iran we could do a lot: counterbalance Russia and China’s influence in Central Asia, help Israel and be much more effective at isolating Iraq. So we might as well use this mess with France and the oil companies to test Khatami. Hey, when you’ve got lemons, make lemonade.”

Associated Press
October 15, 1999
By BARRY SCHWEID

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Clinton administration is renewing an overture to Iran for face-to-face talks “on the basis of equality and mutual respect.”

The goal in talking to Iran would be to encourage Iran to support Mideast peacemaking, stop supporting terrorism and halt the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, Assistant Secretary of State Martin Indyk said Thursday in a speech to the Asia Society.

Similar overtures have been made by President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. “Unfortunately,” Indyk said, “the Iranian government’s response to this overture has been, for the most part, hidebound and unimaginative.”

And yet, the State Department official said, the administration has streamlined U.S. visa policies and supported academic and athletic exchanges with Iran while Iran has opened its doors to American wrestlers, scholars, graduate students and museum officers.

Indyk also welcomed a statement this week by a high Iranian official that the safety of Americans and other tourists in Iran must be safeguarded.

In a gesture, Indyk said the Mujahedin-e Khalq, a group that claimed responsibility for the assassination of Iran’s deputy chief of staff and the slaying of two high-ranking members of the Iranian government, was redesignated last week by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organization. The National Council of Resistance, an alias of the group, was listed for the first time, he said.

This means contributions to the group are illegal.

“Iran is also a victim of terrorism,” Indyk said. “We condemn these acts as we condemn all acts of terrorism.”

But, he said, Iran continues to support groups that use terrorism, even though senior Iranian officials have denounced attacks on innocent people, and Iran continues efforts to develop ballistic missiles, causing the United States to oppose investment in Iran’s petroleum sector.

With many in the Arab world looking toward a future of peace with Israel, Indyk asked, “what business is it of Iran to encourage terrorist activity,” and “why is Iran still fomenting trouble in Jordan and giving safe haven to Egyptian extremists.”

U.S. sanctions against Iran can be changed through “a parallel process,” he said, not as a precondition to talks, as Tehran insists, he said.

“We should move beyond the stage of gestures and symbols,” Indyk said. “Indeed, 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,” he said.