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

October 16, 2011 by Editor

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

Filed Under: Luminaries, News Tagged With: Blacklist, Camp Ashraf, Delist MEK, FTO, Iran, Iranian Resistance, Iraq, MEK, MKO, Mojahedin, Mujahedeen, Mujahedin, NCRI, PMOI, Secretary Clinton, Terrorism

Ending hypocrisy of terrorist designation

October 14, 2011 by Gen. Hugh Shelton

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/

Tehran’s Foes, Unfairly Maligned

October 13, 2011 by Louis J. Freeh

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

Protesters rally against Iranian leader outside UN

September 22, 2011 by VERENA DOBNIK

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Demonstrators rally outside the UN headquarters to protest against controversial Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad before he is scheduled to speak at the UN General Assembly, Thursday, Sept. 22, 2011, in the Manhattan borough of New York. Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and former UN Ambassador John Bolton were among the speakers at the event. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

NEW YORK, (AP) — Former United Nations ambassador John Bolton said Thursday that the Obama administration is doing “almost nothing” to protect Iranians from the violence of their own regime — as represented at the U.N. by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Minutes before Ahmadinejad addressed the annual U.N. General Assembly, about 1,000 Iranian-Americans staged a protest rally in nearby Dag Hammarskjold Plaza.

Children stomped on a poster of Ahmadinejad among banners that covered the pavement. “Down With the Islamic Republic of Iran,” read one.

Bolton, who served as ambassador during George W. Bush’s presidency, told The Associated Press that the United States had failed to stop Iran from torturing and killing its own people.

“We expect that our commitment to the people of Iran is going to be upheld,” he said. “Right now, the Obama administration is doing almost nothing.”

Former UN Ambassador John Bolton speaks to the crowds at an anti-Ahmadinejad rally outside the UN headquarters before the controversial Iranian president is scheduled to speak at the UN General Assembly, Thursday, Sept. 22, 2011, in the Manhattan borough of New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

He said this week’s release of two American hikers held for years by Iran was what he called “just Broadway theater.”

Some protesters were draped in the Iranian flag, while others hoisted yellow flags representing Iran’s political opposition led by Maryam Rajavi, head of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran.

Protesters say tens of thousands of the opposition group’s supporters in Iran have been executed by the regime.

Speaking live from Paris via satellite on a giant television screen, Rajavi told the crowd that Ahmadinejad does not represent the Iranian people.

She urged the U.N. and the U.S. to stand with the Iranian people and their organized opposition, including more than 3,000 U.N.-defined refugees in Camp Ashraf in Iraq, which was attacked twice, with 47 killed and about 1,000 wounded.

“There is no doubt today that the United States has clearly abandoned its international obligations toward Camp Ashraf,” Rajavi said.

Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge speaks to the crowds at an anti-Ahmadinejad rally outside the UN headquarters before the controversial Iranian president is scheduled to speak at the UN General Assembly, Thursday, Sept. 22, 2011, in the Manhattan borough of New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

While addressing protesters, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said he agreed with Bolton that the U.S. government’s policy toward Iran is inadequate — especially in how it treats the MEK, or People’s Mujahedin of Iran that is the main component of Rajavi’s resistance group.

The U.S. State Department lists it as a terrorist organization, while supporters say the group opposes Ahmadinejad.

As the nation’s first head of homeland security after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Ridge said he started every day with a list of potential threats against the United States.

“Never, not once, among hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of potential terrorist threats, did I ever see the MEK as a terrorist organization,” said Ridge, who also served under Bush. “It’s about time we took them off the list.”

That position was echoed by many of the protesters, including one group busy assembling cardboard rolls into a “cage” symbolizing the one that held former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at his trial. Inside was a man wearing a mask resembling Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Demonstrators rally outside the U.N. headquarters to protest against controversial Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad before he is scheduled to speak at the U.N. General Assembly, Thursday, Sept. 22, 2011, in New York. Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton were among the speakers at the event. Demonstrators hold pictures of Massoud Rajavi, president of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, and his wife Maryam Rajavi. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

“We hope that Khameini will be in a cage like this soon, to be tried for crimes against humanity,” said Farid Ashkan, 55, an Iranian-born New York dentist.

At the entrance to the plaza, a same-sex “wedding” was staged mocking the alliance of Syria and Iran. A protester posing as ousted Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi presided over the ceremony, with yellow cake served to onlookers, representing the uranium used to make nuclear weapons.

Will U.N. Chief Ban Ki-Moon Do the Right Thing and Protect Iranian Dissidents?

September 22, 2011 by Michael B. Mukasey and Ruth Wedgwood

FoxNews.com

Each September, like clockwork, a bestiary of the world’s worst rogues and criminal heads of state arrive at the U.N. building on First Avenue to join in the organization’s opening of the 193-member United Nations General Assembly.

Protestors gathered outside United Nations headquarters in New York to protest the appearance of Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad at the UN General Assembly. New York, USA. 22nd September 2011

This season, the winner of the contest for “greatest rogue with diplomatic immunity” is, once again, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran – a president with blood on his hands and nukes in his dreams who will get his 8″ by 10” glossy photograph of a handshake with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon–and a P.R. platform supported by U.S. tax dollars.

Despite Ahmadinejad’s infamy as a Holocaust denier and his wild-eyed claim that the September 11 terrorist attacks were a Western conspiracy, it’s a banner year for the Mullahs’ regime, with the Iranian ambassador soon to be seated as vice president of the U.N. General Assembly.

Unfortunately, such diplomatic bon-bons are available only to heads of state, and not to their victims.For the grieving relatives of thousands of Iranian dissidents who have been killed by the Iranian Mullahs — both in jail and during peaceful demonstrations in the streets of Teheran — there will be no photo opportunity at the U.N.

Other Iranian dissidents, in the United States and Europe, are also shut out of these rarefied U.N. precincts — despite their high status in the West as university professors, medical specialists, and entrepreneurs.

The reason is simple: these successful Iranian-American and Iranian-European dissidents have asked that the world organization and its Secretary General protect their less fortunate relatives who are currently held captive at a threatened place in Iraq called Camp Ashraf.

They are, quite simply, trying to prevent a bloodbath, but that is not high on the U.N. agenda. Twice in the last 14 months, Iraqi military forces have attacked the 3,400 unarmed residents at the Ashraf camp — using U.S.-supplied military equipment — killing dozens of unarmed protesters and wounding hundreds more. Iraq will likely soon attack again, and use their cache of automatic weapons originally supplied by the U.S. to build the Iraqi army, to finish off the camp inhabitants — despite the 2004 U.S. promise to them of a protected status as unarmed civilians under the Geneva Conventions.

The reason for this crime is simple: Iraq’s Shia prime minister Nouri al-Maliki wants to prove his usefulness to Teheran, and the Ashraf residents are anti-Mullah activists. Despite this imminent danger, the American family members of Ashraf victims have not been allowed to see the U.N. Secretary General — even for a symbolic moment — amidst his chockablock schedule of handshakes and photo-ops with creatures like Ahmadinejad.

The rebuff comes even though the Ashraf residents and their allies have supplied the international community with much of the key intelligence about the location and progress of the Iranian regime’s program to build a nuclear bomb.

How would the Secretary General explain to these desperate families why the U.N. diplomatic mission in Iraq rarely visits the camp and does not bear witness when attacks are mounted against the unarmed residents, including young women and children?

Maliki has now announced that after December 31, Iraqi military forces will dismantle Camp Ashraf and scatter the dissidents around Iraq – for a fate easily imagined.

The Secretary General has an opportunity to use his moral platform wisely at the General Assembly, to show some courage and demand that Maliki postpone this “drop dead” deadline, so that the international community has time to work out a happier solution than the one Maliki and Tehran are preparing for the residents of Camp Ashraf, Iraq.

The United States Congress has been aghast at the U.N.’s inaction, on both sides of the aisle. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs committee chairman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida cut her teeth fighting Fidel Castro and has made Camp Ashraf a personal issue. Texas Congressman Ted Poe has linked UN appropriations to the demand for protection of Ashraf.

Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee — who hailed from Jamaica, Queens, across the river from the United Nations, before she moved to Texas — is equally adamant. Senator John Kerry and Congressman Howard Berman have also condemned the violence against Camp Ashraf in the strongest terms.

The U.S. currently contributes over $6 billion a year to the U.N. at a time of record-high unemployment, skyrocketing deficits, crushing debt, and great economic challenges to our citizens. Ban Ki-moon’s obtuse snub of the Ashraf victims may provoke the Congress to snub the delivery of U.S. dollars to Turtle Bay. Even as the Secretary General talks about the “responsibility to protect” as the U.N.’s new motto, he has refused to give it teeth.

Yet it is within Ban Ki-moon’s power, by the stroke of a pen, to appoint a U.N. Special Representative for Ashraf who will travel to the camp and report on its daily condition.

It is within his power to demand an immediate meeting with Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, not to exchange diplomatic niceties but to deliver a warning that the international community will not tolerate another attack on the camp.

And it is within Ban Ki-moon’s power to openly express his support for the dissidents in Iran and Iraq who have opposed the brutal regime of the Mullahs.

The American relatives of the Ashraf hostages are also asking the Secretary General and the U.N. mission to hire private security guards — which they will pay for — in order to protect the camp’s residents and escort the Secretary General’s representative for Ashraf. Though the U.S. pays 27 percent of U.N. peacekeeping bills, this will not require any financial contribution from the U.S. or the U.N.

And finally, it is within Ban Ki-moon’s power to tell Maliki that the December 31 deadline for the relocation of Ashraf camp residents must be postponed, for so far, they have nowhere else to go. And let’s be clear: when Maliki says deadline, he emphasizes “dead.” Ban Ki-moon could do all this. The question is whether he has the fortitude and simple decency to act boldly and to save the lives of these unarmed men, women and children of Ashraf.

Michael B. Mukasey, a former federal judge, served as Attorney General of the United States from 2007-09. Ruth Wedgwood is a member of the Hoover Institution Task Force on Law and National Security and a former member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee.

Free Iran’s freedom fighters

September 18, 2011 by Wes Martin

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Those who slander the MEK know nothing about its promise.

As the first colonel to command Camp Ashraf in Iraq, where the main Iranian opposition movement, the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) is located, I should like to think I can speak with some authority about this deeply misunderstood organization now at the center of a fierce debate in Washington.

The MEK is the largest component of the National Council of the Resistance to Iran (NCRI), Iran’s parliament in exile. They established several bases inside Iraq in 1986, when Iraq was locked in a war with Iran.

Today, as Iraq grows ever closer with Iran, the MEK is being targeted for annihilation in its temporary Iraqi home at Camp Ashraf.

The marginalization and murder of MEK members defies American values and interests – but far too little has been done about it.

The State Department is about to announce a decision on whether or not to remove the MEK from its terror list. PHOTO BY Muhly/Getty

The group was previously thrown to the wolves by the Clinton administration, which placed the MEK on the State Department‘s terrorist list at Iran’s request in a futile effort at rapprochement in the late 1990s. Not only was a grave injustice done to the democratic opposition to Tehran, but America‘s reward for appeasement has been Iran’s sprint toward nuclear weapons, attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq and its crushing of the human rights of its people.

The MEK surrendered to the U.S. military in 2003 without firing a shot, turned over all its weapons, accepted consolidation at Camp Ashraf and fulfilled every requirement placed on it. The MEK has even provided reliable intelligence to the U.S concerning Iran’s nuclear program and interference in Iraq.

What did the MEK get in return? Nothing we should be proud of. As part of its drawdown, the U.S. turned over the protection of Ashraf to the Iraqi government in January 2009. Twice since then, the Iraqi military has attacked the camp, killing or wounding hundreds. Today, the 3,400 remaining people in Camp Ashraf live in constant fear.

These are the facts.

With the State Department about to announce a decision on whether or not to remove the MEK from its terror list, anti-MEK “experts” are popping up everywhere in the American media to discredit the group. These “experts” range from the sister of a Clinton administration State Department official who admitted spending but hours analyzing the group, to Iranian-Americans who have consistently and publicly defended the Iranian regime. Their claims range from the MEK being a Marxist/Leninist Islamic extremist organization to it being a dangerous cult in which women are automatons, marriage is prohibited and members are prevented from leaving. %A0 They claim the group has no support inside Iran or harbors terrorist ambitions.

These “experts” are maligning a group I have come to know up close and personally. Firstly, this is no Marxist cult. The MEK was founded on democratic principles, including equality between government and governed, between men and women and among various religions and races. The MEK also believes the clergy should not have total control over interpretation of the Koran, nor should the clerics have total control over their congregations. Contrary to a recent claim by Elizabeth Rubin, sister of Jamie Rubin, a former spokesman for the State Department, the MEK promotes the empowerment of women.

Concerning the ability of members to depart the organization: At Ashraf I had responsibility for almost 200 people who left for Kurdistan. As for the claim that the group has no support in Iran, I ask the experts, where was I getting the intercepted sensitive intelligence that a State Department officer was releasing to a well-known Iranian sympathizer within the Iraqi government?

My colleagues and I had unfettered access to Ashraf. As a matter of fact, the only time Americans have been denied access to Ashraf was in 2011, when the Iraqi government refused to allow visitation by a congressional delegation. I know for a fact the MEK does not have weapons. Just search for “Ashraf” on YouTube to see horrific videos of attacks on the camp by the Iraqi Army in 2009 and 2011, in which MEK members armed only with courage rescued their fallen comrades.

A decision by the State Department that is based on the facts on the ground will result in the MEK being removed from its terrorist list and added to America’s kit bag in managing its greatest strategic threat: the Iranian regime. Any decision to the contrary is to the benefit only of this repressive theocracy and its allies.

Martin, who retired as a colonel in the U.S. Army, served as the senior antiterrorism/force protection officer for all coalition forces in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2011/09/18/2011-09-18_free_irans_freedom_fighters.html

MeK, Iran and the War for Washington

September 16, 2011 by Raymond Tanter

THE NATIONAL INTEREST

There is an escalating war for influence over U.S. policy toward Iran: It is a dispute among university scholars, think-tank analysts and former American officials. Reverberations of this war are not confined to the Washington beltway but have profound significance for the Middle East. As Arab republics like Egypt and Tunisia fall from popular protests, internally inspired regime-change scenarios abound. While largely peaceful protests brought down regimes in Cairo and Tunis, state suppression resulted in violent pushback in Libya, Syria and Yemen.

Secretary of State Hillat Clinton. Image by Harald Dettenborn

Although Arab republics are the immediate targets of their populations, Arab kingdoms like Bahrain, and to a much lesser degree Jordan and Saudi Arabia, are feeling the heat of popular unrest. Because there is generally a lack of consensus on how to transfer power in Arab republics, they are less stable than kingdoms. “The king is dead; long live the (new) king,” does not easily translate into “The president of the republic is dead; long live his son.”

Just as conflicts over succession occur among the Arab republics, so a succession crisis is likely to arise in the Islamic Republic of Iran. We should use the lens of such a conflict in Iran when viewing the war in Washington about an Iranian dissident organization—the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MeK). Saddam Hussein’s takedown by foreign militaries highlights the need for a homegrown antidote to Iranian rulers because external regime change is off the table in the aftermath of the Iraq War.

Secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton is poised to announce the MeK designation in fall 2011, a decision long overdue. Nothing is likely to be more decisive in reducing the strategic threat from Tehran than having a vigorous democratic opposition in Iran; it is critical to have a coalition of prodemocracy dissidents working together to weaken the regime from within and replace it; the MeK can play an enhanced role in the prodemocracy movement if it is removed from the State Department terrorist list. But above and beyond the potential international benefit of facilitating internal regime change for Iran, the MeK simply deserves to be delisted on the basis of facts and law alone.

A search of U.S. government and private electronic and media sources by scholars in the Iran Policy Committee reveals an absence of evidence to support the inference that the MeK engages in terrorist activities or terrorism or has the capability and intent to do so. The databases are: the U.S. Worldwide Incident Tracking System; Department of Homeland Security-sponsored Global Terrorism Database; and U.S. government-supported RAND Database of Worldwide Terrorism Incidents. In these major databases, there are no confirmed associations of the MeK with any military action after 2001.

Given the absence of unclassified evidence of MeK involvement in terrorist activities during the course of nine years (2001-2010), any countervailing evidence in the classified record should be viewed with skepticism and subject to scrutiny for credibility. An assumption here is that terrorist incidents are too public not to appear in databases or in newspapers of record.

On 4 December 2008, the Court of First Instance of the European Communities issued a judgment annulling the MeK designation, and the European Union cleared the MeK of terrorist conduct in January 2009. The United Kingdom removed the group from its list of proscribed organizations in June 2008. In addition, the French judiciary dismissed all terrorism and terrorism-financing charges against the group in May 2011.

Two issues before the American court have been whether the State Department provided due process of law to the MeK and credibility of evidence in support of allegations against it. In a July 2010 ruling regarding a MeK appeal of its continued designation in January 2009, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC circuit faulted the decisionmaking process of the secretary of state.

The court questioned the credibility, sources and legal relevance of evidence in the Secretary’s January 2009 decision to maintain the designation and ordered the State Department to give the MeK an occasion to rebut some of the declassified material used in the re-designation. On 20 May 2011, the department released ten documents. Five were unclassified, mostly wire service reports from the Associated Press, Radio Farda and Azeri Press Agency. They concern allegations, such as MeK’s “cult-like” behavior and supposed lack of popular support within Iran. Such false, nonlegal allegations are no grounds on which to base a terrorist tag.

For the MeK to be re-designated absent any terrorist activity or terrorism, the State Department has to demonstrate that the group has both the capability and the intent to engage in terrorist activity or terrorism and that it either threatens U.S. national security or the security of American citizens.

In the Department of State Country Reports on Terrorism (CRT) 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010, a CRT 2006 accusation that the MeK has “capacity and will” to commit terrorist activities or engage in terrorism does not recur, and there are no terrorist activities or terrorist events cited during the legally relevant period of two years prior to the last re-designation decision of January 2009. In fact, no such actions are listed since 2001.

In view of the convergence of historical circumstances and the law in favor of delisting, consider the political origins of the MeK designation. The roots are in the Iran-Contra affair of the mid-1980s: In exchange for release of American hostages held in Lebanon by one of Tehran’s proxies, Hezbollah, the State Department alleged without evidence that MeK members used terrorism and violence as “standard instruments of their politics.” Thus began the use of that designation primarily as a tool to achieve foreign-policy aims rather than antiterrorism goals.

Martin Indyk, who served as assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs in 1997, said one of the reasons the MeK was put on the terrorism list was part of a “two-pronged” diplomatic strategy. It included increasing pressure on Saddam Hussein by linking him to a “terrorist group,” the MeK. The other “prong” was the Clinton administration’s interest in opening a dialogue with Tehran. On 8 June 1997, Mohammad Khatami was elected president of Iran, and the administration viewed him as a moderate. Clinton officials saw cracking down on the MeK as a way to strengthen Khatami at the expense of so-called hardliners. But this political use of the terrorist designation failed; Tehran pocketed the concession without reciprocity.

Because law and facts converge for removing the designation of the MeK, those who oppose delisting fall back on political grounds buttressed by vague factual allegations for a continuation of the terrorist tag. There is an unfounded claim that the MeK is unpopular within Iran because of “numerous terrorist attacks against innocent Iranian civilians.” Then there is an invalid policy conclusion: “Removing the MeK from the Foreign Terrorist Organization [sic] list and misconstruing its lack of democratic bona fides and support inside Iran will have harmful consequences on the legitimate, indigenous Iranian opposition.” The allegation of MeK unpopularity is false. Support within the expatriate Iranian community suggests popularity in Iran; no other dissident organization can mobilize similar numbers of expat supporters.

Some who believe delisting would limit Washington’s ability to reach out to the Iranian street are wrong; the disproportionate number of protestors arrested and hanged because of association with the MeK indicates the organization’s significant presence on the Iranian street. Those who oppose delisting the MeK and hold a dim view of the effectiveness of Iranian dissidents to bring about regime change weaken their opposition to removal of the tag on the MeK. An argument in support of delisting on foreign-policy grounds is that it would reinforce the democratic opposition in Iran.

In most of the arguments opposed to delisting the MEK, no statutory fact is presented. So opponents of removing the terrorist tag resort to irrelevant non-legal arguments to overshadow lack of evidence of its engagement in terrorist activities or terrorism. In effect, those in favor of maintaining the MeK listing want Secretary Clinton to disregard the facts and the law entirely. With a simple signature delisting the group, Secretary Clinton would not only bring her Department in line with law and facts; she also would help empower the Iranian people to change the regime and open a political option between failed engagement and ineffective sanctions, on one hand, and problematic military action on the other.

Raymond Tanter served on the senior staff of the National Security Council and as personal representative of the Secretary of Defense to arms control talks in Europe in the Reagan-Bush administration. He is currently an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan.

http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/meks-war-washington-5889

Take Iran opponent MEK off terror list

September 12, 2011 by Louis Freeh, Lord Corbett of Castle Vale and Lord Waddington

CNN Opinion

Editor’s note: Louis Freeh served as director of the FBI from 1993-2001; Lord Corbett of Castle Vale heads the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom; and Rt. Hon. Lord Waddington QC is a former British home secretary and leader of the House of Lords. Freeh has received payment for travel expenses and speaking at conferences organized by groups that want People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran removed from the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations.

(CNN) — Congressional leaders and former top U.S. officials are pressing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to remove Iran’s main opposition group, the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, from the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations. So what should Clinton do?

Let’s consider the background. The People’s Mujahedeen, also known as the MEK, is the Iranian mullahs’ worst nightmare. Since 1981 it has waged a costly and deadly battle to unseat the ayatollahs’ regime, but it is a battle for the soul of Iran of which it can be immensely proud.

In 1997, the Clinton administration added the MEK to the State Department’s blacklist in what a senior administration official, according to the Los Angeles Times, described as a good will gesture to Iran — thought at the time to be moving toward a more moderate form of government. The Bush administration maintained the ban, which many saw as an effort to persuade the Iranians to abandon their nuclear weapons program. But Iran is no closer to moderation and its nuclear ambitions get closer and closer to fulfillment.

Former U.S. officials calling for the MEK to be de-listed include former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, three former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs, two former directors of the CIA, former commander of NATO Wesley K. Clark, two former U.S. ambassadors to the U.N., former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, a former White House chief of staff, a former commander of the Marine Corps, former U.S. National Security Adviser Fran Townsend, now a CNN contributor; and even President Obama’s recently retired National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones. Their call is backed by 93 members of Congress, who have signed a bipartisan resolution urging the president to revoke the designation, and by prominent Democratic and Republican leaders such as Howard Dean and Rudy Giuliani.

In deciding whether to delist the MEK, Clinton should consider the following:

First, the decision to classify an organization as a terrorist group must be based on fact. Up until now, 10 courts in Britain, France, the European Union and the United States have looked at the evidence and ruled that the group is not involved in terrorism. Britain’s Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission and later the Court of Appeal looked at the U.S. State Department’s reasons for listing the group as a terror organization in great detail and rejected them as irrelevant or found that the allegations’ sources and accuracy could not be established. The courts confirmed that the MEK halted armed activities against Iran in 2001 and voluntarily disarmed in 2003.

Second, the ban has put the lives of 3,400 MEK members at Camp Ashraf, Iraq, at great risk. In April, Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a close ally of Iran, ordered an armed raid on the camp that left 36 residents dead and 350 injured. But when a bipartisan congressional delegation questioned al-Maliki in Baghdad about the incident, he said the United States had no right to complain about such violence when it was directed at a group the State Department itself called terrorist. Lifting the ban would remove any pretext for another military assault against the unarmed and defenseless MEK members at Camp Ashraf.

Finally, there is the broader issue of relations with Iran. Proponents of engagement with Iran claim that lifting the ban on the MEK would all but destroy any chance of future dialogue with Tehran. But what would be the point of such dialogue? Does anyone seriously believe the mullahs could be persuaded to throw away their attempt to obtain a nuclear weapon when the achievement of their ambitions is so close? And what would be the time frame for the talks, when Iran is believed to be less than one year from reaching nuclear breakout capability?

Delisting the MEK would send a strong signal to the millions in Iran who seek democratic change that the United States is on their side and has shunned the regime. It will tell the mullahs that the United States seriously intends to stop their outlawed activities and support democratic change in Iran just when Tehran is trying to use its influence to keep its anti-democratic and anti-Western partners in power in Syria and Iraq.

Delisting the MEK would lift the restrictions on the region’s largest Muslim group with a secular agenda and a democratic platform, whose moderate interpretation of Islam strongly threatens the mullahs’ fundamentalism.

The State Department, which has been unable to offer the courts any sound legal arguments for maintaining the ban on the MEK, now has a legal, moral and political duty to delist the MEK so it is not hampered in its work as the representative of those yearning for democratic change in Iran.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writers.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/09/12/freeh.corbett.waddington.mek/

Ignore Iranian regime’s lies on opposition group

September 8, 2011 by Tom Ridge and Lord Carlile of Berriew

THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

While Secretary of State Hillary Clinton edges closer to deciding to remove the Iranian opposition group, the Mujahedeen e Khalq (MEK), from a U.S. list of banned organizations, the international media has been awash with Iranian regime propaganda attempting to demonize the group.

In an attempt to counteract this tendentious public relations campaign, the group’s supporters, including senior figures in U.S., British, and European political circles, have waged their own media campaign to counter the Iranian propaganda.

Indeed, a recent independent assessment by a former senior State Department official debunked virtually all of the stale allegations that have been regurgitated by Tehran’s lobby inside the Beltway in recent weeks.

In the midst of this punch and counterpunch media campaign, it is crucial that Clinton’s decision be based upon genuine evidence. De-listing the MEK is a legal issue and Clinton must act on facts within the correct legal framework.

The MEK has fought similar legal cases in the United Kingdom and the European Union, and after numerous appeals it has been successful in being removed from those entities’ lists of banned organizations.

The British courts found that allegations made against the group were untrue and in some cases were initially propagated from Iran’s intelligence ministry. WikiLeaks revealed that, lacking any credible claim to maintain the ban on the MEK, the British government’s continued defiance was more about how Tehran would react rather than what its legal system required it to do. In fact, the British Court of Appeal told us much about how the MEK had been mistreated, finding that the British labeling of the MEK as terrorist was “perverse.” This was a severe indictment of the government’s refusal to delist the organization.

For the EU, the embarrassment was even worse. It was dragged kicking and screaming through court after court until it had fought its last battle and succumbed to the legal reality that the MEK could not legally be labeled a terrorist group.

The judgments of the UK and EU courts are significant because the propaganda the Iranian regime wants us to believe about the MEK today is exactly the same as that replayed before those courts. Yet, in the end, those courts could not resist the evidence.

Now it is time for Secretary Clinton to make her decision. If she does so based on the facts, there is little doubt that she will conclude that in legal terms the ban on the MEK is no longer justified. However, if Iranian propaganda is allowed to muddy the water or the hope prevails that Tehran can be appeased by continuing to ban this Iranian opposition group, then things may not be so simple.

Clinton is credited as being a woman of principle who has the wisdom and foresight to recognize propaganda and withstand pressures inviting her to trample on the rule of law upon which all democracies are based. Our bet is that she will not fall into the trap set by the Iranian regime and its apologists and will stick to her principles in making the right decision and removing the MEK from the terrorism list. Only time will tell if we are correct.

Tom Ridge is a former secretary of Homeland Security and governor of Pennsylvania. Lord Alex Carlile of Berriew was Britain’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation

http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/inquirer/20110908_Ignore_Iranian_regime_s_lies_on_opposition_group.html

Obama’s Iran Appeasement Syndrome

August 30, 2011 by Tom Tancredo

TOWNHALL.COM

Calling President Obama’s approach toward Iran “bad policy” is like calling a rotten egg a failed omelet.

The Iranian regime is an avowed enemy of the US and the West by virtue of its stated goals and its violent actions. The Iranian government’s visceral, unmitigated hatred of the United States and its hostile intentions are manifest in every speech by President Ahmadinejad and every edict from the mullahs of the ruling Islamic High Council. No American should doubt that Iran is at war with the US and the West and will escalate its hostilities as new weapons and new resources become available.

None of this is new or controversial among people who have followed Iran’s actions since the mullahs seized power in 1979; the most potent and portentous symbol of the Iranian revolution were the 52 Americans held hostage there for 444 days. Indeed, virulent anti-Americanism has been a source of national identity for the Iranian regime from its inception. What should worry Americans more than Iran’s posture is that such commonsense statements are heresy in the Obama White House.

The naïve hand of friendship extended by President Obama to this hostile regime has led to a series of humiliations and increasingly dangerous strategic threats. Since President Obama took office and sent Nowrouz greetings to the Iranian people, the regime has responded by — holding three innocent American youths hostage, accelerating their nuclear weapons program, violently suppressing democratic movements, providing weapons and materiel to terrorists who attack American troops in Iraq, and coddling enemies of America including Hamas, Hezbollah, Hugo Chavez, and Bashir al Assad.

But nowhere is President Obama more out of touch with the reality of the Iranian threat than in his treatment of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (or MEK), the Iranian dissident movement.

The MEK was put on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations in 1997 by the Clinton administration as a sop the Islamist regime. It was a condition demanded by the ruling mullahs in Tehran because they hated and feared the MEK. Thousands of MEK members have been killed by the regime. Tehran maintains a constant propaganda barrage attacking the MEK and millions of dollars have been spent to curry resistance to the MEK in the West.

In recognition of the changed, democratic character of the MEK, both Great Britain and the European Union have taken the MEK off their terrorist lists. The list of American foreign policy experts calling for the de-listing of the MEK is impressive: a former Attorney General, two former US Ambassadors to the UN, a former Director of the FBI, and a former Secretary of Homeland Security, to name only a few. Additionally, almost 100 members of Congress have signed a resolution calling for removal of the MEK from the terrorist roster.

While the continued blacklisting of the MEK is unreasonable and illogical, it is eerily consistent with Obama’s selective indignation when civilians are bludgeoned to death by police in Islamic regimes. Obama’s lack of support for the massive democratic dissent in the streets of Tehran in 2009 was shocking, but he welcomed the recent uprisings in Egypt, Libya and Syria despite the prominent presence of radical Islamists in the leadership of those protests. Obama committed American forces to help topple the dictator Gaddafi, but has not committed America and prestige and power to help the pro-democracy forces in Iran.

What is the thread that ties Obama’s strange and inconsistent policies together? The consistency lies in the peculiar ideology Obama brings to foreign policy decisions.

President Obama pledged during his campaign that an “open hand” would be extended by his administration to all nations, friend or foe. Disastrously enough, he has kept this promise. This has required overlooking mortal threats such as those posed by the Iranian regime, and ignoring potential allies like the MEK. It also explains why President Obama and his appointees in the US State Department have resisted firmer measures against Iran. In plain language, Obama’s ideology blinds him to the serious danger a nuclear-armed, anti-democratic Iran poses to the United States and our allies.

The United States urgently needs to confront and oppose Iran’s terrorist agenda through strong diplomatic and economic measures. A simple first step to signal our serious intentions would be to support Iran’s internal dissidents, a strategy which should begin with lifting the outdated and invalid terrorist stigma from the Mujahideen-e Khalq.

When Iran’s internal democratic forces see that the United States will no longer tolerate that nation’s backing for international terrorism, we will begin to see an unraveling of that regime’s despotic grip on its people.

Tom Tancredo represented Colorado’s 6th Congressional District from 1999 until 2009 where he chaired the 100+ member bipartisan Immigration Reform Caucus. He currently serves as co-chairman of Team America PAC and president of the Rocky Mountain Foundation. He authored “In Mortal Danger: The Battle for America’s Border and Security.

http://townhall.com/columnists/tomtancredo/2011/08/30/obamas_iran_appeasement_syndrome

Filed Under: Luminaries, News, US Congress Tagged With: Blacklist, Camp Ashraf, Delist MEK, FTO, Iran, Iranian Resistance, Iraq, MEK, MKO, Mojahedin, Mujahedeen, Mujahedin, NCRI, PMOI, Secretary Clinton, Terrorism