THE BALTIMORE SUN

Stop calling MEK a terrorist group and let Iranians transform their own country

The International Atomic Energy Agency‘s latest report about Iran lays bare the true nature of Tehran’s nuclear agenda: an advanced, sophisticated and highly secretive program run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps to build the bomb.

Overwhelming evidence shows a pattern dating back many years of covert activities with significant military involvement that cannot be explained away for any purpose other than building a nuclear warhead. The report contradicts the Iranian regime’s claim that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. “Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device,” the IAEA report underscored.

For years, Tehran has been dribbling out information only when confronted, conceding the existence of nuclear sites only after they were exposed by Iran’s main opposition movement, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), and responding to IAEA inquiries only after the fact.

Speculation over what to do about Iran is the topic of the day, but the Iran policy conundrum was not ignited by this or previous IAEA reports, nor is it a matter only for Washington to decide. The West has been engaged in a policy debate for years, in the course of which Europe was pretty much given the lead to deal with Iran, but to no avail.

For three decades, Washington has acted like a pendulum, oscillating between engagement and threats of military action. Given the problematic nature of the latter, engagement has essentially held sway. This has provided the Iranian regime a golden opportunity to rapidly advance its quest for the bomb.

When the European Union started nuclear talks with Iran in 2003, Tehran had not even completed the construction of its only known uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, and it was not enriching uranium. By the time President Barack Obama was sworn in, Iran was already enriching uranium at 3.5 percent levels, thousands of centrifuges had been installed at Natanz, and work was proceeding at a number of nuclear sites.

When President Obama embarked on his campaign to unclench the fist of the ayatollahs and persuade Tehran to abandon its nuclear weapons program, Tehran’s apologists were cheering the anticipated results. Nearly three years later, Tehran is enriching up to 20 percent, is installing centrifuge machines in an underground uranium enrichment facility in Qom, has been experimenting and working on building nuclear warheads, and has enough enriched uranium to make four nuclear weapons, if further enriched to weapon grade.

The moral of the story is that engagement has failed to halt Tehran’s nuclear drive. Sanctions have proven patently insufficient. So can anything be done? The answer is yes.

The opposition MEK has been the source of much of the intelligence about the existence of multiple nuclear sites scattered in different parts of Iran, including the uranium enrichment facility in Natanz and the heavy water facility in Arak in 2002; the key nuclear research and development facility in Lavizan-Shian in 2003; the Qom underground enrichment facility in 2005; and other significant sites over the following years directly involved with nuclear weaponization.

Iran saw major uprisings in 2009 lasting several months before being brutally suppressed. Many MEK members were arrested, sentenced to death or hanged for organizing and/or taking part in the anti-government demonstrations.

Currently, Iran’s economy is in shambles, the ruling elite are increasing fighting among themselves and internal dissent has spread.

Little can be done to stop Iran from advancing its ambitious nuclear weapons program without factoring in the Iranian people and their organized opposition committed to replacing the regime with a democratic, secular and non-nuclear republic. This option has the support of a large, bipartisan group of members of Congress who are calling on the State Department to remove the terrorist designation of the MEK, placed on the movement 14 years ago as a goodwill gesture to Tehran. (Dozens of senior former officials of the Obama, Bush and Clinton administrations have made similar calls for delisting the MEK, including a national security adviser, a Homeland Security secretary, three chairs of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, directors of the CIA and FBI, a U.S. attorney general, U.S. ambassadors to the United Nations, and counter-terrorism officials.)

Nothing has been more destructive than engagement packaged under different names. Iran’s nuclear clock is ticking. However, there is no need for foreign governments to allocate money, dispatch troops or launch any kind of military action against Tehran.

This is the era of people power, arguably more deeply rooted in Iran than what we have seen in the Arab Spring. It is time for the West, the U.S. in particular, to focus on the third way: change from within, by relying on the people of Iran and their organized opposition movement.

Alireza Jafarzadeh is the author of “The Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear Crisis.” He exposed the nuclear sites in Natanz and Arak in 2002, which triggered the IAEA inspections of the Iranian nuclear sites. His email is jafarzadeh@spcwashington.com.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-iran-20111115,0,7202013.story

THE INDEPENDENT

Who remembers the siege of Sarajevo? Today’s world leaders might have forgotten the early 1990s and the four-year encirclement of the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Serbian forces.

Known as one of the longest sieges in modern warfare, it was also a bloodbath – thousands of lives were lost, many of them women and children. For Europe, Sarajevo was a humiliation because the massacre occurred at the heart of what some claimed was the most civilised continent on earth. The European Community was incapable of coming together to prevent the extermination of innocent Europeans.

A new Sarajevo is in the making today, and the question must be asked again: will the European Union stand by and watch? At Camp Ashraf in Iraq, 3,400 residents are encircled. Loud speakers have been placed around the town’s perimeter as part of a campaign of psychological intimidation. They blast out insults and threats in the early hours of the morning. The aggressors, Iraqi forces, are taking orders from the Iranian regime. They want Camp Ashraf cleared out and shut down because the residents are members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), the main Iranian opposition group.

No-one is allowed out of the Camp to receive medical attention. Foreign observers, including Euro MPs, US congressmen and journalists, are not allowed to enter. In the latest sign that the siege is tightening, Ashraf’s fuel supplies have been cut off. There have been no gasoline deliveries for almost a year, and very little diesel fuel and kerosene. Now that temperatures are dropping, Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki has ordered an end to deliveries of coal and wood.

Discomfort is sadly not the only hardship Camp Ashraf has had to endure.  In April this year Iraqi troops stormed the town and opened fire on anyone who tried to resist. Some 36 residents died, including eight women. More than 300 were wounded. “What happened on the 8^th of April is deplorable,” European Union High Representative Catherine Ashton told the European Parliament. “We need a strong united EU response,” she said. Iraq “has a duty to protect the human rights of Ashraf residents”.

The EU has increased diplomatic pressure on the Iraqi regime in recent months.  Some 180 Euro MPs signed a joint declaration in October warning that “the lives of 3,400 Iranian dissidents, including 1000 women, in Camp Ashraf, Iraq are in danger.” If Iraq was allowed to impose its December 31 closure deadline there could be a “large-scale massacre”, they warned. The precedents are not good. Another nine residents were killed in a separate attack in 2009. Dozens have been held and tortured.

The EU prides itself on its common, shared values, such as opposition to the death penalty. It actively exports these values to other nations. If Europe is serious in its desire to become a heavy-hitting diplomatic force it must show determination and oblige the Iraqi Government to abandon its year-end deadline. Europe must also respond to calls for Ashraf residents to be treated as asylum-seekers and resettled in countries where their lives are no longer at risk.

Europe is to a large extent in the driving seat. The US promised to protect Ashraf residents, but this promise did nothing to prevent the killings. And US troops are withdrawing from Iraq at the end of the year. What new atrocities can we expect when they are gone?

EU should weigh on the government of Iraq to revoke the deadline and UN monitors should be placed there so the United National High Commission for Refugees could do its work and be able to transfer the residents to third countries.

Camp Ashraf is of course a small piece in a much larger geopolitical puzzle. Tension between Iran, the US and its allies over Iran’s nuclear weapons programme is rising once again. But Europe must not lose sight of the fact that this is essentially a humanitarian crisis. Camp Ashraf is caught in the crossfire. Its inhabitants made their homes there 25 years ago. Europe has the opportunity to prevent a bloodbath. This must not go down in the history books as the Sarajevo of the Middle East.

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/11/15/sarajavo-style-siege-at-refugee-camp-in-iraq/

McClatchy Newspapers

Since the Nov. 8, 2011, release of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s latest report about Iran’s nuclear program, Tehran has waged an all-out campaign to dismiss the IAEA’s findings, while implicitly threatening the world with a terrorist response.

“Iran will respond with full force to any aggression or even threats in a way that will demolish the aggressors from within,” Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said.

The regime’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said that the report’s findings were dictated by the United States, vowing Iran would not abandon its nuclear agenda.

But on Nov. 11, the IAEA showed letters and satellite imagery to United Nations member states as additional proof that the report is credible. Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said the UN agency’s findings “strongly indicate the existence of a full-fledged nuclear weapons development program in Iran.”

Overwhelming evidence unveils a pattern stretching over years, of covert activities with a significant military component that cannot be explained away for any purpose other than building a nuclear warhead. Despite the IAEA’s definitive conclusion that “Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device,” the Iranian regime continues to claim that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

In like manner, the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism denies all the evidence and claims that it is itself a victim of terrorism. Tehran is responsible for the murder of thousands of Americans since the mullahs came to power in 1979. The regime has supplied its proxies in Iraq with advanced EFP bombs that pierce through armored vehicles; it held American diplomats hostage in Iran for 444 days back in the 1980s; and it blew up the Marine barracks in Lebanon, killing hundreds of Americans, and Khobar Tower in Saudi Arabia, where 19 American servicemen were killed.

There is widespread speculation as to how fast Iran could obtain nuclear weapons. There may never be consensus on that because we don’t have a full picture of what else Tehran has been hiding. But one thing should be clear; the world cannot afford to wait another two years, because it might be just too late to act.

The question is, what can and should be done?

For three decades, Washington’s Iran policy has oscillated between engagement and threats of military action. Given the problematic nature of the latter, engagement has essentially held sway, giving the Iranian regime a golden opportunity to rapidly advance its quest for the bomb.

Eight years ago, the European Union began its negotiations with Iran to halt its uranium enrichment program. Three years ago, President Obama initiated his attempt to unclench the fist of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

As the IAEA report confirms, neither engagement nor sanctions have succeeded in halting Tehran’s nuclear drive. Instead of oscillating between these narrow options, Washington should focus on the Iranian opposition and its struggle to bring about a democratic and non-nuclear Iran.

Iran’s principal opposition movement, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), has been the source of much of the intelligence revealing the existence of multiple nuclear sites scattered across Iran. In 2002, the MEK reported the groundbreaking revelation of the uranium enrichment facility in Natanz. It was also the same group that released valuable intelligence about the regime’s Qods Force, whose notorious activities in Iraq incite violence and support the extremists.

And the MEK was instrumental in the 2009 uprisings in Iran. Its slogans of “death to dictator” and “death to [Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei” became the predominant slogans, and most of those later hanged for their dissent were MEK supporters.

Little can be done to stop Iran from advancing its ambitious nuclear weapons program, unless we factor in the Iranian people and their organized opposition committed to replacing the regime with a democratic, secular, and non-nuclear republic.

Yet the biggest obstacle blocking the option of real democratic change, experts believe, remains the U.S. State Department’s inclusion of the MEK on its terrorist list. This has drawn the ire of senior members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the Select Committee on Intelligence and some 100 members of Congress who co-sponsored a bi-partisan resolution that calls for delisting the MEK immediately in accordance with a federal court order.

Tehran’s apologists argue that if the U.S. takes a tough approach to counter Iran’s nuclear threat, the Iranian people will rally behind the regime’s leaders, including the IRGC. Make no mistake; nothing can mobilize Iran’s population behind its ruthless rulers.

To the contrary, nothing has been more destructive than engagement packaged under different names. Iran’s people are not unified behind the mullahs’ nuclear program; they are united in their anger toward the regime’s rulers, and their deep-rooted desire for democracy and human rights.

It is time for the Obama Administration to wake up to the lessons of the Arab Spring. Dozens of former senior administration officials tasked with keeping America safe, believe that the U.S. must abandon its decades-old policy of engagement with the ruling dictatorship, and recalibrate its policies to accord with the realities of the region. A “Persian Spring” is imminent.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Alireza Jafarzadeh is the author of The Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear Crisis (Palgrave; New York 2008). Jafarzadeh exposed the nuclear sites in Natanz and Arak in 2002. His revelations triggered the first IAEA inspections of the Iranian nuclear sites. He can be reached by email at: jafarzadeh@spcwashington.com.

McClatchy Newspapers did not subsidize the writing of this column; the opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of McClatchy Newspapers or its editors.

http://www.kansascity.com/2011/11/15/3267541/commentary-its-time-to-act-on.html

www.struanstevenson.com

Struan Stevenson, MEP, the President of the Delegation for Relations with Iraq in the European Parliament described the visit by H.E. Massoud Barzani, president of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region as constructive for EU strategic relations with Iraq, and particularly Iraqi Kurdistan and looked forward to these relations being expanded in future.

Struan Stevenson, MEP, the President of the Delegation for Relations with Iraq in the European Parliament discusses the humanitarian crisis with H.E. Massoud Barzani, president of Iraq's Kurdistan Region.

Struan Stevenson commended the political and economic progress of Iraqi Kurdistan under President Massoud Barzani’s leadership and asked for an expansion of economic and political cooperation of the EU and its Member States with Iraqi Kurdistan.

In a meeting with President Barzani and leading members of the KRG, a common desire for continuing progress and improvements in human rights inside Iraq was expressed, together with respect of the rights of ethnic minorities and different religions. To this end, Struan Stevenson said that Kurdistan acts as a shining example to the rest of Iraq in its peaceful environment and tolerance of minorities and different religions.

Commenting after the meeting in Brussels, Struan Stevenson said:

“President Barzani asked for mutual expansion of economic and political cooperation and underscored the need for expanding European investment in Kurdistan and Europe’s role in the democratic process and economic progress in Iraq.

“President Barzani also expressed his long-held view that the Iraqi Government’s current approach to the crisis in Camp Ashraf will not succeed and stressed the need for the tactics to change and in particular for the residents of Ashraf to be treated in a humanitarian way. I pointed out that the Ashraf residents must now be regarded as people of concern to the UN and as bona fide asylum seekers and political refugees in Iraq. I also stressed that the Iraqi government’s deadline for the closure of Ashraf was a hindrance to the work of UNHCR and should be revised without delay to enable the refugee status of the Ashraf residents to be confirmed and their re-settlement to third countries facilitated in line with the wishes of the EU, the UNHCR, the UN Special Envoy to Iraq, Amnesty International, and the US Congress. President Barzani said that he would do everything he could to help in order to find a peaceful resolution to this crisis.”

http://www.struanstevenson.com/media/news-release/kurdistans_president_strikes_a_positive_note_in_brussels/