The Huffington Post
April 6, 2010
By Ali Safavi, Member of Iran’s Parliament in Exile; President of Near East Policy Research

One of the unsubstantiated allegations against the Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK) is that it was involved in the suppression of Iraqi Kurds and Shiites in the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm in 1991. The source of this allegation, which later found its way into a 1994 Department of State report on the MEK,[1] and subsequently in the Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism, is none other than the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS).

The fact is that in the aftermath of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the Iranian regime launched an extensive propaganda campaign alleging that the MEK had played a role in putting down the Kurdish uprising in northern Iraq. The propaganda blitz specifically meant to overshadow Tehran’s dispatching of thousands of troops into Iraq in March and April 1991 to destroy MEK bases close to the Iran-Iraq border.

Surprisingly, despite a palpable dearth of factual and evidential basis, this accusation also acted as one of the justifications for the MEK’s terror listing in the United States. Not only is there not the slightest bit of evidence supporting this accusation, in fact, a plethora of documents and evidence exist, at times offered by prominent Iraqi Kurds and Shiites themselves, that definitively dismiss the allegation.

This is the third in the series of Reality Check posts that address the specific allegations against the MEK.

NEXT WEEK: Resistance Against Tyranny 

“(We) can confirm that the Mujahedeen (sic) were not involved in suppressing the Kurdish people neither during the uprising nor in its aftermath. We have not come across any evidence to suggest that the Mujahedeen have exercised any hostility towards the people of Iraqi Kurdistan.”Iraqi Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari 
There is absolutely no truth to the allegation that the MEK was involved in the crackdown on Iraqi Kurds. The most definitive testament to this fact is a 1999 letter to a court in the Netherlands by Iraq’s present Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, who was at the time the foreign policy spokesman for the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iraq (KDP). He wrote, “(We) can confirm that the Mujahedeen (sic) were not involved in suppressing the Kurdish people neither during the uprising nor in its aftermath. We have not come across any evidence to suggest that the Mujahedeen have exercised any hostility towards the people of Iraqi Kurdistan.”[2]

Four years earlier, an official United Nations document had refuted those allegations, noting that they were part of a well-orchestrated misinformation campaign by the Iranian regime to discredit the MEK. “From our independent investigation and discussion with parties involved, we find these allegations false,” wrote International Educational Development, a non-governmental organization with consultative status at with UN.[3]

In 2001, statements by defectors from the Iranian regime’s Intelligence Ministry confirmed that the propaganda campaign concerning “the MEK’s suppression of the Kurds” was one of the Ministry’s top priorities. In an affidavit to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2001, one such defector, Jamshid Tafrishi, wrote: “My mission was to tell international organizations and foreign governments that the PMOI crushes the Kurdish uprising in Iraq. The plot was conducted under the supervision of Nasser Khajenouri, regime’s agent in the USA. He arranged for me and other agents to be interviewed by an Iranian radio broadcast in Los Angeles so we could air our stories on how the PMOI [MEK] had oppressed the Kurdish people alongside Iraqi forces. Khajenouri further prepared a written brief on the subject on my behalf and sent it to the US intelligence and government agencies and the United Nations.”[4]

This corroborated the conclusions of International Educational Development, which again registered another document with the United Nations in 2001, reiterating its earlier findings that Iranian intelligence services were the source of these bogus allegations.[5]

And in its 2007 Country Reports on Terrorism, even the Department of State expressed doubts about the veracity of the charges concerning the MEK’s actions against Iraqi Kurds by grudgingly diluting its earlier definitive statement in this respect. It wrote, “In 1991, the group reportedly assisted the Iraqi Republican Guard’s bloody crackdown on Iraqi Shia and Kurds who rose up against Saddam Hussein’s regime.”[6]

This was hardly surprising especially after an exhaustive 16-month investigation of each and every MEK member in Iraq by seven different agencies of the US Government acknowledged in 2004 that “there was no basis to charge any member of the group [MEK] with the violation of American law.”[7]

Moreover, in a November 2006 letter to then-US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, Mr. Mohammad Mehdi Hachem, a senior official of the Iraqi Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, expressed concern about the allegations and activities against the MEK, and reiterated the amicable relationship that exists between the people of Iraq and the organization.[8] Among other things, for example, he wrote that MEK members have been law-abiding residents in Iraq for over 20 years. In a separate statement on December of that year, Mr. Hachem emphasized that the “PMOI [MEK] has never acted against the Kurdish people in Iraq, and has not been involved in any suppressive action against them. The rumors spread by the Ministry of Intelligence of Iran are all false and a conspiracy.”[9]

Indeed, had there been any evidence of the MEK’s collusion with the former Iraqi government on any issue, let alone suppressing the Kurds or the Shiites, it would have certainly surfaced in the seven years since the invasion of Iraq considering that forces hostile to the MEK, including those in the current government, have had access to all the documents. In response to a question about the involvement of the MEK in the suppression of the Iraqis, the prominent and senior Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Iyad Jamal ad-Din, Deputy Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Iraq’s Council of Representatives, told the Al-Arabiya television, “I have personally followed up and reviewed many of the files in the intelligence services of the previous government and special security agencies to see whether I could find a single page of evidence, or a photograph or a document that would show that this organization had participated in the suppression of Iraqi. We did not find any such document or evidence that the Mujahedin-e Khalq took part in the crack down against the people of Iraq… In my view, these lies are being disseminated by the Iranian intelligence to tarnish the image of the Mujahedin-e Khalq.”[10]

Of course, this is not the only case where Tehran has tried to blame the MEK for the ill-treatment of the Iraqi Kurds. In October 2005, Mr. Emmanuel Ludot, a French jurist and lawyer in the Counsel of the former Iraqi head of state, unveiled a proposal made to him by the then Iranian regime’s ambassador to France, Sadeq Kharrazi, asking him to attribute the gassing of Iraqi Kurds to the MEK. Mr. Ludot said, “The Iranian ambassador told me [to] say Iranians did not gas the Kurds … [that] this was the work of the MEK.”[11] The Iranian regime has never denied this assertion.

Beyond these indisputable facts, from a historical perspective, this allegation is inconsistent with the MEK’s principled position vis-à-vis the Kurdish minorities in Iran and in Iraq. In other words, just as the MEK has always defended the rights of Iranian Kurds for autonomy within the territorial integrity of Iran [12], it has never harbored the slightest bit of hostility toward Iraqi Kurds.

In 1984, even before the MEK relocated to Iraq, then-head of the Patriotic Union of Iraqi Kurdistan (PUK), and now Iraq’s President, Jalal Talabani, wrote a letter to Massoud Rajavi, President of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), saying in part: “Honorable and dear brother Massoud Rajavi, on behalf of the Patriotic Union of Iraqi Kurdistan (PUK) politburo, I would like to express my greetings and very best wishes to you and other Mujahedin brothers in your just struggle against the reactionary gang of zealots who rule Iran… We are therefore always ready to strengthen our good relationship with the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran.”[13]

Regrettably, some time later, after bowing to pressure from the clerical regime and in order to buy Tehran’s strategic support to secure his political future, Mr. Talabani changed his stance and the PUK went as far as launching armed attacks against the MEK and Iranian dissidents in Iraq. Dozens of MEK members were killed in those unprovoked attacks. It even boasted of handing over MEK members to the Iranian regime who were later executed.[14] The MEK never retaliated, which makes it certainly bizarre for it to be involved in the suppression of the Iraqi Kurds.

Also, from a practical standpoint, the MEK could not have been involved in cracking down on the Iraqi Kurds. Months before the outbreak of the Persian Gulf War, the MEK evacuated all of its bases in the Kurdish areas in the north and in the Shiite regions in the south of Iraq, relocating instead to the central part of the Iran-Iraq frontier, in Diyala Province, where Camp Ashraf is located. The purpose was to refrain from getting embroiled in internal Iraqi affairs.[15] This was a policy to which the MEK has remained strictly committed ever since it made the decision to establish its bases there in 1986. In exchange, Iraqi officials agreed to refrain from meddling in the MEK’s affairs and decisions. In the Zebari letter cited above, he said, “The Mujahedin-e Khalq has its own political agenda in Iran and does not interfere in Iraqi internal affairs.[16]

Similarly, neither did the MEK have any role in events related to the Shiite uprising in south of Iraq. In a letter to then-European Union’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, the Secretary General of the prominent Iraqi Shiite movement, Intifidiya Movement of Sha’baniya, Sami Ghazi al-Assadi, wrote, “The People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran had no participation in suppressing the Shiite movement against the previous government in 1991 and there is no evidence to that; rather it is the invidious claims and rumors by the Iranian regimes agents against them.”[17]

In 2006, in a joint declaration, more than 12,000 Iraqi jurists and lawyers expressed readiness to defend the MEK in any court of law about its 20-year presence in Iraq. The Iraqi jurists testified, “The MEK had no involvement in Iraqi internal affairs and therefore allegations of its involvement in suppression of Iraqi Kurds and Shiites are absolute lies and have been fabricated by the Iranian regime to tarnish the image of the Iranian Resistance.”[18]

And finally, the extensive support for the MEK by Iraqi Shiites during the past five years belies the allegations of MEK involvement in “suppressing” them. In November 2007, some 300,000 Shiites from southern Iraq voiced their support for the MEK and rejected the claims about MEK’s involvement in suppressing the Shiites in Iraq.[19] That support among Shiites swelled to three million by June 2008.[20]

Such bogus allegations against the MEK also shed light on the motivations and legal poverty of the US State Department terror label against the organization. If the MEK was really a terrorist organization, why would the Department risk its credibility by resorting to dubious accusations that are not only unsubstantiated but clearly contradicted by credible sources and evidence?

Endnotes
[1] US Department of State, “People’s Mojahedin of Iran,” prepared at the request of Congress, Section 523 of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 1994 and 1995, Public Law No. 103-236., October 28, 1994. p. 10.
[2] Hoshyar Zebari, letter to M.F. Wijingaarden, attorney in the Netherlands, July 14, 1999. See also, “U.S. Says Iraq-based Iran Opposition Aids Iraq Government,” by Jonathan Wright, Reuters, May 22, 2002. Available at:
http://www.neareastpolicy.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=21&Itemid=30
[3] Implications of Humanitarian Activities for The Enjoyment of Human Rights, written statement submitted by International Educational Development, United Nations Economic and Social Council, Commission on Human Rights, Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, Forty-seventh session, Agenda item 19, E/CN.4/Sub.2/1995/NGO/55, August 22, 1995. Available at: http://www.globalpolitician.com/25756-ncri-mek-pmoi-iran
[4] Jamshid Tafrishi, affidavit to the United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit, submitted in the case PEOPLE’S MOJAHEDIN ORGANIZATION OF IRAN, Petitioner, v. DEPARTMENT OF STATE and Colin L. Powell, Secretary of State, Respondents. No. 01-1465 and No. 01-1476., September 11, 2001. Available at: http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F3/327/327.F3d.1238.01-1476.01-1465.html
[5] Question of the Violation of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in Any Part of the World, written statement submitted by International Educational Development, United Nations Economic and Social Council, Commission on Human Rights, Fifty-seventh session, Agenda item 9, E/CN.4/2001/NGO/51, January 23, 2001. Available at: http://www.globalpolitician.com/25756-ncri-mek-pmoi-iran
[6] 2007 Country Reports on Terrorism, Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, US Department of State, Chap. 6, Terrorist Organizations, April 30, 2008. Available at: http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2007/103714.htm
[7] Douglas Jehl, “U.S. Sees No Basis to Prosecute Iranian Opposition ‘Terror’ Group Being Held in Iraq,” The New York Times, July 27, 2004, p. A8. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/politics/27iran.html?pagewanted=all
[8] Letter by Mohammad Mehdi Hachem to US Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, November 2006.
[9] Statement by Mohammad Mehdi Hachem, December 2, 2006.
[10] Ayatollah Iyad Jamal Ad-Din, interview with Al-Arabiya Television Network, Panorama Program, January 28, 2009.
[11] Emmanuel Ludot, Interview with the French-German Television channel, ARTE, September 27, 2005.
[12] National Council of Resistance of Iran, Plan for the Autonomy of Iranian Kurdistan, adopted November 1983. Available at: http://ncr-iran.org/content/view/32/
[13] Jalal Talabani, letter to NCRI President Massoud Rajavi, March3, 1984, Mojahed Weekly, No. 196, March 29, 1984. Also reprinted in Democracy Betrayed, A Response to the State Department Report on the Mojahedin and the Iranian Resistance, Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, Paris: 2005, p. 128. Available at: www.iran-e-azad.org/english/special/chap8.html
[14] Agence France Presse, dispatch from Tehran, April 13, 1991. Hassan Zolfaqari and Beshar Shabibi, were handed over to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in Qasr-e Shirin (western Iran). See also the report by Mr. Bacre Waly Ndiaye, Special Representative of the United Nations Human Rights Commission to the 49th Session of the Commission, para. 360, p. 89. E/CN.4/1993/46, December 23, 1992. Available at: http://www.extrajudicialexecutions.org/application/media/49%20Comm%20HR%20SR%20Report%20(E-CN.4-1993-46).pdf
[15] Reuters, dispatch from Damascus, March 27, 1991. The only allegation concerning MEK’s involvement in the crackdown on Iraqi Kurds revolves around a single incident in the Iraqi town of Kelar on March 25 1991. Anticipating that the Iranian regime might take advantage of the turmoil resulting from Iraq’s defeat in Operation Desert Storm to attack its bases, the MEK sent a number of messages through the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran – Revolutionary Leadership, to the leaders of the Iraqi Kurds in early March 1991, explaining Tehran’s nefarious plans. The MEK stressed that it did not seek to engage the Iraqi Kurds unless attacked, explaining that the MEK’s presence in Diyala Province, in the central region of the Iran-Iraq border, was its only passage into Iran. Owing to the geographical distance, at no time and at no place did the MEK come into contact with the forces of Massoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iraq. But on March 11, 1991, Talebani’s forces attacked a detachment of MEK units near the city of Tuz, as they were evacuating from one a base further north to Camp Ashraf. The MEK’s unit commander (Reza Karamali) was killed and several others were wounded. On March 25, during large-scale battles between the MEK and the units of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), which had penetrated well into Iraq to attack MEK’s defensive positions near the town of Jalula, a platoon of 19 combatants, riding in four armored vehicles, lost radio contact with the command center. The group lost its way in the unfamiliar terrain, and mistakenly advanced several kilometers north toward the city of Kelar, where they were captured by members of Talebani’s group and the Kurdish Hezbollah (a proxy group of the Iranian regime). Although the MEK immediately acknowledged the error and issued statements to that effect the same day, the Talebani group executed 17 MEK fighters. The other two, Hassan Zolfaqari and Beshar Shabibi, were handed over to the Iranian regime in Qasr-e Shirin (western Iran).
[16] Zebari letter, op. cit.
[17] Letter by the Political Bureau of Intifadiya Movement of Sha’baniya to the European Union’s Foreign Policy Chief, Javier Solana, November 18, 2006.
[18] In March 2006, Iraqi national dailies Az-Zaman, Al-Watan, Al-Haqa’eq, Al-Iraq Al-Yowm and Assyiada published the declaration by 12,000 prominent Iraqi jurists and lawyers. The declaration was also published in a full-page advertisement in The New York Times on April 21, 2006 (p. A19). See also: “Hitting the Mark on the Wrong Iranian Target Doesn’t Help the Cause,” Daniel M. Zucker, Global Politician, February 22, 2006. Available at: www.globalpolitician.com/21625-iran
[19] Amit R. Paley and Sudarsan Raghav, “Muslim Shiite Sheiks Condemn Tehran for Violence in Iraq”, The Washington Post, November 22, 2007. Also reported by CNN.com, “Tribal leader: Evicting Iranian regime is only solution for Iraq,” November 23, 2007. Available at: http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/11/23/iraq.iran/
[20] Arab-language daily, Al-Qabas, Kuwait, June 15, 2008, p. 73.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-safavi/emreality-checkem-mek-sup_b_526627.html

The Huffington Post
March 31, 2010
By Ali Safavi, Member of Iran’s Parliament in Exile; President of Near East Policy Research

The Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK) has figured prominently in policy equations between Tehran and Washington since at least 1985. As recently as June 2007, in talks with the United States over Iraq’s security, the Iranian regime’s ambassador to Baghdad pressed the issue of the MEK and the presence of some 3,400 of its members in Camp Ashraf, Iraq, as one of the most sensitive items on the meeting’s agenda.[1]

Aside from the unsubstantiated and bogus allegations against the MEK — essentially fabricated by Iran’s notorious Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) and recycled by Tehran’s foreign apologists over the past two decades — the issue of MEK’s resorting to armed action against military targets in Iran until summer of 2001 has been cited by some Western government agencies, including the US Department of State, as evidence to invite the designation of the group as “terrorist.” [2]

There is ample evidence to suggest, however, that the terrorist designation of the MEK by the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union had little if anything to do with the nature or conduct of the organization itself, the realm in which the legal criteria of the designation resides. Instead, the label was from the outset politically motivated and a byproduct of the policy of rapprochement with Tehran pursued both by the US and the EU. This suspicion was further confirmed when in 2008 and 2009, the UK[3] and the EU[4], respectively, were forced by their highest courts of law to remove the MEK from their watch lists after wrongly accusing the MEK of terrorism.

At least up until the post-June 2009 election uprisings that swept Iran, many foreign policy circles in the West surmised that the Iranian regime had become a “permanent feature” of the Middle East, and thus rejected the idea of regime change as a palatable policy option, proposing instead rapprochement. That approach, however, exacted a price vehemently demanded by Tehran: labeling the MEK, Tehran’s arch nemesis, as terrorist. Indeed, as British officials involved in the matter acknowledged, “Any decision that… the PMOI should be deproscribed would… undoubtedly be viewed in Iran as a calculated move to interfere in Iranian affairs and destabilise the regime.”[5]

Realpolitik and unsubstantiated claims, however, are not sufficient to justify a terrorist designation. Governments, no doubt, have a right to protect their citizens against the scourge of terrorism, but they are required by law to provide necessary and adequate evidence and factual material to legitimately back a terrorist designation. In the particular case of the MEK, convincing evidence has never been provided. This was clearly demonstrated during the 2006-08 court proceedings in the UK and the EU, where the tribunals, after an exhaustive review of both classified and unclassified materials, not only rejected as “perverse”[6] the terrorist designation of the MEK, but also chastised government agencies for making a mockery of the rule of law in favor of ulterior political motives.[7]

The official legal justificatory grounds for the MEK’s terror label, in addition to its pre-2001 actions inside Iran, include allegations that the organization has an “Islamic-Marxist” ideology (against which I tried to offer convincing evidence in part I of Reality Check posted here on March 2), “supported” the 1979 taking of Americans hostage in Tehran,[8] “killed” several American military and security advisors in Iran in the early 1970s,[9] and was involved in the “suppression” of Iraqi Shi’ites and Kurds in 1991.[10]

Before addressing those specific charges and providing a narrative of the different phases of the MEK’s struggle against the clerical regime since 1979, making an effort to shed light on the provenance of the MEK’s designation in the United States and Europe is critical to understanding whether or not the MEK is in fact a terrorist entity. In the next installment, I will discuss the specific incidents of violence involving the MEK in years past. Readers are welcome to comment on these posts or ask for further clarification.

MEK: Origins of the Terrorist Designation 

“[There] was White House interest in opening up a dialogue with the Iranian government. Top Administration officials saw cracking down on the [MEK], which the Iranians had made clear they saw as a menace, as one way to do so.” ~ Martin Indyk, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs in the Clinton Administration
The allegation of terrorism levied against MEK by the US Department of State has its roots in the Iran-Contra (Irangate) scandal of the mid-1980s, when in exchange for the release of American hostages held in Lebanon by the Iranian regime’s proxies, the Department issued a statement accusing the MEK of “continu[ing] to employ terrorism and violence as standard instruments of their politics.”[11]

If at the time it was unclear as to why the Department of State would so suddenly and strongly lash out at the leading opponents of a regime which the US had been consistently describing as the most active state sponsor of international terrorism, the release of the Tower Commission Report two years later solved the mystery. That report cited a letter by an Iranian go-between, Manouchehr Ghorbanifar, to his US counterpart as saying that one of the nine demands of the Iranian regime from the US was the “(issuance) of an official announcement terming the Mujahedin-e Khalq Marxist and terrorist.”[12]

When the deal with Tehran fell through, the Department of State reversed course and began to formally meet with the MEK, even at the height of the organization’s armed resistance against the clerical regime. [13] In a testimony before the House Europe and the Middle East Subcommittee in April 1987, Assistant Secretary Richard Murphy explained the reasons for that volte face by saying: “I don’t want to overstate our knowledge of the organization… I will very freely admit there were gaps in our knowledge about the organization… We have met with the Mujahedin organization here in Washington… They are a player, and they are hurting in Iran…. We are not boycotting them.”[14]

A decade later, after Mohammad Khatami — wrongly perceived by some in the US as a “moderate” influence within the ruling establishment — became the Iranian regime’s President, the Department under Secretary Madeleine Albright formally designated the MEK as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) on October 8, 1997. Highlighting the political motivations of the move, the very next day, a senior Clinton administration official told the Los Angeles Times, “The inclusion of the People’s Mujahedin was intended as a goodwill gesture to Tehran and its newly elected president, Mohammed Khatami.”[15]

In September 2002, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs during the Clinton Administration, Martin Indyk, told Newsweek, “[There] was White House interest in opening up a dialogue with the Iranian government. Top Administration officials saw cracking down on the [MEK], which the Iranians had made clear they saw as a menace, as one way to do so.”[16]

Four years later, the Wall Street Journal wrote, ” In 1997, the State Department added the MEK to a list of global terrorist organizations as ‘a signal’ of the U.S.’s desire for rapprochement with Tehran’s reformists, says Martin Indyk, who at the time was assistant secretary of state for Near East Affairs. President Khatami’s government ‘considered it a pretty big deal,’ Mr. Indyk says.”[17]

The same paper wrote after the MEK’s victory in its legal battle in the UK in 2008, that, “Iranian officials for years have made suppression of the MEK a priority in negotiations with Western governments over Tehran’s nuclear program and other issues, according to several diplomats who were involved in those talks.”[18]

Notwithstanding the fact that MEK supporters were shut out of the political debate about Iran’s future because of a bogus label, what has been most disturbing in these developments has been the successive administrations’ one-sided and unseemly obsession with sending “goodwill gestures” to a regime that has proven itself as a strategic threat to both Washington and the international community. This obsession denigrated into a blatant kowtow when the Department of State acquiesced to Tehran’s main demand of blacklisting the regime’s arch nemesis, the MEK, in a foolhardy attempt to extract concessions from the mullahs. Needless to say, the policy ramifications of the designation went far beyond the MEK, giving free reins to the murderous rulers in Tehran to crackdown on dissidents at home under the pretext of fighting against terrorism.

The windfall gains of the policy of rapprochement appeared to continue for the Iranian regime even through the George. W. Bush years.

In January 2009, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice overruled the recommendation of the Department’s Coordinator for Counterterrorism and rejected the MEK’s petition to revoke its designation. The New York Times later wrote, “In the Bush administration’s final days, the State Department’s top counterterrorism official, Dell L. Dailey, pushed to have the People’s Mujahedeen removed from the list… Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state at the time, decided to keep the group on the list.”[19] That decision, according to media reports, was prompted by a change of heart in the Bush administration, reflected in a decision to negotiate directly with the Iranian regime over the nuclear issue as well as the desire to establish a US interest section in Tehran.

Across the Atlantic, the MEK’s blacklisting in the UK and the EU was also heavily grounded in similar political (and economic) considerations. In an interview with the BBC radio in 2006, then British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw admitted that the UK designation of MEK was the result of demands made by the Iranian regime. Mr. Straw said, “The very first meeting I ever had with an Iranian Foreign Minister Colonel [Kamal] Kharazi, now over four years ago, I expressed very serious concern about Iran’s continued support for these terrorist organizations at the same time as they were demanding actually successfully of me when I was the Home Secretary that we should ban a terrorist organization MEK that was working against Iran.”[20]

The same year, 35 members of the British Houses of Common and Lords brought a legal challenge against the MEK’s proscription in the UK before the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission, POAC, the specialized tribunal tasked exclusively to review terrorist designations in the UK. In the course of the proceedings, a number of classified documents, later unclassified by the Court, revealed the truth about the ulterior political aims behind the MEK’s designation in the UK.

In one such document, a witness statement submitted to POAC, Benjamin James Fender, a senior Foreign Office and Commonwealth official, made reference to “possible adverse foreign policy consequences were the PMOI [MEK] to be deproscribed.”[21] He added, “The present Iranian regime puts a priority on tough legal and political measures against the PMOI.”[22]

Mr. Fender went on to say, “Iranian Ministers and officials have chosen to discuss the PMOI with their counterparts from the UK and other EU Member States on countless occasions. These exchanges have often taken place in the context of discussions on UK/Iran or EU/Iran relations, terrorism in Iraq…. We have therefore been prepared to exchange information with Iran about PMOI activity in the UK, Iran and Iraq, and to discuss our policy towards the group… There was also the belief that reassuring Iran of our intention to apply the law against the PMOI (among other steps in a variety of fields) would help foster the atmosphere of confidence that would be needed for a successful negotiation.”[23]

The Foreign Service official also reiterated that “continued proscription” of the MEK would demonstrate to the Iranian side that “UK’s … efforts are not contrary to Iranian interests but rather something from which Iran benefits.”[24] He also made the startling revelation that, “During the autumn of 2002 and the spring of 2003, the Iranians were keen to understand the Coalition views on Iraq and possible military action, including how that might affect the PMOI. They expressed concern about the possibility of PMOI attacks on Iran during any military campaign. UK officials reassured their Iranian counterparts that we would take the problem of the PMOI in Iraq seriously.”[25]

These very “assurances” to a regime that would later plan and fund the murder of American and British soldiers were part of a quid pro quo with Tehran that prompted the unprovoked bombing of MEK camps by the US and the UK [26] during the invasion of Iraq. The air strikes led to the death of dozens of MEK members, including a number of women, despite MEK’s publicly and officially declared position of neutrality in the 2003 Iraq war.

The MEK’s terrorist designation by the European Union was also the result of pressure by the Iranian regime and the UK. When the EU compiled its own list of terrorist organizations in 2001, Tehran pressured the EU Presidency, held by Belgium at the time, to blacklist the MEK. Belgium, however, refused to do so. In an interview with the Belgian daily La Libre, Foreign Minister Louis Michel warned, “All necessary measures must be taken so that the fight against terrorism is not mistaken with the fight against obtrusive opposition. And this danger really exists….”[27].

However, when Spain took over the EU Presidency in January 2002, it bowed to pressure from Tehran and designated the MEK. In October 2002, in an interview with the state-run daily, Entekhab, Spanish ambassador to Iran boasted, “As you are aware, Spain was the EU rotating President for the first six months of 2002. There were three issues that Iran wanted to address with the EU. When Spain held EU’s Presidency, the two sides were able to resolve these differences. One of the major issues was including the People’s Mujahedin Organization in the list of terrorist groups by the EU.”[28]

Two weeks later, the official Iranian News Agency, IRNA, added, “Analysts point out that this year the EU took several major steps to improve ties with Iran: it put the MKO [MEK] group-let on its terrorist list…”[29]

This “major” issue was even brought up during the sensitive negotiations between the so-called European Troika (France, Germany and Britain) and the Iranian regime on the nuclear dossier. In a document outlining an EU offer to Tehran to persuade it to abide by the September 18, 2004 resolution of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the European Troika pledged that in return for Iran’s compliance with the offer, they “would continue to regard the MEK (Iranian resistance group) as a terrorist organization.”[30]

In this way, the story of the MEK’s designation, fraught with acknowledgments by officials themselves, reveals how Washington, Brussels, and London decided to blatantly trampled upon even their own laws and values in order to comply with Tehran’s “priority on tough legal and political measures against the MEK.” Completely absent from the picture for any unbiased observer is the MEK’s true goals, beliefs and deeds, distorted through a sophisticated misinformation campaign designed to demonize the group in order to justify dancing with the wolves in Tehran.

Meanwhile the Iranian regime reaped the benefits of having the hands of its biggest enemy tied in the West, suppressing its opponents inside Iran, advancing its export of fundamentalism and terrorism and accelerating its nuclear weapons program.

So, in addition to the legal fiasco, concrete developments of recent memory would suffice to convince even the most ardent advocates of pragmatism inside the Beltway that the policy of rapprochement with Tehran has failed. With the MEK having been already delisted in the UK and the EU, this awareness would necessitate that the remnants of that failed policy also be dispensed with in the US. As such, it is high time for the Obama administration to untie the hands of one of the most serious oppositions to the Iranian regime. That is a reality check Washington cannot afford to ignore, if not for the Iranian people, then for its own citizens who are being threatened by a hostile regime eager to get its hands on a nuclear bomb.

Endnotes:
[1] Jay Solomon and Neil King Jr., “Two Agendas: Why Iran, U.S. Stand Far Apart: Tehran Seeks End to Bid to Destabilize Regime; Washington Wants Insurgent Backing in Iraq to Stop,” The Wall Street Journal, June 25, 2007.
[2] US Department of State, Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, “Country Reports on Terrorism 2008”, Ch. 6, Terrorist Organizations, April 30, 2009, http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2008/122449.htm
[3] The United Kingdom removed the MEK from the Proscribed Organizations List on June 23, 2008. See David Stringer, “Britain Removes Iran Opposition Group From Terror List,” The Associated Press, June 23, 2008. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004479589_apbritainiran.html?syndication=
[4] The European Union followed suit on January 26, 2009. See Philippa Runner, “EU Ministers Drop Iran Group From Terror List,” EUOBSERVER, January, 26, 2009. http://euobserver.com/9/27472
[5] Benjamin James Fender, Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Second Witness Statement to Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission, POAC, p. 4, June 25, 2007.
[6] LORD ALTON OF LIVERPOOL & OTHERS (People’s Mojahadeen Organisation of Iran) v. SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT, Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission (POAC), Judgment, para.360, p. 144, November 30, 2007, http://www.siac.tribunals.gov.uk/poac/Documents/outcomes/PC022006%20PMOI%20FINAL%20JUDGMENT.pdf
[7] Case No: 2007/9516, IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE COURT OF APPEAL APPLICATION FOR PERMISSION TO APPEAL FROM THE PROSCRIBED ORGANISATIONS APPEALS COMMISSION AND IN THE MATTER OF THE PEOPLE’S MOJAHADEEN ORGANISATION OF IRAN, “The Secretary of State for the Home Department v. Lord Alton of Liverpool and Others”, judgment handed down on May, 27, 2008. Para 57, p. 23: “It is a matter for comment and for regret that the decision-making process in this case has signally fallen short of the standards which our public law sets and which those affected by public decisions have come to expect.” http://www.bailii.org/cgibin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2008/443.html&query=The+and+Secretary+and+of+and+State+and+for+and+the+and+Home+and+Department+and+v.+and+Lord+and+Alton+and+of+and+Liverpool+and+Others&method=boolean
[8] US Department of State, “Country Reports on Terrorism 2008”, op. cit.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Hearing at the United States House of Representatives, before the Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East, July 24, 1985. Assistance Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Richard Murphy, testified before the Subcommittee. At the session’s close, he proceeded to read an unsolicited statement about the MEK into the record. His statement read in part: “They [Mujahedin] are militantly Islamic, anti-democratic, anti-American, and continue to employ terrorism and violence as standard instruments of their politics.” This rather abrupt burst of accusations startled the committee members. The Subcommittee Chairman Lee Hamilton surprisingly asked, “You had a section in there on the People’s Mujahedin Organization in Iran. Why do you do that at this time?” Mr. Murphy, replied, “… In this case, I was presented with an issue which the country director involved felt had been inadequately addressed.”
[12] Tower Commission Report, the Full Text of the Presidential Special Review Board, John Tower, Chairman, Edmund Muskie and Brent Scowcroft, members, Bantam Books, New York 1987, page 360.
[13] David B. Ottaway, “U.S. Meets With Iran Opposition Group,” The Washington Post, April 22, 1987. The Post wrote, “The State Department has been meeting with representatives of an Iranian opposition group the department twice has warned Congress about, saying the group has a terrorist history and is strongly anti-American and Marxist. Assistant Secretary of State Richard W. Murphy told the House Foreign Affairs Middle East subcommittee yesterday that ‘we meet, we have met’ with the Mujaheddin-e Khalq or People’s Mujaheddin Organization ‘here in Washington’, and described the group as ‘a player’ in Iran today.”
[14] Hearing at the United States House of Representatives, before the Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East, April 21, 1987. Assistance Secretary of State Richard Murphy testified before the Subcommittee.
[15] Norman Kempster, “U.S. Designates 30 Groups as Terrorists,” Los Angeles Times, October 9, 1997.
[16] Michael Isikoff, “Ashcroft’s Baghdad Connection” Newsweek, September 26, 2002, http://www.pepeace.org/current_reprints/16/Ashcrofts_Bagdhad_Connection.htm.
[17] Andrew Higgins and Jay Solomon, “Strange Bedfellows- Iranian Imbroglio Gives New Boost To Odd Exile Group,” The Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2006. www.iranpolicy.org/ipcInTheNewsArchive.php?id=1&type=1
[18] Marc Champion, “Iranian Dissidents Win U.K. Ruling,” The Wall Street Journal, May 7, 2008. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121018399158474335.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
[19] Mark Mazzetti and Mark Landler, “Iranian Dissidents’ Fate in Iraq Shows Limits of U.S. Sway”, The New York Times, August 2, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/world/middleeast/02policy.html
[20] British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, interview with BBC Radio 4, Today Program, February 1, 2006.
[21] Benjamin James Fender, op. cit. p. 4.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Ibid., pp. 3-4.
[24] Ibid., p. 3
[25] Ibid., p. 7
[26] David S. Cloud, “U.S. Bombs Iranian Fighters On Iraqi Side of the Border,” The Wall Street Journal, April 17, 2003. Available at: http://www.neareastpolicy.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=21&Itemid=30
[27] Louis Michel, Belgian Foreign Minister, interview with La Libre, Brussels, November 10, 2001.
[28] Entekhab daily, October 28, 2002.
[29] Islamic Republic News Agency, IRNA, November 11, 2002.
[30] Preparatory text for European proposals on Iranian nuclear program, Agence France Presse, October 21, 2004

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-safavi/reality-check-understandi_b_520592.html

The Huffington Post
March 2, 2010
By Ali Safavi, Member of Iran’s Parliament in Exile; President of Near East Policy Research

The Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK) was founded in 1965 by three Muslim university graduates and sought to replace the Shah’s dictatorship with a representative government that respects human rights. But after the 1979 revolution, it fell victim to the new dictatorship’s onslaught. So far, it has lost tens of thousands of its members and supporters to the ruling regime, most famously during a massacre in 1988, which Amnesty International has dubbed “a crime against humanity.”[1] Though a Muslim organization, the MEK seeks a secular republic in Iran based on democracy and political pluralism.

Given that despite an unprecedentedly harsh crackdown, the Tehran regime has failed to extinguish the freedom cry in Iran which erupted more than eight months ago, it is imperative to get a better understanding of the organized opposition, whose role in future developments will continue to be of critical importance. In virtue of its significant impact on Iranian affairs over the past 45 years, especially following the 1979 revolution, the MEK has long been targeted by the regime and its foreign apologists with a plethora of accusations meant to vilify the organization and diminish its influence now and in the future.

The purpose of this forum is to dispense with some of these myths originally propagated by Tehran’s intelligence services against the MEK, and also try to respond to various questions regarding the organization and its actions. Readers are welcome to comment on these posts or ask for further clarification.

NEXT WEEK: Mujahedin-e Khalq: Freedom Fighters or Terrorists?****

Mujahedin-e Khalq: “Islamic-Marxists”?

“Masud [Massoud] Rajavi… is the leader of the movement. Its intention is to replace the current backward Islamic regime with a modernized Shiite Islam drawing its egalitarian principles from Koranic sources rather then Marx” ~ Former Undersecretary of State George W. BallOne of the many allegations levied against the MEK has been that it is an “Islamic-Marxist” organization, purportedly combining Marxist philosophy with its proclaimed Islamic ideology.

The MEK was founded in 1965 as a Muslim organization. It saw the society divided between tyranny and liberation forces, and not believers and non-believers. Like most Iranians, its founders sought a secular republic and the establishment of a democracy in Iran. MEK has never endeavored towards an ideological government, be it Islamic or otherwise.

The origins of the “Islamic-Marxist” label date back to the early 1970s, when the Shah’s secret police, SAVAK, sought to erode the organization’s growing popularity among young Iranians. The Iranian scholar Afshin Matin-Asgari described it as “an ingenious polemical label” used by the Shah’s regime to discredit its enemies.[2]

After the Shah’s overthrow in 1979, Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the newly established clerical regime, recycled the Shah’s propaganda relics in his own attempts to alienate a new generation of Iranians who wanted a democratic order. At the forefront of this generation was the MEK, which according to historian Ervand Abrahamian, came into the fore with a “reputation as a modern secular organization.”[3]

The group’s gatherings attracted hundreds of thousands of people. More than half a million people took part in its protest in June 1981.[4] By mid-1981, “the circulation of Mojahed [MEK’s newspaper] had reached 500,000” far surpassing the official newspapers.[5] For Khomeini, this was a serious force to be reckoned with.

To confront the MEK, he alleged that the organization is not truly Islamic. Claiming that it had an “eclectic” ideology, which mixed Islam with Marxism, he called them “the Monafeqin” (literally, “hypocrites”), a derogatory term which is still used by the regime (most notably in their gatherings with the chants of “Death to America, Death to Monafeqin”).

By doing this, Khomeini wanted to pave the way for the violent crack down on the organization’s activities. In other words, his plan was to delegitimize the MEK first on religious grounds and then proceed to eliminate it.

In a 1981 interview, Massoud Rajavi, then MEK’s leader, said: “Every high school student knows that believing in God, Jesus Christ and Muhammad is incompatible with the philosophy of Marxism. … But for dictators like Khomeini, ‘Islamic Marxist’ is a very profitable phrase to use against any opposition. If Jesus Christ and Muhammad were alive and protesting against Khomeini, he would call them Marxists, too.”[6]

In fact, MEK’s history shows a pronounced rejection of the philosophy of Marxism. In late 1979, Massoud Rajavi presented the ideological viewpoints of the MEK in a series of lectures in Tehran University entitled “Comprehending the World,” later published in a 15-volume book. The lectures were meant to clearly demarcate the MEK’s Islamic ideology against Khomeini’s fundamentalist interpretation of Islam on the one hand and Marxism on the other.[7]

According to Syracuse University professor Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Rajavi provides the MEK’s critique of the limitations of a host of “isms” such as scholasticism, positivism, pragmatism, scientism, empiricism, and rationalism. But Rajavi saves his most extensive critical commentary for Marxist materialistic epistemology. The chief target of the lectures was the Russian biochemist Aleksander Ivanovich Oparin (1894-1980), whose theory on the origin of life was first formulated in 1922. By subjecting the materialistic doctrines of Oparin and a host of other orthodox Marxist thinkers to a philosophical critique, the MEK hoped to challenge the vigorous presence of Marxism within Iranian intellectual circles. The group remained skeptical of Marxism’s philosophical postulates and rejected the latter’s cardinal doctrine of historical materialism. It held firm to the beliefs in the existence of God, revelation, the afterlife, the spirit, salvation, destiny, and the people’s commitment to these intangible principles.[8]

So, clearly, the MEK’s is not Marxist. If it were, Khomeini would have been able to easily eradicate the organization. But, in fact, in virtue of its ideology which had its roots in a Muslim country, the MEK survived Khomeini’s ideological onslaught, which incidentally eliminated every other opponent, including Marxists, from the political arena at the time.[9]

The MEK’s ideological stance also guaranteed its complete independence from other political powers like the Soviet Union. Precisely because of such emphasis on independence and freedom, Marxist organizations like the pro-Moscow Tudeh Party vehemently spurned the MEK.[10]

The Tudeh leaders’ unconditional backing of Khomeini, part of a policy dictated by the Soviet KGB, led them to describe the MEK as “a bastion of liberalism and imperialism.” The Tudeh Party described the MEK’s actions during those years as American conspiracies, and many MEK supporters later executed on Khomeini’s orders were wrapped in American flags before burial.

In his book, The Center of the Universe: The Geopolitics of Iran, Graham E. Fuller noted that the Mojahedin’s Islamic orientation was a major impediment to the Soviets’ effort to gain influence within the organization: “The Soviets in the past have also been interested in other leftist movements such as the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (‘The People’s Holy Warriors’) but had almost no success in establishing any influence over it because of that group’s own suspicions of Moscow and its at least nominal commitment to Islam.” [11]

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, especially after the Bolshevik victory in Russia, Iran’s northern provinces like Gilan and Mazandaran turned into the mainstay of the pro-Moscow Communist Tudeh Party. Marxism further gained momentum among Iranian youths and intellectuals after Marxist-inspired movements sprang up in Africa and Latin America in the latter half of the century.

Against this backdrop, the MEK’s arrival into the political scene, as the first democratic Muslim organization in contemporary Iran, changed the landscape completely. Intellectuals and youths now felt their ideals revived in an organization with potential mass appeal that could materialize their democratic desires. Following the 1979 revolution, the MEK’s growth proved that earlier predictions about its widespread appeal were indeed true.

People in the northern provinces, for example, began to embrace the MEK’s Islamic ideology on a wide scale. Roughly a year after the Revolution, more than 300,000 people from the city of Rasht in Gilan province gathered in a stadium to hear MEK’s leader Massoud Rajavi speak. The rising tide of support for the MEK in former Tudeh strongholds, helped increase the Marxist and Communist organizations’ enmity towards the MEK. At the same time, the MEK’s tolerant and democratic interpretation of Islam alienated and threatened Khomeini’s fundamentalist clique. This explains why the Communist Tudeh and the ostensibly Islamic Khomeinists quickly forged an unexpected and ironic alliance against the MEK.

In a 1979 report from Tehran, the Washington Post wrote about the MEK’s “large public following,” adding that the “Mujahideen owe much of their impact to their unquestioned religious credentials, which make them acceptable — if sometimes only barely — to Khomeini’s followers in contrast to the Marxists, Maoists, Trotskyites and other atheist splinter groups.”[12]

The MEK’s Islamic ideology, however, is also sharply distinct from the fundamentalist Islamic ideology of the likes of Khomeini and the regime’s terrorist proxies in the region. Its interpretation of Islam is one which gives solid ideological grounds for embracing science and modernity, and advancing modern social causes such as gender equality, participatory democracy and popular sovereignty. Currently, the entire leadership council of the MEK is comprised of women.

The MEK is impenetrable against fundamentalist propaganda, since it challenges Islamic extremism not from the position of “enemies of Islam,” but as committed Muslims. Blessed with the most effective and practical ideological and cultural weapon, the MEK has emerged as the antithesis to the fundamentalist and extremist ideology haunting the Middle East under the veneer of Islam. Three decades ago, former Undersecretary of State George Ball chastised Western press for characterizing the MEK as Marxist. He wrote, “The sloppy press habit of dismissing the Mujahedeen as ‘leftists’ badly confuses the problem. Masud [Massoud] Rajavi… is the leader of the movement. Its intention is to replace the current backward Islamic regime with a modernized Shiite Islam drawing its egalitarian principles from Koranic sources rather then Marx.”[13]

Endnotes:
[1] Fear of Ill-treatment/possible prisoner of conscience, Public AI Index: MDE 13/128/2007, Amnesty International, November 2, 2007, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE13/128/2007/en/d6ea449a-d359-11dd-a329-2f46302a8cc6/mde131282007en.pdf
[2] Afshin Matin-Asgari, 2004, “From social democracy to social democracy: the twentieth-century odyssey of the Iranian Left“. In: Cronin, Stephanie, editor. Reformers and Revolutionaries in Modern Iran: New Perspectives on the Iranian Left: London and New York: Routledge Curzon. pp. 37-64 (cited originally in Iran Policy Committee, White Paper, Sept. 13, 2005, p. 42. http://www.iranpolicycommittee.org).
[3] Ervand Abrahamian, The Iranian Mojahedin, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 187
[4] Ibid. p. 218
[5] Ibid. p. 207.
[6] Massoud Rajavi, interview, “We Are on the Offensive,” Time Magazine, September 14, 1981.
[7] According to the French daily Le Monde, “some 10,000 people presented their admission cards to listen for three hours to the lectures […and additionally] the courses [were] recorded on video cassettes and distributed in 35 cities. They [were] also published in paperback and sold by the hundreds of thousands of copies.” Le Monde, Paris, 29 March 1980.
[8] Mehrzad Boroujerdi, “Iranian Intellectuals and the West: The Tormented Triumph of Nativism“, Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1996. pp. 117-9 (cited originally in Iran Policy Committee, White Paper, September. 13, 2005, p. 42. http://www.iranpolicycommittee.org).
[9] In March 1980, Le Monde wrote: “The daily Jomhouri Islami has devoted entire pages to writings against the Mojahedin and its leadership. On the eve of the election, hundreds of thousands of newsletters abounding in vituperations were distributed. In one, Mr. Rajavi is described as a SAVAK agent. Doubtless, the fundamentalist clergy consider these leftist Muslims a greater enemy than the Marxist organizations, easily discredited with the label of atheist.” (Le Monde, Paris, March 29, 1980).
[10] Ervand Abrahamian, a US historian, writes that the communist Tudeh and Majority faction of the Fedayeen “pleaded with the Mojahedin to join their Anti-Imperialist Democratic Front; to remember that the United States was still Iran’s main enemy; to avoid allying with pro¬-Western liberals,” adding that the Minority faction of the Fedayeen (still opposed to the regime) accused the Mojahedin of “flirting with pro-American liberals such as Bazargan.” The author writes that “the Mojahedin rebuffed the pleas and criticism.” Op. cit., p. 215.
[11] Graham E. Fuller, “The Center of the Universe: The Geopolitics of Iran,” (Westview Press: 1991), p. 179.
[12] Jonathan Randal, “Iranian Leftists Emerge From Isolation,” The Washington Post, 3 December 1979.
[13] George W. Ball, Op-Ed, “Iran’s Bleak Future,” The Washington Post, August 19, 1981.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-safavi/mujahedin-e-khalq-pmoimek_b_482770.html