According to the Saudi Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) accused Raisi, president since August 2021, of committing crimes of “torture and murder” against Iranian opponents in the late 1980s when he was at the Public Prosecutor’s office.
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The NCRI, which says it has support from 50 members of Congress*, called on the US administration to prevent Raisi from visiting the US and delivering a speech before the United Nations General Assembly next September.
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The National Council of Resistance of Iranis an Iranian political organization based in France and Albania. The organization is a political coalition calling to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran. The coalition is made up of different Iranian dissident groups, with its main member being the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK).
It was here that the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) conducted training, beginning in 2005, for members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a dissident Iranian opposition group known in the West as the M.E.K. The M.E.K. had its beginnings as a Marxist-Islamist student-led group and, in the nineteen-seventies, it was linked to the assassination of six American citizens. It was initially part of the broad-based revolution that led to the 1979 overthrow of the Shah of Iran. But, within a few years, the group was waging a bloody internal war with the ruling clerics, and, in 1997, it was listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department. In 2002, the M.E.K. earned some international credibility by publicly revealing—accurately—that Iran had begun enriching uranium at a secret underground location. Mohamed ElBaradei, who at the time was the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear monitoring agency, told me later that he had been informed that the information was supplied by the Mossad. The M.E.K.’s ties with Western intelligence deepened after the fall of the Iraqi regime in 2003, and JSOC began operating inside Iran in an effort to substantiate the Bush Administration’s fears that Iran was building the bomb at one or more secret underground locations. Funds were covertly passed to a number of dissident organizations, for intelligence collection and, ultimately, for anti-regime terrorist activities. Directly, or indirectly, the M.E.K. ended up with resources like arms and intelligence. Some American-supported covert operations continue in Iran today, according to past and present intelligence officials and military consultants.
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Five Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated since 2007. M.E.K. spokesmen have denied any involvement in the killings, but early last month NBC News quoted two senior Obama Administration officials as confirming that the attacks were carried out by M.E.K. units that were financed and trained by Mossad, the Israeli secret service. NBC further quoted the Administration officials as denying any American involvement in the M.E.K. activities. The former senior intelligence official I spoke with seconded the NBC report that the Israelis were working with the M.E.K., adding that the operations benefitted from American intelligence. He said that the targets were not “Einsteins”; “The goal is to affect Iranian psychology and morale,” he said, and to “demoralize the whole system—nuclear delivery vehicles, nuclear enrichment facilities, power plants.” Attacks have also been carried out on pipelines. He added that the operations are “primarily being done by M.E.K. through liaison with the Israelis, but the United States is now providing the intelligence.” An adviser to the special-operations community told me that the links between the United States and M.E.K. activities inside Iran had been long-standing. “Everything being done inside Iran now is being done with surrogates,” he said.
It may not be illegal to participate in a Rajavi rally or to attach one’s name to a ghost written Mujahedin-e-Khalq piece in the same way that Gen. Mike Flynn did with Erdoganists, but it does signal an embrace of greed above principle and a willingness to sell out the freedom agenda. Giuliani’s transformation of himself from America’s mayor to a figure of ridicule is an extreme example, but his embrace of a wacky cult was an early warning sign of his true character. People of both parties should view attendance at future Mujahedin-e-Khalq rallies in the same way — as a barometer of corruption that neither Republicans nor Democrats should accept in their leadership. Mujahedin-e-Khalq Barometer of Corruption
The MEK was originally an armed group opposed to the Iranian monarchy before the revolution, and during that period it was also responsible for killing several Americans.
The MEK has not changed. They remain at their core the same militant and extremist organization they have been for decades. Cheering on the MEK is as crazy and irresponsible as endorsing the Lord’s Resistance Army or defending the Khmer Rouge, and it is not an accident that the group has sometimes been likened to the latter. Unfortunately, because they hate the Iranian government and make the right noises about democracy, they are given a free pass and Iran hawks embrace them as allies. In the past, participants in MEK summits have ranged from Newt Gingrich, John Bolton, and Rudy Giuliani to Joe Lieberman, Tom Ridge, and John McCain. This year it included former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy, the current Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Menendez, his fellow New Jerseyan Sen. Cory Booker, and many other members of Congress. The speakers routinely declare that the MEK and its allies are the “real” opposition working towards “secular democracy,” they denounce the Iranian government, and they call for some form of regime change.
Some skeptics might say Raisi is under US sanctions for his involvement in the 1988 mass execution of prisoners. In the anti-Iranian folklore, hundreds of detainees were executed. But few would know what really happened.
It is no secret that Washington encouragedSaddam Hussein to wage his war on Iran, taking advantage of the apparent disorder and isolation of the new Islamic government in Tehran —then at loggerheads with the US over the seizure of the American embassy —and of the demoralisation and dissolution of Iran’s regular armed forces.
But the revolutionary regime fought back and Saddam was finally forced to seek a peace agreement with Iran. It was a brutal war. Estimates of total casualties range from 1-2 million.
Now, Trump’s defeat in the presidential election is causing the circle of lobbyists and supporters of terrorism to collapse. Extremists in the Middle East, such as the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Mohammed bin Salman took advantage of Trump’s presidency to beat the drums for war more vigorously while diminishing opportunities for dialog and a world free of violence.
Trump’s defeat and the Capitol riots were not simply the failure of one candidate. They indicated the defeat of Trumpism. This bellicose and anti-peace ideology must not influence future developments around the world. Trump’s circle of friends and supporters are a threat to democracy, world peace and security. This anti-peace circle with its destructive ideology has no place in the post-Trump world.
This November 28th is the 10th anniversary of the assassination of leading Iranian nuclear scientist Majid Shahriari, whose death represented a particularly disgraceful episode in the attempts made by Israel’s Mossad intelligence service to interfere with and damage Iran’s peaceful nuclear research program. Shahriari, who reportedly had no connection to any possible military applications in his research, was the most prominent of the four Iranian nuclear scientists and technicians who were killed by terrorists between 2010 and 2012. He was a leader in the development of Iran’s atomic power research and development program and was internationally respected for his expertise in quantum physics and neutron transport.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a key Iranian nuclear official, has been assassinated in Tehran. While it’s unclear as of this writing who is responsible, Israel has assassinated numerous Iranian nuclear scientists in the past, but had, until now, been unable to get to the highly protected Fakhrizadeh.
Some Iranian reports claim it was a suicide attack, which would reduce the likelihood of Israeli operatives carrying out the attack, but the bullet holes in Fakhrizadeh’s car cast doubt on that.
Israel has in the past, however, used operatives from the the MEK — a cult-like Iranian exile group recently removed from the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations — to conduct attacks in Iran. The MEK was the first group to introduce suicide assassinations to Iran.
Economic warfare, cyber warfare and assassinations too. Since 2010, there have been at least three assassinations and one attempted assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists. Two senior officials in the Obama administration revealed to NBC news that the assassinations were carried out by the MEK. They also confirm that the MEK was being financed, armed and trained by the Israeli Mossad and that the assassinations were carried out with the awareness of the United States. The State, too, has secretly trained and supported the MEK.
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