Friendly fire and the US in Iran

Friendly fire and the US in Iran

By Neda Bolourchi


In recent months, the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) and its attempts to prove that the Islamic Republic of Iran intends to develop nuclear weapons garnered widespread media coverage and speculation. While bringing forth a modicum of new information, the attention fails to illuminate just how dangerous the MEK could be to the United States.

Grappling in Iraq, the Bush administration now faces an analogous yet graver situation in the Islamic Republic. In the years leading up to the Iraq war, Ahmad Chalabi led the exiled Iraqi National Congress. In courting Bush officials like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz to stoke the war flames in Iraq, Chalabi materialized defectors who affirmed suspicions about Saddam Hussein's ethereal weapons of mass destruction. Chalabi then secured administration support by seducing it with visions of Iraqis showering American liberators with flowers and a quick handover of a well-ordered Iraq from US troops to his Free Iraqi Fighters.

Today, Maryam Rajavi, the so-called president-elect of the MEK's National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), conjures up the same desert visions for Iran.

Like the case of Chalabi, who offered information on the seemingly impenetrable Iraq, reliance on Rajavi and her supporters superficially makes sense. Given the US's lack of human intelligence inside the Islamic Republic's government, supporting the MEK would naturally appeal to the US administration as a means to quickly develop and install agents who can provide reliable information regarding the Islamic Republic's nuclear advancements.


The MEK even appears to fit the bill better than Chalabi in many respects. As an Iranian opposition group with members inside and outside the country, the MEK can utilize its nativist connection to seamlessly merge with countrymen without fear of being detected by foreign accents, mannerisms or characteristics.

Moreover, the MEK is the largest and the best-organized Iranian opposition group, with realistic estimates between 6,000 to 10,000 fighters, members and supporters combined. More importantly, the MEK demonstrated its ability to deliver reliable information when it revealed, on August 14, 2002, that the Islamic Republic possessed an advanced nuclear program that included facilities at Natanz and Arak.

The MEK now finds support within parts of the American government as a "third option". Such support is built on the fallacy that the MEK can not only provide information, but also enjoys enough popular support so that diplomacy and direct military action can be skirted. By lobbying to remove the MEK from the US's list of foreign terrorist organizations and considering the group as leverage to destabilize, overthrow, and/or replace Tehran's clerical government, supporters ignore the unsavory history of the MEK.


And that puts the United States, its citizens and its interests in grave danger.

Under the Bill Clinton administration, the State Department placed the MEK on its terrorist organization list in 1997 as a conciliatory gesture to the then newly elected Mohammed Khatami moderates. In justifying its decision, the State Department used several acts of violence committed against Americans to justify its actions.

These acts included the November 1971 attempt to kidnap the American ambassador, as well as the 1972 bombings of the offices belonging to Pepsi-Cola, General Motors, the Hotel International, the Marin Oil Company, the Iranian-American Society and the US Information Office. Over the next three years, the MEK robbed six banks, assassinated the deputy chief of the US Military Mission (Colonel Lewis Hawkins), killed the chief of the Tehran police, killed five American civilians and/or military advisers, attempted to assassinate the chief of the US Military Mission in Iran (General Harold Price), and bombed the offices of Pan-American Airlines, Shell Oil Company, British Petroleum, El Al and British Airways. [1]


In a military tribunal in 1972, MEK leader Massoud Rajavi explained such acts of violence by premising that the future of Iran depended on armed resistance.

Blaming most of the world's problems on imperialism, Rajavi insisted that "American imperialism" was the main enemy of Iran because the United States conducted the 1953 coup d'etat that overthrew the then prime minister, Mohammad Mossadeq. [2] In retaliation, the Shah attempted to discredit the group by labeling the mujahideen as "Islamic Marxists" and by claiming that Islam merely served as a cover to hide the group's Marxist ideology.

In response, the MEK declared its respect for Marxism "as a progressive social philosophy" but stated that "their true culture, inspiration, attachment and ideology was Islam". [3] Attempting to clarify its position, the MEK later published an article declaring that


[T]he regime is trying to place a wedge between Muslims and Marxists ... Of course, Marxism and Islam are not identical. Nevertheless, Islam is definitely closer to Marxism than to Pahlavism. Islam and Marxism contain the same message for they inspire martyrdom, struggle, and self-sacrifice. Who is closer to Islam: the Vietnamese who fight against American imperialism or the Shah who helps Zionism? Since Islam fights oppression it will work together with Marxism which also fights oppression. They have the same enemy: reactionary imperialism. [4]

With this history, news that the MEK engaged coalition forces during Operation Enduring Freedom should not be surprising. [5] With their obvious ideological differences, the US and MEK have been separately battling the Islamic Republic of Iran for about the past 25 years. Now, however, the MEK and its supporters within the American government want to temporarily put aside such differences to bring about regime change.

Intelligence sources, though, are quick to note that the information the MEK/NCRI provides is only sometimes correct.

For example, on September 16, the group's "spokesman", Alireza Jafarzadeh of Strategic Policy Consulting, a corporation viewed as established to circumvent US laws prohibiting the MEK/NCRI's existence on American soil, proffered that the Islamic Republic had secretly built an underground tunnel-like facility deep in the mountains of the Parchin military complex, in order to transfer secret nuclear components and conduct other activities related to a supposedly vibrant nuclear weapons program.


The tunnels allegedly house secret "military-nuclear factories" and serve as storage space. Diagrams that were produced appear to show that the tunnels are supplied with water, electricity and ventilation, providing a suitable and seemingly extensive working space deep underground. Jafarzadeh claims that Iranian officials decided to construct the tunnels in response to continuing leaks regarding the country's nuclear activities, and that they serve to prevent the easy destruction of essential facilities by US "bunker-busting" munitions.

Yet neither a direct inquiry into the credibility of the statement nor confirmation from reliable sources seems to exist. Given that American satellites would be able to detect the mass movement and transit required to perform the alleged tunneling activities, and with access given again to international nuclear inspectors, additional skepticism is in order.

In much the same manner that the American intelligence community questioned the credibility of Chalabi over his allegations regarding Iraq, it is rightfully wary of the MEK.

More- http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GK18Ak02.html