Using Cult Leader Maryam Rajavi To Derail Nuclear Talks Backfires

With the P5+1 nuclear negotiations with Iran due to resume on Monday (5th May), American anti-Iranian hardliners have been working hard to destroy or disrupt any rapprochement between Iran and the US. As an example, The Hill newspaper, written for the political community in Washington D.C. to reflect business and lobbying views, has been persuaded to give webspace to blogs directly promoting the notorious MEK cult. The blogs, written by Soona Samsami, a member of ‘Saddam’s Private Army’ (aka MEK) and a Briton, Lord Alton (a long time MEK advocate presumably pulled in to give the illusion that this is not an exclusively American plan), are part of a pattern of activity deliberately designed to disrupt or destroy any rapprochement between the US and Iran.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen with Mojahedin Khalq (Rajavi cult) members

An article (below) by Anne Singleton reveals that these anti-Iranian hardliners in the USA, headed by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, already failed in a provocative bid to bring the Mojahedin Khalq’s second-in-command Maryam Rajavi to the US to speak in Washington to coincide with the nuclear talks. Such a visit could have only one purpose; the hope that Iran would take offence and walk out of the talks.

But anyone even remotely familiar with the way in which the view of Iran’s mainstream political establishment toward the MEK has evolved over the past twenty years will understand that this is a futile hope; sure the MEK is a terrorist organisation, but one that has long passed its sell-by date as an actual threat to Iran. (Although Iranian hardliners are just as keen as their American counterparts to exploit the MEK to foment enmity and prevent progress.) The Rajavis, and indeed the MEK itself, are essentially political lightweights who are only able to attract notice through well-paid publicity stunts like that in The Hill.

Rather than causing the talks to fail, the other P5+1 countries would see clearly that America has been reduced to a publicity stunt to gain leverage. Who wins then except Iran?

This is the article by Anne Singleton of Iran Interlink:

Rajavi’s visa application challenges America’s stance on terrorism

There are rumours that Mojahedin Khalq leader Massoud Rajavi is contemplating whether and where it would be safe for him to resurface after going to ground during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But in Europe his wife, Maryam Rajavi, is herself keen to expand her reach. According to a source inside the organisation, Maryam Rajavi has recently been ‘encouraged’ to apply for a visa to the United States of America. Maryam is currently based in Auvers-sur-Oise just outside Paris, from where the MEK plans and supports its various acts of violence including aiding the insurgency in Iraq. From here she has been able to exploit the lack of effective oversight in the European Parliament in Brussels to join with anti-Iran politicians in their drive to prevent any rapprochement between western governments and Iran, and to support a level of violence and chaos in the region which benefits Israel. With no other tools at their disposal, neoconservatives and the Israeli lobby have spent years using the MEK – at arms length – to pursue their virulent, provocative campaign to keep the two sides apart. (Matched equally of course by former president Ahmadinejad’s calculated provocations; both sides playing the same game with different footballs.)

Maryam Rajavi’s application for a US visa is embedded in the context of this deliberate  animosity.   Certainly because the European Parliament has no foreign policy teeth, Maryam Rajavi tried for over a decade to obtain a visa to visit the UK to promote this agenda; even unsuccessfully using private health treatment as an excuse. Either the system of border control in the UK is more rigorous than it is rumoured to be, or the UK government considers Maryam Rajavi persona non grata. Either way – or both – she has not been welcome in the UK.

But the efforts of MEK backers like MEP Struan Stevenson failed to make an impact. The successful P5+1 nuclear talks with Iran in November 2013 have put rapprochement, no matter how difficult, back on the agenda. Anti-Iran advocates and promoters have been forced to try a new tack – attack Iran’s record on human rights. Again, at the forefront of this push is the MEK. Preparations to use the MEK have been in train for some time. The group’s US presence has been carefully managed since 2009 when Iraq moved to expel the MEK from its terrorist base there. There has been a concerted, well funded campaign to whitewash the group’s past and pass it off as a democratic, feminist opposition group. Fortunately, only the MEK’s western backers have convinced themselves there is some truth to this assertion, and this comes at a price – speaking fees paid to them range from $25-60,000 each time.

In September 2012 Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, reached an accommodation with the MEK over its continued occupation of this base, Camp Ashraf, and removed the MEK from the US terrorism list. By early 2013 the MEK had opened an office in Washington and registered, under its pseudonym the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), as a lobbying group. Interestingly, registration as a lobby group includes a declaration that no money is provided by a foreign government, which raises the question as to where the MEK gets its money within the USA. Previous claims that wealthy Iranian expatriates have backed the MEK’s massive expenditure are unrealistic and in any case have never been backed by any evidence.

Instead, we can join up more than a few dots by considering the MEK’s current place in American foreign policy and linking this back to its previous position as described above. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who is Chair of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa has been a long time supporter of the MEK, and recently described ‘her friend’ Maryam Rajavi as a human rights advocate – a description which is nonsense to American-Iranians.

In pursuit of an agenda to prevent rapprochement, hardliners (I mean neoconservatives) in America surely aimed to slip Maryam Rajavi into Washington during the next round of nuclear negotiations next week (5-9 May). On the heels of the controversy over denial of a visa to Iran’s appointed head of mission at the United Nations in New York, this would indeed have been a poke in the eye to goad Iran with. But whatever incentives have been offered by Ros-Lehtinen to John Kerry to nod through this visa application, the US Secretary of State will no doubt have lent an ear to the voices of the other members of the P5+1 group. It would mean that, after Saddam Hussein, the United States would be the only government in the world which has directly supported the MEK. It would mean that the other members of this group would drift further and further away from the US agenda, and it would mean that Iran would make a net gain rather than the US. Fortunately this time the administration has not fallen into Ros-Lehtinen’s honey trap. But who knows what may happen in future.

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