Iraqi government to expel Cheney's terrorists

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People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran - SourceWatch
On Cheney, Rumsfeld order, US outsourcing special ops, intelligence to Iraq terror group, intelligence officials say
The State Department says MEK is a terror group.
mparent7777+MEK
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Original in Arabic

Machine translation

26/04/2007

Tehran - The Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari Following talks Wednesday with his Iranian counterpart Manouchehr Mottaki in Tehran that the Iraqi government has decided to expel the Iranian opposition Mujahideen Khalq from Iraq. Zebari was quoted as saying at a joint press conference held with Mottaki, "that the Iraqi government has formed a committee to ensure the implementation of this resolution." He explained, "talked with a number of countries, including European countries to accept elements of this" group after being discharged from Iraq. The opposition group exists in Iraq before the occupation by the American forces, but the Americans have allowed the group to stay in Iraq. Replying to a question about the Iranian diplomats arrested in Arbil Zebari said that "the Iraqi government will make its utmost efforts for the release of these diplomats and hopes to end this problem and to return to their homeland soon."

Enemies at the borders

Right Web | Profile | Iran Policy Committee: "...the IPC paper maintains that the Bush administration should find a role for “the Iranian opposition in Iraq to build a national compact among the Iraqi factions.” For the IPC, the “Iranian opposition in Iraq” is represented by the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), a group that has been identified by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist group. "

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An explosion in the south-eastern Iranian city of Zahedan should give pause for thought about wider instability in the Middle East.

February 14, 2007 5:17 PM

Ian Black

It's bombs in Baghdad that tend to hit the headlines these days, but a deadly explosion in the south-eastern Iranian city of Zahedan should give pause for thought about wider instability in the Middle East, who is targeting whom and why.

Reports from the scene, close to the Pakistani border, confirmed at least 11 revolutionary guards killed by a car bomb that destroyed their bus. Iran's official media reported that the attack had been claimed by a Sunni group called Jundullah (Soldiers of God), which Tehran has linked both to al-Qaida and the Baloch insurgency in Pakistan. Zahebad is the capital of the province where Iran's own Baloch minority is concentrated.

Predictably, given current tensions over Iraq and Iran's nuclear ambitions, an official Iranian source was quick to charge that the attack had been perpetrated by a group "with support from the US."

It's hard to be certain about the truth of these claims in the swirl of propaganda and misinformation that surrounds such incidents, always grist to the mill of conspiracy theorists. But there is common sense in the view of one strategic analysis website that this is part of a much wider conflict.

"The US-Iranian standoff over Iraq has reached a high level of intensity," commented (subscription only) Stratfor, supplier of intelligence to the international business community. "While the hard-line rhetoric and steps toward negotiations absorb the media's attention, a covert war being played out between Iran on one side, and the United States and Israel on the other, will escalate further. While Israel appears to be focused on decapitating Iran's nuclear programme through targeted assassinations, the United States has likely ramped up support for Iran's variety of oppressed minorities in an attempt to push the Iranian regime toward a negotiated settlement over Iraq."

Much hangs on that tentative word "likely".

Jundullah has been blamed in the past for kidnappings and killings in this wild border area, where drug-smuggling is a big preoccupation for the Iranian security forces. It was accused last year of killing 12 people as well as a security guard protecting the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The alleged al-Qaida connection also makes nonsense of the occasional suggestion in the west that Tehran is somehow in cahoots with Osama bin Laden.

It is not the first time that Iran has linked trouble in its border regions to its enemies. Tehran regularly accuses the US and Britain of fomenting separatism in Khuzestan, the oil-rich, ethnic Arab majority area in the south-west. That was where, on the eve of the 1980 war, Saddam Hussein backed the young men who took over the Iranian embassy in London - triggering the famous siege by the SAS in 1980.

And there have been unsubstantiated claims that the US is using the Iranian exile group the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK) - banned as a terrorist group in the US and EU - as a proxy to mount attacks in both Baluchistan and Khuzestan.

Iran's Balochs form part of the country's 9% Sunni Muslim minority, so it was heartening to see a swift appeal from a local religious leader to avoid sectarian revenge attacks. Sunni Saudi Arabia, banging the drum over the "Shia crescent" and rising Iranian influence in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, has repeatedly made clear in recent days that fomenting sectarianism can cut both ways. The Zahedan bombings might have been an illustration of that point.

Ian Black is currently the Guardian's leader writer on foreign affairs and has previously been its European editor in Brussels (2000-2004), diplomatic editor in London (1993-2000) and Middle East correspondent based in Jerusalem. (1984-1993).

Another Curveball?

November 21, 2006

From a fantastic interview(video at theend of this article) with investigative god Sy Hersh, the most important things to take away are, somewhat paraphrased by me:

1). Iran is not off the table, and certainly not off the agenda as far as the OVP is concerned. Which jives with what I have reported. The question, however, remains focused on just how much pressure Gates will be able to put on the LAI (Let's Attack Iran) gang.

2). Iran is no where near nuclear ready or remotely close to being a threat to the US or its neighbors. This jives with what many experts have said, including the head of homeland Negroponte, as well as the AIEA, and UN inspectors. The CIA's own reporting that this is the case in Iran is also interesting, not because of the report, but because someone felt strongly enough to leak it and did so because the OVP is once again putting pressure on Langley to come up with something more supportive of their policy. That is to say, to "fix the facts around the policy."

3). The Israelis have apparently found a new curve-ball and are funneling his intelligence through DOD into the OVP, bypassing the CIA, again. This jives with what I have reported on the Iranian Directorate and on Shulsky bypassing intelligence communities, again.

4). Israeli intelligence allegedly shows that Iran is roughly a year out from being nuke read. I heard hear something similar last year, but the claims were as dubious then as they are now, which begs the question: who will play the role of SISMI this war around?

5). Never underestimate Dick Cheney. If Sy Hersh says it, we listen. What this actually translates to I don't know, but it is most interesting.

6). We are conducting cross-border "forays" into Iran. The "we" in this scenario is the United States along with Israel, but also includes now Party to Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK). As I reported and as Hersh has previously reported, we are conducting some massive clandestine activities in Iran that are less about HUMIT and more about destabilization. My reports have focused on the MEK, so this added Contras-like element into the game makes things even more interesting. PJAK is closely tied to PKK, a terrorist organization that the US has also supported in the past and is allegedly still supporting.

7). Congress had not been briefed and there has been no finding done. Of course it was most clever to run this operation out of the DOD, that way, Congressional oversight can be avoided. To date, the only person to react to the news of us running terrorist organizations in Iran has been Congressman Kucinich (D-OH). Perhaps the 110th Congress will take an interest?

8). Regime change is the focal point for the OVP in Iran, not WMD or anything else.

9). The White House attempts to smear Hersh even before his article has come out by issuing talking points to the press. Per the usual, the talking points address nothing in the article, but simply use smear tactics to attack the writer, not the substance.

10). And Wolf Blitzer buys into the attack, by citing things that Hersh has said as a US citizen when he has criticized the Bush administration. How this relates to the article or his fine investigative work is anyone's guess, but for Blitzer to use this garbage in order to play "fair and balanced" is frankly quite ugly.

Words to CNN: between the bigotry of Beck, the questionable ethics of Nancy Grace, and the Fox-like questions presented by Blitzer, perhaps the network name should be changed to Fox Light.

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Watch this fantastic interview with Sy Hersh:

http://larisaunplugged.typepad.com/atlargely/2006/11/another_curveba.html

Technorati Tags: Cheney, Iran, Iranian Directorate, MEK, PJAK, PKK, Sy Hersh

Posted by Larisa Alexandrovna at 07:32 PM in What I think Permalink