Much of the information behind this is being promulgated by Israel, which has a vested interest in seeing Iran neutralized as a potential threat. But Israel is joined by another source, even more puzzling in terms of its broad-based acceptance in American journalism: the Mujahadeen-e Khalk, or MEK, an Iranian opposition group sworn to overthrow the theocracy in Tehran.
The CIA today provides material support to the actions of the MEK inside Iran. The recent spate of explosions in Iran, including a particularly devastating “accident” involving a military convoy transporting ammunition in downtown Tehran, appears to be linked to an MEK operation; its agents working inside munitions manufacturing plants deliberately are committing acts of sabotage which lead to such explosions. If CIA money and planning support are behind these actions, the agency's backing constitutes nothing less than an act of war on the part of the United States against Iran.
MEK traces its roots back to the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq. Formed among students and intellectuals, MEK emerged in the 1960s as a serious threat to the reign of Reza Shah Pahlavi. Facing brutal repression from the Shah's secret police, the SAVAK, MEK became expert at blending into Iranian society, forming a cellular organizational structure which made it virtually impossible to eradicate. MEK membership also became adept at gaining access to positions of sensitivity and authority. When the Shah was overthrown in 1978, the MEK played a major role and for a while worked hand in glove with the Islamic Revolution in crafting a post-Shah Iran. In 1979 the MEK had a central role in orchestrating the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran, holding 55 Americans hostage for 444 days.
However, relations between the MEK and the Islamic regime in Tehran soured, and after the MEK staged a bloody coup attempt in 1981, all ties were severed and the two sides engaged in a violent civil war. Revolutionary Guard members active at that time have acknowledged how difficult it was to fight the MEK. In the end, massive acts of arbitrary arrest, torture and executions were required to break the back of mainstream MEK activity in Iran, although even the Revolutionary Guard today admits MEK remains active and is virtually impossible to completely eradicate.
It is this stubborn ability to survive and operate inside Iran, at a time when no other intelligence service can establish and maintain a meaningful agent network there, which makes MEK such an asset to nations such as the United States and Israel. The MEK is able to provide some useful intelligence; however, its overall value as an intelligence resource is negatively impacted by the fact that it is the sole source of human intelligence in Iran.
As such, the group has taken to exaggerating and fabricating reports to serve its own political agenda. In this way, there is little to differentiate MEK from another Middle Eastern expatriate opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress, or INC, which infamously supplied inaccurate intelligence to the United States and other governments and helped influence the US decision to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein. Today, MEK sees itself in a similar role, providing sole-sourced intelligence to the United States and Israel in an effort to facilitate American military operations against Iran and, eventually, to overthrow the Islamic regime in Tehran.
The current situation concerning the MEK would be laughable if it were not for the violent reality of that organization's activities. Upon its arrival in Iraq in 1986, the group was placed under the control of Saddam Hussein's Mukhabarat, or intelligence service. The MEK was a heavily militarized organization and in 1988 participated in division-size military operations against Iran. The organization represents no state and can be found on the US State Department's list of terrorist organizations, yet since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, MEK has been under the protection of the US military. Its fighters are given “protected status” under the Geneva Conventions. MEK says its members in Iraq are refugees, not terrorists. Yet one would be hard-pressed to find why the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees should confer refugee status on an active paramilitary organization that uses “refugee camps” inside Iraq as bases.
MEK is behind much of the intelligence being used by the International Atomic Energy Agency in building its case that Iran may be pursuing (or did pursue) a nuclear weapons programme. The complexity of the MEK-CIA relationship was recently underscored by the agency's acquisition of a laptop computer allegedly containing numerous secret documents pertaining to an Iranian nuclear weapons programme. The United States led the charge against Iran within international diplomatic circles, citing the laptop information as the primary source proving Iran's ongoing involvement in clandestine nuclear weapons activity. Of course, the information on the computer, being derived from questionable sources (i.e., MEK and CIA, both sworn enemies of Iran) is controversial and its veracity is questioned by many, including me.
I have a simple solution to the issue of the laptop: Give it the UNSCOM treatment. Assemble a team of CIA, FBI and Defense Department forensic computer analysts and probe the computer, byte by byte. Construct a chronological record of how and when the data on the computer were assembled. Check the “logic” of the data, making sure everything fits together in a manner consistent with the computer's stated function and use. Tell us when the computer was turned on and logged into and how it was used. Then, with this complex usage template constructed, overlay the various themes which have been derived from the computer's contents, pertaining to projects, studies and other activities of interest. One should be able to rapidly ascertain whether or not the computer is truly a key piece of intelligence pertaining to Iran's nuclear programme.
The fact that this computer is acknowledged as coming from the MEK and the fact that a proper forensic investigation would probably demonstrate the fabricated nature of the data are why the US government will never agree to such an investigation.
The evidence used by the IAEA is unable to withstand even the most rudimentary cross-examination. It is speculative at best, and most probably fabricated. Iran has done the right thing in refusing to legitimize this illegitimate source of information.
A key question is why does the IAEA continue to permit Olli Heinonen, its Finnish deputy director for safeguards and official responsible for ongoing technical inspections in Iran, to wage his one-man campaign on behalf of the United States, Britain and (indirectly) Israel regarding allegations derived from sources of such questionable veracity (the MEK-supplied laptop computer)? Why is such an official given free rein to discuss such sensitive data with the press, or with politically motivated outside agencies?
Heinonen has become the pro-war yin to the anti-confrontation yang of boss Mohamed El Baradei. Every time El Baradei releases the results of the IAEA probe of Iran, pointing out that IAEA can find no evidence of past or present nuclear weapons programme, and that there is a full understanding of Iran's controversial centrifuge-based enrichment programme, Heinonen throws a monkey wrench into the works. Mysteriously, leaks from undisclosed sources occur.
The fact that IAEA is being used as a front to pursue blatantly anti-Iranian propaganda is a disservice to an organization with a mission of vital world importance. The interjection of not only the unverified (and unverifiable) MEK laptop computer data, side by side with a newly placed emphasis on a document relating to the forming of uranium metal into hemispheres of the kind useful in a nuclear weapon, is an amateurish manipulation of data to achieve a preordained outcome.
Calling Iranian possession of the aforementioned document “alarming,” Heinonen (and the media) skipped past the history of the document, which, of course, has been well explained by Iran previously as something Pakistani nuclear proliferator A.Q. Khan inserted on his own volition to a delivery of documentation pertaining to centrifuges. Far from being a “top-secret” document protected by Iran's security services, it was discarded in a file of old material that Iran provided to IAEA inspectors. When IAEA found the document, Iran allowed it to be fully examined by the inspectors, and answered every question about how the document came to be in Iran.
Shortly after Heinonen's alarmist briefing in March 2008, the US ambassador to the IAEA, Gregory Schulte, emerged to announce, “As today's briefing showed us, there are strong reasons to suspect that Iran was working covertly and deceitfully, at least until recently, to build a bomb.” Heinonen's briefing provided nothing of the sort, being derived from an irrelevant document and a laptop of questionable provenance.
The problem has never been Iran's enrichment programme. The problem is American policy objectives of regime change in Iran, pushed by a combination of American desires for global hegemony and an activist Israeli agenda which seeks regional security, in perpetuity, through military and economic supremacy.
A major culprit in this entire sordid affair is the mainstream media. Displaying uncanny inability to connect the dots, the editors who run America's largest newspapers, and the producers who put together America's biggest television news programmes, have collectively facilitated the most simplistic, inane and factually unfounded story lines coming out of the Bush White House. The most recent fairy tale was one of “diplomacy,” on the part of one William Burns, the No. 3 diplomat in the State Department.
Sending a relatively obscure official like Burns to “observe” a meeting between the European Union and Iran, with instructions not to interact, not to initiate, not to discuss, cannot under any circumstances be construed as diplomacy. And yet the esteemed editors and news producers used the term diplomacy to describe Burns' mission to Geneva on July 19. The decision to send him there was hailed as a “significant concession” on the part of the Bush administration, a step away from war and an indication of a new desire within the White House to resolve the Iranian impasse through diplomacy.
Of course, the Geneva talks produced nothing. The United States had made sure Europe, through its foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, had no maneuvering room when it came to the core issue of uranium enrichment: Iran must suspend all enrichment before any movement could be made on any other issue. Furthermore, the American-backed programme of investigation concerning MEK-supplied laptop poisoned the diplomatic waters. Iran refused to suspend its enrichment programme, and rejected the Heinonen-led investigation into nuclear weaponization, refusing to cooperate further with the IAEA on that matter, noting that it fell outside the scope of the IAEA's mandate in Iran.
Condoleezza Rice was quick to respond. After a debriefing from Burns, who flew to Abu Dhabi, UAE, where Rice was holding closed-door meetings with the foreign ministers of six Arab nations on Iran, Rice told the media that Iran “was not serious” about resolving the standoff. Having played the diplomacy card, Rice moved on with the real agenda: If Iran did not fully cooperate with the international community (i.e., suspend enrichment programme), it would face a new round of economic sanctions and undisclosed punitive measures, both unilaterally on the part of the United States and Europe, as well as in the form of even broader sanctions from the United Nations Security Council (doubtful that Russia and China would go along with such a plan).
The issue of unilateral US sanctions is most worrisome. Both the House of Representatives, through HR 362, and the Senate, through SR 580, are preparing legislation that would call for an air, ground and sea blockade of Iran.
The false diplomacy waged by the White House in Geneva pre-empted any congressional call for a diplomatic outreach. Now the President can move on with the mission of facilitating a larger war with Iran by legitimizing yet another act of aggression.
One day Americans will awake to the reality that American military forces are engaged in a shooting war with Iran. Many will scratch their heads and wonder, “How did that happen?” The answer is simple: We all let it happen. We are at war with Iran right now. We just don't have the moral courage to admit it.
Scott Ritter is a former UN weapons inspector and Marine intelligence officer who has written extensively about Iran
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