Subversify welcomes Ron West. Ronald Thomas West is author of Penucquem Speaks, ranked five stars by Howard Zinn at Amazon. A former sergeant of Operations and Intelligence for Special Forces and past Investigator for a law firm aligned with Trial Lawyers for Public Justice and Gerry Spence (Mueller Law Office, Austin, TX), Ron is co-author of the Mueller-Wilson Report with Dr Mark D Cole
(International Law & Human Rights) and was briefly a professor at Johannes Guttenberg University where he is persona non-grata at the law school, after having taught a course on U.S. Constitutional Law as satire, in stand-up comedy format. A political exile and fugitive from American intelligence agencies since July 2007, other than the occasional analysis/exposé, presently Ron writes prurient satire from undisclosed location in Berlin, lampooning nearly anything, particularly neo-liberal and neo-con sexuality. You can find him at his blog site:http://www.scribd.com/Penucquem/info or Email: penucquemspeaks@googlemail.com
This analysis of the present circumstance at Camp Ashraf, Iraq, and the dissident Iranians imprisoned there, begins with [Bill Clinton’s] Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s statement:
“In 1953, the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran’s popular prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh. The Eisenhower administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons, but the coup was clearly a setback for Iran’s political development and it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs.”
Allen Dulles’ CIA was responsible for this ‘cold war’ crime, which had as much to do with American oil companies interests and military/industrial complex corporate profit lines, that is to say securing arms sales relevant to corporate greed, as much or more than it had to do with Soviet containment. The British monopoly on Iran’s oil production was broken, and American companies were able to muscle their way into the Iran oil market. After, the Shah of Iran became a prime buyer in the American weapons market, at one point going on an $8 billion in high tech weapons purchase spree. In the mid 1970s, by comparison with today, taking inflation into account, about $34 billion in one short period.
With the CIA’s consolidation of absolute power handed to Shah Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, and its training and long term support [with pro-active MOSSAD assistance] of the new and patently illegal regime’s brutal secret police SAVAK, subsequent torture and execution of political opposition, the wheels were put in motion for extended period of political friction and legitimate armed resistance under recognized principles of international law.
According to Encyclopædia Iranica:
“A U.S. Army colonel working for the CIA was sent to Persia in September 1953 to work with General Teymur Bakhtiar, wh0 was appointed military governor of Tehran in December 1953 and immediately began to assemble the nucleus of a new intelligence organization. The U.S. Army colonel worked closely with Bakhtīār and his subordinates, commanding the new intelligence organization and training its members in basic intelligence techniques, such as surveillance and interrogation methods, the use of intelligence networks, and organizational security.”
These events initialized armed resistance movements in several and/or mutating forms over time, including the ‘People’s Mujahedin of Iran’, also known as the MEK or Mojahedin-e-Khalq Organization. It is a large [disarmed] remnant of the MEK located at Camp Ashraf.
The Mojahedin-e-Khalq is problematic from a classic point of view in the history of American geo-political strategy. Allied with the Ayatollahs, until the overthrow of the Shah, there is record of Mojahedin-e-Khalq assassination of several Americans materially supporting the Shah’s regime, pointing towards the 1979 revolution.
However, ensuing development changed political alignment of the MEK. Initially it was the Ayatollah Khomeini turned on the MEK in his consolidation and control over Iran’s revolution of 1979.
From this time forward, events saw the MEK degenerate from a powerful force turned to attempting overthrow of the ayatollahs, to a struggle to survive as an ‘isolani pawn’ in geo-political chess.
What the MEK could not have known of, at least in the rank and file, is the Paris meeting facilitated by Robert Gates of the CIA via MOSSAD, where 1980 Vice Presidential candidate George H.W. Bush met together with representative of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
There was a three way deal made, taken together with intervening subsequent events, it would seem the 1980 meeting had sealed the MEK survivors fate at Camp Ashraf 30 years in the future.
The Carter administration had ‘green lighted’ Iraq’s Saddam to invade Iran, following the desert fiasco when the American Embassy hostage rescue operation had come apart. More than any initial ‘ernest money’ payment of $40 million cash ($113 Million in 2011, calculated with the inflation index) to Iran’s new rulers to delay the release of the hostages until after the 1980 elections, there was [Bush] authorizing Israel to clandestinely arm Iran, evolving over time into the spillover Iran-Contra affair, and most certainly there would be wicked fallout for MEK as a deadly [at this period] internal foe of the Iranian regime.
Subsequent to the Paris meeting, the Ayatollah Khomeini would have leverage to receive much of the intelligence he needed from western agencies to deal aggressively with MEK, this was a top priority of the new regime and simply would not be neglected when bargaining from a position of advantage in negotiations with CIA and MOSSAD, to expect otherwise in matters of the geo- politic of the moment, is pure naïveté. In fact Iran was able to take a big piece of the MEK network down from within Iran, subsequently MEK became based in Iraq during the period of the Iraq-Iran war begun by Saddam. With the USA initial taking a ‘hands off’ position for public consumption, but eventually playing both sides, now arming Iraq, all the while feeding weapons to Iran, using Israel as the intermediary. That’s how a dirty game is played.
The Ayatollahs had the weaponry needed to counter Saddam, the [treasonous] American party to the meeting was delivered a victory in the 1980 presidential election, and Israel scored a Christian Zionist ally in the newly elected Reagan/Bush administration and there was a lift to the considerable Israeli weapons industry.
Meanwhile, Iraq and Iran were tearing each other to pieces with MEK having become openly aligned with Iraq, alienating many Iranian supporters and serving to weaken the organization considerably, on more than one front. Not only was there the loss of much indigenous Iranian support for MEK came with the Iraq alignment, but the subsequent attending and problematic public relations image of having become aligned with a man [Saddam] who’d gassed the Iraqi Kurds in which area the MEK was based.
Consequently, the MEK having located in Iraq for purpose of pro- active military operations against the ayatollahs had, by 1990 with the Iraq/Iran war over, done considerable damage to its cause.
The ensuing decade of weakened MEK resistance is largely notable for the Clinton administration having designated the MEK as a ‘terrorist’ organization, as a geo-political concession to Iran, when there were some attempt at USA/Iranian dialogue.
By 2001 the MEK had renounced violent struggle and converted to a political opposition in exile. This position is reinforced by the fact the MEK had negotiated its disarmament with the American military following the 2003 Iraq invasion and had turned its weapons over to the Americans as agreed and without hostilities.
The past 8 years, closing the MEK story to the present, are interesting times, rich in intrigue and point to the western democracies, USA and France particularly, pursuing strategy to eliminate the MEK as a viable political movement in any possible future or post ayatollah Iran. The facts are succinct:
The people of Camp Ashraf had disarmed, and international bodies, including the European Union’s courts have since found the MEK has honored it stated intent of 2001 to become a non-violent political movement.
In 2003, French neo-con Nicolas Sarkozy, then Interior Minister, approved of a police raid on MEK associated people, ordered by a French anti-terror magistrate, no doubt at Sarkozy’s instigation. The charges were not sustained and a member of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Sam Brownback, accused Sarkozy of “doing Iran’s dirty work. Brownback would have access to classified information at a necessary level to know.
This becomes more germane as the decade unfolds in USA/Iran relations and developments in regards to Iraq, oil and geo-politics.
About the time the American military handed Camp Ashraf over to the Iraqi government, in 2009, it turns out CHEVRON was in negotiations with Iran over proposed development of an oil field. CHEVRON Board Director General James Jones was Obama National Security Advisor and CHEVRON Board Director Condoleezza Rice was by this time back in the ‘private’ sector and resumed proactively public, CHEVRON policy initiatives.
This coincides with the first Iraqi raid on Camp Ashraf and Prime Minister Maliki declaring the MEK would either have to repatriate to Iran or relocate to other countries. Real relocation effort is nil.
Following intervening attacks, including one organized in Iraq by Iranian agents where Iraqi forces refused to intervene except to prevent MEK casualties transport to medical services, there was the April 8, 2011 attack by the Iraqi forces coinciding with the new CHEVRON strategic planning with Condoleezza Rice and General James Jones [also now back in the ‘private’ sector] initiating global policy on behalf of the USA.
The dirty ‘double game’ continues.
The MEK political leadership, in regards to the 2011 massacre at Camp Ashraf, has been proactively supported by American neo-con personalities that must be assessed as agents provocateur, Rudy Guilianni and Tom Ridge.
Determining whether this is naiveté on the part of MEK political leadership, simple blind arrogance its leaders or penetration of the MEK political apparatus by agents for CHEVRON is not the object of this analysis, but in any case, the result is as follows:
Richard Armitage, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, had stated:
“There were some in the administration who wanted to use the Mujahideen-e Khalq as a pressure point against Iran, and I can remember the national security adviser, Dr. [Condoleezza] Rice, being very specific about it, saying no, a terrorist group is a terrorist group.”
Noting Condoleezza Rice is a poster girl for CHEVRON, I’d further point out few are more closely politically aligned with the 1980 American-Iran ‘Paris meeting’ electoral coup d’état, than Rudy Guilianni who was subsequently appointed to number 3 at the Department of Justice, more on Guilianni a bit further, and Tom Ridge is little more than a Bush thug for CHEVRON.
Then, Armitage went on to state:
“That was exactly the point of view of the State Department as well. We wanted the U.S. military to disarm the MEK and contain them. … And eventually we did disarm the major weapons [from] the MEK.”
Actually Armitage is at this point playing with truth, in fact the military had collected ALL of the MEK weapons, not only major weapons (all of which had been voluntarily surrendered) and Camp Ashraf had become and remains, disarmed.
And finally, Armitage resorts to an out and out lie:
Then we … engaged in a broad effort to try to resettle these people, but we were very unsuccessful in getting them settled in foreign lands….”
Actually, other than a bit of lip service to that effect, if only to keep the MEK calm while being led to slaughter, in fact events have proved precisely the opposite to be true. All of the evidence points to these peoples being deliberately worn down to a point of surrender to Iran.
The FBI refuses to back off a trumped up ‘terror’ listing for the MEK. Hillary Clinton’s Department of State has been dragging it feet for a year on a Federal Court ordered review of the ‘terror’ listing. Relevant to this is a Condoleezza Rice quote: “I’ve known Hillary for years, she is smart, she is tough and she is doing the right things.”
Meanwhile, the USA, which has resettled Guantanamo inmates around the world and can push International Tribunals into political prosecutions but never seems to worry it will answer to its own crimes, has sat on its hands. The USA can bully allies into joining in its wars for geo-political domination, but will not find a way out for the people of Camp Ashraf and lets them rot in the Iraq sun with inadequate food, water, medical and shelter, unarmed while under sporadic attack by Iraq. The MEK must eventually surrender to Iran and eradication.
This would be the point at which the corporate media blackout on MEK could be lifted, and the American news channels would push the utter destruction of the MEK survivors by Iran with its disappearances, mock trials, imprisonments, torture and executions.
Here is how 3,300 unarmed dissident Iranians are sacrificed as easily as a pawn for propaganda sake in the geo-political game Zbigniew Brzezinski has aptly called the ‘Grand Chessboard’ of Central Asia. Iran will be pilloried in the press for the human rights abuses suffered by 3,300 people handed to them in anticipation of Iran doing exactly that, exterminating the MEK.
Who are the MEK, The Peoples Mujahideen of Iran, Mujahideen-e Khalq, really? With roots in a liberal-left Islam with an absolutely rock solid women’s emancipation within that context, the MEK is absolute anathema to the ayatollahs.
Those same roots also point to the MEK devotion to Islamic social justice principles and the fact were the MEK ever in any position of power, corporate deep state consortiums including deep state leader CHEVRON and its associated deep state personalities represented in Condoleezza Rice, Rudy Guilianni and Tom Ridge, would never achieve the CHEVRON objectives in Iran.
Everything you need to know about Rudy Guilianni since he served as number 3 at the Department of Justice following the 1980 coup d’état, can be summed up in one event: His stout obstruction of any investigation into the building that died of fright on 9/11.
Of course it cannot hurt to point out here, the CHEVRON CEO from 1989 to 1999, Kenneth Derr, together with a who’s who of neo-con power brokers and professional spooks sit together on Guilianni’s presidential committee, including but not limited to: Dick Thornburgh, Dick Riordan, T Boone Pickens, Ted Olsen [a Federalist Society founder] Michael Mukasey [a Bush lap dog at DoJ] Carl Icahn [who handed TEXACO gift wrapped to CHEVRON], Walter Hickel [a dead man, like padded voter rolls], Louis Freeh [the former FBI Director, one of many who refuse to come clean with COINTELPRO], to mention just a few notables.
Beyond all this, is a dilemma for both the USA corporate criminals and the ayatollahs in Iran. The 1980 electoral coup d’état in any state records of Iran under compromised circumstance, could lead to revelations in either or both nations, the ayatollahs having done extended business with America and Israel behind the backs of their people while lying about the relationship the entire time, and the USA discovering just how and when democracy had been hijacked by the corporate entities comprising today’s ‘deep state.’
Welcome to Subversify Ron! Thanks for the article. The residents at Camp Ashraf continue to be caught between a rock and a hard place. We’re talking about 30 years of what amounts to incarceration and things don’t look like they are getting better anytime soon.
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_18420332
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE13/051/2011/en
Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Looking forward to more of your contributions.
I don’t believe democracy, in and of itself, has been hijacked. It is a concept accepted and believed by many people. The problem has always lain with the administrators of democracy, who, seeing what they want, find ways to take it. The expansion of the United States from thirteen colonies to its muscle backed empire has been one of force, from the Louisiana Purchase to the seizure of the West Coast. The battle cry was a democratic union, which the innocent laid down their lives for, never suspecting they were supporting an illusion.
Over the years, the entrepreneurs of the democratic ideal have perfected their propaganda machine, using media support to furbish their lies while they make war on other countries. Democracy that resides only in conquest and colonialism is a failure. A democracy that uses lies and false evidence as a persuasive majority force is a mockery.
What has been hijacked is the understanding that behind the word democracy; which in simplest terms means a two-party system, ideally to peacefully counter-balance the effects of two extremes; is the U.S. Constitution, meant to recognize the equality of all races, cultures and religions. By thwarting any aspect of this Constitution, we have deviated from the visionary democratic ideals of the founding fathers.
Ironically, if you study the policies of twentieth century US Government, you will discover that those the US Government has declared war against are generally those with far more idealistic democratic (socialized) principles than are currently exhibited within the United States. This is not only true for Iran, but for most of the Mideastern countries burdened under the reign of self-interested dictators, and for Latin America, where US intrusion has resulted in escalating conflicts and wars against their citizens. Democracy is an easy sham to put up. All you need is an apparent adherence to a two-party system, and the political machine in the United States has become quite skillful at employing this. It’s when you tack in the Bill of Rights, as listed under the U.S. Constitution, that you run into trouble.