NCRI-US Staff
On May 25,
2018, MSNBC’s “On Assignment” Program, narrated by Richard Engel, regurgitated
a series of stale, unfounded, and repeatedly debunked allegations against the
Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), a member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
(NCRI), which acts as Iran’s Parliament in Exile. The following is in order:
The MSNBC piece
by Richard Engel on May 25, 2018, lacks the minimum standards of journalism and
objectivity. It revolves around the outlandish, and at times hilarious,
assertions of Masoud Khodabandeh, a notorious agent of the Iranian regime’s
Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) for two decades.
This report is,
of course, not the first such hit-piece against the largest and best-organized
Iranian opposition movement, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). On February 2, 2012,
NBC’s Rock Center broadcast a bogus report, also co-narrated by Richard Engel,
quoting unnamed sources that the MEK had assassinated Iranian nuclear
scientists. MEK flatly rejected this allegation at the time and challenged
Engel to produce any evidence. The State Department specifically rejected this
allegation on September 28, 2012, when the MEK was removed from the Foreign
Terrorist Organization’s list. When asked about this, a senior State Department
official told reporters, “And I should add that the United States Government
has not claimed that the MEK was involved in the assassination of scientists in
Iran.”
NBC never
retracted that story, nor did it apologize to the MEK for its patently false
report!
Likewise, MSNBC
editors should explain their motives for broadcasting such an unbalanced “On
Assignment” report by Richard Engel, especially at a time when the Iranian
people have unequivocally called for the overthrow of Iran’s totalitarian
regime in nationwide protests and strikes in over 140 cities. Is it a
coincidence that Engel’s report failed to make any mention of these protests,
escalating since December 2017, or of the fact that the Iranian regime has
executed 120,000 members and sympathizers of the MEK, including 30,000
massacred in 1988?
The report
leads any fair-mined viewer to only one conclusion: It is part of a
well-orchestrated, albeit desperate, campaign by the Iranian regime’s lobby and
by the proponents of appeasement of a regime shaking to its foundations in the
face of the Iranian people’s unwavering resolve to bring down the ruling
theocracy.
As the Iranian
Resistance has repeatedly emphasized, there is no need whatsoever for U.S.
military involvement. The Iranian people and Resistance have the will, and the
capability to overthrow this criminal regime.
Sensing its
inevitable demise, Iran’s ruling clerics have stepped up their efforts to plan
and carry out terrorist attacks against the MEK outside Iran, including in
Albania, the United States and Germany, as exposed by the statement issued by
the National Council of Resistance of Iran on April 20,
2018.
Specific
responses to set the record straight:
Richard Engel
interviewed Masoud Khodabandeh, as his key witness on fabricated allegations of
the MEK being a “destructive cult” that receives money and gold from Saudi
Arabia.
It is common
knowledge that Khodabandeh and his wife, Anne Singleton, are notorious agents
of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) for the past two
decades. According to the Library of
Congress, Federal Research Division, Dec. 2012 p. 31: Masoud Khodabandeh
& his wife Anne Singleton Khodabandeh “agreed to work for Iran’s Ministry
of Intelligence & Security (MOIS) and spy on MEK.”
According to
Win Griffiths, Member of UK Parliament, Witness Statement to UK court 7/4/2007:
“During a visit to Iran [in June 2004], I was surprised to see Anne Singleton
in Evin prison. She was moving around freely and was in direct contact with
Iranian officials in the prison.”
For the record,
throughout their history, the MEK and the NCRI have relied exclusively on the
material support of their members and sympathizers inside and outside Iran for
the funds needed for their activities. They have not received a dime from any
foreign government and we challenge anyone to produce evidence to the contrary.
Engel falsely
attributed the death of six American military personnel and Pentagon
contractors in the early 1970s in Iran to the MEK.
An independent
study in 2013 by the University of Baltimore, and a backgrounder by Council
on Foreign Relations in 2014 confirm that the MEK had no role in the
deaths of US service members in Iran nearly half a century ago. To the
contrary, a number of surviving MEK leaders were assassinated by the very same
three individuals who murdered the Americans. The three were caught, confessed,
and were executed by the shah regime.
Moreover,
according to the New York Times, July 27, 2004, after a 16-month
investigation, thousands of MEK members in Camp Ashraf, Iraq, were recognized
by the U.S. Government as “protected persons” under the Fourth Geneva
Convention. “Senior American officials said extensive interviews by officials
of the State Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had not come up
with any basis to bring charges against any members of the group [MEK].”
Engel falsely
claimed that the MEK participated in the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran
in 1979.
In fact, the
MEK was too a victim of the 1979 U.S. Embassy occupation in Tehran. The
regime’s then-Supreme Leader Khomeini created the hostage crisis to consolidate
power and suppress the MEK. Masoumeh Ebtekar, the Spokeswoman for the hostage
takers, and now a key Rouhani cabinet official, confirmed that the MEK had no
part nor did the MEK participate in that incident.
On November 4,
1984, on the fifth anniversary of the embassy takeover, then-Chief
Justice Ayatollah Abdol Karim Moussavi-Ardebili said on Tehran
Radio: "[The embassy takeover] brought about the fall of the Provisional
Government, the isolation of the liberals and the confusion of left wing groups
and the [MEK] and exposed their real faces. As Imam Khomeini said, this
revolutionary move was greater than the first revolution.”
Ervand
Abrahamian, an MEK detractor, wrote in his book, “The Iranian Mojahedin,” that the MEK’s criticisms of the
regime at the time included “Engineering the American hostage crisis to impose
on the nation the ‘medieval’ concept of the velayat-e-faqih.”
Engel knowingly
lied by claiming that the MEK paid large sums of money to former U.S. officials
as speaking fees.
MEK has stated
unequivocally that it has never made any payments to any American, a fact later
confirmed by the U.S. Treasury Department. In 2012, the Treasury Department
launched a widely reported investigation into Iranian-American citizens who, in
exercising their first amendment rights, had organized different conferences
and seminars in which former U.S. officials spoke. After more than a year of
investigation, Treasury Department sent letters to the communities, informing
them that it had completed its review of the case and that no laws had been
violated.
Engel
selectively interviewed the former Coordinator of Counterterrorism, Daniel
Benjamin--not his predecessor-- who claimed MEK was delisted despite still
being a terrorist organization.
The original
1997 designation of the MEK was a “goodwill gesture” to the Iranian regime as
officially confirmed by the Clinton Administration. A bi-partisan
House Majority letter in 1998 rejected the designation as a “wrong headed
policy,” which would only embolden the regime, and described the MEK as “a
legitimate resistance movement.”
There were
several court rulings starting in 2010, which found no evidence of terrorism by the MEK and gave the
Secretary of State a deadline to either make a new decision or the court would
unilaterally delist the MEK. The State Department had no choice but to follow
the order by U.S. Court of Appeals, DC Circuit. Benjamin’s predecessor, Ambassador Dell Dailey, had called for MEK delisting in
2009, but was overruled for political reasons.
The State
Department and Benjamin refused to heed the July 2010 decision by the U.S.
Court of Appeals, DC Circuit, after the court found their evidence
insufficient. The MEK filed a writ of mandamus to force the Department to make
a decision, which resulted in the Court granting the writ, the first such
decision since 1803, compelling the Secretary of State to revoke the MEK’s
designation on September 28, 2012, two days before the deadline mandated by the
Court, which had stated it would revoke MEK designation if the Secretary failed
to make a decision.
Benjamin’s
crocodile tears for the MEK in Iraq notwithstanding, had the State Department
acted properly in 2009 or at least followed the Court’s decision in July 2010,
all or most of the 177 members of the MEK would not have lost their lives during
the attacks or medical siege by the government of Nouri al-Maliki, a puppet of
the Iranian regime.
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