Max Forte's List: Iran and (Anti) Imperialism

• The U.S. State Department lists the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq as a terrorist organization for its association with Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime until the dictator’s ouster by the U.S.-led invasion in 2003
• Over the last two decades, however, the group’s continued presence on the U.S. terrorist group list primarily involves its activities directed from Iraqi territory against Iran
• MEK was disarmed and confined by American forces to the grounds of a former Iraqi military base
• MEK maintains “the capacity and will” to attack “Europe, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, and beyond.”
• Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK) is the largest and most militant group opposed to the Islamic Republic of Iran
• Also known as the People’s Mujahadeen Organization of Iran
• MEK was added to the U.S. State Department’s list of foreign terrorist groups in 1997 and to the European Union’s terrorist list in 2002 because its attacks have often killed civilians
• MEK was founded in 1963 by a group of college-educated Iranian leftists
• But MEK’s ideology, a blend of Marxism, feminism, and Islamism, put it at odds with the post-revolutionary government, and its original leadership was soon executed by the Khomeini regime
• In 1981, the group was driven from its bases on the Iran-Iraq border and resettled in Paris, where it began supporting Iraq in its eight-year war against Khomeini’s Iran
• In 1986, after France recognized the Iranian regime, MEK moved its headquarters to Iraq, which used MEK to harass neighboring Iran
• MEK has increasingly come to resemble a cult that is devoted to Massoud Rajavi’s secular interpretation of the Koran and is prone to sudden, dramatic ideological shifts
• Despite MEK’s violent tactics, the group’s strong stance against Iran—part of President Bush’s “axis of evil”—and pro-democratic image have won it support among some U.S. and European lawmakers
• there has been an ongoing, vigorous campaign by its supporters in the U.S. Congress to have it removed from the terrorist list
• MEK has a network of sympathizers in Europe, the United States, and Canada
• The group’s political arm, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, maintains offices in several capitals, and used to have a branch in Washington, DC before U.S. officials closed it down in August 2003
• Until 2003 the MEK received funds, arms, and state sponsorship from Saddam Hussein. Following Operation Iraqi Freedom, the MEK relies on donations from Iranian expatriates and front organizations that often campaign for greater human rights in Iran, according to the State Department.
• two thousand tanks, armored personnel carriers, and heavy artillery pieces
• MEK is believed to have several thousand members
• Incidents linked to the group include
• Saddam Hussein’s suppression of the 1991 Iraqi Shiite and Kurdish uprisings

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• the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq
• Since the U.S. handed control of the camp to Iraqi authorities on Jan.1, Iraq has increased efforts to push the group out. U.S. officials were promised that the cult-like MEK organization on the U.S. list of terror groups would be treated "humanely" under Iraqi authority.
• The MEK has also been linked to the assassinations of U.S. military personnel in Iran in the 1970s and helping Saddam quash Kurdish and Shiite uprisings.

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• February-November 4, 1979: US Attempt to Create De Facto Alliance with Khomeini’s Iranian Government Ends Disastrously
• After the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi is deposed in Iran and Ayatollah Khomeini takes over as Iran’s new leader in February 1979, the US is interested in continuing to work with the Iranian government. At first the US is taken aback by the new fundamentalist Islamic government, and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski contemplates fomenting a military coup to stop Khomeini.
• Khomeini is fiercely anti-communist, and Brzezinski soon decides that Iran’s new government can become part of an effective anti-Soviet alliance he calls the “arc of crisis’
• The CIA in particular begins secretly collaborating with Iranian intelligence, providing information about the Soviet Union, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The CIA and Iran both covertly work to destabilize the pro-Soviet government in Afghanistan
• Brzezinski’s attempts to create a de facto alliance with Iran collapse.
• February 2002: US Criticism Results in Iran Expelling Al-Qaeda-Linked Warlord to Afghanistan
• In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Iran is supportive of US efforts to defeat the Taliban, since the Taliban and Iran have opposed each other.
• In 2006, Flynt Leverett, the senior director for Middle East affairs on the National Security Council in 2002 and 2003, will recall this cooperation between Iran and the US in a heavily censored New York Times editorial
• in December 2001 Iran agrees to prevent Hekmatyar from returning to Afghanistan to help lead resistance to US-allied forces there, as long as the Bush administration does not criticize Iran for harboring terrorists
• “But, in his January 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush did just that in labeling Iran part of the ‘axis of evil’ (see January 29, 2002). Unsurprisingly, Mr. Hekmatyar managed to leave Iran in short order after the speech.”
• Iranian cooperation with the US over Afghanistan will continue in a more limited manner, with Iran deporting hundreds of suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives who had fled Afghanistan, while apparently keeping others. But the US will end this cooperation in 2003.
• October 2, 2007: Iran’s Foreign Minister Slams British Talks with the Taliban and Efforts to Counter Drug Trafficking in Afghanistan
• Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki criticizes ongoing talks between British officials and the Taliban in Afghanistan, characterizing them as the wrong approach.

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• Hillary Mann Leverett, CEO of STRATEGA, a political consulting firm, and the former Director of Iran and Afghanistan Affairs at the National Security Council.  From 2001-2003, she was one of a small number of U.S. diplomats authorized to negotiate with the Iranians over Afghanistan, al-Qaeda and Iraq
• first hand experiences negotiating with Iranian officials and discussed the possibilities for successful collaboration in Afghanistan
• Iran agreed to attend a U.N. conference on Afghanistan sponsored by the United States
• However, Iran is not interested in tactical cooperation, Leverett asserted.  Noting the many aborted attempts at tactical cooperation between the two countries under previous presidents, Leverett argued Iran is interested in nothing less than a fundamental realignment in relations. 

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• On the eve of a possible groundbreaking meeting between the United States and Iran, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton predicted Monday that Tehran would be propelled by self-interest to work with other world powers on stabilizing Afghanistan
• the Islamic regime in Tehran has an interest in reducing the huge Afghan drug flow and gaining control over its porous border with its eastern neighbor
• "From our information, they are really concerned about all the narcotics crossing the border into their country," Clinton told reporters on her plane, en route to The Hague. "This is a matter of their own internal security. . . . I would imagine that's an area where they are willing to work with others."
• The two countries have had an antagonistic relationship and limited contact since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. But they cooperated on Afghanistan in 2002

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• Al-Qaida number two Ayman Al-Zawahiri has launched a vitriolic attack on Iran, accusing it in a video message broadcast by Al-Jazeera on Monday of collaborating with the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq
• "The leadership in Tehran is collaborating with the Americans in their occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan," Zawahiri said in the extract broadcast by the channel.
• "There was been no fatwa (religious edict) from Iran or Iraq calling for jihad in Iraq or Afghanistan" while there have been many issued on Lebanon and the Palestinians.

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• Iran is ready to fill a vacuum in Iraq caused by the collapsing power of the United States, its president said on Tuesday.
• "The political power of the occupiers (of Iraq) is being destroyed rapidly and very soon we will be witnessing a great power vacuum in the region," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said.
• The U.S. military accuses the Islamic Republic of arming and training militias behind some of the violence in Iraq.
• A U.S. commander said on Sunday that Iraqi Shi'ite group have received more weapons, funding and training from Iran in the past two months.

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• There have been on-and-off talks between the United States and Iran on the security situation in Afghanistan since the end of the war there in late 2001, but no such talks have occurred with Iran on Iraq since 2003, when they were broken off after bombings in Riyadh that U.S. officials said were linked to extremists based in Iran.
• The two main Shiite parties, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and Dawa, have had close ties to Tehran since the days when their leaders were in exile in the era of Saddam Hussein

• allegations that Iranian-made weapons with manufacture dates of 2008 had been found in the southern city of Basra in the wake of recent clashes between Shiite Muslim militiamen and Iraqi and U.S. security forces
• purported finds, which have not been shown to the public
• United States blames much of the fighting since the offensive on Iranian-backed extremists
• Iraq's main Shiite group, the powerful Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, is allied with Maliki's Islamic Dawa Party and with the United States, but it also has close ties to Tehran

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• the country's elected leadership apparently believes that Iraq's long-term welfare will depend on building a strong relationship with Iran as well as on maintaining ties to the United States
• The Shiite leaders, though, already draw support from Iran as well as the United States in the face of the deep Sunni Arab resentment that has fed the insurgency here
• Their political parties have historically had much stronger ties to Iran than to the United States, which, as they vividly recall, did nothing while Saddam Hussein slaughtered up to 150,000 Shiites who rebelled after the 1991 gulf war
• The reality, however, is that Iraqi leaders, with the encouragement of their Iranian counterparts, are trying to forge stronger bonds with Iran in many spheres, from reconstruction to the writing of the constitution
• 'We've had good relations with the great Islamic Republic for more than two decades,'' Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a powerful Shiite politician
• ''Iran opens its doors and receives the Iraqis, and there is a huge number of Iraqis in Iran,'' he added.
• Mr. Hakim's party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, was founded by Mr. Hakim's older brother, Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, while he was in exile in Iran in the 1980's
• Its armed wing, the Badr Brigade, was trained by Iran's military and fought Mr. Hussein's forces in the Iran-Iraq war, when many other Shiites served in the Iraqi army
• the Dawa Islamic Party, is led by Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who lived in exile in Iran for many years before moving to London and who visited Iran this month
• Iran's government would spend about $1 billion to build schools, hospitals and libraries in Iraq

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• Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Sunday his landmark visit to Iraq opened a new chapter in "brotherly" relations between the two countries, which were once bitter enemies
• highlights his country's growing influence on its Arab neighbor in the post-Saddam Hussein era, but it also serves as an act of defiance toward the U.S., which accuses Iran of training and giving weapons to Shiite extremists in Iraq
• After discussions with Talabani, Ahmadinejad went to meet Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Both of the Iraqi leaders have made official visits to Iran since taking office

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• Iran has also sought highly publicized relationships with Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador, promising lucrative investments, including, for example, a $350 million deepwater seaport off Nicaragua’s Atlantic coast, and a “dry canal” of pipelines, rails and highways across the country
• Already, the proposed deepwater seaport is facing resistance in Nicaragua by land right activists. Iran’s real commitment to this project is also not clear and Tehran has so far refused to forgo Nicaragua’s $152 million debt, despite Ortega’s specific request that it do so
• Iran and Venezuela
• Between 2005 and 2007, each president visited the other’s country three times and commercial relations have vastly expanded: trade, which amounted to $1.1 million in 2004, grew to $50.7 million in 2006
• Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and President Ahmadinejad embrace a rhetoric emphasizing autonomy and independence from the great powers, primarily the United States but also Europe, citing unity in the struggle against imperialism and capitalism
• Venezuela has turned to Iran as a source of investment for infrastructure and industrial development, including in the oil and petrochemicals sectors
• A large gap, nonetheless, separates the signing and actual implementation of cooperation agreements
• Both Ahmadinejad and Ortega made state visits to each other’s countries, resulting in Iranian promises of some $1 billion in aid and investment. The funds are to be used to develop the energy and agricultural sectors, infrastructure, and water purification in Nicaragua. The largest project establishes a deep water port on Nicaragua’s eastern shores, which would require an investment of $350 million. The proposed projects create the appearance of strong economic ties between the two nations. However, Maradiaga stated that there was little evidence that the aid and investment would materialize. He doubted that the relationship-- held together by the anti-Americanism espoused by leaders of both countries--would deepen beyond the ideological and political level.
• Ecuador and Iran
• Montúfar stated that Ahmadinejad’s short and surprising visit to Rafael Correa’s presidential inauguration spawned a new and short-lived bilateral relationship between the two countries. Correa maintained that the relationship was not political but based solely on commercial interests. There is little evidence of a growing commercial relationship between Quito and Tehran.

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• the rapprochement between Iran and Latin America did not originate under current Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
• However, due to his “aggressive” foreign policy, which aims to defy attempts by the US and its allies to isolate Iran, Tehran now solicits Latin American support much more intently than before
• Iran-Venezuela alliance is “publicly touted as a poke in the eye of the United States;” it is a relationship that “annoys great Washington imperialism.”
• “There is no indication that [Iranian support] will be a short-run substitution for aid from Europe and North American empires,”
• Yet, Iran’s visibility in Latin America has clearly grown in recent years. According to Montúfar, Iran pursues relations with Latin American states as a sign of solidarity; “a gesture to [other] countries who feel attacked by the U.S.”
• “Iran wants regional power and recognition,” Farhi stated, “but it is not a large-scale threat.”
• “axis of annoyance.”

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• Egypt’s foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, fired a verbal broadside against Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah, on Wednesday, saying the three “worked together in the fighting over Gaza to provoke conflict in the Middle East,” reports Reuters
• “An Iranian freighter carrying weaponry for Hamas has been blocked by Egypt from entering the Suez Canal, amid concerns that Tehran is trying to supply the Palestinian militant group with missiles capable of striking Tel Aviv,” reports The Australian

• Their Iranian company is building thousands of apartments for Venezuela's poor. Iran is also helping to build cars, tractors and bicycles in Venezuela and has opened new embassies in Bolivia and Nicaragua
• The public housing project alone has brought more than 400 Iranian engineers and specialists to Venezuela, where many have learned basic Spanish
• The most visible impact so far has been the arrival of Iranian businesses
• Iran is courting Latin America's leftist bloc with active diplomacy, joint business projects and aid while gathering support for its much-criticized nuclear program. Nicaragua has received Iranian aid pledges for a dam and milk-processing plants, and is playing down U.S. concerns about Iran's nuclear-weapon ambitions. Iran has also promised Bolivia US$1 billion in aid and investment, including plans to build a cement plant, dairies and two public health clinics.
• an Iran-owned bank in Caracas
• Banco Internacional de Desarrollo, recently opened an unobtrusive office on the eighth floor of a Caracas high-rise that looks out over the palm trees of an exclusive golf course
• Venezuela has already become Iran's gateway for travel to the region, with a flight between Tehran and Caracas every other Tuesday. Chavez says Venezuela's state airline bought an Airbus jet especially for the route, which includes a stop in Damascus, Syria. Venezuela has a large Arab community of Syrian and Lebanese immigrants, many of whom arrived decades ago.
• The U.S. Treasury Department announced in June that it found Hezbollah was receiving support from a Venezuelan diplomat and a Lebanese-born businessman living in Caracas. The diplomat, Ghazi Nasr al Din, is assigned to the Venezuelan Embassy in Syria, and the U.S. said he used his position to provide financial support to the Lebanese militant group and "counseled Hezbollah donors on fundraising efforts." The diplomat is also accused of arranging travel for Hezbollah members to and from Venezuela, and to attend a training course in Iran
• Iranian tractors are now being driven by farmers in parts of Venezuela and Bolivia, and the first cars produced by Venirauto, a joint venture, are on Venezuelan roads.
• Meanwhile, concrete apartment blocks are going up on farmland in the southern plains. Kayson Company employs nearly 6,000 workers to build four public housing complexes with 10,000 apartments across the country, including the 2,700-unit subdivision in Calabozo.

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• In December 2005, Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, told Agence France Presse that Iran had extradited all foreign members of al-Qaeda, and tried any Iranian suspects. Previously, Iran had refused to publicly identify or extradite the detainees on security grounds.
• U.S. officials say Iran mostly backs Islamist groups, including the Lebanese Shiite militants of Hezbollah (which Iran helped found in the 1980s) and such Palestinian terrorist groups as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. A few months after Hamas won the Palestinian Authority (PA) elections in early 2006, Iran pledged $50 million to the near-bankrupt PA.

• There have long been cadres of Iranian

   

  IRGC forces, with elements of the Iranian Al Quds force (the IRGC element

   

  that trains forces abroad) present in Lebanon and training the Hezbollah for

   

  some time
• Iran almost certainly does,

   

  however, provide financial aid and goods and military services worth some

   

  $25-50 million in real-world terms
• The most significant changes in terms of Iranian support for the Hezbollah,

   

  however, is that Iran has also given the Hezbollah much longer-range

   

  rockets that can be fired into major cities like Haifa
• The Hezbollah has also had significant Iranian and Syrian support in other

   

  areas, and in helping to train anti-Israeli Palestinian groups. Hezbollah

   

  forces now have modified AT-3 Sagger anti-tank missiles reworked to carry

   

  tandem warheads designed by an Iranian engineer
• The Hezbollah have also had Iranian supply and aid in using the Iranian

   

  Mohajer unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that they have used for

   

  surveillance over the north of Israel. Hezbollah first began to fly UAVs

   

  when it made two flights over northern Israel between November 2004 and

   

  again in May 2005.
• about 100 Iranian soldiers are in Lebanon and helped fire the Iranian-

   

  made, radar-guided C-802 at the Israeli ship late Friday, and that the Iranian

   

  forces were from the IRGC, a force controlled by supreme leader Ayatollah

   

  Ali Khamenei

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• TEHRAN, Iran – Iran approved plans Sunday to build 10 industrial scale uranium enrichment facilities, a dramatic expansion of the program in defiance of U.N. demands it halt enrichment and a move that is likely to significantly heighten tensions with the West.

• The White House said the move "would be yet another serious violation of Iran's clear obligations under multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions and another example of Iran choosing to isolate itself."

   

  "Time is running out for Iran to address the international community's growing concerns about its nuclear program," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.
• On Friday, the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency issued a strong rebuke of Iran over enrichment, infuriating Tehran. Parliament speaker Ali Larijani threatened on Sunday to reduce cooperation with the IAEA.
• "Should the West continue to pressure us, the legislature can reconsider the level of Iran's cooperation with the IAEA," Larijani told parliament in a speech carried live on state radio.
• Vice President Ali Akbar Salehi, who is also Iran's nuclear chief, said Sunday's decision was "a firm message" in response to the IAEA. He told state TV that the agency's censure was a challenge aimed at "measuring the resistance of the Iranian nation."
• Any new enrichment plants would take years to build and stock with centrifuges. But the ambitious plans were a bold show by Iran that it is willing to risk further sanctions and won't back down amid a deadlock in negotiation attempts.
• Iran currently has one operating enrichment facility, at the central town of Natanz, which has churned out around 1,500 kilograms (3,300 pounds) of low-enriched uranium over the past years — enough to build a nuclear weapon if Iran enriches it to a higher level. Iran says it has no intention of doing so, insisting its nuclear program aims only to generate electricity.
• On Sunday, a Cabinet meeting headed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran to begin building five uranium enrichment plants at sites that have already been studied and propose five other locations for future construction within two months, the state news agency IRNA reported. All would be at the same scale as Natanz.
• The new sites are to be built inside mountains to protect them from possible attacks, said Salehi, Iran's nuclear chief. They will also use a new generation of more efficient and more productive centrifuges that Iran has been working to construct, he and Ahmadinejad said.
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for "a concentration of sanctions and pressure on the Iranian regime, which is vulnerable economically" to rein in its nuclear ambitions. Israel has not ruled out military strikes against Iranian nuclear sites if its program is not stopped.
• It noted that IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei cannot confirm that Tehran's nuclear program is exclusively geared toward peaceful uses, and expressed "serious concern" that Iran's stonewalling of an agency probe means "the possibility of military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program" cannot be excluded.
• 226 of the 290 lawmakers signed a letter urging the government to prepare a plan to reduce Tehran's cooperation with the IAEA in response to its resolution.

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