US’ Iran regime-change plan: hit economy, orchestrate protests, engage MEK cult to chant “Democracy”
While
the hard-hit Iranian economy is likely to continue reeling, driving
more protesters into the streets, one shouldn’t mistake their pain
for a desire to subject themselves to a totalitarian cult with hardly
a fraction of the support enjoyed by the Shia clergy helming the
Islamic Republic.
by
Elliott Gabriel
Part
2 - From revolutionary anti-imperialists to bizarre mercenary cult
The MEK
once enjoyed a decently-sized support base within Iran and even
played a role in the 1979 Iranian Revolution that overthrew
U.S.-loyal Shah Reza Pahlevi and opened up a new period of national
independence for the nation. Following the revolution, the group’s
political struggles with the faction led by Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini and failure to secure widespread support led it to deploy
its Shah-era “armed struggle,” or terrorist tactics, against
officials and clergy loyal to Khomeini, claiming the lives of dozens
of key figures in the newly-formed government.
The
Mojahedin (jihadists), whom the Islamic Revolution’s leader
regularly derided as monafeghin (hypocrites) – an allusion to those
in the Quran who conspired against the Prophet while feigning loyalty
– became the top enemies of the Islamic Republic.
Faced
with the full brunt of the Islamic Republic’s retribution, the
group fled to Iraq in the 1980s and became a virtual “Iranian
Legion” for Saddam Hussein, who equipped the group with heavy
armor, uniforms, and artillery so that it could fight alongside Iraqi
forces during the Iran-Iraq war. Following the war, the self-styled
“national liberation army” launched a series of cross-border
raids against Iranian civilian and military targets, sacrificing
nearly all of its remaining support among Iranians.
The drop
in Iranian support led to a push to replenish MEK ranks by targeting
family members, wealthy potential donors, and expatriate Iranians in
Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. True to their form as a cult,
the group promised to connect prospective recruits with a lifeline of
assistance as the trade-off for their enlisting in the group.
According
to the RAND Corporation: “Many were enticed not with promises of
an opportunity to fight the IRI, but rather through promises of paid
employment as translators, assistance in processing asylum requests,
free visits to family members, public-health volunteer opportunities,
and even marriage. All ‘recruits’ were brought into Iraq
illegally and then required to hand over their identity documents for
‘safekeeping,’ effectively trapping them at MeK compounds. These
findings suggest that many MeK recruits since 1986 were not true
volunteers and have been kept at MeK camps in Iraq under duress.”
Tens of
thousands of the group’s members remained under the protection of
the Iraqi dictator, even participating in the bloody massacres that
followed the Shia Arab and Kurdish uprisings of 1991, until the fall
of the Ba’athist regime in 2003 when the U.S.-led coalition bombed
the Saddam loyalists’ camps.
Seeing
continued use for the MEK for their own anti-Iran efforts, however,
the U.S. placed 3,800 members of the group under protective custody
at Camp Ashraf, the sprawling city-sized base built for them by
Saddam. Those who escaped the group had to undergo cult
deprogramming.
According
to RAND, the group – which claims to uphold women’s equality –
ensured that lines were “painted down the middle of hallways
separating them into men’s and women’s sides” at the camp,
prior to their expulsion by Iraqi forces in 2013. Many were shipped
by the U.S. to Albania, the only country willing to accept them.
Yet
while a major portion of the group’s membership spent over three
decades imprisoned in Ba’athist Iraqi camps near the border with
Iran, a significant chunk of the group – such as leader Maryam
Rajavi – nestled into the Iranian expatriate communities in Paris,
Washington, and other capitals. The group spent decades relentlessly
lobbying Western governments and lawmakers to support its attempts to
bring “reform” to Iran, and has even furnished intelligence to
U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies in hopes to provide a casus
belli for hostile policies and even military actions versus Tehran.
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