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Locked on 05/04/2011 12:18:31 PM PDT by Admin Moderator, reason:
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Posted on 03/30/2011 7:12:26 AM PDT by MestaMachine
Edited on 03/30/2011 12:16:23 PM PDT by Sidebar Moderator. [history]
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I think maybe it’s too late for a “cure.” This is one of those things that by the time we recognized it, it had already metastisized and has become fatal.
AN AMAZING MUST SEE VIDEO!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-p2GHH1Glo
It’s Catching On .. Fire ! — Koran Burned In Iran ( Freedom from Religion is Possible )
A simple action can set you F R E E - Aim Spray Set ( ASS )
Two anonymous young men in Iran, one Iranian and one Afghan, have burned a Koran in protest. This seven-and-a-half minute long video shows the two men, their faces obscured, holding the Muslim holy book and reading prepared statements. They say that Arabs have foisted this book and their homelands and because of it they have gone backwards for 1400 years. They say they dislike the Koran and want it to disappear, adding “Viva freedom!”
Afterwards they stand the Koran on a flat rock, douse it alcohol and light it. One of them hoots and laughs. The book burns fiercely, and after a few moments one of them sprays more alcohol into the flames. The video ends with them warming their hands over the blazing book.
***************************************************
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/palestinian-institutions-ready-statehood-u-n-20110412-070929-139.html
Excerpt:
..Palestinian institutions ready for statehood: U.N
By Mohammed Assadi | Reuters – Tue, 12 Apr, 2011 10:09 AM EDT
.........RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - The Palestinian Authority is ready to run an independent state but will struggle to make further institutional progress due to the restrictions of the Israeli occupation, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
The U.N. report followed equally upbeat assessments of the PA’s nation-building achievements released over the past week by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
The positive statements comes before a meeting in Brussels on Wednesday of aid donor countries which will review Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s drive to construct the framework of a state by mid-2011.
“In six areas where the U.N. is most engaged, governmental functions are now sufficient for a functioning government of a state,” said the report, entitled “Palestinian State-building: A Decisive Period.”
It listed the six areas as rule of law and human rights; livelihoods; education and culture; health; social protection; and infrastructure and water.
However, it said the PA could not make significant further advances given the continued Israeli occupation of much of the West Bank and a breakdown in Middle East peace talks.
“Measures of occupation which stifle Palestinian life need to be fundamentally rolled back by more far reaching Israeli actions to match the progress of the state-building program,” the report said.
Direct negotiations aimed at ending the decades-old conflict broke down last September following a dispute over continued Jewish settlement building on the West Bank.
Given the impasse, Palestinian leaders aim to ask the United Nations General Assembly in September for recognition of statehood on all of the territory Israel occupied in 1967, including Gaza — over which the PA has no control.
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http://ca.news.yahoo.com/egypt-army-sets-limits-free-speech-hrw-20110412-011630-919.html
Excerpt:
..Rights groups condemn Egypt blogger jail sentence
By Tom Pfeiffer and Isabel Coles | Reuters – Tue, 12 Apr, 2011 11:05 AM EDT
.........CAIRO (Reuters) - The sentencing of a blogger to jail for criticizing Egypt’s army has drawn a chorus of objections from rights groups, who say the country’s ruling military council is drawing red lines around free speech.
Maikel Nabil, 26, was taken from his home in Cairo by five military officers early on March 28 and charged with insulting the military establishment and “spreading false information,” New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said.
Nabil’s lawyers were told the judge would rule on Tuesday but discovered he had already been sentenced in their absence on Sunday, HRW cited defense lawyer Adel Ramadan as saying.
“Maikel Nabil’s three-year sentence may be the worst strike against free expression in Egypt since the Mubarak government jailed the first blogger for four years in 2007,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at HRW. He urged the army to drop all the charges and release Nabil immediately.
Activists suspect anything from hundreds to thousands of Egyptians are being held and tried before military courts behind closed doors after President Hosni Mubarak’s ousting on February 11.
“The methods used by the Egyptian military do not seem to have evolved since Hosni Mubarak’s fall,” said Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-Francois Julliard.
“A civilian should not be tried by a military court. This is not the way things are done in the democratic society to which Egyptians aspire,” he added.
you may have meant to say that, but yo sure didnt actually say that.
If this thread is to die because of your hysteria over reza pahlevi and savak and/or the MeK, then by golly, at the very least it will die with the truth and not some hysterical rant against me personally. I did no such thing to you.
The next posts are not my “personal” opinion. They are from sources far and wide, left and right, including the Library of Congress.
You have called me ignorant. You have said I haven’t any clue as to what I said in my post...as if you are the only person who is allowed to speak on Iran with authority because YOU were there. And by this, you have brought this thread to a screeching halt. I question why. Because if, as you claim, you were there, were you there from the beginning? And if you WERE then you KNOW the truth and either don’t want it told, or you know far less than you claim.
Were you a pahlevi confidant? Because if THAT is true, then I can understand your reluctance to attribute any of the tragedy that has befallen Iran to the pahlevis.
I KNOW the history, but I have spent the last three days combing the web to put together a SHORT synopsis of how things got so out of control.
I didn’t want to take up pages and pages of the thread with Iran, because it is a long, long story that started a long time ago. To understand how we got here now you had to go back to BEFORE the 1979 revolution. And to understand the MEK, as it is NOW you had to go BACK to its inception. Had I wanted to write a book, I suppose I could have.
I would have had to explain that early iran was controlled by british oil greed, (which has caused untold misery in the entire ME.) And then go from there to Mosaddegh who was the duly elected prime minister that wanted to end all that so HE was overthrown in a coup, at the brit’s request, by the cia to keep your boy in power.
HE had a LOT of followers and the MEK originated from those followers. But let’s not allow facts to overshadow the shah myth, shall we?
What was your purpose in making such a rant at me and making it so down and dirty and personal? Personal attacks like that are the last resort of the scoundrel.
I have enough source material to swamp this thread into oblivion which backs up EVERYTHING in my original post. If you don’t like it, that is fine, and if you had a dispute, back it up. But you didn’t. Instead, you called me names.
Where are your facts...because I have mine.
Syrian soldiers have been shot by security forces after refusing to fire on protesters, witnesses said, as a crackdown on anti-government demonstrations intensified.
Witnesses told al-Jazeera and the BBC that some soldiers had refused to shoot after the army moved into Banias in the wake of intense protests on Friday.
Human rights monitors named Mourad Hejjo, a conscript from Madaya village, as one of those shot by security snipers. "His family and town are saying he refused to shoot at his people," said Wassim Tarif, a local human rights monitor.
Footage on YouTube shows an injured soldier saying he was shot in the back by security forces, while another video shows the funeral of Muhammad Awad Qunbar, who sources said was killed for refusing to fire on protesters. Signs of defections will be worrying to Syria's regime. State media reported a different version of events, claiming nine soldiers had been killed in an ambush by an armed group in Banias.
Activists said not all soldiers reported dead or injured were shot after refusing to fire. "We are investigating reports that some people have personal weapons and used them in self-defence," said Tarif.
***********************************************
Saudi terror suspect Aldawsari denies Texas charges
A Saudi student has pleaded not guilty to charges he sought to make a bomb and planned terror attacks in the US.
Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, 20, is charged in Texas with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. If convicted, he faces life in prison.
His list of targets allegedly included the house of former President George W Bush in Texas.
Prosecutors say Mr Aldawsari bought a gas mask, hazardous materials suit and toxic chemicals for use in bomb-making.
Mr Aldawsari is in the US legally on a student visa, and was studying business at South Plains College near Lubbock in Texas, the justice department said.
A jury trial is due to begin in federal court in Lubbock on 2 May.
'Toxic chemicals' Investigators said in February Mr Aldawsari had ordered the toxic chemical phenol, which can be used to make explosives, telling the supplier he wanted it for "off-campus, personal research".
The supplier became suspicious and reported the contact to the FBI; Mr Aldawsari later cancelled the order, the justice department said.
Mr Aldawsari succeeded in purchasing 30 litres (6.6 gallons) of concentrated nitric acid and 11 litres of concentrated sulphuric acid, prosecutors said.
He planned to use a mobile phone as a remote detonator and purchased other items to assist with bomb-making - a gas mask, hazardous materials suit, soldering iron, glass beakers and a stun gun, the justice department said.
Mr Aldawsari drew up a list of US targets to attack, including Mr Bush's Dallas residence and 12 reservoir dams in Colorado and California, investigators allege.
Prosecutors have informed US District Judge Sam Cummings they intend to use evidence derived from foreign intelligence operations in the trial.
On 9 March, Judge Cummings ordered attorneys on both sides not to speak to the news media about the case.
Thank you. Really!
I am going to save the source material on iran for now. Would much rather hear a rational response first rather than send this thread over a cliff. If anyone wants me to post the stuff, I will, but it’s very lengthy. Up to you guys.
For the record. I was alerted by someone who is very decent, that THIS:
“To: Cindy; Velveeta; All; Spunky; ~Kim4VRWC’s~; 1035rep; 2ndDivisionVet; 4woodenboats; 5Madman2; ...
Thank goodness for your alternative to Threat Matrix where anti-Terrorism can flourish instead of being promoted as a good thing.
http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/post?id=2490938%2C1923
post by Mestamachine to FARS (Karma?)
“If this thread (Threat Matrix) is to die because of your hysteria over reza pahlevi and savak and/or the MeK, then by golly, at the very least it will die with the truth and not some hysterical rant against me personally. I did no such thing to you.”
The reason:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2696934/posts?page=622#622
Paid shills of the Mullahs are not as virulently against the monarchy as Mestamachine has been.
1,924 posted on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 4:05:44 AM by FARS (Be healthy, happy and thrive,) “
was posted on the anti-terrorism thread with no reply here to me on this thread, and without pinging me to the post.
So now, not only has he called me ignorant and clueless, he has gone as far as to say I support terrorism...did so somewhere he thought I would never see it, and ALSO told his entire ping list (which not surprisingly did not include me as of today, I suppose,) not to post to THIS thread anymore. To kill Threat Matrix because I don’t agree with him. ME, not anyone else who posts here. I can deal with someone who challenges me to my face. This is just plain cowardly.
FARS, why didn’t you also post your rant to me which was REAL the reason for that reply to you? It’s dishonest.
The LAST person who did this and acted in exactly this manner, was polarik. The personal insults all in caps. The rage at anyone who dared disagree with him or challenge him on any issue. The summoning of his “supporters.” The backdoor freepmail campaign. Is this the act of an honest person, or a coward who will not face you in the open? Killing TM is your idea of karma?
I will post the full docs now. I gave you a chance to do this decently. It would appear you have declined. And if you can’t be honest about THIS, what else have you been dishonest about?
And indeed, from examining the pawprints of mr.Farce around the web, there's a lot of commonality between him and old Polarik ;).
It's getting to be a boring chore collating and analyzing the activity of web scammers on FR.
#1:
hero file
First published 24 March 2004
MOHAMMED MOSSADEGH
Country: Iran.
Cause: Independence and democracy for Iran.
Background: Beginning in the 19th Century, Iran becomes subject to interference and land grabs by Britain and Russia. Local dissatisfaction with Iran’s weak and corruption prone royal regime grows and becomes increasingly vocal until in August 1906 Shah (King) Muzaffar ad Din is forced to issue a decree promising the introduction of a new constitution. The constitution that is subsequently drafted places strict limitations on royal power and establishes a representative parliament, or Majlis. The shah signs the new constitution on 30 December 1906. He dies five days later. In 1908 oil is discovered in Iran. More background.
Mini biography: Born on 19 May 1882 into Iran’s ruling elite. His father is finance minister to the Qajar Dynasty and his mother the granddaughter of the crown prince. Mossadegh marries Princess Zia Saltaneh in 1903. The couple will have five children.
1906 - Following the ‘Constitutional Revolution’, Mossadegh is elected to the first Majlis as a representative for Isfahan in central Iran. However, he refuses to take up the position, claiming that he is too young.
1907 - Britain and Russia sign the Anglo-Russian Agreement to divide Iran into spheres of influence, with the Russians taking exclusive right to the north, and the British the south and east. The neutral sphere in the centre is to be open to both powers.
1908 - In June Shah Muzaffar ad Din’s successor, Mohammad Ali Shah, attempts to reassert royal power, ordering a brigade led by Russian officers to bomb the Majlis and close down the building. Mossadegh, a known liberal, goes into hiding to avoid execution or imprisonment.
Meanwhile, oil is discovered in Iran. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later renamed the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company) is formed soon after.
1909 - In July forces loyal to the constitution regroup and march on Tehran. The shah is deposed and the constitution reestablished. Mohammad Ali Shah goes into exile in Russia.
Mossadegh travel via Russia to France, where he studies at the Political Science Institute for two years. Illness forces him to return to Iran but after five months is back in Europe to study law at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, graduating in 1913 with a doctorate in law.
1911 - When the Majlis refuses to bow to a Russian ultimatum to dismiss an Iranian-employed administrator who has attempted to collect tax within the Russian sphere, Russian troops stationed within Iran move to occupy Tehran. However, local chiefs preempt the Russians. The Majlis is forced to accept the ultimatum before being once again shut down.
Meanwhile, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) commissions an oil refinery at Abadan on the Persian Gulf.
1914 - The First World War begins on 3 August. Iran declares its neutrality but is caught up in the conflict by the presence of Russian, Turkish and British troops.
Mossadegh returns to Iran to take up a professorship at the Political Science Institute of Tehran. He writes two books - ‘Civil Legal Procedure’ and the ‘Capitulation’.
During the war the British Navy places a long-term contract with the AIOC for the supply of fuel oil for its fleet. The British Government also buys a majority of the company’s stock.
1917 - Mossadegh is appointed deputy finance minister to the government.
1918 - The First World War ends on 11 November with the signing of a general armistice. With Russia still immersed in the Bolshevik Revolution of the previous year Britain is now the dominant foreign influence on Iran’s affairs.
Britain soon attempts to establish a virtual protectorate over the country under the Anglo-Persian Agreement. Mossadegh, a fervent nationalist, strongly objects and travels to Europe to promote his views. Though supported by Iranian Prime Minister Vosuq od-Dowleh, the agreement will never be enacted as the now reassembled Majlis refuses to approve the deal.
Vosuq od-Dowleh is subsequently forced out of office, to be replaced by Moshir al-Doleh, who invites Mossadegh to join the Cabinet as minister of justice. He is also appointed governor of the Fars Province in the south of Iran.
1921 - In February the Iranian government is overthrown in a British-backed military coup d’état led by Persian Cossacks Brigade officer Reza Khan. Reza Khan will quickly take full control of the country, ruling in all but name. To protest against the legitimacy of the coup government, Mossadegh resigns from his post as governor of Fars.
1923 - Mossadegh serves as minister of finance and then briefly as governor of Azerbaijan Province. In May he is appointed minister of foreign affairs.
Reza Khan, meanwhile, secures the prime ministership. At the same time, Mossadegh is elected to the Majlis as a representative for Tehran.
1925 - In October Reza Khan deposes the royal Qajar Dynasty, and in April 1926 takes the crown for himself as His Imperial Majesty Reza Shah Pahlavi, beginning the so-called Pahlavi Dynasty.
Reza Khan’s rule will bring a modernisation of the political and social systems and a substantial reduction in the power of the clergy and tribal leaders. However, along with the reforms will come increasing repression and social unrest.
Under Reza Khan the government will be centralised and the military strengthened, with between 30 to 50 percent of total yearly national expenditure being allocated to military projects. However, rather than becoming an effective defence force focussed on foreign threats, the military is used to uphold Reza Khan’s increasingly dictatorial regime.
The education system is secularised and, in 1935, the country’s first European-style university is established. Iran’s transport infrastructure is expanded and industrial development is encouraged. The country’s legal system is taken out of the hands of the clerics. Women are brought into the social mainstream. European dress codes are imposed on the population, and the wearing of the veil is banned.
At the same time, the Majlis is sidelined and freedom of speech curtailed. Opponents are arrested, with many being sent to jail or into exile. Many others are murdered. In the countryside peasant farmers find their lifestyles are deteriorating under Reza Khan’s policies.
Iran’s economy becomes more and more centred on the production of crude oil from the country’s vast reserves, which by the end of the century are estimated at between 89.7 and 99.1 billion barrels, ranking them as the fourth or fifth largest in the world.
Mossadegh strongly objects to Reza Khan taking the title of shah. He retires from politics into private life.
Late in Reza Khan’s reign Mossadegh will be arrested and exiled for several months before being placed under house arrest in his Ahmad-Abad country estate west of Tehran.
1933 - The Iranian Government cancels the AIOC oil concession and negotiates a new agreement that reduces the area covered and improves the returns to Iran. The term of the contract is also extended to the end of 1993, when all oil facilities, including the refinery at Abadan, are to revert to the Iranian Government.
1938 - Iran’s Communist Party is banned.
1939 - On 1 September German troops invade Poland. Britain and France declare war on Germany two days later. The Second World War has begun.
Iran again attempts to remain neutral but is brought into the war when British and Soviet Union troops invade on 26 August 1941 in order to secure supply lines across the country and into the Soviet Union. Iran’s military forces are decimated within three days.
Following the invasion, Reza Khan abdicates in favour of his son, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who takes the throne on 16 September 1941.
1943 - In September Iran declares war on Germany. From 28 November to 1 December the country hosts the ‘Tehran Conference’ meeting between British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. The three leaders discuss the details of their joint campaign against Germany and reaffirm their joint policy of accepting nothing less than Germany’s unconditional surrender. They also reaffirm their commitment to Iran’s independence and territorial integrity and their willingness to provide Iran with economic aid.
However, during the war, Iran experiences economic hardship, assisting the rise of the communist Tudeh Party (tudeh means masses), which also receives patronage from the Soviet Union.
1944 - Following Reza Khan’s abdication, Mossadegh returns to public life, regaining a seat in the Majlis as the first deputy for Tehran. He becomes a prominent advocate of Iranian nationalism and leader of the Jebhe-ye Melli (National Front), a coalition of secular and religious political groups.
Among his nationalist initiatives, Mossadegh introduces a bill to stop ministers negotiating oil concessions with a foreign party without the approval of the Majlis. The bill is passed in December.
1945 - The Second World War in Europe ends on 7 May when Germany surrenders unconditionally. In keeping with their wartime pledges, British and US forces withdraw from Iran.
However, Soviet troops remain in the country until the Majlis grants an oil concession to the Soviet Union. The concession is later revoked by a vote of 102 to two in a ballot spearheaded by Mossadegh. The Majlis also passes a bill forbidding any further foreign oil concessions and requiring the government to exploit oil resources directly.
1947 - Iran signs an agreement with the US providing for military aid and training.
The AIOC, meanwhile, reports an after-tax profit of US$112 million. Of this only US$19.6 million is returned to the Iranian government.
1949 - With the need for development funds growing, the Majlis becomes increasingly focussed on renegotiating the oil concession with the AIOC to achieve more equitable returns for Iran. (Under the existing agreement the British government derives more from tax on the AIOC than Iran does from royalties.) Again, Mossadegh leads the push to improve the returns to Iran from the concession.
Meanwhile, following an abortive attempt on the shah’s life on 4 February, reputedly by Iranian communists, the Tudeh Party is banned.
1950 - Mossadegh is elected as chairman of the government’s Oil Committee. In November the committee rejects a draft agreement with the AIOC that offers the government slightly improved terms but not the 50-50 profit-sharing split of other Persian Gulf oil concessions.
Mossadegh’s position attracts growing popular support, and the National Front wins many new seats in elections held during the year.
1951 - In February the AIOC finally agrees on a 50-50 split in profits, but with nationalist sentiment on the rise it is now too late. On 8 March the Majlis votes to nationalise the oil industry.
In April Mossadegh is named prime minister. His first act after selecting his Cabinet is to enforce the Oil Nationalisation Bill. Soon after, Iran takes control of the AIOC’s refinery at Abadan, which at the time is the largest in the world, supplying 43% of Europe’s petroleum requirements.
Britain responds to the nationalisation by placing a worldwide embargo on the purchase of Iranian oil and pressuring its allies to do the same. In September Britain freezes Iran’s sterling assets and bans export of goods to Iran.
In the US the administration refuses to lend Iran funds until the dispute is resolved, and works to ensure the oil embargo is enforced.
Britain also takes its case against Iran to United Nations (UN) Security Council in New York and the International Court of Justice at The Hague in the Netherlands. Mossadegh defends Iran’s action in both forums. Ultimately, Britain’s legal assault fails when the Court of Justice upholds Iran’s argument that the oil dispute is outside its jurisdiction and cannot be heard.
Meanwhile, oil production in Iran comes to a virtual standstill and the economy begins to go into serious decline. Only Japan and Italy resist the pressure to join the embargo and continue to purchase Iranian oil.
Mossadegh is named ‘Time’ magazine’s person of the year for 1951, “not that he was the best or the worst or the strongest, but because his rapid advance from obscurity was attended by the greatest stir.”
“The stir was not only on the surface of events: in his strange way, this strange old man represented one of the most profound problems of his time. Around this dizzy old wizard swirled a crisis of human destiny,” the magazine says.
“There were millions inside and outside of Iran whom Mossadegh symbolised and spoke for, and whose fanatical state of mind he had helped to create. They would rather see their own nations fall apart than continue their present relations with the West. ...
“Mossadegh does not promise his country a way out of this nearly hopeless situation. He would rather see the ruin of Iran than give in to the British, who, in his opinion, corrupted and exploited his country. He is not in any sense pro-Russian, but he intends to stick to his policies even though he knows they might lead to control of Iran by the Kremlin. ...
“The fact that Iranians accept Mossadegh’s suicidal policy is a measure of the hatred of the West - and especially the hatred of Britain - in the Near and Middle East.”
1952 - On 17 July, after the shah refuses Mossadegh’s request that he be given the power to appoint the minister for defence, Mossadegh resigns, sparking a general strike and three days of rioting by Iranian nationalists aided by communists. The shah is forced to reappoint Mossadegh as head of the government on 22 July and to grant him full control over the military.
Mossadegh appoints himself as minister for defence and begins to introduce changes in the military high command, dismissing officers loyal to the shah and replacing them with nationalists.
In August the Majlis grants Mossadegh full power in all affairs of government for a six-month period, allowing him to attempt reforms to the country’s tax and revenue structures and to control government spending. These special powers are subsequently extended for a further six-month term. Mossadegh also obtains approval for a law to reduce the term of the Senate from six years to two years, bringing about the dissolution of that body.
Also in August, Mossadegh offers to enter into new negotiations with the AIOC over the claims arising out of the oil nationalisation if the company hands over US$1.4 billion it has been holding in a contingency account and if Britain ceases blocking the sale of Iranian oil in world markets. At the same time, Britain and the US offer to recognise the nationalisation if The Hague is allowed to adjudicate the level of compensation. However, the offers will be rejected by both sides.
Britain, meanwhile, starts to plan a coup d’état to topple Mossadegh and urges the US to join in the operation, which is code-named ‘TPAJAX’, or ‘Operation Ajax’. The coup plan has the full backing of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, although the outgoing administration of US President Harry S. Truman is reluctant to become involved.
Aware that a plot is being hatched, Mossadegh breaks off diplomatic relations with Britain on 16 October. The British embassy in Iran is closed down and all British diplomats inside the country are ordered to leave. The involvement of the US now becomes essential if a coup is to succeed.
1953 - The administration in Britain and the new administration of incoming US President Dwight D. Eisenhower become increasingly alarmed by the behaviour of Mossadegh and the ongoing nationalism inside Iran. Their concerns are further heightened when Mossadegh begins to work with the communist Tudeh Party. They fear that Iran will be drawn into the Soviet sphere, although Mossadegh advocates a policy of nonalignment in foreign affairs.
Mossadegh’s position also becomes destabilised by internal conflicts within the National Front, with several senior members and the religious faction defecting.
In March the shah attempts to have Mossadegh assassinated, but Mossadegh is warned and the scheme fails. The same month an Iranian general approaches the US Embassy in Tehran seeking support for an army-led coup against Mossadegh.
On 4 April the US director of central intelligence releases US$1 million which, according to a secret history of the coup written in 1954 by the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) chief coup strategist, Dr Donald N. Wilber, is to be used “in a way that would bring about the fall of Mossadegh.”
“The aim was to bring to power a government which would reach an equitable oil settlement, enabling Iran to become economically sound and financially solvent, and which would vigorously prosecute the dangerously strong Communist Party,” the secret history says.
Major-general Fazlollah Zahedi is selected by the coup plotters as Mossadegh’s replacement. He will also lead the coup, along with the shah.
In May Wilber travels to Cyprus to meet Norman Darbyshire, chief of the Iran branch of British intelligence, to make initial coup plans. Anti-Mossadegh cartoons begin to appear on Tehran’s the streets and the Iranian press start to publish articles criticising Mossadegh.
British and US intelligence officers meet again in June to finalise the coup strategy, after which Kermit Roosevelt, the chief of the CIA’s Near East and Asia Division, travels secretly to Iran to coordinate the plans with the shah and the Iranian military. However, the shah is reticent and will have to be pressured along every stage to the coup plan.
On 1 July British Prime Minister Winston Churchill gives final approval for Britain’s participation in the plan. US President Dwight D. Eisenhower approves the joint operation on 11 July. The plan has four elements - first a campaign to undermine Mossadegh’s popularity and raise the spectre of a communist takeover of the government; second, Mossadegh’s dismissal; third, street riots; and lastly the emergence of Zahedi as prime minister.
Beginning in August CIA operatives in Iran masquerading as communists start their attempts to stir dissent within the community. At the same time the media campaign against Mossadegh is cranked up.
On 4 August, suspecting that a plot has been mounted against him, Mossadegh organises a plebiscite asking voters to choose between the dissolution of the lower house of the Majlis or the resignation of his Cabinet. The referendum is in effect a vote of confidence in Mossadegh’s government and, after claiming a massive vote in favour of his Cabinet, he dissolves the house.
On 13 August the shah signs royal decrees dismissing Mossadegh and his cabinet and appointing Zahedi as prime minister. However, the legality of the decrees is questionable as the prime minister can only be appointed or dismissed by the Majlis.
The coup d’état begins on the night of 15 August when a royalist army colonel from the shah’s Imperial Guard attempts to serve Mossadegh with the royal decree ordering his dismissal. But the coup plot has been uncovered and the officer is arrested outside Mossadegh’s house in Tehran.
The next day it appears that the coup attempt has failed, with the majority of the military remaining loyal to Mossadegh. As masses of demonstrators take to the streets in support of Mossadegh, the shah flees to Baghdad then Rome, and several of the conspirators involved in the coup are arrested. Believing the danger has passed, Mossadegh directs that the troops who have remained loyal return to their barracks.
However, on 19 August the pro-shah forces rally, staging a counterattack that is fuelled by anti-communist sentiment and backed by the majority of the military and police. Mossadegh’s fortified house is stormed and he only narrowly escapes before it is looted and burned. More than 300 people die during the fighting in Tehran, and over 100 are wounded.
At 7 p.m. on 20 August Mossadegh surrenders to Zahedi and is placed under arrest.
The shah returns to Iran on 22 August, heavily indebted to the US and Britain for the continuation of his reign. The CIA and British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) immediately provide the coup government with US$5 million to help it consolidate power. It is the CIA’s first successful attempt to overthrow a foreign government. Martial law is declared, and will remain in force until the end of 1957. Diplomatic relations with Britain are restored.
Referring to Mossadegh, the shah says, “the law must be carried out with regard to persons who have violated national institutions and the constitution, wasted the nation’s money and the spilled blood of innocent persons to promote hypocrisy.”
Mossadegh’s trial before a five-member military tribunal begins on 8 November. The former prime minister conducts his own defence, arguing that the shah did not have the right to dismiss him without prior approval of the Majlis.
On 21 December the tribunal sentences Mossadegh to three years solitary confinement for trying to overthrow the monarchy.
In a letter read to the court, the shah praises Mossadegh for “the services rendered ... during his first year as Premier in connection with nationalisation of the oil industry which is desired by the whole nation and is confirmed and supported by the monarchy itself.”
On hearing his sentence Mossadegh states, “The verdict of this court has increased my historical glories. I am extremely grateful you convicted me. Truly tonight the Iranian nation understood the meaning of constitutionalism.”
After serving his sentence Mossadegh will be placed under house arrest in his Ahmad-Abad estate, where he will remain until he dies.
In the wake of the coup, hundreds of other National Front leaders, Tudeh Party officers, and political activists are also arrested, with some being sentenced to death. Several hundred pro-Mossadegh military officers are also arrested, allegedly for membership of the Tudeh Party, and approximately two dozen are executed.
Relations with the US and Britain are restored. The US immediately provides economic assistance, and a new oil concession is negotiated with Britain.
As with his father, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi will attempt to introduce a variety of social, economic and administrative reforms but in an atmosphere of increasing repression.
Opposition parties including the Tudeh and the National Front are banned, suppressed, or closely controlled, freedom of speech is curtailed, and the secret police (SAVAK - Sazman-e Ettelaat va Amniyat-e Keshvar) is strengthened - measures that along with economic instability, corruption, and the rise of Shia fundamentalism will contribute to the shah’s ultimate downfall.
1954 - Oil production resumes late in the year. Under an agreement reached between the government and a consortium of eight foreign oil companies, industry control of the oil companies is restored, but the government’s share of income is greatly increased to approximately one-half of the net profits.
The consortium is made up of the AIOC (with a 40% holding), Royal Dutch Shell (14% holding), Standard Oil Company (New Jersey), Standard Oil of California, Socony Vacuum, the Texas Company, Gulf Oil Corporation, and the Compagnie Francaise des Petroles.
At the same time, Iran agrees to pay compensation to the AIOC of US$70 million over 10 years.
The AIOC is renamed the British Petroleum Company, better known these days as ‘BP’.
1961 - Iran joins with other major oil-exporting countries to form OPEC, the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
1963 - In June Shia cleric Ayatollah Sayyid Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini is placed under house arrest following a blistering speech attacking the shah. His arrest sparks three days of the most violent riots seen in the country since the coup against Mossadegh.
1964 - Khomeini is released from house arrest in April. In November he again publicly attacks the regime, denouncing a new law giving diplomatic immunity to US military personnel serving in Iran, and to their staffs and families. He is arrested and sent into exile in Turkey. In October 1965 he moves to Iraq, where he will remain until October 1978, when he is expelled by the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
1967 - Mossadegh dies from throat cancer on 4 March. At the time of his death he is still under house arrest. He is buried in one of the rooms of his house. He is survived by his two sons and three daughters.
Postscript
1972 - During a visit to Iran, US President Richard M. Nixon agrees to allow the shah to purchase unlimited quantities of US military hardware. In return, the shah permits the US to establish two listening posts in Iran to monitor Soviet ballistic missile launches and other military activity.
1975 - Iran is declared a one-party state under the Rastakhiz Party created by the shah.
1976 - Following a period of growth, where Iran becomes the world’s fourth largest producer of crude oil and the second largest exporter of petroleum, the economy begins to falter. Steeply rising inflation and inequitable distribution of oil revenues leads to increased community dissatisfaction. Local unrest is coupled with growing criticism from abroad over Iran’s human rights record.
1978 - In January religious demonstrations break out after an Iranian newspaper publishes an article questioning Khomeini’s piety and suggesting he is a British agent. Khomeini responds from his exile in Iraq by calling for further demonstrations and the overthrow of the shah.
On 4 September antigovernment demonstrations break out. On the night of 7 September the government declares martial law. The next day troops open fire on demonstrators in Jaleh Square in Tehran, killing at least 87.
In October Khomeini is expelled from Iraq. He moves to Paris, France, where he continues to agitate against the shah.
Meanwhile, in Iran, the economy continues to deteriorate, with strikes creating further havoc.
On 9 and 10 December several hundred thousand people participated in antigovernment marches in Tehran and the provinces. At the end of the month the National Front agrees to form a new government on the condition that the shah leave the country.
1979 - On 16 January Shah Pahlavi leaves Iran, saying he is going on a short holiday. He will never return, dying in exile the following year.
Khomeini returns to Iran on 1 February. From his base in Tehran he coordinates the so-called ‘Islamic Revolution’ - the final overthrow of the monarchist regime.
By 13 February the task has been completed and Iran is in the hands of Khomeini and his supporters. The country is rebuilt as a self-reliant Islamic republic controlled by Khomeini’s ‘Council of Guardians’. Relations with world powers hit rock bottom. The US is characterised as the ‘Great Satan’ and the Soviet Union as the ‘Lesser Satan’.
2000 - On 17 March US Secretary of State Madeline Albright publicly admits to the role of the US in the 1953 coup.
“The United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran’s popular prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh,” Albright says.
“The Eisenhower administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons. But the coup was clearly a set back for Iran’s political development and it is easy to see why so many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs.”
Comment: Mossadegh is an unlikely hero. Though often derided for his eccentricities and hypochondria, he was honest and sincere, with a deep love of his country and an abiding wish for it to be free at last from the intervention of foreign powers.
It is intriguing to pose a raft of “what ifs” around Mossadegh and the coup that overthrew him, though the cycle of cause and effect is forever too complex for anyone to be even remotely sure of alternative outcomes.
What does seem certain, however, is this - if the US hadn’t been involved in the planning and execution of the coup it would enjoy far greater favour in Iran than it does today. From this many more “what ifs” are raised.
While it may be drawing far too long a bow to describe the overthrow of Mossadegh as one of the pivotal events of the 20th Century, there are many aspects to the episode that appear to justify this claim. Not the least of these is the fact that the ouster of Mossadegh was the first successful coup planned and executed by the CIA.
Iran
Prior to the Islamic revolution of 1978–79 in Iran, SAVAK (Organization of National Security and Information), the Iranian secret police and intelligence service, protected the regime of the shah by arresting, torturing, and executing many dissidents. After the shah’s government fell, SAVAK and other intelligence services were eliminated and new services were created, though many low- and mid-level intelligence personnel were retained or rehired by the new services. The most important of the postrevolutionary intelligence services is the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), which is responsible for both intelligence and counterintelligence. It also has conducted covert actions outside Iran in support of Islamic regimes elsewhere; for example, it was said to have provided military support to Muslim fighters in Kosovo and in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s.
Wiki-Brittanica
History
1957-1970After removing the populist regime of Mohammad Mosaddeq (which was originally entrusted with nationalizing Iran's oil industry but ultimately set out to weaken the Shah's power) from power on 19 August 1953, in a coup, the monarch, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, established an intelligence service with police powers. Pahlavi's goal was to strengthen his regime by placing political opponents under surveillance and repress dissident movements.
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, who 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. This organization was the first modern, effective intelligence service to operate in Persia. Its main achievement occurred in September 1954, when it discovered and destroyed a large communist Tudeh Party network that had been established in the Persian armed forces
In March 1955, the Army colonel was "replaced with a more permanent team of five career CIA officers, including specialists in covert operations, intelligence analysis, and counterintelligence,including Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf who "trained virtually all of the first generation of SAVAK personnel." In 1956 this agency was reorganized and given the name Sazeman-e Ettela'at va Amniyat-e Keshvar (SAVAK). In 1960/61 the CIA trainers left and were replaced by a team of instructors from the Israeli Mossad.[9] These in turn were replaced by SAVAK’s own instructors in 1965. Chief CIA Iran analyst Jesse Leaf in an interview on 6th Jan. 1979 stated that the CIA taught Nazi torture techniques to SAVAK.
SAVAK had the power to censor the media, screen applicants for government jobs, "and according to reliable Western source, use all means necessary, including torture, to hunt down dissidents."
After 1963, the Shah expanded his security organizations, including SAVAK which grew to over 5300 full-time agents and a large but unknown number of part-time informers.
The agency's first director, General Teymur Bakhtiar, was dismissed in 1961 and later became a political dissident. In 1970 he was assassinated by SAVAK agents, disguised to look like an accident.
Hassan Pakravan, director of Savak from 1961–1965, had an almost benevolent reputation, for example dining with the Ayatollah Khomeini while Khomeini was under house arrest on a weekly basis, and later intervened to prevent Khomeini's execution, on the grounds it would "anger the common people of Iran".[16] After the Iranian Revolution, however, Pakravan was among the first of the Shah's officials to be executed by the Khomeini regime.
Pakravan was replaced in 1965 by General Nematollah Nassiri, a close associate of the Shah, and the service was reorganized and became increasingly active in the face of rising Shia and communist militancy and political unrest.
Siahkal attack and after
A turning point in SAVAK's reputation for ruthless brutality was reportedly an attack on a gendarmerie post in the Caspian village of Siahkal by a small band of armed Marxists in February 1971, although it is also reported to have tortured to death a Shia cleric, Ayatollah Muhammad Reza Sa'idi, in 1970. According to Iranian political historian Ervand Abrahamian, after this attack SAVAK interrogators were sent abroad for "scientific training to prevent unwanted deaths from 'brute force.' Brute force was supplemented with the bastinado; sleep deprivation; extensive solitary confinement; glaring searchlights; standing in one place for hours on end; nail extractions; snakes (favored for use with women); electrical shocks with cattle prods, often into the rectum; cigarette burns; sitting on hot grills; acid dripped into nostrils; near-drownings; mock executions; and an electric chair with a large metal mask to muffle screams while amplifying them for the victim. This latter contraption was dubbed the Apollo—an allusion to the American space capsules. Prisoners were also humiliated by being raped, urinated on, and forced to stand naked.[18] Despite the new 'scientific' methods, the torture of choice remained the traditional bastinado used to beat soles of the feet. The "primary goal" of those using the bastinados "was to locate arms caches, safe houses and accomplices ..."
Abrahamian estimates that SAVAK (and other police and military) killed 368 guerrillas between 1971–1977 and executed something less than 100 political prisoners between 1971 and 1979 - the most violent era of the SAVAK's existence.
One well known writer was arrested, tortured for months, and finally placed before television cameras to 'confess' that his works paid too much attention to social problems and not enough to the great achievements of the White Revolution. By the end of 1975, twenty-two prominent poets, novelist, professors, theater directors, and film makers were in jail for criticizing the regime. And many others had been physically attacked for refusing to cooperate with the authorities.
By 1976, this repression was softened considerably thanks to publicity and scrutiny by "numerous international organizations and foreign newspapers." In 1976, Jimmy Carter was elected President of the United States and he "raised the issue of human rights in Iran as well as in the Soviet Union. Overnight prison conditions changed. Inmates dubbed this the dawn of `jimmykrasy.`
After the Iranian Revolution of 1979, former directors Pakravan, Nassiri, and Moghadam were tried by Revolutionary Courts and executed by the Revolutionary Guard. During the height of its power, SAVAK had virtually unlimited powers of arrest and detention. It operated its own detention centers, like Evin Prison. In addition to domestic security the service's tasks extended to the surveillance of Iranians abroad, notably in the United States, France, and the United Kingdom, and especially students on government stipends. The agency also closely collaborated with the American CIA by sending their agents to an air force base in New York to share and discuss interrogation tactics.
Teymur Bakhtiar was assassinated by SAVAK agents in 1970, and Mansur Rafizadeh, SAVAK's United States director during the 1970s, reported that General Nassiri's phone was tapped. Mansur Rafizadeh later published his life as a SAVAK man and detailed the human rights violations of the Shah in his book Witness: From the Shah to the Secret Arms Deal: An Insider's Account of U.S. Involvement in Iran.
According to Polish author Ryszard Kapuściński, SAVAK was responsible for
Censorship of press, books and films.
Interrogation and often torture of prisoners
Surveillance of political opponents.
The American edition of Shah of Shahs, issued in the United States in 1985 by the San Diego publishers, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, in the translation of William R. Brand (b. 1953) and Katarzyna Mroczkowska-Brand, was censored — by having references to CIA involvement in the 1953 overthrow of Iran's prime minister Mossadegh (or about 15 pages) excised.[37] (The censorship of the American edition, ironic in a book that deals in part with the terror of pervasive censorship unleashed on the people of Iran by the Shah's security agency, the SAVAK, has never been satisfactorily explained, and is not fully elucidated
http://www.fas.org/irp/world/iran/savak/index.html
Ministry of Security SAVAK
Shah-an-Shah [King of Kings] Mohammad Reza Pahlevi was restored to the Peacock Throne of Iran with the assistance of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1953. CIA mounted a coup against the left-leaning government of Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq, which had planned to nationalize Iran’s oil industry. CIA subsequently provided organizational and and training assistance for the establishment of an intelligence organization for the Shah. With training focused on domestic security and interrogation, the primary purpose of the intelligence unit, headed by General Teymur Bakhtiar, was to eliminate threats to Shah.
Formed under the guidance of United States and Israeli intelligence officers in 1957, SAVAK developed into an effective secret agency. Bakhtiar was appointed its first director, only to be dismissed in 1961, allegedly for organizing a coup; he was assassinated in 1970 under mysterious circumstances, probably on the shah’s direct order. His successor, General Hosain Pakravan, was dismissed in 1966, allegedly for having failed to crush the clerical opposition in the early 1960s. The shah turned to his childhood friend and classmate, General Nematollah Nassiri, to rebuild SAVAK and properly “serve” the monarch. Mansur Rafizadeh, the SAVAK director in the United States throughout the 1970s, claimed that General Nassiri’s telephone was tapped by SAVAK agents reporting directly to the shah, an example of the level of mistrust pervading the government on the eve of the Revolution.
SAVAK increasingly to symbolized the Shah’s rule from 1963-79, a period of corruption in the royal family, one-party rule, the torture and execution of thousands of political prisoners, suppression of dissent, and alienation of the religious masses. The United States reinforced its position as the Shah’s protector and supporter, sowing the seeds of the anti-Americanism that later manifested itself in the revolution against the monarchy.
Accurate information concerning SAVAK remains publicly unavailable. A flurry of pamphlets issued by the revolutionary regime after 1979 indicated that SAVAK had been a full-scale intelligence agency with more than 15,000 full-time personnel and thousands of part-time informants. SAVAK was attached to the Office of the Prime Minister, and its director assumed the title of deputy to the prime minister for national security affairs. Although officially a civilian agency, SAVAK had close ties to the military; many of its officers served simultaneously in branches of the armed forces.
Another childhood friend and close confidant of the shah, Major General Hosain Fardust, was deputy director of SAVAK until the early 1970s, when the shah promoted him to the directorship of the Special Intelligence Bureau, which operated inside Niavaran Palace, independently of SAVAK.
Founded to round up members of the outlawed Tudeh, SAVAK expanded its activities to include gathering intelligence and neutralizing the regime’s opponents. An elaborate system was created to monitor all facets of political life. For example, a censorship office was established to monitor journalists, literary figures, and academics throughout the country; it took appropriate measures against those who fell out of line. Universities, labor unions, and peasant organizations, among others, were all subjected to intense surveillance by SAVAK agents and paid informants. The agency was also active abroad, especially in monitoring Iranian students who publicly opposed Pahlavi rule.
SAVAK paid Rockwell International to implement a large communications monitoring system called IBEX. Both the CIA and the NSA funded Ibex and received Ibex data. The project included specially converted aircraft containing broadband and narrow band receivers. The aircraft penetrated Soviet airspace for the purpose of recording communications coincident with the penetration. There were five Ibex ground sites in Iran which also received and recorded Soviet transmissions. The Stanford Technology Corp. [STC, owned by Hakim] had a $5.5 million contract to supply the IBEX project. STC had another $7.5 million contract with Iran’s air force for a telephone monitoring system, operated by SAVAK, to enable the Shah to track his top commanders’ communications.
Over the years, SAVAK became a law unto itself, having legal authority to arrest and detain suspected persons indefinitely. SAVAK operated its own prisons in Tehran (the Komiteh and Evin facilities) and, many suspected, throughout the country as well. SAVAK’s torture methods included electric shock, whipping, beating, inserting brokon glass and pouring boiling water into the rectum, tying weights to the testicles, and the extraction of teeth and nails. Many of these activities were carried out without any institutional checks.
At the peak its influence under the Shah SAVAK had at least 13 full-time case officers running a network of informers and infiltration covering 30,000 Iranian students on United States college campuses. The head of the SAVAK agents in the United States operated under the cover of an attache at the Iranian Mission to the United Nations, with the FBI, CIA, and State Department fully aware of these activities.
In 1978 the deepening opposition to the Shah errupted in widespread demonstrations and rioting. SAVAK and the military responded with widespread repression that killed thousands of people. Recognizing that even this level of violence had failed to crush the rebellion, the Shah abdicated the Peacock Throne and departed Iran on 16 January 1979. Despite decades of pervasive surveillance by SAVAK, working closely with CIA, the extent of public opposition to the Shah, and his sudden departure, came as a considerable suprise to the US intelligence community and national leadership. As late as September 28, 1978 the US Defense Intelligence Agency reported that the shah “is expected to remain actively in power over the next ten years.”
However, it was no surprise that SAVAK was singled out as a primary target for reprisals, its headquarters overrun, and prominent leaders tried and executed by komiteh representatives. High-ranking SAVAK agents were purged between 1979 and 1981; there were 61 SAVAK officials among 248 military personnel executed between February and September 1979. The organization was officially dissolved by Khomeini shortly after he came to power in 1979.
Me: *Not quite. Most of savak was absorbed by khomeini and operate underthenew name, savama.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+ir0187)
Library of Congress
Iran
SAVAK
Formed under the guidance of United States and Israeli intelligence officers in 1957, SAVAK developed into an effective secret agency. General Teymur Bakhtiar was appointed its first director, only to be dismissed in 1961, allegedly for organizing a coup; he was assassinated in 1970 under mysterious circumstances, probably on the shah’s direct order. His successor, General Hosain Pakravan, was dismissed in 1966, allegedly for having failed to crush the clerical opposition in the early 1960s. The shah turned to his childhood friend and classmate, General Nematollah Nassiri, to rebuild SAVAK and properly “serve” the monarch. Mansur Rafizadeh, the SAVAK director in the United States throughout the 1970s, claimed that General Nassiri’s telephone was tapped by SAVAK agents reporting directly to the shah, an example of the level of mistrust pervading the government on the eve of the Revolution.
In 1987 accurate information concerning SAVAK remained publicly unavailable. A flurry of pamphlets issued by the revolutionary regime after 1979 indicated that SAVAK had been a full-scale intelligence agency with more than 15,000 full-time personnel and thousands of part-time informants. SAVAK was attached to the Office of the Prime Minister, and its director assumed the title of deputy to the prime minister for national security affairs. Although officially a civilian agency, SAVAK had close ties to the military; many of its officers served simultaneously in branches of the armed forces. Another childhood friend and close confidant of the shah, Major General Hosain Fardust, was deputy director of SAVAK until the early 1970s, when the shah promoted him to the directorship of the Special Intelligence Bureau, which operated inside Niavaran Palace, independently of SAVAK.
Founded to round up members of the outlawed Tudeh, SAVAK expanded its activities to include gathering intelligence and neutralizing the regime’s opponents. An elaborate system was created to monitor all facets of political life. For example, a censorship office was established to monitor journalists, literary figures, and academics throughout the country; it took appropriate measures against those who fell out of line. Universities, labor unions, and peasant organizations, among others, were all subjected to intense surveillance by SAVAK agents and paid informants. The agency was also active abroad, especially in monitoring Iranian students who publicly opposed Pahlavi rule.
Over the years, SAVAK became a law unto itself, having legal authority to arrest and detain suspected persons indefinitely. SAVAK operated its own prisons in Tehran (the Komiteh and Evin facilities) and, many suspected, throughout the country as well. Many of these activities were carried out without any institutional checks. Thus, it came as no surprise when, in 1979, SAVAK was singled out as a primary target for reprisals, its headquarters overrun, and prominent leaders tried and executed by komiteh representatives. High-ranking SAVAK agents were purged between 1979 and 1981; there were 61 SAVAK officials among 248 military personnel executed between February and September 1979. The organization was officially dissolved by Khomeini shortly after he came to power in 1979.
Data as of December 1987
http://www.hirhome.com/iraniraq/savak.htm.
If the Ayatollah Khomeini was an enemy of the United States ruling elite, why did he adopt the CIA’s security service?
Historical and Investigative Research - 23 Feb 2006
by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/iraniraq/savak.htm
___________________________________________________________
In June of 1980, the New York Times reported that the new leader of Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini, was complaining loudly that many people who had served under the Shah had not been purged from the government bureaucracies. “He singled out the Foreign Ministry for criticism, saying that in this department and in other ministries there were ‘the same emblems and the same corruption’ as before.”[0] It is curious that he should not have singled out SAVAK — especially SAVAK.
SAVAK had been the Iranian Shah (King) Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s feared security service, which routinely tortured and assassinated dissidents, and spied on everybody. It had been created by the CIA after the CIA installed the shah in power in a 1953 coup d’état.[1] As a dissident leader prior to the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had been denouncing SAVAK. So why so much noise now about other ministries being full of Shah agents and nothing in particular about SAVAK?
Earlier the same month, the Washington Post had published an interesting article with the title: “Khomeini Is Reported to Have a SAVAK of His Own.”[1a] And what was Khomeini’s own SAVAK like? It was none other than SAVAK itself. Here is what the Washington Post writes (emphases are mine):
“Though it came to power denouncing the shah’s dreaded SAVAK secret service, the government of Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini has created a new internal security and intelligence operation, apparently with a similar organizational structure and some of the same faces as its predecessor.
The new organization is called SAVAMA. It is run, according to U.S. sources and Iranian exile sources here and in Paris, by Gen. Hossein Fardoust, who was deputy chief of SAVAK under the former shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and a friend from boyhood of the deposed monarch.
...‘SAVAK is alive and kicking’ in the form of SAVAMA, claims Ali Tabatabai, former press counselor at the Iranian Embassy in Washington under the shah... now president of the Iran Freedom Foundation in Bethesda [Maryland, near Washington D.C.]… ‘There are large numbers of former SAVAK people’ in the new organization, he says. ‘In fact, with the exception of the bureau chiefs [who ran the individual sections of SAVAK] the whole organization seems to be intact.’
(Ali Akbar Tabatabaei was an Iranian exile and former press attache to the Iranian embassy in the United States under the Shah who became president of the Iran Freedom Foundation in Bethesda, Maryland after the Islamic Revolution.
A critic of Ayatollah Khomeini, Tabatabaei was shot in his Bethesda, Maryland home by Dawud Salahuddin, an American Muslim convert.
Salahuddin has stated he was paid $5000 by Iranians to kill Tabatabaei and is currently on the FBI fugitives list. He escaped to Iran via Paris and Geneva, reaching Teheran, Iran, on July 31, 1980. In a 1996 interview with ABC’s 20/20, Salahuddin confessed to killing Tabatabaei. He has also stated he thought the killing was an “an act of war
MeK
http://www.iran-e-azad.org/english/special/chap6.html
publication of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
Correspondence address: B.P. 18, 95430 Auvers-sur-Oise, France
Chapter Six: HISTORY OF MOJAHEDIN
The nineteenth century, coinciding with the rule of the Qajar dynasty in Iran, is remembered by most Iranians as an era of national subjugation by foreign powers, particularly Imperial Russia and Great Britain, both of which frequently infringed on Iranian national sovereignty. Control over Iranian oil fields made Britain the major power in Iran until the end of World War II. After the fall of Reza Shah’s dictatorship in 1941, popular movements began to voice the Iranian resentment of British colonialism and the puppet regimes. In the late 1940s, Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq led the movement to nationalize Iran’s oil industry. His movement had widespread support among the Iranian people, and the shah was forced in 1951 to appoint him as prime minister after parliament ratified the oil nationalization bill. Dr. Mossadeq’s 27-month-term was devoted on the one hand to implementing the new law, and on the other to confronting the joint conspiracies of the court, reactionary clergy, and pro-Soviet communist Tudeh Party. The British essentially coordinated these conspiracies. Despite the ruling in Iran’s favor on the oil issue by the International Court of Justice at the Hague and the U.N. General Assembly, British hostility towards Mossadeq’s government persisted. In 1952, the United States allied itself with the British in this policy.
Unfortunately, Mossadeq’s overthrow in a U.S.-engineered coup d’etat convinced Iranians that the United States had replaced Britain in defending the shah and depriving Iranians of democracy and their national interests. The brutal suppression of student protests and the killing of three student leaders only four months after the coup, on the eve of Vice President Richard Nixon’s trip to Iran in December 1953,1 only served to confirm this view.
In a report submitted to President Eisenhower’s National Security Council in 1953, U.S. policymakers explained their support for the shah:
Over the long run, the most effective instrument for maintaining Iran’s orientation towards the West is the monarchy, which in turn has the army as its only real source of power. U.S. military aid serves to improve army morale, cement army loyalty to the shah, and thus consolidate the present regime and provide some assurance that Iran’s current orientation towards the West will be perpetual.2
Mohsen Milani, author of The Making of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, writes:
The coup had drastic consequences. First, because it was generally believed that the United States had saved his throne, the shah lost his legitimacy. From then on, he was tainted as an American puppet... and most important, the foreign-orchestrated coup seemed to have touched the very sensitive pride-nerve of some middle class Iranians who perceived the monarch as America’s shah.3
John F. Kennedy’s election to the Presidency in 1960 raised hopes that the new administration would make the defense of human rights and democracy a foreign policy goal, and therefore dissuade the shah from his repressive ways and limit his dictatorship. The shah’s extended trip to the U.S. in late 1962, however, was followed by a widespread crackdown on popular protests by SAVAK and the army in the first half of 1963, dashing all such hopes. As Iran expert Shaul Bakhash puts it:
One result of these developments was to push elements of the opposition toward an increasingly radical position. The suppression of the 1963 protest movement persuaded young men of the National Front that constitutional methods of opposition against the shah were ineffective.4
Milani agrees that the historical consequences were profound:
The June uprising had a profound impact both on Iranian politics in general and on the ulama community in particular. In the literature of most opposition groups to the shah, the June uprising symbolized the end of peaceful coexistence with the shah and justified the start of the armed struggle against his regime.5
In subsequent years, the shah increasingly strengthened the secret police, SAVAK, which had been formed in 1957 with American support. Notorious for its use of torture, SAVAK grew to symbolize the shah’s rule from 1963-79, a period also characterized by corruption in the royal family, one-party rule, the torture and execution of thousands of political prisoners, sweeping clampdown, suppression of dissent, and alienation of the religious masses, whose historic symbols were openly scorned. Throughout those years, the United States reinforced its image as the shah’s protector and staunch supporter, sowing the seeds of the anti-Americanism that later manifested itself in the revolution against the monarchy. In this historical context, the forces that would build Iran’s future - the younger generation - began to search for a solution to the country’s problems.
The 1960s also saw a rise in resistance movements throughout the third world, most heavily influenced by Marxism. This applied to some extent to European societies as well, where dissident movements also began to emerge. Major student movements were formed in France and Germany. In Iran, frustration with the failures of the traditional secular opposition propelled the intelligentsia towards Marxism as a possible solution. They saw no hope in the Islam espoused by traditional religious leaders, such as Khomeini. Meanwhile, with every step, the shah heightened the repression, only increasing the potential for social revolution.
The Founding
The Sazeman-e Mojahedin-e Khalq-e Iran, or People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, was founded in 1965 by Mohammad Hanifnejad6 and two other young intellectuals, Sa’id Mohsen and Ali-Asghar Badi’zadegan. The three wanted to establish a Muslim, revolutionary, nationalist and democratic organization. All university graduates, they had been politically active in the nationalist movement for democracy since the Mossadeq era and later became members of Mehdi Bazargan’s Freedom Movement. Both Hanifnejad and Mohsen had been temporarily detained by the shah’s secret police for their political activities.
The founders’ ultimate goal was to pave the way for a democratic government to replace the shah’s regime. In contrast to most of their contemporaries, they believed that a new, democratically inclined interpretation of Islam was the means to this end. They set about establishing a political organization that could survive the shah’s repression and respond to the needs of ordinary citizens. This was no easy task.
They began by refuting the reactionary interpretation of Islam, marking the Mojahedin’s first confrontation with the traditional clergy, who considered themselves the sole guardians of the faith. They and the organization’s new members painstakingly studied the various schools of thought, as well as Iranian history and those of other countries, enabling them to analyze other philosophies and theories with considerable knowledge and to present their own ideology, based on Islam, as the answer to Iran’s problems. 7
The Mojahedin’s early activities were of necessity kept secret, and no one knew of the organization’s existence. In years to come, however, the Mojahedin’s message found its place among Muslim and revolutionary intellectuals and the religious sector. More importantly, because of their propinquity to Iranian society and culture, the Mojahedin attracted vast support among the people.
After reviewing the overall situation in Iran, the organization concluded that in light of the shah’s iron-fisted rule and suppression of all opposition, the only viable route to democratic rule was the ouster of his regime. Given the shah’s police-state, attaining this objective through a non-violent political campaign was, by definition, impossible.8 Consequently, the Mojahedin began to prepare for armed resistance. They were also critical of U.S. policy on Iran, and called for an end to the United States’ unflinching support for the shah.
In 1971, before the Mojahedin undertook any military action, SAVAK arrested and imprisoned all of their leaders and many of their members. In May 1972, on the eve of the visit to Iran by then U.S. President, Richard Nixon, the three Mojahedin founders and two Central Committee members were executed.
The events of 1971 had dire consequences. In the aftermath of the arrests, the organization was shattered when several individuals took advantage of the ensuing vacuum to infiltrate the organization and carry out a bloody coup from within. To consolidate their control of the organizational apparatus, they planned and carried out the murders of several of the remaining leading members.9 They also removed the traditional Quranic verse from the Mojahedin emblem, declaring that there had been an ideological “advance” to Marxism. They continued, however, to misappropriate the Mojahedin name and reputation.10
These actions had far-reaching repercussions, going beyond the shattering of the Mojahedin. Until then, the Mojahedin, espousing a democratic interpretation of Islam, had assumed the leadership of the anti-shah movement, pushing the backward mullahs to the fringes. Many of the present regime’s leaders, including Hashemi- Rafsanjani and Khamenei, claimed to be Mojahedin supporters to bolster their public images. Although opposed to the young Mojahedin, even Khomeini could not publicly take a stand against them. Under public pressure to express support, which he never did, Khomeini succumbed to the point of issuing a fatwa that one- third of the religious tithe be given to the “young Muslims and strugglers,” an obvious reference to the Mojahedin at the time. The temporary dissolution of the Mojahedin’s organization allowed Khomeini to exploit the vacuum of leadership in the 1979 uprising and popular disillusionment from the internal coup to usurp the helm and turn a popular revolution, yearning for freedom and independence, into a tragic episode of genocide in Iranian history. The internal coup hence became a decisive factor in the advance of fundamentalist interpretations of Islam.11
The Mojahedin, meanwhile, came under attack from three sides: Using the coup to divide and weaken the ranks of the opposition, the shah’s regime labeled them Islamic-Marxists and began a concerted campaign to wipe out the true Mojahedin. From another angle, the reactionary mullahs, previously held at bay by the Mojahedin’s popularity and social roots, sprang to the attack, preaching that their Islam was the only Islam. Several imprisoned clerics decreed the Muslim Mojahedin to be non-Muslim after 1975. On the third front were opportunist Marxists, who exploited the setbacks suffered by the Mojahedin to portray them as proponents of a petite-bourgeoisie ideology whose time had passed.
From 1975 to 1979, while incarcerated in different prisons, Massoud Rajavi led the Mojahedin’s resistance against all three fronts, for which reason he was taken to the Tehran Komiteh’s torture center and tortured to the brink of death.12 He stressed the need to continue the struggle against the shah’s dictatorship. At the same time, he characterized religious fanaticism as the primary internal threat to the popular opposition, and warned against the emergence and growth of religious backwardness and despotism symbolized by Khomeini.13 These positions remained the Mojahedin’s manifesto until the overthrow of the shah’s regime. In internal discourses, Rajavi argued that Khomeini represented the reactionary sector of society and preached religious fascism. Later, in the early days after the 1979 revolution, the mullahs, specifically Rafsanjani, pointed to these statements in inciting the hezbollahi club-wielders to attack the Mojahedin.
New Challenge
In the late 1970s, the shah, under international pressure, began to free some of the political prisoners. Among the last were the Mojahedin leaders, set free thanks to the public uprising.14 Their release, one week after the shah fled and 12 days before Khomeini returned to Iran on January 21, 1979, coincided with a new phase in the Iranian revolution, when crowds filled the streets shouting anti-shah and anti-American slogans.
Despite the destruction of their organizational apparatus as the result of the coup, the Mojahedin still wielded significant weight and popular support. They soon reorganized their membership and waded into the fray.15 Massoud Rajavi’s first public speech, on January 24, 1979, inspired little support for the Mojahedin in the political climate of the time. Instead of unconditionally endorsing Khomeini, comme it faut, Rajavi insisted on safeguards for democratic freedoms, as the most important achievement of the revolution.16 He refused to call the anti-monarchic revolution an “Islamic revolution” and called for a democratic revolution.
The Mojahedin also called for public participation in the establishment of a nationalist, democratic government. This demand formed the basis of their political strategy and was reiterated in their “Minimum Expectations” program in early 1979,17 and later in Mr. Rajavi’s platform during the presidential elections. The Mojahedin slate of candidates for the first Assembly of Experts (which Khomeini had substituted for the Constituent Assembly) and then for the parliamentary elections was a coalition slate of all democratic forces.18 Well aware of the reactionary nature of the regime to come, the Mojahedin strategy emphasized a political campaign that increasingly highlighted the need for democratic freedoms and exposed the turbaned rulers. Although they had refused from the outset to collaborate with the mullahs, the Mojahedin wanted to avoid any sort of confrontation. Shortly after the new government took power, however, they again came under attack. Their offices, meetings and supporters were assaulted by the hezbollah.19 But, the hostility only served to bolster their popularity. They had become known for standing firm against religious fanaticism and the mullahs’ bid at monopolizing the religion.20 In a short period, the movement became Iran’s largest organized political force. The circulation of Mojahed newspaper reached 500,000, surpassing those of official newspapers.
The Mojahedin grew in popularity and political strength, despite the many restrictions imposed on their activities by the new regime, and continuing arrests of and attacks on their supporters and members.21 In 1980, they nominated Massoud Rajavi for President of the republic. Less than a year after the shah’s fall, all opposition political groups supported Rajavi’s candidacy. In his book, The Iranian Mojahedin, Ervand Abrahamian writes:
Rajavi’s candidacy was not only endorsed by the Mojahedin- affiliated organizations... ; but also by an impressive array of independent organizations including the Feda’iyan, the National Democratic Front, the Kurdish Democratic Party, the Kurdish Toilers Revolutionary Party (Komula), the Society of Iranian Socialists, the Society for the Cultural and Political Rights of the Turkomans, the Society of Young Assyrians, and the Joint Group of Armenian, Zoroastrian and Jewish Minorities. Rajavi also received the support of a large number of prominent figures: Taleqani’s widow; Shaykh Ezeddin Hosayni, the spiritual leader of the Sunni Kurds in Mahabad; Hojjat al-Islam Jalal Ganjehi...; fifty well-known members of the Iranian Writers’ Association, including the economist Naser Pakdaman, the essayist Manuchehr Hezarkhani and the secular historians Feraydun Adamiyyat and Homa Nateq; and, of course, many of the families of the early Mojahedin martyrs, notably the Hanif-nezhads, Rezais, Mohsens, Badizadegans, Asgarizadehs, Sadeqs, Meshkinfams, and Mihandusts. The Mojahedin had become the vanguards of the secular opposition to the Islamic Republic.22
Khomeini took the threat seriously, issuing a fatwa declaring Rajavi ineligible as a candidate because he had not voted for the velayat-e faqih and the constitution based on it. A few months later, similar decrees and electoral fraud prevented even one Mojahedin member from being elected to parliament. Mr. Rajavi, a parliamentary candidate from Tehran, received over 530,000 votes (25 percent of the total cast)23. Despite widespread rigging, the Mojahedin candidates came in second in every case.
Turning Point
Finally, in June 1981, Khomeini decided that the only solution to curb the Mojahedin’s rising popularity was their total suppression. On the afternoon of June 20, 1981, some 500,000 demonstrators turned out in Tehran in support of the Mojahedin, who had only hours to organize the protest via their own network of supporters, and marched toward the parliament. Khomeini’s Revolutionary Guards opened fire on the peaceful demonstration, killing or wounding hundreds.24 Thousands of demonstrators were arrested and hundreds summarily executed that same night.25 (For a detailed review of the political struggle between the Mojahedin and the regime, see chapter VII.)
This event marked the beginning of an era of widespread suppression, arrests, torture, and mass executions. It also marked the beginning of the Iranian people’s nationwide resistance movement. To unite all opposition political forces against the Khomeini regime, the Mojahedin proposed that a coalition be formed. In July 1981, Massoud Rajavi officially announced in Tehran the formation of the National Council of Resistance, and invited all democratic forces opposed to religious despotism to join.26
At the time, Khomeini had deposed Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr as the president. Hunted by the government, Bani-Sadr sought refuge with the Mojahedin, who gave him haven in Rajavi’s residence. The two agreed on a covenant, which they published, whereby Bani-Sadr recognized Rajavi as prime minister, responsible for forming the National Council of Resistance.27 From then on, the Mojahedin’s strategy was two-pronged: nationwide resistance and all-out confrontation against the regime’s suppression in Iran, and formation of a democratic alternative to the Khomeini regime.
Rajavi, accompanied by Bani-Sadr, left Tehran for Paris at the end of July 1981 from Tehran’s 1st fighter base, aboard an Iranian Air Force jet piloted by Colonel Behzad Mo’ezzi (the shah’s former pilot), who had joined the Mojahedin after the anti-monarchic revolution. In Paris, the National Council of Resistance announced its program and more independent political parties and dignitaries joined its ranks.28 The Council soon emerged as the only viable alternative to Khomeini’s fundamentalist regime. As resistance inside Iran continued, the Council and the Mojahedin established offices in Europe and North America and began a worldwide campaign to expose the clerics’ atrocities and introduce the NCR as the democratic alternative. Many parliamentarians the world over declared their support.
Simultaneously, the Council launched a campaign to end the Iran- Iraq war. The NCR’s feasible plan for peace was widely welcomed in Iran and endorsed by 5,000 parliamentarians and political dignitaries throughout the world.29 In 1986, after the French struck a deal with Tehran, Mr. Rajavi left Paris and went to the Iran-Iraq frontier, where he formed the National Liberation Army of Iran in 1987.30 In a series of military operations, the NLA struck hard at Khomeini’s forces, becoming a major threat to the mullahs’ regime.31 The all-volunteer NLA’s fighters are of diverse political and religious preferences, and include members of the Mojahedin.
The Iranian Resistance has, in recent years, organized anti- government protests and demonstrations through its internal network of resistance activists.32 It has also waged an extensive publicity campaign to prepare the ground for the regime’s overthrow and a change for democracy in Iran.33 The NCR has expanded over the years, to represent a wider range of the Iranian people.34
The State Department report distorts the Mojahedin’s history. The Mojahedin’s ideology is described as “eclectic”and based on “Shi’a Islamic theology and Marxist tenets.”35 They are accused of having: “assassinated at least six American citizens” in the 1970s; “collaborated with Ayatollah Khomeini;” “supported the takeover of the U.S. Embassy;” engaged in violence and terrorism in resisting the Khomeini regime; and being dependent on Iraq.36 Regrettably, the authors of the report followed political guidelines that precluded an impartial study in favor of an account that distorts the simplest facts. (We will consider the subject of relations with Iraq and terrorism in detail in chapters VII and VIII. The issue of the Mojahedin’s popular base is discussed in chapter XI.)
Collaborating with Khomeini?
The charge of collaborating with Khomeini is a classic example of the authors’ rather shallow understanding of events in Iran. Khomeini took power with the backing of the majority of the Iranian people. He continued to enjoy vast popular support during the early post-revolutionary era. In accordance with democratic principles and norms, the Mojahedin recognized the regime’s initial political legitimacy in deference to the popular will, despite their opposition to many of the policies of the new rulers. The organization continued to recognize the regime as legitimate as long as the people continued to support it, and as long as it allowed peaceful dissent. The Mojahedin, however, were almost immediately recognized as the regime’s opposition, because they refused to collaborate with Khomeini. In a dramatic expression of dissent, they boycotted the new regime’s constitutional referendum in late 1979.
Abrahamian’s Iranian Mojahedin, upon which the report draws so heavily, is quite definitive about the Mojahedin’s opposition to the Khomeini regime:
By late 1980, the Mojahedin was brazenly accusing Khomeini’s entourage, especially the IRP, of “monopolizing power”, “hijacking” the revolution, trampling over “democratic rights”, and plotting to set up a “fascistic” one-party dictatorship. By early 1981, the authorities had closed down Mojahedin offices, outlawed their newspapers, banned their demonstrations, and issued arrest warrants for some of their leaders; in short they had forced the organization underground...
In the economic sphere, they denounced the regime for having failed not only to raise the standard of living, but also to tackle the unemployment problem; to control the spiraling inflation, especially in rents and food prices; to diminish the dependence on the West, particularly in the vital arena of agriculture imports; to diversify the exports and lessen the reliance on the oil industry; to distribute land to the landless; to build homes for the homeless; to deal with the ever-increasing growth of urban slums; and, even more sensitive, to stamp out corruption in high places. These complaints read much like those previously leveled at the Pahlavi state. In raising the question of corruption, the Mojahedin published internal documents from the Mostazafin Foundation showing that it was subsidizing clerical newspapers, providing jobs for amiable functionaries, and at ridiculously low prices quietly selling off expropriated royalist properties to IRP friends in the bazaar. The Mostazafin Foundation, they charged, was as corrupt as its predecessor - the Pahlavi Foundation.
In the social sphere, the Mojahedin argued that the regime had failed to solve any of the country’s major problems: illiteracy, ill health, malnutrition, prostitution, gambling, drug addiction and, of course, inadequate educational facilities. Moreover, they argued that the “medieval-minded” regime had resorted to primitive remedies to deal with the problem of urban crime. The macabre Law of Retribution, they stressed, violated human rights, insulted true Islam, ignored the social causes of crime, unthinkingly revived the tribal customs of seventh-century Arabia and, being based on “feudal principles”, institutionalized inequality - especially between rich and poor, between believers and non believers, and between men and women. Furthermore, they argued that the regime, being wedded to the traditional notion that the two sexes should have separate spheres, had drastically worsened the general condition of women. It had purged women from many professions, lowered the marriage age, closed down coeducational schools, eliminated safeguards against willful divorce and polygamy and, most detrimental of all, perpetuated the “medieval” myth that women were empty vessels created by God to bear children, obey their husbands, and carry out household chores. True Islam, the Mojahedin argued, viewed men and women as social, political and intellectual equals, and thus advocated absolute equality in all spheres of life: in the workplace, at home, and before the law... The concept of sexual equality, which had been implicit in their earlier works, was now explicit.
In the political sphere, the Mojahedin attacked the regime for disrupting rallies and meetings; banning newspapers and burning down bookstores; rigging elections and closing down universities; kidnapping, imprisoning, and torturing political activists; favoring clerics who had collaborated with the previous regime, even those who had participated in Mosaddeq’s overthrow; venerating the arch-reactionary Shaykh Fazlollah Nuri who had fought against the 1905-9 constitutional revolution; grossly distorting Shariati’s teachings; covering up the fact that courtiers had helped Beheshti gain control of the mosque in Hamburg; making a mockery of the promise to create grass-root councils; violating the rights of the national minorities, especially the Kurds; reviving SAVAK and using the tribunals to terrorize their opponents.37
Hence, the charge of “collaboration with Khomeini” is outlandish, only revealing the extent to which the Department’s report has distorted the historical record.
Islamic-Marxists
The label “Islamic-Marxist” has been borrowed from the shah’s SAVAK and later Khomeini’s regime, both of which used it in a futile attempt to undermine the Mojahedin’s social base. On many occasions, the Department has described the Mojahedin ideology as a blend of Marxism, Leninism, and Shi’ism. Obviously, Islam and Marxism are philosophically, politically, and economically disparate and cannot in any sense be mixed. In the years prior to the revolution, when most of the Mojahedin were imprisoned by the SAVAK, they were much admired by the people precisely for their Islamic beliefs, despite having suffered a major organizational setback. Faced with the same problem, the Khomeini regime coined the term Monafeq, meaning “hypocrite” in Arabic, to imply that the Mojahedin falsely claimed to be Muslim. The report also contains this allegation.
The truth is that every ideology ultimately manifests itself in the practices and policies of its followers. We suggest an objective, as opposed to distorted and self-serving, review of the Mojahedin’s activities and positions, coupled with a close look at the alignment of political forces in Iran during the last 15 years, as the best criteria for judgment. Remember that Khomeini was able to eliminate every other opponent from the political arena under the banner of Islam. Only the Mojahedin and their current allies in the National Council of Resistance survived, despite the brutal repression, because of their well known beliefs or respect for Islam, the religion of most Iranians.
In his book The Center of the Universe, The Geopolitics of Iran, Graham E. Fuller notes that the Mojahedin’s Islamic orientation was a major impediment to the Soviets’ effort to influence them:
The Soviets in the past have also been interested in other leftist movements such as the Mojahedin Khalq (”The People’s Holy Warriors”) but had almost no success in establishing any influence over it because of that group’s own suspicions of Moscow and its nominal commitment to Islam.
Death of Americans
In referring to the assassinations of American citizens in Iran, the State Department has again distorted the historical record to serve its end. These charges have been dealt with in detail in chapter I. As previously stated in Appeasing Tehran’s Mullahs, the Mojahedin are not responsible for actions undertaken by others in their name. We refer to specific individuals who eliminated the Quranic verse from the Mojahedin’s emblem and murdered Mojahedin officials who had not been arrested (including Majid Sharif Vaqefi and Mohammad Yaqini). It is common knowledge that from the outset, Mr. Rajavi, still in prison, condemned this Marxist group’s use of the name “Mojahedin.” Emphasizing the Islamic ideology, he clearly demarcated the differences between the Mojahedin and this group, which in 1977 finally changed its name to Peykar (Organization of Struggle in the Path of Emancipation of the Working Class).38
The Embassy Takeover
One of the most controversial events of the reign of the mullahs was the U.S. embassy takeover and the holding of American citizens as hostages. In its report, and on previous occasions, the State Department has accused the Mojahedin of supporting the hostage- taking in 1979-81. Interestingly, although the Mojahedin are at worst accused of “supporting” the hostage-taking, the State Department apparently has no qualms about inviting the former hostage-takers themselves, now “diplomats” of the regime’s foreign ministry, to engage in dialogue and negotiations with the United States. These same hostage-takers later masterminded, encouraged and supported the murder of hundreds of American and French nationals in successive bombings in Lebanon, and the kidnapping of scores of foreign nationals.39 This extraordinarily unbalanced attitude only makes sense as part of a policy of courting the mullahs.
The Mojahedin have always maintained that the hostage crisis was the single best pretext under which the Khomeini regime could isolate Iran’s democratic forces and drive them from the political arena. Hence, they were victims, and probably a primary target, of the hostage-taking. As Mojahed newspaper wrote at the time:
For the ruling monopolists,the hostages were nothing but a pretext, to be used in the power struggle to consolidate all key government positions. This is why this faction’s slogans about the hostages were always fervid, never calling for anything less than their trial and even execution. The hostage issue had become a tool in the hands of the ruling reactionary faction to outmaneuver and push aside all political rivals and forces... It was only for internal consumption, because it could not have any significant effect or positive impact outside Iran or on foreign policy. The affair was prolonged for internal consumption, namely the power-hungry profiteering of the monopolists.40
Six years later, on the takeover’s anniversary, Abdol Karim Moussavi-Ardebili, then the regime’s Chief Justice, elaborated on the mullahs’ motives: “[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 Monafeqin and exposed their real faces. As Imam Khomeini said, this revolutionary move was greater than the first revolution.”41 Abbas Soroush, the Director General for Political Affairs in the regime’s Foreign Ministry, was one of the leaders of the “Student Followers of the Imam’s Line” and a hostage-taker. He acknowledges that “political groups, especially the Mojahedin, played no role whatsoever in the occupation of the embassy. But once they realized that they had fallen behind us in the political struggle, they brought their people in front of the embassy.” Mullah Mohammad Moussavi-Khoiniha, the mastermind of the hostage-taking and Khomeini’s personal representative in the affair, has stressed that in their first statement, the Mojahedin described the occupation of the embassy as reactionary and unpopular, but displayed superficial tolerance so that the titanic waves would not sweep them aside.
Immediately after it was occupied, the U.S. embassy in Tehran became a staging ground for attacks on the Mojahedin. Everyday, after the public prayer, the regime’s hooligans paraded in front of the embassy, where they were exhorted by officials to prepare for attacks on the “second nest of spies” (a reference to the Mojahedin’s offices. The mullahs called the American embassy the first “nest of spies.”)
Unfortunately, longtime U.S. support for the shah had sown the seeds of anti-Americanism among the public, which Khomeini used to his advantage. Under the circumstances, any public opposition to the hostage-taking by the Mojahedin would have given Khomeini a carte blanche to suppress them as “U.S. lackeys.” They had to walk a political tightrope. While exposing Khomeini’s real motives, the Mojahedin had to deny the mullahs the chance to exploit the public sentiment against the democratic opposition.42 The spirit of all Mojahedin positions and publications in this period was to unveil Khomeini’s political deceit and intrigue. If given half a chance, Khomeini would have eliminated the Mojahedin, as he did others.43
Abrahamian says the Mojahedin’s criticisms included:
Engineering the American hostage crisis to impose on thenation the “medieval” concept of the velayat-e faqih. To support the last accusation they published articles revealing how the student hostage-takers were linked to the IRP; how the pasdars had facilitated the break-in; how those who had refused to toe the IRP line had been forced out of the compound; how Ayatollah Beheshti had used the whole incident to sweep aside the Bazargan government; and how Hojjat al-Islam Khoiniha, the man appointed by Khomeini to advise the students, had carefully removed from the embassy all documents with references to U.S. officials meeting clerical leaders during the 1979 revolution...44
Abrahamian adds, “Meanwhile, the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam’s Line , the occupiers of the U.S. embassy, denounced the Mojahedin as secret Marxists in cahoots with the “pro-American liberals.”45
From day one of Khomeini’s rule, the Mojahedin had tried to prevent the mullahs from manipulating the people’s anti-American sentiments to suppress dissent. History records that Khomeini was notorious for using anti-imperialist slogans to justify the internal repression and export of terrorism and instability to countries of the region. The alignment of forces in Iran in 1979 attested to this reality. Two political fronts, with opposing programs, were arrayed face to face. On one front were Khomeini and his allies, including the pro-Moscow Tudeh Party and the Fedayeen (a pro-Moscow Marxist organization), who contended that the primary issue for Iran was the struggle against the United States and that the main internal threat was “liberalism.” On the opposing front were the Mojahedin, Ayatollah Taleqani,46 and their current allies in the NCR, who dissented from the mainstream politics of post- revolutionary Iran by insisting that the vital issue was political freedoms inside Iran. The Mojahedin and their allies continuously warned that the foreboding shadow of religious dictatorship was the primary threat.47
This alignment had taken shape in the early months of Khomeini’s reign. In August 1979, three months prior to the embassy takeover, the Revolutionary Guards formally occupied the Mojahedin’s central offices in Mossadeq Avenue in Tehran.48 From that point on the organization became a semi-clandestine movement, and Massoud Rajavi warned of the return of dictatorship under the cloak of religion.49 In March 1979, less than three weeks after the mullahs seized power, Mojahedin offices in Kashan, Yazd, and Torbat Heydarieh were ransacked and taken over, and many members - men and women - were beaten and detained.50 In April 1979, and only two months after the shah’s fall, Ayatollah Taleqani closed all his offices and left Tehran in protest to the new despotism.51 The Mojahedin supported Taleqani’s move, announcing that they had put all their forces and facilities at his disposal to confront religious dictatorship.52 In July 1979, two Mojahedin supporters in Fars Province, the Asgari brothers, were arrested and executed on orders of the religious judge (also Khomeini’s representative) on charges of conducting “pro-imperialist” activities.
Precisely because of this emphasis on political freedoms, the Tudeh leaders described the Mojahedin as “a bastion of liberalism and imperialism.” The communist party paper wrote:
Mr. Rajavi please consider this: Even movements and individuals who have monarchist views and are not democratic, but are struggling in practical terms against imperialism, are revolutionary. Clear enough? Firstly, can democracy, so loved and esteemed by you, exist without independence and struggle against imperialism? Secondly, due to your emphasis on democracy, the struggle against imperialism, today our number one priority, may lose its standing even as a secondary goal.53
In a 1981 commentary in his newspaper, Nooreddin Kianouri, the Secretary General of the Tudeh, posed several politically loaded questions to Massoud Rajavi, among them: “What have you done that unveiled women from uptown, the bourgeoisie and liberals are applauding you?” The Tudeh Party’s “plot-meter” described the Mojahedin actions during those years as American conspiracies, and many Mojahedin later executed on Khomeini’s orders were wrapped in American flags before burial.
In later years, the religious tyranny, which the Tudeh had helped bolster, unleashed an onslaught against the Mojahedin and executed thousands of their supporters. In the meantime, the pro-Moscow communists carried on their activities and distributed their publications freely and openly. Of course, the price of their freedom was collaboration with the regime in the suppression, arrest, and torture of the Mojahedin and other opposition groups.
If the authors of the State Department report had objectively reviewed their sources and refrained from selective use of them, they would have necessarily concluded that democracy was the major issue for the Mojahedin in post-revolutionary Iran. Abrahamian writes:
In criticizing the regime’s political record,the Mojahedin moved the issue of democracy to center stage. They argued that the regime had broken all the democratic promises made during the revolution; that an attack on any group was an attack on all groups; that the issue of democracy was of “fundamental importance;”...54
Abrahamian says that in the same years, the communist Tudeh and Majority faction of the Fedayeen “pleaded with the Mojahedin to join their Anti-Imperialist Democratic Front; to remember that the United States was still Iran’s main enemy; to avoid allying with pro-Western liberals,” adding that the Minority faction of the Fedayeen (still opposed to the regime) accused the Mojahedin of “flirting with pro-American liberals such as Bazargan.” The author admits that “the Mojahedin rebuffed the pleas and criticism.”55
A Final Say
The State Department’s Near East Bureau, seemingly oblivious to the repercussions of 25 years of unconditional U.S. support for the shah’s dictatorship, bickers with the Mojahedin about why they did not speak of the United States in friendlier terms in the post- revolutionary era. This is either an excuse for a policy of appeasement, or an indication of the bureau’s naivete regarding post-revolutionary circumstances. The point here is not to defend every single position, word or tactic of the Mojahedin or their affiliated publications in the past. We see no need, in principle, to answer to any authority but to the people of Iran. The Mojahedin take pride in their three decades of unwavering struggle for freedom, independence, and national, popular sovereignty. Neither the Mojahedin nor their allies in the National Council of Resistance will ever deviate from these sacred ideals. Thus, our aim is only to explain a policy which stressed political freedoms, while denying the mullahs the opportunity to use “anti-imperialist” theatrics and schemes to suppress Iran’s democratic forces.
At the same time, it is worth pointing out that the State Department which has so meticulously reviewed and criticized Mojahedin deeds and words of 15 years ago, has not been at all conscientious about reviewing its own past policy on Iran. Regrettably, there has been no equivalent effort to examine the negative implications of that policy either, especially because since 1984, the U.S. has again severed all ties with the Iranian people and their resistance in favor of deals with one of the most sinister regimes in the world today. Unfortunately, the minimum demand in any deal with the mullahs has been, is and will remain labeling the Iranian Resistance “terrorist.” Even more perplexing is the insistence on pursuing such a policy today, when Khomeini’s regime is more unpopular than the shah’s ever was, and when dictatorships are giving way to new democracies in the wake of Soviet disintegration.
It bears reiterating that the Iranian people and Resistance are determined to end religious dictatorship in Iran and bring democracy to their country. This Resistance movement extends its hand in peace, friendship and cooperation to all who respect Iran’s freedom, independence and territorial integrity, today and in tomorrow’s democratic Iran. It is up to the United States to demonstrate its desire for a policy that deals justly with the Iranian people. Meanwhile, the fact remains that the mullahs are on their last legs, and the State Department’s hysteric animosity toward the Mojahedin is reminiscent of U.S. policy under the shah.
Timeline. If our friend the Farce would have been a pahlevi confidante with hi-level security clearances - how old would he have had to be when arriving in the US? 30? 40? 50?
So now he would be what? 100-120?
See how time flies when you’re having fun, on the internet.
This is the link for post #672
The heroes file also includes names like Winston Churchll.
http://www.moreorless.au.com/heroes/mossadegh.html
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