organization:iranian government

  • Spain’s Far-right Vox Received Almost $1M from ’Marxist-Islamist’ Iranian Exiles: Report | News | teleSUR English
    https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Spains-Far-right-Vox-Received-Almost-1M-from-Marxist-Islamist-Irania

    It is unlikely that Vox’s hyper-nationalist voters know that their party scored a significant presence in Spain’s parliament mostly thanks to Zionists, Islamists and foreigners.

    With the April 28 general elections in Spain over, the far-right party Vox gained about 10 percent of parliamentary seats, marking the far-right’s rising comeback into politics four decades after Francisco Franco’s dictatorship. While a less alarmist reading would say that the far-right was always there, hidden in the conservative People’s Party (PP), the fact that they are out in the open strengthens Europe’s wave of far-right xenophobic and anti-European advance.

    The party appealed to voters in one of Spain’s most contested elections since its return to democracy, mostly basing its arguments against leftists politics, social liberals, migrants, charged mainly with an Islamophobic narrative. Emphasizing the return of a long lost Spain and pushing to fight what they refer to as an “Islamist invasion,” which is the “enemy of Europe.” One could summarize it as an Iberian version of “Make Spain Great Again.”

    Yet while this definitely appealed to almost two million voters, many are unaware of where their party’s initial funding came from. Back in January 2019, an investigation made by the newspaper El Pais revealed, through leaked documents, that almost one million euros - approximately 80 percent of its 2014 campaign funding - donated to Vox between its founding in December 2013 and the European Parliament elections in May 2014 came via the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a self-declared “Marxist” organization and an Islamist group made up of Iranian exiles.

    However, this is where things get complicated. The NCRI is based in France and was founded in 1981 by Massoud Rajavi and Abolhassan Banisadr, nowadays its president-elect is Maryam Rajavi (Massoud’s wife). The Rajavis are also the leaders of the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK). A reason for many to believe that the NCRI is just a front for the MEK, which over the past few decades has managed to create a complicated web of anti-Iranian, pro-Israel and right-wing government support from all over the world.

    To understand MEK, it’s necessary to review the 1953 U.S. and British-backed coup which ousted democratically elected prime minister of Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh and instituted a monarchical dictatorship led by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

    The oppression carried out by the Pahlavi royal family led to the creation of many radical groups, one which was MEK, whose ideology combined Marxism and Islamism. Its original anti-west, especially anti-U.S. sentiment pushed for the killing of six U.S citizens in Iran in the 1970s. While in 1979, they enthusiastically cheered the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. After the Iranian Revolution, its young leaders, including Rajavi, pushed for endorsement from the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, but were denied.

    So Rajavi, allied with the winner of the country’s first presidential election, Abolhassan Banisadr, who was not an ally of Khomeini, either. Soon Banisadr and MEK became some of Khomeini’s main opposition figures and had fled to Iraq and later to France.

    In the neighboring country, MEK allied with Sadam Hussein to rage war against Iran. In a RAND report, allegations of the group’s complicity with Saddam are corroborated by press reports that quote Maryam Rajavi encouraging MEK members to “take the Kurds under your tanks, and save your bullets for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards."

    The organization was deemed a terrorist organization by the U.S. and European Union for the better part of the 1990s, but things changed after the U.S. invasion to Iraq in 2003. This is when the U.S. neoconservative strategist leading the Department of State and the intelligence agencies saw MEK as an asset rather than a liability. Put simply in words they applied the dictum of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

    The U.S.’s dismissal of past crimes reinvigorated MEK’s intense lobbying campaign to have itself removed from terrorist lists in the U.S. and the European Union. MEK, which by the beginning of the 21 century had morphed into a cult-like group according to many testimonies from dissidents, moved from Camp Ashraf to the U.S-created Camp Liberty outside of Baghdad. And that’s when things rapidly changed.

    According to the Guardian, between 2007 and 2012, a number of Iranian nuclear scientists were attacked. In 2012, NBC News, citing two unnamed U.S. officials, reported that the attacks were planned by Israel’s Mossad and executed by MEK operatives inside Iran. By 2009 and 2012, the EU and the U.S. respectively took it out of its terrorist organizations list.

    Soon after it gained support from U.S. politicians like Rudy Giuliani and current National Security Advisor John Bolton, who now call MEK a legitimate opposition to the current Iranian government. As the U.S. neocon forefathers did before, MEK shed its “Marxism.” After the U.S.’s official withdrawal from Iraq, they built MEK a safe have in Albania, near Tirana, where the trail of money can be followed once again.

    Hassan Heyrani, a former member of MEK’s political department who defected in 2018, and handled parts of the organization’s finances in Iraq, when asked by Foreign Policy where he thought the money for MEK came from, he answered: “Saudi Arabia. Without a doubt.” For another former MEK member, Saadalah Saafi, the organization’s money definitely comes from wealthy Arab states that oppose Iran’s government.

    “Mojahedin [MEK] are the tool, not the funders. They aren’t that big. They facilitate,” Massoud Khodabandeh, who once served in the MEK’s security department told Foreign Policy. “You look at it and say, ‘Oh, Mojahedin are funding [Vox].’ No, they are not. The ones that are funding that party are funding Mojahedin as well.”

    Meanwhile, Danny Yatom, the former head of the Mossad, told the Jersulamen Post that Israel can implement some of its anti-Iran plans through MEK if a war were to break out. Saudi Arabia’s state-run television channels have given friendly coverage to the MEK, and Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief, even appeared in July 2016 at a MEK rally in Paris.

    With Israel and Saudi Arabia backing MEK, the question of why a far-right movement would take money from an Islamist organization clears up a bit. Israel’s support of European far-right parties has been public. In 2010, a sizeable delegation arrived in Tel Aviv, consisting of some 30 leaders of the European Alliance for Freedom, gathering leaders such as Geert Wilders of the Netherlands, Philip Dewinter from Belgium and Jorg Haider’s successor, Heinz-Christian Strache, from Austria.

    Yet for the U.S., Israel, and Saudi Arabia, MEK represents an anti-Iranian voice that they so desperately need, and that on the surface didn’t come from them directly. It is unlikely that Vox’s hyper-nationalist voters know that their party scored a significant presence in Spain’s parliament mostly thanks to Zionists, Islamists and foreigners.

    #Espagne #extrême_droite #Israël #Iran #Arabie_Saoudite #OMPI #Albanie

  • Syria Latest: Day-to-Day Life in War-Weary Damascus - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-04-26/waiting-19-hours-for-gas-in-a-lifeless-city

    Instead of a frenzy of reconstruction and the promise of revival, Syrians have found themselves fighting another battle. Weary and traumatized from the violence, they’re focused on trying to survive in a decimated economy that shows no signs of imminent revival and with no peace dividend on the horizon.

    [..,]

    Robert Ford, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria, said the Trump administration is much more aggressive than under Barack Obama, using more secondary penalties that target those doing business with sanctioned individuals or companies.

    In November, the U.S. Treasury Department added a network of Russian and Iranian companies to its blacklist for shipping oil to Syria and warned of significant risks for those violating the sanctions.

    “It is a conscious policy of the American government to try to strangle to death the Iranian government in Tehran and the Syrian government in Damascus,” said Ford, who’s now a fellow at the Middle East Institute. “They don’t want to fight a military war with the Syrian government, but they’re perfectly willing to fight an economic war.”

    Ford likened the situation in Syria to the one in Cuba after the economy collapsed in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. Cuba had financial difficulties, “but the Castros are still there,” he said.

    #Syrie #sanctions #civils #etats-unis

  • China pushing billions into Iranian economy as Western firms stall
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-nuclear-china/china-pushing-billions-into-iranian-economy-as-western-firms-stall-idUSKBN1

    China is financing billions of dollars worth of Chinese-led projects in #Iran, making deep inroads into the economy while European competitors struggle to find banks willing to fund their ambitions, Iranian government and industry officials said.

    #Chine

  • Iran Continues Deporting Undocumented Afghan Refugees

    Nearly 130,000 undocumented Afghan refugees have been forced by the Iranian government to go home this year, heading to an uncertain future with the resurgent Taliban now holding more than 40 percent rural territory in Afghanistan.

    http://www.voanews.com/a/iran-continues-deporting-undocumented-afghan-refugees/3864010.html

    #Iran #réfugiés_afghans #asile #migrations #réfugiés #expulsions #renvois #Afghanistan

  • Hajj Closed to Iranians After Year of Discord | Foreign Policy
    http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/05/12/hajj-closed-to-iranians-after-year-of-discord

    Last year, almost 75,000 Iranians went on the hajj — the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, a requirement of Islam, that many scrimp and save for years to afford.

    This year, the Islamic Republic is set to send zero.

    Since last year’s hajj, tensions between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia have peaked. Disaster marked the 2015 pilgrimage: A stampede, one of many in the hajj’s history, cost at least 2,426 lives, 464 of them Iranian. Iran said Saudi “incompetence” and “mismanagement” were to blame.

    Relations between Riyadh and Tehran worsened in January, when Iranian protesters ransacked part of the Saudi Embassy after Saudi Arabia executed Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr. And both countries back different factions in the civil wars, which have come to serve as proxy battles, in Syria and Yemen.

    On Thursday, an Iranian official told the country’s state media that negotiations to keep hajj open had come to an impasse. “We did whatever we could, but it was the Saudis who sabotaged” it, said Ali Jannati, Iran’s minister of culture and Islamic guidance.

    Saudi officials contested that narrative. “The decision not to participate in this year’s hajj is a decision made solely by the Iranian government in what is clearly an effort to politicize the hajj,” a spokesperson for the Saudi embassy in Washington said in an email to Foreign Policy. “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has always welcomed all pilgrims. Any government that hinders or prevents its citizens from exercising their right to perform the pilgrimage, shall be held accountable before Allah and the entire world.

    Even if Tehran decided not to closed off the 2016 hajj, however, few Iranians would be able to go. Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties with Iran after January’s embassy incident in Tehran. Without the help of consulates or an embassy, Iranians looking to obtain hajj visas would have had to travel to other countries to apply. Even those willing and able to travel abroad for visas would likely have been wary, given last year’s tragedy and the mounting discord between the kingdom and the Islamic Republic.

  • The ‘Hybrid War’ of Economic Sanctions
    https://consortiumnews.com/2016/04/01/the-hybrid-war-of-economic-sanctions

    Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei told a large group of people in the holy city of Mashhad on Sunday that “The Americans did not act on what they promised in the [Iranian] nuclear accord [the JCPOA]; they did not do what they should have done. According to Foreign Minister [Javad Zarif], they brought something on paper but prevented materialization of the objectives of the Islamic Republic of Iran through many diversionary ways.”

    This statement during the Supreme Leader’s key Nowruz (New Year) address should be understood as a flashing amber light: it was no rhetorical flourish. And it was not a simple dig at America (as some may suppose). It was perhaps more of a gentle warning to the Iranian government to “take care” of the possible political consequences.

    Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei speaks to a crowd. (Iranian government photo)
    What is happening is significant: for whatever motive, the U.S. Treasury is busy emptying much of the JCPOA sanctions relief of any real substance (and their motive is something which deserves careful attention). The Supreme Leader also noted that Iran is experiencing difficulties in repatriating its formerly frozen, external funds.

    U.S. Treasury officials, since “implementation” day, have been doing the rounds, warning European banks that the U.S. sanctions on Iran remain in place, and that European banks should not think, even for a second, of tapping the dollar or euro bond markets in order to finance trade with Iran, or to become involved with financing infrastructure projects in Iran.

    Banks well understand the message: touch Iranian commerce and you will be whacked with a billion dollar fine – against which there is no appeal, no clear legal framework – and no argument countenanced. The banks (understandably) are shying off. Not a single bank or financial lending institution turned up when Iranian President Hassan Rouhani visited Paris to hold meetings with the local business élite.

    The influential Keyhan Iranian newspaper wrote on March 14 on this matter that: “Speaking at the UN General Assembly session in September, Rouhani stated: ‘Today a new phase of relations has started in Iran’s relations with the world.’ He also stated in a live radio and television discussion with the people on 23 Tir: ‘The step-by-step implementation of this document could slowly remove the bricks of the wall of mistrust.’”

    Keyhan continues: “These remarks were made at a time when the Western side, headed by America, does not have any intention to remove or even shorten the wall of mistrust between itself and Iran. … Moreover, they are delaying the implementation of their JCPOA commitments. Lifting the sanctions has remained merely as a promise on a piece of paper, so much so that it has roused the protest of Iranian politicians.

  • David Gardner of the Financial Times is wrong—but who is counting when it comes to foes of US and Israel?
    http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2016/04/david-gardner-of-financial-times-is.html

    The diplomatic break with Iran, and rupture with Lebanon, came after the Saudi execution in January of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a dissident Shia cleric. Riyadh reacted after the Saudi embassy in Tehran and consulate in Mashhad were attacked by mobs. Lebanon’s foreign minister, a Hizbollah-aligned Christian, declined to condemn the events — acting as more papist than the Pope given that the Iranian government itself did so.” In fact, the Lebanese foreign minister repeatedly condemned the attacks on Saudi embassy and consulate in Iran, but he refused to categorize Hizbullah as a terrorist organization. That was the tiff.

    #mensonges

  • Iranian official: Republicans asked the Iranians to delay last months prisoner exchange deal
    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/oh-my--6

    We can by no means take this as a disinterested claim. And no specific names are mentioned. But a high-ranking Iranian government official, who is an appointee of reformist President Hassan Rouhani, says that Republicans asked the Iranians to delay last months prisoner exchange deal until after the Presidential election.

    The original report comes from an openly pro-regime, quasi government news agency, Tasnim News Agency. And the official is Ali Shamkani, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. (Here’s a backgrounder on Shamkani from al-Monitor.) But there seems little reason to doubt that the Shamkani quote itself is genuine.

  • Video Shows the Beginning of Saudi-Led Coalition’s Ground War in Yemen | Foreign Policy
    http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/08/04/video-shows-the-beginning-of-saudi-led-coalitions-ground-war-in-yemen

    Since beginning an aerial campaign in March to halt the territorial gains of Houthi rebels in Yemen, the military coalition led by Saudi Arabia has managed to limit its involvement there to bombings and arming its proxies against the Houthis, which Saudi Arabia and its allies consider an arm of the Iranian government. This week, all that changed, as the United Arab Emirates, a member of the coalition, deployed what is reported to be a brigade of tanks and other armored vehicles to boost the fight against the Houthis.

    In the past 24 hours, photos and video have surfaced on social media showing that force arriving in Aden, a port city that has been the scene of intense fighting between Houthi rebels and troops loyal to former President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, the so-called Southern Resistance. The video below shows a large column of tanks moving out of Aden, from which the Houthis were expelled last month. Note that the video mislabels the tanks as M1 Abrams tanks. They, in fact, appear to be Leclerc battle tanks, a French fighting vehicle exported to the UAE.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd5t28HkLqk

  • “American victims of terror sponsored by Iran have moved to seize the internet licenses, contractual rights and domain names being provided by the United States to the extremist regime in Tehran.”

    "The families, who hold unsatisfied American federal court judgments amounting to more than a billion dollars against the Iranian government seek to own all the “top-level domain” (TLD) names provided by the US to Iran including the .ir TLD, the ایران TLD and all Internet Protocol (IP) addresses being utilized by the Iranian government and its agencies."

    “The court papers have been served on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), an agency of the US Department of Commerce [sic] in Washington, DC, which administrator [sic again] the World Wide Web [more sic].”

    http://www.free-press-release.com/news-american-victims-of-terrorism-look-to-seize-iran-s-internet

    #ICANN #DNS #ccTLD #domain_name #Iran

  • #Israël #Iran #nucléaire
    Un jour, le premier ministre, le suivant, le chef d’état-major et le troisième, le ministre de la défense.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/27/world/middleeast/ehud-barak-adds-to-israels-recent-mix-of-messages-on-iran.html

    Mr. Netanyahu (…) told CNN on Tuesday that he would not count on Iran’s rational behavior.

    In an interview published Wednesday in the left-leaning newspaper Haaretz, General Gantz described the Iranian government as very rational.

    Defense Minister Ehud Barak, said Thursday that the chances appear low that the Iranian government would bow to international pressure and halt its nuclear program.

  • US Congress promises Iranian people strangulation and catastrophe - Max Blumenthal
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/blogs/gadfly/us-congress-promises-iranian-people-strangulation-and-catastrophe

    A co-sponsor of the Swift sanctions, Republican Senator Mark Kirk, has been the largest single recipient of AIPAC-related donations in Congress. Kirk’s desire to collectively punish the Iranian people for anything their government might or might not have done is unconcealed. In an October 2011 appearance on a Chicago-area radio show, Kirk spent his time harumphing over a transparently trumped up Iranian government terror plot. But the host interrupted the senator with an important question: “Are you really going after the government of the country, or are you taking food out of the mouths of the citizens?‘”

    Kirk’s reply neatly encapsulated the sadistic consensus in Washington: “It’s okay to take the food out of the mouths of the citizens from a government that’s plotting an attack directly on American soil.”

  • What media coverage omits about U.S. hikers released by Iran - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com
    http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/09/26/iran

    Fattal then expressed “great thanks to world leaders and individuals” who worked for their release, including Hugo Chavez, the governments of Turkey and Brazil, Sean Penn, Noam Chomsky, Mohammad Ali, Cindy Sheehan, Desmond Tutu, as well as Muslims from around the world and “elements within the Iranian government,” as well as U.S. officials.

    Unsurprisingly, one searches in vain for the inclusion of these facts and remarks in American media accounts of their release and subsequent press conference.

    [...]

    Saberi’s case became a true cause célèbre among American journalists, with large numbers of them flamboyantly denouncing Iran and demanding her release. But when their own government imprisoned numerous journalists for many years without any charges of any kind — Al Jazeera’s Sami al-Haj in Guantanamo, Associated Press’ Bilal Hussein for more than two years in Iraq, Reuters’ photographer Ibrahim Jassan even after an Iraqi court exonerated him, and literally dozens of other journalists without charge — it was very difficult to find any mention of their cases in American media outlets.

  • It’s hard to make light of the plight of my people, the #Bahá'ís | Omid Djalili | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/jul/10/bahai-iran-repression

    Nowadays, the climate feels different. In February 2009 a group of Iranian intellectuals, writers, activists and artists signed an open letter to the Bahá’ís stating their regret concerning the Iranian government’s treatment of its Bahá’í minority. They made an open apology for their silence during Iran’s long-running persecutions: “a century and a half of oppression and silence is enough”. This letter was welcomed by the Bahá’ís, who have always made it clear they are humanitarians, not political activists, working towards social transformation for all at a grassroots level, not concerned with overthrowing governments.

    #iran

  • Pour mémoire, opération Ajax, Iran, 1953 :

    Obama admits US involvement in Iran coup in 1953
    http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.32cde4b38d55ae6af28266bb31a7221e.851&show_article=1

    US President Barack Obama made a major gesture of conciliation to Iran on Thursday when he admitted US involvement in the 1953 coup which overthrew the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh.
    “In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government,” Obama said during his keynote speech to the Muslim world in Cairo.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'état

    On August 19, a pro-Shah mob, paid by the CIA, marched on Mosaddegh’s residence. According to the CIA’s declassified documents and records, some of the most feared mobsters in Tehran were hired by the CIA to stage pro-Shah riots on the 19th. Other CIA-paid men were brought into Tehran in buses and trucks, and took over the streets of the city.

    Et pour les références complètes :
    http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28