Human Lives Human Rights: According to professor Marandi, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) is suspected of having actually killed Fakhrizadeh. He says: The MEK works with the United States and Israel. “Teams from MEK have been involved in such projects in the past.”
As reported in the Christian Science Monitor, from 2007-2012, Israel used the MEK to carry out sophisticated assassinations of five nuclear scientists inside Iran. The Israeli Mossad trained members of the MEK to carry out the hits. Mossad used Mujahedin-e-Khalq MEK for the assassination of Fakhrizadeh.
Imagine for a moment what would happen if unknown assassins murdered a high-ranking U.S. scientist involved with chemical weapons. Let’s say officials in Iran quietly took responsibility, arguing that the United States had violated international law because it continues to hold stockpiles of mustard gas and nerve agents VX and sarin, despite numerous commitments to destroy them starting in the late 1990s.
Compare that fictional assassination with Israel’s actual assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a prominent Iranian scientist described as the “father of the Iranian bomb.” The fictional and real murders are analogous with an important exception: The United States has had a chemical weapons program since 1917. Iran has no nuclear weapons program.
Had the Iranian government assassinated a U.S. military or scientific leader, “It would have caused absolute outrage and very swift retribution,” says professor Joshua Landis, director of the Farzaneh Family Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at the University of Oklahoma.
On November 27, Fakhrizadeh, a military leader and professor, was killed while on his way to visit relatives outside Tehran. The New York Times cites intelligence sources who identify Israel as responsible for the attack.
On December 2, the Iranian parliament voted to increase its uranium stockpiles to a higher level than needed for nuclear power generation, but still below the level to build a bomb. It also gave Washington an ultimatum until early February to lift economic sanctions or Iran would bar IAEA inspectors from entering Iran.
Two senior officials in the Obama administration told NBC news that the assassinations were carried out by the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), the group that spent many years on America’s terrorist list. They also alleged that the MEK was “financed, trained, and armed” by Israeli intelligence. Like in Iraq, before Iran assassinations of scientists have failed to stop the nuclear program. But history has shown us, the pattern of extra-judicial killings and covert strikes will endure.
Although the assassination of Iranian scientists has so far shown no sign of responsibility, other than some self made comments by some officials, NBC now offers something more specific. According to Richard Engel and Robert Windrem’s report, the assassinations were a joint operation of Israel and the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq terrorist group.
According to their report, the partnership included financing, training and arming for the MEK to carry out attacks, as well as other violent acts inside Iran. With or without confirmation of the details of this story, the assassinations are terroristic act. (US State Department defines terror as ‘premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents’).
The MEK is a group with a long history of terrorism including American victims. On the other part of the story, MEK was an arm of Saddam Hussein’s security forces, the group had almost no popular support inside Iran. For anyone in Israel, the United States, or anywhere else hoping for a regime change in Iran, it is foolish to deal with the MEK.
Sources confirm that the Mujahedin-e-Khalq organization, which also is referred to as MEK or MKO, was involved with Israel in the current round of assassinations of two Iranian nuclear scientists and Iran’s top missile designer. So far, some five Iranian nuclear scientists have been targeted.
The British Daily Mail separately reports that U.S. officials have confirmed that Israel has been funding and training Iranian dissidents to assassinate nuclear scientists involved in Iran’s nuclear program.
U.S. officials also confirmed similar information to NBC News but quickly added that the United States was not involved in the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, although it appeared to be aware of an alleged link between the Israeli intelligence service Mossad and the MeK.
U.S. sources confirm the close relationship between Israel’s Mossad and the MEK. The association hasn’t gone unnoticed by Iranian officials.
“The relation is very intricate and close,” according to Mohammad Javad Larijani, who is a senior aide to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s current supreme leader. “They (Israelis) are paying the mujahedin. Some of their (MEK) agents are providing Israel with information. And they recruit and also manage logistical support.
“Israel does not have direct access to our society,” Larijani added. “Mujahedin, being Iranian and being part of Iranian society, they have a good number of places to get in touch with people. So, I think they are working hand-to-hand very close. And we do have very concrete documents.”
Larijani apparently was referring to an interrogation of an MEK member in a failed assassination attempt in 2010 in which such documentation reportedly was found on him.
