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http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp/html/realfile/story.asp? NewsID=46317&Cr=iraq&Cr1=#.UrQjcdLuJB4

Iraq: launching new trust fund, UN chief urges relocation of Champ Hurriya residents
un.org, October 23, 2013 Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called on Member States to offer safe relocation for residents of Camp Hurriya, located near the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, and to contribute to a trust fund launched today to cover costs related to the relocation process. The Secretary-General is committed to resolving the situation faced by the former residents of Camp New Iraq (Ashraf) now residents of Camp Hurriya (Liberty) in accordance with international human rights and humanitarian standards, Mr. Bans spokesperson said in a statement. He added that the UN chief has taken note of the letters and other expressions of concern over the residents well -being and safety from parliamentarians, political figures, civil society groups, and private individuals. Camp Hurriya has served as a transit facility for 3,174 people, most of them members of a group known as the Peoples Mojahedeen of Iran, where a process to determine their refugee status is being carried out by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), and resettle them outside of the country, in line with an agreement signed in December 2011 between the UN and the Iraqi Government. About 10 per cent of the camps residents now have offers to relocate to third countries. Mr. Ban in todays statement that relocation of the remaining residents to safe and secure locations outside of Iraq is the only durable and sustainable solution and encouraged Member States to pick up the pace of the relocation. The UN is launching a Trust Fund initiative to cover costs relating to the relocation process, it was announced in the statement. Mr. Ban also reiterates the continued responsibility of the Government of Iraq to ensure the safety and security of the residents during their stay in Camp Hurriya. The previous Camp Ashraf had been attacked several times, including last month. Following that attack, the remaining residents were transferred to Camp Hurriya, but the circumstances of the attack remain obscure.

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http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/just-who-has-been-killing-irans-nuclear-scientists-8861232.html

Just who has been killing Iran's nuclear scientists?

World View: The timing of the latest shot in a covert war invites questions about the role of proxies
Indipendent.co.uk, October 6, 2013 By Patrick Coburn What to make of the latest alleged assassination in Iran of a senior officer in the Revolutionary Guards just as Iran and the US move towards negotiations? Is it a last-minute attempt by Israel or the Iranian dissident group the Mojahedin -e-Khalq (MEK) to sabotage talks or at least to show that they are still players in the decades-long struggle between the government in Tehran and its many antagonists? The first account on an Iranian website stated that Mojtaba Ahmadi, the head of Iranian cyber warfare, had been found shot in the head outside Tehran. The Revolutionary Guards issued a statement denying that he had been assassinated, but admitted there had been a "horrific incident" which it was investigating. The killing appeared to be the latest in a string of killings, since 2007, in which five Iranians associated with the country's nuclear programme have been murdered in professional attacks. Men on motorcycles operating on the basis of good intelligence have stuck magnetically attachable bombs to their victims' cars. The timing of Ahmadi's assassination looks suspicious, coming a few days after the Iranian President, Hassan Rouhani, addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations and later spoke to President Barack Obama by telephone. Not everybody on either side is happy: the head of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohammed Ali Jafari, even stated openly that, while he agreed with Rouhani's UN speech, "he should have turned down a telephone conversation until after the American government had shown its sincerity towards Iran". Jafari may be worried that Washington believes it has Iran on the run because of the devastating impact of economic sanctions. An obvious motive for carrying out such assassinations is to demonstrate that the enemies of the Iranian government have a long reach and can identify and kill top specialists in modern warfare, notably but not exclusively those involved in the Iranian nuclear programme. This is in keeping with the plot of so many spy movies in which a single irreplaceable scientist is targeted for assassination by the forces of good or evil. In reality, such uniquely capable scientists, even where they exist, are extremely well-guarded and seldom drive their own cars. It is unlikely that any of those killed are the Iranian equivalent of J Robert Oppenheimer, the mastermind behind America's successful effort to build an atomic bomb. Who is doing the killings? A well-sourced and convincing investigation last year by NBC News in the US concluded that "deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by an Iranian dissident group that is financed, trained and armed by Israel's secret service". It cites two senior Obama administration officials as confirming that the MEK is responsible for the killings but denying any US involvement. Richard Engel and Robert Windrem of NBC quote Mohammad Javad Larijani, a senior aide to Iran's spiritual leader Ali Khamenei, as asserting that Israel's secret service, Mossad, trained MEK members. He claimed that in one case it built a replica of a nuclear scientist's house so that the killers would be familiar with it. His information largely came from the interrogation of a would-be assassin detained in Iran in 2010. Larijani said that Mossad worked through the MEK because "Israel does not have direct access to our society. [The MEK], being Iranian and being part of Iranian society, they have a good number of places... to get into touch with people." The MEK categorically denies any involvement with Israel but Israeli commentators have confirmed the MEK-Israeli connection. The MEK is a strange, highly disciplined, cult-like organisation which began as a militant opponent of the Shah, inspired by an ideology that is a mixture of Marxism and Islam. After Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1979, the MEK fought a ferocious war against his clerical regime, basing itself in Iraq with support from Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war. During the Kurdish uprising in 1991, the Kurds blamed the MEK for blocking their advance against Saddam's forces at a crucial moment. After the fall of Saddam, the MEK established shadowy connections with the US occupation authorities, often through American contractors who had previously worked for Washington and still had their security clearances, according to Iraqi officials. This allowed the US to deny it was working with a group designated as "terrorist" by its own State Department in 1997 (though that designation was lifted last year). Nevertheless, the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh says that, even while it was listed as a foreign terror group, MEK members received training from the Joint Special Op-

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erations Command in Nevada. During the confrontation between Tehran and Washington over Iran's nuclear programme, the MEK was attractive to US intelligence agencies because it already had committed adherents on the ground in Iran. The US and Iran have been conducting a covert war against each other since the fall of the Shah, though its intensity goes up and down. During the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), the CIA had a station in Baghdad that fed satellite surveillance photographs of Iranian frontline positions to Saddam. The conflict escalated again during the US occupation of Iraq (although Iran had quietly welcomed the toppling of its arch enemy in Baghdad). At the same time, Iran made every effort to ensure that it, and not America, became the predominant foreign power in post-Saddam Iraq. Pin-prick attacks by the two sides were highly visible from 2003 to about 2008, but less evident during this time was a degree of co-operation, since both sides wanted to stabilise a ShiaKurdish government. Likewise today, neither country has an interest in seeing a reinvigorated al-Qa'ida establish itself in the Sunni heartlands of western Iraq and eastern Syria. The problem with the US-Iranian proxy war is that neither side quite controls their own proxies to the degree the other side imagines. It is all very well working through surrogates to retain deniability, but these have their own interests and may, in addition, be incompetent, corrupt or simply crazed. The MEK is not the only player in this murky and violent world. There are others such as PJAK the Iranian Kurdish franchise of the Turkish Kurd PKK group which is based in the southern Qandil mountains and has its militants inside Iran. Meanwhile, in Pakistani Baluchistan, there are militant Sunni groups eager for money and support from foreign intelligence services. Some of these groups, whatever their origin, end up as guns for hire and have so many tactical alliances they must have difficulty remembering what they are fighting for. How feasible is a US-Iranian dtente? Prospects are a lot better than they have been for a long time given that US and Iranian interests in Syria are not so diametrically opposed as they were six months ago. The Sunni offensive that seemed to carry all before it in 2011 and 2012 has stalled, at least for now. But Iran does not want to give the impression that it is caving in under sanctions and Israel will want to retain its veto over any future US-Iran deal. So, whatever the truth about the death of Mojtaba Ahmadi, the covert war between Iran and its enemies is a long way from ending.

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2013/10/215817.htm

U.S. Pledges Support to UN Trust Fund for Resettlement of Camp Hurriya Residents
State.gov, October 24, 2013 Press Statement Marie Harf - Deputy Department Spokesperson, Office of the Spokesperson, Washington, DC October 24, 2013 The United States welcomes the establishment of the United Nations Trust Fund to support the resettlement of individuals currently residing at Camp Hurriya in Iraq. We are pleased to announce that the United States plans to provide $1 million to the UN Trust Fund. The Administration will continue to work with the U.S. Congress regarding these funds. The United States hopes other countries will also support this important humanitarian effort. We share the conviction that relocation is the only lasting means of guaranteeing the safety and well-being of those residing at Camp Hurriya. Achieving this goal has become an ever more urgent humanitarian imperative in the aftermath of deadly attacks on Camp Hurriya in February and June of this year, and the horrific attack on individuals at Camp Ashraf in September. We also continue to support the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in their efforts to resettle the residents of Camp Hurriya outside of Iraq. The United States is actively engaged in working with the international community to move the UNHCR-led relocation process forward. To that end, the Department of State recently appointed Jonathan Winer as Senior Advisor for Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) Resettlement, to oversee our efforts towards resettling the residents of Camp Hurriya to safe, permanent and secure locations outside of Iraq as soon as possible.

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http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-iranian-smoke-and-mirrors-threat-and-washingtons-human-rights-card/5355699

The Iranian Smoke and Mirrors Threat and Washingtons Human Rights Card - excerpt globalresearch.ca, October 27, 2013 By Sam Muhho Other means proposed included playing upon sectarian and ethnic divisions inside Iran to destabilize the country and even funding radical Sunni militant groups, specifically the MEK, which has killed Americans in the past and is labeled by the U.S. state department as a foreign terrorist organization. Its ideology is described by analysts as radical left wing Islamic-Marxism which makes it interesting to consider the US plans to fully employ this group as political assets. MEK has also collaborated with Saddam Husseins forces in guerilla warfare against Iran in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s (113, 117-118)1. The group is against the dominant Iranian establishment and it is noted that the US has worked covertly with them in the past and that in order to work overtly with them, the group had to be removed from the terrorist list (118). Regarding the MEK on pages 117118, Brookings states: Perhaps the most prominent (and certainly the most controversial) opposition group that has attracted attention as a potential U.S. proxy is the NCRI (National Council of Resistance of Iran), the political movement established by the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq). Critics believe the group to be undemocratic and unpopular, and indeed anti-American. In contrast, the groups champions contend that the movements long-standing opposition to the Iranian regime and record of successful attacks on and intelligence-gathering operations against the regime make it worthy of U.S. support. They also argue that the group is no longer antiAmerican and question the merit of earlier accusations. Raymond Tanter, one of the groups supporters in the United States, contends that the MEK and the NCRI are allies for regime change in Tehran and also act as a useful proxy for gathering intelligence. The MEKs greatest intelligence coup was the provision of intelligence in 2002 that led to the discovery of a secret site in Iran for enriching uranium. Despite its defenders claims, the MEK remains on the U.S. government list of foreign terrorist organizations. In the 1970s, the group killed three U.S. officers and three civilian contractors in Iran. During the 1979-1980 hostage crisis, the group praised the decision to take America hostages and Elaine Sciolino reported that while group leaders publicly condemned the 9/11 attacks, within the group celebrations were widespread. Undeniably, the group has conducted terrorist attacks often excused by the MEKs advocates because they are directed against the Iranian government. For example, in 1981, the group bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, which was then the clerical leaderships main political organization, killing an estimated 70 senior officials. More recently, the group has claimed credit for over a dozen mortar attacks, assassinations, and other assaults on Iranian civilian and military targets between 1998 and 2001. At the very least, to work more closely with the group (at least in an overt manner), Washington would need to remove it from the list of foreign terrorist organizations. The compounded criminality of western and Israeli collaboration with MEK is emphasized here2. It should be noted that the MEK has recently been removed from the US list of terrorist organizations as part of the next phase of using them as a proxy. MEK claims to have killed 40,000 Iranians in the past and has been trained on U.S. soil in a secret base in Nevada, published on the Huffington Post and cited here by Kurt Nimmo3 in an excellent and well-sourced article emphasizing the coordinated western agenda against Iran. -References: 1) RAND Report: Iran after the Bomb, http://www.rand.org/ pubs/research_reports/RR310.html. 2) http://landdestroyer.blogspot.de/2012/04/confirmed-terroristorganization.html. 3) http://www.infowars.com/war-with-iran-started-five-years-ago/.

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http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/controversial-iranian-group-attempts-to-take-out-washington

Controversial Iranian Group Attempts To Take Out Washington Post Ad, Accidentally Sends Invoice To Opponent
Buzzfeed.com, October 10, 2013

By Andrew Kaczynski The M.E.K, short for the Mujahedeen-e Khalq or Peoples Mujahideen of Iran, is an exiled Iranian opposition group that was previously designated a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department until its removal in Sept. 2012.

The M.E.K has a number of high profile backers in the U.S. Heres former House Speaker Newt Gingrich bowing to M.E.K. leader Maryam Rajavi in 2012. At the time the M.E.K was still labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S.

[http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/ MEKad09022011.pdf]

The letter was signed by a number of prominent Democrats and Republicans, including former members of the Bush And Obama Administrations.

[http://youtube.com/watch?v=YB7yVp_tBxQ]

The National Association of Iranian Academics in Britain took out a Washington Post ad in 2011, writing an open letter to President Obama asking him to take the M.E.K. off the list of terrorist organizations.
[http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/ MEKad09022011.pdf]

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The State Department labeled the M.E.K. a terrorist organization for a number of reasons, among other things, they staged terrorist attacks killing U.S. military personnel and civilians. They were also funded by Saddam Hussein. From the State Departments website: The groups worldwide campaign against the Iranian government uses propaganda and terrorism to achieve its objectives. During the 1970s, the MEK staged terrorist attacks inside Iran and killed several U.S. military personnel and civilians working on defense projects in Tehran. In 1972, the MEK set off bombs in Tehran at the U.S. Information Service office (part of the U.S. Embassy), the Iran-American Society, and the offices of several U.S. companies to protest the visit of President Nixon to Iran. In 1973, the MEK assassinated the deputy chief of the U.S. Military Mission in Tehran and bombed several businesses, including Shell Oil. In 1974, the MEK set off bombs in Tehran at the offices of U.S. companies to protest the visit of then U.S. Secretary of State Kissinger. In 1975, the MEK assassinated two U.S. military officers who were members of the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group in Tehran. In 1976, the MEK assassinated two U.S. citizens who were employees of Rockwell International in Tehran. In 1979, the group claimed responsibility for the murder of an American Texaco executive. Though denied by the MEK, analysis based on eyewitness accounts and MEK documents demonstrates that MEK members participated in and supported the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and that the MEK later argued against the early release the American hostages. Before Operation Iraqi Freedom began in 2003, the MEK received all of its military assistance and most of its financial support from Saddam Hussein. The fall of Saddam Husseins regime has led the MEK increasingly to rely on front organizations to solicit contributions from expatriate Iranian communities. Following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the group was disarmed and has said they have renounced terrorism. They started lobbying to get their name removed from the list of foreign terrorist organizations. The group managed to achieve this in Europe in 2009, and eventually, the U.S. in September 2012. [http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2010/170264.htm] One of the M.E.K.s supporters, The National Association of Iranian Academics in Britain, recently attempted to take out an ad in The Washington Post.

Heres the invoice:

Even though the National Association of Iranian Academics in Britain was supposedly an independent group of M.E.K. supporters, the recent ad invoice is signed by Shahin Gobadi, a Paris-based spokesman for the M.E.K.s parent organization.

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Continued from page 8: MEK makes...

from NCRI that they didnt even rewrite todays article very much from the last wild NCRI accusation in July7 (the link here is to CBC carrying the Reuters story): But analysts say it has a mixed track record and a clear political agenda. The signed-copy of the invoice is also addressed to the wrong place. The address listed is the office of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), who OPPOSES the M.E.K. and ran a campaign to stop them from being delisted as a terror organization. But in that July story, Reuters went further in linking that accusation to a desire to derail diplomacy: The latest allegation comes less than a month after the election of a relative moderate, Hassan Rouhani, as Irans new president raised hopes for a resolution of the nuclear dispute with the West, and might be timed to discredit such optimism. Yes, the MEK clearly sees diplomacy as the real enemy. That article also rehashed the abject failure of an accusation NCRI and MEK made in 2010: In 2010, when the group said it had evidence of another new nuclear facility, west of the capital Tehran, U.S. officials said they had known about the site for years and had no reason to believe it was nuclear. It would appear that NCRI and MEK need to step up their acts. They have reached a level of incompetence that is barely worthy of rewriting the standard dismissal that Reuters keeps on file. -References: 1) http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/10/ iran-nuclear-deal--concessions-hint.html 2) http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/10/us-irannuclear-dissidents-idUSBRE9990CP20131010 3) http://www.ncr-iran.org/en/about
[http://www.niacouncil.org/site/PageServer?pagename=mek_terror]

The NIAC still has an entire section of their website devoted to opposition to the M.E.K. So accidentally signing a copy of contract addressed to them is particularly embarrassing.

By accidentally signing this invoice and somehow failing to notice that it was addressed to their opposition, the M.E.K. outed itself as the ones pulling the strings at the National Association of Iranian Academics in Britain.

4) http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/world/ middleeast/iranian-opposition-group-mek-wins-removalfrom-us-terrorist-list.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 5) http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/middle-east-north -africa/301841-delisted-iranian-terror-group-mek-registersto-lobby 6) http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1274/ncridid-not-discover-natanz 7) http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/exiled-dissidents-claimiran-building-new-nuclear-site-1.1378783

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http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/10/10/mek-makes-desperate-new-iran-nuclear-accusation-reuters-yawns/

MEK Makes Desperate New Iran Nuclear Accusation, Reuters Yawns

Emptywheel.net, September 13, 2013

By Jim White With the world anticipating real progress1 at the next round of P5+1 talks set to start next week in Geneva, the MEK is getting desperate. Because they appear to only want a violent regime change in Iran, talk of actual diplomacy is their worst nightmare. Today, Reuters reports2 on the latest wild accusation tossed out by the MEK using the umbrella organization of the National Council of Resistance of Iran3: An exiled Iranian opposition group said on Thursday it had information about what it said was a center for nuclear weaponisation research in Tehran that the government was moving to avoid detection ahead of negotiations with world powers. Reuters clearly was unmoved by the accusation, as they immediately pointed out that NCRI is biased and politically motivated. However, even in pointing out the bias of NCRI, Reuters perpetuates a myth that has been disproven: The dissident National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) exposed Irans uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and a heavy water facility at Arak in 2002. But analysts say it has a chequered track record and a clear political agenda. Uhm, yes. Having your major group spend decades on the list of terrorist organizations4 (before eventually buying their way off the list and registering as a lobbying group5) would indeed qualify as a chequered track record. But Reuters insists on repeating the falsehood that the NCRI and MEK were responsible for exposing the underground enrichment site at Natanz. That myth has been thoroughly debunked by Jeffrey Lewis6: The debate about whether Iran has constructed a clandestine centrifuge program drives me nuts. You mean other than the one we already found? And by we, I mean the United Statesor at least its intelligence community. As I understand the sequence of events, the United Statesknowing full well that Iran had a clandestine centrifuge program watched Iran dig two MASSIVE HOLES near Natanz (see the big picture), then ratted the Iranians out to the IAEA. About the same time, someone leaked that information to an Iranian dissident group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which then released the second-hand dope in a press conference where they got the details wrong. Lewis goes on to cite multiple independent sources to confirm that the intelligence community, not the NCRI, was responsible for discovering the Natanz facility. [It is also instructive to note the role ISIS played in the charade of promoting NCRI responsibility.] Aside from that major error on attribution of the discovery of Natanz, Reuters was so unmoved by the newest ploy
continues on page 7...

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