All right y'all, welcome back.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our next guest is Mohamed Sahimi.
He writes for us at antiwar.com and writes for PBS Frontline's Tehran Bureau at pbs.org.
I believe it's his latest piece, yes, for antiwar.com.
We discussed before, but it's worth covering again.
Don't remove the M.E.K. from the terrorist list.
Welcome back to the show, Mohamed.
How are you doing?
I'm good.
I'm happy to be back in your program, Scott.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here.
And this is such an important subject, the Mujahideen-e-Khalq and the controversy over whether or not they are going to be removed from the State Department's list of officially designated terrorist organizations.
What do you think would be the repercussions if they were delisted, this group?
Oh, there will be many consequences.
One is the very distinct possibility that they would try to start a war with Iran.
The M.E.K. over the past 30 years has tried to overthrow the Islamic Republic through military attacks, assassination, terrorist operation, and so on.
They claim that they have set aside such tactics, but one can never trust them, given their long history of what they have done over the past 30 years, including, for example, collaborating with the regime of Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war, spying on Iranian troops and reporting it to Saddam Hussein, attacking Iran at the end of the Iran-Iraq war, and then using its forces to put down the uprising by Iraqi Kurdish and Iraqi Shiite population at the end of the first Persian Gulf War in 1991.
So there is a long and distinguished track record of what the M.E.K. has done to Iranians as well as Iraqis, so there is no way that one can trust this group.
That would be one consequence.
The other consequence would be the fact that, given that the Islamic Republic is well aware of the fact that Iranian people despise M.E.K. because of its treason that it committed against Iranian people in the 1980s and 1990s, any democratic movement in Iran is linked to M.E.K. by the Iranian government and taken advantage of to increase pressure and operation of democratic figures, democratic groups, and democratic and peaceful struggles.
So these would be two main consequences.
The other consequences of it would be the fact that the voice of Iranian-Americans that reside in the United States and in Europe and on one hand are opposed to the policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran regarding democratic rights of the Iranian people and on the other hand are anti-war and anti-military attacks and sanctions against Iran may quite possibly be silenced by Mujahideen, because if these people are delisted from the State Department, they can raise millions of dollars in funds, they can lobby all sorts of groups, Congress and so on, and try to silence those groups that oppose their policies and oppose military attacks and sanctions against Iran.
They have already been doing it through their front organizations, such as National Council of Resistance and Council for Democratic Changes in Iran.
These are all front groups that operate for Mujahideen.
And if Mujahideen itself is delisted, that would even add more to the pressure on the reasonable voices of Iranian-Americans that are anti-war and anti-sanctions and at the same time are struggling to create a better environment and a better government in Iran.
Who's bankrolling the MEK, do you know?
The general belief is that Persian Gulf countries, Arab countries of the Persian Gulf, such as Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.
What about David Petraeus?
I don't know whether David Petraeus has personally paid them, but Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates and so on are generally believed to have provided the MEK with large funds.
I would not be surprised at all if MEK, at least indirectly, has received some funds from the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies.
The fact of the matter is they have been spending money like crazy over the past few years.
And, for example, when their leader, Maryam Rajavi, was arrested in France a few years ago on terrorist charges, the French police discovered millions of dollars in cash in her villa near Paris.
That is not the type of money that an organization can raise to its supporters, given that they don't have that many supporters, even outside Iran, and given that many of their supporters have been living outside for years and haven't done very well.
I know personally some of them here in Southern California.
The MEK claims that all of its funds come from its supporters, but that's just impossible to believe because the level of spending that they have had over the past three years, and not just on politicians.
They also operate a satellite TV station.
They also have many types of publications.
They also have lobbies.
They also have attorneys.
All of this costs a huge sum of money, and there is just no way that the ordinary supporters that they have, most of them are poor working people, can provide such a level of support.
So the general belief in the Iranian community, and there is some credible evidence for it, is that foreign countries, particularly the foes of the Islamic Republic in the Persian Gulf area, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and quite possibly Jordan, provide them with support.
And it is also, as I said, possible that Western intelligence agencies also provide them with funds, at least indirectly if not directly.
Well now, how much support do they have?
Because they seem to get most of the headlines as far as Iranian dissident groups go, and I don't guess there's really anyone in the diaspora in this country who favor the Ayatollah whatsoever.
They wouldn't be here, they'd be there.
But I wonder, you know, out of just all the Iranian Americans, what percentage of them do you think are MEK supporters?
Is it broad or just deep?
No, it's a very small fraction of the Iranian community in the diaspora that may support MEK.
When they have, for example, a public demonstration, it seems like they have a large number of people that come out to support them and to demonstrate for them.
But that's in fact just a show, because it is well documented that in these demonstrations they pay a lot of people just to show up and stand there in order to make the crowd look much larger than it would be without them.
So even in the Iranian American community in this country, for example, which as you said wouldn't be here if they didn't oppose the Islamic government in Iran, the MEK does not enjoy considerable support, mainly because of what it did in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war.
And many also, including myself, hold MEK responsible for creating an environment in the 1980s that allowed the Islamic Republic to carry out large-scale executions of political prisoners and suppress the freedom that people had started to have after the Iranian revolution, using assassination and terrorist operations of MEK as an excuse.
Because in 1981, the Mujahideen, which at that time did enjoy relatively large support, started assassinating the government officials because they recognized that they could not work within the framework of the Islamic Republic.
And in retaliation, the government used that as an excuse to carry out execution of supporters of MEK.
So that forced MEK to move its operation headquarters to Iraq.
It started working with Saddam Hussein.
It started spying on Iranian forces and used whatever support Iran had to continue carrying out the assassination and terrorist operations that they carried out.
And as I said, they also helped Saddam Hussein at the end of the first Persian Gulf War.
Do I have it right, Mohamed, that you're saying that they worked against the Shah and with the Ayatollah, then they turned against the Ayatollah, committed a bunch of acts of terrorism that really only led to a terrible clampdown on everybody else in Iran.
Then they fled to go be buddies with Saddam Hussein as his loyal death squad.
And then now, since, I guess, the invasion of Iraq, they've been protected by the Americans.
And some have said and reported used by the Americans, suspected that they've been used by the Americans to set off bombs inside Iran.
It's, I think, an established fact that they funnel bogus Israeli intelligence into the stream in America and in England on a fairly regular basis.
And now you're saying they're working for, it looks like, the Saudis and maybe the Jordanians and anybody else who's working against the Iranian government's interests in the Middle East?
Yes.
I mean, the track record of MEK over the past 30 years shows clearly that the leadership of MEK is willing to make a pact with even Satan if that advances its agenda, which is coming to power in Iran at any cost.
As I said, they work with Saddam Hussein, they work with the Ayatollahs before they took arms against them, they work against the Shah, and they have been working, they have worked with Israelis to propagate bogus information about Iran's nuclear program.
And they are most likely funded by Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and other countries in that region who dislike the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Let me, let me just point out one important point here, and that is the following.
Whether progressives and libertarians in this country and anti-war people like myself like it or not, there are laws in the book in this country that are used to prosecute people that supposedly aid and abet people that are labeled by the government as terrorists.
So if that's, and that has been done by Bush administration and Obama administration and so on, so I have been wondering why the same laws are not used against people such as Howard Dean of the Democratic Party, neocons such as John Bolton and R. James Woolsey, the former CIA director, and other people who have been publicly lecturing and supporting MEK.
So long as MEK is an organization which is listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department, the same laws should be equally applicable to these people.
In other words, the only places that people like Howard Dean and John Bolton and Woolsey should be allowed to speak is in a court of law defending themselves why they defend a terrorist organization publicly and receive tens of thousands of dollars in honorarium in return for for the speeches that they give.
This has been well documented that the MEK has spent and gives to its front organization tens of thousands of dollars in honorarium to such figures to come to their rallies and speak.
These are against the same laws that the Bush administration and the Obama administration have used against other people because supposedly they aided terrorists, whether they were terrorists or not, but they were used against them.
So why is it that the same laws are not used against such despicable figures such as John Bolton and Woolsey and even mainstream people such as Howard Dean?
That's one of the things that the Iranian-American community has been wondering about in this country ever since this campaign by MEK started.
Yeah, well, the answer is because there's no such thing as the rule of law here.
There's the oligarchy and then there's the rest of us and laws that apply to the rest of us don't apply to them in any circumstance, really.
That is probably true, but, you know, the public should be made aware of at least this discrepancy because John Bolton, for example, I mean, look, if John Bolton robbed a store on a Saturday night or something, he could get in trouble for that.
But anything that he does, you know, politically, anyone he supports, as far as that kind of thing goes, even out of official power, he's got sovereign immunity.
Yeah, he does.
And he has voiced, he has forcefully given many, many speeches everywhere that he could in which he has praised MEK, he has supported MEK, he has advocated delisting MEK from the terrorist list of the State Department, and he has advocated attacking Iran and bombing Iran.
I mean, attacking and bombing Iran is his opinion.
Of course, people like you and I are totally opposed to it.
But giving public speeches about an organization that is listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department, and as of the moment that you and I are speaking, the organization is still a terrorist organization, according to the list, is against the law.
And Bolton, and not just Bolton, Bolton, Woolsey, Howard Dean, James Jones, the first national security advisor to President Obama, Michael Mukasey, the last attorney general in the Bush administration, other people, they have gone out of their way, have been paid tens of thousands of dollars on Orion by a, by a terrorist organization, which by itself is against the law, and have supported them publicly in their speeches.
Right.
Well, Mohammed, if you read at state.gov about the Mujahideen, they lament that despite their best efforts, they have never been able to apply the law, they've never been able to have the Department of Justice figure out a way to hold these people accountable for the American civilian and military people that they killed during the revolution in 1979.
Yes, in fact, the, the assassination that the MEK started against Americans in Iran, that started in 1973, I posted an article on Truthout.com, the link to which is given in my anti-war.com article, in which I describe in detail the history of MEK, when it was first founded in 1965.
And in that I listed all the American personnel, organizations, companies, advisors, and so on in Iran that were attacked by MEK between 1973 and 1979.
Even as late as 1981, when the Mujahideen took up arms against Khomeini and his government, they probably referred to their past as being as the avant-garde of the struggle against what they called imperialism, the United States, and take up arms against them.
This was also their policy until late 1980s, as I described in the article.
But once they, it became obvious that they could not, with the aid of Saddam Hussein army, they could not overthrow the Iranian government.
And after Saddam Hussein regime was severely sanctioned after the first Persian Gulf War, they started shifting tactics.
And in order to gain some credibility with Western European countries and the United States, they began denying that they actually carried out those assassinations, claiming that a communist faction that woke up from them in 1975 carried those operations and terrorist operations against Americans.
But in fact, those operations, as I described in the article, began in 1973 when there was no communist faction.
There was no split between the two factions.
And in fact, one of their main leaders, Reza Rezaei, who the present leadership of Mujahideen is very proud of because the Rezaei family in Iran is well known because three of their sons were killed by the security forces of the Shah.
One of the three brothers, Reza Rezaei, was actually arrested by the government and executed because he was the main culprit behind the assassination of US advisors in Iran in 1973.
So there's this whole history of this organization, both against American personnel and advisors in Iran, and the Iranian government, the Kurdish people of Iraq, the Shiite people of Iraq in the South, and so on, that, you know, they have committed all sorts of crimes, all sorts of prisons, all propagating all sorts of bogus information, and yet they seem to enjoy immunity in this country.
And the people like John Bolton and others who publicly support them, and as of now this organization is still listed as a terrorist organization, also enjoy immunity.
That's puzzling, and at least the public should learn about this.
Now, you recount in your Truthout article, I'm sorry I didn't mention this, US neocons new overtures to terrorist opposition group in Iran, part one and two here.
Can you explain how important Marxism is or was to the Mujahideen cult?
Mujahideen always believed in a Marxist interpretation of Islamic teaching.
In other words, they always believed that even Islam has allowed collective, as opposed to private ownership, they always, in their books and pamphlets, they always use Marxist dogma to interpret Islamic teaching.
And in fact, one of their main figures, Ali Mihanduz, who was a contemporary of mine at the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Tehran in the 1970s, when he was put on trial by the Shah in the early 1970s, he said that Marxism is the science of revolution, and we use it to advance our struggle against your regime.
So, Marxism and Marxist ideology have always played an important role in what MDK has advocated.
They now claim that they no longer believe in that ideology, but if you really look at and study what they say and talk to their supporters, they actually believe in the same type of ideology, the same type of thinking, and so on.
At the same time, if you look at the way they operate, for example, if you go to their satellite TV program and watch the meetings that they have, they operate completely similar to a Stalinist type of regime or a communist type of gathering that the communist parties had in the 1970s or 60s and so on.
They operate with that type of mentality and that type of discipline.
So, Marxism and leftist ideology has always played an important element in the ideology that MDK has advocated.
I wanted to ask you now, Muhammad, about the phrase cult.
I want to be careful.
I mean, I don't like these MDK guys.
They threatened one of my guests from last week saying his ego is doing things that his body can't cash and all this kind of stuff.
It was enough to make me angry.
I don't like these guys.
But then again, I'm worried about people throwing around the term cult too much, too, because of course that's how the national government dehumanized the Branch Davidians before taking their human lives from them back in 1993.
And so, I try to be careful about classifying a group as a cult as such, unless they really are.
I mean, there's such a thing as Bo and T and the Heaven's Gate chasing the comet and Jim Jones and those kinds of lunatics and whatever different doomsday cults have existed.
Would you say that the Mujahideen occult is actually Webster's dictionary definition a cult?
MEK is a classic example of a cult.
There is no question about it, and I have made it clear in my articles about MEK that I, like many other Iranians, believe that MEK is a cult.
Why is it a cult?
Because of the type of relationship that exists between supporters and sympathizers of MEK and their leadership.
The leadership basically tells supporters what to do.
The supporters do not have the right to protest, to discuss, to refuse to carry out an order, and so on.
It got to the point that in 1986, Massoud Rajavi, who is the ideological leader of MEK, wanted to marry the wife of another member of the leadership of MEK, Mehdi Abishamchi.
Mehdi Abishamchi was a guy who took part in the struggle against the Shah and was jailed for six years before the revolution, and then he was one of the top leaders of MEK.
And he was married to another member of MEK, Maryam Rajavi, who is now referred to as the president-elect of Iranian resistance.
Perhaps she has never been elected by anybody but Massoud Rajavi, her current husband.
In 1986, Massoud Rajavi wanted to marry Maryam Rajavi, so basically Mehdi Abishamchi, who was Maryam Rajavi's husband at that time, divorced her so that she can marry Massoud Rajavi.
That's just one simple and small example of what's happening.
Then, after MEK forces invaded Iran at the end of the Iran-Iraq war and then were defeated easily by Iranian forces, Massoud Rajavi started an ideological purge of the organization, and he ordered all the men in MEK to divorce their wives.
They didn't have any right to marry anybody, and they were only allowed to think about the leadership and the great fortune that they have to work with such leadership.
At the same time, in order to protect himself against criticism by the supporters, what Massoud Rajavi did was he elevated his wife that he had married, Maryam Rajavi, to the president-elect of the resistance and appointed himself as the ideological leader of the group, which is exactly the same power structure that the Islamic Republic in Iran has.
Namely, it has a supreme leader in Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a president in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the president should be obedient to the supreme leader just as the president-elect that has never been elected by anybody other than her husband should be obedient to the supreme leader of MEK, namely Massoud Rajavi.
These are just points.
Then, for example, as I mentioned, Maryam Rajavi was arrested in 2003 in Paris on terrorism charges.
After her arrest, several of MEK supporters set themselves on fire in various cities around Europe in order to protest the arrest of their leader.
So these are just the tip of the iceberg regarding what the MEK supporters and leadership have done and the relationship between them.
To me and to many other people like me, this is just a classical example of a cult.
I don't know whether you agree with it, but exactly because of this type of relationship between the supporters who blindly follow everything that the leadership tells them and the leadership that we call them a cult, if you look at, and I have described this in great detail in my True Thoughts article, part two, if you look at the whole history of MEK since 1981, when they took up arms against the Islamic Republic, you will see that not a single analysis or prediction or anything that their leaders have has turned out to be true.
Not even one.
You can just go and look at the article and I challenge anybody can show me one single analysis, proclamation, predictions, whatever that the leadership has made that has turned out to be true.
And yet, when you talk to MEK leadership, sorry, MEK supporters, they justify every action, every order, every analysis, every prediction that have turned out to be completely wrong, but they justify it.
They keep justifying it.
If they have to say at noon, at 12 p.m., that this is at midnight because the leadership told them, they would tell you.
If they have to tell you that, you know, whatever that it goes against common wisdom, because the leadership told them, they would do it.
Because of this relationship that exists between the supporters and the leadership.
And because of the fact that they blindly support the leadership, despite all the things that have happened over the past 30 years, people like me, and I'm not the only one, most Iranian outside Iran in the diaspora, believe that Mujahideen is nothing but a cult.
And now these are, again, these people have very powerful allies working very hard in Washington, D.C. to have them removed from the State Department's list of designated terrorist organizations.
And you were making the case before, what sounded, Mohamed, like you were saying that basically they'll be much more effective at kind of replaying that Iraqi National Congress role of being the exiles that come up with the bogus information to get us into the war.
Of course, Gareth Porter has shown that the Israelis use the MEK to funnel the so-called alleged studies documents about, you know, the bogus forgeries about Iran's nuclear program and things like that.
But explain exactly how things will change for, I mean, for example, the NCRI, they got an office right there in D.C., terrorist list or not.
So what difference will it really make if they're removed?
Well, first of all, as you pointed out, the MEK would become the equivalent of Iraqi National Congress of Ahmad Shalabi, and 100 times more dangerous because MEK, you know, has had access, has had a long history of terrorist operations going back to 1970s.
Secondly, if they are delisted from the terrorist organizations, then that opens up all sorts of possibility of that organization working with the CIA, with the Pentagon, with the DIA, and so on, because then they can come out openly and support this organization.
Third, that increases greatly the possibility of a war with Iran, because, for example, I think I mentioned this in the last conversation that we had on your program, that MEK can, for example, dispatch some of its supporters to a corner of Iran and start some sort of assassination and bombing against the Iranian government.
And of course, the Iranian government would react strongly.
And then just like the Libyan model, they can call for help from outside world, and therefore, Western countries, NATO countries, the United States, can go in Iran, into Iran, and start bombing.
And that would quickly spread into a regional war between Iran and its allies, and the United States and its allies.
That's why they are so dangerous.
I'm sorry.
Hold it right there, Muhammad.
I got to keep you one more segment here.
We'll be right back with Muhammad Sahimi, everybody.
All right, y'all, it's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and I got Muhammad Sahimi on the line.
So much ground to cover here.
And I'm learning so much.
I hope you guys are, too, about the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, the communist terrorist cult that works for, I guess, whoever will hire them to kill people.
I'm looking at an article that my now wife wrote back in 2006 on Cheney-Rumsfeld Order, U.S. Outsourcing Special Ops Intelligence to Iraq Terror Group, Intelligence to Iraq Terror Group, intelligence officials say.
And she's got a Brit saying that the MEK is active inside Iran.
And she's got an American intelligence official and an American official posted at the United Nations saying that it's the U.S. military doing it, that Donald Rumsfeld and Stephen Cambone had the MEK swear an oath to democracy and then incorporated them into some of their special forces units and put them to work.
What do you know about that, Muhammad Sahimi?
Well, whatever you said is completely correct.
It is no surprise to any Iranian to hear that MEK members have been incorporated in some sort of special forces operation used by the Pentagon against Iran.
Because as I said, there's a long history of this organization working with the highest bidder in order to come to power to Iran.
And they have been willing to work with anybody.
So it doesn't surprise me at all that Cambone and Cheney arranged for these to swear that they would be loyal to democracy, the type of democracy that they have within their own organization, which is a terrorist cult, and then be used along American forces for operations against Iran, inside Iran.
The very fact that Mujahideen has been documented by many people, including Guy Porter, and also in a fabulous article in New Yorker, that they have worked with Israelis to propagate false information about Iran's nuclear program is another indication.
When the revelation about the Natanz enrichment facility was made available to any group that was willing to go public by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence organization, in 2002, the only taker was Mujahideen.
Mossad first presented the evidence to Iranian monarchies who also opposed violently, I mean strongly, not, I shouldn't say violently, because it would confuse them with MBK.
They also opposed strongly the Islamic Republic, simply because their favorite system of government was overthrown by Islamic government.
But when the information about the Natanz uranium enrichment facility was presented to monarchies to go public with them, because Israel didn't want to go public with it itself, they didn't accept it out of their nationalism.
And in fact, senior figures within the monarchist camp that, as I said, opposes as strongly as possible the Islamic Republic, have supported Iran's nuclear program, mainly because it considers Iran's nuclear program as Iran's fundamental right and their international agreement, which was started by the Shah of Iran, who was an ally of the United States.
So the only taker was Mujahideen.
And since then, Mujahideen have propagated one lie after another, and almost all of them, practically all of them, have turned out to be completely bogus and incorrect.
And yet they continue with a straight face, holding press conferences, making bogus revelations, one after another, about Iran's nuclear program.
And of course, the IAEA pursues every case, and it doesn't get anywhere, because there is no basis for their claim and lies and exaggeration, and comes back and reports that they have found no evidence of any diversion or any secret activity or any parallel program within Iran's nuclear program.
So it doesn't surprise me at all to know that neocons and Cheney and Combon and others, Donald Rumsfeld and others, used and wanted to use MEK against Iran.
This is no surprise to me and no surprise to almost all Iranians, given the long history of MEK.
Well, and so all of this begs the gigantic question, why does the American Empire prefer the MEK to any of the rest, I mean, even to the monarchists, but never remind them?
What about all the rest of the Iranians in America and in Iran that don't want to be ruled by any of these goons?
Why is it that the MEK is so useful as compared to somebody else?
Because MEK is perceived as having a network of supporters within Iran that can supply good information, good intelligence about what is going on in Iran.
MEK is perceived as being able to create trouble for Iranian government.
MEK is perceived as being the only group that can actually confront the Iranian government if it is supported by the Western power.
But the fact of the matter is, most supporters of MEK and active members are in their 50s and 60s.
They haven't been able to recruit any of the young generation.
And in fact, given the fact that 70% of the population of Iran is under the age of 35, they have no recollection or no history of who the MEK was and what MEK stands for.
The only thing they know about MEK was what their parents told them.
And their parents told them that these people committed treason against Iran during the 1980s war with Iraq, an eight-year war in Iraq, and provided information to the enemies and carried out terrorist assassinations, operations, and so on, in Iran, and helped create the terror environment that extremists within the Iranian government also wanted to create.
David Muhammad, okay, look, from the point of view of the empire now, if they want regime change by hook or crook, they've got to realize that their best bet is the Green Movement actually just accomplishing its own regime change from within and being able to come to some kind of accommodation with them.
Yes, but with one difference.
The Green Movement and the Green leadership is not willing to sell its soul to foreign power in order to come to power.
The Green Movement is a true, genuine, nationalist, democratic movement.
They are not depending on any foreign power.
That's the difference between the Green Movement, which is supported by a large majority of Iranian people, and the MK that has a whole history of committing treason and accessing the highest bid by the highest bidder in order to commit any sort of crime to come to power to Iran.
That's the difference.
The Green Movement is an independent, homegrown, nationalist, democratic movement that is not dependent on any foreign power.
Well, but you know, if, well, I guess it's kind of pointless when it all comes down to Israeli paranoia about their nuclear program.
The Greens won't give it up.
But, you know, it seems like since the reality of war with Iran and the difficulty there, it just seems like they would choose to, well, you know, take half a loaf and say, you know, let's let's not get in the way of the Greens.
Let's not marginalize moderate reformers in Iran.
Then someone come to power that we won't be so afraid if they're making nuclear electricity or something.
But I guess that's just me being reasonable in the and what we're talking about is Israeli and American foreign policy has nothing to do with reason.
No, it doesn't.
And it is not that they just, you know, they just want to have a sort of puppet in Iran.
They basically want to control the state of Iran in that region.
In my view, and people like me, it is unacceptable for the political establishment of the United States and Israel to have a country that may be even completely democratic, but follow its own independent path, independent of whatever the politicians in Washington or Western European countries or Israel want.
That is the difference.
And that's and and politicians in Washington are well aware of it because Iranians have a long history of fierce nationalism, and they want to remain independent.
So that's why they try to support groups such as M.E.K. that has proven to be willing to commit any treason that would advance their agenda in order to come to power.
Do you think that includes driving by on motorcycles and killing scientists over there?
I'm asking you to speculate now unless you actually know something about it.
In my mind, I have no evidence for it.
But in my mind, there is no question that the assassination of Iranian nuclear program, Iranian scientists that are involved with Iran's nuclear program in Iran has been helped by local people.
Now, who are the local people?
The only local people who may possibly help the foreign government to access any of these scientists are M.E.K.
I have no proof for it.
But at the same time, this is a general belief shared by a large segment of Iranian community.
Yeah, because after all, when they back the Jandala Sunni jihadist types, they mostly just round up police and execute them and real, you know, crude bombings in public, that kind.
Exactly.
This is very specialized work here.
Exactly.
And it's the type of operation that M.E.K. has been an expert of, given its track record of the past 30 years, and given all the bogus revelations that he has made about Iran's nuclear program.
So why should anybody be surprised about if evidence comes to surface that it was actually Mujahideen that helped or even carried out the assassination on Iranian nuclear scientists in Iran over the past couple of years?
Right on.
All right.
Well, listen, we're all out of time.
We're over time, in fact.
But I want to thank you for staying on this whole hour and a little bit more to talk about this today.
I really appreciate it, Mohamed.
Thank you for having me on your program.
Everybody, that's Mohamed Sahimi.
He's a professor of chemical engineering at USC in L.A. and he writes for PBS Frontline's Tehran Bureau as well as Antiwar.com.
And you have to check out this incredibly important work, U.S. neocon's new overtures to terrorist opposition group in Iran, part one and part two for Truthout.org.
We'll be right back.
