EUROPE WEAPON AIMED AT IRAN

What follows is my English translation of an article by Margherita Furlan, published on ComeDonChisciotte.org yesterday, 28th August 2024. (All formatting original).

Albania hosts not only NATO bases, but also anti-Iran “moderate rebels”. What are they doing in Albania? Someone went to ask several Albanian politicians and was answered, without any embarrassment, something like: “America gave us Kosovo, now we have to give something in return”.

But let us go in order. On 7 September 2022, Albania broke off diplomatic relations with Iran. This was announced by the Albanian Prime Minister, Edi Rama, in a video posted on social media, in which he accused the Islamic Republic of being responsible for the cyber attack on Tirana's government websites on 15 July that year. The decision was the culmination of years of troubled relations between the two countries due to the presence of members of the People's Mujahedin Organisation of Iran (MEK) on Albanian territory. In December 2018, the Albanian government had in fact expelled two Iranian diplomats, Ambassador Gholamhossein Mohammadnia and Mohammed Roodaki, an official at the Embassy in Tirana, both accused of being undercover members of Iranian intelligence. According to The Independent newspaper, the two were allegedly part of a cell whose task was to organise “a plot to target Iranian opposition refugees in Albania”. The move was allegedly put in place following talks with “interested” countries, including Israel and the United States. Not surprisingly, the Washington administration immediately congratulated Tirana.

The news spread at the time by The Independent, however, drew attention to a hitherto little-studied scenario that had remained outside the range of international attention. A scenario in which the United States has given Albania a central role, and whose aim (one of the aims) appears to be to increase the destabilisation of the entire Balkan area.
Relations between Albania and Iran began to deteriorate in 2013, when Tirana decided, at the request of the US and the UN, to gradually accommodate the MEK. Born in 1963 as a Marxist and Shia-inspired student revolutionary movement opposing the then Shah, Reza Pahlavi, the MEK participated in the revolution led by Khomeini in 1979. The ideology that characterised it at the time was a peculiar mixture of Marxism, feminism and Islamism. As such it was completely incompatible with that of the Shia ayatollahs. The MEK was thus forced to disperse and its headquarters moved to Paris in 1981. During this time the MEK “shed its skin”, as well as ideologists and financiers and, five years later, reappeared in Iraq, precisely in Camp Ashraf, north of Baghdad. It distinguished itself as an autonomous armed formation - several thousand well-trained fighters with their families in tow - that supported Saddam Hussein against Iran and actively appeared in numerous episodes of repression of the Iraqi Kurds. The MEK strangely survived the fall of Saddam Hussein and, in 2003, was transferred by the victorious Americans, literally “lock, stock, and barrel”, to another large military outpost whose name, not surprisingly, was Camp Liberty. From that outpost, numerous terrorist attacks as well as diversionary and boycott actions against Iran branched out. Formally “disarmed” by the US military and included in the list of international terrorist organisations, the MEK continued to carry out an intense war and propaganda action against Tehran. Always under the guidance of the Paris HQ and always left free to act by the American, Israeli, and French secret services. The ambiguity of its position did not prevent it, however - indeed it helped it - to win the more or less explicit support of Western politicians.
The MEK was included by the USA in the list of foreign terrorist organisations as early as 1997 for “occasional use of terrorist violence”. In the early 1970s, MEK members allegedly killed several US soldiers and civilians working on defence projects in Tehran. In 1972, the MEK also allegedly attempted to assassinate then US President Richard Nixon. During the same period, MEK agents were allegedly responsible for attacks against facilities of Pan-Am Airlines, Pan-American Oil and Shell Oil. According to research conducted by Ivan Kesić - a freelance writer for The Iranian - reported by Global Research, the MEK is said to be a terrorist organisation that also conducted attacks against numerous other Western targets, even in Europe.

In 2012, at the height of a bipartisan, aggressive and well-funded lobbying campaign, the then Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, cleared the MEK, removing it from the blacklist, despite the fact that the organisation was considered terrorist not only by Iran and Iraq, but also by the European Union, Great Britain and Canada. Not a few voices were raised against this decision. Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), stated: “Unlike other Iranian opposition groups, the MEK can organise military operations. Its members are experts in sabotage, assassinations and terrorism. These are not qualities that lend themselves to any ‘democratisation’ project, but they are extremely useful when the strategic objective is to provoke regime change through invasion or political destabilisation”. As early as 1994, the US State Department emphasised that the MEK could not run for the leadership of the Islamic Republic. The document read: “Shunned by most Iranians and fundamentally undemocratic, the Mojahedin-e Khalq organisation is not a viable alternative to the current Iranian government”. Even earlier, in 1992, the then Assistant Secretary of State, Robert Pelletreau, had pointed out: “The MEK does not represent a significant political force among Iranians, in part because of its close ties to the Iraqi government”. Michael Rubin, the Pentagon's Middle East advisor from 2002 to 2004, had pointed out in The National Interest that “much of the Iranian population, regardless of its political views, shares a deep hatred for the MEK”. John Limbert, former Deputy Secretary of State for Iran, added that the majority of the Iranian people “are not fooled by the MEK's democratic pretensions because they know its murderous history”. According to a poll commissioned in 2018 by the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans only 6% of Iranians living in the US supported the MEK as a legitimate alternative to the government in Iran. The figure mirrored the previous year's analysis, which reported a weak 7% regarding sympathies for Maryam Rajavi, leader of the MEK.

But by then everything was ready. The agreement to relocate some 3,500 Mujahideen to Albania actually began in 2013 and ended in 2016. The MEK was relocated. Again “lock, stock, and barrel”. A very costly undertaking, which certainly required a substantial airlift and large relocation costs for thousands of people. Organisers of such an exodus were, no doubt, the American secret services. But why precisely in Albania? And with what tasks?
An interesting interview recently given to the Balkans Post by Olsi Jazexhi, a Canadian-Albanian historian specialising in the history of Islam in South Eastern Europe: “America is turning Albania into a safe haven for international jihadism”.
The People's Mujahideen are an unprecedented presence in Albania, which also hosted quite a few Islamic fighters before and during the war against the former Yugoslavia. When the US brought the first group of Iranian jihadists to Albania, the Iranian government protested publicly and vigorously. At the time, former Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha assured the Iranians that the MEK would only be hosted for humanitarian reasons and no action against Iran would be allowed by the government in Tirana. “However, time has shown”, Jazexhi explains, “that the Iranian mujaheddin came to Albania not only to seek asylum, but with the intention of turning Albania into a second Afghanistan, in the heart of Europe”. The mechanism would be, in essence, the same as that by which, in the 1980s, the Afghan mujaheddin were supported and financed by the Americans to fight the USSR.
And these are not rumours. In 2016 Voice of America announced that Albania would accept two thousand mujaheddin in exchange for $20 million. In the Manza camp - a veritable town built by Israeli companies - some 4,400 MEK members are said to be “housed” today, living in almost complete isolation, unable to go out, even to have contact with their families, evidently camped nearby. Something akin to a sect, with strict moral and religious rules to abide by. What happens there is not easily verifiable given the very tight surveillance surrounding the camp. At Ashraf-3 - that is the name of the new Iranian Resistance Headquarters in Albania - groups of ISIS fighters fleeing Syria are also said to be stationed there, transported there directly by US Airforce planes. It may be a coincidence, but it was precisely in Albania that the MEK leader, Maryam Rajavi, on 23 June 2014, in front of six hundred Western dignitaries, rejoiced at Daesh's recapture of Iraq. A recent Al-Jazeera documentary also revealed the existence of a large group of militants trained in the techniques of cyber-communication diversion: something that could be defined as “cyber-jihad”, i.e. fake news and cyber-attacks, directed against Iran, but specifically intended to influence the European media in view of a break in relations with Tehran and to increase fear of the Islamic Republic in the European public.

In the New York Times , in 2012, a list of MEK supporters appeared, including several members of the US Congress, but also R. James Woolsey and Porter J. Goss, former CIA directors, Louis J. Freeh, former FBI director, Tom Ridge, former US National Security Advisor under the George W. Bush administration. Bush, former Mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, John Bolton, former National Security Advisor under Donald Trump, former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, and former National Security Advisor under Obama, General James L. Jones.

There have also been several worldwide stances in favour of the MEK by Italian politicians, such as Emma Bonino. An official delegation of the association “Hands Off Cain” visited the Albanian headquarters of the Mujaheddin, in support of the human rights struggle against the Iranian government. The former foreign minister of the [Italian] Monti government, Giulio Terzi, stood out in this direction, announcing “unconditional support” for the MEK, describing its militants as “freedom fighters” and assuring them that “a large part of Italian society is convinced that being on your side means being on the right side of history”. The words uttered by Giulio Terzi were clear: “The mullahs must go, the ayatollahs must go, and they must be replaced by a democratic government under the leadership of Mrs. Rajavi, leader of the MEK”. A textbook design of regime change: overthrow of a government and subsequent “export of democracy”. A film we have already watched many times.

In the meantime, however, the border between Albania and Kosovo is disappearing and Edi Rama, in the name of European standards - thus with NATO's applause - is working to ensure that the “one-stop shop” is also adopted at the border with North Macedonia, Montenegro and Greece. Serbia evidently needs to be isolated and excluded because of its proximity to the Russian Federation, while Greater Albania is preparing to become a weapon aimed at what will remain of Europe.

The great Israeli-American operation to destabilise the Middle East through the use of jihadist forces, which began many decades ago, thus seems to be continuing in this guise as well. And this time it looks straight at Iran. With the silent complicity of Europe, which is incapable of an autonomous policy, a not too obscure alliance between pieces of the US administration and men from the deep states is now preparing for another crucible of pointed provocations. All we can do is wait for the next episode. Until the final armageddon.

---