US finds a communist ally against Iran 

By B Raman

06/21/03: (Asia Times) The United States, which used Islamic 
fundamentalists against communism in Afghanistan in the 1980s, 
has embarked on an operation to use communists to bring about 
the end of the Islamic regime in Iran.  

The dozens of anti-cleric and secular Iranian exile groups operating 
from the West against the Islamic regime in Tehran broadly fall into 
the following categories:  

The left-oriented Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK - People's Mujahideen) and 
elements allied with it in the National Council of Resistance of Iran 
(NCRI). They mainly operate from West Europe, with headquarters in 
France. The monarchists, mainly operating from the US, with the help 
of neo-conservative and Jewish lobby groups. The remnants and new 
adherents of the old pro-Moscow Communist Party of Iran, called the 
Tudeh Party, and other communist factions, mainly operating from the 
United Kingdom.  

The MEK, which has in the past indulged in acts of terrorism inside 
Iran from sanctuaries provided by the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, 
has been designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) under 
a 1996 US law. Until recently, this precluded any Central Intelligence 
Agency (CIA) assistance to or even contacts with it. However, it would 
seem that after the occupation of Iraq by the US forces, the CIA and 
the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) have been allowed to establish 
contact with MEK elements in Iraq and West Europe for using them 
against the Teheran regime. This decision was reportedly taken to 
preempt any Iranian meddling in Iraq.  

The MEK has had the ability in the past to organize acts of terrorism in 
Iranian territory, mainly because of the operational assistance provided 
by the Iraqi intelligence. As of now, the CIA does not have a similar 
operational capability inside Iran. Moreover, the Bush administration 
would not like to be seen by the international community as sponsoring 
terrorism in Iran. Its present cultivation of the MEK is meant more to 
exercise psychological pressure on the Teheran regime and to keep 
before it the specter of a US-backed operation one day for a regime 
change, with the MEK spearheading the operation with US assistance. 
The French action earlier this week to round up the leaders and 
activists of the MEK and the NCRI in France was meant to preempt 
the CIA's covertly using its territory and the large number of 
Iranian exiles there for a destabilization operation in Iran.  

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Full article at Information Clearinghouse ....
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3868.htm

Cheers, Steve..

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