Opinion Editorials, June 2010

Bomb Blasts in Iran and the Raymond-Constance Tanter D.C. Divorce Case

By Mark Dankof

My radio partner, Mark Glenn, sent me the Agency France Presse (AFP) release today containing the tragic-comedic news that a Washington, D. C.-based 3 judge panel on the U. S. Appeals Court has declared that the U. S. State Department “failed to accord the People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran [PMOI]/Mujahideen-e-Khalq [MEK/MKO] the due process protections” necessary for the latter to appeal its classification as a terrorist organization.

     The 3 judge panel has apparently not been let in on the history of the MEK/MKO/PMOI in killing Americans working in Pahlavi Iran a generation ago.  The preferred method of assassination was to block off an unsuspecting American defense contractor or Embassy official in Tehran vehicular traffic, and then to spray the car with automatic weapons fire.  What were the “due process protections” accorded people like American Air Force Colonel Jack Turner of Dayton, Ohio, just one of the victims of the MEK/MKO/PMOI?

     My past article on the MEK/MKO/PMOI will serve as an initiation for the uninitiated.  So will Ed Blanche’s research on this organization for The Middle East magazine, in June of 2009.

     In my past op-ed on the MEK/MKO/PMOI, I noted the following:

     And the ultimate paradoxes are these: First, Mr. Bush’s Operation Iraqi Freedom has resulted in the installation of a central government in Baghdad largely sympathetic to the IRI regime in Tehran, and with identical animosity to the MEK’s presence within its borders. Second, while Ed Blanche notes that it “was the MEK that disclosed the existence of Iran’s nuclear program in August 2002, stunning the U. S. intelligence and military establishments,” he fails to note credible information provided by Barry O’Connell and IPS’s Gareth Porter that the MEK’s role in “disclosing the existence of Iran’s nuclear program,” has been to serve as a clandestine conduit of information on the subject supplied by the Israeli intelligence community. Hello, Mossad, meet your new allies in the ‘Islamic-Marxist’ network worldwide.

     There you have it. The Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), or People’s Holy Warriors, is an “Islamic-Marxist” terror organization, which assisted in implementing the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979; was subsequently involved in guerrilla warfare operations against the very Iranian Mullahs they helped to bring to power; fought on the side of Saddam Hussein for 8 years in the Iran-Iraq war between 1980-1988; and now, according to Barry O’Connell and Gareth Porter, is working with Jewish neo-conservatives and Israeli intelligence in planting false “intelligence” on Iran’s nuclear program with the American National Security State and Western news media, itching for a confrontation between Tehran and Tel Aviv—even as it now possesses an adversarial role with the very regime in Baghdad installed by Mr. Bush’s War. Confused?  . . .

     Apparently, the 3 judge panel on the U. S. Court of Appeals in Washington also failed to consult the web sites of the Habilian Association , the Nejat Society , and Survivors’ Report.org.  Turn off the Israeli propaganda beamed on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, and see the reports on these web sites.  One will learn that the MEK/MKO/PMOI has killed approximately 16,000 in Iran after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, along with many other things concealed from the American public by a Zionist-controlled media and national security establishment.

     For this trio of black-robed boobs on the U.S. Court of Appeals in the Nation’s Capital (along with the rest of us), two recent developments bear closer watching in the days ahead.  The first is Chris Floyd’s post on the Jundallah-sponsored suicide bombing in Zahedan, Iran this past week, which is especially suggestive.  Not one American in 100 could tell you that Jundallah has a reported working relationship with both United States and Israeli intelligence.  What are the implications of this link, and Jundallah’s criminal activities in Iran?  Are the CIA and Mossad brokering murder and terror in that country?

     Floyd, excellent as his writing and research are, missed one essential fact in this week’s analysis, a fact brought to international attention by Dr. Paul Sheldon Foote of Cal State Fullerton in a radio conversation with yours truly. 

     Foote, a Ron Paul Republican, American Army veteran in Vietnam, and past denizen of the American Embassy in Tehran in olden days, tells us in that conversation that Jundallah has a working relationship with the MEK/MKO/PMOI in criminal acts of terror taking place in Iran with the full connivance of the United States government and Israel.

     What in the world is going on here?  Are we forced to conclude that terror and murder are only defined as such when perpetrated by adversaries of the American and Israeli governments, but rationalized as “freedom fighting” when accomplished by our “allies?”  Do once-governing concepts of international law and civilized conduct not apply to the Central Intelligence Agency and Mossad?  And is there a relationship between the American government’s ongoing support for Israel’s lawless, immoral conduct in Iran, Gaza, and Palestine, and the disappearance of a Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branch committed to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution at home?

     Thomas Jefferson and James Madison understood that an American government mired in constant foreign interventionism and militarism abroad, was a threat to the liberties and happiness of its own citizens. What would they have said about the United States government’s service to the Israeli Lobby, and the linkage to the criminals in organizations like the MEK/MKO/PMOI/NCRI?

     Development number two involves a divorce case currently being litigated in Washington, D. C., involving Georgetown University professor Raymond Tanter and his estranged wife, Constance.

     Tanter’s profile at Right Web makes for interesting reading.  The biography of the professor states that:

Raymond Tanter is an adjunct scholar at the “pro-Israel” Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a visiting professor at Georgetown University, and founder of the Iran Policy Committee (IPC), which was established in January 2005 to promote regime-change strategies in Iran. Tanter’s experience also includes serving on the National Security Council during the first Ronald Reagan administration and as a Pentagon arms control advisor.

     Tanter has been a key advocate for U.S. support of the People’s Mujahedin Organization (MEK), which has been on the State Department’s list of international terrorist organizations since 1997, after it assassinated six U.S. citizens involved in selling weapons to the Shah. Shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Tanter vociferously pushed this argument, claiming that supporting the MEK could replace a U.S. invasion of Iran. He said, “I think that regime change ought to be the policy of the Bush administration. But regime change doesn’t mean that you need the 4th Infantry Division to come in from the north and meet up in the south with the 3rd Infantry Division coming in from the south and the Marines coming in from the West. That is, Iran is not Iraq.” Instead, said Tanter, the United States could support the Iraq-based MEK so that it could launch a cross-border insurgency against Iranian targets.

     Tanter revived these arguments in a February 2010 IPC press release, claiming the “regime crackdown after the June elections has fomented a new cohesion among dissidents,” including the MEK and the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which is also considered a terrorist group. Said Tanter, “Designation of the NCRI and MEK as foreign terrorist organizations acts an obstacle to building a coalition of dissidents. The irony, however, is that members of the MEK are paying a disproportionate price by being singled out for hangings among the thousands of individuals arrested since June.”

     Both NCRI and the MEK also figured prominently during a 2005 IPC National Press Club briefing. Tanter said: “One military option is the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, which may have the capability to destroy hardened deeply-buried targets. That is, bunker-busting bombs could destroy tunnels and other underground facilities. But the Pentagon’s 2001 Nuclear Posture Review states that over 70 countries employ underground facilities for military purposes, while the United States lacks sufficient means to destroy these facilities. In addition, the Non-Proliferation Treaty bans use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, such as Iran. Such a prohibition might not apply as much to Israel. In this respect, the United States has sold Israel bunker-busting bombs, which keeps the military option on the table. . . .

     “Empowerment requires working with Iranian opposition groups in general and with the main opposition in particular. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK) are not only the best source for intelligence on Iran’s potential violations of the nonproliferation regime. The NCRI and MEK are also a possible ally of the West in bringing about regime change in Tehran. . . .

     “The international community should realize that there is only one group to which the regime pays attention and fears: the Mujahedeen-e Khalq and the political coalition of which the MEK is a part, the National Council of Resistance of Iran. By delisting the NCRI and MEK from the Foreign Terrorist Organizations listing maintained by the Department of State, it would allow regime change to be on the table in Tehran. With regime change in the open, Tehran would have to face a choice about whether to slow down in its drive to acquire nuclear weapons or not.  . . .”

     Into this labyrinth maze of American think-tanks, neo-conservatives, the Israeli lobby, an impending Third World War, and the MEK/MKO/PMOI/NCRI, steps one Mrs. Constance Tanter.

     Mrs. Tanter publicly alleges in Washington, D. C.-based Divorce Court proceedings, and to many journalistic contacts, that Raymond Tanter utilized agents of the MEK/MKO/PMOI to terrorize her into signing a capitulationist divorce settlement in Paris, France, home to MEK/MKO/PMOI leaders-in-exile Masoud and Miryam Rajavi. She also alleges that Tanter directly, or indirectly, threatened her with “elimination.”

     These allegations will presumably be examined by the Court.  While ushering at Washington’s National Cathedral recently,  Mrs. Tanner claims that amidst the throngs of hundreds there, she was approached by a Middle Eastern man, who handed her a napkin.  Her story to Paul Sheldon Foote, a bishop at the Cathedral, and yours truly, is that the napkin contained a simple message:  Drop it, or die.

     Are the allegations in this divorce case anger-driven fiction straight out of a Hollywood script for an Edward Woodward episode of The Equalizer?  Or are they a terrifying microcosm of a cosmic tragedy playing itself out in a clandestine battle of governments, intelligence agencies, hoodlums, and terrorists?

     One thing is not in doubt.  Netanyahu’s globally public utterances, along with those of the Israeli lobby and American neo-conservative stooges like John McCain and Joseph Lieberman, underscore that war with Iran and the mass murder of Iranians, is the desired outcome for these constituencies, no matter how many thousands of innocents are killed or how far afield of true American national security interests this Zionist-driven madness really is.

     You heard it all first from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. 

     And as for Constance Tanter, she plans on telling her story to Mark Glenn and Mark Dankof in a future broadcast of The Ugly Truth.  Stay tuned.

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