Iraq Mounts Attack on Iranian Dissidents

(CBS)  When the U.S. began turning over security to the Iraqis, it stopped protecting some valuable allies - thousands of Iranian exiles living in Iraq. Left alone, their camp outside Baghdad is now under attack.

For two days, Iraqi police have beaten the resident and no food or doctors have been allowed in - all with the approval of Iran's government as CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Lara Logan reports.

It started peacefully and quickly turned violent, with Iraqi police using wooden sticks against a group of unarmed civilians.

The civilians were Iranians living inside Iraq - members of an Iranian opposition group, known as the MEK.

It was the MEK that provided the U.S. with intelligence on Iran's nuclear program.

"Were it not for the MEK, the world would not be in the position to find out about Iran's nuclear weapons program and the mullahs may have had the bomb," said Ali Safavi of the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

The MEK have lived in Camp Ashraf - a quiet community featuring fountains and manicured gardens - for decades, providing intelligence on Iran. The Iranian government wants them expelled and accuses them of being involved in the recent unrest in Iran.

Since the U.S. invasion, the camp's roughly 3,000 residents have been living under U.S. protection. But that ended in January when the Iraqis took control under the security agreement.

Now the U.S. appears to have washed their hands of the people of Ashraf.

"It is a matter now for the government of Iraq to resolve," said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Images captured by residents inside Ashraf, showed the dead and wounded. Not even the women were spared. Residents told CBS News at least 11 people were killed, hundreds wounded and 30 arrested. The numbers are impossible to verify because the Iraqi government has sealed off the camp.

The attack was the latest sign that American influence in Iraq is waning, just as Iranian influence rises. Iraq's Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki and his government are becoming increasingly pro-Iranian.

"The Iranians would have to cross the border to get at them directly, because Camp Ashraf is clearly over the border," said Kenneth Katzman of the Congressional Research Service, "but they have an obviously willing ally in Prime Minister Maliki willing to do their bidding/."

In Iran, the government praised the Iraqi action, saying, "It is appreciated that they have decided to clean up the Iraqi land from the filthy existence of terrorists."

[Funky-President]

MEK was added to the U.S. State Department?s list of foreign terrorist groups in 1997.
The United States, which lists National Council of Resistance of Iran as a terrorist organization, closed the NCRI's Washington office in 2003.

On Cheney, Rumsfeld order, US outsourcing special ops, intelligence to Iraq terror group, intelligence officials say

Larisa Alexandrovna
Published: Thursday April 13, 2006


rawstory.com/news/2006/US_outsourcing_special_operations_intelligence_gathering_0413.html

CBSnews ran the same story.

The Pentagon is bypassing official US intelligence channels and turning to a dangerous and unruly cast of characters in order to create strife in Iran in preparation for any possible attack, former and current intelligence officials say.

One of the operational assets being used by the Defense Department is a right-wing terrorist organization known as Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), which is being ?run? in two southern regional areas of Iran. They are Baluchistan, a Sunni stronghold, and Khuzestan, a Shia region where a series of recent attacks has left many dead and hundreds injured in the last three months...



One former counterintelligence official, who wished to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the information, describes the Pentagon as pushing MEK shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The drive to use the insurgent group was said to have been advanced by the Pentagon under the influence of the Vice President?s office and opposed by the State Department, National Security Council and then-National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice.

[Funky-President]

Yes the USA supports terrorism. Any questions?

Please read this NYT article too about the anthrax attacks -its from Sept 4, 2001! - before any of this started. Then you will begin to understand.

nytimes.com/2001/09/04/international/04GERM.html?pagewanted=3

[Clapton77]

Ironically we wasted all our tax payer dollars to hand Iran the country of Iraq. As a result the Iranian mullahs now control as much oil as Saudi Arabia. And worse yet... we promised these Iranian freedom fighters that we would protect them if they put down all their weapons. How can American foriegn policy play to the favor of the mullahs oppressing the Iranian people and threatening the world with their nukes? What in God's name is wrong with us?

Watch the Iraq's puppet goverment kill all these dissidents and then they can crush the democracy movement in Iran too. And watch our tax dollars that bought the guns, bullets and tanks kill these unarmed people.

Wonderful US policy pissing off another generation of young Iranians = only in America can we do this for nearly 50 years!

[wyodutch]

Jeez. Doesn't the Iraqi government understand that the MEK are "our" terrorists?

For pete's sakes... Don't the Iraqis understand that there are "good" terrorists and there are "bad" terrorists and that for the moment.. the Iranians in that camp are "good" terrorists.

[inbredone]

did'nt this happen after we left vietnam