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Timmerman’s Tendentious Tirade Against Iranian Opposition

Rabbi Dr. Daniel M. Zucker - 7/26/2007

Dr. Kenneth R. Timmerman has an excellent understanding of the nefarious nature of the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In that regard he enjoys a well deserved fine reputation. It is therefore a shame that he spoils his good name by engaging in wholesale lies and slander towards the best organized, oldest, and most popular and most effective of all Iranian resistance organizations,1 the Mojahedin-e Khalq, a group that has existed for 42 years, beginning as an anti-monarchist (anti-Shah), pro-democracy student group in 1965 and after the fall of the Shah in 1979 became the leading anti-fundamentalist (anti-Khomeini), pro-democracy movement in Iran.

But maybe it’s the origins of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MeK) that bother Timmerman. He has consistently backed Reza Pahlavi (son of the late Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi) despite the fact that Iranians held a revolution in Iran in order to depose the Shah who--though closely allied to the United States (having been put back on the Peacock Throne through a 1953 CIA sponsored coup d’etat that deposed the populist Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh)--had become increasingly autocratic and despotic. No one requires Timmerman to like the anti-monarchist MeK; unlike the Shah’s Iran this is a free country. However, one expects that Dr. Timmerman would refrain from what he knows are outright lies and slander. Accusing the MeK of murdering Americans and bragging about it is nothing short of libel. Timmerman knows full well that the attacks on Americans in the 1970’s were carried out by an illegitimate Marxist splinter group that held sway only while the legitimate leadership of the MeK was languishing in the Shah’s prisons—the real leaders of the MeK denounced the splinter group and disavowed such anti-American activities when they learned of them2. Although our State Department still has web site materials that present misinformation on these events3, a staff member from the Senate Intelligence Committee already confirmed two years ago that our intelligence services know that the MeK is innocent of such charges.

Timmerman’s repetition of the lies spun out by the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS=VEVAK) concerning MeK aiding the late Saddam Hussein to suppress the Kurds has been more than adequately disproved by multiple testimonies of Kurdish leaders.4 Citing Iraqi President Jalal Talabani5 as an authority against the MeK is truly revealing: Talabani lived for years before 2003 in Tehran and still owns property there. His frequent trips to Tehran to consult with Iran’s President Ahmadinejad6 and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei7 should tell just how impartial Talabani really isn’t.8

As to Timmerman’s charge that the crowds at National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)-organized rallies are smaller than claimed, yes that may be possible. However, having been at all the events that Timmerman discusses, I can testify that his numbers are way off. At the “New York Committee Against Ahmadinejad” rally held at Dag Hammarskjöld Park on September 19, 2005, the Kurdish group had less than 100 attendees, the monarchists, with whom Timmerman was, gathered about 200 attendees, and the supporters of the NCRI and MeK numbered at least 10,000. Were there others who were not Iranian who joined the pro-MeK rally in support of an anti-Ahmadinejad protest? Yes, absolutely, but these non-Iranian supporters didn’t even comprise five percent of the crowd. As regards the June 30, 2007 rally in Paris, one which Timmerman was not at, but which I attended with my family, there were at least 40,000 supporters inside the Villepinte Exhibition Hall # 5B and thousands more outside. I don’t like to contradict my friend Dr. Daniel Pipes, but his figure of 20,000 is far too low; that figure alone covers the front half of the hall. Comparing the Paris program to a Third Reich propaganda event is just plain mean-spirited; Dr. Timmerman, do you say the same thing about Dr. Martin Luther King’s March on Washington on August 28, 1963, just because thousands upon thousands were photographed in attendance?

As to the question of the popularity of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MeK) within the Iranian community, I would pose several questions to Timmerman: first, since the MeK does not have the wealth that the Shah and his family stole9 from Iran in 1979, the money to hold such large rallies has to come from somewhere. That “somewhere” is the people that support the NCRI and MeK. If the MeK is so unpopular, why are the people supporting it? Next, even President Bush has acknowledged that most of the public information that we have about the Iranian regime’s nuclear and missile programs, as well as about Iranian agents in Iraq, comes from the MeK. If the MeK is unpopular, how is it getting Iranians deep inside Iran to supply it with secret information at great risk and peril to their lives?

Claiming that the Iranian regime would like nothing better than for Western nations to openly back the MeK is a statement that is 180 degrees from the truth; in case after case of contacts that the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) has had with the US and EU, its first precondition for further discussion is keeping the MeK and NCRI on the FTO lists.10 The IRI would like nothing better than to destroy the MeK.11

Dr. Timmerman: you are either being fooled by the disinformation of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (VEVAK) and their agents like Mohsen Sazegara , or you are trying to promote your agenda for Solidarity Iran, whose program you attended in Paris a month ago with such disparate types as Sazegara (founder of the IRGC/Pasdaran) and Amir Farshad Ebrahami (former Hezbollahi aid to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei), leftist activists Kambiz Roosta and Dr. Hassan Massali (who opposed the former Shah), conservative former monarchists Shahriar Ahi (advisor and spokesman for Reza Pahlavi), Dr. Shahin Fatemi or Dr. Cyrus Amouzegar (a former government minister under the Shah), Dr. Hassan Sharafi (deputy secretary general of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran), Azeri activist Dr. Zia Sadr-ol Ashrafi, Ramin Parham (a supporter of Reza Pahlavi), nine-year exile Faramarz Bakhtiar (whose regime-assassinated uncle was prime minister under the Shah), Mohsen Zarafzadeh (fled Iran after release from jail a few years ago, reading letter of support from jailed student leader Hesmatollah Tabarzadeh), Hamza Bayezid (representative of the federalist CNFI), jouralist Ahmad Ra’fat (contact for women and student activists in Iran), Ali Afshari (former student leader), Pooya Dayanim (president of the Iranian Jewish Public Affairs Committee), member of the newly-elected coordinating council Iman Foroutan (runs the California-based Iran of Tomorrow Movement), and Mani Aryamand (Party Secretary of the secular republican Marzeporgohar Party.12 While many of these individuals and their fellow two hundred or so delegates genuinely seek regime change in Iran, some--like Sazegara and Ebrahami--have dubious credentials. What, may I ask, financial promises of forthcoming American government funds did you promise the group as incentive to form a united front?13 Does the figure $300,000,000 ring a bell?14

While your 200 Solidarity Iran conference participants were slowly getting organized (it took over a year to get everyone to agree to meet for three days in Paris this year), the MeK and NCRI have been drawing crowds of one hundred, one hundred-fifty, and at least two hundred times that size during the same time period. More important, the Tehran regime has been busy attacking the MeK and NCRI in its press on a regular basis; it has barely mentioned Solidarity Iran.15 Is it possible that Tehran feels no threat from Solidarity Iran because to date it remains basically irrelevant? As mentioned earlier, no one requires you to like the anti-monarchist MeK, but if your goal is to end the regime and bring democracy to Iran, start to listen more carefully to the voice of the Iranian people—those that take to the streets, risking arrest, torture and execution for writing pro-MeK slogans in public16, or that risk their lives providing information that the IRI regime wants kept secret, or those that are on the frontline helping the Iraqi people form an anti-fundamentalist coalition to oppose Iran’s interference in Iraq’s internal affairs—and you will hear that they support the MeK and NCRI. As all of the many opposition groups talk about establishing democracy in Iran, I look to the Iranian people themselves to help identify which they prefer. For now, the answer of the people—not the IRI regime or any special interest group—the people, support the MeK and NCRI. For me that seems the right way to look at things if the goal is democracy for Iran.

Professor Rabbi Daniel M. Zucker is founder and Chairman of the Board of Americans for Democracy in the Middle-East, a grassroots organization dedicated to teaching our elected officials and the public of the dangers posed by Islamic fundamentalism and the need to establish genuine democratic institutions in the Middle-East as an antidote to the venom of such fundamentalism.

1 http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=29131.

2 See DLA Piper, Iran: Foreign Policy Challenges and Choices, November 2006, pp.77-90 and pp. 151-

158.

3 http://www.nmia.org/images/Country_Reports_on_Terrorism.pdf , p.212f; but also see:

http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/71855.pdf, pp.7-8.

4 Global Options, Inc., “Independent Assessment of the Mujahedin-e Khalq and National Council of

Resistance of Iran” quotes a statement by Iraqi Foreign Minister (at the time, Kurdish Democratic Party

Foreign Affairs Chief) Hoshyar M.M. Zebari’s statement of July 14, 1999 clearing the MeK of any

action to suppress the Kurdish People, DLA Piper, Iran: Foreign Policy Challenges and Choices, p. 190f.

See also Saffi Yasseri’s statement in Iran Policy Committee, “Appeasing the Ayatollahs and Suppressing

Democracy: U.S. Policy and the Iranian Opposition”, pp. 145-147.

5 http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/07/1343226.

6 http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=11679

7 http://news.netscape.com/story/2006/11/27/iraqi-president-jalal-talabani-has-arrived-in-iran-for-key-talks-

on-his-countrys-security-situation/.

8 http://www.ncr-iran.org/content/view/3846/152/ , http://www.almalaf.net/more.asp?ID=38909&catID=13

and http://www.almalaf.net/more.asp?ID=38268&catID=18.

9 The late Shah’s family was reputed to be worth over 25 billion dollars in 1979.

10 http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=21442, (see last seven paragraphs); see also Iran Policy Committee, “Appeasing the Ayatollahs and Suppressing Democracy: U.S. Policy and the Iranian Opposition”, pp. 129-131, and DLA Piper, “Iran: Foreign Policy Challenges and Choices”, pp. 64-65.

11 http://www.ncr-iran.org/content/view/3846/152/.

12 http://plateauofiran.wordpress.com/2007/06/17/iranian-opposition-solidarity-paris-conference-update/ ,

http://www.iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/news.pl?l=en&y=2007&m=06&d=18&a=5 , and

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/6/17/185504.shtml?s=sr.

13 http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=28774.

14 http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=26494.

15 http://www.iran-press-service.com/ips/articles-2007/june-2007/iran-opposition-15607.shtml.

16 http://www.ncr-iran.org/content/view/3867/152/.