Even before its inception, the Trump administration was accused of foreign interference and repeated counter allegations that such charges are fake news. Now, even as House Democrats are squeezing whatever advantage they can from the Mueller investigation into Russian influence, a fresh allegation of foreign interference has emerged.
An investigation by The Intercept revealed that the White House used an article written by “Heshmat Alavi” to justify President Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran
This weekend, a new wrinkle was added to the ongoing saga about the information war over Iran policy: the stunning revelation that an online persona that was cited by the Trump administration to justify leaving the Iran nuclear deal is likely not a real person, after all.
On Sunday, the Intercept published an investigation into “Heshmat Alavi,” a rabid supporter of the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), a controversial Iranian opposition group. Since 2014, he had amassed a large Twitter following
In 2018, President Donald Trump was seeking to jettison the landmark nuclear deal that his predecessor had signed with Iran in 2015, and he was looking for ways to win over a skeptical press. The White House claimed that the nuclear deal had allowed Iran to increase its military budget, and Washington Post reporters Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly asked for a source. In response, the White House passed along an article published in Forbes by a writer named Heshmat Alavi.
“Iran’s current budget
An American non-profit says it’s been the victim of a harassment campaign.
National Security Advisor John Bolton and a little-understood Twitter network have both boosted MEK, an armed Iranian opposition group.Douglas Christian/ZUMA
As the Trump administration has ramped up economic sanctions against Iran and aimed increasingly threatening rhetoric at the country, an influence network has popped up on Twitter pushing similar messages.
Networks comprising over four hundred Twitter
Until recently, what passed for “Iran policy” in the Trump administration originated in the president’s obsession with his predecessor. If President Barack Obama was going to open dialogue with the Islamic Republic, then this president would shut it down, and return to 40 years of futile exchanges of threats, insults, and accusations.
If President Obama and five other nations made an agreement (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for
An 'Ugly American' is once again leading the resurgence of American imperialism.
The publication of The Ugly American in 1958 created a sensation in the United States. A scathing critique of arrogant and inept American diplomatic provincialism, the novel was written as a warning by two Americans - Eugene Burdick and William Lederer - to their fellow Americans. It is a damning indictment of the stupidity and ignorance, arrogance and ineptitude of those who were charged with representing the
The Facebook pages appear to be a part of a larger effort to sway U.S. opinion on policy toward Iran.
As U.S. policymakers weigh responses to increasing Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf, a German national based in a small neighborhood of northwest London is quietly financing an ad campaign designed to stoke a more forceful U.S. policy toward Tehran.
The person behind the campaign, pushed in part under the guise of independent news and analysis, is Soheila Aligholi Mayelzadeh, who’s
“I actually temper John,” Trump said, “which is pretty amazing.”
Fourteen months into his tenure as national security adviser, John Bolton has become a central figure in the run-up to what could be the most extensive American military offensive since the invasion of Iraq. Tensions between Iran and the United States have been high for weeks, beginning with a menacing video Bolton released in February targeting the Iranian supreme leader and reached a boil last week when, according the New
by Massoud Khodabandeh
When Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif took to the airwaves during his visit to the UN in New York, particularly for an interview with Fox News, a frisson of surprised anticipation swept the American political polity. How was it possible that Iran, the pariah nation, not only had the audacity to enter the lion’s den, but from there to lecture the lion on its dirty behavior!
Of course, this is a spat that Iran cannot easily win. What mattered most was that Zarif did
The Daesh leader appeared in a video on Monday which the group said had been shot in April, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s first appearance in five years.
The heftier-than-before leader was calmly speaking about their defeat in Baghuz in Syria, and how they had tried to retaliate in heavy suicide attacks which took place in Sri Lanka recently. Not only that, he was vowing to seek revenge for its loss of territory.
The question is now this: how powerful really is the world community to
New patronage resulted in a strategic shift for the MEK
After the fall of Saddam Hussain and the disappearance of Massoud Rajavi, leader of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) terrorist cult, the group’s members were forcibly deported to Albania where the MEK regrouped under the now open support of the Israeli right wing and the regime change pundits of the USA. In Paris, Prince Turki al Faisal al Saud of Saudi Arabia presented himself at a public rally alongside of Maryam Rajavi, wife of the cult
The ineffectiveness and many of the costs of the Trump administration’s latest move in its anti-Iran campaign—its designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO)—are readily apparent and have been ably analyzed by other commentators. The designation does not put any additional economic pressure on an already heavily sanctioned Iran and, among other drawbacks, only makes it harder for Iranian critics of the IRGC to speak up lest they be
PARIS -- For the first time in history, the United States has designated a military unit of a foreign country as a terrorist group.
U.S. President Donald Trump offered no real explanation for placing the terrorist designation on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a branch of Iran's armed forces, but it's also the first time an entire government entity has been given the terrorist label.
That announcement on Monday prompted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to comment on
In a piece written for the National Interest, Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official, has described the Mujahedin-e Khalq organization (MKO, a.k.a MEK, NCRI, PMOI, etc.) as a terrorist cult which should not be considered America’s friend.
In a part of his article, Rubin writes: “The Trump administration is reportedly reconsidering the pariah status of the MEK within U.S. diplomacy. Barbara Slavin, an American analyst often
Members of the Trump administration have been providing support to a political sect that aims to topple the Iranian regime in Tehran. Around 2,000 of its members live in a camp in Albania. Former members say it subjected followers to torture and psychological terror.
On a country road in northwestern Albania, a rather odd collection of men and women living together in a camp are busy preparing themselves to topple the Iranian regime. Three times per week, many of them apparently practice
“Iran should be isolated until Iran changes,” US President Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani, who claimed to be representing the Iranian group the People's Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (MEK), during a Middle East conference in Warsaw, Poland.
Giuliani’s suggestion for who will lead the democratic government after replacing the current Iranian government is Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the group that was, until recently, listed as a terrorist organisation by the US.
US support of the
Meanwhile, Israel, emboldened by the fall of the Soviet Union, the crippling of Saddam Hussein (an arch nemesis of Israel) and having an ally in the Clinton White House, began to depict Iran as a threat to advance its “New Middle East” ambitions. Israeli Prime Minister’s Yitzhak Rabin’s proposal whereby Israel would play a central role in the Middle East required Israel to demonize the only remaining regional power in the Middle East: Iran. That Rabin’s vilification of Iran flew in the face
A former US Senate candidate described the upcoming Warsaw summit against Iran as a “waste of time”, arguing that it is the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia’s “criminal policies” which are destabilizing the region not the Islamic Republic’s.
“It is a waste of time since the 'destabilizing influence' in the Middle East is clearly the result of the criminal policies of the United States and its Israeli and Saudi friends in disregarding international law on a global basis,” Mark Dankof, who is also a
John Bolton is carefully uniting an unholy alliance of terrorist groups who all share one goal: opposition to Iran.
In 1978, President Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbignew Brzezinski, decided to use the Muslim Brotherhood against the Soviets, and sent Arab combatants to support the Afghan opposition against the Communist regime. Responding to a call for help from the Afghan government, the Red Army became bogged down in an unwinnable conflict.
In Afghanistan, the Muslim Brotherhood was
By Anne Khodabandeh
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s global summit in Warsaw on 13 and 14 February to discuss Middle East issues was greeted with scepticism. It was widely interpreted as a thinly veiled excuse to talk about Iran. And because Iran was not invited, the agenda could only be hostile.
But while it is acknowledged that Pompeo wants to build consensus against Iran, it is also understood that Pompeo’s first target is the European Union. Efforts to get the EU to withdraw from the
Even before its inception, the Trump administration was accused of foreign interference and repeated counter allegations that such charges are fake news. Now, even as House Democrats are squeezing whatever advantage they can from the Mueller investigation into Russian influence, a fresh allegation of foreign interference has emerged.
An investigation by The Intercept revealed that the White House used an article written by “Heshmat Alavi” to justify President Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran
