Israel teams with terror group to kill Iran’s nuclear scientists, U.S. officials tell NBC News
By Richard Engel and Robert Windrem – NBC News February 9, 2012
Wrecked
car that was bombed by motorcycle riding assassins on January 11, 2012,
Killing Iranian scientist Mostafa Ahamdi Roshan.
The group, the People’s Mujahedin of
Iran, has long been designated as a terrorist group by the United
States, accused of killing American servicemen and contractors in the
1970s and supporting the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran before
breaking with the Iranian mullahs in 1980.
The attacks, which have killed five
Iranian nuclear scientists since 2007 and may have destroyed a missile
research and development site, have been carried out in dramatic
fashion, with motorcycle-borne assailants often attaching small magnetic
bombs to the exterior of the victims’ cars.
U.S. officials, speaking on condition
of anonymity, said the Obama administration is aware of the
assassination campaign but has no direct involvement.
The Iranians have no doubt who is
responsible – Israel and the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, known by
various acronyms, including MEK, MKO and PMI.
“The relation is very intricate and
close,” said Mohammad Javad Larijani, a senior aide to Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, speaking of the MEK and Israel. “They
(Israelis) are paying … the Mujahedin. Some of their (MEK) agents …
(are) providing Israel with information. And they recruit and also
manage logistical support.”
Moreover,
he said, the Mossad, the Israeli secret service, is training MEK
members in Israel on the use of motorcycles and small bombs. In one
case, he said, Mossad agents built a replica of the home of an Iranian
nuclear scientist so that the assassins could familiarize themselves
with the layout prior to the attack.
Much of what the Iranian government
knows of the attacks and the links between Israel and MEK comes from
interrogation of an assassin who failed to carry out an attack in late
2010 and the materials found on him, Larijani said. (Click here to see a video report of the interrogation shown on Iranian televsion.)
The U.S.-educated Larijani, whose two
younger brothers run the legislative and judicial branches of the
Iranian government, said the Israelis’ rationale is simple. “Israel does
not have direct access to our society. Mujahedin, being Iranian and
being part of Iranian society, they have … a good number of … places to
get into the touch with people. So I think they are working hand-to-hand
very close. And we do have very concrete documents.”
Two senior U.S.
officials confirmed for NBC News the MEK’s role in the assassinations,
with one senior official saying, “All your inclinations are correct.” A
third official would not confirm or deny the relationship, saying only,
“It hasn’t been clearly confirmed yet.” All the officials denied any
U.S. involvement in the assassinations.
As it has in the past, Israel’s Foreign
Ministry declined comment. Said a spokesman, “As long as we can’t see
all the evidence being claimed by NBC, the Foreign Ministry won’t react
to every gossip and report being published worldwide.”
For its part, the MEK pointed to a statement calling the allegations “absolutely false.”
The sophistication of the attacks
supports the Iranian claims that an experienced intelligence service is
involved, experts say.
In the most recent attack, on Jan. 11,
2012, Mostafa Ahamdi Roshan died in a blast in Tehran moments after two
assailants on a motorcycle placed a small magnetic bomb on his vehicle.
Roshan was a deputy director at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility
and was reportedly involved in procurement for the nuclear program,
which Iran insists is not a weapons program.
Previous attacks include the
assassination of Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, killed by a bomb outside his
Tehran home in January 2010, and an explosion in November of that year
that took the life of Majid Shahriari and wounded Fereydoun
Abbasi-Davani, who is now the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization.
In the case of Roshan, the bomb appears
to have been a shaped charge that directed all the explosive power
inside the vehicle, killing him and his bodyguard driver but leaving
nearby traffic unaffected.
Although Roshan was directly involved
in the nuclear program, working at the huge centrifuge facility between
Tehran and Qom, Iran’s religious center, at least one other scientist
who was killed wasn’t linked to the Iranian nuclear program, according
to Larijani.
Speaking of bombing victim
Ali-Mohammadi, whom he described as a friend, Larijani told NBC News,
“In fact this guy who was assassinated was not involved in the
nitty-gritty of the situation. He was a scientist, a physicist, working
on the theoretically parts of nuclear energy, which you can teach it in
every university. You can find it in every text.”
“This is an Israeli plot. A dirty
plot,” Larijani added angrily. He also claimed the assassinations are
not having an effect on the program and have only made scientists more
resolute in carrying out their mission.
Not so, said Ronen Bergman, an Israeli
commentator and author of “Israel’s Secret War with Iran” and an
upcoming book tentatively titled, “Mossad and the Art of Assassination.”
Bergman said the attacks have three
purposes, the most obvious being the removal of high-ranking scientists
and their knowledge. The others: forcing Iran to increase security for
its scientists and facilities and to spur “white defections.”
He explained the latter this way:
“Scientists leaving the project, afraid that they are going to be next
on the assassination list, and say, ‘We don’t want this. Indeed, we get
good money, we are promoted, we are honored by everybody, but we might
get killed. It isn’t worth it. Maybe we should go back to teach … in a
university.’”
There are unconfirmed reports in the
Israeli press and elsewhere that Israel and the MEK were involved in
a Nov. 12 explosion that destroyed the Iranian missile research and development site at Bin Kaneh, 30 miles outside Tehran. Among
those killed was Maj. Gen. Hassan Moghaddam, director of missile
development for the Revolutionary Guard, and a dozen other researchers.
So important was Moghaddam that Ayatollah Khamenei attended his
funeral.
Unlike the assassinations, Iran claims
the missile site explosion was an accident; the MEK, meanwhile,
trumpeted it but denied any involvement.
Indeed, there may be other covert
operations carried out either by Israel acting alone or in concert with
others, according to Bergman.
“Two labs caught fire,” said Bergman,
enumerating the attacks. “Scientists got blown up or disappeared. A
missile base and the R&D base of the Revolutionary Guard exploded
some time ago, with the director of the R&D division of the
Revolutionary Guard being killed along with … his soldiers.”
Bergman added, “So, a long series of …
something that was termed by an Israeli (Cabinet) minister … as
‘mysterious mishaps’ happening and rehappening to the project. Then the
Iranians claim, ‘This is Israeli Mossad trying to sabotage our attempts
to be a nuclear superpower.’”
Dr. Uzi Rabi, director of the Dayan
Center at Tel Aviv University, said the supposed accidents could all be
part of “psychological warfare” conducted against Iran. “It seems
logical. It makes sense,” he said of possible MEK involvement, “and it’s
been done before.”
Rabi, who regularly briefs Israel’s
parliament, the Knesset, on Iran also said the ultimate goal of the
range of covert operations being carried out by Israel is “to damage the
politics of survivability … to send a message that could strike fear
into the rulers of Iran.”
For the United States, the alleged role
of the MEK is particularly troublesome. In 1997, the State Department
designated it a terrorist group, justifying it with an unclassified
40-page summary of the organization’s activities going back more than
25 years. The paper, sent to Congress in 1998, was written by Wendy
Sherman, now undersecretary of state for political affairs and then an
aide to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
The report, which was obtained by NBC
News, was unsparing in its assessment. “The Mujahedin (MEK)
collaborated with Ayatollah Khomeini to overthrow the former shah of
Iran,” it said. “As part of that struggle, they assassinated at least
six American citizens, supported the takeover of the U.S. embassy, and
opposed the release of the American hostages.” In each case, the paper
noted, “Bombs were the Mujahedin’s weapon of choice, which they
frequently employed against American targets.”
“In the post-revolutionary political
chaos, however, the Mujahedin lost political power to Iran’s Islamic
clergy. They then applied their dedication to armed struggle and the use
of propaganda against the new Iranian government, launching a violent
and polemical cycle of attack and reprisal.”
U.S. officials have said publicly that
the information contained in the report was limited to unclassified
material, but that it also drew on classified material in making its
determination to add the MEK to the U.S. list of terrorist
organizations.
Maryam Rajavi greeted by several hundred Iranian expatriates at Tegel Airport in Berlin, 2010
The MEK and its sister organizations
have since the beginning been run by Massoud and Maryam Rajavi, a
husband-wife team who have maintained tight control despite
assassination threats and internal dissent. Massoud Rajavi, 63, founded
the MEK, but since the U.S. invasion of Iraq has taken a backseat to his
wife.
The State Department report describes
the Rajavis as “fundamentally undemocratic” and “not a viable
alternative to the current government of Iran.”
One reason for that is the MEK’s close relationship with Saddam Hussein, as demonstrated by this 1986 video showing
the late Iraqi dictator meeting with Massoud Rajavi. Saddam recruited
the MEK in much the same way the Israelis allegedly have, using them to
fight Iranian forces during the Iran-Iraq War, a role they took on
proudly. So proudly, they invited NBC News to one of their military
camps outside Baghdad in 1993.
“The National Liberation Army (MLA),
the military wing of the Mujahedin, conducted raids into Iran during the
latter years of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War,” according to the State
Department report. The NLA’s last major offensive reportedly was
conducted against Iraqi Kurds in 1991, when it joined Saddam Hussein’s
brutal repression of the Kurdish rebellion. In addition to occasional
acts of sabotage, the Mujahedin are responsible for violent attacks in
Iran that victimize civilians.”
“Internally, the Mujahedin run their
organization autocratically, suppressing dissent and eschewing tolerance
of differing viewpoints,” it said. “Rajavi, who heads the Mojahedin’s
political and military wings, has fostered a cult of personality around
himself.”
The U.S. suspicion of the MEK doesn’t
end there. Law enforcement officials have told NBC News that in 1994,
the MEK made a pact with terrorist Ramzi Yousef a year after he
masterminded the first attack on the World Trade Center in New York
City. According to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity,
Yousef built an 11-pound bomb that MEK agents placed inside one of Shia
Islam’s greatest shrines in Mashad, Iran, on June 20, 1994. At least 26 people, mostly women and children, were killed and 200 wounded in the attack.
That connection between Yousef, nephew
of 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, and the MEK was first
reported in a book, “The New Jackals,” by Simon Reeve. NBC News
confirmed that Yousef told U.S. law enforcement that he had worked with
the MEK on the bombing.
In recent years, the MEK has said it
has renounced violence, but Iranian officials say that is not true, that
killings of Iranians continue. Still, through some deft lobbying, the
group has been able to get the United Kingdom and the European Union to
remove it from their lists of terrorist groups.
The alleged involvement of the MEK in
the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists provides the U.S. with a
cloak of deniability regarding the clandestine killings. Because the
U.S. has designated the MEK as a terrorist organization, neither
military nor intelligence units of the U.S. government, can work with
them. “We cannot deal with them, “ said one senior U.S. official. “We
would not deal with them because of the designation.”
Iranian officials initially accused the
Israelis and MEK of being behind the attacks, but they have since added
the CIA to the list. Three days after the Jan. 11, 2012, bombing in
Tehran that killed Roshan, the state news agency IRNA reported that
Iran’s Foreign Ministry had sent a diplomatic letter to the U.S.
claiming to have “evidence and reliable information” that the CIA
provided “guidance, support and planning” to assassins directly involved
in the attack.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
immediately denied any connection to the killings. “I want to
categorically deny any United States involvement in any kind of act of
violence inside Iran,” Clinton told reporters on the day of the attack.
But at least two GOP presidential
candidates have no problem with the targeting of nuclear scientists. In
a November debate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich endorsed “taking
out their scientists,” and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum called
it, ”a wonderful thing.”
The MEK’s opposition to the Iranian
government also has recently earned it both plaudits and support from an
odd mix of political bedfellows.
A group of former Cabinet-level
officials have joined together to support the MEK’s removal from the
official U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organization list, even taking out a
full-page ad last year in the New York Times calling for the removal of
the MEK from the U.S. terrorist list. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean,
former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former U.N. Ambassador
John Bolton; former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, former FBI
Director Louis Freeh and former Rep. Patrick Kennedy were among those
whose signatures were on the ad.
“There’s an extraordinary group of
bipartisan or even apolitical leaders, military leaders, diplomats, the
United States … the United Kingdom, the European Union, even a U.S.
District Court in Washington, said that this group that was put on the
foreign terrorist organization watch list in 1997 doesn’t deserve to be
there,” Ridge said in November on “The Andrea Mitchell Show” on MSNBC
TV.
U.S. politicians also have been pushing
the U.S. government to protect the 3,400 MEK members and their families
at Camp Ashraf in Iraq, about 35 miles north of Baghdad. With the
departure of U.S. troops, the MEK feared that Iraqi forces, with
encouragement from Iran, would attack the camp, leading to a bloodbath.
At the last minute, however, agreement was brokered with the United
Nations that would permit the MEK members’ departure for resettlement in
unspecified democratic countries. As of this week, there’s been little movement on the planned resettlement.
The Iranians see what’s happening as
terrorism and hypocrisy by the United States. They have forwarded
documents and other evidence to the United Nations – and directly to the
United States, they say.
“I think this is very cynical plan.
This is unacceptable,” said Larijani. “This is a bad trend in the
world. Unprecedented. We should kill scientists … to block a
scientific program? I mean this is disaster!”
Daniel Byman, a professor in the School
of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and also a senior fellow
with the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings
Institution, said that if the accounts of the Israeli-MEK assassinations
are accurate, the operation borders on terrorism.
“In theory, states cannot be terrorist,
but if they hire locals to do assassinations, that would be state
sponsorship,” said Byman, author of the recent book, “A High Price: The
Triumphs and Failures of Israeli Counterterrorism.” “You could argue
that they took action not to terrorize the public, the purpose of
terrorism, but only the nuclear community. An argument could also be
made that degrading the program means that you don’t have to take
military action and thus, this is a lower level of violence and that
really these are military targets, where normally terrorist targets are
civilians.”
But ultimately, Byman said, there is a “spectrum of responsibility” and that Israel is ultimately responsible.
Ronen Bergman, while not speaking on
behalf of the Israeli government, suggests that there is a
justification, citing an oft-repeated but disputed quote in which
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s said that Israel should be wiped
off the face of the earth.
“Meir Degan, the chief of Mossad, when
he was in office, hung a photograph behind him, behind the chair of the
chief of Mossad,” notes the Israeli commentator. “And in that
photograph you see — an ultra-orthodox Jew — long beard, standing on his
knees with his– hands up in the air, and two Gestapo soldiers standing —
beside him with guns pointed at him. One of — one of them is smiling.
“And Degan used to say to his people
and the people coming to visit him from CIA, NSA, et cetera, ‘Look at
this guy in the picture. This is my grandfather just seconds before he
was killed by the SS,’” Bergman said. “’… We are here to prevent this
from happening again.’”
Richard Engel is NBC News’ chief foreign correspondent; Robert Windrem is a senior investigative producer.
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