Terror-Spring
US President Donald Trump ramped up the threat with a Game of Thrones meme warning Iran, with a November 5 deadline, that “Sanctions are Coming.” Qasem Soleimani, a Major General in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, responded with a meme of his own that Friday with the message “I will stand against you.”
More than just rhetoric, the exchange signified the high pomp the mention of sanctions posted to the Islamic Republic following an extensive international campaign by the US and Iranian expat and separatist allies to maximize their impacts.
The United States has slapped around a dozen sanctions on Iran since 1984 including two rounds on its shipping, oil, banking, and ship-building sectors since Trump’s removal from JCPOA earlier this year. These include five UN security council resolutions between July 2006 and 2008.
Despite the language of nuclear non-proliferation, one aim of the sanctions is to facilitate an atmosphere of intense economic frustration in hopes of inciting regime change — or what the State Department insists is just a change in “regime behavior.” This strategy includes supporting separatist groups like the MEK to accomplish this goal — without pulling the United States into another armed conflict.
The MEK originally began as a leftist student group, joining a coalition of forces against the Shah at the onset of the 1979 revolution. Relations with Iranian revolutionary leader Ruhollah Khomeini quickly soured after the Islamic Republic took power. The group carried out sophisticated bombings against the state, including a 1981 bombing that killed 74 government officials and another two months later that detonated in the Prime Minister’s office, killing President Mohammad Ali Rajaei, Prime Minister Mohammad Javad Bahonar, and three others. Before the revolution, the MEK was responsible for attacks against American civilians and was later housed, supported, and trained by Saddam Hussein during the Iraqi-led, US-backed 1980-1988 war. A history of waging terror attacks inside Iran and abroad in support of destabilizing the current government has rendered them natural allies with the US.
It was also in exile that the organization rebranded from an “Islamo-Marxist” to a pro-free market, Western-allied one to win the support of Europe, the West, and other reactionary powers in the Middle East. A history of waging terror attacks inside Iran and abroad in support of destabilizing the current government have rendered them natural allies with the US.
In addition, various NATO powers have hosted and given the separatist groups coverage in attempts of strengthening support and ties with the United States. They Include France, where the MEK and its umbrella organization NCRI is based, Denmark and the Netherlands, housing Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz (ASMLA), and Albania, where a MEK camp, housing a training ground and even Twitter troll-farm, pumping out anti-government tweets and pro-Rajavi propaganda, is based.