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Iranian Opposition Group Blows Nuclear Whistle, Receives Terrorist Designation By Terrence Henry National Journal WASHINGTON — Until their organization was declared a terrorist group last year, Alireza Jafarzadeh and Soona Samsami were working out of a narrow, cramped, windowless office with two desks at the National Press Building. Jafarzadeh and Samsami, members of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a group of Iranian exiles opposed to the current regime in their native country, had enjoyed a busy year in 2003, disclosing new intelligence on Iran’s program to develop nuclear weapons. Unlike the intelligence supplied by an Iraqi exile group more familiar to Americans — Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress — the information provided by the Iranians proved true: Iran was indeed hiding nuclear facilities from the United Nations and was constructing sites to make uranium and plutonium (see GSN, Sept. 9). But on Friday, Aug. 15, 2003, early in the morning, the State Department designated the National Council of Resistance of Iran a terrorist organization, adding the group to a list of those found “to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, acts of terrorism that threaten the security ... of the United States.” The NCRI’s offices were summarily closed and $100,000 of their assets seized. When a terrorist group is discovered working in an office in the middle of downtown Washington, one might expect a large, swooping raid by the FBI and SWAT teams wielding guns and wearing bulletproof vests, or at least a discreet seizure by undercover FBI agents and D.C. Metropolitan Police. But according to Jafarzadeh, Samsami, and their lawyers, no FBI agents, no State Department officials, not even the police were there to close the office. Instead, the only government officials to show up that morning were agents from the Treasury Department. They simply went to the NCRI office and placed a one-page notice on the door, affixed with bright-green tape, notifying them of the closure and warning them not to enter under severe penalty. The locks were not changed, the office was not entered, and to this day, neither Jafarzadeh nor Samsami, nor any of their staff and associates, have been interviewed or detained by the FBI or police. The office was left alone — without a guard or surveillance — until about a month later, when Treasury agents politely arranged entry with Jafarzadeh and the NCRI’s attorneys, who had the keys to the office and would be on hand to facilitate the government’s seizure of documents. But when the agents went through the office, they seized only phone and utility bills, financial records, and lease documents, leaving the rest of the group’s materials alone. Paul Enzinna, an attorney for the NCRI who works for the firm Baker Botts, said that judging by the records Treasury took, its agents were there to block the organization financially, not to seize evidence that could prove that the NCRI was a terrorist group. Jafarzadeh, a short man with an owlish face, thick mustache, and ever-present half-smile, was the NCRI’s official spokesman in the United States. There was nothing clandestine about his public actions: He regularly held press conferences in Washington on Iran’s weapons development and human-rights violations. He continues to be a reliable source for many journalists and nuclear watchdog groups. But the closure of the NCRI has made it impossible for him to have an official platform. “Since last year, the level of activity the NCRI had in the U.S. — both in the Congress and in the media — revealing a lot of Iran’s rogue activities has been seriously damaged,” Jafarzadeh told National Journal. “That’s certainly made Iran very happy; they welcomed the closure of the office last year.” Indeed, once the State Department announced the closure of the offices, Iran lavished rare praise on the United States for taking a “positive step” and urged additional action against the group and its affiliates. Jafarzadeh’s colleague at the NCRI was Samsami, a middle-aged woman with a ready sense of humor who is a longtime U.S. resident. Samsami’s work in the NCRI was focused on women’s-rights and human-rights violations in Iran and on Tehran’s biological and chemical weapons development. “In every state before the office was closed, we had a huge network of Iranians working [on] anti-fundamentalism and looking for democratic and secular government in Iran,” she said in an interview. “This was not just one office that was closed.... We’re talking about disappointing thousands of Iranians [in the United States] who were working for a cause — a secular, democratic government in Iran.” Jafarzadeh and Samsami also used their charm and location to establish a close relationship with the U.S. media, as well as with several members of Congress, including Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) and Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), all of whom sit on the House International Relations Committee. Because of the NCRI, major U.S. newspapers were able to run front-page stories in 2002 and 2003 with detailed satellite photos showing Iran’s nuclear and biological weapons facilities, and congressional committees had sources outside the U.S. intelligence community briefing them on Iran’s weapons development. The NCRI made a key disclosure in August 2002 about two Iranian nuclear facilities, in Natanz and Arak, that were thought to be capable of making weapon-grade uranium and plutonium, the key ingredients for nuclear weapons. (The NCRI said the intelligence came from an extensive network of dissidents inside Iran.) Once U.N. inspectors finally had a look at the facilities, they found traces of highly enriched uranium, suitable for weapons, and massive halls of enrichment machines that could make material for dozens of nuclear weapons a year. Just as U.N. inspectors were finishing their first report on Iran’s nuclear program in the summer of 2003, and publicly establishing that Iran had lied about its capabilities, the U.S. State Department shut down the NCRI. The now-tarnished Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress, however, stayed on the State Department’s payroll, providing to the CIA what later was found to be outright false information on Iraq, at a cost of $350,000 a month and a total of $33 million. “The CIA gets it completely wrong with Iraq, but they get it right — so far — in Iran,” Sherman said of the NCRI. “And which one do we shut down? The one that gives us the information we don’t want to deal with.” According to the State Department, the official reason the NCRI was deemed a terrorist group was its links to a 40-year-old, Marxist-inspired, militant Iranian group called the Mujahadeen-e Khalq (“The People’s Mujahadeen”), known in Washington acronym speak as the MEK. The State Department claimed that a “variety of sources” proved that the NCRI “functioned as part of the MEK and ... supported the MEK’s acts of terrorism.” The MEK is by no means an angelic group. It is linked to the killings of Americans in the 1970s. It was harbored and supported by Saddam Hussein. It is responsible for numerous terrorist acts against Iran, many of which have killed civilians, and the most visible of which, in February 2000, consisted of dozens of attacks on the country. Its base of operations for most of these attacks was the large Camp Ashraf in eastern Iraq, home to some 3,800 of its members. The U.S. military bombed the MEK camp when it invaded Iraq last year, subsequently disarmed the group, and confined it to its camp. “They’re no Amnesty International,” Sherman told National Journal. “They’ve done some pretty bad things in the past.” But Sherman and Tancredo — as well as the NCRI and its attorneys — think the State Department’s designation of NCRI as an “alias” group linked with the MEK had a different purpose. They suspect that the closure of the NCRI office was simply a political capitulation to get Iran to stop meddling in Iraq, since Tehran’s actions were seriously hindering U.S. efforts against the insurgency in Iraq at the time. “Look, by August of 2003, things weren’t going so wonderful in Iraq,” Sherman said. “And a desire to kowtow to Tehran increased as things got poorer in Iraq. It created a domestic public-relations need to snuff out or minimize information about Iran and created a strategic and diplomatic incentive to pacify Tehran and beg them not to do anything embarrassing in [Iraq]. It’s a twofer.” Since early 2001, the MEK has kept a low profile and has refrained from attacking Iran. To be on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations, the group must have carried out attacks within the past two years. But after receiving no evidence from the State Department that the group has done so, “we came to the conclusion that although there was certainly a spotty record in the past for them, there is nothing at the present time — except for their opposition to the present regime in Iran — that can explain their being listed” as a terrorist group, Tancredo said. The Defense Department seems to think so as well, saying the group has abided by its vow not to attack Iran from its camp. The Pentagon has now granted “protected persons” status to the group’s members, in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. They are under the care and watch of the United States. Tancredo thinks both the MEK and the NCRI, although disarmed, could still play an important role in a more aggressive policy toward Iran. “Why wouldn’t we use these people to make life more difficult for the government of Iran?” Tancredo asked. “I would just like them to be meddlesome, that’s all. I’d like them to be a little thorn in the side of the government of Iran.” After more than a year of negotiations fizzled recently between Iran and European countries, Iran announced that it is again building centrifuges to make weapons-grade uranium, although it continues to insist the fuel is only for civilian nuclear power plants. Washington is now pushing for the matter to be taken to the U.N. Security Council this month for possible sanctions. Meanwhile, since the NCRI office was closed, both Jafarzadeh and Samsami have remained in Washington and are still working to be something of an irritant to Iran. But they are no longer allowed to organize Iranian exiles in the United States, conduct press conferences, or officially pass information to U.N. inspectors. Instead, they now work as one-person teams. Samsami has continued her advocacy for Muslim women’s rights, attending U.N. conferences and running her own watchdog group. As for Jafarzadeh, he has started a one-man consulting firm and has carried his cause of regime change in Iran to an even larger forum, that of 24-hour cable news — he is now a talking head employed by Fox News Channel.
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