DoD Recruiting Terrorists for Iran Attack

According to a short article in CQ Weekly (one of the Beltway insider trade magazines), the Department of Defense is recruiting anti-Iranian terrorists in Iraq, in violation of US law, as part of their contingency plans for an attack on Iran.

The former official, who retains close contacts with his own sources from the region, says the Pentagon has been using former members of Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), which is on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations, to plant targeting "beacons" in Iran to guide any future attack.

He says U.S. intelligence operatives are recruiting MEK members at their U.S.-controlled base at Camp Ashraf in Iraq, about 60 miles west of the Iranian border.

From there, he says, new recruits are transported to Israel to be "sheepdipped" — outfitted with a national affiliation acceptable for contract warriors, since the United States is legally prevented from hiring them outright, thanks to the State Department's designation. Some supporters of regime change, such as Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen , the odds-on favorite to become ranking Republican on the House International Relations Committee, are trying to get the State designation changed.

The former official says that as recently as last year, U.S. forces were training the recruits at a site in Nevada. He says he has it on good authority that the operation is ongoing, having spoken with individuals associated with it.

Both sources stress that these activities did not mean the administration is planning for an already-decided-upon invasion, but rather that the military is engaged in contingency planning. But, they add, the risk was always there that the sort of activities under way could spark an incident that could escalate into something more serious.

Not familiar with the MEK? They began as an blend of Marxist and Islamist ideologies and took part in acts of anti-Western terrorism during the reign of the Shah, participating in the 1979 revolution, eventually emerging as in opposition to Ayatollah Khomenei. Persecuted in Iran, the leadership eventually found support from Saddam Hussein to carry out acts of violence against the Iranian regime, thus losing much of their support in Iran. Though a terrorist group, they successfully raise funds in the U.S. under a number of front groups and recieve (political, not financial) support from American politicians such as Reps. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) and Brad Sherman (D-CA) who want them removed from the terrorist list.

While I don't believe this article tells us anything new about whether an attack on Iran is in the offing, it raises a number of questions about the effort's legality and whether Congress - including Democratic leadership - has been fully briefed.