US Officials: Israel teams with terror group to kill Iran's nuclear scientists [NBC]

[Correction]

Israel teams with terror group to kill Iran's nuclear scientists, U.S. officials tell NBC News

Not quoting the entire article, it's very very long. Few excerpts to give most the gist of the story

Deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by an Iranian dissident group that is financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service, U.S. officials tell NBC News, confirming charges leveled by Iran’s leaders.
ROCK CENTER EXCLUSIVE

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.

And the denials

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.”

Ali Safavi, a long-time representative of the MEK, underscored the denial after publication of this article,

"There has never been and there is no MEK member in Israel, period," he said. "The MEK has categorically denied any involvement. The idea that Israel is training MEK members on its soil borders on perversity. It is absolutely and completely false."

And lest you forget that Iran still blames the CIA for the latest attack and that plenty of prominent American politicians publicly support the assassinations

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.

Proxy warfare, ladies and gentlemen! Freedom and Democracy!

[Elvis]

Some US politicians, policy-makers, former government officials, etc. are working hard to get MEK off the terrorist list:

For Obscure Iranian Exile Group, Broad Support in U.S. - NY Times

The extraordinary lobbying effort to reverse the terrorist designation of the group, the Mujahedeen Khalq, or People’s Mujahedeen, has won the support of two former C.I.A. directors, R. James Woolsey and Porter J. Goss; a former F.B.I. director, Louis J. Freeh; a former attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey; President George W. Bush’s first homeland security chief, Tom Ridge; President Obama’s first national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones; big-name Republicans like the former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Democrats like the former Vermont governor Howard Dean; and even the former top counterterrorism official of the State Department, Dell L. Dailey, who argued unsuccessfully for ending the terrorist label while in office.

The American advocates have been well paid, hired through their speaking agencies and collecting fees of $10,000 to $50,000 for speeches on behalf of the Iranian group. Some have been flown to Paris, Berlin and Brussels for appearances.

But they insist that their motive is humanitarian — to protect and resettle about 3,400 members of the group, known as the M.E.K., now confined in a camp in Iraq. They say the terrorist label, which dates to 1997 and then reflected decades of violence that included the killing of some Americans in the 1970s, is now outdated, unjustified and dangerous.

I wonder if people lobbying for MEK would apply the same standard to Hezbollah (killed 241 American soldiers in 1983 during the Lebanese Civil War).

More:

Iranian terrorist group has close US allies - Al Jazeera English

Iranian group's big-money push to get off US terrorist list - Christian Science Monitor

[Ragnus]

But Israel isn't the bad guy guys!

[Kurokikaze]

Israel is the definition of a habitual line-stepper.

[Andalusian girls]

yet no one will ever mash up their legs

[Elvis]

yet no one will ever mash up their legs

Wat

[djzombie]

Israel is the definition of a habitual line-stepper.

i lol'ed so true

[djzombie]

yet no one will ever mash up their legs

Wat

shoulda never gave you niggas money.

also, if you still dont know... dayum.

[Kurokikaze]

yet no one will ever mash up their legs

http://emotibot.net/pix/2690.jpg

[Lucavi]

Israel will always be allowed to do whatever it wants so long as Christianity is the de-facto religion in first-world countries. If its in the bible, its good (even slavery~!!)