Trump views the Supreme Court as an ally, sowing doubt about its independence among his critics

Supreme Court Justices, from left, John G. Roberts Jr., Elena Kagan, Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh listen as President Trump gives his State of the Union in February. (Doug Mills/AP)

By Robert Barnes and Josh Dawsey-April 27

The morning after the Supreme Court reviewed his administration’s most important case of the term, President Trump informed the justices he might have another task for them.

“I DID NOTHING WRONG,” Trump tweeted Wednesday. “If the partisan Dems ever tried to Impeach, I would first head to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Constitutional experts immediately derided Trump’s faulty legal analysis. But the more striking message, the day after the court considered the administration’s plan to put a citizenship question on the 2020 Census, seemed to be Trump’s consistent theme that he views the nation’s highest court as an ally, and safeguard against lower court defeats and congressional opponents.

His administration’s lawyers have tried to leapfrog the legal process to seek the high court’s quick review of adverse rulings and nationwide injunctions by lower courts, which they say handicap Trump’s initiatives in numbers that can’t be defended. They are ready, too, to go to court as the president resists demands from congressional Democrats investigating his conduct, business dealings and personal finances .

[Trump officials aggressively bypass legal process to get to Supreme Court]

Liberal critics of the president say his rhetoric seeds doubts about the Supreme Court’s independence, complicates the role of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and could taint the victories Trump achieves there.

Lawmakers are split along partisan lines over whether to further investigate possible areas of obstruction of justice by President Trump. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)

“President Trump views the Roberts Court as his potential, perhaps literal, ‘get out of jail free’ card,” said Elizabeth Wydra, president of the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center. She added: “The question is, what does Chief Justice Roberts do?”

There is a vast difference between the 17th chief justice’s aspirational message of judicial independence and the 45th president’s realpolitik view that some judges (those who are Republican-appointed) are his friends while others (those installed by Democrats ) are his foes. And Trump has explained the legal process in a way not found in textbooks on American democracy.

“We will then be sued . . . and we’ll possibly get a bad ruling, and then we’ll get another bad ruling and then we’ll end up in the Supreme Court, and hopefully we’ll get a fair shake, and we’ll win at the Supreme Court,” he said in February, during a Rose Garden event at which he declared a national emergency.

Keith E. Whittington, a Princeton University political science professor, who teaches a course called “Constitutional Difficulties in the Age of Trump,” said he thinks the president misjudges the court as an ally but adds, “It’s one of the odd features of the Trump presidency that he says things out loud and in public that other people might say in private.”

Trump’s confidence in the high court seems borne of the fact that he’s nominated two of the five conservative justices that make up the court’s majority — Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh. The president said this week he was pleased with Kavanaugh’s questioning in the census case, an adviser said.

Trump gestures toward Gorsuch, center, during his swearing-in ceremony at the White House in 2017. Kennedy, now retired, is at right. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

The president and the first lady are friendly with Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginni Thomas, having shared dinner at the White House.

But Trump declared Roberts a “disaster” during the presidential campaign because of the chief justice’s pivotal vote upholding the Affordable Care Act. The two have a cordial if limited relationship now, and Roberts wrote the court’s opinion last term upholding Trump’s ban on travelers from some majority Muslim countries.

[Supreme Court upholds Trump’s travel ban order]

That decision discounted Trump’s statements in interviews and tweets, and focused on the president’s power to control entry into the country.

“The issue before us is not whether to denounce the statements,” Roberts wrote. “It is instead the significance of those statements in reviewing a Presidential directive, neutral on its face, addressing a matter within the core of executive responsibility.”

Last week, the conservative majority seemed inclined to defer to the administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, despite predictions from census officials that it could result in an undercount of millions of people, and a finding by three federal judges that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross obscured the truth about how the decision came about.

[Supreme Court’s conservatives appear likely to let Trump add citizenship question to 2020 Census]

“With this court, they seem very inclined to put on blinders when it comes to really parsing the president’s words and understanding the motives driving the policy actions he’s undertaken during his presidency,” said Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

That has not been the case in lower courts. A Washington Post analysisfound an extraordinary string of legal defeats for the administration that has stymied large parts of the president’s agenda on the environment, immigration and other matters.

[The reason the Trump administration is losing in court]

Judges have rebuked Trump officials for failing to follow the most basic rules of governance for shifting policy, including providing legitimate explanations supported by facts and, where required, public input.

That has stoked Trump’s ire, and led to some of his outbursts questioning whether one judge could be fair because of his ethnicity and deriding an “Obama judge” who ruled against the Trump administration.

Roberts rebuked the president for the latter, releasing a statement in November saying that “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”

[Roberts and Trump clash over the president’s criticism of judges]

Trump was hardly chastened. “Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have ‘Obama judges,’ and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country,” Trump shot back on Twitter.

Trump has referred to Supreme Court justices as Democrats and Republicans, current and former aides say, and has bragged that he thinks he may get one or two more chances to remake the court .

During Gorsuch’s nomination process, Trump was angry that the Colorado judge had told a Democratic senator that it was wrong for the president to criticize federal judges or refer to them as partisan. Trump worried that Gorsuch would not be “loyal,” The Post reported, and mused about withdrawing the nomination. The president has since referred to the nominations of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh as triumphs.

[Trump talked about rescinding Gorsuch nomination]

Trump is right that challengers to his policies have sought out sympathetic judges largely on the East and West coasts, although such a tactic is not unusual. Those judges have issued a number of nationwide injunctions against Trump’s initiatives, which is a relatively recent phenomenon.

William Jay, a Washington lawyer who frequently argues before the Supreme Court, was at the Constitutional Accountability Center’s event last Thursday reviewing the Supreme Court term, and brought a more conservative viewpoint.

He noted that those challenging the president’s policies are careful to criticize his motives, not his power.

“A lot of the states and advocacy groups that are bringing these challenges very much want the next president to have all the power the statutes confer, but they don’t want President Trump to be able to rely on that broad grant of authority.”

Whittington, the Princeton professor, said that presidents have long bemoaned “activist” judges or those who “act like legislators.” But Whittington, who describes himself as a libertarian and is a frequent speaker at Federalist Society events, said Trump’s language often goes beyond that.

“Some of the rhetoric Trump has used — talking about the courts directly as allies, talking about Republican and Democratic judges, talking about judges of Mexican ancestry and whether they can be fair to him — on that point, it’s not just that the rhetoric is unusual and unconventional,” Whittington said.

“The substantive message being sent is really very different from what other presidents have said about courts, and I think is very corrosive.”

[Trump says he would ask Supreme Court to intervene if Democrats try impeachment]

Trump’s tweet about impeachment may indicate his preoccupation with the Democratic House’s ongoing inquiry.

The Constitution leaves impeachment to the House, with a trial to be conducted by the Senate. In a 1993 opinion, the Supreme Court was unanimous in rejecting a federal judge’s plea that justices review his impeachment proceedings. The court’s opinion specifically mentioned the difficulty of judicial review in the case of a presidential impeachment.

And Kavanaugh wrote in a 2009 law review article that impeachment, rather than prosecution, is the remedy when a president “does something dastardly.”

“No single prosecutor, judge or jury should be able to accomplish what the Constitution assigns to the Congress,” Kavanaugh wrote.

But other issues dear to the president — declaring a national emergency over migration at the border, his plan to restrict transgender men and women from serving in the military — could end up at the Supreme Court.

Trump has told White House aides that he would take the battle over his tax returns to the high court, where he believes he would win.

And two legal advisers to the president said the White House is going to fight most subpoenas issued by House investigators and they think they will have a receptive audience at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and at the Supreme Court.

“More than anything, what’s the choice?” one adviser said. “He’s not going to just comply with Congress with their overreaching demands.”

Afghan peace deal hinges on ceasefire by Taliban: U.S. peace envoy

U.S. envoy for peace in Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad, speaks during a debate at Tolo TV channel in Kabul, Afghanistan April 28, 2019. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani

APRIL 28, 2019

KABUL (Reuters) - Any peace agreement with the Afghan Taliban would depend on the declaration of a permanent ceasefire and a commitment to end the country’s long war, the U.S. special envoy for peace in Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad said on Sunday.

In an interview with Afghanistan’s largest private television station, Tolo News, Khalilzad said the Taliban’s demands were focused on the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country.

“Our focus is on terrorism. No agreement will be done if we don’t see a permanent ceasefire and a commitment to end the war,” said Khalilzad. “We are seeking peace and (a) political settlement ... We want peace to give us the possibility to withdraw.”

The Afghan-born U.S. diplomat arrived in Kabul on Saturday to meet President Ashraf Ghani, part of a multi-country tour ahead of his next meeting with the Taliban in Qatar.

The United States has about 14,000 troops in Afghanistan as part of a NATO-led mission, known as Resolute Support, that is training and assisting the Afghan government’s security forces in their battle against Taliban fighters and extremist groups such as Islamic State and Al-Qaeda.

U.S. President Donald Trump wants to reach an agreement to end his country’s longest-ever war, which dislodged the Taliban from power in Afghanistan following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Intense fighting is still going on all over the country, and while the Taliban are negotiating, they now control and influence more territory than at any point since 2001.

A plan to cut the number of staff at the U.S. embassy in Kabul by up to half starting late next month has alarmed some who fear such a move could undermine the fragile peace process.

Before Khalilzad embarked on his tour, the State Department said he will “press forward on negotiations with the Taliban to reach a consensus on core national security issues, and urge their participation in an inclusive intra-Afghan dialogue.”

After several rounds of talks, Khalilzad has reported some progress toward an accord on withdrawing U.S. troops and on how the Taliban would prevent extremists from using Afghanistan to launch attacks as al Qaeda did in 2001.

But the Taliban still refuse to negotiate with Ghani’s government, which they call a puppet regime controlled by the United States.

Khalilzad told Tolo news that he had tried in recent weeks to foster such a dialogue, adding there had been some progress “but not as much as I wanted”.

Hopes for a breakthrough were dashed earlier this month when planned talks in the Qatari capital Doha between the Taliban and 250 Afghan representatives collapsed.

Hoping to renew the push for direct talks with the Taliban, Ghani has convened a grand consultative assembly on Monday.

The Loya Jirga, a traditional gathering of elders, religious scholars, and prominent Afghans, will see more than 3,000 people gather amid tight security for four days of discussion under a large tent in Kabul.

Why we protest

Mohammed Zaanoun -22 April 2019

More than 200 Palestinians have been killed since the launch of the Great March of Return along Gaza’s boundary with Israel on 30 March 2018.

Palestinians participating in the protest series are demanding their right to return to the lands on the other side of the boundary from which their families were expelled decades earlier.

Every two in three Palestinians in Gaza is a refugee.

Protesters are also calling for an end to Israel’s land, sea and air blockade on Gaza, now in its 12th year, which has plunged the territory into poverty and despair.

Mohammed Zaanoun, a member of the Activestills photo collective, has documented the Great March of Return since its beginning.

Here protesters tell their stories and explain why they come back to the boundary week after week, despite Israel’s brutal crackdown.

Husam, 25, from Khan Younis, southern Gaza

Last Friday, when I had the Palestinian flag painted on my face, I was hit by a gas canister directly in my back. I was badly injured and transferred to a hospital. I’m now being treated at home. I wish to recover so I can go [back to the protests] next Friday.

Despite the killings and the injuries, I am still going. I think I will keep participating even if it lasts for nine years, not just nine months. One of the worst things I’ve seen was one of the Fridays during which about 60 people were killed, when they [soldiers] were killing youth randomly and shooting towards heads and legs. It was a horrific day. I felt like I was in a nightmare.

It was so hard when I could not save one of my comrades who was bleeding on the ground after being injured by an Israeli sniper, and then he died. I can’t understand how they can kill unarmed people.

After nine months, the world is still not doing anything. We need them to stand with us and to stop the killing of the unarmed youth by the occupying forces.

Ahmad, 24, from Gaza City

I am a young person who is looking for stability but the occupation has killed all of my dreams and ambitions. It is an occupation of the mind. The challenge in my life is finding a job or any opportunity. We join the demonstrations because this is our land and to demand our rights.

But we are making progress through our resistance and our commitment to continue the peaceful, popular struggle. Many of my friends were martyred. I will keep on the path of my comrades, although everything is very difficult here in Gaza.

I was injured many times. Once by tear gas and the other by a bullet. But I came back to the field.

Shireen, 20, from al-Shujaiya, east of Gaza City

When I go to the protests, I express the anger inside me. We are a nation under siege in a very small area of 360 square kilometers, like a big prison. One of the worst things I’ve seen was when my sister was injured by a bullet. I did not know what had happened, only that she was bleeding a lot.

The women are the biggest part of the grassroots movement. Our participation means that our strength as a nation comes from both genders.

I did not face any difficulties or criticism from anybody. On the contrary, we found great support from men, families and friends for our participation as women.

With the Great March of Return, the world has become aware that there is a nation demanding its rights and that we will not stay silent. The world should support us. I want to live in a developed, free society, which has no occupation, killing or destruction. We are looking for freedom and we will seize it.

Ismail, 22, from central Gaza

I do my duty towards my homeland, therefore I join the March of Return. Even if it lasts forever, I will keep coming. I think we are about to realize our goals despite all of the oppression and the siege. It’s a new way to defend our rights and it destabilizes the occupying forces.

There is no clear future for young people. I am part of the young generation who wish to have a future and dream of nice things like all young people around the world. We have been under siege since I was 11 years old. I grew up and I learned the meaning of not being able to find a job or even to travel.

I was injured in my head by a gas canister and I stayed at the hospital for a while with many of my friends. Some of them lost a limb and some were injured by gas and others by an explosive bullet in the stomach.

I wish for the world to stand on the side of justice and support us. We are strong and we need them to be next to us. I wish one day I wake up and I find our society finally opened towards the Arab and the Western world, dominated by love and stability.

Muhammad, 20, from al-Shujaiya, east of Gaza City

I come from a poor family. I cannot get an education because of the terrible living conditions and the fact that my father cannot afford to pay for my studies. I join the protests every week because I believe we have the right to go back to our houses that we were forced from. I was not alive at the time that my grandparents were displaced from their homes. But today, I am affirming my right to return to my grandparents’ land.

There is no future for young people in Gaza. It’s hard losing comrades in the March of Return after snipers shot them with bullets. We usually remember their last words and this pushes us to keep going. I was injured twice, once seriously, but I got back my strength and I rejoined the march. We don’t ask anything from the world but to watch how we can change our reality with our own hands. We need freedom and stability. We want a homeland without occupation.

Aya, 21, from Gaza City

I know I could be killed by Israeli snipers, but if I stay home the siege will become worse and the world will forget our cause.

We [women] are strong, just like men, and we will take part in political change. Instead of criticism we received full support from men, family and friends. No one can prevent us from taking part in the protests.

At the March of Return, you witness many terrible things. The bloodiest day was 14 May, which was full of tragic scenes that broke our hearts as we watched Israelis killing young people in cold blood. I was injured many times and I recovered and returned to take part with my friends. I have lost loved ones but we are following their path and we will meet in paradise.

We have sent a strong message to the world to support us and to put pressure on the occupier to stop its oppression. We are waiting for that to happen, and we continue Protesting.

Asma, 23, from Gaza City

We women are making a difference in the history of confronting the occupation. We make sure to always be there because we are part of this cause. Yes, women have a role in politics and the struggle. Women and men stand shoulder to shoulder and there is no difference in the way we confront soldiers. I am supported by my family, brothers and friends and there is no criticism from men. On the contrary, they support us.

We have lost martyrs and many others were injured. The only thing the world does is that it condemns the excessive killing, which is very bad for us. But we need to see the world uphold its responsibilities towards Palestine and Gaza.

I’m looking forward to a society that has freedom and culture and in which women are equal to men, such as in the March of Return.

Aya, 21, from Gaza City

I participate because it is our duty to demand our full rights, as the Palestinian people, despite the killing and the injuries. This is the march of a nation.

I ask Avichay Adraee [the Israeli army spokesperson who advised Palestinian women on Twitter that it was best for them to stay at home] to sit next to his wife instead of spreading foolish speech. I have witnessed so many scenes of children being killed and the targeting of women, medics and the press. My oldest sister was seriously wounded but thank God she survived and she returned to the protest again. After all that time, the Return march continues and will not stop.

I wish that the world would stop the oppression of the occupation and the killing of innocent, unarmed people. The difficult thing in my life is that I’m looking for a future amid the darkness. I wish to live in a society like any other Arab or Western society where there are no wars or killings, only justice, equality, love and peace.

Raghda, 18, from Gaza City

To live in Gaza means that you’ll continuously suffer due to long electricity outages and the inability to do homework, in addition to the sounds of explosions. My dream is to be a doctor in order to save the lives of wounded people.

I confront Israelis on the boundary and I’m not afraid of their fire. The world must do something to save our lives.

Hidaya, 39, from Gaza City

It is our right to defend our land. I am aware of the dangers we face but if I stay home, that’s more dangerous for us.

My youngest son was seriously injured in his stomach. I asked God to keep him alive and thank God he is well now and he is still participating in the March of Return. I was injured twice and I recovered very quickly.

I was expecting that the world would put pressure on the occupation, but after Trump announced the move of the US embassy to Jerusalem, I realized that the world is abetting in the crimes against Palestinians. I wish nations would wake up from their sleep and stand up to the oppressive occupation. I wish for Palestine to be liberated from the occupation.

Spain’s Vox Party Hates Muslims—Except the Ones Who Fund It

The upstart far-right party is unapologetically Islamophobic, but without donations from Iranian exiles, it may have never gotten off the ground.

Santiago Abascal, the leader of the far-right party Vox arrives to a rally at Palacios de Congresos on Apr. 17 in Granada, Spain. (DAVID RAMOS/GETTY IMAGES)

BY SOHAIL JANNESSARI, DARREN LOUCAIDES

| APRIL 27, 2019, 4:28 PM

Spain’s far-right party Vox launched its 2019 election campaign this month in the tiny town of Covadonga. Situated in a lush valley in the northern region of Asturias, with fewer than 100 inhabitants, Covadonga is sometimes referred to as the “cradle of Spain.” According to the historical narrative of Spanish conservatives, Covadonga was the site of the first victory by Christian Hispania against Spain’s then-Muslim rulers, and the start of the Reconquista, the 780-year process of reclaiming Iberian lands for Christendom.

“Europe is what it is thanks to Spain—thanks to our contribution, ever since the Middle Ages, of stopping the spread and the expanse of Islam,” Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, Vox’s vice secretary of international relations and a candidate in the April 28 elections, told Foreign Policy over the phone on his way to Covadonga. At the campaign launch, Vox leader Santiago Abascal added: “History matters, and we shouldn’t be afraid of that,” to cries of “¡Viva España!”

While Spain’s right-wing has previously been relatively light on anti-Islam rhetoric, preferring to rail against secessionists in Catalonia and elsewhere, Vox has no such compunction. One of the party’s earliest controversies was a wildly Islamophobic video conjuring a future in which Muslims had imposed sharia in southern Spain, turning the Cathedral of Córdoba back into a mosque and forcing women to cover up. Recently, Vox’s No. 2, Javier Ortega Smith, was investigated by Spanish prosecutors for hate speech after he spoke of an “Islamist invasion” that was the “enemy of Europe.”

Given Vox’s staunch Islamophobia, it was an embarrassment for the party when reports of Iranian funding emerged in January. Vox’s racist, homophobic, and sexist policies had already provided plenty of ammunition for its critics and rival parties; the claims that Vox had been established with the help of Iranian money in 2013 was less expected. However, Vox was not actually funded by Iran itself. The reality is even more surprising.

Documents leaked to the Spanish newspaper El País show that almost 1 million euros donated to Vox between its founding in December 2013 and the European Parliament elections in May 2014 came via supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an exiled Iranian group. The NCRI was set up in the 1980s by Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) and a number of other Iranian dissidents and opposition groups. The MEK’s allies later abandoned the NCRI, making the organization functionally an alias for the MEK.

The MEK and NCRI dispute that they are synonymous, but many disagree, including Daniel Benjamin, a former coordinator for counterterrorism at the U.S. State Department, who refers to the NCRI as the MEK’s “front organization.” The MEK and NCRI also share the same leader, Maryam Rajavi. The U.S. government and a U.S. Court of Appeals decision affirm that the NCRI is an alias of the MEK, while a 2009 Rand Corp. report sponsored by the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense refers to the NCRI as an “MeK subsidiary.”

The MEK is billed by U.S. politicians like Rudy Giuliani and current National Security Advisor John Bolton as the legitimate opposition to the current Iranian government. But the MEK also happens to be a former Islamist-Marxist organization that was only taken off the U.S. list of terrorist organizations in 2012—raising the question of why supporters of such a group would want to back an Islamophobic, hard-right Spanish party like Vox.

In Spain, much has been made of Vox’s links to U.S. President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon, who met a senior figure from the party in Washington last year, and has promised to tour Spain in the near future. But the mysterious MEK-linked funding points to another controversial relationship.

With Vox poised to win more than 10 percent of the vote in this weekend’s Spanish elections, the party could end up propping up a new right-wing government, as happened in regional elections in Spain’s southern region of Andalusia in December. It would be the first time a Spanish government has depended on a far-right party since Francisco Franco, and this would send shockwaves through Spain’s entire political system.

The question of Vox’s funding is now more burning than ever.

In 1953, a U.S.- and British-backed coup overthrew the democratically elected prime minister of Iran and propped up a monarchical dictatorship led by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Waves of oppression followed, including scores of executions, thousands of incarcerations, and the choking of civil society. In the ensuing political vacuum, many radical groups popped up. One such group, the MEK, or People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, combined both Marxism and Islamism. The MEK set about fighting the Western-backed dictatorship, staging attacks against the shah’s regime and U.S. targets. The shah responded in kind, torturing and executing opposition leaders, including those of the MEK.

In the months preceding the Islamic Revolution of 1979, thousands of prisoners were set free, including Massoud Rajavi, a prominent MEK figure. Rajavi was a young, charismatic orator, who rejuvenated the organization and even met Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the revolution’s leader, hoping to secure his endorsement for the MEK. Khomeini refused. Rajavi then tried to run as a candidate in Iran’s first-ever presidential election, but confronted with Khomeini’s disapproval, he was forced to drop out. The winner of that election, Abolhassan Banisadr, was not an ally of Khomeini either. The MEK saw an opening and allied itself with Banisadr.

In 1981, Rajavi and Banisadr fled Iran together after Banisadr was impeached and removed from office with Khomeini’s blessing and MEK followers had lost deadly street battles with Khomeini loyalists that had threatened to turn into a civil war. The MEK was now an official enemy of the Islamic Republic, which was at the time fighting a bloody war with Iraq, so the MEK came to see Iraq’s Saddam Hussein as a viable ally. The MEK started helping Saddam in his war against Iran.

Since that moment, the group has been widely seen as a pariah among the Iranian public. Later, the MEK reportedly helped Saddam in his massacres of Kurds and Iraqi Shiites. As stated in the Rand report: “MEK officials strenuously deny any involvement in the atrocities against the Shia and Kurds. … However, the allegations of the group’s complicity with Saddam are corroborated by press reports that quote Maryam Rajavi encouraging MEK members to ‘take the Kurds under your tanks, and save your bullets for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards,’ as well as the timing of Saddam’s conferring the Rafedeen Medallion—a high honor in the Iraqi military—on Masoud Rajavi.” In return, Saddam gave the MEK near-unlimited funding and a stretch of land to build itself a city, about 60 miles north of Baghdad and just 50 miles away from the Iranian border.

When the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 overthrew Saddam, the MEK lost its biggest ally.
 The country was now ruled by parties and people the MEK had helped suppress, friends of Iran’s Islamic Republic, and a United States at the height of its global war on terrorism and which had designated the MEK as a terrorist group. What’s more, the MEK had by now morphed into something resembling a cult, according to allegations by various people who have left the group.

Hassan Heyrani, a former member of the MEK’s political department who defected in 2018, told Foreign Policy about group rituals and routines designed to completely subjugate the individual self, including members’ sexual lives and the slightest hint of free thinking, while forcing near-religious worship of MEK leader Massoud Rajavi. Women were made to adhere to a strict dress code. Members were obliged to record the details of their daily activities and thoughts in personal notebooks and then share them in group meetings, with the risk of public shaming and punishments, according to Heyrani. The MEK did not respond to requests for comment for this article, but its representatives have denied such claims in the past.

Despite the MEK’s metamorphosis from an opposition group to designated terrorist organization, hawks in the George W. Bush administration decided that they could use the MEK in their redrawing of the Middle East. Instead of apprehending members of the group as terrorists, during the occupation the U.S. Army was instructed to defend the MEK’s base from possible attacks by Iraqi forces, various Iraqi militias, or forces loyal to the Iranian government.

The MEK quickly seized on Washington’s change of heart. The organization started an intense lobbying campaign to have itself removed from terrorist lists in the United States and European Union. A vast and impressive range of current and former U.S. politicians and officials ended up being linked to this effort, from Giuliani and Bolton on the right to Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez and former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean on the left. In Europe, the list included Alejo Vidal-Quadras, a now-retired Spanish politician, who previously served as one of the 14 vice presidents in the EU Parliament. The MEK was finally delisted by the U.S. government in 2012 and by the EU in 2009.

Spain’s Vidal-Quadras went on to help found Vox in late 2013. And supporters of the NCRI provided the funding needed to launch the right-wing party and contest the 2014 European elections, according to El País.

“From the day it was founded in December 2013—the same day that it registered as a political party with the Spanish Ministry of Interior—Vox started to receive Iranian funds,” said Joaquín Gil, one of the El País journalists who first reported on NCRI-linked funding of Vox. The donations came from dozens of individual sources, from several countries including the United States, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, and Italy in amounts ranging from 60 to 35,000 euros, totaling almost 972,000 euros, in the period from December 2013 to April 2014, shortly before the European parliamentary elections.

According to Gil, Vidal-Quadras said he had “asked his friends at NCRI … to instruct its followers to make a series of money transfers.” Vidal-Quadras told El País that he had informed the current leader of the party, Abascal, about his relationship with the organization and that the NCRI
would finance the party. Vidal-Quadras has confirmed that the NCRI organized the international fundraising campaign for Vox and the group was willing to discuss the matter with Spanish journalists. “We knew that it was a new party, but not a far-right one,” a spokesperson for the NCRI told El País.

This money would be fundamental to the launch of the party—without it, Gil suggested, Vox wouldn’t exist. But the NCRI had already achieved the goal of having the MEK removed from the EU terrorist list years earlier, so why did its supporters agree to fund a fringe Spanish party? “It’s totally surreal,” Gil admitted.

When asked about the party’s links to the NCRI, Espinosa, the Vox vice secretary of international relations, told Foreign Policy: “We don’t have any relationship with them.” The funding of Vox by the NCRI came out of a “personal relationship” with Vidal-Quadras, who had supported the Iranian organization throughout his stint in the EU Parliament until 2014, when he lost his race to win a seat as part of the newly founded Vox. (Vidal-Quadras had previously been a lifetime member of Spain’s conservative People’s Party, or PP.) “They supported him,” Espinosa claimed. “Not the party so much as him. And when he left,” Espinosa added, “when the campaign was over, they never came back.” Like the NCRI and MEK, Vidal-Quadras did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this article.

In December 2013, Spain’s electoral commission reminded the political parties that foreigners were not allowed to finance parties during the 2014 European elections campaign. Spain’s electoral law prohibits parties from receiving money from foreign entities or individuals 54 days before elections, although foreign funding is permitted outside of the campaign period;

While there is no evidence that Vox has broken Spanish or EU funding rules, Espinosa clearly had no qualms about accepting foreign funding “I try to get as much funding from abroad as I can—not to say that it’s significant, but I’d be lying if I told you nobody from abroad [had made donations].”

Espinosa, who was part of Vox’s European parliamentary candidates list in 2014 alongside Vidal-Quadras (Vox narrowly missed winning a seat), went on to emphasize that the noncampaign funding was entirely legal, transparent, and came through verified bank wires by “professionals—lawyers, bankers, dentists, doctors who live abroad.” Other parties remain suspicious.

Spain’s ruling Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), currently in a minority in the Senate, has asked the Senate’s majority party, the PP, to request that Vox appear in front of the Commission of Investigation for Funding of Parties. The conservative PP, which would likely need Vox’s support to have any chance of forming a right-wing coalition government after the election, has expressed concerns about Vox’s funding but has stopped short of a Senate investigation, instead urging Spain’s Court of Auditors to investigate Vox. Espinosa told Foreign Policy that the party has presented all the related documents to the Court of Auditors.

Espinosa also insisted that Vox’s funding had never come from “foundations, organizations, parties”—only individuals. But while the donations to Vox technically came from followers of the MEK rather than directly from the organization, the distinction between “members,” as in those actually part of the MEK, and so-called “supporters” outside the organization itself is false, claimed Heyrani. “Those in other countries are also members. They have daily schedules. There are circles led by MEK offices in each country, and they act upon their orders,” he said. NCRI and MEK representatives have not responded to requests from Foreign Policy for comment on this allegation.

The MEK may have just been returning the favor to a long ally, Vidal-Quadras, who has been supportive of the MEK for years. But as one former member of the MEK executive committee told Foreign Policy, the financial resources the group gained under Saddam Hussein have likely run out—which suggests that it may have another source of funding today.

“Mojahedin [MEK] are the tool, not the funders. They aren’t that big. They facilitate,” said Massoud Khodabandeh, who once served in the MEK’s security department; Khodabandeh defected in 1996, a year before the MEK was designated by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization. “You look at it and say, ‘Oh, Mojahedin are funding [Vox].’ No, they are not. The ones that are funding that party are funding Mojahedin as well.”

Khodabandeh said he himself was involved in moving money for the MEK and its funders during the reign of Saddam Hussein. “I went to Riyadh and recovered three trucks of gold bars from agents of [the] Saudi intelligence agency [at that time] led by Prince Turki bin Faisal. We transferred them to Baghdad and then to Jordan. We sold the bars in Jordan,” he claimed.

Khodabandeh’s account raises the question of where the MEK’s money is coming from today. Heyrani, the recent MEK defector, also handled parts of the organization’s finances in Iraq and was blunt when asked about the current financial backing of the MEK: “Saudi Arabia. Without a doubt,” he said. Once the MEK was given a safe haven in Albania after U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, with no U.S. Army to defend the group’s camp and the Iraqi government wanting them gone, one of the ranking members of the political department told Heyrani that Saudi Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud had finally laid a “golden egg.”

The so-called egg was the massive installation, or camp, based just outside Tirana, Albania, which has been used by the MEK as its base of operations since 2016. “Habib Rezaei [a top-ranking member] told me that we will bring some U.S. senators to parade in front of Albanians so that they know who they’re dealing with,” Heyrani said. (In August 2017, Republican Sens. Roy Blunt, John Cornyn, and Thom Tillis visited the MEK in Albania and met with Maryam Rajavi.)

Saudi Arabia’s state-run television channels have given friendly coverage to the MEK, and Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief, even appeared in July 2016 at an MEK rally in Paris. “I want to topple the regime too,” the prince said, to cheers. It has also been widely reported that the MEK has collaborated with Israel’s Mossad, including in attacks against Iranian nuclear scientists, according to U.S. officials. The MEK has called the allegations of their role in assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists “patently false.”

There is evidence that Gulf leaders, fearful of Iranian influence and Islamist movements at home, are warming to anti-Islam parties in Europe, as Ola Salem and Hassan Hassan have argued in Foreign Policy. Khodabandeh agreed. “It’s all over Europe,” he said. “Far-right, anti-EU parties have support that comes from lots of places. … There is outside backing. This backing is the same as [those backing] MEK.”

Experts in the United States have reached similar conclusions about the source of the MEK’s funds. “Group supporters claimed the money came from the contributions of ordinary Iranians in exile, but the sums seemed far too great,” wrote Benjamin, the former State Department counterterrorism official, who added that some believed Arab governments of the Persian Gulf to be behind the MEK “lucre,” as he put it.

Even so, a fringe party in Spain just getting off the ground does not seem to be a natural destination for supporters of an organization dedicated to overthrowing the Iranian government, much less a party whose ideology was not known to the NCRI and MEK at the time of those donations, according to an NCRI spokesperson quoted in the El País report. Moreover, Spain’s governments and its royal family have long enjoyed amicable relations with the Gulf monarchies, reducing the likelihood of these governments wanting to prop up an extremist far-right party in Spain.

Ultimately, the revelations by El País about MEK-linked funding being used to establish Vox leave more questions than answers. As Benjamin wrote in 2016, the removal of the MEK from the list of foreign terrorist organizations ended “any hope of gathering more information from MEK proponents on their financial relations with the group, or where all that money came from.”

Renowned enemies of the Iranian government may have been happy to see their funding reach a European supporter of the MEK, given that the organization has been promoted internationally by some as the legitimate Iranian opposition-in-exile, but either these alleged financial backers didn’t realize their cash would ultimately be used to fund a far-right party—or they didn’t care.

Extremism must be defeated, prince tells New Zealand mosque survivors

This handout picture taken by Mark Tantrum from the New Zealand Internal Affairs office and released on April 25, 2019 shows Britian's Prince William being greeted by New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (R) in a traditional Maori "hongi" welcoming at the War Memorial Museum in Auckland. Prince William paid tribute to Australian and New Zealand troops on April 25 at an emotional Anzac Day ceremony, six weeks after the Christchurch mosques massacre. Source: Mark Tantrum / NEW ZEALAND INTERNAL AFFAIRS / AFP

@ascorrespondent-April 25 at 11:26 PM · 

IN AN emotional meeting with survivors of the New Zealand mosques massacre, Britain’s Prince William appealed Friday for “extremism in all forms” to be defeated.

About 160 people gathered at the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch to meet the prince who had earlier told first responders to the March 15 carnage that when “a good friend” is in need “you travel to their place and you put your arms around them.”

Six weeks to the day from when a self-styled white supremacist killed 50 people and wounded just as many in two Christchurch mosques, the prince said he stood with the people of New Zealand, the people of Christchurch and the Muslim community.

SEE ALSO: Christchurch attacks remind us how toxic politics encourages hate

“An act of violence was designed to change New Zealand, but instead, the grief of a nation revealed just how deep your wells of empathy, compassion, warmth and love truly run,” the prince said after arriving at the mosque from a meeting with hospital staff who had tended to the wounded.

“In a moment of acute pain, you stood up, and you stood together. In reaction to tragedy, you showed something remarkable.

“I stand with you in gratitude to what you have taught the world in these past weeks. I stand with you in optimism… I stand with you in grief. I will support those who survive.

“May the forces of love always prevail over the forces of hate… Extremism in all forms must be defeated.”

Prince William paid tribute to Australian and New Zealand troops on April 25 at an emotional Anzac Day ceremony, six weeks after the Christchurch mosques massacre. Source: Mark Tantrum / NEW ZEALAND INTERNAL AFFAIRS / AFP

As armed police stood guard outside the mosque and a police helicopter circled overhead, the prince was welcomed to the mosque by the Imam Gamel Fouda, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and attack survivor Fahid Ahmed whose wife was among those killed.

Ahmed, who became the face of the Muslim community when he said he loved and forgave the gunman, told the prince: “We have to keep up hope and not surrender to hatred”.

SEE ALSO: The media has an ethical obligation to distinguish Islam from Islamist terrorism

When William arrived in the country on Thursday he made an unannounced visit to the Starship Children’s Hospital in Auckland where he met with five-year-old Alen Alsati and her father, Wasseim, who were both injured in the March 15 attack.

In a touching video released by Kensington Palace, Alen, who only woke from a coma early this week, asked William: “Do you have a daughter?,”

“Do I have a daughter? Yes, she’s called Charlotte… she’s about the same age as you,” William replied.

He flew to Christchurch later in the day to meet with police and medical officers who were first to the scene of the carnage, telling them they did “an incredible job on a very bad day.”

William — who also visited Christchurch just weeks after the devastating February 2011 earthquake which claimed 185 lives — will end his brief visit later Friday when he lays a wreath at the earthquake memorial site. © Agence France-Presse

Japan’s Reiwa era may be less than harmonious

Author: Noriko Kawamura, Washington State University

28 April 2019

When Japan’s Emperor Akihito abdicates on Tuesday 30 April 2019 the gengo — or era name — of Heisei (‘achieving peace’) under his 1989–2019 reign will come to an end. A new era will begin when his son, Crown Prince Naruhito, ascends the throne on 1 May. The new era will be known as Reiwa (‘beautiful harmony’) as revealed by the Abe Cabinet to an eagerly awaiting Japanese public on 1 April.

Although the Japanese government and people use both the Western calendar and the Japanese imperial period system, the latter has had a special place in Japanese history for over thirteen centuries. In modern Japan, landmark public and personal memories are still often identified with era names.

The era of Showa (‘enlightened harmony’), under Emperor Hirohito’s 1926–1989 reign, was divided into two periods: the pre-war years of militarism, war and defeat, and the post-war years of rebuilding, peace and economic prosperity. During his reign, Hirohito underwent an extraordinary transformation from being pre-war an absolute monarch of near-divine status to the more humanised post-war symbolic monarch with no real political power under the democratic constitution. Hirohito was haunted in the latter period by the question of his wartime responsibility as he was excused by the US-led Allied powers from facing the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal.

Unlike his aloof and conservative father, the personable and open-minded Akihito broke with archaic Imperial House tradition by marrying a commoner, Michiko. She also broke tradition by raising her children herself under the same roof.

Although Heisei era Japan suffered from economic stagnation caused by the bursting of Japan’s asset price bubble in the early 1990s and a number of devastating natural disasters, the Imperial House of Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko earned solid popularity both at home and abroad. The couple came to symbolise a modern, liberal and open court which stayed close to the people.

One of the most noteworthy legacies of Emperor Akihito will be his tireless efforts to travel, both at home and abroad, to promote peace and reconciliation with the victims of the 1931–1945 Asia Pacific War waged in his father’s name. Expressing his remorse and regret to peoples across the region, including in Okinawa, Hiroshima, the Korean peninsula, China and the Philippines and elsewhere, Emperor Akihito represented Japan’s commitment to pacifism as ‘the symbol of the State and of the unity of the people’.

Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko also promoted the welfare of the Japanese people as part of their duties, tirelessly engaging in compassionate work for social causes. They were concerned with marginalised peoples — the poor, the disabled and ethnic minorities. They comforted and encouraged survivors of natural disasters. After the 1995 Kobe earthquake and the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, the couple visited thousands of survivors in shelters. Images of the Emperor and the Empress getting on their knees on shelter floors won over the hearts of the Japanese people.

August 2016 saw another unprecedented move, with Akihito announcing that he had lost confidence in his capacity to serve as a symbol of national unity due to illness and age. He indirectly conveyed his desire to abdicate, something which is not permitted under Imperial Household Law. The conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, tagged for his right-wing nationalist political ideology, was unlikely to have welcomed the Emperor’s proposition. Yet he improvised a one-time cabinet decision to make it possible, as the Japanese public overwhelmingly believed that the Emperor should be allowed to retire.

The Japanese media has recognised the widening gap between Emperor Akihito, who embraces the pacifist course, and Prime Minister Abe, who is implementing a more assertive foreign policy — including establishing Japan’s first-ever National Security Council and National Security Strategy. The Abe government also reinterpreted the Article 9 ‘peace clause’ of the Constitution to permit Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (SDF) the right to engage in limited forms of collective self-defence.

When Crown Prince Naruhito ascends the throne, many expect him to follow his father as a champion of pacifism, civil liberties and the welfare of the people. But as the Abe government continues to pursue constitutional revision to recognise the SDF, the new Emperor may be standing at a crossroads. Given the constitutional limitations on Japanese Emperors it is hard to tell what Naruhito can or will do, but compared with his father’s mild manner and humility, the Oxford-educated Naruhito is known to be more individualistic, independent and outspoken.

Besides the issue of abdication, the Imperial Household Law may be long overdue for amendment on the question of succession. The law stipulates that the Chrysanthemum Throne must be succeeded by a male, but Crown Prince Naruhito only has a daughter, Princess Aiko. In the age of increasing gender equality the law seems anachronistic to most liberals, but the conservative Abe Cabinet does not seem interested in amending it. Will the new Emperor and his Western-educated wife, Masako, be content with accepting the old tradition?

In contrast to its moniker of ‘beautiful harmony’, the Reiwa era may begin with some less than harmonious dialogue between the Imperial House and the Abe cabinet.

Noriko Kawamura is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Washington State University.