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The interconnections that make up the Washington power world.
The Biden-Harris administration has promoted the senior Pentagon employee who was outed as a member of an Iranian government-run influence operation, Politico reported.
Ariane Tabatabai is now a deputy assistant secretary of defense within Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's office, where she will lead its force education and training division. Tabatabai, according to Politico, was offered the promotion last month. She previously served as chief of staff for the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict.
Tabatabai became a public commodity after a 2023 Semafor report outed her as a member of an Iranian government propaganda group known as the Iran Experts Initiative. The affiliation saw Tabatabai report back to Iran’s foreign ministry and communicate with senior officials in the hardline regime.
[FWIW. Bonus reading material: an article in Semafor, “Inside Iran’s influence operation” details at great length that “Iran Experts Initiative” and Tabatabi’s involvement in it. Here’s just one paragraph:
…. Tabatabai currently serves in the Pentagon as the chief of staff for the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, a position that requires a U.S. government security clearance. She previously served as a diplomat on Malley’s Iran nuclear negotiating team after the Biden administration took office in 2021. Esfandiary is a senior advisor on the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group, a think tank that Malley headed from 2018-2021]
Now back to the Free Beacon:
Tabatabai's promotion comes at a curious time for the Biden-Harris administration. Over the weekend, classified U.S. intelligence on Israel's military preparations for a strike on Iran leaked in a "deadly serious breach," which the administration is investigating. While the leaker has not been publicly identified, the situation has raised concerns about a host of Biden-Harris administration officials, including Tabatabai, who want to increase diplomacy with Iran at the cost of the historically close U.S. alliance with Israel.
News of Tabatabai's affiliation with the Iran Experts Initiative sparked multiple congressional investigations, with Republicans raising concerns about Tabatabai’s ability to obtain a top-secret security clearance. The Pentagon and State Department, where Tabatabai formerly worked, have vocally defended her, saying there was nothing in her background that would have disqualified her from accessing classified information.
"Dr. Tabatabai was thoroughly and properly vetted as a condition of her employment with the Department of Defense," a Pentagon spokesman told the Washington Free Beacon in September 2023, after lawmakers raised concerns about her connections to Iran. "We are honored to have her serve." One month later, the Pentagon confirmed to lawmakers that Tabatabai would keep her security clearance.
Tabatabai and two others affiliated with the pro-Tehran group served as aides to former Biden-Harris administration Iran envoy Robert Malley, who was suspended from his post amid an ongoing FBI investigation into his alleged mishandling of classified information.
And Tabatabai’s boss?
Suspicion surrounds ex-Iran envoy Rob Malley after Israel attack: ‘Worst State Department scandal’
The Biden administration’s former special envoy to Iran, who was placed on leave earlier this year for allegedly mishandling classified material, should face “extensive scrutiny” for his “permissive” stance toward the Tehran regime after it aided Hamas and Hezbollah in carrying out terrorist attacks against Israel, critics said Monday.
“Rob Malley deserves extensive scrutiny — yesterday, today and tomorrow,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) told The Post after the Wall Street Journal reported that officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps planned and signed off on this weekend’s atrocity that killed at least 900.
“These reports could not be more concerning, and they hint at what could be the worst State Department scandal since Alger Hiss,” Issa added.
“Malley and others created an incredibly permissive environment for Hamas, for Iran, to do all these things,” added Gabriel Noronha, a former special adviser on Iran at the State Department.
Noronha, who served under former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, said Malley and his negotiating team “purposefully funneled billions of dollars to [Iran] through lack of sanctions enforcement and provision of sanctions relief that has given them somewhere between $50 [billion] and $80 billion over the last two and a half years.”
A senior House Republican aide told The Post that the cash influx followed an even more generous payout of $1.7 billion that the Obama administration made to Iran in 2016, eventually contributing to Saturday’s attack that triggered the Jewish state’s first declaration of war in 50 years.
“There is a straight line from Obama’s giveaway to Iran, to Biden’s enriching of Iran — to Iran’s war on Israel,” the aide said.
Don’t trust the Free Beacon or the New York Post? How about this one, published just last month by the reliable Left, pro-administration outlet, Politico?
9/18/24: Internal watchdog says State Department mishandled Iran envoy’s clearance. The entire Malley/State Department/Anthony Blinken affair is an on-going scandal, although the term “scandal” usually includes “public outrage” as part of its definition, and this story has been mostly covered up by a complacent media.
