OPINION
We can be fairly sure — mostly because they’re boasting about it — that Iran was deeply involved in the horrific Hamas terror attacks in Israel. Even down to giving the final go-ahead.
Yet, US intelligence is downplaying Iran’s involvement. Which begs the question: why?
Sure, no doubt much of it is to try and avoid a wider regional war — which is probably why Israel is also downplaying Iran’s role — but there are also dire questions hanging over the Biden administration. Not least that, allegedly, weapons abandoned by the Biden administration in Afghanistan were found on Hamas terrorists.
Not even that Iran’s involvement in allegedly sponsoring terror against Israel comes hot on the heels of it being flushed with $6 billion, thanks to the Biden administration.
No: questions are being asked about just how deep Iranian sympathisers are into America’s top policy-making circles.
One of those sympathizers, Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group, visited the White House at least five times in the last two years, meeting with the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, and the Biden administration’s Mideast coordinator, Brett McGurk, the Free Beacon reports Tuesday.
Mr. Vaez was implicated last week in reports by Iran International and Semafor that included emails indicating he was a member of a small group cultivated by top Iranian officials. According to Iran International, Mr. Vaez failed to gain security clearance to join the administration’s Iran negotiating team.
Mr. Vaez is a protege of President Biden’s former top Iran envoy, Robert Malley, whose security clearance was revoked in the spring for reasons yet to be explained by the administration. The Department of State has repeatedly declined to comment on Mr. Malley’s suspension, citing “privacy considerations.”
Another close associate of Mr. Malley, who has been identified by the Iran International and Semafor reports as a member of the influence group of think tankers known as the Iran Experts Initiative, Ariane Tabatabai, is serving as chief of staff for the Pentagon’s undersecretary for special operations.
Unsurprisingly, then, Republican senators are calling for Tabatabai’s security clearance to be suspended, pending a full investigation. But there’s plenty more to be ferreted out when it comes to the Democrats allegedly pandering to the mad mullahs in Tehran.
In meetings leading up to the signing of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, “there was a group of people that pushed for weaker and weaker American positions,” the president of the Institute for Science and International Security, David Albright, tells the Sun. The three Americans and several Europeans mentioned in the Iran International and Semafor reports were part of the group, he says.
A physicist and former weapons inspector, Mr. Albright says that while he has pushed policy makers to tighten inspections and necessary requirements to slow Iran’s nuclear progress, members of that group constantly pushed back against measures to restrict the number of centrifuges and other tough American demands. They often did so in an aggressive manner, at times using “nasty” personal attacks, he says.
Albright says that the pro-Iranian lobbyists were notably “ignorant on the technical side”. Whether they were any better informed on the politics is also questionable: the suspicion is, in fact, that they were Tehran’s useful idiots.
Tehran officials understand these biases and target individuals they believe will put Iran’s agenda in the best light, he says. American policy makers have been known to provide sympathetic think tank voices with access to senior officials or even time in the limelight if doing so will support their policy initiatives.
New York Sun
All of this may have seemed somewhat academic, just a week ago.
But the horror unleashed in Israel just a week after Biden’s dreadful prisoners-for-billions deal has changed all that. Now, the questions over Iran’s access to the inner workings of the Biden administration demand swift, unequivocal answers.