National Review Online
Tuesday,
October 22, 2024
The source
of last week’s leak of U.S. intelligence about Israel’s plans to strike Iran,
which has occasioned an investigation, isn’t yet known. What should be obvious,
though, is that no individual who has had extensive contact with Iranian
intelligence and diplomatic officials, and who has deferred to the direction of
those officials before, should have ever been put in a sensitive position in
the first place.
The
Biden administration has ignored this rather simple rule.
The
most glaring example of its questionable handling of the Iran portfolio is
Biden Iran envoy Robert Malley’s continued employment by the State Department
amid a probe into his handling of classified materials and the possibility that
he shared information with the regime. Though Malley has since been suspended,
it’s noteworthy that the administration has opted to technically keep him in
the role, no doubt wishing to avoid the political fallout that would come with
terminating him.
Possibly
worse than Malley’s appointment is that of Ariane Tabatabai, an
academic-turned-State Department and Pentagon official. She was part of the
now-infamous Iran Experts Initiative — a program used by Tehran’s Ministry of
Foreign Affairs to cultivate relationships with foreign academics who could
carry water for the regime.
At
one point, according to reporting from Semafor, which revealed the program’s existence,
Tabatabai opted to skip a conference in Israel after an Iranian official
instructed her not to go. She also consulted with this same Iranian official
regarding how she should testify in hearings before Congress. Her job today —
chief of staff to the Pentagon official who oversees special operations.
It’s
true that the leak of documents from the National Security Agency and the
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency could have come from any number of
places. According to a former official who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon last week, they appear to
have been available to “thousands upon thousands” of U.S. officials via a
classified system.
But
it’s also true that since October 7, pro-Hamas ideologues within the State
Department have labored to leak information that would help their cause and
damage Israel’s war effort.
More
fundamentally, cleaning house of Biden administration political appointees with
questionable ties to the Iranian regime need not have anything to do
specifically with this leak. The president was wrong to appoint these officials
in the first place, and he should have fired them long ago.
When
law enforcement and intelligence agencies wrap up their investigation into the
matter, they might find that Iran-tied officials leaked the documents, or they
might not.
Either
way, as we have said before, President Biden’s appointment of individuals who
are too compromised to be trusted to perform their jobs with the trust of the
American public is a scandal — and one that deserves more attention from the
press and Capitol Hill.
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