An Iranian spy with direct access to highly senstive Special Ops information. Greeaaaat. The biden admin is guilty of straight up sedition/treason for not immediately removing this person from accessing any kind of sensitive information. They hammer/kick in the doors of Grannies who walked into open doors on 1/6 but they treat this Tabatabai chick with kid gloves?!? WTF??
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In response to a Tablet email requesting comment on Malley’s and Tabatabai’s role in an Iranian spy ring, a State Department spokesman wrote: “We have seen the Semafor article, which does not presume it was a ‘spy ring,’ and we reject that characterization. Rob Malley remains on leave and we have no further comment due to privacy considerations. The Biden-Harris administration appointed Ariane Tabatabai to serve various roles in the U.S. government because of her expertise on nuclear and other foreign policy issues.” The Defense Department did not respond by press time to Tablet’s email requesting comment on Ariane Tabatabai’s role in an Iranian spy ring.
Whether the IEI is best characterized as an Iranian “spy ring” or as a “regime-directed influence operation” is a semantic question that beggars the larger question of how any responsible U.S. security official in possession of Tabatabai’s correspondence could have cleared her to enter the State Department building or the Pentagon—let alone cleared her to work as a chief of staff in the Defense Department, with direct access to the most sensitive real-time details of U.S. special forces operations.
It seems likely that by the time of her appointment to the Pentagon’s special operations office, Tabatabai’s covert activities on behalf of the Iranian regime were well known in Biden administration and intelligence circles. “The hoops you have to jump through to get a bare-bones top secret clearance even without compartments or special access programs are enormous,” says Theroux. “They grill you on your foreign contacts. Contacts with any foreign government raise more red flags than Bernie Sanders’ honeymoon. Contacts with senior officials from enemy governments, classified as non-frat governments like Russia, China, Cuba, as well as Iran, are in a different category altogether—what would normally be totally disqualifying.”
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Theroux suggests that a range of U.S. authorities would have likely known about Malley’s involvement with the IEI as well—and that Malley would have been well aware of what they knew. “When I was on the National Security Council, the National Security Agency would call to alert me when my name had popped up in a conversation among bad actors,” Theroux recalls.
The facts of Malley’s involvement with the IEI and its agents are likely to have been old news within the Biden administration; the impending publication of the IEI emails is likely the reason why Malley was put on leave in April and had his security clearances suspended. As news of emails and their impending publication circulated in Washington, the administration moved him to the sidelines before Republican officials had the chance to demand his head on a spike.
Why an Iranian operative is still at the Pentagon, especially in a job which gives her daily access to classified information that puts the country’s most sensitive military operations at risk, is another matter entirely. “The optimistic reading,” says Theroux, “is that they were watching her to see what she does and the FBI has her apartment all teched up. But to be an optimist you have to believe the FBI is clean, rather than see this as a huge counterintelligence failure. Though, of course, it’s not a failure if they were complicit.”
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https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/iran-spy-ring-robert-malley-lee-smith
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In response to a Tablet email requesting comment on Malley’s and Tabatabai’s role in an Iranian spy ring, a State Department spokesman wrote: “We have seen the Semafor article, which does not presume it was a ‘spy ring,’ and we reject that characterization. Rob Malley remains on leave and we have no further comment due to privacy considerations. The Biden-Harris administration appointed Ariane Tabatabai to serve various roles in the U.S. government because of her expertise on nuclear and other foreign policy issues.” The Defense Department did not respond by press time to Tablet’s email requesting comment on Ariane Tabatabai’s role in an Iranian spy ring.
Whether the IEI is best characterized as an Iranian “spy ring” or as a “regime-directed influence operation” is a semantic question that beggars the larger question of how any responsible U.S. security official in possession of Tabatabai’s correspondence could have cleared her to enter the State Department building or the Pentagon—let alone cleared her to work as a chief of staff in the Defense Department, with direct access to the most sensitive real-time details of U.S. special forces operations.
It seems likely that by the time of her appointment to the Pentagon’s special operations office, Tabatabai’s covert activities on behalf of the Iranian regime were well known in Biden administration and intelligence circles. “The hoops you have to jump through to get a bare-bones top secret clearance even without compartments or special access programs are enormous,” says Theroux. “They grill you on your foreign contacts. Contacts with any foreign government raise more red flags than Bernie Sanders’ honeymoon. Contacts with senior officials from enemy governments, classified as non-frat governments like Russia, China, Cuba, as well as Iran, are in a different category altogether—what would normally be totally disqualifying.”
...
Theroux suggests that a range of U.S. authorities would have likely known about Malley’s involvement with the IEI as well—and that Malley would have been well aware of what they knew. “When I was on the National Security Council, the National Security Agency would call to alert me when my name had popped up in a conversation among bad actors,” Theroux recalls.
The facts of Malley’s involvement with the IEI and its agents are likely to have been old news within the Biden administration; the impending publication of the IEI emails is likely the reason why Malley was put on leave in April and had his security clearances suspended. As news of emails and their impending publication circulated in Washington, the administration moved him to the sidelines before Republican officials had the chance to demand his head on a spike.
Why an Iranian operative is still at the Pentagon, especially in a job which gives her daily access to classified information that puts the country’s most sensitive military operations at risk, is another matter entirely. “The optimistic reading,” says Theroux, “is that they were watching her to see what she does and the FBI has her apartment all teched up. But to be an optimist you have to believe the FBI is clean, rather than see this as a huge counterintelligence failure. Though, of course, it’s not a failure if they were complicit.”
..."
