Why does the Biden/Harris regime PROMOTE antisemitic spies of the Iran Mullah regime

1) Phil Gordon

https://freebeacon.com/national-sec...robed-over-ties-to-iranian-influence-network/

National Security
Kamala's NatSec Adviser Probed Over Ties to Iranian Influence Network
'The Biden-Harris Administration is no stranger to Iran accommodators, appeasers, and accomplices,' Cotton and Stefanik write

Philip H. Gordon (Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for HBO)
Adam Kredo
July 31, 2024
Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) launched a probe into Vice President Kamala Harris's national security adviser over his ties to an Iranian government influence network, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

In a Wednesday letter to Harris, Cotton and Stefanik asked the presumptive Democratic nominee to provide information about her adviser Phil Gordon's "connections to Ms. Ariane Tabatabai, a senior Department of Defense official who was reportedly involved in an Iranian government operation to expand Tehran's soft power in the United States."

Gordon, the letter notes, coauthored at least three opinion pieces with Tabatabai that argued against sanctions on the Iranian regime. Tabatabai was outed last year as an alleged member of an Iranian-run influence network that reported back to Tehran's foreign ministry.

Gordon's connections to Tabatabai are fueling concerns ahead of the 2024 election. Gordon is likely to play a central national security role in a Harris White House, and his connections to pro-Tehran advocacy groups suggest that renewed diplomacy with Iran will be a top foreign policy priority for Harris if she is elected.

Cotton and Stefanik are primarily concerned about Gordon's access to classified information and want to know if his ties to Tehran's enablers might disqualify him from holding a top-secret security clearance.

Gordon, the lawmakers note, published pieces with Tabatabai "blatantly promoting the Iranian regime's perspective and interests." Those pieces were published after the time Tabatabai was alleged to be working for the Iran Experts Initiative (IEI), an influence network that included several American policymakers associated with the Biden administration's former Iran envoy, Robert Malley, who was indefinitely suspended from his job amid allegations that he leaked classified information.

In a March 2020 article, Gordon and Tabatabai "claimed continued sanctions on Iran would create 'catastrophe' in the Middle East," Cotton and Stefanik wrote in their letter. In another piece, according to the lawmakers, Gordon and Tabatabai "wrote sanctions could lead to new Iranian efforts to 'lash out with attacks on its neighbors, and on Americans and American interests in the Middle East.' Each prediction was as wrong, as it was biased in favor of Tehran."

Gordon is also "closely associated with the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), another Iranian influence organization that allegedly collaborates with Tehran," according to the letter. NIAC has long faced allegations of serving as Iran's unregistered lobbying arm in America and was a player in the Obama administration's self-described pro-Tehran "echo chamber." Gordon spoke at NIAC's Leadership Conference in 2014 and 2016, before and after his time serving in the Obama administration as a Middle East hand working on the nuclear agreement with Iran.

"The Biden-Harris Administration is no stranger to Iran accommodators, appeasers, and accomplices," Cotton and Stefanik wrote. "Ms. Tabatabai remains gainfully employed in the Defense Department, helping oversee sensitive special operations. The FBI is investigating your former Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley for passing classified intelligence to Tehran and your Special Envoy Amos Hochstein allegedly passed intelligence about Israeli airstrikes to Hezbollah potentially as recently as this weekend."

The lawmakers pressed the vice president's office to come clean about Gordon's ties to the pro-Tehran advocacy world and about the nature of his relationship with Tabatabai.

"When you hired Mr. Gordon, were you aware of his connections with Ariane Tabatabai, the IEI, and the NIAC?" Cotton and Stefanik asked. "Did Mr. Gordon undergo security screening and receive a security clearance when you hired him? Does he have an active security clearance?"

The lawmakers also want to know if Harris initiated an investigation into Gordon after "Tabatabai's connections to the Iranian Foreign Ministry were revealed in September 2023."

"Did Mr. Gordon admit and report his ties to this individual?" they asked. "Have you or Mr. Gordon met with other members of the IEI, including Ali Vaez? Have you met with Ms. Tabatabai personally?"

"As the Vice President do you support Ms. Tabatabai's continued employment at the Department of Defense?" the lawmakers went on. "As the Vice President what specific actions will you take to address the issue of Iranian sympathizers, aside from yourself, within the Administration?"

In his 2014 speech to the NIAC, Gordon said that a "nuclear agreement [with Iran] could begin a multi-generational process that could lead to a new relationship between our countries."

NIAC continues to champion diplomacy with Iran and praised Harris in 2020 for committing to reenter the nuclear deal after former president Donald Trump abandoned it.

In a 2018 op-ed written with Malley, Gordon argued that "Iran sanctions won't advance U.S. interests."

"Far from convincing Tehran to cooperate, new U.S. measures are on track to achieve the exact opposite," Gordon and Malley wrote in Foreign Policy magazine. "In Trump's vision, sanctions are a quasi-magical, multi-purpose tool: They would force Iran back to the table to accept an improved nuclear deal, include restrictions on Tehran's ballistic missiles program, and give inspectors unlimited access."



For Stefanik, that piece and others expose "the depth of the Kamala Harris anti-Israel, pro-Iran agenda."

"Since last year, I have demanded accountability from the Department of Defense for allowing Iranian regime acolytes to infiltrate high level government staff," Stefanik said in a statement. "The Biden-Harris Administration policy of appeasing Iran and abandoning Israel will only worsen if Kamala Harris and her Iranian apologist staff are elevated. I am proud to join Senator Cotton to demand accountability."

 

2) Rob Malley

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/iran-spy-ring-robert-malley-lee-smith


Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images




High-Level Iranian Spy Ring Busted in Washington
The trail that leads from Tehran to D.C. passes directly through the offices of Robert Malley and the International Crisis Group
by
Lee Smith
October 01, 2023
The Biden administration’s now-suspended Iran envoy Robert Malley helped to fund, support, and direct an Iranian intelligence operation designed to influence the United States and allied governments, according to a trove of purloined Iranian government emails. The emails, which were reported on by veteran Wall Street Journal correspondent Jay Solomon, writing in Semafor, and by Iran International, the London-based émigré opposition outlet which is the most widely read independent news source inside Iran, were published last week after being extensively verified over a period of several months by the two outlets. They showed that Malley had helped to infiltrate an Iranian agent of influence named Ariane Tabatabai into some of the most sensitive positions in the U.S. government—first at the State Department and now the Pentagon, where she has been serving as chief of staff for the assistant secretary of defense for special operations, Christopher Maier.

On Thursday, Maier told a congressional committee that the Defense Department is “actively looking into whether all law and policy was properly followed in granting my chief of staff top secret special compartmented information.”

The emails, which were exchanged over a period of several years between Iranian regime diplomats and analysts, show that Tabatabai was part of a regime propaganda unit set up in 2014 by the Iranian Foreign Ministry. The Iran Experts Initiative (IEI) tasked operatives drawn from Iranian diaspora communities to promote Iranian interests during the clerical regime’s negotiations with the United States over its nuclear weapons program. Though several of the IEI operatives and others named in the emails have sought to portray themselves on social media as having engaged with the regime in their capacity as academic experts, or in order to promote better understanding between the United States and Iran, none has questioned the veracity of the emails.

The contents of the emails are damning, showing a group of Iranian American academics being recruited by the Iranian regime, meeting together in foreign countries to receive instructions from top regime officials, and pledging their personal loyalty to the regime. They also show how these operatives used their Iranian heritage and Western academic positions to influence U.S. policy toward Iran, first as outside “experts” and then from high-level U.S. government posts. Both inside and outside of government, the efforts of members of this circle were repeatedly supported and advanced by Malley, who served as the U.S. government’s chief interlocutor with Iran under both the Obama and the Biden administrations. Malley is also the former head of the International Crisis Group (ICG), which directly paid and credentialed several key members of the regime’s influence operation.

The Iran Deal




The Realignment
In the Middle East, Biden is finishing what Obama started. And his top advisers are all on board.
byMichael DoranandTony Badran




Malley in Wonderland
How Obama’s ‘progressive’ foreign policy vision—to backpedal away from the Middle East, fast, while kicking our former allies in the region to the curb—became consensus in D.C.
byTony Badran




Why Iran Is Getting the Bomb
The ‘moderates’ staffing the Biden administration will move quickly to cement Barack Obama’s foreign policy legacy, starting with its most obvious failures
byLee Smith
The IEI, according to a 2014 email from one Iranian official to one of Iran’s lead nuclear negotiators, “consisted of a core group of 6-10 distinguished second-generation Iranians who have established affiliation with the leading international think-tanks and academic institutions, mainly in Europe and the US.” The network was funded and supported by an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) official, Mostafa Zahrani, who was the point of contact between IEI operatives, and Iran’s then-Foreign Minister Javad Zarif.

According to the correspondence, the IEI recruited several U.S.-based analysts, including Tabatabai, Ali Vaez, and Dina Esfandiary, all of whom willingly accepted Iranian guidance. These Middle East experts were then subsequently hired, credentialed, supported, and funded by Malley and the ICG where he was president from January 2018 until January 2021, when he joined the Biden administration. Malley was also ICG’s program director for Middle East and North Africa before the Obama administration tapped him in February 2014 to run negotiations for the Iran nuclear deal. Vaez joined the ICG in 2012 and served as Malley’s top deputy.

Emails quoted in the stories show that even once in government, Malley directed Vaez’s actions at ICG, sending him to Vienna where the Iranian and U.S. teams held nuclear negotiations. “Following the order of his previous boss Malley, Ali Vaez will come to Vienna,” Zahrani reportedly wrote Zarif in an April 3, 2014, email. “Who from our group do you instruct to have a meeting with him?”

Vaez wrote Zarif directly after the Iranian foreign minister expressed dissatisfaction with an ICG report on Iran. “As an Iranian, based on my national and patriotic duty,” wrote Vaez in an October 2014 email, “I have not hesitated to help you in any way; from proposing to Your Excellency a public campaign against the notion of [nuclear] breakout, to assisting your team in preparing reports on practical needs of Iran.”

These emails likely explain why Vaez was unable to obtain a security clearance in order to join Malley in the Biden administration. At the same time, they raise the question of why Malley sought to bring Vaez into the State Department in the first place, and why he remained in close operational contact with him even after he was denied a security clearance.

After the Iran deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was finalized in July 2015, ICG hired another IEI operative as a consultant—Adnan Tabatabai, not to be confused with Pentagon official Ariane Tabatabai. Like Vaez, Adnan Tabatabai also pledged to dedicate his efforts to the Iranian regime.

In an email from 2014, as the agreement was being negotiated, Adnan Tabatabai wrote to Zarif about the foreign minister’s meeting in Vienna with IEI operatives: “As you will have noticed, we are all very much willing to dedicate our capacities and resources to jointly working on the improvement of Iran’s foreign relations. Iran is our country, so we, too, feel the need and responsibility to contribute our share. When I say “we” I mean the very group you met.”

In early 2021, shortly before he joined the Biden administration, Malley brought a third IEI operative, Dina Esfandiary, into the ICG. ICG did not respond by press time to Tablet’s email requesting comment on its employees’ role in an Iranian spy ring.

(...)

 

(...)

In February 2021, Malley hired Ariane Tabatabai to join his Iran team at the State Department. The emails document her cloying determination to prove her worth to the Iranian regime. Shortly after the 2014 meeting in Vienna, Ariane Tabatabai sent Zahrani a link to an article she’d co-authored with Esfandiary. “As I mentioned last week, Dina and I wrote an article about the nuclear fuel of Bushehr [nuclear power plant] for the Bulletin which was published today. Our goal was to show what is said in the West—that Iran does not need more than 1500 centrifuges—is wrong, and that Iran should not be expected to reduce the number of its centrifuges.” Zahrani then forwarded the email to Zarif.

In June 2014, Ariane Tabatabai emailed Zahrani to say she’d been invited to conferences in Saudi Arabia and Israel and asked for his prior approval of her trips. “I would like to ask your opinion too and see if you think I should accept the invitation and go,” she wrote. Zahrani replied that “Saudi Arabia is a good case, but the second case [Israel] is better to be avoided.” She responded: “Thank you very much for your advice. I will take action regarding Saudi Arabia and will keep you updated on the progress.” There is no record of Tabatabai traveling to Israel.

A month later, she again wrote Zahrani asking for additional instructions. She’d been invited to join academic experts Gary Samore and William Tobey to brief House members on the Foreign Relations, Armed Services, and Intelligence committees. “I am scheduled to go to the Congress to give a talk about the nuclear program,” she wrote the IRGC official. “I will bother you in the coming days. It will be a little difficult since both Will and Gary do not have favorable views on Iran.” Zahrani forwarded the email to Zarif.

Ariane Tabatabai’s correspondence with Zahrani offers clear evidence that Malley’s protégé was an active participant in a covert Iranian influence campaign designed to shape U.S. government policy in order to serve the interests of the Iranian regime. Her requests for guidance from top Iranian officials, which she appears to have faithfully followed, and her desire to harmonize her own words and actions with regime objectives, are hardly the behavior of an impartial academic, or a U.S. public servant. Tabatabai’s emails show her enthusiastically submitting to the control of top Iranian officials, who then guided her efforts to propagandize and collect intelligence on U.S. and allied officials in order to advance the interests of the Islamic Republic.

“I know what a spy network looks like,” says Peter Theroux, a veteran Mideast analyst who is now retired from the CIA, where he was awarded the Career Intelligence Medal for his service. During his 25 years at the agency, Theroux was frequently called on to analyze the Iranian regime and its foreign spying and terror networks. “This is how recruited assets speak to their handling officers. There’s lots of the mood music around that correspondence saying, let me know what you need me to collect. It seems clear who’s the subordinate here—what you’d call responsive to tasking.”

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.”

There is also the fact that, as early as 2014, as Tablet has reported, the Obama administration was spying on Israeli officials and their contacts within the United States, including U.S. lawmakers and pro-Israel activists. The fact that U.S. intelligence services routinely disobeyed guidelines preventing them from unmasking the identities of U.S. persons recorded in transcripts of foreign intelligence intercepts has been exhaustively demonstrated in a long series of U.S. government reports, Congressional investigations, and other reporting. Since Zarif’s communications and the IRGC’s communications were also collected, U.S. officials would have known about the IEI—and about the names of those working on behalf of Iran, such as Vaez and Tabatabai.

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.”

So far, however, the evidence points to a less optimistic reading: The Biden administration allowed Malley to push an Iranian agent into sensitive national security positions because she was best equipped to carry out the administration’s own policy—to appease a terror regime with American blood on its hands. Because the number of American officials who want to be responsible for protecting Iran’s nuclear weapons program is limited, the White House went outside the federal bureaucracy for someone who was well-connected to the regime, and would relish the job of advancing its interests—an Iranian spy.

Congress needs to demand the Biden White House make Malley and Tabatabai available to testify immediately. It must also press to interview the security officials who buried evidence of Tabatabai’s covert activities, putting her in a position to endanger the lives of American civilians and special forces operators. It’s time to find out why the interests—and now the personnel—of the Iranian “death to America” regime intersect so frequently with those of America’s own ruling party.

 

3) Ariane Tabatabai

Top Iranian Pentagon aide keeps security clearance despite ‘spying for Tehran’ accusation
By
Mary Kay Linge
Published Oct. 20, 2023, 11:56 a.m. ET

Ariane Tabatabai is keeping her role and security clearance as a top Pentagon official despite being named as part of an Iranian influence campaign in leaked emails.
An Iranian-born Pentagon official is to keep her top-level security clearance despite being named as part of a covert influence campaign run by Tehran — and being called a “spy” by Republicans.

Ariane Tabatabai appeared to be a willing recruit in the covert influence operation run by Tehran’s Foreign Ministry, according to a trove of leaked files revealed last month by Semafor.

She was previously a key aide to the suspended Iran envoy Robert Malley, whose secret ties to Tehran sparked congressional uproar.

Since early 2022, Tabatabai has been chief of staff to the Pentagon’s assistant secretory of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, Christopher P. Maier.


Malley was quietly placed on unpaid leave in June for his alleged mishandling of “protected material.”

But the Pentagon will let Tabatabai, 38, keep her $153,434-a-year job, along with her top secret security clearance, the Washington Free Beacon reported Wednesday.

10
Tabatabai (circled) was in the United States’ negotiating team over the Iran nuclear deal in July 2021 when it held talks with the Russian side.@Amb_Ulyanov/X
10
Tabatabai’s former boss, Robert Malley, has been suspended from his role as the Biden administration’s Iran envoy, with a new trove of emails suggesting he was part of a pressure campaign by Iran to get its way.AFP via Getty Images
“Ms. Tabatabai’s employment and clearance processes were carried out in accordance with all appropriate laws and policies,” Pentagon official Rheanne E. Wirkkala wrote to Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) last week.

Republicans reacted with fury to news that Tabatabai will keep her job — and her access to the Pentagon’s most sensitive secrets — and called her an Iranian “spy.”

“Biden’s DoD is REFUSING to revoke the security clearance of an Iranian spy working at the Pentagon,” Ernst wrote on X. “More of POTUS’s appeasement strategy that has emboldened [Iran] & its proxies, like Hamas, & threatened our nat’l security.”

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said he may subpoena Tabatabai as part of his committee’s probe into Malley.

10
Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst called Tabatabai a “spy” in a message posted on X, formerly Twitter.Joni Ernst/ X
10
Malley (circled) was part of the team, led by then-Secretary of State John Kerry, which negotiated the Iran nuclear deal.ZUMAPRESS.com
A Pentagon official told The Post: “The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency has enrolled all Defense Department service members, civilians, and contractors with a security clearance in its continuous vetting program, which is a process that involves regularly reviewing a cleared individual’s background to ensure they continue to meet security clearance requirements and may continue to hold positions of trust.”

Tabatabai, 38, who was brought up in Tehran as the daughter of one of the country’s leading political thinkers, has openly argued that Iran is “too powerful to contain” — and has urged the United States to align with the Islamic republic and break its ties with Israel and the Gulf states, for America’s own good.

Her background and writings cast doubt on the wisdom of the Pentagon’s defense of the Iranian-born Tabatabai, whose Pentagon perch gives her access to America’s critical military intelligence.

10
Javad Tabatabai (right) was one of Iran’s foremost post-revolutionary legal and political thinkers until his death this year. He held a top post at Tehran University and was close to two Iranian presidents.@HeshmatAlavi/X
Tabatabai, a US citizen born in Tehran, recalled Iran as “a country where one learns about hating ‘Zionists’ before being able to spell the word” in a 2014 Tumblr post, although she also claimed to not “want to have anything to do with any of that.”

Her father, political philosopher Javad Tabatabai, was one of Iran’s most celebrated thinkers before his death in February.

“My childhood … was dominated by politics,” she wrote.

A one-time officer in the Iranian military’s propaganda corps, Javad Tabatabai studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he developed a theory of Iranian supremacy and became deputy dean of the state-run Tehran University Law School after the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

When he was ousted in 1993, Tabatabai followed her father as he served as a visiting scholar in Germany, France and the US.

10
Then-Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was close to Javad Tabatabai and presented him with an award at a ceremony in 2019.Mehr News Agency/Creative Commons
After graduating from SUNY Stony Brook in 2008, she returned to Iran, where her father had been inching back into the regime’s good graces.

He became an adviser to President Muhammad Khatami and was apparently close to President Hassan Rouhani, who presented him with an award in 2019.

In 2014, less than a year into Rouhani’s first term, Tabatabai was one of three Western-based academics quietly invited by the Iranian Foreign Ministry to help form a secret influence group, the Iran Experts Initiative, the leaked documents said.

The IEI, organized by Mostafa Zahrani, head of the Iranian foreign ministry’s main think tank, aimed to boost public acceptance of then-US President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), via an aggressive media campaign.

At the time, Tabatabai was a perpetual student at age 29. She had earned a master’s degree from King’s College London but was still pursuing her PhD as a pre-doctoral fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

10
Iran’s nuclear centrifuges, two of which were inspected in June by its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, were simply boosting civilian nuclear power plans, Tabatabai argued.via REUTERS
(...)

 

(...)

Within weeks of the IEI’s formation, Tabatabai apparently delivered — sending Zahrani articles she wrote in the Boston Globe and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in which she claimed that Iran needed nuclear capabilities not for weapons but for the “production of radioisotopes for medical purposes” and for “desalination, an energy-intensive process.”

Her goal, she explained to Zahrani, “was to show … that Iran should not be expected to reduce the number of its centrifuges” in the ongoing nuclear negotiations.

She scored face time with top Iranian officials, including then-Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, to glean quotes for a January 2015 paper she published in the journal International Affairs, a coup for a PhD candidate.

Meanwhile, documents show, she used her Harvard email address to seek Zahrani’s approval of her attendance at international conferences — and even to request his help as she crafted testimony to deliver to a US congressional hearing on the nuclear deal.

10
Mostafa Zahrani, head of the Iranian foreign ministry’s main think tank, and Tabatabai emailed each other repeatedly, leaked correspondence revealed, and she sought his approval to attend international conferences.Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA/Shutterstock
“I will bother you in the coming days,” she wrote — confiding that her task before the committee “will be a little difficult” because her fellow witnesses “do not have favorable views on Iran.”

“This is how recruited assets speak to their handling officers,” former CIA analyst Peter Theroux told Tablet magazine after reviewing the email chain.

As the IEI sought to sway public opinion, Tabatabai’s career zoomed.

She became a visiting assistant professor at Georgetown University, completed her PhD in war studies at King’s College London and established herself as a frequent guest on NPR, the BBC, Al Jazeera and more — apparently without ever disclosing her connection to the mullahs’ regime.

In a single week in April 2015, as the Iran deal neared completion, she published four articles in influential publications like Foreign Policy and sat for multiple interviews, much to the delight of her Tehran contacts, the emails show.

10
Tabatabai argued that Iran may accept restrictions on the distances its missiles could travel, without mentioning the threat they could pose to Israel.
“With or without a deal, Iran is a force to be reckoned with in the Middle East,” she wrote in the National Interest in an analysis titled “Mission Impossible: Iran Is Too Powerful to Contain.”

The IEI’s activities faded once the JCPOA was adopted on July 14, 2015, but Tabatabai continued to rise.

Over the next five years, she held prominent positions at a string of major universities and think tanks — and at each stop, she voiced her Iranian sympathies.

“The balance of power is really what Iran has been seeking,” she insisted in November 2018, soon after former President Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA and imposed “maximum pressure” sanctions on Tehran.

10
Some of the Israeli civilians killed by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip, in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, in southern Israel, October 10, 2023. Tabatabai argued that Iran’s support of Hamas was America’s fault.REUTERS
In fact, she argued, Iran’s support of “non-state actors, terrorist groups, militias, insurgents” was all America’s fault.

“Iran’s relationships with these players” — including Hamas and Hezbollah — “are largely shaped on Iran’s need to overcome isolation,” Tabatabai said at the Middle East Institute.


What do you think? Post a comment.


“You know, we can’t ask Iran to give up all missile activity for the future,” she said in October 2019 at the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress.

“Zones of possible agreement” might be found in the types of missiles Iran could agree to have, Tabatabai suggested — making no mention of the threat such weapons would pose to Israel, 1,100 miles (1,700 kilometers) from Iran’s border.

“It’s clear that everyone wants a missile program, but it’s not clear how far these missiles should be able to go,” she continued. “The supreme leader has said 2,000 kilometers, others have said 5,000 … those are places to look and to think about.”

 

4) Maher Bitar

https://voz.us/en/politics/240516/1...came-bidens-senior-intelligence-official.html

Who is Maher Bitar, the former anti-Israeli activist who became Biden's senior intelligence official

Despite having supported Islamic terrorism, Bitar was rewarded, first by Obama and then by Biden, with important positions on the National Security Council. Has he influenced the current tensions between the U.S. and Israeli governments?

In 2021, President Joe Biden appointed Maher Bitar, a former anti-Israeli activist of Palestinian descent who has hosted conferences praising Islamic terrorism, as senior director of intelligence on the National Security Council (NSC).

In January 2024, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan relocated Bitar to a new position on the council, where he now serves as deputy assistant to the president and coordinator for intelligence and defense policy.

Previously, under the Obama administration, Bitar worked at the NSC as director of Israeli and Palestinian Affairs and was deputy to Samantha Power, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. between 2013 and 2017. In addition, he was a foreign affairs official at the State Department from 2011 to 2016.

Has Bitar influenced the recent tensions between the Biden administration and the Israeli government regarding the Jewish state's offensive in Gaza in response to the Oct. 7 massacre?

Maher Bitar's past as an antisemitic activist
In an article published by The Jewish News Syndicate in 2021, journalist Daniel Greenfield points out that in 2006, Mitar was part of the executive board of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), one of the main organizers of an anti-Israeli conference held that same year by the Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM) at Georgetown University.

The PSM is a student organization belonging to the anti-Israeli Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and whose conferences often support terrorist groups, such as Hamas, and celebrate the murder of Jews.

Bitar not only helped organize the PSM conference, but also explained at the event how best to demonize Israel.

Later, Mitar collaborated with the organization in a summit held by the Palestinian Students Society in which Joseph Massad, a professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history of the Middle East, who has called Israel a “Jewish supremacist state,” justified antisemitic hatred and praised Islamic terrorism.

Years later, Greenfield adds, Bitar spoke at a conference by the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, based in Jerusalem, in which some far-left activists participated. One of them was Richard Falk, professor emeritus at Princeton University, who, despite being born to a Jewish family, once said that “Hitler might have been right.” Rebecca Vilkomerson, from the leftist group Jewish Voice for Palestine (JVP), also participated. Among some of this group's reprehensible actions, in 2017, they invited Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh, who was deported from the United States that same year, to give a speech at a BDS event.

Greenfield further indicates that Bitar worked for UNRWA, the U.N. agency supposedly dedicated to helping Palestinian refugees, which has been accused of inciting hatred against Jews in the schools it operates in Palestinian territory, and many of its employees are suspected of having participated in terrorist acts against Israel, including during the Oct. 7 massacre. The agency is also in the crosshairs of Gazans themselves after it was accused of stealing humanitarian aid.

The journalist also highlights in the article that Bitar studied at the Oxford Center for Refugee Studies, where he presented deeply anti-Israeli academic works. In one of them he argued that Israel's “political existence as a state is the cause for Palestinian dispossession and statelessness.”

Bitar also helped produce a publication for a BDS organization called BADIL, in which he condemned “Jewish colonization” and demanded a Palestinian “right of return,” which would lead to the destruction of Israel.

(...)

 

(...)

How Democrats let Bitar occupy senior intelligence positions
Despite his antisemitic activism, Bitar managed to start working in the Office of the Envoy for Peace in the Middle East. Then, as mentioned above, he went on to serve as NSC director for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs and as deputy to Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2013 to 2017, under the Barack Obama administration.

Greenfield notes that even while Bitar was involved in anti-Israeli activism, he was also volunteering for the Obama campaign and at the United Nations.

Following Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 election, Bitar became the Democrats' general counsel on the House Intelligence Committee, serving as chief legal counsel to Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and played a role key in the first Democratic attempt to impeach Trump.

Greenfield mentions a series of unusual situations that occurred during the Obama administration, when pro-Israeli organizations went to Washington, D.C., to receive reports from Bitar on Israel's security without having any idea who he was.

According to Greenfield, the left continues to win political battles, even when moderates and conservatives win elections, because they understand that having their people in various bodies to formulate policy is more important. And this can be seen in the case of Bitar, who Obama put in charge of the NSC's Israel table, while Biden appointed him to be in charge of this organization's intelligence.

How important is the position Bitar was appointed to by Biden in 2021?
As explained by journalist Caroline B. Glick in an article published by The Jewish News Syndicate, in 2021, the position of senior director of intelligence at the NSC, with which Biden awarded Bitar despite his antisemitic past, is one of the most important in the U.S. intelligence community. The senior director is the node to which all intelligence from all agencies flows. He decides what to share with the president. And on behalf of the president, he determines priorities for operations and intelligence gathering.

Glick adds that the senior director also determines what information the U.S. intelligence community will share with foreign intelligence services. Likewise, he decides how to relate to the information that foreign agencies share with the United States.

The position, Glick notes, is intended to define the Biden administration's foreign policy. Therefore, it should be filled by intelligence professionals, but strangely, an activist who has helped organize conferences that supported Islamic terrorism was awarded the position after the boost he received from the Obama administration.

The journalist comments that when word spread about Bitar's appointment, Fred Fleitz, former spokesperson for the NSC during the Trump administration and former official at the CIA, asked if Biden and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan approved the appointment. Obviously, Glick points out, Bitar was not appointed despite his obvious support for the demise of Israel, but precisely because of that.

Did Biden's difficult relationship with Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu influence the appointment of the antisemitic activist?

Is Biden turning his back on Israel?
Recently, Joe Biden announced that his government would not send weapons to Israel for its military raid on Rafah, the final Hamas stronghold in Gaza, because the U.S. president does not agree with that IDF operation.

Biden's attitude generated rejection from Republican legislators and even some Democrats, as well as important donors.

After the controversial announcement, the U.S. government issued a sanctions exemption to allow the sale of weapons to some countries allied to terrorism, such as Lebanon and Qatar.

Senator Ted Cruz took aim at Biden after the announcements made by the government. "They have sanctioned Israel and imposed an arms embargo. Meanwhile, they've spent hundreds of millions pouring aid into the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, dismantled sanctions on Iran, and now are suspending congressional restrictions to send weapons to Israel's enemies such as Qatar and Lebanon," he said, adding: "The foreign policy of the Biden administration is precisely backwards. Joe Biden is the best friend Iran, Hezbollah, or Hamas could ever have."

Amid tensions between the Biden administration and the Israeli government, the State Department published a six-page report on Friday, May 5, concluding that it is “reasonable” to evaluate whether or not Israel illegally used American weapons in Gaza. The report was made under pressure from several Democratic lawmakers who criticize the IDF's military offensive in response to the massacre carried out by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups on Oct. 7.

After the criticism received from Republicans and Democrats, Biden decided to advance efforts to allocate $1 billion in weapons for Israel as a way to mend his ties with Netanyahu.

 

5) Ali Vaez

https://freebeacon.com/national-sec...network-visited-biden-white-house-five-times/

National Security
Member of Iranian Influence Network Visited Biden White House Five Times
Meetings indicate alleged members of Iranian gov’t group including former Malley colleague Ali Vaez had access to top Biden officials

Ali Vaez (Ali Vaez/Twitter)
Adam Kredo
October 3, 2023
An alleged member of a secret Iranian government influence network visited the Biden White House at least five times for high-level meetings with senior U.S. officials, according to visitor logs.

Ali Vaez, an Iran analyst with the International Crisis Group, was outed last week as an alleged member of a vast Iranian-government-controlled propaganda network that helped push Tehran’s talking points in Washington, D.C., and influence policy, according to Semafor. Vaez reportedly communicated with senior Iranian government associates as part of the Iran Experts Initiative, an influence operation run by Iran’s foreign ministry.

The meetings are raising questions about whether the Biden administration was aware of Vaez’s alleged participation in the Iranian influence operation and may have given him insider information about the administration’s diplomacy with Tehran. Another alleged member of the Iran Experts Initiative, Ariane Tabatabai, serves as a senior Pentagon official and holds a security clearance, prompting Republican lawmakers to demand her top secret access be revoked.

Vaez is a close associate of U.S. Iran envoy Robert Malley, who was removed from his post earlier this year and stripped of his security clearance amid an investigation into his alleged mishandling of classified information.

Vaez took at least five meetings at the White House between 2022 and 2023, as the Biden administration was engaged in diplomacy with Iran that resulted in a hostage deal last month that freed up some $6 billion in revenue for the hardline regime.

Vaez’s meetings appear to have been with White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Brett McGurk, the administration’s coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa. Both Sullivan and McGurk played critical roles in reopening diplomacy with Iran and engaging in talks that led to the $6 billion ransom payment and release of five wrongfully imprisoned Americans.

"The Biden administration must be honest with the American public regarding its relationship with the Iran Experts Initiative," said Alireza Nader, a veteran Iran analyst based in Washington, D.C. "Did Sullivan and McGurk know that Ali Vaez was actively advocating for the Islamic Republic’s interests in Washington, D.C.? If they did know, why did they allow the regime’s influence or lobby network to have such immense influence in U.S. foreign policy?"

On April 13, 2022, Vaez is listed in White House visitor logs as being escorted by Sullivan’s personal assistant, Hazel Castillo. Two months later, Vaez is listed as visiting the West Wing and being escorted by Kimberly Lang, another assistant to Sullivan.



Vaez then visited the White House on Feb. 3 and 8, meeting both times with McGurk.



In March, Vaez made another trip to the White House when he attended a Nowruz holiday event, which celebrates the Persian New Year.

The White House did not respond to a Washington Free Beacon request for further information about these meetings, or if they are being reviewed in light of Vaez’s alleged participation in the Iranian-government propaganda network. Vaez also did not respond to a request for comment about the substance of his sit-downs with Sullivan and McGurk.

A spokesman for the International Crisis Group, where Vaez serves as the director of its Iran Project, said Vaez often meets with government officials in his role as an analyst.

"Over the past decade, Ali Vaez has met with officials from three successive U.S. administrations to discuss Iran policy, just as he's engaged with European diplomats and officials from across the Middle East," the spokesman said. "The topics have often included the threat of an unrestricted Iranian nuclear program and ways to address the regime's regional policy, which poses a key threat to U.S. forces and allies."

The meetings are certain to generate further scrutiny about the Biden administration’s close alliance with several analysts alleged to be part of the Iran Experts Initiative.

"The extent to which [Vaez’s] allegiance to Tehran and his relationships with Iranian officials were known to people in the White House could be a subject for future investigation," said one former senior White House official. "Anybody who’s read Ali Vaez’s writing and seen his advocacy should have already known he had a close relationship with Tehran and favored Tehran’s positions in negotiations."

In leaked Iranian government emails reviewed by Semafor, Vaez is shown to have been in touch with Mostafa Zahrani, who heads a Tehran-based think tank that is close to the regime. Vaez reportedly sent copies of his op-eds to Zahrani for review before publication. In at least one case, Vaez’s writings were forwarded to former Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif, according to Semafor.

Gabriel Noronha, a former State Department official who worked on the Iran portfolio, said the White House meetings indicate Iran's network of influencers pushed their priorities at the highest levels of government.

"The State Department has claimed they have no reason to believe an Iranian influence operation infiltrated the United States government," said Noronha, who serves as the executive director of the Polaris National Security think tank. "The White House visitor logs reveal that claim to be false. This administration’s refusal to acknowledge the existence or success of Iran’s information operations reveals either extreme naïvety or yet another coverup."

Tabatabai, the senior Pentagon official who worked under Malley, is also reported to have communicated directly with Zarif before attending various policy events.

The disclosure of the Iranian influence network has already fueled speculation in Congress that the administration has been infiltrated by Tehran-linked spies, the Free Beacon reported last week.



A group of 30 senators on Friday also launched an investigation into the Tabatabai matter, calling for her security clearance to be revoked pending an investigation into whether she was subjected to an adequate background check.

"We find it simply unconscionable that a senior Department official would continue to hold a sensitive position despite her alleged participation in an Iranian government information operation," the senators wrote.

 

6) Dina Esfandiary

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...n-influence-network-biden-white-house-visits/

Iranian influence network members scored 10 Biden White House visits

At least three reported members of a covert Iranian government-controlled influence network visited the Biden White House on numerous occasions for meetings with senior U.S. officials, records show.

The trio, Dina Esfandiary and Ali Vaez of the global International Crisis Group think tank, plus now-Pentagon official Ariane Tabatabai, was outed through the release of leaked Iranian government emails last year as being linked to a network called the Iran Experts Initiative, a project of Iran’s foreign ministry that helped push Tehran talking points in the United States and Europe.

According to a Washington Examiner review of White House visitor logs, Esfandiary, Vaez, and Tabatabai headed to the White House a combined 10 times between April 2022 and December 2023 — a fact that foreign policy experts, watchdog groups, and congressional sources say shows the Biden administration has granted those with concerning Iran ties apparent access to the halls of power.

Esfandiary, Vaez, and Tabatabai share connections to Robert Malley, President Joe Biden‘s special envoy to Iran who was placed on unpaid leave in June of last year amid a federal investigation into his handling of classified information, Semafor reported. Malley, who saw his security clearance revoked, was the Obama administration’s lead negotiator in 2015 for the heavily scrutinized Iran nuclear deal that waived sanctions for Iran — the leading state sponsor of terrorism.

Malley, until 2021, led the International Crisis Group, the think tank that counts Vaez and Esfandiary as senior advisers. Tabatabai was a diplomat for a period on the Malley-led Iran nuclear negotiations team upon Biden taking office that year.

“There’s two things that are problematic here,” said Richard Goldberg, an ex-White House National Security Council member who worked on the Iran portfolio.

“One, it’s troubling that people with a track record of being very close to the regime and potentially sympathetic to the regime in Tehran have open-door access to the administration,” Goldberg, now a senior adviser to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, told the Washington Examiner. “Two, it’s even more troubling that, to this day, we have no answers on the Malley investigation and where it’s leading.”

News of the Biden White House meetings with the Iran Experts Initiative-tied individuals comes days after Iran’s unprecedented attack on Israel, a key U.S. ally that is now weighing its response. But it also comes as Republican lawmakers slam the Biden White House for waiving sanctions on Iran, a decision they worry “makes restricted Iranian funds more accessible to the Ayatollah’s regime, at a time when Iranian-backed aggression in the region is at a peak.” Until now, Iran has long relied on terrorist faction proxies that it funds, such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, to carry out attacks on the Jewish state.

To the ire of GOP lawmakers, Tabatabai, the Iranian-born Pentagon aide who was reported to be a member of the Iran Experts Initiative, retained her security clearance late last year after an internal Pentagon review. She was dubbed “an Iranian spy” by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA). And on at least two occasions in prior years, Tabatabai “checked in” with the foreign ministry in Iran before attending policy events and has urged the U.S. to align with Iran while breaking Israeli ties, according to reports.

White House visitor logs reviewed by the Washington Examiner list three entries for Tabatabai between January 2023 and December 2023, including a meeting with diplomat Laura Rosenberger in the West Wing. Rosenberger just recently departed the National Security Council, where she was special assistant to the president and senior director for China and Taiwan.


President Joe Biden arrives on Air Force One at Delaware Air National Guard Base in New Castle, Delaware, on April 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)
The point person for Tabatabai’s other visits was Vanessa Millones, special assistant to the president for presidential personnel and an Obama White House alumna, according to records. Those 2023 meetings were in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, the records show.

“The Biden administration’s collusion with Iran is arguably the most ignored political story in the last two years,” a senior GOP congressional aide told the Washington Examiner. “There’d be wall-to-wall mainstream media news coverage if a Republican administration had been crazy enough to engage with, say, a Russian influence network in the way that the Biden administration actually has engaged with an Iranian influence network.”

The Defense Department did not return a request for comment. Tabatabai and Esfandiary were touted as “the core group” of the covert Iran Experts Initiative in 2014 by Iranian official Saeed Khatibzadeh, a former spokesman for the country’s foreign ministry, Semafor reported.

In June 2022, Esfandiary visited the White House on back-to-back days in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, according to visitor logs. Her point person was Stephanie Hallett, the deputy chief of mission for the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.

In a statement to the Washington Examiner, a spokesperson for the International Crisis Group said Esfandiary “frequently meets with government officials, offering her insights and analysis.”

“Over the past decade, Esfandiary has met with officials from numerous U.S. administrations to discuss matters concerning Iran, the Gulf, and Middle East policy,” the spokesperson said. “She has also met with diplomats and officials from across Europe and the Middle East. The discussions included topics such as Middle East security, Gulf Arab relations, and Iran’s relations, including ways to address the Iranian regime’s regional power projection.”

Vaez, the International Crisis Group adviser, has visited the Biden White House at least five times, the Washington Free Beacon reported, noting that the meetings were likely with White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Brett McGurk, the Biden administration’s Middle East and North Africa coordinator.

The think tank said last October that Vaez “has met with officials from three successive U.S. administrations to discuss Iran policy, just as he’s engaged with European diplomats and officials from across the Middle East.”

Nevertheless, the Biden administration should be transparent and disclose information about its various meetings with the Iran Experts Initiative-tied individuals, particularly given heightened national security concerns over recent attacks on Israel, said Tom Jones, the director of the American Accountability Foundation watchdog group.

“Whether it’s personnel actions or diplomacy, the Biden administration’s close ties to the Mullah’s enablers should trouble everyone,” Jones said.

The White House did not return a request for comment.

 

Meet the Israel-haters at the top of Biden’s pro-Iran government

Americans have looked on in horror as pro-Hamas sympathy and genocidal Jew-hatred have erupted across college campuses, on city streets and up to Capitol Hill in the aftermath of the jihadist group’s monstrous Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

But perhaps even more horrific is how prevalent the “buttoned-up” version of this worldview is at the highest echelons of the US national-security and foreign-policy apparatus — and how the Biden administration’s Middle East agenda reflects it.

For the latest example, look to the social-media accounts of the CIA’s associate deputy director for analysis.

Amy McFadden, a decorated intelligence officer once responsible for overseeing the production of the all-important President’s Daily Brief, shared Palestinian propaganda on her Facebook page just two weeks after the Black Sabbath massacre, the Financial Times reports.


The woman who serves as one of three officials “responsible for approving all analysis disseminated inside the agency” changed her cover photo to an image of a man waving a Palestinian flag in a keffiyeh-patterned shirt — a design euphemistically referred to as a symbol of Palestinian “solidarity” popularized by the late Palestine Liberation Organization terrorist-in-chief Yasser Arafat.

McFadden previously posted “a selfie with a sticker saying ‘Free Palestine’ superimposed on the photograph,” FT says.

It is bad enough for an American official to share a domestic political message on social media.

It’s infinitely worse when not just any official but a senior intelligence hand publicly promotes a foreign political cause — in this instance, Palestinian nationalism, right after Hamas’ Nazis executed a catastrophic and savage attack overwhelmingly supported by Palestinian Arabs against one of America’s foremost allies.

The Free Beacon adds that McFadden had in recent days liked a LinkedIn post from the International Crisis Group promoting an article critical of Israel for “making the utter defeat of Hamas its top priority.”

Another senior Biden national-security official once led that very conflict-resolution-focused nonprofit.

His name is Rob Malley.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama sidelined Malley as an adviser when it was revealed that while leading the ICG’s Middle East program, the Hamas apologist had met with the group’s members.

Nevertheless, Malley resurfaced as President Obama’s lead negotiator on the Iran nuclear deal, a pact that enriched and empowered the world’s leading state sponsor of jihad — including its proxy Hamas.

Today, Malley has been sidelined again, this time from the Biden State Department, where he was working as special envoy to Iran to reprise the nuclear deal.

Malley had his security clearance pulled, went on leave and is under FBI investigation.

Why? Perhaps because evidence indicates the ICG hired analysts — serving under Malley while he was its president — who participated in an Iranian influence operation against America.

Malley recruited one alleged agent of influence, Ariane Tabatabai, to serve on his Biden administration Iran team.

She would leave and become chief of staff to the Pentagon’s assistant secretary of defense for special operations.

As The Post’s Miranda Devine reports, Tabatabai also recently became a US reserve naval intelligence officer.

Despite being rumored to be under investigation, Tabatabai has somehow retained her high-level security clearance.

Another high-level Israel-hater: Maher Bitar, the senior director for intelligence programs at the National Security Council.

While a boycott-divestment-sanctions activist as a Georgetown student, he served as an executive board member for Students for Justice in Palestine, organizing virulently anti-Israel conferences.

He then interned at the Hamas-captured UN Relief and Works Agency and pursued like-minded think-tank and academic work — building a paper trail of writings demonizing Israel — before working his way to the top of the US national-security apparatus.

Imagine the extent to which these four individuals alone may have compromised our security.

Then consider the impact of the hundreds of like-minded officials who have signed onto dissent cables and protest letters since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war, demanding the administration work to impose a cease-fire — rewarding and protecting Hamas while punishing and imperiling Israel.

Finally, recognize that while less radical and radioactive on their face, top officials such as Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan have overseen a Middle East policy consistent with the one they pursued during the Obama-Biden administration.

Team Biden’s overarching goal has been once again to make Iran the regional strong horse, coddling the mullocracy and its proxies as if they are pillars of stability in the region and putting the screws to Israel, as if it is the key irritant.

Post-Oct. 7, the Biden administration has provided rhetorical support for Israel and to date continued to provide it with munitions.

But it is arguably trying to maintain the sinister status quo to the greatest extent politically possible, and Israel self-evidently feels it must play nice given Team Biden’s leverage over it.

The White House has sought to protect Iran by de-linking it from the attack its Hamas proxy perpetrated; refusing to enforce, snap back and impose new sanctions on the mullocracy; and deterring Israel from striking Hezbollah while letting Iran’s proxies attack American assets with impunity.

On the other hand, the White House has delayed, micromanaged, imposed suffocating strictures on and executed a whisper campaign against Israel’s leader of and now pressured it into freezing its offensive against Hamas, effectively resupplying the terrorist group.

What’s more, Washington has sought to pre-dictate the terms of “peace” in Gaza, calling for Hamas-lite — the Palestinian Authority — to rule over the strip and perhaps a Palestinian state.

One can draw a clear link from the Biden administration’s personnel to its policy.

The administration may claim its jihadist appeasement and hostility toward Israel is somehow in good faith and rooted in the US national interest.

But the reality is it’s pursuing a policy increasingly indistinguishable from that championed by the progressives and Islamists on the march in America and across the West.

 

The really alarming thing is how Kamala Harris deliberately surrounds herself with Israel-hating Iranian spies.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-820587

Kamala Harris’s alarming election campaign appointments - opinion

In any normal year, people with such radical records wouldn’t be allowed near a presidential campaign, let alone given senior appointments, but radical anti-Zionism is common in today’s Democrats.
By ABRAHAM KATSMAN
SEPTEMBER 18, 2024 03:55

US VICE PRESIDENT Kamala Harris is flanked by French President Emmanuel Macron and her national security advisor, Phil Gordon, during a briefing at NASA Headquarters in Washington, in 2022.
(photo credit: KEVIN LAMARQUE/REUTERS)

If there is one reliable political rule, it is: “Personnel is policy.” In a US presidential election, a candidate’s appointments to important campaign posts are the most accurate indicators of how an administration will govern. Candidates may spew sound-bites reflecting all manner of half-baked proposals during a campaign, but the appointed executive staff fleshes out those policies and brings them to life post-election.

These appointees are particularly influential where a candidate, like Kamala Harris, is no master of policy detail. Contrast Harris with, say, policy wonk Hillary Clinton, and Harris’s policy shortcomings appear stark. Thus, Harris’s advisers will have an outsized role in shaping her administration’s policies.

Harris’s own Israel-related record, statements, political allies, and vice-presidential choice are already unsettling, and her party’s unmistakable de-Zionization is already problematic; but her campaign appointments have ominous implications for a Harris-administration US-Israel relationship.



However she now repackages herself, Harris has a decidedly left-leaning ideological orientation: support for government-imposed price controls, reparations for slavery two centuries ago, and lukewarm support of Israel. Her impeccable progressive credentials are reinforced by her Senate voting record: according to nonpartisan GovTrack.us, she was the single-most left-wing senator – to the left of socialist Bernie Sanders. On the political landscape, that is “squad” territory.

But while she may assert hazy Israel-related platitudes along with her policy reversals calibrated to sound more palatably centrist, her newly appointed aides and Mideast advisers are not similarly coy about their own Israel orientation. Theirs is clear, and it is menacing.


Democratic presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris waves from the stage on Day 1 of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) at the United Center in Chicago on August 19. (credit: BRENDAN MCDERMID/REUTERS)
The newest appointment
Brenda Abdelall is Harris’s newest appointment to lead outreach to the Arab-American community. She is an Egyptian-American lawyer and Muslim rights activist and recent senior counselor to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro (“The Border is Secure”) Mayorkas.

“The Zionists have a strong voice in American politics; I would say they’re controlling a lot of it,” Abdelall said at a convention of the American Muslim Council, a Muslim Brotherhood-supported organization founded by a terror facilitator on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list. Notably, Hillary Clinton refused AMC campaign donations; more notably, Abdelall’s mother founded the Ann Arbor, Michigan, AMC chapter.

Abdelall’s specific role, as described in the Arab community press, is “to woo Arab-American voters outraged by the Biden administration’s unbridled support for Israel’s genocidal war in besieged Gaza.” Just what, precisely, will be the substance of such wooing?

The Harris campaign had just hired Nasrina Bargzie to also “lead outreach to Muslim and Arab voters.” Bargzie has been an advisor to Harris on “Muslim, Arab, and Gaza-related issues.” Her tenure corresponds with Harris’s increased criticism of Israel, including statements implying that Israel “intentionally” targets civilians.

Bargzie has worked closely with Hamas-affiliated CAIR and vocally defends Students for Justice in Palestine, the radical campus thugs making Jewish university life intolerable and celebrating Hamas terror. (SJP was recently banned from several campuses).

While Jewish students warily navigate “anti-Zionist” campuses, Bargzie has argued that even investigations of SJP hostilities violate free speech, and that complaining Jewish students and organizations engage in “organized legal bullying.” She was one of the attorneys who caused the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to close three investigations against University of California schools regarding whether Palestinian rights activism created an antisemitic climate. In other words, she has worked to block efforts to combat campus antisemitism and protect Jewish students from hostile environments.

Harris might have balanced those appointments with her choice of director of Jewish outreach. Alas, quite the opposite; she appointed Ilan Goldenberg, who, on the Zionist spectrum, falls on J Street’s left-most fringe. His history is of zealous advocacy on behalf of Iran’s Islamist regime and the JCPOA (the Iran nuclear agreement).

Plus, he is the architect of the administration’s pernicious sanctions on growing numbers of Jewish Israelis – including US citizens – whose political persuasions are at odds with the administration’s. Under the guise of combating “settler violence,” the sanctions have metastasized to entwine non-settlers and non-violence. Sanctions summarily imposed with no due process against Jews. “Outreach,” indeed.

More worrisome, such campaign liaison/outreach positions are usually filled by junior staffers who maintain contact with community organizations and federations. But Harris’s appointments are senior level and already steer policy. They are in line for administration policymaking positions.

Others in Harris’s shadow administration cause further concern. Her national security advisor, Phil Gordon, an advocate of rapprochement with the Islamic Republic, has worked so closely with pro-ayatollah lobbyists and likely Iranian agents that he is the subject of a congressional investigation.

Harris’s presumed director of national intelligence is Palestinian-American Maher Bitar, a former leader of Students for Justice in Palestine who worked for UNRWA and for the rabidly anti-Israel Foundation for Middle East Peace.

In any normal year, people with such radical records wouldn’t be allowed near a presidential campaign, let alone given senior appointments, but radical anti-Zionism is unremarkable in today’s Democratic Party. Whatever one’s usual party preference or feelings about the Republican nominee, it is crucial for Israel sympathizers to face this election alert to developing dangers and be appropriately alarmed.

 

This person belongs in jail, not in the Pentagon.