FPI / October 4, 2023
An Iranian spy network, with the help of the U.S. envoy to Iran, was able to penetrate the Biden White House, U.S. State Department and the Pentagon in an effort to influence Iran policy in the Biden Administration and allied governments, reports say.
Along with support from the IRGC, the intelligence operation was supported by now-suspended U.S. envoy to Iran Robert Malley, according to Iranian government 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.
The emails showed that Malley had helped Iranian spy Ariane Tabatabai gain access to some of the most sensitive positions in the U.S. government. Most recently, Tabatabai served as chief of staff for Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations Christopher Maier.
On Sept. 28, 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.”
Solomon noted: “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.”
“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.”
Theroux suggests that a range of U.S. authorities would have likely known about Malley’s involvement with the IEI 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 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.”
The Biden Administration, Solomon added, “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.”
Meanwhile, the Semafor report detailed how 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.
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