Good to read that the Biden administration has Iranian agents like Ariane Tabatabai with top secret security clearances working at the Pentagon.
She's publishing & submitting articles to Foreign Policy, The Huffington Post and Iran’s Fars News agency, supporting a pro nuclear Tehran arguing that Iran is “too powerful” to be contained and that “Tehran doesn’t need an agreement to be empowered and to strengthen its foothold in the region.”
Nothing to see here folks.......in the mean time, lets send another 25 billion to Zelenskyy.
I shall never forget an interview with Bibi Netanyahu back during one of the Bush administrations. When asked about Iran's nuclear ambitions, his response was cryptic and chilling. Paraphrasing: We know that the United States is politically limited in its response to an Iranian nuclear weapon.
Translated: We understand that America is an unreliable ally; we further understand that an Iranian nuclear weapon means the immediate destruction of Israel, and our response will not be limited by any such silliness as politics.
Anyone who thinks the Jews are unaware of their historical place as underdogs and global whipping-boys, unaware of the pogroms and genocides directed entirely at them - and further, that they are ever going to allow themselves to be gathered together in railcars or driven into the sea are fools. Will they respond to an Iranian nuclear weapon? Yes. Will it be overwhelming and decisive, and will it involve the use of their own nuclear device, which we know they have? Yes and yes.
When asked how the Jews defeated an overwhelming army of Arabs in seven days, Golda Meir replied, "We have a secret weapon." Asked to elaborate, she said, "We have nowhere else to go."
If the Iranians have any doubts what will be the wages of developing a nuclear device, I would suggest a little history lesson; a good place to begin would be the story of Masada.
Maybe I just don't know enough about the details of foreign policy, but I had a hard time following the tangled threads of this article. Is the problem that these people were acting as agents for the Iranian government when they had not been openly declared to be such?
I’m half German and my uncle was a senior official in the German Embassy in Tehran in the 70s and 80s. He was involved in negotiating the (supposedly peaceful) nuclear deals between the German government and the Shah, which was the original technological basis for Iran’s current nuclear weapons program. My uncle married an Iranian / Persian and I have numerous Persian cousins.
Persians are highly intelligent, cultured and attractive people. Their culture is one of the oldest in the world. They are not Arabs and historically regarded Arabs with contempt as primitive barbarians.
The regime that took over from the Shah is one of the cruelest and most effective governments in the world. We should have been taking Iran exceptionally seriously as a strong regional power with aggressive designs to dominate its region.
Instead, this brilliant, strategic nation has been playing America like a piano for decades. Just observing from the outside, President Obama and the Obama Administration appeared to have crossed a bright line into treason during their Iran negotiations. This article seems to confirm the infiltration of America’s defense and policy establishments by Iranian agents and the active collusion by Obama and Biden (aka Obama Administration 2.0) officials with Iran.
In a sense, this is no surprise given Obama’s betrayal of America, and it is certainly the most plausible explanation for the Obama Administration's disastrous Iran policy.
A nuclear-capable Iran will never have the scale of Russia or China, but they have perfected the deadly art of both covert and overt terrorism, starting way back with the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon under Reagan, and we can expect them to continue to punch way above their weight in the international arena. Soon they will be be able to add the threat of nuclear weapons (not necessarily mounted on ballistic missiles) to their deck of cards.
The deepest question is why Barack Obama himself has chosen to lavishly fund and arm with nuclear weapons a regime that is perhaps America’s most implacable enemy?
Well, it should come as no surprise that Iran, like every other anti-American regime, has its intelligence fingers in our government as we likewise do in theirs. That we are blessed with a free press that digs up the bodies and reports on the secret connections between the actors is our advantage and saving grace. This report is a prime example of the benefits of a free press. Good job Semafor ,and thank you FP for posting it.
It isn't as if the Biden cabal wasn't warned about these traitors. "Iranian dissidents and Republican lawmakers expressed outrage when the Biden administration in 2021 tapped Tabatabai for a State Department post, arguing that based on her family's ties to the Iranian government and the policy views she has espoused, she should not be granted a top-secret security clearance, the Free Beacon reported." Now she's working at the Pentagon and the Pentagon flacks are defending her. Just another piece of evidence that the reptilian Biden Administration is anti-American to its core. Coddling Iran is no accident. Never forget their shrieks of outrage when Trump took out Soleimani - the Iranian terror chief who had the blood of American soldiers on his hands.
I can’t help but wonder whether Ben Rhodes, President Obama’s foreign policy assistant (whose qualifications for the post was his ability for writing fiction) who was tasked with getting the public to support the JCPOA, knew about the IEI. After all, he did brag later of having created an “echo chamber” to fake the existence of a broad consensus.
The possibility of parallel but independent tracks cannot be foreclosed, but given the cross-over of personnel with Malley and both sides desire to push an agreement that seemed to undermine fundamental US interests (and should have been a treaty but lacked the required Senate support), some level of coordination suggests itself.
To this day, President Obama has never given a particularly compelling or coherent justification for his decision to embolden Iran, of which the JCPOA was only part of his larger strategy (a word I use loosely as that strategy remains opaque, at least to me).
Put slightly differently, the detailed critique given by Prime Minister Netanyahu in his speech to Congress remains unanswered. For starters, the “echo chamber” never explained how Iran could be forever barred from developing nuclear weapons by an agreement full of sunset clauses. Similarly left unexplained was how an inspection regime that exempted all Iranian military sites and providing a 24 day notice to all others, could legitimately be characterized as the most robust ever.
That Prime Minister Netanyahu was instead personally attacked for “insulting” the President by accepting Congress’ invitation to address Congress directly on the matter should have told everyone all they needed to know about the JCPOA’s merits.
And the concessions we made to Iran continue to reverberate. For instance, having agreed to allow Iran to enrich and have its own nuclear industry, it’s hard for the US to make the case to our ally Saudi Arabia that it won’t be allowed the same capabilities.
On the bright side, the JCPOA seems to have been an essential spur to the Abraham Accords and caused a significant change in the Kingdom’s public relationship with Israel.
Should all these ongoing tectonic shifts in the Israeli-Arab conflict somehow translate to Arab recognition of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people and lead to an economic renaissance in a now stabilized region, look to President Obama to attempt a victory lap and claim that was the real goal of his JCPOA all along. Don’t believe him.
It is clear that Washington DC, government, politicians,as lobbyists and contractors are open for business without regard to impact on the country. Rather than allowing the corporate press to focus on sideshows of individual politicians, relatives, etc, the focus should be the across the board on the built in risks to the country from their actions. Until then, no one is really serious about fixing it.
How much money is spent in "think tanks" creating experts? Our society is swimming in experts of every kind. Is the world a better place because we have more of them? I would vote no. This article tells of people in think tanks, and Iran funds it. Is there any news here? As a government, Iran has national interests that it wants to influence. The Obama and Biden teams on Iran love diplomacy and talk. They come from the Neville Chamberlian School of Foreign Policy. For me, things like this will happen in a free society. But part of a great reform movement is to get rid of the funding for think tanks and make these people get real jobs.
Amazing story and worrying that US intel not good enough (or maybe it is) to know what is happening.
Mind you the UK can't talk. Our Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) is a Sinophile and married to a Chinese woman who is high in the CCP and works in Chinese State Media - how did he ever get security clearance to be any where near Govt let alone one of the chief ministers!
Might be a good investigation and story for The Free Press......
Thank you for a very valuable story. It only continues the trail of influence peddling the Slow Joe regime is influenced by. Some millions here, some millions there, University Presidents bought and paid for and you have foreign policy dictated by those trying to destroy you. Makes as much sense as Iran or Russia on the UN Human Rights Commission. Yet there it is.
One can wager lots of money in betting this story never makes it to the so called main press (aka - fish wrap) or the talking heads who probably would say Trump did it or the Republicans prevented fixing a busted system. See the absolutely mentally unbalanced liberal mind set says; it's not them, it's really us causing the issues. Our actions make the governments of Iran, N. Korea, China, Russia, etc. act like they do. See way back when we were Imperialists and that somehow justifies their evil actions of today. Women and kids being killed, sold, or just plain enslaved, must be caused by the USA.
From Fang-Fang, other Dems and even Republicans connections via money and academic funding, is it any wonder our foreign policy is such a disaster. Only thing worse is the economy and the border. Yet the same liberal mindset will work to elect the same idiots again. This should be a major issue in the coming elections on foreign influence in elected officials and the academic realm. But it won't, why? We need to be worried about tranny issues and the ability to abort babies. Two main issues and to hell with selling the country for a few gold bars.
Inside Iran’s Influence Operation
Good to read that the Biden administration has Iranian agents like Ariane Tabatabai with top secret security clearances working at the Pentagon.
She's publishing & submitting articles to Foreign Policy, The Huffington Post and Iran’s Fars News agency, supporting a pro nuclear Tehran arguing that Iran is “too powerful” to be contained and that “Tehran doesn’t need an agreement to be empowered and to strengthen its foothold in the region.”
Nothing to see here folks.......in the mean time, lets send another 25 billion to Zelenskyy.
I’m waiting for trusted MSNBC anchors Ali Velshi, Ayman Mohyeldin, and Medhi Hassan to weigh in on this before I pick a side……..
Iranian spies probably blend in really well in Washington DC because, like everyone else in Washington DC, they hate America.
What does our government and the Iranian regime have in common?
They both see their own people as their biggest threat.
Birds of a feather seem to flock together.
I shall never forget an interview with Bibi Netanyahu back during one of the Bush administrations. When asked about Iran's nuclear ambitions, his response was cryptic and chilling. Paraphrasing: We know that the United States is politically limited in its response to an Iranian nuclear weapon.
Translated: We understand that America is an unreliable ally; we further understand that an Iranian nuclear weapon means the immediate destruction of Israel, and our response will not be limited by any such silliness as politics.
Anyone who thinks the Jews are unaware of their historical place as underdogs and global whipping-boys, unaware of the pogroms and genocides directed entirely at them - and further, that they are ever going to allow themselves to be gathered together in railcars or driven into the sea are fools. Will they respond to an Iranian nuclear weapon? Yes. Will it be overwhelming and decisive, and will it involve the use of their own nuclear device, which we know they have? Yes and yes.
When asked how the Jews defeated an overwhelming army of Arabs in seven days, Golda Meir replied, "We have a secret weapon." Asked to elaborate, she said, "We have nowhere else to go."
If the Iranians have any doubts what will be the wages of developing a nuclear device, I would suggest a little history lesson; a good place to begin would be the story of Masada.
Maybe I just don't know enough about the details of foreign policy, but I had a hard time following the tangled threads of this article. Is the problem that these people were acting as agents for the Iranian government when they had not been openly declared to be such?
I’m half German and my uncle was a senior official in the German Embassy in Tehran in the 70s and 80s. He was involved in negotiating the (supposedly peaceful) nuclear deals between the German government and the Shah, which was the original technological basis for Iran’s current nuclear weapons program. My uncle married an Iranian / Persian and I have numerous Persian cousins.
Persians are highly intelligent, cultured and attractive people. Their culture is one of the oldest in the world. They are not Arabs and historically regarded Arabs with contempt as primitive barbarians.
The regime that took over from the Shah is one of the cruelest and most effective governments in the world. We should have been taking Iran exceptionally seriously as a strong regional power with aggressive designs to dominate its region.
Instead, this brilliant, strategic nation has been playing America like a piano for decades. Just observing from the outside, President Obama and the Obama Administration appeared to have crossed a bright line into treason during their Iran negotiations. This article seems to confirm the infiltration of America’s defense and policy establishments by Iranian agents and the active collusion by Obama and Biden (aka Obama Administration 2.0) officials with Iran.
In a sense, this is no surprise given Obama’s betrayal of America, and it is certainly the most plausible explanation for the Obama Administration's disastrous Iran policy.
A nuclear-capable Iran will never have the scale of Russia or China, but they have perfected the deadly art of both covert and overt terrorism, starting way back with the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon under Reagan, and we can expect them to continue to punch way above their weight in the international arena. Soon they will be be able to add the threat of nuclear weapons (not necessarily mounted on ballistic missiles) to their deck of cards.
The deepest question is why Barack Obama himself has chosen to lavishly fund and arm with nuclear weapons a regime that is perhaps America’s most implacable enemy?
Well, it should come as no surprise that Iran, like every other anti-American regime, has its intelligence fingers in our government as we likewise do in theirs. That we are blessed with a free press that digs up the bodies and reports on the secret connections between the actors is our advantage and saving grace. This report is a prime example of the benefits of a free press. Good job Semafor ,and thank you FP for posting it.
It isn't as if the Biden cabal wasn't warned about these traitors. "Iranian dissidents and Republican lawmakers expressed outrage when the Biden administration in 2021 tapped Tabatabai for a State Department post, arguing that based on her family's ties to the Iranian government and the policy views she has espoused, she should not be granted a top-secret security clearance, the Free Beacon reported." Now she's working at the Pentagon and the Pentagon flacks are defending her. Just another piece of evidence that the reptilian Biden Administration is anti-American to its core. Coddling Iran is no accident. Never forget their shrieks of outrage when Trump took out Soleimani - the Iranian terror chief who had the blood of American soldiers on his hands.
Since 1979 they have been chanting on the streets, "Death to America". I am willing to take their word for that and nothing else.
I can’t help but wonder whether Ben Rhodes, President Obama’s foreign policy assistant (whose qualifications for the post was his ability for writing fiction) who was tasked with getting the public to support the JCPOA, knew about the IEI. After all, he did brag later of having created an “echo chamber” to fake the existence of a broad consensus.
The possibility of parallel but independent tracks cannot be foreclosed, but given the cross-over of personnel with Malley and both sides desire to push an agreement that seemed to undermine fundamental US interests (and should have been a treaty but lacked the required Senate support), some level of coordination suggests itself.
To this day, President Obama has never given a particularly compelling or coherent justification for his decision to embolden Iran, of which the JCPOA was only part of his larger strategy (a word I use loosely as that strategy remains opaque, at least to me).
Put slightly differently, the detailed critique given by Prime Minister Netanyahu in his speech to Congress remains unanswered. For starters, the “echo chamber” never explained how Iran could be forever barred from developing nuclear weapons by an agreement full of sunset clauses. Similarly left unexplained was how an inspection regime that exempted all Iranian military sites and providing a 24 day notice to all others, could legitimately be characterized as the most robust ever.
That Prime Minister Netanyahu was instead personally attacked for “insulting” the President by accepting Congress’ invitation to address Congress directly on the matter should have told everyone all they needed to know about the JCPOA’s merits.
And the concessions we made to Iran continue to reverberate. For instance, having agreed to allow Iran to enrich and have its own nuclear industry, it’s hard for the US to make the case to our ally Saudi Arabia that it won’t be allowed the same capabilities.
On the bright side, the JCPOA seems to have been an essential spur to the Abraham Accords and caused a significant change in the Kingdom’s public relationship with Israel.
Should all these ongoing tectonic shifts in the Israeli-Arab conflict somehow translate to Arab recognition of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people and lead to an economic renaissance in a now stabilized region, look to President Obama to attempt a victory lap and claim that was the real goal of his JCPOA all along. Don’t believe him.
It is clear that Washington DC, government, politicians,as lobbyists and contractors are open for business without regard to impact on the country. Rather than allowing the corporate press to focus on sideshows of individual politicians, relatives, etc, the focus should be the across the board on the built in risks to the country from their actions. Until then, no one is really serious about fixing it.
How much money is spent in "think tanks" creating experts? Our society is swimming in experts of every kind. Is the world a better place because we have more of them? I would vote no. This article tells of people in think tanks, and Iran funds it. Is there any news here? As a government, Iran has national interests that it wants to influence. The Obama and Biden teams on Iran love diplomacy and talk. They come from the Neville Chamberlian School of Foreign Policy. For me, things like this will happen in a free society. But part of a great reform movement is to get rid of the funding for think tanks and make these people get real jobs.
Amazing story and worrying that US intel not good enough (or maybe it is) to know what is happening.
Mind you the UK can't talk. Our Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) is a Sinophile and married to a Chinese woman who is high in the CCP and works in Chinese State Media - how did he ever get security clearance to be any where near Govt let alone one of the chief ministers!
Might be a good investigation and story for The Free Press......
Thank you for a very valuable story. It only continues the trail of influence peddling the Slow Joe regime is influenced by. Some millions here, some millions there, University Presidents bought and paid for and you have foreign policy dictated by those trying to destroy you. Makes as much sense as Iran or Russia on the UN Human Rights Commission. Yet there it is.
One can wager lots of money in betting this story never makes it to the so called main press (aka - fish wrap) or the talking heads who probably would say Trump did it or the Republicans prevented fixing a busted system. See the absolutely mentally unbalanced liberal mind set says; it's not them, it's really us causing the issues. Our actions make the governments of Iran, N. Korea, China, Russia, etc. act like they do. See way back when we were Imperialists and that somehow justifies their evil actions of today. Women and kids being killed, sold, or just plain enslaved, must be caused by the USA.
From Fang-Fang, other Dems and even Republicans connections via money and academic funding, is it any wonder our foreign policy is such a disaster. Only thing worse is the economy and the border. Yet the same liberal mindset will work to elect the same idiots again. This should be a major issue in the coming elections on foreign influence in elected officials and the academic realm. But it won't, why? We need to be worried about tranny issues and the ability to abort babies. Two main issues and to hell with selling the country for a few gold bars.
So the Obama-Biden bunch indulged in arguably treasonous secret outreach to America's sworn enemy? As disgusting as it is, sadly I am not surprised.