Iran influence operation targets Biden

 Washington Examiner:

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.

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 “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.”

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Biden's dealing with Iran is inexplicable.  It makes no sense. 

See also:

Sen. John Kennedy Wrecks Biden Over Iran Appeasement, 'Go to Amazon and Buy a Spine Online'