“This latest chapter raises serious questions about how the regime obtained this potentially authentic document and what other sensitive or classified information they may have. The State Department needs to do a top to bottom security review, because I am concerned they have a leak.”
—House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), in a statement about the publishing of a purported State Department memo informing US special envoy Robert Malley that his security clearance was being suspended during an investigation.
It’s bad enough for a senior government official to have his security clearance pulled because of questions about his behavior. For a newspaper that serves as a mouthpiece for a foreign government to know more about it than anyone else is much worse.
That appears to be the case in regard to the ongoing saga of the security clearance of Robert Malley, the Biden administration’s special envoy for Iran. In truth, however, we don’t know exactly what is going on, because the administration won’t say anything—which is making Congress, or at least congressional Republicans, angry.
Robert Malley has long been considered by many supporters of Israel to be antagonistic to Israel and therefore a problematic choice for the special envoy job, since so many of the threats of the Iranian regime are aimed at Israel. Malley has been in favor of dialogue with terrorist groups that have vowed to destroy Israel, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as with Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The fact that Malley has been on leave from his position as special envoy since June 29 has raised questions about whether his behavior has been worse than simply advocating for dialogue with terrorists. But a weird aspect of the case is that it seems that the best information about it is coming straight from Tehran.
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