The Obama-Biden Iranian Spy Scandal Spreads to Harris

Is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president compromised by Iranian intelligence penetration of her staff?

Yesterday the Israel Defense Forces conducted daring raids into Lebanon and Iran to strike heavy blows at the heart of Tehran’s international terrorist infrastructure. Ever since the Gaza war commenced in October, the IDF has killed several prominent Iranian-backed terrorists as well as senior Iranian intelligence personnel in neighboring countries. However, these audacious new assassinations significantly upped the ante between Israel and Iran.

First, an IDF airstrike in the suburbs of Beirut killed Fuad Shukr, the military commander of Hezbollah. Today Hezbollah confirmed Shukr’s death. This was Israel’s first strike in the Lebanese capital since the Gaza war began. Shukr was one of the Middle East’s most wanted men for years. He directed Hezbollah’s missile barrages against Israel in recent months, and the IDF targeted him in retaliation for Saturday’s missile strike on a soccer field in the town of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights, which killed a dozen Druze children and teens.

Hezbollah’s armed wing, which includes both terrorist and conventional military elements, is practically an extension of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which created it in the 1980s. Top officials in Hezbollah’s armed wing are usually senior IRGC officers too. The United States considered Shukr a wanted man, and the Trump administration in 2019 placed a bounty on him for up to $5 million due to his central role in the Oct. 23, 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine peacekeeping barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 American military personnel. Yesterday’s strike represents the most significant blow against Hezbollah since the 2008 assassination of Imad Mughniyeh (more on that shortly).

The IRGC and the mullah regime in Tehran took Shukr’s killing personally, reacting with anger, but worse was coming for Iran. Just hours after the air strike in Lebanon, another IDF attack landed in Tehran, killing Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of HAMAS. Normally based in Qatar, with much of the HAMAS leadership, Haniyeh was visiting Iran to show the flag and attend the swearing in of Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s new president. Haniyeh is the most senior HAMAS official killed by Israel in the Gaza war so far, and his death has stunned Iran’s leadership, which responded with rage and threats of revenge against Israel.

These back-to-back targeted killings by the IDF, precision strikes which produced limited collateral damage, demonstrate not just the lethality of Israel’s long-range strike capability across the Middle East, but the country’s superb intelligence as well. The IDF required extraordinarily accurate and timely intelligence to kill both Shukr and Haniyeh with such precision. Here the usual Israeli acumen in combining multidisciplinary espionage, from human spies to technical surveillance across the region, paid high dividends. Hezbollah and HAMAS will now commence mole-hunts to locate the traitors in their midst, real or imagined, who betrayed their leaders to the “Zionist entity.”

IDF leadership has made clear that the Pentagon, specifically U.S. Central Command, was kept fully in the loop regarding the Israeli strike in Beirut. Tensions between Hezbollah and Israel have been rising for months, with many expecting a wider war to burst forth at any time, therefore “constant communication” with CENTCOM was required. In contrast, the Biden administration has distanced itself from the Haniyeh assassination at top speed. Today, Secretary of State Antony Blinken explained that the IDF’s Tehran raid “is something we were not aware of or involved in,” thereby leaving Israel isolated as the threat of Iranian retaliation rises.

It needs to be stated that targeted assassinations of top terrorists linked to Tehran is nothing new – for Israel or the United States. In February 2008, CIA and MOSSAD executed a daring joint operation in Damascus which killed Imad Mughniyeh with a bomb hidden in the spare tire of an SUV parked on the streets of the Syrian capital. Mughniyeh was the second-highest official in Hezbollah and the founder of its armed wing. He was Iran’s man from the start and a top IRGC official. Mughniyeh, not Osama bin Laden, was the Middle East’s true master-terrorist of his era, with the blood of thousands on his hands. His killing was a major blow to Iran’s international terrorist infrastructure.

An even bigger blow to the IRGC came in January 2020 with the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, who for 22 years before his death headed the shadowy Quds (Jerusalem) Force, which is the IRGC’s organ for conducting terrorism and special operations beyond Iran’s borders. Soleimani, a highly gifted killer, was responsible for the deaths of at least hundreds of U.S. military personnel, besides thousands of other victims. He was Tehran’s top spy-terrorist. Soleimani was killed, alongside nine members of his entourage, near Baghdad airport by missiles launched by a U.S. Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone.

To state the quiet part out loud: Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump oversaw the killings of top terrorists working for Tehran. Trump especially wanted to assassinate Soleimani throughout his presidency, and eventually got the chance. In contrast, Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden were unwilling to strike Iran so directly. It’s a good idea to ask why. Certainly, the Obama administration desperately wanted to secure the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, better known as the Iran Deal, which Obama did in 2015. Similarly, the Biden administration has striven to resurrect JCPOA after Trump killed it in 2018.

However, it needs to be asked whether more and worse is going on here. As this newsletter has explored in detail, both the Obama and Biden White Houses let Iran policy be driven by Rob Malley, a left-wing scholar-diplomat with a penchant for pleasing the mullahs in Tehran. Malley left the administration under a cloud in the spring of 2023, amid circumstances which the Biden administration was unwilling to explain. We know that Malley’s security clearances were pulled, and he was placed under investigation by the FBI, but repeated Congressional inquiries have shaken almost no information loose from Team Biden. Is Rob Malley the victim of a witch hunt, or the new Alger Hiss, an Iranian mole embedded in the White House in two Democratic administrations?

The mysterious Malley saga includes other players, several of whom are linked to the National Iranian American Council, an NGO that advocates in Tehran’s interests. NIAC is viewed as a front for Iranian intelligence by Western counterspies. The NIAC orbit also touched the Iran Experts Initiative, which served to push Tehran’s line on several security-related issues. IEI members included multiple Malley friends and proteges, including Ariane Tabatabai, who was appointed chief of staff to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, a highly sensitive Pentagon position requiring Top Secret security clearances. Requests by Congress for information have been met with more stonewalling by Team Biden, and Tabatabai is reportedly still in the Pentagon, notwithstanding that she appears to be an Iranian spy of some sort.

Is Vice President Kamala Harris involved with this Iranian espionage ring? Certainly the extended Malley network has been very welcome in the Biden White House, allowing NIAC access to the administration (just as it enjoyed under Obama). Harris criticized the Soleimani assassination, while her public appearance alongside known NIAC agents raises counterintelligence questions. Now Congress is asking what’s going on here.

Today, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) sent Vice President Harris a letter which pointedly inquires into the relationship between the aforementioned Ariane Tabatabai and Phil Gordon, a Democratic foreign policy guru who served in the Obama administration and since 2021 has been the vice president’s National Security Adviser. Cotton and Stefanik acidly observe that “the Biden-Harris administration is no stranger to Iran accommodators, appeasers, and accomplices. Ms. Tabatabai remains gainfully employed in the Defense Department, helping oversee sensitive special operations.” They allege a dubious relationship between Gordon and Tabatabai, as well as NIAC:

Before joining your office, Mr. Gordon co-authored at least three opinion pieces with Ms. Tabatabai blatantly promoting the Iranian regime’s perspective and interests. In a March 2020 piece, Mr. Gordon and Ms. Tabatabai claimed continued sanctions on Iran would create “catastrophe” in the Middle East. In another, they 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. Mr. Gordon was also closely associated with the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), another Iranian influence organization that allegedly collaborates with Tehran. He spoke at the NIAC’s Leadership Conference in both 2014 and 2016.

Then, they address six pointedly relevant questions to the vice president:

We request you provide answers to the following questions no later than August 9, 2024:

1. When you hired Mr. Gordon, were you aware of his connections with Ariane Tabatabai, the IEI, and the NIAC?

2. Did Mr. Gordon undergo security screening and receive a security clearance when you hired him? Does he have an active security clearance?

3. Did you request further investigation into Mr. Gordon when Ms. Tabatabai’s connections to the Iranian Foreign Ministry were revealed in September 2023? Did Mr. Gordon admit and report his ties to this individual?

4. Have you or Mr. Gordon met with other members of the IEI, including Ali Vaez? Have you met with Ms. Tabatabai personally?

5. As the Vice President do you support Ms. Tabatabai’s continued employment at the Department of Defense?

6. As the Vice President what specific actions will you take to address the issue of Iranian sympathizers, aside from yourself, within the Administration?

From a counterintelligence viewpoint, these are basic yet important questions. We’ve already experienced two Democratic administrations, three terms in the White House, where friends of Tehran exercised undue influence over U.S. foreign policy. At best, Malley and his retinue were dangerously naïve; at worst, they were witting agents of Tehran. If Kamala Harris becomes our next president, it’s likely that Phil Gordon will get a top job running American foreign policy. We need to know how close Gordon is to Iran – and by extension, Vice President Harris too.