When someone is nominated for any kind of public service position, there is a thorough background investigation. Yet they continuously miss things. People have secret affiliations and past lives they love to keep hidden. Sometimes it’s a small thing like not telling them that they are a member of the Masons or that they tried cocaine once in college. Then you have people like Ariane Tabatabai.
According to a report issued on September 26th by The Washington Free Beacon, Tabatabai is directly linked to the Iranian regime. They based their report on reports on senior Iranian officials and their email communications, as well as the uncovering of a communications network called the Iran Experts Initiative. In response to the allegations, a spokesman simply said, “Dr. Tabatabai was thoroughly and properly vetted as a condition of her employment with the Department of Defense. We are honored to have her serve.”
The State Department waved off the report, decried the intel as being almost a decade old, and said any questions would be answered by the Pentagon. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby also attempted to poke holes in the report and questioned just how legitimate it was. This kind of investigation is something they are still investigating, though, according to the report.
Later in the day on the 26th, lawmakers sitting on the House Armed Services Committee had Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sent an investigative letter. In it, they simply asked, “Ms. Tabatabai’s past employment history and close ties to the Iranian regime are alarming and should be disqualifying for anyone seeking such a sensitive position of trust within the United States Department of Defense.”
The vetting process for such access as she would have had should have easily uncovered this behavior. To wave it off as if it was a decade ago is horrific. A decade ago, we were withdrawing from Iraq, and Iran was at a jumping-off point for ISIS and other terrorist networks to use Iran for the crossing over of terrorists from Iraq to Afghanistan, as well as an uptick in attacks from Iran toward US assets still in Iraq. Her knowledge of US activities and interests would have been of great use to the Iranian people.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, “Tabatabai, who obtained security clearance for her Pentagon job, and two others affiliated with the influence campaign also served as aides to Biden administration Iran envoy Robert Malley, who was suspended from his post earlier this year for allegedly mishandling classified information. It is unclear whether Malley’s suspension is related to his connection to the Iranian influence network documented in the Semafor report.”
At least two separate instances of Tabatabai doing a check-in with Iranian officials before policy meets have been documented, with others suspected of happening. Given her deep family connections with hardline factions of the Iranian regime, as well as her stances on policies that would line up with Iranian ideologies, it was clear that the connections were not only there but ran deep.
Giving someone like her a clearance is already a monumentally bad decision. To then not only renew but also defend the renewal is so incredibly ignorant. People are being declined for having bad credit due to losing a job thanks to COVID and the Biden administration or for simply using cannabis, and yet they keep around someone with known associations with terrorist networks.
It’s news like this that makes it even more obvious how deep the separation is between liberals and the rest of us. They keep putting themselves up on a pedestal when they do something good and hiding the bad behind the curtain while acting like it doesn’t exist. It’s time we, as a pool of conservatives, band together and tell the Washington liberals that enough is enough.