In the days leading up to Israel’s counterstrikes against Iran, after Iran’s Oct. 1 launching of 200 ballistic missiles at the country, someone inside the U.S. government leaked several top-secret documents detailing Israel’s impending military plans.
According to multiple news outlets, the leaked documents detailed the types of aircraft and munitions Israel was planning to deploy, as well as military exercises observed by U.S satellite imagery that appeared to be Israeli aircraft rehearsing for a potential strike.
The leak is believed by some to have been motivated by a desire to handicap Israel in its multi-front war ahead of November’s election.
“How on earth did top-secret US intel on Israel’s military plans wind up on a pro-Iranian social media channel?” demanded the editorial board of the New York Post in a scathing Oct. 21 article alleging that “Team Harris-Biden is leaking intel on Israel.”
The identity of the leaker is not yet known but the top-secret intelligence material, which quickly went viral, reportedly forced Israel to delay its attack on Iran.
The security breach galvanized the FBI and Department of Defense to launch investigations aimed at identifying the source of the leak.
Of all the many bureaucrats across the U.S. government who had access to the top-secret documents from the NSA and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, suspicion has centered on a woman with close ties to Iran who has served as a senior Defense Department official for the past two years.
According to the NY Post, an anonymous Defense Dept. official told Sky News Arabia, “The employee suspected of leaking the Israeli military plan to strike Iran is a woman of American-Iranian descent named Ariane Tabatabai.”
The official reportedly added that several congressional committees had been informed of the suspect’s identity, and that she has long been known to harbor close ties with Teheran.
Iranian Spy Ring Infiltrating Biden Administration?
Yated readers may recall Tabatabai’s name from articles in Oct. 2023 detailing an alleged Iranian spy ring infiltrating the Biden Administration, based on bombshell revelations in two news media outlets, US-based Semafor and UK-based Iran International.
Evidence of this infiltration began surfacing through a series of leaks appearing in Iran’s state-controlled media, demonstrating that Teheran has access “to restricted U.S. State Department emails or government servers,” a letter to the White House by Republican lawmakers stated.
The massive security breach gave rise to suspicions that a mole or network of moles have been operating in the Biden administration, the congressmen said.
Reps. Kevin Hern R.-Okla., Joe Wilson R.-S.C., and Sen. Bill Hagerty R.-Tenn who spearheaded the letter, went on to assert that Iran obtained sensitive government information over the past several years through its highly placed Iranian-American influence operatives—of whom a core member was Ariane Tabatabai.
Tabatabai was brought into the Biden administration in 2021 to serve on the State Department negotiating team with Iran under Special Envoy Robert Malley, the Biden administration’s now-discredited “special envoy on Iran.”
Malley also led former President Obama’s effort to seal the nuclear deal with Iran. Known as the JCPOA deal, this accord, with its “sunset” clauses, paves the way for Iran to build a nuclear bomb after an agreed upon delay of a few short years.
“Malley’s policy was so pro-Iranian that several career U.S. State Department officials—not known for their hostility to Tehran—resigned in protest,” writes political analyst Caroline Glick. “As Semafor and Iran International exposed last month, Malley surrounded himself with advisers who served as Iranian regime agents in Washington.”
Malley was fired under a cloud of suspicion in early 2023, following the suspension of his security clearance for “mishandling protected documents.” He is currently under investigation by the State Department.
Assigned to One of the Most Sensitive Posts in the US Military
Tabatabai, in turn, was mysteriously reassigned to a Pentagon post, one of the most sensitive in the entire military: chief of staff in the Office of Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict, or SO/LIC, writes the Free Press.
The job provided Tabatabai unique access to the highest levels of classified intelligence as well as knowledge of virtually all global U.S. special military operations, the article observed. The Special Operations Office manages secret programs and has knowledge of American forces operating in close proximity to Iranian proxies.
The Free Beacon reported that even after it was revealed that she had been at the heart of the Iranian influence network, the Biden White House hosted Tabatabai on eight occasions.
Those meetings sparked further concerns by senior Republican lawmakers about Tabatabai’s access to classified information, long after US lawmakers called for a suspension of her security clearance and an investigation into her role.
Tabatabai’s status is particularly sensitive for the Biden-Harris administration as she has worked closely in the past with Vice President Harris’s national security adviser, Philip Gordon.
This included co-authoring a string of opinion pieces in the summer of 2020 that called for the U.S. to return to its nuclear diplomacy with Iran, and to soften some of Washington’s economic sanctions on Tehran.
A letter authored by Senator Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, and Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-NY, to Vice President Harris in August brought these facts to the attention of Vice President Kamala Harris.
“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,” the lawmakers wrote.
“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,” wrote Sen. Cotton and Rep. Stefanik, going on to ask a number of probing questions about Gordon’s ties to known Iranian activists.
Months later, Harris’ office has not yet responded to the letter.
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As dangerous as Malley’s and Tabatabai’s ties to Iran are, Phillip Gordon may actually pose the biggest threat, given his likely role as National Security Advisor should Harris win the presidential election, political experts say.
Gordon’s views are so transparently pro-Iran and anti-Israel, that his possible appointment to National Security Advisor would pose troubling consequences for the Jewish state and the Middle East, no less than for America’s national security.
Under Gordon’s tutelage, Harris would likely formulate an Israel policy more hostile even than Biden’s, a Washington Post article suggests. As the article noted, Harris’ Israel policy would include “challenging Israel more directly,” “putting conditions on aid,” and would “reshape U.S. – Israel policy” in a way that is guaranteed to weaken U.S. support of Israel.
Emails Reveal Vast Propaganda Network Operating in US
Tabatabai began facing scrutiny last year after a large tranche of Iranian government emails were intercepted by Semafor and Iran International, which revealed close personal communications between herself and senior Iranian diplomats, beginning in 2014.
As the Yated detailed in October 2023, the emails secretly obtained from Iranian government servers showed Tabatabai had been a leading member of a vast propaganda network known as the Iran Experts Initiative.
This group of elite academics was founded in 2014 by Teheran’s foreign ministry, according to the Semafor report, quoted in Tablet Magazine.
The disgraced Robert Malley “helped to fund, support, and direct” the Iran Experts Initiative tasked with influencing the United States into complying with Teheran’s terms in the nuclear deal.
The telltale Iranian emails reveal how the regime groomed a cluster of Iranian-American academics at pre-arranged meetings in foreign countries. There, the young operatives pledged their personal loyalty to the regime before receiving instructions from top regime officials, the Tablet article details.
Republicans have gone so far as to call this group an Iranian spy ring, reports the NY Post.
Aggressive Media Campaign
Organized by Mostafa Zahrani of the Iranian foreign ministry, the Experts Initiative was designed to boost public acceptance of President Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). An aggressive media campaign was seen as vital to gaining support for the nuclear deal.
According to the Semafor report, one of the founding members of the propaganda network was Ariane Tabatabai, whose father had close ties with former Iranian president Hassan Rouhani. Tabatabai became a protégé of Robert Malley and a key aide.
Malley maneuvered her into influential posts in academia and used his position to help her publish frequent pro-Iranian opinion pieces in influential circles, the Semafor report alleges.
As the Experts Initiative sought to sway public opinion in favor of the nuclear deal, Tabatabai established herself as a frequent guest on NPR, BBC, Huffington Post, Al Jazeera and other outlets — while keeping under wraps her close affiliation with the Teheran regime.
According to Semafor, “In a single week in April 2015, as the Iran deal neared completion, [Tabatabai] published four articles in influential publications like Foreign Policy, the emails show.”
In some of the leaked Iranian emails, Tabatabai can be seen checking in with Iran’s Foreign Ministry before attending policy events, sharing her articles for their review, and asking for advice and guidance, including on how to minimize and negate Israeli influence over America.
“Tabatabai would send Zahrani articles she published in the Boston Globe and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, in which she pushed the notion that Iran needed nuclear capabilities not for weapons but for the “production of radioisotopes for medical purposes,” the Semafor report noted.
A Tablet article, summarizing the explosive report, notes that in one email, Tabatabai confided to Zahrani that her goal was “to persuade public opinion that Iran should not be expected to reduce the number of its centrifuges” in the ongoing nuclear negotiations.
She even requested Zahrani’s input as she crafted testimony to deliver to a U.S. congressional hearing on the nuclear deal.
(The nuclear deal was finally clinched to Iran’s satisfaction in 2015.)
“I know what a spy network looks like,” Peter Theroux, a retired Mideast analyst told the Tablet. Theroux, with over two decades of analyzing the Iranian regime and its spying and terror networks, said he’s familiar with the ingratiating tone recruited assets use when speaking to their handling officers.
Speaking of Tabatabai’s emails, he noted “there is lots of the ‘mood music’ (approval-seeking) around that correspondence, with her saying in effect, “Let me know what information you need me to collect.”
Senators Demanded Suspension of Tabatabai’s Security Clearance
A congressional investigation led by U.S. Senators Roger Wicker, R-Miss. and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa., ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, summarized many of their investigations’ findings about Tabatabai in a Sept. 2023 letter to Sec. of Defense Lloyd Austin, signed by 30 of their Senate Republican colleagues.
The letter alerted Austin that “an individual who allegedly served as part of an Iranian Foreign Ministry information operation is currently serving in a senior Department of Defense position” and urged him “to take immediate action to ensure that the Department has not been compromised.”
The senators demanded a full accounting of actions taken by Tabatabai in her role as a senior member of the secretive Iranian Experts Initiative.
They asked for the date the DOD learned of Tabatabai’s participation in the Iranian influence operation; whether she had undergone any counterintelligence screening; which foreign nationals she had listed as contacts; and “special access programs” she had been included in.
“Iran continues to threaten U.S. military personnel in the Middle East and remains intent on assassinating American citizens here in the United States,” the letter stated. “Given these facts, we find it simply unconscionable that a senior Department official would continue to hold a sensitive position despite her alleged participation in an Iranian government information operation,” the senators wrote.
The senators went on to call for Tabatabai’s “security clearance to be immediately revoked pending further review, as the State Department did with her former supervisor, Robert Malley.”
Nothing of the sort happened, however. A Pentagon official told the NY Times in September that Tabatabai “was thoroughly and properly vetted” and that the U.S. government was “honored to have her serve.”
“Last year, I called for suspending Ariane Tabatabai’s security clearance for her role in an Iranian info operation. Amazingly, she’s still in her job,” wrote Sen. Wicker in an online post a few weeks ago.
“One thing’s for certain: personnel is policy,” Grassley insisted in his own post. “Biden’s soft-on-Iran approach has made our world less safe. And you can bet that Harris would bring more of the same.”
Promoted To New Defense Post
During a heated Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week, lawmakers renewed their scrutiny of Tabatabai, and their concerns that she has been secretly assisting the Iranian regime, citing compelling pieces of evidence.
Those concerns were met with a wall of resistance by Assistant Secretary of Defense Christopher Maier who categorically denied that Tabatabai had anything to do with the Israeli military leaks, the Washington Times reported.
All the same, while staunchly defending her innocence, the Defense Department quietly transferred Tabatabai out of her Pentagon post to a new position; Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Education and Training.
Tabatabai’s switch at the Pentagon was billed as a promotion. But in reality, a number of former U.S. defense officials told The Free Press, it’s a clear step down, inasmuch as she now has significantly less access to intelligence and covert military programs.
“Everyone that is in the know understands that this is not a promotion, as Tabatabai wants to be active in the policy space, and moving over to education and force training is not where it’s at,” Garrett Exner, who served in the Pentagon’s SO/LIC during the Obama and Trump administrations, told the Free Press.
“The Biden administration transferred Tabatabai to a department “where she can’t touch any classified material,” added Exner, signaling “some level of admission” that she may not be wholly trustworthy.
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Watchdog Group Sues Biden-Harris For Obstructing Senate Investigation into Tabatabai
America First Legal, a government watchdog group, is suing the Biden-Harris administration for obstructing the yearlong Senate congressional investigation into Tabatabai, by ignoring the Senators’ letter demanding answers to vital questions about her actions.
America First Legal filed its lawsuit against the Pentagon earlier this month, accusing the agency of stonewalling its probe into Tabatabai and other senior U.S. officials for the past year, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
“The Biden-Harris administration has appointed pro-Iranian apologists and influence agents to sensitive positions in the departments of defense and state,” said Reed Rubinstein, America First Legal’s senior vice president. “Our lawsuit should shine useful light on the role that these individuals may have played in leaking or sharing U.S. intelligence with the mullahs.”
In its lawsuit, the watchdog group accused the Defense Department of intentionally slow-walking its request for internal documents and communications, including encrypted text messages, sent between Malley, Tabatabai, and any individual inside the Iranian government.
The initial request for this information was sent in October 2023, just after it was revealed that Malley had been suspended from his post amid a probe into his mishandling of classified information, and after it surfaced that his protégé Tabatabai served as a member of the covert Iran Experts Initiative.
The Pentagon was legally mandated to respond within 20 days to the organization’s FOIA request but let this deadline pass, blaming its failure to respond on “unusual circumstances.”
In its latest batch of FOIA requests, American First Legal petitioned the Pentagon, Office of Director of National Intelligence, State Department, and the NGA to hand over documents detailing all internal communications officials have engaged in, since the top-secret intelligence pertaining to Israel’s planned counterstrike on Iran became public.
America First Legal is asking that each agency release all records related to “Iran,” “Israel,” “leak,” “investigation,” and “Telegram”—the channel that broadcast the leaked intelligence.
The information obtained through this broad request could shine light on the administration’s private reaction to the leakage of highly classified government documents related to Israel.
Was everyone truly alarmed or concerned over the security breach in the NSA and NGA? Do any internal communications indicate prior knowledge about the breach or about who leaked the information?
Do any communications express clandestine satisfaction over the leakage of the secret intelligence?
As the FOIA process plays out, a lot of surprises may be in store.
“The White House has already been complaining about Jerusalem’s failure to share its war plans, but this scandal should guarantee the Biden-Harris folks learn even less,’ wrote the NY Post editorial board.
“However the leaks happened, Israel doesn’t dare share sensitive information with Washington now — not until the entire current administration is gone.”