About the leak of U.S. intelligence on Israel’s plans to strike Iran

The source of last week’s leak of U.S. intelligence about Israel’s plans to strike Iran, which has occasioned an investigation, isn’t yet known. What should be obvious, though, is that no individual who has had extensive contact with Iranian intelligence and diplomatic officials, and who has deferred to the direction of those officials before, should have ever been put in a sensitive position in the first place.

The most glaring example of its questionable handling of the Iran portfolio is Biden Iran envoy Robert Malley’s continued employment by the State Department amid a probe into his handling of classified materials and the possibility that he shared information with the regime. Though Malley has since been suspended, it’s noteworthy that the administration has opted to technically keep him in the role, no doubt wishing to avoid the political fallout that would come with terminating him.

Possibly worse than Malley’s appointment is that of Ariane Tabatabai, an academic-turned-State Department and Pentagon official. She was part of the now-infamous Iran Experts Initiative — a program used by Tehran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to cultivate relationships with foreign academics who could carry water for the regime.

At one point, according to reporting from Semafor, which revealed the program’s existence, Tabatabai opted to skip a conference in Israel after an Iranian official instructed her not to go. She also consulted with this same Iranian official regarding how she should testify in hearings before Congress. Her job today — chief of staff to the Pentagon official who oversees special operations.

It’s true that the leak of documents from the National Security Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency could have come from any number of places. According to a former official who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon last week, they appear to have been available to “thousands upon thousands” of U.S. officials via a classified system.

But it’s also true that since October 7, pro-Hamas ideologues within the State Department have labored to leak information that would help their cause and damage Israel’s war effort.

More fundamentally, cleaning house of Biden administration political appointees with questionable ties to the Iranian regime need not have anything to do specifically with this leak. The president was wrong to appoint these officials in the first place, and he should have fired them long ago.

When law enforcement and intelligence agencies wrap up their investigation into the matter, they might find that Iran-tied officials leaked the documents, or they might not.

Either way, as I have said before, President Biden’s appointment of individuals who are too compromised to be trusted to perform their jobs with the trust of the American public is a scandal — and one that deserves more attention from the press and Capitol Hill.