Robert Malley – the State Department bureaucrat and former special envoy to Iran who is mysteriously on leave for alleged mishandling of classified information – grew up with Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat as his unofficial “godfather” and once wrote that Israel’s treatment of Arabs was “disgraceful .”
Malley is being investigated, along with members of his Iran negotiating team, by the House Oversight and Accountability Committee for allegedly “compromising relations with the Iranian regime.”
He has tried to normalize relations with Hamas, the Iran-backed terrorist group that killed about 1,200 Israelis and at least 27 Americans this week.
The 60-year-old was suspended under a cloud of secrecy by the State Department in June.
At the time, he confirmed that his security clearance was being investigated and that he was confident of a positive outcome, according to a statement he gave to Fox News.
Robert Malley was the Biden administration’s controversial envoy to Iran until the State Department put him on leave for alleged mishandling of classified documents.AP
“I have been informed that my security clearance is under review,” he told the outlet. “I have not been given any further information, but I expect the investigation to be completed well and soon. Meanwhile, I’m on vacation.”
But that may take some time with growing speculation that Iran financed and helped coordinate the recent attacks on Israel.
Follow The Post’s live blog for the latest news on Hamas attacks on Israel
“He compromised classified information, we think with Iran, and now there’s a broader investigation into this,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said on Fox News Thursday.
Although Secretary of State Antony Blinken said there was “no direct evidence” that Iran was behind the attacks on Israelis, he acknowledged that “Iran has a long-standing relationship with Hamas” in an interview with NBC Thursday.
Robert Malley worked for the Clinton administration’s National Security Council and was included in a high-level meeting with former Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat (above right, with, from right, Malley, Palestinian negotiator Nabi Abu Rudineh and Bill Clinton).Getty Images
“Hamas would not be Hamas without years of support from Iran,” Blnken said. “So, we know that. We see that. When it comes to this particular attack, at this time, we have no direct evidence that Iran was involved in the attack, either in planning or executing it.”
Malley, who has served as the Biden administration’s special envoy for Iran since January 2021, currently teaches at the Yale Jackson School of International Affairs at Yale University.
Before that, he served as president and CEO of the George Soros-backed International Crisis Group, a nonprofit organization that works to prevent war, according to its website.
In his capacity as a Middle East analyst, he often spoke to Hamas, and tried to normalize US relations with Iran — a situation that has earned him the nickname “Mullah Malley” among his many critics in the Iranian opposition.
Simon Malley, Robert’s father, was an Egyptian-born journalist who embraced revolutionary struggles in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. He moved with his family to Paris in 1969 to edit a newspaper covering the liberation movement but was kicked out of the country 11 years later. New York Post
Brooklyn-based Iran journalist Masih Alinejad started a petition last year to convince the State Department to fire Malley as Iran’s envoy.
“Now, we respectfully ask President Biden to appoint a new Special Envoy who can be trusted and respected by the people of the US and Iran as a symbol of America’s commitment to freedom and democracy,” he wrote.
Alinejad added that Malley had “minimized” the widespread Iranian protests that erupted after the death of Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody after she was arrested for not wearing her hijab properly. The petition has so far gathered more than 136,000 signatures.
Malley is no stranger to controversy, and has followed in the footsteps of his father – an Egyptian-born Jew and Arab nationalist journalist who dedicated his life to anti-Israel causes and the developing world.
Simon Malley embraced national liberation movements around the world, and was a trusted confidante of Arafat and former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, with whom he once held a 20-hour interview, according to reports.
Robert Malley’s father, Simon Malley, once interviewed Fidel Castro in a marathon 20-hour session. New York Post
In 1969, after covering the United Nations for the Egyptian newspaper Al Goumhourya, Simon moved his family to Paris to launch Afrique Asie — a journal that focused on newly independent countries like Egypt and Algeria and gave voice to liberation movements around the world.
The journal covered campaigns that disrupted French influence in Africa. It was banned in several African countries for supporting radical movements against King Hassan II in Morocco and dictator Mobuto Sese-Seko in Zaire, among others.
Malley, along with his brother Richard and sister Nadia, attends the posh École Jeannine Manuel, a bilingual school in Paris where his future boss Blinken is a classmate.
Robert Malley (fourth from left) went to primary school in Paris with Secretary of State Antony Blinken (second from left). Malley was part of a discussion with Iranian activists about last year’s protests in Iran. Malley is known as “Mullah Malley” to many in the Iranian opposition for appeasing Iran.@SecBlinken/X
The Malley family’s stay in Paris was interrupted when conservative French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing ordered Simon out of the country and revoked his residence permit in 1980.
The removal came shortly after Interior Minister Christian Bonnet told the country’s National Assembly that the article written by Simon “is a pure plea to kill a foreign head of state. The French government cannot tolerate this.”
French authorities put Simon on a plane to New York City, the hometown of his wife Barbara Silverstein, who had worked with the United Nations delegation of the Algerian National Liberation Front, or FLN.
Arriving in New York, Simon immediately boarded a plane to Switzerland where he spent eight months editing his newsletter before returning to France after the election of Francois Mitterand in 1981.
Malley, left, at a briefing with former Secretary of State John Kerry. US State Department
(Arafat, whose father Malley has written “felt close to,” may have intervened with the French government to help the family return to the country.)
At the time, Robert was on his way to Yale University where he wrote for the student newspaper.
“There is much to be said for Israel’s treatment of Arabs — shame on the part of those who suffer more than others from racial injustice and horror,” he wrote in one piece. “And the fact must be faced that acts of violence by the Palestinian people are an inevitable consequence of the violence committed against them.”
The elite École Jeannine Manuel in Paris where Antony Blinken and John Malley attended school. Jeannine Manuel School
After his studies at Yale, Malley enrolled at Harvard Law School where Barack Obama was a classmate, and later became a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University.
Malley worked as a law clerk to Justice Byron R. White of the US Supreme Court between 1991 and 1992, and two years later joined the Clinton administration, working as part of the staff of the US National Security Council as Director of Democracy.
In 1996, he published a book, “The Call from Algeria: Third Worldism, Revolution and the Turn to Islam.” The following year, Malley became Executive Assistant to the National Security adviser, acting as unofficial chief of staff to Samuel Berger, according to his bio on the Yale website.
In 2006, the year Simon died, Malley offered a solution to the problems in the Middle East in an op-ed for Time magazine. “Today the US is not talking to Iran, Syria, Hamas, the elected Palestinian government or Hezbollah,” he wrote. “The result is a policy with all the appeal of moral principle and all the effectiveness of a tired harangue.”
Former PLO leader Yasser Arafat is a close confidant of Simon Malley and is said to be the unofficial “godfather” of Robert Malley.AP
In 2008, Malley was forced to resign from then-candidate Barack Obama’s campaign after it was discovered that he spoke with officials in the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas — only to return to the Obama administration as senior director of the National Security Council and one of the main architects of US foreign policy in Middle East.
“There is a lot of misinformation about them,” Malley said of the Hamas leader he often contacts. “I talk to them, my colleagues talk to them, None of them are crazy, they have their own rationale. In their own system … they are very logical.”
The comments, which resurfaced after the State Department placed Malley on leave this summer, have drawn a barrage of criticism on social media.
Robert Malley at a meeting with Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani in Qatar in 2021. Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
“@Rob_Malley keep seeing & work with the apologists of the Islamic Republic who by any means want to get money from the terrorist regime of Iran! Who is this Senior White House official? Why don’t they meet with any Iranian Americans who are not pro-regime lobbyists?” said one tweet in June.
“YOU sir, are the reason this regime is taking hostages,” said another, following the release of five American hostages in Iran in exchange for $6 billion – a controversial deal Malley helped broker. “They know they can count on you to negotiate with them&give them billions of $$ to release a select few; yet you left out Jamshidi Sharmahd who was sentenced to death #IranRansomDeal.”
Malley did not respond to The Post’s request for comment this week.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
