An Iranian-born Pentagon aide, revealed earlier this year as part of a years-long Teheran-backed influence operation, also sought to undermine a prominent group opposed to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to a new report sent to President Biden.
Ariane Tabatabai has retained her security clearance and her position as chief of staff to the Pentagon’s assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict — despite a shocking Semafor report in September detailing her ties to senior Iranian Foreign Ministry officials.
But Tabatabai and founding members of the influence operation, known as the Iran Expert Initiative, were also involved in a “covert campaign” to discredit the country’s leading opposition group, known as the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), according to reports recently confirmed by former vice president national security adviser Lincoln Bloomfield and written by a University of Baltimore professor.
“By seeking to neutralize favorable perceptions of the organization among Washington’s foreign policy elite, Tehran seeks to bring down an entity capable of aiding Western attempts to curb the Iranian regime’s nuclear weapons program, aggravating regional agenda, human rights abuses, and fundamentalist tendencies,” writes Ivan Sascha Sheehan, associate dean of UB’s College of Public Affairs.
“By targeting such a highly effective opposition organization, the operatives hope to leave US officials with the false impression that there is no viable alternative to the ayatollah — and certainly none with a pro-democracy record who remains committed to overthrowing clerical rule.”
Ariane Tabatabai has retained her security clearance and her position as chief of staff to the Pentagon’s assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Sheehan delivered his report to Biden on Monday, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Post, and is planning a special briefing with members of Congress on Tuesday to highlight the alleged spying efforts.
The professor noted in his letter to the president that a former member of the European Parliament, Alejo Vidal-Quadras Roca, had also supported the report’s findings — and was nearly killed in Madrid last week, an attack Sheehan warned Biden about. associated with the Iranian regime.
Roca was shot in the jaw in broad daylight by a motorcycle rider wearing a helmet who quickly fled, according to reports. The Spanish politician was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries.
The Iran Experts Initiative — founded by Tabatabai, fellow academic Dina Esfandiary and Saeed Khatibzadeh, an Iranian diplomat who currently serves as the regime’s deputy foreign minister — connected with the head of a think tank tied to Iran’s Foreign Ministry, Mostafa Zahrani, beginning in March 2014, months after the US began negotiations for a nuclear deal with Tehran.
An Iranian-born Pentagon aide sought to undermine a prominent group opposed to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to a new report.ZUMAPRESS.com
Academics exchanged draft op-eds with their Iranian counterparts who supported the Obama administration signing the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, in which Iran agreed to reduce its uranium enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief.
According to Sheehan, the Iran Expert Initiative also wrote op-eds to “slander” opinion “against regime democracy” and seek “to prevent a shift in the US government toward a realistic policy of regime change in Iran.”
“These views include beliefs such as, ‘According to Khamenei’s fatwa, nuclear bombs are not Halal in the Shia faith and therefore will not be developed by a theocratic regime’ and ‘the regime has no viable alternative and the MEK is not liked in Iran, and therefore this regime necessary and will remain despite the dissatisfaction,’” he wrote.
The report was sent to Biden on Monday, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Post.AFP via Getty Images
Tabatabai, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies, in his professorial role sought to “repeat what the regime’s club-wielding hooligans told students and protesters,” according to Sheehan.
“Protests, discontent, reform efforts are part and parcel of Iranian public life,” Tabatabai told attendees at a January 2020 violence panel at Georgetown University, the report said.
“Now the question for me is, ‘Did the regime manage to control this discontent?’ So far, the answer is yes,” he said. “If you go back to 2009, and then in 2012, and then 2017 and 2018, people were predicting that the Islamic Republic would collapse.”
“And, actually, there’s a running joke in Iranian families, which is, you know, ‘God willing, next year in Tehran.’ Right, but ‘God willing, next year in Tehran’ has been blocked for 41 years,” he added. “So we shouldn’t make policy based on what we hope will happen. We should think about the political reality and deal with it and make policy accordingly.”
Tabatabai and members of the Iran Expert Initiative are involved in a “covert campaign” to discredit the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), which is led by Maryam Rajavi (above).AFP via Getty Images
Tabatabai briefly worked at the start of the Biden administration for then-special envoy for Iran Robert Malley before leaving for the Pentagon.
The FBI is investigating Malley after his security clearance was revoked in April for alleged mishandling of classified information – which has received new scrutiny following reports that Iran helped plan and sign off on Hamas’s October 7 surprise attack on Israel.
Bloomfield told The Post in a statement that many reports in the Western media about the brutal attack, which killed 1,200 Israelis, have tried to “swallow and spread” the narrative of the Iranian regime denying their involvement – which he said is another example of how the influence operation works.
The Iran Expert Initiative also wrote an op-ed to “slander” the opinions of the “regime’s anti-democrats.” Anadolu via Getty Images
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) is weighing his own subpoenas for both Malley and Tabatabai to reveal the extent of their ties to Tehran.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and 30 other Senate Republicans signed a September letter urging the Pentagon to revoke Tabatabai’s security clearance and conduct an investigation into his regime ties following the Semafor report.
A Defense Department official later informed the GOP senator that Tabatabai’s hiring followed “appropriate law and policy” and that his security clearance was subject to regular review, according to a copy of an Oct. 13 letter to members reviewed by The Post.
Leftist students formed the MEK in 1965 as a radical alternative to the authoritarian rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, which had seen almost all of its members arrested and executed.
Remaining members of the MEK allegedly carried out assassinations of both Iranian officials and US military service members and civilians in the 1970s.
Tabatabai, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies, in his professorial role sought “to repeat what the regime’s club-wielding hooligans were saying to students and protesters,” according to Sheehan.Center for a New American Security
Massoud Rajavi, one of its surviving members, was briefly imprisoned for his participation but later released during the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which overthrew the shah.
Iran’s former Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini seized power during the country’s presidential election the following year, then ordered the army to open fire in June 1981 on a group of protesters who opposed him.
Khomeini’s army rounded up 30,000 dissidents in the following years, most of whom supported the MEK and were executed in 1988.
Maryam Rajavi, Massoud Rajavi’s wife, led the MEK together after the couple was exiled. Her husband disappeared before the Iraq war began in 2003, and it is unclear if he is still alive.
The State Department listed it as a foreign terrorist organization until 2012. Tabatabai has repeatedly drawn attention to the MEK’s radical past in his writings.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
