Contexts We Aren't Examining In The Hamas Invasion Of Israel

The news of an attack on Israel leading to the first declaration of war in 50 years has mostly raised questions for me about contexts that I'd been noticing for some time. The first is Biden's recent slights against both Israel's President Herzog, on which I posted here, and Prime Minister Netanyahu, which I covered in this post. On July 18,

President Joe Biden seemingly fell asleep today while sputtering gibberish during a high-level meeting with the President of Israel, Isaac Herzog.

“The Israelis and the Palestinians… uh… on a political level… They uh, and… uh… They uh… And, I… Agwai endhole and whole shegwam… And uh…” said Biden.

My assessment at the time was that this was deliberate, an indication at best that Isreal's head of state wasn't worth Joe's full attention, however pro forma this might seem. Then there was a not fully unequivocal exchange with Prime Minister Netanyahu on September 20:

Biden noted that he worked with Netanyahu as a freshman senator, joking that he “gave up counting” how long they had been friends, with Netanyahu adding later that it had been “over 40 years.”

Biden, however, crossed himself when Netanyahu referred to the 40 years, an ambiguous gesture at best that I thought at the time corresponded to the cryptic "God save the queen" remark he occasionally makes to indicate some level of skepticism over whatever is being discussed.

Then there's the peculiar correspondence between a $6 billion transfer to Iran, whose proxy Hamas invaded Israel yesterday:

According to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Iran sends $100 million annually to Hamas, $700 million annually to Hezbollah, and tens of millions to Islamic Jihad. Hamas also uses Iranian technology and logistical support to produce arms locally. What Hamas does not produce it smuggles into the Mediterranean enclave from tunnels under its border with Egypt.

Republican presidential candidates have claimed that the $6 billion to Iran funded the Hamas invasion:

Trump, like others, directly blamed the $6 billion — “American taxpayer dollars helped fund these attacks,” he said in an earlier statement — and argued that, under Biden, the U.S. is perceived as being “weak and ineffective” on the global stage, opening the door to hostility.

“They didn’t have that level of aggression with me. They didn’t have it. This would have never happened with me either,” Trump claimed, adding later in Cedar Rapids that Biden had “betrayed Israel” with the deal.

But every story from the Hamas invasion to bite reports on poor canine Commander seem to have kept the story of the Iran spy ring from getting the prominence it should have:

The Biden administration’s now-suspended Iran envoy Robert Malley helped to fund, support, and direct an Iranian intelligence operation designed to influence the United States and allied governments, according to a trove of purloined Iranian government emails. . . . They showed that Malley had helped to infiltrate an Iranian agent of influence named Ariane Tabatabai into some of the most sensitive positions in the U.S. government—first at the State Department and now the Pentagon, where she has been serving as chief of staff for the assistant secretary of defense for special operations, Christopher Maier.

. . . The contents of the emails are damning, showing a group of Iranian American academics being recruited by the Iranian regime, meeting together in foreign countries to receive instructions from top regime officials, and pledging their personal loyalty to the regime. They also show how these operatives used their Iranian heritage and Western academic positions to influence U.S. policy toward Iran, first as outside “experts” and then from high-level U.S. government posts. Both inside and outside of government, the efforts of members of this circle were repeatedly supported and advanced by Malley, who served as the U.S. government’s chief interlocutor with Iran under both the Obama and the Biden administrations. Malley is also the former head of the International Crisis Group (ICG), which directly paid and credentialed several key members of the regime’s influence operation.

The picture that's tardily emerging from the Malley-Tabatabai revelations strikes me as analogous at least to the allegations against Alger Hiss, though it's hard even now to imagine Hiss as an active Stalinist, as opposed to an elitist dreamer. Malley and Tabatabai operated at a much more practical and detailed level, and they clearly had direct policy impacts. It's hard to avoid thinking they influenced the $6 billion payment to Iran and facilitated plans for the Hamas invasion.

What did Biden and his handlers know? Was the Malley-Tabatabai group paying any of them? Even leaving questions of payment to the Bidens for policy decisions aside, this Iran spy ring cries out for serious investigation, especially in the context of the new Hamas-Israel war.