There Aren't Any Surprises Here

There's been a near-immediate consensus that the Hamas invasion over the weekend was a failure of Israeli intelligence, less so that US intelligence missed anything.

NBC’s Kristen Welker pressed Blinken on “Meet the Press” on whether it was an intelligence failure. Blinken said that the violence in the region was “an attack that I don’t think anyone saw coming,” but fell short of calling it a failure.

. . . Deputy national security adviser Jon Finer also dodged answering whether it was a failure, again reiterating that there will be time in the future to look into it.

So far, only a few observers are looking at the causes of the invasion. Yesterday's New York Post editorial is a good start:

The Obama administration’s vision saw an empowered Iran as a fulcrum to force action from Israel on the Palestinian question.

Thus the Iran deal, which set the mullahs on the path toward nuclear breakout and regional hegemony they are now speeding down.

. . . Obama’s White House marketed this as “realism.”

It was no such thing but rather part of a pernicious and (as we have now seen) wantonly destructive radical idealism that blamed America and her allies, like Israel, for all global suffering.

The Trump years saw an interruption: a withdrawal from the Iran deal and a return to a close alliances with our actual allies in the region.

But as I posted yesterday, the key figure in this Iran policy since the Clinton administration has been Robert Malley. But it appears that the Deep State had developed certain reservations about Malley months before the invasion, having his security clearance revoked and then putting him on unpaid leave between April and June of this year. According to a story yesterday in the New York Post,

“Rob Malley deserves extensive scrutiny — yesterday, today and tomorrow,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) told The Post after the Wall Street Journal reported that officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps planned and signed off on this weekend’s atrocity that killed at least 900.

“These reports could not be more concerning, and they hint at what could be the worst State Department scandal since Alger Hiss,” Issa added.

“Malley and others created an incredibly permissive environment for Hamas, for Iran, to do all these things,” added Gabriel Noronha, a former special adviser on Iran at the State Department.

The problem for now is that we know that Malley had somehow gotten crosswise with the Deep State, we know nothing of the details, and the Deep State hasn't been telling us. As of late September, according to House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul,

Every day, the Rob Malley saga gets more alarming. Not only is the Special Envoy for Iran being investigated by the FBI after having his security clearance suspended, new reports allege an official responsible for supporting his Iran negotiating team was a core member of an Iranian-run influence campaign. Somehow this official was able to get a security clearance in spite of that, and now works in a senior position at the Defense Department. Between these egregious violations of trust by Biden officials, their mind-boggling $6 billion hostage deal that enriched the largest state-sponsor of terror, and their refusal to enforce sanctions, the Biden administration’s weak Iran policy is emboldening a dangerous adversary. The American people deserve transparency on the Malley saga immediately.

This was more than a week before the Hamas attack on Israel, but it's plain that thr concern about Malley was well-founded. Even as of July, the State Department was stonewalling requests about the issue:

As a senior Department official charged with a highly sensitive role, Special Envoy Malley enjoyed access to critical intelligence and numerous senior State Department, Executive Branch, and foreign officials. It is alarming that the Department chooses to withhold even the most basic of details from Congress, such as the timeline of Special Envoy Malley’s leave, clearance status, accesses, and foreign contacts. The Committee expects prompt and full compliance with its requests, and it will not tolerate obstruction of its oversight of this national security matter.

As of August 22, Chairman McCaul had received no response, which he'd requested by July 26. On August 22, he and Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman Brian Mast wrote to Secretary Blinken again renewing the request:

Accordingly, we are writing to directly reiterate our request that the Department notify and brief the Committee upon any relevant developments regarding the status of Mr. Malley’s employment and his ability to access classified information at the Department. This request is even more important with the recent news that Mr. Malley will be joining both Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs as a visiting professor and guest lecturer, and Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs as a senior fellow. Both developments would suggest a change to his employment status and that he will be leaving the State Department.

To improve communication and transparency with Congress going forward, we also request that the Department notify and brief this Committee when an Assistant Secretary or higher, a Deputy Chief of Mission or higher, or an individual who is a direct report to you, such as a Special Envoy, has their clearance suspended or revoked.

Both the House Republicans were making the point over last summer that Malley's apparent departure from the State Department and his position as a direct report to Secretary Blinken under security-related circumstances were matters of concern. In a search as of this morning, I've been unable to find any reference to a reply from Blinken to the House Republicans' August 22 letter.

We have a lot more to learn. The Tablet article I linked yesterday makes the point,

It seems likely that by the time of her appointment to the Pentagon’s special operations office, [Malley protégé Ariane] Tabatabai’s covert activities on behalf of the Iranian regime were well known in Biden administration and intelligence circles.

But this implies that Malley's intelligence activities must have been just as well known -- with the exception that Malley was a direct report, as a Special Envoy, to Secretary Blinken. And Blinken has so far resisted attempts to investigate why Malley's security clearance was revoked.

My instinct tells me Blinken will now be the first, but not the last, Biden cabinet member to go. The Republicans definitely now need a new and more aggressive speaker. My guess is this will outdo Alger Hiss as a State Department scandal. Hiss made the State Department look bad and Nixon look good, but nobody made the Secretary of State resign.