Senator Jim Risch, Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, suggested Thursday that his committee might issue a subpoena to get details about what led to the downfall of former Iran envoy, Robert Malley.
Malley was appointed by President Joe Biden in early 2021 as the administration announced its plans to begin talks with Iran to revive the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal. For many years, he had been an advocate of engagement –and not isolation– of the Islamic Republic.
After 18 months of multi-lateral talks with Iran in Vienna it became finally apparent that Tehran was not inclined to accept Western proposals, and the talks broke down.
In April 2023, Malley was noticed to be absent. Iran International was first to report two months later that Malley had been placed on compulsory leave and had his security clearance suspended.
For more than a year now, members of US Congress have been trying to figure out “what he did, when he did it, and how much damage he has cost US national security,” in the words of Risch, who grilled the Deputy Secretary of State, Rich Verma, during a committee hearing on Thursday.
“The Rob Malley saga has been wildly out of control,” Senator Risch said. “Your department has failed to respond for months… We can’t help but conclude there’s an orchestrated effort to obscure the facts from Congress… and we probably won’t get answers until we agree to issue a subpoena.”
Last week, two influential congressmen suggested that Malley had lost his security clearance because he had transferred classified documents to his personal email and cell phone, and the documents were then stolen by a hostile “cyber actor.”
“Can you confirm that a malign cyber actor actually gained access to Mr. Malley’s personal email,” Senator Risch asked Verma –to which Verma replied, “I’m not in a position to speak to the status of the investigation or anything related to it.”
The Malley ‘saga’, as Risch put it Thursday, is set against the backdrop of growing concerns over Iran’s “influence” operations in the US. In fact, Rob Malley’s case seems to be a significant factor in such concerns.
Only a day before the SFRC hearing, US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines predicted that the Iranian regime would intensify its cyber and influence activities in the run up to the 2024 elections in November.
“Iran is becoming increasingly aggressive in their efforts,” Haines told the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Wednesday. “[They] seek to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions, as we have seen them do in prior election cycles.”
President Biden has been widely attacked for not being assertive enough in dealing with Iran and its anti-US activities. Biden critics say his ‘soft’ approach and his fear of a regional war has only emboldened the Islamic Republic to pursue its ambitions more aggressively, increasing the risk of the large-scale war that he’s fearing.
More pertinent, the critics say Biden's Iran policy may have been influenced by individuals, including Rob Malley, who seem to take too much note of Iran’s positions due to their political views or longstanding and extensive relationship with individuals linked to Iranian officials.
“We deserve to know whether Mr Malley’s crimes impacted US-Iran policy, influenced nuclear discussions, or swayed the President’s decisions to unfreeze cash for wrongfully detained Americans. Or importantly, misinformed us as we tried to formulate foreign policy,” Senator Risch said in the hearing Thursday.
“This is not a defense of myself, but the defense of the system's republican (and Islamic) foundations, a defense of the institution of presidency which as the direct representative of all Iranians should not be weakened any more than this,” the former president who was barred from running in the March 1 elections of Assembly of Experts has written in an open letter.
The letter which is addressed to the “Iranian Nation” was published on Rouhani’s personal website earlier this week.
The Guardian Council comprises twelve members, half of whom are clerics with expertise in Sharia laws and appointed by the Supreme Leader. The remaining six members, who may be laymen or clerics versed in civil law, are appointees of the chief justice, who is also appointed by Khamenei. They require parliamentary approval and over the years have expanded their role in disqualifying election candidates.
Opponents of the clerical regime and dissidents have always been barred from running in the elections, but now prominent insiders are being disqualified. Hundreds of candidates running for parliament and the Council were disqualified this year. The pattern was that those who are not members of hardliner factions or have been tossed out of Khamenei’s inner circle were barred.
Rouhani has been challenging the decision since February without any result. He said in his open letter that he has not received a satisfactory response form the Council. The reasons cited so far do not constitute legal violations on his part to warrant disqualification.
Rouhani said the “classified letter” he received from the Council’s Secretary, Ahmad Jannati, amounted to “an indictment” not only against him and his government but also against “the institution of presidency” and refuted all the reasons cited, namely insolence against the Judiciary and the Council itself, “lack of political insight”, failing to comply with the Constitution, and “contradicting pure Islamic beliefs.”
The contents of Jannati’s letter prove that the president who is the “highest directly-elected official” of the country does not have the right to freedom of speech even as much as an ordinary citizen and his statements about other institutions of the country, including the Guardian Council, Judiciary, and the Parliament can always be turned into an indictment against him, Rouhani argued.
“The Council uses my presidential record as the legal as reasons for not having been convinced of my qualification to run, as if the second highest official of the country is an opposition figure,” Rouhani said while pointing out that the Council itself had twice before found him qualified to run for the presidency and three times to run in the elections of the Assembly of Experts.
He also pointed out that he had served as the secretary and chairman of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) for 24 years and represented Khamenei in the National Security Council the whole time.
The Guardian Council, originally empowered to interpret the Constitution, review legislation, and supervise elections, bestowed upon itself discretionary supervisory powers in 1991, giving it the final say on candidate eligibility. Over the past two decades, it has used these powers to eliminate various political factions, targeting reformists, moderates, and even some conservatives.
The pattern of candidate disqualification has turned into a serious concern about the transparency and fairness of Iran's electoral process for over a decade resulting in continuous decline of election turnout in the past few years.
Some prominent former officials previously disqualified from running in elections include former presidents Akbar-Hashemi Rafsanjani in 2013, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2017, and conservative parliament speaker Ali Larijani in 2021, ostensibly due to concerns about their loyalty to Khamenei.
The Council, however, always cites other reasons for disqualifying candidates or argues that it could not “confirm the candidate’s qualifications” due to lack of sufficient evidence. Religious jurisprudence (ijtihad), required for running in elections of the Assembly of Experts, for instance, has often been cited for disqualification of candidates in its elections.
Larijani, for instance, repeatedly called on the Council to publicly announce the reason he was barred but was told it would not be “in his interest” if they did so.