In the landmark book ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’, Dale Carnegie wrote that the best way to be promoted in any given job is to be an enemy of the United States. Or at least that’s the 2024 edition.
Back in September, I did a deep dive on Ariane Tabatabai, an Iranian immigrant who emails appeared to show appeared to have been coordinating with Iranian government officials.
In 2014, a year before Tabatabai began working as a NATO consultant, she joined an initiative by the Iranian Foreign Ministry to mobilize “Iranians who have established affiliations with the leading international think-tanks and academic institutions, mainly in Europe and the US.”
Before Tabatabai testified about the Iran Deal in Congress, she allegedly checked in with the head of an Iranian Foreign Ministry think tank. “I am scheduled to go to the Congress to give a talk about the nuclear program. I will bother you in the coming days,” she wrote.
In 2015, while Tabatabai was consulting for NATO, serving as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Kennedy’s Atom/International Security Program and teaching at Georgetown University, the Iranian government was bragging about her propaganda. Emails containing her articles were circulated from the Iranian Foreign Ministry operation all the way to Foreign Minister Javad Zarif.
Ariane Tabatabai personally forwarded her propaganda articles, including one claiming that Iran really needs nuclear energy and doesn’t intend to use it as a weapon.
In one leaked message, Tabatabai emailed her handler her article, co-written again with Esfandiary, titled, “Meeting Iran’s nuclear fuel supply needs”. “Our goal was to show what is said in the West – that Iran does not need more than 1500 centrifuges – is wrong, and that Iran should not be expected to reduce the number of its centrifuges,” she allegedly told her handler.
Her handler then forwarded the email to Iran’s Foreign Minister Zarif.
There were warnings about Tabatabai in 2021 when she was brought on board at the Office of the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control, and the Biden administration fumed.
Biden’s State Department Spokesman Ned Price claimed that she “was thoroughly vetted and investigated before being granted the position. Any suggestion of security-related concerns about Dr. Tabatabai are baseless and illegitimate.” He fumed that, “we will not sit idly by as our employees—dedicated public servants—face personal smears and slander.”
Then the Biden-Harris administration promoted Tabatabai to the Chief of Staff to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict.
After current concerns were raised about her possible role in leaking classified information about Israel’s attack plans on Iran, the Biden-Harris admin decided to grant her another promotion.
Ariane Tabatabai, who was named in the media as the source of the Oct. 18 leak but whom defense officials said was not a suspect in the investigation, is now the deputy assistant secretary of defense for force education and training within the Office of the Secretary of Defense under U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Politico reported.
What could possibly go wrong?
Promotions are supposed to be rewards for hard work and loyalty. Under Biden-Harris, they’re rewards for something else entirely.