Robert Malley, the State Department bureaucrat and former special envoy to Iran who is mysteriously on leave for allegedly mishandling classified information, grew up with Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat as his unofficial “godfather.” and once wrote that Israeli treatment of Arabs was “shameful.” .”
Malley is being investigated, along with members of his Iran negotiating team, by the House Oversight and Accountability Committee for allegedly “engaging ties with the Iranian regime.”
He once attempted to normalize relations with Hamas, the Iran-backed terrorist group that massacred about 1,200 Israelis and at least 27 Americans this week.
The 60-year-old was suspended under a cloud of secrecy by the State Department in June.
At the time, he confirmed that his security clearance was being investigated and that he was confident of a positive result, according to a statement he provided to Fox News.
Robert Malley was the Biden administration’s controversial envoy to Iran until the State Department placed him on leave for allegedly mishandling sensitive documents.
“I have been informed that my security clearance is under review,” he told the outlet. “They have not provided me with more information, but I hope that the investigation is resolved favorably and soon. In the meantime, I’m on leave.”
But that could take a little longer amid growing speculation that Iran financed and helped coordinate the recent attacks on Israel.
Follow The Post’s live blog for the latest on Hamas’ attack on Israel.
“He compromised classified information, we believe with Iran, and now there is a broader investigation into this,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said Thursday on Fox News.
Although Secretary of State Antony Blinken said there is “no direct evidence” that Iran was behind the attacks on Israeli citizens, he did acknowledge that “Iran has had a long relationship with Hamas” in an interview with NBC on Thursday.
Robert Malley worked for the Clinton administration’s National Security Council and was included in high-level meetings with former Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat (above right, with, from right, Malley, the negotiator Palestinian Nabi Abu Rudineh and Bill Clinton).Getty Images
“Hamas would not be Hamas without Iran’s support for many, many years,” Blnken said. “And we know that. We see that. “In regards to this specific attack, at this time we have no direct evidence that Iran was involved in the attack, either in its planning or in its execution.”
Malley, who served as the Biden administration’s special envoy for Iran since January 2021, now teaches at the Yale Jackson School of International Affairs at Yale University.
Before that, he served as president and CEO of the George Soros-backed International Crisis Group, a nonprofit that works to prevent wars, according to its website.
As a Middle East analyst, he has spoken regularly with Hamas and sought to normalize the United States’ relationship with Iran, a situation that has earned him the nickname “Mullah Malley” among his many detractors in the Iranian opposition.
Simon Malley, Robert’s father, was an Egyptian-born journalist who embraced revolutionary causes in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. He moved with his family to Paris in 1969 to edit a newsletter covering the liberation movements, but was expelled from the country 11 years later. New York Post
Brooklyn-based Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad started a petition last year to convince the State Department to remove Malley as envoy to Iran.
“Now, we respectfully ask President Biden to name a new special envoy that the people of the United States and Iran can trust and respect as a symbol of America’s commitment to freedom and democracy,” he wrote.
Alinejad added that Malley had “downplayed” the widespread protests in Iran that erupted following the death of Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody after being arrested for not wearing her hijab properly. The petition has so far gathered more than 136,000 signatures.
Malley is no stranger to controversy and has followed in the footsteps of his father, an Egyptian-born Jew and Arab nationalist journalist who dedicated his life to anti-Israel causes and the developing world.
Simon Malley embraced national liberation movements around the world and was a trusted confidant of Arafat and former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, with whom he once reportedly held a 20-hour interview.
Robert Malley’s father, Simon Malley, once interviewed Fidel Castro in a marathon 20-hour session. New York Post
In 1969, after covering the United Nations for the Egyptian newspaper Al Goumhourya, Simon moved with his family to Paris to launch Afrique Asie, a magazine that focused on newly independent states such as Egypt and Algeria and gave voice to the movements of liberation around the world.
The magazine adopted campaigns that altered France’s influence in Africa. He was banned in several African countries for supporting radical movements against King Hassan II in Morocco and dictator Mobuto Sese-Seko in Zaire, among others.
Malley, along with his brother Richard and sister Nadia, attended the posh École Jeannine Manuel, a bilingual school in Paris where his future boss Blinken was a classmate.
Robert Malley (fourth from left) went to elementary school in Paris with Secretary of State Antony Blinken (second from left). Malley was part of a discussion with Iranian activists about last year’s protests in Iran. Malley is known as “Mullah Malley” by many in the Iranian opposition for his appeasement of Iran.@SecBlinken/X
The Malley family’s stay in Paris was cut short when conservative French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing ordered Simon to leave the country and stripped him of his residence permit in 1980.
The expulsion came shortly after Interior Minister Christian Bonnet told the country’s National Assembly that the articles written by Simon “were genuine calls to assassinate foreign heads of state. The French government cannot tolerate this.”
French authorities put Simon on a plane bound for New York City, the hometown of his wife Barbara Silverstein, who had worked with the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) delegation to the United Nations.
Upon arrival in New York, Simon immediately boarded a plane to Switzerland, where he spent eight months editing his newsletter before returning to France following the election of Francois Mitterrand in 1981.
Malley, left, at a briefing with former Secretary of State John Kerry. US Department of State
(Arafat, to whom Malley wrote that his father “felt close,” may have intervened with the French government to help the family return to the country.)
At the time, Robert was on his way to Yale University, where he was writing for the student newspaper.
“There is much to be said about Israel’s treatment of the Arabs: shameful on the part of a people who suffered more than any other from the injustices and horrors of racism,” he wrote in an article. “And we must face the fact that the Palestinians’ resort to violence is the inevitable corollary of the violence carried out against them.”
The elite École Jeannine Manuel in Paris, where Antony Blinken and John Malley went to school. Juanina Manuel School
After his studies at Yale, Malley enrolled at Harvard Law School, where Barack Obama was a classmate, and later was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University.
Malley worked as a law clerk to Justice Byron R. White of the United States Supreme Court between 1991 and 1992, and two years later he joined the Clinton administration, working on the staff of the United States National Security Council as Director of Democracy.
In 1996 he published a book, “The Call of Algeria: Third Worldism, Revolution and the Turn to Islam.” The following year, Malley became executive assistant to the National Security Adviser, acting as Samuel Berger’s informal chief of staff, according to his biography on Yale’s website.
In 2006, the year Simon died, Malley offered a solution to the problems in the Middle East in an op-ed for Time magazine. “Today the United States is not talking to Iran, Syria, Hamas, the elected Palestinian government or Hezbollah,” she wrote. “The result has been a policy with all the appeal of a moral principle and all the effectiveness of a tired harangue.”
Former PLO leader Yasser Arafat was a close confidant of Simon Malley and was said to be an unofficial “godfather” to Robert Malley.AP
In 2008, Malley was forced to resign from then-candidate Barack Obama’s campaign after it was discovered that he was speaking with officials from the Hamas Islamic Resistance Movement, later returning to the Obama administration as senior director of the National Committee. Security Council and one of the main architects of US foreign policy in the Middle East.
“There is so much misinformation about them”Malley said of the Hamas leaders with whom he was in regular contact. “I talk to them, my colleagues talk to them, none of them are crazy, they have their own rationality. Within their own system… they are very logical.”
Those comments, which resurfaced after the State Department placed Malley on leave this summer, have generated a barrage of criticism on social media.
Robert Malley in a meeting with Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani in Qatar in 2021. Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
“@Rob_Malley keep meeting and working With the apologists of the Islamic Republic who want by any means to put money into the hands of the terrorist regime of Iran! Who is this senior White House official? Why haven’t they met with any Iranian Americans who are not pro-regime lobbyists? said a tweet in June.
“You, sir, are the reason this regime takes hostages,” said another, following the release of five American hostages in Iran in exchange for $6 billion, a controversial deal that Malley helped negotiate. “They know they can count on you to negotiate with them and give them billions of dollars to free a select few; However, you leave behind Jamshidi Sharmahd, sentenced to execution. #IranRansomDeal.”
Malley did not respond to The Post’s requests for comment this week.
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