The Biden administration’s envoy to Tehran, Robert Malley, and some of his associates may have troubling ties to the Iranian dictatorship. Their role in trying to influence the American government on behalf of Iran warrants close scrutiny by Congress. 

This month’s report by the Department of State’s inspector general on the bizarre handling of Mr. Malley’s security clearance — and other recent events — should spur Congress to seriously investigate Iranian influence inside our own system.

Iran is sponsoring would be assassins to kill American government officials; supporting terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis; and funding chaos and terror across the Middle East. 

The Department of State is clear that Iran is the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world. The Iranian dictatorship has a nuclear program which could become a mortal threat to America, Israel, and Europe.

Mr. Malley has been a key player in American-Iranian policy for decades. He has had a continuing role in shaping Iranian policy in the  Obama and Biden administrations. Mr. Malley is a high school classmate of Secretary Blinken. He was at Harvard Law School with President Obama.

He served on the transition team for the State Department after President Biden was elected and was then named as special envoy to Iran on April 25, 2021. He ultimately led the State Department’s Iran Action Group.

As the inspector general’s report noted, Mr. Malley reported directly to the Secretary of State and was “designated as a critically sensitive position for national security purposes and require[ed] a security clearance. Mr. Malley was granted a Top Secret clearance.”

For reasons that are not clear, the inspector general reported that “on April 20, 2023, the Director of the Department’s Office of Personnel Security and Suitability….received a referral proposing the suspension of Special Envoy Malley’s Top Secret security clearance pending an Investigation due to adverse information received. On the morning of April 21, 2023, the Director signed a memorandum suspending his clearance.”

The report does not indicate what this “adverse information” was, but it clearly led to immediate steps to keep Mr. Malley away from secret information. However, four days later “senior department officials” — who were not named — asked that he be restored to use the OpenNet system at the Department of State.

It is important to remember that Mr. Malley’s job was at the center of American planning for Iran. As the inspector general’s report described it, Mr. Malley’s role “serves as the principal advisor to the Secretary on Iran-related matters, and is responsible for, coordinating, integrating, and synchronizing the President’s Iran strategy” across the federal government. 

“Given the nature of the Special Envoy’s work,” the report adds, “the Position is designated as critically-sensitive for national security purposes and requires a security clearance.”

Amazingly Mr. Malley was allowed to continue as special envoy during the investigation. He continued to work for 10 weeks before he was finally placed on leave without pay and told to stop working on department activities.

The handling of the Malley case is worthy of a Congressional investigation, because it is potentially the tip of a deep iceberg.

Mr. Malley was kicked out of the Obama campaign in 2008 when the team learned he had personal ties to Hamas.

That year, Mr. Malley said of Hamas: “It’s a mistake to only think of them in terms of their terrorist violence dimension… It has a charity organization, a social branch; it’s not something you can defeat militarily either and people need to understand that.

“There’s so much misinformation about them… None of them are crazies. They may do things that we consider to belong to a different realm of rationality, but within their own system it’s often very logical.”

Further, any serious research into Mr. Malley’s background would find that his father was an intense supporter of Yasser Arafat and sided with the terrorist groups in their revolt against what he called the Western imperialists. At one point Mr. Malley’s father was expelled from France for his pro-terrorist views.

Despite all this Mr. Malley bounced back and in 2014 became the Obama administration’s leader in negotiating the Iranian nuclear deal.

I don’t know how Mr. Malley views the terrorism and barbarism of October 7, 2023, but his views on Hamas bring clarity to the Biden-Harris administration’s out-of-touch commitment to a ceasefire. Any serious person would understand that a terrorist organization committed to killing every Jew in Israel is not going to suddenly embrace a peaceful solution.

Now, Mr. Malley has lost his security clearance for actions that are still secret.

Congress has an absolute obligation to get to the truth about Mr. Malley, his pro-Iranian associates, and the people who protect him.