Dept. of Diplomacy
January 3 & 10, 2022 Issue
The Looming Threat of a Nuclear Crisis with Iran
The Biden Administration faces a potential confrontation with a longtime rival that is better armed and more hard-line than at any time in its modern history.
By Robin Wright
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/...ial-type=earned
December 27, 2021


Green white and red missiles stand together to create an Iranian flag.
The U.S. special envoy believes Iran is “miscalculating and playing with fire.”Illustration by Alexis Beauclair

Shortly after his Inauguration, Joe Biden appointed Rob Malley to be his special envoy for Iran. Malley, who is fifty-eight, grew up in France and was in the same high-school class in Paris as Secretary of State Antony Blinken. He graduated from Yale and Harvard Law School, won a Rhodes Scholarship, and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Byron White. Ruth Bader Ginsburg officiated at his wedding.

Malley has long experience with the Middle East. His father was a French journalist known for his support of anti-colonialist movements. Working on the National Security Council during the Clinton Administration, Malley participated in the Camp David peace talks. After they collapsed, in 2000, he broke with the conventional analysis that the summit had failed because of Yasir Arafat’s intransigence. Malley published detailed insider accounts about how the Israelis shared the blame, for making proposals difficult for Arafat to accept. Critics declared Malley rabidly anti-Israel. Former colleagues publicly called the attacks on Malley “unfair, inappropriate, and wrong.” After Clinton left office, Malley worked on Iran at the International Crisis Group, which tracks global conflicts. As part of his job, he met with Iranian officials and travelled to Tehran.

During the Obama Administration, he was on the team that produced the Iran nuclear deal, in 2015. The agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was the most significant nonproliferation pact in more than a quarter century. Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia were equal partners, but the United States had a virtual veto, and Iran knew it. During two years of tortuous talks, the Iranians often met the Americans in hotel hallways to thrash out issues. Malley, who deliberates with the intensity of a lawyer but is soft-spoken in person, was on a first-name basis with his Iranian counterparts. They exchanged family stories, cell-phone numbers, and e-mail addresses.

The agreement survived for only two years. Influenced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and by Republican hawks, President Donald Trump abandoned the deal in 2018. He also imposed more than a thousand sanctions on Iran. They targeted the Supreme Leader, the Foreign Minister, judges, generals, scientists, banks, oil facilities, a shipping line, an airline, charities, and allies, such as the President of Venezuela, for doing business with Tehran. Trump also designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country’s most powerful military branch, as a terrorist group—an action that the U.S. had never taken against another nation’s military, even the Nazi Wehrmacht.

During the Trump years, Malley was appointed president of the International Crisis Group. He kept-- excerpt, rest at link above --

And, for context:


Glenn Greenwald@ggreenwald
·
27m
The New Yorker and The Atlantic were the two mainstream magazines that did the most to help convince Americans that Saddam had WMDs. They're the two that were the most fanatical about Russiagate conspiracies. Now they'll lead on Iran and the bomb (Jeffrey Goldberg has for years):

Quote Tweet
Atrios@Atrios
· 29m
new yorker did lots of nutty fabulism is support of GWOT and the iraq war, just fucking groundhog day twitter.com/CarolineGlick/…
Show this thread
Tip
Show this thread


Glenn Greenwald@ggreenwald
·
5m
So revealing: the same CNN writer who wrote yesterday's predictable @NewYorker attack on Dan Bongino -- @eosnos -- which accused Bongino of profiting by spreading unhinged conspiracy theories, was the lead writer of the @NewYorker cover story depicting Putin in control of the WH.
Tip


Glenn Greenwald@ggreenwald
·
2m
The other attack on Bongino by @eosnos was that Bongino only speaks to a like-minded, ideologically homogenous audience. Meanwhile, Osnos spent all day re-tweeting praise of his article exclusively from Dem partisans. Do you see how they always accuse others of what they are?