If the democrats’ assertion that DEI isn’t illegal (“you can’t be racist toward or discriminate against white/asian people” they say) were true, they wouldn’t be saying “when the conservatives say this they mean the N word.”
Pray For Israel 🇮🇱 🙏
- Thread starter TulsaFanFromStigler
- Start date
What is Israel's end game here? How do they intend to get to where they want to be? I haven't heard of any plan from Bibi about a post-Hamas government. I think he likes the chaos because it gives him purpose and keeps him in power.
Now, they are starting to kill more Hezbollah dudes. How far does the bombing go there? It just seems like they don't have a plan here.
Now, they are starting to kill more Hezbollah dudes. How far does the bombing go there? It just seems like they don't have a plan here.
I assume Israel just wants Iran to stop using its proxies to bomb them.
I also assume Bibi doesn’t mind the conflict. Provides an ongoing threat and solidifies his power base. After the Oct attack Hamas had to be eliminated if you’re head of Israel. I also assume of non-terrorist based governance likely installed by Israel would be the goal.
I also assume Bibi doesn’t mind the conflict. Provides an ongoing threat and solidifies his power base. After the Oct attack Hamas had to be eliminated if you’re head of Israel. I also assume of non-terrorist based governance likely installed by Israel would be the goal.
Temporarily keeps the courts and the people off his back. He will likely not get Hamas or a some new organization to be stopped. The last time they tried to get the PLO shut down, they got Hamas. Different time, same story. He knows that, but is moving forward with self protecting actions. That gets him next to zero, with replacing Hamas with a non-terrorist organization, but that is probably not his real goal.
This is a conflict between Iran and Israel, plain and simple.
If not for Iran there would be a broader settlement between Israel and the Arabs.
If not for Iran, there would be no Hezbollah. Assad would have fallen in Syria.
Iran is the worst. Israel demeans the Palestinians who are largely stateless people and creates facts on the ground to lay claim to others' land.
But Iran gives them excuses for doing those things. Iran is the worst actor in the region.
I say this as someone who has family just a couple of miles from where Israel dropped their bunker busters to kill Nasrallah last week.
If not for Iran there would be a broader settlement between Israel and the Arabs.
If not for Iran, there would be no Hezbollah. Assad would have fallen in Syria.
Iran is the worst. Israel demeans the Palestinians who are largely stateless people and creates facts on the ground to lay claim to others' land.
But Iran gives them excuses for doing those things. Iran is the worst actor in the region.
I say this as someone who has family just a couple of miles from where Israel dropped their bunker busters to kill Nasrallah last week.
How long does someone get in federal prison for leaking top secret military plans for an upcoming attack to a terrorist regime? Hope it was worth it.
Well Israel/Netanyahoo didn't really give us much of a chance. with his decisions that seem to be as much about personal career protection as they are about things in the interest of Israel as a whole.
Our providing him with tons of ammo and military support(missile launchers, etc) for protection of Israel, didn't seem to get him to listen to our advice, as he ignored most of it. I wonder if it was leaked with high level clearance or if it was even from our country, instead of from a possibly cooperating ally.
Protecting the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism would be a very bad look if it were the U.S. who in fact leaked the plans .
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I'm sure we'd be interested to hear her father's thoughts on the issue, so as to the fact that he teaches Philosophy at the University of Tehran.
No offense, Israel has not been a very good ally as of late. I honestly could care less about this entire situation. Both sides can take a flying leap for all I care.
And as far as American hostages go, my advice is: don't go party in a warzone without thinking you might be taking your life into your own hands. I don't suggest we hold any raves in Kharkiv either.
Sounds like your attitude is prevalent in our intelligence agencies. The obvious problem is if we’re giving Iranian Americans who have been accused of spying for Iran access to top secret attack plans against Iran then what other idiotic decisions are being made by our intelligence agencies. How many Americans are dying as a result. It’s one of the biggest clown shows I’ve ever seen.
You can blame those hostages if you wish. That doesn’t absolve our obligation not to further place them in harms way. We’ve seen how bad the Secret Service has become. The incompetence appears to be widespread. Whoever wins this election in two weeks, my hope is they conduct a house cleaning of these agencies.
One traitor does not mean the entire agency necessarily needs a house cleaning. Certainly a review.
Trump loves a constituency like you as a president, that uses those desires to change out as much of Washington as he can. There are some hardcore reviews that need to be done, but no wholesale changes that need to be enacted. Pick out the bad apples, and things will run smoothly in all of the agencies and bureaus.
The problem isn’t a traitor. The problem is an agency who allows someone suspected of spying for Iran to receive top secret battle plans involving that very country. This isn’t one or two people. It’s multiple people within the agency who believed she should still have access to top secret information such as this. As I said above, I would hope whoever is elected will look at the intelligence agencies from top to bottom and reevaluate decision making and policies. The same thing which was recommended for the Secret Service. Both have zero to do with Trump.
When I said bad apples, I wasn't referring to just spies. I was referring to wide swaths of upper management.
A lot to unpack here with Tabatabai. Y’all are mostly right.
First, to clarify, she is not a career DOD official. Or a career diplomat. Or a career academic. Or a career journalist. She’s never really done anything.
She’s one of those creatures of our system that obtains elite academic credentials and then combines that with summary research done by others to engage in the opinions industry. She basically shows up in organizations, public or private, and produces nothing other than to influence decision makers, inside and outside the organization.
The federal government has two basic types of employees - political appointees and career workers. Tabatabai is a Biden administration political appointee. Not every political appointee has administration or decision making responsibilities. In fact, less than 1,000 of the 4,000 or so political appointees have that function. Many political appointees exist to provide policy advice and problem solving band width to the administrators. Administrators rely on these folks as a check against senior career workers, who may give the administrator bad advice to act in their own self interest, or in some cases are actively engaged in sabotaging the policy objectives of the administration for a variety of reasons. Some are “spying” for Congress to cruise to retirement, some have friends in industry who want to capture government function etc. So senior political appointees want their own staff to watch the organization because one or two people can’t do it alone. So that’s why Project 2025 is such a big deal for the Dems. Without any proof, they extrapolate for political purposes that the same people who wrote that document will be advising the administrators if Trump is elected.
Very few political appointees are hand picked by the President. About 100 require his/her direct review and action. About 300 more cross his desk and he/she has some level of knowledge and familiarity of them and their functions. This is everyone from the WH Chief of Staff, the Secretary of the Army, to the Undersecretary for payroll at cabinet agencies down to the various U.S. Attorneys across the country.
The individual agencies in turn hire the advisors assigned to the administrators in close consultation with the White House. In some cases, the White House will hire advisors directly and place them in agencies. But at all times, the White House has knowledge of, and has helped vet, every political appointee.
Not all political administrators and advisors have security clearances. In fact, a shocking number that you would think would be cleared have no clearance beyond the informal confidential or work/product level.
Those that do have a clearance must undergo the same vetting procedures that career government workers and military personnel must undergo.
Ultimately, the choice to grant or deny a clearance is vested in the President. He typically delegates that function to impartial career officials in the various agencies who are trained and experienced professionals most with military counterintelligence experience. The President has the ability to grant or revoke a clearance, except for the members of Congress who have clearance by virtue of holding the purse and being elected and the tiny number of Congressional staffers with clearances, maybe 30 staffers total. Just because you are cleared does not mean you are entitled to view or use classified information at that level. Even the President does not have the ability to see or be informed of some classified materials. But he does have the ability to over rule security clearance denials or people who work for him who have been granted that authority in some cases.
All of that said …
Tabatabai is a Biden administration political appointee of dubious professional credentials given her function and experience.
She is not an administrator, she is an advisor presumably providing the advice function described above. She did her undergrad at Stony Brook. She got a PhD at an upper mid tier UK university on par with a near Ivy, then went to work for the Rand Corporation where she began her professional opinion career. She did largely nothing after that which merits a senior government post except show up and have opinions. Shes had various stops as a visiting researcher at several Ivys and Georgetown performing research and advocacy work on and off campus. But I don’t believe she’s ever actually taught students as a professor. So impressive for average folks but there’s nothing in her background that is notable or puts her amongst Washington elites. At some point she began working on Iran nuclear policy maybe because she speaks Farsi and Iran policy was a trendy thing in the Obama Administration when she was starting out. Or some other reason. We don’t know.
As most people know through common sense, every foreign government in the world funds influence campaigns in the United States. Our friends, competitors, and enemies alike. They pay people with opinions and plausible credentials to voice the opinion of the foreign government. In some cases, you have to register with the government to do that, in other situations you don’t. Influencing public opinion leads to everything from starting or avoiding wars to making sure foreign aid is raised each year to setting up your friends and cronies with sweet U.S. aid packages and development contracts.
And all of that is fine as long as you aren’t in government, and when in government, you are not working your old job for your old friends and employers.
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It’s pretty telling that she has a Wikipedia page but it doesn’t list her full CV and it doesn’t list the series of Defense Department political appointments she’s had under Biden.
What is relevant is that in 2023 she was Chief of Staff to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations. Naturally, she was cleared for that job. She has about the same qualifications for that job as the shoe factory executive running Chernobyl. She has no known experience managing a bureaucracy, she’s not a veteran or an operator. She shows up and has opinions on things she’s never personally done. And she directed personnel decisions and special projects in that sub agency.
As discussed above, you don’t get that job without at least some high level White House scrutiny, including possibly the President himself.
What we do know is that prior to joining DOD, since at least 2014, she knowingly participated in a think tank owned and operated indirectly by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the mafia like organization that runs Iran and its military.
This is a common intelligence gathering and influence peddling scheme many governments set up that our clueless, and sometimes not clueless, but always self obsessed, academics get duped into. She either knew, or had reason to know, she was working for the Iranians putting out academic papers and main stream press appearances advocating for pro-Iran and anti-Israel policies.
The head of the think tank was emailing the head of the Iranian nuclear proliferation negotiating team about her activities during the Obama Administration.
We know this because the communications leaked into main stream media, presumably by someone within a foreign intelligence group who did it for reasons unknown. Several emails related to her activities eventually were forwarded to the Iranian foreign minister.
Several of the emails are unusual because she asks for guidance from the Iranians on which government officials she should interact with from the US, Saudi Arabia and other countries. Not a typical ask of a domestic academic on the left wing grievance tour. She asked for clearance for her remarks to Congress in one case and requested “permission” to travel abroad.
In turn, the Iranian head of the think tank, perhaps without her knowledge, kept careful statistics on her work recording things like media and Congress appearances which was eventually forwarded to the Iranian foreign ministry. The outlets she was published in taking sympathetic Iran views ranged from the New York Times to CSPAN to Iranian government controlled state media outlet Fars News Agency, the Iranian equivalent of RT.
Prior to her position as CoS at Special Operations, she was an advisor to the head of the Biden lead negotiator in the Iranian nuclear talks. He was removed from his position after he lost his security clearance for allegedly leaking classified information. We only know that because Congress asked him to testify on his progress and he never replied because he was suspended.
She was recently moved over to work as an advisor in DOD’s training unit, which in theory at least, is focused on preparing the military for peer on peer conflict with countries like China.
What she is doing in government and at the Defense Department and still holds a clearance is anyone’s guess.
But since the average government worker can lose their clearance for a DUI or bounced check because it’s risky behavior, the average guy on Main Street has to ask, “is she still in government because of influence into her retaining her security clearance, who made that decision, and why?” Maybe it’s just me, but emailing the Iranians probably should disqualify you before taking one of your wife’s sleeping pills ten years ago.
Turning to the issue at hand, there’s a lot of bureaucratic cross talk.
She’s not in a position where she would presumably be cleared to have access to information related to the Israel attack on Iran. If she leaked it, she likely had help and both her and her help either intentionally leaked it or are incredibly lazy or stupid.
So the denials from DOD that she is a person of interest are likely legitimate, even if it’s just a plausible argument while they investigate further.
What isn’t legitimate is that the DOD keeps saying she was vetted by career officials coming into government. It doesn’t say whether her clearance was adjudicated by the White House and it doesn’t say if she has had any follow up vetting.
What we do know is that pro-Israel think tanks spend a lot of time and money countering the arguments that she and her think tank spread around. They likely don’t want her in government and don’t want her viewed as credible.
So press reports like this tweet that suggest she was involved is just sort of true.
She has no business in government much less a role of great public trust. Mostly because she has been in government long enough to document through metrics what her results are and they are lacking. And that’s because she’s not qualified to be in the roles she’s in. Which is not only her failure, but failures of those above.
But this likely is probably not on her, I don’t know, and “clearing out” the agency of people who put her there likely means many more people, both political appointee and career official than you might imagine.
But if I’m Israel and I’m planning on war with Iran, and I rely on US Intelligence, before I invade, I likely want everyone out of US intelligence who might have access to my plans with a history of communicating with the Iranians, directly or indirectly, innocently, recklessly, or unknowingly.
So that’s why this story is likely being floated with little facts to back it up. They want the leaker out, AND people like her who have either leaked in the past, worked in environments where others leaked and habits may be bad, or are vulnerable to blackmail due to their past unknowing aid to foreign intelligence.
It’s embarrassing to Biden at election time and a foreign government wants you to think that way.
And that’s scary.
Whatever you read, never forget that someone wants you to think that way.
Be sure you decide for yourself what is true and never forget your brain, no matter how talented, is vulnerable to garbage in garbage out.
What is relevant is that in 2023 she was Chief of Staff to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations. Naturally, she was cleared for that job. She has about the same qualifications for that job as the shoe factory executive running Chernobyl. She has no known experience managing a bureaucracy, she’s not a veteran or an operator. She shows up and has opinions on things she’s never personally done. And she directed personnel decisions and special projects in that sub agency.
As discussed above, you don’t get that job without at least some high level White House scrutiny, including possibly the President himself.
What we do know is that prior to joining DOD, since at least 2014, she knowingly participated in a think tank owned and operated indirectly by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the mafia like organization that runs Iran and its military.
This is a common intelligence gathering and influence peddling scheme many governments set up that our clueless, and sometimes not clueless, but always self obsessed, academics get duped into. She either knew, or had reason to know, she was working for the Iranians putting out academic papers and main stream press appearances advocating for pro-Iran and anti-Israel policies.
The head of the think tank was emailing the head of the Iranian nuclear proliferation negotiating team about her activities during the Obama Administration.
We know this because the communications leaked into main stream media, presumably by someone within a foreign intelligence group who did it for reasons unknown. Several emails related to her activities eventually were forwarded to the Iranian foreign minister.
Several of the emails are unusual because she asks for guidance from the Iranians on which government officials she should interact with from the US, Saudi Arabia and other countries. Not a typical ask of a domestic academic on the left wing grievance tour. She asked for clearance for her remarks to Congress in one case and requested “permission” to travel abroad.
In turn, the Iranian head of the think tank, perhaps without her knowledge, kept careful statistics on her work recording things like media and Congress appearances which was eventually forwarded to the Iranian foreign ministry. The outlets she was published in taking sympathetic Iran views ranged from the New York Times to CSPAN to Iranian government controlled state media outlet Fars News Agency, the Iranian equivalent of RT.
Prior to her position as CoS at Special Operations, she was an advisor to the head of the Biden lead negotiator in the Iranian nuclear talks. He was removed from his position after he lost his security clearance for allegedly leaking classified information. We only know that because Congress asked him to testify on his progress and he never replied because he was suspended.
She was recently moved over to work as an advisor in DOD’s training unit, which in theory at least, is focused on preparing the military for peer on peer conflict with countries like China.
What she is doing in government and at the Defense Department and still holds a clearance is anyone’s guess.
But since the average government worker can lose their clearance for a DUI or bounced check because it’s risky behavior, the average guy on Main Street has to ask, “is she still in government because of influence into her retaining her security clearance, who made that decision, and why?” Maybe it’s just me, but emailing the Iranians probably should disqualify you before taking one of your wife’s sleeping pills ten years ago.
Turning to the issue at hand, there’s a lot of bureaucratic cross talk.
She’s not in a position where she would presumably be cleared to have access to information related to the Israel attack on Iran. If she leaked it, she likely had help and both her and her help either intentionally leaked it or are incredibly lazy or stupid.
So the denials from DOD that she is a person of interest are likely legitimate, even if it’s just a plausible argument while they investigate further.
What isn’t legitimate is that the DOD keeps saying she was vetted by career officials coming into government. It doesn’t say whether her clearance was adjudicated by the White House and it doesn’t say if she has had any follow up vetting.
What we do know is that pro-Israel think tanks spend a lot of time and money countering the arguments that she and her think tank spread around. They likely don’t want her in government and don’t want her viewed as credible.
So press reports like this tweet that suggest she was involved is just sort of true.
She has no business in government much less a role of great public trust. Mostly because she has been in government long enough to document through metrics what her results are and they are lacking. And that’s because she’s not qualified to be in the roles she’s in. Which is not only her failure, but failures of those above.
But this likely is probably not on her, I don’t know, and “clearing out” the agency of people who put her there likely means many more people, both political appointee and career official than you might imagine.
But if I’m Israel and I’m planning on war with Iran, and I rely on US Intelligence, before I invade, I likely want everyone out of US intelligence who might have access to my plans with a history of communicating with the Iranians, directly or indirectly, innocently, recklessly, or unknowingly.
So that’s why this story is likely being floated with little facts to back it up. They want the leaker out, AND people like her who have either leaked in the past, worked in environments where others leaked and habits may be bad, or are vulnerable to blackmail due to their past unknowing aid to foreign intelligence.
It’s embarrassing to Biden at election time and a foreign government wants you to think that way.
And that’s scary.
Whatever you read, never forget that someone wants you to think that way.
Be sure you decide for yourself what is true and never forget your brain, no matter how talented, is vulnerable to garbage in garbage out.
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Hoping not expecting. I do believe most Iranians don’t approve of the current regime. They just know the consequences of dissent.
We thought that about Iraq and Afghanistan too.
And we’ve propped up too many monarchies in the region to suggest to the average Iranian any direct U.S. backed regime change effort would look like a government they would want or different than anything they currently have.
They want regime change like we want regime change. They are tired of back breaking inflation and want hope for a better life for their kids. They will take it from the mulahs or someone else, but it won’t be imposed on them.
Just because times are hard in Dublin and the folks want a different government doesn’t mean they are eager for the British to install a Protestant government.
