Exclusive: Covert Ties Between Iran And The International Crisis Group

Malley was placed on unpaid leave in April 2023, after his security clearance was withdrawn reportedly for mishandling sensitive information. US lawmakers have tried several times to gain information on why Biden’s top man on Iran lost his security clearance –all to no avail.

The latest hearing on Iran was held by the House financial services subcommittee on oversight and investigation. It was entitled Moving the Money Part 2: Getting Answers from the Biden Administration on the Iranian Regime’s Support for Terrorism.”

Abram Paley and Elizabeth Rosenberg, Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, were the two officials testifying in the hearing.

They both confirmed that two transactions have been made from the Iranian funds held in Oman, which were made available to Iran when the US government renewed a sanction waiver allowing Iraq to pay Iran what it owes for imported electricity –reportedly up to $10 billion.

Congressman Bill Huizenga, chairing the hearing, asked if “any issues or problems” have been identified in the two transactions facilitated with the Iranian funds held in Oman. Rosenberg offered to answer “in a closed setting,” implying that the information requested was classified.

"We'll take that as a yes," said Rep. Huizenga.

Other Representatives present in the hearing expressed concerns over the fungibility of the funds made available to Iran, despite assurances by the Biden administration that transactions would only be allowed for humanitarian purposes, such as purchasing medicine or agricultural products.

“Biden’s Deputy Special Envoy to Iran insisted Iran is not to be trusted,” Rep. Dan Meuser posted on X after the hearing. “Yet, this Administration takes Iran at its word that they won’t use the billions of dollars in aid Biden is trying to give them to finance terror.”

Paley explained that the Iraqi sanction waiver has been in place for a long time to allow the country to meet its energy needs. “This is the 21st time it has been renewed,” he said. However, the waiver never allowed Iran to gain access to hard currencies in cash. Money never left Iraq and Iran could only use the funds to import humanitarian needs. For the first time, the Biden administration allowed the funds to go to Oman in June of this year.

Congressman Pete Sessions questioned the reasoning of the waiver and the choice of Oman as the custodian of the Iranian funds.

He said: “[Secretary of State] Blinken statement says France, Italy and Oman faced exceptional circumstances preventing them from significantly reducing their petroleum purchases from Iran… Oman has reserves 79.4 times its annual consumption… This secretary has chosen to fool the US Congress into believing significant and exceptional rather than providing the data and information.”

Paley was also grilled on the now infamous $6 billion released by the Biden administration in September.

This is money from Iran’s oil sales that was blocked in South Korea but was released and transferred to Qatar to help release five Iranian-Americans held hostage in Iran. After Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, US officials announced that Iran would not be allowed to access the money “any time soon.”

Paley was repeatedly asked to confirm that the Iranian regime has not had access to this fund. “Not one penny has been spent,” he said.

But Rep. Dan Meuser pressed Paley on this point, enquiring whether the hold on the $6 billion was permanent. Paley couldn’t give a straight yes or no answer. So the statement should really be “not one penny has been spent –yet”, Meuser concluded.

Towards the end of the hearing, Congressman Zach Nunn focused on Iran’s oil exports, noting that there’s been a significant increase in the regime’s revenue –that would be used to fund terrorism, he said.

Neither Rosenberg nor Paley managed to explain the rocketing of Iran’s oil revenue in spite of numerous restrictions imposed by a multi-layered sanctions regime.

Rep. Nunn asked about particular steps taken by the Biden administration to address this –including taking action against those facilitating the exports in the shipping industry. Yet again, neither officials could provide a clear answer.

“Mr Paley, I would like a listing of all the actions that have actually resulted in reduction of oil flow out of Iran into terrorist groups,” Rep. Nunn said in the end, demanding a written answer following the hearing.

The issue of Iran’s oil exports using “ghost fleet” was discussed at length in another hearing on Tuesday, entitled Restricting Rogue-State Revenue: Strengthening Energy Sanctions on Russia, Iran, and Venezuela.

What the Shiite regime in Iran did over four decades to make religious institutions state-owned entities with success, Atatürk did in a secular regime and made all religious institutions officially state-owned by establishing the Department of Religion (1924).

The Grand Mufti of Turkey is appointed by the executive branch. Diyanet organization has more than 150 thousand employees and about two billion dollars of government budget. The imams of around 85,000 mosques in Turkey and 2,000 mosques abroad (under the supervision of this department) are recruited by this organization and the contents of their speeches are also sent weekly, which is done in Iran by the Friday Prayer Office in Tehran. 

Until the 1970s, the Diyanet organization operated within Turkey, but after that, it expanded its network to countries with Turkish immigrants. Since the 1990s and with the rise of the Islamists, this organization has expanded its facilities and staff and received tremendous funding by quadrupling its budget in one decade. It has become a tool for expanding Turkey's ideological, political, and even security sphere of influence in the Balkan Peninsula, Central Asia, Western Europe, and the United States. Thus, civil and independent religion neither exists in Iran under the Islamist regime nor in Turkey under the Erdogan regime.

When the government claims to promote religion as a tool to shape social and political life, and religion is a means of gaining and maintaining power, it harms both religion and the state. It is for this reason that the behavior of the Khamenei and Erdogan regimes in using religious institutions to consolidate their power and expand their influence are very similar, while they operate in two different political systems.

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When religious institutions become state-owned, religion becomes a tool of power and it doesn't matter if you have an Islamist or a secular political system. This is why the Diyanet organization acts in the same way as the Mustafa University and the Shiite regime's Islamic Culture and Communication Organization in terms of political-religious propaganda abroad. Erdogan and Khamenei are acting in the same way in financing and expanding religious institutions worldwide. They have formed a network of mosques and religious centers that serve as venues for the gathering of religious followers who are residents of other countries. Using their religious networks these governments promote their political and ideological agendas.

It is important to pay attention to the organizational structure, funding, and programs of these centers. Turkey's state mosques are managed in the US by an organization called "Dyianet Center of America" with its headquarters in Maryland and its 29 mosques scattered all over the United States. The Dyianet Center of America website mentions these mosques under the title of its branches. As of 2018, Diyanet was operating in 36 countries with 61 branches. 

All the Turks who attend the mosques linked to Diyanet Center of America did not immigrate to America from Turkey, but some of them immigrated to the United States from countries such as Georgia, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan. What brings these people together is their religious orientation and cultural background. Using the tendency of these Turkish-speaking peoples to worship and congregate, the Turkish government subjects them to political propaganda and buys their loyalty.

The budget for the construction, maintenance, and programs of thousands of mosques affiliated with the Diyanet Center of America and European countries is provided by the Turkish government; missionaries and managers of these centers are sent by the government and receive government salaries, and all programs are approved, funded, and implemented by the Turkish government. Any program that does not fit into the government’s political Islam agenda and the expansion of its influence in the world (especially in Western countries where there is freedom of religion) is not tolerated and immediately canceled in these centers and mosques. 

The Diyanet- and the government which manages it- see Islam as one of the features of the identity of Turkish citizens living abroad. The macro-political strategy of Erdogan and Khamenei regimes is to rebuild Ottoman and Iranian empires with a cover of Islamism based on a mixture of religious beliefs and national-historical pride. Therefore, Diyanet is “committed to protecting the Muslims’ religious and cultural roots in the face of assimilationist policies.” Based on this statement, Turkish diaspora’s integration into host societies is something that should never happen.

Due to the author’s observations in mosques under the administration of Diyanet in the New York/New Jersey area, the authority and legitimacy of the political regime of Turkish Islamists are promoted in three ways:

1. The presence of political officials of the regime in religious ceremonies and giving prizes to children and financing religious centers and mosques with public resources;

2. Using these mosques and centers for political mobilization in favor of the government in areas such as voting for the ruling party candidates in elections; and

3. Recruiting forces for networking, gathering information from the opposition, and distributing positions, rents, and facilities available to the government.

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The activities of the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet Isleri Baskanligi) are based on multi-purpose missions. The main mission is to promote Sunni Islam, but without other missions, this department would not have expanded to this extent it has and would not have received huge funding. 

The main content of religious centers and mosques is holding religious ceremonies (such as Friday and congregational prayers, Eid al-Adha and Fitr, and the celebration of the birth of the Prophet), delivering various religious services such as Hajj and Umrah as well as various religious educational activities for Turkish migrants, children's religious education (recitation of the Qur'an, the principles of religion) and the establishment of religious classes and schools (for the teaching of jurisprudence and theology). What is really presented in this content is a kind of political perception of Islam and injecting it into the minds of Muslim children to internalize the ideology of political Islam. It is used as a tool for Turkey’s propaganda and indoctrination. The main discourse of the content of these programs is not human rights articles based on the equality of rights of all people, including men and women, Kurds and Turks, Muslims and non-Muslims, homosexuals, and non-homosexuals.

There have been accusations of Diyanet personnel gathering intelligence and spying on behalf of the Turkish state. In January 2017, the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DİTİB) admitted that some of its imams in Europe had spied for the Turkish government and supplied Ankara with intelligence on people supposedly linked to the Gülen movement, a religious group the Turkish government accuses of masterminding a coup attempt in July 2016. 

University students living in the diaspora or studying abroad are utilized as an asset to promote Shiite Islamism in Western democracies and recruited to transfer information and know-how to the um-ul-Qora (Islamic motherland).

Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei appointed Ahmad Vaezi to oversee the Islamic students' organizations in Europe in 2020. As Khamenei’s trustee, he is the direct link between Khamenei’s office and the Islamic Students Associations in Europe. An ardent supporter of the Islamic Republic regime, writing in a letter to members of this union, he said "Try to follow your role model, the great leader of Islam, martyr Qasem Soleimani,” referring to the slain commander killed by the US in 2020. Responsible for the violent proxies across the Middle East, Soleimani has now become a symbolic figurehead for the Iranian regime spreading its influence and destruction not only across the Middle East but to young students in Europe. 

Until the 1979 revolution, Islamic student associations in the West mainly consisted of Iranian students and worked against the Pahlavi monarchy while most of them were receiving generous scholarships provided by the government.

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After the revolution, these associations, due to the financial need for government resources and the desire of students to gain power and status through the new regime, were completely at the service of the ideology of the Islamic Republic and purged the opposition forces such as Marxists and MEK members. For about four decades, these associations start their annual gatherings with the messages of Khamenei, Iran’s leader.

While millions of Iranian university students pursue their education by getting loans, working, and using their hard-earned parents’ savings, these students and their family members have a luxury life in universities abroad. 

Due to this privilege, they are willing to perform several functions for the regime including spreading political propaganda, participating in anti-Israel Qods (Quds) rallies, and recruiting their professors and colleagues to steal information for bolstering military and technical knowledge in addition to establishing pseudo companies to help Iran’s military programs.

Members of the Islamic Students Association in Britain have met at least eight times with commanders and members of the IRGC since 2020. According to the Jewish Chronicle, the text of the commanders’ speeches has focused on anti-Semitism and anti-West sentiments. They also organized a technological conference held in Tehran in 2023 with invitees including faculty members living in the UK and people who are involved in tech companies in Iran, mostly working for the IRGC. 

History has shown that any member of a branch in the coalition of Islamic students associations who criticizes the government faces certain arrest on returning to Iran. An example is Saeed Razavi Faqih, a reformist, who was arrested after entering Iran in 1992 and sentenced to five years in prison and 148 lashes.

Later, they added another 3.5 years to his sentence in prison. Razavi Faqih, who was elected as the general secretary of this coalition, revealed that the associations receive money for their expenses from Khamenei's office through the leader's representatives in Europe. After 1992, reformists were purged from these associations.

Every few years, the members of these associations are invited to Iran, paid for by the government, to meet with Khamenei, groomed for eventually joining the government ranks. The last such meeting was on January 2, 2023, at the height of the student repression during the protests of the Women, Life, Freedom movement. Even amidst mass oppression of students in Iran, the associations still firmly aligned with the regime in Tehran.

Until the beginning of the1990s, members of these associations were mainly related to Shia clerics who were sent to Europe by government propaganda organizations for religious programs such as Muharram mourning and Ramadan ceremonies. In recent years, the connection between the members of these associations has reached the level of continuous communication with the commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The overall path to support a more military-security based regime rather than a religious or hierocratic one is well underway. Khamenei has been successful in transforming the hardcore power of the regime into the hands of a small group of IRGC commanders and sideline the religious establishment and as each year's budget shows, that priority only strengthens year by year.

The House Committee of Education and the Workforce is probing the Pro-Tehran pundit who served as a key figure in Iran’s nuclear negotiations with the international community until 2005. He is currently a Middle East Security and Nuclear Policy Specialist at the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton.

Twelve Republican committee members have expressed concerns about Mousavian's influence on campus, citing his participation in Qassem Soleimani's funeral and an appearance on Iranian TV. Mousavian denies the allegations.

The investigation aims to assess potential threats to national security and underscores broader worries about malign influences infiltrating US education.

Representative Virginia Foxx has emphasized the 15-year tenure of Mousavian at Princeton as a troubling instance of individuals associated with hostile regimes within US education.

Notably, the revelation that STRATCOM hosted Mousavian as a speaker in August 2023 has raised concerns among House Committee members and the Armed Services Committees. Mousavian clarified that his talk at STRATCOM focused on peace in the Middle East.

Despite a recent declassified US intelligence report asserting that Iran is not currently engaged in key nuclear weapons activities, European reports from 2023 suggest the presence of an active atomic weapons program. Princeton University has yet to respond to inquiries regarding the investigation.

In an interview with One America News Network, Mast criticized the US government for not shedding light on the events that led to Malley’s suspension, noting that he was “quietly” removed from his position earlier this year.

Iran International broke the news in late June that Malley’s security clearance had been revoked and he was no longer acting as US envoy, but the State Department has remained tight-lipped about the details of the case. Critics of the administration and US lawmakers have demanded answers, but so far the administration has refused to provide details.

Mast stressed that the US government did not notify the Congress about revoking Malley’s security clearance, adding that the affair was discovered “by accident.”

He called Malley “an Iranian sympathizer working to be soft on Iran” and pointed that Malley championed Washington’s adoption of “soft policies” towards a state which urges the destruction of the United States and Israel.

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The congressman also referred to the case of Ariane Tabatabai, a former associate of Malley and the current Chief of Staff for the Assistant Secretary of Defense, who has had close ties with the Iranian regime.

Tabatabai was alleged to be part of a network that tried “to gain influence to top US diplomats and convince them to be soft on Iran,” Mast went on to say.

Iran International’s exposé, Inside Tehran’s Soft War: How Iran Gained Influence in US Policy Centers, and its twin report by Semafor, Inside Iran’s Influence Operation, prove the existence of the “Iran Experts Network”, whereby members acted as agent provocateurs of the regime.

Mast pointed out that according to the information revealed, Tabatabai “was directly reporting to the Iranian foreign ministry.”

He added that in order to obtain a security clearance, one is needed to disclose all their ties with foreign countries.

There is still no information whether Tabatabai has informed the authorities about her interactions with the Iranian government, Mast stated.

He further called Iran’s influence campaign “a serious problem” and urged the Biden administration to address it with transparency.

Mast, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also accused Tehran of having a hand in Hamas October 7 deadly attack on Israel, which claimed the lives of 1,400 mostly civilians and left thousands injured in the single most deadly day for Jews since the Holocaust.

Mast’s remarks came four weeks after top US Republicans at the Senate and the House opened dual probes into Malley's links to the secret Iranian influence network.

At the same time, House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-KY) and Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs Chairman Glenn Grothman (R-WI) also raised concerns about the Administration’s use of officials with sympathetic ties to the Iranian regime to negotiate with Tehran.

Also on October 24, America First Legal, a group of conservative lawyers, announced that it had launched a probe into the activities of a pro-Iran influence network in the United States which can pose a threat to the American national security.

"It is of paramount importance that the truth about the role that Iranian assets may have played, and may continue to be playing, in formulating US policy be brought to light," said Reed Rubinstein, the group’s senior counselor.