Abbas Maleki, M. Jaffar Mahallati and Farhad Atai have made Boston the base for their mission to assist with Iran's strategic goals.
While McCain and Obama are debating whether they should engage or contain Iran, the world is waking up to the Iranian regime’s proxies infiltrating Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Gaza. We are out there putting out the forest fire with our tea cups, and the mullahs’ men and women are digging trenches in our backyards. Iran has established an embassy in Boston!
Three former Iranian deputy ministers, Abbas Maleki, M. Jaffar Mahallati and Farhad Atai, have made Boston the base for their mission to assist with Iran's strategic goals. These diplomats have been recycled as scholars at Harvard or other fine American institutions. Senior among them is Abbas Maleki.1
A former revolutionary guard, a high-ranking Iranian diplomat, and now a senior fellow at Harvard, Professor Maleki is a prominent figure of the Mullahs' lobby in the US. He has been the Deputy Foreign Minister (1989-1997), advisor to the Supreme Leader until 2003 and the director of International Affairs at the Expediency Council until 2006.
In a series of articles and speeches in Tehran, Maleki recently elaborated on "how to combat the US." He argued that the best means for countering US pressure on Iran with respect to the nuclear issue is the use of "soft diplomacy," which according to him is to mount a large-scale PR campaign. Maleki identifies AIPAC (the pro-Israel lobby) as a role model for a successful PR campaign. (Iranian Diplomacy, March 27, 2008.)
Two years ago when Maleki came to Harvard, Sadegh Kharrazi, a close friend and collaborator of his, told Shargh newspaper in Tehran (May 28, 2006):
There is actually an Iranian lobby in US which illustrates itself occasionally . . . [this lobby] should remain non-governmental, but the government could support it, promote it and rely on it.
Maleki's goal has been to turn this "occasional" lobby into a full-time and large-scale machine of influence and misinformation.
It is now apparent that US policy on Iran over the past has been packed with confusion and shortsightedness. It is certainly not a mere security oversight to allow so many former officials to enter the United States. Almost certainly, the United States’ goal is to create a backdoor channel to the mullahs in Iran, a de facto Iranian embassy. Nevertheless, this “embassy” is acting more like a Trojan horse than an ambassadorial channel.
The Iranian community has the right to be suspicious of a former Iranian high diplomat and revolutionary guard who lucratively benefits from his several oil-related activities in Iran but suddenly decides that he wants to pursue a career in scholarship. He conspicuously ends up in Harvard. It is safe to assume that his Iranian academic achievements did not open doors to hisprofessorship in Harvard!
Endnote
1. http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/experts/878/abbas_maleki.html
