Former Obama aide Robert Mally has been named Biden's chief envoy for Iran, Washington said on Friday.

However, this name has been heard since November.

In November, as soon as it became clear that Joe Biden had won the US elections, it immediately became known who would deal with the Iranian and, in general, the entire Middle East dossier in his new administration.

At the same time, the name of Robert Mally, a 58-year-old expert on the Arab-Muslim world, who had headed the International Crisis Group in recent years, was mentioned.

For two months, waves of republican and Israeli anger were breaking about his name, like a stone, calling Biden to change his mind and not to appoint such an obviously “pro-Iranian” official to such an influential post.

“It is deeply troubling that President Biden is considering the appointment of Rob Mulley, as Mully has long demonstrated his benevolent attitude towards the Iranian regime and hostility towards Israel,” wrote Republican Senator Tom Cotton.

The American hawks wrote a collective letter to Tony Blinken, the new US Secretary of State, in which they asked not to appoint Malli, but to choose a more neutral candidate, warning that this would upset the balance of power in the Middle East and cause great concern for American partners in the region - Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, etc.

Why are Israel and the Arab world against Malli?

My first thought: because Mally is a lobbyist for the nuclear deal with Iran.

If you look at the photo of the talks on the Iranian nuclear program in 2015, then opposite the Iranian team - Zarifa, Salehi - next to the former head of the State Department John Kerry is always a modest man with glasses - Robert Mally.

“Secretary Blinken is creating a dedicated team of discerning experts with different perspectives and will be led by Rob Malli as our Special Envoy for Iran, who took over the position following his success in negotiations on Iran’s nuclear energy restrictions,” said a State Department official.

"The Secretary of State is confident that he and his team can do it again."

Robert Mally means a new nuclear deal, the lifting of sanctions on Iran, the resuscitation of the Palestinian issue, a much tougher stance on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and something else.

And this "something else" is more important than the deal.

To make it clearer, let's first look at the biography of the new envoy.

Well, first of all, Malli is a hereditary "Iranian".

His father, Simon Malli, was an expert on Iran, an Egyptian journalist who sympathized with the Communists, the National Liberation Front of Algeria and worked as a foreign correspondent for Al Gomhuria.

In 1969, Malli's father moved the family from Egypt to France, where he founded the leftist magazine Africasia.

The Malli family remained there until 1980, when the then President of France exiled them to New York due to ... hostility towards Israel.

And this paradox - a Sephardic Jew who was expelled from France for anti-Zionism, and the memory of this - will then shine through in everything that Robert Mally will do in his high posts in the presidential administration, from Clinton, Obama and ending with Biden.

In 2008, he even had to resign from a public position in the Obama electoral team after it became known about his regular meetings with representatives of the Palestinian group Hamas.

Later, when the scandal subsided, he returned to the Obama administration, in which Biden served as vice president, and became the main adviser on the Middle East.

Briefly, his track record is as follows: he was the special assistant to President Clinton for Arab-Israeli affairs and the director for the Middle East and South Asia in the National Security Council, under Obama he was engaged in IS *, probably powerfully interacting with Al-Quds, oversaw the International Crisis Group on affairs The Middle East and North Africa, until in 2018, with the arrival of Trump to the White House, he headed it.

If you have closely followed the Crisis Group publications over the years and followed the public statements of its director, you might get the impression that it is Malli who oversees and guides Tehran in its fight against Trump.

Just one quote: “If you are Iran, then the tools you have in your arsenal now are the ability to expand your nuclear arsenal, stir up markets or threaten the countries of the region and the US presence in them.

These are the tools that they have, and they will use them in response to pressures that they see tantamount to economic war. "

This is what Iran has consistently carried out.

It is no wonder that Tehran fought for the appointment of Malli as a special envoy for Iran as a matter of life and death, devoting the covers of Iranian newspapers to this and convincing Washington through its lobbyists that the future success of the American-Iranian negotiations directly depends on this appointment.

And now the most interesting thing: in the Obama administration, Mally was considered the curator of IS.

Well, in the sense of the curator of the fight against IS, which, in fact, was born and unfolded in full force precisely during these two Obama periods.

At this time, Iran was dragged into the world information agenda - as almost the flagship of the fight against IS in the region, and at this time the image of the hitherto little-known Iranian General Soleimani, who became a "hero of the fight against ISIS" and even got on covers of American magazines.

Trump, I recall, having been elected, drastically changed the rhetoric, erased the heroic veil from the "fighters against terrorism", on the contrary, adding the IRGC and almost all pro-Iranian proxies - from Hezbollah to Yemeni's Ansarullah - to the lists of terrorist organizations and subjecting them to sanctions.

Iran could not fight IS alone, and only Russia's intervention could change the situation in Syria - this is a reminder to Iran, which in its official propaganda prefers to modestly bypass this indisputable fact.

The first day of Biden's rule became symbolic: on this day, two suicide bombings thundered in Baghdad.

The responsibility for the attacks was claimed by ... who do you think?

Of course, IG.

We have not heard anything about him for a long time - and now, it seems, the time has come to remember.

Iran immediately turned to Iraq, with which it has its own scores lately, and offered help in the fight against IS, until terror swept over Mesopotamia at all. 

This means that Robert Mally is already working and Iran will be rehabilitated in the fight against ISIS, which the Democrats must remove from the "terrorist list" and again make them "fighters against the Islamic State."

Biden's first days in office are the Pakistani millionaire city of Karachi, raised to a mass protest.

A human river of Muslims threatens Israel with anger and sings about support for the "poor people of Palestine."

Democrats have returned to the White House.

Robert Mally rules.

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“Joe Biden himself is not easy to predict in foreign policy matters.

For example, he was against the first Gulf War, but for the second.

He was for the war in the Balkans, but against the intervention in Libya.

He doesn't have his hand on the trigger.

He will not immediately give preference to the military option.

Joe Biden is a very realistic and pragmatic man, he does not share the optimism and ambitious vision of Barack Obama in his first term.

Obama has become disaffected over time, and Biden starts where his predecessor left off.

But he will definitely return to the nuclear deal with Iran, ”- from an interview by Robert Malli to the French edition of Le Point on November 13, 2020.

Malli calls his main task "transformation of the regional context" - the establishment of a dialogue between Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iran.

It is easy to see that Israel is absent in this triangle, and it is not difficult to predict that this triangle may be tried to be turned against it, overthrowing the success of the Abraham Peace Treaty, which Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner were so proud of.

It would seem that the Prince of Saudi Arabia should not relax: "As for human rights, the president will demand responsibility in the case of Khashukji."

But we know how "consensus" is reached.

The switchman will answer - and that's the end of it.

Turkish President Erdogan should strain, because "Joe Biden will show greater solidarity with the Syrian Kurds than Trump, which will complicate his relationship with Turkey." 

And the main thing.

If Trump made a bet on the Middle East and the region served as a kind of theater for him (aggravation with Iran, elimination of Suleimani, support for Iranian protests, the signing of a peace treaty between Israel and the monarchies of the Persian Gulf, a war that almost started several times, a humanitarian crisis in Yemen, an aircraft carrier in Gulf), the new administration has other priorities in foreign policy - this is China and the problem of climate change.

“There is a consensus in the US that the country has invested too much in the Middle East without actually making a profit.

The American people are tired of American meddling in the region, ”says Malli.

And here, at this very place, we hear loud victorious salutes somewhere in the Green Zone of Baghdad, cheers at the Last Supper in Mashhad, where the elders in turbans stroke their gray beards, and the elderly generals in dark green military uniforms are rather laugh.

The Americans will leave on their own, there is simply no need to interfere with them.

* "Islamic State" (IS) - the organization was recognized as terrorist by the decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of December 29, 2014.


The author's point of view may not be the same as the editorial