Biden Iran Envoy on Ropes After Pro-Regime Comments
Robert Malley’s credibility shot, State Dept won’t say what massive protests are about
Biden administration Iran envoy Robert Malley / Getty Images Adam Kredo • October 25, 2022 4:30 pm
Biden administration Iran envoy Robert Malley is under increasing pressure to resign his post, as members of Congress and Iranian-American advocacy groups lose faith in his ability to support a growing protest movement in the Islamic Republic that threatens to topple the hardline regime.
The protests, which first erupted after the regime’s morality police murdered a young woman who didn’t properly wear her head covering, have quickly evolved into a referendum on the Iranian regime itself. But Malley, who has been the administration’s public face of diplomacy with Tehran, claimed the protesters are merely demonstrating “for their government to respect their dignity and human rights”—even in the face of mounting evidence they are protesting to end the oppressive regime.
The Biden administration is still waiving economic sanctions on the Iranian regime as it seeks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, though the prospects of reaching an agreement grow increasingly slender. These efforts have also forced the administration to walk a diplomatic tightrope as it offers tepid support to protesters to avoid isolating the hardline government from negotiations. Following Malley’s online gaffe, the State Department declined to answer Washington Free Beacon questions about whether it assesses that Iranian protesters are seeking regime change, even as those protesters chant “Death to the Dictator” and make clear they want the theocratic government dismantled.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), a leading congressional critic of a new Iran deal, told the Free Beacon that the “Biden administration is literally invested in the survival of the Iranian regime because the administration wants Iranian oil to make up for the catastrophe they’ve created by attacking American energy producers. That’s why they can’t bring themselves to support the calls by the people of Iran for regime change.”
“Robert Malley will go down in the history books as the most ineffective and feckless State Department official of the last 50 years. It’s time for him to go,” Bryan Leib, executive director of Iranian Americans for Liberty, a grassroots group that supports democracy, told the Free Beacon. “His most recent gaffe on Twitter is just another example of how he has aligned the United States government with the Islamic Republic and not with liberty-seeking
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