It is an established fact that Iran is plotting to murder former U.S. officials on American soil. Yet, the Biden administration is reportedly providing cover for Tehran, including by hiding information about Iranian plots from both the press and policymakers.
Tehran is actively seeking to kill former U.S. officials for their perceived role in the Jan. 3, 2020, strike that took out Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force. Those targeted include top former Trump administration officials, such as former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former national security adviser John Bolton, and Brian Hook, the former U.S. special representative for Iran, among others. Hook was among those invited to testify before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Iranian threats last week.
During the hearing, senators from both political parties thanked Hook for his service and expressed outrage at the threats to his and his family’s lives. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) then dropped a bombshell, revealing that the “Biden administration has gone to great lengths to hide the extent and persistence” of threats from Iran, “including abusing the classification system.” Cruz elaborated, noting that “the administration is required to regularly notify Congress of threats to former U.S. officials” like Hook. Cruz revealed that during the summer of 2023, when the White House was negotiating a $6 billion payout to Iran for Americans held hostage, the administration “took the unprecedented step — for the first time before or after — of classifying their notification, limiting who could see it and who could discuss it.”
Put simply, the administration allegedly sought to hide information about plots to murder former American officials to facilitate a payout to the very regime behind those plots. It would’ve been “politically inconvenient” to draw attention to this fact as “Americans understandably don’t like their government sending billions of dollars to theocratic thugs trying to murder fellow Americans,” Cruz noted. Cruz’s comments were certainly newsworthy. But with a few exceptions, such as Adam Kredo of the Washington Free Beacon, they went widely overlooked by legacy media outlets. Yet it is important to understand the danger exposed by these revelations.
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By continuing a policy of cutting deals with a regime that targets former U.S. officials, the administration is setting a dangerous precedent, effectively normalizing rogue governments trying to murder American public servants. Worse still, by allegedly abusing the classification system, the administration is politicizing a mechanism that policymakers trust to be nonpartisan. This corrodes the policymaking process and erodes faith in our national security institutions.
Accordingly, it is incumbent upon the administration to restore transparency to its Iran policy. Those who seek to murder and maim Americans deserve to be confronted, not protected and rewarded. It is the least that we owe to those who, often at great personal sacrifice, serve the American public.
The writer is a Senior Research Analyst for CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis
