Ariane Tabatabai, a Pentagon official whose troubling links to the Iranian regime were revealed more than a year ago and who is reportedly suspected of being behind the leak of top secret US intelligence documents related to Israel, is no longer chief of staff for Assistant Secretary of Defense Christopher Maier.
Politico reports that Tabatabai has been promoted to Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Education and Training, a position she’s (also) completely unqualified for:
ARIANE TABATABAI is now the deputy assistant secretary of defense for force education and training within the Office of the Secretary of Defense, a position she was offered last month. She was previously chief of staff for assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict.
Note that Politico pointedly asserts that Tabatabai was offered the position last month, likely in an attempt to make people believe that this move wasn’t in response to the document leak.
In her position as chief of staff to Maier, Tabatabai had access to extremely sensitive intelligence assessments because of what Maier’s role entails:
ASD(SO/LIC) oversees and advocates for Special Operations and Irregular Warfare throughout the Department of Defense to ensure these capabilities are resourced, ready, and properly employed in accordance with the National Defense Strategy. In this role, the ASD:
- Exercises authority, direction, and control of all special operations peculiar issues relating to the organization, training, and equipping of special operations forces
- Is the Principal Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict Official within the senior management of DoD
- Sits in the chain-of-command above USSOCOM for special operations-peculiar administrative matters; provides civilian oversight of the SOF enterprise.
- Advises, Assists, and Supports the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy on Special Operations and Irregular Warfare policy matters.
A defense official with knowledge of the investigation told RedState on Saturday evening that investigators believe that the top secret documents related to Israel’s activity/preparations to strike Iran that were leaked to an Iranian-linked Telegram channel were leaked by Tabatabai, and Sky News Arabic reported the same on Monday. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told reporters Wednesday, though, that, “There’s no OSD official being named as a part of this investigation.”
RELATED: Sources Point to Pro-Iran Defense Official as the Leaker of Documents on Israeli War Strategy
Tabatabai’s move to a role where she won’t have access to classified information about special programs, the current location of U.S. special forces, intelligence assessments, and much more, is considered by some observers as essentially a demotion and a tacit admission that she was, in fact, the leaker, and they are working to contain the damage while the investigation continues.
This moves her out of the Special Ops world into an Admin slot with no access to real time real world info
Smells like a forced “promotion” she can’t refuse while they investigate her and prep to bust her for the leaks https://t.co/sUNC1fyzrN
— Jim Hanson (@JimHansonDC) October 24, 2024
According to counterterrorism analysts who spoke to RedState in October 2023, Tabatabai’s been a subversive force at the Pentagon since she arrived from the State Department in 2022:
“[C]ounterterrorism analysts speaking to RedState on condition of anonymity, whose reports would have crossed Tabatabai’s desk, say that for at least the past year their product has been watered down, misquoted, or outright quashed. Tabatabai had the opportunity to shape the intelligence to meet her needs, the analysts say, and they say it’s likely that the overt intel collected during that period went to Iran.”
Tabatabai’s position at State was as a policy adviser to disgraced Iran envoy Robert Malley, who’s accused of mishandling classified information himself. As the Washington Free Beacon reported, Tabatabai has been a frequent guest at the White House courtesy of Phil Gordon, who’s Kamala Harris’ national security advisor and who’s collaborated with Tabatabai on multiple opinion pieces “argu[ing] against sanctions on the Iranian regime”:
Tabatabai was at the White House just two months after Semafor revealed she was a key member of a secretive Iranian influence group, the Iran Experts Initiative, that reported back to Tehran’s foreign ministry, according to the logs. She participated in at least seven other White House gatherings throughout the end of 2023 and into April 2024, mixing with officials from a range of cabinet-level agencies.
Now that we’ve seen the granularity of the surveillance the U.S. and, at least in the case of the leaked documents, the U.K. conducts on Israel, and knowing that Tabatabai had access to all of this prior to 10/7, it’s not difficult to believe that she also leaked those assessments to the mullahs.
According to the DoD’s Force Education and Training site, in her new position, Tabatabai will “serve as the principal senior authority on the development of DoD policy on all issues related to military education and training across the Joint Force,” and “responsibilities include professional military education, military and joint training policy, training capability modernization, military and joint exercises policy, and language programs.” The man who served in this position in an acting capacity until today was Dr. Ling Yung, a retired USAF Colonel who previously served as the Deputy Chief Learning Officer at DHS. A bit more about Yung:
Dr. Yung began his career in public service as a Distinguished Graduate of the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Program. For more than 25 years, he held numerous leadership positions in U.S. Air Force space and missile operations, including Deputy Commander for Space and Missile Analysis at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center and Commander of a Space Operations Squadron and an Air Force Installation. He has also served on the Joint Staff; at Headquarters, U.S. Space Command, North American Aerospace Defense Command, Pacific Air Forces; and at the Air Force Electronic Systems Center, retiring from the U.S. Air Force in 2015 at the rank of Colonel.
Anyone who would be appointed as DoD’s chief learning officer at this point is undoubtedly woke and likely not extremely helpful in terms of readiness and quality training, but having Tabatabai there is an insult. She should be nowhere near the Pentagon due to her relationship with the Iranian regime, but this is a very slight move in the right direction.
