(Free Beacon) A senior Pentagon official who was recently outed as an alleged member of an Iranian government-run influence operation will keep her top-secret security access following an internal review, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.
Ariane Tabatabai, a senior official in the Defense Department’s special operations office, was identified last month by Semafor as a member of the Iran Experts Initiative, an Iranian government propaganda network run by Tehran’s foreign ministry and tasked with advancing the Islamic Republic’s interests among policymakers in Washington, D.C.
Tabatabai’s alleged membership in the organization drew concerns among Republican lawmakers, who demanded her security clearance be pulled pending a review into her possible ties to the Iranian government, which helped orchestrate the Hamas terror group’s most recent strike on Israel.
