After a variety of ambiguous reports, the State Department clarified on June 29 that the special envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, has been placed on indefinite leave, apparently pending a review of his security clearance. Malley had resigned from his role as an advisor to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008 due to his contacts with Hamas. The incident didn’t prevent him from being appointed to the National Security Council in 2014, or from serving as a lead negotiator in the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.

Malley is the son of an Egyptian Jewish Arab-nationalist intellectual with close ties to Gamal Abdel Nasser and Yasir Arafat. The elder Malley was, as the Endowment for Middle East Truth explains, an enthusiastic member of the “Third Worldist” movement, informed by the works of Frantz Fanon, that saw Western imperialism as the world’s great evil and admired all revolts against it, especially that in Algeria. Yet, while the younger Malley was very much shaped by that upbringing, he represents a distinct phenomenon:

After college, Malley became a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, a Supreme Court clerk, and a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. . . . Malley is a fully credentialed member of America’s most prestigious institutions, and he represents a new rising progressive America that largely internalized the anti-imperialist image of the United States’ global power.

The recent news that Robert Malley has been put on leave from his position as the special envoy to Iran had many—including many Iranian dissidents and activists—hoping that the man who oversaw the empowerment of the Middle East’s leading criminal regime is finally leaving the picture for good. But this hope could prove to be misguided. Whether Robert Malley stays involved with the U.S. government or retires and spends his remaining days fishing in the Bahamas, it won’t make much difference. Malley is merely one person, but the way of thinking he represents has already taken over, irreversibly, many American institutions.

Robert Malley is not part of a global America-hating conspiracy. He is not taking orders from Tehran and is not a fifth column for the ayatollah. He is not a self-hating Jew who is secretly plotting the destruction of Israel with Hamas and the PLO. Such populist and obsessive language is one of the main reasons that Robert Malley, and the American socio-historical development he represents, gained the upper hand.

In the epilogue of his book The Call from Algeria, Malley spoke of his relationship with the [Third Worldist] ideology in the past tense. He made it clear he is no longer a true believer. . . . However, what Malley does represent is a new America that is hellbent on undoing its own power.

If Iran succeeds in obtaining nuclear weapons, the war in Gaza, let alone the protests on college campuses, will seem like a minor complication. Jonathan Schachter fears that this danger could be much more imminent than decisionmakers in Jerusalem and Washington believe. In his view, Israel seems to be repeating the mistake that allowed it to be taken by surprise on Simchat Torah of 2023 and Yom Kippur of 1973: putting too much faith in an intelligence concept that could be wrong.

Israel and the United States apparently believe that despite Iran’s well-documented progress in developing capabilities necessary for producing and delivering nuclear weapons, as well as its extensive and ongoing record of violating its international nuclear obligations, there is no acute crisis because building a bomb would take time, would be observable, and could be stopped by force. Taken together, these assumptions and their moderating impact on Israeli and American policy form a new Iran concept reminiscent of its 1973 namesake and of the systemic failures that preceded the October 7 massacre.

Meanwhile, most of the restrictions put in place by the 2015 nuclear deal will expire by the end of next year, rendering the question of Iran’s adherence moot. And the forces that could be taking action aren’t:

The European Union regularly issues boilerplate press releases asserting its members’ “grave concern.” American decisionmakers and spokespeople have created the unmistakable impression that their reservations about the use of force are stronger than their commitment to use force to prevent an Iranian atomic bomb. At the same time, the U.S. refuses to enforce its own sanctions comprehensively: Iranian oil exports (especially to China) and foreign-currency reserves have ballooned since January 2021, when the Biden administration took office.

Israel’s response has also been sluggish and ambiguous. Despite its oft-stated policy of never allowing a nuclear Iran, Israel’s words and deeds have sent mixed messages to allies and adversaries—perhaps inadvertently reinforcing the prevailing sense in Washington and elsewhere that Iran’s nuclear efforts do not present an exigent crisis.