Last week, the State Department inspector general issued a report pointing to serious failures regarding the suspension of Robert Malley, its special envoy for Iran. In the spring of 2023, the State Department suspended Malley due to an FBI investigation into his mishandling of classified information, which the agency believes he shared with Tehran. According to the inspector general, State Department officials covered up the suspension and continued to allow Malley access to classified information. Seth Mandel comments:

A first-class appeaser, Malley seems to have lost his sense of boundaries in his eagerness to gift Iran a new nuclear-legitimization deal and gobs of Western cash. But Malley’s alleged indiscretion is only part of the story. What he did as part of his official duties is a scandal in itself.

Malley was part of the Obama administration’s negotiating team that fooled itself into the lopsided Iran nuclear deal, which President Trump then pulled the U.S. out of. In 2021, Malley was invited back by the Biden administration to try to get a new deal. He showed up so ready to give away the store that he embarrassed other U.S. negotiators and the Europeans.

While on leave for allegedly mishandling classified information in his role as envoy to the Iranians, Malley has been given a soft landing with plum teaching posts at Princeton and Yale. His main subject, in the words of the Wall Street Journal: “U.S. foreign policy and human rights.”

Even if the agreement with Hamas to secure the release of some, and possibly all, of the remaining hostages—and the bodies of those no longer alive—is a prudent decision for Israel, it comes at a very high price: potentially leaving Hamas in control of Gaza and the release of vast numbers of Palestinian prisoners, many with blood on their hands. Nadav Shragai reminds us of the history of such agreements:

We cannot forget that the terrorists released in the Jibril deal during the summer of 1985 became the backbone of the first intifada, resulting in the murder of 165 Israelis. Approximately half of the terrorists released following the Oslo Accords joined Palestinian terror groups, with many participating in the second intifada that claimed 1,178 Israeli lives. Those freed in [exchange for Gilad Shalit in 2011] constructed Gaza, the world’s largest terror city, and brought about the October 7 massacre. We must ask ourselves: where will those released in the 2025 hostage deal lead us?

Taking these painful concessions into account Michael Oren argues that they might nonetheless be necessary:

From day one—October 7, 2023—Israel’s twin goals in Gaza were fundamentally irreconcilable. Israel could not, as its leaders pledged, simultaneously destroy Hamas and secure all of the hostages’ release. The terrorists who regarded the hostages as the key to their survival would hardly give them up for less than an Israeli commitment to end—and therefore lose—the war. Israelis, for their part, were torn between those who felt that they could not send their children to the army so long as hostages remained in captivity and those who held that, if Hamas wins, Israel will not have an army at all.

While 33 hostages will be released in the first stage, dozens—alive and dead—will remain in Gaza, prolonging their families’ suffering. The relatives of those killed by the Palestinian terrorists now going free will also be shattered. So, too, will the Israelis who still see soldiers dying in Gaza almost daily while Hamas rocket fire continues. What were all of Israel’s sacrifices for, they will ask. . . .

Perhaps this outcome was unavoidable from the beginning. Perhaps the deal is the only way of reconciling Israel’s mutually exclusive goals of annihilating Hamas and repatriating the hostages. Perhaps, despite Israel’s subsequent military triumph, this is the price for the failures of October 7.