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Will Robert Malley Revive Obama's Policies on Dealing with Tehran?

Robert Malley, AFP
Robert Malley, AFP
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Will Robert Malley Revive Obama's Policies on Dealing with Tehran?

Robert Malley, AFP
Robert Malley, AFP

The new US government has named Rob Malley, an architect of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, as its special envoy to Tehran, but policy hawks say he's too soft on the Islamic republic.

Malley, a childhood friend of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, has been serving as head of the International Crisis Group, an independent non-governmental organization focused on conflict resolution.

Before that, he was one of the chief negotiators on the 2015 nuclear deal reached by Iran and world powers, under which Tehran was promised economic relief for major curbs in its contested nuclear program.

Malley “brings to the position a track record of success negotiating constraints on Iran's nuclear program,” a State Department official said.

“The Secretary is confident he and his team will be able to do that once again,” they added.

While many of Malley's friends have praised his experience, integrity and political goodwill, he has faced stinging criticism from other Republican hawks.

“Malley is an extremely knowledgeable expert with great experience in promoting US security through diplomacy,” Senator Bernie Sanders said.

Before he was even named to the post, rumors of Malley's nomination prompted sharp criticism from anti-Iran hawks on the political right.

“It's deeply troubling that President Biden would consider appointing Rob Malley to direct Iran policy,” Republican Senator Tom Cotton tweeted last week.

“Malley has a long track record of sympathy for the Iranian regime and animus towards Israel. The Ayatollahs wouldn't believe their luck if he is selected,” he added.

One of the more stinging criticisms of Malley came from Xiyue Wang, an American academic arrested and effectively taken hostage by the Iranian government for three years while doing doctoral research in the country during the final months of the Obama administration.

He was released in late 2019, under a prisoner exchange deal negotiated by the Trump administration.

“During my imprisonment Mr. Malley was a senior White House official. He played no positive role in facilitating my release,” Wang tweeted.

“If he is appointed, it’d suggest releasing US hostages from Iran won’t be a priority.”

Wang also said, “Malley has long opposed pressure against Iran and its regional proxies and apathy about Iran’s human rights abuse.”

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Palestinians in Syria Flock to Cemetery Off-Limits under Assad

People pray by the grave of a relative in a damaged cemetery at the Yarmuk camp for Palestinian refugees in the south of Damascus on December 14, 2024. (AFP)
People pray by the grave of a relative in a damaged cemetery at the Yarmuk camp for Palestinian refugees in the south of Damascus on December 14, 2024. (AFP)
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Palestinians in Syria Flock to Cemetery Off-Limits under Assad

People pray by the grave of a relative in a damaged cemetery at the Yarmuk camp for Palestinian refugees in the south of Damascus on December 14, 2024. (AFP)
People pray by the grave of a relative in a damaged cemetery at the Yarmuk camp for Palestinian refugees in the south of Damascus on December 14, 2024. (AFP)

In a war-ravaged Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, Radwan Adwan was stacking stones to rebuild his father's grave, finally able to return to Yarmuk cemetery after Bashar al-Assad's fall.

"Without the fall of the regime, it would have been impossible to see my father's grave again," said 45-year-old Adwan.

"When we arrived, there was no trace of the grave."

It was his first visit there since 2018, when access to the cemetery south of Damascus was officially banned.

Assad's fall on December 8, after a lightning offensive led by opposition factions, put an end to decades of iron-fisted rule and years of bloody civil war that began with repression of peaceful anti-government protests in 2011.

Yarmuk camp fell to the opposition early in the war before becoming an extremist stronghold. It was bombed and besieged by Assad's forces, emptied of most of its residents and reduced to ruins before its recapture in 2018.

Assad's ouster has allowed former residents to return for the first time in years.

Back at the cemetery, Adwan's mother Zeina sat on a small metal chair in front of her husband's gravesite.

She was "finally" able to weep for him, she said. "Before, my tears were dry."

"It's the first time that I have returned to his grave for years. Everything has changed, but I still recognize where his grave is," said the 70-year-old woman.

Yarmuk camp, established in the 1950s to house Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their land after Israel's creation, had become a key residential and commercial district over the decades.

Some 160,000 Palestinians lived there alongside thousands of Syrians before the country's conflict erupted in 2011.

Thousands fled in 2012, and few have found their homes still standing in the eerie wasteland that used to be Yarmuk.

Along the road to the cemetery, barefoot children dressed in threadbare clothes play with what is left of a swing set in a rubble-strewn area that was once a park.

- 'Spared no one' -

A steady stream of people headed to the cemetery, looking for their loved ones' gravesites after years.

"Somewhere here is my father's grave, my uncle's, and another uncle's," said Mahmud Badwan, 60, gesturing to massive piles of grey rubble that bear little signs of what may lie beneath them.

Most tombstones are broken.

Near them lay breeze blocks from adjacent homes which stand empty and open to the elements.

"The Assad regime spared neither the living nor the dead. Look at how the ruins have covered the cemetery. They spared no one," Badwan said.

There is speculation that the cemetery may also hold the remains of famed Israeli spy Eli Cohen and an Israeli solider.

Cohen was tried and hanged for espionage by the Syrians in 1965 after he infiltrated the top levels of the government.

Camp resident Amina Mounawar leaned against the wall of her ruined home, watching the flow of people arriving at the cemetery.

Some wandered the site, comparing locations to photos on their phones taken before the war in an attempt to locate graves in the transformed site.

"I have a lot of hope for the reconstruction of the camp, for a better future," said Mounawar, 48, as she offered water to those arriving at the cemetery.