A video has emerged of United States Special Envoy to Iran Robert Malley saying that Hamas and Hezbollah “have their own rationality” and “none of them are crazies.”
The video clip, which was first reported by The Daily Wire on May 26, features Malley stating: “Hezbollah and Hamas, there is so much misinformation them. I speak to them, and my colleagues speak to them. Now we may disagree them, but they have their own rationality. That’s the one thing to understand: none of them are crazies. They may do things that we consider to belong to a different realm of rationality, but within their own system it’s often very logical.” It is unclear when exactly Malley made these comments and who he was speaking to. Both Hamas and Hezbollah are classified as terror organizations under the State Department and are backed by the Iranian government.
Robert Malley, US Special Envoy for Iran @USEnvoyIran: There’s so much misinformation abt #Hamas& #Hezbollah. None of them are crazy,they have their own rationality.#Nasrallah: A suicide bomber who wants to explode himself is like someone who wants to go2a sauna&have a cocktail. pic.twitter.com/2iS0qNZixF
— حافظه تاریخی (@hafezeh_tarikhi) May 15, 2021
Alireza Nader, an Iranian scholar and commentator, tweeted that Malley’s remarks were evidence as to why “the Obama/Biden administrations did not push back on [Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei & [Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan] Nasrallah’s power across the Middle East.” Malley was one of the leaders in the negotiating team for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, according to Politico. A request for comment through the State Department’s website was not immediately returned.
There is a reason the Obama/Biden administrations did not push back on Khamenei & Nasrallah’s power across the Middle East. Hear it from @USEnvoyIran himself: pic.twitter.com/xIVCwAle2P
— Alireza Nader علیرضا نادر (@AlirezaNader) May 25, 2022
The Politico report also noted that Malley’s appointment to special envoy was criticized, with some accusing him of being “hostile to Israel” for, among other things, meeting with Hamas while working for the International Crisis Group (ICG), prompting him to resign from Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.
Malley said during a May 25 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that “we do not have a deal [with Iran] and prospects for reaching one are tenuous at best,” CNN reported. “If Iran maintains demands that go beyond the scope of the [Iran nuclear deal], we will continue to reject them, and there will be no deal. It is not our preference, but we are fully prepared to live with and confront that reality if that is Iran’s choice.”
