On Sunday, the New York Times committed a rogue act of journalism. It reported on an obvious violation of the Espionage Act by Joe Biden’s Special “Presidential” Envoy for Climate, former Secretary of State, former Democrat presidential candidate, former senator, and perennial douchebag John F. (Mr. Teresa Heinz) Kerry.
You can read the whole story in Shipwreckedcrew’s post NYT: John Kerry Disclosed Israeli Military Operations in Syria to the Iranian Foreign Minister, but this is the synopsis.
In March of this year, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif set down for a seven-hour “oral history” (I was going to make a joke about Kamala Harris and throat swabs, but I’m much too mature to do that) with an Iranian economist/journalist named Saeed Leylaz. The oral history was not intended to be released any time soon as the interview slams the martyred Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force Qasem Soleimani, whom a US Hellfire missile put through a Cuisinart on a Baghdad highway and Iran’s reliance upon terrorism as the keystone of its international diplomacy. It is highly critical of US-Iran relations, including the Iran nuclear deal that Zarif dictated to a hapless John Kerry. A recording of this oral history was leaked to a Persian-language outlet, Iran International, and shared with the New York Times.
There is every reason to believe the recording is legit. The Iranian foreign ministry has not disputed the authenticity. The opinions Zarif express are too heterodox to be anything other than candid, and Zarif’s own account of Iranian foreign policy is not flattering to him. It makes him look duplicitous and irrelevant and should leave any diplomat wondering why they should even deal with him when he admits the IRGC, not the foreign minister, sets foreign policy.
The shocker in the story is that John Kerry gave highly classified information to Zarif.
Former Secretary of State John Kerry informed him that Israel had attacked Iranian interests in Syria at least 200 times, to his astonishment, Mr. Zarif said.
Both Kerry and the State Department spokescritter Ned Price have denied it.
Because, of course, they did. There is no reason to take these statements more seriously than we took Kerry’s fantasies about traveling up the Nung River to eliminate Colonel Kurtz. Israel did not release information on “at least 200” operations against Iranian interests in Syria. It acknowledged a few attacks.
To claim that all the information Zarif got from Kerry was open source is ludicrous and could only be explained by monumental incompetence or widespread illiteracy in the Iranian intelligence community.
Kerry’s ex parte meetings with Zarif while President Trump was trying to un-f*** the mess Obama and Kerry had left him were well documented. This is from 2018:
The Trump administration is vehemently criticizing former Secretary of State John Kerry after he confirmed this week that he had met with Iranian officials since leaving office.
Current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blasted Kerry on Friday for “actively undermining” U.S. policy on Iran, and, in a tweet Thursday night, President Donald Trump accused Kerry of holding “illegal meetings” with Iranian officials.
“John Kerry had illegal meetings with the very hostile Iranian Regime, which can only serve to undercut our great work to the detriment of the American people. He told them to wait out the Trump administration! Was he registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act? BAD!” the president tweeted.
Pompeo said he would leave “legal determinations to others,” but said there was “no precedent for this in U.S. history.”
It is also well established that Kerry was advising Iran on how to counter US actions in the Persian Gulf.
President Donald Trump went after former Secretary of State John Kerry again Thursday, calling for the former senator and top U.S. diplomat to be prosecuted for meeting with Iranian leaders and “telling them what to do.”
It’s an accusation that Kerry strongly denies and that legal scholars question the merits of as well. A source close to Kerry said that he has not talked to Iranian leaders since Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal.
Trump’s charges against Kerry come as his own administration has heightened tensions with Tehran. U.S. officials said Iran and its proxies were preparing an attack against U.S. forces in Iraq, sending an aircraft carrier strike group to the region and deploying Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Baghdad in a show of force.
Senior Trump aides met at the White House on Thursday to discuss next steps, with concerns growing about a clash between the two sides. But the president said he was not interested in war with Iran; he wanted to talk to Iranian leaders, but it was Kerry who has blocked that, according to the president.
“John Kerry tells them not to call. That’s a violation of the Logan Act, and frankly he should be prosecuted on that, but my people don’t want to do anything,” he said Thursday during a White House announcement on cutting costs for medical expenses.
As my colleague Bonchie points out, the John Hudson who is pushing the story that there is nothing to see here is the same clown who pushed the bogus “Russian bounties” story. Read John Kerry Just Backed the Biden Administration Into a Corner Over His Reported Collusion With Iran.
In short, there is no reason to think Zarif’s oral history is anything but accurate. He has maintained a close relationship with Kerry since rolling him on the Iran nuclear deal. The oral history is damaging to Zarif both at home and abroad. If you are going to claim this was a clever ruse to further discredit John Kerry, you have to answer two questions: a) why bother? and b) why Zarif made himself and Iran look bad in the process. Everything we know about Kerry since he flung someone else’s medals over a fence in front of the US Capitol in 1971 screams, “THIS IS TRUE!!”
In a sane party or in a sane “administration,” passing on classified information to a US adversary like you were giving away Lebron James trading cards would get you shown the door if not actually prosecuted. But we have neither. We are governed by a party where the chairman of the subcommittee overseeing the CIA was boinking a Chinese spy, and when the relationship was disclosed to the Democrat leadership, nothing was done, (read While Eric Swalwell Was Sleeping With a Chinese Spy Adam Schiff Put Him in Charge of CIA Oversight). We have as our selected president a man who is deeply compromised by the Chinese and by the Russians. In that environment, Kerry’s giving aid and comfort to Zarif is more properly viewed as a job application for a higher position.