Former Secretary of State John Kerry disclosed sensitive intelligence about Israel military actions in Syria to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian diplomat said in recently New York Times leaked audio. The recording casts new light on communications between the two men after Kerry returned to life as a private citizen in 2017.
In the audiotape that was first released by the London-based Iran International media outlet, Zarif reportedly said that Kerry told him that Israeli forces had attacked Iranian targets in Syria at least 200 times. Zarif expressed “astonishment” at the revelation. Zarif then sat down for interviews with an Iranian journalist as part of a major government-sponsored Iran history project.
Iranian officials have not denied the authenticity of the recordings but have said they were selectively edited.
In the tapes, Zarif bemoans the influence of Iranian military officials in Tehran, suggesting that the military often overrules diplomats and, in effect, takes the lead on Iran’s foreign policy. Zarif said the Revolutionary Guards Corps call the shots, overruling many government decisions and ignoring advice. The Iranian minister also confessed that by assassinating Major General Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Guards’ elite Quds Force in Iraq, the United States delivered a major blow to Iran, more damaging than if it had wiped out an entire city in an attack.
Israel’s attacks on Iran are nothing new. After all, routinely sabotaging Iran’s military and government projects is a matter of survival for Israel, a country Iranian leaders in turn routinely vow to demolish. In fact, it is no secret that Israel is behind many strategic attacks on Iran, such as the recent targeting of Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility or the surprise assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, one of Iran’s top nuclear scientists who played a critical role in Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
What is surprising is that Kerry would disclose details about Israel’s secret military missions to Iran, an enemy of both Israel and the America. Such behavior raises eyebrows, especially considering Kerry has been appointed Biden’s special envoy on climate.
Kerry has a long history of being close to the Iranian regime. The relationship goes back to Davos in 2007 and likely earlier. The United States worked hard on the Iran Deal, in part because we needed a diplomatic win. Kerry fronted that win, collaborating closely with Zarif.
The Jerusalem Post reported that Kerry and Zarif cultivated a relationship in which they would help one another, ostensibly confronting “hardliners” back home in their own societies. It was a symbiotic relationship: They would rise and fall together.
Kerry himself denies the allegations. “I can tell you that this story and these allegations are unequivocally false,” he wrote on Twitter. Some Biden administration officials have dismissed the severity of Kerry’s alleged disclosure. State Department spokesperson Ned Price commented at a press briefing Monday, “I would just make the broad point that if you go back and look at press reporting from the time, this certainly was not secret, and governments that were involved were speaking to this publicly, on the record.”
Kerry traveled to Iran in 2018 — as he admitted himself — to meet with Zarif regarding the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal that he helped to negotiate as President Obama’s secretary of state and may have disclosed the information during that meeting. The 200 attacks were not reported publicly until six months later.
Also, the peculiar “shady diplomacy” of former Obama diplomats, Kerry included, was aimed “to devise a political strategy to undermine the Trump administration and to continue building up a reservoir of support for the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, aka Iran Nuclear Deal] or another deal like it, that could be drawn up if a Democrat returned to the White House in 2021,” as reported in detail by the Washington Times. These actions presumably violate the Logan Act, a law that criminalizes negotiations of unauthorized Americans involving themselves in government business with foreign governments.
Republican lawmakers are calling for Kerry to leave his climate change position and for an investigation into the case. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) called for Kerry’s resignation in a floor speech, one of several senators to do so on Monday: “I don’t do this lightly. In my entire time in the Senate, I’ve never called for anyone’s resignation…. But his record, John Kerry’s record, of undermining working families and working against American national security interests was too much to bear. He needs to go.” Senator Tim Scott (R-Fl.) suggested Kerry resign as well, and Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) called for transparency in evaluation of an “apparent breach of a commitment to one of our key allies.”
Representative Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, called for Kerry to be prosecuted: “This is a criminal act and John Kerry must be immediately investigated and PROSECUTED. President Biden must immediately remove John Kerry from any government or advisory position,” she tweeted.
The case against Kerry is quite compelling, and clearly deserves to be investigated to the fullest extent of the law.
