Iran Cannot Be Trusted. What About John Kerry?

By 

Wesley Smith

|
April 30, 2021

6 min read

Middle East

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It is a given that the Iranian government cannot be trusted. They have defied and deceived the United Nations and the international community so often it is actually expected that they will not keep their word. As Israel revealed to the world in 2018, the Iranians have been working on a nuclear weapon for years—in spite of their assurances to the world that they had absolutely no need or interest in such a weapon. Just last week, German intelligence services revealed that Iran continues to seek multiple weapons of mass destruction that include nuclear weapons, as well as chemical and biological weapons.

Iran ignores U.N. resolutions, such as the one that mandates they not continue research and development of ballistic missiles; they now have the largest arsenal of missiles in the entire region and also have developed a ballistic missile that can easily carry a nuclear weapon. They provide rockets with sophisticated guidance systems to Hezbollah which targets Israel. The rockets fired by Hamas that targeted civilians in Israel last week have the fingerprints of Iran all over them.

Attacking and destabilizing other nations in the region is Iran’s chief export, though they generally use proxies so as to have plausible deniability and continue their protestations and claims of innocence. Iran has sought to sow unrest and destabilize our allies in the Arab Gulf States, including Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Like their lies to the world at large, the list of Iran’s unlawful activities could go on and on.

The Iranian regime is not only dishonest, it is violent. They abuse their own citizens; sham trials and unlawful imprisonments are common. They also detain citizens from other countries, including the United States. They have one of the worst human rights’ records in the world, right up there with their friends Russia, North Korea, and China. Also, China just signed a new agreement with Iran to share military training/technology and intelligence.

Iran has attacked ships in international waters and has recently begun to harass U.S. Navy and Coast Guard vessels again. They support the Houthi rebels in Yemen who launch missile attacks on Saudi Arabia. They attempted to assassinate a Saudi diplomat in Washington, D.C., America’s capital city. Iran’s malign behavior and dangerous duplicity goes on and on.

Iran’s self-declared chief enemy is Israel. They continue to call for the destruction of the Jewish state (the Middle East’s only democracy) and provide training and weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah, terror organizations that do Iran’s bidding. Of course, the United States, as “the Great Satan,” is on Iran’s list of enemies as well. Iran provided advanced IEDs to the insurgents in Iraq that killed and wounded thousands of American soldiers.

Why would Europe continue to press for the reestablishment of the JCPOA (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or Iran nuclear deal)? Why would some of these same countries seek to evade U.S. sanctions against this world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism? Apparently, oil and commerce are more important than human rights, as well as peace and their own security.

All of this begs the question: Why would former Secretary of State John Kerry consider the Iranian leadership to be his friends, and why would he behave as if Israel were the enemy? This is the same John Kerry who accused his fellow sailors of war crimes during his service in Vietnam. It appears that he has a long-standing issue with America in general and joins with other elitists in being overly critical of the United States and overly enamored with our adversaries.

Multiple media outlets reported this week that John Kerry shared classified intelligence with Iran about Israeli airstrikes against Iranian assets in Syria. As former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Senior Counsel for Global Affairs at the ACLJ, said this week: "Looks like from this reporting it's confirmed what we already believed, which is when I was briefing President Trump, Kerry was briefing Zarif on intelligence that related to Israeli operations. I hope that's not true. John Kerry needs to come forward and speak to the American people and explain to them why he was meeting with Zarif."

The nature of Kerry’s relationship with Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif is what gives legs to these media reports. Kerry himself essentially admitted that he was in ongoing conversations with Iranian leadership during the Trump Administration and conducted unauthorized shadow diplomacy that undercut American foreign policy at the time.

It was also during Kerry’s service in the Obama Administration that the flawed JCPOA was crafted, with billions of dollars in cash made available to the rogue regime. By the way, the ACLJ just recently won a major victory in court concerning the Obama Administration’s attempts to hide their secret meetings with Iranian officials in the run up to the JCPOA and the attempt to mislead the American people about what actually happened. Additionally, during the Trump presidency, Kerry apparently provided encouragement to Iran that if they would patiently wait, a new U.S. Administration would be more accommodating and re-enter the nuclear deal from which President Trump withdrew.

Remember: The 2015 Iran nuclear deal did not prohibit them from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Rather it delayed it for approximately a decade. The international inspections that were written into the deal required that Iran be given advance notice of any inspection and that all Iranian military installations were off limits. In the ensuing six years, Iran violated the agreement by increasing the number of centrifuges and by enriching uranium from the allowed 5% to now 60% enrichment. Iran also hid their nuclear research and development facilities deep underground so as to shield them from any attacks.

This is where the world finds itself. Iran is well on the way to possessing nuclear weapons. In order for the agreement to be re-entered by the United States, Iran demands that all U.S. sanctions be immediately lifted. The Biden Administration is actually considering doing just that. Yet many of the sanctions have nothing to do with nuclear weapons; rather, they are about demanding that Iran stop the human rights abuses and stop their terrorist activities.

And John Kerry, as the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, is a Biden Administration official and confidant who also serves again on the National Security Council. More problematic, it seems that Kerry is also a confidant of the Iranian regime. This should concern every American.

Some lawmakers are already calling for an investigation into Kerry’s relationship to Zarif and whether Kerry violated the law by providing classified information to the Iranians. While the need for an investigation is being debated, Kerry should have his security clearance suspended and have no access to classified information. He should not be allowed to attend any meetings of the National Security Council or any classified briefings. This is not about partisan politics, in spite of the protestations of the Biden Administration and Kerry’s allies in the media. This is about national security and the law. Kerry must be held to the same standard as any U.S. official who may have violated the sacred responsibility that comes with being entrusted with classified information.