A recent report disclosed that leading members of President Joe Biden’s administration, including former Secretary of State and current Climate czar John Kerry, may have “colluded” with Iran to undermine President Donald Trump’s foreign policy.
Kerry, Biden administration’s Iran envoy Robert Malley, and other former Obama officials were in “backchannel” talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in “an apparent bid to undermine the Trump team and lay the groundwork for post-Trump relations,” the Washington Times reported Sunday.
The Washington Times published the details of these unauthorized talks:
President Trump in 2019 sought to open a back channel of communication with top Iranian officials and saw the U.N. General Assembly meeting in September as a potential opportunity to defuse escalating tension with Tehran, but the effort failed.Two months earlier, however, a different back channel was thriving in New York. Iran’s smooth, English-speaking foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, met with Robert Malley, who was President Obama’s Middle East adviser, in an apparent bid to undermine the Trump team and lay the groundwork for post-Trump relations.The attempt at counterdiplomacy offers a window into the deep relationships Mr. Zarif forged with influential U.S. liberals over the past decade. These relationships blossomed into what high-level national security and intelligence sources say allowed the Iranian regime to bypass Mr. Trump and work directly with Obama administration veterans that Tehran hoped would soon return to power in Washington.One of those was former Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who met with Mr. Zarif during the Trump years. So did Obama-era Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. They, along with Mr. Malley, were top U.S. negotiators of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). As part of the deal, Tehran promised to limit its nuclear enrichment activities in exchange for economic sanctions relief and access to tens of billions of dollars in frozen bank accounts.
Malley, the architect of the flawed Obama-era nuclear deal, told the ruling Mullahs of Tehran to wait out the Trump presidency in hopes of better terms under a Democratic administration, the report suggested. In a 2018 interview, Kerry also admitted giving Iranians similar advice.
“Malley, in his meeting with Zarif, likely urged Iranian officials to sit tight until 2021, when it was expected a Democratic administration could restore the deal,” the New York Post reported on Monday.
Malley seems to have a history of holding secretive talks with entities hostile to the United States. The 20o8 Obama presidential campaign fired him after embarrassing details of his “unauthorized” discussions with the Iran-supported Islamic terrorist group Hamas came to light.
The Washington Times article also exposed the reach Iran’s diplomat has within the Democratic foreign policy establishment:
(…) Zarif’s power extends far beyond the negotiating table. Numerous sources have told The Washington Times that he wields tremendous influence over a tightly knit group inside the U.S. that has long advocated for Washington to take a more accommodating tack toward Iran.The sources, including several from the U.S. intelligence community who spoke on the condition of anonymity, described a “web” of activity tied to prominent think tanks across the United States, as well as lobbying efforts that reached directly into the White House during the Obama years.It’s an informal union of Iran apologists and pro-diplomacy advocates that helps amplify Mr. Zarif’s talking points, giving the Iranian Foreign Ministry influence over public opinion in the United States and considerable sway in left-leaning political and social circles.
Responding to the damning revelations, former Secretary Mike Pompeo called the conduct of the senior Biden administration officials “unamerican.”
“We knew this was going on,” he told the Fox News on Wednesday. “It’s unamerican. It’s very troubling. It’s not the right thing to do.”
Former acting director of national intelligence, Richard Grenell, on Tuesday, called for a detailed inquiry into these previously undisclosed meetings between the prominent Obama-Biden officials and the Iranian regime’s top brass.
“I think we’ve got to look at the details because if these meetings were happening and he was undermining U.S. policy by offering a different alternative, a different set of carrots if you will, we really need to get to the bottom of this,” he told the Newsmax, referring to the Logan Act, which prohibits unauthorized U.S. citizens from negotiating with foreign governments.
When the first revelations about John Kerry’s alleged backdoor dealings with Tehran first came to light in mid-2019, President Donald Trump took a similar stance.
“[Biden]’s talking to Iran and has been — has many meetings and many phone calls, and he’s telling them what to do. That is a total violation of the Logan Act,” President Trump said in May 2019.
“The United States does not need John Kerry’s possibly illegal Shadow Diplomacy on the very badly negotiated Iran Deal. He was the one that created this MESS in the first place!” he subsequently tweeted.
By rehiring Obama officials with the history of backdoor dealings with Tehran, Biden sends all the wrong signals to the regime.
With his old friends back in the White House, Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif told the Biden administration to pay $1 trillion in “reparation” for the U.S. sanctions.
The regime is also expecting President Biden to lift “all sanctions in the near future,” a senior Iranian regime spokesman declared on Saturday.
“Pompeo reacts to report Biden team colluded with Iran to undermine Trump”
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