By Jim Geraghty
Tuesday, April
27, 2021
For what it’s worth, former secretary of
state John Kerry denied late
yesterday that he had informed Foreign
Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif about 200 Israeli attacks on Iranian targets in
Syria. “I can tell you that this story and these allegations are unequivocally
false. This never happened — either when I was Secretary of State or since.”
Some of the usual suspects on Twitter,
eager to defend Kerry, made an implausible claim that those Israeli attacks
were public knowledge at the time, and asked, “You don’t normally believe anything
that comes out of Iran. Why
now?” (I welcome their newfound skepticism of statements from the Iranian
regime, and hope they apply that skepticism consistently to any negotiations or
discussions with the Iranians from here on out.)
Kerry
defenders need to reread the New York Times piece that started all this.
The comment comes from Foreign Minister Zarif, who met with Kerry
many
times
while Kerry was secretary of state during Obama’s second term. In fact, you may
recall Kerry and Zarif continuing
their conversations after Kerry left government service, in an effort to
preserve the nuclear deal. The
two men are on a first-name basis, and were characterized as “friendly but not
friends.” The Financial Times characterized it as “the
Kerry-Zarif special relationship.”
By Iranian standards, Zarif is one of the
nicer guys, one who is more eager to engage with the West, and to the extent
Kerry has a . . . maybe “friend” is putting it too strongly, but . . . to the
extent Kerry has a reliable partner in the Iranian regime, Zarif is the guy. If
this is all a big lie from Zarif to make Kerry look bad . . . why would Zarif
do that? What would Zarif have to gain by trying to make the former U.S.
government official most eager to reach a deal appear incapable of keeping
secrets?
Sure, the Iranian regime lies all the
time. But if this is a lie, why would the foreign minister lie about his
favorite negotiating partner in this case?
This is the sum total of what the
original Times article says about Kerry: “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.” This morning, subsequent
reporting by the New York Times provides a little more
context:
The
recording in question captures Mr. Zarif speaking for hours to an interviewer
producing an oral history of the current Iranian administration.
“Kerry has
to tell me that Israel has attacked you 200 times in Syria?” says Mr. Zarif,
who complains in the recording that Iran’s military has long kept him in the
dark on crucial matters.
“You did
not know?” the interviewer asks twice. Both times, Mr. Zarif replies, “No, no.”
In the
recording, Mr. Zarif does not specify when Mr. Kerry was supposed to have made
the comment.
From that, we don’t know
whether the alleged leak was before or after public reports in September 2018
that Israel had struck 200 Iranian targets in Syria, but the fact that Zarif was surprised by what Kerry had told him —
and that the Iranian military had not kept him in the loop — strongly suggests
that this information had not yet appeared in news reports.
It is likely that the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps already knew, or strongly suspected, Israel was
behind these attacks. The IRGC probably suspected the Israelis every time
something went wrong for the Iranians in Syria — something important blew up,
or someone important died in mysterious circumstances. (I would guess that when
Iranian hardliners stub their toes in the morning, they suspect the Mossad was
behind it.)
But notice that the context of Zarif’s
comment is not, “Boy, that John Kerry is a big blabbermouth.” He’s
not setting out to stab his old negotiating partner in the back. He’s
complaining about the Revolutionary Guard Corps. The context is, “I’m
the foreign minister, but those jerks at the IRGC aren’t keeping me in the loop
on anything; I have to learn about what the Israelis are doing from my American
counterpart!”
And whatever the Iranian regime as a whole
knew, believed, or suspected, Zarif didn’t expect Kerry to come out and confirm
their suspicions. Zarif says he learned this “to his astonishment.”
So we’re left with my original questions
from yesterday: Was this a deliberate Obama administration decision to
tell the Iranians, or was Kerry freelancing?
Either way, it seems extraordinarily
unlikely that the Israelis had signed off on Kerry revealing this information
to Tehran. We’re left where we started: John Kerry knowing about military
actions that an allied country had taken in Syria that were not meant to be
public knowledge — and sharing information about them with the Iranian foreign
minister.
Also note that by speaking this bluntly
and critically of the Revolutionary Guard Corps and the late Major General
Qasim Soleimani, it seems clear Zarif did not expect this interview to go
public at this time. Maybe he thought his comments would be revealed far in the
future, after his retirement or after his death — if they were ever revealed at
all. For what it is worth, the Iranian
foreign ministry says the recording was never meant to be released to the
public:
Iran’s
Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said today that the recording was not supposed to be released to the media.
The interview took place with economist Saeed Leylaz, who is a supporter of the
Rouhani administration. Khatibzadeh said the recording was a “typical
discussion within the administration.” The intention of the talks was a Rouhani
administration initiative that all Cabinet members record their experiences in
order to serve as documents to help the next administration.
It seems pretty clear that we in the West
were not meant to hear this interview anytime soon, if ever — which makes it
even more implausible that this is some sort of Iranian misinformation effort
to undermine John Kerry’s reputation. However, it does feel as if somebody in
the Iranian government wanted to kneecap Zarif, and/or his political allies.
Iran is scheduled to have a presidential “election” in June 18. (Those scare
quotes are deliberate.) While the final ballot has yet to be set, take a look at who a bunch of the top
contenders are:
A number
of Iranian military leaders, from both the army and the Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps (IRGC), are among the likely candidates for Iran’s presidential
election, which will be held on June 18. Among these candidates are the former
IRGC air force commander and former defense minister in the Rouhani government
Hossein Dehghan; former IRGC commander and current Secretary of Iran’s
Expediency Discernment Council Mohsen Rezaee; and the former head of the IRGC’s
Khatam Al-Anbiya Construction Headquarters Brig. Gen. Saeed Mohammed, as well
as other politicians with a military background, including Ali Larijani, Parviz
Fattah and Mehrdad Bazrpash.
If you’re the IRGC or an ally of that
faction within the Iranian government, and you come across an audiotape of the
foreign minister trashing your beloved
brigadier-general-turned-airport-highway-speedbump, you’re sure as heck going
to release that.
This isn’t a lie designed to smear Kerry.
There’s no good reason to think Zarif is lying to the interviewer. Kerry’s
reputation is collateral damage in a fight among factions within the Iranian
government.
We as Americans have very little ability
to influence who runs what within the Iranian regime. But we can decide which
people can be trusted with secrets within the U.S. government — and John Kerry
isn’t one of those people.
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