Pompeo criticizes John Kerry
Meetings with Iranians called ‘BAD,’ ‘unseemly’
The Secretary of State said his predecessor was “actively undermining” U.S. policy on Iran.
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo unloaded Friday on his predecessor John Kerry for “actively undermining” U.S. policy on Iran by meeting recently with the Iranian foreign minister, who was his main interlocutor in the Iran nuclear deal negotiations.
In blunt and caustic language, Pompeo said Kerry’s meetings with Mohammad Javad Zarif were “unseemly and unprecedented” and “beyond inappropriate.” President Donald Trump had late Thursday accused Kerry of holding “illegal meetings with the very hostile Iranian Regime, which can only serve to undercut our great work to the detriment of the American people.”
Pompeo said he would leave “legal determinations to others” but slammed Kerry as a former secretary of state for engaging with “the world’s largest state sponsor of terror” and telling Iran to “wait out this administration.” He noted that just this week Iranianbacked militias had fired rockets at U.S. diplomatic compounds in Iraq.
“You can’t find precedent for this in U.S. history, and Secretary Kerry ought not to engage in that kind of behavior,” an agitated Pompeo told reporters at the State Department. “It’s inconsistent with what foreign policy of the United States is as directed by this president, and it is beyond inappropriate for him to be engaged.”
Kerry, who is promoting his new book, “Every Day is Extra,” had no response Friday to Trump’s latest Twitter broadside. In the past, he’s been harshly critical of the president and his decision in May to withdraw from the Iran deal.
Pompeo also took to task former Energy Secretary Earnest Moniz and ex-Iran deal negotiator Wendy Sherman for joining Kerry at a meeting with Zarif and other Iranian officials earlier this year at a security conference in Munich. Along with Kerry, Moniz and Sherman played key roles in negotiating the 2015 agreement between Iran and several world powers that lifted sanctions against Tehran in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program.
“I wasn’t in the meeting, but I am reasonably confident that he was not there in support of U.S. policy with respect to the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Pompeo said.
Such meetings, between a private U.S. citizen and foreign official, are not against the law and not necessarily inappropriate or a violation of federal regulations, but Trump, Pompeo and several GOP lawmakers say they are evidence Kerry and former Obama administration officials are trying to subvert Trump’s hard line on Iran.
Trump tweeted late Thursday: “He told them to wait out the Trump Administration! Was he registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act? BAD!”
The law Trump seemed to invoke — known as FARA — requires registration and transparency by people or companies acting on behalf of foreign governments, political parties or individuals.
But Josh Rosenstein, a partner with the Washington law firm Sandler Reiff and a specialist in lobbying compliance, said there are too many unanswered questions to know whether the law applies to Kerry’s interactions with Zarif. FARA’s provisions don’t extend to activities conducted entirely overseas, so where Kerry interacted with him matters.
“The devil’s always in the details,” Rosenstein said. “Simply offering advice to a foreign government doesn’t make you a foreign agent.”
Trump and Pompeo’s criticism came after Kerry told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Wednesday that earlier reports of his meetings with Zarif were correct: They had met three or four times since Kerry left office but not since Pompeo took the job in April.
Kerry told Hewitt that he was not coaching the Iranians on how to deal with the Trump administration.
“That’s not my job, and my coaching him would not, you know, that’s not how it works,” he said. “What I have done is tried to elicit from (Zarif ) what Iran might be willing to do in order to change the dynamic in the Middle East for the better.”