John Kerry said he never tipped of the Iranian foreign minister of Israeli military operations in Syria.
The former secretary of state posted the denial on Twitter after Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif claimed in a leaked audio recording that Kerry told him that “Israel had launched more than 200 attacks on Iranian forces in Syria.”
“I can tell you that this story and these allegations are unequivocally false,” he said on Monday. “This never happened – either when I was Secretary of State or since.”
He was responding to a post about conservatives who accused him of sharing secrets while, according to former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, “stabbing” Israel “in the back.”
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. https://t.co/BTOdFE1khW
— John Kerry (@JohnKerry) April 26, 2021
‘THIS CERTAINLY WAS NOT SECRET’: STATE DEPARTMENT DEFENDS JOHN KERRY OVER IRAN LEAKS CLAIM
The Biden administration asserted that even if Kerry did share the information, it wasn’t a secret.
“This is purportedly leaked material. Can’t speak to the authenticity. Can’t speak to the accuracy of it. Can’t speak to any motives that may be behind its dissemination,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters on Monday. “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.”
A senior Israeli official announced in September 2018 that his country struck targets in Syria 200 times over the past two years.
Kerry previously admitted to meeting with Zarif multiple times since leaving the State Department, for which he was criticized by the Trump administration. The former U.S. senator and presidential candidate was instrumental in putting together the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran and is now a climate envoy for the Biden administration.
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“I’m not really sure what to make of [the Kerry anecdote],” said Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior adviser Richard Goldberg, a senior White House National Security Council official in 2019 and 2020 under former President Donald Trump. “The larger issue though is, of course, why do these U.S. officials trust the propagandists of the supreme leader of Iran to such an extent that you’re going to carry on these long conversations and risk disclosing things to them? … This is merely a propagandist for the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world.”
