US President Donald Trump blasted former secretary of state John Kerry for meeting with Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif after he left the state department.
“John Kerry had illegal meetings with the very hostile Iranian Regime, which can only serve to undercut our great work to the detriment of the American people. He told them to wait out the Trump Administration! Was he registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act? BAD!” Trump tweeted Thursday night, the Hill reported.
The Foreign Agents Registration Act requires agents representing the interests of foreign powers to disclose their relationships with international governments and their related activities and finances.
Speaking on journalist Hugh Hewitt’s daily radio show, Kerry acknowledged that he met with Zarif “three or four times” but denied he was trying to coach him through the Trump administration’s rejection of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
“No, that’s not my job, and my coaching him would not, you know, that’s not how it works. What I have done is tried to elicit from him what Iran might be willing to do in order to change the dynamic in the Middle East for the better,” Kerry said.
“You know, how does one resolve Yemen? What do you do to try to get peace in Syria? I mean, those are the things that really are preoccupying, because those are the impediments to people, to Iran’s ability to convince people that it’s ready to embrace something different.”
Kerry was heavily involved in crafting the nuclear agreement between Iran, the US and other major world powers.
The Boston Globe revealed in May that Kerry met Zarif in an effort to save the deal.
Earlier this week, Kerry justified his meetings with Iranian officials, telling Fox News, “Every secretary of state, former secretary of state continues to meet with foreign leaders, goes to security conferences, goes around the world. We all do that.
And we have conversations with people about the state of affairs in the world in order to understand them. We don't negotiate. We are not involved in interfering with policy. But we certainly have reasonable discussions about nuclear weapons, the world, China, different policies obviously.”
Last November, Kerry warned Congress that it would be "extraordinarily dangerous" for it to reject the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
More recently, Kerry ripped Trump in an interview on CBS for deciding to leave the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, claiming the president “doesn't know what he's talking about”.
In May, Trump withdrew from the landmark 2015 Iran nuclear deal and then reimposed US sanctions on Iran.
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