Claims that John Kerry fed secrets about Israeli military strikes to top Iranian officials must be investigated and, if proven true, should lead to the immediate dismissal of Mr. Kerry from his post as the State Department’s climate envoy, 19 Republican senators said Thursday.
In a letter to President Biden, the group of GOP lawmakers said the White House should begin an investigation immediately. And in the interim, they said that Mr. Kerry — who served as secretary of state under former President Obama — should temporarily lose access to all sensitive government information.
“Secretary Kerry has a long history of employing transactional diplomacy against the best interests of the United States or our allies — often trading long-term national security for a flawed short-term political agenda — which has ultimately endangered our allies and emboldened our enemies,” the senators said.
“The most recent egregious allegation … is reason alone to remove Secretary Kerry from your administration,” they wrote in the letter.
The firestorm facing Mr. Kerry stems from his relationship with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, an English-speaking diplomat who worked closely with Mr. Kerry in crafting the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The deal put limits on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for economic sanctions relief.
In a recently leaked audiotape, Mr. Zarif said that Mr. Kerry once told him that Israel had conducted more than 200 covert airstrikes against Iran-backed militias stationed in Syria.
Mr. Kerry denied ever having such a conversation.
“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,” he said in a Twitter post earlier this week.
The timing of the alleged Kerry-Zarif conversation is important. Israeli officials acknowledged in September 2018 that they had carried out 200 airstrikes in Syria.
Mr. Kerry has admitted to meeting with Mr. Zarif at least twice after leaving his post as secretary of state in January 2017. Mr. Zarif did not provide a date of when the conversation supposedly occurred.
Republican lawmakers have called for congressional hearings to get answers to that question and a host of others.
They’re also cautioning the Biden administration to exercise caution as it pursues new diplomatic talks with Tehran about resurrecting the JCPOA, which former President Trump exited in 2018. If Mr. Zarif is lying about his conversation with Mr. Kerry, they said, the administration should not trust the Iranian regime to honor its commitments.
“If proven false, this narrative is yet further proof that Iranian officials are dishonest brokers and we ask that your administration be mindful of this as you continue discussions on the future of U.S. posture towards Iran, the 19 senators wrote.