His latest banana skin came when he told Congress “let me just inform everybody here” that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has “actively pulled its forces back from Syria”. His officials were told not to say anything more publicly about the crucial role the IRGC has been playing, with Russian support, in propping up the Assad regime.

No recent event in Syria has caught more world attention than the taking back by “Syrian” forces of the ruined city of Palmyra. But in two reports from Palmyra last week, the admirable Lindsey Hilsum from Channel 4 News described how the area had in fact been retaken by troops led by the IRGC, including their Hezbollah allies and thousands of mercenaries from Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

She was supported from Kabul by her colleague Jonathan Miller, interviewing young Afghan men who had escaped into Iran from the murderous chaos into which their country is being plunged by the Taliban, only to find themselves forced on pain of death to join the IRGC forces fighting in Syria.

The difference between the Channel 4 reporters and Mr Kerry is that they are on the spot, telling us what is really happening, while he, back in Washington, lives entirely in his own sad little bubble of wishful thinking – even to the point where he thinks it appropriate to tell the British people that they must vote to stay in the EU.