Former Secretary of State John Kerry gestures during the Boston Climate Summit in Boston, Thursday, June 7, 2018. About two dozen mayors and city leaders were attending the event, billed as a chance to explore ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prepare for the challenges posed by climate change. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Former Secretary of State John Kerry wrote an opinion piece for the NY Times on Thursday blaming President Donald Trump for “conflict and turmoil with Iran,” arguing that “diplomacy was working until Trump abandoned it.

There’s a lot we could dispute and but let’s just take a look at a couple of things.

Here’s what Kerry says about IRGC terrorist leader Qasem Soleimani.

Let’s get one straw man out of the way. General Suleimani was a sworn, unapologetic enemy of the United States, a cagey field marshal who oversaw Iran’s long strategy to extend the country’s influence through sectarian proxies in the region. He won’t be mourned or missed by anyone in the West. Occasionally, when American and Iranian interests aligned, as they did in fighting ISIS, we were the serendipitous beneficiaries of his relationships and levers, as were the Iraqis. But this was a rare exception. That underscores the tragic irony of Mr. Trump’s decision to abrogate the nuclear agreement: It played into General Suleimani’s hard-line strategy by weakening voices for diplomacy within the Tehran regime. What Iranian diplomat would be empowered by a skeptical supreme leader to explore de-escalation with a country that broke its word on a historic agreement and then, in their words, “martyred” arguably Iran’s second most powerful figure?

So the Iran Deal was about diplomacy and helping the moderates against the hardliners like Soleimani, according to Kerry. He acknowledges Soleimani was a sworn enemy (although he doesn’t use the word terrorist despite the fact he was officially designated as such and the IRGC a terrorist organization) and Trump is playing into the hands of the hardliners.

But what happened under the Iran Deal? The Iran Deal reportedly released sanctions that had personally existed on Soleimani and other IRGC terrorist leaders. It released reportedly $150 billion to Iran, although Kerry argued that it was effectively less than that. He acknowledged that some of the money would go to terrorists. Well, of course, when you lift sanctions on those terrorists. So who was “appealing to hardliners?” The ones doing an airstrike to stop their attacks or the ones releasing money to them?

Michael Doran is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute. He specializes in Middle East security issues. During the administration of George W. Bush, he served as a senior director in the National Security Council. One of his responsibilities was dealing with issues related to Iran.

He was clearly not happy with Kerry’s little revisionist article.

Kerry would have us believe that the JCPOA contained rather than enabled Iran. In response to this ludicrous and reckless contention, I must become a whistleblower. I know for a fact that the Obama admin sent letters – plural – directly to Soleimani. https://t.co/yY3NPCZ7Q6 — Mike (@Doranimated) January 10, 2020

Well, well, well. Please feel free to share.

I urge the press and Congress to excavate that correspondence. I challenge former senior Obama officials — Susan Rice, John Brennan, John Kerry, Ash Carter and President Obama himself — to divulge all they know about the Soleimani messages and agree to have them declassified. — Mike (@Doranimated) January 10, 2020

And I also challenge those former officials to divulge all they know about — and to declassify — presidential correspondence w/ Khamenei & Rouhani. Now that the public has a better understanding of who Qassem Soleimani was, it has a right to understand the messages in context. — Mike (@Doranimated) January 10, 2020

If Trump’s conversation with Zelensky was in need of a public airing, then surely we are justified in seeing the messages to Soleimani. Obama officials, we know, have nothing to hide. They say they’re proud of their Iran “containment” policy, so why would they pose any obstacle? — Mike (@Doranimated) January 10, 2020

It’s my patriotic duty to be a whistleblower. Feel free to thank me for my service. But please don’t reveal my identity. I must remain anonymous. I didn’t want to play this role, but history & destiny compelled me to stand & be counted. That, and my desire for a good laugh. — Mike (@Doranimated) January 10, 2020

My identity is a secret. Please don’t reveal it, lest I be subjected to horrendous acts of harassment and persecution, such as anonymous people on Twitter calling me nasty names, and blue check marks asking, “What happened to you? You used to be such a reasonable guy?” — Mike (@Doranimated) January 10, 2020

Sounds like there’s a lot more there, deserving of attention. Pass the popcorn.

Paging President Trump for the declassification…

HT: Twitchy