What role did John Kerry play in Iran’s attacks on foreign tankers and the downing of an American surveillance drone?

By Jon Dougherty

(NationalSentinel) For more than a year we’ve known that Obama’s secretary of state and longtime U.S. senator, John Kerry, has been attempting to undermine President Donald Trump’s foreign policy with the Islamic republic of Iran.

In May 2018, we posed the question: “What is John Kerry doing talking to the Iranians?”

We noted:

Reports … revealed that former Obama Secretary of State John Kerry is trying to â€˜saveâ€™ the Iran nuclear deal he helped negotiate by holding secret meetings with Iranian diplomats.

The Boston GlobeÂ reportedÂ that Kerry began his secret meetings as reports spread that President Donald J. Trump was considering pulling out of the deal, which â€” as the current president â€” he has every right to do.

The paper said that Kerry â€œengaged in some unusual shadow diplomacy with a top-ranking Iranian officialâ€ who was also involved in the original negotiations, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif.





In an interview with the paper, Michael Oâ€™Hanlon, a foreign policy expert at the Left-leaning Brookings Institute, said that it may be normal for former U.S. officials to remain in contact with foreign diplomats and leaders, but itâ€™s highly unusual for them to be lobbying for a specific policy position.

The paper also said that Kerry and the others wanted to keep Trump out of the process because they believe if he knew about it that would anger him and make him that much more prone to pulling out of the deal.

As it turned out, POTUS Trump did leave the so-called “nuclear agreement” that Kerry’s boss, President Obama, gave up nearly everything of importance and interest to the United States to get a deal done — even if it wouldn’t have prevented Iran from eventually developing a nuclear weapon or that the Iranians were cheating on aspects of the agreement even before Obama left office.

A year later — just last month — Kerry was again exposed for continuing his talks with Iranian government officials, again ostensibly to ‘save the nuclear deal.’ This time the president was animated and rightfully upset:

â€œThatâ€™s a violation of the Logan Act, and frankly he should be prosecuted on that, but my people donâ€™t want to do anything on that,â€ POTUS told reporters at the White House.

No doubt, that took a great many establishment news journalists aback; Democrats acting on their own to subvert the current administration is not only okay but, apparently, required. But when it comes to Republican â€˜malcontents,â€™ then, the president said, Democrats are all-in on the prosecutorial bandwagon.

Last year Kerry, Obamaâ€™s second secretary of state after the chronically criminally investigated Hillary Clinton left the position, admitted to having secret discussions with the Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, â€œthree or four timesâ€ to talk about the nuclear deal that POTUS Trump exited.

â€œJohn KerryÂ violated the Logan Act, plain and simple,â€ the president said Thursday. â€œHe shouldnâ€™t be doing that.â€

True, he most likely did violate the law. While itâ€™s not known what Kerry and Zarif discussed, itâ€™s fair to say it had nothing to do with hockey scores or â€˜the grandkids.â€™

And consider that Kerry’s meddling may led to some of Iran’s most recent behavior:

— Early last month, acting on intelligence obtained by the Pentagon, Trump ordered an aircraft carrier strike group and additional military assets to the Persian Gulf region specifically to address threats posed by Iran.

— On May 12, four tankers — two belonging to Saudi Arabia, who is waging a proxy war against Iran in neighboring Yemen, one belonging to Norway and another to the United Arab Emirates — were attacked, which the U.S. blamed on Tehran.

— A month later, two more tankers were attacked in the Strait of Hormuz, with one of them catching fire. Again, the Iranians were blamed and U.S. Central Command even put out video evidence of an Iranian patrol boat attempting to retrieve an unexploded mine from the side of one of the tankers.

— Overnight, an RQ-4 Global Hawk drone was shot down by Iranian forces over international water in the Strait of Hormuz. The attack was to be countered by POTUS Trump but he decided to abort it at the last moment because, he said, the approximately 150 Iranian deaths that would have been caused by the attack was “disproportionate” to the attack on the U.S. drone, which did not involve any loss of American life.

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That was very likely a calculated decision by the Iranians — to target an unmanned U.S. asset versus a manned airborne surveillance aircraft that was also reportedly in the area, a P-8 Poseidon with 35 personnel before.

In fact, the Iranians claimed they could have just as easily downed the P-8 but chose the Global Hawk instead, according to theÂ head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard’s aerospace division.

â€œAt the same moment, another spy aircraft called a P8 was flying close to this drone,” Gen. Amir Ali HajizadehÂ claimedÂ at a press conference. “That aircraft is manned and has around 35 crew members. Well, we could have targeted that plane, it was our right to do so, and yes it was American, but we didnâ€™t do it. We hit the unmanned aircraft.â€

These actions, taken together, reflect an emboldened, empowered Iran — a country that cannot possibly withstand a full-on assault by the United States. Did Kerry tell the Iranians some things — about U.S. capabilities, about the Trump administration, about things that would or could force POTUS Trump to reconsider any retaliatory strikes — so their government could remain intact and compete its nuclear work?

Given his history of Logan Act violations and recent discussions with this rogue regime, following by Iran’s challenging behavior, it would behoove the president to have his attorney general, William Barr, impanel a grand jury, then haul Kerry in front of it and ask him, under oath and penalty of perjury, just what it was he and his Iranian buddies talked about.

Follow Jon Dougherty on Twitter at @JonDougherty10

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