Secretary of State Mike Pompeo criticized former Secretary of State John Kerry for meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif multiple times during Donald Trump’s presidency as being “unseemly and unprecedented.”
Pompeo told reporters on Friday, “This is a former secretary of state engaged with the world’s largest state sponsor of terror and according to him, he was talking to them, he was telling them to wait out this administration. You can’t find precedent for this in US history and the secretary ought not engage in this kind of behavior. It’s beyond inappropriate.”
Matt Summers, a spokesman for Kerry, told CNN in a statement, “Like America’s closest allies, Kerry believes it is important that the commitments Iran made under the nuclear agreement, which took the world years to negotiate, remain effective. He was advocating for what was wholly consistent with US policy at the time. There’s nothing unusual, let alone unseemly or inappropriate, about former diplomats meeting with foreign counterparts.”
Kerry told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Wednesday that he has met with Zarif “three or four times” during the Trump presidency, although Kerry denied that he was coaching Zarif on how to preserve the Iran deal. Kerry also didn’t deny telling Zarif to simply wait until 2020, when Trump could be voted out office.
