Itâs hard to know how much damage John Kerry has done to himself or his country and her allies by having snitched on Israel. Itâs true, of course, that no one likes a snitch, but no one liked John Kerry even before he snitched.
Still, Kerry isnât just any dirty rat. No, the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat who by the way served in Vietnam (as the great James Taranto at The Wall Street Journal always called him) snitched on one of our nationâs most important allies. And he did so in his capacity as Barack Obamaâs secretary of state. And he did so to the world leader in state-sponsored terrorism; to a regime with the blood of hundreds of American servicemen on its hands; to a regime hell-bent on the destruction of Israel; to a regime that routinely leads its people in chants of âDeath to America!â
High confidence that Kerry is lying
In my early morning assessment of the credibility of John Kerry’s denial of Javid Zarif’s leaked disclosures, I cited my own initial exposure to Kerry’s lies. I also referred without elaboration to the circumstantial evidence that weighs in favor of the credibility of Zarif’s disclosures in this case.
Since I wrote this morning, Jim Geraghty has now weighed in with a detailed assessment of the circumstantial evidence in today’s NR Morning Jolt: “Kerry’s Denial on Leaking to Iran Doesn’t Add Up.” The dry tone of Geraghty’s weighing of the evidence adds to its weight. The fairness of Geraghty’s judgment is patent. As Kerry’s allies in the intelligence community would put it, we assess Kerry to be lying with high confidence.
Nickelodeon’s ‘environmental racism’ segment and more round out today s top media headlines.
The New York Times is taking criticism for burying a report that former Secretary of State John Kerry told Iran that Israel had attacked Iranian interests in Syria at least 200 times.
The story focuses on leaked audio of Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif speaking candidly about Iran s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the powerful branch of Iran s Armed Forces and a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. However, 21 paragraphs into a 26-paragraph story, the Times dropped a major revelation. Former Secretary of State John Kerry informed him that Israel had attacked Iranian interests in Syria at least 200 times, to his astonishment, Mr. Zarif said, Times reporter Farnaz Fassihi wrote.
Cole asked what the takeaways are from
The New York Times reporting on a leaked tape of an interview with Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif. As I put in a comment in that post, there are four. I’m going to copy and paste them below, but then I want to really focus on the fourth one because I think that’s the real tell.
There are three possible leakers of the tape: Israel, Russia, or Iran’s Quds Force. All three don’t want the nuclear deal back on the table for different reasons, though some of them overlap. In the case of Israel, Bibi is desperate to maintain a foreign threat that only he can safely lead Israel against. And he definitely does not want Iran to be incentivized to open up to the west, which will have profound impacts on Iranian society, economy, and ultimately politics. Without Iran, Israel has no foreign threat for Bibi to rail against as an existential problem that requires his experienced leadership to survive. Russia doesn’t want the deal because it also