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Kerry violates Logan Act

A furor has arisen about former Secretary of State John Kerry’s meetings with Iranian government officials and others regarding the Trump Administration’s decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal. Kerry’s tenure as Secretary of State ended in January of 2017. The issue has been simmering for some time. The Boston Globe reported last May that Kerry met twice with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad to discuss the nuclear deal.

Inadvertently,  Iranian officials, describing those meetings, laid out the clear legal groundwork for an indictment under the Logan Act, which criminalizes negotiation by unauthorized persons with foreign governments having a dispute with the United States. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi, quoted in Iran’s FARS news Agency “We don’t see the U.S. just as Mr. Trump; the United States is not just the current ruling administration and there are many figures who have different views on international and regional issues…”

Qassemi failed to understand that, indeed, the United States Government does have just one entity at a time that is legally permitted to conduct foreign affairs. Current Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, in an interview, stated: “what Secretary Kerry has done is unseemly and unprecedented. This is a former secretary of state engaged with the world’s largest state sponsor of terror, and according to him…You don’t have to take my word for it. … He was talking to them. He was telling them to wait out this administration. You can’t find precedent for this in U.S. history, and the secretary ought not – Secretary Kerry ought not to engage in that kind of behavior. It’s inconsistent with what foreign policy of the United States is, as directed by this President, and it is beyond inappropriate for him to be engaged in this. I remember, I saw him. I saw him in Munich at the Security Conference…”

President Trump concurred in Secretary Pompeo’s concerns: “John Kerry had illegal meetings with the very hostile Iranian Regime, which can only serve to undercut our great work to the detriment of the American people. He told them to wait out the Trump Administration! Was he registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act? BAD!”

Raising further questions about Mr. Kerry’s actions is the revelation last April that Israeli undercover agents obtained 55,000 pages of documents and 183 CDs indicating that Iran lied about the extent of its nuclear program both before and after the Obama Administration’s deal with it, in which pallet loads of cash were transferred to the regime and sanctions were lifted in return for promises, without adequate verifications according to critics, to delay its legal ability to develop nuclear weapons.
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Unofficial dealings with Tehran are distasteful on a variety of levels, including the fact that it both supports terrorism abroad and gives support to a regime that oppresses its own population. The theocratic government routinely engages in horrific acts against many, and not just dissidents.  According to Human Rights Watch,“Under Iranian law, many nonviolent crimes, such as “insulting the Prophet,” apostasy, same-sex relations, adultery, and drug-related offenses, are punishable by death.

In January, the Spectator reported that “Shortly after the latest protests began, the country’s security forces, including the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, were seen photographing the events. In Iran, a regime camera is as deadly as a sniper’s sights. Only more delayed. As in 2009, the photographs will be used by the police to arrest demonstrators and also family members unconnected with the protests. This will be followed by the torture and rape of men and women in prison by the theocratic regime’s frontmen. As after the Green Revolution, there will in due course be show trials, forced recantations and executions. This is how a police state with four decades of experience goes about its business.”

Those protests were about a variety of causes, including repression at home, and the use of Iran’s new-found riches from the Obama Administration’s nuclear deal with Tehran not t benefit the Iranian people but to indulge in even greater levels of support for terrorism and regional wars.

Photo: Former Secretary of State John Kerry (U.S. State Department photo)