John Kerry And The Iranian Collusion To Undermine President Trump

Fox News reported: 

Biden administration officials, including John Kerry and Robert Malley, had meetings with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif during the Trump administration that were orchestrated to undermine President Biden's predecessor, a recent report from The Washington Times claims.

Zarif held meetings with Obama administration veterans who could return to power "to devise a political strategy to undermine the Trump administration" and usher in softer diplomacy between the U.S. and Iran, according to an unnamed former senior U.S. official cited by The Washington Times.

The official was discussing face-to-face meetings between Zarif and influential Democrats in 2017, 2018 and 2019, according to The Washington Times.

The Washington Times broke the story, and had the original report: 

Although details of Mr. Zarif’s face-to-face conversations with leading Democrats remain murky, one former senior U.S. official told The Times that the Iranian foreign minister held meetings throughout the Trump years, in 2017, 2018 and 2019, before the administration halted his visa in 2020.

The underlying goals of Mr. Zarif’s meetings, the official said, was “to devise a political strategy to undermine the Trump administration” and to continue building up a reservoir of support for the JCPOA, or another deal like it, that could be drawn up if a Democrat returned to the White House in 2021.

Mr. Kerry has publicly acknowledged meeting with Mr. Zarif at least twice during the early years of the Trump administration.

In 2018, the former senator from Massachusetts told radio host Hugh Hewitt that he intended to find out “what Iran might be willing to do in order to change the dynamic in the Middle East for the better” and said there was nothing secret about his meetings with Mr. Zarif. He vehemently denied claims that he “coached” Mr. Zarif about how to deal with the Trump administration. 

Outraged at the American reversal, Mr. Zarif saw an opportunity to exploit Democratic anger to Iran’s advantage. During the initial uproar in 2018 over his meetings with Mr. Kerry, Mr. Zarif explained that he could tap into a network of support for the deal that was alive and well on the political left.

That network, he said, allowed him to work around the Trump administration.

“America is not just a government in the White House. America is a collection of public opinion, pressure groups and studies. These factors are pushing politics forward,” Mr. Zarif told a May 2018 meeting with members of the Iranian Parliament, as quoted by the Al Arabiya news channel.