John Kerry

Floor Speech

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Mr. SULLIVAN. Madam President, I rise today on the Senate floor to call for the resignation of John Kerry as a member of the Biden administration's National Security Council.

Now, I don't do this lightly. As a matter of fact, in my entire time in the Senate, I have never called for anyone's resignation--Obama- Biden administration, Trump administration, Biden administration now. I have been tempted, particularly when some in government have tried to hurt my State. A lot of that is going on right now with the Biden administration. But his record--John Kerry's record--of undermining working families and working against American national security interests is too much to bear. He needs to go.

Today, I have heard such disturbing news that, if true, it should absolutely result in the call of John Kerry either being fired or resigning. Enough is enough. Why am I saying this? First, he is killing jobs, arrogantly killing American jobs. That is a fact. He is putting hard-working Americans, particularly in the energy sector--the great men and women who make our country strong by developing oil and gas resources; a lot of my constituents--in the name of climate goals, he is putting them out of work. He is going to Wall Street, saying: Don't finance these projects anymore. That is what reporters are saying.

On these issues, I completely and adamantly disagree with the arrogant way--frankly, callous way--he says: Hey, people need to move on to better jobs. But for this issue alone, I wouldn't be calling for his resignation. This is a major difference in the Biden administration's policies and priorities with regard to the American people. I think it is going to really come back and hit this administration hard because the vast majority of Americans don't agree with putting people out of work, energy workers out of work during a recession and pandemic, but that is going to be decided in the voting box in the elections. The American people will ultimately decide whether arrogantly putting thousands and thousands of energy workers out of work right now is a good idea.

In the name of these climate goals, he has also been a strong appeaser of countries that threaten ours.

Let me take you back to 2015. I was a brandnew U.S. Senator. President Obama and President Xi Jinping are meeting in the Rose Garden.

President Xi Jinping from China tells the President of the United States and the American people: No, we are not going to militarize the South China Sea. We won't do it.

Of course, the Chinese Communist Party was not telling the truth to the President of the United States and the American people. They started to do this already, militarizing one of the most important sea routes in the world.

Many of us here in the Senate, Democrats and Republicans, said: We need to stand up for our interests. We need the U.S. Navy to do freedom of navigation operations.

The Secretary of Defense wanted to do this. The admiral in charge of the INDOPACOM area of responsibility wanted to do this. But we now know, in principals' meetings, we delayed doing this for almost 3 years because John Kerry said: We don't want to get the Chinese mad, or they will go back on their Paris climate deal and commitments--which, by the way, are way out in the future.

This is true. This is true. This happened. Again, in my view, this bordered on treacherous but not treasonous. I didn't call for his resignation then. I was mad about it. By the way, a lot of people in the Obama administration were mad about this, including the Secretary of Defense. We lost a lot of time.

It certainly makes me nervous that John Kerry is out in Beijing again. What kind of deal did he cut this time with China, the Communist Party of China, which won't keep any commitments? But, again, that wasn't a call for resignation.

The straw that broke the camel's back came out today, and it is the reason I am up here calling for John Kerry to resign. It is a tape that was leaked of an interview with Iran's Foreign Minister, Mohammad Zarif.

First, some background. Zarif was being interviewed by an economist and journalist who is an adviser to Mohammad Khatami, the pro-reform cleric who served two terms as Iran's President. An edited version was intended to be public of this interview only after Iran's current President left office in August, but it was leaked.

Zarif, according to reports, says many interesting and telling things in the tape, one, for example, that, in my view, the rightful killing of General Soleimani, the Quds Force commander, in January of 2020 when he was in Iraq looking to kill more American soldiers--Zarif said this ``was a major blow to Iran, more damaging than if it had wiped out an entire city in an attack''--that was what a lot of us were arguing at the time--and that unlike what John Kerry had been telling the public when negotiating the Iran nuclear deal in the Obama administration, it is the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Quds Force, not Zarif, who calls the shots in Iran. That is all on the tapes.

But the most disturbing part of the interview that was leaked was when Zarif said that John Kerry told him, the Iranian Foreign Minister, about covert Israeli actions against Iranian interests in Syria. Now think about that. According to news reports, Zarif is heard as saying:

It was former U.S. Foreign Secretary John Kerry who told me Israel had launched more than 200 attacks on Iranian forces in Syria.

That is Zarif saying John Kerry told him that, classified information about one of our most important allies in the world, Israel.

Zarif said that he ``listened to this information [from Secretary Kerry] in astonishment.''

Now, when I read this today, I was astonished as well, that a former Secretary of State, now a member of President Biden's National Security Council--who wasn't confirmed for that, by the way, by this body--would reveal the secrets of one of our most important and enduring allies in the region to an avowed enemy and the largest state sponsor of terrorism, a country that was responsible for the killing and wounding and maiming of thousands of American service men and women, whose leaders have the blood of American soldiers on their hands. He is telling them that information.

It is unclear why John Kerry would relay such information to the leaders of the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world, but here is a guess: During the Trump administration, after that administration pulled out of the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal, which John Kerry negotiated--and by the way, a bipartisan majority of U.S. Senators in this body were against that deal--John Kerry started to freelance. He admitted to meeting with Zarif in 2018 to try to salvage the nuclear deal. In other words, he was likely acting and working against the previous administration, the elected administration, the Trump administration, and many of us here in Congress who applauded when we pulled out of the JCPOA.

Madam President, I would ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article written today by the National Review titled ``John Kerry, Enemy of Israel.'

In leaked audiotapes obtained by the U.K.-based Iran International, as reported by the New York Times, Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told a supporter that the former secretary of state had informed him about ``at least'' 200 covert Israeli actions against Iranian interests in Syria. Zarif listened to this information in ``astonishment.''

It's predictable, perhaps, that the Times glides over this remarkable exchange in a single-sentence paragraph that is submerged near the bottom of the piece. (I guess it's better than the Washington Post, which doesn't even mention the interaction.)

A high-ranking American official feels comfortable sharing this information with an autocratic adversary--a government that's murdered hundreds of Americans, regularly kidnapped them, interfered with our elections, and propped up a regime that gasses its people--about the covert actions of a long- time American ally. What else did he tell Zarif? The Times doesn't say.

It wouldn't be surprising if Israel was more reluctant to share intel with the United States when Democrats such as Kerry show more fondness for those making genocidal threats against the Jewish people than they do for the state that protects them. It's worth remembering that others like Senator Chris Murphy (who is now ``requesting a classified briefing'' on the Natanz incident, in which Israel likely sabotaged a nuclear facility) also secretly met with Zarif in Munich in a coordinated effort to undercut the Trump administration's efforts to derail Iran's ongoing nuclear- weapons program--an incident that comports far more closely with the definition of ``collusion'' than anything turned up against Trump officials. We have no idea what Murphy discussed with Zarif, either.

We do know that after the assassination of Qasem Soleimani--head of the Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force and the terror group behind the death of over 600 American servicemen and thousands of others--Kerry and Murphy were among the many people scaremongering over a ``massive regional war'' that never materialized. In his leaked conversation, Zarif says of Soleimani that ``by assassinating him in Iraq, the United States delivered a major blow to Iran, more damaging than if it had wiped out an entire city in an attack.''

As the Trump years proved, there are a number of options available as we wait for the Iranian regime to come to its senses or, hopefully, crumble, including maximum economic pressure and sabotage. Last week. Israel reportedly blew up Iran's Natanz nuclear facility's electrical substation, located 40 to 50 meters underground, damaging ``thousands of centrifuges.'' This is likely the second time in the past few months that the Israelis have been able to smuggle explosives into the facility and detonate them remotely. Of course, this incident is only one in a long line of unexplained fires, assassinations, and computer worms that have caused substantial delays and damage to the illegal Iranian nuclear- weapons program. All of these efforts have likely saved lives by delaying the ability of Iran to become another North Korea--or worse, since Iran exports terror all over the world.

During the Obama years, Democrats would offer an ugly false choice: You either support diplomacy with the ``moderate'' wing of the theocratic state, or you endorse ``war''; either fly unmarked euros in tonnage and bail out the Mullahs, or plunge America into another Iraq War. At one point, Obama claimed that the Republican caucus was making ``common cause'' with Iranian hard-liners.

The opposite was true. In the leaked audio from Zarif, we hear that the military and theocratic forces in the nation ``call the shots'' and overrule ``government decisions and ignoring advice.'' According to the Times, Zarif says that the political wing is ``severely constricted'' and decisions ``are dictated by the supreme leader or Revolutionary Guards Corps.'' Obama's contention that the Iran deal was being forged with the ``moderate faction'' was always a fantasy.

The real moderates in Iran were forsaken by Obama and Biden when they decided that the United States wouldn't support the 2009 Green Movement, in what Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky called one of the biggest failures of human rights in modern history. Democrats Murphy, Biden, and Kerry are more interested in ensuring Iran becomes a regional counterforce to Israeli power.

Whatever you believe about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or Biden's iteration of the deal, it should not have to be said that high-ranking United States officials shouldn't be sharing sensitive information about an ally with a terror regime. Yet it also seems quite likely that's exactly what John Kerry did.

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Mr. SULLIVAN. The beginning of this article says:

Let's pause to reflect on how monumentally stunning it is that the former U.S. secretary of state allegedly tattled on Israel to Iran.

It goes on to say: A high-ranking American official would feel comfortable sharing this kind of classified information ``with an autocratic adversary--a government that's murdered hundreds of Americans, regularly kidnapped them, interfered with our elections, and propped up a regime that gasses its people--about the covert actions of a long-time critical American ally.''

What else did Kerry tell Zarif, this article asks? Press reports don't say, but if this is true, if John Kerry told Iran--the leaders of Iran--about issues relating to our most critical ally in the region, Israel, which Iran has repeatedly said they want to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth, if he did this, he needs to resign. If he did this with the intent of undermining the current President of the United States at the time, President Trump, and the Members of this body, he needs to resign.

He is a member of the current administration's National Security Council. It has become clear that our adversaries, whether Beijing or Iran, like it when John Kerry is in charge of foreign policy and national security. Why? Because they know how to use him to their advantage. And our allies fear him. Why? Because they know his judgment is off on so many issues. So, too, do America's working families.

We need to look into this. If this is true--if this is true--I certainly hope other Members of this body, Democrats and Republicans, will join me in calling for the resignation of John Kerry. Enough is enough. The redline that was crossed, if this is true, revealing secret information to one of America's most sworn enemies, with the blood of thousands of American military members on its hands, undermining the interests of one of our most important allies, the State of Israel, if this is true, John Kerry needs to go. He should resign or he should get fired by the President of the United States.

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