WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump lashed out at former secretary of state John Kerry for his meetings with Iran’s foreign minister after the Obama-appointee had left office.
“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,” Trump said on Twitter late Thursday.
“He told them to wait out the Trump Administration!” he said, ending his Tweet with the word “BAD!”
Kerry, who negotiated the 2015 Iran nuclear deal which Trump scrapped this year, said during a tour to promote his new book “Every Day is Extra” that he had met Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif “three or four times” since he left office and Trump had entered the White House.
Without commenting on the legality of such meetings, the current US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, accused his predecessor of “actively undermining US policy.”
“What secretary Kerry has done is unseemly and unprecedented,” said Pompeo, who is seen as an anti-Iran hawk.
“This is a former secretary of state engaged with the world’s largest State sponsor of terror and according to him... he was telling them to wait out this administration.”
A spokesman for Kerry said there was nothing improper about his conduct.
“Secretary Kerry stays in touch with his former counterparts around the world just like every previous Secretary of State,” the spokesman said in a statement.
“And in a long phone conversation with Secretary Pompeo earlier this year he went into great detail about what he had learned about the Iranian’s view.” (AFP)