Former Secretary of State John Kerry repeatedly undercut President Donald Trump’s foreign policy towards Iran during unauthorized talks with senior Iranian officials, according to Keith Kellogg, the former chief of staff for the National Security Council under President Donald Trump.
“He did it all the time,” Kellogg told Just the News when asked if Kerry sent a conflicting message to Iran. “By just the very fact that he went over there, and the fact that he talked to [Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad] Zarif, sent a very, very strong counter-message to what we were trying to do out there.”
“We read cables and we understand what’s going on,” Kellogg added. “We talked about it in the Oval Office several times. It was not helpful what he was doing, because he was basically countering every message we were putting out there and trying to push them into some type of negotiation.”
Trump reimposed tough sanctions on Iran after exiting the multilateral nuclear deal with the Islamist regime. The measures crippled the oil-rich nation in a bid to force Iran to commit to denuclearization.
“I was in there many times when the president would reach out to people like Macron of France, he would reach out to Boris Johnson in U.K., and trying to get them to be an intermediary to talk to the Iranians to get us into some type of discussions. And we always had a pushback,” Kellogg said. “Because we had people like Kerry out there talking to Zarif and others.”
It appears the Trump administration did nothing to hold Kerry back, causing a headache to Kellogg and others.
“We knew what he was doing and the frustration we had is that it was basically acknowledged by everybody and nobody cared about if one of us has [sic] done that,” Kellogg said.
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