[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 71 (Monday, April 26, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2191-S2193]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               John Kerry

  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

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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.'
       There being no objection, the material was ordered to be 
     printed in the Record, as follows:

                      John Kerry, Enemy of Israel

                          (By David Harsanyi)

       We know now that former secretary of state John Kerry isn't 
     merely a critic of Israel; he is an adversary. 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

[[Page S2193]]

     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.

  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.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.