Zarif's Book, Part VIII: Kerry's Lost Respect for Khamenei

In his last weeks in office, Mohammad Javad Zarif, who served as foreign minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran from 2013 to 2021, published a six-volume treatise on Iran’s nuclear negotiations with the P5 + 1:  the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany.

Entitled The Sealed Secret, the book carries the subtitle “An Immense Endeavor for Iran’s Rights, Security and Development”. Besides Zarif’s own memoirs, the book also includes contributions and quotations from Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency during the pre-JCPOA nuclear talks, former deputy foreign minister Abbas Araghchi and Majid Takht-Ravanchi, a senior nuclear negotiator and Iran’s permanent representative to the UN.

Our eighth article, based on a few different passages in the book, explores how the US secretary of state John Kerry’s view of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei evolved as the nuclear negotiations dragged on.

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In July 2014, exactly a year before the JCPOA was signed, a round of negotiations between Iran’s then-foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and the foreign ministers of the P5+1 was drawing to a close. The US Secretary of State, John Kerry, had decided to stay in Vienna a while longer than planned. Javad Zarif was still in Vienna as well.

Before the end of the formal nuclear talks, a meeting took place between Zarif, Kerry and Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s then-high representative for foreign relations. The Sealed Secret holds that Kerry in particular had some interesting things to say.

“The delegation you see before you,” the secretary of state reportedly said, “is the highest-level team that the White House and the State Department can send. It seldom happens that the State Department’s three top officials [Kerry himself, his deputy Bill Burns and Wendy Sherman, under-secretary of state for political affairs] are together on the same foreign trip and in the same meeting.

“I want to tell you with certainty that you won’t find a better group than Obama, Kerry, Burns, Sherman, and Sullivan [Jake Sullivan, then-national security advisor to Vice-President Biden], who’ll distance themselves so far from politics and ideology, and who are so determined to reach an agreement. Please tell Iran’s Supreme Leader and President Rouhani that we are truly committed to find a just, sensible and true solution. At the time of [George W.] Bush, some good opportunities presented themselves but he missed them because of his beliefs. Now, we have a chance to go forward.”

Even as a senator, John Kerry had always shown an interest in meeting Iranian officials. In 2007, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he had held a meeting with Mohammad Khatami, former president of the Islamic Republic. Some analysts believe this was the reason Obama chose Kerry to succeed Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state, having already been writing to Ali Khamenei in an attempt to win his trust.

The next year, after the sixth round of negotiations ended in Muscat, Oman, The Sealed Secret claims that Kerry made another off-script overture to the Iranians. “We know how much Iran’s leadership distrusts the US,” he is quoted as saying. “The issue of uranium enrichment by Iran has been ongoing for 10 years. We decided to put this issue behind us and accept enrichment, but then you took it for granted, and started on the road to a higher level.

“Please tell your president that we have to convince our own people, too. They ask us: ‘The Iranians are enriching uranium and you’re lifting the sanctions?’... Obama is going to be president for another two and a half years, and we have enough time. You can count on us. If necessary, go to Tehran and convey our sincerity. Please do this so that decisions can be made more easily.”

Early Praise for Khamenei

In The Sealed Secret, Zarif and his co-authors write: “These statements by the US Secretary of State were the most straightforward that had been uttered since the negotiations in Muscat started. Nevertheless, it seems the decision to express some of what was going on in the minds of the American delegation was more due to expediency than to honesty. He made this point well: Obama only had two and a half years left.”

In his public statements, Kerry referred to Ayatollah Khamenei with notable respect. In public at least, he took Khamenei’s fatwa against the making, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons seriously, and said it was this that meant a nuclear agreement might be possible. In March 2014, while the talks were ongoing, Kerry had said: “I have great respect for a fatwa. A fatwa is a very highly regarded message of religious importance. And when any fatwa is issued, I think people take it seriously, and so do we, even though it's not our practice. But we have great respect for what it means.”

Khamenei Disparages US Representatives

For now at least, no-one knows for certain how Obama and Kerry regarded Iranian officials outside the arena of negotiations. But in his book, Zarif recounts that in one private meeting, Khamenei told him that he did not find Ernest Moniz – the US Secretary of Energy who joined the negotiations to assess technical issues – “likeable”.

Far worse was in September 2014, two months after Kerry’s conciliatory and respectful words to Zarif at the meeting in Vienna. Emerging from hospital after prostate surgery, Khamenei made some astounding public remarks about the American delegation. “I must say one thing that has nothing to do with the hospital, illness and the hospital environment,” he declared. “These last two or three days, I entertained myself with what the Americans were saying about ISIS [the Islamic State] and fighting ISIS.

“What they said was absurd and biased. One of the things I found entertaining was that both the American secretary of state and that girl — their spokesperson who stands there and talks — explicitly said that they were not going to ask Iran for a coalition to fight ISIS... This is a reason to be proud, not sorry.

“Second, I saw they were all lying... Through their ambassador in Iraq, the Americans asked our ambassador to Iraq to cooperate against ISIS...Some of our officials had nothing against it but I opposed it... because their own hands are dirty.

“Then the same secretary of state who had told the world in front of the camera that they did not want Iran’s collaboration personally asked Dr. Zarif for collaboration on this issue. But Dr. Zarif rejected the offer. And his deputy, a woman that you have seen and know of, also asked Mr. [chief nuclear negotiator Abbas] Araghchi for cooperation.”

By “that girl” Khamenei, was referring to Marie Harf, the State Department’s deputy spokesperson, and by “his deputy, a woman that you have seen and know” was Wendy Sherman, deputy secretary of state.

The Sealed Secret makes no mention of Khamenei’s disrespectful statements, nor of the US delegation’s reaction. Instead, the book is at pains to portray Khamenei as an experienced, knowledgeable individual in the field of foreign relations. Khamenei, it oozes, “was so knowledgeable about the details of the negotiations that it would be no exaggeration to say he was fully aware of and critiqued every session and topic discussed in those sessions.”

But as nuclear negotiations got closer to more sensitive and difficult phases, Khamenei made more public speeches criticizing the US and opposed the agreements that had already been reached. Sometimes he would draw red lines that threw the negotiations into an impasse. Little by little, this behavior by Khamenei changed John Kerry’s view of him.

In one passage of The Sealed Secret, Zarif talks about the International Atomic Energy Agency’s investigation into “possible military dimensions” (PMD) of Iran’s nuclear program: “A rare but significant dispute was about access to individuals and locations. The secretariat of the Supreme National Security Council... had prepared and proposed guidelines. The Supreme Leader’s position explicitly opposed these guidelines. He was against any access to the country’s scientists and visits to specific places. The negotiating team had to follow the Leader of the Revolution’s decisions. Therefore, the judgement by the Exalted Supreme Leader was conveyed to the US Secretary of State as Tehran’s position.”

John Kerry apparently reacted with anger on learning of the decision, though Zarif claims this was because Kerry had “misunderstood” and thought an already-reached agreement had been snatched away by the Supreme Leader. The Sealed Secret describes Zarif telling Kerry: “It’s not the case that in the Islamic Republic one individual makes the decisions. Decisions are made in different places and go through their own processes, and then the Leader gives his opinion based on his insight of various considerations.”

 

Related coverage:

Zarif's Book, Part VII: Religious Tensions in the Negotiating Room

Zarif's Book, Part VI: Ex-FM Claims Retaliatory Missile Tests Were His Idea

Zarif's Book, Part V: Foreign Minister First Tried to Resign in 2014

Zarif's Book, Part IV: The Behind-Closed-Doors Nuclear Shouting Match

Zarif's Book, Part III: Mohsen Fakhrizadeh's Role in the Nuclear Talks Revealed

Zarif's Book, Part II: The Obama Meeting that Never Happened

Zarif's New Book Lifts Lid on Iran's Nuclear Strife

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