The Weekly Standard has published a scathing editorial blasting John Kerry as "arrogant'' and a "busybody" for carrying out unauthorized negotiations with Iran.
"Why can't Democratic grandees admit that somebody else is in charge?" the editors of the conservative magazine wrote on Tuesday.
"John Kerry is no longer secretary of state … There's no role to play for Obama-era retirees vainly groping for media attention."
The Standard points out how, in 1985, Kerry and then-Sen. Tom Harkin traveled to Managua to meet with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega in an "explicit attempt to undermine" the Reagan administration's policy of aiding anti-communist Sandinistas.
It adds that former Sen. Chris Dodd and House member Peter Kostmayer, among others, "were fond of sending letters to Ortega apologizing for Reagan administration policy." As well, the magazine said, former President Jimmy Carter "has inserted himself into U.S. foreign relations, uninvited, time and again since leaving office."
"In their hearts, left-liberal politicos like Kerry, Kennedy, Dodd, and Carter can't abide the idea that somebody else is in charge. They enjoy the trappings of office, and they like to pretend they hold office even when they don't. We will stop well short of calling it traitorous. Instead we'll call it arrogant and malign," The Standard said.
Last Friday, the Boston Globe reported Kerry, who was President Barack Obama's secretary of state, met two weeks ago with a top Iranian official at the United Nations to try to use shadow diplomacy to keep the U.S. from scuttling the nuclear deal he negotiated in 2015.
Kerry's powwow with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif was their second meeting in as many months, according to The Globe.
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