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In a tweet, Middle East reporter Laura Rozen discussed a friend’s meeting with Kerry at a Lausanne chocolate shop. “Friend of colleague ran into @JohnKerry at chocolate shop tdy. She said friends in #Iran are looking forward to deal. He said ‘inshallah,'” Rozen tweeted. “Inshallah,” for those of you not up on your Arabic, means “Allah willing.” “Inshallah,” of course, may come to be the 21st century version of Neville Chaimberlain’s “Peace in our time.” It’s clear that Kerry has been sent on a blatant appeasement mission that he seems to be carrying out flawlessly. It’s so bad that we’ve...

Secretary of State John Kerry sent a letter to the State Department’s Inspector General requesting a review of email and records management, the State Department said today. The timing of Kerry’s request has many asking if this push for reform is connected to former Secretary Hillary Clinton’s recent scandal involving her use of a private email server, rather than a State Department account. State Department Spokesman Jeff Rathke denied this had anything to do with Clinton, citing instead the State Department’s need to better manage the overwhelming number of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and requests for information from...

According to the April 18, 2013 U.K. Telegraph: "Mr Kerry, the US secretary of state, told the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday that the 'window' for a two state solution was 'shutting'. 'I think we have some period of time, a year, a year-and-a-half, or two years and it's over,' he said." And what happened two years after Mr. Kerry's prophecy that at the maximum, after two years, the two-state solution is "over"? On March 16, 2015, Netanyahu asserted that there won't be a Palestinian state. And then, a funny thing happened. Instead of rejoicing at...

It’s déjà vu all over again. In November, the multilateral negotiations aimed at curbing Iran’s march toward a nuclear weapon stalled and failed to culminate in an agreement before the scheduled deadline. But Iran and the P5+1 were reportedly so close to an agreement that they just couldn’t let the talks collapse merely because an arbitrary dead had come and gone. All parties agreed to extend the talks until the end of March when all parties would have to agree on a framework for a final deal. They would have until the end of June to work out the...

Turkey has criticised United States Secretary of State John Kerry for suggesting that negotiations would have to be opened with President Bashar al-Assad to end the conflict in Syria. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told the state-run Anatolia news agency on Monday that all Syria's current problems, on the fourth anniversary of the start of the uprising in March 2011, were caused by Assad’s government. "What is there to be negotiated with Assad?" Cavusoglu was quoted as saying at the end of his visit to Cambodia. "You are going to have what [kind of] negotiations with a regime that has killed...

Secretary of State John Kerry compared himself to Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln and other great historical luminaries for having the courage and tenacity to tackle the most heinous enemy plaguing mankind — climate change. “My heroes are people who dared to take on great challenges without knowing for certain what the outcome would be,” Kerry said in an address to the Atlantic Council on Thursday. “Lincoln took risks, Gandhi took risks, Churchill took risks, Dr. King took risks, Mandela took risks, but that doesn’t mean that every risk-taker is a role model.”

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) - The United States will have to negotiate with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for a political transition in Syria and is exploring ways to pressure him into agreeing to talks, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told CBS News in an interview. Washington has long insisted that Assad must be replaced through a negotiated, political transition, but the rise of a common enemy, hardline militant group Islamic State, appears to have slightly softened the West's stance towards him. In the interview broadcast on Sunday, Kerry did not repeat the standard U.S. line that Assad had lost...

Iran Deal Secrets Revealed – by IranPosted By Kenneth R. Timmerman On March 13, 2015 @ 12:46 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 1 Comment Much is being made of the letter signed by 45 U.S. Senators, all of them Republican, aimed at schooling Iranian leaders in the requirements of the U.S. Constitution.Secretary Kerry said his reaction was “utter disbelief” that the Senators would “go behind” the back of the administration during a delicate international negotiation. Some on the American Left called it “treason,” conveniently forgetting that some of their own (including Kerry, as a junior Senator) have met with enemy...

US Secretary of State John Kerry will meet Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas and Jordan's King Abdullah II on the sidelines of economic talks in Egypt on Friday, US officials said. The talks are likely to focus on the economic crisis facing the Palestinian Authority and could be a four-way meeting which would also include Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a State Department official said. "We continue to be concerned about the PA," the official told reporters travelling with Kerry on his plane to the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. "It’s really part of the continuous, ongoing conversation we’re...

Secretary of State John Kerry told members of Congress Wednesday that “we have the capacity” to “knock out ISIL,” but “we’re not going to get suckered into that.” “The enduring transformation that has to take place here is not going to take place if the United States just comes in and were to knock out ISIL and that’s it, go away. Not gonna happen,” Kerry said during a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on a hearing about the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, also known as ISIS or ISIL. “We could do that, actually. We have that...

Via the Examiner, he’s not the only State Department official to admit this within the past 24 hours. Jen Psaki also acknowledged last night that a nuclear deal with Iran wouldn’t be legally binding, with good reason. The only way to give an international agreement the force of law vis-a-vis future presidents and Congresses is to have the Senate ratify it under its treaty power. Until that happens — and it won’t happen — this is a deal between Barack Obama and the Ayatollah Khamenei. Once one of them is gone, the deal remains valid if and only if his...

Secretary of State John Kerry spent five minutes of a Senate hearing excoriating a group of 47 Republicans who sent a highly unusual letter to the government of Iran warning that Congress could modify the terms of any nuclear deal it negotiates with the White House. 'This letter raises questions of judgment and policy,' he insisted, before Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker cut him off and scolded him for delivering 'a well-written speech.' 'It's not a speech! This is not a speech!' Kerry erupted. 'This is a statement about the impact of this irresponsible letter. The letter does not have...

Jake Tapper ‏@jaketapper 3h3 hours ago Kerry: "I believe we have all the (HRC) emails...let me check on that when I actually have time to pay attention to such an important issue" 0 replies 63 retweets 44 favorites

The U.S. State Department hunkered into defense mode after Benjamin Netanyahu’s congressional speech, saying in an early Wednesday statement that the Israeli prime minister misrepresented one of his claims that painted Secretary John Kerry in a poor light. Jen Psaki, spokeswoman for the State Department, referred to the website FactCheck.org to make her point that Netanyahu’s remarks about Iran going nuclear actually “misrepresented what Kerry had said’ during the secretary’s House Foreign Affairs Committee testimony on Feb. 25, Fox News reported. In his speech, Netanyahu said Kerry told Congress Iran could “legitimately possess” up to 190,000 centrifuges used to enrich...

MONTREUX, Switzerland - Simply demanding Iran's capitulation is no way to get a nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday as he wrapped up three days of talks with a veiled dig at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Kerry said he and Iranian counterpart Mohammad Jawad Zarif made some progress in their negotiations in the Swiss lakeside town of Montreux and would resume them on March 15. Kerry aides said many obstacles remained before a late March deadline for an outline accord between Iran and six world powers. "There are still significant...

That’s some nuanced nuance right there. The ISIS Jihadists just want to join John Kerry for a meal at a fancy restaurant. Maybe he can invite them on over. Kerry introduced the topic of what motivates terror recruits. “Why do people make what to many of us would seem to be an utterly wrongheaded choice and become the kind of terrorists that we’re seeing?” he asked. “It’s a question that we need to approach with humility, but also with determination, because you cannot defeat what you don’t understand.” “Certainly, there is no single answer,” Kerry continued. “In our era, poisonous...

The rise of violent extremism represents the pre-eminent challenge of the young 21st century. Military force is a rational and often necessary response to the wanton slaughters of children, mass kidnappings of schoolgirls, and beheading of innocents. But military force alone won’t achieve victory. In the long term, this war will be won only by deploying a broader, far more creative arsenal. A safer and more prosperous future requires us to recognize that violent extremism can’t be justified by resorting to religion. No legitimate religious interpretation teaches adherents to commit unspeakable atrocities, such as razing villages or turning children into...

North America has an “enormous interest” in building diplomatic relationships with Cuba, Secretary of State John Kerry said Saturday during a weekend meeting with his counterparts from Canada and Mexico. “This is an effort we believe offers the best opportunity for the people of Cuba to improve their lives and to take part in the choices about their lives,” Kerry said during a news conference at Boston’s Faneuil Hall. A high-level U.S. delegation held two days of talks with Cuban officials in Havana last week for the first time in decades. In December, President Barack Obama announced plans to restore...

The intervention in Israel’s forthcoming election by groups that have received funding from the U.S. government, and which are staffed by veterans of the Obama campaign, certainly sounds like intervention on the internal politics of another nation – a big no-no on the world stage. It demands investigation, and unsurprisingly, Senator Ted Cruz, joined by Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), is at the forefront. He has sent off a letter to Secretary of State Kerry asking specific questions – questions that can be repeated at Senate oversight hearings. Israel Matzav excerpts some of the key issues....

When folks like Andrew McCarthy articulated why our findings about then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s close adviser Huma Abedin were important, his camp was smeared as being discriminatory. His argument had nothing to do with discrimination or Islamophobia. It had everything to do with Abedin’s familial ties compromising her judgment and allegiances to the U.S. Constitution. Here we have an example that demonstrates this reality further and it comes via Kenneth Timmerman, who has picked up on the fact that the new Secretary of State – John Kerry – has a son-in-law with family still living in Iran. This...