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Secretary of State John Kerry just gave Syria a hard deadline for starting the political transition to get rid of Syrian President Bashar Assad: Aug. 1. Kerry told reporters Tuesday if Syria doesn’t begin the process of removing Assad by Aug. 1, there will be serious consequences, The Associated Press reports. “If Assad does not adhere to this, there will clearly be repercussions,” Kerry said. “One of them may be the total destruction of the cease-fire and then go back to war. I don’t think Russia wants that. I don’t think Assad is going to benefit from that. There may...

Bernie Sanders loves to denounce the tax dodges of the wealthy (even as he pays 13.4% income tax on a $200K+ income), so it would be interesting to hear what he has to say about John Kerry, the current secretary of state and former Democratic Party nominee for president.  An analysis of public documents by the Daily Caller News Foundation indicates that Kerry and his wife liberally use offshore tax havens.  Richard Pollock writes: … a DCNF investigation has confirmed that the former Massachusetts Democratic senator and his billionaire wife, using an elaborate set of Heinz family trusts, have...

When John Kerry toured the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Museum this week before meeting foreign ministers at the G-7 Summit, Reuters reports that he had witnessed “haunting displays [of] photographs of badly burned victims, the tattered and stained clothes they wore and statues depicting them with flesh melting from their limbs.” “It is a stunning display. It is a gut-wrenching display,” explained Kerry. “It is a reminder of the depth of the obligation every one of us in public life carries … to create and pursue a world free from nuclear weapons.” Iran exempted, of course. But, really, is this...

HIROSHIMA, Japan (Reuters) - John Kerry will not offer an apology for the United States' use of the atomic bomb against Japan when he becomes the first U.S. secretary of state to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum on Monday, a senior U.S. official said. Kerry is visiting the city, which was obliterated by a U.S. atomic bomb on Aug. 6, 1945, to attend gathering of foreign ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) advanced economies that Japan opened on Sunday with a call to end nuclear weapons.

Iranian officials on Monday accused the United States of violating the recent comprehensive nuclear agreement by working behind the scenes to stop American companies from conducting business with Iran, according to regional media reports. Iran has been complaining for months that it is not being granted enough sanctions relief under the agreement. These complaints have reportedly pushed the Obama administration to consider offering Iran greater concessions, including access to the U.S. dollar and American financial markets.

The Islamic State is desperately lashing out in Europe because its base in the Middle East is rapidly eroding, Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday in Brussels, where he traveled to demonstrate the United States’ support for Belgium three days after bombs killed 31 people, including at least two Americans. “We will not be intimidated, we will not be deterred,” Mr. Kerry said, directly addressing Islamic State militants who have struck Paris; Ankara, Turkey; Tunis; San Bernardino, Calif.; and elsewhere. “And we will come back with greater resolve, with greater strength, and we will not rest until we...

In a press statement Tuesday morning condemning the terror attacks in Belgium that killed at least 30 people and left 100 others injured, Secretary of State John Kerry managed to address the deadly incident without ever mentioning Islam, Muslims, jihad or any other term linking the attacks to Islamic terrorism. […] The attacks in Brussels, in which Islamic militants set off explosions at both the Zaventem Airport and a city metro station, were quickly labeled as terrorism and immediately linked to radical Islam. Local reports stated there were shouts in Arabic and gunfire along with the explosions, and a suicide...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will miss a deadline set by the U.S. Congress for determining whether Islamic State atrocities against Christians and other religious groups are genocide, but he should have a decision soon, a spokesman said on Wednesday. Congress directed Kerry in legislation passed last year to consult with government agencies and rights organizations and report back to lawmakers on whether atrocities committed by Islamist extremists against Christians and other religious groups should be considered mass atrocities or genocide under U.S. law. The legislation sought a similar determination on whether Buddhist extremists in Burma...

Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Secretary of State John Kerry insisted that despite all of Iran’s saber-rattling in the wake of it’s deal to curb its nuclear intentions, the world is still safer as a result of the deal.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: John F. Kerry (who served in Vietnam, by the way) has thanked the Iranians for taking our sailors hostage and humiliating them. The audio sound bite will be coming up in due course. BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I'm not kidding on this, either. John Kerry thanked Iran for humiliating our sailors, one of whom was a woman, by the way. He thanked 'em for rescuing 'em, thanked 'em for humiliating them. Well, that's what he thanked 'em for. He thanked the Iranians for capturing Americans engaged in harmless activity on a boat. BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Here, you gotta...

The State Department continues to live in an alternate universe. One day after the agency received criticism for claiming it is successfully "bringing peace" to Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry wrote in a Boston Globe op-ed that of all the achievements of 2015, he is most proud of the historic climate deal reached in Paris.

US Secretary of State gives same message of condemning violence and need for calm to both Israelis and Palestinians. US Secretary of State John Kerry shared his "deep concern" Saturday over the recent wave of terror in Israel, though he made efforts to treat the two sides as equally culpable, AFP reports. Kerry called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and PA President Abbas separately "to express his deep concern over the recent wave of violence and offer his support for efforts to restore calm as soon as possible," a State Department statement said.

VIENNA (AP) — Iran will be allowed to use its own inspectors to investigate a site it has been accused of using to develop nuclear arms, operating under a secret agreement with the U.N. agency that normally carries out such work, according to a document seen by The Associated Press.

When your best argument for an agreement is that the deal's opponents are "making common cause" with your negotiating partners, it's safe to say you've lost the debate. In what was billed as a major foreign policy address, perhaps the most critical of his residency, resident Obama recently attempted to defend the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran as it comes up for review in Congress. The lines most calculated to draw a sharp domestic political contrast were these: Just because Iranian hardliners chant "Death to America" does not mean that that's what all Iranians believe. In fact, it's those hardliners...

The Constitution can be SUCH a pain. If you’re looking for someone who will admit what the left thinks, but usually doesn’t say, John Kerry might be your new best friend. Last week, we saw him testify that his nuclear deal with Iran would most likely lead to the deaths of American citizens. It was a disgusting, and probably treasonous, moment. It was also just the beginning of Kerry’s revelations. According to everyone’s favorite Secretary of State, the Iran deal isn’t being presented as a treaty because the administration is well aware that no sane person would ratify it. As...

In his continuing quest to sell Congress on what House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) labeled a "diplomatic masterpiece," Secretary of State John Kerry tried to reassure the House Foreign Affairs Committee that Iran's vow to take down the United States is "mere rhetoric for domestic consumption." "Surely, members of Congress are aware that from time to time it is necessary to espouse policies that we have no real intention of implementing," Kerry said. "I've lost count of the number of times that various spokesmen for the GOP have pledged to repeal Obamacare or to build a border fence. Yet,...

Excerpted from The Hill: Last Tuesday, a 159-page PDF of the Iran nuclear agreement dropped into my inbox. Scrolling down to page 19, I checked out Paragraph 36. I suggest you do the same. Plenty of provisions in the Vienna agreement will get attention in the coming weeks, but Paragraph 36 may be the most important of all. Paragraph 36 tells us when and how the agreement might end. Both friend and foe have touted this deal as “historic” and promised (or moaned) that its provisions will stay in place for the long term. But in practice, this is not...

It almost sounds like Nancy Pelosi’s famous line, “We have to pass the bill first before we know what’s in the bill.” Some members of Congress are protesting that two secret “annexes” to the Iran nuclear accord are being withheld from them before they sign off on the overall agreement.

A senior Iranian cleric delivered Friday prayers in Tehran while standing behind a podium that declared, “We Will Trample Upon America,” according to photos released by Iran’s state-controlled media. Iranian cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Movahedi Kermani, who was handpicked by the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader to deliver the prayers, delivered a message of hostility toward the United States in the first official remarks since a final nuclear deal was signed between Iran and world powers in Vienna last week. Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser and expert on rogue regimes, said that the official remarks by Iranian officials and clerics...

Likud minister calls assessment by top US diplomat ‘baseless,’ says Tehran must be accountable for past actions National Infrastructure Minister Yuval Steinitz on Sunday slammed remarks by US Secretary of State John Kerry, who over the weekend dismissed as “fantasy” the claim — raised by Israel and domestic US critics — that it was possible to have penned a better nuclear deal than the one signed by world powers and Iran last week. “To the best of our professional assessment, these remarks are baseless,” Steinitz, who is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s point man on the Iranian nuclear threat, told Army...