Biden administration climate czar John Kerry defends ‘shadow diplomacy’ with Iran during Trump presidency.

By Adam Kredo, The Washington Free Beacon

John Kerry, President Joe Biden’s climate envoy, on Thursday defended his decision to conduct backdoor negotiations with Iranian officials during the Trump administration in a bid to preserve the 2015 nuclear deal.

Kerry, who was not in government at the time, held at least three secret meetings with former Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif, during which he attempted to undermine the Trump administration’s hardline policies towards Tehran. Kerry defended these powwows under questioning from Rep. Michael Waltz (R., Fla.) during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing Thursday.

“Shadow diplomacy,” Kerry said, is permissible “depending on what it does. Shadow diplomacy has also saved us from a war,” Kerry said, referring to back-channel discussions that helped diffuse the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

Kerry’s behavior, Waltz said, “undermined current administration diplomacy.” At the time Kerry met with Zarif, then-president Donald Trump was working to kill the nuclear accord and reimpose tough sanctions on Tehran. Kerry’s meetings drew widespread scrutiny after Zarif claimed the former secretary of state passed him sensitive information about Israeli strikes in Syria.

Kerry denied disclosing that information, saying that conversation “never took place,” but also claimed details about Israel’s attacks on Iranian positions were “in public circulation” at the time.

Waltz dismissed this rationale, saying, “I would posit that your shadow diplomacy now has us on the verge of Iran having a nuclear weapon.”

Kerry also declined to elaborate on how he communicated with Zarif, and whether any conversations took place via encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, or Signal.

“I don’t recall how I communicated with him,” Kerry said.

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Fox News’ Laura Ingraham discusses failed U.S. policy, which “helped create the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine,” while China and Russia are in cahoots.

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Jordan has committed to buying twice as much water from Israel in a tit-for-tat deal

By World Israel News staff

Israel and Jordan are set to sign a mutually beneficial deal, in which Israel will build a giant solar farm in the Jordanian desert in exchange for providing Jordan with more water.

The United Arab Emirates, an Abraham Accord partner to Israel, is also involved in the deal as it will fund the solar farm, while the U.S. climate envoy John Kerry has been credited for being instrumental in brokering the deal, Axios has reported.

The deal is expected to be signed on Monday in Dubai, by Israeli Energy Minister Karine Elharrar, Jordanian Water Minister Raed Abu Al-Saud and UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed, with Kerry in attendance.

The project was initially the vision of regional environmental NGO EcoPeace Middle East. The idea is that Israel will bolster its renewable energy generation by building a large solar farm in the Jordanian desert where there is more land available, and in exchange will build a desalination plant on the Mediterranean, which is closer to Jordan’s large population centers than its own coastline.

Axios reports that the solar farm will be built by UAE government-owned alternative energy company Masdar. It is intended to be operational by 2026, and to supply 2% of Israel’s energy needs by 2030. In return, Israel will pay $180 million a year, split equally between Masdar and the Jordanian government.

The deal also commits Jordan to buying more of its water from Israel, doubling the amount it acquires, which will come either from the new desalination plant or existing facilities.

Israel’s relationship with Jordan has grown warmer since Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett took the reins from Benjamin Netanyahu. The agreement is reported to have arisen from behind the scenes talks between the three governments, which solidified into a draft agreement in October.

Initially the deal was planned to be signed two weeks ago at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, but Bennett requested it be postponed due to concerns that it might spark debate within Israel just days before a crucial budget vote, Israeli officials told Axios.

Final details were negotiated Tuesday, with Kerry involved in the talks.

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Republicans demand that the Biden administration investigate John Kerry over information he is accused of leaking to Iran about alleged Israeli strikes.

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Financial disclosures obtained by Fox News reveal that Biden administration climate czar John Kerry was heavily invested in a number of oil companies.

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Watch the video below to see what you may have missed this week but shouldn’t have!

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Haley slammed Kerry for tipping off Iran about Israel.

By David Isaac, World Israel News

Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley blasted John Kerry, former Secretary of State under the Obama administration and currently the Biden administration’s special envoy for climate, after a New York Times report revealed that he had fed Iran information about Israel.

“This is disgusting on many levels. Biden and Kerry have to answer for why Kerry would be tipping off Iran, the number one sponsor of terror, while stabbing one of our greatest partners, Israel, in the back,” Haley tweeted, linking to a Fox News story.

This is disgusting on many levels. Biden and Kerry have to answer for why Kerry would be tipping off Iran, the number one sponsor of terror, while stabbing one of our greatest partners, Israel, in the back. https://t.co/ZLWnQRZkrG

— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) April 26, 2021

The news about Kerry emerged at the end of a Sunday Times story about a leaked conversation featuring Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

According to Zarif, “Former Secretary of State John Kerry informed him that Israel had attacked Iranian interests in Syria at least 200 times, to his astonishment,” the Times reports.

Kerry denied the story on Monday. He tweeted, “I can tell you that this story and these allegations are unequivocally false. This never happened — either when I was Secretary of State or since.”

I can tell you that this story and these allegations are unequivocally false. This never happened – either when I was Secretary of State or since. https://t.co/BTOdFE1khW

— John Kerry (@JohnKerry) April 26, 2021

It has also been reported that Kerry advised the Iranians in 2018 to wait out the Trump years in the hopes that a Democratic administration would take its place in 2020.

This is in the end what happened. Iran now enjoys the prospect of a return to the 2015 nuclear deal and the lifting of sanctions.

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“John Kerry needs to go. He should resign, or he should get fired by the president of the United States,” said Sen. Dan Sullivan.

By Josh Plank, World Israel News

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) on Monday called for the resignation of Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, a member of President Biden’s National Security Council, due to reports that Kerry revealed sensitive information about Israel’s covert activities in Syria to Iranian officials.

Sullivan, speaking on the Senate floor, said, “Today I’ve 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.”

According to Sullivan, the disturbing news came by way of “a tape that was leaked of an interview with Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif.”

“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,” Sullivan said.

Zarif said that, “to his astonishment,” then Secretary of State Kerry informed him that Israel had attacked Iranian interests in Syria at least 200 times, the New York Times reported Sunday.

“When I read this today, I was astonished as well,” said Sullivan.

“If John Kerry told the leaders of Iran about issues relating to our most critical ally in the region, Israel, who Iran has repeatedly said they want to wipe off the face of the earth, if he did this, he needs to resign,” he said.

Sullivan said that Kerry has a record of working against American national security interests, but the latest news represents “a redline that was crossed” and “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

“John Kerry needs to go. He should resign, or he should get fired by the president of the United States,” he said.

According to the New York Times, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh did not dispute the authenticity of the recording but called the leak “unethical politics.”

Kerry denied the allegations. “I can tell you that this story and these allegations are unequivocally false. This never happened – either when I was Secretary of State or since,” he tweeted Monday evening.

When asked for Biden’s reaction to the report on Monday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said, “We’re not going to comment on leaked tapes.”

As secretary of state under the Obama administration, Kerry was America’s lead negotiator of the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal.

After President Donald Trump pulled out of the JCPOA, Kerry admitted to meeting on his own with Zarif in 2018 in an effort to salvage the deal. According to reports, he advised Zarif to hang tough during the Trump years in the hopes that the 2020 elections would lead to a Democratic administration.

Before entering a long career in politics, Kerry served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War. Upon his return, he accused his fellow soldiers of committing war crimes before Congress. His actions later came back to haunt him during his 2014 run for the presidency as a group, “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,” formed against him and successfully attacked him on grounds of character as unfit for the White House.

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The inescapable conclusion from these events is that the Israelis should be in no doubt about the fact that they are being abandoned by the United States with respect to Iran.

By Jonathan S. Tobin, JNS

The head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency and the government’s national security adviser is in Washington this week on an important mission that has failed even before it began.

White House spokesperson Jen Psaki made it clear last week that the Israelis are wasting their time. When asked if Israeli pleas about the danger to the region if the United States rejoins the 2015 nuclear deal would have any impact on President Joe Biden’s plans, Psaki answered “no.”

She went on to say that the Israelis are free to keep “challenging” the administration’s goal of returning to a weak pact that gives Tehran a legal path to a nuclear weapon by the end of the decade, but the best they could hope for is to be “kept abreast” of America’s plans.

That contemptuous attitude was of particular significance because the day before the Israeli security officials arrived, news broke about how former Secretary of State John Kerry had shared intelligence with Iran about Israeli covert operations seeking to stop their nuclear program.

According to an audiotape of comments made by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif that were obtained by The New York Times, he said, “It was former U.S. Foreign Secretary [sic] John Kerry who told me Israel had launched more than 200 attacks on Iranian forces in Syria.”

There is a lot to unwrap in that one sentence and not just because the Times buried this revelation at the bottom of its story.

Kerry, for whom Psaki served as spokesperson during the nuclear negotiations from 2013 to 2015, currently acts as President Joe Biden’s special presidential envoy of climate.

We already knew that in 2018, Kerry consulted with Zarif advising his former negotiating partner not to work with the Trump administration, which withdrew from the nuclear deal as part of a “maximum pressure” campaign to force the Iranians to agree to a new tougher agreement that would eliminate sunset clauses, as well as include bans on Tehran’s role as the world’s leading state sponsor of international terrorism and its illegal missile-building.

Kerry as Iran adviser

Kerry told Zarif to simply wait out Trump and then deal with a more pliant Democrat that he hoped would be elected in 2020.

That’s exactly what happened, and now the Iranians are reaping the benefits. Biden’s foreign-policy team, composed almost entirely of veterans of the administration of former President Barack Obama, are again resuming their past practice of appeasing the Iranians with concessions in the works in order to entice Tehran to return to a deal with little hope of improving upon it.

Kerry’s collusion with Iran is important because it comes in the context of the growing tension with Israel over its efforts to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program. Unlike in the past, when it was clear that the United States and Israel were cooperating in a joint effort to derail the Islamist regime’s nuclear ambitions, the administration went out of its way to disavow any role in Israel’s recent successful attack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility.

The implication of these off-the-record comments from “senior administration officials” is that the administration regarded Israel’s efforts as seeking to forestall an American push to re-engage with Iran.

A news analysis published in The Washington Post filled with quotes from anonymous American and European sources, as well as some on-the-record potshots from former Obama administration figures, said the Jewish State was trying to play “the spoiler” in order to undermine Biden’s diplomacy.

The liberal magazine Slate labeled the attack as an act of a “sneaky saboteur,” as if there was something inherently illegitimate about actions that sought to prevent a terrorist theocracy from acquiring a nuclear weapon that could fulfill the ayatollah’s genocidal threats against Israel.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) fulminated about the attack, saying he would demand a full security briefing on it while sending a message to the Israelis that he — and other members of his party — take it as a matter of faith that diplomacy is the “only” acceptable path for relations with Iran and that Israel’s efforts were bound to fail.

As Martin Peretz pointed out in Tablet, while Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s messaging on Iran has sounded a moderate tone, he has essentially outsourced the nuclear issue to Robert Malley, Biden’s special envoy on Iran. Malley was not only one of the chief architects of the disastrous nuclear deal with Iran; he is a veteran appeaser and critic of Israel.

US to Israel: ‘Trust Us’

In essence, right now the United States is asking Israel to back off on its efforts to stop Iran and to trust Biden’s team to deliver a diplomatic solution to the problem. But given that Malley has demonstrated no interest in strengthening the nuclear pact so as to forestall an Iranian bomb or stop the regime’s terrorism, that’s a leap of faith that no responsible Israeli government can make.

More to the point, Zarif’s revelation about Kerry’s sharing of intel about their anti-Iran operations makes it clear to the Israelis that the administration isn’t merely wrongheaded in its approach but may actively be seeking to undermine their country’s security and that of its regional allies.

Not only did Psaki refuse to answer a question about Kerry’s astonishing betrayal during her regular press conference on Monday, she didn’t even make an attempt to say something that might reassure the Israelis that the administration regarded this as an issue of concern, let alone something about which an apology should be forthcoming. An investigation into this scandal is imperative. So is Kerry’s resignation from his current post.

The implication here is something that advocates for Obama’s signature foreign-policy accomplishment have always been at pains to contradict. Democratic apologists for the deal have spent the last six years trying to claim that the agreement was the best way to safeguard Israel against an Iranian nuclear weapon.

However, critics pointed to the way the deal empowered and enriched a rogue regime, and asked whether the goal was very different from the one Obama had discussed.

Obama said it was a chance to give Iran the opportunity to “get right with the world” by giving up its nuclear ambitions. Instead, the deal may have been part of an effort to shift American policy in the region from one of an alliance with Israel and the Gulf states to one in which Iran would supplant them as America’s best friend in the region.

Few would have believed this claim in 2015. And yet, the impact of the agreement on the region, coupled with Kerry’s actions and the efforts of Obama alumni to return to the deal on Biden’s watch, lend some credibility to this theory.

Whatever Obama intended or what Biden may want now, the inescapable conclusion from these events is that the Israelis should be in no doubt about the fact that they are being abandoned by the United States with respect to Iran. This leaves Israel with no good options.

Nevertheless, the Jewish state has no choice but to proceed as if its future safety lies solely in its own hands. If the Biden administration or the Democratic Party don’t like that, they can reverse course and start acting as if they take the Iranian nuclear threat seriously. Otherwise, they should pipe down and let the Israelis do what they must to stop an existential threat to their existence.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS—Jewish News Syndicate. 

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Former State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus reacts to Biden’s Climate Czar John Kerry being optimistic about China’s efforts with climate change as well as the Iran nuclear deal.

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Despite American Airline’s contention that it requires masks aboard its aircraft, an image surfaced of White House climate czar John Kerry maskless on a commercial flight.

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Did former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, as a private citizen, collude with Iran in order to undermine then-President Donald Trump and save the nuclear deal?

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Kerry’s flights would have powered all the appliances in 50 American homes for a year.

By Daniel Greenfield, FrontPage Mag

In his last year in office, Secretary of State John Kerry was touting the fact that he had traveled over 1.06 million miles and spent some 96 days in the air in the course of three years. The archived State Department site tallies Kerry’s total record at 1,417,576 miles and 126 days in the air.

Kerry spent more time flying in three years than the average American would in 50 years.

When the Air Force Boeing 757 which ferried Kerry around the world broke down for the fourth time, the media and the foreign policy establishment treated it as some sort of accomplishment.

That might have amounted to something if the ketchup gigolo had done anything in that time except jet around the world to give speeches about the importance of not jetting around the world. Kerry kept racking up miles by flying to Morocco to address the 22nd UN Climate Change Conference, to Indonesia to deliver a speech denouncing unbelievers in global warming, and to Paris to warn that the earth was about to be destroyed if people didn’t stop living like him.

Kerry’s flights would have powered all the appliances in 50 American homes for a year.

“It’s the only choice for somebody like me who is traveling the world to win this battle,” Kerry recently retorted when a reporter asked him about flying his private jet to Iceland to receive an environmental award. Environmentalists don’t fly coach or even first class. They jet set.

But sometimes you have to destroy the environment to save the environment.

Former Secretary of State John Kerry racked up 302 tons worth of CO2 emissions just from his flight time. Americans would have to burn 100 tons of coal to match the CO2 emissions from Kerry’s jaunts to save the world from people wanting to fly on vacation or heat their homes.

And as Biden’s new ‘Climate Envoy’, Kerry will soon be filling the sky with even more hot air.

Everyone from Moscow to the Middle East knew that Kerry was full of hot air, but not even they would have guessed that John Forbes Kerry was full of 302 tons of hot air. Don’t just think of Kerry as a politician, but as the Exxon Valdez with a “Save the Whales” sticker on the hull.

Biden’s ‘Climate Envoy’ recently argued that coal, oil, and gas workers needed to make better choices and make solar panels. In 2004, Kerry had won the endorsement of the United Mine Workers of America by promising to protect coal jobs. The UMWA didn’t even bother trying to endorse Biden, just as it didn’t try endorsing Obama or Hillary in 2012 and 2016.

The Democrats are militantly anti-coal now. Hillary Clinton had vowed to destroy coal and Kerry thinks coal miners ought to move to China and get jobs constructing toxic solar panels there.

But while the Democrats may be anti-coal, they’re pro-mansion and pro-private jet.

After the Obama regime ended, Kerry went back to using his own private jet to flit around the world, give speeches, and accept awards. Iceland was just one stop on the Kerry world tour.

And then it was back to one of his portfolio of mansions.

“Local sea levels are rising twice as fast as the global average,” Kerry claimed in 2015. Two years later, he and his wife bought a seven-bedroom waterfront house in Martha’s Vineyard.

Much like jetting everywhere, that’s just the sort of island property that a man who sincerely believes that global warming is causing the oceans to rise and flood the world would buy.

Kerry’s homes, like the jet set lifestyle, clash with his apocalyptic environmentalism.

“I don’t see it as all tragedy at all. I mean, yes, there will be tragedy associated with it. It’ll be hard for some people to give up homesteads and move away,” Kerry, speaking as Biden’s new “Climate Envoy,” argued. “So yes, life will be different, but it doesn’t have to be worse.”

Not when you can afford to pay for the carbon offsets the way that Kerry does.

It’s not easy being ‘green’. But you don’t have to be green, as Kerry told a reporter in Iceland, “if you offset your carbon, it’s the only choice for somebody like me.”

Paying someone else to be ‘green’, which is what carbon offsets amount to, is the modern equivalent of the Civil War practice of allowing the wealthy who were drafted to pay poor people to fight in their place. Life won’t be all that different for John Kerry, aside from giving up an estate on Nantucket for one on Martha’s Vineyard, because he’ll pay the poor to be green.

Trading coal for solar raises energy prices. Attaching carbon taxes to everything will make the cost of living impossible for millions. Air travel will become a thing of the past. For most.

“What I’m doing, almost full time,” Kerry whined in Iceland, “is working to win the battle on climate change, and in the end, if I offset and contribute my life to do this, I’m not going to be put on the defensive.” And it’s not as if any reporter outside Iceland would dare to even try.

John Forbes Kerry is flying around the world like Superman, fueled by hot air and carbon offsets, to save the world from the rest of us who irresponsibly drive to work and run our air conditioners without caring about the environment. While John Kerry goes through enough CO2 to cover 60 Americans driving their cars for a year because he cares about the environment.

All these years after Vietnam, Lt. Kerry, who collaborated with the Viet Cong to stop a war and launch a political career, is still destroying things to save them. And if these things, whether it’s the people of Vietnam or the planet, never get saved, he still gets rich and famous.

Meanwhile he emits enough CO2 to account for 100 tons of coal while fighting coal with jets.

When John Kerry first got the State Department gig under Obama, he divested a number of resources including millions worth of the Sustainable Technologies Fund which the media described only as a “green energy-oriented private equity firm” while leaving out a key detail.

Leaving out key details when it comes to the dealings of Democrats is the new journalism.

The Sustainable Technologies Fund was co-founded by Andre Heinz: Kerry’s stepson.

“The emergence of new policies and laws aimed at aligning our economic system of production with our environment’s carrying capacity,” STF’s site tells potential investors. “Understanding and predicting the desired goals of such policies is key to an optimal market strategy.”

No doubt.

The conflict of interest here didn’t go away with Kerry and his wife shedding their financial interest in Andre’s Swedish green energy fund. Much like jetting everywhere while lecturing the proles on setting their thermostat too high isn’t vaporized by carbon offsets.

“The time it takes me to get somewhere, I can’t sail across the ocean. I have to fly, meet with people and get things done,” Kerry argued. The rules never apply to the elites. They can’t. Not when those elites, like John Kerry, are saving us from ourselves by taking on the privileges that we are no longer allowed to exercise for ourselves in the name of the greater good of mankind.

And what sort of skeptic would begrudge the elites from jetting to save us from the jets?

Going ‘green’ is great when you’ve got private equity funds and private jets. It’s a lot less fun when you’re a British pensioner freezing to death in the winter or a French senior citizen dying of heatstroke due to the lack of air conditioning. Greenness means factory workers making $20K a year paying for the Teslas of upper class Californians. It’s oil and gas workers losing their jobs at the behest of environmental consultants pushing Chinese solar panels.

And it’s John Kerry flying a private jet to accept another award 10,000 miles away while emitting enough CO2 to heat an American home. If Biden still lets Americans heat their homes.

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“So what President Biden wants to do is make sure those folks have better choices,” said Special Envoy Kerry.

By Josh Plank, World Israel News

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Wednesday sharply criticized the statements of U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, who said that American oil workers should make “better choices” and instead “go to work to make the solar panels.”

“What an arrogant, out-of-touch statement for a centimillionaire to say,” Cruz told Fox News.

“The Democratic elites have decided that blue-collar workers, that union members, that men and women with calluses on their hands, they’ve made the wrong choices, in John Kerry’s words,” he said.

Cruz said that President Joe Biden’s “radical and extreme” executive orders, such as revoking the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, are “hurting a lot of jobs” and undermining U.S. security while increasing the nation’s reliance on foreign energy.

Cruz also said that the Biden administration’s efforts will actually cause more harm to the environment, which they aim to protect.

“The irony of what they’re doing is there will be worse pollution,” he said.

During a White House press briefing on Wednesday, Kerry was asked what message he had for oil and gas industry workers whose livelihoods are ending as a result of the Biden administration’s policies.

“So what President Biden wants to do is make sure those folks have better choices, that they have alternatives, that they can be the people who go to work to make the solar panels,” Kerry said.

He suggested that coal miners should switch careers and become solar power technicians.

“The same people can do those jobs, but the choice of doing the solar power one now is a better choice,” he said.

Prior to signing several executive orders on Wednesday, Biden said, “When we think of climate change, we think of it — this is a case where conscious and convenience cross paths, where dealing with this existential threat to the planet and increasing our economic growth and prosperity are one in the same.”

“When I think of climate change, I think of — and the answers to it — I think of jobs,” he said.

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Mike Pompeo embarks on a burst of actions in his final days as Secretary of State, contrasting his achievements with predecessors.

By Associated Press

Mike Pompeo isn’t quietly fading away.

“Remember this Middle East ‘expert?’ He said it couldn’t happen. We did it,” Pompeo said in a taunting tweet featuring a video clip of John Kerry saying Arab countries would not recognize Israel without an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. Kerry, a former secretary of state, will serve as climate envoy in Joe Biden’s administration.

“As the UN’s largest contributor, I put U.S. taxpayers and America’s interests first,” Pompeo tweeted on Monday. It was accompanied by a photo of former President Barack Obama, Kerry, Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice and Obama’s U.N Ambassador Samantha Power at the United Nations. Along with Kerry, Rice and Power have also been named to prominent positions in Biden’s administration.

During the past week, Pompeo has embarked on a burst of actions in his final days as Secretary of State, contrasting his achievements with predecessors.

Since last Saturday, Pompeo rescinded long-standing restrictions on U.S. contacts with Taiwan, a move that will no doubt anger China.

He also declared Yemen’s Houthi rebels a terrorist organization and redesignated Cuba a “state sponsor of terrorism.”

Pompeo also announced that Iran has deep and longstanding ties with al-Qaeda.

Throughout his tenure, Pompeo has attacked China, Iran, various U.N. organizations, institutions like the International Criminal Court, and bilateral treaties such as arms control accords with Russia, two of which the Trump administration has withdrawn from during his time as America’s top diplomat.

On Iran, Pompeo has re-imposed all sanctions that had been eased by the Obama administration after the 2015 nuclear deal and added more penalties. He also advocated for the killing of a top Iranian general in Iraq at the beginning of last year and has been at the forefront of an effort to encourage Sunni Arab states to unite against predominantly Shiite Iran.

“The foreign policy blob constantly looks for a moderate inside the Iranian regime who will ‘normalize relations,'” Pompeo said this week. “The reality is you have a better chance finding a unicorn.”

Led by Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, the administration relentlessly promoted Israeli-Arab peace efforts, culminating in agreements for the normalization of relations between the Jewish state and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.

On Thursday, Pompeo lauded Trump’s March 2019 decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria in 1967. He tweeted a video of himself and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking at Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem that night with the caption: “I’ll never forget this moment.”

Pompeo also voided a decades-old U.S. legal opinion regarding the legality of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. On his last visit to Israel in November, Pompeo became the first secretary of state to visit a settlement and on Thursday proudly promoted a Samarian wine named after him.

“L’Chaim to Pompeo wine!” Pompeo said on Twitter.

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Trump’s critics blasted the Morocco-Israel normalization agreement as merely a transaction, rather than peace. They forget that deals based on mutual interests are the only kind that last.

By Jonathan S. Tobin, Editor-in-Chief, JNS

The news was greeted with jubilation by friends of Israel and the approximately 1 million Israelis who trace their roots back to Morocco. An agreement announced last week by the White House made Morocco the fourth Muslim country in the last few months to agree to normalize relations with Israel.

For Israelis and those who care about the way the boycotts and long siege of the Jewish state have fallen apart, it’s a welcome step. Along with the accords signed with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan, transforming the already warm under-the-table relationship with the North African kingdom into a permanent and public relationship is more than good for Israel. It not only strengthens the stability of the region, it serves as a major blow to rogue Islamist nations like Iran and its terrorist proxies and allies, and constitutes another diplomatic triumph for the Trump administration in its last months in office.

But for President Donald Trump’s critics, the prospect of his imminent departure from the White House has not moderated their unwillingness to reject anything he does as wrong, no matter how right it might be. Thus, the reaction to the agreement with Morocco from the foreign-policy establishment and many liberal pundits was dismay rather than happiness about another development that disproved the belief that Israel would never have normal relations with the Arab world until it somehow satisfied Palestinian ambitions. Which is to say that short of Israel agreeing to its own destruction, it would never happen.

This is not just resentment from Obama administration veterans like former Secretary of State John Kerry who were exposed as incompetent. Kerry’s infamous 2016 prediction that normalization would never happen should never be forgotten and remains a testament to the stubborn foolishness of three decades of American diplomats and foreign-policy experts who believed that the only way to peace was by appeasing the Palestinians and pressuring Israel. The return to power of individuals who subscribed to this idiocy in the incoming Biden administration probably means that the United States will not be helping to facilitate more such agreements.

But the common thread throughout a blizzard of negative commentary and Twitter contempt for normalization between Morocco and Israel was something different. The critique of the agreement was that it was a crude “quid pro quo” that should not be confused with progress towards peace. Even worse, some denounced the deal for shortchanging American interests in favor of those of Israel.

Arguments about Jewish manipulation of U.S. foreign policy have become increasingly legitimized in the last few years. However, in this case, it’s not just anti-Semitic radicals like Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) using them. Instead, it’s become a theme taken up by  otherwise respectable liberal journalists, newspapers like The Washington Post, websites like Bloomberg news or think tanks like the Atlantic Council.

Part of the problem is that the phrase “quid pro quo” has become something of a term of abuse since the Democrats used it as the main argument for their partisan attempt to impeach Trump last winter over his talk with the president of Ukraine. Hence, the mere use of the term to describe the arrangement was a signal to liberals on Twitter that normalization between Morocco and Israel had to be a bad thing.

This is absurd. After all, all agreements between nations are rooted in self-interest, even if the ultimate goal is altruistic.

In the case of Morocco, as with the other three nations that have normalized relations with Israel recently, the North African country was being asked to stick its neck out and risk the inevitable abuse from Islamists and their left-wing allies that comes with giving up support for the Palestinians’ futile century-old war against Zionism. Even more to the point, it makes the kingdom more of a target for terrorism.

It is hardly unreasonable that they should ask something in return. What they got was American recognition of the Moroccan claim to the Western Sahara.

Acknowledging reality

This is being represented by Trump’s critics as a grievous concession to tyranny and imperialism, as well as an insult to the United Nations. It’s also a recognition of reality.

The territory—approximately the size of Britain—is a sparsely populated strip of desert adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean that used to be owned by Spain. When that former imperial power gave it up in 1975 once Spain embraced democracy after the death of dictator Francisco Franco, Morocco staked a claim to land that they considered had been stolen by Europeans. It was opposed by a small nationalist movement called the Polisario that, with the help of Algeria, waged a bloody and unsuccessful war against Morocco for 16 years before agreeing to a ceasefire in 1991. That left Morocco in charge of almost the entire country.

Much of the international community still supports the myth that the Polisario represents the territory. Continuing to prop them up in a war they can never win in order to create another unstable dysfunctional Third World country is what passes for enlightened diplomatic activity at the United Nations and in other international bodies. The Trump administration is merely acknowledging reality when it says that the Moroccans aren’t giving up land they think is theirs. And in exchange for that and encouraging investment, a significant regional player has formally aligned itself with the West against the radicals while further chipping away at the foundations of the effort to wipe out the only Jewish state on the planet.

That is not a solution congenial to people who hate the United States and Israel, or those who hold grudges against the Moroccans. But in terms of U.S. interests, that’s what the business world would term an easy “win-win” solution.

But the point to be understood here is not so much the wisdom of the American decision to give the Moroccans something they wanted in exchange for something the America and Israel wanted any more than that was the point of the Abraham Accords, which, despite some denials, also involved giving the UAE something it wanted in terms of arms sales.

The ability of the Trump foreign-policy team to succeed in doing something its predecessors failed to do was based on two factors. One was that its members were not blinded by ideology when it came to Israel and the Palestinians, as were the Obama, Clinton and both Bush administrations. The other was that they took a more openly transactional approach to diplomacy.

The foreign-policy establishment likes to dress up agreements based on mutual interests in high-sounding language about principles. But the Trump team, which was composed to a large extent of people like White House senior adviser/presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner with a background in real estate, didn’t get bogged down in such meaningless and ultimately counterproductive exercises, and stuck to dealing with the world as it is rather than as they’d like it to be. They strove to make deals that made sense for both sides. And as a result of what some consider a crass rather than a principled approach, they advanced the cause of peace far more than any of the experts who mocked them as shallow amateurs.

With American foreign policy about to fall back into the hands of Obama alumni, some are lamenting the Trump administration’s achievements in expanding the circle of governments with normal relations with Israel as boxing them and ignoring their obsession with forcing a two-state solution that the Palestinians don’t want. Instead, the Biden team should learn from their predecessors. More Trump-style quid pro quos—and less magical thinking and expert ideological condescension from Washington—will make the world a safer place.

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