I know, I know, NO ONE is surprised by this, but yes Team Obama is keeping up with their former contacts in Iran and encouraging them to resist Trump’s tactics.
From the Daily Beast:
As the Trump administration sent warplanes and an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf, a small group of former Obama administration officials reached out to their contacts in the Iranian government, including Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. Their message to Iran: Don’t take Trump’s bait. Stay calm.
Conversations between former Obama officials and Iranian government officials have been ongoing since November 2016. Zarif, who visits the U.S. every year for the U.N. General Assembly in New York, usually meets with lawmakers, think tanks, journalists, and former officials when he is in town.
But the recent round of conversations, which took place over the phone and in person over the last two months, came as lines of communication between the U.S. and Iran, through intermediaries in Europe and elsewhere, deteriorated.
I have to give credit where credit is due – the Daily Beast is absolutely a left-wing rag, and this is definitely something that makes Obama’s team look bad. BUT I have to think that if any Republican administration had done this, the media would be already oiling up the guillotines.
Several former officials who spoke to The Daily Beast stressed that their discussions with their Iranian contacts were “normal.” But in other corners, these kind of talks cause alarm. A Republican congressional aide who works on Iran policy told The Daily Beast the conversations may run counter to the Trump administration’s messaging to the Iranian government.
“It’s not just about what they were saying to the Iranians,” the aide said. “It’s about what they were saying to their political allies back here in the U.S. Their strategy was to divide and isolate the Trump administration just as the Trump administration was trying to re-establish deterrence with Iran. In the current highly partisan political environment, the only safe course is to signal national unity—and they contributed to eroding that at home and abroad.”
Yeah, I’m not sure I trust the idiots who literally laughed at the media after they fooled them into publishing all sorts of lies about the Iran Deal in order to get it pushed through.
And remember when everyone used to accuse everyone else of Hatch Act violations? Well toss the Obama admin on that pile too while you’re at it…
Via TRS
