Kerry, Zarif, the White House and the Iran Deal

Allen B. West is a retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel who was elected to Congress from the Florida 22nd District in 2010. His district was redrawn before the 2012 election, and he ran in the new 18th District. He was defeated by 2,000 votes, in a vote recount tainted by rampant rumors of fraud, along with fraud allegations in Miami, in the state that clinched Obama's second term as President. But for us today, that is not the topic. ~~~~~ Allen West now has a website -- allenbwest.com -- whose editor-in-chief is Michele Hickford. On July 28, 2015, she wrote an article about a longstanding relationship between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Secretary Mohammad Javad Zarif. The article has been rerun many times over the Web and discussed in social media. The article is highly controversial, with conservatives and leftists in clear opposition. In it, she revealed several disturbing details about their relationship. Here they are. ~~~~~ In 2009, the daughter of Secretary Kerry, Dr. Vanessa Bradford Kerry, his younger daughter by his first wife, married an Iranian-American physician named Dr. Brian (Behrooz) Vala Nahed. Brian Nahed is the son of Nooshin and Reza Vala Nahid of Los Angeles. Nahid reportedly has close ties to the Iranian government, but there is almost no information available about him on the Web. Brian’s Persian birth name is “Behrooz Vala Nahid” but it has been shortened and americanized in the media to “Brian Nahed.” At the time of his engagement to Vanessa Kerry, there was rarely any mention of Nahed’s Persian/Iranian ancestry, and even the official wedding announcement in the October 2009 issue of New York Times avoided any reference to Dr. Nahed's birthplace -- although we should note that his professional CV for Massachusetts General Hospital mentions somewhat ambiguously that he was born in New York. This was never mentioned publicly during his Senate confirmation hearings, according to Hickford, "either because Kerry never disclosed it, or because his former colleagues were 'too polite' to bring it up." ~~~~~ This in itself is nothing to lose sleep over. But, Kerry's long-standing relationship with his Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is another matter. Zarif is the current minister of foreign affairs in the Rouhani administration and he has held various significant diplomatic and cabinet posts since the 1990s. Zarif, from a prominent Iranian family, attended universiry and graduate school in the US and served in the Iranian delegation to the UN. He married an Iranian woman in Iran but they immediately moved to New York where their two chikdren were born. Most importantly, Zarif was Kerry’s chief counterpart in the Iran - P5+1 nuclear deal negotiations. According to the Hickford article, "Secretary Kerry and Zarif first met over a decade ago at a dinner party hosted by George Soros at his Manhattan penthouse." ~~~~~ And if that triangle -- Kerry-Soros-Zarif -- were not enough to make everyone skeptical that Kerry was completely objective in the Iran negotiations, consider this. Hickford reports that the best man at the 2009 wedding of Kerry’s daughter Vanessa and Brian Vala Nahed was Zarif's son, Mehdi. This is a hotly contested matter. The Iranian Foreign Ministry denied last week that Foreign Minister Zarif's son, Mehdi Zarif, attended the Kerry-Nahed wedding, a claim it said is circulating "among right-wing American blogs. Some of the claims suggested the younger Zarif served as best man to Kerry’s bridegroom, Iranian-American physician Brian Vala Nahed." The Foreign Ministry insisted that Mehdi Zarif’s presence was a “sheer lie and ‘news fabrication,' adding that “some media outlets that lack credit [sic] fabricate such news in pursuit of special objectives, including finding more viewer [sic],” the Fars state media outlet said. The Iranian report traced the best-man story back to "one Michele Hickford, a communications strategist and award-winning advertising copywriter. She has held senior marketing positions at Turner Broadcasting and USA Networks and served in Congressman West’s congressional office and as Press Secretary for his 2012 campaign.” Fars reported that former Congressman Allen West cited the report on his website on July 28. Fars explained to its readers that the report was an attempt to tarnish Secretary of State John Kerry’s reputation “as the Republicans and the Israeli lobbies have started massive propaganda to torpedo a recent nuclear deal struck between the six world powers and Iran.” The US State Department labeled the Hickford revelation "false." Vanessa Kerry Nahed tweeted that the couple had "no wedding party," which beggars the question since they must have had witnesses. ~~~~~ Dear readers, the controversy goes on. Most conservative social media comments suggest that Kerry should have recused himself from the negotiations with Iran at the very outset because of his relationship with Zarif, his Iranian counterpart in the P5+1 negotiations. Many serious analysts have called the deal with Iran a dangerous outcome in which Obama and Kerry were badly out-maneuvered and bested by Zarif and Iran. And unfortunately, unless Congress stands firmly on the side of America and its Middle East allies, the world will have to live with the consequences of the Obama-Kerry incompetence and caputulation - or duplicity. But, while there may be questions that remain unanswered about John Kerry's competence and allegiances, there are no unanswered questions as to President Obama's leanings. We need only to keep in mind that Obama’s closest advisor -- called by some the ‘real’ president -- Valerie Jarrett, was born in Shiraz, Iran. We may wonder about John Kerry. But, we can be sure that Iran is getting very good treatment in the Obama White House.