The first thing we have to understand is that Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is the closest thing John Kerry has to a friend in the Iranian government, and vice versa.

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If this is all a big lie from Zarif to make Kerry look bad . . . why would Zarif do that? What would Zarif have to gain by trying to make the former U.S. government official most eager to reach a deal appear incapable of keeping secrets?

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Sure, the Iranian regime lies all the time. But if this is a lie, why would the foreign minister lie about his favorite negotiating partner like this?

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Second, we don’t know whether Zarif is saying Kerry said this to him before or after public reports in September 2018 that Israel had struck 200 Iranian targets in Syria…

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...but the fact that Zarif was surprised by what Kerry had told him — and that the Iranian military had not kept him in the loop — strongly suggests that this information had not yet appeared in news reports.

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Yes, It is likely that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps already knew, or strongly suspected, Israel was behind these attacks. (I would guess that when Iranian hardliners stub their toes in the morning, they suspect the Mossad was behind it.) https://bit.ly/3sWujJl ">https://bit.ly/3sWujJl&q...