Iran leak fallout continues

Former Secretary of State John Kerry denied that he told a top Iranian official about Israeli intelligence operations. A recording of Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif discussing Iranian politics and foreign policy leaked over the weekend. At one point, Zarif said Kerry informed him there had been more than 200 Israeli airstrikes on Iranian targets in Syria, The New York Times reported. “I can tell you that this story and these allegations are unequivocally false,” Kerry tweeted on Monday. “This never happened—either when I was secretary of state or since.”

How big of a deal is this? Some Republican members of Congress said Kerry should resign as President Joe Biden’s special climate envoy if the allegations were true. But State Department spokesman Ned Price pointed out that Israel’s strikes in Syria were already well-known at the time Zarif spoke of. The leak has upset Iran and thrown a wrench in ongoing negotiations to restart the 2015 nuclear deal between the country and global powers.

Dig deeper: From the WORLD archives, read Mindy Belz’s in-depth report on Iran’s nuclear program.