Did Chris Murphy Engage in Private Diplomacy?

Murphy after Zarif blowup -- Getty Images

Connecticut U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, up for reelection this year, had “a secret meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during the Munich Security Conference” in February 2020, according to a posting written by Mollie Hemingway, the Editor-in-Chief of The Federalist.

Was Murphy commissioned by proper authorities to participate in the meeting, or was he freelancing? If the former, there is no problem. If the latter, Murphy was courting political disaster.

“Such a meeting,” Hemingway wrote at the time, “would mean Murphy had done the type of secret coordination with foreign leaders to potentially undermine the U.S. government that he accused Trump officials of doing as they prepared for Trump’s administration. In February 2017, Murphy demanded investigations of National Security Advisor Mike Flynn because he had a phone call with his counterpart-to-be in Russia.

“’Any effort to undermine our nation’s foreign policy – even during a transition period – may be illegal and must be taken seriously,’ Murphy said in 2017 after anonymous leaks of Flynn’s phone call with Russian ambassador Sergey Kisylak were published. He also strongly criticized the open letter some Republican senators sent Iranian leaders during the Obama administration’s campaign for a nuclear agreement.”

The Munich Security Conference in 2020, Hemingway noted at the time, “featured robust debate on the United States’ maximum pressure policy against Iran, China’s handling of the coronavirus and technology concerns, and the European alliance with the United States. Other Democrat senators at the conference included Sens. Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. Former Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts also attended.

“Both Murphy and Zarif spoke publicly during a two-hour session on Middle East policy, with Murphy and Zarif both fiercely criticizing U.S. policy.”

Here a very discordant note is struck. “Murphy,” Hemingway tells us, “is a frequent speaker at the National Iranian American Council, a lobbying group with alleged links to the Islamic Republic of Iran… Evidence indicates that Zarif himself was involved in founding” the pro-Iranian group.

Zarif led the Iranian negotiation with P5+1 countries that produced the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on 14 July 2015 that lifted the economic sanctions against Iran on 16 January 2016.

In 2019, Zarif met with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, now deceased, in Beirut Lebanon, presently under attack by Israel. During the meeting, Nasrallah thanked Zarif for Iran's support of Hezbollah's fight against “Zionist aggression”, Zarif affirming Iran’s "firm stance that supports Lebanon and its state, people and resistance."

In view of the current hot war between Israel and its terrorist enemies – Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemin – Murphy’s earlier association with Zarif bears closer scrutiny.

Two months ago Zarif resigned as Iran’s vice president of strategic affairs. According to  Mena, “Zarif was in charge of forming the committees to choose the new ministers under Mr Pezeshkian, who won July's election after the death of former president Ebrahim Raisi and foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian in a helicopter crash in May.

“I am not satisfied with the outcome of my work,” Zarif said at the time, “and I am ashamed that I could not achieve the expert opinion of the committees and the inclusion of women, youth, and ethnic groups as I had pledged.”

Zarif plans a return trip to academia.

Responding to the 2020 meeting, Murphy “defended a weekend meeting he held with Iran’s foreign minister in Europe, “according to an Associated Press report. ‘The Connecticut Democrat said his Saturday meeting with Mohammed Javad Zarif was important because it is ‘dangerous not to talk to one’s enemies.’ Murphy said he wanted to see Zarif because there has been no U.S. diplomatic channel with Iran since Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal two years ago… The senator also said he had raised Iran’s support for Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen and Americans held prisoner in Iran.”

Hours ago, the US military belatedly “struck more than a dozen Houthi targets in Yemen,” according to the Associated Press.

Trump was at the time imposing punishing tariffs on Iran. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said of the questionable Zarif meeting, “If they met, I don’t know what they said. I hope they were reinforcing America’s foreign policy, not their own.”

We know that the Biden-Harris administration, hotly pursuing since the Obama administration an ever vanishing nuclear missile deal with Iran – the principal sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East –    has sought to check the war policies of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Churchillian Prime Minister of Israel. And we also suspect that Israel’s aggressive military defense of its interests may be more persuasive than fruitless negotiations with a state pledged to destroy Israel or the intentional enrichment of Iran by means of the removal of punishing sanctions.

In view of recent events, Murphy’s “secret coordination with foreign leaders” should be exposed well before he is reelected to a third term as Connecticut’s junior US Senator. “Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis told us in 1913, a perception that remains true even in today’s labyrinthine politics. It certainly would be refreshing if our own Connecticut media’s light-bearers could bathe Murphy’s earlier meeting with Zarif in disinfecting light.

Murphy’s Republican opponent, Matt Corey, recently mentioned the senator’s 2020 meeting with Zarif in a Facebook comment. “Senator Chris Murphy,” Corey noted, “secretly met with Islamic State terror regime officials in Munich to undermine the Donald J. Trump administration's Iranian policy.  Given the current state of the Middle East, do you think a single member of the CT media will even ask him about it?”

As yet, the event remains smothered in suffocating darkness. Was Murphy at the time operating as an authorized agent of the US government – or not?