On Dec. 19, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif attended a meeting at parliament with the foreign policy and national security commission. As in other regular sessions, he informed members of the commission on various foreign policy issues, including the July 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). 

Two days later, while Zarif was accompanying President Hassan Rouhani to Armenia, hard-line member of parliament Javad Karimi Ghoddousi took to distributing a page about Zarif’s alleged statements at the Dec. 19 meeting.

Karimi Ghoddousi claimed that the main thrust of Zarif’s address to the commission was related to his “mistake” in trusting the Americans. He quoted the foreign minister as having said, “I admit that I made a mistake by listening to [US Secretary of State John] Kerry, and if I had followed my own strategy, I wouldn’t face a problem right now. … Following the violation of the JCPOA, Kerry called me and asked me to go to Italy and hold talks there, and I told him in response that what you did to me has made it impossible for me to even be present in the same city as you. … The [extension of the] ISA [Iran Sanctions Act] is a violation of the JCPOA. … Kerry and [US Energy Secretary Ernest] Moniz had told us that we have methods to prevent the passage of ISA, and we trusted their methods, and this was among Obama’s commitments that weren’t upheld, and I noted this big mistake during my conversation with Kerry.”

On the same day, Alireza Rahimi, a member of the foreign policy and national security commission, described the meeting with Zarif as confidential, saying, “What was quoted from Zarif was a clear lie. These issues weren’t discussed [by Zarif] in the recent meeting of the commission.”