The United States may be on the seeming precipice of war with the jihad-exporting terrorist regime that has governed the Islamic Republic of Iran since the fateful Islamic Revolution of 1979, but apparently that hasn’t stopped the notoriously authoritarian regime-friendly Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) from recently meeting with infamous Iranian regime mouthpiece Mohammad Javad Zarif — foreign minister for the terrorist mullocracy.
Per Politico‘s “Playbook”:
SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D-CALIF.) had dinner with IRANIAN FOREIGN MINISTER JAVAD ZARIF when he was in the United States a few weeks ago, several sources told us. Last week, Playbook reported that Feinstein was walking around the Capitol with Zarif’s contact information pulled up on her iPhone — we spotted it in an elevator.
FEINSTEIN’S team tells us that the dinner was “arranged in consultation with the State Department.” “The office was in touch with State in advance of the meeting to let them know it was happening and to get an update on U.S.-Iran activity,” Feinstein’s office said. A State Department official told us that they did not ask Feinstein to go to the dinner with Zarif, a smooth-talking, American-educated Iranian diplomat who worked on the nuclear deal with John Kerry.
OF COURSE, the United States and Iran are in the middle of a high-wire diplomatic and military staring contest. The United States has moved additional military resources into the region, and has indicated it has intelligence that the Iranians were readying to attack American interests in the region.
Politico also casually referred to Feinstein’s “dining with the foreign minister of an adversary” as “a bit unusual.”
As the Washington Examiner notes, Zarif was one of the preeminent public-facing Iranian regime figureheads during the Obama administration’s negotiations that led to the United States’ entrance in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (i.e., the Iran nuclear deal):
Zarif was also one of the Iranian officials who met with former Secretary of State John Kerry about salvaging the Iran nuclear deal. This led to accusations by the Trump administration that Kerry violated the Logan Act, a more than 200-year-old law that prohibits unauthorized private citizens from acting on behalf of the U.S. in disputes with foreign governments but has never been used to prosecute anyone.
The Logan Act routinely comes up in discussions regarding non-presidential governmental figures and foreign government officials, but it is never actually invoked. Conservative commentator and radio host Erick Erickson actually once referred to it, during the context of the Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR)-led Republican senator pushback against the Iran deal, as a “talking point of hacks and morons”:
The Logan Act originated in 1799. Not a single person has ever been convicted under the Logan Act. Ironically, the namesake of the law, George Logan, after compelling John Adams to get the act passed, became a United States Senator. The Logan Act serves mostly as a partisan tool to throw at opponents who dare to contradict a sitting President’s foreign policy. …
It’s a stupid talking point used by unserious people who want to avoid having to deal with the fact that the President of the United States is giving away the farm to Iranians who, given the chance, would gladly kill him, you, me, and everyone complaining about a Logan Act violation.