New York — In an audio recently leaked to the media, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif claimed that former US Secretary of State John Kerry informed him of more than 200 Israeli operations in Syria, according to a Fox News report Monday.

Kerry, who is now part of the current Biden administration, allegedly shocked Zarif when he informed him that Israel had attacked the Iranian targets in Syria 200 times. The former Secretary of State conducted meetings with Zarif in an attempt to revive the JPOAC nuclear deal reached in 2015, from which former president Donald Trump withdrew in 2018. Kerry was extremely critical of the decision to leave the JPOAC, calling it “extraordinarily dangerous” and said that Trump risked driving Iran towards nuclear proliferation if he were to cancel the deal.

Kerry admitted to holding the meetings with Zarif, but justified his actions by saying that “every” former Secretary of State meets with foreign leaders. However he categorically denied ever having told Zarif about the Israeli attacks in Syria, stating on his Twitter account that  “I can tell you that this story and these allegations are unequivocally false. This never happened – either when I was Secretary of State or since.”

Kerry faced sharp criticism over the issue Monday.

“John Kerry was ratting out Israeli covert operations in Syria directly to the Iranian foreign minister. Let that sink in. Wow,” Noah Pollak of the foreign policy-focused Democratic Alliance Group wrote on Twitter.

“People are talking about treason — and I don’t throw that word around a lot,” Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) said in a brief interview. “John Kerry does all kinds of things that I can’t stand. But this is the one that broke the camel’s back.”

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“It’s unfathomable that any U.S. diplomat, past or present, would leak intelligence to the world’s leading sponsors of terrorism at the expense of one of our staunchest allies,” added Wisconsin Rep. Mike Gallagher, a rising-star Republican on national security issues.

However Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) appeared to defend Kerry, urging caution about Zarif’s reliability.