Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs
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He was ‘set upon an act of diplomatic vandalism’, says memo from former U.K. envoy
It was just hours after Boris Johnson, then Britain’s Foreign Secretary, returned to London from a whirlwind trip last year to try to persuade the White House to abide by the Iran nuclear accord.
Kim Darroch, then the British Ambassador to the United States, fired off a withering assessment of President Donald Trump’s wish to quit the deal. Mr. Trump, he wrote in leaked diplomatic cables that were published on Saturday, was “set upon an act of diplomatic vandalism, seemingly for ideological and personality reasons — it was Obama’s deal.”
The Vice-President, the National Security Adviser and the Secretary of State had all failed to “articulate why the President was determined to withdraw, beyond his campaign promises,” Sir Kim wrote. And the U.S. government had no plan for what would follow. Sir Kim resigned after Mr. Trump vowed to stop dealing with the Ambassador, and after Mr. Johnson, now the front-runner to succeed Prime Minister Theresa May, refused to say he would keep Sir Kim in his post. Mr. Johnson’s position drew fierce criticism from his opponent in the Prime Minister race, Jeremy Hunt, the current Foreign Secretary, as well as from some of the Conservative Party members.On Friday night, Mr. Johnson acknowledged in a BBC interview that his failure to stand behind Sir Kim had been part of the reason the Ambassador decided to resign. Heckled that same night at a campaign event, Mr. Johnson said for the first time that he wished he had publicly supported Sir Kim. “I probably should have been more emphatic that [Sir] Kim personally had my full support,” he said. The leak has prompted an investigation by a counterterrorism unit of the Metropolitan Police, as well as a bitter dispute over the right of The Mail on Sunday to publish the files. Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, the leader of the counterterrorism unit, warned before the latest release that publishing any further documents “may also be a criminal matter.” He asked newspapers to turn over any leaked documents to the police.
