During a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) called out Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev for signing a cooperation deal with Iran.
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00:00Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I now recognize the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Smith, for five minutes.
00:06Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Let me just ask two basic questions.
00:10You know, despite presenting itself as a U.S. partner, Azerbaijan, under Eliev,
00:15and I've met with him twice in Baku and raised human rights issues with him,
00:19and recently, obviously, he committed genocide against the people of Nagorno-Karabakh,
00:24he signed a cooperation agreement with both Iran and Russia,
00:27including a significant gas swap deal with Tehran.
00:31These actions, in my opinion, directly benefit the two regimes
00:34that the U.S. is actively working to counter,
00:38and I'm wondering what your thoughts might be on that.
00:41Secondly, if I could, Rob Malley.
00:44You know, we know that the Office of Inspector General, and I read the report,
00:47it was a good report about the fact that the State Department did not follow its own clearance guidelines,
00:55but the bigger issue is having someone who was seemingly very much in favor of Tehran's policies
01:03in such a strategic position as Special Envoy does raise the question what damage might have been done,
01:09has been done, and might even carry forward right into today,
01:13especially as to Tehran's perceptions of what we're all about.
01:17Do you think the FBI will ever get to the bottom of it?
01:20And if you could speak to that as well.
01:22But those two questions, if you could.
01:25Norman?
01:28In order to restrict Iran's access to funds and to apply the appropriate diplomatic and economic pressures,
01:36it is critical that Iran not have the capacity to undertake economic deals
01:41such as it conducted with Azerbaijan, with anyone.
01:44As Ms. Stroll correctly stated, Iran is under the greatest pressure
01:47when it faces multilateral economic and diplomatic isolation,
01:51and that must be absolute.
01:54Whenever there are exceptions to that, Iran benefits,
01:58and that weakens the pressure on Iran itself.
02:01Regarding Mr. Malley, it's out of my level of competence,
02:06and I would defer to the Federal Bureau of Investigation or others.
02:09Would any of you want to comment on either of those two issues?
02:14I would simply note that in the Biden administration,
02:19and again in this administration,
02:20there is an aligned objective of pursuing negotiations first
02:24for a verifiable deal that blocks all Iran's pathways towards a nuclear weapon.
02:29And I think it underscores the importance of an independent and strong inspector general
02:34in the State Department,
02:35as well as an FBI who is allowed to conduct credible and important investigations.
02:41Claire?
02:43Do any of you have any sense as to when the FBI may reveal where it is in terms of this investigation?
02:50It seems like Malley just fell off the face of the earth,
02:52and to have someone of his special envoy in such a strategic position seems to me
02:59it would undermine what this country was all about in our dealings with Iran.
03:04Would you agree with that at least?
03:08Nobody?
03:10Okay.
03:11I do hope that we will follow up on the Azerbaijan connection.
03:13Again, I've met with a number of people who have political prisoners sitting in his horrible
03:20jails.
03:20He is so brazen that in the past he put a stringer, who was an Azerbaijani woman, into jail,
03:28gave her an over-seven-year prison sentence, and she worked for Radio Free Europe.
03:32So I actually convened a hearing and had the head of Radio Free Europe come and testify
03:35about how horrible it was.
03:37And what was her crime?
03:38She pointed out how corrupt Aliyev is.
03:42And now we have a situation again where he's getting into deals with a country that needs
03:50hard currency, extremely hard.
03:52We know that Xi Jinping and the Communist Party, they enable dictatorship and bad actors everywhere.
04:00But this man who gets a free pass in this town, and that is Aliyev, needs to be called
04:06out.
04:06I thank you.
04:07Yield back.
04:11Thank you, Mr. Smith.
04:12I now...