Chris Smith Slams Azerbaijan President For Cooperation Deal With Iran, Claims He Gets A 'Free Pass'

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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.

Transcript

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...

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