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The United States has not yet made a decision on what actions it will take regarding a UN resolution being worked on by France that would set a timetable for an Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said on Monday. Harf was asked in her daily briefing about comments made by Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah in an interview with The Washington Post. In that interview, Hamdallah said the French resolution was drafted in coordination with the United States, hinting Washington would not veto such a resolution. “We’ve made no decisions with respect...

State Dept. Spokesperson explains that Iran will meet the standards for nuclear materials possession it agreed to in November 2013, according to Joint Plan of Action (JPOA). MARIE HARF: A lot of nuclear experts have now started chiming in online as well. And I, to be clear, tweeted the exact same things I said in the briefing yesterday, so we can go back through that and I'm sure people have follow-ups... This type of stockpile, under the JPOA and exceptions, can go up and down, it is variable as long as at the end of the time period, in this...

Painful truth: The really awful thing about speaking for this State Dept is all the spin one must do on behalf of the govt of Iran Frum wrote that yesterday. More than 24 hours later, Harf’s still shilling for our partners in peace in Tehran. To understand what this is about, re-read yesterday’s post about the growing alarm among western diplomats that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium has been increasing despite their promises to freeze it at a certain level. There may be an innocent-ish explanation for that related to the process of converting uranium into fuel rods; there may...

Iranian nuclear fuel stockpiles grew by a massive 20% over the past 18 months of negotiations between Iran and world powers, a report last month by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has revealed. The report comes just one month ahead of the June 30 deadline set for the P5+1 powers and Iran to finalize a deal over Tehran's nuclear program. News that Iran has been busily expanding its stockpiles contradicts claims by US President Barack Obama that the Islamic Republic had "frozen" its nuclear program during the last year and a half of negotiations. Despite that, western leaders appear...

“We’re certainly not going to coordinate with a brutal dictator who’s massacred so many of his own citizens,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters on Tuesday. “That’s just an absurd proposition. That’s certainly not going to happen.” She was talking about Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. “And—look,” Harf continued. “There’s nothing ideological about standing up and saying Bashar al-Assad has no place in the future of Syria. And we are not going to partner with a brutal dictator like that to defeat a terrorist organization.” …

State Department spokesperson Marie Harf said she was “perplexed” by a New York Times story Tuesday on Iran’s 20 percent increase in nuclear fuel over the past 18 months. The United States has been in negotiations with Iran for a final deal about their nuclear program. The International Atomic Energy Agency issued a report on Friday that documented an increase of Iran’s nuclear fuel stockpile. A reporter asked Harf if Iran’s increased stockpiles has complicated the current negotiations. “Not at all. Our team read that story this morning and was quite frankly perplexed because the main contentions of it are...

We have followed the performance of Marie Harf as a spokesman for the Obama administration foreign policy at the State Department. Harf gives the catastrophic foreign policy of the Obama administration a lighter than air, Valley Girl kind of feel. She is a walking self-parody. As such, she presents a novel use of expressive form. Now comes word that Harf is being promoted to Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications to Secretary of State John Kerry. Like a helium filled balloon, Harf ascends. In her new position Harf will focus on negotiations between the U.S. and Iran on nuclear weapons. It...

US Secretary of State John Kerry has promoted Marie Harf to be one of his top advisers, the Department of State said in a statement, Sputnik reports. [Snip] Kirby said Harf would continue working on communications strategy about the US nuclear talks with Iran, as well as other key issues.

Doing her best impression of Baghdad Bob, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf gave the Iraqi army props following the fall of Ramadi. Never mind that Iraqi forces cut and ran, surrendering the city to Islamic State militants. “The Iraqi security forces have held their lines on the outside of the city,” Harf told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Wednesday.

The Wall Street Journal, citing a State Department official, reports that any evacuation point designated in a country where an Al Qaeda affiliate is active and an unstable security picture puts Americans and any U.S. military assets involved at risk. Instead, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf has pointed to an online system where Americans stranded in Yemen can register to receive updates on opportunities to leave the country. The department has also talked to other countries about Americans joining their rescue missions, she said. The decision of saving Americans puts U.S. authorities in a tight spot. They must choose between...

ISTANBUL — The mayor of Ankara, the Turkish capital, fired out a slew of sexist, anti-American remarks on Twitter on Wednesday and promoted a photograph that referred to Marie Harf, the State Department spokeswoman, as a “stupid blonde.” Melih Gokcek, Ankara’s combative mayor and close ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, criticized Ms. Harf for her “silence” about the death of a black man who was fatally injured while in police custody in Baltimore after she had heavily criticized Turkey for its disproportionate use of police force during antigovernment protests in 2013. He lashed out at her on Twitter and...

CNN host Wolf Blitzer praised actress Jane Fonda and acting U.S. State Department spokesperson Marie Harf on Saturday night at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner. “Nothing better than Jane Fonda,” the CNN host said of his guests. “Can you believe I’m here with Jane Fonda and Marie Harf, acting spokeswoman of the State Department?! How cool is that?” Harf joined in to gush about Fonda. “I was looking forward to meeting Jane Fonda, so this was a dream come true,” Harf said. “We’ve already done selfies in the car.”

Former Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby will retire from the military and move to the State Department to be that agency's new public face, U.S. officials said Wednesday. Secretary of State John Kerry tapped Kirby to be the department's spokesman because of his deep experience and knowledge of international issues and the fact that he is widely seen as a non-political face, the officials said. Kirby will replace Jen Psaki, a former spokeswoman for President Barack Obama's presidential campaign, who left the State Department last month to become White House communications director...[SNIP]...The officials said acting State Department spokeswoman Marie...

Poor Marie Harf! Shortly after attaining immortality by having her name become a verb, she suffered the ultimate indignity: her boss left, and a white male has been hired to fill the vacancy instead of promoting her. Jamie Crawford and Elise Labott of CNN report: Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon's chief spokesman, will shift over to the State Department, according to a senior administration official. In replacing Jen Psaki, who recently returned to the White House to serve as communications director, Kirby would be the first spokesman to have represented both the Defense and State departments. Kirby, who is...

At the tender age of 33, Marie Harf has attained a special kind of immortality, joining a list of luminaries (for instance, Thomas Crapper) whose names have become verbs. The Urban Dictionary has now listed “Harfing” as a verb: Harfing To say or assert something so patently stupid and preposterous as to generate widespread mockery. Named in honor of State Department Spokesperson Marie Harf. The State Department Spokesperson was harfing on about how Islamic State jihadists only needed job opportunities in order to give up their evil ways. And yesterday, Marie gave us another example:

“It’s not true,” Harf said of the dispatch. She added that there had been no change in the administration’s position regarding phased sanctions relief, but she didn’t seem to realize that this assertion failed to contradict The Journal’s reporting. “They won’t get relief until they take nuclear-related steps,” the State Department spokeswoman added. “And those cannot technically, probably happen on day one.” Well, that’s reassuring.

Last week, legendary former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George P. Shultz wrote a scathing Wall Street Journal op-ed critical of the Obama Administration’s nuclear dealmaking with Iran. The Obama State Department has responded, not with criticisms of the detailed argument in the piece, but by dismissing it as “a lot of big words and big thoughts.”... William M. Todd, an old family friend of Harf’s, linked to an article describing Harf’s performance and Brooks’ criticism on Facebook, crowing “Team Obama bans polysyllabic words!” Harf ended up in an angry Facebook exchange with Todd...

Or maybe China will rescue them?

A second gutwrenching phenomenon, known as the Harf barf, is rocking the nation. State Department stumble bum Marie Harf follows on the heels of the White House Fraud 'n' Thief, who made the "Obama retch" a household phrase. Both phenomena have been observed across the breadth of the country from San Francisco to K Street. In one test, sequential performances of Harf and Obama, clipped from press conferences, triggered nausea of varying severity in 75 percent of adults randomly sampled, some describing the audio-visual experience as "torturous."

QUESTION: I don’t – so you don’t think – you reject the Kissinger-Shultz line that political restraint and the nuclear issue should be linked? MS HARF: What kind of political restraint do you think they’re referring to? QUESTION: Well, this is what they’re talking about. They’re – I believe that they’re talking about Iran’s destabilizing role in places like Syria and places like Lebanon and places like Yemen -- MS HARF: Right. So we have always said that once you start linking the nuclear issue, which is complicated enough on its own, with all these other issues, it’s really hard...