He served as Secretary of State from 2013 to 2017
It is an interesting fact that he served as Secretary of State from 2013 to 2017. On December 15, 2012, several news outlets reported that President Barack Obama would nominate Kerry to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, after Susan Rice withdrew her name from consideration, citing a politicized confirmation process in response to criticism of her response to the 2012 Benghazi attack. On December 21, Obama proposed the nomination, which was met with enthusiastic feedback. On January 24, 2013, he was confirmed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the same panel before which he initially testified in 1971. On January 29, 2013, the committee overwhelmingly approved him, and the full Senate confirmed him on the same day by a vote of 94-3. Kerry announced his resignation from the Senate in a letter to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, effective February 1.
During his tenure as Secretary of State, Kerry spoke in French on multiple occasions in an official capacity. Following six months of intensive diplomacy in the Middle East, Kerry was able to persuade Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to begin the 2013-14 Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. According to senior US sources, the two parties were able to meet without American mediators on July 30, 2013, at the State Department following a dinner held by Kerry the night before.
He met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on September 27, 2013, during the P5+1 and Iran summit, which resulted in the JCPOA nuclear agreement. It was the highest-level direct interaction between the US and Iran in the previous six years, and he became the first US Secretary of State to meet with his Iranian counterpart since the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
During the 2014 Israel-Gaza war, Kerry affirmed support for Israel's right to self-defense. Kerry stated that the US supported the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen because Saudi Arabia, an ally, was threatened quite directly by the Houthis' seizure of neighboring Yemen, but that the US would not automatically support Saudi Arabia's proxy conflicts against Iran.
