Iran's official statement on the nuclear agreement reached last week stands in stark contrast to the statement issued by the White House, writes
Amir Taheri in The New York Post.
In fact, President Barack Obama appears more to be trying to settle scores with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Republicans in Congress than trying to improve national security, Taheri writes.
Though Secretary of State John Kerry touted the agreement as essentially a done deal, Iran's statement not only casts the deal as preliminary, but it's also vague in the language about what that country is supposed to do.
The joint statement coming out of the P5+1 talks with Iran is 291 words long, authored by Iranian Foreign Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif and European Union foreign policy point-woman Federica Mogherini, who headed up the talks.
The official Iranian statement is in Persian is 512 words long, and the French text is 231 words.
Kerry's text earns a "spinner-in-chief" label from Taheri. It comes in at 1,318 words.
But their lengths aren't the only differences.
Taheri calls the Mogherini and French texts "vague enough to be ultimately meaningless, even as spin," while the Persian text sounds as though nothing has been agreed to or that Iran has made any concessions.
Iran's version also is labeled a "press statement" only while the American version claims that key points have been decided and only the details need hammering out. It is labeled "Parameters for a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action."
The Iranian version also uses tricks in verb tense, Taheri said. When speaking of things Iran is supposed to do, the tense "nakarah" is used. As an example: "The nuclear facilities at Fordo shall be developed into a center for nuclear research and advanced Physics."
For actions specified for America and its allies, the verb tense "maerfah" is used, which specifies the actor. For example: "The United Nations shall abrogate its previous resolutions while the United States and the European Union will immediately lift sanctions [imposed on] financial, banking, insurance, investment and all services related to oil, gas, petrochemicals and car industry."
The American version states that Iran will cut its centrifuges from 19,000 to 6,500 while Iran says it "shall be able to …" make those cuts should it choose to do so.
But some statements are complete opposites, Taheri notes.
The American statement says Iran has agreed not to use advanced centrifuges, which can do the work of 10 old ones, while Iran says "on the basis of solutions found, work on advanced centrifuges shall continue on the basis of a 10-year plan."
"In the past two days Kerry and Obama and their apologists have been all over the place claiming that the Iranian nuclear project and its military-industrial offshoots would be put under a kind of international tutelage for 10, 15 or even 25 years," Taheri writes. "However, the Persian, Italian and French texts contain no such figures."
Taheri said Obama tried to sell the American people a "bill of goods" in his Thursday Rose Garden ceremony marking the deal.
First, Obama claimed that Iran had "thousands of centrifuges" when he took office. The true number was 800, Taheri said, adding that Iraq sped up its nuclear program because of Obama's perceived weakness.
Also, Obama claimed "all of Iran's paths" to nuclear weapons would be blocked, but he also said that even if the plan is implemented Iran could build a bomb in one year.
But Obama's "worst claim," Taheri said, is that the only alternative to the deal would be war with Iran.
"He ignores the fact that forcing Iran through diplomatic action, sanctions and proximity pressures to abide by six U.N. resolutions could also be regarded as an alternative," Taheri writes. "In other words, preemptive surrender is not the only alternative to war."
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