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Iran Framework Deal: Greatest Political Hoax Ever?

Iran Framework Deal: Greatest Political Hoax Ever?

The Iranians have banked U.S. concessions, while disputing purported U.S. achievements.

I have fallen into the trap almost everyone has, in referring to an Iran “nuke deal” and “Framework deal.”

Based on what the White House has revealed, the “deal” is a very bad deal, as we have explored here repeatedly: It purports to give Iran its dual goals of maintaining and improving its nuclear infrastructure while removing sanctions and ensuring the economic viability of the oppressive Mullah regime.

But it’s even worse. Based upon statements made after the initial announcements, it’s clear that there is no deal, just enough vague verbiage to allow each side to portray the “deal” however it wants. There is no meeting of minds, not binding contract, nothing.

This was revealed initially in tweets by the Iranian Foreign Minister disputed White House “spin” on the “deal,” insisting that sanctions would be lifted immediately, and crowing that Iran’s enrichment would continue.

https://twitter.com/HassanRouhani/status/583994063512276992

https://twitter.com/JZarif/status/583723860522115072

Since then, the divergence has grown, The Times of Israel reports:

In a televised address on state TV, [Iranian Foreign Minister and negotiator) Zarif said that Iran “stood up to the six powers who call themselves the international community,” proving that the people of Iran cannot be spoken to “with the language of force and sanctions.”

“They didn’t design sanctions to bring us to the negotiating table, but to force us to surrender,” Zarif said, adding that the world now recognized that Iran cannot be cowed.

Zarif charged that under the deal, Iran would have “full nuclear rights, [and] only limited certain restrictions for a certain number of years; we have enrichment and we will continue to enrich uranium.”

In remarks that underscored the emerging gaps between Iran and the world powers in terms of how the agreement is understood, Zarif disputed US statements that the lifting of sanctions would be in phases.

“The termination of sanctions is directly tied to the implementation of a final deal [due to be penned by June 30]. On the day of the implementation of a deal… the US will terminate oil, financial, bank sanctions. We are terminating United Nations Security Council resolutions without any intermittent suspension. It will be direct termination,” he said.

Similarly, he asserted that Iran, under the deal, has the right to continue working on more advanced IR-8 centrifuges, which can enrich uranium 20 times faster than the IR-1 centrifuges it currently uses. “Some said Iran can have no R&D, but we now have the right to develop IR-8, which has 20x output of IR-1,” he claimed.

The Guardian reports that Iran rejects the White House fact sheet on the “deal”:

[Tehran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif] disputed a “fact sheet” released by the US shortly after the deal that emphasised Iranian concessions and referred to sanctions being suspended rather than lifted and only after confirmation that Tehran has complied with the terms of the agreement.

“The Americans put what they wanted in the fact sheet … I even protested this issue with [US secretary of state John] Kerry himself,” he said in a television interview cited by the Fars news agency, adding that the UN security council would oversee any deal.

The NY Times reports, Outline of Iran Nuclear Deal Sounds Different From Each Side:

Negotiators at the nuclear talks in Switzerland emerged from marathon talks on Thursday with a surprisingly detailed outline of the agreement they now must work to finalize by the end of June.

But one problem is that there are two versions….

A careful review shows that there is considerable overlap between the two accounts, but also some noteworthy differences — which have raised the question of whether the two sides are entirely on the same page, especially on the question of how quickly sanctions are to be removed. The American and Iranian statements also do not clarify some critical issues, such as precisely what sort of research Iran will be allowed to undertake on advanced centrifuges during the first 10 years of the accord.

Amir Taheri writing in The NY Post points out that Iran’s Persian statement on ‘deal’ contradicts Obama’s claims:

All we have is a number of contradictory statements by various participants in the latest round of talks in Switzerland, which together amount to a diplomatic dog’s dinner.

First, we have a joint statement in English in 291 words by Iranian Foreign Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif and the European Union foreign policy point-woman Federica Mogherini, who led the so-called P5+1 group of nations including the US in the negotiations.

Next we have the official Iranian text, in Persian, which runs into 512 words. The text put out by the French comes with 231 words. The prize for “spinner-in-chief” goes to US Secretary of State John Kerry who has put out a text in 1,318 words and acts as if we have a done deal.

It is not only in their length that the texts differ.

They amount to different, at times starkly contradictory, narratives.

The Mogherini and French texts are vague enough to be ultimately meaningless, even as spin.

The Persian text carefully avoids words that might give the impression that anything has been agreed by the Iranian side or that the Islamic Republic has offered any concessions.

The Iranian text is labelled as a press statement only. The American text, however, pretends to enumerate “Parameters for a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” and claims key points have been “decided.” What remains to be done is work out “implementation details.”

Ehud Ya’ari, Middle East analyst for Israel’s Channel 2 News and an international fellow at the Washington Institute think tank, has identified six major discrepancies:

Two days after the US-led powers and Iran hailed a historic framework understanding designed to ensure Iran’s nuclear program not enable it to build nuclear weapons, a leading Israeli analyst on Saturday highlighted six gaping areas of discrepancy between American and Iranian accounts of what the agreement actually entails.

Ehud Ya’ari, Middle East analyst for Israel’s Channel 2 News and an international fellow at the Washington Institute think tank, said the six discrepancies represent “very serious gaps” at the heart of the framework accord. They relate to issues as basic as when sanctions will be lifted, and how long restrictions on uranium enrichment will remain in place.

Referring to Thursday’s American-issued “Parameters for a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,” on the one hand, and the “fact sheet” issued Friday by the Iranian Foreign Ministry, on the other, Ya’ari noted that no deal was actually signed on Thursday, and that the leaders’ statements and the competing fact sheets were thus critical to understanding what had been agreed.

The six areas of discrepancy are: Sanctions relief, Enrichment, Development of Centrifuges at the underground Fordo facility, Inspections, Shipping previously enriched Uranium out of the Country, and defining “Possible Military Dimensions” of the Iranian program.

In other words, almost every major achievement touted by the White House is disputed based on Iranian statements.

This is all a political hoax, in which the Iranians have banked U.S. concessions, while disputing purported U.S. achievements.

There is no “deal” only U.S. concessions, which will lead to more concessions if a real agreement is to be signed.

Meanwhile, the White House and Democrats are setting up Bibi Netanyahu as the fall guy if the “deal” falls apart:

The White House said Friday that there is no convincing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the merits of a nuclear deal with Iran and that the Israeli leader has been fiercely opposed to the diplomatic track even before the first interim agreement was reached in November 2013

“I think that we’re not going to convince Prime Minister Netanyahu. Frankly, he has disagreed with this approach since before the first Joint Plan of Action, the first interim agreement that was reached with Iran,” said Ben Rhodes, US President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser. The White House official was speaking to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.

UPDATE 4-7-2015: It’s even worse than initially thought, French fact sheet differs from US on Iran’s centrifuge use, R&D

A French government fact sheet on the Iran framework deal, which has not been made public by Paris but which has been seen by The Times of Israel, provides for Iran to gradually introduce the use of advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium after 12 years, in contrast to the US official parameters, which make no such specific provision

The use of the more advanced IR-2 and IR-4 centrifuges, as permitted according to the French fact sheet, would enable Iran to more rapidly accumulate the highly enriched uranium needed to build nuclear weapons, accelerating its breakout time to the bomb.

The French fact sheet also specifies that Iran will be allowed to continue R&D work on the advanced IR-4, IR-5, IR-6 and IR-8 centrifuges, the last of which can enrich uranium at 20-times the speed of Iran’s current IR-1 centrifuges, whereas the American parameters are less specific.

Differences between the texts issued by Paris and Washington also extend to the question of inspection and supervision of Iran’s activities, with the French document indicating that the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, will be able to visit any suspect site in Iran — so-called “anywhere, anytime” access — whereas the US document is less far-reaching.

The two documents also differ in their terminology as regards the scale and timing of sanctions relief as the deal takes effect.

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Comments

Sorry, Prof. I wasn’t fooled.

Pres. ScamWOW got on TV and assured us x, y, plus some z.

I knew he was lying. I knew we were caving like a Florida sink-hole. I knew this was a disaster of historical proportions, and, if ALLOWED, would lead to the deaths of countless people.

So. It simply CANNOT be ALLOWED. We have to stop it.

    Rick in reply to Ragspierre. | April 5, 2015 at 1:00 pm

    Agreed.
    It amazes me that any sentient American believes anything obama says. That is especially true with respect to anything obama says about the future benefits of something he or his administration has done.

    David R. Graham in reply to Ragspierre. | April 5, 2015 at 3:20 pm

    “We have to stop it.” OK. lead the way.

      Ragspierre in reply to David R. Graham. | April 5, 2015 at 3:44 pm

      I already have. Along with lots of others.

      You can go back to sleep. You won’t be needed or missed.

        David R. Graham in reply to Ragspierre. | April 5, 2015 at 4:12 pm

        Naw, you rant and roar but you are not in position to affect the course of events — i.e., to lead in a sane direction — and you do not build a sane, American frame of reference that can be grasped and utilized when the day arrives wanting it. Rags, you are mouth. Amusing mouth, but mouth.

        And I do enjoy sleep, thank you very much. It is closer to reality than waking and dreaming. It gives rather than takes. So, thank you for mouthing encouragement in that direction. And I never have been missed. Never thought I would be. Never wanted to be. One man’s insults are another man’s blessings. One man’s mouth is another man’s unction.

          NeoConScum in reply to David R. Graham. | April 5, 2015 at 4:49 pm

          Deep. Deeply Deep in the Depth of David. Deep.

          Henry Hawkins in reply to David R. Graham. | April 6, 2015 at 10:20 am

          Dude, seriously? LOL. Yikes.

          I hereby create and invoke the David R. Graham Law:

          NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO VOICE THEIR COMPLAINTS UNLESS THEY ARE ABLE TO LEAD AMERICA IN SOLVING THE PROBLEM.

          And I suggest another:

          Henceforth, any time Mr. Graham voices a complaint or concern about something that **he cannot personally lead America into resolving**, we shall C & P his above anti-Rags hissyfit in response.

will congress have the balls, let alone the brains, to stop it?
no.
anyone whose dealt with iran or its adherents knew they would not agree to anything that caused them any real loss and would do everything to get a deal that embarrasses us.
they did not outplay this administration, this administration played it exactly as iran knew they would.
both iran and obama got what they wanted.
simple.

    Rick in reply to dmacleo. | April 5, 2015 at 1:06 pm

    Agreed.
    It has been clear to me since his “my muslim faith” comment that obama is a muslim. He is advancing their cause.

    Ragspierre in reply to dmacleo. | April 5, 2015 at 2:48 pm

    You missed the THRUST of my post.

    We don’t give them a CHOICE or a CHANCE.

    This can’t be left to ANYBODY. They HAVE to step up and kill this dangerous “deal”. WE have to MAKE them. (See the period?)

      but they won’t.
      even if it means they get voted out in a few years.
      they will count on people forgetting, and most people will.

        I have collins (prob will vote against) and king who will vote D no matter what.
        in house I have pingree (not my rep) who is hard core left and poloquin (mine) who would vote against if he ever had chance.
        senate is all that really matters at this point so I am half screwed on it.

      David R. Graham in reply to Ragspierre. | April 5, 2015 at 3:22 pm

      Are you on the NSC, chair it, control Jarrett, Kerry, Congress?

    Andy in reply to dmacleo. | April 5, 2015 at 3:09 pm

    Why do I vote Republican? It seems to yield the same results as voting Democrat.

      Ragspierre in reply to Andy. | April 5, 2015 at 3:55 pm

      You’re totally missing the point. This isn’t about voting. This isn’t really about partisanship.

      It’s about getting out in the streets if need be, or into your congress-critters’ offices regardless of their party, and MAKING them do right.

      Or you can sit on your ass and cluck your tongue, and bitch about “your vote”.

    Anonamom in reply to dmacleo. | April 6, 2015 at 11:06 am

    Sadly, I must agree with you. We can rage and storm, but our “leaders” simply don’t care. The majority of them are interested solely in feathering their own nests. (But I will continue to hope that Ragspierre is right and his ideas will work.)

      Henry Hawkins in reply to Anonamom. | April 6, 2015 at 2:41 pm

      Have faith. A high number of conservatives who post here are very politically active in their home areas, as I am in eastern NC. Poster NC Mt Girl has indicated she’s very active in western NC, and you can believe there are many working in your home area.

      The Tea Party sentiment, which is really just basic conservatism – smaller gov, low taxes, respect Constitution, principles over politics – has never been higher in the USA, its growth readily measured by the conservative landslides in recent midterm elections of 2010 and 2014. Conservative gains on the state gov level have been historic – and states are the incubators for national candidates – and national policies.

      The only failures really, have been in presidential years… when the national GOP & crony donors take over everything and shoves their picks through.

      The Democrat Party has nothing to fear from Tea Party sentiments compared to what the GOP has to lose (and is steadily losing every day). If the GOP elite insist on Jeb Bush as their nominee, then Bush’s loss in 2016 will be the effective end of the GOP, well deserved, for choosing to ignore the conservative base for so long. A party for whom the general consensus is that they can’t win the WH soon loses donors. The way they have successfully alienated their base while simultaneously failing to pick up independents. This is/was their formula: “If we ditch these troublesome conservatives, we will more than make up for the lost voters by appealing to far more independents.”

      If we succeed in voting a conservative ito the White House in 2016, it will cement the fast-growing realization that the current GOP leadership is moribound, self-neutered by personal interest, a boorish guest who has lived on conservative donations and votes for far too long.

      It’s a long game, but we are far further along than people realize.

      Have faith and vote conservative. Change is coming. Fast.

      Ragspierre in reply to Anonamom. | April 6, 2015 at 2:54 pm

      Remember that history has LOTS of examples of pols being dragged into doing the right thing.

      Bill Clinton was NOT a fan of limited government, but he HAD to sign welfare reform as a matter of political reality.

      A lot of pols are 1) whores, or 2) weather-vanes without any principles of their own. YOU and your neighbors get in their faces, and they have no particular reason NOT to accede to powerful, passionate demands, especially in connection with something so clearly connected with national security. Even Collectivist are aware they have a big-ass chink in their armor WRT that. (I can say “chinks”, because I’ve decided that I’m a Chinese woman poly-amorous omni-sexual.)

        Henry Hawkins in reply to Ragspierre. | April 6, 2015 at 6:37 pm

        Your post appears after mine, but you didn’t upthumb my post. Explain yourself.

          Ragspierre in reply to Henry Hawkins. | April 7, 2015 at 8:39 am

          Oh, my gawd, oh, my gawd…

          It was SO tots an accident. I was texting Buffy, and I hit the thumby button (ups of course) and I must have missed. And just then Mr. Muffins started throwing up a fur-ball and so I had to call 9-11. You just have no idea what my afternoon was like…

          Fixed now.

Going from unenriched to slightly enriched is 80% of the work of going from unenriched to bomb grade.

Under the 6000 centerfuge limit and without cheating – it will take Iran 12 months after the expiration date to begin building 25 nuclear bombs a year.

“Biggest scam”? I vote for “global warming.”

    Doug Wright Old Grouchy in reply to xsnake. | April 5, 2015 at 2:29 pm

    Yep, agree that both are bad.

    However, one little qualification: The Persian Bomb deal could be proved to be a bad deal once Persia conducts its test blast. That might come when its new ICBM missile is launched towards a western target or when a ship, so thusly loaded, is exploded while berthed in an Israeli port.

    Climate change: won’t personally be around on the grass side of things when that’s scheduled to go BAD1

    So, all I’m saying is that one I would be around to experience, the other, no chance; technically, I’d be about 160 years old then; maybe could make it since my family is very long lived, but that’s pushing it.

Who is the woman in the white coat? Is she supposed to represent the scientific side? Iranians do not respect any woman.

    David R. Graham in reply to dunce1239. | April 5, 2015 at 3:27 pm

    Google is a research facility on the World Wide Web. It’s address is http://www.google.com. One enters in the text box words one wishes to research, clicks Submit or Go or Search and is presented a list of results matching the words entered in the text box. One uses a computer or a hand-held, internet-enabled device to reach http://www.google.com on the World Wide Web. Al Gore invented it recently, along with much else. Try Google as described above using the words “Federica Mogherini” and see what comes.

      so they were supposed to just pull a name out of their butt to search?
      a smarter man would have told the person to upload it into google image search.
      you that smart of a person?
      prove it.

    David R. Graham in reply to dunce1239. | April 5, 2015 at 3:31 pm

    Federica Mogherini wears black and white mostly and occasionally red. Her fabrics and tailoring are superb.

David R. Graham | April 5, 2015 at 3:51 pm

There are people who believe that as long as they are talking they are accomplishing. State and White House today are full of the kind. It seems inconceivable that anyone could be so vacuous, but it is there to see is happening. In their minds, their talking eventually (“strategic patience”) compels their interlocutor(s) to abide their wishes and live by rules to which they long-since resolved to compel those interlocutors to submit.

It is not your grandmother’s way of thinking. Or, perhaps it is. To the extent hoax is involved, it occurs bi-directionally: the talker hoaxes their target and is hoaxed by their ego. That pan-optic delusion-ing flummoxes the decent. Well, for a time anyway.

At the moment there is no way of getting to the hoaxing and its consequences to make it and them move in a sane direction. However, and importantly, there are ways — and sufficient means — to get fixes on what a sane direction of movement would entrain. And upon such I urge the expenditure of time, energy and wealth. The days advance when results of that effort will be dearly treasured.

    Ragspierre in reply to David R. Graham. | April 5, 2015 at 5:09 pm

    Wow. As meaningless…but very HIGH SOUNDING…ambiguity goes, that rivals the astrology column in the local shopper.

    Yep. That’s right up there with “Keep your powder dry” as an action plan.

    Henry Hawkins in reply to David R. Graham. | April 6, 2015 at 10:23 am

    “There are people who believe that as long as they are talking they are accomplishing.”

    Oh, the irony. You don’t see it, do you?

    LOL x 100

inspectorudy | April 5, 2015 at 3:53 pm

I knew the negotiating ability of the obama admin was lousy when obama told the Republicans to “Not call my bluff”! The proper term is “Don’t call me” but to say that the other players should not call your bluff means you are lying about your hand to begin with. This moron is such a lousy poker player, along with his imbecilic SoS Kerry, that a child could have beaten them in head to head negotiations. The Middle East has a very long history of bargaining and negotiating for almost every thing there of value. obama has never negotiated for anything since it was always handed to him as well as Kerry.

Dear Dianne, I would have to go back and check, but the way I remember it, Bibi objected to sanction relief to bring Iran to the table. He was right, it was a very bad move.

This could be considered political cover. Give Iran everything it wants and then when it blows up (perhaps literally) disclaim all responsibility for it.

I wrote about this fake “deal” over on my blog http://www.thediplomad.com/2015/04/the-fake-iran-deal.html

I spent nearly 34 years in the State Department, and did lots of negotiations. This is fake. I have been telling people the announced deal was fake. There are no signatures. Iran signed nothing. The points weren’t even jointly announced. The negotiators spent months coming up with some points for another three months of discussion. Even then, the Iranians are disputing the points, and claiming that the US is lying about what was agreed on for further discussion. It’s all fake. No deal.

    Ragspierre in reply to Diplomad. | April 6, 2015 at 10:46 am

    So… The vaporware of statecraft…???

    Sammy Finkelman in reply to Diplomad. | April 6, 2015 at 11:09 am

    Vaporware is right.

    Iran issued a non-legally binding “press release” of guidelines for an agreement that said the U.S. – that’s where Congress comes in – 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, and the United Nations shall abrogate its previous resolutions, and in return Iran
    shall arrange things so that it is able to (“qader khahad boud” in Farsi) reduce the number of its centrifuges in Fordow and stop enrichment there for 15 years, and the nuclear facilities at Fordow shall be developed into a center for nuclear research and advanced Physics. That reseasrch will evudentaly include continuing on with planes for advanced centrifuges.

    Kerry et al say they are only saying things to sell the agreement, so I suppose they expect them to sneak the final agreement past Ali Khamenei and get his approval in the dark in the middle of the night, after first fooling a few trusted aides. Actually, the ideas at the State Department probably make even less sense.

    DO you know they were negotiating using a white board, so that the Iranian delegation would not have to contact Teheran for instructions, because if they did, they’d probably tell them not to agree to something?

    http://nypost.com/2015/04/04/translated-version-of-iran-deal-doesnt-say-what-obama-claims-it-does/

      Sammy Finkelman in reply to Sammy Finkelman. | April 6, 2015 at 11:16 am

      Links about the white board:

      http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/04/world/middleeast/an-iran-nuclear-deal-built-on-coffee-all-nighters-and-compromise.html?_r=0

      The board served a major diplomatic purpose, letting both sides consider proposals without putting anything on paper.

      That allowed the Iranians to talk without sending a document back to Tehran for review, where hard-liners could chip away at it, according to several American officials interviewed for this article, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

      “It was a brilliantly low-tech solution,” one White House official said. (It also had its drawbacks. One American wrote on it with a regular marker, then had to scrub hard to wipe out some classified numbers.)

      See also:

      http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/05/whiteboard- diplomacy-permanent-marker-sparks-panic-at-the-iran-talks

      The whiteboard appealed to the Iranian team “because if they get paper, they’ve got to take it back to Tehran”, the State Department official said.

      Kerry had his own version committed to paper to consult on the go….

      ….It was not lost on American diplomats, that the Iranian statement hit the press before the State Department’s fact sheet. Nor has it gone unnoticed that the two statements have a different twist on what happened.

      “We understood we would have different narratives, but we wouldn’t contradict each other,” the State Department official said.

Sammy Finkelman | April 6, 2015 at 10:53 am

The hoax or April Fools joke, is that there’s a deal!!

” Iran framework deal greatest political hoax ever? ”
Maybe second greatest with the greatest hoax perpetrated, the election of this person to lead the US; this person whose personal details are basically unknown to the citizens.

Henry Hawkins | April 6, 2015 at 1:23 pm

I’d place the Iran deal third behind second place Obamacare and first place Obama himself, the ‘moderate post-racial uniter’ of 2008.

A pack of liars dealing with the untrustworthy. Which is which? Does it really matter? They deserve each other. Too bad the rest of us are along for the ride.