New York Times Caught Scamming Iran Interview

The Associated Press in an article titled “The Iran Deal: A Look at What It Does and Problems Remaining”  and released on the eve of a final round of negotiations between Iran and the six world powers (the US, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China) embarked on a fool-hearted and blatant distortion of the Iranian Supreme Leader’s remarks to make all his demands look irrational and project the blame on him and on the Islamic Republic in case the talks fail, specially now that both sides say progress in drafting the final deal is not made as expected and a further extension of the July 1 deadline is likely.

The AP piece claims that Ayatollah Khamenei “says he wants all economic sanctions lifted before the deal is signed” , while this is not true at all.

In fact, the Iranian Supreme Leader said something completely different. In an early news version of his remarks,Ayatollah Khamenei said, “All the economic, financial and banking sanctions, no matter they are related to the Security Council or the US Congress or the US administration, should be immediately terminated right at the time when the agreement is endorsed, and the rest of the sanctions should also be removed in rational intervals.”

And in a manuscript version of his remarks that is normally released on his own website a day after each of his meetings and speeches, you may also find the same.

The Iranian Leader then explained that the Americans have introduced a complicated, multi-layered and estrange formula for the termination of the sanctions with no guaranteed result for Iran, “but we state our points in very explicit terms”.

And then he stressed that striking a deal means give and take and Iran is ready to give concessions as long as its redlines are not crossed since it believes in a fair and just deal, but the US is in a quest for a totalitarian agreement where it gives nothing much to Iran, and sees most of its excessive demands met.

Ayatollah Khamenei further explained that Americans are just seeking to destroy Iran’s nuclear industry through the negotiations.

The Iranian Leader took the initiative to explain the conditions in explicit terms to the Iranians and to the world, and one would wonder how passive and paralyzed the Americans have grown to show such a thoughtless and naive reaction, or maybe the AP thinks no one knows English in Iran.

Given the fact that the foreign ministers of Iran and the world powers are scheduled to arrive in Vienna on Saturday to have their final meetings in these marathon talks, anyone a bit acquainted with the history of the western propaganda about Iran’s nuclear issue will immediately find out that this has no way been a misquotation, but another distortion.