The Iran nuclear deal was always more or less the same: limitations of the civilian nuclear program in return for lifting economic sanctions. In that regard, it should be unsurprising that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei today insisted that sanctions need to be lifted for the deal.
Somehow, this is being presented by western media as a huge snag in the talks, that Iran is somehow being too demanding. President Hassan Rouhani clarified that Iran is insisting on sanctions being lifted the day the final deal goes into effect.
The real problem here isn’t Khamenei’s comments, but the stark disconnect between the US and Iranian presentations of the framework agreement, as the Obama Administration, trying to sell the deal to the Israel Lobby and Congressional hawks, is claiming Iran gets virtually nothing in return for massive limits to their program.
Khamenei addressed that in his comments, saying that “hours after the talks, Americans offered a fact sheet that most of it was contrary to what was agreed.”
Officials had conceded there were some private agreements during the framework talks that the US and Iran would present the framework differently in their respective announcements, but the US seems to be so starkly off-base that Iranian officials are worried it means the US is trying to shift the reality of the deal toward an outright Iranian surrender.