Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is going to cause big trouble for the Obama administration. In a speech today, Khamenei denounced the White House’s spin tactics—according to the rahbar, there is no nuclear deal. Counter to what the White House has been peddling since it announced the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Khamenei says that nothing was agreed in Lausanne, especially not sanctions relief, nor IAEA inspections.
Regarding the former, Khamenei said:
Instant annulment of all sanction is one of the demands of our officials... This issue is very important, and the sanctions must all be completely removed on the day of the agreement... Should the removal of the sanctions be related to a process, the foundation of the negotiations would be senseless, since the goal of the negotiations was to remove the sanctions
As for the P5+1’s verification scheme, Khamenei said:
One must absolutely not allow infiltration of the security and defense realm of the state on the pretext of inspection[s], and the military authorities of the state are not - under any circumstance - allowed to let in foreigners to this realm under the pretext of inspection, or stop the country's defense development... Any unconventional inspection or monitoring which would make Iran into a special case, would not be acceptable, and the monitoring must only be as monitoring regimes taking place all over the world and nothing more.
The Obama administration has been claiming Lausanne as a great achievement, but its negotiating partner, the man who has the final say in Tehran, has laid bare the truth. Read the whole speech here, translation courtesy of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.