A recent story in the New York Post http://bit.ly/1NK55m1 is making a rather sensational claim that Iran's official statement in Farsi about the deal last week on sanctions and nuclear proliferation contradicts in essential respects the State Department's fact sheet, which I discussed in a post on this blog last night http://bit.ly/1GWZitj. Now I admit to reading not a word of Farsi, but based on the full translation of the Iranian text done by Harvard's Belfer Center http://iranmatters.belfercenter.org/blog/translation-iranian-factsheet-nuclear-negotiations, the Post article's selective use of passages from both the US and Iranian texts is at a minimum confusing and misleading, if not outright deceptive.
Let's look at the supposed "contradictions" identified by the Post article:
1) The Post notes that the Iranian text says that what was understood in Lausanne is not legally binding but that the State Department document implies that there are agreed legal commitments. In fact, the State Department document indicates no such thing-quite the opposite; the opening paragraph begins with the important caveat "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed" and stresses that the Lausanne understanding is about the parameters for an agreement, which is still to be negotiated.
2) According to the Post, "The American statement claims that Iran has agreed to dismantle the core of the heavy water plutonium plant in Arak. The Iranian text says the opposite." In fact, there is no contradiction; while not specifically mentioning the core, the Iranian text indicates that the reactor will be "redesigned" and re-constructed, "decreasing the amount of plutonium production."
3) The Post suggests that, unlike the American statement, the Iranian statement avoids indicating what actions will be taken by Iran on its own and which under international supervision or cooperation: Untrue: the Iranian statement indicates clearly that, for example, the rebuilding of the Arak reactor will be "a joint international project under the management of Iran" and that "The production of fuel for the Arak reactor and the granting of an international nuclear fuel license are among the issues that will be undertaken with international cooperation" and that centrifuges "will be collected and stored under the supervision of the IAEA." According to the Post, there is no indication in the Iranian statement whether the conversion of the Fordow facility into a research center will involve "international supervision". Again, untrue: the Iranian statement explicitly indicates that this operation will be "in cooperation with some of the countries of the P5 + 1".
4) According to the Post, "The American statement claims that Iran has agreed not to use advanced centrifuges, each of which could do the work of 10 old ones. The Iranian text, however, insists that "on the basis of solutions found, work on advanced centrifuges shall continue on the basis of a 10-year plan."" Here also there is no contradiction once one reads the full statements of both the US and Iran, rather than just the passages selected by the Post. The American statement provides that for 10 years none of Iran's installed centrifuges, i.e. those in use, will be of the advanced kind. But both the American and the Iranian statements indicate work on advanced centrifuges ("research and development" in the Harvard translation) will continue over the 10 year period. While the American statement says the research will be "limited", the Iranian one spells out these limits in effect, by listing the specific centrifuge types in question and phases of research and development.
5) The Post claims, "The US talks of sanctions "relief" while Iran claims the sanctions would be "immediately terminated."" Here again, the Post is simply wrong. The Iranian statement says that sanctions will be "immediately revoked" but "after the implementation of the Comprehensive Plan of Joint Action." (emphasis added) The US Statement says the same: "sanctions will be suspended" when "all key nuclear-related steps" have been taken. Now, ironically, given its manufacturing of imaginary differences between the Iranian and the US statements, the Post article doesn't pick up on one actual area where Iranian foreign minister Zarif has had concerns about the way in which the American statement has been phrased; "suspension" of sanctions sounds something less than termination, which is what Zarif apparently thought was agreed. But as I suggest in yesterday's post on this blog, using the notion of "suspension" may simply be a way of referring to measures that the President can take without Congress to render the sanctions inoperative (waiver, etc.), as opposed to removing the legal framework itself. But in the language of international law, it is reasonable to think that both the US and Iran agreed that the "obligation of result" would be that Iran would no longer be subject to any nuclear-related sanctions, once the JCPOA was implemented.
