In remarks to Iranian clerics and tweeted on his official account Thursday, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said there will be no deal if sanctions are only suspended.
Khamenei said he was acting off recent comments by U.S. officials, but he may have been referring to the administration’s assertion that sanctions will “snap back” if Iran violates the deal — something critics like Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) have said is not realistically possible.
“Iran is in a — you know — much tighter box, if you will, because they have to live up to the international agreement with the threat that all the sanctions will snap back if they don’t, and they will snap back automatically,” Secretary of State John Kerry told Reuters in August.
“…They don’t get a dime of relief from the sanctions until they have built a two-month breakout time for one year, for 10 years. Then it starts to go down a bit, but we did it on a slope, where you go up to about 15, they will have very little if none — they’ll have almost no research on their advanced centrifuges for the first 10 years, then they get some research, but they’ve got a long way to go before they have viable centrifuges for a major program.”
Khamenei also chimed in on sanctions during the negotiating process, insisting there would be no deal unless all sanctions are repealed immediately.
Iran’s parliament has yet to weigh in on the deal. That’s expected in about a month, after the UN General Assembly.
The supreme leader has final say over all matters in the Islamic Republic, but publicly insists he’s not telling lawmakers to vote one way or the other.
Enemy’s smile or its possible, short-term cooperation in a particular case should not deceive us; we must always be aware of enemy’s plots.
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) September 3, 2015
If sanctions regime is to remain, so why did we negotiate? This is against Iran’s reason for talks; our goal was total removal of sanctions.
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) September 3, 2015
If we made some concessions in talks, it was mainly to remove sanctions; otherwise why should have we negotiated? pic.twitter.com/mdNq2RYo8e
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) September 3, 2015
If sanctions are not removed, then there will be no deal either; so it must be decided. We urged removal, not suspension, of sanctions.
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) September 3, 2015
We asserted sanctions must be removed, not suspended. In case of suspension, our actions will respectively be suspension, not fundamental.
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) September 3, 2015
Other party says removal of sanctions is not in power of US govt.; we say those under control of US & European governments must be removed.
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) September 3, 2015
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