Erika Johnsen:
Back in November, along with diluting their stockpiles, not installing any new centrifuges, and succumbing to more transparent international review, the White House listed one of the requirements of the interim deal as halting “all enrichment above 5% and dismantle the technical connections required to enrich above 5%.” The offending word, however, is now absent from the official “summary of technical understandings related to the implementation of the Join Plan of Action” the White House put out just before the deal went into effect on January 20th (“Halting production of near-20% enriched uranium and disabling the configuration of the centrifuge cascades Iran has been using to produce it” seems to be the next closest thing). Somebody, somewhere needs to get their semantics straight — or maybe that’s the point? Via CNN:
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif insisted Wednesday that the Obama administration mischaracterizes concessions by his side in the six-month nuclear deal with Iran, telling CNN in an exclusive interview that “we did not agree to dismantle anything.”
Zarif told CNN Chief National Security Correspondent Jim Sciutto that terminology used by the White House to describe the agreement differed from the text agreed to by Iran and the other countries in the talks — the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany.
“The White House version both underplays the concessions and overplays Iranian commitments” under the agreement that took effect Monday, Zarif said in Davos, Switzerland, where he was attending the World Economic Forum. …
