Secretary of State John Kerry spoke Wednesday at a Department of Energy event at the U.S. Navy Heritage Center in Washington, D.C., where he noted the official implementation of the nuclear deal reached with Iran this summer. Throughout the negotiations with Iran, that country’s religious leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, frequently verbally attacked the United States, belittled the negotiations, and seemed to undermine key elements of the pending deal. In Kerry’s remarks Wednesday, however, Kerry told the audience that the “supreme ayatollah” had “formally embraced the agreement”:
However, a brief perusal of Wednesday’s activity on the Twitter account attributed to the ayatollah calls into question Kerry’s declaration of Khamenei’s “embrace” of the deal. Here are just a few:
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Perhaps this tweet is what Kerry had in mind when he spoke of an “embrace”:
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But Khamenei ended his rant/embrace with a nine-point Mandates of Implementation putting Iran’s spin on the deal, and he included the hashtag #Conditional_JCPOA_Approval. In Kerry’s remarks Wednesday, however, there was no mention of “conditional” or Khamenei’s stipulations, simply “this is for real.” It remains to be seen, however, based on the ayatollah’s words, if what Kerry describes as an “embrace” ends up being more of a stranglehold instead.
