Informed Comment has the article Iran: What did Khamenei really say about the Lausanne Agreement, and Why? by Juan Cole.
Hard liners are jumping up and down mad about what Rouhani & Zarif are alleged to have given away to the West, and my suspicion is that Khamenei’s demand for immediate end of sanctions is a way of tossing them a bone for the moment. If you read the whole speech he comes back and is still supportive of the process at the end, saying he is not for or against the deal since there really is no deal yet, just a framework agreement for negotiating the deal. But then that means he did not, contrary to the headlines, come out against the deal today.
Juan Cole is telling you what he thinks is going on. In using the phrase “my suspicion is”, he gives you fair warning that he does not have inside knowledge into Khamenei’s brain. I just think that, given the one-sided presentation of the negotiations by our new media, it is valuable to consider other possible interpretations that are driven by different agendas. I have not researched what Juan Cole’s agenda is, but I assume he must have one.
Mardy,
You might be the only one that actually clicks through and reads the articles. Good for you, and thanks for the comments.
I liked the last paragraph in Juan Cole’s article:
Khamenei is not allying with soft liners. Rather, he is trying to put together a new coalition of centrists and pragmatic hard liners who can sideline both the reformist Greens and the populist far right, in essence transcending and leaving behind the key divisions of 2009. At the same time this new center-right coalition could just possibly do a nuclear deal with the P5 +1 that would turn around Iran’s economy. But this latter may or may not be possible.