Contradictions And Differences In The Official U.S. And Iranian Nuclear Agreement Texts

US Secretary of State John Kerry (2L) and US Under Secretary for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman (2R) listen April 2, 2015 in Lausanne as US President Barack Obama addresses the US people about the status of Iran nuclear talks

New York Times: Outline of Iran Nuclear Deal Sounds Different From Each Side

WASHINGTON — Negotiators at the nuclear talks in Switzerland emerged from marathon talks on Thursday with a surprisingly detailed outline of the agreement they now must work to finalize by the end of June.

But one problem is that there are two versions.

The only joint document issued publicly was a statement from Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, and Federica Mogherini, the European Union foreign policy chief, that was all of seven paragraphs.

The statement listed about a dozen “parameters” that are to guide the next three months of talks, including the commitment that Iran’s Natanz installation will be the only location at which uranium is enriched during the life of the agreement.

But the United States and Iran have also made public more detailed accounts of their agreements in Lausanne, and those accounts underscore their expectations for what the final accord should say.

WNU Editor: The New York Times is carrying the administrations water when it tries to explain the differences between the U.S. statement on this nuclear deal, and what everyone else is saying .... but you know that you are not being told the truth when you read stories like this .... Iran’s Persian statement on ‘deal’ contradicts Obama’s claims (New York Post) .... or this .... Zarif stresses benefits to Iran of framework nuclear deal (Reuters).

Update: I guess this says it all .... the official Iranian text, in Persian, runs into 512 words. The text put out by the French comes in with 231 words. And the U.S. text from US Secretary of State John Kerry comes in at 1,318 words and acts as if we have a done deal. The Russians have not bothered to post their official text yet.  This is troubling .... and I know that this just lays the groundwork for disaster in the coming months of negotiations. In my first international deal (it was actually a minor commercial deal that permitted business between Soviet enterprises and Chinese business groups from Fujian province), our document ran into a thousand words .... with very little differences between the translations. We could not do it otherwise .... because it would just not work if there were different interpretations on what we agreed upon.

I know two of the people who negotiated with the U.S. on nuclear arms agreements in the 1980s .... same story. Every word was discussed and negotiated with the U.S. on both English and Russian drafts .... and there was no ambiguity or misunderstanding. That was 30 years ago .... flash forward to today's nuclear discussions .... what has come out of these talks is a travesty on how foreign diplomacy is conducted. But this is the problem with John Kerry and his team .... just like the failure last year in their push for an Israeli - Palestinian peace agreement .... they are more interested in the process rather than dealing and negotiating on the hard issues. It is almost as if they hope that the process will give them their desired result in the end .... but unfortunately .... in my experience this rarely works .... and definitely not when it comes to international discussions and agreements.

Update #2: A friend of mine just emailed me saying that this is just a deal to make a deal .... true .... it is not a deal as we would like to think it is. But it is still a process that the White House hopes will produce a  deal .... but like a said .... when it comes to international negotiations banking on a process to produce your desired result rarely works.