Debunked: Israeli media’s bid to spin-doctor Ayatollah Khamenei’s remarks

By Syed Zafar Mehdi

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei during a meeting with Iranian nuclear agency officials and scientists on Sunday made important remarks about the country’s nuclear program.

The event was widely covered by local and international media, with the focus primarily on this part – there is “nothing wrong” with an agreement as long as Iran’s nuclear infrastructure “is not touched”.

However, in a classic example of spin-doctoring and gross manipulation of facts, the Israeli newspaper Jerusalem Post in a report completely distorted what Ayatollah Khamenei said about the country’s nuclear activities and the possibility of reaching an agreement.

“West can’t stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons,” beamed the Jerusalem Post news headline on Sunday, falsely attributing the quote to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution.

“On the basis of our Islamic ideals, we do not want nuclear weapons…But if this wasn’t the case, they would not be able to prevent us from doing so, just like they could not prevent our nuclear advancements so far,” the story further expanded, contradicting the headline.

Headlines are essentially designed to grab the reader’s attention so chances of manipulation and spin-doctoring are always high, especially for news outlets that serve the agenda of illegitimate regimes.

Jerusalem Post, which is close to the far-right cabinet of Benjamin Netanyahu, gave a spooky spin to Ayatollah Khamenei’s remarks to poison the minds of readers and engineer public opinion.

A simple fact-check would debunk the gross lie peddled by the Israeli propaganda outlet.

The leader of the Islamic Revolution in his remarks did not say that the West “cannot stop” Iran from getting weapons, because Iran in the first place is not in the race for nuclear weapons.

He emphatically said that the Islamic Republic follows a defense doctrine based on Islamic ideals that does not allow the development of nuclear arms, so the question of having a bomb is non-existent.

Ayatollah Khamenei, extending an olive branch, said an agreement is possible if Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, which has been developed with blood and sweat over the years, is “not touched”.

The infrastructure has taken years to develop, thanks to the painstaking efforts of Iranian scientists and officials, with many young and promising nuclear scientists offering supreme sacrifices along the way.

Among those in the audience on Sunday were children of slain nuclear scientists, Darioush Rezai-Nejad and Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, who were too little when the light of their lives was extinguished.

Ayatollah Khamenei praised Iranian scientists for their contribution to the country’s nuclear industry, which he said has been developed “despite sanctions and threats and killings of scientists”, referring to both American sanctions and Israeli assassinations – terrorism of different forms.

He once again rejected claims made by Western countries and the Israeli regime about Iran developing nuclear weapons as “lies”, reiterating that nuclear proliferation is against the Islamic Republic’s “religious ideals”, which is also clearly affirmed in the decree issued by the Leader.

In fact, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution endorsed Iran’s continued cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and said this cooperation must continue in the framework of the safeguards agreement, as Iran has been doing despite the agency’s overtly political approach.

Importantly, unlike Iran, Israel has not signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has repeatedly and contemptuously rejected calls to join the keystone accord of the international arms control regime and refused to give UN nuclear agency inspectors access to its nuclear sites.

If that was not enough, the regime has over the years carried out numerous sabotage attacks at Iran's IAEA-monitored nuclear sites and assassinated the country's top nuclear scientists, as the Leader of the Islamic Revolution referred to in his remarks on Sunday.

While Iran’s leader said cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog must continue, he also asserted that the parliamentary law that called for increasing uranium enrichment must also not be violated.

The law, passed in February 2021, is “in the interest of the country and its nuclear industry”, he said.

Ayatollah Khamenei also hit out at Western powers, including the US and its European allies, for not keeping promises and not proving trustworthy based on the experience of more than 20 years.

His words carry weight. The former US administration unilaterally walked out of the 2015 nuclear deal and reinstated sanctions on Iran. European signatories to the deal did nothing to adhere to their commitments and salvage the multilateral deal.

Donald Trump’s successor Joe Biden, despite initial signals of realism, failed to reverse draconian measures taken by his megalomaniac predecessor, carrying on an approach that is far from pragmatic.

Ayatollah Khamenei’s remarks were measured as always and based on ground realities. Israeli media cannot distort facts by resorting to spin-doctoring and misinformation. Truth prevails in the end.

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