in a speech last week, prompting many analysts to suggest Khamenehi was open to shifting Iran’s foreign policy away from its vocal hostility to the United States.
But while one sentence in Khamenehi’s speech to the Assembly of Experts was courteous to Obama, the thrust of the full speech was not.
Khamenehi spoke last Thursday, just two days after Obama had criticized the “loose talk of war” with Iran.
Khamenehi said, “We heard two days ago that the American president said they are not thinking about war with Iran. Very well, this is good. These are wise words. It is an exit from delusion.”
It is believed to be the first time Khamenehi has ever cited any American president for speaking “wise words,” and that attracted attention all around the world.
But Khamenehi went on to say that Obama “has said, ‘We will bring the people of Iran to their knees through sanctions.’ This is a delusion.”
Khamenehi went on, “The exit from delusion in the first part is good. But the continuance of delusion in the second part will harm them. When one’s calculations are based on delusion, it is obvious that the planning he makes based on those calculations will end in failure.”
Perhaps the main problem with Khamenehi’s speech was not the level of positive or negative remarks, but rather his repeated misunderstanding of what Obama has said.
Obama has never said that sanctions will “bring the people of Iran to their knees.” To the contrary, he has frequently said that sanctions are aimed at the government of Iran, not the people—an assertion easy to defend when referring to the early sanctions applied to named officials of the government, but difficult to defend when aimed, as now, at throttling the Iranian economy.
The strangest thing is the assertion by Khamenehi that Obama said two days earlier that he was “not thinking about war with Iran.” Actually, four days earlier, Obama for the first time said he was willing to take “military” action against Iran if all else failed. It was thought to be the first time he had mentioned “military” action as opposed to the frequent vague statements about “all options” being “on the table.”
The question was whether Khamenehi was consciously ignoring what Obama said, which might suggest he was trying to open a door to Washington, or whether he was just ill-informed by poor staff work and bad translations about what Obama was really saying.
Some analysts thought Khamenehi didn’t really care what Obama had really said, at least not for the purpose of this public speech. This view holds that many Iranian officials fear all the talk in Iran about a possible war is feeding opposition to the regime by convincing more Iranians that the confrontational policy toward the West is against Iran’s national interest. Some also say that the war talk is dispiriting for the Iranian public.
All that may mean that Khamenehi wants to convince the Iranian people that the West isn’t really giving war serious consideration. That view was supported by the fact that the Islamic Republic has ignored Obama’s reference to being willing to use the “military” option against Iran, a comment that would normally have prompted vocal denunciations of the United States rather than silence.
Elise Labott, CNN’s foreign affairs reporter, cautioned against reading too much into the speech. “A wink and a nod from Khamenehi at a public meeting is hardly being viewed in Washington as a genuine invitation to start a dialogueÖ. If Khamenehi was inclined to negotiate with America, there are plenty of channels through which to communicate a signal.”
Khamenehi may still, however, be operating under a delusion about what Obama is saying.
Comments by many public officials suggest that the classified news summaries delivered to senior officials are riddled with sloppy translations that often convey the opposite of what US officials are saying. For example, several years ago, then-President George W. Bush used the word “crusade” (with a small “c”) in a speech. Even former President Mohammad Khatami drew the conclusion from what he was shown that Bush had spoken of resuming the “Crusades” (with a capital “C”) against the Islamic world, leading Khatami to express revulsion.