The Iranian government is now demanding the finished nuclear deal be re-opened for negotiation, again.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei demanded earlier this month that sanctions be lifted entirely, rather than simply suspended as agreed in the nuclear deal signed in July.

This past weekend, the demand was repeated by a top Iranian official ahead of the upcoming United Nations General Assembly, where informal negotiations often take place on the sidelines. On September 28, Iranian officials plan to meet with the entire P5+1 delegation that negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran, according to Iran’s FARS news agency.

However, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry reportedly plans to meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in the coming days in New York over the issue. According to Fox News, a State Department official said there will be no further negotiation.

“We’ve long said that we’re not going to comment on or react to every statement attributed to the Iranian leadership,” the official told FoxNews.com. “Our focus is on implementing the deal, and verifying that Iran completes its key nuclear steps under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). There is no renegotiation, and the nuclear-related sanctions relief that Iran will receive once the IAEA verifies that it has completed its nuclear steps is clearly spelled out in the text of the [agreement].”

The ayatollah has said, however, that unless sanctions are lifted entirely, “there will be no deal.” According to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Khamenei warned if sanctions are only suspended, Iran too will only “suspend” the nuclear activities listed in the agreement.

In the text of the agreement, there is a reference to “lifting” the sanctions, but the White House has promised that sanctions “will snap back into place” if Iran violates its end of the deal.

According to MEMRI, it’s not that simple. The talks on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly may provide a forum for new negotiations over further concessions to Iran. Outright “lifting of sanctions” would constitute a “fundamental change” to the deal, MEMRI pointed out, because “lifting the sanctions, rather than suspending them, will render impossible a ‘snapback’ in case of Iranian violations.”

Three Iran leaders announced already last July, however, that Iran intended to openly violate at least part of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231.

“Just as we refrained from complying with UN Security Council resolutions, we can do so with regard to 2231,” explained senior negotiator Abbas Araghchi in an interview on Iranian Channel 2 broadcast on July 20, 2015, picked up and translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

The three leaders, President Hassan Rouhani, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, and Araghchi, who also serves as deputy foreign minister, emphasized in the interview that Iran has no intention of abiding by the UN resolution, which includes both the JCPOA and Annex B – the list of points with which Iran disagrees, including the issue of sanctions on the Iranian missile development project. Rather, Iran seeks to abide only by the JCPOA.

Following the passage of UNSCR 2231, the Iranian foreign ministry issued a statement noting, “Iran does not attach legitimacy to any restriction and any threat. If UNSCR 2231 will be violated by Iran, it will be a violation of the Security Council resolution and not of the JCPOA, similar to what happened 10 years ago when we violated Security Council resolutions and nothing happened.

“The text of the JCPOA notes the fact that the content of the JCPOA and of the UN Security Council resolution are two separate things,” the statement read.

During the interview, Araghchi said that there had been tough bargaining between the Iranian and American delegations over the issue of the arms embargo on Iran and the sanctions related to Iran’s missile development project.

Iranian nuclear scientists are expected to maintain their pace and make good progress in the field – with or without sanctions or a deal for relief – according to a report on state TV.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made it clear Tuesday that he has ruled out any freeze on sensitive nuclear work, state television reported.

The deal being offered by the six world powers (the U.S., UK, France, Germany, Russia and China) offers relief from sanctions imposed on Tehran, linked to verifications by the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran has halted its sensitive nuclear development program. The deal is to extend over a 10 year period.

In return, the UN is to lift the economic sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy, using a step-down system linked to IAEA inspections of Iranian nuclear plants and research facilities.

But Iran’s Supreme Leader has nixed all that, and demands that sanctions be removed immediately as well.

“Freezing Iran’s research and development for a long time, like 10 or 12 years, is not acceptable,” Khamenei responded in a speech that was broadcast live over Iran state television.

“Sanctions should be lifted immediately when the deal is signed and it should not be linked to verification by the UN watchdog body.

“Inspection of our military sites is out of the question and is one of our red lines.

“America is hoping to destroy our nuclear industry altogether. Our negotiators’ aim is to safeguard Iran’s integrity … and our nuclear achievements during the talks.”

It is Khamenei who has the authority to make the final decision on anything dealing with nuclear technology in Iran; thus as it stands now, it is likely that unless he suddenly changes his mind – or the delegation is willing to accept his terms — the deal is likely to be scrapped.

Or talks will again be extended, as they have been twice before.

Negotiations so far are scheduled to end – “one way or the other” – on June 30.

Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been pressuring the world powers to walk away from “this bad deal” and warning Iran would not keep its end of the bargain. It has already been discovered that Iran was increasing its uranium enrichment production during the nuclear agreement talks, even though it had already committed to halting such production as a good faith measure during negotiations.

Israel maintains that Iran cannot be trusted to fulfill its side of any future deal, either.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei supposedly met with environmental activists in Tehran on Sunday, two days after he was hospitalized and hours after social media chatter said he is dead.

“Frequent news about the death of Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran, the Persian State might be a serious historical change doors,” tweeted Gamal Sultan, a Cairo-based journalist for Rassd News.

The claim by the regime’s propaganda organ Fars News Agency of his supposed attendance in public was not accompanied by any photograph or quotes, another indication that the paranoid propaganda machine is keeping a gag order on his reported death until it feels dissidents won’t exploit a power vacuum.

Fars reported Sunday:

The public meeting that was held in the national Week of Natural Resources was particularly important as it put an end to Israeli driven rumors in the social media and a number of western websites in the last three days that alleged the Iranian leader has been hospitalized due to critical health conditions.

Some western media outlets pushed the rumor so much that they claimed that Tehran would soon announce the leader’s demise.

But it was Iranian media that reported on Friday he had been hospitalized, and if he had been released, Fars certainly would have headlined it.

Furthermore, Khamenei’s “public meeting’ supposedly with environmentalist activists, is not an event that deserves headiness in Iran.

The Jewish Press reported here on Friday that Khamenei was critically ill from a stage four cancer condition.

Khamenei has ruled for 26 years and has led a regime based on strict Islamic law. He was behind the brutal suppression of the protest movement in 2009, which resulted in the deaths and disappearance of thousands of demonstrators, and the murders of American soldiers in Lebanon in the 1980s.

It is hard to ignore the timing of Khamenei’s hospitalization and reported death with Purim and talks on an agreement on Iran’s nuclear development.

His critical condition – or death – will make it difficult for the Islamic Republic to reach an agreement with the P5+1 powers by the end of the month.

Khamenei has called the shots, and a power vacuum leaves all of the little power mongers clawing at each other to replace him. If there is not an immediate replacement, it might give a green light to dissidents to come out of the woodwork and demand an end to the Islamic regime.

Published on Jewish Business News

by Ilan Shavit

Couldn’t happen to a nicer man on a nicer date: on Purim, the Jewish holiday commemorating an Iranian (OK, they still called themselves Persians back then) plot to annihilate the Jews, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been reportedly hospitalized in critical condition as of Wednesday.

The website Israel Hayom, citing Arab sources, reported that Khamenei, 76 was rushed to hospital in Tehran after some of his systems had begun to collapse.

The Ayatollah suffers from severe prostate cancer which spread to all over his body, which kept him away from public events.

Khamenei underwent surgery Wednesday night and remains in critical condition.

On Saturday, the French daily Le Figaro reported on Saturday, citing intelligence sources, that Khamenei would likely live only two more years. Apparently, his prostate cancer had reached stage four and started to spread to the rest of his body. He was admitted to hospital last September for cancer treatment.

Shortly after he was admitted to hospital last year, Iran’s former Intelligence Minister Ghorbanali Dari Najaf Abadi said in a public speech: “In any case, we have to start thinking about the era after him (Khamenei),” Rudaw reported.

Khamenei’s official website, which lists all his official events, was last updated February 18, 2015, with the Supreme Leader’s Speech in Meeting with Air Force Commanders and Personnel. His Tweeter account, quoted so lavishly by PM Netanyahu on Tuesday, has not been updated in several days.

Buy flowers? Is that a Shiite thing?

An interesting Purim tidbit: On Purim 1953, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin died in the midst of the infamous “Doctors’ Trial” that accused Jewish doctors of treason against the USSR, where a conviction would have resulted in the mass executions of Jews.

Iran’s Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei accused the United States and Britain having given birth to ISIS and Al Qaeda/ in order to confront Iran

“Efforts by the US and its allies against the ISIL Takfiri terrorists are not genuine., he said, according to Irfan’s regime-controlled Press TV.

“If anyone fuels the fire in this regard, he or she will definitely be helping sinister America and Britain which are the creators of the ISIL and al-Qaeda,” Khamenei added.

Press TV reported that he declared that all enemy efforts, including their divisive plots, against Iran over the past thirty-five years have failed.

He claimed that ISIL and al-Qaeda were “ created to confront Iran and the wave of Islamic awakening in the Middle East and Africa, adding the militant groups have now turned against their creator,” according to the news agency.

So much for President Barack and British Prime Minister David Cameron’s new trusted friend.

“America, Zionism, and especially the veteran expert of spreading divisions – the wicked government of Britain – have sharply increased their efforts of creating divisions between the Sunnis and Shi’ites,” the Supreme Leader stated.

A senior U.S. administration official said that inflammatory rhetoric by the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday was “uncomfortable” but did not condemn it as unacceptable, as the French have done, BuzzFeed’s Rosie Gray reported.

“Of course I don’t ever like it when people use rhetoric that in any way talks about the U.S. in ways that I find very uncomfortable and not warranted whatsoever,” the official told reporters assembled in Geneva to cover Iran nuclear talks this week…

The official was asked about Khamenei’s address to the Basij paramilitary force on the very day negotiations on the Iran nuclear program were renewed in Geneva. called Israel a “rabid dog.”

“It came from the mouth of the rabid dog of the region—Israel—that Iran is a threat to the world! No, the fake regime Israel and its allies are the threat,” Khamenei said in his speech, broadcast on Iran’s Press TV with an English translation.

Regarding the nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 powers, Khamenei said, “We do insist that we will not step back one iota from our rights.”

The Leader of the Islamic Revolution “expressed regret” that certain European governments curry favor with Zionists who lack humanity. Here’s an ayatollah style regret: “…French politicians not only bow before America but also in front of the ominous and unclean Zionist regime and belittle themselves, and are a disgrace for the French nation…” Oh, yes, that’s regretful.

A French government spokesperson on Wednesday condemned the remarks, calling them “unacceptable” and saying that they “complicate” talks.

Woof.

JNS content was used in this report.

Iran’s attempt to soft-pedal its nuclear program in talks in Geneva has not affected its rabid anti-Zionism, with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei now calling Israel the “rabid dog” of the Middle East.

“It came from the mouth of the rabid dog of the region – Israel – that Iran is a threat to the world,” he said in a speech broadcast on the regime’s official Press TV with an English translation. “No, the fake regime Israel and its allies are the threat,” Khamenei said.

He added, “We do insist that we will not step back one iota from our rights.”

His audience responded with the blessing, “Death to America” to  back Iran’s intentions that it wants nuclear power for peaceful purposes,  such as obliterating Western culture and making the world safe for radical Islam.