Iran’s conservative figures and media are sounding the alarm on what they claim is a bad deal being negotiated with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (P5+1) over the country’s nuclear program. A March 31 soft deadline for either an agreement or a political framework has pushed some Iranian media into a frenzy, despite acknowledgement that the details of the talks that would reduce Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the removal of sanctions are confidential.
Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the hard-line Kayhan newspaper that often sets the tone of conservative talking points in Iranian media, said in an interview with Fars News: “There are indications that a deal is near” between Iran and the P5+1, whose negotiators are in Lausanne, Switzerland. He added: “If the news is true, it could be said that there is distance between this agreement and what the Islamic Republic of Iran had desired. And the red lines that were drawn were not followed the way it was expected.”
