I wrote in Politico today about the president’s ongoing cave on Iran, and how, amazingly enough, the Iranians have provided a better picture of the state of the negotiations:
Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif attacked a U.S. fact sheet on the alleged deal as inaccurate. “There is no need to spin using ‘fact sheets’ so early on,” Zarif lectured on Twitter.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest dismissed the wily Zarif as playing fast and loose for a domestic audience: “He’s obviously out there trying to make the case to his population.”
But Zarif was right to put sneer quotes around “fact sheets,” and not for the first time. He also correctly rapped another Obama “fact sheet,” this one about a November 2013 initial agreement, as vastly overstating Iranian concessions.
The sad fact is that it’s often more illuminating to read the Twitter feeds of officials serving an anti-American theocracy than to listen to the White House press secretary.