Calling Iran's interpretation of the temporary agreement to lift sanctions "bad news," former U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman said the White House should "put the brakes on."
The United States should not start to carry out any of the reduction of sanctions agreed to over the weekend in Geneva, Lieberman told
Fox News Channel's "The Kelly File" on Tuesday. It also shouldn't unfreeze the billions of dollars in Iranian assets that were part of the agreement.
The negotiated
deal freed $4.2 billion for the Iranian government, and the United States says the Iranians agreed to stop enriching uranium for the next six months.
But Iran says the agreement reads otherwise.
"What has been released by the website of the White House as a fact sheet is a one-sided interpretation of the agreed text in Geneva, and some of the explanations and words in the sheet contradict the text of the Joint Plan of Action [the title of the Iran-Western powers deal], and this fact sheet has unfortunately been translated and released in the name of the Geneva agreement by certain media, which is not true," Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Marziyeh Afkham was quoted as saying Tuesday by the
English-language version of the FARS News agency.
"There's not an agreement," Lieberman told Fox News. "Unless you have an agreement, no part of it can be implemented."
Iran, he said, seems to be disputing whether it has a right to perform nuclear enrichment.
"That's critical," he said, adding that Iran has been "chronically deceitful" for so long that it should not be allowed to enrich uranium until it has proved for several years that it can keep an agreement.
"We gave away something really big here if that's, in fact, what happened," he said.
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