A series of strange tweets Thursday by Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Bagheri-Kani, created confusion in Iran, with readers not knowing how to interpret them.
“We shan’t spend foreign policy treasures for the success of diplomacy; instead, we will sacrifice ourselves to achieve foreign policy objectives,” Bagheri-Kani tweeted in English, which was the translation of a Persian tweet same day.
This was the most confusing post, which led hundreds of Iranians to joke in reply. Some said about the original Persian text that they could not understand what the diplomat meant, and maybe it was “bad Google translation from Russian.”
One user went as far as to say that “surely Putin send you the text in Russian and the translation came out bad.”
Some thought Bagheri-Kani was sending cryptic messages about the stalled nuclear talks with the United States, not knowing to take them as a positive or negative sign.
Etemad Online website on Friday clarified that Bagheri-Kani apparently delivered a speech on Thursday and the tweets were quotes from his remarks, taken out of context and sounding vague and even poetic.
“The same Iran which managed to defeat the U.S. 'maximum pressure campaign', will not allow the Zionists to legitimize Iranophobia and anti-Iran campaign by spearheading the “maximum blackmail game,” was another tweet.
The main factor that surprized the public was Bagheri-Kani’s habit of not tweeting very often and then sending several messages in quick succession.