We enquired at the Office of the Federal President with Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier:
There are a number of question marks surrounding the “non-telegram” from the Federal President to the Iranian regime on the anniversary of the “revolution”. We enquired at the Bundespräsidialamt – also about the content of the critical draft – and received the following answer:
With regard to the Iranian national holiday on 11 February, and in view of the developments of recent months, there were two options from the point of view of the Bundespräsidialamt: either a critical telegram or no telegram at all. The Federal President had expressly reserved the final decision on whether a telegram should be sent.
Option 1 was initially prepared in the responsible department of the Bundespräsidialamt, in unusually clear language, including translation and timely transmission to the competent mission abroad. Owing to an error, the embassy was not informed of the Federal President’s reservation. Because of this error by the Bundespräsidialamt, the prepared text was delivered to the Iranian authorities by the embassy as early as 5 February, too soon and without the Federal President’s final approval.
This in turn only became known after the Federal President’s decision of 7 February not to send a telegram this year had been passed on to the embassy as an instruction via the Federal Foreign Office.
The ambassador thereupon informed the Iranian side on 8 February that there would be no telegram from the Federal President this year and that a text had been transmitted inadvertently without the Federal President’s final approval.
The Iranian side took note of this explanation.
Since the text is a draft by the specialist department of the Bundespräsidialamt – and precisely not a telegram from the Federal President – this text is not available for publication.
Conclusion: This was therefore evidently a classic case of “human error”. Furthermore, a screenshot of a tweet by the Iranian news agency FarsNews is circulating on social media. It sees things differently:
برخلاف اخبار منتشر شده در برخی رسانهها، پیام تبریک رئیس جمهور آلمان به مناسبت پیروزی انقلاب اسلامی خطاب به روحانی در روزهای گذشته واصل شده. رئیس جمهور آلمان در این پیام برای رئیسجمهور و مردم ایران آرزوی صحت و سلامتی کرده و آلمان را «شریک صادق و جدی ایران» توصیف کرده است.
— خبرگزاری فارس (@FarsNews_Agency) February 9, 2020
In this tweet the supposedly critical telegram is presented in a positive light. So was the criticism hidden too politely and diplomatically, or are the mullahs cobbling together whatever suits them?
