As the March deadline for a deal between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (P5+1) over Iran's nuclear program approaches, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham is under fire for making statements that critics say implied a two-step deal, something the supreme leader has opposed.

At a press conference Feb. 18, Afkham said that while according to the interim deal in Geneva, the deadline for the negotiations is the end of June, “An internal understanding in the Geneva talks took place to have a political ‘understanding’ by the end of March in order to discuss the details later.”

Afkham spent considerable time answering follow-up questions and attempting to explain the difference between “understanding” and “agreement.” She stressed that Iran is still after a comprehensive nuclear agreement with the P5+1 but that there needs to be “step by step” understandings in order to reach that point and that the final agreement is not “violated by the discussion of the political understanding.”

Responding to a reporter’s question about the difference between the two, Afkham said that an "understanding" was not necessarily binding but that an "agreement," is legally binding.