The Booch has a temper.
Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani suggested Iran had defeated U.S. efforts to win a referral of Iran to the UN Security Council. Asked about the comment, State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher got testy with a reporter:
QUESTION: Do you agree with Mr. Rohani’s characterization of what happened yesterday as an Iranian victory?
MR. BOUCHER: No, I don’t.
QUESTION: You don’t?
MR. BOUCHER: No.
QUESTION: Is it not correct that you did not—is it correct that you, in fact, did not get your wish to have this referred to the UN Security Council?
MR. BOUCHER: I believe we had that discussion yesterday. I’ll stand by what I said yesterday.
QUESTION: You’re not going to accuse Mr. Rohani, though, of taking the negative view of the situation?
MR. BOUCHER: I expect him to take a jaundiced, prejudiced and counterfactual view of the situation. I may not expect that from all my friends.
The reference to “taking the negative view” is a bit of ridicule from the reporter about something dumb The Booch said yesterday.
Take a pill, already.
Note also that the Booch repeatedly but mistakenly referred to the desired nuclear end-state in Iran as a “closed cycle,”—which actually is the indusry shorthand for reprocessing and recycle of plutonium—when one presumes he meant to say “once-through” fuel cycle. Not one of his better days.