Hardball, French Style
Seriously. Damn.
Yesterday: no more Mr. Nice Guy.
France rejected Iran's request for more talks on the Islamic republic's nuclear program, saying Wednesday that Tehran first must suspend its atomic activities.Today: We have nukes too.
Iran asked for a ministerial-level meeting with France, Germany, Britain and the European Union, but its decision to resume some uranium enrichment-related activities "means that it is not possible for us to meet under satisfactory conditions to pursue these discussions," French Foreign Ministry spokesman Denis Simonneau said in Paris. "Iran must return to a complete suspension of these activities."
French President Jacques Chirac has said France would be ready to use nuclear weapons against any state which launched a terrorist attack against it.This is certainly a refreshing change from France's usual policy of preemptive surrender. However, the use of nuclear weapons in response to an attack with conventional weapons is one of the few things that is indisputably illegal under international law. Unlike -- as Saddam's French trading partners tirelessly insisted -- the war in Iraq.
Speaking at a nuclear submarine base in northwestern France, Mr Chirac said a French response "could be conventional. It could also be of another nature." He said France's nuclear forces had been configured for such an event.
Well. It's good that someone has decided to dispense with the velvet diplo-speak and rattle a saber right back at Iran. But France's actual use of nuclear weapons would not necessarily be a good thing.
posted by st @ 3:54 PM
2 Comments:
Ummm, I guess so.
But let's remember this is FRANCE talking. I wouldn't exactly trust them as allies or count on them if anything serious happens.
FF, I'm trying to figure out what Chirac's game is too. In the space of one week, France went from saying that talk of sanctions against Iran was premature, to a not so subtle reinder that they can lob nukes too. I've known full-blown bipolars whose mood swings couldn't match this.
My major problem with France's threat is that a gloves-off nuclear exchange between a western country and an Islamic one wouldn't be good for anyone. For one thing, this is exactly the sort of total war the French and the UN have supposedly spent the last 60 years trying to avoid. For another, the record of the French military in Africa is ample grounds to hope fervently that Chirac is just talking smack. Everything they touch turns to smelly blue-veined cheese.
Further, Israel and the US assuredly have plans to "take care of" Iran's nuclear capabilities, and those plans assuredly do not include anything beyond conventional weapons -- certianly not in a preemptive scenario, and perhaps not even in retaliation.
Unfortunately for Chirac, the terrorists most likely to attack France already live there.
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