‘France acting as a lackey of the US’

A senior Iranian lawmaker has criticized the French stance on Iran, saying that France has become the United States’ accomplice in implementing wrong policies throughout the world.

The deputy chairman of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of the Iranian Majlis (parliament), MP Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, said on Saturday that during Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidency, French foreign policy has changed in regard to international equations, the Majlis news agency (ICANA) reported.

This change has resulted in countless diplomatic failures for Paris in recent years, he added.

“Presently, [the French] are playing roles in Washington’s programs in a way that it can be said that they have become the partners of the Americans in implementing incorrect policies in the world,” Falahatpisheh said.

“The revolutionary people of the [Middle East] region and North Africa not only pursue anti-dictatorial goals domestically but also anti-colonialist objectives against Western countries. Thus, the status and position of France have been seriously damaged in Tunisia and Lebanon.”

The Iranian MP described Sarkozy’s stance on Iran as reactionary and said that his remarks should not be taken seriously because Tehran gave the appropriate defensive responses to the United States in the past, and this is the reason that the US now carefully chooses its methods to threaten Iran.

On Wednesday, August 31, the French president warned that Iran’s alleged attempts to build long-range missiles and “nuclear weapons” could compel unnamed countries to launch a preemptive military strike against some of its facilities.

“Its military, nuclear, and ballistic ambitions constitute a growing threat that may lead to a preventive attack against Iranian sites that would provoke a major crisis that France wants to avoid at all costs,” the French president said.

However, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has conducted numerous inspections of Iran’s nuclear sites but has never found any evidence indicating that its civilian nuclear program has been diverted toward weapons production, which gives the lie to Sarkozy’s remarks about Iran.