3/20/15, "France Takes Toughest Line at Iran Nuclear Talks," Wall St. Journal, Jay Solomon and Laurence Norman, Lausanne
"Negotiations move closer to March 31 cutoff without a breakthrough."
"France is again adopting the toughest line against Iran in negotiations aimed at curbing Tehran’s nuclear program, potentially placing Paris at odds with the Obama administration as a diplomatic deadline to forge an agreement approaches at month-end.
President Barack Obama called French President François Hollande on Friday to discuss the Iran diplomacy and try to unify their positions. The presidents “reaffirmed their commitment” to a deal “while noting that Iran must take steps to resolve several remaining issues,” the White House said.
French diplomats have been publicly pressing the U.S. and other world powers not to give ground on key elements—particularly the speed of lifting United Nations sanctions and the pledge to constrain Iran’s nuclear research work—ahead of the March 31 target.
Paris also appears to be operating on a different diplomatic clock than Washington, arguing that the date is an “artificial” deadline and that global powers should be willing to wait Tehran out for a better deal if necessary.
Obama administration officials have said that expected moves by the U.S. Congress to put new sanctions on Iran as soon as next month limit their ability to extend the diplomacy. But French officials took exception.
“Making the end of March an absolute deadline is counterproductive and dangerous,” France’s ambassador to the U.S., Gérard Araud, said via Twitter after the latest round of negotiations in Switzerland concluded Friday.
“No agreement without concrete decisions on issues beyond the enrichment capability question,” he said a day earlier, specifically mentioning the need for extensive monitoring and clarity on Iran’s past research work. Western officials believe they included the pursuit of nuclear-weapon capabilities.
In a sign of France’s determination, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius called his negotiating team in Lausanne on Thursday to insist no deal could be forged that allowed for the rapid easing of U.N. Security Council measures, according to European officials.
France worries the quick repeal of the U.N. penalties could lead to a broader collapse of the West’s financial leverage over Tehran, according to these officials.
Paris is demanding Tehran address evidence that it has conducted research into the development of nuclear weapons to get those U.N. penalties relaxed. Iran has for years denied the allegations and some officials fear that forcing Tehran to publicly reverse itself could break the diplomacy.
Mr. Fabius has served as diplomatic foil in the Iranian diplomacy in the past.
In November 2013, the former French prime minister said a deal that the U.S. had been negotiating with Tehran in Geneva was a “fool’s game” and didn't go far enough in limiting Iran's nuclear capabilities. His comments briefly delayed the signing of an interim agreement that modestly rolled back Tehran’s program.
Western officials in recent days have stressed that Washington and the other powers negotiating with Iran—France, the U.K., Germany, Russia and China—remain united. Still, Obama administration officials have voiced frustration with France’s public posturing, arguing it isn’t constructive.
Some U.S. officials privately believe France is seeking in part to maintain strong ties to Israel and to Arab countries deeply skeptical of Washington’s outreach to Tehran. French defense companies have signed lucrative arms deals with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in recent years.
French diplomats, however, say their strong stance against nuclear proliferation has been a central foreign policy tenet for years. By remaining one of the world’s few nuclear powers, France can maintain an independent role in global affairs.
Secretary of State John Kerry wrapped up five days of direct talks with his Iranian counterpart, Javad Zarif, in Lausanne without a breakthrough. Mr. Kerry is traveling to London on Saturday to meet with Mr. Fabius and the foreign ministers of the U.K. and Germany.
These countries will return to Switzerland as soon as Wednesday to resume the negotiations.
“We’ve had a series of intensive discussions with Iran this week, and given where we are in the negotiations, it’s an important time for high-level consultations with our partners in these talks,” said State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf.
While U.S., Russian, Chinese and Iranian diplomats have stressed the progress made in the talks, others have been more cautious. One European diplomat said on Thursday: “I don’t think we have made sufficient progress. A lot of issues remain on the table.”
Wang Qun, China’s senior diplomat at the talks, said Friday there had been “good progress” this past week. “I do see some novelties in this round of negotiations,” he said, adding that both sides had shown “very strong political will.”
Failure to reach a political understanding on time could firm up political opposition to the negotiations in Washington.
On Thursday, Senators Bob Corker (R.-Tenn.) and Robert Menendez (D.-N.J.) said the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will vote April 14 on a bill that would give U.S. lawmakers an up-and-down vote on the agreement.
U.S. officials initially believed the negotiations could stretch until Sunday. But Iran’s delegation abruptly left on Friday, citing the death of the mother of President Hasan Rouhani. Iranian officials also said they wanted to return to Tehran for the beginning of the Persian New Year, called Nowruz.
In a meeting with his Iranian counterpart on Friday, Mr. Kerry expressed his condolences for the death of the president’s mother and called for “progress and peace” at the start of Nowruz.
Mr. Zarif responded: “I hope this new day will be a new day for the entire world.”
Both sides had hoped to wrap up the talks before the start of the Iranian holiday.
Mr. Obama also sent a Nowruz message to Iranians on Thursday. He stressed the importance of a deal in potentially opening a new era of cooperation between Washington and Tehran, who have been staunch adversaries since Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.
“Our nations have been separated by mistrust and fear. Now it is early spring. We have a chance—a chance—to make progress that will benefit our countries, and the world, for many years to come,” Mr. Obama said." via Drudge, via Levin show
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Among comments at WSJ:
================================
"John Corn
Are
the French the only sane party in the "negotiations?" Obama, from the
start, has been offering barrels of Vasoline and willingness to bend
over as many times as the Mullahs want to indulge.
America is France in 1940... outmaneuvered by better prepared and more determined enemies.
In 1940 France had a good excuse, she and England bore the full brunt of a Germany's well prepared mechanized army and its use of new strategies.
What is America's excuse today?
In 1940 France had a good excuse, she and England bore the full brunt of a Germany's well prepared mechanized army and its use of new strategies.
What is America's excuse today?
Obama and Kerry are so weak that even the French are too embarrassed to
be associated with this capitulation to the Iranians. What's next? The
Italians will have to step in and take over the war against ISIS?
While
U.S., Russian, Chinese and Iranian diplomats have stressed the progress
made in the talks, others have been more cautious..”
What a line up of rogues to be include in.
I am ashamed.
What a line up of rogues to be include in.
I am ashamed.
There
is no hurry for the west to strike a deal [that favors Iran]. Keep the
devious country in the sanction box. Let it sink in to the Iranian on
the street that their negotiators are failing them, and that they should
expect more sanctions as a result. Make them crave to come back to the
table. Let them know that a continuation of their nuclear program, while
absent negotiations, will result in a level of sanctions of the
greatest severity.
Obama is willing to give Iran anything for them to sign a deal, no matter how bad the deal is."
.
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France stunned at Obama weakness, Oct. 2013 Wall St. Journal:
10/14/13, “France Covers Obama’s Middle East Retreat,” Wall St. Journal, John Vinocur, Paris
“Fed up with U.S. waffling, France may be ready to take a harder line on Iran.“
“In an interview with the Associated Press on Oct. 4, Barack Obama depicted Iran as a country living with sanctions “put in place because Iran had not been following international guidelines, and had behaved in ways that made a lot of people feel they were pursuing a nuclear weapon.”
For French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, that was a pastels-and-wispy-brushstrokes rendering of reality. Two days later, in an interview with Europe 1 radio, Mr. Fabius drew a darker, edgier picture. “As we speak,” he said, Iran keeps the centrifuges turning that are needed to make enriched uranium for nuclear bombs. But Iran is also pursuing a second, separate track toward atomic weapons with the construction, at Arak, of a heavy-water reactor producing plutonium.
That project might take “around a year” to complete. And “if it is completed, you won’t be able to destroy it,” Mr. Fabius said, “because if you bomb plutonium, it will leak.” At that point, he said, for “the Americans, the Israelis and others,” there would no longer be adequate sanctions to stop Tehran.
He gave no hint of who those “others” might be. But here was the French foreign minister talking about a possible military engagement against Iran in a more forceful manner than anything summoned so far by the U.S. president. Mr. Fabius was not advocating a strike, volunteering eventual French participation, or indulging in simple Obama-bashing. But he was expressing a kind of French contempt for the U.S. administration’s evasive vocabulary about the Iran endgame.
Which augurs what?
When talks between Iranian President Hasan Rouhani’s emissaries and diplomats of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany begin this week in Geneva, France’s medium-term choice will be between two roles.
Paris could play the hard-line defender of the international nonproliferation regime, which would mean, among other things, insisting on Iran’s closure of the Arak reactor as a starting point for negotiations. Or Paris could revert to its old routine as a cranky sideline voice, watering down its stated refusal to accept a weak, ambiguous deal on Iranian nukes.
Camille Grand, the director of the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research, argues that this France is different. Think of its first-in role in Libya, its successful military operation against al Qaeda in Mali, its readiness to strike Syria alongside America—at least until Mr. Obama’s reversal,
A French official also said that in a discussion on Mali in October 2012, former U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta promised, referring to an eventual French incursion,
As it turned out, the White House overruled Mr. Panetta, according to the official. The administration actually asked France for cash in exchange for tanker aircraft to support French forces when they entered Mali in January.
Last week, I asked an Élysée Palace official about the solidity of two parts of the notional French position: One, that the Iranian mullahs must officially “renounce” their nuclear-weapons ambitions, and two, that they must make an unmistakable “strategic leap” that would demonstrate they are not trying to retain options that could possibly lead to making a bomb.
The official said: “To have credibility on security issues like Iran you must be firm and consistent, and not zigzag,” choosing a kind of semi-polite international code word to describe Mr. Obama’s course on Syria.
But French diplomacy is not the U.S. Congress, which has been demonstrably tougher than the White House or France on sanctions (and possibly other alternatives) to punish Tehran’s endless defiance.
Here’s where the Fabius approach may falter and French resolve not to tolerate a bad deal on Iran becomes an issue. Former French diplomats now talk of an internal debate between the hard-liners and other officials, backed by commercial interests, who say: “We have our choice between Obama and Netanyahu. The Americans will eventually go to one-on-one talks, and we’ll be isolated because Obama wants a deal and the Iranians are smart enough to give him one.”
François Hollande, whose poll numbers are miserable, has gained nothing in domestic political terms from his campaign against Islamist fighters in Africa and his willingness to strike the awful Syrian regime. He may think France has sufficiently made its PR point that it, and not Germany, is the single European country to truly function in the world of political-military machtpolitik.
This leaves the Obama administration to halt its embarrassing attempts at finesse. And with little way around brave or shameful decisions, to face up alongside Israel to the Iranians.”
“Mr. Vinocur is former executive editor of the International Herald Tribune.”
.
==================================
============================
France stunned at Obama weakness, Oct. 2013 Wall St. Journal:
10/14/13, “France Covers Obama’s Middle East Retreat,” Wall St. Journal, John Vinocur, Paris
“Fed up with U.S. waffling, France may be ready to take a harder line on Iran.“
“In an interview with the Associated Press on Oct. 4, Barack Obama depicted Iran as a country living with sanctions “put in place because Iran had not been following international guidelines, and had behaved in ways that made a lot of people feel they were pursuing a nuclear weapon.”
For French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, that was a pastels-and-wispy-brushstrokes rendering of reality. Two days later, in an interview with Europe 1 radio, Mr. Fabius drew a darker, edgier picture. “As we speak,” he said, Iran keeps the centrifuges turning that are needed to make enriched uranium for nuclear bombs. But Iran is also pursuing a second, separate track toward atomic weapons with the construction, at Arak, of a heavy-water reactor producing plutonium.
That project might take “around a year” to complete. And “if it is completed, you won’t be able to destroy it,” Mr. Fabius said, “because if you bomb plutonium, it will leak.” At that point, he said, for “the Americans, the Israelis and others,” there would no longer be adequate sanctions to stop Tehran.
He gave no hint of who those “others” might be. But here was the French foreign minister talking about a possible military engagement against Iran in a more forceful manner than anything summoned so far by the U.S. president. Mr. Fabius was not advocating a strike, volunteering eventual French participation, or indulging in simple Obama-bashing. But he was expressing a kind of French contempt for the U.S. administration’s evasive vocabulary about the Iran endgame.
Which augurs what?
When talks between Iranian President Hasan Rouhani’s emissaries and diplomats of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany begin this week in Geneva, France’s medium-term choice will be between two roles.
Paris could play the hard-line defender of the international nonproliferation regime, which would mean, among other things, insisting on Iran’s closure of the Arak reactor as a starting point for negotiations. Or Paris could revert to its old routine as a cranky sideline voice, watering down its stated refusal to accept a weak, ambiguous deal on Iranian nukes.
Camille Grand, the director of the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research, argues that this France is different. Think of its first-in role in Libya, its successful military operation against al Qaeda in Mali, its readiness to strike Syria alongside America—at least until Mr. Obama’s reversal,
- which left French President François Hollande “flabbergasted,” according to Le Monde.
- sees U.S. leadership often lacking resolve, hesitant, tempted by strategic retrenchment.”
A French official also said that in a discussion on Mali in October 2012, former U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta promised, referring to an eventual French incursion,
As it turned out, the White House overruled Mr. Panetta, according to the official. The administration actually asked France for cash in exchange for tanker aircraft to support French forces when they entered Mali in January.
- Once the $50,000 per hour charge for planes to confront al Qaeda had become a news story, it was dropped.
Last week, I asked an Élysée Palace official about the solidity of two parts of the notional French position: One, that the Iranian mullahs must officially “renounce” their nuclear-weapons ambitions, and two, that they must make an unmistakable “strategic leap” that would demonstrate they are not trying to retain options that could possibly lead to making a bomb.
The official said: “To have credibility on security issues like Iran you must be firm and consistent, and not zigzag,” choosing a kind of semi-polite international code word to describe Mr. Obama’s course on Syria.
But French diplomacy is not the U.S. Congress, which has been demonstrably tougher than the White House or France on sanctions (and possibly other alternatives) to punish Tehran’s endless defiance.
Here’s where the Fabius approach may falter and French resolve not to tolerate a bad deal on Iran becomes an issue. Former French diplomats now talk of an internal debate between the hard-liners and other officials, backed by commercial interests, who say: “We have our choice between Obama and Netanyahu. The Americans will eventually go to one-on-one talks, and we’ll be isolated because Obama wants a deal and the Iranians are smart enough to give him one.”
François Hollande, whose poll numbers are miserable, has gained nothing in domestic political terms from his campaign against Islamist fighters in Africa and his willingness to strike the awful Syrian regime. He may think France has sufficiently made its PR point that it, and not Germany, is the single European country to truly function in the world of political-military machtpolitik.
This leaves the Obama administration to halt its embarrassing attempts at finesse. And with little way around brave or shameful decisions, to face up alongside Israel to the Iranians.”
“Mr. Vinocur is former executive editor of the International Herald Tribune.”
.
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