French politicians will continue to play their double standard approach toward the nuclear deal with Iran. Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian recently announced that France (along with other European countries) does not intend to offer a package in the near future to preserve the nuclear deal with Iran. On the other hand, French officials have been silent about how their economic cooperation with Iran has been in place in recent days.
This issue can be considered from a variety of dimensions.
Although it was thought that the French, at least after the withdrawal of the United States President Donald Trump from the nuclear deal, would somewhat moderate their previous game against Iran, now they continue to play their direct role in the United States and the White House.
The reality is that Iranians are angry at the French president's game on the American ground. It was for the first time that President Emanuel Macron said some parts of the nuclear deal could be amended to include Iran's missile program and extend limits on Iran’s nuclear program beyond 2025. During the meeting between Macron and Trump in New York in 2017 on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, France's dishonesty toward the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the official name for the nuclear agreement) and the Islamic Republic of Iran became more and more apparent.
The behavior of Macron and other French officials toward the JCPOA will never be omitted from the memory of the Iranian nation. Obviously, in the event of a complete cancellation of the nuclear deal, there will be no difference between the presidents of the United States and France.
In any case, it should not be forgotten that France has been one of the main motivators of Trump’s pullout from the nuclear deal. If the young French president had not supported calls by Trump to change the content of the nuclear accord since the beginning of 2017, today we would not have faced the current situation. Even now, after Trump left the nuclear deal, the French have not revised their behavior.
The French are eying the mid-term Congressional elections; they also plan to take more benefits from our country under the pretext of secondary US sanctions.
Now that the US has exited the JCPOA, Macron continues to play his paradoxical game. Another point is that in this equation, the main difference between the French and the American officials is the "tactic” employed by the White House and the Elysee Palace. During the presidential campaigns in 2016, Trump called the JCPOA "the worst deal ever" and threatened to either "change" it or "withdraw" the US from it. However, the French have chosen the policy of "playing with ambiguous words". The vocabulary used by the French authorities is wider than Americans in this regard: from "commitment to the JCPOA" to "completing the JCPOA".
Finally, the French authorities have a hard time to gain the confidence of the Iranians. If Macron really wants to amend this negative image of himself and his country in the eyes of the Iranians, Paris must enter a real struggle with the US in defense of the JCPOA. However, there seems to be no such will by the French authorities to defy the United States.
MNA/TT
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