France using atomic deadlock to ink arms deals
Iranian officials have lambasted negative remarks by French officials about ongoing nuclear talks and criticised Paris’ arms deals in the region.
The remarks comes as foreign policy experts in Tehran warned that France was impeding the nuclear negotiations in order to please its arms clients in the Middle East.
In response to Friday’s $15bn deal for French warplanes between France and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said that such deals would destabilise the region.
“Other countries should not forget the destructive and destabilising role that the activities of countries like France play in the region,” Khatibzadeh was quoted as saying.
Meanwhile, Iranian foreign policy experts told the Donya-e Eqtesad daily that France was using the deadlock in the current nuclear talk in Vienna to ink new arms deals with wealthy Arab states.
Analyst Reza Nasri said: “France’s Defensc Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian is known in his own country as ‘the salesman’ for the arms he sold to Egypt’s general [Abdel Fattah] el-Sisi, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf countries.
“Obviously, to make his customers happy, he would occasionally attempt to subvert the negotiations.”
Rahmen Ghahremanpour, another analyst, suggested that France was aware that any agreement between Iran and world powers would result in a better relationship between Tehran and the Middle East’s Arab states.
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Ghahremanpour said such a result would make small Arab states less dependent on France’s military and political support.
“Small states such as Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait and even Saudi Arabia will get closer to Iran if the negotiating parties reach an agreement,” said Ghahremanpour.
“On the contrary, if the talks fail, those states will get closer to [world powers] like France,” he added.
