This Time, the Hawks Are French
New York Times
12-Oct-2009 (4 comments)

But there’s something that’s not clear: how this America reacts now when it’s told it’s behaving weakly, indecisively, or perhaps deceptively in inadequately trying to stop Iran’s rush toward a nuclear weapon.

Which is just the argument that France’s nuclear nonproliferation experts are making. They suggest the Americans are selling likely Iranian trickery as hopeful signs, and toying with potential agreements with the mullahs that resemble the American concessions on North Korea which have led only to its nuclear and ballistic missile tests.

Thérèse Delpech of the French Atomic Energy Commission has said it’s difficult to understand how any relief could be felt from steps which involve tentative agreements for inspectors to visit a previously hidden uranium enrichment plant at Qum and, separately, for Iran to export some of its enriched uranium — God knows how much more is stashed away — for processing.

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MOOSIRvaPIAZ

key quote: "God knows how much more is stashed away "

by MOOSIRvaPIAZ on Tue Oct 13, 2009 02:21 PM PDT

As in, we have no clue, we have no evidence so we rather resort to our faith in a nonexistant deity to confirm our suspecions.

 

hawks are hawks... clueless ideologues. 


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Fred

Craig

by Fred on Tue Oct 13, 2009 12:33 PM PDT

“In the meantime they are just posturing so that they look tough, while satnding in the background and not taking any risks.”

  That is not entirely true; among other ventures, the French supermarket chain Carrefour just opened its first store in Tehran under the name, Hyperstar, and French oil Total might be getting back into doing business with the Islamist Rapists. So lets be fair, the French are doing way more than they say!


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ex programmer craig

He’d have a head start

by ex programmer craig on Tue Oct 13, 2009 09:29 AM PDT

He’d have a head start with the French: A German Marshall Fund poll on trans-Atlantic attitudes released last month showed that they have more confidence in him (69 percent) to manage relations with Iran than they
do in the European Union (45 percent). Notable detail: this assurance
in French public opinion on the president’s handling of the mullahs is
14 points greater than what Americans accord him.

It doesn't surprise me that 69% of Frenchies think Obama has the right idea on Iran, but the claim that 55% of Americans do... I find that a bit shocking. I haven't heard anything from the Obama administration that even SOUNDS like it might work.


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ex programmer craig

Fred

by ex programmer craig on Tue Oct 13, 2009 09:17 AM PDT

Sure they are hawks, Fred! Why shouldn't they be? They can try to goad the US into doing something and if anything goes wrong then they can complain that we secrewed it up. There's no risk for them. I hate the idea of IRI with nukes, but I'd really like some of these foreign critics to state explicitly what it is that they think the US is supposed to do about it! Are they calling for war? If they are, let them say that in open session at the UN. I'd really like to get that on DVD... the French demanding the US go to war. I would cherish that until the end of my days. In the meantime they are just posturing so that they look tough, while satnding in the background and not taking any risks.


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