How France’s Presidential Runoff Could Shape Iran Diplomacy
cnn / TONY KARON
24-Apr-2012 (2 comments)

French President Nicolas Sarkozy may have once been caught in an unguarded moment telling President Barack Obama he couldn’t stand Benjamin Netanyahu and branding the Israeli leader “a liar,” but Netanyahu would nonetheless lose an important ally if Sarkozy is unable to reverse Sunday’s setback in his reelection bid. That’s because regardless of the personal chemistry between them, Netanyahu will be initimately aware that Sarkozy is widely regarded as the most Israel-friendly French president ever and is also Israel’s best bet among Western leaders for maintaining a hard line on Iran. Even if presidential frontrunner Francois Hollande is unlikely, if elected, to change France’s formal position on Iran, the Socialist Party candidate is also highly unlikely to reprise Sarkozy’s hyperactive and reliably hawkish hectoring of Washington and his European neighbors to escalate pressure on Iran—and to resist compromises with Tehran on the issue of uranium enrichment
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Darius Kadivar

Russians Rubbing their hands to see Sarkozy's defeat ...

by Darius Kadivar on Thu Apr 26, 2012 02:44 AM PDT


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Darius Kadivar

Why Trita Parsi Wants Holland to Beat Sarkozy

by Darius Kadivar on Tue Apr 24, 2012 03:38 PM PDT

The Socialist candidate, if he wins the presidency, is expected to be more of a low-key team player than Sarkozy, who demands the limelight and has been willing to publicly challenge the Obama Administration to take a tougher line. Hollande’s plate will be full in managing domestic challenges, and his key foreign policy priority as president would be renegotiating the treaty to save the eurozone. Foreign policy dossiers such as Iran and Syria are likely to be returned to the French Foreign Ministry, in contrast to Sarkozy’s habit of taking personal charge. So even if the formal policy remains the same, Sarkozy’s ouster would silence the most important cheerleader for a hard line on Iran in the Western camp. That’s why all stakeholders in the Iran nuclear standoff will be watching closely when French voters return to the polls on May 6 to settle the matter of whether Sarkozy will have a second term.

 

“Sarkozy has played a critical, instrumental role in hardening the European position on Iran, although the Iranians themselves have certainly helped,” says Iran scholar Trita Parsi, author of  A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama’s Diplomacy With Iran. “He has consistently taken positions more hawkish than those of the Obama Administration. By contrast, Hollande’s orientation will be on fixing France’s many domestic problems, and even if he leaves the formal position on Iran unchanged, he’s very unlikely to adopt Sarkozy’s approach of pressing other Western powers and agitating for a harder line.”


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