FRENCH Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Sunday that in relation to Iran: ‘We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war,’ he said in an interview broadcast on French television and radio.
‘We must negotiate right to the end,’ with Iran, he said, but underlined that if Tehran possessed an atomic weapon, it would represent ‘a real danger for the whole world.’ The fact that the US, UK, France and Israel have thousands of them and are developing new types all the time is presumably a manifestation of peace.
Kouchner added: ‘We will not accept that the bomb is manufactured,’ and hinted that military plans were on the way. . .
‘We are trying to put in place plans which are the privilege of chiefs of staff and that is not for tomorrow,’ he said.
Kouchner continued that France wanted the European Union to prepare sanctions against Iran, outside the ambit of the UN Security Council, to force Tehran to forsake its nuclear ambitions.
‘We have decided that while negotiations are continuing . . . to prepare eventual sanctions outside the ambit of UN sanctions. Our good friends, the Germans, suggested that,’ he said.
Again, this is all about oil and gas and that France does not have any, while there are oceans of both in the Gulf and central Asia.
Also it is about the new France under Sarkozy where Chirac’s caution is dispensed with to the point of mounting sanctions on Iran, through various EU states and bypassing the UN.
This change in French foreign policy, which is now falling in line with US policy, goes hand in hand with Sarkozy’s threats to take serious actions against the French working class, especially those workers enjoying early retirement.
Under Sarkozy, bourgeois France is raring to go to war in the Gulf and to engage in civil war at home.
It is determined to undergo the British experience. Blair allied himself to Bush for regime change in Iraq and ended up sacked, with a broken army holed up in Basra airport, and with his successor, Brown facing an angry working class at home.
We are for the defeat of the imperialist states if they attack Iran. On the issue of Iran’s nuclear research programme the issue is also crystal clear.
No nation has the right to halt Iran’s programme for nuclear power.
In fact if it is ok for the bullies of the world, such as France, the US and the UK to have thousands of nuclear bombs, then all oppressed nations are entitled to develop them so that they can defend themselves.
Our advice to such nations is to develop nuclear weapons as quickly as you can.
Look at Iraq. It had no weapons of mass destruction, and it has been levelled with hundreds of thousands of dead, killed with the utmost ruthlessness and callousness.
Then look at the US allies, Israel and Pakistan, who have large numbers of nuclear weapons and also the means of delivery.
Israel is one of the main hired mercenaries of US imperialism, while Pakistan was selling nuclear material worldwide, and offered some to Saddam who refused.
As far as the US and the UK are concerned there can be no limit to Israeli nuclear development. The imperialist powers are opposed to a nuclear free Middle East because Israel would have to give up its nuclear bombs!
France, the US and the UK use nuclear weaponry to dominate the planet.
The road to peace lies trough workers revolutions to disarm them, and expropriate their ruling classes.
Till then the oppressed nations should arm themselves with the most powerful weapons that they can muster.
We believe the Iranian government when it says that as a regional power it has no need for nuclear weapons.
Nevertheless we defend its right and the right of every oppressed nation to develop them and keep them until imperialism is smashed.