"Minister Juppe, when they came for the children,
where WERE the French police?"
Posted on 03/07/2012 5:32:19 AM PST by SJackson
Juppe: It's our responsibility to bring to Israel's attention the unforeseeable consequences it [strike] would have.
PARIS - French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said on Wednesday that it was important to ensure that Israel is fully aware of the potential consequences of a military strike on Iran.
"There is still a debate in Israel (about a military strike) and it's our responsibility to bring to Israel's attention the unforeseeable consequences it would have," he said, signaling that France was wary of resorting to a military strike.
Related: •'Israel must be ready to strike Iran if talks fail'•PM: Israel has acted against US advice beforeJuppe also said, however, that he was skeptical renewed talks between six world powers and Iran would succeed as Tehran was still not sincere in its willingness to negotiate over the future of its nuclear program.
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who represents the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany in dealings with Iran, said on Tuesday the six powers had accepted an Iranian offer for talks on its disputed nuclear program.
"I am a little skeptical ... I think Iran continues to be two-faced," Juppe told France's i-Tele television.
"That's why I think we have to continue to be extremely firm on sanctions, which in my view are the best way to prevent a military option that would have unforeseeable consequences," he added.
The Islamic Republic's approach to the six powers, in a letter dated Feb. 14, comes as it suffers unprecedented economic pain from expanding sanctions against its oil and financial sectors.
Western states are likely to tread cautiously in talks, mindful of past accusations that Iran's willingness to negotiate has been a stalling tactic to blunt pressure rather than a genuine effort to reach agreement.
With Israel speaking increasingly loudly of resorting to military action, the talks could provide some respite in a crisis that has driven up oil prices and threatened to suck the United States into its third major war in a decade.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy was the first among leaders of the six powers to push for tighter sanctions on Iranian oil and finance, however Juppe on Wednesday signaled that France was wary of resorting to a military strike against Iran.
Sarkozy said in January that time was running out for efforts to avoid military intervention in Iran.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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I'm sure Israel never thought of consequences, good thing France has their back too.
When your very survival is at stake, there is really nothing to ponder.
"Minister Juppe, when they came for the children,
where WERE the French police?"
Churchill said this of England in 1940, when that country was under assault from the Nazi war machine:
“We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”
Blood, toil, tears, and sweat were all he could promise his nation then. This was their finest hour.
Israel can do no less.
She is going to suggest to Iran checking tire pressure for better gas mileage, windmills and Chevy Volts for alternative power sources.
Don’t know how well these things can be targetted, but a high-altitude nuclear burst would fry every circuit in Iran and toss them back into the stone age.
There are option not discussed that should be.
An alternative is to give Iranians a taste of what nuclear weapons really mean. Much like the US dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II.
Yet not sent by missile or dropped by an aircraft, but by a covert operation that smuggles a crude nuclear weapon into Iran, detonated to appear to have been an accident at a nuclear facility, resulting in a major city being contaminated with fallout.
The world would have damning evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program despite passionate Iranian denials. And since the Iranians have made it a practice to blatantly lie, no one will believe them.
And the people of Iran will get to see, first hand, the effects of nuclear war on their people, hopefully stripping away their illusions that nuclear weapons are an easy means to get power, respect, and domination over others.
In the final analysis, several thousand people will die, but that is far fewer than those who would die in a conventional war. The biggest casualty would be Iranian belligerence.
With the French saying “no strike”, then the correct thing to do is strike. The Israelis are aware of the consequences of not striking, per Netanyahu’s AIPAC speech. Case closed.
What nonsense. If you can see the consequences enough to "bring" them "to Israel's attention" they're not "unforeseeable."
The Islamic world as well as the UN has a public and a private face. Publicly they damn the US, and frequently, but they are privately realistic enough to know what the underlying reality is.
Their first conjecture will be to assume that either Iran screwed up horribly, or it was attempting to make a bomb and was sabotaged by either the US or Israel, which would be the most likely consensus.
The IAEA would likely be on the scene after considerable delay, and would look for trace isotopes that would give some indication of the type of nuclear device and its origins. So were Israel to do this, it would likely “down engineer” the nuclear explosive to conceal its place of origin.
Events would likely be overtaken by what would be happening in Iran during all of this. After the initial shock and horror, accusations would flow like a river and their politics would be a “52-card-pick-up.”
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who represents the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany in dealings with Iran, said on Tuesday the six powers had accepted an Iranian offer for talks on its disputed nuclear program.Ashton's shown in the past that she can't be trusted to support civilized values, and/or that she is incompetent.
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