France Backpedals: Talk of Sanctions "Premature"

They'll know it's time for action when Tel Aviv has been nuked:

France said on Friday that it favours a step-by-step approach over Iran's contested nuclear program and that any sanctions request at this stage would be premature.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei, said France's priority for now is convening a special session of the International Atomic Energy Agency to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council.

The Security Council could decide to sanction Iran. But Mattei did not prejudge what action the council might take.

He said France, Britain and Germany regard the issue of sanctions as being ``premature for the moment.''

``We'll see what happens at the Security Council,'' he said in a telephone interview. ``One step at a time.''

The foreign ministers of Germany, Britain and France said on Thursday that negotiations with Iran over its nuclear programme had reached a ``dead end'' and that Tehran should be referred to the Security Council.

Forward-Looking Update Through A Glass Darkly: The Great Gulf War of 2007-2011, and the nuclear fire that scorched the world.

The devastating nuclear exchange of August 2007 represented not only the failure of diplomacy, it marked the end of the oil age. Some even said it marked the twilight of the West. Certainly, that was one way of interpreting the subsequent spread of the conflict as Iraq's Shi'ite population overran the remaining American bases in their country and the Chinese threatened to intervene on the side of Teheran.

Yet the historian is bound to ask whether or not the true significance of the 2007-2011 war was to vindicate the Bush administration's original principle of pre-emption. For, if that principle had been adhered to in 2006, Iran's nuclear bid might have been thwarted at minimal cost. And the Great Gulf War might never have happened.

posted by Ace at 12:04 AM

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