Zahra Khodaee: Last week, the French President François Hollande met with King Salman and other Persian Gulf states’ leaders, some days before a U.S.-Arab summit in Washington in which President Barack Obama will try to win support for a nuclear agreement with Iran by the end of June.

Zahra Khodaee: Last week, the French President François Hollande met with King Salman and other Persian Gulf states’ leaders, some days before a U.S.-Arab summit in Washington in which President Barack Obama will try to win support for a nuclear agreement with Iran by the end of June.
 Mr. Hollande’s presence at the PGCC Meeting was a message to Washington sent by the Saudis and their key Arab allies, who have declared their scepticism about the nuclear diplomacy of the Obama administration and their efforts to convince their traditional allies in the Middle East.

 During the nuclear talks with Iran, France has emerged as the most critical of the effort but meanwhile, Paris has signed a number of major arms deals with Persian Gulf Arab countries in recent months.

 Khabaronline press agency has talked to François Nicoullaud, France’s ambassador to Tehran from 2001 to 2005, about Mr. Hollande's visit to the Persian Gulf country and the French position on the nuclear deal with Iran. Mr. Nicoullaud was in charge of cultural development as well as non-proliferation issues. He has also served in the Interior Ministry as a diplomatic advisor and in the Ministry of Defence.

 *As always, I would like to start the interview with a question about your mandate when you were ambassador in Iran. Do have any memorable experiences that worth to mention to our readers?

 It has been ten years since I left Iran after having spent almost five wonderful years as French Ambassador in your country, but since then I have had many opportunities to come back on short visits. It has been very rewarding for me to see on each time the progress of the Iranian society,which goes forward with an irrepressible energy. As for memorable experiences of my time in Iran as ambassador, I have plenty which come to my mind, the strongest being perhaps all the emotions felt at the time of the Bam earthquake and the splendid reaction deployed by the personel of the French Embassy when coming to the rescue of the people of Bam.

 *France is again adopting the toughest line against Iran in the P5+1 negotiations, potentially placing Paris at odds with the Obama administration as a diplomatic deadline to forge an agreement. What do French negotiators seek in nuclear talks?

 I do not believe that there is a serious rift between the US and the French positions in the negotiation on the Iranian nuclear file. The French let clearly the Americans take the lead, intervening eventually when they feel that there could be some flaws in the architecture of the agreeement, thus contributing to produce the best possible deal. All in all, up to now, the result has not been so bad!

 *For Iranians people, the French position is unfriendly and unjustified when French diplomats have been publicly pressing the U.S. and other world powers not to give ground. What’s your message for Iranian people about this political behavior?

 My message to the Iranians is quite clear : do not worry, whatever the perception you can have of France as the "Bad Cop" in this negotiation, the French have no intention whatsoever to kill the chances of an agreement. Look at the last joint statement produced by President Hollande and King Salman of Saudi Arabia : "France and Saudi Arabia confirmed the necessity to reach a robust, lasting, verifiable, undisputed and binding deal with Iran". Who can oppose such a statement? It is also in the Iranian interest to reach a robust and binding deal with the US and the others! In this case, please take note that the French have in fact convinced the Saudis to take their first public position in favor of a good deal with Iran, and this goes into the right direction.

 *Precisely, Mr.Hollande’s meeting in Saudi Arabia comes ahead of U.S.-Arab summit in which Obama will aim to sell Iran nuclear deal. How do you analyze this visit?

 President Hollande was invited by the PGCC leaders to join them at their summit meeting, and this was the first time that a Western leader was invited at such a meeting. This is not the kind of invitation that you can decline... It is true that this invitation was a signal sent by the PGCC leaders to Obama before their upcoming meeting at Camp David, conveying the message :" look, you are not the only friend we have in the world, there are other people who like us and on which we can also rely". This is good diplomatic game but it does not mean that France has been invited, or is ever imagining, to replace the US in the Middle-East, This is far beyond its capacity, France knows it and the PGCC countries know it also. And by the way, I am absolutely convinced that the US has no intention to reduce its presence in the Persian Gulf as it rightly perceives this region as a kind of "Global Hub" between East and West, and therefore as a crucial place for World balance. But it is true that Obama would wish to be less entangled in Middle East crises inherited from his predecessor's policies, and then freer to engage into more positive entreprises.This is all the meaning of the negotiation with Iran.

 *French officials have signed a number of major arms deals with Persian Gulf states in recent months, including a $7 billion deal to sell 24 Rafale fighter jets to Qatar. What do you think of this policy?

 The French military establishment needs to sell at at steady rate a significant quantity of arms abroad in order to maintain its defense industry, as the French army does not offer to its industry a market big enough for its survival and development. To take the example of Dassault, which has produced the jet fighter Rafale for the French Air Force, it had also to sell this plane abroad in order to maintain its production line in the long run and to be able to invest into the development of the next generation of jet fighters. With Qatar, France has a long tradition of cooperation in defense, as Dassault sold its first Mirage fighter planes to Doha 35 years ago. But this is true also with Saudi Arabia, with which we have a strong cooperation in naval armament, or the UAE, which possesses about 400 French tanks... All this said, do not forget that the US is by far the biggest provider of defense equipment to the PGCC countries!

 *What in your opinion would be the future of relations between Iran and France? What are the most important areas of cooperation between the two countries?

 Once a comprehensive nuclear agreement is signed and faithfully implemented by both sides, I see no limit to the development of cooperation in almost all fields between France and Iran : certainly in the fields of culture, science, medicine and higher education, thus renewing a glorious and fruitful tradition, certainly in industrial ventures, and I am thinking of the automotive industry, aeronautics, transportation, telecommunications, food industry... I am thinking also of sustainable urban development and natural resources preservation, which are obviously two of the biggest challenges that Iran will have to face in the upcoming years. In these fields France can help a lot. There is also a vast field of cooperation opening up in international life, as the Middle East needs the participation of all to regain peace and prosperity

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