PARIS — French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian says the US can help encourage dialogue with Iran to ease growing tensions, even though it withdrew from the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran.
Speaking to the French Senate, Le Drian says that Iran’s decision to surpass two accord threshholds, for stockpiling weakly enriched uranium and enriching uranium beyond the 3.67 percent limit, amounts to “a bad reaction to a bad decision,” a reference to the US withdrawal.
France wants to create a “space for dialogue” to de-escalate a potentially dangerous situation, he says, and President Emmanuel Macron spoke both to the Iranian leader and President Donald Trump for that reason.
He says: “The Americans, even if they’re no longer signatories… can make needed gestures of appeasement to open a space of discussion to avoid an uncontrolled escalation, or even an accident.”
— AP
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, right, and his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian, shake hands for journalists at the start of their meeting in Tehran, Iran, on March 5, 2018. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
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