Nicolas Sarkozy has become a cheerleader for US actions in the Middle East, writes Lara Marlowein Paris
So we must prepare for war with Iran, French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner warned on Sunday night. Though he softened the statement by adding that he "[ didn't] think we've got there yet". Dr Koucher said it was "normal to make plans" for war. The French armed forces "are not for the moment in . . . any kind of manoeuvres," he added.
In a week of two crucial meetings on the Iranian nuclear issue, at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna and in Washington on Friday, it was Dr Kouchner - not the Bush administration - who wielded the most strident threat against Tehran.
The events of late 2002 and early 2003 seem to be recurring like a bad dream; just substitute "Iran" for "Iraq". In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Hans Blix, then head of the IAEA, and the deputy who succeeded him, Mohamed ElBaradei, warned that there was no convincing evidence that Iraq sought weapons of mass destruction. Dr ElBaradei says the same of Iran today. The IAEA was right, but up to 1.2 million Iraqi civilians, according to a survey published by the Los Angeles Timesat the weekend, have died for the Bush administration's error.
France is the one variable that has radically altered. In 2003, president Jacques Chirac was a thorn in the side of the Bush administration. In a telling slip last winter, Chirac said it wouldn't matter that much if Iran obtained nuclear weapons because deterrence would work; Tehran would be annihilated within seconds of launching a missile.
Contrary to Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy believes the possibility of an Iranian bomb is more dangerous than confrontation with Iran. Loyalty to Washington seems to take precedence over the potentially apocalyptic consequences that a war with Iran would have in Iraq, Lebanon and across the Muslim world. The Iranian news agency IRNA was not entirely wrong when it said yesterday that "The occupants of the Élysée have become the executors of the will of the White House and have adopted a tone that is even harder, even more inflammatory and more illogical than that of Washington."
Only last week, the US envoy to the IAEA, Gregory Schulte, praised Dr ElBaradei's attempts to achieve a peaceful solution to the crisis, saying that the nuclear accord Dr ElBaradei negotiated with Tehran in August was "a potentially important development and a step in the right direction."
The US defence secretary Robert Gates also sounded more moderate than Dr Kouchner, responding to his remarks by saying that the US still thought "diplomatic and economic means is by far the preferable approach".
Last month, Sarkozy said the world risked facing "a catastrophic alternative; the Iranian bomb or the bombardment of Iran". Now Dr Kouchner has taken the bellicose language one step further. The foreign minister gives the impression he is floating a trial balloon on behalf of Sarkozy, who is testing the air for the Americans. Dr Kouchner was one of a handful of French politicians who supported the US invasion of Iraq. His nomination - and the elimination of the better qualified former foreign minister Hubert Védrine, who was deemed not pro-Israeli enough by the French Jewish Council (CRIF) was a gift and sign of good will from Sarkozy to Washington.
Dr Kouchner has supported US positions on everything from the undesirability of the Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, to Lebanon, to Darfur. Now he seems to be cheerleading for an attack on Iran, possibly with French participation.
Sarkozy's Élysée works in close collaboration with the Bush White House. The French president discussed the possibility of economic sanctions outside the UN framework with US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice in Paris in June, and with President George Bush over lunch at Kennebunkeport in August. Dr Kouchner will continue the consultations with Rice in Washington this week.
In the meantime, Paris has endangered whatever was left of an international consensus on the Iranian nuclear programme by lobbying its EU allies for EU - not UN - sanctions against Tehran. But it's unlikely all 27 EU members will agree, so the inexhaustible Sarkozy has thought of G7 sanctions, or a more limited Iran sanctions club led by France and Britain.
On Turkey, too, Sarkozy is moving towards the US position. During his election campaign, the French president promised to stop negotiations for Turkish EU membership, a position he reversed last month.
A few days ago, his European affairs minister Jean-Pierre Jouyet suggested that France might drop the requirement for a referendum on further EU enlargement. Chirac had enshrined it in the French constitution, but Sarkozy says he "won't hide behind the referendum to refuse Turkey entry".
Politicians further to the right of Sarkozy have reacted vehemently to the shift in policy on Turkey. By appearing to advocate military action against Iran, Sarkozy also risks alienating a large part of the French body politic.
The socialist leader François Hollande yesterday demanded that Sarkozy explain his Iran policy to the French people. Prime minister François Fillon, a more traditional Gaullist than Sarkozy, yesterday seemed to back-pedal on Dr Kouchner's statement.
In another Atlanticist trial balloon, the defence minister Hervé Morin said on September 11th that it was time for France to "clarify" its relationship with Nato. Gen de Gaulle pulled France out of the integrated command in 1966, and Sarkozy has civil servants working weekends to engineer her return.
Career diplomats at the foreign ministry on the Quai d'Orsay would prefer that Sarkozy wait at least until Bush leaves office in January 2009 to rejoin Nato's central command. But thanks to Yasmina Reza's best-selling book on Sarkozy, we know what he thinks of career diplomats.
The last French ambassador to Moscow was a couillon (meaning "daft"), Sarkozy said; Chirac's ambassador to Lebanon a cretin. "It's become very important to get rid of the Quai d'Orsay," he continued. "I have contempt for all these guys; they're cowards. . ."