After decades of training their sights on Britain, America and Israel, Iranian officials and commentators have found a new culprit - France
Shame on you wicked French people
France assumed the unfamiliar role of Iranian national villain on Sunday as senior officials and commentators in Tehran - long accustomed to spewing vitriol at Britain, America and Israel - blamed it for scuppering a deal on Iran's nuclear programme.
A chorus of anti-French bile over the failure to reach agreement in Geneva appeared to have the endorsement of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, with a Twiiter account run in his name and believed to have his approval leading the charge.
"French officials have been openly hostile towards the Iranian nation over the past few years; this is an imprudent and inept move," one tweet posted on the account @khamenei.ir read.
A second message, accompanied by a #France hashtag, declared: "A wise man, particularly a wise politician, should never have the motivation to turn a neutral entity into an enemy."
The tweets reflected widespread Iranian anger at the role played by Laurent Fabius, France's foreign minister, who told reporters in Geneva that the six-power group negotiating with Iran should not sign a "suckers deal" and must take heed of the fears of Israel and Arab countries troubled by Iran's nuclear activities.
In an indication that the Twitter messages accurately represented the supreme leader's views, the semi-official Fars News website - linked to Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards - reminded its readers that Ayatollah Khamenei had chided French officials for perceived anti-Iran policies in a speech last March marking the Iranian new year.
Fars fell in with the prevailing anti-French sentiment in a commentary headlined "Difficult negotiations in Geneva and the gun-slinging French frog". In strident tones, the commentary accused France of looking "like a frog that drew its gun to give it the feeling of being all-powerful".
An editorial in the hard-line Keyhan newspaper - often seen as Ayatollah Khamenei's official mouthpiece - even compared France's conduct unfavourably with that of Britain, usually depicted as Iran's historical enemy by regime insiders.
The author, Saadollah Zarai, pointed to comments by William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, and a recent interview BBC with Jack Straw, a past foreign secretary, as evidence that Britain wanted to settle the long impasse over Iran's uranium enrichment programme.
However, Hamid Reza Asefi, a former spokesman for Iran's foreign ministry, warned that France was not acting alone. "Another [factor] is the external pressure that these six countries are under from the Zionist regime [Israel] and other countries in the region," he wrote in the pro-reformist Shargh newspaper, alluding to outspoken criticisms from Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, who called the proposed agreement a "very bad deal" that was "bad for peace".
"In practice, the French foreign minister acted as if he was the advocate of [Israel] and in the division of labours, played its role."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... ilure.html
Who has got the most deadly weapons? Iran? France? China? England? Holland? Germany? Burkina Fasso? Jamaica? New Zealand? Togo? Russia? Kurdistan? Italy? Chile? NONE of these or any other country one cares to mention.
The country with the MOST DEADLY WEAPONS in the world is AMERICA
It is time AMERICA gave up its weapons - the world would be a safer place
