Philippe Étienne, former French ambassador to the United States, was the guest of Tout est politique on franceinfo this Tuesday, June 16. He returns in particular to the agreement between Iran and the United States to stop the war.
This text corresponds to part of the transcription of the interview above. Click on the video to watch it in its entirety.
France TV: Philippe Etienne, will Donald Trump buy peace?
Philippe Étienne: It’s a political problem for him because he withdrew the United States from the agreement that existed before and which was signed by Obama in 2015. He said “This agreement is horrible, I denounce it, I take out the United States”. It was in 2018. And what he criticized in particular about this agreement was that in this agreement, we had given back to the Iranians a lot of money which was frozen, which was under sanction. And this money, Trump said, had been used by the Iranians to finance all the movements in the region, Hezbollah, finally all these movements which are what we call proxies, the allies of the Iranians and which are the adversaries of Israel, in particular.
So there, he now has the will to make an agreement and must show that it is a better agreement than Obama’s. And it’s not obvious, because in addition, there is the Strait of Hormuz, which was open during the Obama era. And so, this is where the 300 billion is interesting, because we find the logic of this administration, in particular of these negotiators, who are businessmen, Witkoff and company, who handle these concepts and want to involve companies from other countries. And for them, it’s a way of saying, you see, we’re not going to do like Obama, we’re not going to give lots of money to the Iranians who can do what they want, including the worst things, make nuclear bombs, help terrorist movements, etc., massacre their people. We are going to bring in private money, we are going to put it to work for infrastructure projects. So, in reality, there will still be a problem with the frozen funds, with the sanctions. But hey, there you go, it’s still, as you said, a way of getting around these difficulties a little.
When they write that they are stopping nuclear power. Where does it come from? Because regardless of the fact that it is in the number and it is explained that they are companies. There is no such commitment at this time.
Philippe Étienne: Iran has always said, it has even been a fatwa since the Islamic revolution, that Iran does not want to have a nuclear bomb. In practice, it is not obvious when we see the degrees of enrichment of uranium, but in any case, it is not new to obtain from Iran a declaration saying that we will not have the nuclear bomb.
The problem is actually how we are going to negotiate in the second phase of 60 days, which is due to open next Friday, after the signing of this famous memorandum, no longer electronic but a real signature, how are we going to negotiate in 60 days on nuclear power? Negotiations began in 2003 and ended in 2015, but the real negotiation of the 2015 agreement lasted at least two years. There is a credibility problem and we probably need to take different steps.
Click on the video to watch the full interview
