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On Middle East, France is a tale of two countries

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The French, to the casual observer, are a real enigma when it comes to foreign policy. Sometimes it seems like they can be truly helpful, whereas other times they are truly awful.

Take Iran. On the question of the mullahs’ nuclear ambitions, France has retained a healthy skepticism regarding the current negotiating process being pushed by the Obama administration.

Yet we shouldn’t get overly carried away by Francophilia. Historically, France has never liked playing second fiddle to the Americans. But this has more to do with strategic calculation than emotion.

In 2003, France vociferously opposed the American-led war in Iraq that led to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. At the time, the French figured that doing so would push up their stock in the Middle East just as the stock of the Americans came crashing down. So it is with Iran. The French stance certainly boosts the Israelis, but it is among the Sunni Arab nations that they are reaping material rewards.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is another aspect of the Middle East’s woes in which France is pursuing a policy of pleasing the Arab nations, only this time at the expense of Israel.

Last year’s vote by French parliamentarians to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state, then described as mainly symbolic, is steadily becoming official French policy. In March, the French government set in motion the drafting of a U.N. resolution to secure a final settling of the Palestinian conflict with Israel. As the Associated Press reported at the time, “While the substance of the French draft may not differ much from past failed efforts to revive Mideast peace talks, France is hoping this time to avoid a U.S. veto at the U.N. because of increasing American frustration with [Israeli] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”

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