French President Macron says tone of comments adopted by U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia towards Iran is virtually “a path to war”.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday claimed that the tone of comments adopted by the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia towards Iran was virtually “a path to war”, Reuters reports.
“The official line pursued by the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia, who are our allies in many ways, is almost one that would lead us to war,” Macron was quoted as having told reporters.
The line being taken was “a deliberate strategy for some,” he said, while adding that France wanted to maintain some balance.
“Otherwise, we end up surreptitiously rebuilding an ‘axis of evil’,” he said, referring to a comment by former U.S. President George W. Bush, who once used that term to describe countries including Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
Macron also said he would only visit Iran if there was a return to calm and respect for freedoms.
His comments come amid the ongoing protests in Iran. On Tuesday, Macron urged his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani to show restraint in dealing with protests, while French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian postponed his trip to Tehran, which was planned for later this week.
U.S. President Donald Trump has backed the anti-regime protests of the last week, saying it is time for a change in Iran.
Rouhani pushed back on Trump’s criticism of the Tehran regime, saying Trump had “no right to feel pity” for Iran’s people.
“This man who today in America wants to sympathize with our people has forgotten that a few months ago he called the nation of Iran terrorist,” Rouhani told a cabinet meeting earlier this week.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, responded Monday to claims by Rouhani that Israel was behind a series of anti-government protests in the Islamic republic, a charge Netanyahu called “laughable”.
Netanyahu praised the demonstrators, who on Thursday began protesting the Tehran regime as high unemployment rates and high prices for consumer good fuel popular angst against the government.
“Unlike Rouhani, I will not insult the Iranian people. They deserve better. They seek freedom. They seek justice. They seek the basic liberties that have been denied to them for decades.”
Reported by: Israel National News
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No one has been more unfair to the entire rest of the planet than Al Franken.
While it is true that Franken was given virtually no chance to defend himself against multiple groping allegations (your side made those rules, not us), remember, it was never his practice to give that chance to anyone else.
On CNN and MSNBC, they were thunderstruck by Franken's magnanimous response to the charges: UNLIKE ROY MOORE, HE ADMITTED IT AND APOLOGIZED!
Yeah -- there's a photo. So the part they had him dead to rights on he apologized for. What a guy.
Everything else he denied. Specifically, Franken said of his accusers: "Some of the allegations against me are simply not true. Others I remember very differently."
Which reminds me: That's exactly what Newt Gingrich said about the charge -- repeated by Franken ceaselessly, endlessly, relentlessly and ubiquitously -- that he'd served divorce papers on his wife when she was in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery.
This claim came from Gingrich's ex-wife. It was denied by Gingrich. Now I don't know who's telling the truth, but I note that there's no expression: "As reliable as testimony given by parties in a bitter divorce dispute!"
Franken didn't care. He flogged the nasty story about Gingrich in books, on radio and in speeches, saying at the National Press Club, "And the thing about this story that you should know is that it's true -- every part of it."
In addition to mining divorce records for sleazy, unprovable allegations against people he disagrees with politically, Franken spent years taunting Bill O'Reilly for claiming to have grown up in modest Levittown, New York, rather than -- according to Franken -- glamorous, ultra-posh Westbury, New York, apparently the Malibu of Levittown-adjacent areas.
It doesn't seem like a big deal to me, but this was Franken's case in chief that O'Reilly was a LYING LIAR. He offered a million dollars to O'Reilly to prove he grew up in Levittown.
Disregarding the lawyer's rule about never asking a witness a question you don't know the answer to, Franken invited a Levittown historian onto a live broadcast of his Air America radio show to dramatically ask her if O'Reilly grew up in Levittown.
(Drumroll) Franken: "I consider you the world's foremost authority on Levittown. ... What's the answer here?"
Hofstra professor Barbara Kelly: "Yes ... (O'Reilly) is right. It is Levittown. There is no doubt about that."
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that O'Reilly never got his million dollars. There was no apology, no retraction, no "I guess I got this one wrong." It was just onto the next one.
The pinnacle of Franken's reckless cruelty came when he used his Senate office to champion the cause of delusional nutcase Jamie Leigh Jones when she accused completely innocent men of gang rape while she was working in Iraq.
Jones had been a civilian employee of KBR, then a subsidiary of media bête noire Halliburton. She went on a major media tour in 2007 with claims that on her fourth day in Iraq, she'd been drugged, gang-raped, anally penetrated and roughed up so badly that her breast implants ruptured -- whereupon, to keep her from talking, evil KBR had her locked in a shipping container guarded by machine gun-toting men.
Think for a second. What part of that story could possibly have been true? KBR, knowing that the entire American media wanted its scalp, punished a woman for being gang-rapedby its employees by holding her hostage in a shipping container surrounded by armed men? Did KBR think she'd never get home and tell anyone?
Any normal person: I'm calling B.S. on this story.
American media and Al Franken: OMG!!! The part about the shipping container gave me goosebumps!
The female doctor who examined Jones the day after her alleged attack found no evidence of gang rape, no evidence of anal rape, no evidence of a date rape drug and no evidence that her breast implants had ruptured. In fact, there was no evidence of any kind of rape: Semen samples showed she'd recently had sex with one man. (Also, KBR employees don't carry guns.)
Before arriving in Baghdad -- at age 20 -- Jones had already falsely accused four men of rape in four separate incidents.
A federal grand jury refused to indict KBR or any of its employees for the alleged rape.
Jones lost her civil lawsuit demanding more than $100 million from KBR and the one man she'd had (consensual) sex with. Instead, she was ordered to pay KBR $145,000 in legal costs. She blew off the judgment by declaring bankruptcy while pocketing $175,000 from her workers' compensation claim. (Thanks, taxpayers!)
This was the woman Franken championed, using Jones' fantastical story to push legislation regulating employment contracts with Defense Department contractors -- a gigantic taxpayer-funded boon to trial lawyers. Because of this woman's hoax, the law was changed in a way that materially hurt our country: Either taxes had to be raised or the defense budget trimmed to make up for the trial lawyers' slice.
GOP senators who declined to support Franken's nakedly pro-trial lawyer amendment were taunted as "Republicans for rape."
Franken didn't care that he had gone on national TV and the Senate floor loudly accusing innocent KBR employees of rape. When it turned out he was once again spectacularly wrong, he simply never mentioned it again. No apology, no retraction, nothing. It was just onto the next one.
So, yes, Franken was not given a full opportunity to defend himself -- as per leftist rules -- against the multiple charges that he'd groped women, backed by photographic evidence, before his party booted him from the Senate. But consider that no one has been more unfair to the entire rest of the planet than Al Franken.