The spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Esmaeil Baqaei, strongly lashed out this Friday at the French Foreign Minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, whom he holds responsible for "complicity" and "hypocrisy" after the head of the French diplomacy recently stated that the Iranian citizenry was "the big loser of the agreement" reached between the United States and Iran.
"Mr. Minister, hypocrisy remains a distinctive feature of French political culture; a vice that, as Molière rightly observed in his 1664 masterpiece, Tartuffe, or the Impostor, 'has become fashionable.' You remained silent - and even became complicit - while Iranian cities were savagely bombed and innocent citizens were massacred," argued the Iranian spokesman.
The origin of the diplomatic clash lies in an interview in which Barrot maintained that the population of Iran is "the big loser of the war" after the pre-agreement sealed between Washington and Tehran, presenting the Persian country as a society "trapped between repression" (by the Iranian Government) and bombings (by the United States and Israel).
The Foreign Ministry representative in Tehran also resorted to irony to criticize Paris's sudden awakening of "selective conscience," considering that France only positions itself as a defender of human rights on the international stage when it aligns with its strategic priorities.
This exchange of accusations occurs in the context of the pre-agreement sealed between Washington and Tehran, materialized last Wednesday night with a 60-day truce, during which an attempt will be made to close a definitive pact covering the Iranian nuclear program, the unrestricted reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and the establishment of a reconstruction fund valued at 300 billion dollars (about 260 billion euros).
During this negotiation period, the White House plans to provisionally suspend sanctions on Iran's oil and petrochemical products, in addition to proceeding with the unblocking of Iranian assets and properties held abroad.
This new diplomatic incident also intensifies tensions between Iran and European capitals. At the beginning of the month, the Iranian Executive had already described the European Union as "hypocritical" for censoring its retaliatory attacks against US bases, actions that Tehran emphatically defends as covered by "legitimate defense".