France Says Iran's Missile Program Must Be Put 'Under Surveillance'

ASHARQ AL-AWSAT, 15 February, 2018-- Iran’s ballistic missile program must be placed under international surveillance, French President Emmanuel Macron said, in an bid to get tougher on Tehran while preserving the nuclear deal that US President Donald Trump has threatened to scrap.

With the 2015 deal, aimed at stopping Iran developing nuclear weapons, put in jeopardy by Trump, Britain, France and Germany are working on a plan to satisfy him by a May deadline to address Iran’s ballistic missile tests and its regional influence.

Macron said France, one of the signatories to the nuclear deal, wanted to preserve it as nothing better had been offered.

However, he said the use of Iranian-linked missiles in Yemen and Syria needed to be addressed because they were a security problem for French allies.

“I want a new cycle of negotiations with regional parties and the permanent members of the Security Council, like we did for the nuclear deal, but widening it to regional countries so that we can reduce and eradicate this insecurity,” Macron told reporters, according to Reuters.

“And we need to put Iran under surveillance over its ballistic missiles. It’s indispensable for the security of the region and so we need a mechanism of sanctions and control adapted to that,” he added.

Citing Iranian influence in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen, Macron said Tehran’s foreign policy “can sometimes be a factor of destabilisation and we need to have a dialogue with the Iranian regime.”

Macron, whose foreign minister travels to Tehran on March 4, said he wanted to organize a meeting of the main players in the Syrian crisis.

“I want that we have in the coming weeks a meeting on Syria that eradicates the ballistic activities in Syria that puts in danger all the regional powers,” he said, without elaborating.

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