France must be ready for Iran war - minister

France has changed its stance towards almost everything since the election of the new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy; a man who has bent over backwards to reassure Bush that the days of Jacques Chirac and European opposition to American plans is finally over.

This is also being reflected in the noises come out of France regarding any future confrontation with Iran over its enrichment of uranium, with French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, going as far as to say that the world must prepare for war.

Seeking to ratchet up the pressure on Iran, Mr Kouchner also told RTL radio and LCI television that the world's main powers should use further sanctions to show they were serious about stopping Tehran getting nuclear weapons, and said France had asked French firms not to bid for tenders in the Islamic Republic.

"We must prepare for the worst," Mr Kouchner said in an interview, adding: "The worst, sir, is war."

The political realignment which has taken place in France is simply astounding. Anyone watching would be forgiven for thinking that Chirac had been proven wrong in his epic battle with Bush before the invasion of Iraq.

The truth is, of course, that Chirac was proven to be completely correct and that it was the neo-cons who were wrong in every single assumption they made before that conflict, including their belief that Saddam possessed WMD.

As a result of this colossal misadventure US influence throughout the planet is weaker than it has been for decades, with China and Russia stepping in to fill the void.

The Global Power Barometer has recently pointed out just how disastrous the US intervention in Iraq has been for the US as a world leader:

The media has recently caught on to the fact that US influence is in steep decline but still under the mainstream radar is the extent to which other players such as Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela are stepping into the vacuum. The US is still the military superpower but it's already sharing the global influence stage with emerging powers who can move global events as well or better.

A dramatic global realignment appears to be in progress (and quickening) as the result of several factors:

• The loss of US influence as a result of the Iraq war
• A view across the globe resulting from Abu Ghraib and range of missteps that the US has lost the moral high ground it had enjoyed for decades
• A feeling among global leaders that the US is without a coherent foreign policy strategy...a belief that has started feeding on itself and has emboldened US adversaries
• China's rise, its smooth diplomatic technique, its re-alignment with Russia and its aggressive, clever drive to form new alliances with nations extending from Asia and Africa to South America
• Russia's recent rise combined with Russian President Putin's domestic popularity and his reputation for effectively standing up to the West
• The rise of non-aligned nations emboldened by the inability of the US to effectively use the extraordinary power it possesses
• A view among key global leaders that the US will be bogged down in Iraq for many years (a view heightened by significantly by President Bush's September 13 Iraq speech), thus distracted and unable to respond effectively to key political moves by the range of international players
• A recognition by the international community that the Bush Administration not only hasn't been able to deal effectively with non-state actors (e.g. terror groups like Al Qaeda) but they are holding their own or starting to win

The effects of the Bush presidency and the Iraq war on the global standing of the United States has been catastrophic.

Iraq is now perceived as a failed campaign by a failed Presidency. And it was a military campaign which the government of France famously opposed.

Not that one would know that by listening to Bernard Kouchner. No, one could be forgiven for thinking that the French have learned the lesson of ignoring their wiser neo-con masters, such is their keenness to join the US is any further military misadventure.

It's a strange old world and Sarkozy appears to be lining himself up to be the French equivalent of Tony Blair, another European who ignored the best interests of his own nation by saddling himself up to American foreign policy.

Mr Kouchner's comments follow a statement by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who said last month that a diplomatic push by the world's powers was the only alternative to "an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran".

Mr Kouchner said France had asked its biggest companies, including the oil giant Total and the gas firm Gaz de France, not to bid for projects in Iran. "It is a way of signalling that we are serious," he said. In addition, Paris and Berlin were preparing possible EU economic sanctions against Tehran, he said.

At least Blair tied himself to Bush whilst his power was in the ascendancy, Sarkozy appears to be doing so whilst Bush is holed beneath the water line.

All in all, it's a very strange position for France to adopt.

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