Obama Greets France’s Leader, but Warns Against Doing Business With Iran
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J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press
Obama on Iranian Sanctions
President Obama spoke about the state of sanctions against Iran, and the businesses that do not comply.
WASHINGTON
— With the French president looking on, President Obama vowed on
Tuesday to come down on companies that evade sanctions against Iran
“like a ton of bricks.” He spoke a week after a delegation of French
corporate executives traveled to Tehran looking for business
opportunities amid diplomatic efforts to reach a nuclear deal.
The
French executives’ visit to Tehran has crystallized fears that the
interim nuclear agreement with Iran is setting off a horse race to get
back into that country, and could fracture the international sanctions
regime cobbled together by the United States and Europe.
Administration
officials have complained publicly and privately to French officials,
and Mr. Obama delivered the most pointed warning yet, even as he
welcomed President François Hollande for a state visit replete with
symbols of French-American amity.
“Businesses
may be exploring, are there some possibilities to get in sooner rather
than later if and when there is an actual agreement to be had,” Mr.
Obama said at a White House news conference with Mr. Hollande. “But I
can tell you that they do so at their own peril right now because we
will come down on them like a ton of bricks.”
Multimedia Feature
Timeline on Iran’s Nuclear Program
Whether Iran is racing toward nuclear weapon
capabilities is one of the most contentious foreign-policy issues
challenging the West.
Mr.
Hollande said he had warned the companies not to sign commercial
agreements with Iran before sanctions were lifted. But he said the
French government had no control over whether French businesses made a
private trip, noting, “The president of the republic is not the
president of the employers’ union in France.”
It
was a rare moment of tension in a joint appearance in which both
leaders tried to project an image of trans-Atlantic harmony, celebrating
a rejuvenated French-American partnership on issues from Iran and Syria
to counterterrorism operations in North Africa.
On
Syria, however, that partnership has done little to ease the bloodshed
and deepening despair — a fact acknowledged by Mr. Obama and Mr.
Hollande, who devoted much of their meeting to the crisis but emerged
with no new ideas for ending the civil war, beyond a general pledge to
keep supporting the moderate opposition.
“We
still have a horrendous situation on the ground in Syria,” Mr. Obama
said, adding later that “nobody’s going to deny there is enormous
frustration here.”
He
said he remained skeptical that further military intervention would
solve the problem, although he appeared to be groping for other options.
“The
situation’s fluid,” Mr. Obama said, “and we are continuing to explore
every possible avenue to solve this problem because it’s not just
heartbreaking to see what’s happening to the Syrian people, it’s very
dangerous for the region as a whole.”
Both
leaders rebuked Russia for threatening to veto a United Nations
Security Council resolution demanding that President Bashar al-Assad
open relief corridors to allow the delivery of food, medicine and other
supplies to people trapped in besieged cities.
If
Russia blocked the resolution, Mr. Obama said, it would share blame
with the Syrian government for starving civilians in Homs and other
cities. Mr. Hollande added, “How can you object to humanitarian
corridors? Why would you prevent the vote on a resolution if, in good
faith, it is all about saving human lives?”
Both
leaders tried to put a good face on what was easily their most
difficult moment: Mr. Obama’s abrupt decision last August to seek
congressional approval for a military strike to punish Mr. Assad for his
use of chemical weapons. So firmly had Mr. Hollande backed Mr. Obama’s
threat that he was readying French jet fighters to carry out raids.
They
defended the fallback agreement with Russia to remove and destroy
Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons, even if both acknowledged it had
bogged down, with Syria missing multiple deadlines and only a fraction
of the stockpile being removed.
“It is a very long-winded process,” Mr. Hollande said. “It’s only partial destruction and it doesn’t go nearly far enough.”
The
two leaders sought to play down lingering tensions over the National
Security Agency’s spying on foreign leaders and collection of telephone
records overseas.
Mr.
Obama reiterated his pledge to protect the rights of non-Americans,
while Mr. Hollande said that after an air-clearing phone call with Mr.
Obama, “mutual trust had been restored.”
Still,
Mr. Obama appeared to balk at extending to France the special
arrangement — often called a “no-spying agreement — that the United
States has with Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
France
has sought closer intelligence cooperation with the United States,
though French officials said they were not seeking the same terms as
Britain.
In
fact, Mr. Obama disputed that any country was immune to American
surveillance. “There’s no country where we have a no-spy agreement,” Mr.
Obama said, adding that the United States was in talks with France
about ways to deepen its intelligence sharing.
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