France, Iran Still Unable to Resolve Crisis : Analysts Say Diplomatic Stalemate Means Prolonged Tension

Two weeks after their rupture in relations, there is still no sign of France and Iran finding any solution to their diplomatic crisis. Most analysts in Paris now predict a protracted period of tension, perhaps lasting into the French presidential campaign of next year.

The crisis is not yet a political issue in France. Almost all politicians profess continued support for the uncompromising French line that has kept scores of riot police around the Iranian Embassy here and led to the dispatch of an aircraft carrier and three support ships toward the Middle East.

The siege of the embassy, which began as an attempt by the French to force an Iranian official to submit to questioning about terrorism, has given the air of a military camp to a fashionable block near the Trocadero hill that faces the Seine River and the Eiffel Tower.

But as the crisis drags on, more and more French may start to wonder how their government trapped itself in what Jacques Amalric, foreign editor of the Paris newspaper Le Monde, calls “a time of unwanted tests of strength in an uncontrolled entanglement.”

Damage to Chirac

That kind of questioning could hurt Premier Jacques Chirac in his campaign for the presidency in 1988. Although the handling of foreign policy is shared under the French constitution by both Chirac, a conservative, and President Francois Mitterrand, a Socialist, Chirac is more closely identified than anyone else with French policy on Iran. He, in fact, started overtures to Iran that finally blew up in the face of the French government.

The first signs of questioning have come in lengthy analyses of past policy by Le Monde, the weekly news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, and other influential French newspapers and magazines. And the first hint of political criticism has come from former President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, now chairman of the National Assembly’s committee on foreign affairs, who publicly advised the government a few days ago to adopt “a low profile” in its Middle East diplomacy.

At the moment, the crisis is on dead center. France broke relations with Iran on July 17 after the Iranians refused to let a judge question Iranian Wahid Gordji about his possible connection with the wave of bombings that killed 11 people in Paris last September. The French say that Gordji, who is listed as an interpreter but is widely regarded as an intelligence officer, has no diplomatic immunity.

Won’t Yield on Gordji

Iran, however, insists that he has such immunity and threatens to slap criminal charges against the 15 French diplomats in Tehran unless Gordji is allowed to leave France. The French say they are willing to trade all the others in the Iranian Embassy in Paris for the French diplomats but will not yield Gordji.

The tension has been exacerbated by vitriolic statements from Iranian officials and Iranian-influenced Muslim fundamentalists in Lebanon. France believes that the hijacking of an Air Afrique plane and the killing of a French passenger a week ago is a direct result of the crisis.

The French government ordered the aircraft carrier Clemenceau and three other ships to the the gulf region Wednesday to demonstrate that France cannot be intimidated. The formation sailed from the Mediterranean port of Toulon on Thursday.

Three questions dominate the analyses that are now beginning to appear in the French press:

-- Did the French, despite all their love of logic, fail to think through the implications of their attempt to normalize relations with Iran?

-- Are the French police running the foreign policy of France in this crisis?

-- Is Gordji really linked in an important way to the bombers who terrified Paris?

When the conservatives won the parliamentary elections in March, 1986, Chirac, the new premier, was determined to ease relations with Iran and persuade Iranian officials to arrange the release of eight French hostages held by extremist groups in Lebanon. Unlike their counterparts in the White House in Washington, however, the French pursued their changes in policy publicly.

Topped Only by Soviets

But the French ran into an obstacle. France is second only to the Soviet Union as a supplier of arms to Iraq in its war with Iran. Iranian officials insisted from the beginning that improved relations with France were impossible until it stopped arming Iraq.

In months of negotiations, the French gave the Iranians everything else they wanted: an agreement to pay back $330 million of a loan made to France by the late Shah of Iran; the expulsion from France of Massoud Rajavi, a militant Iranian opposition leader, and, according to some news reports, secret deliveries of arms.

Although the French insisted that these concessions were not ransom, five hostages were released over the months, and Chirac, seen on national television basking in all the emotional relief, greeted and embraced each one on his return to Paris.

But the kidnapers never released as many as expected and even took more hostages. More than a year after Chirac announced his change of attitude toward Iran, six French hostages remain in Lebanon.

Doomed From Start

Analysts now believe that the policy was doomed from the start unless Chirac seriously contemplated ending sales of arms to Iraq. And the analysts doubt that Chirac would have ever contemplated such a drastic change of policy in the face of a lobby of aeronautic and munitions manufacturers earning billions of dollars from Iraq.

Chirac, however, did not abandon his policy because it seemed hopeless. Instead, the policy was torn out of his hands by the police. After breaking up a series of interlocking rings of suspected Middle East terrorists, the Ministry of Interior concluded a few weeks ago that last September’s bombers had been helped and perhaps organized by Iranian officials trying to put pressure on France.

Armed with this new evidence, Judge Gilles Boulouque, in charge of the investigation, decided to question Gordji. But when police tried to arrest him at his home, they found that he had taken refuge in the Iranian Embassy. Gordji, according to Le Nouvel Observateur, had been warned by an official of the French Ministry of External Relations that the police were coming after him.

Their Main Contact

Officials in that ministry had tried to protect Gordji, according to Le Nouvel Observateur, because he was their main contact in negotiating improved relations with Iran. Despite the police evidence of an Iranian hand in the Paris terrorism, External Relations Ministry officials were not ready to give up on Chirac’s normalization policy. They knew the policy would be hopeless if police arrested Gordji.

A bitter dispute broke out in the government between the ministers of interior and security, who were furious about the tip-off, and the minister of external relations, who was upset at the prospect of a shattered policy. External Relations Ministry officials, according to Le Nouvel Observateur, derided “police ayatollahs who don’t understand a thing about diplomacy.”

In the end, however, Chirac bowed to the evidence and the fury of his police and allowed the siege of the embassy that led to the break in diplomatic relations.

Worth the Cost

Most French now assume that the principle of trying to force Gordji to submit to questioning is worth the cost of broken relations with Iran. Much of the evidence leaked to the press about the Iranian influence on the accused terrorists is persuasive.

Yet the theory about an Iranian hand in the bombings is the third advanced since the September attacks. At first, many news accounts blamed Syrian agents, contending that the Syrian government was trying to pressure France into abandoning its interests in the Middle East.

This was quickly followed by a theory that the bombers were brothers and cousins who were trying to force French authorities to release their clansman, Lebanese Christian radical Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, from prison. The Ministry of Interior, in fact, put up tens of thousands of posters throughout France with photos of the Abdallah clan.

This theory was dropped a few weeks ago when police began breaking up the networks of alleged Islamic terrorists and discovered evidence of Iranian assistance.