This magazine is one of the most prominent French general information magazine in terms of audience and circulation. It is also one of the most influential publications whose circulation is about 600,000 per week. Its central office is in Paris.

IRAN NEWS POLITICAL DESK

The magazine was established in 1950 as L’Observateur politique, économique et littéraire. The name Le Nouvel Observateur was adopted in 1964 and since its foundation it has been covering political, business and economic news. It features extensive coverage of European, Middle Eastern and African political, commercial and cultural issues. Its strongest areas are political and literary matters and it is noted for its in-depth treatment of the main issues of the day

Jacqueline Galvez is currently the director of the weekly and the weekly’s founders Jean Daniel and Claude Perdriel are heading the editorial board and famous journalists like Serge Lafaurie and Laurent Joffrin are members of the editorial board.

This team which plays an important role in feeding the French culturally or intellectually believe that the U.S. President Donald Trump is a genuine idiot. The weekly has written several articles opposing the U.S. pullout of the JCPOA and the last one was published late June with the title of “How to Play Chess with a Pigeon.” The article was written inspired by a French proverb which says talks with Trump is like talking with an idiot. The article says, “Debating with Trump as some diplomats say is to some extent like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter the bird shits on the board and struts around like it won away. In Iran’s case, Trump has acted in this way. He tore down the 2015 nuclear deal and struts the whole day in its Twitter account and threatens and becomes angry. He is one day kind and one day hangman. One day he announces Iran and the U.S. can be the best friends in the world and claims Iranians are terrorists and the other day he refrains from talks. He then urges Iranians to talk and later he promises of total destruction and issues order for attack and very soon he cancels it. He freezes Iran’s assets like the assets of Iran’s foreign minister in order to let no chance be left for diplomacy. So Trump has scrambled chess pieces which had been set up by expert and experienced diplomats for the chess game with Iran without knowing to which way he is to take us. Does he go towards a war? In advance, the reply to this question is “no”. He does not like war unless it becomes some kind of a trade war. He has promised his American voters that he would not lead his country towards a military adventurism as the upcoming presidential election approaches. Those people, who claim that they are able to predict the rough and tumble behaviors of the U.S. President, refer us overconfidently to the book “The Art of the Deal” which has been written by Trump or written in favor of him in 1987 when he was a businessman. According to these people, the summary of the book says that for negotiations it needs first some toughness, violence and bullying; when the opposite side feels frightened and trembled and got pale, then raise proposal for talks and tell them that talks would be to their benefits; the deal which lets the opposite party keep his  head high. These Trumpologists tell you that this is exactly the method that Trump has adopted against North Korea’s Kim Jong-un; let’s  suppose that these people are right and Trump is not a player of this imaginary chess and he is a calculating person who acts based on a certain and fixed policy. He left the JCPOA last year without telling that how he could improve this bad agreement. He does not explain how he is to move ahead beyond the JCPOA. Does he think that he could get guarantee from Iranians to ignore uranium enrichment program? This was a dream which George Bush Junior cherished and Washington exerted pressures on Iran to materialize it but it failed. At that time despite presence of more than 150,000 U.S. troops in the region and of course presence of the die-hard hawkish statesmen in the White House, Tehran resisted and even it increased the number of its centrifuges. Really who can imagine that Iran would come under more U.S. pressure than that time?”

The French with their reasoning completely Iranian-like have made themselves believe that Trump knows neither Iran, nor the Islamic Republic and Shiism, and this time his book has had reverse results and if he is wise, of course he is not, he would return to the JCPOA.

By: Hamid Reza Naghashian