Dictators and the Good Doctor

Bernard Kouchner, France's foreign minister, is a rare fellow in such an influential post. The dashing co-founder of the French group Medecins Sans Frontieres, he has spent much of his life organizing humanitarian operations and projects in the world's poorest countries. A doctor by training, he served as minister of health in a French Socialist government. So how do we explain his militaristic comments about Iran during a talk show interview on Sunday?

"We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war."

"We must negotiate right to the end," he said, but stressed that if Tehran developed a nuclear weapon, it would represent "a real danger for the whole world."

He called the Iranian nuclear dispute "the greatest crisis" of our times, saying: "We will not accept that the bomb is manufactured."

He said it was normal for France to plan for a war, commenting: "We are trying to put in place plans which are the privilege of chiefs of staff and that is not for tomorrow."

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon didn't help matters when he added today: "The Iranians must understand that tension has reached an extreme point... in the relationship between Iran and its neighbours."

Kouchner's remarks brought a swift rebuke from Mohammed Elbaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is negotiating over Iran's nuclear program. "I would not talk about any use of force," ElBaradei told journalists in Vienna where he opened a 144-nation IAEA general conference. "There are rules on how to use force, and I would hope that everybody would have gotten the lesson after the Iraq situation, where 700,000 innocent civilians have lost their lives on the suspicion that a country has nuclear weapons. I do not believe at this stage that we are facing a clear and present danger that require we go beyond diplomacy."

Several things are happening here.

Kouchner, a celebrity politician who is a maverick leftist in the cabinet of the rightist Sarkozy, is notorious for popping off.

Like Sarkozy and unlike other recent French presidents, Kouchner strongly favors a close French alliance with the United States. Neither man is embarrassed to support Bush's hard-line stance against Iran.

As evidenced by his recent Middle East tour, Kouchner is anxious to revive France's role as an influential player in Middle East issues--albeit more in partnership with than in opposition to the U.S.

Most interestingly, Kouchner has a thing about dictatorships. He is inspired by the same strong belief in freedom that drives many American neo-cons. It may come as no surprise that Kouchner, unlike most of his countrymen, supported the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Like the neo-cons, he believes in the principle of humanitarian intervention.

While questions remain about both Iran's nuclear intentions and its international behavior, the U.S., France and other nations are right to put pressure on Tehran. But not even the most hawkish Bush administration officials have used the W-word so openly--or so carelessly. In Washington, Defense Secretary Robert Gates sounded positively soft when he commented, "I will tell you that I think the administration believes at this point that continuing to try and deal with the Iranian threat...through diplomatic and economic means is by far the preferable approach."

It would be nice to dismiss Kouchner's comments as the careless words of an ambitious, publicity-craving politician letting his guard down after Le Brunch Dimanche. But he knows well that words have meaning. In fact, he's just helped push the confrontation with Iran toward a dangerous new stage. I'm already guessing that, whatever his grand hopes of saving humanity, he'll turn out to have been a better minister of health than minister of foreign affairs.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo