TEHRAN – French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian was scheduled to visit Washington on Monday to discuss issues surrounding Iran.

The meeting comes as Paris on Saturday hosted a meeting of the MKO, a terrorist group which resorted to bombings and assassinations after the 1979 revolution in Iran and sided with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during his war against Iran in the 1980s.

Le Drian planned to hold consultations with U.S. officials on the 2015 nuclear deal and Iran’s missile program.

Though France has been strongly defending the nuclear deal, it has been dancing to the tune of the Trump administration in regard to Tehran’s missile program which Iran has been insisting is purely defensive.

The Trump administration has created a commotion over Iran’s missile program. According to the UN Security Council Resolution 2231, Iran has not been banned from producing and testing conventional ballistic missiles.

In an article in the New York Times published on December 10, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote: “Our military doctrine is… based on historical experience: During the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam Hussein rained Soviet-made missiles on our cities, some of them carrying chemical components provided by the West. The world not only kept silent, but also no country would sell Iran weapons to enable us to at least deter the aggressor.”

France was also a major arms supplier to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein during the war. During the war France sold dozens of Super Etendard attack aircraft to Iraq.

NA/PA