Ho-Hum -- Chirac Edition

"PARIS, Jan. 31 — President Jacques Chirac said this week that if Iran had one or two nuclear weapons, it would not pose a big danger, and that if Iran were to launch a nuclear weapon against a country like Israel, it would lead to the immediate destruction of Tehran. [ But he'd finally have the second Holocaust he's been dreaming of. And even if I'm being unfair to him on that point, he's at minimum not competent to realize that Israel is a "one bomb state", and that BOTH Ahmadi-Nejad AND his "moderate" competitor (and former president) Rafsanjani are frankly indistinguishable in the insanity of their public statements regarding the use of nukes. It's completely unfathomable to us (and I'll stretch my charity to the breaking point and include Chirac in that "us"), but credible experts like Bernard Lewis are genuinely worried -- alarmed even -- that MAD simply doesn't apply to these apocalyptic loons. Where the logic in the Cold War was that there was the capability but not (quite) the intent, with the loons it's exactly reversed: the intent is there just biding its time until it has the capability. -ed. ]

The remarks, made in an interview on Monday with The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune and Le Nouvel Observateur, a weekly magazine, were vastly different from stated French policy and what Mr. Chirac has often said.

On Tuesday, Mr. Chirac summoned the same journalists back to Élysée Palace to retract many of his remarks. Mr. Chirac said repeatedly during the second interview that he had spoken casually and quickly the day before because he believed he had been talking about Iran off the record." [ And winking at them no doubt. OK. I'm sobered up now. I really don't consider him part of "us". -ed. ]