PARIS: Military intervention in Iran, where authorities launched a deadly crackdown on protesters that killed thousands, is not France\u2019s preferred option, its armed forces minister said on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we must support the Iranian people in any way we can,\u201d Alice Rufo said on the political broadcast \u201cLe Grand Jury.\u201d<\/p>\n
But \u201ca military intervention is not the preferred option\u201d for France, she said, adding it was \u201cup to the Iranian people to rid themselves of this regime.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rufo lamented how hard it was to \u201cdocument the crimes the Iranian regime has carried out against its population\u201d due to an internet shutdown.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fate of the Iranian people belongs to Iranians, and it is not for us to choose their leaders,\u201d said Rufo.<\/p>\n
The son of Iran\u2019s president, who is also a government adviser, has called for internet connectivity to be restored, warning that the more than two-week blackout there would exacerbate anti-government sentiment.<\/p>\n
Yousef Pezeshkian, whose father, Masoud, was elected president in 2024, said, \u201cKeeping the internet shut will create dissatisfaction and widen the gap between the people and the government.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis means those who were not and are not dissatisfied will be added to the list of the dissatisfied,\u201d he wrote in a Telegram post that was later picked up by the IRNA news agency.<\/p>\n
Such a risk, he said, was greater than that of a return to protests if connectivity were restored.<\/p>\n
The younger Pezeshkian, a media adviser to the presidency, said he did not know when internet access would be restored.<\/p>\n
He pointed to concerns about the \u201crelease of videos and images related to last week\u2019s \u2018protests that turned violent\u2019\u201d as a reason the internet remained cut off, but criticized the logic.<\/p>\n
Quoting a Persian proverb, he posted \u201c\u2018He whose account is clean has nothing to fear from scrutiny.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The president\u2019s son blamed foreign interference for the protests\u2019 violent turn, but said \u201cthe security and law enforcement forces may have made mistakes that no one intends to defend and that must be addressed.\u201d<\/p>\n
He went on to say that \u201cthe release of films is something we will have to face sooner or later. Shutting down the internet won\u2019t solve anything; it will just postpone the issue.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PARIS: Military intervention in Iran, where authorities launched a deadly crackdown on protesters that killed thousands, is not France\u2019s preferred option, its armed forces minister said on Sunday. \u201cI think we must support the Iranian people in any way we can,\u201d Alice Rufo said on the political broadcast \u201cLe Grand Jury.\u201d But \u201ca military intervention …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":92770,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92756"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92771,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92756\/revisions\/92771"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}