PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday said France was sending an aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean in response to the widening conflict in the Middle East following US-Israeli airstrikes on Iran.
\n\u201cI have ordered the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, its air assets, and its escort of frigates to set course for the Mediterranean,\u201d he said in a televised speech a day after he warned of the risk of the conflict spilling over Europe\u2019s borders.
\nMacron said he was also sending air defense capacities to Cyprus a day after Iranian-made drones hit the Mediterranean island\u2019s British air base at Akrotiri.
\n\u201cI have also decided to send additional air defense assets and a French frigate, the Languedoc, which will arrive off the coast of Cyprus this evening,\u201d he said.
\nThe United States and Israel launched attacks against Iran on Saturday, killing supreme leader Ali Khamenei.
\nIran has responded by targeting US allies across the Middle East.
\n\u201cThe United States of America and Israel decided to launch military operations, conducted outside international law, which we cannot approve of,\u201d said Macron.
\nBut \u201cthe Islamic republic of Iran bears primary responsibility for this situation,\u201d he said, because of its \u201cdangerous\u201d nuclear program, support for regional proxies, and orders to shoot \u201cits own people\u201d during protests in January.
\nMacron said French forces downed drones \u201cin self-defense\u201d during the opening hours of the conflict.
\n\u201cWe reacted immediately and shot down drones in self-defense in the early hours of the conflict to defend the airspace of our allies, who know they can count on us,\u201d he said, referring to defense agreements with Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday said France was sending an aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean in response to the widening conflict in the Middle East following US-Israeli airstrikes on Iran. \u201cI have ordered the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, its air assets, and its escort of frigates to set course for the Mediterranean,\u201d …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":94573,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94560","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\/94560","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=94560"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94576,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94560\/revisions\/94576"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}