FRANCE PERSPECTIVE

Paris views the Islamabad talks collapse with the frustration of a country that had advocated for multilateral negotiating frameworks—and now watches the US choose bilateral confrontation then unilateral escalation. France 24 reports the negotiation failure by emphasizing the format itself: a US-Iran face-to-face without Europeans, without the IAEA, without Gulf states at the table. For French diplomacy, trained in the 2015 JCPOA, this is exactly the scenario that had been predicted. France faces double exposure: TotalEnergies operates in the Gulf, and the French Navy patrols the Indian Ocean. A Hormuz blockade poses the direct question of French military engagement—either follow Washington in an operation Paris views as legally questionable, or distance itself at risk of further fracturing the transatlantic alliance. The Élysée's initial silence is itself a signal: Paris is calculating before it speaks.