French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said in an interview on RTL radio and LCI television,
“We must prepare for the worst,” Kouchner said, adding: “The worst, sir, is war.”
Le Monde (link in French) also mentions that the French armed services are preparing for such an eventuality:
“We are preparing ourselves by trying to put together plans that are the chiefs of staff’s prerogative (but) that is not about to happen tomorrow.”
An interesting aspect is that Germany is apparently also involved,
“We have decided to … prepare ourselves for possible sanctions outside the U.N. sanctions and which would be European sanctions. Our German friends proposed it. We discussed it a few days ago.”
How will this translate in the upcoming UN summit?
We shall soon find out.
One thing is clear: Europe can not afford to have Iran armed with nuclear weapons. The Iranians have made themselves perfectly clear that they will use those weapons as soon as they get them.
Update, Monday 17 September:
Hardly surprising, Iran scorns French warning of war.
Are you sure this isn’t the foreign minister of France in some alternate universe or something?
What a difference a (French) election makes!