Iran dubs France a "gun-slinging frog" over nuclear deal failure In an indication that the Twitter messages accurately represented the supreme leader's views, the semi-official Fars News website - linked to Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards - reminded its readers that Ayatollah Khamenei had chided French officials for perceived anti-Iran policies in a speech last March marking the Iranian new year. Fars fell in with the prevailing anti-French sentiment in a commentary headlined "Difficult negotiations in Geneva and the gun-slinging French frog." In strident tones, the commentary accused France of looking "like a frog that drew its gun to give it the feeling of being all-powerful." An editorial in the hard-line Keyhan newspaper - often seen as Ayatollah Khamenei's official mouthpiece - even compared France's conduct unfavourably with that of Britain, usually depicted as Iran's historical enemy by regime insiders. The author, Saadollah Zarai, pointed to comments by William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, and a recent interview BBC with Jack Straw, a past foreign secretary, as evidence that Britain wanted to settle the long impasse over Iran's uranium enrichment programme. However, Hamid Reza Asefi, a former spokesman for Iran's foreign ministry, warned that France was not acting alone. "Another [factor] is the external pressure that these six countries are under from the Zionist regime [Israel] and other countries in the region," he wrote in the pro-reformist Shargh newspaper, alluding to outspoken criticisms from Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, who called the proposed agreement a "very bad deal" that was "bad for peace." In practice, the French foreign minister acted as if he was the advocate of [Israel] and in the division of labours, played its role.