France is a great country (I know I’ve traveled it): Paris, food, nightlife, cote d’azur, fashion, cinema and, of course, the women. But few nations harbor as many delusions, a nostalgia for great power lost and an inferiority complex which is why they are always competing with America (for the record, those few nations include Lebanon with its Phoenician delusion, expect Lebanon was never great and isn’t special today either while Paris remains one of the best cities around.)

France desperately wants to be a great power again. To command the world. It is desperate to prove itself against America. The French press engages in one petty ranking and comparison with American over another while the Americans people could care less. But France, its elite, need to understand that those days are gone. France is still great, but in a different field. The French economy isn’t even first in Europe, but third. And France’s diplomatic clout is confined to its continent and former colonies. But the nation remains steadfast in its quest to punch above its weight. But it simply cannot, and nobody is fooled otherwise.

Which is why France’s words against Iran, for the latter’s nuclear enrichment effort, are so hollow. Nicholar Sarkozy wants to be France’s Bush and sound so tough against Iran. He has been hawkish since day, even more than Bush, and his foreign minister famously uttered that Iran cannot get the bomb and thus it is “Iranian bomb or bomb Iran” or words to that effect.

“We cannot let Iran acquire nuclear” weapons because it would also be a threat to Israel, Sarkozy said during a meeting at the Elysee presidential palace with lawmakers from his conservative UMP party on Tuesday.

“It is a certainty to all of our secret services. Iran is working today on a nuclear (weapons) program,” he said.

The French leader also said he would not “shake the hand of someone who wants to wipe Israel off the map”, referring to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

So Sarko doesn’t want to shake Mahmoud’s hand, neither do I. Leaving aside the debate of whether Iran should have nuclear capability of even a bomb; France’s words are nonsense and undermine French credibility because France does not have the capable to anything military against Iran. All the hawkish words are empty, no more no less. Sarkozy wants to be a strong leader, but his stands on hollow grounds. When France speaks about “bombing Iran” it means it prays the U.S. or Israel will do it. France would never bomb Iran even if the Iranians would dare them to. Does anyone believe all the hawkish rhetoric of Sarko? It is all empty nonsense.

France better stop lest it embarrass itself some more by once again confirming France’s status as a has-been power.