I was skeptical, at first, on the question of whether the Sarkozy administration would end up doing much to change the nearly 200-year French ambition of being Europe’s staunchest advocate for Muslim interests in the Middle East (a self-styled puissance musulmane, or Muslim power). Except for the fortuitous few years of Pierre Etienne-Gilbert’s ambassadorship to Israel (1953-1959), France has always hewed to a policy of conspicuous favoritism toward the Arab world at the expense of Jewish interests and Israel (see National Review senior editor David Pryce-Jones’s terrific book Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews).

Amidst France’s embargo of arms shipments to Israel in the run-up to the Six Day War, Charles De Gaulle told British Prime Minister Harold Wilson that from then on France would “be the only Western power to have any influence with the Arab governments.” Everyone knows about Jacques Chirac’s love affair with Saddam Hussein, but fewer know that when Hussein expelled Ayatollah Khomeini from Najaf in 1977, France set up Khomeini in a swank Paris compound, complete with international communications equipment that he used to foment the Iranian Revolution. When the Shah fled in 1979, Khomeini arrived in Tehran via a chartered Air France jet.

So it is deeply satisfying to see Sarkozy today taking such a strong public stance against the nuclear ambitions of an Iranian regime that his own country had an important hand in bringing to power. The Jerusalem Post has this report on Ehud Olmert’s visit to Paris this week:

Olmert reported that French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s position regarding Iran’s nuclear program was “identical” to his own. Sarkozy reportedly also told Olmert, regarding the Palestinian demand of a “right of return,” that they cannot demand a state of their own and “part of your country too.” Finally, Sarkozy said that “Israel’s establishment is a miracle and may have been the central event of the 20th century.”

These are really quite astonishing quotes, when you consider that Francois Mitterand’s foreign minister said not very long ago that “my condemnation of Zionism is absolute.” If Sarkozy keeps this up, he’ll find that, after centuries of trying, France will finally have some genuine influence in the Middle East.