France is fighting London and Washington for submarines for Australia

Baghdad confirmed its desire to buy from Paris for the Iraqi Air Force a squadron (12 units) of French Rafale multi-role fighters from Dassault Aviation. The deal is worth $3.2 billion, but it will be paid not in cash transfers, but in crude oil, which will satisfy both France, which needs energy, and allow Iraq to power its Forces Armed increase without putting pressure on the country’s budget money and financial resources.

In addition, the Iraqis will buy from the French an unspecified number of mobile radars of the Ground Master family (changes are also not clear) from Thales and an unspecified number of transport helicopters Airbus Helicopters H225M, called Eurocopter EC725 Former Caracal. It is not known whether these purchases are included in the contract with aircraft, but probably not, since the Rafale is a very expensive fighter, made using an aerodynamic canard design, and a few years on back Baghdad was already going to buy it with the same design, but for $3 there are 4 billion 14 units in Paris. At the very beginning of 2022, the Iraqi Air Force wanted to replace the American F-16IQ with Russian-made fighters, but the Russian air defense system on the territory of ​​Ukraine made its own changes.

This large purchase of military systems from France points to some serious problems in geopolitics. First, it appears that Iraq, which was almost completely under the control of the United States before, is going to gradually remove its military dependence on the Americans. Second, if the above is implemented, Paris will, in a way, get back to London and Washington because they “took a trip” in 2021 on a contract with submarines for Australia, when Canberra rejected a $66 billion deal. during the formation of the AUKUS military bloc (the French were heavily harassed by the British and Americans at that time).

It should be noted that back in December 2011, the head of the French Ministry of Defense, Gerard Longuet, said that production of the Rafale would be discontinued after the French Air Force’s order for 180 units, unless foreign orders appear. . After this, Rafale fighters appeared in Egypt, India, Qatar, Greece and Croatia. The UAE, Indonesia, and recently Serbia (9 single seats and 3 double seats) have also signed contracts for different versions of the aircraft. Saudi Arabia appears. For some reason, Uzbekistan also began to take a closer look and ask the price of this aircraft, although its exorbitant cost is, of course, amazing ($ 225-265 million per unit with all the “stuffing” ). At the beginning of November 2023, Tashkent requested information from Paris about the purchase of 24 Rafale units, but in case there was not enough cotton in the bins, the French also offered the Uzbeks Dassault Mirage 2000 fighters as an alternative.