French Far-Right Leader Le Pen Softens Image for Election

Marine Le Pen walks on stage, at a National Rally event in Frejus, Sunday, Sept. 12, 2021. (AP)
Marine Le Pen walks on stage, at a National Rally event in Frejus, Sunday, Sept. 12, 2021. (AP)
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French Far-Right Leader Le Pen Softens Image for Election

Marine Le Pen walks on stage, at a National Rally event in Frejus, Sunday, Sept. 12, 2021. (AP)
Marine Le Pen walks on stage, at a National Rally event in Frejus, Sunday, Sept. 12, 2021. (AP)

French nationalist leader Marine Le Pen has softened her rhetoric and her image to broaden her appeal in next week’s presidential election — but is under threat from a provocative rival who has broken her monopoly as the watchdog of the country’s identity that they claim is under threat.

For more than a decade, Le Pen has been known for her fierce anti-immigration stance, seeing herself as standing guard at the parapets of French civilization. Now she is honing in on consumers' buying power, the top concern for voters.

“I obviously consider that immigration and insecurity are serious problems which need urgent answers, but there’s not just that,” said Le Pen, head of the National Rally party, during a TV show featuring voters’ questions. “I worry about making ends meet as much as the end of France.”

Meanwhile, Eric Zemmour, 63, a political novice running under the banner of his newly created Reconquest! party, is now portraying himself as the protector of old France, with bold proposals on immigration and Islam. He has proposed a “Remigration Ministry,” equipped with airplanes to expedite the expulsions of what he says are undesirable migrants.

Their rivalry illustrates France’s increasing tilt toward the hard right and how that has set the agenda for the presidential election, held in two rounds on April 10 and 24. While polls suggest centrist President Emmanuel Macron is the front-runner, nearly half of respondents say they're ready to vote for a far-right candidate in the decisive runoff.

And that's despite the fact that Zemmour, a TV pundit who models himself after former US President Donald Trump, has been convicted three times of inciting racial or religious hatred.

Zemmour, who said he entered the race to “save France,” has made the conspiracy theory known as the “great replacement” the centerpiece of his campaign. The term evokes a false white supremacist claim that immigrants and other people of color — notably Muslims — are supplanting natives of Western countries and will one day erase Christian civilization.

He recently alleged that without a stop to immigration, France will become “an African nation, an Islamic nation” in 10-20 years. A large majority of French people are white Catholics, and immigration evolution statistics contradict his claim.

Zemmour’s political goal is to create a “union of the right,” bringing together conservatives, including traditional Catholics, and far-right parties. Le Pen, who also decries “migratory submersion,” says her goal is the “union of France.”

Polls of voters suggest that Le Pen’s focus on pocketbook issues may be working. They show her consistently second to Macron, with Zemmour in third or fourth place. That could put her in a runoff against Macron, a repeat of their 2017 standoff, which she lost 66%-34%.

This time, the two far-right candidates together are drawing more support than the centrist president, making their supporters a threat to the established order.

A low voter turnout could render useless all pre-election calculations. Le Pen’s party is still stinging from her party’s failure in last summer’s regional balloting, blamed on a turnout of only 33% of voters in the first round.

Le Pen’s emphasis on buying power is in line with her work to detoxify her party since taking the reins from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the firebrand leader of what was then the National Front. She changed the party name and then expelled him after he reiterated antisemitic remarks for which he was once convicted.

Her father, who now backs her new presidential bid, once compared her to Diet Coke, saying that her ridding the party of hard-liners was like diluting its values.

A batch of officials and their supporters have deserted her for the more extreme Zemmour. She slammed most of them with insults — except for her niece, Marion Marechal, a popular former lawmaker who has returned to politics to help Zemmour.

“Poor Marion,” Le Pen said, lamenting Marechal's role as a “life preserver” for Zemmour.

Sylvain Crepon, a National Rally specialist, said Zemmour doesn’t pose a serious threat. He says it is Le Pen who embodies nationalist ideas, and “in the end, voters prefer the original to the copy.”

The 53-year-old Le Pen, who represents northern France and is in her third presidential race, has adopted a less-aggressive tone, and she has all but ditched her signature navy blue wardrobe in favor of pastels.

On policy issues, she is stressing concerns that speak to those struggling to make ends meet. She also has dropped her earlier goals of quitting the European Union and abandoning the euro.

But her nationalist strain remains firm. If elected, Le Pen plans drastic measures — to be put to a vote in a nationwide referendum — to contain immigration and “eradicate” political Islam. Among them is ending the policy of family regrouping, which allows immigrants to take up French residence if a close relative is a resident. Like Zemmour, she would expel delinquent foreigners and those who have not been employed for at least a year.

She says she honors the religion of Islam but vows to ban Muslims from wearing headscarves on the street, calling them an “Islamist uniform.”

In public appearances, however, the spotlight is often on the everyday problems of the middle class and the working class, her base of support. Her platform calls for measures to soften the blow of rising prices, like slashing taxes on energy bills from 20% to 5.5%. Le Pen promises to put 150-200 euros per month back in people’s pockets.

“What she has understood is subjects that interest the French that are not ideological topics” like paying bills, said Jean-Yves Camus, a leading expert on the far right.

“Eric Zemmour says that the only important subject is the end of France," Camus said. “The French don’t necessarily believe that France is finished. And if you want France not to be finished, you have to give it buying power.”

For Macron, Le Pen is the candidate to beat.

The Macron camp has worried openly about an electoral “accident," perhaps through low turnout by moderate voters, that could put Le Pen in power.

Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire decried Le Pen's “stupefying metamorphosis.”

“Don’t let yourselves believe that we’re the elite and she is the people,” the French press quoted him as saying on a visit to Normandy.

Romain Lopez, mayor of the southwestern town of Moissac and a member of Le Pen’s party, says he'll vote for Zemmour in the first round but will support Le Pen in the runoff if Zemmour fails.

“Zemmour gave himself a glass ceiling with his excesses of language,” said Lopez, citing the policies of “remigration.”

Lopez is looking past the election, when he believes a new party will emerge on the right with a major role for Le Pen's niece, Marechal.

For far-right expert Camus, Zemmour has helped Le Pen by making her appear more palatable.

A presidential candidate must bring voters together, and that's what Le Pen has done, he said.

“At some point, you are obliged, as the French say, to put water in your wine, accept compromise,” Camus said. "You’re obliged to make proposals that unite not 40% of voters but 50.1%.”



Fear Stalks Tehran as Israel Bombards, Shelters Fill Up and Communicating Grows Harder

Shops remain shuttered Tehran's historic Grand Bazaar, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)
Shops remain shuttered Tehran's historic Grand Bazaar, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)
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Fear Stalks Tehran as Israel Bombards, Shelters Fill Up and Communicating Grows Harder

Shops remain shuttered Tehran's historic Grand Bazaar, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)
Shops remain shuttered Tehran's historic Grand Bazaar, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)

The streets of Tehran are empty, businesses closed, communications patchy at best. With no bona fide bomb shelters open to the public, panicked masses spend restless nights on the floors of metro stations as strikes boom overhead.

This is Iran’s capital city, just under a week into a fierce Israeli blitz to destroy the country's nuclear program and its military capabilities. After knocking out much of Iran's air defense system, Israel says its warplanes have free rein over the city's skies. US President Donald Trump on Monday told Tehran's roughly 10 million residents to evacuate “immediately.”

Thousands have fled, spending hours in gridlock as they head toward the suburbs, the Caspian Sea, or even Armenia or Türkiye. But others — those elderly and infirm — are stuck in high-rise apartment buildings. Their relatives fret: what to do?

Israeli strikes on Iran have killed at least 585 people and wounded over 1,300, a human rights group says. State media, also a target of bombardment, have stopped reporting on the attacks, leaving Iranians in the dark. There are few visible signs of state authority: Police appear largely undercover, air raid sirens are unreliable, and there’s scant information on what to do in case of attack.

Shirin, 49, who lives in the southern part of Tehran, said every call or text to friends and family in recent days has felt like it could be the last.

“We don’t know if tomorrow we will be alive,” she said.

Many Iranians feel conflicted. Some support Israel's targeting of Iranian political and military officials they see as repressive. Others staunchly defend the country and retaliatory strikes on Israel. Then, there are those who oppose Iran’s rulers, but still don't want to see their country bombed.

To stay, or to go? The Associated Press interviewed five people in Iran and one Iranian American in the US over the phone. All spoke either on the condition of anonymity or only allowed their first names to be used, for fear of retribution from the state against them or their families.

Most of the calls ended abruptly and within minutes, cutting off conversations as people grew nervous or because the connection dropped. Iran’s government has acknowledged disrupting internet access. It says it's to protect the country, though that has blocked average Iranians from getting information from the outside world.

Iranians in the diaspora wait anxiously for news from relatives. One, an Iranian American human rights researcher in the US, said he last heard from relatives when some were trying to flee Tehran earlier in the week. He believes that lack of gas and traffic prevented them from leaving.

The most heartbreaking interaction, he said, was when his older cousins with whom he grew up in Iran told him “We don’t know where to go. If we die, we die.”

“Their sense was just despair,” he said.

Some families have made the decision to split up.

A 23-year-old Afghan refugee who has lived in Iran for four years said he stayed behind in Tehran but sent his wife and newborn son out of the city after a strike Monday hit a nearby pharmacy.

“It was a very bad shock for them,” he said.

Some, like Shirin, said fleeing was not an option. The apartment buildings in Tehran are towering and dense. Her father has Alzheimer’s and needs an ambulance to move. Her mother's severe arthritis would make even a short trip extremely painful.

Still, hoping escape might be possible, she spent the last several days trying to gather their medications. Her brother waited at a gas station until 3 a.m., only to be turned away when the fuel ran out. As of Monday, gas was being rationed to under 20 liters (5 gallons) per driver at stations across Iran after an Israeli strike set fire to the world's largest gas field.

Some people, like Arshia, said they are just tired.

“I don’t want to go in traffic for 40 hours, 30 hours, 20 hours, just to get to somewhere that might get bombed eventually,” he said.

The 22-year-old has been staying in the house with his parents since the initial Israeli strike. He said his once-lively neighborhood of Saadat Abad in northwestern Tehran is now a ghost town. Schools are closed. Very few people even step outside to walk their dogs. Most local stores have run out of drinking water and cooking oil. Others closed.

Still, Arshia said the prospect of finding a new place is too daunting.

“We don’t have the resources to leave at the moment,” he said.

Residents are on their own

No air raid sirens went off as Israeli strikes began pounding Tehran before dawn Friday. For many, it was an early sign civilians would have to go it alone.

During the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, Tehran was a low-slung city, many homes had basements to shelter in, and there were air raid drills and sirens. Now the capital is packed with close-built high-rise apartments without shelters.

“It's a kind of failing of the past that they didn’t build shelters,” said a 29-year-old Tehran resident who left the city Monday. “Even though we’ve been under the shadow of a war, as long as I can remember.”

Her friend's boyfriend was killed while going to the store.

“You don’t really expect your boyfriend or your anyone, really to leave the house and never return when they just went out for a routine normal shopping trip,” she said.

Those who choose to relocate do so without help from the government. The state has said it is opening mosques, schools and metro stations for use as shelters. Some are closed, others overcrowded.

Hundreds crammed into one Tehran metro station Friday night. Small family groups lay on the floor. One student, a refugee from another country, said she spent 12 hours in the station with her relatives.

“Everyone there was panicking because of the situation,” she said. “Everyone doesn’t know what will happen next, if there is war in the future and what they should do. People think nowhere is safe for them.”

Soon after leaving the station, she saw that Israel had warned a swath of Tehran to evacuate.

“For immigrant communities, this is so hard to live in this kind of situation,” she said, explaining she feels like she has nowhere to escape to, especially not her home country, which she asked not be identified.

Fear of Iran mingles with fear of Israel

For Shirin, the hostilities are bittersweet. Despite being against the theocracy and its treatment of women, the idea that Israel may determine the future does not sit well with her.

“As much as we want the end of this regime, we didn’t want it to come at the hands of a foreign government,” she said. “We would have preferred that if there were to be a change, it would be the result of a people’s movement in Iran.”

Meanwhile, the 29-year-old who left Tehran had an even more basic message for those outside Iran:

“I just want people to remember that whatever is happening here, it’s not routine business for us. People’s lives here — people’s livelihoods — feel as important to them as they feel to anyone in any other place. How would you feel if your city or your country was under bombardment by another country, and people were dying left and right?”

“We are kind of like, this can’t be happening. This can’t be my life.”