France, Feb. 28 -- "The crisis is ongoing," the Minister Delegate for the Armed Forces told French broadcasterFrance 2.

"Obviously, our priority in such cases is to protect our nationals and our forces in the region and to monitor the situation in real time, which is what we are doing," she said.

France has several military bases in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Jordan.

Rufo said that France had received information from the Israeli military chiefs of a pre-emptive strike.

"We are well aware that there is a state of maximum alert in Israel in the event of an Iranian retaliatory strike.

"We also know that there is a large American deployment in the region that will inevitably participate or at least be there to defend Israel," s...