That's a dangerous precedent.

If nobody has the right to a phone number, and governments can assign any telephone number to themselves that they wish, that the Russian government can take over the phone number to the Whitehouse Switchboard? Then the Whitehouse would have to take it back and it would be the start of a perpetual tug-of-war?

I assume your response would be that "no, the US has already reserved that number". But isn't that what happened with France.com? It was already reserved.