France, Germany to urge Trump to stay in Iran deal

French leader Macron visits today; Germany’s Merkel Friday

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump faces a European double bill this week as a deadline looms for deciding whether the U.S. will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, arriving back to back, will bring a unified message: Save the deal.

“I don’t have any Plan B for nuclear (protections) against Iran,” Macron said Sunday. “Let’s preserve the framework because it is better than a sort of North Korea-type situation.”

Iran’s foreign minister made the point more dramatically, warning that if Trump quits the 2015 agreement Tehran may respond by resuming and intensifying its nuclear program.

Javad Zarif, who helped negotiate the nuclear deal, said that Iran might consider “resuming at a much greater speed” its nuclear activities.

“Obviously the rest of the world cannot ask us to unilaterally and one-sidedly implement a deal that has already been broken,” Zarif said.

“I think the international community has seen that…the United States under this administration has not been in a mood to fulfill its obligations,” he said. “So that makes the United States not very trustworthy.”

The dual nuclear problems — Iran and North Korea — are coming to a head simultaneously.

Trump has said he would like to scrap the Iran accord unless co-signatories France, Germany and Britain can “fix” it. Unless revisions are made, he said he would not sign another waiver of U.S. sanctions on May 12, the next deadline, potentially wrecking the deal.

Trump also is hoping to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un by mid-June in a push to roll back the country’s nuclear arsenal. On Sunday, Trump uncharacteristically sought to downplay expectations of the proposed summit. “Only time will tell,” he posted on Twitter.

U.S. and European diplomats have been looking for ways to address some of Trump’s concerns, including Iran’s production of ballistic missiles and its support for militant groups elsewhere in the Middle East — issues that were never tied to the nuclear deal.

But the diplomats still are not “across the finish line,” a senior administration official said Friday. Macron and Merkel will try to persuade Trump not to renege on the deal.

Macron, who arrives Monday for a threeday state visit and Merkel, who comes Friday for a 24-hour working visit, have other concerns, including the tariffs that Trump has imposed on steel and aluminum.