Macron arrives as Iran deal is front and center
WASHINGTON — The last time they met face to face, at the United Nations in September, French President Emmanuel Macron was puzzled when President Donald Trump and his delegation seemed to have no agenda, carried no papers and took no notes.
“It was like a good discussion with a buddy in a bar,” recalled a French official. “At the end, you don’t know exactly what it means.” Now that Trump has been in office longer, the official mused, “maybe the process is different.”
At the very least, the agenda will be clear to both sides when Macron arrives here Monday for the first official state visit Trump has hosted for any leader. Following their joint attack, with Britain, on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons facilities early this month, there is a Syria strategy to figure out. Trade, climate change, Russia, North Korea and counterterrorism are all on the to-do list.
But no issue looms larger than Iran, and the nuclear agreement that the United States and five other countries signed with Tehran in 2015. Trump has called it a bad deal and said the United States will withdraw unless it is “fixed.” Signatories France, Britain and Germany vehemently disagree, say there can be no changes to the agreement, and have pledged they will not follow Trump’s lead.
The U.S. decision deadline is May 12. Failure to work out a compromise between the United States and its closest European allies that will keep the nuclear accord alive could lead to the most significant trans-Atlantic breach in decades.
Enter Macron. By consensus among his counterparts in Europe, if there is accommodation to be reached with Trump on Iran, he is the man to close the deal.
Senior French, British and German officials have been negotiating for months with a State Department team led by Brian Hook, director of policy planning, to come up with a way to meet Trump’s demands without altering the deal itself or driving the other signatories — Russia, China and, of course, Iran — to cry foul.
According to U.S. and European officials involved in those talks, significant progress has been made on addressing concerns about the deal’s sunset clauses, its verification rules, and the absence of restrictions on Iranian ballistic missile testing and development, as well as new measures to counter Iran’s “malign” activities in Syria and beyond in the Middle East. Four documents have been drafted that they believe are responsive to Trump’s criticisms.
An overall declaration and three subtexts are to outline their joint understanding that other international conventions will prohibit Iran from developing nuclear weapons beyond restrictions that expire in the next decade, push the International Atomic Energy Agency to expand its monitoring and promise strict sanctions if Iran moves forward with intercontinental ballistic missile development.
Mike Pompeo, Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, was a harsh critic of the deal when it was signed and spoke openly about bombing Iran’s nuclear installations. But at his confirmation hearing last week, Pompeo assured lawmakers that “there is no doubt that this administration’s policy, and my view, is that the solution to preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons, to finding ourselves in the same place we are in North Korea in Iran, is through diplomacy.” He also agreed with the Europeans and the IAEA that Iran has so far complied with its terms.
“I am confident that the issue will be discussed at great length” during Trump’s upcoming meetings with European leaders, including a one-day visit here by German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday, following Macron’s departure late Wednesday, Pompeo said. “It’s important to them and I know they’ll raise their hopes and concerns.”