As he begins his state visit to the U.S., French President Emmanuel Macron of France has one defining objective: persuading President Trump to remain in the Iran nuclear accord.
He is highly unlikely to succeed.
First off, Trump’s recent appointment of John Bolton as national security adviser is a very clear signal of the president’s sentiment on the nuclear deal. While Trump has always seen the agreement as dysfunctional and overly generous to Iran, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former national security adviser H.R. McMaster had persuaded him to remain inside its framework.
But McMaster and Tillerson are now gone. Tillerson’s presumptive replacement is Mike Pompeo, who is as skeptical of the deal as is Bolton — which is to say, very. It is highly likely Trump will withdraw from the nuclear deal on or before May 12.
Yet, also complicating Macron’s “sil vous plait, mon president, stay in the deal” endeavor is Trump’s personal evolution on Iran.
After all, having been president for 15 months now, Trump’s intelligence briefings will have educated him as to the aggression which defines the Iranian theocratic elite.
Specifically, the violence of action employed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps from Lebanon to Syria to Iraq to Yemen. In these locales, the IRGC is attempting to displace or kill U.S. allies and weaken U.S. interests. And while Macron has supported a range of efforts to check Iranian influence in these areas, Trump regards Iran’s access to the post-nuclear agreement sanctions relief as a source of these continuing problems.
In that sense, Trump’s course of action seems clear: He will withdraw the U.S. from the agreement both because he believes it is unfair but also because he believes it is destructive. I believe Trump will then qualify new sanctions or a U.S. snapback of previous sanctions to Iran’s amenability to new restrictions on its ballistic missile program.
Thus, the best Macron can hope for is a Trump pledge not to sanction European multinationals that continue doing business with Iran after the U.S. withdraws from the agreement. If Macron gets that pledge; which I suspect is his ultimate goal here, he will be quite content. That’s because Iran will likely continue abiding by the deal as long as it can retain its European financial dealings.
If he does not get that pledge, the Macron-Trump partnership will head into rough waters.
