President Trump is expected to face intense pressure this week to preserve the Iran nuclear agreement as he hosts one if its most ardent defenders, French President Emmanuel Macron, for a state visit in Washington.
Macron and his wife arrived at the White House on Monday, just two weeks before a May 12 deadline for European allies to commit to improving the 2015 nuclear deal or watch the Trump administration walk away from it.
Both Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who will visit the White House later this week, have urged Trump against unraveling the agreement, which they claim is superior in its current form to having no deal at all.
In a widely viewed interview preceding his state visit, Macron told Fox News’ Chris Wallace on Sunday he would support some changes to the Iran deal but did not endorse scrapping it altogether.
“I don’t have any plan B for nuclear against Iran, so that’s the question we will discuss,” Macron said.
The White House faced a series of questions on Monday about Macron’s comments and whether Trump would be willing to remain in the nuclear deal next month pending certain adjustments.
“I feel very confident that we have the best negotiator at the table,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said of the president.
The warm relationship between Trump and Macron will help foster “very open and candid conversations” about the benefits and pitfalls of remaining in the agreement, Sander said.
“The president wants to make a good deal for this country and if he feels that he can make a good deal for this country, he’s certainly going to engage in those conversations,” she added.
Macron’s visit comes as Trump adjusts to a new national security team that features two staunch critics of the nuclear agreement, which was negotiated by the Obama administration and signed by the U.S., Britain, Germany, France, Russia, China, and Iran in 2015.
When Trump appointed Bush veteran John Bolton to be his new national security adviser last month, defense experts described the move as “bad news” for proponents of the Iran deal.
“The deal is RIP as of right now,” Harry Kazianis, director of defense studies at the Center for the National Interest, told CNBC following Bolton’s appointment.
Critics of the deal simultaneously praised Trump for nominating Mike Pompeo to succeed Rex Tillerson as secretary of state. The current CIA director has long complained about the “disastrous” nuclear agreement with Iran and said in January that he was eager to begin “rolling back” the deal.
Trump has told foreign leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that he fully intends to abandon the agreement if France, Germany, and the United Kingdom refuse to pursue substantial changes. Though senior administration officials have already held two rounds of talks with representatives from the deal’s European members, little progress appears to have been made on agreeing to modifications.
“President Trump has called on the Congress and our European allies to enact real and lasting restraints on Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile ambitions,” Vice President Mike Pence told a gathering of Jewish donors last month. “This is their last chance. Unless the Iran nuclear deal is fixed in the coming months, the United States of America will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal immediately.”
Trump and Macron are scheduled to have dinner Monday night with their wives at George Washington’s historic Mount Vernon estate, followed by a series of bilateral meetings and the president’s first state dinner on Tuesday.
“The president has been very clear about how he feels about this deal and changes that he needs and wants to see reflected will certainly come up,” Sanders told Fox News ahead of Macron’s arrival on Monday.
