Paris: French President Emmanuel Macron is urging US President Donald Trump to stick with the Iranian nuclear accord, arguing there’s no ‘Plan B’. Macron told the broadcast ‘Fox News Sunday’ that he thinks the 2015 deal curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions is imperfect. But the French leader, who began a state visit to Washington on Monday, asked, “Is this agreement perfect and this JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] a perfect thing for our relationship with Iran? No. But for nuclear — what do you have? As a better option? I don’t see it.”
Trump has vowed to withdraw from the Iran deal by May 12 unless US and European negotiators agree to fix what he calls its serious flaws.
Macron is on something of a rescue mission for the 2015 Iran nuclear JCPOA deal, which was reached between Iran, the United States and five other world powers. It put curbs on Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.
The two leaders are also expected to discuss Syria, less than two weeks after the United States, France and Britain launched air strikes in Syria in retaliation for a suspected chemical weapons attack that killed dozens in Douma, Syria.
Macron said last week that he believed he had persuaded Trump to keep US troops in Syria, but Trump has been insistent on bringing them home, although he has not publicly provided a definite timetable.
Whether substantive progress will be made on these and other issues was unclear.
“Whether we will actually solve, or come to closure, or a full detailed agreement on some of the issues that we’ve touched on is difficult to say at this remove,” a senior administration official told reporters on Friday.
