Trump Speaks at G7 Summit After Renewing Threats on Iran
President Trump said U.S. allies “love” the preliminary agreement with Iran, although he has not released details. He earlier said the United States would resume bombing Iran if “they don’t behave” in implementing the deal.
President Trump swung on Wednesday between praising the preliminary agreement with Iran as “very strong” and threatening to resume bombing if he was unhappy with its implementation, hours after world leaders at the annual Group of 7 summit hailed it as a “breakthrough.”
The terms of the deal have not been released, a fact Mr. Trump acknowledged as he hailed it. “Nobody knows what it is, but it’s very strong,” he said, adding that “most people” and “the market” were happy about it.
But even as he and other leaders cast the preliminary deal in a joint statement as a “historic opportunity to prevent Iran from acquiring any nuclear weapon,” Mr. Trump also renewed threats of violence.
“If I don’t like it, if they don’t behave, we’ll go right back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head,” he said, speaking to reporters alongside President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt during the summit.
Mr. Trump, who has been fixated on proving that former President Barack Obama’s 2015 Iran deal was weaker than the one he is negotiating, also became angry and used a denigrating term to characterize Iranian attitudes toward his predecessor. “They laughed at Obama, and they said he’s a stupid son of a bitch,” he said.
Hours earlier, the G7 leaders issued the joint statement praising Mr. Trump’s leadership in securing the deal with Iran, as they gathered for the second full day of the summit in Évian-les-Bains, France, a resort town on the shores of Lake Geneva.
But amid uncertainty about what the deal entails, the leaders also noted that there must be “a robust and comprehensive diplomatic follow-on agreement” to the memorandum that top officials from the U.S. and Iran were expected to sign in Switzerland on Friday.
With its combination of caution and flattery directed toward the American president, the statement from G7 leaders captured the tone of this week’s summit on its final day. The gathering has been surprising so far for its cordiality, even as leaders tackle weighty and often contentious subjects.
Mr. Trump has struck a friendly tone toward European leaders whom he has a history of mocking and criticizing, even praising President Emmanuel Macron of France and speaking enthusiastically about a dinner they are set to have Wednesday night at the Palace of Versailles, the lavish estate of French royalty. They, in turn, have showered him with compliments and even gifts.
Here’s what else we’re covering:
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Russian invasion of Ukraine: Mr. Trump switched between apparent interest and indifference regarding the war, which is now in its fifth year. He said he’d had “very good talks” with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, a day after suggesting that the U.S. had “nothing to do” with the war.
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A.I. regulation: The leaders had lunch on Wednesday with executives from some of the world’s most influential technology companies, including OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, as they wrestle with how to regulate artificial intelligence. Read more ›
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Hot mics: Small talk between mingling leaders has been picked up on hot mics, recording snippets of conversations that ranged from geopolitics and trade to the leaders’ personal lives. As at many diplomatic gatherings, the real action at the annual Group of 7 summits often occurs on the sidelines, where world leaders mingle and make small talk that occasionally gets picked up by lurking microphones. These hot mics, as they are known, seemed to be working overtime on Tuesday, recording snippets of conversations that ranged from geopolitics and trade to the leaders’ personal lives.
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Diplomatic strategies: European leaders appear to have concluded that the best way to deal with Mr. Trump is to court him. After a year dominated by rancor and the occasional sharp elbow, many turned at this week’s summit to conciliatory words and charm.
When Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany presented President Trump with a soccer jersey emblazoned with the number 47 on Tuesday morning, it was the kind of gesture that a foreign leader might have made during his first term: flattering, emollient, and calculated to please.
But Mr. Merz was doing it after a rancorous stretch, in which he and other European leaders condemned the war in Iran, provoking Mr. Trump to announce that the United States would pull some American troops from the Continent.
Europe’s alliance with the United States may still be on the rocks, but on the first full day of a Group of 7 summit meeting at this Alpine spa town in France, the leaders showed they remained ready to behave politely toward Mr. Trump.