SAINT-JEAN-DE-LUZ, France — President Donald Trump said Monday that he signed off on French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to invite Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to France where the U.S. and other world leaders are meeting.
While Zarif’s arrival on Sunday in Biarritz, France, caught White House officials by surprise, Trump said he was expecting it because Macron had sought his approval in advance.
“He asked me,” Trump told reporters as he sat down to meet with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. “I don’t consider that disrespectful at all.
The president refused to say specifically when Macron informed him of his plans to ask Zarif to fly to Biarritz, the coastal French town that’s the backdrop for year’s Group of Seven summit.
Trump said he is not looking for regime change in Iran, rather to negotiate a new deal on its nuclear and ballistic missile programs under which the U.S. would lift sanctions.
“We’re looking to make Iran rich again,” Trump said.
Since Trump withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal last year, Macron and the leaders of Germany and the U.K. have tried to salvage it and bring the U.S. and Iran back to the negotiating table. Instead, Trump has adopted a so-called maximum pressure campaign of sanctions to squeeze Iran’s economy. He’s also expressed a willingness to meet with the Iranians without preconditions, but Iran’s leaders have refused.
Zarif, who was sanctioned by the Trump administration last month, said on Sunday that he met with Macron and other European officials while in Biarritz. “Iran’s active diplomacy in pursuit of constructive engagement continues,” Zarif wrote on Twitter. “Road ahead is difficult. But worth trying.”
Some administration officials traveling with the president in France were furious after Zarif’s unannounced arrival in Biarritz. But they said they couldn’t say when Trump became aware.
“It was a surprise,” one U.S. official said at the time.
