While Iran Foreign Minister Zarif’s arrival on Sunday in Biarritz, France, caught WH officials by surprise, President Trump said he was expecting it because President 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.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., said on Sunday that he met with Macron and other European officials while in Biarritz.
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.Carol E. Lee is an NBC News correspondent.
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