Kiss and tell

After all the public display of "affectionate gamesmanship", Macron is telling the world what he really thinks.

Emmanuel Macron conceded he had probably failed in his attempt during a three-day trip to Washington to persuade Donald Trump to stay in the Iran nuclear deal, describing US flip-flopping on international agreements as “insane”.

[...]

“My view – I don’t know what your president will decide – is that he will get rid of this deal on his own, for domestic reasons.”

Noting that Trump had also pulled the US out of the Paris climate change accord – another commitment of the Obama administration – Macron said such frequent changes in the US position on global issues “can work in the short term but it’s very insane in the medium to long term”.

  Guardian

In this country, we don't do long term.

Over the course of a 50-minute address to a joint meeting of Congress on Wednesday, the French president said he was “sure” the US would one day return to the Paris climate change accord, and vowed that France would not abandon the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Programme of Action (JCPOA).

We'll return to the climate agreements when Trump is gone. That is, if we still exist.

More broadly, Macron presented himself to the US legislature as an unabashed advocate of the liberal world order of global institutions and free trade – the very opposite of the America First nationalism that fuelled Trump’s rise to the White House. The speech – delivered in English – was interrupted by frequent standing ovations, many from both sides of the aisle.

“We will not let the rampaging work of extreme nationalism shake a world full of hopes for greater prosperity,” Macron said.

Trump will have to wait for Sean Hannity to explain Macron's speech before he can tweet about it.

“Personally, if you ask me, I do not share the fascination for new strong powers, the abandonment of freedom and the illusion of nationalism,” Macron said, in remarks that could easily be seen as a rebuke for Trump’s enthusiasm for some of the world’s most autocratic “strongman” rulers.

Macron also made a full-throated argument for global action to combat climate change, built around the 2015 Paris accord, which Trump announced in June he was walking away from.

“What is the meaning of our life if we [are] destroying the planet while sacrificing the future of our children?” the French president asked. “Let us face it. There is no planet B.”

[...]

He had an even more direct rebuke for his host’s resort to tariffs as an instrument of trade policy. Macron said that the right way to correct trade imbalances and overcapacity was to negotiate through the World Trade Organisation.

“We wrote these rules. We should follow them,” the visiting president said.

[...]

He called for respect for the sovereignty of Iran and its ancient civilisation, and urged the west not to “repeat past mistakes”, an apparent reference to the 2003 Iraq invasion.

Both the US and France endorsed the JCPOA, he pointed out, adding: “We should not abandon it without something more substantial in its place.”

In a tweet after his speech to Congress, Macron added: “We decided with President [Trump] to work on a new comprehensive deal” which would address Iranian missiles and its regional role, and make limits on Iranian nuclear activities permanent.

If the "we" he is referring to is Trump, he can expect that as soon as the "insane" one watches Fox News, he'll be doubling down on his earlier decisions to scrap the Iran deal.

The head of the state department planning office, Brian Hook, disparaged the nuclear agreement.

“It has no signatures. It has no legal status. It is a political commitment by an administration that is no longer in office,” Hook told National Public Radio, although the JCPOA is enshrined in a UN security council resolution.

And that last reason - that Obama signed onto it - is the problem for Trump.

In Geneva on the same day, the assistant secretary for international security, Christopher Ford, said: “We are not aiming to renegotiate the JCPOA or reopen it or change its terms,” seemingly in clear contradiction of multiple presidential statements.

I wonder how long Mr. Ford will have his job.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.