French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday accused US President Donald Trump of creating confusion over the Iran war with his contradictory statements and accused him of undermining the North Atlantic
Treaty Organisation (NATO) with his recent threats.
“You have to be serious. When you want to be serious, you don’t say the opposite every day of what you said the day before. And perhaps you shouldn’t talk every day,” Macron said during his state visit to South Korea on Thursday.
“If you create daily doubt about your commitment, you hollow it out,” he remarked on Trump’s NATO stance, adding that there is “too much talk… going off in all directions”. The French President also stressed an immediate ceasefire in the ongoing war and suggested a return to negotiations.
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His remarks came after Trump suggested that he is strongly considering pulling out of NATO after it refused to support the US-Israeli war on Iran, calling the alliance a “paper tiger”.
“Oh yes, I would say (it’s) beyond reconsideration. I was never swayed by NATO. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way,” he told the Telegraph, the strongest sign that the Trump administration no longer sees Europe as a reliable defence partner after NATO partners rejected Trump’s demand to send warships to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Macron Calls Hormuz Op ‘Unrealistic’
Meanwhile, Macron said that a proposed military operation to liberate the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic route for oil shipments that has remained blocked by Iran since the US-Israeli strikes on February 28, was “unrealistic” and would take excessive time. He also highlighted “coastal threats” like Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) “who possess significant resources as well as ballistic missiles”.
“There are those who advocate for the liberation of the Strait of Hormuz by force through a military operation, a position sometimes expressed by the United States,” he said. “I say sometimes because it has varied, it is never the option we have chosen and we consider it unrealistic.”
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The Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping route for oil, has been virtually paralysed for weeks by the ongoing war, pushing up prices for crude and related products worldwide. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have vowed to keep the strait shut to the country’s “enemies” while Trump has made reopening it a condition for a ceasefire.
Trump has pushed US allies to take steps to secure shipping through Hormuz. “Let South Korea do it. Let Japan do it. They get 90 percent of their oil from the Strait. Let China do it. Let them all do it. What the hell are we doing it for?” he said.
Trump has set a timeline of “two to three weeks” for a possible conclusion to the war, while also deploying thousands of troops in the region in preparations for a major escalation. He has also threatened to hit Iran “extremely hard” and sent them “back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.”
(with inputs from agencies)
