Leaders of the Group of Seven are using their first full day in Evian-les-Bains to manage wars, sanctions and ceasefires from above, with Russia’s war in Ukraine and Donald Trump’s tentative deal to end the 3 1/2-month-old U.S. war against Iran dominating the summit of leading industrialized nations on Tuesday.
Who Gets to Decide
Trump said he would turn back to Ukraine after a bilateral meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron shortly after arriving late Monday in the lakeside spa town. “Now that this (Iran) is finished, we’re going to be focusing on that,” Trump said. The line is a neat summary of how the powerful talk about war: one conflict is “finished,” another becomes the next item on the agenda, and the people living through the damage remain the ones expected to absorb the consequences.
Macron said he will seek to persuade Trump to continue supporting Ukraine and increase pressure on Russia to help reach a peace agreement more than four years after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the war. Trump said he had good conversations on Sunday with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is attending the summit at France’s invitation. The summit’s choreography puts heads of state and their diplomatic bargains at the center, while ordinary people are left with the costs of decisions made in conference rooms.
French organizers placed Ukraine high on the agenda during efforts to end the war, and Trump and other leaders of the G7 gathered with Zelenskyy for an hour and 15 minutes Tuesday morning in Evian-les-Bains. The talks focused on how to “build peace and security for Ukraine and Europe,” according to the French organizers. Macron and Zelenskyy also took a walk through the wooded garden at the Hotel Royal as they held bilateral talks before joining other G7 leaders.
The Price of Their Deals
The leaders also are expected to discuss the global economic crisis resulting from the war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Egypt, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates will join the talks. That crisis is not abstract: the desert peninsula of Qatar was shaken by the three-month Iran war, and Iranian strikes caused billions of dollars in damage to Qatar’s critical energy infrastructure. Experts estimate it will take three to five years to repair liquefied natural gas pipelines that were damaged by strikes.
Trump announced an agreement to end the 3 1/2-month-old U.S. war against Iran shortly before his arrival. He said the U.S. is not investing any money in Iran and dismissed as a “rumor” a claim of a $300 billion fund to rebuild Iran. “That rumor got out there yesterday, it was ridiculous,” Trump told reporters. “We have no obligation to invest any money in Iran.” The president made the comment a day after senior U.S. officials told reporters that a memorandum of understanding includes a $300 billion fund to help rebuild if Tehran meets certain benchmarks. Trump denied the claim twice on Tuesday during a bilateral meeting with the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani.
Trump and Sheikh Tamim have much to discuss with the U.S. and Iran expected to formally sign a ceasefire settlement later this week and open up negotiations about Tehran’s nuclear program. “You’ll always be my friend,” Trump said at the start of the bilateral meeting. The emir in turn thanked Trump for his leadership, adding that the ceasefire agreement between the U.S. and Iran “is a very important deal” but much work remains to be done.
Sanctions, Troops, and the Machinery of Pressure
Britain has announced a new set of sanctions targeting the “shadow fleet” Russia uses to ship oil and gas and the finance networks used by Moscow to evade Western sanctions. The sanctioned ships include several vessels recently purchased by Russia to ship liquefied natural gas from its sanctioned Arctic LNG 2 project. Britain says it has now sanctioned more than 600 shadow fleet vessels. U.K. troops seized a Russian shadow fleet vessel in the English Channel for the first time last weekend. The sanctions were announced as Prime Minister Keir Starmer attends the G7 summit in France, and he is due to meet Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who has had a frosty relationship with Trump, gave the U.S. president a soccer jersey with Trump’s name and the number 47 on the back. Merz approached with the jersey as Trump sat down at a conference table for a working session. Trump smiled and held it up for a photo. The white jersey appeared to be the same one the German national team is wearing in the ongoing World Cup. Earlier this year, Merz and Trump exchanged barbs after Merz said the U.S. was being “humiliated” by Iran and criticized the U.S. for going into the war without any strategy. Trump later said Merz “should spend more time on ending the war with Russia/Ukraine” and “fixing his broken Country, especially Immigration and Energy.”
Trump is scheduled to host one-on-one talks with the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, and United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan later in the morning. The Gulf nations are not part of the G7, but Macron extended invitations to the leaders to take part in the summit at a fraught moment for the region. G7 leaders also will convene a working lunch to discuss the situation in the Middle East, where the conversation is expected to focus on the path ahead after the ceasefire agreement between the U.S. and Iran.
Trump said he is “not happy with the way Israel has handled themselves with Lebanon and with Hezbollah.” “They should have been able to deal with them faster,” Trump told reporters in reference to Israeli operations to target Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. “It just goes on forever. And when that happens, it throws a negative light on the big deal. And that’s the deal with Iran,” he said. He also said he wants to focus on Ukraine, adding that the issue of Iran will soon be “back in the rear view mirror.” Trump, who said he will meet with Zelenskyy for further talks, downplayed the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine on the U.S., but lamented the death toll. “The whole thing is ridiculous,” Trump said. “So, yeah, I’m going to do whatever I can.”
The summit’s first session on Ukraine began with five of the seven leaders, representing Britain, Canada, Germany, Italy and Japan, huddled in conversation with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen before the start of the session. Trump was missing. Macron, too, hadn’t arrived yet because he was with Zelenskyy. Zelenskyy was welcomed by French President Emmanuel Macron ahead of the morning working session with G7 leaders to discuss the ongoing Russian war against Ukraine.