As a powerless observer of the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran, French President Emmanuel Macron sought to make France’s voice heard. “It is essential to urgently bring these military operations to an end, as they pose serious threats to regional security,” Macron argued during a defense and national security council meeting on Wednesday, June 18. Paris, he said, wants to definitively end Iran’s nuclear program, but through negotiation, not force. That diplomatic option is becoming increasingly elusive as the war intensifies.
On Wednesday night, fresh barrages of missiles were exchanged between the two countries, while the US president kept the possibility of American intervention alongside Israel shrouded in uncertainty. “I may do it, I may not do it,” Donald Trump told the press on Wednesday. “Nobody knows what I’m going to do.”
In this uncertain context, from the Elysée’s bunker nestled in the basement of the presidential palace, Macron tasked his foreign affairs minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, to launch “in the coming days” an “initiative, with close European partners, to propose a demanding negotiated settlement, designed to end the conflict,” according to the Elysée. Macron hopes to be joined by his European “E3” counterparts – Germany and the United Kingdom – even though each country has its own particular view of the conflict. On Wednesday evening, various media outlets, including the BBC and Reuters, reported that a meeting could take place in Geneva on Friday, bringing together French, German and British foreign ministers and Abbas Araghtchi, their Iranian counterpart. But neither Paris nor Tehran had confirmed the meeting on Wednesday night.
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