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Trump and Macron Say They Have the Same Goals on Iran

Trump and Macron Say They Have the Same Goals on Iran

(Bloomberg) -- U.S. President Donald Trump and his counterpart in France, Emmanuel Macron, said Thursday that they share the goal of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

“I don’t think the president wants to see nuclear weapons and neither do I,” Trump told reporters at a meeting with Macron in Caen, France.

“We do share the same objectives on Iran,” Macron said, siding with Trump in calling for “a new negotiation” with Tehran.

“We want to be sure they don’t get nuclear weapon” and “we want to reduce their ballistic activity,” the French president said.

Macron has advocated for the 2015 Iran nuclear accord to be broadened to curb Iranian behavior Western countries consider hostile, including its development of ballistic missiles. But the French president tried and failed to persuade Trump not to back out of the nuclear deal negotiated by his predecessor Barack Obama.

Trump said earlier this week that there’s “always a chance” of the U.S. taking military action in Iran, though he’d prefer to engage verbally with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

“If they want to talk, that’s fine,” Trump said Thursday. “We’ll talk.”

Tensions have recently escalated between the U.S. and Iran after Trump blamed the Islamic Republic for recent violence in the Middle East and ordered 1,500 U.S. troops to the region last month. The small deployment indicated that Trump’s administration wants to avoid fueling fears of another war, though the president has repeatedly made clear the possibility isn’t entirely off the table.

To contact the reporters on this story: Alyza Sebenius in Washington at asebenius@bloomberg.net;Margaret Talev in Washington at mtalev@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Elizabeth Wasserman

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