Macron: Iranian Strikes Violated MoU, But Ceasefire Talks Will Continue

French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday that Iran’s strikes on U.S. military sites in Bahrain and Kuwait violated the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding and that Tehran had been wrong to carry them out, but he said he understood that ceasefire talks between Washington and Tehran would continue despite the escalation, according to the Jerusalem Post.

Macron’s remarks, delivered on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, put him at odds with President Donald Trump, who told reporters at the same gathering hours earlier that he considered the 60-day agreement “over” following Iran’s retaliatory strikes and a new round of tanker attacks in the Strait of Hormuz.

What Macron Said

Macron told reporters he believed the Iranian strikes on U.S. installations in Bahrain and Kuwait breached the terms of the MoU signed in Islamabad on June 17, and that Iran had erred in launching them. Despite that assessment, he indicated his understanding was that the negotiating track between the United States and Iran — the 60-day window established under the memorandum — would proceed, according to the Jerusalem Post report.

The French president’s comments came at the same NATO gathering where Trump, seated beside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, said of the agreement, “For me, I think it’s over,” a declaration detailed in our earlier report on Trump’s ceasefire remarks in Ankara. Macron’s position — acknowledging a clear Iranian violation while still expecting talks to continue — represents a more measured European reading of the same events than Trump’s public assessment.

Macron separately addressed reports of transatlantic friction at the summit, saying he had not heard Trump raise complaints about allies in closed-door sessions, an apparent reference to Trump’s public criticism of Spain as a “terrible partner” over its restrictions on U.S. military access during the earlier air campaign against Iran. That underlying rift among NATO members over the Iran conflict is examined in our broader NATO Ankara summit report.

The Strikes in Question

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it struck 85 U.S. military sites across Bahrain and Kuwait on Wednesday, including the Fifth Fleet’s naval district in Bahrain and Ali Al-Salem Air Base in Kuwait, in response to U.S. airstrikes on Iranian facilities at Sirik, Qeshm Island, and Bandar Abbas. Those U.S. strikes had themselves followed IRGC attacks on three commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, including the Qatari-flagged LNG carrier Al Rekayat and the Saudi-flagged supertanker Wedyan. The sequence, and Iran’s threat to suspend negotiations entirely, is covered in detail in our report on the Bahrain and Kuwait strikes.

Iran’s own government has offered contradictory signals on the state of the agreement. Ghalibaf, Iran’s lead negotiator, accused Washington of multiple “major violations” of the MoU, while Iran’s Foreign Ministry has continued to describe the negotiating channel as active even as its military command has issued escalatory statements — a split that has recurred throughout the conflict.

A Split Among Washington’s Allies

Macron’s comments illustrate a broader divide between Washington and its European partners over how to characterize the crisis. Where Trump has treated Wednesday’s exchange as grounds to abandon the framework, Macron’s remarks suggest European governments continue to view the MoU’s 60-day negotiating window — which runs through August 16 — as intact, notwithstanding what he characterized as a clear Iranian breach.

That divide mirrors the wider disagreement at the Ankara summit over the Iran campaign, where NATO members including Spain, France, and Italy restricted U.S. military access during earlier strikes and have generally favored continued diplomacy over further escalation. NATO Secretary General Rutte has separately described the U.S. strikes as “absolutely necessary” while affirming that Iran had violated the ceasefire, a position that splits the difference between Trump’s and Macron’s framing.

The dispute over the MoU’s status is not merely rhetorical. The agreement’s economic provisions, including a sanctions waiver on Iranian oil sales that the U.S. Treasury has since revoked, and its nuclear-inspection timeline, detailed in our report on the 60-day nuclear clock, depend on both parties continuing to treat the framework as binding. Whether that holds may depend less on public statements from Ankara than on whether U.S. and Iranian negotiators actually convene another session — technical-level nuclear talks had been expected to resume around July 11.

What Comes Next

Neither the White House nor the Élysée Palace had issued a written statement clarifying the two leaders’ apparent disagreement as of publication. It remains unclear whether Trump’s “over” and Macron’s expectation that “meetings would continue” reflect a genuine policy split between Washington and Paris or simply differing emphases delivered in real time to reporters at a crowded summit. The next concrete test will be whether either government formally suspends participation in the Islamabad talks, or whether negotiators from both sides appear at the next scheduled session.