THE HAGUE (Reuters) -France will finalise its own analysis on damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities in the next few days and will then compare results with allies, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday, after U.S. and Israeli strikes.
Speaking to reporters after a NATO summit in The Hague, Macron said he would meet the head of the U.N. atomic watchdog Rafael Grossi in Paris later to discuss his latest assessment.
“We are finalising our analysis with everything we have and then it will be confronted with the analysis of other interested countries, obviously the Americans, other Europeans, Israelis,” Macron said.
President Donald Trump said earlier on Wednesday that the damage from the strikes was severe and “there was obliteration,” though he also conceded that U.S. intelligence had been inconclusive.
France, along with Britain and Germany, is party to a 2015 nuclear deal between world powers and Iran and prior to the war between Israel and Iran had sought to play a role to negotiate a solution to the Tehran’s contested nuclear programme.
Following the strikes, the European powers have few levers and diplomacy has been thrown into disarray.
However, they will at some point need to make a decision whether to re-impose United Nations sanctions on Iran before the U.N. resolution ratifying the 2015 deal expires in October.
“We have a timeline that is running and decisions need to be made by the summer,” Macron said.
(Reporting by John Irish; Editing by Alex Richardson)
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