EVIAN-LES-BAINS, France — Appearing exhausted and at times unwell, President Donald Trump on Wednesday left the G7 summit similar to the way he entered it, with tortured, increasingly bizarre explanations of his new agreement to end his war with Iran.“You can only go so far. You drive somebody into the ground and a lot of bad things happen. Number one, the strait would never open,” he told reporters at an early afternoon photo opportunity, eliding the obvious fact that the Strait of Hormuz was fully open to oil tanker traffic before he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began their attacks nearly four months ago.He repeated his familiar lie, multiple times, that former President Barack Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreement with Iran that Trump tore up during his first term provided “a pathway” to a nuclear weapon.In fact, Trump’s much-touted “deal” is more a ratification of the existing-but-loosely-adhered-to ceasefire, a $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran that amounts to a form of reparations, and an immediate end to sanctions and permission to export its own oil. In return, Iran will facilitate the reopening of the strait within 30 days, while all issues regarding Iran’s nuclear program are to be negotiated over the next 60 days, a period that is subject to renewals upon agreement of both parties.“It’s complete apples and oranges at this point,” said Ned Price, a former CIA officer who later served in the Obama and Biden administrations. “The JCPOA was a nonproliferation agreement. This is a commitment to start negotiating a nuclear deal, while in the meantime providing far more concessions than the JCPOA ever contemplated.”U.S. President Donald Trump attends a morning work meeting to "revive balanced, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth for the benefit of all" in the presence of the G7 countries, partner countries, the International Monetary Fund, and the OECD, as part of the G7 summit, in Evian, eastern France, on Wednesday.LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP via Getty ImagesRobert Kagan, a top State Department official in Ronald Reagan’s administration, said the biggest and so-far-underappreciated result of Trump’s war is the tacit understanding that Iran controls the strait and there is little the United States can do about it.“Iran will insist that any nation wanting to use the strait must drop sanctions and other hostile policies,” he said. “The U.S. lost the war back in March and we’re just marking the extent of the loss.”Trump had spent weeks disparaging the members of the world’s seven largest democratic economies for refusing to help him with his war, even though he had not consulted any of them before starting it. He appears to have remained comparatively polite with them in person through the three-day conference at a resort hotel in the French Alps town famous for its spring water, although that may have been more a function of exhaustion than civility.At one point, Trump either didn’t hear or didn’t understand summit host Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, when he asked everyone to look toward the photographers for a group photo of a work session. Trump was the only leader looking off in a different direction.Later, he seemed to get confused looking for a way down from an outdoor stage after standing for some long moments by himself, staring off into the distance as all the other participants chatted and mingled. Wednesday morning, he arrived an hour late for the first leaders’ meeting of the day, prompting Macron to start without him. And for the first two days of the conference, one side of his mouth and face frequently drooped downward.Trump spent years as he was running to regain the White House disparaging President Joe Biden’s misstatements and elderly tics, claiming they were evidence of dementia.“When the camera catches him walking around or in an unguarded moment, he certainly looks exhausted. And heavier too,” said Jim Townsend, a former Defense Department official in the Obama administration. “He kind of shambles along in an ill-fitting suit.”In some ways, Trump’s performance at the summit was typical of his normal behavior when interacting with others. He managed to lie about the 2020 election being stolen from him as he praised Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi. He boasted about the kickboxing bouts he had staged on the White House South Lawn for his birthday Sunday multiple times, including at least once at a meeting of all seven leaders. In nearly all interactions with the press, Trump launched into long rambles, sometimes with a tangential-at-best connection to the topic at hand.Responding to a question Wednesday about his new Iran ceasefire agreement, for example, Trump responded with 657 words, explaining how he was the one who had killed Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani in 2020, how oil prices would have hit $300 per barrel if he had not been sneaking tankers through the strait each night over the past months, how Obama had loaded a Boeing 757 with “cash, green cash, from banks” to give Iran, how Iranians had called Obama “a stupid son of a bitch.”Trump, over the course of the three days, also said the new leaders of Iran are “very rational” and “not radicalized” ― most analysts disagree, and believe the U.S. attacks instead strengthened hard-liners within the Iranian regime ― while stating that Israel should stop attacking the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon and instead turn that task over to the new leader of Syria. Trump caps off his G7 visit with a planned dinner Wednesday evening at the Palace of Versailles outside Paris at the invitation of Macron.
Tired And Confused-Looking Trump Continues Selling Iran ‘Deal’ At G7 Close
Given the opportunity to insult in person the allies he has attacked from afar, Trump did not take it and instead remained reasonably well-behaved.












