Macron says he warned Trump not to scrap Iran deal

French President Emmanuel Macron said in a new interview Sunday that he told President Trump not to scrap the Iran nuclear deal.

“What I told him was not to tear up the deal,” Macron said in a live TV interview on Sunday, according to Politico. “After that I told him, ‘let’s have a demanding dialogue, let’s continue to conduct checks, but let’s be much more demanding with Iran on its ballistic activity.’”

Macron also compared Trump wanting to “get tougher with Iran” with North Korea’s nuclear plan.

{mosads}“I told him I thought this was the wrong approach because we have to look where we are now with Korea,” Macron said in the interview, according to Politico.

In a speech at the White House Friday, Trump announced he was decertifying the Iran nuclear deal, arguing it was no longer in the national security interest of the United States. 

“I am announcing today that we cannot and will not make this certification,” Trump said.

“We will not continue down a path whose predictable conclusion is more violence, more terror and the very real threat of Iran’s nuclear breakout,” he continued.

Trump didn’t call for the U.S. to withdraw from the deal, however, instead calling for Congress to pass new benchmarks Iran must meet to avoid nuclear weapons-related sanctions in the future.

Trump faced criticism from U.S. allies following the speech. Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Theresa May said in a joint statement that preserving the Iran deal “is in our shared national security interest.” 

“We encourage the U.S. administration and Congress to consider the implications to the security of the U.S. and its allies before taking any steps that might undermine the [deal], such as re-imposing sanctions on Iran lifted under the agreement,” they said.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) also ripped Trump for his announcement, saying his comments were just “a lot of bluster.”

“If we are genuinely concerned with Iran’s behavior in the region, as I am, the worst possible thing we could do is undermine this nuclear deal. It would make addressing all of these other problems harder. Unfortunately, I heard no strategy from Trump today, just a lot of bluster,” Sanders said in a statement.