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FRANCE PRESIDENT EMMANUEL Macron today called on Donald Trump to “be serious” in his remarks on the Iran war.
Macron was today visiting South Korea today and expressed frustration at Trump’s statements on the conflict.
“You have to be serious,” said Macron.
“When you want to be serious, you don’t say the opposite every day of what you said the day before. And perhaps you shouldn’t talk every day.”
He also said that Trump was undermining the NATO alliance.
“If you create daily doubt about your commitment, you hollow it out,” Macron said, adding that there is “too much talk… going off in all directions”.
Macron also hit out at Trump for his “unrealist” remarks on the conflict.
The Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping route for oil, has been virtually paralysed for weeks, pushing up prices for crude and related products worldwide.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have vowed to keep the strait shut to the country’s “enemies” while Trump has made reopening it a condition for a ceasefire.
Trump last night, in a prime-time White House address, said that countries that receive oil through the strait “must take care of that passage”.
Trump also claimed that the strait will “open up naturally” when the war ends, adding that the US could “finish the job” in Iran in “two or three weeks”.
“There are those who advocate for the liberation of the Strait of Hormuz by force through a military operation, a position sometimes expressed by the US,” Macron said during his visit to South Korea.
“I say sometimes because it has varied, it is never the option we have chosen and we consider it unrealistic,” he said.
Macron added that such an operation would take excessive time and expose those crossing the strait to “coastal threats”, particularly from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards “who possess significant resources as well as ballistic missiles”.
“This can only be done in concert with Iran,” Macron added, calling first for a ceasefire and a return to negotiations.
Trump meanwhile poked fun at Macron’s marriage and accent last night, and Macron today said these remarks were “neither elegant nor up to standard” and “do not merit a response”.
Elsewhere, the United Nations chief Antonio Guterres today warned that the Middle East conflict risked spiralling into a wider war, as he called for an immediate halt to US-Israeli strikes on Iran and Iranian attacks on its neighbours.
“We are on the edge of a wider war that would engulf the Middle East with dramatic impacts around the globe,” the secretary-general told reporters in New York.
Meanwhile, Trump last night threatened that if Iran does not reach a negotiated settlement with him, the US would “hit each and every one of their electric generating plants.”
Attacks on civilian energy infrastructure are widely considered to be illegal under the laws of war and could constitute a war crime.
“Over the next two to three weeks, we are going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong,” Trump said.
This remark was taken up by US Defence Secretary Pete Hegesth on social media.
In response to Hegseth, the Iran Embassy in South Africa replied: “Stone Age? At a time when you were still in caves searching for fire, we were inscribing human rights on the Cyrus Cylinder.
Stone Age?
— Iran Embassy SA (@IraninSA) April 2, 2026
At a time when you were still in caves searching for fire, we were inscribing human rights on the Cyrus Cylinder.
We endured the storm of Alexander and the Mongol invasions and remained; because Iran is not just a country, it is a civilization. https://t.co/7yGdWKMV5i
“We endured the storm of Alexander and the Mongol invasions and remained; because Iran is not just a country, it is a civilization.”
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