Photos: Flash90

W

hen Binyamin Netanyahu jetted this week to Germany, France, and England to persuade European leaders to back President Trump’s hard-line stance on Iran, he found himself dealing with a new European power broker in France’s President Emmanuel Macron.

Germany might still be Europe’s strongest economy, but Chancellor Angela Merkel is a lame-duck prime minister with a coalition that took her five months to paste together.

Macron, who became France’s youngest president at age 39 last year, heads a new political party that controls 60% of France’s National Assembly.

Macron also gets on famously with President Trump, even though they disagree fiercely on Iran and issues such as climate change.

On the eve of Netanyahu’s visit to France, I turned to Mishpacha’s veteran Paris correspondent Jean-Yves Camus for some insight on what makes Macron tick and whether Netanyahu’s time with him will be well-spent.

“Our president is very straightforward, and he seems to be quite at ease with leaders he disagrees with, preferring to voice his opposition in face-to-face dialogue rather than issuing communiqu?s,” Camus says. “With regard to Trump, I believe that Macron, being a former investment banker, understands quite well that the president is not an ideologue but a businessman, and he knows that a businessman’s job is to broker deals with people whose interests are opposed to his.

There is little common ground between Macron and Netanyahu, Camus says, but given the anti-Israeli bias of many within the French elites, Macron has kept French official reaction to the events in Gaza “within the boundaries of what is, I would say, expected from the French.”

However, Bibi will find Macron to be a tough sell when it comes to Iran.

“Macron’s attitude on the Iran deal is the consequence of his belief that breaking the deal will only benefit the hardliners in Tehran,” Camus says. (Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 713)