President Donald Trump is skipping the remainder of this year’s Group of Seven summit and returning to Washington early after issuing a dire warning to residents of Iran’s capital.
In response to shouted questions from reporters about why he's leaving the G7 early Trump said, “I have to be back”. Gathering with other leaders for a customary photo ahead of dinner Monday, the president added, “You probably see what I see and I have to be back as soon as I can.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt informed reporters late Monday that Trump would be returning to Washington after participating in the G7 “family photo” with other world leaders, with his early departure allowing him to “attend to many important matters.”
The president had been expected to remain at the conference through Tuesday.
In a separate post on X, Leavitt said Trump would depart following a dinner with his fellow G7 heads of state and government, attributing the move to “what’s going on in the Middle East.”
Trump said he thought the group had "got a lot done" in the time he attended the G7. "I wish I could stay for tomorrow, but they understand,” he said.
Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, in response to a question on whether he'd been briefed on why Trump was leaving, said he was "very grateful for the president's presence,” and “I fully understand.”
Leavitt’s announcement came approximately one hour after the president took to his Truth Social platform to complain that Iranian leaders had not “signed the ‘deal’” Trump had “told them to sign” as part of talks held over the last few months over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear weapons program.
He called the situation “a shame” and “a waste of a human life” and reiterated the longtime American position that Tehran “CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON.”
“I said it over and over again! Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!” Trump added.
The president’s warning to Tehran residents comes amid questions over whether the United States would join Israel’s days-old effort to cripple the Iranian nuclear program by destroying nuclear sites, targeting scientists for assassination, and taking out military leaders and much of Iran’s military capabilities.
While Israeli forces claim to have had significant successes in taking out numerous targets associated with Iranian nuclear weapons research and development, one obstacle that remains is the Fordow enrichment facility, located deep inside a mountain near the city of Qom.
Because the facility is deep underground, successfully destroying it would require dropping so-called “bunker-buster” munitions into the facility from heavy bomber aircraft. Israeli forces do not possess such weapons, but the United States does.
Trump, who has long boasted of his record in keeping American forces out of what he calls “endless wars” in the Middle East, and has sought to redirect American foreign policy in a more isolationist direction not seen since the period leading up to the Second World War, has thus far maintained that the U.S. is not involved and has not been involved in Israel’s operations against Iran.
But the American president, who generally appears to dislike multilateral organizations such as the Group of Seven, was also understood to be unwilling to sign on to a G7 statement that would have called for Israel and Iran to de-escalate the days-old conflict.
The statement was understood to have clearly stated that Israel has the right to self-defense and proclaim that Iran cannot obtain a nuclear weapon, but Trump did not want to add his name to the statement nevertheless. Leaving the summit early will allow him to avoid discussions on that topic, as well as the subject of the three-year-old Russian war against Ukraine.
Earlier in the day, Trump told reporters that he believed he could still broker a diplomatic agreement to curb Tehran’s nuclear ambitions despite the Israel effort to accomplish the same by force of arms.
“I think Iran basically is at the negotiating table where they want to make a deal, and as soon as I leave here, we’re going to be doing something,” he said.
Stefan Kornelius, a spokesperson for the German government, told reporters gathered at the summit site earlier in the day that the ball was in the Americans’ court on the matter of a G7 statement.
“We’ll see in the end, it’ll be up to the American side to decide whether we’re going to have a G7 statement on the Middle East or not,” he said.
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