The G7 summit in Kananaskis, Canada is likely to be dominated by efforts to persuadeDonald Trumpto dilute an America-first strategy, which world leaders fear may put the global economy into recession, and entrench the war in Gaza, Ukraine and Iran – three conflicts Trump once promised to solve.
The summit represents the first collective opportunity for western leaders to challenge Trump with the consequences of his unilateralism, but with the world on a knife-edge, the six leaders cannot risk being seen to gang up on him and spark a presidential explosion.
The last time Trump attended a G7 summit hosted byCanada, in his first term in 2018, he arrived late, demanded Russia be permitted to attend future gatherings, described former prime minister Justin Trudeau as dishonest and weak, and then from his departed plane tweeted that the US was withdrawing from the communique he had agreed to sign.
The current Canadian host,Mark Carney, might not even attempt to agree a joint communique at the summit if he fears it will be a recipe for fruitless rows, but that would be a last resort. Out of deference to Trump, the climate crisis has already been erased from the agenda.
The largely informal talks provide a rare change for the leaders to press Trump about shared values and specifically on a timetable to impose further sanctions on Vladimir Putin, a step he has repeatedly delayed. Volodymyr Zelenskyy will also be present, marking the first time the two men will have met since Russia and Ukraine failed to agree a ceasefire in Istanbul.
European leaders will test Trump to see if he will agree to the price cap on Russian oil being lowered from $60 a barrel to $45, a means of undercutting the Russian war budget. The concept of the cap was invented at theG7, and tightening it is included in Europe’s planned 18th sanctions package.
The one area of unity may come in backing a strategy against China, including ensuring secure supply lines on critical minerals.
But Trump’s erratic handling of the conflict betweenIsraeland Iran is likely to top a crowded agenda. The four European powers – Germany, France, the UK and Italy – will express their support for Israel’s right to defend itself, but in private calls to Trump have urged de-escalation.
Diplomats had hopedIrancould be persuaded to attend the Oman-mediated talks with the US on Sunday, but the talks – from which Europe had been excluded and which offered the only hope of preventing further missile exchanges – have been cancelled.
European leaders will seek an explanation about what persuaded Trump to give Israel a green light to strike Iran before talks involving his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, in Oman, had come to an end.
It is not clear that European powers agree with the US negotiating stance that Iran must abandon any right to enrich uranium, a break from the compromise agreed in the 2015 nuclear deal.
Iran deeply resents Europe’s lead role last week in ensuring it was censured by the board of the UN nuclear watchdog for failing to meet its nuclear safeguarding obligations. Iran believes the vote gifted Israel an excuse to launch its assault, so diverting the diplomatic path. Europe for its part said it had no option to press the vote due to the lack of Iranian cooperation with the UN nuclear inspectors.
With the diplomatic route currently closed, western leaders at the summit will instead collectively have to assess how close Israel is to permanently destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities, and the risk that the country’s reeling leadership will declare that the lesson of the war is that its security can only be protected by rushing to build a nuclear bomb. Demands for the leadership to take the fateful step are being openly voiced by demonstrators and by politicians.
Israel is trying to create the conditions for the regime to be overthrown but western diplomats report even internal critics of the brinkmanship over its nuclear programme are rallying to patriotic calls.
Writing in Foreign Affairs Richard Nephew, a Iran deputy special envoy in the Biden administration, said: “Iran’s most dangerous uranium enrichment site at Fordow has been attacked, but there is no confirmation that its defences have been breached or that its couple of thousand of centrifuges have been destroyed.
“There is also no indication that Israel has rendered unusable Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium. If that stockpile is still available, and if Iran’s centrifuges are still around, Tehran may be able to reconstitute a nuclear weapons programme in just weeks.
“Iran could, for example, ship its hoard of 60% enriched uranium to Fordow (or a secret site) for further enrichment, quickly giving it enough uranium to make a bomb.
“But to actually build a nuclear weapon, Iran needs more than weapons-grade enriched uranium. It also needs processing equipment that can turn the uranium into metal, shape it into weapons components, and then build the weapon itself. Doing all that in the midst of war will be difficult, especially given the world’s decades’ long effort to deny Iran the necessary gear.”