The 52nd G7 summit opened in Évian-les-Bains under the shadow of a freshly minted preliminary peace accord between the United States and Iran. President Donald Trump arrived on Monday evening buoyed by the virtual signing, declaring that the Iran file would soon be “in the rearview mirror” and that his administration would now pivot to ending Russia’s war in Ukraine. The shift in focus, announced during a bilateral meeting with the Emir of Qatar, set the tone for a summit in which the two conflicts competed for primacy.

European leaders, however, used the first working dinner and subsequent sessions to press Trump on the risks of a superficial interim deal with Tehran. Viewed from Paris, Berlin and London, a hastily constructed agreement could entrench rather than curb Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. President Emmanuel Macron insisted the priority was a “solid, serious and finalised” accord, while officials voiced unease over conflicting American signals on how quickly the Strait of Hormuz would be reopened to commercial shipping. A Franco-British-led maritime demining mission was floated as a possible mechanism, but European capitals remain wary of being drawn into open-ended commitments without a clear framework.

Ukraine dominated the second day’s agenda. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy joined the leaders for a morning working session, his first face-to-face encounter with Trump in nearly four months. Trump, speaking afterwards, declared that “Russia should make a deal”, lamenting the enormous losses on both sides and pledging to do “everything in my power” to end the conflict. Behind closed doors, the G7 agreed to intensify pressure on Moscow through new sanctions targeting Russian oil and gas exports, a step that diplomats said would be calibrated once the Hormuz waterway was secured. A French diplomatic source described the group as “united” in backing Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, noting a battlefield dynamic that now favoured Kyiv.

Zelenskyy, for his part, offered to meet Vladimir Putin for negotiations in the United States, and confirmed that Washington had agreed to invite the Russian president to the G7 gathering — an invitation the Kremlin said it never formally received and would have declined. The Ukrainian leader’s extended stay at the summit, at Macron’s invitation, underscored Europe’s determination to keep Kyiv at the centre of diplomatic manoeuvring, even as Trump’s parallel outreach to Moscow raised questions in allied capitals about the coherence of Western strategy.

As the summit moves towards its final day, the twin tracks of Iran and Ukraine diplomacy are set to converge on Friday’s planned formal signing ceremony in Geneva. The preliminary Iran framework opens a 60-day window for complex negotiations over highly enriched uranium and sanctions relief, a period during which European powers will seek to shape the final text. Meanwhile, the G7’s renewed sanctions threat against Russian energy signals that, for all the transatlantic friction, the major industrialised democracies are still willing to use economic leverage to force a negotiated end to Europe’s largest land war since 1945. Whether Trump’s deal-making instincts can be harnessed to a durable, rules-based settlement remains the summit’s unanswered question.