Macron: France ready to do more for transit through Hormuz — ‘Regime change by bombing doesn’t work’

French President Emmanuel Macron said France is ready to do more to make transit through the Strait of Hormuz possible, in an interview with the American television network ABC News, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

“We do not want to get involved in confrontation with any country, but we are ready to do more to protect certain capacities, so as to make this transit possible,” Macron said, referring to the strategic waterway through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas passes.

According to him, the “main objective” of the meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump was “finding the right agreement for the opening” of Hormuz and addressing the escalating global energy crisis.

Macron sharply criticized the U.S. decision to go to war, saying that “regime change by bombing a country is not something I consider achievable”. “It doesn’t work. And we have made this mistake several times in past decades,” he added.

The French president also explained why Paris did not join the military campaign: “When you want to engage people, you strategize with them and ask them before starting a war — and we decided not to join this war, because we considered, and still consider, that it was not the right option.”

Source: Al Jazeera — https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2026/9/23/iran-war-live-trump-confirms-very-good-meeting-with-iran-at-un