Trump Says He Won’t Send Troops to Iran But Leaves Wiggle Room

 

Trump Says He Won’t Send Troops to Iran But Leaves Wiggle Room

 

The president was cagey about his plans for Iran. He confirmed the Pentagon was seeking $200 billion to support a protracted war effort while also claiming it would be over soon.

 

Karoun Demirjian David E. Sanger

By Karoun Demirjian and David E. Sanger

Reporting from Washington

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/world/middleeast/trump-iran-us-troops.html

March 19, 2026

 

President Trump asserted on Thursday that he had no plans to commit ground forces to the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, even though he has acknowledged he is contemplating moves that could drag the military into land combat operations.

 

Mr. Trump’s comments still left some room for him to reverse course.

 

“I’m not putting troops anywhere,” Mr. Trump told a reporter who asked about using ground troops. “If I were, I certainly wouldn’t tell you.”

 

The president has spent several days alternating between threats to escalate strikes on Iran — which at times he has insisted are an “operation” or an “excursion” instead of a war — and promising that the hostilities are on the brink of completion.

 

His latest comments come just two days after Mr. Trump said that he was “not afraid” to put U.S. boots on the ground.

 

They also come amid revelations that the Pentagon has asked for $200 billion to pay for its war operations against Iran, a sum that is expected to encounter resistance on Capitol Hill.

 

The fighting has been steadily escalating since the United States and Israel first struck Iran three weeks ago. Overnight Israel and Iran exchanged a series of strikes on key energy infrastructure sites. Israel struck Iran’s processing complex for the South Pars natural gas field, and Qatar blamed Iran for missiles that damaged Ras Laffan International City, a major energy hub.

 

Those strikes shocked global markets, sending oil prices soaring before falling later in the day. The turmoil may have prompted Mr. Trump to speak in calmer tones when challenged about the negative economic impact the war was having.

 

He said on Thursday that while he hated to attack Iran, he felt it was necessary, even though oil prices would rise and the economy might “go down a little bit.”

 

“I thought there was a chance it could be much worse,” he said. “It’s not bad, and it will be over with pretty soon.” He provided no further explanation.

 

Despite Mr. Trump’s efforts at reassurance, the administration was sending signals that it was bearing down for a longer fight. It was not immediately clear what operations the $200 billion the Pentagon was seeking would pay for, but even at the steep price tag of recent operations — the first six days alone cost more than $11.3 billion, officials recently told lawmakers — that sum could most likely sustain operations for months.

 

The United States is currently weighing whether to attempt a takeover of Kharg Island, where Iran loads most of the oil it produces onto tankers. The United States struck what it described as several military sites on Kharg Island over the weekend, though Mr. Trump has repeatedly pointed out they left the oil infrastructure alone. On Wednesday, however, he also threatened that the United States could destroy Iran’s oil infrastructure or its electrical grid.

 

The United States is also deciding whether to attempt to seize the underground nuclear site at Isfahan, where Iran stores most of its 970 pounds of near-bomb-grade nuclear fuel. Either operation would likely require ground troops.

 

Last week, the United States began moving 2,500 Marines from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit from the Indo-Pacific region to the Middle East, adding to approximately 50,000 U.S. troops already in the region. The selection of that unit, which has expertise in conducting ground operations buttressed by sea and air support, suggests that the United States might be planning raids into Iran, potentially against the islands from which Iran has been launching fast boats capable of mining the Strait of Hormuz.

 

Karoun Demirjian is a breaking news reporter for The Times.

 

David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.

Iran War Live Updates: As Attacks Shake Markets, Trump Seeks to Reassure Americans

 

Iran War Live Updates: As Attacks Shake Markets, Trump Seeks to Reassure Americans

President Trump said he would do whatever was necessary to lower oil prices, and his Treasury secretary said the government might even take the paradoxical step of lifting sanctions on some Iranian oil.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/03/19/world/iran-war-news-trump-oil

 

Here’s the latest.

Global markets experienced a day of gyrations on Thursday as the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran entered its 20th day, amid fears of a deepening global energy crisis and as oil prices surged to $119 a barrel, an increase of nearly 10 percent, before settling at $108.65.

 

President Trump, seeking to reassure Americans, said that the crisis would be temporary. “It will be over with soon,” he said, even as the Pentagon sought $200 billion in funding for the war — a significant sum adding to the costs of an already divisive campaign.

 

A new round of attacks on major energy facilities in Iran and Qatar on Wednesday raised concerns about energy supplies. To ease the crisis, the United States was weighing lifting sanctions on millions of barrels of Iranian oil, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox Business on Thursday. Still, the S&P 500 ended the day 0.3 percent lower.

 

Oil prices have been surging since the start of the conflict on Feb. 28, with international crude futures up almost 50 percent in less than three weeks.

 

As oil prices eased on Thursday afternoon, it allowed nervous investors to exhale slightly. But the market swings were a reminder of what analysts say is a stubborn truth: Prices will likely not dip meaningfully until the region is secure.

 

“It really comes down to when tankers can securely flow through the strait again,” said Jim Burkhard, the head of research for oil markets at S&P Global Energy. “But then you will have bottlenecks even after that opens.”

 

The pullback on oil prices on Thursday came after Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he had directed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to cease attacks on Iran’s energy fields. Hours later, the Israeli leader said during a news conference in Jerusalem that it was no longer possible for Iran to enrich uranium or manufacture ballistic missiles after 20 days of bombardment.

 

He provided no evidence and said nothing about Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium that was buried under the country’s nuclear site at Isfahan by U.S. strikes last year. The White House did not address his comments.

 

While an end to the conflict would reopen the shipping routes through the Strait of Hormuz, serious damage to infrastructure would be longer lasting.

 

Here’s what else we are covering:

Ground troops: During a meeting with the Japanese prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, in the Oval Office on Thursday, Mr. Trump was asked about using ground troops in Iran. He said: “I’m not putting troops anywhere. If I did, I wouldn’t tell you.

 

Missile attacks: Strikes on Wednesday and Thursday hit the Ras Laffan energy hub in Qatar, reducing the country’s natural gas export capacity by 17 percent and causing an estimated loss of $20 billion in annual revenue, according to Saad Sherida al-Kaabi, the country’s energy minister and head of QatarEnergy, the state-owned energy company. He said damage from missiles would take three to five years to repair and would affect supply to markets in Europe and Asia.

 

Saudi Arabia: Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister said that the country reserved the right “to take military actions if deemed necessary” to protect itself from Iranian attacks.

 

Death tolls: Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations said last week that at least 1,348 civilians had been killed since the start of the war. On Wednesday, a Washington-based human rights group, the Human Rights Activists News Agency, reported that at least 1,369 civilians had been killed. The number of Lebanese killed rose to more than 1,000, Lebanon’s health ministry said on Thursday. At least 14 people have been killed in Iranian attacks on Israel, officials have said. The American death toll stood at 13.

Is a global recession coming? - Iran war economic fallout

 

Trump’s Complaint About Israeli Strike on Gas Field Exposes Divergent Strategies

 

Trump’s Complaint About Israeli Strike on Gas Field Exposes Divergent Strategies

 

President Trump said he told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel he disapproved of the attack, which sent energy markets reeling. But Israeli officials said the Americans were informed beforehand.

 

David E. Sanger

By David E. Sanger

David E. Sanger has covered five American presidents in more than four decades at the Times. He writes often about the revival of superpower conflict, the subject of his latest book.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/us/politics/trump-netanyahu-iran-gas-field-attack.html

March 19, 2026

 

President Trump said on Thursday that he had complained to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel about the bombing of one of Iran’s largest offshore gas fields, exposing the two allies’ sharply different strategies as they try to disarm Iran, and in the case of Israel, trigger “state collapse.”

 

Asked about the Israeli strike, which sent oil markets reeling, Mr. Trump said, “I told him don’t do that,” and he suggested that Mr. Netanyahu “won’t do that” again in the future.

 

“We’re independent, we get along great,” said Mr. Trump, who spoke to reporters as he welcomed Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, in the Oval Office. He insisted that the U.S. and Israeli approaches were “coordinated.”

 

Three Israeli officials briefed on the strike on the gas field said that the United States was informed before the attack. But Mr. Trump, in a Truth Social posting, suggested he knew nothing about it, and said the United States did not participate.

 

In a war that is about to complete its third week with no end in sight, the attack and the furious counterstrikes on the energy facilities of Persian Gulf states revealed that the two allies were clearly not coordinated in their approach.

 

European officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the military operations over the past few days were more evidence of Israel’s belief that if it can dismantle Iran’s main sources of revenue and decapitate its political, military and intelligence leadership, the country will devolve into what the Israelis call “state collapse.”

 

The European view is that the result will be the opposite: Iran’s forces will escalate, using its surviving drones and missiles to destroy the vulnerable infrastructure of its neighbors, in what will become an existential battle.

 

Israel has been targeting the Iranian leadership, and with the attack on the South Pars gas field — a vast natural gas field in the Gulf run jointly by Iran and Qatar — it was striking directly at Iran’s ability to generate revenue. The Iranians responded with a missile attack on Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City, significantly damaging one of the Gulf state’s most critical energy hubs.

 

Mr. Trump clearly worries that such attacks and counterattacks will result in even greater surges in the price of oil and gas, and make shippers even more fearful of transiting the Strait of Hormuz. So he has been trying to preserve Iran’s oil and gas infrastructure and keep the country from retaliating at energy facilities throughout the Gulf. With every piece of evidence that the war is escalating, the price of oil increases, and Mr. Trump’s aides are scrambling to contain the economic ripple effects, starting with oil prices.

 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that to calm the markets, the United States was thinking about releasing more from the Strategic Oil Reserve, which the administration had failed to refill to capacity in the run-up to the war. But more strikingly, he has discussed suspending sanctions on Iranian oil already at sea — in an effort to free up roughly 140 million barrels — as another way to tamp down prices.

 

That would, of course, bring more revenue to Iran, but Mr. Bessent insisted that “we will be using the Iranian barrels against the Iranians to keep the price down for the next 10 or 14 days, as we continue this campaign.”

 

At every moment, Mr. Trump and Mr. Bessent are trying to signal to the markets that they have everything under control, even amid evidence that their effort to contain Iran’s retaliation — and the markets’ response — is failing. Mr. Trump tried to characterize his conversations with Mr. Netanyahu as a modest difference of opinion. “On occasion, he’ll do something,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Thursday, “and if I don’t like it, and so we’re not doing that anymore.”

 

In their public explanations of the status of the war, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, contended anew on Thursday that the United States was hitting all of its targets. Mr. Hegseth stressed the attacks on Iran’s defense industrial sites, so that it cannot replace missiles, launchers and drones destroyed in what has been an aerial hide-and-seek operation.

 

They spoke about dropping 5,000-pound bombs earlier this week at a suspected missile storage site near the Strait of Hormuz, part of an effort to keep Iran from being able to harass shipping through the 21-mile-wide stretch that has become a bottleneck for oil and gas exports. The weapon it used was the new GBU-72/B, a bunker-busting bomb that appeared to be directed at cruise-missile storage sites along the strait.

 

“To date we’ve struck over 7,000 targets across Iran and its military infrastructure,” Mr. Hegseth insisted, saying that Thursday would be “the largest strike package yet,” repeating his vow of “death and destruction from above.”

 

But the speed of the Iranian retaliation for the South Pars attack was evidence that the United States had not gained what military strategists call “escalation dominance,” the ability to keep an adversary from further escalating its response. And Mr. Hegseth repeated that he would provide no “definitive time frame” for declaring that it had achieved its objectives.

 

In Mr. Hegseth’s telling, the entire war is playing out according to plan. But evidence to the contrary abounds. The rush to find allies to patrol the strait — which so far has resulted in no takers — and the scramble to contain increases in energy prices suggests that the administration continues to be surprised at Iran’s ability to strike back. Its skillful asymmetric attacks are designed to drive prices up and stock markets down in the United States — metrics that get Mr. Trump’s attention.

 

Washington’s fear now is that the Gulf countries, which have shown considerable restraint in not responding to Iranian missile and drone attacks, will begin retaliating. On Wednesday, shortly after the Israeli attack on South Pars, part of the world’s largest offshore gas fields, two waves of incoming ballistic missiles were intercepted over Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, according to the Saudi Defense Ministry.

 

The kingdom’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, warned that his government reserved the right “to take military actions if deemed necessary.”

 

“We will not shy away from protecting our country and our economic resources,” he said at a news conference early Thursday.

 

He would not say how long Saudi patience with attacks would stay in place. “Do they have a day, two, a week?” the prince asked. “I’m not going to telegraph that.”

 

He added that “what little trust” there was between the kingdom and Iran had “completely been shattered.” The countries re-established diplomatic relations in 2023.

 

Vivian Nereim contributed reporting from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

 

David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.

Welcome summary

 

2h ago

02.24 GMT

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/mar/20/iran-war-live-updates-oil-prices-israel-netanyahu-ground-component-us-tensions-hormuz?filterKeyEvents=false&page=with%3Ablock-69bc952b8f08c0f5c45a85f9#block-69bc952b8f08c0f5c45a85f9

 

Welcome summary

Hello and welcome to our continuing live coverage of the US-Israel war on Iran and the effect the conflict is having on the region, the world and the global economy.

 

Benjamin Netanyahu has hinted at a possible “ground component” to the US-Israel warn on Iran – while Donald Trump suggested the US had no plans to put boots on the ground.

 

“You don’t want to replace one ayatollah with another,” the Israeli prime minister said on Thursday, adding that the Iranian regime was unlikely to be overthrown ​using air strikes alone.

 

It is “often said” that you can’t “do revolutions from the air”, Netanyahu told a press conference. “There has to be a ground component as well. There are many possibilities for this ground component and I take the liberty of not sharing [those] with you.”

 

Trump, meanwhile, claimed he had no plans for the US to engage in such an operation. “I’m not putting troops anywhere,” he told a reporter, when asked about using ground troops. But he added: “If I were, I certainly wouldn’t tell you.”

 

The president also confirmed that the Pentagon has asked Congress to approve a further $200bn to fund the war.

 

Some 65% of Americans believe Trump will order troops into a large-scale ground war in Iran, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, but just 7% support that idea.

 

In other developments:

 

Benjamin Netanyahu denied that Donald Trump was “dragged” into the war by Israel, as he tried to pour cold water on suggestions that Israel influenced the US’s decision to attack Iran and amid growing signs that the US and Israel are not aligned on their war aims. “Does anyone really think that someone can tell President Trump what to do,” the Israeli prime minister said, adding: “I misled no one.”

 

Netanyahu also stated that Israel “acted alone” in striking Iran’s South Pars gasfield, though he didn’t address whether or not he had told Trump about the attack beforehand. “President Trump asked us to hold off on future attacks, and we’re holding out,” he added. Trump has distanced himself from Israel’s attack on the world’s largest gasfield (which he claimed on Wednesday that Washington “knew nothing” about), and confirmed today that he told Netanyahu to stop attacking Iran’s energy facilities.

 

Netanyahu also claimed that Iran has “no ability to enrich uranium at the moment and no capability of manufacturing ballistic missiles”. He said that the war would take “as long as is necessary”, adding: “We will crush them entirely, all those capabilities.”

 

Iranian attacks on Ras Laffan Industrial City in Qatar have reduced the country’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity by 17%, according to QatarEnergy, the state-run energy giant. The “extensive damage” could reduce its annual revenues by $20bn and take “up to five years” to repair, Saad al-Kaabi, the Qatari energy minister and CEO of QatarEnergy, said in a statement.

 

US Central Command said that it has destroyed the Iranian regime’s surface-to-surface missile plant in Karaj. The plant was used to “assemble ballistic missiles that threatened Americans, neighboring countries, and commercial shipping,” Centcom said.

 

France will double its humanitarian aid to Lebanon to the value of €17m ($19.7m), foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot said, as Lebanon grapples with Israel’s latest military assault. Israeli strikes on Beirut and its ground invasion of southern Lebanon have killed over 1,000 people, including 118 children, and wounded more than 2,500 since Tel Aviv’s renewed offensive on 2 March. More than one million – roughly one in five – of the population have been displaced.

 

An Iranian missile attack hit Israel’s oil refineries in the northern port city of Haifa but did not cause “significant damage“, Israel’s energy ministry said. Energy minister Eli Cohen said power was briefly disrupted, with electricity restored to most of those who were affected, Reuters reported.

As Iran War Drags On, Europe Wants to Avoid a New Migration Crisis

As Iran War Drags On, Europe Wants to Avoid a New Migration Crisis

 

A decade ago, a surge in migration to Europe spurred the far-right’s rise. European leaders now fear the Iran war could set off another crisis, and they have taken tentative steps to prepare.

 

Jim Tankersley Jeanna Smialek Ben Hubbard

By Jim TankersleyJeanna Smialek and Ben Hubbard

Jim Tankersley reported from Berlin, Jeanna Smialek from Brussels and Ben Hubbard from Istanbul.

March 18, 2026, 5:01 a.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/18/world/europe/iran-war-refugees-turkey.html

 

The longer the war in Iran continues, the more European officials worry it will spur a new refugee crisis. That fear is driving anxious scenario-planning and back-channel diplomacy over how to prevent a fresh wave of migration from roiling Europe.

 

The planning includes consultations between officials from the European Union and Turkey, the geographic buffer between Iran and Europe that was a thoroughfare a decade ago for more than a million migrants who made their way to the continent by sea.

 

The talks intensified with a phone call two days after the war started.

 

In the call, Hakan Fidan, the Turkish foreign minister, assured Magnus Brunner, the European Union’s migration commissioner, that Turkey was working to avoid a repeat. Officials had hardened the Turkish border with Iran, Mr. Fidan said, and would work with Europe to block any new wave of refugees, according to Mr. Brunner’s account of the call in a subsequent broadcast interview.

 

Mr. Brunner and Mr. Fidan then agreed that if the U.S.-Israeli assault maintained a narrow focus, the fallout might be contained, according to European and Turkish officials briefed on the call. If the strikes broadened and Iran became unstable, Mr. Brunner and Mr. Fidan concluded that people could try to flee, according to the people briefed on the discussion, who also confirmed Mr. Brunner’s account. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.

 

Anxiety over a possible new migration crisis joins a growing list of global consequences from the war in Iran. Across the world, leaders and citizens alike are dealing with rising fuel costs, warnings of a recession and snarls in trade flows. In Europe, that fallout has been compounded by fears of a renewed populist backlash to a new wave of refugees — the type that has boosted far-right anti-immigrant parties over the last decade.

 

The conversation between Mr. Brunner and Mr. Fidan on March 2 was a preliminary discussion and did not lead to concrete new steps to prepare for a potential migration surge, European diplomats and Turkish officials said. That is largely because, more than two weeks into the war, there have been no signs of Iranians — or Afghans living in Iran — amassing at the Iran-Turkey border seeking to flee. Mass movements of refugees can take years to peak. After civil war broke out in Syria in 2011, it took nearly four years before Syrian migration to Europe reached crisis levels.

 

But as the war persists, more European officials have worried about that scenario. The concerns intensified after fighting flared between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militia, setting off mass displacement from southern Lebanon.

 

“We do not want to see a scenario like Syria,” Friedrich Merz, the chancellor of Germany, told an audience in Munich, a week after the war began. He added, “We have a strong interest ourselves in avoiding new influxes of refugees from the region.” Mr. Merz raised similar concerns after meeting last week with the prime minister of the Czech Republic.

 

Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the executive branch of the European Union, on Sunday sent a letter focused on migration to leaders of the bloc’s 27 member states.

 

The conflict “has already led to the internal displacement” of millions of people, notably in Iran and Lebanon, Ms. von der Leyen wrote, adding that while people were not crossing into the European Union yet, “what the future holds remains unclear.”

 

She said leaders should use “every migration diplomacy tool we have at our disposal.”

 

European officials are scarred by the political backlash to the surge of refugees that poured into Europe from countries like Syria and Afghanistan, peaking between 2014 and 2016. Europe has since hardened its borders and persuaded transit countries like Turkey to act as the continent’s border guards — but its actions came too late to prevent the rise of far-right anti-immigration parties in countries like Germany, Austria and France.

 

The far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, is now polling neck and neck with Mr. Merz’s party, despite the introduction of measures like German border checks to stop some migrants before they can enter the country.

 

The flow of new migrant arrivals to both Germany and Europe sharply fell in 2017 and has ebbed further since. The European Union’s border agency, Frontex, reported that unauthorized border crossings dropped by a quarter in 2025, continuing a yearslong trend.

 

During the crisis a decade ago, Europeans accused Turkey of turning a blind eye to people smuggling between Turkey and Greece. Smugglers operated with ease along the Turkish coast until European leaders agreed to send billions of dollars in aid to the Turkish government.

 

Now, European leaders appear keen to forestall that kind of outcome. The call between Mr. Fidan and Mr. Brunner grew out of a weekend of intense coordination between Ms. von der Leyen and Middle Eastern leaders.

 

Turkish and European officials briefed on the diplomacy said that all sides shared a wariness about a new migration wave, even if there was no significant planning yet for any kind of coordinated response.

 

Turkey’s interior minister, Mustafa Ciftci, told reporters in early March that his government had prepared three contingency plans to deal with potential migration flows caused by the war.

 

These included setting up “buffer zones” at the border to house refugees and, in the case of very large numbers, allowing the refugees to cross the border and seek shelter inside Turkey, Mr. Ciftci said.

 

He called the last option “a last resort,” adding that Turkey could initially host up to 90,000 people in tent camps and other temporary accommodations.

 

Because of its proximity to long-running conflicts in the Middle East and Asia, Turkey hosts one of the largest refugee populations in the world.

 

The civil war in Syria that began in 2011 led to large numbers of refugees crossing its long border with Syria, overwhelming host communities. The number of registered Syrian refugees in Turkey has fallen to 2.3 million, from its peak of 3.7 million in 2022, according to the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR.

 

The presence of so many refugees is a sensitive political issue for the government, which has stepped up measures along its borders to prevent refugees from entering.

 

Prolonged war in Iran could unsettle the country’s more than 760,000 refugees, who are mostly from Afghanistan, according to data collected by UNHCR.

 

Jim Tankersley is the Berlin bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

 

Jeanna Smialek is the Brussels bureau chief for The Times.

 

Ben Hubbard is the Istanbul bureau chief, covering Turkey and the surrounding region.

French far right’s success in Champagne buoys presidential dream

 

French far right’s success in Champagne buoys presidential dream

 

Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella struck an upbeat tone in the land of sparkling wines.

 

March 19, 2026 2:47 pm CET

By Marion Solletty

https://www.politico.eu/article/france-far-right-success-champagne-region-buoys-presidential-dream-marine-le-pen-jordan-bardella/

 

CHÂLONS-EN-CHAMPAGNE, France — In rural Champagne, the National Rally is finding the momentum and enthusiasm it needs to believe that it can win the French presidency in 2027.

 

The first round of local elections on Sunday delivered mixed results for the far-right party, highlighting how a decisive breakthrough still eludes Marine Le Pen, Jordan Bardella and their allies in France’s biggest cities.

 

Despite strong performances in key southern cities like Marseille and Toulon, where the National Rally scored 35 percent and 42 percent of the vote respectively, the runoff this Sunday likely won’t be an emphatic victory given how other movements have teamed up against the National Rally.

 

But the party’s leadership is relishing its growing popularity in Champagne and other areas of France’s heartland where the moderate right formerly prevailed.

 

The National Rally candidate in the famed Champagne capital of Epernay garnered 31 percent of the vote, doubling the party’s score from the previous local elections in 2020 partly thanks to higher turnout. And in the bucolic town of Châlons-en-Champagne, 45 kilometers from the region’s largest city, Reims, the far-right candidate came just a few hundred votes short of the first-place finisher, incumbent Mayor Benoist Apparu, a minister under former President Nicolas Sarkozy.

 

The dream is that combining growing rural support with the surging number of far-right voters in the French sunbelt in addition to the National Rally’s northern strongholds will be enough to deliver the poll-topping party their big prize in the 2027 presidential election.

 

 

“It is through these [local] roots that we will rebuild France, town by town,” Le Pen said at a rally Wednesday on the outskirts of Châlons-en-Champagne. “The great victory we are preparing for next year will not be handed to us, it will be conquered.”

 

Speaking to a crowd of about 2,000 people in a mid-sized convention center, Le Pen and other National Rally heavyweights framed the upcoming runoffs as another example of President Emmanuel Macron and his allies trying to “ignore, if not shut down people’s voice.” Many of the cross-party alliances that emerged after the first round of the contest look poised to again block the party from winning control of major cities in the runoffs this Sunday.

 

Lawmaker Laurent Jacobelli elicited cheers in the crowd when he slammed those strategic partnerships as a “ménage à trois between Macronism, Socialism and the fake right” on stage.

 

Ahead of the rally, a small gathering in the city’s historic center on Wednesday gathered around 300 people protesting the National Rally’s presence, but they were stopped by police before they could reach the rally’s venue.

 

Unite the right

In Reims, the National Rally landed a symbolic win this week when its candidate, Anne-Sophie Frigout, merged with a center-right candidate, Stéphane Lang from Les Républicains ahead of the runoff.

 

Such alliances, now openly called for by Bardella, used to be anathema for centrist parties who have pledged to keep the National Rally at arm’s length.

 

“I am sure that this alliance is going to reproduce itself everywhere in the weeks and months to come,” Frigout told POLITICO at the rally between two selfies with local supporters. “This is what our voters are asking for here.”

 

The Reims merger is being touted by the National Rally and comes amid increasing support for a union on the right. But whether the merger is indicative of a greater trend within the ranks of Les Républicains remains to be seen.

 

Lang, who failed to qualify for the runoff, was immediately expelled from his party for the rogue move. And given he and Frigout together scored 28.7 percent of the vote in the first round, the alliance is unlikely to lead to victory.

 

Historically, the complex dynamic of ad hoc, last-minute alliances that shape local elections in France’s two-round system has worked against the National Rally, with the far right accusing the rest of the political class of conspiring to keep it out of power.

 

But its leaders now hope they can break that glass ceiling ahead of next year’s presidential race.

 

During his speech at the rally, Bardella’s message to France’s conservative party was simple: “Join us,” he said.

 

“We are facing a wall that is being built against us,” Jacobelli told POLITICO on the sidelines of the rally. “It is not a glass ceiling, it is a reflex of self-preservation” from other parties.

 

During Bardella’s speech, a small group overcome by enthusiasm chanted “Jor-dan president, Jor-dan president” — forgetting for the moment that Marine Le Pen, who had a front row seat to the scene, is still supposed to be their presidential candidate pending a decision in her appeal of a five-year election ban.

 

In the crowd, supporters vigorously approved both leaders’ odes to the working class and their chastising of leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

 

“If Mélenchon goes through, we lose France forever,” Jordan Delvallée, a blue-eyed, 22-year-old mechanic who came to the rally with a younger friend. “There is no better party than [the National Rally],” he said, even if “everybody is against them.”

 

“The French get cold feet at second round because they are scared, but one shouldn’t be afraid of change.”