French President Emmanuel Macron did not hide his satisfaction over his Aug. 25 meeting in Biarritz, France, with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, on the margins of the Group of 7 summit, and the ensuing change of tone by President Donald Trump. Speaking Aug. 27 at the annual ambassadors’ conference in Paris, Macron was cautious but optimistic, hinting that a meeting between Trump and his Iranian counterpart could be in the offing.

Official Israel kept quiet over these latest developments. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made no public statements, but senior officials fed the local press hints about Israel’s apprehensions should such a meeting materialize. Israeli diplomats were sent out to gather information from the French, but their efforts came too late — much too late. The French train has already left the station.

According to French diplomats, Paris is in constant contact with Washington over many diplomatic and security files, including the Iranian one. And so it is safe to assume that the twist of Zarif’s visit was not that much of a surprise for the White House. Israel, though, is another story, and Paris seems to be reluctant to include Jerusalem in its confidence on Iran.

In prior years, when the nuclear deal was being negotiated, Israel espoused a different approach vis-a-vis the Europeans, and vice versa. At some point it was France, not the United States, that defended the Israeli positions. It was France and its Socialist Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius that pushed for the 2013 interim agreement with Iran that froze part of the nuclear program in exchange for relief from the sanctions imposed by the Western powers. Two years later, in March 2015, Israeli emissaries, including then-Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz, went to Paris and to London to seek support against a draft deal proposed by the Obama administration that Jerusalem considered too lenient.