Germany’s Merz turns against Trump over war in Iran

BERLIN — Only last week German Chancellor Friedrich Merz was “on the same page” as U.S. President Donald Trump over the goals of the Iran war.

He is no longer sounding so enthusiastic.

Europe’s most powerful leader went out on a limb to stick close to Washington in the early days of the conflict, while his peers such as Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the U.S.-Israeli strikes as illegal.

But Merz is now having to perform an abrupt U-turn as the economic and security impacts of the war on the EU’s biggest economy become clearer, and is publicly airing his fears that Trump has no exit strategy to end the fighting in the Persian Gulf.

On Friday, during a visit to Norway, Merz struck his most critical tone to date. He argued the war raised “major questions” about security and added: “It is having a massive impact on our energy costs, and it has the potential to trigger large-scale migration.”

That’s a far cry from his trip to Washington last week. Visiting Trump in the Oval Office, Merz voiced his support for Trump’s war aims. He gave a fawning chuckle when the president bragged of the damage U.S. airstrikes had inflicted on Iran and declared that Berlin was fully aligned with Washington regarding the need to eliminate the dictatorship in Tehran.

But the chancellor no longer appears to be in a laughing mood as the repercussions of the war — now set to enter its third week — increasingly threaten myriad German and European interests. Merz’s political isolation among key European allies and growing pressure from his center-left coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), have pushed the chancellor to take a tougher line on the war in recent days.

Merz increasingly fears the Iran war will deepen his country’s formidable economic woes — with Germany’s already-ailing manufacturing sector taking another hit thanks to soaring energy costs. He also worries it could set back European efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine and potentially unleash a new refugee crisis just as he is battling to prevent the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party from becoming the country’s most popular political force.

Merz on Friday condemned the Trump administration’s decision late Thursday to ease oil sanctions on Russia in an effort to bring down global oil prices, fearing the move will only serve to refill the Kremlin’s war chest and sustain Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He called the move “wrong.”

“We want to ensure that Russia does not exploit the war in Iran to weaken Ukraine,” Merz added.

‘Endless war’

Merz has sent mixed messages on Iran since the U.S. and Israel launched their attacks. The day after the first assault, Merz expressed doubts that they would succeed in toppling the regime in Tehran and warned of an Iraq-style quagmire. Still, he said, Germany was in no position to “lecture” its allies and supported their goal of regime change.

Those mixed messages have even led to confusion on the German position within Iran’s government.

“We don’t know what the real position of Germany is,” the Iranian ambassador to Germany, Majid Nili Ahmadabadi, told POLITICO. “We are hearing different voices from within the government.”

But Merz took a somewhat tougher line on the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Wednesday this week when, standing alongside Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš in Berlin, he expressed concern that the U.S. and Israel have no plan for ending the conflict.

“We have no interest in an endless war,” Merz said at the time.

That shift is at least partly due to growing pressure within the EU and inside his own coalition government, with center-left SPD lawmakers increasingly attacking Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) for being soft on Trump and the Iran strikes. 

“The CDU position is increasingly losing ground,” said René Repasi, an SPD lawmaker in the European Parliament.

Repasi said that European Council President António Costa’s criticism of the U.S. and Israeli strikes earlier this week illustrated Berlin’s isolation. “He knows that the majority of member states are behind him,” Repasi said of Costa.

This week, even Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni — a frequent Trump ally — joined the chorus of EU leaders condemning the attacks on Iran as against international law.

Merz hasn’t gone that far — and is unlikely to do so. But SPD politicians in Berlin say Merz’s tougher rhetoric in the past couple days is due at least partly to pressure they’ve applied.

“There were different rounds within the coalition where we insisted very strongly that we should clearly reject this war,” Adis Ahmetovic, the leading foreign policy lawmaker for the SPD, told Deutschlandfunk radio earlier this week.

‘Economic and refugee fears’

But Merz is also being driven by the economic risks of a prolonged war, particularly as Germany’s energy-intensive manufacturing sector — which was already sputtering before the war started — is particularly vulnerable to cost spikes.

“Growth prospects are likely to continue to deteriorate,” Veronika Grimm, one of the country’s leading economists, wrote in an essay for German newspaper Handelsblatt. “For Germany, this means that hopes for a return to growth are once again being dampened.” 

Germany is also expected to be among the EU countries most impacted if the escalating war in the Middle East creates a new refugee crisis.

Germany would be the most popular destination for Iranians fleeing the war, with 28 percent of Iranians identifying it as their most likely destination, according to a study by the Berlin-based Rockwool Foundation. That is due largely to the fact that Germany is already home to a large population of Iranian refugees.

These challenges come as Merz’s conservatives face a series of state elections in which rising anxiety over the economy and war abroad are playing a key part — and are helping propel the far right.

In view of the rising risks, Merz on Friday said he would work to develop a plan for ending the war through talks with the G7 and Israel.

“Germany is not a party to this war, and we do not want to become one,” Merz said. “And in that regard, all our efforts are focused on ending the war.”