President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul sharply criticized US and Israeli attacks on Iran at a Berlin event Tuesday, with Steinmeier calling the conflict a “politically fateful mistake” and a “breach of international law.”
The remarks came at a ceremony marking the 75th anniversary of the reestablishment of the West German Foreign Ministry in 1951, an early step in the Federal Republic’s return to international diplomacy after World War II.
Wadephul, a conservative CDU politician, acknowledged the United States’ central role in defeating Nazi Germany, helping rebuild post-war West Germany and assisting reunification after the Cold War. Yet he warned that transatlantic ties face “new epochal challenges” during what he called an increasingly erratic US foreign policy under President Donald Trump.
“Our own security is possibly in more concrete danger than it ever was in the last 75 years,” Wadephul said, citing an aggressive Russia and escalating tensions with the US. He noted Europe now confronts “two wars right on its borders at the same time”: Russia’s war in Ukraine and a war in the Middle East and Gulf.
Despite his criticisms, Wadephul urged not to forget the broader US contribution to Germany’s postwar stability and security, saying Americans liberated Germany from Nazism, helped shape the young Federal Republic and enabled reunification.
Steinmeier, whose ceremonial non-partisan role often allows him to voice blunt assessments, was more forthright on the Middle East. He said foreign policy loses credibility if states fail to call breaches of international law by their name: “This war is, by my estimation, a breach of international law.”
He questioned the claim that the attacks were justified by an imminent threat to the United States, suggesting that line of justification “does not hold water” and pointing to signs of dissent within US agencies — an apparent reference to the recent resignation of Trump’s counterterrorism chief Joe Kent.
Steinmeier described the conflict as “a politically fateful mistake … a truly avoidable, unnecessary war, if its goal really was to stop Iran on its path towards a nuclear weapon.” He argued that other diplomatic avenues might have been more effective, recalling his role 11 years ago as one of the foreign ministers involved in negotiating the now-defunct JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran, which Trump withdrew the US from during his first term.
Tuesday’s ceremony commemorated March 15, 1951, when the occupying powers allowed the Adenauer government to reestablish a Foreign Ministry in Bonn, enabling West Germany to resume foreign relations. The founding of the ministry was seen as a symbolic step in rehabilitating German politics and increasing the country’s autonomy after the war. Konrad Adenauer initially served simultaneously as chancellor and foreign minister, underscoring the role’s significance. The ministry’s Bonn headquarters opened in the mid-1950s; after reunification and the return of the capital to Berlin, the Foreign Ministry’s seat was moved east.
Edited by: Wesley Dockery