German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Monday that Iran’s leadership is in the process of “humiliating” the United States in the ongoing conflict.
Merz said Washington appeared to lack a clear strategy and questioned what kind of exit the US might pursue. “The Iranians are clearly stronger than expected and the Americans clearly have no truly convincing strategy in the negotiations either,” he said during a school visit in Marsberg in his home region of Sauerland.
“The problem with conflicts like this is always: you don’t just have to get in, you have to get out again. We saw that very painfully in Afghanistan for 20 years. We saw it in Iraq,” Merz added. “At the moment, I do not see what strategic exit the Americans will choose, especially since the Iranians are clearly negotiating very skillfully — or very skillfully not negotiating.”
He said “an entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, particularly by the so-called Revolutionary Guards.”
Merz warned that the complicated situation in the Middle East is now having a strong negative economic effect on Germany. “It is at the moment a pretty tangled situation,” he said. “And it is costing us a great deal of money. This conflict, this war against Iran, has a direct impact on our economic output.”
The chancellor said Germany is maintaining its offer to deploy minesweepers to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a key route for global oil supplies, but stressed that hostilities must first end.
Visiting the Carolus-Magnus-Gymnasium as part of EU Project Day, Merz emphasized that Germany must take a leading role in the European Union. He noted the EU has about 100 million more inhabitants than the US and argued that, if the bloc were to unite and act more effectively together, “we could be at least as strong as the United States of America.”