Germany’s chancellor has branded Donald Trump’s Iran war a strategy-free debacle that has “humiliated” the United States.
The withering verdict from Friedrich Merz—the most pointed European criticism yet against the president’s flailing Middle East campaign—comes after other NATO allies, including the United Kingdom, Spain, and Italy, all rebuffed Washington’s pleas for military backing in the conflict.
Speaking to students in the town of Marsberg, in North Rhine-Westphalia, on Monday, the chancellor, 70, said Washington “quite obviously went into this war without any strategy,” while warning that Iran’s leaders were “negotiating very skillfully,” The Telegraph reported.
“The Iranians are clearly stronger than expected, and the Americans clearly have no truly convincing strategy in the negotiations either,” Merz told the audience.
He added that “a whole nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, especially by these so-called Revolutionary Guards.”
The chancellor—long viewed in Berlin as one of Trump’s more sympathetic European counterparts—drew a stinging parallel with America’s past Middle East quagmires.
“The problem with conflicts like this is always: you don’t just have to get in, you have to get out again,” he said. “We saw that very painfully in Afghanistan for 20 years. We saw it in Iraq.”
Amid his criticism, Merz repeated an offer to dispatch German minesweepers to clear the blockaded Strait of Hormuz, the maritime chokepoint Tehran shut down at the war’s outset.
But Merz’s attack is a fresh humiliation for Trump, 79, who launched Operation Epic Fury alongside Israel on February 28 and has spent the weeks since publicly begging European partners for support, only to lash out when they refuse.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, 54, closed his country’s airspace to U.S. war planes and barred operations from the jointly run Morón and Rota bases. Italy then refused to let U.S. bombers touch down at its strategic Sigonella base in Sicily.
The U.K. initially blocked the Pentagon from launching strikes out of the joint U.K.-U.S. base at Diego Garcia, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer, 63, drawing a sneering “this is not Winston Churchill we are dealing with” jibe from Trump in return.
So apoplectic is the president that the Pentagon has weighed options to suspend Spain from NATO and revise Washington’s official position on Britain’s claim to the Falkland Islands.
A flicker of de-escalation emerged on Monday, with Axios reporting that Tehran had pitched a new peace deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for putting nuclear talks on ice.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
