German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has strongly backed Israel’s war on Iran and said on Tuesday that Israel was “doing dirty work” for the West by launching the assault.
“This is the dirty work Israel is doing for all of us. We are also victims of this regime. This mullah regime has brought death and destruction to the world,” Merz said.
The German leader also said that Iran’s nuclear program must be destroyed and suggested that the US should do it since it has heavy bunker-busting bombs that the Israeli military doesn’t possess. “The Israeli army is obviously unable to accomplish that. It lacks the necessary weapons. But the Americans have them,” he said.
When Israel first launched its aggressive war against Iran on Friday, Germany’s Foreign Ministry released a statement condemning the Iranian counterattack. “We strongly condemn the indiscriminate Iranian attack on Israeli territory,” the ministry said.
Germany, France, and the UK, the three European signatories to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA, worked against the chances of a diplomatic solution between the Trump administration and Tehran by joining the US in introducing a resolution against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Board of Governors.
The resolution claimed Iran was not fulfilling its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, a charge based mainly on uranium traces and nuclear activity that allegedly occurred over 20 years ago.
While Germany, France, and the UK have criticized Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza in recent months, the three countries have all backed Israel’s assault on Iran, though French President Emmanuel Macron has said regime change, which increasingly appears to be Israel’s goal, would be a “strategic mistake.”
