{"id":18207,"date":"2026-03-13T19:13:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T19:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/18207\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T19:13:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T19:13:10","slug":"germanys-merz-turns-against-trump-over-war-in-iran-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/18207\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany\u2019s Merz turns against Trump over war in Iran \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThere were different rounds within the coalition where we insisted very strongly that we should clearly reject this war,\u201d Adis Ahmetovic, the leading foreign policy lawmaker for the SPD, told<\/a> Deutschlandfunk radio earlier this week.<\/p>\n

‘Economic and refugee fears’<\/p>\n

But Merz is also being driven by the economic risks of a prolonged war, particularly as Germany’s energy-intensive manufacturing sector \u2014 which was already sputtering before the war started<\/a> \u2014 is particularly vulnerable to cost spikes.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrowth prospects are likely to continue to deteriorate,\u201d Veronika Grimm, one of the country\u2019s leading economists, wrote in an essay<\/a> for German newspaper Handelsblatt. \u201cFor Germany, this means that hopes for a return to growth are once again being dampened.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>. That is due largely to the fact that Germany is already home to a large population of Iranian refugees.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014\u00a0and are helping propel the far right.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cGermany is not a party to this war, and we do not want to become one,\u201d Merz said. \u201cAnd in that regard, all our efforts are focused on ending the war.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThere were different rounds within the coalition where we insisted very strongly that we should clearly reject this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7189,6366,177,38,1143,154,1120,537,3894,34,94,37,9283,9284,49,2681,971,213,1614,55,509,443,56,51,36,226,2679],"class_list":{"0":"post-18207","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran","8":"tag-andrej-babis","9":"tag-antonio-costa","10":"tag-conflict","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-emmanuel-macron","13":"tag-energy","14":"tag-friedrich-merz","15":"tag-germany","16":"tag-giorgia-meloni","17":"tag-iran","18":"tag-iraq","19":"tag-israel","20":"tag-kremlin","21":"tag-manufacturing","22":"tag-middle-east","23":"tag-migration","24":"tag-norway","25":"tag-oil","26":"tag-refugees","27":"tag-russia","28":"tag-sanctions","29":"tag-security","30":"tag-ukraine","31":"tag-united-states","32":"tag-war","33":"tag-war-in-iran","34":"tag-war-in-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116223462801598062","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}