Germany’s foreign minister said that an attack on a NATO member state could not be ruled out following a drone strike on a British air base in Cyprus.<\/p>\n
“Yes, that danger exists, it cannot be dismissed,” Johann Wadephul told public broadcaster ZDF when asked whether NATO countries could be targeted as the conflict involving Iran escalates.<\/p>\n
The British air force base at Akrotiri in Cyprus was attacked late Sunday with a drone of the Iranian Shahed type, officials said. Two additional unmanned aerial vehicles were intercepted later in the day, according to government sources.<\/p>\n
Cyprus is a member of the European Union but not part of NATO.<\/p>\n
The United Kingdom says it is engaged in a defensive military mission in the Middle East against Iran. Germany has also reserved the right to take military defensive measures.<\/p>\n
Wadephul said in a separate interview with Deutschlandfunk that he understands this to mean German soldiers defending themselves if attacked.<\/p>\n
He stressed again on ZDF that Germany would not participate in any military confrontation. “We are also not making military facilities available for that purpose,” he said.<\/p>\n
He added that efforts must continue to resolve the conflict with Iran through negotiations.<\/p>\n
The United States and Israel launched a large-scale offensive against Iran on Saturday, sparking a regional escalation as Tehran fired missiles at US bases in several Gulf states.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Germany’s foreign minister said that an attack on a NATO member state could not be ruled out following…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":800564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5310],"tags":[232093,8612,68756,2000,299,1824,774,29135,232092,232094],"class_list":["post-800563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-crisis-management-team","tag-cyprus","tag-drone-strike","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-germany","tag-iran","tag-johann-wadephul","tag-nato-member","tag-the-foreign-ministry"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116163666600606126","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}