BERLIN: \u200bThe Iran war is a \u201cdisastrous mistake\u201d that breaches international law, Germany\u2019s president said on Tuesday in an unusually blunt rebuke of US President Donald Trump\u2019s foreign policy.<\/p>\n
This marked a rupture for German ties with its biggest post-war ally, he added.<\/p>\n
In a scathing verbal attack, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, whose largely ceremonial role allows him to speak more freely than politicians, took a far more critical line than Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who has \u200cskirted questions on \u200cthe war\u2019s legality.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur foreign policy does not \u200bbecome \u200cmore convincing \u200bjust because we do not call a breach of international law a breach of international law,\u201d Steinmeier, a former foreign minister from the center-left Social Democratic Party, said in a speech at the Foreign Ministry.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe must address this with regard to the war in Iran. For, in my view, this war is contrary to international law,\u201d he said, adding he had little doubt that the justification of the imminent nature of an attack on \u200cUS targets did not hold water.<\/p>\n
Calling \u200cthe war unnecessary and a \u201cpolitically disastrous mistake,\u201d Steinmeier \u200bsaid Trump\u2019s second term marked a \u200crupture in German foreign relations as profound as Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust \u200cas I believe there will be no going back in relations with Russia to before Feb. 24, 2022, so too do I believe there will be no going back in transatlantic relations to before Jan. 20, 2025,\u201d said Steinmeier.<\/p>\n
Germany \u200chad to apply lessons it learned in extricating itself from \u201cexcessive dependencies\u201d on Russia and apply them to the US, particularly in defense and technology, which translate to power, he said.<\/p>\n
Germany has stressed the importance of creating alternatives to US-dominated technology as concerns grow over US access.<\/p>\n
China returned to being Germany\u2019s top trading partner in the first eight months of 2025, overtaking the US as higher tariffs weighed on German exports. Trade between the US and Germany amounted to more than $190 billion over that period.<\/p>\n
The spat between the Pentagon and Anthropic over safety guardrails surrounding the latter\u2019s artificial intelligence could be a wake-up call, or even an opportunity, for Europe, said Steinmeier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BERLIN: \u200bThe Iran war is a \u201cdisastrous mistake\u201d that breaches international law, Germany\u2019s president said on Tuesday in an unusually blunt rebuke of US President Donald Trump\u2019s foreign policy. This marked a rupture for German ties with its biggest post-war ally, he added. In a scathing verbal attack, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, whose largely ceremonial role allows …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":95375,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95363"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95376,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95363\/revisions\/95376"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}