Germany’s Merz says the US is ‘being humiliated by the Iranian leadership’

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz says Iran’s leadership is humiliating the United States and getting US officials to travel to Pakistan and then leave without results, in an unusually abrupt rebuke over the conflict.

Merz also says he does not see what exit strategy the US is pursuing in the Iran war — comments that underline deep divisions between Washington and its European NATO allies, which had already been festering over Ukraine and other issues.

“The Iranians are obviously very skilled at negotiating, or rather, very skillful at not negotiating, letting the Americans travel to Islamabad and then leave again without any result,” he says during a talk to students in the town of Marsberg.

“An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, especially by these so-called Revolutionary Guards. And so I hope that this ends as quickly as possible,” he adds.

Merz reiterates that Germans and Europeans were not consulted before the US and Israel started attacking Iran on February 28, and that he conveyed his skepticism directly to US President Donald Trump afterwards.

“If I had known that it would continue like this for five or six weeks and get progressively worse, I would have told him even more emphatically,” Merz says, comparing it to previous US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Merz says it is evident the Strait of Hormuz has been at least partially mined. “We have offered, also as Europeans, to send German minesweepers to clear the strait, which has obviously been mined in part,” he says.