Germany at 100 days: how Merz went from backing US strikes on Iran to drawing Trump's anger

On February 28, the day US and Israeli forces struck Iran -- killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and numerous civilians -- German Chancellor Friedrich Merz declined to use the phrase "violation of international law," a phrase no member of his government has since uttered. Instead, Merz called the Iranian government a "terrorist regime" and said "categorizing the events under international law will have relatively little effect," adding the US and Israel had "good reasons." Johannes Varwick, a political scientist at the University of Halle, told DW that Merz appeared initially convinced the US and Israel were "doing things in Iran that Europeans are not capable of doing themselves, but that the political goals are correct." German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned against "ignoring" international law. Henning Hoff of the German Council on Foreign Relations assessed that Merz was applying international law selectively -- forcefully in the case of Russia's war in Ukraine, minimally in Iran. "In reality, the chancellor seems to take a situational approach to international law," Hoff told DW.

Days after the strikes, Merz met Trump in Washington -- a visit read domestically as favour-seeking. Norbert Rottgen, CDU foreign policy expert in the Bundestag, described it as a difficult balancing act: "What is the lesser evil? War is, without a doubt, an evil, but the mullahs' regime is the greater evil for the region." Lea Reisner of the Left Party accused Merz of having allowed himself to be "paraded as Trump's sidekick." Varwick was blunter: "Merz had -- and this cannot be stated more clearly -- a flawed compass on these issues."

The Strait of Hormuz closure sent oil and gas prices sharply higher, squeezing Germany's already contracting economy. Merz's approval ratings fell and the AfD moved ahead of CDU/CSU in polls. An ARD Deutschlandtrend survey found 58 percent of Germans considered the US-Israeli military action unjustified. By late April, Merz publicly reversed course: the US had "no convincing strategy," he told students, and Iran's leadership had "humiliated" Washington. Trump reacted immediately on Truth Social: "He doesn't know what he's talking about! No wonder Germany is doing so poorly, both economically, and otherwise!" He then announced the withdrawal of 5,000 US troops from Germany, cancelled the planned Tomahawk cruise missile deployment, and re-imposed car export tariffs on the EU. In the period that followed, Germany scrambled to accelerate its own rearmament in response.

As damage control, Merz said Germany would join a naval mission in the Strait of Hormuz once hostilities end, with a minesweeper on standby -- though he has not walked back his assessment of US strategy. The transatlantic damage remains visible: at a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Sweden in late May, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Trump sees "disappointment at some of our NATO allies and their response to our operations in the Middle East" and warned that "that will have to be addressed." Rubio described the NATO summit in Ankara in July as "probably one of the most important in NATO's history." Only 15 percent of Germans now consider the US a reliable partner.

For Varwick, the 100-day arc carries a clear lesson for Berlin: "Germany and Europe must clearly define their own interests and not stand there like a deer in the headlights, especially as Washington is bearing down on them, moving in one direction today and another tomorrow." Before becoming chancellor, Merz had argued for greater German independence from the US under Trump; having spent months pulling back from that position, he now appears to have returned to it -- this time under considerably more external pressure.