Trump Being ‘Humiliated’ in Iran Talks, German Leader Says

The US is being “humiliated” by Iranian leaders as President Donald Trump struggles to negotiate an end to the war, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in comments that risk driving a further wedge in transatlantic relations.

In unusually candid terms, the German leader said he didn’t see “what strategic exit the Americans are now choosing,” adding that Tehran’s negotiators are proceeding “very skilfully — or indeed very skilfully not negotiating.”

The result is that an “entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, particularly by these so-called Revolutionary Guards,” Merz told a group of students at a secondary school in western Germany on Monday.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, left, meets with US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on March 3.

The comments underscore several European leaders’ reassessment of their relations with Trump. A tendency to smooth ties by currying favor has given way to a more sober perspective of a US president who has repeatedly called into question NATO, bolstered European far-right forces and threatened to seize Greenland, a territory of Denmark.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who had cultivated close ties with Trump, has navigated a falling out with the American leader, who attacked her verbally after she defended Pope Leo XIV against Trump’s broadsides. At a European Union summit in Cyprus on Friday, Meloni said she’s had no recent contact with Trump, though relations with the US are “still solid.”

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, has in contrast been consistently critical of Trump, drawing the president’s ire after the country denied access to military bases as part of the Iran war.

Merz made an effort to open a productive channel to Trump, including a White House visit in March that involved comparative bonhomie between the two leaders. But the chancellor, whose government is grappling with a spike in fuel prices that is hitting Europe’s No. 1 economy, has grown more critical of the Iran campaign.

Read More: Merz to Discuss ‘Day After’ in Iran, Push Trump on Trade

US and Iranian officials failed to engage in a second round of peace talks over the weekend. After days of anticipation, Trump on Saturday called off a planned trip by his envoys to Pakistan, saying Iran had “offered a lot, but not enough.” Iran’s foreign minister made two separate visits to Islamabad at the weekend, with Axios reporting that a new proposal was made to the US and conveyed through Pakistani mediators.

Merz, reiterating that German and European leaders hadn’t been consulted by the Trump administration before the start of the US-Israeli assault on Iran on Feb. 28, said he’d expressed his skepticism directly with Trump in two conversations.

“If I had known that this would go on for five or six weeks and keep getting worse, I would have made my point to him even more forcefully,” Merz told students at the school in Marsberg in the chancellor’s home district.

The lesson from previous wars, including US-led campaigns in Afghanistan or Iraq, is that the problem lies in bringing such conflicts to an end, Merz said.

“In that respect, I hope this comes to an end as soon as possible,” Merz said. But he didn’t see an immediate prospect for an end, with Iran stronger than its adversaries had expected and Americans lacking a convincing negotiating strategy. The war, he said, is hitting home in Germany.

“This war against Iran has a direct impact on our economic performance and must therefore be brought to an end as soon as possible,” he said.Former State Department official Heather Conley joined Bloomberg's Balance of Power and said the US and Iran are stuck in a standoff until one side feels enough economic pain to force a return to the negotiating table.

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