Not just former US President Obama, Chancellor Merkel of Germany, too, regards the nuclear deal with Iran as her greatest diplomatic accomplishment. The prominent German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung summed up the central role played by the Merkel government, writing, “Among all the parties working to bring about a negotiated deal, Germans enjoyed [Iranian regime’s] special trust.”
Corporate Germany loved the deal too. The Bavaria Chamber of Commerce, the leading trade body in the country, told its clients ahead of the deal that the “German media landscape across the board agrees that lucrative deals worth billions are waiting to be made in Iran. As soon as the sanction are lifted, the run on the markets begins.”
The hopes were well-founded. German exports to Iran soared, raking in billions of euros in revenue for the fat cats supporting major political parties.
Watching President Trump chip away that political legacy and threaten those corporate profits by decertifying the Iran Nuclear Deal in his Friday speech provoked angry reactions from the German government and corporate media.
Chancellor Merkel joined UK Prime Minister May and French President Macron in supporting the deal in a joint statement. German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel warned that President Trump’s actions could lead to the “danger of war relatively close to Europe”. He also accused the US President of “replacing the rule of law with the law of the strongest.”
“Trump raises danger of war after move on Iran nuclear deal, Germany warns,” reported the UK newspaper Independent, citing German Foreign Minister’s statement.
The widely-read German tabloid Bild Zeitung carried the headline “Trump’s Dangerous Showdown.” The German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called the US President the “tension accelerator,” predicting geopolitical tension following Trump’s move to disavow the deal. Trump will be “risking a massive trust deficit” with the Europeans if he were to walk out of the deal. He was only driven by the “motivation to destroy Obama’s legacy,” complained the newspaper
German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle criticized President Trump for “risking isolating the US for the sake of his own fans”: that would be the people who voted him into office. Risking anything for the sake of the people who put you in power is a foreign concept in Merkel’s Germany. The German broadcaster’s reading of President Trump’s move on the Iran Deal was, however, surprisingly on the mark:
[P]resident pulled an old trick out of the bag, one that he had so gladly used in his previous life as a businessman and reality TV star. He simply redefined the rules of the game, according to his own terms.
On their part, the EU and Germany are pulling the trick that career politicians on both sides of the Atlantic know very well: backdoor dealing. “Europe scrambles to save the Iran nuclear deal,” reported the Israeli newspaper Times of Israel earlier this week. “Unable to convince Trump to drop his opposition to accord, European capitals increasingly turning to Congress to salvage it.”
The UK left-wing newspaper Guardian also confirmed that the “Europe’s governments” were looking to “bypass Trump to save Iranian nuclear deal” and the “European lobbying efforts are now focused on Congress which will have two months to decide.”
To the dismay of the European establishment that still yearns for a return to the Obama days, President Trump is refusing to play by their rules. After dumping the Paris Climate Accord and quitting UNESCO, he is now taking on another of their sacred cows. The angry reactions coming from Berlin and Brussels show how Europe’s ruling elite still haven’t come to terms with the change of guard in Washington.
Video: ‘Berlin will try to save Iran nuclear deal,’ says German Foreign Minister Gabriel.
[Cover image via YouTube]
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