Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Sunday declared his full political support for the illegal attack launched by the United States and Israel against Iran.
In a brazen inversion of perpetrator and victim, Merz of all people called on Tehran to “end the escalation.” The German government would not “lecture” its partners over their military strikes, he stated. Germany shared “many of their objectives”—even if it was “not in a position” to achieve them militarily itself.
Berlin is thus openly lining up behind an imperialist war of aggression.
As David North, chairman of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party (US), explained in his statement “Oppose the US imperialist war on Iran!”, the attack constitutes a crime that was defined at the Nuremberg Trials of 1945–46 as a “crime against peace.” Historians will one day compare February 28, 2026, to September 1, 1939—the invasion of Poland by the Third Reich.
The comparison is politically precise, not rhetorical. Then as now, aggression was justified with the claim that the aggressor had been provoked and was acting in self-defense. Today, Trump, Netanyahu and Merz likewise present the aggressor as the defender. Iran has “destabilized the region” and “supported international terrorism,” they claim. The US allegedly sought “a negotiated solution for weeks” and is now conducting “targeted airstrikes.”
This is war propaganda. In reality, it is a long-prepared war aimed at enforcing regime change. Merz made no secret of the fact that Berlin shares this objective. The federal government shares “the relief of many Iranians that this mullah regime is now coming to an end.” Together with Washington and Tel Aviv, it pursues the aim that “the terror of this regime comes to an end.”
In other words: Germany supports the overthrow of the Iranian government through military force.
Particularly revealing was Merz’s assertion that legal assessments under international law would “have relatively little effect.” Appeals, sanctions and diplomatic steps had achieved nothing. “Now is not the moment to lecture our partners and allies,” he concluded.
These statements mark a qualitative break. German imperialism is openly declaring that international legal norms are secondary when it comes to “fundamental interests” that must be enforced, “if necessary by military force.”
As long as Berlin does not yet possess the military means to wage such a war independently, it supports the US-led offensive. Merz’s announcement that he would speak in Washington with President Trump, that he was in close consultation with Israel and had even been informed in advance of the attack, underscores how directly the German government is integrated into the strategic planning.
The moral outrage over the “terror regime” in Tehran is sheer hypocrisy. In truth, Germany and Europe have supported every US-led war of aggression over the past three decades—from Kosovo to Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.
The same powers have supported the genocide in Gaza over the past two years. Under the leadership of the Israeli government, the Gaza Strip has been systematically devastated. Tens of thousands—predominantly women and children—have been killed. The German government supplied weapons, defended the assault diplomatically and criminalized any serious opposition to it.
From the outset, the World Socialist Web Site has emphasized that the war in Gaza is part of a broader imperialist strategy: the violent reorganization of the Middle East in order to bring this resource-rich and geostrategically central region under direct control—and thereby prepare the conditions for a direct military confrontation with Russia and China.
The attack on Iran is the next stage of escalation.
Significantly, Merz himself drew the connection to NATO’s war offensive in Ukraine. The “Russian war against Ukraine,” he said, is “no less unjust than the wrongdoing of the Iranian regime.” Germany is “Kyiv’s strongest supporter.”
Here, too, reality is turned on its head. For decades, NATO has militarily encircled Russia and deliberately provoked the reactionary invasion launched by the Putin regime. Berlin in particular is using the war to massively rearm and aggressively pursue its geostrategic and economic interests, not only in Eastern Europe, but globally.
The war fronts in Gaza, Iran and Ukraine are expressions of the same global development: the desperate attempt of the imperialist powers to secure their global dominance through military violence under conditions of the historic breakdown of capitalism.
Merz admitted that the attack is “not without risk.” The catastrophically failed invasions and regime-change wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya demonstrate “how real the medium-term risks are.” The consequences, he acknowledged, “would also have to be borne by us in Europe and in Germany.”
Yet despite these warnings, the German government supports the war.
Why? Because this is not about “peace,” “security” or “democracy.” The aim is the installation of a pro-Western puppet regime in Tehran that would open the country’s vast oil and gas reserves to Western corporations and fully integrate Iran into Washington’s strategic offensive against Russia and China.
For the Iranian working class, this promises nothing but new catastrophes. The experiences of Iraq and Libya demonstrate that regime changes imposed by imperialist bombing bring social devastation, ethnic fragmentation and brutal repression.
Germany’s support for this war is no aberration, but the expression of a conscious strategic orientation. German imperialism, which unleashed two world wars in the 20th century and committed immeasurable crimes, is once again striving for global influence. Terms such as “peace order” and “transatlantic burden-sharing” are merely euphemisms for the violent redivision of the world.
The escalation against Iran dramatically increases the danger of a regional conflagration and a direct clash between the great powers. It threatens millions of lives, could drive millions more into flight, destabilize Europe and even plunge the entire world economy into the abyss.
Opposition to this policy will not come from the established parties—including those that nominally call themselves left. Immediately after the US-Israeli assault began, Left Party chairman Jan van Aken expressed solidarity with the pro-imperialist Iranian opposition and the official war aims. “It is right that an Iranian nuclear bomb must be prevented at all costs,” he declared. But this could not be achieved through “military attacks,” he claimed, but only through negotiations and strict on-site monitoring.
In other words: the war aims are correct, but not necessarily the methods. Van Aken is clearly concerned that the criminal and illegal escalation in the Middle East undermines the propaganda used by NATO to justify its war offensive against Russia. “If the West itself violates international law,” he warned, it will be “all the harder to win global support for Ukraine and the struggle against the violator of international law, Putin.” For Putin, February 28 was “once again a good day.”
Such statements once again make clear how directly Van Aken and his party support NATO’s war offensive against Russia.
Opposition to war must be organized independently of all pseudo-left parties and must come from the working class—in Germany, in Iran, in the United States, in Israel and internationally. The struggle against war is inseparable from the struggle against the capitalist system that produces it. It requires an international socialist perspective and strategy.