German leader says US was ‘humiliated’ over Iran

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz delivered an unusually sharp rebuke of Washington this week, accusing America of entering the war with Iran without a clear plan for how to finish it.

The US, he said bluntly, appeared to have no strategy for the conflict.

“The problem with conflicts like this is always you don’t just have to get in,” he said during a meeting with German students, “you have to get out again”.

“We saw that very painfully in Afghanistan for 20 years – we saw it in Iraq,” he added.

The remarks quickly set off a furious reaction from the American president, who responded with an angry Truth Social post in his trademark capitalisation, insisting the German chancellor was wrong.

“The Chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Merz, thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon,” he wrote.

“If Iran had a Nuclear Weapon, the whole World would be held hostage,” he added.

“I am doing something with Iran, right now, that other Nations, or Presidents, should have done long ago,” he wrote, adding “no wonder Germany is doing so poorly, both Economically, and otherwise!”

In a separate social media post, Mr Trump also raised the prospect of pulling American troops out of Germany, in what appeared to be retaliation for Merz’s comments.

The US has maintained a permanent military presence in Germany since the Allies defeated Nazi Germany at the end of World War II.

Germany hosts about 36,000 American troops, as well as the headquarters of European (EUCOM) and African (AFRICOM) central command, making it a key hub for logistics, intelligence and medical support for US operations across both continents.

“The United States is studying and reviewing the possible reduction of Troops in Germany, with a determination to be made over the next short period of time,” the American president wrote.

It is a striking clash for two governments that have largely been aligned.

A Boeing C-17A globemaster III cargo plane of the US Air Force takes off from Ramstein Air Base last month in Ramstein-Miesenbach, Germany.

After all, Chancellor Merz has counted among the strongest backers of US policy on Israel.

That made the shift all the more notable.

Last June, when Israel first bombed Iran, Mr Merz said Israel was doing the “dirty work” for the rest of the world.

Now, as tensions between Berlin and Washington simmer, another question comes into focus.

Is Mr Merz right to suggest the US has been “humiliated” by Iran?

That is not how the Trump administration sees it, least of all Mr Trump and his Secretary of Defence/War Pete Hegseth, both of whom insist events are unfolding on American terms.

Mr Hegseth told a congressional committee on Wednesday that the greatest adversary confronting the administration was “the reckless, feckless and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans”.

Over six hours of testimony, he rejected the idea that the US had stumbled into another Middle East quagmire and urged Congress to approve a $1.5 trillion military spending package.

At the same hearing, the Pentagon’s top finance official told lawmakers the war had so far cost at least $25 billion.

US officials later told CBS News, however, that the real figure was closer to $50 billion once replacement ammunition and repairs to military assets across the region were included.

A CNN investigation this week also documented damage from Iranian strikes at 16 US military bases in the Middle East.

Mr Trump, for his part, stayed defiant, saying on Thursday that the US had already won but that he wanted to win “by a bigger margin”. He said he was seeking guarantees that Iran would never obtain a nuclear weapon.

“The blockade is genius,” he had earlier told reporters in the Oval Office during a meeting with the crew of the Artemis II moon mission.

Donald Trump criticised the German Chancellor in a post on his Truth Social platform

“Militarily, we wiped them out,” he said.

“Now, they have to cry uncle… just say, we give up, we give up.”

Still, Mr Trump also revealed clear frustration with dispatching US envoys to talks in Pakistan only to come away empty-handed.

“We’re not flying anymore with 18-hour flights every time we want to see a piece of paper,” he told reporters.

For the time being, he said, communication would happen by phone.

“I always like face to face,” he said.

“But when you have to fly 18 hours every time you want to have a meeting … and you know they’re going to give you a piece of paper that you don’t like even before you leave, it’s ridiculous.”

Mr Trump said he believed Iran would ultimately have no choice but to negotiate on US terms because of the dire state of its economy.

“Their economy is really in trouble, it’s a dead economy,” he said.

Yet the US is also absorbing the economic shock from the continuing closure of the Strait of Hormuz, with gas prices stuck above $4 a gallon, inflation climbing and consumer confidence weakening.

And despite Washington’s insistence that Tehran will blink first, Iran has shown no sign of backing down, warning of “sustained, wide-ranging, and painful retaliation”, if US attacks resume on the country.

As both sides continue to claim victory, Iran appears to be shifting the fight onto a different front: the American public.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth

As previously reported, Iran has mounted a global propaganda campaign using AI-generated Lego movie-style videos to mock the US military and lampoon American leaders, portraying Secretary Hegseth as a drunk and Mr Trump as subservient to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The US State Department dismissed the clips as “lies”.

But this week brought what Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute, a Washington DC-based think tank, described as a meaningful change in Tehran’s messaging.

“Instead of taunting the US military, it reflects a new chapter in which Tehran will seek peace by reaching out directly to the American people, bypassing the US government,” he wrote, commenting on the latest video, which praised the American Dream and the rights protected by the US Constitution.

“It’s a mirror image of the US strategy of the past decades,” he added, referring to American “hearts and minds” campaigns aimed at winning over local populations.

How much of that message is landing with Americans is difficult to measure.

What is clear is that the war is becoming steadily less popular at home.

Indeed, two polls published this week showed President Trump’s approval ratings falling to a record low.

Among Republicans, though, the picture looks very different.

Polling by the Pew Research Centre found that 79% of Republican voters approved of the way Mr Trump was handling the conflict.

That helps explain why, at least in public, the US president has shown none of the humiliation Mr Merz says he is enduring.

“No more Mr Nice Guy,” Mr Trump posted on social media above an AI-generated image of himself in a suit and sunglasses, carrying an automatic rifle and warning Iran to agree to a nuclear deal or face the consequences.

Even so, analysts say Mr Trump is likely searching for a way out that preserves appearances.

“I think the unstated objective at this point, frankly, is to get out of the war… in some way that saves as much face as possible,” said Kelly Grieco, a military analyst with the Stimson Center, at a panel organised by the Council of Foreign Relations.

“They are not going to say that publicly,” she added, “but I actually think that is the number one goal at this point in this war.”

Yet while Iran’s leadership, now likely more hardline than the previous one, is projecting confidence, its internal troubles have hardly disappeared, according to Richard Nephew, research fellow at Columbia University and former deputy special envoy for Iran during the Biden administration.

Writing in Foreign Affairs, he said: “No matter what happens in the weeks and months to come, Tehran will struggle to provide water, electricity, and gas to its people.”

“It will remain wildly corrupt and poorly managed,” he added.

“In fact, its problems might all get worse after the fighting ends”.

Gas prices have surged in the US

Economic collapse had already driven protesters into the streets before the war began in January.

That unrest was brutally crushed by the authorities, leaving thousands dead, according to estimates by human rights groups.

While the threat of a renewed US and Israeli bombing campaign gives Iran’s leadership a unifying message and fuels a degree of rallying around the flag, the absence of that threat will probably expose the old fractures again.

For Washington, the challenge is how to bring the war to an end without further entrenching the regime.

It is worth remembering that one of the first acts of this war was for the US president to urge the Iranian people to rise up against their rulers.

The administration has since quietly dropped that rhetoric, turning its attention instead to striking a deal that would eliminate Iran’s nuclear capabilities and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

“But it should set a high bar for significant sanctions relief and ensure that the IRGC-led regime is not the primary beneficiary of any deal,” argued Mr Nephew.

“Only then will the Iranian people have a chance to finally control their own destiny.”

For now, that outcome appears far away.

In the meantime, neither side wants to look as though it is compromising with its arch nemesis.

The Iranian leadership knows that projecting strength is essential to survival in an authoritarian system like its own.

As for Mr Trump, even if he feels the humiliation Mr Merz described, he is unlikely ever to show it.