The trip by German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul to Israel and the Gulf region underscores that the German government, despite all concerns about the political and economic consequences of the war, firmly backs the US-Israeli offensive against Iran. As the first Western government representative to travel to the region since the start of the illegal US-Israeli war of aggression, Wadephul demonstrated Berlin’s political alignment with the warmongers.
At a joint press conference with Wadephul, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar seized the opportunity not only to justify Israel’s large-scale bombing campaign in Iran but also the genocide in Gaza, Israel’s war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and the massive attacks on Beirut with the familiar war lies.
Wadephul did not contradict these statements in any way. Instead, he explicitly thanked Sa’ar, repeated key propaganda claims and demonstratively sided with the warmongers. “The greatest danger comes from the Iranian regime,” he declared. “You have always said that, and today and here it becomes very clear why.” Iran, he claimed, with its “increasingly aggressive behavior and its ever more advanced military arsenal … is a danger to the region and to Europe.” Germany stood “at the side of Israel,” and “Iran’s indiscriminate attacks, also on civilians, must finally stop.”
These statements turn reality completely on its head. It is Israel and the United States that are indiscriminately bombing hospitals, schools and residential areas and killing thousands of civilians. In the bombing of a girls’ school in the Iranian city of Minab alone, more than 150 students were killed.
What is unfolding in the region is a declared war of annihilation reminiscent of the Nazis. US President Donald Trump has openly threatened the destruction of Iran. Israel is pursuing a similar scorched-earth policy in Lebanon. At the same time, the genocide in Gaza—which has reduced the Gaza Strip to a landscape of ruins and cost the lives of more than 70,000 people, the majority of them women and children—is now being extended to the entire region.
At the press conference, Wadephul stated that his discussions had also addressed “political approaches” on “how it can be prevented that the escalation spreads further.” After his stay in Israel, the German foreign minister also visited Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to, as the German Foreign Office website states, “discuss how a political solution to the current conflict can be found.”
But what concerns the German foreign minister is neither human lives nor the massive destruction of entire countries. What Berlin actually fears are the catastrophic political and economic consequences of an uncontrolled regional conflagration.
The war threatens to trigger a new wave of refugees and to plunge Europe—and possibly even the global economy—into recession. No one could “have an interest in chaos or civil war or the disintegration of Iran,” Wadephul declared. The consequences would be “considerable and would also be felt in Europe.”
He warned that a “regional peace order” was needed to guarantee “the security of the states and peoples in the region, in particular the sea lanes, which are important trade routes.” Israel itself had “vital security interests in the region,” and the issue was “the security and the very existence of the State of Israel.” Germany, Wadephul emphasized, “shares this security interest.”
In diplomatic language, the German foreign minister thus spells out what is really at stake. Germany’s support for Israel and the United States is driven by definite imperialist interests. For the imperialist powers, Israel functions as a military bridgehead for the enforcement of their economic and geostrategic interests in the Middle East.
The escalation against Iran and Lebanon is part of a broader war offensive aimed at bringing the entire region under imperialist control while simultaneously preparing the ground for even wider wars against Russia and China.
German imperialism intends to play a leading role in this new division of the world. As long as Berlin is not yet in a position to openly challenge the United States, it seeks in Washington’s wake to massively expand its military and political influence and establish itself as a global power.
In pursuing this aim, Germany’s ruling class is once again prepared to support—and itself commit—barbaric crimes, including illegal wars of aggression and genocide, such as those that Europe, and above all German imperialism, unleashed in the First and Second World Wars. This is precisely what Wadephul’s trip and his demonstrative alignment with the far-right Netanyahu regime signify.
Workers and young people must draw the necessary political conclusions. Opposition to war and militarism in Germany and internationally is enormous. But it must not be left to parties such as the Left Party, which itself has propagandistically supported the imperialist war and even celebrated the assassination of the Iranian leadership through US-Israeli bombing terror.
The struggle against war and genocide must be organized completely independently of all the established parties. It requires an orientation toward the international working class—the only social force capable of putting a stop to the warmongers.
Above all, the anti-war movement requires a clear political perspective: an international socialist program directed against the imperialist powers in every country and against the capitalist profit system that produces war, dictatorship and social devastation.