{"id":554285,"date":"2026-04-28T02:01:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T02:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/554285\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T02:01:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T02:01:10","slug":"us-is-being-humiliated-by-irans-leadership-says-friedrich-merz-us-israel-war-on-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/554285\/","title":{"rendered":"US is being \u2018humiliated\u2019 by Iran\u2019s leadership, says Friedrich Merz | US-Israel war on Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US is being \u201chumiliated\u201d by Iran\u2019s leadership, according to Friedrich Merz, Germany\u2019s chancellor, who suggested the Trump administration<\/a> was being outwitted at the negotiating table by Tehran.<\/p>\n

Two days ago Donald Trump cancelled a trip<\/a> by US negotiators to Islamabad for indirect talks with an Iranian delegation. A previous round in the Pakistani capital two weeks earlier, when JD Vance, the American vice-president, led the US delegation, broke up without progress<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Merz\u2019s trenchant assessment of the stalled US-Iranian talks<\/a>, which appeared certain to deepen the severe transatlantic rift between the US and its Nato allies, directly contradicts Trump\u2019s effort to cast the limbo in a positive light.<\/p>\n

A day earlier, the US president told Fox News: \u201cWe have all the cards,\u201d adding that if Tehran wanted to talk, \u201cthey can come to us, or they can call us\u201d.<\/p>\n

Speaking to students in Marsberg, Merz suggested it was Trump\u2019s team that was being outplayed. \u201cThe Iranians are obviously very skilled at negotiating, or rather, very skilful at not negotiating, letting the Americans travel to Islamabad and then leave again without any result,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, especially by these so-called Revolutionary Guards. And so I hope that this ends as quickly as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donald Trump and Friedrich Merz at the White House last month. Photograph: Win McNamee\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Iran put forward a new proposal on Monday for a ceasefire deal focused on opening the strait of Hormuz, setting aside discussions on nuclear weapons, missiles, sanctions and other issues for later, according to officials in the region. Under a bill being prepared by Iran\u2019s parliament, shippers would have to pay Tehran for \u201cservices\u201d involved in passing through the strait, which was free before the war.<\/p>\n

Iranian officials said Tehran would be prepared to talk about the nuclear issue eventually, only after the US blockade had ended. Iranian negotiators are also facing domestic pressure from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and public opinion not to discuss nuclear matters.<\/p>\n

Mediators involved in the talks see this approach as unlikely to work because it would achieve none of Washington\u2019s professed war aims, which included a permanent end to Iran\u2019s nuclear programme. \u201cHormuz is a byproduct of the war, so how can this be tackled first?\u201d said a diplomat familiar with the talks.<\/p>\n

The UN\u2019s International Maritime Organization firmly rejected the idea of imposing fees on ships passing through the strait of Hormuz. Arsenio Dominguez, the IMO\u2019s secretary general, said: \u201cThere\u2019s no legal basis for the introduction of any tax, any customs, or any fees on straits for international navigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cHormuz first\u201d offer from Iran does, however, suggest a significant shift in Tehran\u2019s position. The regime had previously sought to use its blockade on oil, gas and other Gulf exports as leverage to win broad security guarantees.<\/p>\n

But after the breakdown of the Islamabad talks, Trump imposed a counter-blockade of shipping using Iranian ports, exacerbating Iran\u2019s deep economic crisis. The International Monetary Fund<\/a> has forecast a 6.1% contraction in Iran\u2019s gross domestic product this year, while year-on-year inflation is running at nearly 70%, with prices for food staples and healthcare rising at even higher rates.<\/p>\n

The blockade has also stopped Iran\u2019s empty tankers returning to port, where they could serve as storage facilities. Iran is running very low on ways to store its output, and winding down production would have long-term damaging effects to its energy sector.<\/p>\n

Abbas Araghchi and Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg, Russia, on Monday. Photograph: Anadolu\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, met Vladimir Putin and a high-powered Russian delegation in Moscow on Monday, seeking in part to mitigate the crippling effects of the blockade.<\/p>\n

According to official media, Putin pledged that Russia \u201cwill do everything that serves [Iranian] interests, the interests of all the people of the region, so that peace can be achieved as soon as possible\u201d.<\/p>\n

Araghchi said \u201cthe world has now realised Iran\u2019s true power\u201d, adding: \u201cIt has become clear that the Islamic republic of Iran is a stable, solid and powerful system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nikita Smagin, an analyst of Russian-Iranian relations, said the talks focused on Russian military and economic support, including transit routes for Iranian trade. \u201cIf the US blockade continues, then the Caspian Sea and the land link with Russia will become one of the few remaining routes for connecting Iran with world markets,\u201d Smagin wrote in a commentary on the Telegram messaging platform.<\/p>\n

Israel attacked the Caspian route in March with the bombing of Bandar Anzali, an Iranian port. But even before the Israeli strike, it fell far short of becoming a substitute for the Hormuz strait, the gateway to more than 90% of Iran\u2019s prewar trade.<\/p>\n

The Panamanian-flagged MSC Francesca was seized by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in the strait of Hormuz last week. Photograph: Meysam Mirzadeh\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Ali Vaez, the Iran project director for the International Crisis Group, said Trump and his team had misjudged how much the economic squeeze would force Tehran into concessions on its nuclear programme.<\/p>\n

\u201cUndeniably, the blockade is basically sharpening the economic pain that Iran was under even before the war started,\u201d Vaez said. \u201cBut Iranian resilience is not a question of economic pain because Iran is in an existential battle and is willing to absorb a much higher price than it has so far. And the Iranian regime doesn\u2019t hesitate to transfer this pain to its population.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said Trump was more politically sensitive on a number of fronts: the political cost of high petrol prices and general inflation at home, the president\u2019s desire to resolve the crisis before meeting Xi Jinping in Beijing in mid-May and the fear that a global shortage of jet fuel could ruin the World Cup, due to be held in North America in June and July.<\/p>\n

If Trump accepted Iran\u2019s offer of a deal to reopen the strait of Hormuz, he could conceivably declare victory by pointing to the damage that the US and Israeli bombing had inflicted on Iran\u2019s nuclear programme and military capabilities. However, such a deal would leave Iran with its stockpile of 440kg of highly enriched uranium, enough in theory for a dozen nuclear warheads.<\/p>\n

Ariane Tabatabai, the vice-president of research, security and defence at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, said Iran could also reconstitute at least some of its military might quite rapidly. \u201cTheir whole military doctrine is based on building and deploying capabilities that they can acquire and maintain and use on the cheap,\u201d said Tabatabai, a former Pentagon policy adviser.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu raised the prospect of fresh Israeli military action in Lebanon, saying rockets and drones possessed by Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group, remained a threat.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are still two central threats from Hezbollah: the 122mm rockets and the drones,\u201d said the Israeli prime minister in a statement issued by his office. \u201cThis demands a combination of operational and technological activity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US is being \u201chumiliated\u201d by Iran\u2019s leadership, according to Friedrich Merz, Germany\u2019s chancellor, who suggested the Trump…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554286,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-554285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}