It is also possible that Dear Leader wanted to get back at Merkel for embarrassing him over his spying on her cell phone.
If he wanted to get back at Merkel, he could have awarded this family asylum. That would have been a very public statement that Christians are being persecuted in Germany. But he didn’t do that - he fought the asylum application all the way, and then granted them something much less than asylum, without the corresponding implication re: persecution.