Free Republic

The German government is generally critical of US President Donald Trump’s politics, especially when it comes to questions of war and peace in the Middle East. Last year, Trump pulled the US out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that Germany, France and the UK, among others, had struggled to secure and wanted to maintain at all costs. The situation appeared to escalate dangerously after the drone attack on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia on September 14. Iran-aligned Houthi rebels fighting a Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen have claimed responsibility. The US immediately blamed Iran, even as the Saudi government...

For more than a decade, we – Europeans, Americans, and the international community – have feared the imminent threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. To counter this threat and make the Middle East a safer place, the international community came together, using the might of diplomatic negotiations and the force of sanctions, agreed by most of the major economic powers. After 13 years of joint diplomatic effort, we reached a major breakthrough and signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an agreement between Iran, France, the UK, Germany, the US, China, and Russia, regarding Tehran‘s nuclear programme. With that, we...