Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier is facing criticism because he is said to have described the Israeli-American war against Iran as a violation of international law without waiting for an announced “final certificate.” In the conversation, this criticism is portrayed as unfounded and the attack is classified as an obvious breach of international law; at the same time, Germany’s federal government is accused of not stating this assessment openly for political reasons, while Russia’s attack on Ukraine is regularly described in clear terms. The only conceivable justification under international law mentioned is pre-emptive self-defence if an imminent attack is proven by clear evidence; in Iran’s case, there were allegedly no such indications, especially since prior negotiations between the United States and Iran had taken place, which are assessed as a deceptive manoeuvre.
The causes of today’s confrontation are historically traced back to the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the overthrow of the pro-Western Shah, who is said to have come to power after a 1953 coup organized by the United States and the United Kingdom against the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh after he nationalized Iran’s oil industry. Iran’s secret police, SAVAK, is said to have been built up and supported during this period largely by the CIA and Mossad. For the period of the World Wars, Iran is described as having been strongly influenced by foreign powers, above all the United Kingdom and Russia, while after the Second World War a democratic opening is said to have been brought to a quick end. At the same time, the political system of the Islamic Republic is portrayed as repressive toward its own population, including brutal persecution of opposition forces, and a distinction is made between substantive criticism and “demonization,” which is said to apply in the West to Russia and China as well.
Sanctions against Iran are presented as counterproductive in foreign-policy terms because they are said to have intensified inflation and impoverishment and thus weakened precisely those middle classes that could have driven social change, while shadow-economy networks and regime-linked actors are said to have profited from smuggling, which runs in part via Dubai. For the war, an asymmetric Iranian strategy is described: threatening or temporarily closing the Strait of Hormuz, attacking U.S. military bases in Gulf states, and potentially targeting economically critical infrastructure; as a historical precedent, the temporary closure of the strait in the 1980s during the Iran–Iraq War is cited. Under international law, an Iranian attack on bases from which attacks on Iran are launched is described as legitimate, while strikes on targets in cities, such as hotels housing soldiers, are described as sensitive, and as an escalation example, reciprocal attacks on seawater desalination plants are mentioned, including a strike on a facility in Bahrain after a U.S. strike on a facility on an Iranian island within twelve hours.