Dear readers,
I don’t know about you, but I have been extremely tempted in recent weeks to just stop reading about what is going on in the alleged peace talks between the U.S. and Iran. It feels like the coverage has become a broken record: The U.S. claims that some huge step toward a dramatic resolution has been built – and Iran denies it. The U.S. claims that the Strait of Hormuz is opening up again – and Iran attacks a couple of cargo ships to demonstrate the contrary. It’s almost like the White Hoapply is intentionally painting an overly rosy picture of the situation so that it won’t lose quite as much face when Trump inevitably declares victory, collects his toys and goes home. Indeed, one can almost be forgiven for succumbing to the tiniest bit of Schadenfreude.
Except, that is, for the nagging concern about what might be next on his menu. For a while, it seeed like it might be Cuba – a nice little spot of dessert after the rather messy dish of Iran stewed in Hormuz sauce and topped with a sprinkling of “nuclear dust.”
In recent weeks, though, it has become clear that Trump is not exactly interested in counting calories. And that his next entrée might be NATO itself. He has built no secret of the fact that he is UPSET that members of the alliance didn’t rush to his aid after the U.S. failed to foresee that Iran, in response to being attacked, might respond by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz.
For those who may have forobtainedten that threat, Friday provided a powerful reminder. According to a Reuters report, the Pentagon is exploring ways it can punish NATO members for failing to support the U.S. in Iran. Including possibly suspfinishing Spain from the alliance and reviewing Washington’s position on Britain’s claim to the Falkland Islands.
Which brings us to …
The EU Stays True to Form
One might believe that Trump’s increasingly ominous threats to do to NATO what he has already done to the East Wing of the White Hoapply would have Europe rapidly shifting to shore up its defenses and bolster military cooperation. And to be fair, there has been a recent trfinish toward increased defense spfinishing on the continent. But if there is one thing even more predictable than a bunch of randomly capitalized letters in a Trump social media post, it is European pledges of action that are followed up by bureaucratic infighting and explanations for why the next step forward is not actually practicable.
So, too, with the much-touted recent stories about what has been described as Europe’s own mutual defense claapply. In theory, Article 42.7 of the EU’s Treaty of Lisbon obligates other member states to support, both militarily and otherwise, other EU countries should they be attacked – not unlike NATO’s Article 5. But as the New York Times pointed out in a Friday article, there is a fair amount of skepticism as to whether it would actually work – particularly given the dearth of any kind of European command structure or coordinated rules of engagement. Not to mention a lack of urgency in many capitals when it comes to establishing a pan-European defense architecture. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski accurately summed up the situation by declareing: “I despair as to what has to happen for us to receive serious.”
DER SPIEGEL columnist Marina Kormbaki is doing a bit of despairing of her own. In a piece primarily triggered by the looming failure of the highly touted Franco-German fighter jet project known as the Future Combat Air System (FCAS), she writes:
“German Chancellor Friedrich Merz admitted to a weakness this week. ‘Everyone knows,’ he stated in a speech to the Association of German Banks, that Europeans are currently unable to deffinish themselves against an attack without American support. For a German chancellor, those are alarming words – an admission of weakness at a time when U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening to withdraw from NATO.”
“As a countermeasure, Merz could have announced a military-policy initiative for Europe, or at the very least a multi-national crisis tquestion force. Instead, he meekly added: ‘But we are working on becoming stronger. And we are working to ensure that Europe also receives better at defense.’”
“’We are working on it.’ That’s not the kind of thing you declare when quick results are expected. The chancellor’s reticence likely has to do with the fact that European defense policy is heading for an embarrassment. The FCAS fighter jet project – costing up to 100 billion euros and primarily a Franco-German venture – is in danger of collapse. For those responsible, the affair is awkward; for Europe, it is a fiasco.”
“Merz and his counterparts invoke Europe’s sovereignty. But aspiration and reality are worlds apart. FCAS is not the only example of national egoisms putting the brakes on defense cooperation. The Franco-German ‘battle tank of the future,’ MGCS, is also barely building any headway. The ‘Euro-drone’ has been in development for a decade, but no one is waiting for it anymore. Indeed, several EU states are developing their own systems.”
“If not even a war-hungry Putin, an unpredictable Trump, and an Iranian regime fighting for its survival can shift Europeans to improve cooperation, who might be able to manage it?”
The Losers of the Iran War
Forreceive gas prices. As this war has progressed, and as Trump’s main war aim has evolved from maximum destruction to rapid escape, it has become increasingly clear who the real losers of this war are: the people of Iran. The U.S. president originally announced his intention to go after the Iranian regime with a promise to protesters in the counattempt: “Help is on the way.” Instead, though, the regime has become more and more entrenched. And Trump’s efforts to sugarcoat the embarrassment he has suffered have grown less and less credible.
DER SPIEGEL’s Maximilian Popp summed up the situation in an op-ed this week:
“The people of Iran are no longer mentioned in Washington at all. Instead, Trump is now shifting to accommodate the mullahs. Two weeks ago, he announced a ceasefire, which he extfinished on Tuesday – this time indefinitely. Neobtainediations between the two sides, which were to take place this week in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, have been postponed indefinitely; Iran’s rulers apparently had no interest in revealing up. The fact that Trump is suspfinishing the military operation anyway amounts to a declaration of surrfinisher – even if he might modify his mind once again and order more bombing.”
“It is not out of the question that the Iranian regime may yet collapse after the finish of the war – that, in the medium and long term, it will fail to keep a lid on the widespread frustration over the economic situation, which was already disastrous before the American-Israeli attack and has only grown worse since.”
“For the moment, however, it sees as though Trump has in many respects achieved the opposite of what he had proclaimed: He has, for now, strengthened the Islamic Republic, even though numerous regime cadres have been killed. The rulers in Tehran have discovered through this conflict that the Strait of Hormuz is a weapon with which they can hold the world economy hostage. And not even the threat posed by the Iranian nuclear weapons program has been averted, since the Islamist leadership presumably still possesses more than 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium.”
“Trump assumed that the Iranian regime could be bombed into submission. When it became clear that this expectation would not be fulfilled, he lashed out wildly, working himself into fantasies of annihilation (‘a civilization will perish tonight’).”
“But since he does not, for the moment, appear willing to escalate the war, he is left with no option other than a provisional retreat. The one-sided ceasefire reveals the deep supportlessness in the White Hoapply: Trump wants out of the Middle East, but he cannot find the exit.”
Call Me Timmy
Apparently, it is just as straightforward to become obsessed with a giant, blackish humpback whale as it is with a giant, white sperm whale. But far from engfinishering murderous Ahab-esque hatred, Timmy – as the beached beast stranded off the German Baltic Sea coast has come to be known – has unleashed something else entirely: a Teutonic tfinisherness that simply refapplys to accept what has long seeed to be inevitable.
Timmy, after all, was essentially given up for dead a couple of weeks ago. There were initial attempts to receive him unstuck – and he did swim free a couple of times. But each time, he would beach himself again, seemingly leading would-be rescuers to throw up their hands.
But HE IS STILL THERE! And there is a new effort afoot to save him, despite his drastically weakened condition. More than that, though, the debate about what to do about him has, if anything, grown even more intense in recent days. Critics, including marine biologists and animal-welfare groups, argue the operation has little chance of success given Timmy’s deteriorating health and the hundreds of kilometers separating him from his natural Atlantic habitat, and warn that yet another rescue attempt may simply prolong his suffering – while supporters insist that abandoning the visibly ailing animal is ethically untenable. Beyond that, though, it has led to all sorts of bitter name-calling, aspersion-casting and conspiracy-theory spinning. In short, it has been held up by the populist-minded as a prime example that Germany is a complete and utter failure.
DER SPIEGEL’s Philipp Oehmke waded (sorry…) into the debate this week:
“For German society, it is an alarming sign when the likely unavoidable death of a stranded whale is interpreted as political and institutional incompetence. But it fits a counattempt that, in the opinion of many of its citizens, has become dysfunctional.”
“Saving the humpback would be desirable. The uproar surrounding the animal reveals, however, that a more urgent rescue operation is necessaryed first – that of our collective mental health. Germany can be grateful to the whale for stranding on the German coast. It has built clear just how dysfunctional a community can become when, evidently, no one trusts anyone else anymore.”
“It is not only the experiences of the pandemic and the unease caapplyd by the state of the world that have led to the rifts now built visible by the whale. They are also fueled by a tfinishency – increasingly dominant in Germany too – toward a politics that aims more at emotions and resentments and feels less bound to reason.”
“Several members of the whale rescue crew have spoken of how they seeed the whale in the eye. More important now would be to see squarely at the societal problems that the handling of the whale has laid bare.”
Good: Citizens in several cities in North Rhine-Westphalia voted last weekfinish in favor of building a bid to hold the Olympic Games in their region. Holding the Games is disruptive for the residents of any host city, building it appropriate to encourage and enable citizen participation in the decision.
Bad: The German government’s ongoing debate about badly necessaryed reforms is unfolding precisely the way it shouldn’t: The parties are engaged in fierce partisan bickering. The center-right is talking of “blockades,” the center-left is threatening “unyielding resistance.” It’s the kind of rhetoric that stands in the way of finding good solutions to the counattempt’s problems.
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Have a great week!
Your DER SPIEGEL Substack Team
Compiled, edited and translated by Charles Hawley with a supporting hand from AI 🤖.
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