Merkel and Putin to discuss US – Iran crisis on January 11th
3761 Min Read
German Chancellor Angela Merkel will travel to Russia on Jan. 11 for talks with President Vladimir Putin on the crisis triggered by the killing of top Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani in a U.S. air strike, the Kremlin press service said.
Merkel will make the trip on the invitation of Putin and they will also discuss the situation in Syria, Libya and Ukraine, it said.
Merkel’s spokesman said German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas would accompany her on the trip.
DW reports that Germany is split over its strategy in the US-Iran conflict as tensions escalate at breakneck speed in the days following the killing of top Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani.
Picking sides or diplomatic inaction risk further alienating the United States and Iran, both of whom are already critical of German and European responses to the conflict, analysts say. The challenge will be preserving Germany’s trademark multilateralism amid conflicting domestic interests and pressure from abroad.
“Choosing sides will only harden the stances of the US and/or Iran and weaken the EU’s mediation position in the long-term,” Gert Hilgers, a doctoral researcher in international politics at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, told DW. “For Berlin, this is not a matter of ambivalence or the avoidance of making hard decisions, but a matter of sticking to its foreign policy roots.”
See how European countries reacted to Soleimani’s killing.
