German chancellor says international law doesn’t apply to Iran

German chancellor Friedrich Merz said of last year’s illegal US-Israeli attacks on Iran that “Israel is doing the dirty work for us all”. Now he has said that the protections of international law shouldn’t apply to Iran. Because rogue states ignore international law.

Except that when he says ‘rogue states’, he doesn’t mean Israel and the US, which just ditched international law to murder Iranian schoolgirls, assassinate Iran’s leader and blow up around twenty Iranian hospitals. He doesn’t mean their enablers – like the German and UK governments – who ignored international law to support the Epstein class’s genocide and now to abet its latest illegal war.

He means Iran.

German double standards

Merz said that “now is not the time” (we’ve heard that before) to “lecture” the US and Israel about their lawbreaking. But apparently now is the time to lecture the victims and tell them international law doesn’t protect them because that doesn’t suit Trump or Netanyahu.

Because Iran hasn’t done the ‘right’ thing and surrendered completely to US and Israel’s demands and the amplification of their European cheerleaders, as he made clear:

Appeals from Europe, including from Germany, and condemnations of Iranian violations of international law, and even extensive sanctions, have achieved little over the years and decades…international legal assessments will have relatively little effect. This is all the more true if they remain largely without consequence… therefore, now is not the time to lecture our partners and allies.

What international law?

Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Wolfgang Janitsch described the comments as “a long farewell to international law”.

Even in Germany, which has a genocide-long record of brutal repression of protests against Israel’s crimes, Merz’s comments caused outrage. So his spokesperson tried to backtrack without backtracking, insisting both that Germany respects international law and doesn’t at the same time:

Germany does not question international law. I want to make that absolutely clear. But there is also a security interest that is not addressed by international law.

Responsible Statecraft summed up the situation succinctly:

Craven Europeans give US and Israel a blank check for illegal war. They frame the crisis not as an act of war against a UN member state, but as a natural consequence of Tehran’s failure to capitulate unconditionally.

Perhaps it’s Merz, like Starmer and his fellow criminals, who needs the protection of international law – but only of his right to a fair trial in the Hague before going down for crimes against humanity.

Featured image via the Canary