He says conflict was avoidable and warns against abandoning international law.
On Tuesday, Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, described the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran as a military operation contrary to international law.
“This war is illegal; there is little doubt about that. It is also a disastrous mistake and, what frustrates me most, an avoidable and unnecessary war if the objective was to halt Iran’s path toward an atomic bomb,” he stated.
Steinmeier defended the importance and validity of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) signed in 2015, when he was Germany’s foreign minister, whose purpose was to prevent Iran from gaining access to an atomic bomb.
“We were never as far from Iran becoming nuclear-armed as we were after the 2015 agreement was concluded, to which many in this institution contributed with great dedication,” the German head of state said.
“It was the U.S. secretary of state who said on the day of the signing: ‘With this agreement, we avoid war,’” Steinmeier recalled, lamenting that in 2018, during the second year of Donald Trump’s first term as president of the United States, Washington withdrew from that understanding.
The JCPOA, reached after two and a half years of intense negotiations, included limits on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions. But the agreement lasted only three years, as the United States withdrew unilaterally and reimposed sanctions on Iran.
On Saturday, Iran said it was no longer subject to limits on its nuclear program due to the expiration of the agreement in October 2025.
“International law, as a normative framework, a code of rules and a source of legitimacy, has lost none of its importance — not for Germany nor, of course, for Europe, because in a world without law or rules, this Europe would be lost,” Steinmeier said.
“And the European Union itself is founded on law and rules. It would collapse if we adopted a worldview based on raw power,” he added.
teleSUR/ JF
Source: EFE
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