German Opposition Slams Gov't For Caving To US Pressure Over Iran Nuclear Deal - Reports

German Opposition Slams Gov't for Caving to US Pressure Over Iran Nuclear Deal - Reports

German opposition bashed the government on Friday for yielding to US "blackmail" amid claims that Berlin triggered nuclear dispute process against Iran after being threatened by the White House, media said

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 17th January, 2020) German opposition bashed the government on Friday for yielding to US "blackmail" amid claims that Berlin triggered nuclear dispute process against Iran after being threatened by the White House, media said.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that the US administration had threatened a 25 percent levy on European car imports if Berlin, Paris and London continued backing the Iran nuclear deal. The three states triggered the dispute mechanism over Tehran's violations of the multilateral pact on Tuesday. German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer seemed to confirm the report on Thursday, saying "this expression or threat, as you will, does exist."

Omid Nouripour, a foreign policy spokesman for the Greens party, told Der Spiegel magazine that the government's response was "a public admission of its vulnerability to blackmail."

"The government cannot dismiss the suspicion that the US threat at this time has triggered the dispute resolution mechanism," he said.

Bijan Djir-Sarai, a foreign policy spokesman for the liberal Free Democratic Party, said that "whatever happened behind the scenes the visible events show how drastically the relationship between the US and Germany has worsened."

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has insisted that the dispute process aims at rescuing the 2015 nuclear deal by finding a diplomatic solution. But Djir-Sarai argued that the arbitration was "the beginning of the end, only put more elegantly than Trump did."

US President Donald Trump pulled his country out of the landmark pact in 2018, claiming it was "the worst deal ever." In response, Iran began scaling back limits on uranium enrichment. The three EU core nations, Russia and China have been working to salvage the agreement.