Merz's coalition partner queries US and Israeli goals in Iran

A senior member of Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD), the junior partner of Chancellor Friedrich Merz's coalition government, called on Sunday for the United States and Israeli to justify their attacks on Iran.

"The Israeli government has justified the military intervention as a preventive reaction. But doubts will remain for as long as they do not make their evidence public," Rolf Mützenich, an SPD foreign policy spokesman told the Sunday edition of Berlin's Tagesspiegel newspaper.

US President Donald Trump's aims and their consequences were just as impenetrable, he said. "The American administration must explain why further negotiations on the Iranian nuclear programme were without perspective," Mützenich told the paper.

He called for a break in the hostilities to allow civilians to seek safety.

Mützenich acknowledged the brutality of the current regime in Tehran. "Both the overwhelming majority of Iranians and many other countries would be happy to see these rulers replaced by a legitimate government and a parliament aware of its responsibilities," he said.

But experience showed that changes of this kind could not be initiated from outside, "and certainly not in a region that has been marked by innumerable interventions and coups," Mützenich said.

Israeli and US forces launched widespread attacks on Iran on Saturday, targeting its political and military leaders, along with military facilities, justifying the strikes as "preventive" to halt Tehran's nuclear programme.

The strikes followed just two days after talks on the programme in Geneva ended without clear progress but also without a final breach. Trump had set an early March deadline for substantive progress.