GERMANY: Wolfgang Schaeuble has won his parliamentary seat a dozen times, survived an attempt on his life and guided Angela Merkel through the euro zone crisis. Now, the German chancellor may have to sacrifice him to secure a coalition deal.
Merkel’s conservatives are likely to win a national election on Sept. 24, but lack of an overall majority could force them to continue their alliance with the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD).
SPD leaders say their price for a re-run of the current ‘grand coalition’ would be for Schaeuble to vacate the finance ministry and hand it to them.
Schaeuble personifies the fiscal discipline and financial stability that many Germans crave. But for the SPD he goes too far.
For Merkel’s political opponents, Schaeuble’s emphasis that both Germany and other EU countries adhere to Europe’s budget rules risks denying French President Emmanuel Macron the flexibility to revive his country’s economy.
Germany is awash with tax revenues but France is in a tighter spot. The SPD worries that insistence on French budget discipline will not give Macron the room for maneuver to foster growth. If Macron fails, the SPD’s concern is the EU will fail or that far-right leader Marine Le Pen could win power.
SPD Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said he had asked Merkel which scenario in her view would be more expensive for Germany: a slightly higher budget deficit in France or Le Pen as president in five years.
“We Germans must change our position,” Gabriel said.
Softening Schaeuble’s approach to the euro zone would not go down well with many Germans. In his home region of Baden-Wuerttemberg, where hard work and saving is a way of life, he enjoys cult status.
In Schaeuble’s view, governments must stop piling up debt so that future policy makers still have some money to spend.
READY TO CONTINUE
In a wheelchair since a deranged man shot him at an election campaign event a few days after German reunification in 1990, Schaeuble lives for the job and has signalled his willingness to stay in politics.
“I’m ready to continue,” he told voters in Sasbachwalden, his home town near the French border.
Schaeuble does not let his disability hold him back.
In May, he flew half way around the world to spend 12 hours in Durban, where he attended several panels at the World Economic Forum on Africa, backed efforts to attract more investment and lectured students on how the EU works.
It is this relentless drive that commands the respect of voters and colleagues alike.
“When I go to breakfasts and party meetings with him, he is the one who is the most aggressive — ready to take on the Social Democrats,” a senior German government official said.
But while polls suggest Merkel will win a fourth term in September, she might end up losing Schaeuble as finance minister.
TRICKY TALKS
Merkel faces tricky coalition talks over ministerial jobs in the next parliament.
Senior members of the two parties most likely to be her junior coalition partner — the SPD and the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP) — have made clear that they have their eye on the finance ministry this time.
“The SPD won’t repeat the mistake it made during the coalition talks four years ago,” Gabriel told reporters.
In 2013, the SPD focussed mainly on domestic issues and pushed for the introduction of a national minimum wage. It consequently got the labor ministry, among other departments such as economic affairs and foreign relations.
Now, the SPD’s candidate for chancellor, Martin Schulz, has made investment and solidarity with Europe a cornerstone of his campaign, signalling a less rigid stance on the budget.
If the Social Democrats are forced into another grand coalition under Merkel, it would be “very important” for the SPD to get the finance ministry, a senior SPD source told Reuters.
“If there’s one thing we Social Democrats have learned, it’s this: We should not enter coalition again without controlling the finance ministry,” SPD budget lawmaker Johannes Kahrs told Reuters.
The smaller FDP shares similar thoughts. A senior FDP source said the party was interested in the finance ministry, although it could be more difficult for it to achieve this.
REFORM, THEN INTEGRATE
Senior members of Merkel’s CDU/CSU conservative bloc acknowledge that she could win the election and still be forced to give up Schaeuble as finance minister.
Eckhardt Rehberg, Merkel’s chief budget lawmaker in parliament, said his party would find it hard to keep the finance ministry if the election produced another ‘grand coalition’ with the SPD — an option both parties have said they dislike.
“Keeping the finance ministry will be most difficult to achieve with the SPD as junior partner because the party has put a strong emphasis on finances and Europe,” Rehberg told Reuters.
“If we have a similar situation on election night as we did four years ago, the SPD is likely to demand not only the foreign ministry but also the finance ministry,” he added.
It remains unclear whether Merkel will have to sacrifice Schaeuble. But his departure would be a blow for the chancellor’s goal of strengthening integration within the EU once Britain leaves, or at least within the euro zone.
For Merkel, deeper integration is a question of sequencing.
This is where Schaeuble could help her: keeping skeptical German voters and lawmakers on board by insisting France and the southern euro zone countries reform first, before agreeing to bind Germany’s economic fate closer to theirs.
“If France becomes stronger that would help,” said one senior official close to Merkel.
Merkel may win election, but lose her finance minister
Merkel may win election, but lose her finance minister
Trump urges Iranian Kurds to attack Iran as war widens
- Azerbaijan preparing unspecified retaliatory measures on Thursday
- The seven-day war has now seen Iran target Israel, the Gulf states, Cyprus, Turkiye and Azerbaijan, and spread to the Indian Ocean off Sri Lanka
DUBAI/WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump encouraged Iranian Kurdish forces in Iraq to launch attacks against Iran as the Middle East conflict widened, with Azerbaijan warning it would retaliate for being targeted by Iranian missiles.
Israel on Friday said it had started a “broad-scale” wave of attacks against infrastructure targets in Tehran, as Gulf cities came under renewed bombardment by Iran.
The seven-day war has now seen Iran target Israel, the Gulf states, Cyprus, Turkiye and Azerbaijan, and spread to the Indian Ocean off Sri Lanka where a US submarine sank an Iranian naval ship.
On the possibility of the Iranian Kurdish forces entering Iran, Trump told Reuters on Thursday: “I think it’s wonderful that they want to do that, I’d be all for it.”
Two Iranian drone attacks targeted an Iranian opposition camp in Iraqi Kurdistan on Thursday, security sources said.
Iranian Kurdish militias have consulted with the United States in recent days about whether, and how, to attack Iran’s security forces in the western part of the country, according to three sources with knowledge of the matter.
The Iranian Kurdish coalition of groups based on the Iran-Iraq border in the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan has been training to mount such an attack in hopes of weakening the country’s military, as the United States and Israel pound Iranian targets with bombs and missiles. Trump, speaking with Reuters in a telephone interview, also said the United States must have a role in deciding who will be the next leader of Iran after airstrikes killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last week.
“We’re going to have to choose that person along with Iran. We’re going to have to choose that person,” he said.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Thursday that the US was not expanding its military objectives in Iran, despite what Trump said about choosing the country’s next leader.
“There’s no expansion in our objectives. We know exactly what we’re trying to achieve,” he said. The attack on Iran is a major political gamble for the Republican president, with opinion polls showing little support and Americans concerned about the rise in gasoline prices caused by disruption to energy supplies. Trump dismissed that concern. Shares on Wall Street fell on Thursday, weighed by surging oil prices, as the economic impact of the campaign intensified, with countries around the world cut off from a fifth of global supplies of oil and liquefied natural gas and air transport still facing chaos and global logistics increasingly snarled.
Azerbaijan prepares to retaliate
Azerbaijan was preparing unspecified retaliatory measures on Thursday after it said four Iranian drones crossed its border and injured four people in the Nakhchivan exclave.
“We will not tolerate this unprovoked act of terror and aggression against Azerbaijan,” President Ilham Aliyev told a meeting of his Security Council.
Iran, which has a significant Azeri minority, denied it targeted its neighbor.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah militia warned Israeli residents to evacuate towns within 5 km (3 miles) of the border between the countries in a message posted on its Telegram channel in Hebrew early on Friday.
“Your military’s aggression against Lebanese sovereignty and safe citizens, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and the expulsion campaign it is carrying out will not go unchallenged,” Hezbollah said.
Us munitions full
Hegseth and Admiral Brad Cooper, who leads US forces in the Middle East, said during a briefing about operations that the US has enough munitions to continue its bombardment indefinitely.
“Iran is hoping that we cannot sustain this, which is a really bad miscalculation,” Hegseth told reporters at Central Command headquarters in Florida. “Our munitions are full up and our will is ironclad.”
The Pentagon earlier this week said the military campaign, known as Operation Epic Fury, is focused on destroying Iran’s offensive missiles, missile production and navy, while not allowing Tehran to have a nuclear weapon.
Cooper said the US had now hit at least 30 Iranian ships, including a large drone carrier that he said was the size of a World War Two aircraft carrier.
He added that B-2 bombers had in the past few hours dropped dozens of 2,000 penetrator bombs targeting deeply buried ballistic missile launchers, and that bombings were also targeting Iran’s missile production facilities.
Iran’s ballistic missile attacks had decreased by 90 percent since the first day of the war, while drone attacks had decreased by 83 percent in that time frame, he said. In Iran, at least 1,230 people have been killed, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society, including 175 schoolgirls and staff killed at a primary school in Minab in the country’s south on the first day of the war. Another 77 have been killed in Lebanon, its Health Ministry says. Thousands fled southern Beirut on Thursday after Israel warned residents to leave.
