Friedrich Merz said concerns about further escalation with Iran dominated his visit to the Gulf region.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz warned on Friday of the threat of military escalation in the Middle East ahead of talks between Iran and the United States in Oman.
Speaking in Doha on Thursday, Mertz said concerns about new conflicts had characterized talks during his visit to the Gulf region.
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“In all of my conversations yesterday and today, great concern was expressed about further escalation of the conflict with Iran,” he said at a news conference.
Merz also urged Iran to stop what he called aggression and enter into talks, saying Germany would do everything it could to calm the situation and bring stability to the region.
The warning came just ahead of important talks between Tehran and Washington officials scheduled for Muscat.
Mediators from Qatar, Turkiye and Egypt have presented Iran and the United States with a framework of key principles to be discussed in the talks, including Iran’s commitment to significantly limit uranium enrichment, two sources familiar with the negotiations told Al Jazeera.
Ahead of the talks, the two countries appear to be struggling to find common ground on a number of issues, including what topics will be discussed.
Iran insists talks should be limited to its long-running nuclear conflict with the West and has rejected a U.S. request to also discuss Iran’s ballistic missiles, warning that pushing issues beyond its nuclear program could jeopardize talks.
Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett, reporting from Washington, D.C., said the United States is keen to follow what it considers an agreed-upon format of talks.
“That agreed format includes a broader range of issues than what the United States understands that Iran intends to discuss in this first set of talks,” she explained.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday that talks should include not only Iran’s nuclear program, but also the range of its ballistic missiles, its support for armed groups around the Middle East and its treatment of its own citizens.
White House officials told Al Jazeera that Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and key figure in Middle East policy negotiations, and Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in the Qatari capital Doha ahead of the meeting.
Halkett said Qatar, along with other U.S. regional partners, including Egypt, plays an important role in facilitating these talks.
“We understand that this is probably part of the reason for the visit, according to White House officials, to try to work with Qatar to get Iran to expand and build upon these forms of talks.”
pressure on iran
The talks come as the region braces for a possible U.S. attack on Iran after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the massing of troops in the Arabian Sea following Iran’s violent crackdown on protesters last month.
The U.S. government has sent thousands of troops to the Middle East, as well as aircraft carriers, other warships, fighter jets, reconnaissance planes and aerial refueling tankers.
President Trump warned that “bad things” would probably happen if a deal could not be reached and that he would increase pressure on Iran.
This is not the first time Iranian and US officials have met in a bid to revive diplomacy between the two countries, which have not had formal diplomatic relations since 1980.
In June, U.S. and Iranian officials met in the Omani capital to discuss the nuclear deal, but the process stalled when Israel launched an attack on Iran, killing several military leaders and top nuclear scientists and targeting its nuclear facilities. The United States then briefly entered the war and bombed several Iranian nuclear facilities.
