The CDU leadership made it clear on Monday that it did not share this regret. CDU Secretary General Carsten Linnemann said after board and presidium meetings in Berlin that the CDU supported the US action. “There is no contradiction between advocating a diplomatic solution on the one hand and supporting these US and Israeli military strikes on the other – and that is exactly what this federal government is doing,” Linnemann said. “That is why I believe that the American approach is correct in this context.”

Meanwhile, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte does not see the US attacks on targets in Iran as a violation of international law. “I do not agree that the US actions violate international law,” Rutte told a news conference in The Hague. His “greatest concern” regarding the conflict in the Middle East is “that Iran could acquire and use nuclear weapons,” Rutte added. With nuclear weapons, Tehran could expose “Israel, the entire region and other parts of the world to great danger,” he argued. NATO partners “have long agreed that Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.”