Hormuz is closed. Germany does nothing.

While Iran squeezes global energy supplies, Germany focuses on petrol taxes.

Dear Reader,

Friedrich Merz, when still leader of the opposition, once coined a stinging epithet for the then chancellor Olaf Scholz. Scholz, he said, was a Klempner der Macht — a plumber of power: a man adept at fixing leaks, but incapable of designing a better system.

The label stuck. But if Scholz was the diminutive Mario, Merz is proving to be his lanky brother Luigi — still patching pipes rather than confronting the fact that the system itself needs replacing.

Like his predecessor, Merz has shown himself incapable of shaping events abroad to secure Germany’s interests at home. Instead, he is bogged down in cosmetic domestic fixes to problems whose causes lie far beyond Germany’s borders.

This became clear within weeks of his taking office. As opposition leader, Merz spoke confidently about the fact that he would supply Ukraine with Taurus cruise missiles — something Scholz had refused to do. In power, he has gone silent. At the same time, his government has classified German arms deliveries to Kyiv, ostensibly to avoid revealing capabilities to the Kremlin. There is, however, no indication that Taurus has been approved.

Scholz dressed up his refusal to deliver Taurus as statesmanship, claiming he needed to prevent Germany from being dragged into the war. In reality, it was political cowardice. He was spooked by the left wing of his party, which clung to the delusion that holding back weapons might coax Putin into talks. The public, meanwhile, feared that Germany might accidentally cross some invisible red line — an anxiety the Kremlin was only too happy to exploit.

Britain and France took the opposite approach. Since 2023, both have supplied Kyiv with long-range cruise missiles, allowing Ukraine to strike high-value targets deep behind Russian lines. These weapons have done exactly what they were meant to do: raise the cost of continuing the war for Moscow. The Kremlin’s fury each time such systems are used is not evidence of escalation gone wrong, but of pressure applied in the right place.

The pattern is now repeating itself in a different theatre.

Merz and his ministers are right to insist that the US-Israeli war against Iran “isn’t ours.” Washington did not consult Berlin before launching it, and it is far from clear that the conflict serves European interests.

But that is only half the story. By blockading the Strait of Hormuz and attacking neutral shipping in retaliation, Iran has not merely breached international law — it has directly targeted the economic lifelines of countries far beyond the conflict. Since late February, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has issued warnings forbidding passage, carried out repeated attacks on merchant vessels, and reportedly laid sea mines in the narrow waterway.

Photo by Planet Volumes on Unsplash

The stakes are enormous. Roughly a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil trade and a fifth of global LNG shipments pass through the strait. Even countries that do not import directly from the Gulf still pay the global price for energy. The consequences are already being felt across Europe, with growth forecasts for Germany sharply downgraded.

Iran is a signatory to international agreements guaranteeing freedom of navigation through such chokepoints. Its attempt to shut the strait to all shipping — not just that of its enemies — is a blatant violation of those rules.

This is precisely the kind of moment in which Merz should have made good on the foreign policy vision he set out at the Munich Security Conference. He spoke then of building flexible coalitions to defend the foundations of a globalised order — few of which are more fundamental than freedom of navigation.

Instead, Germany has once again retreated into the background. France and Britain have stepped forward, though even their response is too hesitant. Paris and London are exploring a multinational naval mission to safeguard shipping through Hormuz, likely involving mine-clearing operations and the escort of merchant vessels. Crucially, it would operate independently of the United States. Emmanuel Macron has described it as a “strictly defensive mission, separate from the warring parties.”

Even so, the initiative is hedged with caveats. Both governments have suggested that deployment would only follow a peace agreement.

This makes little sense. If Iran agrees to restore freedom of passage as part of a deal, a naval mission would be unnecessary. If it does not, the risks of confrontation will be exactly the same as they are now.

Europe should not base its economic security on whether a chaotic American president manages to strike a deal with a hostile regime. It should demonstrate — now — that it has both the capability and the will to uphold the rules that underpin global trade. Tehran may interpret such a mission as a provocation. But doing nothing sends a far clearer signal: that Europe is unwilling to defend its own interests.

Merz, like Scholz before him, is constrained by a political class and a public steeped in denial about the role of military power in sustaining prosperity. Germany’s wealth depends on a rules-based system that it is unwilling to defend. Rearmament at home is only part of the equation. The harder test is whether Berlin is prepared to act abroad when those rules are challenged.

For tactical reasons, Merz refuses to state the problem plainly. When addressing the energy crisis, he speaks vaguely of “the war” driving up prices, rather than naming the mechanism at work. Ministers shy away from even discussing, on the record, the possibility of deploying naval assets to the Gulf, hiding instead behind procedural caveats about parliamentary approval.

This isn’t leadership. It is evasion.

Instead, they focus on domestic “fixes.” After a week of bad-tempered negotiations, the coalition has agreed to temporary tax relief at the petrol pump. Cutting fuel duty — at a cost of €1.6 billion — is about the worst possible response to a supply shock. It dulls the price signal precisely when consumption needs to fall. I’ve never seen Germans drive as slowly as they have in the past few weeks. Now even that will be undone.

We’ve been here before. In the early months of the war in Ukraine, Scholz was willing to spend billions cushioning households from rising energy costs, but refused to supply the weapons that might have shortened the war itself. Germans are still paying high energy prices — and Putin still isn’t prepared to talk.

Unable — or unwilling — to act where the problem originates, Berlin falls back on redistributing the pain at home. In other words, Merz the plumber is fiddling with a spanner while the ceiling gives way above him.