German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul on Sunday called on Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and abandon its nuclear weapons programme, aligning Berlin explicitly with Washington’s demands in a telephone conversation with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

“I emphasised that Germany supports a negotiated solution,” Wadephul wrote on X following the call. “As a close US ally, we share the same goal: Iran must completely and verifiably renounce nuclear weapons and immediately open the Strait of Hormuz, as also demanded” by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The call comes as senior German officials work to contain a damaging public spat between Washington and Berlin. Chancellor Friedrich Merz sparked a diplomatic row on April 27 when he said Iran was “humiliating” the United States at the negotiating table — remarks that triggered a sharp response from the White House.

The Trump administration announced it would relocate 5,000 troops from military bases in Germany and that US tariffs on cars and trucks from the European Union would rise from 15 per cent to 25 per cent within days. Trump accused the broader EU of failing to comply with a trade agreement signed last summer, even as the pact continues to move through the bloc’s legislative approval process.

The threatened tariffs would fall with particular force on Germany, which is home to Europe’s largest automotive industry and counts the United States among its most important export markets.

Efforts to end the US-Israeli war on Iran have made little apparent progress since a ceasefire took effect in early April, and international concern over a renewed escalation is growing. Trump said he would study a new proposal submitted by Tehran but indicated he “can’t imagine that it would be acceptable,” adding that, in his view, Iran has “not yet paid a big enough price.”

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards struck a defiant tone on Sunday, saying in a statement that the United States must choose between what it described as “an impossible operation or a bad deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil supply had passed before the outbreak of the war — has emerged as a central concern for European governments. Merz and other EU leaders have repeatedly cited the economic consequences of the blockage as a reason for urgency in the diplomatic process.