US withdrawing 5,000 troops from Germany after Merz says US ‘humiliated’ by Iran

The US is withdrawing 5,000 troops from Germany, the Pentagon announced on Friday, as Donald Trump also threatened Italy and Spain for not helping to reopen the strait of Hormuz.The president’s move to reduce the number of personnel deployed in Germany came after the country’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said the US was being “humiliated” by Iran.A senior Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said recent German rhetoric had been “inappropriate and unhelpful”.“The president is rightly reacting to these counterproductive remarks,” the official said.The Pentagon said the withdrawal was expected to be completed over the next six to 12 months.A brigade combat team now in Germany will be pulled out and a long-range fires battalion the Biden administration had planned to begin deploying to Germany later this year will no longer deploy, the official said.Germany is the US military’s biggest basing location in Europe, with about 35,000 active-duty military personnel, and serves as a key training hub.The withdrawal from Germany comes amid a widening rift between the US and Nato allies over the war in Iran.Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has spoken out against the US-Israeli war on Iran from the start, while Rome had performed a balancing act until