Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei takes a sarcastic swipe at German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, drawing attention to how he has gone from cheering on the Israeli regime's aggression against the Islamic Republic to complaining about the war’s hefty economic bill for Europe.

In a post on X on Wednesday, Baghaei recalled Merz's claim last year that the Israeli regime was “doing the dirty work for us” by attacking Iran, contrasting it with the German chancellor's recent admission that Iran’s retaliation to American-Israeli aggression had cost Europe more than €100 billion in higher energy prices over the past eight months.

“German Chancellor Friedrich Merz once enthusiastically declared that Israel was ‘doing the dirty work for us’ by attacking Iran. Yet just a few months later, the very same chancellor is lamenting that this war is costing the European economy €100 billion!” the spokesman wrote.

Merz made the latter remarks on October 30 while speaking to journalists during a visit to South Korea. He said the aggression had led to enormous costs on Europe, with businesses and consumers paying more for energy as a result.

‘A lesson not learned’

Baghaei, however, also pointed out recent remarks by German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, who accused Iran of, what the latter called, fueling regional tensions.

“Now his (Merz’s) foreign minister, too, apparently feels compelled to justify the military aggression against Iran. He displays such indifference and such a profound degree of moral decay that he neither acknowledges the human toll and the war crimes committed nor grasps the economic damage this war is inflicting on his own country and on Europe,” the Iranian official pointed out.

“’Once bitten, twice shy,’ goes an English proverb. But Hans Guck-in-die-Luft (Hans Look-in-the-Air) seems incapable of learning his lesson,” he concluded, referring to a German narrative poem.