page_title: Sigmar Gabriel
section_title: Foreign policy
hierarchical_section_title: Sigmar Gabriel / Political positions / Foreign policy
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Sigmar Gabriel während der Münchener Sicherheitskonferenz 2018
context_page_description: Sigmar Hartmut Gabriel is a German politician who was Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2017 to 2018 and Vice-Chancellor of Germany from 2013 to 2018. He was Leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany from 2009 to 2017, which made him the party's longest-serving leader since Willy Brandt. He was the Federal Minister of the Environment from 2005 to 2009 and the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy from 2013 to 2017. From 1999 to 2003 Gabriel was Minister-President of Lower Saxony.
  Gabriel is a member of the Seeheimer Kreis, an official internal grouping of the party with liberal economic positions.
context_section_description: Gabriel has been staunchly against German soldiers remaining in Afghanistan. In 2010, he called for an independent assessment that would determine whether the U.S. counter-insurgency strategy would succeed. However, he voted in favor of extending German participation in the NATO-led security mission ISAF in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012.
  On the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel, Gabriel participated in the first joint cabinet meeting of the governments of Germany and Israel in Jerusalem in March 2008. In 2012, after having visited Hebron and the Palestinian territories, he said the Palestinians in those areas were systematically discriminated against and called Israel an "Apartheid Regime".
  While German members of parliament call out Iran's human rights violations and Nazanin Boniadi, advocate for the Center for Human Rights in Iran, described "systemic gender apartheid" where women advocating equal rights are regularly imprisoned, homosexuality is illegal and can carry the death penalty, Gabriel became the first top level German government visitor to Iran in 13 years as well as the first senior figure from any large western country's government to visit the country since it struck an agreement on its nuclear program, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, only days earlier. Travelling with a delegation of German industry representatives keen to move back into the Iranian market, he met with President Hassan Rouhani, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zangeneh.
  In one of the strongest comments by Germany to push for a federal solution for Ukraine, Gabriel told German weekly Welt am Sonntag in August 2014 that a federal structure was the only option to resolve pro-Russian unrest in the country. He added that Germany's priority was to prevent direct conflict between Russia and its southern neighbour. Commenting on the international sanctions regime against Russia, Gabriel stated in early 2015 that “we want to help resolve the conflict in Ukraine but don’t want to force Russia to its knees.” He later suggested that Europe consider easing sanctions in exchange for cooperation in Syria. Ukrainian-American historian Alexander J. Motyl has accused Gabriel of "appeasement" and "a complete betrayal of everything democratic socialists claim to stand for."
  In September 2015, amid the European migrant crisis, Gabriel visited the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan to learn more about the plight of Syrians fleeing the violence in the ongoing Syrian civil war that erupted in 2011. Gabriel publicly urged Saudi Arabia to stop supporting religious radicals, amid growing concern among about the country's funding of Wahhabi mosques in Germany which are accused of breeding dangerous Islamists.
  In January 2016, Gabriel participated in the first joint cabinet meeting of the governments of Germany and Turkey in Berlin. Later that year, he called any accession of Turkey to the European Union in the near term an "illusion."
  After the G7 summit in 2017, Gabriel stated that the United States, with Donald Trump as president, has "weakened" the West and that the balance of power has now shifted. The remark comes days after Merkel stated, in an apparent policy shift, that "Europeans must really take our fate into our own hands".
  In June 2017, Gabriel criticized the draft of new U.S. sanctions against Russia that target EU–Russia energy projects, including Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. In a joint statement Gabriel and Austria's Chancellor Christian Kern said that "Europe's energy supply is a matter for Europe, and not for the United States of America." They also said: "To threaten companies from Germany, Austria and other European states with penalties on the U.S. market if they participate in natural gas projects such as Nord Stream 2 with Russia or finance them introduces a completely new and very negative quality into European-American relations."
  Gabriel is a supporter of the Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, an organisation which campaigns fo
caption: Gabriel during the MSC 2018
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