BERLIN — Germany’s governing coalition entered an open dispute on Monday over Berlin’s response to the Iran war, with the Social Democrats demanding a cap on military assistance to Israel and a sharp expansion of refugee admissions as the Bundestag returned from its Easter recess to confront a war that has scrambled the country’s foreign-policy assumptions.

The dispute, simmering since the conflict’s opening days in early March, broke into public view over the weekend after the SPD parliamentary group released a six-page position paper calling for an immediate suspension of dual-use export licenses to Israeli companies, a doubling of Germany’s pledged contribution to the United Nations refugee response in the Levant, and a formal Bundestag debate on whether Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government required fresh parliamentary authorization for any expansion of Bundeswehr support to U.S. operations in the Gulf.

“We cannot govern a country of 84 million people on the basis of an unspoken agreement that German policy follows wherever Washington leads,” SPD parliamentary leader Lars Klingbeil told reporters at a Monday morning briefing at the party’s Willy Brandt House headquarters. “Our coalition agreement is clear on the need for parliamentary involvement in matters of war and peace. The chancellor cannot treat that clause as decorative.”

The remarks drew an immediate rebuke from senior figures in Merz’s Christian Democratic Union, which leads the coalition and has so far held to a tightly aligned position with the Trump administration on the war. A CDU spokesperson, speaking at the party’s Konrad Adenauer House, called the SPD demands “an unfortunate revival of campaign-style positioning at a moment that requires unity,” and said the chancellor would address parliament in person on Wednesday to set out the government’s line.

The coalition, formed last year after months of difficult talks following the February 2025 federal election, has functioned with unusual discipline on domestic dossiers but has shown growing strain on foreign policy since the war began. Two SPD cabinet members, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and Foreign Minister Saskia Esken, are understood to have raised internal objections to elements of the German naval contribution announced last week as part of the European Union’s expanded maritime mission in the northwestern Indian Ocean. Neither has publicly broken with the chancellor, but the SPD position paper was widely read in Berlin as a signal that they had lost an internal argument and were now seeking to reopen it through the parliamentary group.

Refugee policy has emerged as the most politically charged element of the dispute. UN agencies have warned that reception systems in Lebanon and Jordan are approaching capacity, with new displacement flows from Iraq and western Iran adding to long-standing caseloads. The SPD paper calls for Germany to accept an additional 40,000 refugees from the region through 2026, in coordination with a broader European resettlement framework that EU foreign ministers discussed at their April 1 emergency session in Brussels. CDU leaders have so far resisted any specific numerical commitment, arguing that Germany already absorbed disproportionate flows from Syria and Ukraine and that any expansion must be matched proportionally across the bloc.

The Greens, the coalition’s smaller third partner, have positioned themselves between the two larger parties. Co-leader Franziska Brantner told the Rheinische Post in a Sunday interview that the Greens supported “a generous and rules-based reception policy” but were “not prepared to make resettlement a vehicle for symbolic politics at the expense of those actually waiting in Beirut and Amman.” Greens foreign policy spokesperson Agnieszka Brugger said the party would support a Bundestag debate on parliamentary authorization but was “not yet at the point” of endorsing a cap on assistance to Israel.

Outside parliament, the war has produced sustained street mobilization that has surprised both the security services and the parties themselves. Police in Berlin estimated that 180,000 people marched through the government quarter on Saturday in the third major demonstration since the conflict began, with smaller but still substantial rallies in Munich, Hamburg, Cologne and Leipzig. The protests, organized by a broad coalition that includes traditional peace movement organizations, the Federation of German Trade Unions and a number of mosque associations, have stayed largely peaceful but have produced sharp confrontations over banners and slogans that several Jewish community organizations have called antisemitic.

“The chancellor’s political space is narrowing on multiple fronts simultaneously,” said Dr. Henning Riecke, a senior fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations. “He has a coalition partner that is preparing to break publicly with him on a question of war and peace, a street movement that is larger than anything we have seen since the Iraq war, and a parliamentary group within his own party that is increasingly worried about the political cost of being read as Washington’s branch office. None of those pressures resolve themselves through a single Wednesday address.”

Economic considerations have compounded the political picture. The Federal Statistical Office reported Friday that industrial output fell 1.8 percent in February, the steepest monthly decline in more than a year, with energy-intensive sectors leading the contraction. The Bundesbank’s monthly report, published Monday morning, said it expected first-quarter GDP to register a contraction of between 0.3 and 0.5 percent, citing oil prices, weaker Asian export demand and consumer caution. Federation of German Industries President Siegfried Russwurm called for “the most rapid possible diplomatic resolution,” but stopped short of endorsing any specific element of the SPD position paper.

Within the chancellery, officials have been working through the weekend on the text of Merz’s Wednesday speech, according to two people familiar with the drafting. The address is expected to acknowledge SPD concerns on parliamentary involvement while reaffirming what one official described as “the strategic clarity that has defined German policy since the war began.” A modest expansion of the refugee admissions framework, possibly in the range of 15,000 to 20,000 places, is under active consideration as a coalition-management measure, the officials said, though no final decision had been taken as of Monday afternoon.

Opposition leaders, sensing an opening, have moved to exploit the coalition’s discomfort. Alice Weidel, co-leader of the Alternative for Germany, told a rally in Erfurt on Sunday that her party would oppose “any further German entanglement in an American war” and any expansion of refugee admissions. On the left, Sahra Wagenknecht’s BSW alliance and Die Linke have called separately for a parliamentary vote of confidence in the government’s foreign-policy course.

Coalition managers said cross-party consultations would continue through Tuesday ahead of Wednesday’s chancellery address.