German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. (Photo: Foreign Ministry/Instagram)

Berlin (CNSNews.com) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday downplayed a public proposal by her foreign minister for the E.U. to establish independent payment channels, to bypass U.S. sanctions in a bid to sustain the Iran nuclear deal.

She said the ideas put forward by Foreign Minister Heiko Maas amounted to personal opinion and should not to be considered part of an official government proposal.

In an op-ed for German business paper Handelsblatt, posted on the foreign ministry’s official website, Maas wrote, “It is indispensable that we strengthen European autonomy by creating payment channels that are independent of the United States, a European Monetary Fund and an independent SWIFT system.”

The idea would theoretically see the E.U. and its businesses avoid U.S. sanctions, such as those being reimposed on Iran, by bypassing payment channels connected to the U.S. such as the SWIFT global cross-border financial transactions system.

Maas is a member of the left-leaning Social Democratic Party, a coalition partner of Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

In her response, Merkel acknowledged that “we have some problems in our dealings with Iran, no question” – referring to E.U.’s efforts to keeping the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) afloat despite President Trump’s withdrawal and the resulting restoration of sanctions.

“On the other hand we know that on questions of [monitoring and preventing] terrorist financing, for example, SWIFT is very important,” she said, explaining that the system was built in close partnership with the U.S.

Spokesman for the foreign affairs committee in the federal parliament, Jürgen Hardt, agreed that although Maas’ proposal was interesting, it did not take the purpose of the SWIFT system fully into account.

“One cannot deny intense trade relations between America and Europe simply by saying that we will now calculate things somehow differently,” he said.

The committee’s chairman, Elmar Brok – like Hardt a member of Merkel’s CDU – sided with Maas, saying there was no longer a “common Western strategy.”

“Maas is fundamentally right,” Brok told Handelsblatt on Wednesday. “The Americans are our partners, but we must set ourselves more independently.”

The E.U. has been struggling to keep the JCPOA alive after Trump’s withdrawal in May, hoping that renewed legislation to shield European companies from punitive measures would be enough to counter the restored sanctions.

“Every day the deal is alive is better than the highly explosive crisis that would otherwise threaten the Middle East,” Maas said in the op-ed, in reference to the Iranian nuclear program which the JCPOA was designed to defang.

Several large European firms, such as German giants Daimler and Siemens, have already withdrawn from Iran, wary of far-reaching U.S. financial penalties.

Iran called on Europe this week to speed up efforts to save the deal after French oil group Total formally cancelled a major gas project there.

Maas in the op-ed also called for a broader reassessment of the transatlantic partnership, saying Europe should become a political “counterweight” to Washington “when red lines are crossed,” and do more to protect E.U. companies from the impact of Trump’s tariffs on aluminum and steel imports.

And while he expressed support for an increase in defense spending by NATO’s European members, he stressed this was not because of Trump’s criticism of countries like Germany not meeting their spending targets but because the E.U. cannot count on Washington to the extent it used to.

The E.U. should also form its own security and defense union alongside NATO, he said.

“It's high time to rethink our partnership,” Maas said. “Not to leave it behind, but to renew and preserve it.”