Iran’s nuclear program is "one of our biggest security policy concerns," Merkel wrote in an article for the daily Handelsblatt, which the newspaper posted on its Web site ahead of print publication on Friday.
Germany, along with the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, has played a leading role in addressing worries over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Earlier this month, an American push for new sanctions was dampened with the release of a new U.S. intelligence report concluding Iran had halted a nuclear weapons development program in 2003 and had not resumed it since.
Merkel did not refer specifically to that assessment, but wrote that "it is dangerous and still grounds for great concern that Iran, in the face of the U.N. Security Council’