Noted geopolitical nonentity Ursula von der Leyen announces her determination to begin intensively monitoring the Iran situation as soon as the weekend is over

The foreseeable has come to pass: On Saturday, after the third round of talks between American and Iranian negotiators, the United States and Israel began conducting airstrikes on targets throughout Iran. A sensational hit on an Iranian Defence Council meeting early Saturday killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei alongside other high officials including Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Mohammad Pakpour, Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces Lt. Gen. Abdolrahim Mousavi and Defence Minister Gen. Aziz Nasirzadeh. Iran has retaliated with ballistic missile and drone strikes against Israel, American military bases and U.S.-allied Gulf states like Kuwait, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. These are events of enormous geopolitical importance, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wants you to know that she and her fellow commissioners are monitoring the situation very intensely – or at least that they will begin monitoring the situation very intensely as soon as the weekend is over: In the meantime, Von der Leyen is eagerly tweeting about all the people she has been in touch with. She has called the President of the UAE. She has called the King of Jordan. She has called the Emir of Qatar. She has called the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. She has called the Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Bahrain. Von der Leyen’s opinion on these strikes doesn’t matter, her organisation has basically zero geopolitical relevance and her office grants her little concrete diplomatic standing, which means she’s just wasting everyone’s time here. One thing the Eurotards could do that would really help a lot, is try shutting up more. They are not big actors on the world stage, in part because they have chosen not to be; and they rarely have anything to say that an LLM trained on the most vacuous liberal democratic nostrums could not articulate better. They are a pantsuit plague on the land and a profound embarrassment to Europeans. There is no reason to comment on everything that happens and they should learn to talk less. I’ll write more about Iran soon – I am still forming my opinions – but I had to get this off my chest first. Please let me know in the comments what you make of recent events.