A Europe that does not shame us
“Not a single tear should be shed for the Iranian regime,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. She continued: “[The Iranian regime] has inflicted death and imposed repression on its own people, causing devastation throughout the region.” Listening to her, it was hard not to think of the furious harangue a few days earlier by the Trump administration’s Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, who, with a grimace and bulging eyes, promised that “death and destruction will rain down from the sky” on Iran until the US and Israel consider it acceptable. Perhaps President von der Leyen considers the destruction and death raining down from the sky by American and Israeli attacks preferable to the death, repression, and devastation imposed by the ayatollahs. For the Iranian people, whom she invokes, it seems they must be equally undesirable.
The Iranian people also invoke the ayatollahs, naturally, to justify their criminal dictatorship. Before Ali Khamenei's son, Mukhta Khamenei, of the same fundamentalist and ultraconservative persuasion as his father, was elected the new supreme leader, Abbas Araghchi, Iran's foreign minister, warned: "We will not allow anyone to interfere in our internal affairs." This is a decision that only... Unfortunately, the Iranian people have very little or no say in an authoritarian and theocratic regime like that of the ayatollahs, who came to power in 1979 as a result of the Islamic Revolution, sweeping away the hopes for democracy and renewal that had arisen from the fall of the Shah's monarchy.
Everyone speaks in the name of the Iranian people, but with their backs turned to the Iranian people. It doesn't seem that anyone in the international community is shedding a tear for the Iranian regime or for Ali Khamenei, but there is a legitimate concern about the proliferation of wars and other unilateral, illegal acts of war, which signify the destruction of the geopolitical order as it has been known until now. This concern has, in recent days, placed the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, at the forefront of the global political debate, but it is one that Von der Leyen does not share, or pretends not to: "We can build a foreign policy [...] that is a fundamental pillar of European independence, that protects our interests and promotes our values. Not with nostalgia, not with longing." Translated, this means abandoning multilateralism and current international law. It means adopting the approach of Putins and Trumps, even if we don't know against whom or with what objectives.
Coupled with the decision to send migrants arriving by boat to prisons in non-EU countries using European Union funds (a proposal by Meloni, who is now distancing herself from Von der Leyen regarding the Iran war to align herself with Sánchez: everyone is moving quickly), it can indeed be said that the current Commission is running the EU. But in a particularly opaque way.