Nicolai von Ondarza

Israeli attacks on UNIFIL peace keepers tonight. Irish service men were not directly hit, but they aided their counterparts from Ghana. This will further deteriorate Irish Israel relations.

Please don’t spread misinformation. Tomahawks fly at low altitude. It’s climbing like a THAAD interceptor (we are out of interceptors).

Another way of putting this: the US constitution failed to do the main thing its framers intended - to prevent charismatic monarchy and imperial domination. It's been overwhelmed by money, partisanship and changes in media technology.

Ein paar Gedanken zu den europäischen Reaktionen auf den US-Angriffskrieg gegen #Iran.

Iranian strategy to raise the costs of this war for the US and its allies in the Gulf and in Europe seems to be working.

Almost a Covid like moment for the Cyprus EU Council Presidency:

Meanwhile, Spain's massive investment in renewables is paying dividends now: with prices for Spanish industry and consumers low and stable compared with other European economies.

www.ft.com/content/ac77...

Signs of the times is that at this first post, I wondered for a second about which country Kallas was talking about:

PM call with E4 leaders: 6 March 2026 The Prime Minister spoke to the leaders of France, Germany and Italy this morning about the situation in the Middle East.

Italy has been added to the now E4 of major European leaders coordinating on the US/Israel-Iran war. Perhaps a lost opportunity to include Spain, though that would of course have given the exchange a different direction.

Also note the welcoming of Ukrainain anti-drone help:

Here is the official welcoming of the referendum by the EU enlargement commissioner. Though I assume the EU itself will stay neutral in the referendum to emphasize this is a decision for the Icelandish people to take.

As Iceland in its previous accession talks already opened most chapters and concluded about a third, while also being a member of the European Economic Area, outside of fish this could be quite a swift negotiation.

Iceland locks in on date for EU referendum | Euractiv As a member of the European Economic Area, Iceland is already aligned with much of the bloc's legislation

The Iceland referendum on EU accession is now slated for 29 August this year.

Note: The referendum will first only be on restarting the negotiations, but clearly a sign of shifting geopolitical thinking.

More like Die Welt I assume - some quality journalism, but also clearly right-wing orientation?

Start of my #MissileTour- in Poland, key missile producer in the EU.

With DPM Minister Kosiniak-Kamysz —on how to ramp up missile production in the EU, for & with Ukraine 🇺🇦, how #SAFE will boost 🇵🇱economy and defence industry.

Press conference 🔗⬇️
audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en/media/vid...

Russia is providing Iran intelligence to target U.S. forces, officials say The targeting information has included the locations of American warships and aircraft in the Middle East, the officials said.

You can see why Russia sees an opportunity to settle scores. "Russia is providing Iran with targeting information to attack American forces in the Middle East, the first indication that another major U.S. adversary is participating — even indirectly" www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

A wierd position for von der Leyen to be in. Her EPP spend the last two years trashing her Green Deal and arguing all of Europe's competitiveness issues come from too much (climate) regulation. Now she seems to be able to argue for a clean transition again.

Axel Springer buys Telegraph in £575mn deal German media group has gatecrashed a proposed acquisition by the owner of the Daily Mail

This is an altogether new dimension of British-German cooperation that I did not expect:

Foreign Affairs analysts: Quickly geographically spreading war without end goal strategy, that does not sound good.

Bond yields on the rise again this morning, led by the short end

Gilts, again, the worst hit

As far as I understand, this is not a Security and Defence Partnership (like the EU has with the UK, Canada, Norway, Japan or now even India) but in a classical Swiss style a part of a set of bilateral agreements, including for Swiss participation in EU military operations like in Bosnia-Herzegovina

This one is probably hard to blame on ChatGPT.

I often notice that when people say something like "everybody in the internet is talking about X" and it is usually something that 'my' internet is not talking about all.

The most seductive thing about a social media platform is its ability to create an immersive world that mimics but is different from the ‘actual’ world and in so doing teach its participants to act as if that created world is indeed the real world.

Sorry @politico.eu, but since when it is reporting language to call a meeting of representatives of EU member states and Commission officials "EU apparatchiks" - clearly implying Soviet Style, unthinking/ideologicial and faceless bureaucrats?

Where things stand with the Department of War A statement from Dario Amodei

A statement from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei: https://www.anthropic.com/news/where-stand-department-war

Once again we talk about how crucially important Ramstein airbase - a huge US military installation in Germany - is for US operations in the middle east and beyond.

As someone who has been working on US drone ops for ages, I have posted quite a bit about Ramstein. Like this thread 👇

Driving shared prosperity: Boosting EU–Canada trade through CETA A joint statement issued following the fifth meeting of the Joint Committee of the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA).

The EU and Canada formally launch talks on a digitial trade agreement - see joint statement from CETA joint committee meeting policy.trade.ec.europa.eu/news/driving...

This of course does not mean that Baerbock and Lammy did not meet or the other foreign ministers did not meet in other formats.

It just shows how hard it is to build long-term personal government relationships if ministers change so often on both sides.

That also astonished me when checking. The Strategic Dialogues were:

2021: Raab - Maas
2022: (meeting postponed over snowstorm)
2023: Cleverly - Baerbock
2024: Cameron - Baerbock
2025: Cooper - Wadepfuhl

So Baerbock was the only minister to make two Strategic Dialogues, whereas Lammy made none.

Last night the official White House X account posted a video mixing US pop culture (Gladiator, Transformers, John Wick, Brave heart, Marvel) with video games (Halo) and Hesgeth's war speech and real footage of blowing up Iranian vessels and facilities. All civil taboos are being broken.