World

Friday

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Trump’s two-week delay will unsettle Iran

In a statement relayed by press secretary Karoline Leavitt, the White House declared that President Donald Trump would decide ‘within the next two weeks’ whether to join Israel’s air campaign against Iran’s nuclear facilities. In isolation, it might seem a routine delay – an effort to keep diplomatic channels open, to stage manage an American entry into the conflict or even to row back on Trump’s previous gung-ho position. But by now we should all be attuned to Trump’s history and methods, and appreciate that this declaration could in fact carry a more intricate calculus. Beneath its surface lies a lattice of strategic ambiguity, political choreography and psychological pressure. With this

Alexander Kolyandr

Has Putin pushed the Russian economy to its limits?

The remarkable resurgence the Russian economy has experienced since Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is losing momentum. Where once Putin could boast about 4.3 per cent growth rates for two years in a row – thumbing his nose at Western sanctions with all the aplomb of a man who’d discovered alchemy – the numbers now tell a somewhat different story. The party, as they say, is over – and the time to crank up sanctions against Moscow has come. For two years running, Putin’s propagandists have crowed about Russia’s economic vitality as proof that Western sanctions were about as effective as a chocolate teapot. The economy’s steroid-fuelled growth, pumped up

Ian Williams Ian Williams

Has Ursula von der Leyen seen the light on China?

Coming from an American politician, the accusations would have been unsurprising. Beijing is unwilling to ‘live within the constraints of the rules-based international system’ and its trade policy is one of ‘distortion with intent’. It splashes subsidies with abandon, undercuts intellectual property protections, and as for China’s membership of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), that was probably a mistake too. It is bold of von der Leyen to raise the WTO, and it will be intriguing to see how she is greeted at the EU-China leaders’ summit Yet this tirade came not from an acolyte of Donald Trump, but from Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission

Maurizio Geri

Is Iran about to choke the West’s energy supply?

Nato has learned nothing from Russia’s energy blackmail – and Iran is about to prove it. With precision warheads and hypersonic payloads tearing Israeli and Iranian skies, you might think we’re witnessing the next frontier in modern warfare. But it’s an old game, played with old rules. And once again, Tehran reaches for its well-worn lever of power: energy blackmail. Already, markets are twitching. Crude has jumped over 10 per cent Senior Iranian officials, including Revolutionary Guard commander Esmail Kowsari, have warned that, if Israeli attacks continue, Tehran will not only exit the non-proliferation treaty (thus tearing up its last fig-leaf of nuclear restraint), but will also close the Strait of Hormuz. That’s

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Why Muslim-majority countries have turned against Iran

Swift condemnations have poured in from the Muslim world castigating Israel for bombing Iran. The UAE condemned Israel ‘in the strongest terms’, Jordan spoke up against Israeli attacks ‘threatening regional stability’, Saudi Arabia denounced ‘blatant Israeli aggressions’, Turkey espoused ‘an end to Israel’s banditry’, while various Muslim diplomatic groups, including the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), demanded ‘international action’ against the Jewish State. But cloaked underneath this predictably farcical rhetoric of ‘Muslim unity’ are the evolving interests of many of these states, which today align seamlessly with Israel. Saudi Arabia has described ‘evil’ Iran as the ‘head of the snake’ In Israel’s immediate neighbourhood, Lebanese officials are blocking the depleted Iranian jihadist proxy Hezbollah from taking action against Israel. Meanwhile, the Ahmed al-Sharaa-led Syria,

Thursday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Who is Trump listening to on Iran?

Freddy Gray speaks to Kelley Vlahos DC-based writer, editor and senior advisor at the Quincy Institute about the developing situation between Israel, Iran and America. The President has warned that despite winning the electorate over on an ‘America First’ mandate, the US armed force may intervene on Iran. Freddy and Kelley discuss who Trump is being advised by and why the American people could turn on him should Trump wade into the conflict.

Jonathan Spyer

Only regime change will solve the problem of Iran

The Middle East currently stands at a crossroads. The future geopolitical balance and perhaps also the historical direction of the region depend on the outcome of the war currently underway between Israel and Iran. With the US poised on the cusp of possible intervention, it’s important to grasp the nature and dimension of what is at stake.   To understand the weight of the present moment, it is necessary to accurately define the nature of the current conflict and its roots. This is a war not only or primarily between states. It is a conflict between systems of governance and between rival visions of the region.   The objective needs to

Charlie Gammell

Striking Fordow will not solve the Iran problem

The world is watching Donald Trump to see if he will give his military the green light to use one of America’s most deadly weapons, the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (Mop), to destroy Iran’s underground nuclear facilities at Fordow. As a man with a seemingly inexhaustible need for attention, this is a gratifying position for him to be in. But a potentially dangerous one for the rest of us. ‘Trump doesn’t have a taste for war,’ someone said to me recently. ‘War’s bad for business.’ This appears to be true so far; we have certainly seen Trump try his hand at peace-making in Gaza, Ukraine and Iran with consistently poor results.

Seth J. Frantzman

Have Iran’s kamikaze drones become redundant?

Over the last decade Iran has built up an impressive arsenal of kamikaze drones which can slam into targets more than 2,000 km away. Iran thought that in war it would be able to use these drones for massed attacks, and when Israel attacked Iran in the early hours of June 13, Tehran duly responded by launching its drone army. Yet so far its drones have been unable to terrorise Israel. By June 15, the Israel Defence Forces said they had intercepted more than 100. It seemed like drones would be to warfare what the torpedo bomber was to ships at Pearl Harbor While Iranian ballistic missiles may have penetrated Israel

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Will Trump pull the trigger and strike Iran?

This morning’s sirens shattered the early calm across much of Israel. Quiet anticipation had already been building, as signs pointed to a long anticipated American entry into the conflict, but no one yet knows when, or if, it will truly come. It had been a relatively quiet night; after a brief stint in the bomb shelter around midnight, I had managed to sleep uninterrupted until around 7 a.m. when the Home Front Command app sent the ‘pre-alert’ warning. A sign of how quickly you adapt, I first warmed up the Gaggia and made myself an espresso, before entering the shelter in our building as the sirens began to wail through

James Tidmarsh

Why the fatwa against Gabriel Attal is so dangerous

An imam at the Grand Mosque of Massy, just outside Paris, has threatened to issue a fatwa against former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, head of Macron’s party Renaissance, for his proposal to ban the hijab for girls under 15. In a video that has gone viral in France, the imam declared that Attal is ‘pushing us to issue a fatwa’ and that ‘I will be the one to dictate it’. His words have sparked outrage on the right. Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau has referred the matter to the courts, and Attal himself is weighing legal action. The left meanwhile remains mostly quiet. Across France, a growing network of activist preachers,

Benedict Rogers

What is Britain doing to help free Aung San Suu Kyi?

In a prison cell in the middle of Myanmar (Burma), isolated from other prisoners, sits an elderly woman who marks her 80th birthday today. She is serving a 27-year sentence. Yet she is no ordinary 80-year-old. Today, she should be approaching the end of her second term as de facto head of her country’s government, having won an overwhelming election victory almost five years ago. She should be thinking about retirement and handing over the reins to the next generation to take her country’s democracy further. Instead, she has spent the past four years in jail after her elected government was overthrown in a military coup on 1 February 2021,

Douglas Murray

What else could Israel do?

Over the past few days British readers have been able to enjoy a number of hot takes on the situation in the Middle East. First, there have been all the politicians, such as the Scottish First Minister John Swinney, who have called for our government to step in and ‘de-escalate’ the conflict between Israel and Iran. But even leaving aside whether the mullahs in Tehran can be swayed by Britain or Scotland, ‘de-escalation’ is the only surefire way to ensure that they continue to pursue a nuclear capability. Elsewhere, the BBC has been playing a blinder. When the conflict began, it decided that its audience would be well served by

Justin Marozzi

Toppling Iran’s Supreme Leader could be a mistake

Are we already seeing an ominous mission creep in Israel’s blistering attack on Iran? First, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s air assault was all about ending Iran’s covert nuclear weapons programme, a day after the International Atomic Energy Agency declared Tehran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations. Then, within a few hours of launching ‘one of the greatest military operations in history’, Netanyahu was telling Iranians that Israel was ‘clearing the path for you to achieve your freedom’. Encouraging them to ‘stand up’ and overthrow the ‘evil and oppressive’ government of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he noted that Israel had been friends with Iran since the time of Cyrus the Great, founder

Owen Matthews

Venice deserves Jeff Bezos

Venetians are once again revolting. Not, this time, against cruise ships, wheeled luggage, over-tourism or rule from mainland Mestre. No – according to a small but vocal contingent of the island city’s eternally discontented, it is Amazon’s billionaire founder Jeff Bezos who embodies all that threatens La Serenissima. Bezos’s offence is that he is planning to marry Lauren Sánchez, a former TV journalist, in a three-day celebration in central Venice beginning on 24 June. His 250 guests will include many of the most famous and wealthy people on the planet. The celebrity-obsessed Italian press, deprived of such a world-class spectacle since George Clooney’s Venetian nuptials with Amal Alamuddin in 2014,

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Who’s pushing Trump to be an Iran hawk?

‘This never would have happened if I had been president,’ says Donald Trump, whenever the international news goes from bad to worse. It’s a line he uses a lot in relation to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, both of which began in the interregnum between his first administration and his second. Yet the latest war, between Israel and Iran, is a different matter. Trump of course blames his predecessor, Joe Biden, who ‘made Iran rich’ with $300 billion for the evil regime’s dreaded nuclear weapons programme. It was Trump, though, who in 2018 tore up Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran and in 2020 killed Qasem Soleimani, the head

Wednesday

Charlie Gammell

The Islamic Republic has been weakening for months

In October 2023, the mullahs of the Islamic Republic could look within Iran’s borders, and beyond, and be content with the worlds they had created. After all, they had weathered the storm of the Women, Life, Freedom protests by terrorising their own people, and could rest assured in the strength of their proxy networks, feared fighters operating at Iran’s behest (or guidance) throughout the Middle East. Yes, if we’d looked hard enough, there were signs of weakness in their response to the killing of Qasem Soleimani – in hindsight, a singular failure to match the violence of the words to the violence and efficacy of their actions, a fatal mistake

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

France won’t stop the small boats

The BBC have visited the French coast to see for themselves that Nigel Farage (and Coffee House) aren’t making it up: there is indeed a migrant crisis on the beaches close to Calais and has been for years. Britain certainly won’t receive much in the way of help from the pro-migrant Emmanuel Macron, despite what Keir Starmer may claim The Beeb paid their call last Friday and encountered around 80 people waist deep in water. These weren’t locals having a dip to escape the June heatwave but migrants from Eritrea, Afghanistan and elsewhere. They were waiting for what the BBC described as a ‘taxi-boat’, one of the myriad vessels that

Eliot Wilson

‘De-escalation’ won’t work on Iran

As Donald Trump hastily dashed home from the G7 meeting in Canada to deal with the escalating conflict between Iran and Israel, Prime Minister Keir Starmer went to speak to reporters. The G7 resolution on Iran, he said, ‘was about de-escalation’. ‘The thrust of the statement is in accordance with what I was saying on the way out here, which is to de-escalate the situation, and to de-escalate it across the region rather than to escalate it,’ he added. The Prime Minister has clung doggedly to this line since the first reports came through early last Friday morning of massive and coordinated Israeli air strikes on Iran. That afternoon, Downing

Jawad Iqbal

Will Iranians rise up against the mullahs?

Iran’s crumbling regime is fighting a war to the death on two fronts. The first and foremost is the conflict with Israel. It is safe to say that the Israelis – so far at least – are winning comfortably. The other conflict is the fight the mullahs are waging against their own people. The outcome of that battle is much harder to predict. The initial success of the Israeli strikes has given Iranians an unprecedented chance to seize the moment and topple their oppressors. Can they do it? Will they do it? And what becomes of the country if it frees itself from despotic rule? The rift between Iranians and their rulers