Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Who’s the most special envoy?

On the final weekend of her tenure as Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem was in South America meeting the President of Guyana. Photos posted by the US Embassy in Guyana show Noem’s “senior advisor” Corey Lewandowski sitting alongside her. It would, of course, be “tabloid garbage” to repeat rumors of an affair between the two, to use Noem’s phrase when questioned (both Noem and Lewandowski have vehemently denied the affair, although she didn’t explicitly deny “sexual relations” when under oath in Congress). Noem’s South American jaunt seemed to straddle the role she was leaving and the one she’s just started. She was officially in Guyana on DHS business but has

Oleksandr Sukhoi

The new battle over American airspace

Last month, a mysterious drone swarm led to a lockdown at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Nothing was damaged and none of the 40 B-52 bombers or their cruise missiles were hit. At least not this time. But modern war no longer starts with an open attack. Instead we see hybrid actions: cyberattacks, information and psychological operations, GPS disruptions, damage to undersea communication cables and, increasingly, drone incursions into military sites and critical infrastructure. There is rarely a formal declaration. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the largest war in Europe since the Second World War, was labelled a “special military operation.” Even before the invasion, Russia launched thousands of Orlan-10

Charles Lipson

Trump’s threat to destroy Iran is detailed and credible

Monday’s White House press conference came in two distinct parts. The first was an extraordinary tale of heroism in the rescue of two downed pilots. America’s military and intelligence leaders provided details that were new to the public. The danger of a daytime rescue mission in the face of enemy fire. The harrowing climb by one officer to a crevice in the mountains. The technical sophistication needed to find him. And the misdirection executed to confound Iranian forces in the area, determined to capture the American serviceman before help arrived. It was impossible to listen to that tale of bravery and professional excellence without an overwhelming sense of patriotic emotion,

Daniel Hummel

Is Pete Hegseth waging a Christian Zionist war?

In his war briefings, Pete Hegseth pushes religion almost as much as US military might. This has raised questions about whether the War Secretary is a Christian Zionist – and if he views current events in the Middle East as prophetic of the end times. His Pentagon updates often include prayers, Bible readings and religiously-inflected statements about pursuing “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.” When asked during his 2025 Senate confirmation hearing if he was a “Christian Zionist,” Hegseth affirmed, “I am a Christian, and I robustly support the state of Israel.” However, Hegseth’s specific Christian tradition diverges in key ways from that of many prominent

Sunday

April 5, 2026

Jacob Heilbrunn

Will Trump really obliterate Iran on Tuesday?

Was Donald Trump’s profane and threatening tweet, which included an F-bomb and an allusion to Iran’s leaders as “crazy bastards,” on Easter Sunday itself a bunch of BS? Trump is riding high after the daring rescue of an American airman from Iran, but its leadership doesn’t appear to be overly impressed by his tweet threatening a major attack on Tuesday if the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened. On Saturday, Iran’s military leadership indicated that it had no intention of complying with Trump’s demands, dismissing his vow to destroy its infrastructure as a “helpless, nervous, unbalanced and stupid action.” One of Iran’s media outlets suggested that if anyone is a

Nicholas Hopton

Iran has offered Trump an olive branch

There are few figures in Iranian politics as simultaneously familiar and enigmatic as Javad Zarif. To some in Washington he remains the smooth-talking apologist of the Islamic Republic; to hardliners in Tehran, he is still the man who gave too much away in the nuclear negotiations. When such a figure publishes the necessary elements for a new US-Iran deal that will end the Third Gulf War, it is worth paying attention. Zarif’s recent article in Foreign Affairs, framed as a set of reciprocal steps between Tehran and Washington, is best understood as a sort of olive branch. In diplomatic parlance, he is “flying a kite”: testing how far the wind

Saturday

April 4, 2026

Jawad Iqbal

Why Pakistan is brokering peace in Iran

Pakistan, the world’s only Muslim nuclear power, has traditionally been an international sideshow. No longer. The country has reportedly been passing messages between Washington and Tehran in efforts to bring an end to the Iran war. It is has a five-point plan aimed at restoring “peace and stability” across the region. How have the Pakistanis pulled off this remarkable diplomatic makeover? The answer starts with some critical decisions the Pakistanis took last year. After the four-day armed conflict between Pakistan and India in May 2025, both sides claimed “victory”. But crucially Islamabad publicly acknowledged Washington’s role in achieving a ceasefire (something India refused to do). Pakistan later nominated President Donald

Friday

April 3, 2026

Gus Carter

Trump falls back on ‘you’re fired!’ as midterms loom

Pam Bondi’s departure as attorney general has prompted the usual Kremlinologist speculation. One theory has it that Donald Trump was furious that she may have warned Democrat Eric Swalwell about a planned FBI release of documents detailing his past relationship with a Chinese spy. Bondi’s replacement, Todd Blanche, dismissed these claims as false. Another theory is that the President had finally had enough of her errors over the handling of the Epstein files, given Bondi was recently subpoenaed in a bipartisan effort by the House. And Trump is widely reported to be frustrated at her failure to indict his archenemies, former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General

Irwin Stelzer

This is what Trump means by ‘victory’ in Iran

President Trump has now told us something very important about the war with Iran. Ponder his address to the nation this week and you discover how he defines victory. Nothing that happens from here on out will change that. As Trump sees it, he is the winner, having achieved all his goals. He has accomplished regime change in Iran by eliminating the men who led the regime when the war started. America has so damaged the country’s military infrastructure that it will not be able to produce or deliver a nuclear weapon for at least a decade, by which time it will be up to a future American president to

Jacob Heilbrunn

Donald Trump is going on a firing spree

The surprising thing isn’t that Donald Trump fired his attorney general Pam Bondi and appointed Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche her temporary successor. It’s that he waited as long as he did. After exercising what is for him unusual restraint – his cabinet was in a state of perpetual upheaval during his first term as president – Trump is going on a firing spree. “He’s very angry, and he’s going to be moving people,” one top administration official told Politico yesterday. Next on the chopping block could be a host of Trump loyalists – Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-Remer, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Director of National

Matthew Lynn

The US currency is under attack like never before

It was, on the surface, a fairly routine proposal. Officials from the BRICS nations, made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, have decided to discuss, at a summit in New Delhi later this year, how to deepen trade and collaboration. No one was paying very much attention when the decision was made. And yet, according to a report in the well-informed newspaper Berliner Zeitung, a resolution was quietly suggested that might turn the global monetary system upside down. It was the start of what might be termed the “plot against the dollar.” America’s currency is likely to face its most serious challenge of the post-World War Two

Spectator Editorial

Operation Epic Fury is costing Trump his coalition

As US troops flock to danger, Donald Trump seeks ways to disentangle himself from the war on Iran. “We are on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly, very shortly,” he said in a 19-minute address at the start of the month. “It’s very important that we keep this conflict in perspective.” What’s increasingly clear is that, despite its tactical successes, Operation Epic Fury is turning into a strategic quagmire and a political miscalculation. The President’s approval rating has sunk to -18 percent, the lowest in his second term. Among independents, Trump is on -45 percent, the worst recorded score of any second-term president. That is the perspective

Thursday

April 2, 2026

Cockburn

Bondi out: is Trump culling the beautiful women from his cabinet?

More like Pam Gone-di! President Trump this afternoon confirmed that Attorney General Pam Bondi would be moving on to pastures new. In a Truth Social post announcing her dismissal, Trump called Bondi a “Great American Patriot and a loyal friend” who “did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown in Crime across our Country, with Murders plummeting to their lowest level since 1900.” “We love Pam,” wrote Trump. Deputy AG Todd Blanche, who Trump dubbed, “a very talented and respected Legal Mind,” will serve as Acting Attorney General. Bondi was Trump’s second choice as AG after his attempt to nominate Matt Gaetz failed. She will now “be transitioning to a

Angus Colwell

How the Green party abandoned its environmental roots

In the summer of 1972, Lesley Hill walked into a pub in rural Warwickshire. She had something for her husband Tony Whittaker. It was a copy of Playboy magazine. In that issue, there was an interview with the biologist Paul R. Ehrlich, who died last month aged 93. In it, he repeated the thesis of his 1968 book The Population Bomb, where he wrote that “in the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.” There were simply too many of us. Worldwide famine was imminent. Lesley and Tony were terrified. Along with a local businessman, Michael Benfield, and his future wife, Freda Sanders, they talked about it

Tim Shipman

How bad could the energy price crisis get in Britain?

The energy price surge caused by war in the Middle East has sent shockwaves through Westminster. It has pushed up inflation and the cost of borrowing, causing panic in the cabinet and the recognition that government intervention could be needed on a vast scale to support the cost of living. The UK Prime Minister told a private audience: “The assumption that the growth of the developed countries can proceed steadily on the basis of cheap energy has been shattered almost overnight.” He further observed: “The problem is not simply one of inflation. It is the whole structure of the economy.” In the Treasury there is something approaching a siege mentality.

David Whitehouse

Will Artemis II fulfill our Space Age dreams?

As the Artemis II mission thundered into the sky last night, a full moon rose above Cape Canaveral. It was no coincidence: the timing of the lift-off was ordained by lighting requirements and the mechanics of the Moon’s orbit. The mission set off not in the direction of the Moon, but towards where the Moon will be in five days’ time when the spacecraft swings around it in what is called a “free-return trajectory.” The crew of four are the first in almost 54 years to go to the Moon. In a way, things have not changed so much since then. Over the ten-day Artemis II mission, when the crew

Jacob Heilbrunn

Trump’s rambling Iran address was full of wishful thinking

In his nationwide address on Wednesday, Donald Trump could not have been clearer about the course of the Iran war. It’s not ending any time soon and there will be no deescalation of military force. Instead, channeling his inner General Curtis LeMay, Trump announced, “We are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We’re going to bring them back to the stone ages where they belong.” No, they don’t. It was a jarring reference to an ancient and proud Persian civilization that has been commandeered by a gang of thugs. Apart from the dubious morality of luxuriating in the prospect of annihilating an entire country, the practical problem is this: the “Bomb Them Back to the Stone Age” strategy didn’t work in

Roger Kimball

Trump touts the successes of his war for peace

“Ceasefire!” Some people worried that President Trump was taking to the air waves tonight in order to declare a ceasefire with Iran. That, clearly, was what Masoud Pezeshkian, the President of Iran hoped for in his careful, lengthy and mendacious “Letter to the American People” today. Pezeshkian said that “portraying Iran as a threat is neither consistent with historical reality nor with present-day observable facts.” Tell that to the hundreds of American victims of Iranian aggression. Tell it to the thousands of victims of Iran’s proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas. President Trump was having none of it. Operation Epic Fury, he said, was all about targeting the world’s leading sponsor of state terror and preventing

Wednesday

April 1, 2026

Alan Dershowitz

Trump’s presence won’t sway the Supreme Court

For the first time in memory – and perhaps in history – an American president has attended a Supreme Court argument in person. I recall attorney general Robert Kennedy attending an argument back when I was a law clerk in the early 1960s. But I have seen no record of presidential attendance. Not that there is anything wrong with that, even if it was intended to convey the president’s strong belief in his side of the argument. Any fear that President Trump’s presence would influence the justices was immediately belied by the nature of the justices’ questions – which suggested some hostility to the Solicitor General’s argument limiting birthright citizenship.

Sam Olsen

Donald Trump would regret leaving NATO

Donald Trump has yet again raised the prospect of the United States leaving NATO. The President called the alliance a “paper tiger” and said he “was never swayed by NATO.” It is tempting to dismiss it as political theater. But this time feels different. Trump’s frustration with European allies has sharpened, particularly over their reluctance to back his approach to Iran, where the absence of a clear political end-state has made support difficult to sustain. That hesitation has deepened transatlantic irritation. Combined with tensions over Greenland and Denmark, this is no longer an abstract complaint about burden-sharing but an accumulation of grievances. What once sounded like brinkmanship now carries the

Jacob Heilbrunn

Trump has already checked out of NATO

Donald Trump, who will deliver an address from the Oval Office tonight, isn’t giving up on his aims for his war in the Middle East. This time his target isn’t Iran but NATO. “You don’t even have a navy,” he declared about Britain before going on to denounce the North Atlantic alliance. “I was never swayed by NATO. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way,” Trump told Britain’s Daily Telegraph. There hasn’t been such a loony interview since Kaiser Wilhelm II created an international furor in 1908 in the same paper by denouncing the English as “mad, mad, mad as March

Andrew Cockburn

The age of the aircraft carrier is over

Ever since World War Two, America’s aircraft carrier fleets have served as imposing instruments of imperial power, roaming the oceans to cow recalcitrant nations into obedience. Favored by the Trump administration for this purpose, current experience indicates their day is done thanks to the proliferation of anti-ship missiles and the increasing ubiquity of drones. In America’s last Middle Eastern war but two, against the Yemeni Houthis in 2025, the carrier USS Harry S.Truman, complete with its attendant escorts, was driven into retreat, leaving antagonists in control of the Red Sea. On one occasion, the carrier’s desperate maneuver to avoid a Houthi drone caused an $80 million Hornet jet fighter to slide

Tuesday

March 31, 2026

Stephen Daisley

Israel needs to rethink its relationship with Christians

Sometimes it’s a wonder Israel can stand with all the self-inflicted gunshot wounds in its feet. Israeli police placed their country in the eye of a diplomatic and religious storm by accosting their most senior Catholic clergymen as they made their way to pray at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Religious gatherings have been restricted during the ongoing war with Iran, which has repeatedly targeted built-up civilian areas including Jerusalem. Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, and Father Francesco Ielpo, Custos of the Holy Land, were prevented from accessing the Holy Sepulchre on Palm Sunday, the day when Christians mark Jesus Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. The story

Matthew Lynn

The markets have stopped listening to Donald Trump

Over the last 24 hours, President Trump has come up with a bewildering series of “solutions” to the global oil crisis triggered by his war with Iran. He might seize all of the country’s oil wells. He may send the marines in to capture its main exporting hub, Kharg Island. He has threatened to bomb the country back to the Stone Age if it doesn’t re-open the Straits of Hormuz, while at the same time – apparently – he is very close to a “fantastic deal” that will settle the entire conflict. But will these threats work? Can Trump keep a lid on the unfolding crisis? Crucially, the markets are