Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Friday

Daniel McCarthy

America’s last war in the Middle East

Win or lose, Donald Trump has begun the last war the United States is ever likely to fight in the Middle East. That might sound wildly optimistic, but what it really means is that war with Iran has been decades in the making. If the mission succeeds, it will mark the end of an era. And if it fails, this war will have exhausted what’s left of America’s willingness to remake the region by force. It’s not just that Iran puts the case for regime change to the ultimate test. America’s relationship with Israel is also on trial.

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Thursday

Eliot Wilson

Does Trump really have ‘whatever it takes’ to win in Iran?

With Operation Epic Fury in its sixth day, it is hard to tell how long the current United States military campaign against Iran will last. It may not be swift; yesterday, the Senate rejected a resolution to halt further action. Meanwhile, President Trump has been alarmingly indifferent to the question: Whatever the time is, it’s OK, whatever it takes. Right from the beginning we projected four to five weeks, but we have the capability to go far longer than that. We’ll do it. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth struck a different note with reporters: "This is not Iraq, this is not endless." Yet he has refused to rule out deploying ground forces to Iran and later said, "We have only just begun to fight.

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Tim Shipman

‘Whose side are you on?’: how Keir Starmer alienated Britain’s allies over Iran

The American-Israeli attacks on Iran were publicly called Epic Fury, but behind the scenes it is Britain’s handling of the war which provoked that reaction – not just from Donald Trump but from the UK’s allies in the Gulf. A Labour peer was in Washington when the first missiles slammed into Tehran on Friday evening and Keir Starmer refused to voice support. A member of the Trump administration told the peer: "Britain used to not contribute that much, but you were a good ally. Now you’re contributing nothing and you’re not even a good ally." A version of events has quickly become established: a Prime Minister with a near-religious belief in international law hid behind the advice of his Attorney General, Richard Hermer, that the attacks were illegal.

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Neal Pollack

Kid Rock’s political evolution

The celebrity circles surrounding the second Trump administration are pretty thin. Sylvester Stallone, Jon Voight, Adam Sandler’s close friend Rob Schneider and a scant few others support the President in ways loud and quiet. But other than pop star Nicki Minaj, whose residence in Trumpistan has caused a lot of head-scratching, no entertainment celebrity occupies a more prominent place in the MAGA firmament than the musician Robert Ritchie, better known to the world as Kid Rock. “I call him Bob,” Trump once said. Kid Rock, the second most famous white rapper from Detroit, has long been in Trump’s social circles. He was a guest at Mar-a-Lago before either he or Trump became political figures.

Travis Aaroe

MAGA shouldn’t try to build a new moral order

Americans increasingly suspect that the entire social order is a sort of elaborate swindle. Billions of their taxpayer dollars were found to have gone to mysterious “learing centers” with no students. Federal agencies have paid $2.8 trillion in such mistaken transfers since 2003, according to government figures. There is serious discussion about whether a clique of pedophiles was ensconced at the highest levels of society. When asked, “Do you think the system is rigged in America?” 70 percent of citizens reply “Yes.” They are waiting for someone to tell them what has gone wrong and who is to blame. So naturally, America’s populist movement has decided that what the moment really calls for is religious Pharisaism and family values.

John Jenkins

Why Iran is not Iraq

At the moment, a lot of people – notably including the British Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer – are comparing the current war with Iran with the Iraq invasion of 2003. Do they have a point? There are several common claims of comparison, some good, some bad. When Saddam fell, there was little appetite in Iraq for a western-aligned replacement The principal claim, in Starmer's case, is that what happened in Iraq means the UK should steer well clear of any further involvement anywhere. It reminds me of the final scene in that magnificent film, Chinatown. A private detective moves to intervene to stop a horror unfolding but one of his associates holds him back, saying, “Leave it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.” In this reading, the Middle East is Chinatown.

Wednesday

Jacob Heilbrunn

The Texas Republican revolt

Following last night’s primaries, Texas Democrats have a clear Senate candidate in James Talarico. Texas Republicans have a civil war. Ken Paxton and John Cornyn are headed for a nasty and expensive three-month runoff that will culminate in an election on May 26. Cornyn has made no secret of his disdain for Paxton, deeming him a “dead weight.” Are Texas Republicans facing an Alamo scenario, a last stand as the Democrats swarm over their defenses to reclaim the Lone Star state and the Senate majority? More than 2.4 million Texans cast ballots in the Democratic primary, the highest number in nearly two decades. The significance of Talarico’s victory over Jasmine Crockett can hardly be overstated.

Andrew Cockburn

Does Trump even know why he invaded Iran?

Napoleon is supposed to have defined strategy as "on s’engage, et puis on voit," loosely translated as "get stuck in and then see what happens." Donald Trump is not normally deemed Napoleonic, yet in his approach to strategy he appears to have taken the great general’s precept to heart, launching initiatives without much forethought regarding consequences or further steps in the light of unexpected developments. When the consequences turn out to be unwelcome, he swiftly readjusts, discarding the initial scheme in favor of an alternative course of action, as often as not headlong retreat. Thus the swingeing Liberation Day tariff regime unveiled with much fanfare in April 2025 was swiftly suspended in the face of crashing markets.

Tuesday

Freddy Gray

Will Iran descend into civil war?

33 min listen

Freddy is joined by historian and former diplomat Charlie Gammell. They discuss the situation in Iran, whether the US is heading for a decisive confrontation, and examine the regional consequences: proxy warfare, Gulf energy security, Pakistan’s delicate position, and migration pressures on Europe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

David Loyn

Chaos in Iran spells trouble for the Taliban

The US-Israeli attack on Iran presents an opportunity to get rid of the Taliban in Afghanistan. If there is a collapse of central authority in Iran, tens of thousands of Afghan former soldiers living in exile there could use the power vacuum to mobilize, return home and fight against the Taliban. There are several resistance groups who have advanced plans to fight but need a reliable haven outside the country to launch attacks inside Afghanistan. Iran, which has a 600-mile border with the country, could be the launchpad they need. This represents a unique opportunity for Afghanistan, as for the first time the country faces conflict on both sides.

Robert Skidelsky

What comes after America’s retreat?

What is happening to the "rules-based international order" despairingly invoked by bewildered European leaders? The broad answer is that we are living through the retreat of American hegemony, masked by bluster and marked by contradictions. The retreat has two aspects, economic and geopolitical. Economists talk about Trump’s tariffs breaking up the free-trade order; geopoliticians about the Trump Corollary breaking up the NATO system. These are part of a single, reasonably coherent story. But the retreat is not as straightforward as it sounds. How does the bombing of Iran fit into it? What do people mean when they talk about a global "rules-based order"?

Ben Clerkin

Did Israel bounce the US into war?

Operation Epic Fury has developed from a war to deprive Iran of nuclear weapons into a political war of blame. “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action,” Marco Rubio told reporters at the Capitol last night. “We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces. And we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them [Iran] before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.” The rationale came as a surprise to lawmakers. It sounded as though Israel had effectively bounced America into military action. Trump had told the American people from the outset that the war was to defang Iran of its nuclear weapons program as well as its ballistic missile capability. Regime change was optional.

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

The Middle East’s Muslims are cheering Khamenei’s death

The killing of ayatollah Ali Khamenei in US-Israeli strikes on Saturday was cheered by many Iranians who have suffered innumerable atrocities under his ruthless Islamist rule of the country. While the diaspora were vociferous in their jubilation over the death of Iran’s supreme leader, many in the country also braved violent crackdowns to rejoice in the streets. These Iranians chanted the slogan that has become a common anti-Khamenei refrain over the past four decades: "Death to the Islamic Republic.

Monday

Charles Lipson

What Iran means for the world

The Israeli-American air campaign against Iran will have profound global repercussions. What those repercussions will be depends on two crucial factors. First, will the bombing campaign remove the Shi’ite Islamist regime from power? We do not yet know if the campaign can accomplish that ambitious goal without foreign troops on the ground. If the US and Israel can do that, it would be an unprecedented achievement. Second, if the Islamists are removed, will the successor regime be stable and effective? Will it be able to control the streets and countryside, prevent successful breakaway regional movements, and begin the arduous process of rebuilding the country? Can the factions currently opposing the old regime join in supporting a new one or will they fracture?

Roger Kimball

When will Kash Patel unleash epic fury on the FBI?

As I write, the Washington Post is carrying an obituary about the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – or maybe it is about Santa Claus? You tell me. “With his bushy white beard and easy smile,” the Democracy Dies in Darkness paper told its readers,  “Ayatollah Khamenei cut a more avuncular figure in public than his perpetually scowling but much more revered mentor [Khomenei], and he was known to be fond of Persian poetry and classic western novels, especially Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables... Some Iranians who knew Ayatollah Khamenei before he became supreme leader described him as a ‘closet moderate.’” Did they now? Many other Iranians, some say about 250,000, did not have a chance to describe him at all because they were murdered on his orders.

Paul Wood

Inside the daring plan to reclaim the Chagos Islands

Peros Banhos on the Chagos archipelago looks like your basic tropical island paradise: turquoise waters and golden sands, waves lapping on a palm-fringed beach. But step off the strip of sand into the wall of green behind, and you’re enveloped by mosquitoes. The old well you were counting on for water is a shallow puddle. And the silver fish between your feet dart past a net, despite not having seen one in 50 years. The jungle has grown over the old British colonial buildings, and the jungle is a harsh place. Four Chagos Islanders have been here more than a week, along with the man who brought them, Adam Holloway – former MP, ex-Guards officer, an adventurer seemingly from an earlier era. This is not, as the Foreign Office briefed journalists, "a political stunt.

Saturday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Is this Trump’s Sarajevo moment?

Here we go again. Switch out Saddam Hussein for the Ayatollah Khamenei and Ahmed Chalabi for Reza Pahlavi and you have a fresh war for regime change in the Middle East, this time with Israel as America’s sidekick. With Operation Epic Fury, the American and Israeli bombing of Iran and push for regime change, the self-proclaimed “President of Peace” runs the risk not only of triggering wider upheaval in the Middle East, but also globally. Is this a new Sarajevo moment? With Trump’s own generals having warned him that attacking Iran could be a debacle, he may have torched his own presidency Unlike George W. Bush in 2003, who worked to bolster domestic and international support for attacking Iraq, Donald Trump has disdained the slightest effort to justify his war publicly.

Daniel DePetris

It’s unclear what threat Iran actually poses

Donald Trump has urged Iranians to "take over" their government after the United States and Israel struck targets across the country. A multitude of Iranian military and government targets were hit by missiles in what is turning out to be a joint operation far more comprehensive than the 12-day air campaign last June. Back then, Trump’s objectives were limited: degrade Iran’s three largest nuclear facilities. This time, Trump’s eyes are on a bigger prize – a full-scale decapitation of the Iranian leadership and a degradation of Tehran’s military power.

Friday

Freddy Gray

How careful is Trump being on Iran?

Every Friday, it seems, words spills from Washington that Donald Trump has ordered an imminent strike against Iran. He likes to initiate dramatic military action in the weekend early hours, when markets are closed and the media-consuming public can wake up to big news.  So far, despite the presence of significant US military assets in the region, Trump has resisted the urge to bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran – preferring instead to pursue a diplomatic settlement with the regime in Tehran.   This weekend could be different. This morning, the US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, sent an email to his staff saying those who wanted to leave "should do so TODAY." The path of diplomacy has, it seems, reached an impasse.