Iran

Thursday

Owen Matthews

Putin’s rot

This is Putin’s time. Next week, the Fifa World Cup kicks off in Moscow, and the Kremlin has spared no expense to showcase Vladimir Putin’s new Russia as a vibrant, safe and strong nation. Half a million visitors will be welcomed — with the Russian press reporting that the notorious ‘Ultra’ hooligans have been officially warned to behave themselves or face the full wrath of the state. Despite four years of rock-bottom oil prices, Putin has nonetheless found the cash to build or refurbish a dozen new stadiums. Moscow has undergone a two-year city-wide facelift that has left it looking cleaner, fresher and more prosperous than any European capital I

Thursday

Cindy Yu

The Spectator Podcast: The Italian Job

In this week’s episode, we talk about Italy’s new coalition – what will the Five Star and Lega partnership mean for Italy and for Europe (00:35)? Journalist Peter Oborne and politician Stephen Crabb also get in a fiery debate about whether Conservative Friends of Israel are a little too friendly (12:00). And, on a slightly different note, we get a dominatrix to explain why powerful men loved to be spanked…(26:30) Italy is forming a government. In the March elections no single party received more than 40% of the vote, leaving the most successful party – the Five Star Movement – forming a strange coalition with the party Lega. The two

Kate Chisholm

The sense of an ending | 17 May 2018

The timing of the Today programme’s series about hospices could not have been more apt, coming as it did so soon after Tessa Jowell’s death was announced with its array of tributes and the poignant interview with her husband and one of her daughters. In themselves such personal testimonies are not always that helpful — everyone’s situation is individual and the actual outcomes necessarily different. But what Jowell’s family said about her last hours and their evident acknowledgment and acceptance of their situation gave a real sense of purpose on Monday to Zoe Conway’s report from the North London Hospice. This was part of the Dying Matters campaign, urging us

Saturday

Charles Moore

Donald Trump is right to take on Iran’s mullahs

The point behind the argument about the Iran nuclear deal goes beyond precise nuclear facts. It is like the row over SALT II when Ronald Reagan succeeded Jimmy Carter as US President in 1981. SALT (the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) was not formally junked, but it did not operate because, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the end of 1979, the Americans felt the necessary trust was absent. Better times, including the coming of Mikhail Gorbachev, allowed Reagan to pursue negotiations which culminated (under his successor, the first George Bush) in START I (the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) being signed in 1991. By then, the United States and its

Thursday

Cindy Yu

The Spectator Podcast: Trump vs Iran

What comes after the end of the Iran nuclear deal? Is Donald Trump an expert diplomat worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize, or a maniac let loose? Why don’t ethical millennials care about the moral cost of their drug habits? And are emojis ruining children’s abilities to communicate? Find out about all this and more in this week’s Spectator Podcast. On Tuesday, President Trump announced his decision to take the US out of the Iran nuclear deal. The decision has come despite appeals from Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, and even our own Boris Johnson, for the US to stay in the deal. Christopher de Bellaigue writes in this week’s magazine

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Israel vs Iran: will the conflict escalate further?

Jerusalem It’s a sunny day in Jerusalem where Israelis are waking up to fresh conflict on the country’s border with Syria. I’m in town as part of a Bicom delegation and the picturesque scenes give little indication of the events of the night before which saw 20 rockets fired by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards at Golan Heights overnight. In response, Israel upped the ante and sent more rockets back – targeting Iranian weapons depots, logistics sites and intelligence centres. This marks a serious ratcheting up of tensions between Israel and Iran following increasing unease about Iranian presence in Syria and Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear

Wednesday

Andrew Bacevich

America goes rogue

For the past year or so, in speaking to groups, I’ve ventured to suggest that Donald Trump will ultimately rank among the least consequential presidents in U.S. history. I did not intend that to be a laugh line. Trump, I argued, was likely to end up being to the 21st century what James Buchanan was to the 19th and Warren G. Harding to the 20th – someone who, after occupying the White House for a time, departed and left nary a trace. In the end, Trump’s defining traits — vulgarity, meanness, self-absorption, and apparently compulsive dishonesty — would count for little in the scales of history. So I believed. Let

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Iran shows that even Trump can get things right

An unexpected downside of Donald Trump’s presidency is the rare occasion on which he makes a wise call. Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran deal is wise and demonstrates a clear understanding of Tehran’s motives and tactics. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was Barack Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement, and it was sold as a tough but realistic settlement that would normalise relations with Iran while frustrating its desires to become a nuclear power.  The JCPOA was an attempt to translate Obama’s campaign idealism into hard policy. He won in 2008, in part, by promising a new way forward on American engagement with the world, one humbler and

Douglas Murray

Hectoring Trump on Iran has done Britain and France no favours

Three years ago when the Iran nuclear agreement was signed there was massive political resistance in Washington. Notably – but not solely – from Republicans.  In London, by contrast, there was almost nothing. As Catherine Ashton and co worked away with the Iranians there was next to no resistance from the UK political class and very little pushback from the British media. Considering that the deal delivered an astronomical cash-infusion to the Mullahs and only stood at best to delay their nuclear ambitions, this was striking. At the time I asked one Parliamentarian why there had been such silence in Westminster and was told ‘When the White House wants something

Tuesday

Freddy Gray

Donald Trump pulls out of the Iran deal. Is anyone surprised?

Did anybody really think President Donald J Trump wasn’t going to pull out of the Iran deal? He’s said all along he would and this Commander-in-Chief’s number one public image rule is that, unlike most politicians, he honours his word. Trump’s other big rule is that anything Obama has done he’ll undo. And Obama’s biggest achievement, according to his admirers and former staffers, was the Iran deal, which – in theory anyway — stopped Tehran from acquiring nukes while strengthening democratic forces within the troubled Muslim state. The pride with which Team Obama held up the deal was precisely why Team Trump wanted to destroy. And with his new hawkish cabinet — a

Jacob Heilbrunn

Sorry, Boris, President Trump doesn’t have an Iran plan

Washington, DC. With Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, American foreign policy is getting radioactive. “We cannot prevent a nuclear bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of the agreement,” Trump declared with his habitual understatement. The only thing missing was another shot at Barack Obama for bothering to negotiate with the mad mullahs. Trump had no time for Europe, either. All the air kisses in the world from his French coeval didn’t stop Trump for a second from bidding au revoir to the deal. Nor did the administration pay any heed to dire warnings from Russia or China. Instead, Trump’s terse speech in the White

Monday

Tom Gross

The truth about Iran is now of little importance to Jeremy Corbyn

If any further evidence was needed about the disingenuousness of Jeremy Corbyn and the dangers a government led by him might pose internationally – not just for Britain but also for Britain’s Nato allies – it is worth watching Corbyn’s interview on Iran with the BBC’s Andrew Marr yesterday. ‘You’ve been very reluctant to condemn the government of Iran. Can I read you what Amnesty International has said about Iran… ?’ began Marr yesterday, to which Corbyn interrupted him with the extraordinary response: ‘I think that actually, if I may say so, you’re spending too much time reading the Daily Mail, do you know that?’ Having failed to read Corbyn

Sunday

Steerpike

Jeremy Corbyn’s short-term memory on Iran

It’s happened. Jeremy Corbyn has finally broken his silence on Iran. To be fair, he was rather forced into doing so when Andrew Marr raised the topic live on air this morning. Marr put to the Labour leader – who says ‘to stay neutral in times of injustice is to side with the oppressor’ – that he had gone rather quiet on Iran after over 20 people died and more gone missing following clashes between protesters and security forces.   .@AndrewMarr9: "You've been very reluctant to condemn the government of Iran" @jeremycorbyn: "You're spending too much time reading the Daily Mail… "https://t.co/Yhj91ijeum #marr pic.twitter.com/g3bCzxZYV6 — BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) January 28,

Thursday

Sarah Vine

Diary – 4 January 2018

Owing to the spectacular uselessness of Ticketmaster, my son missed out on his birthday treat, seats for Hamilton at the newly refurbished Victoria Palace Theatre. Our show was cancelled — just one of a total of 16 — and our allotted replacement date clashed with an immovable engagement. By the time the rusty wheels of Ticketmaster’s nonexistent customer service had ground into action, the entire run was sold out. I asked the boy’s godfather to accompany him in my place. Turns out even that’s verboten. Such is the hype that tickets are non-transferable — and require you to show a printed email confirmation, your original payment card and a photo

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 4 January 2018

Home In a message for the New Year, as though it were an immemorial custom, Theresa May, the Prime Minister, said: ‘Most people just want the government to get on and deliver a good Brexit, and that’s exactly what we are doing.’ It seemed a long time since, just before Christmas, Damian Green had resigned as the First Secretary of State, in a letter beginning, ‘I regret that I’ve been asked to resign’ and going on to ‘accept that I should have been clear in my press statements that police lawyers talked to my lawyers in 2008 about the pornography on the computers [in his parliamentary office], and that the

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Iran’s uprising exposes the left’s shameful double standards

Why is Jeremy Corbyn silent on the protests in Iran? A cynic might say that the Labour leader could hardly be expected to bite the hand that fed him £20,000 for appearing on the state’s propaganda channel. But Corbyn’s motivations are not financial. He and those who share his worldview simply cannot stomach being on the same side as the United States, even if that means abandoning Iranians crying out for democracy, justice and human rights.  That may shock soft-left indulgers of Corbyn but it shouldn’t. When the socialist journalist James Bloodworth contends that left-wing politics ‘has become so solipsistic that much of the time it operates strictly negatively’ he

Nick Hilton Nick Hilton

The Spectator Podcast: Iran’s uprising

On this week’s podcast, we look at the global silence around the protests in Iran. We’ll also be asking whether Wilfred Owen might have been a paedophile, and railing against unnecessary subtitling on internet videos. First, in the magazine this week Douglas Murray turns his attention to the recent turbulence in Iran. Not since 2009 has the country seen such widespread disruption, but will this be another abortive uprising, like the so-called ‘Green Revolution’, or is this the descendant of the 1979 revolution, whose leaders are still in power? Douglas joins the podcast to discuss, along with Iranian journalist Nazenin Ansari, Managing Editor of Persian-language newspaper Kayhan London. As Douglas writes: “If

Kim Sengupta

Iran’s hardliners are exploiting Trump’s rhetoric

A year and eleven months ago, Iran’s parliamentary elections ended in a resounding victory for the reformists. Last May, the reformist candidate Hassan Rouhani convincingly defeated his hardline rival, Ebrahim Raisi, in the Presidential election. Rouhani’s inauguration was presented as a celebration of the country’s democracy and stability. But last Thursday demonstrations began at the city of Mashhad and then rapidly spread across the country, growing in clamour and violence with, so far, 21 dead and 450 injured. Earlier this week, the Grand Ayatollah, Ali Khameini, who had sought to stay above it all, intervened to accuse foreign powers of sabotage. He did not name the enemy states, but other

Douglas Murray

Indefensible silence

If there is one lesson the world should have learned from Iran’s ‘Green Revolution’ of 2009 and the so-called Arab Spring that followed, it is this: the worst regimes stay. Rulers who are only averagely appalling (Tunisia’s Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak) can be toppled by uprisings. Those who are willing to kill every one of their countrymen stay. So it is that after almost half a million dead we enter 2018 with Bashar al-Assad still President of Syria and with Iran’s mullahs approaching the 40th anniversary of their seizure of power in 1979. Last week this lesson got a chance to be learned again when protests broke

Wednesday

Steerpike

Paul Mason turns on the ‘Stalinist left’ over Iran

With the death toll in Iran thought to sit at 21 following a series of clashes between protesters and security forces at nationwide demonstrations, many politicians have been quick to express concern over the regime. However, Jeremy Corbyn has intriguingly gone quiet on Iran. Happily, some on the left have proved more willing to comment. The Guardian‘s Owen Jones has expressed ‘solidarity with any Iranian protestors who are fighting for democracy and freedom, both from a vicious regime and from US domination’. Meanwhile, Paul Mason – the journalist turned left wing revolutionary – has used a blog post to criticise the ‘Stalinist left’ for trying to ‘smear the protests as