What happened

United Nations investigators Thursday reported they had found “reasonable grounds” to believe the U.S. committed war crimes in Iran with its “indiscriminate” attacks on an elementary school and sports center, killing at least 178 civilians, mostly children.

The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran also determined that the Iranian government had “committed crimes against humanity” by murdering, imprisoning and torturing protestors.

Who said what

U.S. officials “have ascribed the school strike to a targeting error,” The New York Times said, though the Pentagon “has not published the results of its investigation” into the bombing. The U.N. investigators said the “clearly identifiable” elementary school was the “intended point of impact,” and the U.S. military’s use of outdated targeting data “went beyond mere negligence.” The White House said Iran is the “only party in this conflict that has committed war crimes,” and the U.N. Human Rights Council, which created the mission in 2022, has been “spouting unserious nonsense for decades.”

What next?

The investigators are set to present their findings to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday. U.N. fact-finding missions are “investigative, not judicial bodies,” and can’t “initiate any criminal cases,” Reuters said. But this report “adds to international evidence gathered about crimes in the war in Iran,” The Associated Press said, and “could eventually be used in efforts to reach justice in international courts.”

Brics has been described as a “motley collection of emerging markets that agree on little and achieve even less”, said the Financial Times, but its leaders signed off on a 45-page statement at the recent summit in India.

The group represents 49.5% of the global population, 40% of global GDP and 26% of global trade, but many of its members are at odds with their supposed allies, which limits the group’s influence.

What did it agree?

The acronym Bric – which stood for Brazil, Russia, India and China – was first coined in 2001 by Jim O’Neill, then chief economist at investment bank Goldman Sachs, to describe a group of emerging economies expected to sustain a prolonged period of growth. It has expanded and now includes Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates.

At last weekend’s India summit, the “historically unruly bloc” agreed a statement “blasting protectionism and economic sanctions and calling for peace in the Gulf”. Brics expressed “deep concern over the continued escalation of tensions” in the Middle East around the war in Iran and called for “maximum restraint”. It also encouraged nations to avoid actions that could further aggravate the situation.

The bloc also expressed “firm opposition” to the forced displacement of Palestinians and called for an end to Israel’s war in Gaza. It restated its support for a two-state solution, with the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state.

The Ukraine war is a “source of tension” within the group because Russia is a founding member of Brics, said Al Jazeera. The declaration called for international disputes to be resolved through “dialogue, consultation, and diplomacy”. It was a “generic” statement that didn’t mention Ukraine.

Brics leaders called for “the elimination” of “unlawful” unilateral sanctions that were not authorised by the UN Security Council, saying they “undermine international law and the principles and purposes of the UN Charter”. This “position is significant for Russia, which has faced extensive Western sanctions”.

On US tariffs, the declaration spoke of the organisation’s worry about the “unilateral tariff and non-tariff measures” that distort trade. It called for cooperation to protect global trade, supply chains, energy flows and maritime security as wars disrupt international commerce.

Brics says it wants a “multipolar” world: a global system where power is spread across several major countries or power blocs instead of being controlled by just one or two. It reiterated its “commitment to strengthening multilateralism and multipolarity”, stating that this could expand opportunities for emerging markets and developing countries to develop “constructive potential and enjoy universally beneficial, inclusive, sustainable and equitable economic globalisation and cooperation”.

What does this mean?

For Iran, the summit was “a chance to show that it does not stand alone amid the US and Israel’s military attacks and economic pressure”, said the BBC. In the face of Washington’s sanctions, Iran “pressed for deeper economic ties” with Brics members, including Malaysia, India and Ethiopia.

This was Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first visit to India in seven years and, despite “deep mistrust” between the two countries, the weekend was “still a big moment” for China and India. Xi and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi “agreed to strengthen business ties and transport links and address barriers to trade”. So the summit, held in Delhi, showed that Brics can “create space for rivals to talk and manoeuvre outside Western-dominated institutions”.

But “key members and partners of the bloc are at serious loggerheads”, said Stefan Wolff, a University of Birmingham academic, on The Conversation. Iran is “effectively in a state of war” with the UAE and Saudi Arabia, while the Saudis and the UAE “have been at odds for years” over Yemen, Sudan and Somalia. So a group “whose sole remaining source of unanimity is opposition to the US and its allies” is “hardly likely to become a pole of a multipolar order”.

It has been more than six months since the first barrage of American missiles struck Iranian targets in what has become the defining foreign policy crisis of the second Trump administration. Less defining, however, is the language the White House has used to describe what is taking place between the United States and Islamic Republic.

While President Donald Trump himself often refers to the violence in bombastic terms, other members of his administration have conspicuously avoided calling the ongoing exchanges of missiles part of a larger “war.” Instead, they opt to downplay the conflict’s duration and severity for domestic audiences.

‘It’s small potatoes for us’

Vice President JD Vance argued this month that the “current hostilities shouldn’t even be called a ‘war’” since “‘active combat operations’ ended months ago,” said CNN. Vance’s claim came “despite three consecutive days” in which the U.S. and Iran exchanged fire. “I can understand what he’s saying,” said Trump during an Oval Office press scrum following Vance’s comments. “I call it a military conflict because it’s small potatoes for us. It’s not a big thing.”

From the start of the war, Americans have been “getting conflicting messages from the Trump administration and congressional leaders” about what to call the violence, said FactCheck in March. Given that Congress hasn’t officially declared it as such, “if political leaders were to say that this is a war, they would also be acknowledging that the administration’s actions were unconstitutional,” said Stephanie Savell, the director of Brown University’s Costs of War project, to the outlet.

“Because we haven’t officially declared war, my kids and I aren’t eligible for some benefits,” said Air Force widow Libby Klinner in a recent social media post highlighting the paradox of a nonwar war, per the Military Times. Air Force officials have since launched an “audit on our benefits to ensure that we receive all we are entitled to,” said Klinner in a subsequent message.

White House officials have “downplayed the scale of the conflict” in the “apparent hope that it will recede from the headlines” since hostilities have “already lasted far longer than the president’s initial predictions of victory within a few weeks,” said The Atlantic. Still, with “no end to the hostilities in sight,” the Navy is “staying on a war footing indefinitely.”

‘Just playing to his base’

Trump has “contradicted himself and his own Cabinet in the same week — and sometimes, the same day” in his assessments of the conflict, said the Los Angeles Times. The evolving language is part of an effort to “control the narrative of the Iran war.”

Trump’s more bellicose rhetoric, like when he personally and repeatedly refers to the Iran “war,” is being used in part to “save face for the quagmire he has put himself and Republicans in” ahead of the midterms, said Khaled Elgindy, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, to The New York Times. The president’s wartime language is “just playing to his base, whether it’s true or not.” It lacks “much of a strategy beyond trying to wish things into existence by sheer force of words.”

Twenty-five years on from the most deadly terrorist attack in history, and almost 25 years into the War on Terror, “the world is a less safe place despite our actions”, said Iraq veteran Joslin Joseph on The Hill.

According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, the military interventions after 9/11 led to the deaths of over 900,000 people and cost the United States more than $8 trillion (£5.9 trillion). “Afghanistan and Iraq ended in failure”, said The American Conservative’s David Brady, while “most Americans believe that the post-9/11 wars in the Middle East were a mistake”. Indeed, this was a major part of Donald Trump’s initial appeal: “They lied,” he said of the War on Terror architects in 2016.

But while “there is much to criticise in the war on terrorism,” said Douglas J. Feith in The Washington Post, on its main objective “the success has been remarkable”. There has been no second 9/11. “Terrorists have not exploded skyscrapers, stadiums and power plants across the country” and “they have not transformed America into a police state.”

What did the commentators say?

“Hasn’t Osama Bin Laden gotten everything he wished for?” asked The American Conservative’s Brady. The financial costs “have taken an undeniable economic toll, fuelling unprecedented levels of debt” while the “human costs have soured many Americans, not just on Mideast wars, but on the elites who got us into them”. Syria is even “run by a former member of al-Qaida, who has been welcomed to the White House”.

But the “most costly single event to the US would have been another successful major attack”, said The Guardian’s Jason Burke. The fact that this never came is an “unarguable success of US policymaking since 9/11 and a major failure for al-Qaida”. And despite the obvious economic problems in the US, “no one could argue that the country has suffered a similar fate to the USSR”.

The terrorist group that Bin Laden headed up, meanwhile, faces the question of whether it can replace its ageing fighters. Although this is conceivable, al-Qaida as a brand is “visibly fading”, terrorism expert Behnam Heidenreuter-Said, head of the research centre for Strategic Police Research at Hamburg Police Academy, told Deutsche Welle. In Europe in particular, militant jihadism has become less attractive.

Some analysts “add together the presumed strength of groups in Somalia or Mali that have very loose, historic links to al-Qaida, and warn that their total membership is higher than those loyal to Bin Laden in 2001”, said The Guardian’s Burke. However, “these few thousand young men with AK-47s have little in common with the organisation Bin Laden led 25 years ago, both in aims and capabilities”. The fact that al-Qaida “still exists is an achievement of sorts for the group and, posthumously, for its founder”. But “it should not be described as any victory”.

What next?

A key lesson of 9/11 is that “perils grow when enemies conclude that America lacks the will, capability or staying power to defend itself”, said The Washington Post’s Feith.

But America and the West are again under attack, this time “from a Cold War enemy” in Russia “that watched the US and its allies waste lakes of blood and trillions in treasure enfeebling themselves after 9/11”, said The Independent’s world affairs editor Sam Kiley.

The West is now “spiritually and politically impoverished, deeply indebted and unable to meet new defence needs, and therefore vulnerable”. Vladimir Putin “has Bin Laden to thank for that”.

What happened

Iran on Wednesday said it attacked two U.S. ships and eight tankers near the Strait of Hormuz in response to the U.S. sinking five Iranian oil tankers. The Pentagon said the tanker strikes were retaliation for Iran’s first confirmed attacks on U.S. Navy ships during the six-month war. Those attacks “failed,” The Wall Street Journal said, but “officials described some of them as close calls.”

This was the “biggest wave of attacks on shipping by both sides” yet, Reuters said, and it “sent the price of oil surging” above $100 a barrel for the first time since July. U.S. gas prices hit $4.22 per gallon, and diesel rose to a record $5.94 per gallon. On Thursday, five gas stations in California maxed out diesel at $9.99 per gallon, the highest possible price on the pump, according to GasBuddy.

Who said what

The U.S. and Iran “appear to be stuck in a cycle that is draining U.S. air defenses and deepening Iran’s economic crisis,” The New York Times said. Iranian ballistic missiles did “minimal” damage to a U.S. military base in Jordan, officials told the Times, and it may have left some U.S. troops with “traumatic brain injuries.” They also damaged “several fighter jets” at the base, CBS News said.

What next?

“I think war ​is going to end immediately after the election,” sending oil prices “tumbling downward,” because Iran “can’t hold out any longer,” President Donald Trump told reporters on Wednesday. Top White House advisers have “privately” discussed with Trump “that the Iran war could drag on through the remainder of his term,” the Journal said, citing U.S. officials.

What happened

President Donald Trump capped off the first night of an unusual Republican midterm convention on Wednesday with a movie-length speech in which he defended his Iran war and tariffs while also saying he would send all U.S. adults a $5,000 “Trump dividend” if Republicans retain both houses of Congress in the November elections. “Please pretend that I am running,” he told the partially full arena in Dallas. Trump was preceded by a string of Republican candidates and Cabinet members, many of whom attacked Democrats as “communists,” and a surprise video appearance by Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.).

Who said what

Trump “reveled in making the upcoming elections all about himself,” The Associated Press said. But his “financially and politically implausible” dividend pledge reflects his “apparent calculation that he needs bold moves to revive Republicans’ chances” amid “his low approval ratings.” The payouts would cost about $1.2 trillion, Politico said, which “would dwarf the amount distributed during the Covid pandemic and likely explode the deficit” and “worsen inflation.”

Trump’s “DOGE divided” and tariff rebate checks “never panned out,” The New York Times said. And “there’s reason to think that Republicans in Congress, like they did with his two previous promises of quick cash, could shrug off the president’s suggestion.” The “Trump dividend” is a “last-ditch bid to prevent an electoral shellacking,” The Wall Street Journal said. But the GOP’s “all-Trump-all-the-time strategy” could also “drive away independent voters.”

What next?

Vice President JD Vance is scheduled to give Thursday’s keynote address, but Trump is closing out the convention’s second and final night.

When President Trump launched the Iran war in February, he declared that his “little excursion” would be over in “four to five weeks.” More than six months later, the war is still raging— and Trump “is losing,” said Ishaan Tharoor in The New Yorker. None of his initial goals have been achieved: the toppling of the Islamist regime, the seizure of Iran’s nuclear program, the dismantling of its ballistic missile program. The Strait of Hormuz, a crucial oil export route that was open to international trade before the war, is now largely shuttered and partly controlled by Iran. Meanwhile, the U.S. has spent more than $37.5 billion on combat operations, “burned through inventories of precision-guided and air-defense munitions,” and seen at least 18 service members killed and more than 750 wounded by Iranian drone and missile strikes. Angered by high gas prices—now averaging $4 a gallon, up from $2.75 pre-war— only about 30% of voters approve of the president’s handling of the conflict. But Trump seems happy with his performance, said Peter Baker in The New York Times. Two weeks ago, he posted an AI-generated image of himself backed by an aircraft carrier, warplanes, American flags, and a sign reading “Mission Accomplished 2026."

Trump has been in denial for months, said Chas Danner in New York. Days before starting the war, he asked his then director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard if his plan for overthrowing the regime would work. According to a new Wall Street Journal report, she warned him that assassinating Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would usher in a more extreme regime, that Tehran would close the strait, and that Iran would hit U.S. partners across the region, weakening our standing with allies. Trump ignored her, “and all of those things happened.” America’s generals are still sending distress signals, said Fred Kaplan in Slate. In a “remarkable” document leaked to The Washington Post, four-star commanders around the world told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that they wouldn’t be able to “perform their tasks” if, say, China invaded Taiwan or Russia attacked the Baltics, because the Iran war has gobbled up “so many of their planes, ships, and other weapons systems."

Yet Trump now has the upper hand in Iran, said Noah Rothman in National Review. The U.S. Navy has been quietly shepherding more oil tankers through the strait, while its blockade of Iranian ports is making “life inside Iran intolerable.” Supermarkets are running out of rice and cooking oil. Iranians are “hoarding gasoline,” and medical services are “breaking down.” Those “dire conditions” could reignite mass protests—and force the regime to cry uncle. That’s why Trump “must keep up the current economic war,” said Abe Greenwald in Commentary. He’s spent six months flip-flopping on whether to escalate or look for a negotiated “exit.” It’s time to prioritize an “American victory,” even though that means “enduring the inevitable rise in oil prices.”

Good luck selling that to voters, said Joshua Green and Nancy Cook in Bloomberg. With Trump’s approval rating at 33%, GOP strategists are panicking that the “unpopular conflict” will cost the party dearly in the midterms: 69% of undecided voters say they’ll back candidates who want to end U.S. involvement in Iran. But no swift end is in sight, said Daniel DePetris in the Chicago Tribune. Trump’s ego likely won’t let him extinguish “a fire of his own making.” The Iranians, meanwhile, have a simple goal: “Survive.” Tehran may be weaker militarily, but “at least it knows what it wants.”

What happened

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday told Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian at a summit in Kyrgyzstan that Moscow will continue supplying “the assistance you need” and “the necessary goods” during “this difficult period.” Since President Donald Trump “launched his war against Iran” in February, Russia “has backed the Iranians with intelligence, including on U.S. assets in the Persian Gulf,” and “drone components,” said The New York Times. Moscow has also been secretly helping Iran develop advanced supersonic cruise missiles, the Financial Times reported. The U.S. and Iran traded airstrikes last night, in their “first serious combat since July,” Reuters said.

Who said what

Russia’s transfer of the “strategically important military technology” to build supersonic missiles “would require political approval from Russia’s top leadership,” Conflict Armament Research analyst Fabian Hinz told the Financial Times. Such missiles would be a “qualitatively new strategic weapons system capable of threatening U.S. Navy ships,” former CIA military analyst Jim Lamson told the Financial Times. Iran has already done considerable damage to U.S. military bases in the Middle East with a new ballistic missile it calls “the Kheibar Shekan, or ‘Castle Breaker,’” USA Today said. The missile, likely developed “with the help of Chinese and Russian technology,” can “evade American air defenses and strike with far greater precision.”

What next?

Tehran vowed to respond to last night’s airstrikes with more “crushing and devastating blows” and claimed its own counterstrikes killed several U.S. personnel in Jordan and Iraq.

What happened

The U.S. on Sunday struck two missile launchers on Iran’s Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz, its first confirmed airstrikes on Iran since July 29. U.S. Central Command said Iran was preparing to fire sea mines into the strait, days after President Donald Trump declared the international shipping lanes clear of mines.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said the U.S. strikes killed “several” military personnel and civilians, and warned of “severe repercussions.” Jordan said it successfully intercepted eight missiles that entered its airspace Monday morning, headed for U.S. airbases.

Who said what

The resumption of airstrikes heightened the “risk of a return to all-out conflict,” The Wall Street Journal said, something Trump “has been working to avoid.” The administration recently pivoted to sanctions as it “weighs diminished munitions stockpiles” after six months of war, The Associated Press said.

The “heads of the Army, Navy and Air Force” and other “four-star commanders” warned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth this month that “prolonging large-scale operations against Iran is unsustainable and risks weakening their ability to confront threats elsewhere, including the U.S. homeland,” The Washington Post reported. The U.S. military is “experiencing a ‘beyond critical’ shortage of advanced missile interceptors in Europe,” the AP said last week, citing a U.S. defense official.

What next?

As the war “grinds on, Trump’s talk of finding a quick end” appears to be “fading,” the AP said. He has “repeatedly declared that the ‘Strait of Hormuz is open,’” but Iran continues to strike cargo ships. Brent crude oil jumped 2.8% to $90.57 a barrel after Sunday’s attacks.

‘If only the MAGA “Nixonmaxxers” fully understood the 37th president’

Lee Huebner at The Washington Post

“‘Nixonmaxxing’ young conservatives seem intent on repairing the disgraced former president’s reputation,” considering him a “victim of Washington machinations,” says Lee Huebner. Nixon’s “pugilistic style” clearly appeals to the “populist right,” and his “antiestablishment sensibility is shared by Trump.” But there is a “fundamental difference between the two men.” MAGA “denies election results and works to undermine confidence in America’s electoral system,” while Nixon notably “refused to join Republicans who were urging him to deny election results and defy court rulings.”

Read more

‘An economic D-Day is coming for Iran’

Scott Bessent at the Financial Times

“President Donald Trump and the overwhelming might of our military have significantly dismantled Iran’s military capabilities and weakened its nuclear program,” says U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent. Now begins the “single greatest financial offensive ever marshaled against an adversary.” The “regime’s final refuge lies in the self-deception of fearful nations that still believe accommodating aggression can secure a durable peace,” but “our objective is to sever every economic lifeline that sustains the tyrannical regime until Tehran stands alone.”

Read more

‘The gun lobby’s most cynical move yet’

Sari Horwitz at The Atlantic

A study by Stanford University researchers this year found that “after fatal school shootings, pro-gun political-action committees dramatically increased their contributions to their preferred U.S. House candidates in the districts where the shootings occurred,” says Sari Horwitz. “These shifts in spending” were observed “only when children were killed.” The study shows how “pro-gun PACs work to undermine anti-gun feelings in communities suffering from trauma” and is a “compelling reminder of how far the gun lobby will go.”

Read more

‘We stopped family separation once. We must stop this, too.’

Rosa DeLauro at Newsweek

The “second Trump administration is again targeting children as it pursues its radical anti-immigration agenda,” says Rosa DeLauro. The “contract between the federal government and the Acacia Center for Justice” recently “lapsed after the administration refused to extend the agreement,” leaving more than “20,000 migrant children” without “legal representation.” But depriving kids of “adequate legal services is not targeting the ‘worst of the worst.’” These “frightened” children “will be forced to stand before an immigration judge to plead their own case.”

Read more

What happened

The United Arab Emirates said Wednesday it had halted “all trade, commercial exchanges and financial transactions” with Iran “until future notice” due to “escalations that undermine regional and international peace and security.” Hours earlier, the UAE had accused Tehran of firing two missiles into its territory. Iran’s Foreign Ministry called that accusation “baseless” and possibly a “false flag operation.”

Iranian Gen. Ali Abdollahi later warned “countries on the southern shores of the Persian Gulf” that “any assistance” given to the U.S. military “amounts to participation” in its war. President Donald Trump on Wednesday night threatened that “ANY country that allows its financial institutions” or other entities to “provide any type of lifeline to Iran will itself face TREMENDOUS Economic Consequences.”

Who said what

The UAE is one of Tehran’s “biggest economic lifelines,” The Wall Street Journal said, and Trump’s “effort to squeeze Iran into submission will depend heavily” on Dubai. It’s unclear if the U.S. “played a role in the embargo decision,” The New York Times said, but it was announced “hours after a call” from Trump to the Emirati leader.

What next?

If “implemented broadly,” the UAE’s trade severance could significantly harm Iran’s economy, the Journal said. But “severing those links will be difficult” and “could hurt Dubai’s role as a freewheeling global hub for commerce.”

It is “the most sought-after weapon in the world”, said CNN. But the US-made Patriot interceptor, capable of shooting down ballistic missiles, is “the focus of a global supply crunch”, caused by “liberal use in the Gulf”, often just to counter Iranian drone attacks. Ukraine, which is being “savaged” by Russia’s “near-nightly surge” of ballistic-missile attacks, has “pretty much run out”.

What makes Patriot so special?

Patriot (Phased Array Tracking Radar for Intercept on Target) is a mobile surface-to-air missile defence system, and “considered one of the most advanced” in “the US arsenal”, said The Independent. Nineteen other countries buy and operate the system, and its interceptors protect cities and military bases across Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Combined with other defences, Patriot has this year intercepted more than 90% of Iran’s missiles and drones, according to the US Congressional Research Service. It is also “the only weapon capable of shooting down Russian ballistic missiles fired at Ukraine”, said the Financial Times.

Countering tactical ballistic missiles is “not a simple or cheap activity”, said The Guardian. To intercept them, a defensive system “needs to be remarkably sophisticated”, and building it involves “a huge amount of research and development”. Most Nato nations “have been happy for Washington to invest over decades to make the Patriot up to the job”.

The US “tightly guards the technical blueprints required to manufacture it”, said The Telegraph. So far, only Germany and Japan are licensed to make their own. Donald Trump has talked of letting Ukraine produce them but seems lately to have backtracked; Volodymyr Zelenskyy is “desperate for the technology”.

What is the stockpile situation?

Even before the US attack on Iran, Western allies “were nervous about depleting their own stocks by giving Patriot missiles to Ukraine”, said The Guardian. But the Iran war has now “created an acute global shortage”.

The US and its Gulf allies fired 943 rounds of Patriot batteries in the first 96 hours of the conflict, according to the Foreign Policy Research Institute. For context, US manufacturer Lockheed Martin only makes 620 interceptors a year.

Ukraine’s Patriot supplies been exhausted, said The Guardian. Ballistic-missile intercepts “have gone from more than 70% to none”; Russia now strikes “with impunity”. In one recent bombardment of Kyiv, Ukraine’s defences failed to intercept a single missile; 17 people were killed.

The situation is “so acute” that Kyiv has stopped disclosing the number of missiles Russia fires, to “avoid revealing how many it fails to intercept”, and “preserve public morale", said the Financial Times. Zelenskyy has “pleaded with” the US and European countries “to share more” of their stockpile with Ukraine. But such is the current depleted state of those stockpiles, they could take “months or years to be replenished”.

What does it mean for the world?

Almost all the countries that operate the Patriot system are “reliant on US production and supply chains, meaning any shortage in the US effectively becomes a global shortage”, said The Telegraph.

And such a shortage raises “urgent” questions about whether the US and its allies can “keep up in a new arms race with Russia, Iran, China and North Korea”. With those nations “ramping up production” of ballistic missiles, “the defence side is falling behind”.

The US, Germany and Japan can produce about 840 Patriot interceptors a year, said The Guardian. Russia produces about 750 Iskander ballistic missiles a year and “is looking to increase” that total. It can often take two to three interceptors – or more – to defeat an incoming missile. “And Iran has many more missiles in storage.”

Some analysts see America’s “ongoing strikes and conclude that stockpile concerns are overblown”, said the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “That is the wrong inference.” US-led forces can keep striking Iran because their stocks of bombs are “plentiful”. But “the strategic constraint” is the number of interceptors that “hold enemy launchers” at bay and “keep bases alive”. Bombs “let you keep fighting the war you are in”; interceptors decide if you can “afford to fight the next one”. The war in Iran is “creating a strategic illusion”: bombing continues but US readiness for a “larger, second-theatre conflict quietly bleeds out”.

Donald Trump has ordered the Pentagon to scale back annual joint military exercises with South Korea after the country stayed out of the war with Iran.

Writing on Truth Social, the US president said the exercises “send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea, which “has been unthreatening and respectful” during his second term. He also noted that South Korea had recently declined to join the US in the “denuclearisation” of Iran.

What did the commentators say?

The US is losing the Iran conflict, so Trump has “taken the logical next step” of “punishing” a “loyal American friend”, said Tom Nichols on The Atlantic.

In fact, “scaling back the exercise” is an “insane” decision but in “Trump’s world, every loss, every defeat, is a personal insult”, and “when things go wrong, someone must be held responsible” and, of course, “that someone is never Donald Trump”.

So the world is “witnessing a public exhibition of narcissistic rage” because Trump “embarked on a war for personal glory”, but “what he got instead was ongoing humiliation”.

The Chinese, Russians and North Koreans will “draw the appropriate lessons from this deranged policy”, and notice that “when Trump fails, he hurts those he feels safe hurting”.

It is the “latest example” of Trump “appearing to turn against an ally in favour of a leader that previous administrations have cast as an adversary”, wrote Konstantin Toropin and Alanna Durkin Richer on The Associated Press. It’s a particularly “sharp turnaround” from how his administration has viewed South Korea recently.

The announcement could be “part of an effort to divert attention” from the war in Iran, which has “left energy costs high”. This has become a “sensitive economic issue” ahead of the US midterm elections, said The Korea Times.

It could “trigger a debate over whether the scaling down of joint exercises could affect the allies’ deterrence” against North Korea as the “recalcitrant regime has been doubling down on its nuclear and ballistic missile programs”.

The “sudden” announcement “risks renewing concerns” that “US forces are too stretched to support crucial Western allies or maintain deterrence against autocracies that threaten them”, said Brad Lendon on CNN. It’s also a “gift” to Kim Jong Un at a time when he has “ramped up his own nation’s threat to global stability and offered no concessions in return”.

What next?

Experts told the BBC that the “walking back” of these joint military exercises could “carry a high cost with relatively little benefit”.

They are “essential for military forces to be ready and capable of doing their jobs”, Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, told the broadcaster.

“Scaling them back” could “damage alliance coordination”, as well as “slow the process of South Korea taking on greater responsibility for its own defence, and weaken deterrence against possible conflicts in Asia”.

In a statement, South Korea’s presidential Blue House said it was reviewing Trump’s comments and added that it hoped a favourable relationship between Washington and Pyongyang could lead to meaningful talks.

What happened

The Navy is sending the aircraft carrier USS George Washington from the South China Sea to the Middle East to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln, U.S. officials said Thursday, amid growing concerns over deteriorating mental health and living conditions aboard the Lincoln after more than 260 days at sea. The ship, which hasn’t made a port call in more than 200 days, has been supporting U.S. military actions against Iran since January.

Separately, President Donald Trump signed a national security memorandum directing the Navy to “tear out a complex system for launching jet fighters from its aircraft carriers and instead go back to using steam catapults,” The Wall Street Journal said. This “would likely cost billions of dollars,” The Associated Press said, and “revert the Navy’s most advanced ships to a system that takes more sailors to operate and is more difficult to maintain.”

Who said what

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday said reports about deplorable conditions on the Lincoln have been “completely misrepresented.” But “concerns about the ship’s roughly 5,000 service members mounted” amid reports of “family members describing suicidal ideation and food shortages,” NOTUS said, and several attempts “to jump overboard.” At least one sailor did go overboard earlier this month, before being rescued, U.S. officials told CNN. “The Navy considered the incident a mental health episode.”

What next?

Trump’s directive to retrofit new aircraft carriers with steam catapults comes as the U.S. military is “trying to find funding from Congress for all its desired equipment,” the AP said, and “as the Navy is struggling to fill its ships with enough sailors.”

“It will work out. It always works out. It’s like a chess game,” said Donald Trump at the weekend, as an impasse over diplomatic discussions and disruption in the Strait of Hormuz continue. By letting economic pressure mount, we are “low-keying it” with Iran, Trump told Axios, and “only semi-negotiating with them”.

In response, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said that whether “lights out or lights on, Iranians showed they are professional chess players”.

With no end to the war in sight, inflation on the rise, fuel rationing and continued threats of strikes, the vast majority of the Iranian population appear not to be players, but pawns.

‘Extensive’ damage

Speaking openly about politics in Iran still “carries obvious risks”, said Nawal Al-Maghafi in The Guardian. Within Iran there is “no single narrative of the war”, with some believing it has “strengthened national unity”, and others saying it has only “deepened repression”. Nonetheless, the country has been “transformed” by the war and, as the conflict carries on, “so does the struggle to shape the legacy it will leave behind”.

Iran is facing “extensive” damage from US attacks, estimated to be “running in the hundreds of billions of dollars”, said Maziar Motamedi in Al Jazeera. But this plays into “decades-old economic structural issues” and being continually “strained by years of Western sanctions and local mismanagement”. During both world wars, the US and Israel “systematically bombed” ports, bridges, roads and other civilian infrastructure, and the country has a long history of internet shutdowns and a “cash-strapped” government.

Now, inflation has risen to “nearly 90%” in the last month, with food inflation “hitting 134%”, compared to a year earlier. Following two wars in less than a year, conflict with the US is “showing no signs of abating”.

Many Iranians feel “abandoned” by the West, said Roxana Saberi and Fatemeh Jamalpour in The Times. They believe the US and others have “largely stood by during the recent executions and the January massacre”. The crackdown since January has left Iranians with “widespread trauma” that “spans generations and classes”. The “greatest source of trauma” is the “inaction” of the international community, said head of a survivor charity Azadeh Afsahi. “If these Western countries have democracy, how come they don’t care to see that the Iranian people are suffering?”

Opinion is ‘far from uniform’

There is still a “fervour” among those who support the regime, said Krishnan Guru-Murthy on Channel 4. In June, the “streets were full” of people for national celebrations, and children fired foam darts at “targets bearing the faces of Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump was by far the most popular face to fire at.” Many are still eager to “express their love of country and their hatred of the enemy”. In many ways, ironically, it “reminds you of the most fired-up Maga supporters in America”.

Yet for others, the “greatest fear” is that “the war will end with the Islamic Republic still in power”, said Kelly J. Shannon on the Atlantic Council. However the conflict ends, the “remnants of the regime” will likely become “further entrenched and even more oppressive”. The massacres after protests in January, and an April order to “speed up executions of political prisoners”, support state television warnings that “any dissidents will be killed”. In the eyes of the Islamic Republic, the Iranian population is the “enemy, and it is willing to use any and all measures to keep them in line”.

Ultimately, “Iranian society is diverse, politically complex, and far from uniform,” said Mahmoud Rasouli on the European Consortium for Political Research. “Citizens hold differing views about domestic reform, foreign relations, economic priorities, and the country’s future.”

Yet this does not translate to political influence. Both Washington and Tehran invoke the interests of the Iranian people, but never do they allow such interests to “directly determine the direction of the conflict”. This creates a “paradox”: the Iranian people are “central” to the language used around the war, but “peripheral” in the “decision-making processes that shape their future”. They are neither “invisible spectators nor the main architects of the conflict”, but the “primary stakeholders in a confrontation largely shaped by others”.

What happened

President Donald Trump left a NATO summit in Turkey last month aboard an alternate military aircraft after publicly boarding Air Force One, then secretly exiting from the plane’s opposite side in an “airport catering truck typically used to load meals and other supplies preflight,” The Washington Post reported Monday, citing U.S. officials and “corroborating material.” The “elaborate deception” to “spirit” Trump out of the region was prompted by a credible “threat against him and Air Force One from Iran,” The New York Times said.

Who said what

The “furtive operation” was apparently “developed in a matter of hours,” the Times said. Reporters flying with Trump were not told of the deception, thereby “making them unwitting participants in the ruse and leaving them, along with some White House staff members, to serve as unknowing decoys.” The journalists and staffers were not “made aware of the extent of the threat on Air Force One,” the Post said.

When reporters asked Trump later why they had been advised to keep their window shades closed on the flight from Ankara to Britain, he said they were “probably on a dangerous flight,” but since he’s Iran’s top target, “if I go, you go.”

What next?

Asked about the reports, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said “many enemies of America” have “their sights on” Trump and “we use every tool at our disposal to address those threats.”

What happened

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi Sunday said a deal with Oman on control of the Strait of Hormuz was in the “final stages,” but that “does not mean reopening the strait” until “conditions” are fulfilled. Iran’s Supreme National Security Council on Saturday said the strait won’t be reopened until the U.S. “corrects its behavior,” permanently ending the war, lifting the naval blockade and sanctions, “unconditionally” unfreezing Tehran’s assets and “completely” compensating it for war damages.

Who said what

Between its leverage over global oil prices, the “diminishing stockpiles” of key U.S. weapons and the war’s deep unpopularity with U.S. voters, “Iran believes it holds the cards,” The Associated Press said. Trump Sunday told Axios that the U.S. was “low-keying it” with Iran, waiting for economic pain to bring it to heel. Iran’s demands are largely what Trump “already agreed to” in June, The New York Times said. And denying Trump the “ability to claim victory over the strait” is Iran’s “most efficient lever to persuade him to recommit to those agreements.”

What next?

Tehran’s emerging deal with Oman would give each country control of one direction of transit through the strait. There would be no “fees or tolls during the interim period,” the AP said, but “formal control over even part of the strait would be a clear win for Iran and a loss for the U.S.”

Saudi Arabia last week announced it had joined American forces in conducting air strikes on Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a coalition of Iran-backed militias accused of attacks on both U.S. and Saudi assets in the region. The Saudi attack came in response ⁠to recent drone attacks targeting oil facilities “launched from Iraqi territory and carried out by Iran-aligned terrorist militias,” said the kingdom’s Ministry of Defense in a statement on X.

The latest assault is a “highly dangerous escalation,” said the PMF, per Al Jazeera. Iran’s Foreign Ministry had also condemned the “aggressive attacks” as a violation of Iraq’s “national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

The kingdom ‘does not seek escalation’

After spending months “trying not to get dragged into a regional conflict,” Saudi Arabia “appears hemmed in, facing enemies in three directions” between Iran and its proxies in Iraq and Yemen, said CNN. Saudi Arabia’s strategy of “opening the kingdom up to foreign investment” and making it the “regional economic powerhouse” is “now on life support.” At the same time, embroiling itself in a “broader conflict” would be a “risky and potentially costly option” for Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia’s strikes, done “in coordination with U.S. Central Command,” mark the country’s “first announced foray” into the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, said USA Today. But previous reports from Reuters citing “unnamed Western and Iranian officials” indicated that Saudi Arabia had “launched covert strikes on the Islamic Republic” earlier this year already. These most recent attacks stem from the kingdom’s “legitimate right to defend itself and its capabilities,” said the Saudi Defense Ministry in a statement. Riyadh also reserves the “right to respond at the appropriate time and place.”

While Saudi Arabia “does not seek escalation,” the ministry said, it will “respond to any aggression it faces.” Over the weekend, however, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman spoke with President Donald Trump and “expressed concern over his plans for massive new strikes” against Iran, said Axios. Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman expressed similar sentiments at a recent meeting with Vice President J.D. Vance, emphasizing “deescalation with Iran” shortly after the joint U.S.-Saudi strikes, said the outlet.

The PMF in particular has “always been a contentious” issue between Iraq, the U.S., and “other neighboring countries” like Iran, said Al Jazeera. The Iraqi group exists as “part of the country’s security force,” reports “directly to the commander-in-chief who is also the prime minister,” and has “at times struck the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and bases across Iraq at will” while refusing government orders.

‘Unpalatable choice’

Unlike previous clandestine entanglements, Riyadh’s “overt involvement” in regional fighting “marks a new turning point in the conflict,” said The Guardian. “There is a feeling” among Saudi leadership that the Iranians are “doing what they are doing because they feel that the Gulf Arab states won’t move up the escalatory ladder,” said H.A. Hellyer, the Royal United Services Institute’s senior associate fellow in Middle East studies, to the outlet. Riyadh wants to “make it clear that assessment is wrong and that if Tehran thinks the Gulf states are easy prey, they are wrong.”

Should Saudi Arabia come under direct Iranian attack, “it could face an unpalatable choice,” said CNN. Either it must “respond directly in a way that would draw it more deeply into war” or risk emboldening a Tehran “regime that many see as more hardline than before the war.”

Russia’s war against Ukraine would seem to be an entirely separate conflict from the hostilities between the U.S. and Iran. But Ukraine last month attacked an Iranian cargo ship in the Caspian Sea, raising fears the two regional conflicts could merge and spiral into something bigger and more destabilizing to the world.

What did the commentators say?

The Caspian Sea attack “underscored the links between the wars,” said The New York Times. Russia has “launched swarms” of Iran-made drones at Ukraine, the outgrowth of a decades-long “close military relationship” between Moscow and Iran. (Ukraine said the Iranian ship was carrying a new supply of drones. Iran denied the accusation.) Ukraine, meanwhile, has “brought its hard-earned expertise” in drone warfare to the task of defending Gulf states from Iranian attacks after the U.S. launched its war.

The Ukraine-Iran conflicts are “beginning to overlap,” Gideon Rachman said at the Financial Times. The wars “now span two continents” in Europe and Asia and are “influencing conflicts in Africa.” Ukraine has “ample reasons” to want to hit Iranian shipments of drones that “killed a great many Ukrainians,” but leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy may also “see an opportunity to dramatically improve relations with the Trump administration” by assisting in the U.S. war. This is a fraught moment. The 20th century proved that “regional conflicts and great-power miscalculation can be a deadly combination.”

Zelenskyy appears to seek a “merging” of the two wars into a “single strategic theater,” Trita Parsi said at Responsible Statecraft. The Ukrainian leader has spent the war urging NATO to “move beyond supplying weapons and intelligence” and take a more direct role in defending his country. The Iran war now presents Ukraine with the opportunity to offer itself as a “strategic asset capable of helping Washington turn a military debacle into a splendid victory.” It is a “dangerous gambit” and it could “pave the way for a disaster.”

The Ukraine strike comes as the war in the Middle East appears to be expanding into a regional conflict that includes Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen and Iraq. It is a “glimpse of just how apocalyptic” the war could become, Spencer Ackerman said at Forever Wars. There is increasingly a risk of the conflict “spiraling” beyond its current limits. “There is no mechanism at present to stop its growth.”

What next?

Iran and Russia may want no part of a larger war. Tehran and Moscow seek a “pragmatic partnership without entangling themselves in each other's regional wars,” Barnard College’s Alexander Cooley said to Newsweek. Ukraine could continue to “strike ships it believes are helping Russia,” said USA Today, but would otherwise “gain little from a full-scale confrontation with Iran.” Ukraine’s top priority “remains Russia,” Chatham House’s Neil Quilliam told the outlet.

It isn’t often we can trace a widely used turn of phrase to a single, inspired genesis. Not so with the mocking ‘TACO’ appellation. Coined in May 2025 by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong, the acronym highlights President Donald Trump’s inclination to “Always Chicken Out” on his threats and proclamations.

While there have been numerous iterations and adaptations of Armstrong’s broader point (“perhaps the best Mexican food acronym for Trump is TAMALES,” said Reuters: “Trump Always Messes Around, Leaves Everybody Shafted”), none have quite captured the public’s imagination like Armstrong’s four-letter initialism. One year since its coinage, here are some of the president’s biggest TACO moments to date.

‘Liberation Day’ tariffs

The effects of Trump’s 2025 attempt to “remake the global trading system” by “erecting the largest tariff wall around the U.S. economy” in a century are “well-documented,” said Bloomberg. “Markets crumbled and then recovered when Trump delayed and scaled back his original duties” multiple times in the ensuing weeks, meaning that for a “certain audience,” a TACO “isn’t just a meal anymore.”

Ultimately, the administration “threatened far more tariffs” than Trump has “carried through on,” said NBC. Trump’s trade strategy since his Liberation Day rollout of global tariffs has been “rushed and improvisational,” said the Council on Foreign Relations. Absent congressional input and lacking overall cohesion, the White House’s tariffs and subsequent policy are “not U.S. trade agreements but rather Trump’s trade deals” for better or worse.

Wall Street’s TACO trades

Trump’s Liberation Day rollout of worldwide tariffs “didn’t just reshape global trade,” said CNBC, it also “spawned a new play in the stock market: the ‘TACO trade.’” Here, the president’s “extreme position on policy” is inevitably replaced with a “more palatable place for equities, leading investors to then ‘buy the dip.’” Those who buy stocks “at lower costs after Trump announces new tariffs or increases them” later “reap the benefits when the markets rebound as he delays or backs off of them,” said ABC. “Oh, I chicken out? Isn’t that nice? I've never heard that,” said Trump when asked a “nasty question” in the Oval Office about his eponymous trading trend.

Immigration raids at farms and hotels

“Changes are coming!” Trump said in a June 2025 post on Truth Social that acknowledged “our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, longtime workers away” from the agricultural, hospitality and leisure industries. The waffling commitment to his mass deportation raids was an “echo of Trump’s back-and-forth rhetoric on tariffs,” said the Detroit Free Press.

It was a “rare concession” from Trump that his policies were “hurting American farmers and hospitality businesses,” said The New York Times — “industries and constituencies that he does not want to lose.” The message from Trump’s shifting deportation tactics is “clear,” said The Daily Beast. The president’s “commitment to his own anti-immigration agenda cannot withstand pressure from his supporters” to protect “their bottom line.”

Threatening to end Iranian ‘civilization’

In “one of the more bizarre days in U.S. diplomatic history,” said The Washington Post, Trump’s threat to Iran back in April that a “whole civilization will die tonight” ended with the president “proclaiming a two-week ceasefire” to the U.S.-led war. Trump also announced the start of negotiations based on Tehran’s “10-point proposal,” which was full of “conditions that should be utterly unacceptable to any U.S. administration.”

Similar to the Paris Peace Accords that ended the Vietnam War, Trump can now “pretend that his bloodcurdling threats coerced Iran into giving up,” when he has “so far given up more than the mullahs did,” said the Post. Critics “lampooned” the episode as “another TACO moment,” said CNN, in which Trump backed off his “maximalist” demands “in a way that erased his red lines and raised doubts about his credibility.”

‘Guardian’ fees for the Strait of Hormuz

Just one day after threatening on “Fox and Friends” to position the United States as the “guardian angel of the strait” of Hormuz — and then “get paid for guarding it, a lot of money” — Trump “abandoned his threat,” telling reporters the plan would be “replaced by trade deals with Gulf states,” with whom he had spent the past 24 hours talking, said the BBC. “It was TACO Tuesday in Washington” when Trump walked back his threat, said CNBC. “And Wall Street was all too happy to take a bite.”

In Minneapolis, a ‘soft TACO’ pivot?

The more Trump has pushed the limits of his power, the less locked into a binary TACO dynamic he seems, despite Armstrong’s initial framing. It “might be more helpful,” then, to “craft a more limited soft TACO theory instead,” said Vox. While Armstrong asserts Trump possesses a “low tolerance for political or economic pain,” the soft TACO idea posits that his tolerance “can sometimes be quite high — even if it isn’t unlimited.” Trump’s decision to scale back deportation operations in Minnesota after the shooting deaths of two protestors, for example, “shows he was not entirely captured by hardline advisers or ideology,” nor was he “so insulated” that he could “ignore such intense backlash.” However, said Vox, “it took months — and two deaths — to get him to back down.”

What happened

Joint U.S. and Saudi Arabian airstrikes on Iran-backed militia positions in Iraq on Wednesday have intensified fears that the Middle East conflict is entering a more dangerous phase. At least 20 fighters from Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces were killed in the attacks, while Iran responded by firing missiles at U.S. military bases in Jordan. “We are going to be hitting them very hard because it’s our turn,” President Donald Trump said before the U.S. military launched what it called a “heavy wave of strikes” in Iran.

Who said what

The “scope of the war” in the Middle East has now “widened,” The New York Times said. Iran-linked groups across the region have “opened new fronts and reopened old ones, drawing in forces in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan”.

“This is a war in search of a rationale,” Rep. Kevin Mullin (D-Calif.) told CNN. “We’re losing lives and we’re not going to be any closer to real peace in the Middle East.”

What next?

It is now impossible to know how Tehran will respond because it views this conflict as an existential struggle, H.A. Hellyer, a Middle East expert at the Royal United Services Institute, told CNN. The region has entered “uncharted territory.”

Politics is the art of human beings solving problems without killing each other. Sometimes those efforts fail, never more memorably than in these classic political thrillers. They run the gamut from true storytelling about presidential corruption and the rescue of American diplomats in Iran to entirely fictional yet still believable stories about predatory drug companies and communist surveillance operations.

‘Foreign Correspondent’ (1940)

Hotshot New York Globe crime reporter John Jones (Joel McCrea) is dispatched by his editor, Mr. Powers (Harry Davenport), to Europe on the precipice of WWII to figure out what is about to envelop the continent in director Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller. There Jones discovers an espionage ring bent on selling out the U.K. and the Netherlands to their adversaries.

While the movie functions superbly as a “bold call to action to stop the looming threat of Nazism in Europe,” it also “boasts some of Hitchcock’s most memorable sequences and technical tricks, making for one set piece after another of formal virtuosity” despite the era’s technical limitations, said Brian Eggert at Deep Focus Review. (HBO Max)

‘The Conversation’ (1974)

Arriving the same year that a wiretapping scandal brought down the administration of President Richard Nixon, director Francis Ford Coppola’s quietly devastating thriller follows Harry N. Caul (Gene Hackman), a surveillance wizard hired to record a conversation between Ann (Cindy Williams) and Mark (Frederic Forrest) at the behest of the shadowy Director (Robert Duvall). Harry’s growing suspicion that the young couple is in danger fuels a twisty narrative that keeps both him and the audience guessing and appraising their relationship with technology. A film that is more than just a “product of its Watergate-era anxieties,” Coppola’s haunting masterpiece is a “chillingly prescient and masterfully crafted character study with themes that echo louder than ever in our hyper-surveilled world,” said Andy Punter at InSession Film. (Prime Video)

‘All the President’s Men’ (1976)

While it may seem quaint by today’s standards, the Watergate scandal consumed American politics for more than a year, ended Richard Nixon’s presidency and permanently decreased the public’s level of trust in the government. Director Alan J. Pakula’s film recreates the sleuthing of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) that blew the conspiracy wide open.

“All the President’s Men” mesmerizes by faithfully depicting the banal proceduralism of good journalism. A film that “intentionally underplays the enormity of the central conspiracy and eludes any histrionic moralizing,” this “subversive detective story” brilliantly “rejects mythologizing the pivotal history behind it,” said Wes Greene at Slant Magazine. (Prime Video)

‘The Official Story’ (1985)

Alicia (Norma Aleandro) and Roberto (Héctor Alterio) are middle-class Argentines with connections in government and business and an adopted daughter, Gaby (Analia Castro), that they adore. But Alicia soon begins to suspect that her daughter is one of the children grotesquely stolen from the desaparecidos, dissidents disappeared by the country’s authoritarian junta, and that her husband might be in on the repugnant scheme.

Director Luis Puenzo has made a “must-see film that, in light of the real events, paints a haunting picture of the cruelty humans inflict on one another” and also delicately “honors the memory of those affected by the tragedy that unfolded in Argentina,” said Matthew Jones at Philosophy in Film. (Tubi)

‘The Constant Gardener’ (2005)

“The Constant Gardener” is the first great paranoid thriller of the 21st century. When his wife, Tessa (Rachel Weisz), dies mysteriously, British diplomat Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) gradually discovers layers about who she really was, first suspecting her of being unfaithful and then unraveling a conspiracy to test a new drug on unwitting African patients. Helmed by the great Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles (“City of God”), it is a “brainy thriller” whose “visuals create an overwhelming sense of the world gone mad, the world falling down around the hero just as he's beginning to understand the way it works,” said Tim Brayton at Alternate Ending. (Prime Video)

‘The Lives of Others’ (2006)

At once both chilling and moving, director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck has created what may stand as the most enduring indictment of the 20th century authoritarian surveillance state. Set in East Germany near the end of its communist regime, it is about Stasi officer Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe), who begins surveilling a prominent playwright, Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), and his mistress, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck).

The monastic Wiesler eventually comes to believe Dreyman is harmless and in the process doubts the very foundations of autocracy itself. A film that is “alert to the Kafkaesque absurdity of everyday life” in communist regimes, it “has a maturity and breadth of vision rarely found in a debut feature,” said Geoffrey Macnam at Sight and Sound. (Prime Video)

‘Argo’ (2012)

Ben Affleck directs and stars in this zippy thriller about the clandestine efforts to exfiltrate six American diplomats who managed to escape before they became hostages at the U.S. embassy during the Iranian Revolution. Affleck stars as CIA officer Tony Mendez, who concocts a creative cover story about how the diplomats are in Iran working on a Canadian science-fiction film. Affleck “displays a fearlessness when it comes to mixing genre” in this “part-comic, part-thriller narrative” whose mostly-but-not-entirely-true twists and turns “ensure your nails are down to the quick by the end credits,” said Amber Wilkinson at Eye for Film. (Prime Video)

‘Manuscripts Don’t Burn’ (2013)

Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof’s haunting “Manuscripts Don’t Burn” had to be smuggled into the Cannes Film Festival to protect its cast and crew, who remain anonymous to this day. It follows two government assassins, Khosrow and Morteza, who are tasked with tracking down, torturing and killing a group of dissidents suspected of distributing a manuscript.

That document pertains to what became known in Iran as the “Chain Murders,” a series of assassinations of intellectuals and dissidents in the 1990s. A “harrowing masterpiece,” it is an “unflinching look at creative oppression” that stands as an “entirely singular film experience,” said Joshua Brunsting at CriterionCast. (Prime Video)

‘Official Secrets’ (2019)

The combination of arrogance and doctored intelligence that led the United States and its allies into the 2003 Iraq War is almost made for Hollywood. In “Official Secrets,” real-life British intelligence officer Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley) uncovers evidence of a joint British-American conspiracy to spy on and then pressure diplomats from countries on the U.N. Security Council to secure their votes for a resolution authorizing the war.

Martin Bright (Matt Smith) and Peter Beaumont (Matthew Goode) are journalists at The Observer who wrestle with the implications of publishing the story. The film turns a “historical footnote with potent resonance” into a “compelling tale of injustice on an individual and global level,” said Peter Travers at Rolling Stone. (Netflix)

What happened

Lawmakers in Washington recently demanded that the Trump administration outline its strategy in Iran, as a war that President Trump had vowed would end quickly approached its sixth month and spread further beyond the Persian Gulf. In the first U.S. casualties since March, three American soldiers were killed in a missile attack on a military base in Jordan earlier this month. The next day, a fourth soldier died in Iraq during the controlled detonation of a downed Iranian drone, bringing total U.S. deaths to 18. In response, the U.S. intensified its assault on Iran, hitting bridges and rail lines as well as missile and drone launch sites and air defense facilities. Iran stepped up its attacks on U.S. regional allies, striking a water desalination plant in Kuwait and a U.S. air base and an Amazon data center in Bahrain; the Revolutionary Guard also fired on a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, forcing the crew to evacuate. President Trump vowed the U.S. would “destroy one bridge or power plant” each time Iran targets a ship in the waterway, through which 20% of the world’s oil once flowed.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was pressed on U.S. strategy during a contentious appearance before the Senate appropriations committee. Hegseth, who put the war’s current price tag at $37.5 billion, urged Congress to approve $67 billion in emergency defense funding and warned that the Pentagon would face “critical shortfalls” without the money. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said Democrats would not bankroll “this war and whatever other misadventures Trump wants to get us into”; Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) called for “hard answers” about plans to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Hegseth insisted the U.S. had the upper hand, but Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) said Hegseth and the administration had “failed” U.S. troops, adding, “You don’t have a long-term plan to actually win this war.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militia vowed to block Saudi Arabian ships from exiting the Red Sea and deployed drones and missiles near the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, leading energy analysts to warn that oil prices— which spiked $20 this month to $95 a barrel—could go even higher. Attempts by mediators to secure a 10-day ceasefire and reopen the Strait of Hormuz made no apparent progress. Until Iran is “ready to meet in a meaningful way,” said Trump, “we have no interest."

What the columnists said

The Iran war “has entered a bleak new phase,” said Megan Messerly and Alex Gangitano in Politico. Trump allies fear the president is running out of ways to extricate America from an unpopular conflict ahead of the midterms. With average gas prices hitting $4 a gallon for the first time since June, Republicans say the war could sink them “in an election that is expected to hinge on costof-living issues.” Even among Trump’s MAGA base, 37% said in a new Politico poll that the U.S. should hold course in Iran only if it doesn’t raise costs.

Trump’s war will only “get harder and harder to defend,” said Zeeshan Aleem in MS.now. Nearly 100 troops have been injured over the past few weeks as Iran ramped up attacks on U.S. bases, and the war’s “human toll is likely to increase.” The Pentagon has been slow to release information on casualties, likely because it knows “the war will become even more widely despised as more people die.” The public will swallow casualties in a campaign they support, but won’t tolerate troops dying “for no obvious reason at all.”

Iran, it turns out, “may be stronger than we thought,” said Joshua Keating in Vox. Contrary to previous assurances by the Trump administration, Iran retains “significant missile and drone capabilities,” with 70% of its prewar missile stockpile intact, according to a recent intelligence report. Meanwhile, there are “growing questions about whether U.S. air defense capabilities are depleting.”

A Houthi blockade of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait could widen the war and “further disrupt global oil supplies and international trade,” said Fatma Khaled and Ahmed Al-Haj in The Associated Press. Sitting at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, the strait serves as a conduit for about 12% of global trade and has become even more vital for Saudi oil exports following the shuttering of the Strait of Hormuz. The Houthis say they’ll stop only ships connected to Saudi Arabia, but even the threat of attack could drive up insurance premiums and deter other ships from using the route.

The conflict now “stands on a knife’s edge,” said Erika Solomon in The New York Times. We’re at a critical moment where both sides must find a way to dial back the hostilities or “risk provoking a war that cascades beyond what they may be able to contain.” With Iran’s economy in tatters and Trump under mounting domestic pressure, “the costs of accelerating the conflict are high for both sides.” But the same factors that make escalation dangerous are “pushing them to riskier attacks,” as they seek to gain leverage.

“Trump has only terrible choices,” said Brynn Tannehill in The Atlantic. With hard-line leaders and “a captive population” accustomed to “economic pain,” Iran is unlikely to bend. Facing that reality, Trump can “stay the course,” with scant odds of success. He can declare victory and walk away. He can ratchet up the pain by targeting civilian infrastructure, which would draw Iranian retaliation against Arab states and make the U.S. a pariah. Or he can launch a ground invasion, and pay a steep price in blood. It boils down to “an unpalatable choice between accepting Iranian hegemony over the strait—or initiating cycles of escalation that cannot end well.”

What happened

The United States has “pressed pause” on airstrikes against Iran after President Donald Trump’s advisers told him their military was “running out of targets” and “expressed worries” about dwindling munitions, Reuters reported Sunday. Sources also told Axios that Adm. Brad Cooper, the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East, and other advisers “recommended stopping the bombing campaign” because it had “reached the limit of its effectiveness.” There have been no U.S. strikes in the region since last week, and Iran has halted its retaliatory attacks. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed.

Who said what

The president is giving “some space” for diplomatic talks to take place while still keeping “all options on the table,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” The U.S. has “far more munitions than anyone in the world,” Trump insisted in a statement to The Wall Street Journal.

Recent polling shows the MAGA base is “losing patience” with the conflict, Politico said. Trump seems “trapped” by a “war he cannot find his way out of,” said The New York Times. “There is more skepticism than optimism” that the pause in fighting will continue, a senior Iranian source told Reuters.

What next?

Oil prices tumbled Monday morning as the pause held, but “analysts cautioned against pricing in further falls,” the Financial Times said. Fed officials will meet this week to discuss a possible interest rate hike as prices remain high.

Since the US and Israel first attacked Iran on 28 February, President Trump “has claimed more than 30 times that Operation Epic Fury has been successful, is over, or almost is”, said Robin Wright in The New Yorker. None of these predictions have been borne out; “some have bordered on delusional”.

Tehran on the attack

The latest ceasefire, agreed in June, has “functionally collapsed”. In the past fortnight, the US has launched nightly air strikes, renewed the blockade of Iranian ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz, and reimposed sanctions. Iran has attacked US and other targets in Jordan, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman. Three US service personnel were killed last week by a strike on an airbase in Jordan; nearly 100 more have been injured in the latest attacks.

Trump has tried three strategies so far: regime change, a longer campaign of relentless bombardment, and diplomacy. None have worked. In Washington, “there is a growing sense of despair” about the direction of the war.

Iran’s leaders feared that the Memorandum of Understanding agreed in June was just a temporary retreat, said Vali Nasr in the FT – to relieve pressure on the world economy and allow US forces to rearm. There was, in fact, “plenty of evidence to support their suspicions”. More US military assets began to arrive in the area, and the deal’s provisions – on coordinating the passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz with Iran, on the need for a ceasefire in Lebanon – were ignored. Tehran’s aim now, in going on the attack, is to show that the US cannot dictate events, and that Iran can withstand whatever military and economic pain is inflicted on it.

Deep trouble

Some strategists think the new US plan could work, said Mark Urban in The Sunday Times. Its forces are battering Iran’s coast – military installations, bridges, airports, port facilities – to neutralise the Iranian military’s hold on the strait. At the same time, choking off oil exports will plunge the country into deep economic crisis – albeit in months, not weeks.

In the meantime, the collateral damage to the region is escalating, said Ahmed Al Omran in the FT. Kuwait, which is bearing the brunt of Iran’s current attacks, has endured 1,400 missile and drone strikes. Its airport and its oil infrastructure have been attacked, along with the energy grid and the desalination plants that supply 90% of Kuwait’s water. Oil exports have dropped to 20% of pre-war levels.

The US is in deep trouble, and there’s no easy way out, said Will Walldorf in Foreign Policy – short of accepting Iran’s authority over the Strait of Hormuz and its right to enrich uranium. “But that’s the unfortunate consequence of losing a war that should never have [been] started in the first place.”

Iranian strikes on CIA facilities have led US intelligence officials to believe that unprecedented intelligence cooperation is taking place between Russia and Tehran, with China cooperating closely with Moscow too.

The US is investigating how Iran was able to accurately target covert CIA facilities in Saudi Arabia and other allied countries in March. Reuters cited former CIA officials who said that relatively few countries possess both the intelligence capabilities and strategic motivation to provide Tehran with such highly sensitive data.

If confirmed, “the successful targeting of covert CIA facilities would represent one of the most significant intelligence security breaches affecting US overseas operations in recent decades”, said Military Watch Magazine.

What did the commentators say?

It appears likely that Iran had help from Russia as the attacks “were far more advanced than what they’ve done before”, Nicole Grajewski, from the Center for International Research at Sciences Po university in Paris, told Al Jazeera. Russia “has also allegedly helped Tehran improve the accuracy” of its attack drones by supplying a Russian-designed anti-jamming navigation system, said Al Jazeera.

A secret document seen by The Economist and estimated by the newspaper to have been from the first six weeks of the war showed Russia also offered to provide Iran with “unjammable drones and training on how to use them against American troops in the Gulf”. Christo Grozev, an expert on Russia’s intelligence services, said the proposal was consistent with other evidence that Russia is looking for ways of increasing support for Iran.

For Russia, the benefits of a continued conflict in the Middle East are obvious. More countries are looking to buy Russian oil while the Strait of Hormuz continues to be unstable, said RadioFreeEurope. The Philippines, for example, “has sought to increase Russian crude access and expanded discussions over long-term energy cooperation”. Where Moscow could benefit economically, “China may see diplomatic gains amid the same situation”.

Moscow and Beijing “have coordinated closely throughout the crisis”, said Jasim Al-Azzawi on Middle East Monitor, jointly convening UN sessions and “declining to abandon Tehran diplomatically even as they withheld direct military support”. There is “a seductive myth that China and Iran are allies bound by blood and ideology, that Beijing would ride to Tehran’s rescue the way Nato would for a member under Article 5”. But “nothing could be further from the truth. What binds Beijing and Tehran is colder, more durable, and in some ways more dangerous than sentiment: mutual utility.”

The Iran war has been good for Beijing because it has “accelerated three of China’s long-held goals: a Middle East less dependent on America, a world more dependent on critical Chinese technology and a reputation for Beijing as a serious and steady world power”, said Fareed Zakaria in The Washington Post. Accordingly, China “provides technological and military support to Iran”, said Nadia Helmy on Modern Diplomacy. Chinese companies are “supplying vital components and technologies used in Iran’s missile and defence programmes, making Tehran a regional power that is difficult to deter without significant cost”.

What next?

The US is “surging forces, medics and weaponry to the Middle East to give President Trump more muscular military options as he considers expanding the conflict”, said The Wall Street Journal.

But any escalation will be complicated by the continued support of China and Russia for Iran and the changing of the geopolitical pecking order that this war is beginning to cause. “The Iran conflict has shown that governments increasingly judge the major powers by whether they can help manage energy costs, shipping risk and inflation,” Ilango Karuppannan, a veteran Malaysian diplomat, told RadioFreeEurope.

“This creates a risk for Washington. The US may remain militarily important while becoming less economically relevant.”

What happened

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis on Thursday morning said they had attacked two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea, enforcing a threatened blockade of the Bab el-Mandeb waterway that Saudi Arabia has been using to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. The attack “threatened to open a new front in a war that has roiled the global economy” as the U.S. and Iran “vie for control of vital shipping lanes,” The Associated Press said. Both sides have also “increasingly threatened civilian infrastructure.”

The U.S. conducted a 12th night of airstrikes against Iran, which fired at U.S. allies in the region. Along with striking U.S. military bases, Iran has also hit several CIA sites, prompting U.S. intelligence to “investigate whether Russia assisted by providing targeting information or ​advanced drone technology,” Reuters said.

Who said what

President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened on social media to “destroy ONE BRIDGE OR POWER PLANT” in Iran every time Tehran “shoots at a ship in the Strait of Hormuz.” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran will respond in kind with an “eye for an eye” defense against the U.S. and its enablers. “Current and former military officials caution it isn’t lawful to strike an adversary’s infrastructure for political purposes,” The Wall Street Journal said.

What next?

Trump is considering “both a ceasefire and a significant military escalation” in Iran, Axios said. The Pentagon is “surging forces, medics and weaponry to the Middle East,” suggesting “Trump is considering escalating the conflict,” the Journal said.

In politics, first impressions can mean a great deal and Donald Trump has heaped praise on Andy Burnham for his plans to fast-track oil and gas drilling in the North Sea.

Writing on his Truth Social platform, the president said “the People of Aberdeen” are “dancing in the streets” because Burnham said “he will be opening up, all the way, the invaluable North Sea Oil!” As ever with Trump, this was playing fast and loose with the truth, as Burnham is yet to commit to any new drilling in the North Sea.

But after Trump gave Burnham an initial thumbs-up, “talk in DC turned to Ed Miliband’s role as the most contentious figure”, said The Times’ Katy Balls. Miliband has been an outspoken critic of Trump in the past, which is “likely to put him on the back foot with an increasingly hostile US administration”, said Bloomberg.

What did the commentators say?

There’s an “opening” for a new prime minister who is “liberal, centre-left, internationalist” and who “recognises the world has changed”, said Steve Bloomfield on The New Statesman.

Burnham must “find a way to deal” with the “fracturing” of the special relationship, and having “seen how others have fared”, with Trump, he “should find it easier”.

New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani calls Trump a “fascist” but still works with him on “areas where they agree”, while Mark Carney and Anthony Albanese “took the risk of standing up to Trump” and “subsequently won elections they were predicted to lose”. So “standing up to Trump is not only morally right”, it’s “electorally effective”.

Economic, intelligence and defence ties “run deep”, so many believe it’s “better to stay on the right side of Trump – however tempting it might sometimes be to give him a (metaphorical) kick”, but you don’t want to be a “total toady”, said Anushka Asthana on Channel 4 News.

On energy, Burnham “seems prepared to move the rhetoric” with the suggestion he will green-light two oil and gas drilling projects in the North Sea. He’s promised “help on the Strait of Hormuz” but what if Trump breaches international humanitarian law? Diplomats and advisers know “full well” that the unpredictable president could “change his mind, at any moment”.

Keir Starmer’s relationship with Trump “turned from warm to cold”, said Andrew Buncombe on The i Paper. Burnham will “run into the same problems” on “issues that have created friction”, including Britain’s decision to cede control of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, its refusal to get involved in the war against Iran, and “how far to proceed with drilling for oil in the North Sea”.

The PM “only has a limited way to try and influence how Washington acts” and he should remember that his first call with Trump was “just that – the first talk”. If the “rest are positive”, then Burnham “will turn out to be a very lucky man”.

What next?

Starmer was a former prosecutor seen as a “cool-headed technocrat, unruffled by the insults as long as he was making his case”, said Steve Hendrix in The Washington Post. But Burnham has “honed a warmer, plain-spoken touch” which “could be an asset” with a president who “responds to personal chemistry in ways he doesn’t respond to formal diplomacy”.

The new PM has “made clear that his instincts, and his mandate, are relentlessly domestic”, so the new No. 10 will “have its eyes fixed inward”, not “across the Atlantic”. Trump and the rest of the “foreign policy inbox” is “expected to be substantially subcontracted” to the foreign secretary.

What happened

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a Senate committee on Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s Iran war had cost an estimated $37.5 billion so far, and that the $67 billion in supplemental war funding he was requesting is an “urgent, necessary” stopgap as Congress debates Trump’s $1.5 trillion annual Pentagon budget request. Hegseth faced “fiery questions” during the “combative Senate Appropriations Committee hearing,” The Associated Press said. And the scrutiny was “bipartisan,” The Washington Post said, as “frustrated lawmakers” pressed him to “explain the Trump administration’s strategy for the war” amid “renewed hostilities.”

Who said what

Hegseth’s appearance “represented an attempt by the administration to sell the unpopular conflict as a necessary expense,” Politico said. But Senate Democrats “questioned both the success of the war so far and the need for more military money, citing $75 billion in unused funds” from last year’s huge GOP-only spending package. “The problem is not a lack of money, but poor planning,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) told Hegseth. “This war is now spiraling out of control again,” and Trump is “asking for $70 billion more — and for us to just trust him it’ll all work out fine.”

What next?

The House plans to quit Washington on Thursday “for a month-long recess,” the Post said, “leaving any deal on military funding weeks away at the earliest.”

As the US and Iran continue to trade blows in the Middle East, the consequences of the intense bombings threaten Iran’s already “fragile biodiversity”, said The Associated Press.

Historically, Iran has had a “deep connection” with its wildlife, being one of the first countries to form an environmental protection agency, although “decades of mismanagement and years-long drought” had already put a strain on conservationist work.

Unique biodiversity

Iran’s geographical location gives it a “wide range of climates” that host an “astounding diversity of life”, said the AP. The country is home to at least 86 species at risk of extinction, including the “Asiatic cheetah, Persian fallow deer, brown bear, leopard, black bear, Persian onager, the great bustard and various birds of prey”, according to a 2024 report by Iran’s Environment Department. “Ironically”, military zones had been considered “one of the few areas where falcons can breed safely”, out of reach of smugglers and poachers.

US and Israeli strikes on remote military facilities in deserts and mountain ranges are “causing habitat degradation”, leading to “water and land pollution, soil contamination” and “destruction of land cover”, US-based Iranian wildlife expert Jamshid Parchizadeh told the AP. And an animal population driven away from its habitat, like mountain-dwelling Persian leopards and brown bears, “forever leaves that area from fear”.

Land ecosystems are not the only ones at risk. The “highly contested” Strait of Hormuz is home to the “most diverse” coral population in the region, said CNN. Greenpeace researchers have been able to “regularly detect oil slicks” in the water, following attacks on tankers passing through the strait.

“Many of the compounds found in crude oil will target heart function and respiration,” Martin Grosell, a professor of biology and ecology, told the outlet. Prolonged exposure also “suppresses immune function, rendering animals more susceptible to infections”.

Invisible victims

While most of the attention has been on the urban and economic consequences of the war, the country’s animal species are “less visible victims”, said Iranian news agency Wana.

While there have been “no official reports” on widespread casualties of animals in “natural habitats”, experts warn that a “lack of reporting does not equate to an absence of damage”. And the war’s impact “extends far beyond direct fatalities”: the “intense” noise pollution of bombardments also inflicts “devastating” physical and psychological trauma.

At the Lavizan Bird Garden in Tehran, it was reported that the “deafening noise” caused several birds to lose “behavioural control” due to “severe stress” and to collide with enclosure walls, resulting in injuries and some fatalities.

There are also lasting “indirect” ecological impacts for Iran’s biodiversity. International studies have shown animals exposed to conflict zones develop “disrupted migration, feeding, and breeding patterns” and show signs of “severe aggression or depression”.

“The war has caused serious environmental degradation in a country reeling from a range of climate-related crises, water stress, and air quality issues”, and Iran’s “fragile” ecosystems now face an uncertain future, said non-profit US news organisation Truthout. When it comes to “post-conflict reconstruction”, environmental rehabilitation “often doesn’t take priority”.

Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi militia has announced it is closing the Bab al-Mandab Strait to Saudi ships, in a “maritime embargo” that could further disrupt global energy supplies. The strait, a strategic gateway linking the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden, is one of the world’s most important oil transit routes. And, in recent days, Iran has reportedly been calling on the Houthis to block the strait to all oil tanker traffic passing through it.

Closing off the Bab al-Mandab “chokepoint” on the sea path many oil tankers are now taking to avoid the Strait of Hormuz could seriously “squeeze the global economy” and “add another layer of complexity” to the Middle East conflict, said The Wall Street Journal.

What did the commentators say?

The Bab al-Mandab Strait is “one of the region’s most sensitive sources of leverage”, making the Houthis Iran’s “best placed” allies “to open another pressure front”, said Ahmed al-Shalafi on Al Jazeera.

Around 10% to 12% of annual global maritime trade passes through the strait. With both it and the Strait of Hormuz closed, cargo ships would have to “take a weeks-long detour” around Africa, said Akhtar Makoii in The Telegraph. The Houthis have already shown they are capable of shutting down the waterway: “during the Gaza war, they fired on commercial vessels in the Red Sea for months, driving much of the world’s shipping away from the route”.

Closing the strait again serves “Tehran’s ends” but the Houthis are “partners, not puppets” of Iran, and this move lets them “press their own regional ambitions” and, particularly, “punish Saudi Arabia, their long-time enemy”. Last week, Saudi Arabia “effectively opened a new front in the war” by bombing Sana’a airport in the Yemeni capital to prevent the landing of an Iranian plane carrying a Houthi delegation back from Tehran.

The growing hostilities are “breaking down” the informal 2022 Saudi-Houthi truce that “ended virtually all cross-border attacks” between the two countries, said Stephen Kalin in The Wall Street Journal. The Houthis “see an opportunity to gain an advantage” on the Saudis and feel “strategically emboldened by a perception that Iran has outmanoeuvred the US”.

What next?

Saudi Arabia does not seem “eager to return quickly to a broad war” with the Houthis, said al-Shalafi on Al Jazeera. And closing the Bab al-Mandab Strait completely would require “military, logistical and maritime control capabilities” that the Houthis no longer possess, Ibrahim Al-Malek, a Durham University specialist in Middle Eastern strategic governance, told US-funded Arabic news service Alhurra.

“Whether the Houthis move from threats to direct action remains the critical issue,” Yemeni analyst Mohammed Albasha told Reuters. But “even if no ships are attacked, ​the announcement alone is likely to disrupt shipping and create ​uncertainty”.

What happened

The U.S. military early Monday morning completed a ninth consecutive night of airstrikes on Iranian targets, and Iran again fired missiles and drones at Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan. The Pentagon said a U.S. service member was killed in Iraq on Saturday during the “controlled detonation” of a downed Iranian drone, and human remains were found at a military base in Jordan hit by Iranian strikes last week. That attack killed two U.S. troops, and if the remains are confirmed to be a soldier missing since the strikes, the U.S. death toll from the Iran war will be 18. Iran said U.S. strikes had killed at least 50 people since a ceasefire collapsed this month.

Who said what

The U.S. hit Iran “very hard again” throughout the night “in honor of” the “great patriots” killed, Trump told reporters. “We feel very badly,” but “those great people” were “fighting that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.” Iran has been “stepping up” its strikes on Jordan “as it seeks to produce American casualties and deter Washington from escalating its test of wills with Tehran,” The Wall Street Journal said.

What next?

“Even larger American attacks may be coming” as “more U.S. warplanes head to the Middle East,” the Journal said. “The U.S. is planning for a wider war,” a U.S. official told The Washington Post, but with dwindling munitions stockpiles and growing battle damage, “we do not have enough to safely sustain operations, and I don’t think the White House is aware of that.”

For months, equity markets have been able to treat higher oil prices, higher government bond yields and vast AI costs “as separate problems arriving on different days”, said Stephen Innes on Investing.com. But Wall Street is now finally on “the collision course it had spent weeks pretending would never happen”.

The catalyst was the Strait of Hormuz, where the standoff between Washington and Tehran entered a dangerous new phase, pushing the price of Brent crude up by more than 10% to $85/barrel, the highest in four weeks. For investors, central bankers and governments, the spectre of an inflation shock that many had hoped was behind us has hoved back into view.

No shelter

“I’m left wondering why the smart money failed to hedge against what was always a highly probable breakdown of this fragile ceasefire,” said Andrew Ross Sorkin in The New York Times. “The interim peace deal was clearly resting on a knife’s edge, yet investors chose the comfort of short-term optimism over geopolitical probability. Again.” Iran isn’t the only conflict vexing the oil market, said Javier Blas on Bloomberg. “What matters for Main Street” isn’t the cost of crude, but of petrol, diesel and jet fuel. On that score, the concurrent escalation of the Ukraine War in recent weeks is troubling, given shortages in global refining capacity, in Russia and beyond.

The difficulty investors face is finding shelter from these geopolitical crises, said James Mackintosh in The Wall Street Journal. “In the old investment paradigm, government bonds acted as shock absorbers, with prices rising and yields falling when the economy takes a hit.” But that doesn’t work when shocks are inflationary – particularly “when government debt levels are so high”.

Challenge for Burnham

Bonds have suffered a painful sell-off on both sides of the Atlantic, with prices of benchmark ten-year UK gilts spiking above 5% for the first time since May. Bond yields have broadly tracked oil prices since the start of the Iran conflict, said Mehreen Khan in The Times. And, once again, the UK – highly exposed to global energy and food prices – is vulnerable. Andy Burnham’s economic inheritance as the incoming PM is suddenly looking much more troubling.

“Rising gilt yields eat into the government’s fiscal buffers” by raising the cost of servicing debt, and the unknown identity of the new chancellor is adding to the jitters in debt markets. Some investors are already voting with their feet. Asset manager Rathbones has slashed its gilts holding, as a hedge against potential “fiscal irresponsibility” – out of fear that Burnham “does a Truss”. Given an increasingly fragile fiscal backdrop, more may follow.

What happened

The price of oil has jumped nearly 10% following renewed violence in the Strait of Hormuz. Brent crude futures climbed to $83 a barrel Monday, marking the “largest daily percentage gain since May 2020,” The Wall Street Journal said. The U.S. military launched its third straight night of attacks against Iran Monday night; Iran responded by striking two United Arab Emirates tankers.

Who said what

The new attacks “signaled a return to open conflict” in the region less than a month after the two nations agreed to a ceasefire, The New York Times said. They follow President Donald Trump’s social media declaration that the U.S. is “reinstating THE IRANIAN BLOCKADE,” and will take over the strait, charging a 20% fee for secure passage. That would “be a major new tax on global energy flows and would drive up the cost of the world’s oil and gas,” The Washington Post said.

What next?

The blockade goes into effect Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern time. Oil markets are facing a new reality, the Journal said, as the Strait of Hormuz is “no longer expected to return to a prewar norm.”

What happened

The U.S. military on Sunday night conducted a fresh wave of airstrikes against Iranian targets as retaliatory attacks between the two nations increase. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed responsibility for attacks on a U.S. refueling facility at the Omani port of Duqm, as well as attacks on American bases in Qatar and Jordan. Tehran also said it had shut the Strait of Hormuz and struck commercial vessels transiting the strategic waterway. The latest exchange follows fresh U.S. airstrikes on 140 Iranian military targets.

Who said what

Iran accused the U.S. of undermining diplomatic efforts, saying American attacks had “rendered futile” recent negotiations. The two nations have “traded fire and recriminations,” said The New York Times. Both have accused the other of violating the terms of the ceasefire and “leaving the region suspended between war and peace.” As the war “heats up” again, CNN said, U.S. weapon stocks “remain significantly depleted,” risking the military’s “ability to fight” any “future war.”

What next?

In a televised statement, Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not been seen since the Feb. 28 death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that “vengeance” for his father’s killing “is the will of our nation and must certainly be carried out”.

Tensions between Iran and the US are ratcheting up a new notch. Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new Supreme Leader, has said “revenge” for the death of his father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “is the will of our nation and must certainly be carried out”. Donald Trump has called Iranian leaders “scum”, and said any attempt by Tehran to assassinate him will be met by bombings “at levels they’ve never seen before”.

Meanwhile, both countries have renewed air strikes, as Iranian hardliners insist on control of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, “their principal source of strategic leverage”, said US-based security think tank The Soufan Center. It seems the stage is set “for a return to major combat”.

What did the commentators say?

In “a high-stakes gamble”, Iran is “playing what it believes is its key card”: announcing the closure of the strait “in an attempt to pressure Trump to bend to its will”, said the Financial Times. Its “belligerent” stance, and its attacks on ships and on US-aligned Gulf states, poses “the most severe test yet” of the fragile ceasefire. “It also lays bare” the “hawkish mindset that has taken hold in Tehran”.

The leadership that has emerged in Iran since Khamenei’s death “looks keener to project strength” and wear down Trump “through military pressure, rather than diplomacy”, said The Economist. There has been a noticeable “shift in the regime’s centre of gravity” towards the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which “has accelerated Iran’s transition from a theocracy to an ambitious nationalistic state dominated by military men”.

Their aim is “preventing the erosion of their perceived influence”, Sanam Vakil, Middle East director at UK think tank Chatham House, told the FT. “They feel they have to do this to survive.” They are wagering that “Trump is risk-averse” and that they can “absorb” some “low-level conflict. But this is a quagmire.”

The recent trading of strikes “raises questions for the future of the region”, said The Soufan Center. While Tehran seems “willing to suffer the consequences of escalation, neither they nor Trump appear to want to return” to all-out war. “Each side prefers a ‘no war, no peace’ status”, even while a return to negotiations looks “bleak”.

What next?

The conflict has “descended into a mutually unsatisfying stalemate”, with Washington “unable to topple the Islamic Republic” and Tehran “unable to force the US to vacate its backyard”, said Ali Vaez on Foreign Affairs. US-Iranian tensions are “worse than ever before” but, “paradoxically”, this may be “a moment of opportunity” for both countries “to repair their broken relationship”.

Now that it is “plainly apparent” that neither side can “deliver a knockout blow to the other” or sustain “unmanaged hostility”, there are “decision-makers” in each nation who “have started looking for ways to co-exist”.

Even though the United States and Iran are embroiled in war, a new lawsuit against the Trump administration is claiming that the two countries’ governments actually began working together last year — and jeopardized Iranian asylum seekers’ lives in the process. The White House has dismissed these claims, but those who filed the lawsuit are not backing down.

‘Confidential information’

The issue first arose in 2025 when the Trump administration “adopted a policy of providing” the Iranian government with “confidential information from the immigration files of Iranians seeking asylum in the United States,” according to the lawsuit filed by the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund (IALDF). Many of the asylum seekers whose information is allegedly being shared are people who “seek refuge in the United States because of the grave dangers they face in Iran,” such as pro-democracy activists and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Disclosing the confidential information of these asylum seekers “violates federal regulations requiring confidentiality, endangers their family members and acquaintances who may still be residing in Iran, and puts those who are subject to removal to Iran at risk of persecution,” the IALDF said in a statement. The lawsuit is requesting that the court “order the U.S. government to stop sharing asylum-applicant information with the government of Iran.”

The allegations are based on accounts from “detainees who had been called into meetings with Iranian officials who seemed to already possess details from their U.S. immigration files,” Michael Kirkpatrick, a lawyer representing the Iranian fund, told The New York Times. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has denied any wrongdoing. DHS “provides illegal aliens the opportunity to contact their consular post and facilitates consular access to detained individuals, in accordance with applicable laws, regulations and agency policy,“ the department said in a statement.

‘Prohibit the government from sharing information’

The U.S. government is “allowed to work with government officials of foreign countries to coordinate deportation logistics,” said The Associated Press. But federal regulations generally “prohibit the government from sharing information that could reveal that the individual getting deported applied for asylum.” Congress “made these confidentiality protections mandatory precisely because lives depend on them, and no agency and no administration, of either party, may set them aside,” Ali Rahnama, the interim executive director of the IALDF, told the AP.

And while some may think that the conflict raging in the Middle East would have slowed the information sharing, the lawsuit “alleges that the Trump administration has continued to share confidential information during the current war between the U.S. and Iran,” said ABC News. Though the “in-person meetings reportedly stopped before the war began on Feb. 28,” the lawsuit claims the government continued to “mail or hand deliver document packages” to the Iranian Interests Section, which oversees the nation’s diplomatic duties in the U.S.

Some asylum-seeker data sharing may always occur, such as information on travel documents. What is “different here, though, is they are revealing information from the asylum applications, and that is a very specific category of information that is kept confidential,” Kirkpatrick said to NPR. The U.S. government “shouldn’t even reveal information from which one could infer that somebody had sought asylum.”

As Iran’s religious, political and military elite turned out to say farewell to the country’s former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, one figure was conspicuously absent.

Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who succeeded his father as the de facto head of the Islamic Republic, has not been seen in public since the joint US-Israeli air strikes that killed many of his close family members and decapitated the regime on the first day of the war.

Khamenei, who is said to have been seriously injured in the attack, is believed to be in hiding due to Israeli threats to his life, but his absence has “raised questions about who is really running the country, and allowed extraordinary open divisions to fester”, said Farnaz Fassihi in The New York Times.

What did the commentators say?

For 36 years, “the question of who ultimately ruled Iran had one answer”, said Joshua Keating for Vox. While the country has an elected president and legislature, “whenever the US confronted Iran, American policymakers knew it was Khamenei who would make the final decision.”

But now “they’re no longer so sure”. With the sheer number of senior figures who have been killed over the past four months, “there’s something of a power vacuum in Tehran right now”.

In the void left by the killing of a supreme leader “who exerted absolute power over all important decisions”, the conservatives have “split” and generals in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have “consolidated power, effectively running the country”, said Fassihi.

With the power of the new supreme leader greatly diminished, and various factions and facets of the state jockeying for influence, the question now is just who is actually in charge of the Iranian system.

“The system is in control of the system,” Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East program at Chatham House, told Vox. “I know we all want to think that there’s one individual that has power or authority. There’s no one commander in chief. It is a system that is commanding collectively for the time being.”

If the week-long funeral for Ali Khamenei represents a “calculated projection of strength by a regime determined to demonstrate continuity and resilience despite an extraordinary crisis”, it has done little to quell questions “over the country’s political succession”, said France24.

What next?

Amid the jostling for power, Khamenei’s funeral is undoubtedly a “big moment”, said BBC diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams: a “grand reminder that the old guard has given way to the new. And with the new faces comes a new approach with its own implications.”

The new leadership is not made up of ageing ideologues who emerged in opposition to the Shah and subsequently the US, “but of generally post-revolutionary leaders ruthlessly focussed on preserving the state and willing to act more decisively than their predecessors”, said Vali Nasr, professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

“A whole new generation has taken over. They have a very clear agenda. They managed the war and now they’re going to manage the peace as well.”

Even with the many streaming-induced changes to the film industry’s operations, July remains a month for blockbusters. This July will include an intriguing mix of madcap comedies, sweeping action epics and independent fare hoping to get as many viewers into theaters — or in front of their televisions — as possible.

‘Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass’

Gail (Zoey Deutch) is so shocked when her fiance, Tom (Michael Cassidy), uses his half-joking “celebrity sex pass” — an exception to marriage vows if the opportunity arises to sleep with your most-lusted-after famous person — that she decides to even the score by traveling to Los Angeles and convincing actor Jon Hamm to go to bed with her. Featuring a “tone that’s broad, antic, overemphatic and a bit wacked,” director David Wain (“Wet Hot American Summer”) brings us a film “so aggressive in its meta absurdity that it makes an episode of ‘Seinfeld’ look like Ingmar Bergman,” said Owen Gleiberman at Variety. (in theaters July 10)

‘Reading Lolita in Tehran’

After a year of protests and war for Iran, the timing for an adaptation of Azar Nafisi’s celebrated 2003 memoir is exquisite. Golshifteh Farahahi (“Invasion”) stars as Nafisi in Israeli director Eran Riklis’ film that follows her from her sacking as an English professor at the University of Tehran following the 1979 revolution to her emigration to the United States in 1997.

The book gets its title from the secret book club Nafisi conducted in her home for her students, including Sanaz (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) and Mahshid (Bahar Beihaghi), after her dismissal. The film’s “message about the humane power of literature” makes it a “work of art rather than an exercise in sloganeering,” said Arash Azizi at The Atlantic. (in theaters July 10)

‘The Odyssey’

There may be no more bankable director working in Hollywood today than Christopher Nolan (“The Dark Knight”). He has succeeded at everything from science fiction (“Interstellar”) to war (“Dunkirk”).

In “The Odyssey,” Nolan tackles Homer’s epic story of Odysseus (Matt Damon), the king of Ithaca, and his journey home to his wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), following the Trojan War. An extraordinary cast includes Zendaya as the goddess Athena and Jon Bernthal as Menelaus, the king of Sparta. Nolan “has been circling this kind of scale for much of his career, but ‘The Odyssey’ marks a new technical milestone even for him,” said Rodrigo Perez at The Playlist. (in theaters July 17)

‘The Dink’

Sports comedies like “Dodgeball” don’t always get the critical love they deserve. In “The Dink,” director Josh Greenbaum (“Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar”) looks to capture the zeitgeist with a big-hearted satire of the pickleball phenomenon.

Jake Johnson stars as Dusty Boyd, an over-the-hill tennis pro slumming it as a children’s tennis teacher at his father Chuck’s (Ed Harris) country club, where pickleball is squeezing out tennis. When an injury forces Dustin to try pickleball, he meets Candace (Mary Steenburgen) and reevaluates his kneejerk loathing of the sport. It has “all the hallmarks of a typical sports redemption story,” said Ryan O’Rourke and Maggie Lovitt at Collider. (July 24 on Apple TV+)

‘A Sad and Beautiful World’

Nino (Hasan Akil) and Yasmina (Mounia Akl), who were born on the same day in a Beirut hospital, are childhood friends who rediscover each other as young adults and fall in love against the backdrop of Lebanese political turmoil and violence. The country’s tragic 21st-century travails provide much of the fodder for the couple’s drama in director Cyril Aris’ moving film, including whether to stay or emigrate, with touches of magical realism and whimsy providing levity. A movie that “combines exuberant comedy with soft-hearted drama,” it “builds its entire thesis on the idea that there is still reason for hope,” said Matthew Joseph Jenner at International Cinephile Society. (in theaters July 24)

What happened

Slain Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s funeral procession began advancing through the streets of Tehran this morning after Sunday’s prayers at the capital’s sprawling Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla complex. Three of Khamenei’s sons appeared publicly Sunday for the first time since their father and other family members were killed in the opening U.S.-Israeli strikes of the Iran war, but Mojtaba Khamenei, the son who succeeded him as supreme leader, has still not made any public appearances.

Who said what

The funeral procession route was “packed to capacity” with black-clad mourners “hoping to gain a glimpse of the passing cortège,” CNN said. Some mourners said they were disappointed at the absence of Mojtaba Khamenei, whose face was reportedly “disfigured” and “one or ​both legs” significantly injured in U.S.-Israeli strikes, Reuters said. He is believed to be in hiding “due to the dangers of Israeli threats to his life,” Al Jazeera said.

The “increasingly” common “threats from mourners to avenge Khamenei’s death” included chants of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” and signs calling for the “killing of both U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” The Associated Press said. As the poet Mohammad Rasouli asked why “the biggest bastard in the world” was “still alive” to cheering mourners at the Mosalla complex, Trump was boasting he “wiped out” Iran’s military during “a speech at the same time across the world” to celebrate America’s 250th birthday.

What next?

After a 12-hour procession through Tehran, Khamenei’s body will be transported to Qom, then to important Shiite shrines in the Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala, and finally to Thursday’s burial in his hometown of Mashhad.

‘The vultures arrived before the rescue teams’

Gisela Salim-Peyer at The Atlantic

Following two earthquakes, Venezuela’s “man-made disasters didn’t take long to exacerbate the natural one,” says Gisela Salim-Peyer. For “28 years and counting, Venezuela’s rulers have stolen or squandered much of the oil revenue of the most oil-rich country in the world” as “oligarchs pocketed the petrodollars.” The “humanitarian consequences of this wastefulness were well documented,” but “now they have acquired a fresh urgency.” In the “crucial first 24 hours following the quakes, the government response was practically nonexistent.”

Read more

‘250 years later, we must recommit to the ideals in the Declaration of Independence’

Willie Wilson at the Chicago Tribune

As Americans “celebrate 250 years of representative democracy, independence and freedom, consider recommitting to the ideals found in the Declaration of Independence,” says Willie Wilson. The declaration was “written by imperfect men. However, the message of freedom has endured and inspired others around the world.” Within, there are “suggestions to strengthen our democracy.” Congress “should amend the Constitution to establish for all Americans an affirmative right to vote,” and “every citizen should read the Declaration of Independence.”

Read more

‘Iran has zero chance of honoring the MOU’

Mike Evans at The Jerusalem Post

There are “people in Washington who still believe the Iranian regime can be persuaded to change through diplomacy,” says Mike Evans. They “believe another agreement,” another version of the Memorandum of Understanding or “another round of negotiations will somehow convince the ayatollahs to abandon their nuclear ambitions.” But Iran has “repeatedly shown that it views negotiations as a strategic tool.” Every “concession allows Tehran to strengthen its military, rebuild its economy and continue pursuing the very objectives it promised to abandon.”

Read more

‘How Trump plans to crush fast food workers’

Timothy Noah at The New Republic

Corporate America has “systematically shed low-wage workers, either by offshoring them, contracting out their work or designating them as independent contractors,” says Timothy Noah. The “consumer welfare standard is on its way out, but that transition is not happening quickly.” Today “fast food employees are mostly grown-ups, often with families, and their best recourse, if they can’t make ends meet, is to go on welfare.” President Donald Trump’s “proposed joint-employer rule will impoverish these workers even more.”

Read more

What happened

The U.S. last week removed sanctions on Iranian oil even as peace talks between Washington and Tehran appeared to descend into confusion, with the two sides issuing conflicting accounts of discussions on nuclear inspections and the unfreezing of billions in Iranian funds. An initial round of talks in Switzerland “laid a very good foundation” for a final peace deal, said Vice President JD Vance, who led the U.S. delegation. But the two sides soon sparred publicly over Iran’s nuclear program, with Vance and President Trump saying Tehran had agreed to U.N. inspections of its damaged nuclear sites while Iranians insisted they hadn’t. “They know they’re wrong,” Trump said. “They told us inside.” The two sides also disagreed over the fate of Iran’s highly enriched uranium, which the preliminary agreement states will be diluted. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said his country will “never back down from the right to enrich uranium”; Trump shot back that “he better watch his mouth” or “we’ll take over the rest of the country.”

Citing “productive” talks, the U.S. waived long-standing sanctions on Iranian oil through August and cleared the way for Tehran to be paid in dollars, including by U.S. buyers. Iranian officials said steps had been taken toward the release of $24 billion in frozen Iranian assets. Vance said if assets were released, Iran would have to spend them on U.S. exports, but Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei insisted Iran can spend any released funds “freely.” There were also sharp divisions over the Strait of Hormuz, where hundreds of ships were stranded during the conflict. Iran said it will charge “fees” to ships using the strait in exchange for unspecified services; Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that no country can charge fees for transiting an international waterway.

In Washington, the Senate passed a resolution barring Trump from resuming the Iran war without congressional authorization, with four Republicans joining Democrats in a rare rebuke of the president. The vote came amid broad GOP skepticism about Trump’s ceasefire deal, which has been widely criticized for ceding too much to Iran while achieving none of Trump’s war aims. “The administration acts like they want a deal much more than the ayatollah regime,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.). It “looks like weakness.”

What the columnists said

The “sweeping rollback” of U.S. oil sanctions reverses “years of pressure designed to cripple Iran’s economy,” said Anniek Bao in CNBC.com. The 60-day license issued by the Treasury Department will unlock the sale of 67 million barrels of Iranian crude floating in the strait, yielding a “windfall” of up to $9 billion for Tehran. And it reopens “Iran’s most important revenue stream.” Sanctions are unlikely to return after 60 days, said Jonathan V. Last in The Bulwark. “Once Iranian oil is in the international supply line, they have Trump over a barrel,” because he won’t be able to impose curbs on Iranian exports without “pushing oil prices up again.”

This is quite the turnaround for the Trump team, said Andrew Kaczynski and Jennifer Hansler in CNN.com. For years, Trump, Rubio, and Vance assailed deals that provided financial concessions to Iran, saying they would enrich a dangerous foe that “fuels terror.” That was their “central indictment” of former president Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal, which granted Iran sanctions relief and “access to frozen assets.” Now they’re poised to hand the regime piles of dollar bills.

And for what? asked The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. Tehran has “made no serious concession on nuclear matters.” Lifting oil sanctions now will “gut” U.S. leverage and send cash flowing to the coffers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iran claims some of its frozen assets have already been released, possibly $6 billion that was being held in Qatar. Even if Tehran complies with a U.S. dictate that such cash be spent only on food and medicine, “it frees up other funds for military purposes.”

Meanwhile, the preliminary deal signed by Trump treats our ally Israel as if it were a U.S. “puppet” with “no sovereignty beyond that which America grants it,” said Noah Rothman in National Review. By demanding a ceasefire in southern Lebanon, Iran has compelled America to tacitly take the side of the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists who use the region to strike at northern Israel. “And all in the craven pursuit of a ‘peace’ unworthy of the word.”

“Negotiating with Iran has always been an extraordinary challenge,” said David E. Sanger and Yeganeh Torbati in The New York Times, but it’s even more complex under Trump. Instead of letting negotiators quietly work toward a full agreement, he likes to trumpet “his preferred outcomes as fully negotiated side deals,” in a bid to force Iran’s hand. The Iranians have their own “spin strategy”: Deny every claim, even if it contains “an element of truth.” Some “posturing” is par for the course, but at this level it raises the question of whether the sniping “will ultimately sink the whole venture.”

Hanging over the negotiations is “an uncomfortable question,” said Aviva Klompas in USA Today. What exactly has the U.S. accomplished? The hardliners remain in power in Tehran. The fate of Iran’s highly enriched uranium is unsettled. The Strait of Hormuz, where oil shipping was uncontested before the war, is now a “bargaining chip.” Iran has “suffered enormous losses” to its military and nuclear infrastructure. But if it is financially rewarded and retains its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, it’s fair to ask “whether Tehran has once again accomplished a tactic it has spent decades perfecting: losing the war while winning the negotiation.”

‘We're eating too much sugar. There are ways to change that.’

Priya Fielding-Singh at USA Today

Added sugar “isn't just in candy and soda,” says Priya Fielding-Singh. It is “pervasive, hiding in everyday staples families depend on — from bread and yogurt to tomato sauce.” The government “should set stricter standards around added sugar in the places where children learn and play, from childcare and schools to aftercare programs.” The USDA “should further reduce how much added sugar is allowed, while investing in kitchen infrastructure so schools can prepare more food on site.”

Read more

‘Once, cyber attacks required great skill. AI is changing that.’

Bruce Schneier at The Guardian

“Cyber attacks — both large and small — have been a significant issue since long before the current crop of generative AI models,” says Bruce Schneier. What has been “changing over the decades, and what AI is changing even faster, is the gap between skill and ability.” These “models can, with little detailed direction, autonomously hack into networks, steal data, deploy ransomware and destroy systems.” To the “extent there is a solution, it’s going to involve harnessing AI for the defense.”

Read more

‘What's really driving Latin America’s rightward elections’

Orlando J. Pérez at The Dallas Morning News

Latin American voters are “not embracing a coherent right-wing program any more than voters in 2018 and 2019 embraced a coherent left-wing one,” says Orlando J. Pérez. They are “doing what Latin American electorates have done for decades: punishing whoever holds office when crime rises and the economy stalls, and backing whoever promises to fix both.” Latin Americans are “exhausted with their governments and quick to replace them.” When “citizens feel unsafe, they back almost anyone who promises order.”

Read more

‘The threat of force was a far more effective deterrent than Trump’s show of force in Iran’

Gilles Paris at Le Monde

Donald Trump “pledged to deliver results that would last for at least the next half-century, but the outcome was disappointing,” says Gilles Paris. The Iran memorandum’s “positions are especially difficult to hold today, notably the belief that Washington’s ‘trustworthiness’ will ‘continue to make us the global partner of first choice.’” The “war, which caught U.S. allies off guard and resulted in the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, triggering a systemic global crisis, demonstrated the exact opposite.”

Read more

What happened

The U.S. attacked Iranian targets twice over the weekend while Iran struck an oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz and fired drones and missiles at U.S. military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain. The “renewed fighting was sparked by competing interpretations of the memorandum of understanding” to end the war, Axios said, especially regarding the strait.

Who said what

Hours after Saturday’s oil tanker strike, President Donald Trump warned on social media that if Iran kept violating the ceasefire, the U.S. might be “forced to militarily complete the job” in Iran, which would then “no longer exist!” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Sunday said the MOU gave Tehran sole responsibility for “the management and full restoration of maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.”

Attacking ships transiting the economically “pivotal” waterway “through Omani waters” was a risky but “necessary gambit” for Tehran, The New York Times said. Its “newfound power to disrupt traffic” in the strait is “critical leverage it cannot afford to lose — either at the negotiating table or back at war.”

What next?

After the weekend’s fighting, “both sides will stand down for now and vessels can move freely,” a Trump administration official told news organizations. “Iran has yet to confirm an agreement,” the Times said. U.S. officials said talks with Iran will resume tomorrow in Qatar.

Iran has become a “lose-lose issue” for Donald Trump, which is alienating his entire political base, said Zeeshan Aleem on MS Now. When he attacked Iran, he infuriated the isolationist wing of his coalition, who believed his promise that he’d start “no new wars”. Now, his scramble to end the conflict “is alienating the hawkish sector of his party”, who believe it amounts to a humiliating surrender.

One Republican senator described the Memorandum of Understanding signed by Trump last week as “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades”. Texas senator Ted Cruz said Trump must be getting “very poor advice”. Critics are particularly outraged by the potential creation of a $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran. Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen called the provision a “disaster”, likening it to offering the “Marshall Plan to rebuild Germany while the Nazis were still in power”.

Vance under fire

Furious as they are, many Republican hawks are still reluctant to criticise Trump directly, said Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic. So they’re turning their fire instead on the vice-president, J.D. Vance. “Trump effectively won the war and at the 11th hour Vance is negotiating his way to a loss,” raged one unnamed congressman to a Washington correspondent.

The president has done nothing to discourage such talk. “If it works out, I’m going to take the credit,” he said, half-jokingly, of the peace deal. “If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming J.D.” The irony, said Jim Geraghty in The Washington Post, is that Vance opposed starting this war. Now it has fallen to him to sell the peace deal and serve as the fall guy when it goes sour. “You almost have to feel sorry for Vance. Almost.”

Face of peace

“Playing the part of Trump’s surrender monkey” will hurt Vance’s image in the short term, said Jonathan V. Last on The Bulwark, but few Republican voters are likely to remember any of this stuff in two years’ time if petrol prices are back to normal and Iran hasn’t tested a nuclear device. Vance will just be the guy who helped bring an unpopular war to an end.

He has certainly been happy to serve as the face of this peace agreement, said Adam Cancryn on CNN. He asked to play a leading role in the talks, rather than being pushed into it. Vance may get the blame if the deal blows up, but he has no doubt concluded that if the two sides return to an intractable conflict, his hopes of becoming president are probably scuppered in any case.

What happened

The International Maritime Organization on Thursday paused a nascent effort to evacuate ships stranded in the Persian Gulf after Iran struck a cargo vessel, causing damage but no casualties, according to the ship’s owner. The IMO, a United Nations body, earlier this week began shepherding ships through the Strait of Hormuz along a route hugging Oman’s coast. Hundreds of ships and more than 11,000 seafarers have been stranded in the Gulf since the Iran war broke out, and Iran’s drone strike demonstrated its “continued ability to restrict the critical waterway, despite the agreement reached last week with the United States,” CNN said.

Who said what

The attacked vessel did “not transit under IMO’s evacuation framework,” IMO chief Arsenio Dominguez said in a press release, but “the evacuation plan will be paused until further clarity is obtained” on “necessary safety guarantees.” Hours before the strike, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned that transiting the strait outside routes “authorized” by Iran was “unacceptable and completely dangerous.” The opening of an alternate passage “would relieve pressure on the world economy,” The Associated Press said, but also “remove Iran’s main source of leverage in ongoing peace talks.”

What next?

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday during a “visit to the Gulf to reassure American allies” that “Washington was committed to the new route” and free passage through the strait, the AP said.

What happened

The Senate on Tuesday voted 50-48 to adopt a resolution instructing President Donald Trump to end the Iran war or obtain congressional authorization. Four Republicans joined all but one Democrat to pass the resolution, and two Republicans were absent. The House approved the measure 215-208 on June 3, and Trump cannot veto it.

Who said what

The resolution’s adoption is a “significant rebuke” to Trump, CNN said. It reflects “growing concerns” among GOP lawmakers “over both the war and the deal Trump struck with Iran to end it,” The Associated Press said. Trump called the vote “poorly timed and meaningless.”

This is the “first time since the enactment of the War Powers Resolution of 1973” that both chambers “approved a concurrent resolution directing a president to end a military conflict,” The New York Times said. Whether it’s legally binding without a president’s signature “has never been definitively tested before the Supreme Court.”

What next?

The White House is expected to request $80 billion this week to pay for the war. Trump will “meet with restless GOP senators” on Wednesday on Capitol Hill, where his preference that lawmakers just “pony up, and don’t ask too many questions” about the war, is “grating on many congressional Republicans,” Politico said.

What happened

The U.S. and Iran made “encouraging progress” after a rocky start to high-level peace talks in Switzerland, mediators Qatar and Pakistan said in a joint statement early Monday morning. The two sides approved a “roadmap” to reach a final deal during a 60-day truce, a “de-confliction cell” to ensure an end to “military operations in Lebanon” and a “communication line” to “avoid incidents and miscommunication” in the Strait of Hormuz.

The mediators had “delivered major progress to end Lebanon War,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on social media. Vice President JD Vance, the lead U.S. delegate, said in a press conference Sunday that “great progress” was being made.

Who said what

The negotiations “had a tense start,” The Associated Press said. As Vance talked of turning over “a new leaf” with Iran, President Donald Trump threatened on social media to “hit Iran very hard again” if it didn’t “immediately stop” Hezbollah from “causing trouble” in Lebanon. Trump told Fox News he had warned Iranian officials that if they closed the Strait of Hormuz, as they purported to do over the weekend, “you won’t have a country” or “even make it back to your f---ing country.”

Iranian state media reported that Trump’s threats “prompted the Iranian delegation to leave the negotiation venue,” The Wall Street Journal said. They continued negotiating through the mediators.

What next?

Lower-level technical negotiations will continue at Switzerland’s lakeside Bürgenstock resort for the rest of the week, the mediators said.

‘What a 150-year-old oak teaches about Juneteenth’

Theodore R. Johnson at The Washington Post

The “white oak in my backyard is living history,” as it has “been standing for about a century and a half, dating to the end of Reconstruction,” says Theodore R. Johnson. With “trees, as with history, what is measured matters as much as how.” Juneteenth “signifies both the end of slavery and the rebirth of a nation.” But the “majority of Americans don’t celebrate,” and that “makes it harder for the idea of a second founding to take root.”

Read more

‘Trump and Vance’s spin on the Iran agreement is completely incoherent’

Michael A. Cohen at MS NOW

The White House agreed to a “ceasefire extension that met none of its prewar objectives while providing enormous financial concessions to Tehran” and “now, the administration is desperately trying to argue otherwise,” says Michael A. Cohen. Donald Trump “got played by the Iranians, and no one is buying his spin job.” The “most telling sign that the ceasefire deal is a dud is the White House waited until Wednesday to share the text.”

Read more

‘The culture wars in pro sports go on — for now’

Michael Brendan Dougherty at the National Review

The San Francisco Giants “recently held a Pride Night” and “two Christian players wrote Bible verses on their caps,” says Michael Brendan Dougherty. This is “far from the first controversy about Pride celebrations and American sports, and probably far from the last.” The “major sports leagues are perhaps the last relics of 20th-century American mass culture.” There are “fights over the values expressed in these arenas precisely because there is an assumption that they reflect shared American values.”

Read more

‘Federal cap on student aid will hurt nursing workforce’

Jinhee Jeong at The Seattle Times

Some states are “already experiencing a nursing faculty shortage, and the problem will only get worse with the U.S. Department of Education’s Reimagining and Improving Student Education, or RISE, rule,” says Jinhee Jeong. This “excludes post-baccalaureate nursing degrees from the ‘professional degree’ category, and sets nursing students’ loan limits at $20,500 annually.” With the “increasing cost of graduate school, fewer nurses will be able to obtain a graduate degree in nursing, which will significantly worsen the shortage.”

Read more

With the U.S. and Iran arriving at a “memorandum of understanding” to end hostilities, President Donald Trump seems to think petroleum prices will come down immediately. “Let the oil flow!” he wrote on social media. But while average gas prices did fall just below $4 per gallon after the deal was signed, economists say extended relief from high prices could take much longer to arrive.

When will gas prices come down?

Drivers might expect that oil prices will start to lower as soon as the deal with Iran is inked, but they will “probably have to wait weeks or longer to see meaningful improvement,” said The New York Times. Gas prices often fluctuate in an “up-like-a-rocket, down-like-a-feather” manner, meaning gasoline costs “quickly rise alongside the price of crude oil but are slow to follow its descent.” Gas stations tend to lose money when the price of gas goes up, so when oil starts to “go down, station owners are slow to bring retail prices down to make up for their poor financial performance on the way up.”

Trump is also hopeful that the reopening of the long-contested Strait of Hormuz, and the reactivation of its oil-shipping lanes will help ease the price burden. But there is a “big difference between reopening the Strait of Hormuz on paper and actually resuming the flow of oil through it,” said The Atlantic. While a small number of ships have started traversing the strait, the U.S. and Iran are “far apart on crucial issues, including Iran’s nuclear program,” which could “dissuade oil producers from resuming operations, insurance companies from reducing currently sky-high rates and ‘Ships of the World’ from starting their engines.”

Once ships do start moving again, there will be a “gradual process of resuming east-west traffic, with international actors providing additional support,” Gregory Brew, a senior analyst on Iran and oil at the Eurasia Group, told Intelligencer. But it will “take longer — probably between three and four months — for the region to return to normalcy.” Many countries in the Middle East aside from Iran have had their oil production affected. In Saudi Arabia, virtually “all oil production has been shut in” or capped, said Brew. So a “full return to prewar production and refining levels is likely to take weeks, months or even years,“ said Reuters.

What is the bigger picture?

Fas prices presumably staying high for a while could affect more than just the gas itself. Republicans are “hopeful prices will soon ease near pre-war levels” because the midterms are on the horizon, said Politico. Even if prices go down, voters may carry negative thoughts about Trump’s economy with them into the voting booth.

Other economic elements that rely on petroleum will still be affected as well, most notably airline travel. Aviation experts “have spent months warning that even if the war ended, travelers should not expect airfares to go down immediately,” said The Associated Press. Airlines often buy fuel in advance and adjust their schedules according to demand, meaning “lower oil and jet fuel prices can take weeks or months to get factored into the cost of commercial flights.”

Fuel prices remaining elevated will also affect the grocery aisle. Fuel accounts for 15% to 30% of the total price of food, according to the Independent Grocers Alliance. It “can take months for an energy shock like the one caused by the Iran war to wind through the food supply chain and raise grocery prices,” said the AP. Food, much like gas and travel, may be expensive for a long time to come.