The “vulnerability” of the civilian energy infrastructure was exposed this week when a drone strike on the United Arab Emirates cut off power to a nuclear reactor, said Bloomberg.

It’s the first time a fully operating nuclear power plant has had to rely on back-up generators because of a military attack, but reactors in Ukraine and Iran have also been threatened by recent conflicts.

Why would a nuclear site be targeted?

A country might target a nuclear power plant to cripple an enemy’s power grid, or to force a surrender through the psychological terror of threatening a radiological disaster. An attack on such facilities could also be used to delay a nation’s ability to enrich nuclear material.

Alternatively, armies may attack, or occupy, a nuclear plant to seize control of a strategic geographic corridor or to prevent defending forces from using the area.

What does international law say?

Under the Geneva Conventions, civilian structures, including nuclear power plants, “are protected against attack”, but the treaties also state that they can be hit “for such time as they are military objectives”. This is a “loophole” that “aggressor states” have “interpreted widely”, said Dan Sabbagh, The Guardian’s defence and security editor.

Attacking a nuclear power plant also breaks legal resolutions passed by the UN Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors.

What would happen if a site were hit?

An attack on a nuclear site would not necessarily lead to a mushroom cloud or an immediate release of radiation because modern plants are built with multiple safety systems that can shut down reactors and contain damage.

But the reactor’s core could continue to heat up after a strike. This could lead to a build up of hydrogen gas, which could cause further explosions and damage. If the reactor began to degrade, radioactive material could be released and that can remain in the environment for years or even decades. It could potentially spread across borders and enter water systems or settle into the soil.

There are other consequences. Attacks on nuclear installations “risk undermining the emerging nuclear renaissance” in Western economies as an alternative to fossil fuels, said Bloomberg. Politicians and the public are “highly sensitive to radiation emergencies”, so an incident in one country “tends to dampen enthusiasm” for nuclear power elsewhere.

An attack on a nuclear plant would also be a hugely symbolic moment. Although conventional power plants have been “repeatedly bombed” by Russia during the Ukraine war, said Sabbagh, Kyiv’s three functioning nuclear plants have “remained relatively unscathed” because Moscow regarded a direct attack on them to be “taboo”.

What happened

The Senate on Tuesday voted 50-47 to advance legislation that would halt the Iran war unless President Donald Trump obtained authorization from Congress. A trickle of Republicans began supporting the war powers resolutions over seven previous votes, and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) joined them Tuesday, providing the crucial 50th vote.

Who said what

The vote “showed how Republicans are increasingly uneasy with a conflict” that’s “stuck in a fragile ceasefire” while “causing rising gas prices in the U.S.,” The Associated Press said. The “sliver of GOP skepticism” about Trump’s handling of the war “widened last week,” The New York Times said, a shift “fueled in part” by his “ignoring” of a 60-day legal deadline to seek congressional authorization.

Even Trump supporters are “concerned about this war,” and Congress is “in the dark,” Cassidy, who lost his primary campaign after Trump endorsed his opponent, said on social media. “Until the administration provides clarity, no congressional authorization or extension can be justified.”

What next?

This was “only the first step” toward passing the bill, and GOP leaders believe it would have failed if three Republican Senators hadn’t been absent, Politico said. The House is “expected to vote on a similar war powers resolution” Wednesday, the AP said, and “Democrats are bullish” on passing it.

As the Iran war continues, food and vital medicines in the country are becoming increasingly scarce, said The Australian. The costs of some medicines “have risen by 400%”, and antidepressants and sleeping pills are reportedly being “dispensed without prescriptions”.

This is not unique to the Middle East, as other countries around the world face the threat of conflict, or suffer under pressures of economic and political repression. As mental health crises and resources continue to stretch, many fear the consequences could echo the fallout from the Covid pandemic.

A ‘kind of coma’

Some pharmacists in Iran have called the boom in antidepressants a form of “mass sedation”, said The Australian. These healthcare professionals believe that relaxing the strictness of distribution policy keeps the public in a “state of artificial calm” designed to “delay any popular uprising while the war continues”.

Access to the country’s black market has also been damaged since the start of the war. Built on sanctions, import shortages and “hoarding” by middlemen, the black market is “not new”. But with the joint threat of war and internet shutdown, the “shadow supply chain” has been significantly “disrupted”. As the war continues, Iran is stuck in a “kind of coma, caught between economic collapse and the dream of a better future”.

The rise in antidepressant use is part of a broader system to “doctrinise control of Iranians’ minds and bodies”, said Atlantic Council. Observers from abroad have “overlooked the concerted regime strategy to deliberately engineer this state of depression as a suppression mechanism”. By outlawing cultural events such as Valentine’s Day, “Chaharshanbe Suri (the festival of fire)” and “Shabeh Yalda (winter solstice)”, the regime has arguably “promoted gloom and hopelessness to the extent that citizens become paralysed and incapable of challenging the political status quo”.

Like Iran, Lebanon has been struck by the ongoing conflict, and has appeared to follow a similar pattern of “pushing anxious residents toward sedatives and sleeping pills”, said Y Net News. Though no official data has been released, news outlet Al-Akhbar, which has ties to Hezbollah, claimed that the “demand for sedatives had jumped by 300% since the fighting began”, said Y Net. This figure, though unverified, “points to a population under mounting psychological strain”.

Global impact

And in Cuba, economic and political crises present an “outlook that feels bleaker than the collapse of the Soviet Union”, said The Guardian. As a growing mental health crisis “envelops the island”, many citizens are “turning to prescription drugs” to cope with the US-imposed oil blockade, and still reeling from years of economic decline.

Cuba is stuck in a vicious cycle, as the economy shrinks – GDP has “contracted by 17% since 2019” – it means state pharmacies lie “empty”, while demand for their services increases. People are “leaving in large numbers”, which exacerbates the cycle further. In the last five years, “up to 20% of the population” has emigrated, which has in turn added to the “psychological load on those who chose (or were forced) to remain”.

In its ongoing campaign against Ukraine, Russia is experiencing a “spiral” of antidepressant use, said El País. The country has registered “record sales” of the medications every year since 2020. Last year’s total “nearly tripled pharmaceutical consumption” from 2019. In the same year, figures from Russian consultancy DSM show that after peace negotiations were “unsuccessfully reinitiated” in 2024, sales of antidepressants grew 36%. It appears the war, with its subsequent health crises, has had a “larger emotional impact on its population” than the Covid pandemic.

The UAE has denied Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that he made a secret trip to the Gulf state during the Iran war to meet the president, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

With The Wall Street Journal reporting that the UAE has carried out its own strikes on Iran, there is a renewed focus on the Abraham Accords – the peace and cooperation agreements between Israel and several of its Arab neighbours.

What are the Accords?

The Abraham Accords are a series of agreements between Israel, UAE and Bahrain, normalising Israel’s relations with several Arab nations. The initial accords, which were mediated by the US, were signed on 15 September 2020. Three months later, Sudan and Morocco joined the pact.

States such as the UAE and Bahrain saw the Accords as strategically useful but large parts of Arab public opinion remain strongly pro-Palestinian and opposed to closer relations with Israel. The Gaza war widened this divide and then the Iran war created a sense that the region was being dragged into instability through Israeli-Iranian confrontation.

So Arab governments face a growing dilemma because maintaining ties with Israel and the US risks a domestic backlash but breaking ties could damage security and economic interests.

Tehran’s “narrative” became that it could target “at will” the countries that had signed the Abraham Accords with Israel, said The Jerusalem Post. This reinforced fears in Saudi Arabia in particular that overt alignment with Israel could make the kingdom a direct target.

How might they be updated?

The original vision of the Accords – of a rapidly expanding regional bloc openly aligned with Israel and integrated economically across the Middle East – has become a significantly weaker prospect. So future agreements could involve cooler normalisation, selective security cooperation, quieter diplomacy and a slower expansion.

The power of China has also encouraged the players to think about an update. Beijing has “spent the better part of two decades cultivating Middle Eastern influence”, with infrastructure finance, arms sales and “diplomatic mediation”, said US conservative think tank the Hudson Institute. But an “expanded and strengthened” Accords would create a “competing network rooted in shared security interests and American sponsorship”.

What would it look like?

The Accords have “demonstrated resilience” despite the “turbulence” of the past two and a half years, including “growing criticism of Israel in parts of the Arab world”, said Roy Binyamini, a former National Security Council official, on Ynet.

But the US and its Accords partners could outline a “vision for regional stability, economic growth, interfaith tolerance and the containment of extremist influences”.

Meanwhile, Israel could “leverage its experience” to help regional partners in “strengthening civilian defence systems, including air defence capabilities and protection of critical infrastructure”.

The war in Iran is still simmering, but President Donald Trump may already have eyes on his next target: Cuba’s Communist government.

An invasion of Cuba “could be imminent,” said Axios. The administration last week “imposed additional sanctions on Havana” amid a “worsening humanitarian crisis” of food shortages and power blackouts exacerbated by a U.S. blockade of oil shipments to the island nation. The U.S. has also surged surveillance flights off of Cuba’s coast, said CNN, and Trump on Friday suggested he might send an aircraft carrier to the region.

The president is “growing impatient” that “months of sustained U.S. pressure” have not caused the Communist regime to collapse, said NBC News. Trump speaks about Cuba “as if he wants to make it the 51st state,” a former U.S. official told the outlet.

What did the commentators say?

Trump knows “he can’t bomb his way to victory” in Iran, Heather Digby Parton said at Salon. He instead appears willing to start “yet another military operation” closer to U.S. shores. Invading Cuba seemed “less likely as the quagmire in Iran has developed,” but the president may see pivoting back to the Western Hemisphere as a way to “distract from his failure in Iran.” Cuba is in weakened condition right now. A quick victory might be achievable. “The real question is what happens then.”

It is “not clear how it’s supposed to end,” Joseph Zeballos-Roig said at MS NOW. The Trump administration “has yet to release a basic strategic road map” of its aims or how to achieve them. The U.S. has long wanted economic and political reforms to “loosen the Cuban government’s tight grip on its citizens,” but Havana should not be underestimated. The regime has “managed to foil the well-laid plans of 13 presidents dating back to Dwight Eisenhower.”

The Trump administration is unlikely to install a “new democratically disposed government” in Havana, Renee Pruneau Novakoff said at The Cipher Brief. But it is “realistic” to demand the regime boot Russian and Chinese intelligence operations from its shores. That “important milestone” would allow the U.S. and Cuba to “move forward with the relationship” between the two countries. Beyond that, however, “regime change will have to be a Cuban affair.”

What next?

Senate Republicans are “cautioning” Trump against a Cuba attack, said The Hill. The U.S. should remain “focused on where we are and that is trying to get the Strait of Hormuz opened up,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said to reporters. “I want less war, not more,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). GOP senators last month blocked a resolution forbidding military action, said the outlet, but sentiment in the party is “shifting as a military operation against Cuba appears more likely.”

It is possible Trump will hold back, said Reuters. “Cuba is asking ⁠for help, and we are going to ​talk!!” the president wrote Tuesday on Truth Social. He did not provide more details.

As the Trump administration scrambles to control its war with Iran, both countries have turned to an unexpected moderator: Pakistan, which has led multiple rounds of ceasefire negotiations between the two nations. Now, Pakistan is quietly growing its influence in the region while Washington and Tehran circle one another for another round of talks.

From ‘kind of a sideshow’ to being in Trump’s ‘favor’

Islamabad’s role as a major player in this conflict, for many observers, has “come as a surprise,” given Pakistan’s “global position, domestic challenges” and “volatile relationship” with the first Trump administration, said the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (CCGA). But “perhaps it shouldn’t,” the BBC said.

Pakistani Field Marshal Asim Munir “is in U.S. President Donald Trump’s favor,” with the president asserting that the Pakistani leader knows Iran “better than most.” Pakistan, in its own messaging, has hailed a “brotherly” relationship with neighboring Iran, with the two nations sharing “deep cultural and religious ties,” said the BBC.

Although Pakistan was “kind of a sideshow” during the first Trump administration, it has “really reached out” to both the White House and “Donald Trump personally, as well as his family members, to try to build influence in Washington,” CCGA said. Pakistan’s connections to Saudi Arabia and China have also allowed it to “place itself in a mediator role” with a “greater level of geopolitical clout and influence than we might have expected a couple of years ago.”

Given Pakistan’s reputation for corruption and military authoritarianism, it “would not be an exaggeration” to describe it as a “failed state,” said The Spectator. But simply “being a nuclear power” affords Pakistan a “head start in terms of credibility” by gracing Islamabad with the “nuclear aura that Iran would love to possess.” China, which has played a “background but crucial role” in the peace negotiations, has also had a “longstanding close relationship” with Islamabad, as both nations “enjoy common cause against India.”

Pakistan as a ‘responsible middle power’

“Playing the role of mediator” between the United States and Iran — or “at least message-bearer” — has “been a boon for Islamabad,” Le Monde said. The country has undergone “its authoritarian drift,” in which it “silenced its large Shiite minority during the war and solidarity movements with Iran.”

After having sheltered Osama bin Laden, Pakistan “wants to convince international opinion that it is no longer a breeding ground for terrorism,” said Gilles Boquérat, an associate researcher at the Foundation for Strategic Research, to Le Monde. Instead, it is portraying itself as a “responsible middle power, capable of ensuring regional security from the Arabian Peninsula to the Indian border.”

But Pakistan’s ties with Iran have earned Islamabad its share of critics during the current war, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R.-S.C.). “I don’t trust Pakistan as far as I can throw them,” Graham said during a Senate hearing this week regarding reports that the Pakistani government has aided Iranian forces. “If they actually do have Iranian aircraft parked in Pakistan bases to protect Iranian military assets, that tells me we should be looking maybe for somebody else to mediate.”

What happened

Tehran is considering a U.S. proposal to formally end the Iran war and start a 30-day clock to negotiate a full agreement, Axios and other news organizations reported Wednesday. Iranian and Trump administration officials “offered contradictory and rapidly changing assessments of the state of the war and peace talks,” The New York Times said, all “while providing few details about those negotiations.”

Who said what

If Iran doesn’t agree to “give what has been agreed to,” President Donald Trump said on social media Wednesday morning, the “bombing starts,” and “at a much higher level and intensity.” Hours later, he told reporters the two sides “had very good talks over the last 24 hours” and a deal was “very possible.” An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Tehran would relay its response through Pakistan, while another Iranian official dismissed the proposal as an “American wish-list.”

The one-page U.S. memorandum of understanding involved “Iran committing to a moratorium on nuclear enrichment, the U.S. agreeing to lift its sanctions and release billions in frozen Iranian funds, and both sides lifting restrictions around transit through the Strait of Hormuz,” according to Axios. But the proposal would “not initially require concessions from either ​side,” sources told Reuters, and it leaves “unresolved key U.S. demands” on Iran’s nuclear program and reopening the strait.

What next?

The “biggest obstacle to an Iran deal may be Trump’s ego,” Politico said, citing U.S. and Arab officials. Trump’s “history of nursing grudges, ridiculing opponents and insisting he wins everything doesn’t bode well” for striking a deal with Iran’s respect-conscious leaders.

NHS patients are being forced into “rounds of phone calls and anxiety” to secure their prescriptions amid a worsening shortage of key pharmaceuticals, said the BBC.

Access to prescription medication in England is “at its most fragile point in years”, with people suffering from heart conditions, stroke risks, eye infections, bipolar disorder and ADHD among those reporting issues obtaining the medications they depend on.

‘Significant pressure’

Medicines UK, which represents drugmakers responsible for 85% of all NHS prescriptions, warned last month that it was “increasingly concerned” about the supply of certain active pharmaceutical ingredients, some of which are now in very short supply. This could place “significant pressure” on the NHS as early as June and increase costs for the health service when sourcing these medicines.

Drugs containing aspirin and paracetamol are among those at risk, as they are manufactured using by-products from the petrochemical industry, which has been affected by blockades in the Strait of Hormuz. In the UK, pharmacies are reportedly charging 20–30% more for over-the-counter medicines, said Al Jazeera.

Some pharmaceutical logistics routes rely on sea and air transport hubs in the Gulf, Frederic Schneider from the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, told the outlet. These routes are particularly fragile because many medicines require special handling, such as continuous cold storage, which has been disrupted by the war.

Richard Sullivan, professor of cancer and global health at King’s College London, told the British Medical Journal that there are already signs of “disruption in supply chains for cancer drugs”.

Complicated process

“Surging global prices” are contributing to the supply problems, and this is being exacerbated by the “complicated process of funding medicines”, said the BBC. The NHS reimburses pharmacies a fixed amount for each medicine they dispense, and pharmacies are expected to procure the drugs at or below that price.

When the cost of a medicine rises above the NHS reimbursement rate, it is added to the government’s price concessions list, which reached a record 210 medicines in April. Pharmacies are then reimbursed at the updated concession rate. However, when market prices rise rapidly – sometimes exceeding both the original tariff and the concession rate – pharmacies may be forced to supply medicines at a loss. This makes it more difficult to maintain stock levels and increases the risk of delays or unexpected shortages for patients.

The war in the Middle East has “aggravated the situation”, it is “not the sole reason for the shortage”, said Pharmacy Business. Around 60% of shortages are caused by manufacturing bottlenecks, alongside insufficient reserves of medicines and their raw materials.

A House of Lords report published in February called for improved leadership and strategy on medicine supply in the UK. Peers are urging long-term solutions to address the crisis, including sustained investment in domestic manufacturing, stronger political intervention, and making the issue a national priority. The country is currently “heavily dependent” on foreign manufacturing, particularly from companies based in India, Ireland, and Israel, said Pharmacy Business.

The government has said it is working to boost Britain’s domestic medicine manufacturing industry. A spokesperson told The Telegraph that this includes “offering financial incentives for the manufacturing of more medicines”.

Donald Trump has paused the US operation shepherding ships through the Strait of Hormuz to see if a lasting peace deal with Iran can be agreed. But there remains scepticism on both sides that a permanent end to the conflict is near.

The ceasefire, which was extended indefinitely by Trump on 21 April, “opened up a chance for diplomacy that looked for a short time as if it might make progress”, said BBC international editor Jeremy Bowen. A first round of talks in Pakistan ended without agreement, but while both America and Iran “want to have a deal” they have “different deals in mind and are sticking to their red lines”.

Trump is demanding the immediate reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of global oil and gas exports pass, and cast-iron restrictions on Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Tehran wants an end to the war, guarantees against future attacks, a withdrawal of US forces from around Iran, the release of frozen Iranian assets worth billions of dollars and the lifting of sanctions.

What did the commentators say?

Iran has “slightly softened” its proposal around the US blockade of the Strait, but on the two biggest issues – enrichment of uranium and transferring its highly enriched uranium – both sides remain “far apart”, Paul Musgrave, from Georgetown University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera.

Kenneth Katzman, from the New York-based nonprofit Soufan Center, said Iran’s mistrust of Trump remains a bigger obstacle.

This is partly driven by the president’s “increasingly contradictory statements about the United States’ strategy” and the administration’s “shifting timeline for the war’s end”, which has been “one of the clearest examples of its flip-flopping messaging”, said Julia Ledur in The Washington Post.

Trump “clearly wants to end the war in Iran”, said Katrin Bennhold in The New York Times. At first, “he tried scare tactics” but his ultimatums “proved flexible and his threats to wipe out a civilisation empty (at least so far)”. He is now trying “to inflict financial pain on the Iranian leadership” but his blockade isn’t “faring much better”.

Trump’s “conviction that more economic or even military pressure will bring about Iran’s capitulation is deeply flawed”, said Steven Erlanger in the NYT. Officials and analysts say it is a “misreading of the Islamic republic’s strategy, psychology and capability for adaptation”.

What next?

For now, “diplomacy is not entirely frozen”, said Barak Ravid and Marc Caputo on Axios, as Trump’s envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are still in contact with Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi.

But things could still go either way. One senior US official said: “There are talks. There are offers. We don’t like theirs. They don’t like ours. We still don’t know the status of the [Supreme Leader]. And they’re carrying messages by hand to caves or wherever he or whoever is hiding. It slows the process down.

“It’s either we’re looking at the real contours of an achievable deal soon, or he’s going to bomb the hell out of them.”

“But if history is any guide, there’s a real chance the war continues to drag on,” said Will Walldorf, from the Defense Priorities think tank, in Foreign Policy.

This is because a “few core elements that have turned past conflicts into forever wars are present in this one, too”. These include “high resolve by the weak, erosion of cost-benefit thinking by the strong, and weak institutional constraints to war-fighting on at least one side”. Combined, they mean that “resisting the expansion of the Iran conflict into a forever war won’t be easy”.

What happened

The four-week ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran faltered Monday as President Donald Trump’s attempts to reopen traffic through the Strait of Hormuz prompted Iranian attacks on U.S. warships and commercial ships. The United Arab Emirates and Oman also reported the first strikes on their territories since the ceasefire began, and the UAE blamed Iran. U.S. Central Command said that two U.S.-flagged merchant ships passed through the strait and that U.S. military helicopters sank six Iranian military speedboats; Iran said none of its boats were destroyed.

Who said what

Tehran “did not outright confirm or deny” its attacks, The Associated Press said. CENTCOM said it had shot down all Iranian missiles and drones fired at U.S. Navy ships and the commercial vessels they were guiding through a passage it had “successfully opened” through the strait. Trump appeared “willing to look past” Iran’s attacks, The Wall Street Journal said. But Monday’s violence put his “desire to end the Iran war” to the test.

What next?

Shipping companies said that Trump’s “offer to provide them safe passage” through the strait “fell short of the sort of arrangements that would persuade them to make the trip,” The New York Times said.

What happened

President Donald Trump said the U.S. was launching a new effort Monday to “guide” blockaded commercial ships “safely” through the Strait of Hormuz, which has effectively been closed to maritime traffic since Trump and Israel launched the Iran war Feb. 28. Trump offered few details in his social media announcement, but described “Project Freedom” as a “humanitarian gesture” on behalf of the U.S., Middle Eastern countries and “in particular” Iran. Iranian state-run media said the announcement was part of “Trump’s delirium.”

Who said what

U.S. Central Command said guided-missile destroyers, drones and more than 100 aircraft would support Trump’s new initiative. But the plan “doesn’t currently involve U.S. Navy warships escorting vessels through the strait,” The Wall Street Journal said, citing senior U.S. officials. Traders and shipowners “expressed skepticism” that the “arm’s-length effort to unblock the vital supply route” would be effective.

Trump’s announcement was “essentially a challenge to Iran, and a bet that it would not want to take the risk of firing the first shots — or laying mines” — to challenge the U.S., The New York Times said. Ebrahim Azizi, the head of Iran’s parliamentary National Security Committee, said on X that “any U.S. interference” in the strait “will be considered a violation of the ceasefire.”

What next?

Two months into the war, Trump’s “predictions of a relatively short-term conflict with minimal economic consequences appear to be crumbling around him,” the Times said. “Voter backlash is building” as average U.S. gas prices hit a “wartime high of $4.39,” The Washington Post said, and “inside the White House, the options to lower prices at the pump are dwindling.”

Nine weeks since the start of Donald Trump’s Middle East war, the US and Iran “have entered a precarious standoff”, said the Financial Times. Trump says he won’t lift the blockade of Iranian ports unless Iran agrees to a deal. The Islamic regime insists it won’t resume talks or reopen the Strait of Hormuz as long as the blockade is in place. This “intransigence” caused the cancellation of a second round of talks in Islamabad – and “Trump is now stuck”.

Midterms looming

He’s “trying to look relaxed”, said James Ball in The i Paper, but it’s not very convincing. The president promised voters a strong economy, with low inflation and cheap fuel; it’s becoming obvious he will deliver on none of these things. The midterm elections are looming, and there is an even more pressing deadline ahead of him: on 1 May, it will be 60 days since Trump notified Congress of his action against Iran, at which point, on paper at least, he needs congressional approval to continue military action. So far, most Republicans have not openly criticised his unpopular war. But they would prefer to avoid voting in favour of it.

Trump’s critics believe he has “worked himself into a trap”, said Walter Russell Mead in The Wall Street Journal, but the situation is “sustainable”, for now. True, the war has gone on longer than hoped, but financial markets have stabilised. Trump remains popular with his base. Without taking casualties, the US navy has “consolidated a crushing blockade of Iran”; and with a third aircraft carrier in the region, military options are expanding.

The pressure on Iran is great, said Jonathan Spyer in The Spectator, but the US has made the mistake of believing its leaders think “like us”. They are not remotely pragmatic: they have “mortgaged” Iran’s economy to its project of “resistance” for decades. There appears to be no appetite now for accepting anything they “regard as surrender”.

‘This can’t go on’

Trump could cut a deal, said Paul Krugman on Substack, but it wouldn’t look like a victory. In the meantime, oil markets are pessimistic. The oil price drop that followed the 8 April ceasefire has been near reversed. The world is coping by taking oil out of storage. “Since there’s only so much oil in the tanks, this can’t go on.”

The war has removed an estimated 650 million barrels of oil from the international market, said Andrew Neil in the Daily Mail. This could soon reach one billion. The effects are already all too visible in the Asia-Pacific region, which receives 80% of exports from the Gulf. Asian jet fuel has doubled in price. China has suspended exports of refined oil. The Indian rag trade is facing nylon and polyester shortages, because they’re made from Gulf petrochemicals. We’ve been shielded, because at the start of the war a record amount of oil was at sea, heading for Europe. It won’t last.

It’s not just Trump who has “no idea what to do”. Much of the world, including our government, is “sticking its fingers in its ears, shutting its eyes tight and loudly singing ‘la la la’”.

What happened

The White House is arguing that the War Powers Act deadline to either wind down the Iran war or get congressional authorization is not Friday, as Congress assumed, because the 60-day clock stopped when President Donald Trump ordered a ceasefire on April 7. “For War Powers Resolution purposes,” an official told reporters, the hostilities “have terminated.”

Who said what

“We are in a ceasefire right now, which our understanding means the 60-day clock pauses or stops,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a Senate hearing Thursday. His assertion was “met with outrage from Democrats and skepticism from Republicans,” The Wall Street Journal said. The U.S. military “continues to enforce a military blockade,” which is “considered an act of war under international law.”

“Nothing in the text or design of the War Powers Resolution suggests that the 60-day clock can be paused or terminated,” Katherine Yon Ebright, a war powers expert at the Brennan Center, told The Associated Press, and Congress needs to push back against this “sizeable extension of previous legal gamesmanship” over the law.

What next?

In the hearing, ostensibly about the Pentagon’s $1.45 trillion budget request, Hegseth “did not say how long the war with Iran could continue,” The New York Times said.

Donald Trump has hailed the relationship between the US and UK as “a friendship unlike any other on Earth” during what is widely being seen as a hugely successful state visit by King Charles.

After delivering a much-praised speech to Congress, the King, with Queen Camilla, last night joined the US president and first lady for a star-studded banquet. In a playful toast, Charles joked about Trump’s “readjustments” to the East Wing of the White House following his “visit to Windsor Castle last year”, and presented the president with the bell from the British Second World War submarine, HMS Trump.

Officially a celebration of 250 years of American independence, the three-day visit “has also been billed as a rescue mission”, said the BBC’s North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher. With US-UK relations “strained” by Britain’s refusal to fully back the US-Israeli war against Iran, “the King’s goal has been to ease those tensions with a royal charm offensive”.

What did the commentators say?

King Charles delivered a “masterclass in Trump II diplomacy” at the banquet, said Shawn McCreesh, White House reporter for The New York Times. His speech had “all the right ingredients”: “dry British understatement”; jokes tailored to “Trump’s proclivities”; “a little obsequiousness balanced with a little prodding about Nato”, and “the shiniest, Trumpiest of gifts”.

The president was “on his best behaviour” and, apart from one protocol-breaking moment when he suggested that the King had agreed with his views on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, he “seemed like putty in the bejewelled hands of the monarch. There are few foreign figureheads who can work this president the way this king can.”

“Entirely predictably”, Charles’ speech to Congress did not directly mention Iran, Israel, climate change, immigration, Jeffrey Epstein, “nor a bunch of other hot potatoes in the Trump era”, said David Smith, The Guardian’s Washington correspondent. But it was “exquisitely measured” in its “less-is-more” emphasis on “common bonds that long predate” this president and – “hopefully! – will long outlast him”. Judging by the applause, this “soft power flex worked a treat”.

Charles showed “deep respect for his hosts”, said CNN’s Stephen Collinson. But it’s no small irony that “it took a king to remind America of its republican values: the rule of law, democracy and the power of its international example”.

What next?

After recent “fraught” weeks, this state visit will “probably help stabilise relations” between Britain and America, said former Tory foreign secretary William Hague in The Times. But “it cannot, on its own, reverse the trend of declining trust and mutual respect”. We will still look at Trump, “fearing this might be the future”, and the US will “look at us and worry that our glories are all in the past”.

The special relationship will endure, “whatever the quarrels over Iran”, said the Financial Times editorial board, but “Britain’s place in the world is not what it was” in its heyday. “In the harsh new world of the 21st century, other connections are going to matter a lot, too.”

A mysterious new pro-Iran terror group has been linked to a series of recent attacks on Jewish communities and US financial institutions in the UK and Europe.

The only “catch”, said CNN, is that it “may be a mirage”.

Who are they and what have they claimed?

Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia (HAYI), the Arabic name meaning “The Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right(eous)”, first appeared online shortly after the US and Israel launched their war on Iran at the end of February.

On 9 March, HAYI posted on the encrypted messaging app Telegram that “military operations” against US and Israeli interests around the world had begun. Two weeks later, a Telegram channel claiming to represent the group made an unsubstantiated claim of responsibility for an arson attack on four Jewish ambulances in Golders Green, north London.

It then posted videos of four other arson attacks in Belgium, Greece and the Netherlands, as well as threatening a further attack against the Bank of America building in Paris, before the channel was deleted.

Who is behind the group?

Examining the group’s digital footprint, the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism found “no known references, neither online nor offline, to HAYI prior to 9 March”.

The Netherlands-based think tank highlighted “suspicious dissemination patterns” that were seemingly coordinated with the pro-Iranian online ecosystem. This raises the question “whether HAYI is a genuine terrorist group or merely serves as a façade for Iranian hybrid operations that enable plausible deniability”.

“This group is an Iranian creation,” Phillip Smyth, an analyst on the counterterrorism advisory board for Homeland Security Today, told The i Paper. “The scope of their actions, branding, and Iran’s own messages all demonstrate a clear link.”

For Western security experts, HAYI is “either a construct aligned with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) or an opportunistic network operating within the broader pro-Iranian online ecosystem”, said Radio Free Europe.

Do the attacks follow a pattern?

UK security officials have previously warned of a “rise in ‘gig-economy’ Iranian spies offered cash for operations across Europe”, and have been “actively investigating Iran’s use of social media platforms” to create “sleeper cells with the potential to carry out violent attacks”, said The i Paper.

The spate of arson attacks since the start of the war in Iran are “similar in nature to Russia’s so-called hybrid operations in Europe”, in which people have been recruited online “to carry out sabotage attacks”, said CNN. These are often perpetrated “by non-Russian nationals for small amounts of money and without full knowledge of who the operations serve”.

The series of “low-intensity” incidents involving Jewish and US targets have so far carried “limited material damage but strong symbolic impact, disseminated and amplified through channels linked to the pro-Iranian ecosystem”, said Decode 39.

These “operational and propaganda dynamics point to a possible hybrid model of terrorism in Europe: simple actions, local perpetrators and maximum ambiguity”.

What happened

Iran has proposed a deal to open the State of Hormuz provided the U.S. and Israel cease their attacks and the U.S. ends its naval blockade of Iranian ships and ports. Tehran’s nuclear program and enriched uranium would be discussed at a later date. The proposal, passed to the U.S. through Pakistan on Sunday, followed an Iranian offer to suspend its uranium enrichment that President Donald Trump rejected.

Who said what

Trump is “unhappy with Iran's proposal as he wants nuclear issues dealt with from the outset,” Reuters said, citing a U.S. official. The proposal was “subject to a vigorous debate inside the administration” over which side “has more leverage,” The New York Times said, “and which country is better positioned to endure the economic hardship” from the strait’s closure.

Iranian officials are “serious about getting themselves out of the mess that they’re in,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Fox News. The Americans “have achieved none of their goals, and this is why they are asking for negotiations,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told reporters in Russia. “We are now considering it.” Leaders of European nations also weighed in: the U.S. “quite obviously went into this war without any strategy” and has “no truly convincing strategy in the negotiations either,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Monday. “A whole nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership.”

What next?

The “tense stalemate” has “entered a Cold War-like phase of financial sanctions, gunboat interdictions and talks about having talks,” with “no immediate end in sight,” Axios said. With the midterms six months away, a “frozen conflict is the worst thing for Trump politically and economically,” said a source close to the president.

The government is finalising plans to allow airlines to consolidate flight schedules, in a bid to stave off a summer of travel disruption caused by a shortage of jet fuel.

With the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz restricting global jet fuel supplies, and demand sending prices soaring, there is significant concern that shortages could cause last-minute cancellation of flights in the busy holiday season.

How bad is the shortage?

Refineries in the Middle East usually supply around 75% of Europe’s jet fuel, but production is “basically now almost zero”, Fatih Birol of the International Energy Agency said last Thursday. The week before, he’d warned that the continent had “maybe six weeks of jet fuel left”, if supplies remain blocked.

European countries are trying to replace supplies from the Gulf with imports from the US and Nigeria but, if they cannot do so in sufficient quantity, energy experts predict shortages at some airports, resulting in flight cancellations. The European Commission has said there is “no evidence of fuel shortages” in the EU, but has acknowledged there could be supply issues “in the near future”.

Many airlines had already secured much of their summer-season jet fuel before the Iran conflict doubled the market price. But others are now having to take emergency measures to counter spiralling fuel costs. “Airlines normally run at a single-digit operating margin and spend anywhere from 20 to 40% of revenues on fuel,” so rising fuel prices can quickly push them “into operating losses,” Alex Irving, a senior European transport analyst at financial-research firm Bernstein, told CNBC. German carrier Lufthansa, Scandinavian SAS, and Dutch airline KLM have already announced they are cancelling thousands of short-haul flights over the summer.

What is the UK government doing?

The British government is trying to get ahead of any peak-season flight disruption by giving airlines “rare freedoms to change flight schedules” well in advance, said The Times.

The plan is to temporarily relax laws that require airlines to operate part-full flights from UK airports or risk losing their lucrative take-off and landing slots. Doing this allows airline to consolidate flight schedules now, “before any potential fuel shortages”, minimising disruption and last-minute cancellations in the summer. Of course, it “may mean fewer available flight options than normal” but those flights are “less likely to be cancelled”.

On Friday, the Department for Transport said it was “working closely with the aviation industry to monitor risks and minimise disruption” and there was “no current need for passengers to change their travel plans”.

When will the threat to air travel end?

Even if the US and Iran were to reach a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz today, “the die is cast for summer travel”, because it will take months to resume jet fuel supplies, said CNN. “It’s going to take until at least July,” Matt Smith, an energy analyst for commodity platform Kpler told the broadcaster. “And even that may be optimistic at this point.”

Should US/Iran hostilities restart or the Strait of Hormuz remain completely blocked to shipping through the summer, then the landscape completely changes, said Politico. In this “worst-case scenario”, there would be outright fuel rationing, and many, many more flights would be cancelled.

President Donald Trump’s desire to outdo and undo the achievements of former President Barack Obama is well-documented. Trump in 2018 tore up the 2015 agreement by his predecessor to limit Iran’s ability to develop its own nuclear weapons. Now Trump faces a challenge of getting a better deal as he tries to wind down a costly war.

The president is “adamant” he can exceed Obama in Iran, said The Hill. The 2015 nuclear agreement was “one of the Worst Deals ever made,” Trump said on Truth Social. But foreign policy experts warn that getting a satisfactory deal with Iran will be “much easier said than done,” said The Hill. The “dizzyingly complicated” Obama agreement took two years to negotiate and involved experts “poring over the details of nuclear technology, sanctions and international banking.” The U.S. decision to abandon that agreement and go to war may have convinced Tehran that a “nuclear weapon would be the best deterrent they can pursue,” said Allison McManus at the Center for American Progress to the outlet.

The earlier agreement “capped Iran’s uranium enrichment for 15 years,” said CNN. Trump is now demanding a 20-year pause, while Iran wants limits for just five years. But Tehran is negotiating with new leverage: Its closure of the Strait of Hormuz is a “weapon that is far more usable than nuclear weapons,” said CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.

What did the commentators say?

Trump has sold himself as the “ultimate dealmaker,” but that image is in conflict with his “intensifying love of unilateral power,” Bill Scher said at Washington Monthly. A good negotiator has “knowledge, patience, creativity and flexibility,” but the president prefers “impatiently breaking laws and norms.” Trump launched the war with Iran amid weeks of negotiations, which have left the regime’s leaders leery of reengaging. Obama, it now seems clear, mastered the “art of the deal” and avoided a disastrous war. “Trump didn’t, and here we are.”

One big difference between the 2015 agreement and any deal the U.S. makes now: Iran’s nuclear program is “largely in rubble,” Eli Lake said at The Free Press. Tehran may still possess as many as 500 uranium-enriching centrifuges, but the country’s ability to quickly develop a weapon “has been taken away through military force” and will be difficult to rebuild. Even if Trump fails to get a deal at this moment, he has nonetheless “destroyed the nuclear program that Obama legitimized.”

What next?

Trump faces “major hurdles” getting a better deal than Obama did, said The Guardian. And if a deal is reached, he will be asked to demonstrate that the war with Iran provided a superior outcome than what pre-war negotiations in Geneva were set to deliver. Otherwise the president will have “inflicted massive damage on the world economy” when other options were available. Getting to an agreement will be a challenge. There is a “trust deficit” between the two sides that “makes a solution so difficult.”

The S&P 500, the benchmark US stock index, hit a record high on Wednesday. This is being mirrored in other major stock markets across Asia and Europe, despite growing concerns over global fuel and energy prices as a result of the war in Iran and the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz.

“There’s a lot of risk out there and yet asset prices are at all-time highs,” Sarah Breeden, deputy governor of the Bank of England, told the BBC’s business editor Simon Jack. “We expect there will be an adjustment at some point”, she said. What “really keeps me awake at night is the likelihood of a number of risks crystallising at the same time”.

As Jack said: “It is unusual for a senior figure at the Bank to be so forthright on market movements.” With confidence fluctuating around peace talks, and reverberations in energy markets continuing, what has gone up could just as easily come down.

What did the commentators say?

“Nothing, it seems, can dent the almost inexplicable optimism coursing through financial markets,” said the ABC’s chief business correspondent Ian Verrender. In the past, stock markets would “shudder” and “tumble”, then spend a decade recovering from economic “calamity”; nowadays the recovery time is cut down to weeks, “if they bother to react at all”.

Investors are not “oblivious” to what is happening in the world, said Joe Rennison, financial markets reporter for The New York Times. They are just attuned to “what exactly the markets are measuring”, looking beyond the “immediate upheaval from the war” to concentrate on its “long-term effects on corporate profits”. Americans may be struggling to afford fuel for their cars, but companies have been “very profitable indeed” for “quite a while now”. Big tech is “riding a wave of enthusiasm”, and it is these bigger companies, like Microsoft and Meta, who have been shielded from the war and tend to influence the market more profoundly.

Although the market “rapidly rebounded – and then some” after Trump’s ceasefire announcement, having been on a steady slide for most of March, investors are “not simply taking Trump at his word” that the war is “almost over”. Instead, they are responding to the White House’s “apparent eagerness” to find an end to the combat. “Investors might not believe Trump, exactly, but they do seem to believe that the worst of the war has already passed.”

After “years of headline-driven volatility” and a “dip-buying mindset”, investors have learned not to “stay bearish for too long”, said Bloomberg. The current pattern echoes the “Ukraine-war playbook from early 2022, when an initial equities sell-off and commodity price surge” soon reversed to normal.

“It is never easy to price uncertainty,” said Tej Parikh in the Financial Times. Investors have long relied on “ebitda”, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation, to ascertain the “core value of a business”. But it now appears they have changed their tune, relying on “earnings before Iran, tariffs and dubious announcements”.

What next?

Since the war in Iran began, analysts have “actually raised their expectations for upcoming profits” for S&P 500 companies, said The Associated Press. Major companies such as PepsiCo and GE Vernova have either “stuck by” or “raised” their revenue forecasts for the year, which were initially published before the start of the war. S&P 500 profits could “accelerate to 20% in the second quarter, and companies aren’t giving them many reasons to reconsider”.

Of course, the US stock market “can easily return to falling”. If US-Iran peace talks break down, or if oil supplies cause greater concern, Wall Street’s mood could “swing quickly back to fear”. If oil prices, in particular, stay elevated for long enough, that could “erode” profits and raise costs, not to mention “weaken the spending power” of consumers around the world.

The United States has backed Israel since its founding as a modern state in 1948. That alliance is looking fragile these days, with recent polls suggesting American public support for its longtime ally has cratered amid deadly wars in Gaza, Iran and across the Middle East.

The number of Americans who now hold a “very or somewhat unfavorable view of Israel” is 60%, said Pew Research Center. That’s up seven points since last year, and “nearly 20 points since 2022.” There was once bipartisan support for Israel among U.S. voters, but 80% of Democrats now disapprove while 58% of Republicans approve. There has also been a departure from 25 years of polling, which long reported that “Israelis consistently held double-digit leads in Americans’ Middle East sympathies,” said Gallup. Americans now view Palestinians more sympathetically than Israel, by a margin of 41 to 36%.

‘Heavy-handed militarism’

The United States is “falling out of love” with Israel, Edward Luce said at Financial Times. Fewer Americans remember Yitzhak Rabin, the “courageous prime minister of Israel who sought peace with the Palestinians” but was assassinated in 1995 by an Israeli extremist. Benjamin Netanyahu has largely dominated Israeli politics since then, wielding a “heavy-handed militarism” in Gaza, and Americans have noted his role in persuading President Donald Trump “that it was a good idea to attack Iran.” Rabin lost his life for peace. “What will posterity say of Netanyahu?”

Netanyahu may be remembered as the “prime minister who lost Israel’s most important ally,” Michelle Goldberg said at The New York Times. The country’s faltering reputation is mostly a “consequence of its oppression of the Palestinians” and particularly the “mass killings” in Gaza during its war with Hamas. But the growing split is also the result of Netanyahu’s “aligning Zionism” with Trump’s “American authoritarianism.” U.S. views of Israel “could still have much further to fall.”

The United States “must stand with Israel,” Alex Tokarev said at The Detroit News. Like the U.S., Israel “values liberty” but is “surrounded by tyrants and terrorists determined to annihilate it.” A West that will not support its ally against such enemies “will not defend its own liberty.”

An ‘ominous turn’

Netanyahu has “torched U.S. support for Israel for a generation,” said Axios. The collapse can be seen among Democrats in Congress, where “lawmakers who started out staunchly pro-Israel are becoming increasingly vocal critics” of the U.S. ally. American leaders must “have a discussion about how to normalize” the relationship with Israel, Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said to Axios.

An “unprecedentedly overwhelming majority of Democrats” last week voted against failed Senate resolutions to block weapons and bulldozer sales to Israel, said The Times of Israel. Americans are “sick and tired of spending billions of dollars to support Netanyahu’s horrific wars,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said to reporters, per the outlet. The votes to deny arms to Israel are an “ominous turn that will encourage Iran, Hezbollah and their terrorist allies around the Middle East,” The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial.

President Lee Jae Myung warned earlier this month that the conflict in Iran represented a “war-like situation” for South Koreans. As oil reserves continue to dwindle, even if normal service in the Strait of Hormuz were to resume, it would take a long time for supplies to catch up.

The war is “serving as a significant turning point” for South Korea to shift to renewable energy, South Korea’s Minister of Climate, Energy and Environment Kim Sung-hwan told CNBC. We must undergo a “fundamental energy transition” and “turn this challenge into a blessing in disguise”.

Rising oil prices, and the weakening of the won against the dollar, are “dealing a double blow” to the Korean economy, said The New York Times. But reliance on oil has also highlighted the domestic tussle for green energy action in a divided South Korean system.

‘Draconian’ measures

The “brightly illuminated” satellite images of South Korea at night, compared to the “sea of blackness” in the North, have long been seen as a “wider triumph of capitalism and democracy”, said Christopher Jasper, transport industry editor, in The Telegraph. However, due to the Iran war, these lights could be extinguished “in a matter of weeks”.

Compared to fellow developed countries, South Korea is “almost uniquely lacking in natural resources”, relying on imports to meet “90% of its energy needs”. Around 70% of its crude oil shipments, in addition to 20% natural gas, come from the Gulf. The country has seen fuel prices increase by a fifth, a ban on driving one weekday in five for individuals, and calls to reduce shower times and to charge electric cars and phones only in the daytime. Much more “draconian” measures could be just weeks away.

South Korea must face a “difficult home truth”, said David Fickling in Bloomberg. Behind the “sleek modern society” is an “insatiable appetite for fossil fuels that’s undermining its economy”. But this appetite presents a climate and “strategic” threat. State utility Korea Electric Power Corporation’s (Kepco) “huge” generation plants provide “tempting targets for rocket attacks”, and its proximity to North Korea and China leaves the South exposed to mine threats, should the conflict expand.

A ‘catalyst’ for energy reform?

The fossil-fuel vulnerability highlighted by the war in Iran could be the “catalyst for a faster clean energy system”, said The Guardian. South Korea’s energy targets long predate the current war, aiming to generate 20% of electricity from renewables by 2030 and phase out coal by 2040.

As with most renewable energy, there must be the infrastructure to support it. The power generated by new energy is “colliding” with the grid’s capacity, meaning it is “in effect going to waste”. There is hope in the form of Kepco building high-voltage transmission lines to Seoul, but a decade-long wait and “resistance” from locals are taking the shine off the progress.

On top of the energy opportunities, this is a “fresh opportunity” to “strengthen Seoul’s hand” against North Korea, said Jenni Marsh in Bloomberg. According to Finance Minister Koo Yun Cheol, Middle Eastern countries are “lining up” to buy Korea’s missiles, with their 90% success rate and “affordable price tag” an attractive proposition for buyers. The crisis has also fuelled government investment into nuclear-reactor restarts to “maintain grid stability”. As North Korea’s Kim Jong Un “plays hard to get” with the US, and “refuses talks” with Lee, improving defence capabilities “looks like an increasingly smart option”.

President Lee’s “catnip” calls to transition to renewables due to the war in Iran have “no chance of being met”, said Fickling in the same outlet. For instance, Kepco has “effectively banned” all new generators in the “renewables-rich” east until 2032, all because its “crumbling grid is supposedly incapable of accepting new connections”. Decisions such as these will do “nothing to advance South Korea’s energy transition”. Society as a whole needs to fight against those who have kept them “hooked on polluting power”.

As conflict continues to destabilise the Middle East, the Gulf States elite are seeking solace in European alternatives that offer comparable financial benefits with a far lower risk of war on the doorstep. One such destination is the small Swiss town of Zug, which is becoming a “bolt-hole” for Gulf-based wealth, said the Financial Times.

‘Swiss Monaco’

Switzerland’s reputation as a magnet for the world’s financial elite is nothing new. In 2025, the country recorded the “densest concentration of millionaires” with an estimated 146 per 1,000 adults last year, said The Times. Now home to around 135,000 people, Zug’s canton – also named Zug – used to be the “poorest corner of Switzerland” until it lowered its tax rates in the 1950s. “Now it has corporate tax rates of 16.2% compared with 40% in the US and 33.3% in France.”

“In almost all ways Zug is unremarkable”, with its traditional Swiss architecture and cobbled waterfront lanes. But if its “Alpine lake water is clear”, the financial scene is more “murky”. Many credit Marc Rich and Pincus “Pinky” Green, founders of metals and minerals trading firm Glencore, with the transformation of Zug from a “Swiss backwater” to its status as the “Swiss Monaco”. The multinational is headquartered just outside Zug, and has made the town a “global powerhouse for trading crude and refined oil products”. It should be “no surprise” that the “1% of the world’s 1%” are taking shelter there, and at the same time, hoping to still “keep a hand in the oil business”.

“Industry estimates suggest that tens of billions of dollars could flow into Switzerland depending on how the current conflict evolves,” said the Outbound Investment Group. The “immediate trigger” for the “surge in interest” from Gulf-based investors is the war in the Middle East. However, Switzerland’s underlying appeal is its unwavering “Swissness”: “political neutrality”, “strong legal frameworks”, and reputation for wealth preservation. It’s a safe bet with no sign of slowing.

‘Availability tightening’

There are some drawbacks, said the FT. For “would-be arrivals”, the appeal of the region for Middle Eastern residents comes with “practical constraints”. Those outside the EU “face a higher bar”. Usually, the condition of residency is “tied” to employment or company formation. For the “very wealthy”, there is the added option of “negotiated lump-sum taxation agreements with cantonal authorities” that allow individuals to “pay a flat annual tax based on living expenses rather than global income”.

Even if they are holders of EU passports, the “main bottleneck” is the availability of property. Competition is “intense” and “rental supply is extremely limited, with properties often snapped up within days”. With Zug’s “availability tightening”, other cantons in the region with similar tax arrangements could benefit, such as Lugano, an Italian-speaking city in the Ticino region.

The uncertainty of the duration of the conflict is one of the most pressing concerns, said Bloomberg. The recent breakdown of ceasefire talks risks “forcing a reckoning for the professional and expat classes considering options after putting down roots in the Middle East”.

The short-term benefits of physical safety from leaving the Gulf are clear, but changing tax residency “takes time” and practicalities such as finding schools and “conforming to national requirements such as opening local bank accounts” is often “complicated and time-consuming”. The region’s ultra-wealthy are facing “uncomfortable decisions on whether to make the move permanent, especially with the end of the school year in sight”.

For weeks, the Trump administration has waged a brutal war on Iran. But now that Iran has successfully shifted the conflict’s nexus to the oil-shipping bottleneck in the Strait of Hormuz, the White House has a new plan to inflict maximum pressure: economic warfare, the “financial equivalent” of a bombing campaign, said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a White House briefing last week.

What did the commentators say?

Blocking Iranian ports and shipping lanes and pivoting from “kinetic to economic warfare” is an attempt to “end the conflict without a new U.S.-Israeli onslaught,” said CNN. Per the White House’s “rationale,” the “ruinous financial and humanitarian consequences” of being unable to ship and sell oil leave Tehran with “no choice but to accept U.S. terms” to end the conflict.

Although focused on Iran specifically, the administration’s threats stretch beyond the Islamic Republic to those who would do business with it. Countries that are “buying Iranian oil” or hold Iranian funds in their banks now risk “secondary sanctions, which is a very stern measure,” Bessent said on PBS News. Iranians themselves will feel the “financial equivalent of what we saw in the kinetic activities.”

Bessent’s threat came one day after his Treasury Department notified “financial institutions in China, Hong Kong, the UAE and Oman” that they are at risk of secondary sanctions for “allowing Iranian illicit activities to flow through their financial institutions,” said The Associated Press. The “argument being made to Trump” is that no matter if the Iranians think they can “weather the storm,” any inability to pay their “loyalists” could “pressure Iran to the table.”

Approximately one-third of the oil Iran exports through the Strait of Hormuz “directly funds the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” said The Foundation for Defense of Democracies Senior Fellow Miad Maleki on Fox News. Bessent’s threats will “shut down a lifeline that the regime desperately needs right now to keep its economy on some life support.”

Trump himself has been a “heavy user of financial sanctions” targeting “countries, individuals and companies,” The Washington Post said. At the same time, his administration seems to have been “caught unawares” when rivals like China and Iran “weaponized their economic advantages.”

While sanctions have long been the “instrument of choice for applying pressure on Iran,” the White House’s pivot toward “more kinetic forms of economic coercion” blurs the line between “financial restriction and military intervention,” said Harsh Pant, an international relations professor with King’s India Institute at King’s College London, at The Economic Times. “By physically interdicting maritime traffic” with its naval blockade, Trump is showing a willingness to enforce America’s “economic objectives through direct control of global commons.”

What next?

In many ways, the “damage” caused by economic weapons is already “sparking a response,” with nations that depend on the Strait of Hormuz “making plans to reduce their vulnerability to a future closure,” the Post said. But critics warn that attempts to impose other financial consequences on Iran could ultimately backfire on the United States and its allies. Much of the previous phase of war has “helped Iran’s economy,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), per the AP. Imposing further economic conditions is simply an attempt by Bessent to “mop up the mess that Donald Trump has created by initiating this war.”

The administration could still be making a “sound bet,” said CNN. Iran’s economy has been “shattered by sanctions” and could “quickly suffer critical food shortages, hyperinflation and a banking crisis” that would push Tehran to settle with the Trump administration. But this hope shared by “U.S. officials, conservative editorial pages and analysts” may ultimately “rest on an assumption” that has “led the U.S. astray in the Middle East” many times in the past.

What happened

U.S. Marines boarded and took control of an Iranian cargo ship on Sunday after it breached President Donald Trump’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. Central Command said. An Iranian military spokesperson warned that Iran “will soon respond and retaliate against this armed piracy.”

The seizure followed a weekend of mixed signals on the status of the strait and mutual accusations of violating the fragile ceasefire set to expire Wednesday. Trump said that his envoys would meet with Iranian negotiators in Pakistan on Tuesday, but Iran’s Foreign Ministry later said that Tehran had “no plans for the next round of negotiations” and has made “no decision” on further talks.

Who said what

Trump on Sunday said the U.S. was “offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL” to Iran, but if it did not accept, he would “knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran. NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!” Iran’s state media said Tehran saw “no clear prospect for productive talks” given the Trump administration’s “excessive demands” and shifting, “unrealistic requests.”

Both sides have “triggered a swirl of confusion over the status of peace talks,” The Wall Street Journal said, though Iran “made similar threats ahead of participating in the previous round of negotiations.” Pakistan “appeared to be preparing for the talks,” Reuters said, and U.S. “security equipment and vehicles” landed at an airbase in Islamabad over the weekend.

What next?

All the uncertainty “sent oil prices rising again,” The Associated Press said, and Iran this morning “warned it could keep up the global economic pain” and keep “inflicting political pain on Trump.”

The world is reeling from a war-induced oil shock, and China is poised to take advantage. The country builds nearly every component of the 21st-century electrical grid that will be needed to replace the oil currently bottled up in the Strait of Hormuz.

European and Asian countries facing oil shortages are realizing that “all paths to renewable power run through China and its exporters,” said The New York Times. Beijing has for decades “poured hundreds of billions of dollars into green energy” in its drive for energy independence, and its companies lead the world in producing solar panels, batteries and other equipment. The U.S. war against Iran will “catalyze even more investment and interest in renewables,” said Cory Combs, of analysis firm Trivium China, to the outlet. If Russia and Middle Eastern countries that produce the world’s oil are known as petrostates, China might be the world’s first electrostate.

“Consumers and governments around the world” are realizing their energy supplies are at the “mercy of wars and chokepoints,” said The Wall Street Journal. South Korea’s future “will be at serious risk if we continue to rely on fossil fuels,” President Lee Jae-Myung said to a town hall in March. Many are finding the answer in turning to China’s wind and solar power production, “even if that means more dependence on a single country.”

What did the commentators say?

The U.S. is pushing an “energy-hungry world” into China’s arms, Paul Krugman said on his Substack. President Donald Trump has been attempting to “stop the renewable energy revolution,” but he cannot because the “economics and the science are compelling.” What he can do is “ensure that the revolution passes us by.” His “debacle in Iran” may bring that future ahead of schedule, led by China. The U.S. may someday escape “Trump’s fossil fuel obsession,” but by that time “China’s lead in the manufacture of renewables will probably be insurmountable.”

There will be a “long-term psychological impact” from the Iran war, economist Andy Xie said at The South China Morning Post. The United States and Israel have been in conflict with Iran for nearly half a century, and a ceasefire now will not change the underlying dynamic. Other countries will expect more oil shocks in the future, which will “shape national policies for many years.” The upside: Reducing reliance on oil will take away incentive to wage war against countries like Iran. “Renewable energy makes the world safer.”

What next?

China is inaugurating the “electrostate era,” said Foreign Policy. Beijing spent recent decades plotting an energy strategy “designed precisely for moments like this.” Nearly a third of the country’s energy consumption comes from electricity, and “more than half of the cars sold in China are electric.” That has been the result of policies concerned less with reducing carbon emissions and more with energy independence. Beijing will not entirely avoid the consequences of the current oil shock, but the “push to become an electrostate” will reduce the pain.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has proposed to increase defence spending by less than £10 billion over the next four years, despite the Armed Forces highlighting a £28 billion funding gap in the same period, and warning that Britain’s “national security and safety is in peril”, said The Times.

Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, a former Nato secretary-general, accused the Treasury in a speech on Tuesday of “vandalism” for inaction on defence. Leader of the 2025 Strategic Defence Review, Robertson said that for the UK “building deterrence will not be quick or cheap”. He added that “the public need to face that uncomfortable fact or suffer the consequences of not being safe in a very turbulent world.”

With a fragile ceasefire in the Middle East and continued conflict in Ukraine, many fear that the government’s pledges to defence will prove difficult to fulfil.

What has the government pledged?

Minister of State for the Defence Readiness and Industry Luke Pollard stated in the House that the government was undertaking the “largest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War”, in response to Lord Robertson’s claims, but this is a “low bar”, said Ben Chu on BBC News. Defence spending has been on an “almost constant downward path since the fall of the Berlin Wall”.

The UK government currently spends 2.4% of GDP on defence, and Keir Starmer has committed to hitting 2.5% from April next year. This will then rise to 3% “at some point during the next parliament”, said The Times, though some critics think that the UK “should be hitting the 3% target now”.

More broadly, in June last year the government also committed to a Nato-wide agreement to spend 5% of GDP on national security. This figure will be split into 3.5% on “core defence” and 1.5% on “resilience and security” by 2035.

What state are the Armed Forces in?

In 1990, at the end of the Cold War, the Army had “153,000 regular soldiers in its ranks”, said the BBC. Now, it has less than half that number, just 73,790, according to the Ministry of Defence.

When it comes to recruitment, “Britain is at serious risk of being left behind” as other countries look to bolster their ranks, said Cahal Milmo and Jane Merrick in The i Paper. European neighbours Germany, Finland, Poland and France are “forging ahead with rearmament schemes” and programmes to increase numbers applying to their armed forces.

In the year to September 2025, the number of applications to the British Army Regular Forces (108,020) decreased by 36.6% compared to the previous year (170,380), according to the MoD.

In terms of equipment, in 1990, the Royal Navy had 13 destroyers and 35 frigates, which has since dropped to six and 11 respectively, said the BBC. Similarly, in 1990 the RAF had 300 combat jets. Though the current 137 Eurofighter Typhoons and minimum 37 Joint Strike Fighter F-35 Lightning IIs are “technically superior”, they are fewer in number. The use in combat of unmanned drones, which did not exist in 1990, is rising, and these also form part of the UK’s military aircraft.

How have recent ventures fared?

The “sad state” of the Armed Forces was illustrated by the delay in the deployment of HMS Dragon to the Middle East, said Richard Norton-Taylor in The Guardian. Even after the delay, the destroyer “needed further repairs almost as soon as it arrived”. It is the Navy’s “lone destroyer available to help protect British interests” in the Middle East, as the Navy’s “largest and most expensive” ships, the Queen Elizabeth and the Prince of Wales – which “cost more than £6 billion” – were unavailable.

On land, ministers are facing “scrapping” the Ajax armoured vehicle programme, due to health concerns for its operators. Its issues are “so serious that vibration and noise have made soldiers training on it sick, with some suffering hearing loss”. More than £6 billion has been spent on the project, and it is “already eight years late”.

The government is also “under increasing pressure” to deliver its “long-delayed” Defence Investment Plan, said The i Paper. This promises to “overhaul Britain’s military capabilities with about £300 billion of investment over a decade”, said the outlet. Though expected to have been released last October, due to concerns over the MoD funding gap, it is not expected “until June at the earliest”.

What needs to be done?

The war in the Middle East should be a “wake-up call” for the UK to recognise its “vulnerabilities”, said George Robertson in Prospect. “There are many.” Public attention is mostly focused on the tangibles – such as planes, tanks and ships – but they are the “baubles on the Christmas tree”. “We need to focus on the tree itself” by addressing “crises in logistics, engineering, cyber, ammunition, training and medical resources”.

People across the United States are making their opinions known as the war in Iran enters its seventh week, and perhaps none more so than military members. Active-duty soldiers and veterans are experiencing an array of emotions connected to the conflict, with some in support and others vehemently against it. The differing feelings come as tensions in the Defense Department grow.

‘Powerful motivator’

Some soldiers are angry that the Iran conflict has been run with “strategic incoherence” because the “president hasn’t really been able to say with clarity to the American people what exactly this war is about,” Marine veteran Elliot Ackerman said to WBUR News. The war “leaves this question, okay, ‘So is this tool we have, the U.S. military, is that a tool that we can use to create that better future for our country and for Iran?’” It is important to “articulate a very clear plan if we’re going to put American service members’ lives in jeopardy.”

The number of people looking to leave the military had already been increasing, and the “war against Iran has been a powerful motivator,” Kat Lonsdorf and Tom Bowman said at NPR. Many soldiers are “airing their concerns and frustrations,” Bill Galvin, who helps run the GI Rights Hotline for military discharge, said to NPR. Most of the callers are “asking how to apply to become a conscientious objector,” and nearly all of them “mention the bombing of a girls’ school in Iran on the first day of the war.”

Many veterans also remember the effects of years-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When it comes to the war in Iran, the “U.S. is creating a new generation of anti-American sentiment in Iran and across the region,” Chris Sarson, who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, said to WBUR News. Soldiers who served during these conflicts became “acutely aware of the heavy costs that civilians pay for war.”

‘Many acknowledge the role Iran played’

Though many in the Armed Forces feel the conflict might become another “forever war,” others have more complex feelings. Some soldiers are largely against war but “also acknowledge the role Iran played behind the scenes” assisting other regional nations in Middle East wars, Jeff Schogol and Patty Nieberg said at Task & Purpose. Wars in the Middle East have “caused a lot of moral injury and PTSD amongst the veterans’ community,” but “at the same time, Iran again has been a party to this conflict over the last 25 years,” Alex Plitsas, a former Army staff sergeant and Iraq veteran, said to Task & Purpose.

Some veterans feel that the war means Iran is “finally being held accountable,” said Schogol and Nieberg at Task & Purpose. “I’ve flown combat missions against the very terrorists funded and directed by the Iranian regime, and I’ve seen firsthand the threat Iran poses,” Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas), an Air Force veteran, said in a press release when the war began. The conflict has been “coming for the ayatollahs, who have no regard for human life or peace.”

Many younger soldiers are also “excited to deploy” to Iran because the war is “what needs to be done,” Army veteran Juan Munoz said to The Associated Press. Other soldiers support the war thanks to their positive feelings about President Donald Trump. There “had to have been some reason” for Trump “to bomb them,” Army veteran Edward Bauman told the AP. “I don’t think he would have just went out of his way to just, ‘I’m going to bomb these people.’”

The divide between the American president and the American pontiff has exploded into view. Pope Leo has repeatedly rebuked President Donald Trump’s immigration policies and war in Iran, and Trump is now returning the criticism. Could the division prefigure a split in the Catholic Church?

Leo on Sunday delivered his “strongest condemnation yet” of war in a peace vigil at St. Peter’s Basilica, said CBS News. “Enough with war!” he said during the public service. Real strength is “manifested in serving life.” The president did not take kindly to the critique. Leo is “terrible for foreign policy” and should “get his act together as pope, use common sense, stop catering to the radical left,” Trump said on Truth Social.

The exchange followed a “bitter lecture” during a January meeting between Pentagon appointees and a Vatican diplomat, said The Free Press. The message from Defense Department officials: The church “had better take its side” on the world stage. One unnamed U.S. official “went so far as to invoke the Avignon Papacy,” the 14th-century period in which the French monarchy forcibly moved the papacy from Rome to France. Both sides downplayed the Free Press report. Even so, tension between Catholic leaders and the White House has “only risen since the start of the war with Iran,” said The Atlantic.

What did the commentators say?

“There will be no second Avignon,” Christopher Hale said at the newsletter Letters from Leo. Officials invoking that 14th-century history were making a “threat against the conscience of the world,” but the White House will be unable to repeat it.

A recent favorability survey published by NBC News found Leo finished first in a ranking of “14 public figures, institutions and political groups” by a wide margin. That makes him the “most popular public figure on earth.” Trump cannot compete. “The American people stand with Pope Leo XIV.”

Leo has “resisted Trump like a protester at a ‘No Kings’ rally,” said Gustavo Arellano at the Los Angeles Times. Critics will accuse the pope of “Trump derangement syndrome” and note that he stands “athwart the desires” of the 55% of Catholics who voted for the president in 2024. But Trump’s administration has pulled funding from Catholic charities and criticized bishops who dissent. Leo’s role is to “bear witness to the words of Christ,” who spoke more about caring for the poor than waging war. Unlike Trump, Leo “urges us to stand for something other than ourselves.”

What next?

The debate over the war is spilling into the wider religious sphere, “driving a wedge” between the president’s pro-Israel evangelical supporters and the Catholic commentators who are “increasingly hostile to Trump’s foreign policy agenda,” said Vox. The “Avignon-gate” report will continue to raise tensions “within the U.S. Catholic community and within the MAGA movement.”

Leo, meanwhile, will not return to the U.S. for the country’s 250th birthday celebrations in July, choosing instead to minister to migrants in Italy. Leo’s priority is to “be with those who are downcast and marginalized,” said Cardinal Blase Cupich on “60 Minutes.”

What happened

President Donald Trump on Sunday threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz after peace talks with Iran in Pakistan failed to produce a breakthrough. The U.S. Navy will blockade “any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait,” he said on social media. But U.S. Central Command had a different interpretation of Trump’s order, saying it would block only vessels entering or departing “Iranian ports and coastal areas,” starting this week.

Who said what

A U.S. naval blockade would cut off a “key source of financing for Iran’s government and military operations,” CNN said. But a blockade could be a “blow to the rest of the world as well,” exacerbating the “war-driven global energy crisis” and raising U.S. gas prices, The Washington Post said.

The problem for Trump is that “Americans have a much lower threshold of pain than the Iranians,” Andreas Krieg, a security expert at King's College London, said to The Associated Press. The Iranians “can sustain this for far longer than the world economy” and “the Americans,” and Trump doesn’t have “any tool in the toolbox in terms of the military lever” he can use “to get his way.”

What next?

The face-to-face peace talks, led on the U.S. side by Vice President JD Vance, “were the highest-level negotiations between the longtime rivals” since 1979, the AP said. Iran said it was open to continuing the talks, and “neither indicated what will happen after the ceasefire expires on April 22.”

“WE GOT HIM!” Donald Trump’s announcement on Sunday that the second of two US airmen had been rescued from “deep inside” Iran struck a “triumphant” tone, said Jonathan Sacerdoti in The Spectator – and no wonder.

The rescue brought to an end an episode that had begun on Friday, when a US air force F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down over southwestern Iran – the first time a US fighter jet had been downed by hostile fire since the 2003 Gulf War. Both crew members had “ejected safely”. But while one was quickly recovered by US forces, the second, a weapons systems officer, was stranded for 36 hours, as the two sides raced to find him.

Iran, eyeing a propaganda victory, offered a £50,000 reward for his capture, said Paul Nuki in The Telegraph. Washington, in turn, was desperate to avoid a humiliation evoking memories of the botched US attempt to rescue 53 embassy staff held hostage by Iran in 1980. In the end, Trump was able to celebrate what he called “one of the most daring search and rescue operations in US history”.

“Deep behind enemy lines”, seriously hurt, and armed only with a pistol, the officer had been in a terrifying position, said Guy Adams in the Daily Mail. But his “survival, evasion, resistance and escape” (SERE) training kicked in, and he scaled a 7,000ft ridge in the Zagros Mountains, before hiding in a crevice and using a satellite device to report his location.

The CIA, meanwhile, hatched a “deception plan”, spreading word in Iran that it was moving the airman out of the country on the ground, said Greg Jaffe in The New York Times. Then, on Saturday night, the US launched a “vast and complex” rescue mission. Two MC-130 troop planes carrying more than 100 special forces commandos landed on a disused airfield near Isfahan, which they used as a forward operating base. Drones and jets provided air cover, striking Iranian forces that came near. Then commandos used mini-helicopters to reach the mountains, extract the weapons officer, and fly him back to the airfield.

It was here that a major hiccup occurred, said Dan Sabbagh in The Guardian. The troop carrier planes became bogged down in the soil and had to be destroyed by the US to avoid them falling into enemy hands, while new planes were flown in. Although the US did get all its troops out, suffering no casualties, it lost hardware worth about $250 million (£185 million). The episode as a whole was a reminder that, for all America’s military superiority, Iran “can fight back” – and it would only need to “get lucky once” in this asymmetric conflict to secure a major propaganda victory.

Several thousand people have been killed in Iran since the U.S.-Israeli war broke out, and the conflict has created an additional humanitarian crisis: delays and shortages of medical supplies. Hospitals and health care clinics throughout the Middle East are reporting critical lapses in supplies, which experts fear could lead to a surge in deaths even as the U.S. agreed to a temporary ceasefire.

What did the commentators say?

With the war in a state of flux, humanitarian centers “across the Middle East, Asia and Africa are facing the risk of running out of basic medication and food” due to the “restriction of shipments in the Strait of Hormuz,” said NPR. Some of this food, especially dry and canned goods, can “be stored for a long time,” Bob Kitchen, the vice president of emergencies and humanitarian action with the International Rescue Committee, said to NPR. But health care supplies are a different story, as most of the “medicines or treatments for malnutrition will expire.”

Many of these countries rely almost entirely on foreign aid for medical supplies. Sudan, for example, has “no manufacturing capacity and is entirely dependent on imported medication,” Omer Sharfy of Save the Children in Sudan said to NPR. This means health care workers “won’t be able to find alternatives in the local market.” The war has also “disrupted the movement of medical supplies from WHO’s global logistics hub in Dubai,” said the World Health Organization. By March 11, just 12 days into the war, over “50 emergency supply requests, intended to benefit over 1.5 million people across 25 countries,” were “affected, resulting in significant backlogs.”

Even countries far away from the conflict are bearing the brunt of these scarcities. Fears of syringe and IV shortages in South Korea are “spreading through Korea’s health care sector, prompting authorities to urge medical providers to refrain from stockpiling,” said The Korea Times. The problem is not that the Persian Gulf countries are “major drug producers. They’re not,” said health care news nonprofit Healthbeat. But these nations do “form ‘a critical pharmaceutical transit hub,’ where drugs and their basic ingredients from India, Europe and China routinely pass before heading to Africa, Asia and the United States.”

What next?

Some are hopeful that the two-week ceasefire, announced by President Donald Trump and initially agreed to by Iran, will allow the flow of medicine to restart. But while the U.S. has backed a ceasefire, Israel has continued its assault on the region, carrying out a series of strikes in Lebanon. Iran reclosed the strait in “response to Israeli attacks against the Hezbollah militant group,” said The Associated Press. Iran later accused the U.S. of also violating the deal and claimed that a long-term ceasefire was “unreasonable.”

Even before the strait was closed again, experts say it is unlikely its opening would have made a huge difference in moving global medical supplies. The ceasefire deal would not lead to a “‘mass exodus’ of ships through the Strait of Hormuz,” said The Guardian. The deal also allows Iran and Oman to “charge a fee of up to $2 million a ship on vessels transiting through the strait,” which could further limit the amount of supplies that are able to pass.

With no end to the larger skirmish in sight, fears persist that the shipment of medical supplies could remain at risk. All of these events are happening in an industry that was “decimated by funding cuts from the United States and Europe last year,” said The Washington Post, and is “now straining to meet demand that grows with each additional day of war.”

What happened

The two-week ceasefire announced by President Donald Trump and Iranian officials earlier this week faltered Wednesday as the U.S., Iran and Israel argued over whether it covered the Israel-Hezbollah fight in Lebanon. Iran also accused the U.S. of violating several tenets of the agreement, and closed the Strait of Hormuz in response to Israeli strikes on Lebanon that killed at least 254 people and wounded 1,100 more.

Who said what

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, a key mediator of the ceasefire, said it applied to “everywhere, including Lebanon.” Israel said Lebanon was not included, and President Donald Trump agreed Wednesday. U.S. allies, including the leaders of France, Australia and Spain, said Lebanon needed to be covered by the ceasefire.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Lebanon was included, and the “ceasefire terms are clear and explicit: the U.S. must choose — ceasefire or continued war via Israel.” Vice President JD Vance called the dispute a “legitimate misunderstanding.” Iran likely “thought that the ceasefire included Lebanon, and it just didn’t,” he told reporters, adding that Israel nonetheless “actually offered to be — frankly, to check themselves a little bit in Lebanon.”

In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “faced swift criticism from political opponents on the left and right” over the U.S.-Iran deal, Politico said. “The ceasefire stopped the Israeli military campaign much sooner than Israel wanted,” and while Netanyahu had “no choice but to go along,” he can claim ongoing Lebanon strikes “as a victory with the Israeli public.”

What next?

Despite Wednesday’s “dueling threats to resume attacks if the ceasefire fell apart,” The New York Times said, Trump “seemed determined to plow ahead” with diplomacy, saying Vance would lead a delegation to Islamabad for peace talks starting Saturday.

After five weeks of war, Donald Trump has claimed “total and complete victory” over Iran. Tehran begs to differ. Agreeing to the conditional two-week ceasefire, Iranian officials said their country had dealt a “crushing historic defeat” to the US and Israel.

Meanwhile, commentators are pointing to real, quiet wins for both China and Pakistan, whose behind-the-scenes roles in pushing for the ceasefire have increased their global standing.

What did the commentators say?

Benjamin Netanyahu “looks set to be the biggest loser” of the conflict, said The Guardian’s senior international correspondent, Peter Beaumont. Pressuring Trump to agree to his decades-long goal of neutralising Iran has “turned out to be a bust”. The “political consensus” between Israel and the US is “visibly crumbling”, and there’s “domestic fallout” for Netanyahu in the run-up to an election.

Trump has also emerged as a “strategic loser”, said the South China Morning Post. Washington failed to achieve regime change in Tehran, and Iran retained control of the Strait of Hormuz, the conflict’s “most strategic asset”. Meanwhile, the US has used up “sophisticated air-defence missiles” intercepting “far cheaper Iranian drones and projectiles”. Iran’s nuclear programme has survived, along with the “stockpile of enriched uranium” from which it could “potentially produce a viable weapon”, said The Times’ Middle East correspondent, Samer Al-Atrush. That “will not be given up easily”.

Tehran’s blocking of the Strait of Hormuz was a “high-risk” strategy that “paid off”, said DW. It “secured a ceasefire without conceding defeat”, which it “can present as proof that it withstood the US and all its military might”. The Iranian regime “survived, and bought time to try to shape” the phase of negotiations “on more favourable terms”.

In the longer term, it is actually Beijing that most “stands to gain”. America has “moved many military assets to the Middle East to protect shipping”, which “leaves fewer resources for the Indo‑Pacific, where Washington and Beijing compete for influence”. China has also had the chance to present itself “as a responsible global actor”, with its power brokers widely credited with pushing Iran to agree to the ceasefire.

China is “shaping up to be the big winner”, said Roger Boyes, The Times’ diplomatic editor. Unlike the US, it expected Iran to seize the strait and “amassed large oil reserves”, making itself “more resilient” to an energy crisis. “As a significant exporter” of other goods, it was still initially “hit hard” by the strait’s closure but then the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps ordered that China-bound vessels could pass through “toll-free”.

Pakistan’s credentials have been burnished, too. Its role in brokering the ceasefire was “unexpected” but the Islamabad Accord is the country’s “most consequential diplomatic moment in a decade”, said former UN peacekeeper Anil Raman on NDTV. Capitalising on its good relations with both the US and Iran, Islamabad will “press hard to consolidate” this “return to global relevance”.

What next?

J.D. Vance is due to lead a US delegation in negotiations with Tehran in Pakistan this weekend. The White House said the ceasefire between the US and Iran has created an “opening for a diplomatic solution and long-term peace”.

But the specifics of the terms to be discussed “remain murky”, said the BBC, “as is the current state of shipping traffic” through the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian forces have warned that ships would be “destroyed” if they tried to sail through without permission.

“In the end, cooler heads prevailed – at least for now,” said North America Correspondent Anthony Zurcher on BBC News. After Donald Trump’s threats to launch attacks on Iran that would wipe out the “whole civilisation” in the country, both countries agreed a two-week ceasefire.

The President has since claimed that this could lead to a “Golden Age of the Middle East!!!”, while Vice-President J. D. Vance called the ceasefire a “fragile truce”.

As peace talks are expected to take place in Pakistan, both sides have claimed the ascendancy, though uncertainty surrounding key elements of the agreement, such as the Strait of Hormuz and Iranian nuclear capabilities, have left many sceptical of continued peace.

What did the commentators say?

This ceasefire move is “check, not checkmate”, said Jonathan Sacerdoti in The Spectator. In fact, we shouldn’t even consider this a proper ceasefire; it is merely a “fragile” and “conditional” “pause” in the conflict, which is “already under strain”.

“Beneath the surface, fundamental disagreements persist” in a logistical sense. There has been “no clearly defined start time” and “key uncertainties” remain. The proposed 10-point plan issued by Iran contains “discrepancies” between its Farsi and English versions, “most notably” over the state of uranium enrichment, as well as ambiguity surrounding movement through the Strait of Hormuz. “If this is the Third World War, it is not over.”

“It’s TACO Tuesday!”, said David Charter in The Times, using the Trump Always Chickens Out acronym coined last year during Trump’s “on-off tariff threats”. Even if the ceasefire holds, the US has “left in place a cadre of battle-scarred leaders, no doubt harbouring thoughts of revenge”.

As “king of the ultimatum”, Trump has “played fast and loose in pursuit of his goals”, isolating himself from “shocked” allies, who are now “on their guard” more than ever before. The “reckless” flip-flopping could have “far-reaching consequences for America’s standing in the world”. On the world stage, countries may come to fear America’s “increasingly unpredictable behaviour” more than its “terrifying” military might.

“Both sides have good reason to hope the talks succeed, despite the obstacles,” said The Economist. For the US, the war is “deeply unpopular at home”, and Trump is “keen to have it finished” before his mid-May summit with Xi Jinping in China. “For Iran, renewed fighting would be catastrophic,” with America and Israel expected to continue striking key economic assets. The only outlier may be Israel, which maintained that the ceasefire does not include Lebanon.

“Diplomatic jujitsu” will be required to bridge the gap between the views of a final peace agreement held by Iran and the US, said David E. Sanger in The New York Times. It is hard to imagine that a settlement between the nations could be reached in “two years, much less two weeks”. Neither Trump’s “tactic of escalating his rhetoric to astronomical levels” or the “down-to-the-wire” negotiations have resolved the “fundamental issues that led to the war”. It took the Obama administration two-and-a-half years to negotiate the 2015 nuclear accord – which Trump tore up in 2018 – “and that was in peacetime”. Notwithstanding, “this negotiation will be held under the sword of a possible resumption of hostilities.”

The last-minute ceasefire is “in theory, a victory for real-estate geopolitics”, said Senior Foreign Correspondent Adrian Blomfield in The Telegraph. However, “as any real estate agent knows”, the devil is in the detail, and “closer inspection suggests Mr Trump’s triumph may not be quite as unalloyed as he claims”. Iran’s position is stronger than before the war, and has now “agreed to allow shipping through the chokepoint”, but “on its own terms and has not relinquished its claim to control it”. The country may have agreed to a ceasefire, but its negotiating position, “rhetorically at least, is now more hardline than before the war began”.

What next?

“What is certain is that the clock has been reset yet again,” said Sacerdoti in The Spectator. Providing the ceasefire holds, the “decisive moment” will come in two weeks’ time, when the “temporary pause” ends and the “question of whether it can be extended, or gives way to renewed fighting, will be answered”.

“The talks in Islamabad will be complicated, to say the least,” said The Economist. Significant work needs to be done, as the positions of both sides “could not be further apart”. “If both sides stick to their current positions, the talks could end up at the same impasse they reached just before the war in February.”

If talks were to fail, we would likely see an “uneasy return to the status quo”. Iran would face American sanctions and the continued “threat of further American strikes”, as well as remaining a “menace” in the Gulf region, and have “strong motivation to build a bomb”. “That would be a bad outcome for everyone: a weakened, hostile regime; an impoverished Iran; and a lingering threat to the global economy.”

Donald Trump has repeated his threat to pull the US out of Nato, after Britain and other allies refused to send warships to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Dismissing the alliance as a “paper tiger”, he told The Telegraph’s Washington correspondent that the idea of removing America from the defence treaty had now gone “beyond reconsideration”.

“We’ve been there automatically, including Ukraine,” Trump said. “And we would always have been there for them”. But, in an apparent misunderstanding of the limits of the alliance, the US president believes that, in the Iran conflict, “they weren’t there for us”.

What would it mean for Nato?

Nato, formed by the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949 by 12 founding countries, does not have its own army. Instead, member states pledged to provide collective defence and security. The US is Nato’s largest single military power, as well as funding 62% of its spending, so American withdrawal would dramatically weaken the alliance. Without Washington’s military might behind it, Article 5 – the treaty clause that states that an armed attack against one or more members will be considered an attack against all – would lose credibility .

Trump’s recent threats will further encourage Canada and the European member states in their efforts to rely less on the US for security – a shift that is a boon to their own domestic defence industries.

What would leaving Nato mean for the US?

The US would save money, both by ending its contribution to Nato spending and by no longer maintaining a presence in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. But it would also lose access to many military bases around the world, meaning the US Navy would have to “operate closer to America’s shores”, and US bombers would no longer be able to “reach targets halfway around the world”, said Modern Diplomacy. More broadly, the shift away from US global leadership would accelerate, with America increasingly divorced from an international framework.

Buyers for US arms could also dry up, as America’s former allies seek to re-arm elsewhere. The US spends more on its own military than any other country but that wouldn’t be enough to keep all its arms manufacturers afloat. Without crucial foreign sales, hundreds of thousands of US jobs would be at risk.

What would the process actually look like?

Leaving Nato wouldn’t be easy for the US because a 2024 law prohibits the president from doing so without the approval of a two-thirds Senate majority or an act of Congress. Even if all Republicans in the Senate voted for it, Trump would still need at least 14 Democrats to join them, and it’s unlikely he would even get unanimity from Republicans: Thom Tillis, Republican co-chair of the Senate NATO Observer Group, has already warned that leaving Nato would be an “enormous, enormous risk”.

Given the political obstacles, most Nato observers don’t think Trump will try to withdraw, “despite his obvious displeasure at alliance leaders”, said The Times. But he could use an executive order to suspend US participation, and eke that suspension out while legal challenges are mounted.

But, even without leaving, Trump could still “cause irreparable damage” to the alliance, said UnHerd. He could ignore an Article 5 request, withhold intelligence from Nato partners, cancel weapons deliveries, and limit the export of security-related technologies.

What happened

The U.S. military over the weekend rescued two airmen whose F-15E was shot down over Iran last week. U.S. forces quickly rescued the pilot deep in hostile territory, but the second crew member was not exfiltrated until early Sunday following a “sprawling, high-risk rescue mission” involving about 100 Special Operations commandoes, the CIA and dozens of military aircraft, The Wall Street Journal said, citing President Donald Trump and other U.S. officials.

Who said what

The F-15E crew member, a weapons system officer, was injured when he ejected from the jet, but was able to climb about 7,000 feet and wedge himself into a crevice to evade the Iranian forces searching for him, officials said. The “almost cinematic mission” also “faced major obstacles,” The Associated Press said. Iran said it shot down at least two MH-6 helicopters during the rescue, and the U.S. bombed two of its own MC-130Js to protect sensitive technology after the $100 million stealth transport planes got stuck on a makeshift runway in remote Iran.

What next?

The rescue mission gave both Iran and the U.S. “a new narrative as the war enters its sixth week,” the Journal said. Tehran “portrayed the downing of the jet as proof that the U.S. could be bloodied” and did not have full “air superiority,” while Trump called the operation an “Easter miracle” in “triumphant interviews and posts” as he “seeks to mobilize flagging public support for the war.”

What happened

Pope Leo XIV on Sunday celebrated his first Easter as pontiff by urging leaders “who have the power to unleash wars” to instead “choose peace!” President Donald Trump invoked God in obscenity-laced social media posts threatening to bomb all of Iran’s power plants and bridges unless it agreed to open the Strait of Hormuz by Monday evening. Indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets constitutes a war crime.

Who said what

“Time is running out — 48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them. Glory be to GOD!” Trump posted over the weekend. “Open the F--kin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH!” the president wrote, adding: “Praise be to Allah.” Trump’s post was “notable” for both its “vulgar language” and “somewhat desperate-sounding tone,” said The New York Times. It “would have stood out on any day, much less on what most Christians consider the holiest day of the year.”

The Vatican has become “alarmed” at the Trump administration’s “invocations of God” to “defend” the Iran war, The Washington Post said. Pope Leo has generally been “careful in his language,” leaving “more overt criticism” to U.S. bishops and “other senior proxies,” but he has “grown blunter in pushing back against suggestions that divine providence supports the use of force or violence.” In his traditional Urbi et Orbi blessing, Leo prayed that “those who have weapons lay them down” and choose a peace not “imposed by force” or the “desire to dominate others,” but through “dialogue.”

Some critics were more direct. Trump “is not a Christian,” former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a former Trump ally, said on social media over a screenshot of his Easter post. “Everyone in his administration that claims to be a Christian needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness from God and stop worshipping the President and intervene in Trump’s madness.”

What next?

Before Trump, no “other recent American president has talked so openly about committing potential war crimes,” the Times said, and his “language and actions could have far-reaching consequences” for the U.S., Iran and the world. A “defiant Iran” responded to Trump’s threats by striking “infrastructure targets in neighboring Gulf Arab countries” and threatening to “restrict another heavily used waterway,” The Associated Press said.

As Donald Trump’s war wears on, it becomes increasingly clear that he has no “overarching strategy” and is now fighting a war of attrition, said The Guardian.

America is still striking at Iranian targets while building up troops in the region. Iran, in turn, keeps attacking Israel and the Gulf states. Last week, it hit a US airbase in Saudi Arabia, injuring 12 US personnel and causing hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of damage. Tehran’s allies in Yemen have now entered the fray. The Strait of Hormuz remains shut. And while his officials talk about peace being “weeks, not months” away, Trump is still warning of far worse to come as he “searches for leverage”.

This week, the president said that the US could capture or “obliterate” Iran’s oil export hub, Kharg Island, and possibly even target Iran's energy and water systems – “war crimes by another name”.

Miles apart

Trump threatened to destroy Iran’s energy infrastructure last month, said Andrew Neil in the Daily Mail, only to row back, saying there would be no strikes for ten days to allow time for talks. That deadline elapses on Monday, but all the evidence suggests that he had no plan and was simply “playing for time”. And while he claims that Tehran is “begging for a deal”, the Iranians seem to think they have him “on the run”, and deny talks are even taking place.

Even if meaningful negotiations were on the horizon, the two sides are miles apart, said Richard Spencer in The Times. Iran is demanding not only an end to sanctions, but “an end to all attacks, including Israel’s, on Hamas, Hezbollah and other arms of the ‘resistance’”. It also wants reparations, and “sovereignty” over the Strait of Hormuz – a hint that it plans to charge for access, as Egypt does with the Suez Canal. The US, in turn, insists that Iran end its nuclear programme; give up its enriched uranium; and cut off support to its proxies.

When it comes to Trump’s rhetoric, a pattern is emerging, said Emily Maitlis in The i Paper. He reserves his most bellicose threats for the weekend, when the financial markets are closed, then starts talking up the possibility of peace so that the outlook seems more positive by the time traders are back at their desks. The markets, though, are getting wise to this tactic.

‘Escalate or talk’

As for Tehran, it seems unmoved by Trump’s threats. The fact is, Iran is far more capable than the US of both withstanding and inflicting pain, said The Economist. While the world counts the economic costs of this war, the regime is “making a mint” from sanctions-busting oil sales. Domestically, its hardline Revolutionary Guards remain in control. And overseas, its proxies continue to do its bidding: last Saturday, the Houthis provided a stark reminder of their capacity to ramp up the chaos when they fired missiles at Israel.

Trump, by contrast, is flailing. “Despite operational successes and his nonsensical claim of having already changed the regime in Tehran, he has yet to win any substantive gains from the fighting.” His choice now is to “escalate or talk”.

Given the risks of escalation, Trump will probably seek a deal to reopen Hormuz, said Gideon Rachman in the FT. But any outcome that leaves Iran with practical control over Gulf energy exports would be deeply unpopular with those states. It has even been suggested that the UAE and Saudi Arabia could “join the conflict rather than accept that outcome”.

‘The regime is hurting’

Trump will find the Iranians to be very tough negotiators, said Matthew Gould in The Times. The regime has shown its capacity before to withstand “repeated blows”, and is determined to stay in power no matter how much pain it causes its people. By contrast, Trump will be worrying about popular opinion ahead of the midterms. He is reportedly already “bored” with the conflict. And if it chooses, Tehran can use its trigger-happy proxies to derail the talks at any moment. That said, Iran has a habit of overplaying its hand and, “for all its bravado, the regime is hurting”.

Pakistan, in its role as mediator, has intensified its diplomatic efforts over the past week, said Saeed Shah in The Guardian; but Tehran is so far refusing to engage in face-to-face talks with US officials. Trump began the war confident that it wouldn’t take long to topple the Iranian regime, said Steve Bloomfield in The Observer. Its nuclear programme had been weakened, its allies had been hobbled, so the US and Israel seized the moment. Yet in the past five weeks, the mullahs have actually tightened their grip on power; and it’s the ordinary Iranians, who Trump promised to save, who will pay the price for this war. If it ends soon, other economies will bounce back. Iran could feel the impact for generations to come.

‘When capital can think, who pays?’

Ravi Kumar S, Andreea Roberts and Simone Crymes at Newsweek

In the U.S., AI adoption is “growing at a remarkable pace,” but Americans are “concerned” about “layoffs tied to automation,” say Ravi Kumar S, Andreea Roberts and Simone Crymes. So how should “public policy support” the transition? One answer: a “shift in how automation is taxed relative to human labor.” If capital is “taxed more and labor less, replacing people with AI is no longer the cheapest path,” and using AI to “augment human workers” instead “becomes a more attractive option.”

Read more

‘Birthright citizenship made me American. We can't lose it.’

Cynthia Choi at USA Today

On his “first day back in office,” Trump issued an executive order “seeking to deny citizenship to certain U.S.-born children,” says Cynthia Choi. But birthright citizenship is as “fundamental” to our country as “freedom of speech.” This is “not some isolated policy debate.” It’s a “broader effort by the Trump administration to put an end to multiracial democracy.” Children without citizenship will be denied “access to education, public benefits and the basic rights that come with belonging.”

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‘Missile warfare is faster, deadlier and harder to control’

Hal Brands at Bloomberg

The Iran conflict “demonstrates how the spread of powerful, accurate missiles is changing warfare around the globe,” says Hal Brands. Even “relatively weak states now have fairly accurate weapons that can strike hundreds, even thousands, of miles away.” This means “fewer sanctuaries: Facilities and geographies that were once secure are now vulnerable to attack.” That could be “challenging” for the U.S., since “even relatively weak adversaries will be able to hold U.S. bases, perhaps even the homeland, at risk.”

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‘AOC finally takes a position that makes sense on military aid to Israel’

Zeeshan Aleem at MS Now

On Tuesday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who “struggled to take a clear position on supporting Israel in the past,” pledged to vote “against all military aid to Israel,” says Zeeshan Aleem. This was a “striking shift for a potential 2028 White House hopeful who, should she enter the race, would be the standard bearer for the democratic socialist left.” Her decision “does not just reflect demands on the left but the changing dynamics of the Democratic Party.”

Read more

The Iran war follows on the heels of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on allies and threats to take Greenland from NATO partner Denmark. Now, the president is demanding that other countries reopen the Strait of Hormuz closed by the war he launched. And critics say he has transformed the U.S. from the so-called leader of the free world into a rogue superpower that threatens global stability.

Trump has driven “deep and perhaps permanent wedges” between the U.S. and its allies in Europe and Asia, said Robert Kagan at The Atlantic. The Iran war was launched with “no public debate, no vote in Congress” and no consultation with “allies other than Israel.” Europeans must now wonder if the war signals that the president is “more or less likely” to “take similarly bold action on Greenland.” American global leadership survived unpopular wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan. But it may not survive this.

Weaker, lonelier and less effective

The fallout from Iran demonstrates the administration “either didn’t understand how its actions would affect other states or simply didn’t care,” said Stephen M. Walt at Foreign Policy. That leaves “every country in the world” trying to determine how to work with an “increasingly rogue” U.S. For now, its ostensible friends have to weigh whether U.S. power “could be used to harm them either intentionally or inadvertently.”

Every post-Cold War administration has taken on actual “rogue” states, said Matthew Kroenig at The Wall Street Journal. U.S. presidents have waged a “de facto campaign of toppling anti-American dictators” such as Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Moammar Gadhafi in Libya. And Iran is the “biggest prize” on the list. Even if the Islamic regime does not fall under the weight of U.S. attacks, it will be “too weak to pose a serious threat for years to come.” That puts Trump “on the verge of eliminating the world’s rogue states.”

A swaggering superpower “could be a collective asset for the democratic world,” said Hal Brands at Bloomberg. But Trump’s approach could transform the U.S. into an “out-of-control hegemon” at risk of being “weaker, lonelier and less effective than before.” Success in Iran might “create a new Middle East with a U.S.-led coalition at its core,” but failure will serve as a “damaging rebuff of U.S. power.”

Allies look to Beijing

The U.S. “had to do it ourselves” because other countries would not join the “decapitation of Iran,” said Trump in a Wednesday night prime-time address to the nation. The president has threatened to leave NATO over the issue, but there are “few signs that’s happening,” said Politico.

Polling shows residents of Canada, France, Germany and the U.K. now “believe it’s better to depend on China” than the U.S., said Politico. The U.S. “no longer works in partnership” with its old allies, said former Deputy Assistant Secretary Mark Lambert to the outlet, and is “only focused on itself.”

Oil prices jumped last night after Donald Trump said the Iran conflict was “nearing completion”. Despite the US president saying the attacks on Tehran would end in “two to three weeks” and America doesn’t “need their oil”, the markets were not soothed.

“A word – or social media post” – from Trump “used to spark big moves in prices”, said the BBC. Investors would leap on “signs” that things “could escalate or come to an end”. But now traders seem “to be growing more sceptical about the value of his comments”.

What did the commentators say?

At the outset of the conflict, oil prices were “sensitive to Trump’s comments” but his view of the war “seems to change hour by hour”, said Tom Saunders and Eir Nolsoe in The Telegraph. “His stream of often contradictory statements” have made many wonder “whether they can trust the messaging” coming from the US administration, and some traders have drawn back from the market, “leaving prices increasingly untethered from reality”.

However many solutions to the current global oil crisis Donald Trump comes up with, the oil market isn’t listening anymore – “and the price of oil keeps rising”, said Matthew Lynn in The Spectator. There’s simply no point in Trump “trying to talk the price of oil back down again. It just won’t work.”

His “Persian Taco” tactic “may have run its course”, said Eduardo Porter in The Guardian. “Making extreme threats” and then walking them back may “provide Trump with the illusion of agency” but he “no longer has control of events in Iran”. The markets are “figuring out” that it will probably be Tehran, not the US, that gets to decide when the conflict ends.

What’s next?

UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper is today chairing a virtual summit with almost three dozen nations, to explore measures to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. And Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said his government is determined to find a solution to the energy challenges, although “it will not be easy”.

And yet, “after nearly three weeks of this conflict”, the global financial system is “functioning without panic or alarming signs of stress”, said Zachary Karabell in the The Washington Post. “It’s important to distinguish between price movements” and stability. “The smooth functioning” of the financial system, “in the face” of crises like the oil shock, “gets little attention, probably because stability is not news”. But central banks, financial institutions and governments have “improved at monitoring” risks, and that should “at least provide some relief in a world full enough of fears”.

The U.S. may soon put proverbial “boots on the ground” in Iran. President Donald Trump is considering an operation to seize Kharg Island, a key oil hub for the Islamic regime, as he tries to bring about the end of the war on terms favorable to the United States.

Kharg could prove an attractive target as Trump seeks to “hobble Iran’s oil industry for leverage in negotiations,” said The Associated Press. But experts say a U.S. attack “would risk American lives” and possibly “still fail to end the war.” Kharg is not far from Iran’s mainland, so the regime “can potentially rain a lot of destruction on the island, if they’re willing to inflict damage on their own infrastructure,” said Michael Eisenstadt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. American forces will find the island “hard to take,” said Danny Citrinowicz of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies. “It will be hard to hold.”

Iran will probably respond to a Kharg invasion with “escalating strikes on energy infrastructure across the Middle East,” said Bloomberg. That would create additional turmoil for global oil markets, “where prices have already topped $100 a barrel” because of the war.

What did the commentators say?

Seizing Kharg “could be militarily feasible,” former Gen. Mark Hertling said at The Bulwark. But to what end? The U.S. can “seize terrain, conduct raids” and conduct other military operations with “unmatched precision.” But military campaigns require “alignment between ends, ways and means,” and right now “that alignment is not evident.” If the United States attempts to seize Kharg without a clear understanding of the end goal — regime change, the end of Tehran’s nuclear program or something else — “success will be temporary.” U.S. leaders owe troops a “strategy worthy of the risk we ask of them.”

“There are grounds” to believe that taking Kharg could force Iran’s regime to “capitulate before it implodes,” Marcus Solarz Hendriks said at The Spectator. The country’s economy “cannot limp on without crude oil exports.” A political system should not deflect such economic pain on its people, but the “Islamic Republic is capable.” The regime does not appear amenable to compromise or surrender. Tehran will back down only if “America projects unwavering resolve.” Trump’s path to victory, then, is “through escalation, even if the stakes are immense.”

What next?

Kharg is not the only potential target for U.S. troops. They could also try to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or seize Iran’s nuclear material, said The New York Times. The risks of any of those options “are enormous.” If troops do take the island, they could “be there for a while,” Trump said to the Financial Times.

The Pentagon is preparing for “weeks of ground operations” in Iran, said The Washington Post. That does not mean a final decision has been made. The Defense Department is working to “give the commander-in-chief maximum optionality,” said White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt.

As AI adoption across personal and professional vectors increases so do the risks the industry takes on in the name of commercial growth and financial dominance. Mere weeks into the Iran war, the conflict has laid bare many of the fault lines upon which the AI industry has built its foundations. The result is a potentially perfect storm of intersecting factors that could pop the artificial intelligence industry bubble.

What did the commentators say?

The sprawling artificial intelligence industry has “propped up global trade and investment” and “pushed stock markets from the U.S. to Asia to record highs” for the past three years, said the Financial Times. But as one of the most “power-hungry inventions ever,” with a “slick chip production line that can cross more than 70 borders before reaching the final consumer,” the “fragilities in the AI supply chain” are now at particular risk from the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. “Hidden behind the fury” of the war have been new insights into AI and its mass adoption that will be “felt by all of humanity,” said Bhaskar Chakravorti, the dean of global business at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, at Foreign Policy.

Admitting he’s been an “AI enthusiast since 1991,” Chakravoriti said that while research suggests AI “can be transformational in a breadth of areas,” he is now “placing a high probability on an AI doomsday.” Multiple distinct “horsemen” of possible disaster range from an “epistemic crisis” to “wars, hot and cold.” Industry observers have “fretted publicly about an AI bubble” for the “better part of the past year,” said The Atlantic. But where fears of an AI crash leading to a “chain reaction across the financial system” once “felt hypothetical,” they now seem “plausible and, to some, almost inevitable.”

The Iran war has particularly unveiled a “paradox” for AI, said Bloomberg. The war could “destabilize” significant monetary investment in AI from Gulf State allies, while “surging energy costs threaten to make data centers far more expensive to run.” The resulting “aftershocks of the conflict” seem “less likely to kill the AI boom entirely” than to “cleave the market in two,” leaving juggernauts like Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon the “most exposed to the shifting financial landscape.” High-profile startups like OpenAI and Anthropic, conversely, are poised to be “more insulated” from the fallout.

If the Iran war is what truly “brought conflict to Silicon Valley,” said Fox News, then the industry “was not ready” for what this conflict would expose. “Consider the threat receiving almost no attention,” which also carries perhaps the “greatest economic consequence for Americans at home”: helium production, a third of which takes place in Qatar. “No helium. No chips. No AI.” Without these elements, the “military edge carrying this war degrades.” The Middle East conflict “is proving, in real time” that the large-scale data centers used to power AI platforms can themselves be “wartime targets.”

What next?

The present day AI industry is “not made for the turbulence its leaders have helped usher in,” said The Atlantic. Even if AI manufacturers are “merely forced to slow down,” the “viability” of the enormous amounts of money leveraged to support the industry will “likely be called into question” in ways that could be “devastating for many.”

Although the war, as it currently stands, won’t see hyperscalers “walking away” from their existing infrastructure in the Middle East, it may “impact future investment in the case of drawn-out hostilities,” said CNBC. The war could “reduce the region’s appeal” as an AI data center hub, said the Financial Times, while national sovereign wealth funds might move to “redirect planned AI investments to local security needs.”

What happened

President Donald Trump on Monday claimed “great progress” in his administration’s “serious discussions” with Iran’s “NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME.” But if a deal is “not shortly reached,” he added in a social media post, and “if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately ‘Open for Business,’ we will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating” all its power plants, oil wells and “possibly all desalination plants!”

Who said what

“Deliberate attacks on desalinization plants” would “be a major escalation that could constitute a war crime under international law,” Politico said. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday the Trump administration “will always act within the confines of the law,” but Trump “is going to move forward unabated” to achieve his objectives in the war.

The “biggest danger” for the region “may not be what Trump could do to Iran, but how Tehran could retaliate,” The Associated Press said. Iran isn’t as reliant on desalination as its Gulf Arab neighbors, who “depend on it” to “sustain their current populations.” After Trump’s post, Iran “attacked and set ablaze a fully loaded crude oil tanker off Dubai,” Reuters said, and Kuwait said Iran hit a key power and water desalination plant.

What next?

An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Tehran wasn’t negotiating directly with the U.S. but had received a 15-point proposal filled with “excessive, unrealistic and irrational” demands. Trump claims a “new government is in charge in Iran,” The New York Times said, but the killing of its previous leaders makes it “more difficult” for the “fractured” leadership that remains to “negotiate with American envoys or make significant concessions.”

Britain’s largest energy company has seen a 50% rise in sales of solar panels as the war in Iran pushes up oil and gas prices, leading to fears that energy bills will spike when Ofgem sets its next price cap.

The head of Octopus Energy, Greg Jackson, told the BBC there has been a “huge jolt” in interest in solar panels as an alternative source of electricity.

Meanwhile, the government is in talks to relax current restrictions that ban the sale of plug-in solar panels, meaning they could be available in shops “within months”.

How much do solar panels cost?

Traditional solar panels, which allow you to generate your own energy and reduce your carbon footprint, cost an average of £6,100. This “hefty” up-front price tag means it generally takes at least 10 years to break even, said Money Saving Expert.

There are “various financing options” available, including subscription services, where a household might pay around £95 per month over a period of 20 years, although the interest payments mean this would “cost you more in the long term”, said The i Paper.

A solar battery, which can store excess power generated by your solar panels that you don't use at the time, would add around £4,500 to the set-up costs, although that would similarly be offset by the additional electricity. Batteries have been the “biggest game-changer in solar power”, said The Times. People used to miss out on free electricity if they were not at home while the sun was shining, but now a battery can store energy generated during the day for use in the evenings.

The next big game-changer could be plug-in solar panels. If plans to permit them to be connected to domestic sockets go ahead, they will retail for a single up-front cost of around £400. Typically smaller than traditional panels, they can be placed in sun-exposed areas like gardens and balconies, or on external walls.

Are they suitable for all homes?

Some more than others. North-facing roofs get very little direct sunlight, so they won’t be so efficient. South-facing roofs are ideal, and west or east facing surfaces can work fairly well. If your house is shaded by trees or other buildings between 10am and 4pm the benefits will be reduced. Large roofs are better as a solar panel typically measures two square metres.

Where you live makes a difference, too. The further south, the greater the potential savings, as southern homes generally enjoy slightly more daylight than those in the north.

It takes roughly a decade to recoup your installation costs so if you’re considering moving in the next few years, you won’t reap the full benefit yourself. Solar panels could increase the market value of your home, although experts are divided on how much: trade body Solar Energy UK estimates a boost of up to 2%, but according to The Eco Experts it could be as much as 14%.

Finally, if your property is listed or is in a conservation area you might need to get approval from your council’s building control team.

How much could you save?

Savings will depend on a number of factors, including system size and how much electricity you use. But according to Energy Saving Trust estimates, a typical household could save between £190 and £350 a year at current Energy Price Cap rates.

You can also save money by getting paid to export unused electricity you generate back to the National Grid, through the Smart Export Guarantee. Exact earnings will depend on how much unused electricity you are able to provide, and tariffs vary between providers.

Smaller and cheaper plug-in panels “could cut around £100 off household bills each year”, said The i Paper, meaning that the purchase price “could be covered within about four years by the savings they generate, with any additional electricity they produce being effectively free”.

Britain’s domestic energy prices are the second highest in Europe. Since 2020, the price per unit of electricity, which is measured in kilowatt hours (kWh), has risen from about 17p to 27p. Over the same period, the price per watt of panels has dropped by around 40% and the price of batteries fell by around 50%.

“It’s not easy to topple a $30 trillion economy,” said Alicia Wallace in CNN.com. But if the war in Iran keeps driving fuel prices higher, things will soon “start getting dodgy” for America. With Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz stopping the export of oil from many Gulf Arab states, and missiles and drones raining down on oil and natural gas facilities across the Middle East, the International Energy Agency warned last week that the world is facing the biggest energy crisis in history.

The U.S. is already feeling the shock waves. Oil has rocketed by roughly 30% to about $100 a barrel. Gasoline has hit a national average of $3.98 a gallon—up by a dollar since February—and is over $5 in California, Washington, and Hawaii. Understandably, some 45% of Americans say they are “extremely” or “very” concerned about gas prices, according to an Associated Press poll. For a “first glimpse” of where we may be headed, “look at Asia,” said Alexandra Stevenson in The New York Times. In a region that relies on Middle Eastern energy, gas stations in Thailand and Vietnam are posting “Sold Out” signs. People in India are hoarding cooking gas. Asian airlines have canceled thousands of flights, after the price of jet fuel more than doubled—and all this after only one month of a conflict “with no clear end in sight.”

The war is also “driving the world toward a food crisis,” said Heather Stewart in The Guardian. Hormuz is a “key choke point” in the global supply of urea, a nitrogen-based fertilizer that’s made using natural gas, and sulfur, “a by-product of oil and gas refining and another critical fertilizer ingredient.” Once farmers get hit by the “double whammy of higher energy bills and more costly fertilizer,” it could push some 45 million people around the planet into “acute hunger,” according to a U.N. estimate. Americans won’t starve, said Max Zahn in ABCNews.com, but they will pay more for everything “from groceries to smartphones.” A third of the world’s helium travels through the strait; that gas is essential for the production of microchips used in phones, AI servers, and almost all electronics. The chaos in the Middle East is also pushing up the cost of plastics, which are made of petrochemicals, and aluminum, because the region is home to several key smelters.

There is some “good news” for Americans, said John Cassidy in The New Yorker. Thanks to decades of tightened emissions standards—so detested by President Trump—our economy is “far less energy-intensive” than it used to be, with “every dollar of GDP created” requiring only half the energy it needed back in 1980. As long as the war ends soon, many economists think the U.S. can probably “scrape through this year without a recession.”

It’s already too late, said The Economist in an editorial. Even if fighting stopped today, it would take at least four months for oil facilities in the Middle East to restart production and process back-logged crude into usable fuel, and for markets and prices to regain “some semblance of normality.” And that’s a best-case scenario, said Rogé Karma in The Atlantic. If fighting escalates instead, Iran could reach for the “doomsday option” it previewed last week, when it responded to an Israeli strike on its largest natural gas field by attacking a Qatari facility that produces 20% of the world’s supply of liquified natural gas—causing natural gas prices to spike 35% in Europe. If there are more such attacks on energy infrastructure in the target-rich Middle East, our current energy crisis may become a global “economic catastrophe” that we’ll be living with for years.

Iran’s success at throttling fuel shipments through the Persian Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz has forced President Donald Trump to reframe his war in petrochemical terms. Bolstered by its ability to regulate oil shipping lanes, Iran has moved to weaponize its growing Gulf dominance. Last week, the Islamic Republic began to facilitate the passage of approved tankers through the bottlenecked waterway, a process that includes a reported $2 million transit fee to pass what is increasingly referred to as the Tehran tollbooth.

What did the commentators say?

Charging selective fees on ships hoping to move through the Strait of Hormuz is “another sign” of Tehran’s dominance over the world’s “most important maritime energy channel,” said Bloomberg. Although the current payment system is happening on a “case-by-case basis,” Iran has “floated the idea of formalizing the charges as part of a broader postwar settlement.”

Tehran is experimenting with a “new vetting and registration system” as part of its pivot toward a “selective blockade of the strategic waterway,” said Al Jazeera. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s pledge earlier this month that the strait is “open, but closed to our enemies,” signals a “de-escalation from earlier remarks” by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps threatening violent reprisals. Multiple nations, including India, Pakistan, Iraq, Malaysia and China, are “understood to be discussing vessel transit plans directly with Tehran,” said Lloyd’s List. Iran has created a “de facto ‘safe’ shipping corridor through its territorial waters” in the Strait of Hormuz, providing passage for approved ships in exchange for, “in at least one case, a reported $2 million payment.”

Collecting selective tolls is a sign of Iran’s new “sovereign regime” in the straits, said Iranian MP Alaeddin Boroujerdi in an interview with state media, per The Cradle. Charging $2 million “transit fees” from certain vessels “reflects Iran’s strength.” But this emerging toll system is a “shakedown” for which “tankers are happy to pay,” said the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The dynamic is “only exacerbated” by the Trump regime’s decision to enact “effectively condition-free, monthlong authorization for the sale of sanctioned Iranian oil.”

Iran’s chokehold on the Gulf has forced the White House to explore previously unimaginable fuel futures, including what a “potential spike” of up to $200 per barrel in oil prices would “mean for the economy,” Bloomberg said. Domestically, the “most visible impact” to date of the growing fuel crisis is an estimated 30% increase in retail gasoline cost, which has wiped away declines that Trump had “touted as a key economic achievement.”

Even if crude shipping was at 50% of prewar rates in the Strait, rather than the near-zero it is at now, it would produce “strong global economic headwinds” that would hit the U.S. “in the form of high energy prices and a general ‘supply shock,’” said military historian Bret Devereaux on his website. “Historically at least,” these types of economic jolts have “not been politically survivable for the party in power.”

What next?

The White House has been “effective, so far, at jawboning” crude prices below the $120 to $150 per-barrel levels some analysts have predicted, said Fortune. This works “for now” because “physical shortage hasn’t actually reached most of the world yet,” resulting in a spread between actual barrel prices in the Gulf and, for instance, “Texas futures, which have hovered below $100.”

Opening the Strait of Hormuz has become a “clear objective for ending” the war, said NPR. Multiple oil executives who had “privately begun” to push for a permanent U.S. presence in the Strait of Hormuz that would “remove Iran’s ability to attack oil tankers in the strait” were “caught off-guard” by Trump’s sudden push for a negotiated ceasefire last week, said Politico. However much one might argue that “‘the world’ will not allow the Tehran tollbooth to persist,” and the U.S. military will ultimately intervene successfully, “current events in Iran have not followed the predicted course,” said Lloyd’s List. “So don’t be too sure.”

Pope Leo XIV has said God ignores the prayers of those who wage war and have “hands full of blood”. In what appears to be a clear rebuke of Donald Trump’s administration, the US-born pontiff, celebrating Palm Sunday mass in St Peter’s Square, called for an immediate ceasefire to the “atrocious” conflict between Israel, the US and Iran, and said Jesus cannot be used to justify war.

Leo is “known for choosing his words carefully”; he “did not specifically name any world leaders” but he has “been ramping up criticism of the Iran war in recent weeks”, said Joshua McElwee in The Independent.

What did the commentators say?

“The papacy has always been political,” said Pete Reynolds in The Wall Street Journal. And now “some of the biggest challenges to its vision of society are coming from the US”. As the first American leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, Leo “brings a deeper understanding” of US society and politics than any previous pope, so “his critiques” can’t be as easily dismissed by US politicians. But he will also be well aware that “millions of American Catholics voted for Trump”.

In marked contrast to other senior Vatican figures – such as secretary of state Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who said American strikes on Iran risked setting “the whole world ablaze” – the pope’s initial response to the war had been “a tempered call for peace”, said Anthony Faiola and Michelle Boorstein in The Washington Post. Until now, Leo was delicately “navigating a minefield” with the Trump administration. Pitched by the Vatican “as a unifier and bridge builder”, he was striving to remain “above the fray”, while his allies in the Holy See, and cardinals and bishops in the US, “more directly challenge the administration”.

The problem is, said George W. Bush’s former speechwriter, William McGurn, in The Wall Street Journal, that “the moral witness of the papacy” has been diminished by successive popes’ “blinkered position on war”. “The kind of rightly ordered world” Leo “desires can’t be built by armies alone – but can almost never be built without armies and without the threat of force.” Traditional Catholic teachings, “grounded in the reality of man’s fallen human nature”, have been traded for “functional pacificism” that “risks being dismissed even by sympathisers”.

What next?

The Vatican potentially has great sway over US policy: Catholics, including Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, hold senior positions in the US administration, and are well represented on the Supreme Court and among leading House Republicans.

But a “major rift” has opened up in the Christian coalition that elected Trump, said John Grosso in the National Catholic Reporter. “Traditionalist Catholics and evangelicals” are split over the Iran war and, more broadly, “over the role Israel plays in US foreign policy”. Leo’s most recent comments could be “a moment of reckoning for Catholics caught up in Maga”, Austen Ivereigh, a biographer of Pope Francis, told the paper. How do they “reconcile obedience to church authority with support for Trump”?

Israel and the US went into this war together, said Katy Balls in The Sunday Times. But as the conflict drags on, some members of Maga’s “isolationist wing” are starting to complain that Israel “led” the US into it, in pursuit of its own agenda.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio lent credence to that theory some weeks ago, when he said that the US had struck Iran because Washington “knew that there was going to be an Israeli action” that would prompt a retaliation. And only last week Tulsi Gabbard, the US intelligence chief, told Congress that Iran had abandoned its pursuit of nuclear weapons, undermining any claim that Iran posed an “imminent threat”.

Convenient claims

It is pretty clear that it posed no such threat, said Donald Macintyre in The Independent – and it is well known that Benjamin Netanyahu had been trying to persuade the US to join in such a war for 25 years: successive US presidents blocked it. But that doesn’t mean that Donald Trump was lured into a war by Israel, even if he sometimes finds it convenient to claim that the Israelis are acting without his knowledge.

For Netanyahu, this war is not just about destroying a hostile regime, said Emma Graham-Harrison in The Guardian. This autumn, he will face his first electoral test since the 7 October attacks. For the past two years, his poll ratings have been “stubbornly below levels that would return him to power”. Victory for Israel in this conflict – which has the support of 90% of Israelis – would do much to turn that around.

‘Draining support’

But in going to war with Iran, the PM is gambling with his country’s long-term security, said Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times. For decades, the single biggest guarantee of that security has been the “strong bipartisan support” Israel commands in the US. “But the Netanyahu government’s actions – first in Gaza and now in Iran – are draining that support away.”

If this war turns into a costly “quagmire”, it’s “entirely conceivable” that both the Democratic and Republican candidates in the 2028 presidential race will propose curtailing support for Israel – an outcome that would be a “strategic disaster for the Israelis”.

“Amid the fog of war and the propaganda being pushed by all sides”, it’s hard to tell what’s going on with the Iran conflict right now, said Abubakr Al-Shamahi on Al Jazeera. On Tuesday, Donald Trump claimed that Washington was speaking to the “right people” in the Iranian regime, which wanted a deal “so badly” and had given the US a “very big present worth a tremendous amount of money”. Tehran, however, insisted that the talks were “fake news” and accused the Trump administration of negotiating with itself. This confused picture followed days of conflicting messages from the US.

Last Saturday, Trump talked of “winding down” the war, but also threatened to attack every power plant in Iran in 48 hours unless Tehran fully reopened the Strait of Hormuz. The regime responded by vowing to strike power plants in Israel and across the Gulf region. On Monday morning, shortly before US markets opened, Trump declared that he would postpone the power plant strikes for five days, citing his claimed diplomatic progress.

‘Trump’s evaporating credibility’

It’s “a measure of Trump’s evaporating credibility” that even Washington insiders were sceptical about whether talks with Iran had taken place, said Simon Marks in The i Paper. The postponement of the ultimatum looks like another case of what Wall Street investors call “Taco”, or “Trump always chickens out”. It could be that, said Jonathan Sacerdoti in The Spectator. But it may indeed be a response to backchannel negotiations, or a piece of “dislocation” designed to sow doubt and confusion within Iran’s leadership. Trump likes to keep people guessing.

Some sort of diplomatic effort does now appear to be in motion, led by Pakistan, said Andrew Roth in The Guardian. The reported interlocutor of the US is Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament. But this process may just be another way for Trump to buy time before launching commando raids in Iran: the US is “still moving marines and airborne soldiers into position”.

There’s no mystery here, said Edward Luce in the Financial Times. “The truth inside Trump’s tornado of piffle is that he wants to get out of the mess he created.” He never expected the attack on Iran to lead to this desperate standoff, despite everybody warning him that it would. He thought the regime would swiftly collapse in the face of US might. He now wants Tehran to surrender its ability to disrupt energy markets, but it will never do so, no matter how much Trump blusters and rages. “It does not take a seer to guess that at some point he will hint at using nuclear weapons.”

Winding down the war certainly won’t be easy, said William Hague in The Times. The Iranian leadership is now “more hardline” and will “drive a hard bargain”: its officials have reportedly outlined five conditions, including a halt to assassinations, assurances against further attack, and hefty reparations.

To win, Iran needs merely to survive

Tehran appears in no mood to capitulate, said Stephen Glover in the Daily Mail. It’s still launching drones at nearby Gulf states, and last week demonstrated its wider threat by firing two missiles at the British-American military base on the Chagos Islands, some 2,400 miles away.

To win this war, the regime needs merely to survive, said Ilan Goldenberg in Foreign Affairs. Trump should cut his losses, declaring that the US has achieved its main aim of degrading Iran’s military capabilities. The regime may reject such a ceasefire initially, but if the US keeps pushing for de-escalation, Tehran will come under international pressure to follow suit. Admittedly, this will leave the US “entangled in the region, managing a weakened but more aggressive Iran”, but to double down in search of a decisive outcome would risk “a far worse result”.

I’m encouraged by reports that J.D. Vance is involved in Iran negotiations, said James Ball in The i Paper. The US vice-president is a “committed American isolationist” who stands zero chance of succeeding Trump if the Iran war doesn’t end soon. If he’s surfacing now, he must think there’s a chance of a deal.

The warring parties will have to reach a settlement at some point, said Sean O’Grady in The Independent. Iran’s regime can’t sustain an indefinite conflict. There must be some within it who are “rational enough” to realise this and understand the potential rewards of striking a deal with America. As things stand, Trump is demanding the freezing of Iran’s missile programme, zero uranium enrichment, and the decommissioning of Iran’s main nuclear facilities. The irony is that the US had all but secured agreement on these demands before Trump launched his “stupid, chaotic” war a month ago.