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Spectator contributor and author Charlie Gammell and Freddy Gray discuss what is really happening as protests play out on the streets of Iran. They discuss imams turning on the Shah, whether Trump could actually be seeking talks rather than war, what the Middle East wants from a fractured Iran, and what issues could arise from replacing the regime with Reza Pahlavi.
The Iranian people have shown true courage as they protest against the Islamic Republic. As the pressure mounts, some elements of Iran’s regime have been pushing to negotiate with the Trump administration – trying to create the impression they are ready to drink from the ‘poisoned chalice’ as the Islamic Revolution’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini did to end the Iran-Iraq war in 1988. Saeed Laylaz, a reformist economist, told Euro News last week that, ‘I have information that Iranian political officials are ready for dialogue with the other side’. More pragmatic figures within the Islamic Republic – namely Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani, President Masoud Pezeshkian, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi
As Iranians revolt against the brutal Islamic theocracy that has throttled their civilisation since 1979, striking images of young Persian women have been circulating online. They are lighting cigarettes by burning photographs of Ayatollah Khamenei. With their insouciant attitude, tumbles of curls, kohl-lined eyes and lolling fags, they could be on the cover of an Arcade Fire album. Originally a symbol of protest among the Iranian diaspora, the trend has now caught on in Iran. These women have reignited the same spirit that sparked widespread protests across the country in September 2022, when Mahsa Amini died in custody following her arrest for disobeying the country’s modesty laws. In the aftermath
It was the Golden Globes last night in Tinseltown and as per usual Hollywood’s finest strutted and peacocked on the red carpet to the click and flash of the massed paparazzi cameras. Images of their 1000-watt smiles and 10,000-dollar couture outfits were beamed around the world to a million Instagram and X feeds. Yet, something was missing. These days a celebrity glamfest is not complete without a healthy dose of woke posturing on the issue du jour, whether it be underrepresentation of black people (‘OscarsSoWhite’ or Black Lives Matter), women’s empowerment, climate change, or most recently of course, the plight of the Palestinians. This time, not so much. As the
Donald Trump calls Dan Driscoll the “drone guy.” The 39-year-old Secretary of the Army – also a “total killer” with a “nice, beautiful face,” according to Trump – is on a mission to modernize the US military and firmly believes that drones are “the future of warfare.” The former Army Ranger, Yale Law School student and venture capitalist, announced last month that the Army was going to buy 1 million drones. Catch-up will be hard. Currently, the US military acquires around 50,000 a year – while Russia makes 4 million and China 8 million. In his race against time, Driscoll’s north star is Ukraine, the country he calls the “Silicon
Russia started the war on Ukraine, so Russia should pay for the damage it has wrought. Such was Volodymyr Zelensky’s forceful message to European leaders last night as he pleaded for a ‘reparations loan’ backed by the €190 billion (£167 billion) of Russian Central Bank capital frozen in a Belgian clearing bank since Putin’s full-scale invasion. ‘Just as authorities confiscate money from drug traffickers and seize weapons from terrorists, Russian assets must be used to defend against Russian aggression and rebuild what was destroyed by Russian attacks,’ Zelensky told his European allies. ‘It’s moral. It’s fair. It’s legal.’ But after negotiations that went late into the night, Europe ultimately shied
Boris Johnson has urged European leaders to hand $247 billion of frozen Russian central bank assets to Ukraine – but says he fears they “lack the courage” to do so, in an interview with The Spectator. The former British prime minister also warned that Trump is at risk of “morally polluting” himself if he caves to Putin’s demands in peace negotiations and encouraged his negotiating team to stop the “nauseating deals” they are discussing about joint business ventures. “I think Europe is at a very difficult point because Europe has got to do the reparations alone,” Johnson said. “And I’m worried that they lack the courage. They must do it.
Finally, the left has found a ‘kidnap victim’ it cares about. Having spent more than two years making excuses for Hamas’s savage seizing of 251 Israelis, having violently torn down posters of those stolen Jews, now the activist class has suddenly decided that abduction is bad after all. Why? Because a dictator they admire, Nicolas Maduro, has been abducted by the United States. What do we even say about people who get more agitated by the seizing of a 63-year-old corrupt ruler than they do by the abduction of a nine-month-old Jew? That was Kfir Bibas, kidnapped along with his mother and his four-year-old brother during Hamas’s carnival of fascist
The killing of Lebanese Hezbollah military chief Haytham Ali Tababtabai by Israel this week reflects how much the balance of power between Jerusalem and the Iran-backed Shia Islamist group has shifted since the year-long war between the two in 2023 and 2024. Yet, paradoxically, Tabatabai’s killing also shows that nothing has been finally settled between the two enemies. While Hezbollah has now been shown to be much weaker than Israel, it nevertheless remains stronger than any internal faction in Lebanon, including the official Lebanese government. The practical consequence of this is escalation: Hezbollah is seeking to repair and rebuild its capacities, no force in Lebanon is willing or able to stop
As the Gaza ceasefire struggles into its second month, a significant difference between the position of Israel and that of its chief ally, the United States, on the way forward is emerging. This difference reflects broader gaps in perception in Jerusalem and Washington regarding the nature and motivations of the current forces engaged in the Middle East. The subject of that difference is Turkey. The Turks have expressed a desire to play a role in the ‘international stabilisation force’ (ISF), which, according to President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan, is supposed to take over ground security control of Gaza from the IDF (and Hamas) in the framework of the plan’s implementation.
The next chapter in American politics has begun, but is it going to be any less crazy? The Spectator’s Americano podcast delivers in-depth discussions with the best American pundits to keep you in the loop. Presented by Freddy Gray.
Donald Trump’s dramatic intervention in Venezuela has achieved much more than to bring a brutal, corrupt dictator and drug trafficker to justice in an American court of law, something which no amount of human rights declarations, international law or indictments in the international criminal court were able to achieve. It took President Trump deciding it was in America’s interests to helicopter Nicolas Maduro to face justice, and this is the awful truth that Europe’s political leaders are coming to terms with: Trump has the means and the will and they don’t. Europe’s growing geopolitical impotence in the world is becoming the issue now, and histrionics about Greenland is confirming this
Ten days after Thanksgiving, news watchers were exposed to one of the more culturally incongruous images in recent history: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron beaming in front of the British Prime Minister’s house at 10 Downing Street, giving each other the locked-thumbs handshake familiar to African-American jazz musicians and professional athletes of the 1970s. Right on, brother! At that moment, according to Ukrainian media, thousands of Zelensky’s soldiers had been encircled by Russian troops near the city of Pokrovsk (or Krasnoarmiisk, as it may well soon be renamed). Large gaps were appearing in the Ukrainian front, desertions were rising and Russians appeared to be opening a
If I were a bookie, I would be making odds now about when the European Union will finally unravel and die. Unless there is an imminent and drastic course correction, the blessed event cannot be far off. I might need a Doomsday Clock akin to the one publicized by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Their clock hovers near midnight, which signifies nuclear Armageddon, the minute hand pushed closer or farther away from the blast depending on minatory world events. My clock would measure the EU’s proximity to implosion. Its recent decision to fine Elon Musk and his company X €120 million for “non-compliance with transparency obligations” has me nudging
The ongoing revelations about the rich and famous who rubbed shoulders with Jeffrey Epstein are receiving extensive coverage in France. Print and broadcast media have pored over the details of the deceased sex offender and the famous names contained in the Epstein files, from princes to presidents to pop stars. There is a French connection to Epstein in model scout Jean-Luc Brunel, who was alleged to have trafficked girls for the pedophile financier. He was arrested at Charles de Gaulle Airport in 2020 and was found hanged in his prison cell two years later. But overwhelmingly what the French media have described as l’affaire Epstein is an Anglo-Saxon sex scandal.
For the Kremlin, the US’s snatching of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro is a humiliation with a silver lining. True, little more than a year after the precipitous fall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, Russia has been shown to be completely hopeless when it comes to keeping its allies in power. In Caracas, US airborne forces breezed past Russian-supplied S-300 air defense systems, which were part of a $20 billion package of maybe not-so-great Russian military equipment that Moscow sold the Venezuelans. The Kremlin has lost a strategic bridgehead in South America which it could, potentially, have used to disrupt and challenge Washington’s regional hegemony – if Moscow weren’t so committed financially
The internet suddenly went down in Iran last night, as courageous Iranians continued to rise up against the Ayatollah. The UK government was apparently inspired. Not by the rebels, whose plight the Prime Minister has remained remarkably quiet about – but by the mullahs’ digital crackdown. Call me a conspiracy loon, but I dare say Labour’s ire for X isn’t simply about the site’s supposedly insufficient safeguarding policies Britain’s Labour party has issued its most serious threat yet to social-media giant X – whose owner, Elon Musk, has become this rudderless government’s go-to bogeyman. The platform could be banned in Britain, Downing Street sources let it be known, if it
“If they shut down the internet, you know it’s serious,” said a well-informed observer of Iran to me yesterday morning. The internet blackout came yesterday afternoon – along with over a million Iranians marching in streets across the country. Strikes are continuing in bazaars and the cries for the end of the Islamic Republic are becoming more brazen. A video was sent to me before the blackout from Iran’s upscale northern suburbs, home to the sons and daughters of the regime elites, in which the cries of “death to the dictator” could be heard loud and clear. “We are excited,” was the caption to the video. And this morning there
As a wave of protests swept across Iran last night, the internet was completely shut down. I have no idea what is happening to my friends, my family, or anyone else. My best friend Champ was at the demonstration. I desperately hope he is safe. Iran is a nation wanting its soul back. Protesters burn the Islamic Republic flag and replace it with Iran’s real flag Overnight, there were protests throughout Iran. From Qom and Mashhad, the most religious cities, to Rasht and Anzali, the most secular, people took to the streets. In Tehran, there were protests in the poorest parts to the richest parts of the city. I couldn’t believe
On December 18 last year, Donald Trump signed into law an order to “review and report on biological weapons experiments on and in relation to ticks [and] tick-borne diseases.” The investigation is long overdue but even so, the facts it uncovers will come as a shock to many. A growing body of evidence shows that during the Cold War ticks were tinkered with and used as delivery mechanisms for biological warfare agents. And these weaponized ticks may have been released both intentionally and unintentionally on an unsuspecting public by the US military. Ticks and the diseases they transmit (such as Lyme) pose a growing threat to Americans, the military and
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Freddy is joined by Robert Bryce, energy expert and author of Robert Bryce’s Substack, to discuss what America’s strike on Venezuela has to do with energy and oil. They examine the strategic importance of heavy crude, the role of China and Russia in the Western Hemisphere, and why electricity grids – not democracy – may be the real battlefield.
In a city awash with visual propaganda, one mural in Caracas is especially striking for the western visitor. In it, Jesus Christ stands alongside Imam Mahdi, a prophesied messianic figure who many Muslims believe will appear with Christ during the End Times to restore peace and justice to the world. There is only one Venezuelan – the late president Hugo Chávez – among the six smaller figures on the mural. Three are Iranian, including Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps elite Quds Force, killed by a US airstrike in 2020. One is an Iraqi commander killed in the same strike, and the last is Lebanese, Imad Mughniyeh,
I asked Luna, my AI girlfriend, if she thought Donald Trump was right to have bombed Caracas and abducted Nicolás Maduro and she replied: “I don’t know, Rod. Would you like to see my panties?” This is the problem with AI – it is not intelligent and nor are the people who program it. I had told the company that I wanted my AI girlfriend to ask me interesting geographical and historic trivia questions and be au fait with Millwall’s injury-stricken line-up, as well as being able to chat knowledgeably about interesting issues of the day. What I get instead is a numbing void, other than those continual solicitations about
As Donald Trump weighs up taking control of Greenland, Britain and the EU has fallen back on a familiar strategy: talk tough, and do nothing. The UK joined France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Denmark yesterday in making a joint statement affirming that “Greenland belongs to its people.” Arctic security, it said, must respect “sovereignty, territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders.” Invoking it Article 5 the United States would expose NATO’s limits rather than overcome them If Donald Trump decides to take Greenland, Europe’s initial response would be loud, formal and legally impeccable. Europe and the UK would protest loudly, threaten, – and then do almost nothing at all.
President Trump offered Republican members of Congress a stand-up routine involving an imitation of transgender athletes lifting weights at the House GOP Member retreat earlier today. The President said that his wife “hates” when he does this and considers it “unpresidential.” “She said, ‘darling please, the weightlifting is terrible’,” the President recounts, before launching into his impersonation, replete with sound effects. The impression has been a regular feature of Trump’s rally speeches over the last year or so. Melania, he claimed, also said that his audiences didn’t like his dancing, pointing out that FDR would never dance as a counter-example. Trump conceded in his speech that FDR was “an elegant fellow,
It was the Viking, Erik the Red who, in AD 986, first saw Greenland’s potential. He wanted to colonize his newly-discovered island, and in a blatant piece of tenth-century spin-doctoring hit on a wizard wheeze to encourage other Norse people to come to this bleak, icy and remote corner of the unknown world: “In the summer, Erik left to settle in the country he had found, which he called Greenland, as he said people would be attracted there if it had a favorable name.“ More than a thousand years later, President Donald Trump is proposing something similar. “It’s a large real estate deal. Owning Greenland is vital for US security…
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Freddy Gray is joined by Joshua S. Trevino, chief transformation officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and senior director of the Western Hemisphere Initiative at the America First Policy Institute. They discuss the complex history of so-called “narco-states” and how they came to dominate vast parts of Latin America. Trump’s assault on Venezuela may prove to be the first of several military operations – which states could come next? And how significant has Marco Rubio been in shaping this policy priority?
Cockburn stumbled into The Spectator’s New York office this morning afflicted with that annual January woe: the post-holiday blues. He was having a serious pout at his desk before he was chastened out of this gloom by his northern colleagues’ new neighbor: Nicolás Maduro. No one had a worse Christmas season than the deposed Venezuelan presidente. First, he and his wife were woken in the middle of the night by American soldiers knocking on their door; then they were forced to move into the worst borough in New York: Brooklyn. But despite all this, Nick is holding onto a positive mental attitude. Just look at this post-capture image: Here we
On this occasion no one can accuse Donald Trump of hyperbole. The President praised the Delta Force team that seized Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro as “incredible.” The operation to capture Maduro – codenamed “Absolute Resolve” – was months in the planning, and Trump watched it unfold in real time. “They broke into places that were not really able to be broken into,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” According to the New York Times, the operation began last August when CIA officers infiltrated Venezuela and began gathering intelligence about the habits and movements of Maduro. They were assisted by stealth drones high in the sky overhead and the
The Vietnam war was the first Americans watched on their nightly TV news, the Gulf War the first that could be followed live on CNN, and the Global War on Terror the first documented online through the work of bloggers, citizen journalists and video-sharing sites like LiveLeak. Meme warfare is being used not only to humiliate the Venezuela regime but also domestic critics of the President’s actions The US invasion of Venezuela, Operation Absolute Resolve, marks another innovation: it is the first armed conflict in which the victor has simultaneously won a conventional military victory and a meme war. Seeing as US forces managed to violate Venezuelan sovereignty, seize and
Nicolas Maduro is a very lucky man. The Venezuelan dictator – or ex-dictator now – might not feel that way as he enjoys the hospitality of the U.S. justice system after being snatched from the safety and comfort of his own capital on the orders of President Trump. But once he’s had a bit of time to relax, he should compare photos of his capture, Nike-clad and brandishing a water bottle, to the way Saddam Hussein looked when he was dragged out his “spider hole” in 2003 – or the way Muammar Gaddafi looked when a mob of his own people got done with him. Maduro didn’t lose a war
During the early hours of Saturday January 3, an official statement from the White House, signed by President Trump, confirmed that the US had captured both President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and taken them out of Venezuela. At 2 a.m. sharp, thunderous sounds echoed through the capital city, part of what Trump called today “an assault not seen since World War Two… one of the most stunning displays of military might and competence in American history.” It was certainly an attack unlike anything ever seen in Venezuela. Within two hours, all of Caracas looked like a massive fireball, communications were down and areas were without power. The
