All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Israel’s current war on two fronts shows few signs of wrapping up soon. In Lebanon, the indications are that the IDF is looking to establish an expanded buffer zone north of the border, with the intention of holding it for as long as the government in Beirut fails to fulfill its pledge to disarm Hezbollah.
The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) once wrote that “the man who feels himself drawn to philosophy must himself seek out its immortal teachers in the quiet sanctuary of their works.” That’s easier said than done: philosophical classics have a terrible reputation outside ivory towers – as big, boring, difficult books, filled with obtuse theorizing about irrelevant problems, their covers featuring ghastly
Is there a plausible legal basis for going to war with Iran? Senate Democrats say no, and late yesterday forced a vote on a war powers resolution to bring the hostilities to a halt. It failed along largely partisan lines, 53-47, but Democrats say they intend to bring it up again, citing widening public disapproval
It’s not uncommon to see camouflage on the high street in Belgium. It is a peculiarly Belgian reflex: when the state feels the strain, it reaches for the army. This week, the federal government has done so once more. Soldiers have been deployed to bolster security around Jewish sites and neighborhoods in Brussels and Antwerp,
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Steven Crowder, host of Louder with Crowder, joins Freddy to discuss the warring factions in the podcast world, worsened since Charlie Kirk’s assassination; the global left-wing alliance promoting communism in Cuba, whether Trump was wrong to attack Iran and why the Mark Carney kowtowed to China.
Mark Twain famously wrote that “rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated”, and similar rumors have proliferated about King Charles’s state visit to the United States not taking place as a direct result of the ongoing conflict in Iran. Dubiously-informed sources have suggested either that Charles himself is so personally offended by the outbreak
Denials, contradictions, inflammatory statements and exaggerations have for years characterized the conduct of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump. It is therefore difficult to determine who, this time, is closer to the truth in the dispute that has developed between the two countries regarding attacks on Iran’s energy facilities. Israel’s political and military
When a synagogue is firebombed or a Jewish school is targeted in Europe, the instinct is to reach for a familiar explanation: the rising tide of anti-Semitism, the radicalized lone wolf, the unhinged fringe. That explanation is no longer adequate. What is unfolding now in the UK and across Europe is not a spontaneous eruption
Are congressional Republicans absolutely determined to forfeit this November’s midterm elections? It sure looks that way. The GOP would hardly be acting any differently if it were secretly run by its enemies. The election-security provisions of the SAVE Act enjoy overwhelming popular support. According to CBS/YouGov polling, requiring photo ID to vote is literally an
The United States is once again in a terrible predicament: a war where the definition of “victory” grows murkier by the day, against an adversary whose advantages lie in the tyranny of geography and its determination to fight. While the US and Israel enjoy overwhelming conventional superiority, a handful of cheap Iranian drones or weaponized
This weekend, two statues were installed on the White House grounds. On the north side of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building stands a statue of Christopher Columbus. On the south side is “Freedom’s Charge,” a life-size portrayal by Chas Fagan of two soldiers in the Continental Army, one with a rifle, the other with a billowing
On Friday night, Donald Trump announced that America was “very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great military efforts in the Middle East.” He even pinned the announcement to the top of his Truth Social account to make sure everyone realized he meant it. That did little to settle the markets over the
Have markets and governments horribly underestimated the fallout from the Iran war, or is it the doomsters who have got it horribly wrong? President Trump’s announcement has rather caught the world off guard. This morning, he posted on Truth social saying that he is seeking a negotiated settlement with Iran and has postponed his planned
Walking by Hungary’s immense neo-Gothic parliament building in Budapest’s Kossuth Square, one of Cockburn’s traveling companions sidles up to him. “For a certain kind of right-winger,” he grins, “Hungary is their Rojava.” ‘We were Trumpists before Trump,’ Orbán often says There’s something to this idea, for sure. Since 2010 the premiership of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has
In a sharp escalation, Iran attempted to strike the joint UK-US base Diego Garcia with two intermediate-range ballistic missiles. Both failed: one broke apart in flight and the other was targeted by an SM-3 interceptor from an American warship. The base was left untouched. The significance, however, lies less in the failure than in the
In the pantheon of Trump adversaries, Robert Mueller may rank at the very top. Everything about Mueller – his rectitude, his formality, his blueblood ancestry, his lifelong marriage to his high school sweetheart – was anathema to Trump who has sought, as far as possible, to disestablish the Washington establishment. Yesterday, Trump engaged in a round of gloating over Mueller’s death at
I often think that the dissemination of news is like a game of Chinese Whispers. Giorgia Meloni, for instance, has not condemned the US-Israeli war on Iran. Yet such esteemed exponents of the noble craft of reportage as the Times of London and the Daily Beast are adamant that she has. Even Meloni – President Donald Trump’s
As Ukraine emerges battered but unbowed from the third and most terrible winter of the war against Russia, its people have proved that they can survive and fight on even as Vladimir Putin’s troops destroy swaths of their country’s heating, transport and electricity infrastructure. But one thing that Ukraine cannot survive without is money –
“Whoever rules the waves rules the world” – Alfred Thayer Mahan. Would Donald Trump have attacked Iran on February 28 if the Supreme Court had not ruled against his tariffs on February 20? The two issues may seem unrelated. Yet, as a fascinating piece by Captain John Konrad has pointed out, a closer inspection of Trump’s international
The killing of the Iranian senior security official Ali Larijani this week is the most significant “targeted assassination” undertaken since Israel’s killing (in cooperation with the US) of supreme leader Ali Khamenei on the opening day of the war. These two very high-level hits have been accompanied by a long list of killings of less
Given my longstanding disgust with America’s lawlessly interventionist and self-destructive foreign policy, I should be outraged by Donald Trump’s cavalier remarks justifying – and weirdly minimizing – his surprise attack against Iran in collaboration with Israel. After all, a president stupid enough to mock the new Supreme Leader as “damaged” and only “alive in some
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The attack on Iran is so wildly inconsistent with the wishes of Trump’s base that it is likely to mark the end of Trumpism as a project. Freddy Gray is joined by Spectator columnist Christopher Caldwell to discuss Trumpism, J.D. Vance vs Marco Rubio, what’s left of the Republican party after Trump and the competing
Israel launched a limited ground operation in southern Lebanon this week, intended to expand the de facto buffer zone which it has maintained along the border since the ceasefire of November 2024. At that time, Israel held control of five positions on the Lebanese side of the border. In response to Hezbollah’s decision to re-engage with
More than a decade ago, during a tense visit to Islamabad as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton gave Pakistan’s leaders a warning: “You can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbors.” She was referring to the Taliban and other militant groups that Islamabad had long tolerated as part of
At the event Melania Trump hosted for Women’s History Month, the ladies in the audience had perfect blowouts and wore pastel dresses. But the speakers who took the stage were tough. They included an Olympic athlete, a single mother who worked as a waitress and Melania herself. Most of the women honored were notorious for
President Trump thought it would be a cakewalk. Far from capitulating, his nemesis seems to be on the comeback trail. Gabbard acknowledged that there was no compelling evidence that Iran was seeking to reconstitute its nuclear program Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell thus announced on Wednesday that unless a successor is confirmed by the Senate, he has
Reflecting on the resignation of Cyrus Vance, James Thomson, the American historian and journalist, wrote in the Washington Post that the former secretary of state “has done us all a great public service.” In doing so, Thomson argued, Vance gave “new life and spine to a somewhat rare and weak convention in our nation: resignation
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King Charles is due to travel to the US on a state visit to see President Trump. Given the turbulence between Keir Starmer and Trump over the war in Iran, some politicians such as Ed Davey have suggested the King should not go. Freddy speaks to royal author and Daily Mail journalist Robert Hardman about
For Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump is the gift that keeps on giving. Just as Moscow was tiring of the American president’s assurances that he could strong-arm Volodymyr Zelensky into accepting Russia’s terms for peace in Ukraine, the US-Israeli intervention in Iran caused a spike in the oil price. This has given Russia the chance to
When asked about a united Ireland earlier this week, Zohran Mamdani admitted that he “hadn’t thought enough on that question.” The Mayor of New York then recited a stiff set of platitudes about “solidarity” in language that he repeated word for word in his St. Patrick’s Day address. There was an incongruity between his comments
On the outskirts of Tehran, deep within one of the largest graveyards in the world, Behest-e Zahra, is a singular tomb, a shrine to a 13-year-old Iranian child soldier Mohammed Hossein Fahmideh. It’s a tomb which holds a warning about the American war with Iran. Fahmideh was killed in October 1980 during the first battles
From the modern metropolises of Moscow and St. Petersburg to Arkhangelsk on the permafrosted northern coast and Khabarovsk on the Chinese border, for over a week now, Russian cities have been experiencing unprecedented interruptions to mobile internet coverage. Ostensibly for security reasons, the rumor mill has inevitably cranked out all kinds of alternative explanations, from
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Freddy speaks to James D. Boys, author of the new book US Grand Strategy and the Madman Theory. He is also a senior research fellow at UCL. They discuss the origins of the madman theory – which applies insights from psychology to understand how your enemies think. James covers it from from Nixon to Trump
Iran’s most powerful leaders are being picked off one by one by Israeli and American military strikes. The latest scalp claimed by Israel is Ali Larjani, Iran’s security chief, and widely believed to be the most powerful figure in the present Iranian leadership. The reported killing comes just days after Larjani went on a public walkabout in Tehran,