Iran

Tuesday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Why Trump is tempting 25th Amendment talk

From our US edition

During his remarks in Budapest, Vice President J.D. Vance, who is trying prop up Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as he runs for reelection, appeared to think the unthinkable. Vance, who has been a hero for MAGA anti-interventionists, went all-in on attacking Iran. He indicated that America might resort to “tools” in its arsenal that “we so far haven’t decided to use.” Now the White House is denying that it plans to deploy nuclear weapons against Iran, after frenzied social media speculation that it might. Negotiations with Tehran are ongoing – and Trump told Fox's Bret Baier that "if negotiations move forward today, and there is something concrete" that tonight's 8 p.m. deadline "could change.

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Oleksandr Sukhoi

The new battle over American airspace

From our US edition

Last month, a mysterious drone swarm led to a lockdown at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Nothing was damaged and none of the 40 B-52 bombers or their cruise missiles were hit. At least not this time. But modern war no longer starts with an open attack. Instead we see hybrid actions: cyberattacks, information and psychological operations, GPS disruptions, damage to undersea communication cables and, increasingly, drone incursions into military sites and critical infrastructure. There is rarely a formal declaration. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the largest war in Europe since the Second World War, was labelled a “special military operation.

Monday

Charles Lipson

Trump’s threat to destroy Iran is detailed and credible

Monday’s White House press conference came in two distinct parts. The first was an extraordinary tale of heroism in the rescue of two downed pilots. America’s military and intelligence leaders provided details that were new to the public. The danger of a daytime rescue mission in the face of enemy fire. The harrowing climb by one officer to a crevice in the mountains. The technical sophistication needed to find him. And the misdirection executed to confound Iranian forces in the area, determined to capture the American serviceman before help arrived.  It was impossible to listen to that tale of bravery and professional excellence without an overwhelming sense of patriotic emotion, suffused with gratitude for the men and women who have pledged their lives to keep America safe.

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Hegseth
Daniel Hummel

Is Pete Hegseth waging a Christian Zionist war?

From our US edition

In his war briefings, Pete Hegseth pushes religion almost as much as US military might. This has raised questions about whether the War Secretary is a Christian Zionist – and if he views current events in the Middle East as prophetic of the end times. His Pentagon updates often include prayers, Bible readings and religiously-inflected statements about pursuing “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.” When asked during his 2025 Senate confirmation hearing if he was a "Christian Zionist," Hegseth affirmed, "I am a Christian, and I robustly support the state of Israel.

Sunday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Will Trump really obliterate Iran on Tuesday?

From our US edition

Was Donald Trump’s profane and threatening tweet, which included an F-bomb and an allusion to Iran’s leaders as "crazy bastards," on Easter Sunday itself a bunch of BS? Trump is riding high after the daring rescue of an American airman from Iran, but its leadership doesn’t appear to be overly impressed by his tweet threatening a major attack on Tuesday if the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened. On Saturday, Iran’s military leadership indicated that it had no intention of complying with Trump’s demands, dismissing his vow to destroy its infrastructure as a "helpless, nervous, unbalanced and stupid action.

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Saturday

Jawad Iqbal

Why Pakistan is brokering peace in Iran

From our US edition

Pakistan, the world’s only Muslim nuclear power, has traditionally been an international sideshow. No longer. The country has reportedly been passing messages between Washington and Tehran in efforts to bring an end to the Iran war. It is has a five-point plan aimed at restoring “peace and stability” across the region. How have the Pakistanis pulled off this remarkable diplomatic makeover? The answer starts with some critical decisions the Pakistanis took last year. After the four-day armed conflict between Pakistan and India in May 2025, both sides claimed “victory”. But crucially Islamabad publicly acknowledged Washington’s role in achieving a ceasefire (something India refused to do). Pakistan later nominated President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.

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Friday

Irwin Stelzer

This is what Trump means by ‘victory’ in Iran

President Trump has now told us something very important about the war with Iran. Ponder his address to the nation this week and you discover how he defines victory. Nothing that happens from here on out will change that. As Trump sees it, he is the winner, having achieved all his goals. He has accomplished regime change in Iran by eliminating the men who led the regime when the war started. America has so damaged the country’s military infrastructure that it will not be able to produce or deliver a nuclear weapon for at least a decade, by which time it will be up to a future American president to take the needed action. So, no need to cart away or destroy Iran’s enriched uranium.

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Roger Kimball

Ignore the propaganda war

From our US edition

Prediction: by the time you read this, the joint US-Israeli operation in Iran will be all but over. In fact, it had mostly ended by the start of April. The Kool-Aid-dispensing press has been telling us since the conflict began that Iran was winning. They wanted it so badly to be true. Being adept at magical thinking, they also believe that what they wanted to be the case would suddenly, hey presto, become the case. A cover story in the Economist declared “Advantage Iran.” “A month of bombing Iran,” that once-sober publication announced, “has achieved nothing... For now, at least, the advantage lies with the Islamic Republic.” Not to be outdone, the Financial Times weighed in with “Iran could emerge from the war stronger and more dangerous.” Right. Iran’s navy? Sunk.

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Jacob Heilbrunn

Donald Trump is going on a firing spree

The surprising thing isn’t that Donald Trump fired his attorney general Pam Bondi and appointed Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche her temporary successor. It’s that he waited as long as he did. After exercising what is for him unusual restraint – his cabinet was in a state of perpetual upheaval during his first term as president – Trump is going on a firing spree. "He’s very angry, and he’s going to be moving people," one top administration official told Politico yesterday. Next on the chopping block could be a host of Trump loyalists – Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-Remer, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard – whom the President has found wanting.

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Spectator Editorial

Operation Epic Fury is costing Trump his coalition

From our US edition

As US troops flock to danger, Donald Trump seeks ways to disentangle himself from the war on Iran. “We are on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly, very shortly,” he said in a 19-minute address at the start of the month. “It’s very important that we keep this conflict in perspective.” What’s increasingly clear is that, despite its tactical successes, Operation Epic Fury is turning into a strategic quagmire and a political miscalculation. The President’s approval rating has sunk to -18 percent, the lowest in his second term. Among independents, Trump is on -45 percent, the worst recorded score of any second-term president. That is the perspective concerning the White House.

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Thursday

Tim Shipman

How bad could the energy price crisis get in Britain?

The energy price surge caused by war in the Middle East has sent shockwaves through Westminster. It has pushed up inflation and the cost of borrowing, causing panic in the cabinet and the recognition that government intervention could be needed on a vast scale to support the cost of living. The UK Prime Minister told a private audience: "The assumption that the growth of the developed countries can proceed steadily on the basis of cheap energy has been shattered almost overnight." He further observed: "The problem is not simply one of inflation. It is the whole structure of the economy." In the Treasury there is something approaching a siege mentality. The Chancellor has "to spend [her] time firefighting.

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Jacob Heilbrunn

Trump’s rambling Iran address was full of wishful thinking

From our US edition

In his nationwide address on Wednesday, Donald Trump could not have been clearer about the course of the Iran war. It’s not ending any time soon and there will be no deescalation of military force. Instead, channeling his inner General Curtis LeMay, Trump announced, “We are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We’re going to bring them back to the stone ages where they belong.”  No, they don’t. It was a jarring reference to an ancient and proud Persian civilization that has been commandeered by a gang of thugs.

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Roger Kimball

Trump touts the successes of his war for peace

From our US edition

“Ceasefire!” Some people worried that President Trump was taking to the air waves tonight in order to declare a ceasefire with Iran. That, clearly, was what Masoud Pezeshkian, the President of Iran hoped for in his careful, lengthy and mendacious “Letter to the American People” today. Pezeshkian said that “portraying Iran as a threat is neither consistent with historical reality nor with present-day observable facts.” Tell that to the hundreds of American victims of Iranian aggression. Tell it to the thousands of victims of Iran’s proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas.  President Trump was having none of it.

Tuesday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Oil prices surge, Scott Mills is sacked and the Houthis join the war

Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, said: ‘We are working on a viable plan for the Strait of Hormuz.’ Insisting that ‘it’s not our war, but it is our duty to protect British citizens’, he urged business leaders to help protect households from soaring prices. Brent crude sloshed up to $116 and back a little. From 1 April average household energy bills fell by the equivalent of £117 a year, until they go up in July. Some 12 million drivers mis-sold car finance agreements will receive compensation averaging £829. A 17‑year‑old boy admitted shoplifting goods worth £137,342 from branches of Boots and £2,415 from Holland & Barrett shops in London. A Tesco supermarket in Orkney gave away bananas after accidentally ordering 38,000 of them.

Lisa Haseldine

Russia has its eyes on Svalbard

Svalbard The quiet hillside by Longyearbyen’s church gives visitors to the capital of Norway’s Svalbard archipelago an austere but beautiful panorama of the bay that cradles the town. Tall, sharply steep mountains, blanketed with snow, collide with the blue-grey waters of the Arctic below. From that hillside, I watched the quiet bustle of Longyearbyen. Since Donald Trump threatened Nato with the biggest crisis in the alliance’s history by stating his desire to take control of Greenland in the name of US ‘national security’, Svalbard’s residents have been uneasily looking westward. The US President has repeatedly claimed that only he can prevent the island, which is just 185 miles from Svalbard, being used as a staging post for an attack on the West by Russia or China.

Jonathan Foreman

Britain must recognise Somaliland

Somalia has been a byword for failed statehood and violence for so long that the calm of Somaliland, its neighbour to the north-east, feels almost miraculous. In contrast to Mogadishu, the bustling streets of Hargeisa, Somaliland’s capital, aren’t patrolled by grim-faced soldiers. Government offices aren’t huddled behind blast walls and protected by foreign troops. You can wander into a restaurant and enjoy camel steaks (a national speciality) without worrying about al-Shabaab terrorists. It is a former British colony which, for 30 years after independence, was joined to what had been Italian Somaliland.

Martin Vander Weyer

Hong Kong is the new Dubai

I had forgotten, if I ever knew, that National Savings and Investments (NS&I) began life in 1861 as the Post Office Savings Bank and is still an offshoot of HM Treasury. It survives as a supposedly low-risk choice, in an increasingly hard-sell marketplace, for those who wish to put money aside for old age or their heirs. So it is peculiarly disappointing to learn that NS&I has been caught mishandling some £476 million of savings belonging to 37,500 deceased customers.

Matthew Parris

Iran’s secret weapon of self-sacrifice

Much has been made of the adjective ‘asymmetric’ when discussing warfare in recent years. The word enjoys a renewed currency now that Israel and America are engaged in combat with enemies who, unable to match them with comparable armed forces, instead disperse, hide and strike at the soft underbelly of their foe. David and his sling, I suppose, when David met Goliath thousands of years ago, was a forerunner of this strategy. But I want to discuss another kind of asymmetry, and another Old Testament hero, Samson. Alone, captive and blinded, Samson reached for a secret weapon unavailable to his captors: the weapon of self-sacrifice. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and their forces do not fear death.

Monday

Marcus Solarz Hendriks

The three options facing Trump in Iran

From our US edition

As Trump contemplates a ground operation in Iran, he will be reckoning with the ghosts of previous western "excursions" in the region, as he recently labeled this war. History suggests three endgames for his intervention in Iran are plausible. First, a hasty deal on terms that aggrandize and empower Iran, creating an American equivalent to Britain’s Suez Crisis. Second, a protracted struggle which becomes structurally reminiscent of the Iraq War. Third, a dramatic escalation which achieves Iranian surrender quickly and cleanly. The bad news for Trump is that the outcome he seeks, number three, is the one without real precedent. In the first scenario, Trump makes a deal on terms that flatter Iran.

Sunday

Ed Husain

In defense of Dubai

As the Islamist regime in Iran attacks Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Bahrain and Kuwait with drones and missiles, some in the west are quietly happy to see the Gulf’s skyscrapers lose their shine. "Dubai has no culture or history," say the armchair critics. When it comes to measures of wealth preservation, attracting millionaires, rule of law, social safety, artificial intelligence adaptation and combating Islamist radicalism, the UAE comes out far ahead of many western countries. But we can’t acknowledge this, so we insinuate our snootiness is about culture, history, risks and future stability. The snobs are wrong.  We insinuate our snootiness towards Dubai is about culture, history, risks and future stability.