Israel

“I didn’t ask hard questions because I knew I wouldn’t get an honest answer,” said Tucker Carlson, our edgelord Barbara Walters, in the hype-video run-up to his dull interview with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. But he didn’t get any honest answers in the interview anyway, so why bother asking in the first place? Carlson doesn’t seem to grasp that America’s geopolitical opponents grant him special access precisely because he won’t ask the hard questions. Carlson’s interviews are valuable because they give us a glimpse into what it would be like if we had an actual state-run media. Our journalism has its ideological biases.

When Donald Trump called on Iran’s Ayatollah to “surrender” during Israel’s recent war the word struck many as jarring – almost antiquated. No major global leader has used that language publicly since the unconditional surrenders of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945.But Trump’s invocation, intentional or not and soon abandoned by his call for a “ceasefire,” points to a deeper issue: Are the rules that governed mid-20th century warfare still relevant in the 21st century? Why has “surrender” disappeared from the language of modern warfare? And what, exactly, do today’s ever-growing humanitarian laws offer nation-states forced to operate under them, in a world that looks nothing like the one left smoldering in 1945?

It should come as no surprise that Zohran Mamdani’s surprise victory in last week’s Democratic primary for mayor of New York was celebrated so vociferously by the French far left. Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI) regard the 33-year-old Socialist as a chip off the old block. In a post on X Mélenchon delighted in Mamdani’s defeat of Andrew Cuomo, saying: "Opposed to the genocide of the Palestinians, he is obviously already accused of anti-Semitism. He won against a figurehead of the centre-left backed by the local leaders of the cheating Democratic party." As in France, continued Mélenchon, the "traditional" left no longer speaks to the people; it is the radical left.

President Trump has already warned Tehran that he’ll be back if Iran tries to revive and advance its nuclear programme, following the strikes by B-2 stealth bombers. Judging by the comments of the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Trump may find himself with this dilemma sooner than he thinks. Iran could return to enriching uranium in ‘a matter of months’, according to Rafael Mariano Grossi, IAEA’s director-general, in an interview with CBS News at the weekend. However, a number of questions need to be asked before the B-2s take off again from their Whiteman Air Force base in Missouri.

Syria’s new president, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, is desperate to stay on the sidelines of the Iran-Israel war. Most middle eastern states have strongly condemned Israel for its surprise attack on Iran, but the Syrian government has been conspicuously silent. Since coming to power in December 2024, Al-Sharaa’s forces have confronted Iran-backed militias in many regions of Syria, and moved to curtail Tehran’s soft power by expelling Iranian clerics and closing Shia religious centres. The rag-tag collection of Sunni-Islamists, who now form a large part of the Syrian army, have a long list of scores to settle with the Shiites and their main patron. But, simultaneously, Israel has launched hundreds of airstrikes on Syria and significantly expanded its occupation, far beyond the Golan Heights.

Sitting next to Donald Trump at the end of a short NATO summit, Mark Rutte, head of the organization, looked quite amused as he listened to the President describe the Israel-Iran conflict.  "They've had a big fight, like two kids in a schoolyard," Trump said. "You know, they fight like hell, you can't stop them. Let them fight for about two to three minutes, then it's easy to stop them." Raising a fist, Rutte added: "And then Daddy has to sometimes use strong language to get (them to) stop." Soon after, flanked by two of his Apprentices, Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio, Daddy Trump gave his own press conference. He talked for 15 minutes before he took a single question. The Netherlands, he said, “has the most beautiful trees. I want to bring some back with me.