Trump improves his options for striking Iran

Donald Trump appears to be peparing even more firepower for the waters off Iran. Another aircraft carrier may be earmarked for Iran duty, alongside the USS Abraham Lincoln which is already there. The most likely carrier seems to be the USS George HW Bush which could be deployed from its base in the US. The journey to the Gulf would take three or four weeks. We can probably safely say that no military action is likely before the new carrier arrives. Meanwhile, after his session with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, Trump has made it clear he wants to concentrate on getting a nuclear deal first with Tehran, holding back the military option while US and Iran squabble over what a nukes deal would look like. If nothing has been ahcieved while the second carrier heads for the Gulf (once Trump approves), then I would imagine the pressure for military force will increase significantly. Netanyahu has always been sceptical about a nuclear deal with Iran. He didn't like the last one, brokered by Barack Obama in 2015, and he won't like the Trump version, if it comes about, unless there are other agreements to curb Iran's huge stock of ballistic missiles, all capable of reaching targets in Israel. So now everything will depend on when or if the second carrier is sent to the Gulf. If Trump gives the go ahead, the clock for military action will start ticking. PLEASE BUY AGENT REDRUTH, MY NEW SPY THRILLER, SEQUEL TO SHADOW LIVES, STARRING REBECCA STRONG, ARTIST AND SPY. BUY THROUGH AMAZON, ROWANVALE BOOKS OR WATERSTONES.

Can Iran ever be trusted to keep their word?

Iran has a reputation for being devious, and for that reason it is highly unlikely that any deal Donald Trump might fix with Tehran will actually hold water. Obama did a nukes deal with Iran in 2015 but it was never strong enough to stop Iran from secretly continuing its ambition to build a bomb, even if the programme had to be curtailed under the restrictions imposed by the treaty that was signed. In other words, Iran under its present regime can never be trusted. I feel sorriest for the Iranian people who have had to put up with this regime ever since the revolution in 1979. So, is this the right time for the US to take action that might in the end lead to regime-change? The answer is not simple. If regime-change can only be brought about by war, that won't help the Iranian people who will suffer even more. Many will be killed. It might sound the only solution but violence cannot be the answer. The trouble is, the tens of thousands who bravely protested in the streets against the regime, were brutally repressed. Thousands were killed by the so-called security authorities, many of them moving around on motorbikes, opening fire at random. Now there are even reports of wounded protesters in hosptals being shot in the head as they lie in their beds. A war between Iran and the US and probably Israel, will lead to more and more violence against the poor Iranian people. War or no war, they will always be the victims.

Netanyahu on mission to the White House

When Benjamin Betanyahu jumps on the first available plane to Washington to see Donald Trump, you know he is very anxious about something. The Israeli prime minister clearly took fright when Trump said the first round of new talks with Iran had gone very well. He coild see the unpredictable US president suddenly doing a deal which would, in Israeli eyes, be half-cocked. Netanyahu desperately wants Trump to stick to his principles which would mean the president refusing to concede on any of his objectives vis a vis Tehran: scrapping the nuke programme, handing over all highly enriched uranium, reducing hugely the ballistic-missile programme and axeing all links to the proxy militia scattered throughout the Middle East. Trump shouldn't need to be persuaded because when he decided in his first term of office to take the US out of the Obama-brokered nuclear deal with Tehran, he said it was becausee the deal was terrible, didn't limit the nukes programme sufficiently and didn't include any restrictions on ballistic missiles or those proxy forces working their evil on behalf of Tehran. So, if that was his feeling in his first term, Netanyahu wants to make sure Trump still abides by those red lines. The reference to how good the talks were in Muscat, Oman, last week upset Netanyahu because the Iranian negotiator, the foreign minister, said all he wanted to talk about was nukes. Netanyahu has a point. Trump gets carried away with these high-profile talks and seems to be optimistic that a deal can be done. Despite sending a massive armada of warships to threaten Iran, Trump has been very open that he doesn't want a war. So the talks are absolutely key. Netanyahu will try to persuade Trump that now is the time to drive the hardest bargain and get those ballistic missiles which threaten Israel more than anywhere else, must be curtailed. BUY AGENT REDRUTH, MY NEW SPY THRILLER. AMAZON, WATERSTONES, ROWANVALE BOOKS.

If Epstein was a Russian spy, Moscow must be cheering

As the Jeffrey Epstein scandal spreads to almost every corner of the planet, there has been much speculation that this paedophile financier and Ultimate Creep may have been a Russian spy. In other words, working with the Ruskies to do down as many so-called elite rich buddies as possible to cause the downfall of institutions and governments in the West. Could this have been his real plot? If it was and if the Russians really did work with him, then it has been an amazing success story for Moscow, because more and more rich and famous and otherwise are being drawn into this appalling scandal. Somehow I doubt the Russian connection. It's just that whenever a scandal of this enormity breaks, clever people start thinking there must be more to it. There has even been talk that Epstein was working secretly for Mossad. To what end, for goodness sake? Basically, Epstein was a brilliant, charming sleazebag who charmed the pants off multiple people, including royalty and the richest individuals on earth by offering to fulfill their fantasies free of charge. It was all about temptation temptation temptation, and when offered on a plate, it was just too irrestible. Clearly this is the case because the names in his contacts book cover a huge network of pleasure-seeking males. BUY MY NEW SPY THRILLER, AGENT REDRUTH, DESCRIBED BY ONE REVIEWER AS BETTER THAN JAMES BOND. AMAZON, ROWANVALE BOOKS, WATERSTONES.

Why was a US admiral at the Iran talks?

The oresence of a fully uniformed US admiral at the talks on Friday between American and Iranian delegates was a nice touch. More a piece of theatre than a diplomatic move. I don't suppose Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of Central Command, and thus the boss of the armada of ships currently in the Gulf off Iran, had to actually say anything other than "how do you do, good to meet you" when he was introduced to Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister. But the symbolism was huge. It was Donald Trump's way of saying to Tehran, "we're here to do a diplomatic deal but if you don't play ball then Admiral Cooper has his orders to start bombing military sites in Iran". I'm sure the Iranian foreign minister got the message. I wonder if the Iranians were warned beforehand that the admiral in his uniform would be participating in the talks, held in Muscat in Oman. Central Command covers 16 countries including all of the nations in the Gulf region. So for the admiral it was a chance to meet an important figure representing the country which basically provides most of the aggravation in the Middle East, either directly or indirectly through its proxy militia. The involvement of Admiral Cooper in Muscat was an in-your-face signal from Trump that his massive armada, headed by the carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln, is ready and waiting for the order to strike at Iran if the talks fail to achieve the required objectives: an end to Iran's nuclear ambitions, the handover of all the 60 per cent-enriched uraniuma, a halt to all further uranium-enrichment, the axeing of all links to Iran's proxy forces in the Middle East such as Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen, and the stopping of all killings of protesters by the security forces. It's a big ask which Araghchi has already dutifully dismissed. He wants just the nuclear issue to be discussed. He will have returned to Tehran, hoever, with the image of Admiral Cooper staring at him across the table. PLEASE BUY AND ENJOY AGENT REDRUTH, MY NEW SPY THRILLER. AMAZON, WATERSTONES, ROWANVALE BOOKS.

Trump wants the war in Ukraine to end by June

It's always risky to name a date to end a war that has shown no sign yet of ever coming to an end. Donald Trump's latest deadline for stopping the killings and destruction is June. It sounds arbitrary except that if the war were to end by that month, it would probably help the Republicans to keep their seats in the US mid-term elections in November. So we can expect a massive push from Washington to fix many more trilateral talks between the US, Russia and Ukraine to find the formula that so far has been sadly absent. Eventually, we could see a summit between Trump, Putin and Zelensky, although that would seem to be pie-in-the-sky at the moment. There won't be a summit of this stature until the negotiators have done a deal, and that's as far off as ever. Meanwhile, to emphasise the leverage that Putin has over Zelesnky, his forces have been pounding Ukraine's energy sector with hundreds of drones and amissiles, so that large numbers of Ukrainians are living in freezing conditions. War is always cruel, but Putin is masterminding the cruellest of all, making as many civilians as possible suffer from appalling cold temperatures, lack of water, and no power to cook food. How many Ukrainians are dying from cold or lack of food? Under Trump's timetable this will all come to an end in four months. I seriously doubt it. PLEASE BUY AGENT REDRUTH, MY NEW SPY THRILLER. YOU WILL LOVE IT, I GUARANTEE!!

Could there be a new nuclear arms race?

The expiration of the New Start Treaty reducing the size of the nuclear arsenals held by the United States and Russia has inevitably led to fears that the world is about to see a so-called nuclear arms race with each of the two signatories to that treaty rushing ahead to build more and more warheads and missiles. But it's not in their interest to start spending vast new sums on increasing the size of the arsenals. There are already way too many to make the Cold War's Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) concept any less or more effective. Russia certainly can't afford to build and field hundreds or thousands more nukes, and nor can the US. The focus will surely be more on modernising the nukes now getting old and potentially unreliable, rather than increasing stocks. However, when a treaty of such historic importance expires without any talk of urgent meetings to extend it, should the world be worried? Donald Trump's approach is actually the right one. Instead of trying to extend the New Start Treaty, he says he wants a totally new treaty and for it to be signed by China as well. This is surely the way forward. China will resist it but with Beijing planning to build its stock of nuclear warheads from 600 to at least 1,000 by 2030, there is every reason to persuade Beijing to join a treaty to keep nuclear stocks to a limited level, even though China is far behind the American and Russian stockpiles. Meanwhile, the real arms race will continue to be in developing hypersonic missiles, nuclear or conventionally armed. A new treaty limiting these weapons would make sense, too. PLEASE BUY AGENT REDRUTH, MY NEW SPY THRILLER - AMAZON, ROWANVALE BOOKS, WATERSTONES.