Harry and Meghan are coming home

Most newspapers in the UK today splashed on the most dramatic, extraordinary story of all time: Prince Harry and his wife, the Duchess of Sussex, are to leave their multi-million-dollar home in California and return to the UK to live with their two children. TV presenters were aghast with the news which broke last night. The papers are full of analysis. It's huge. Where will they live, will they get cosy with the King and Camilla, will they actually talk to the Prince of Wales and the lovely Katherine? It's mindboggling, except that it's not, of course. But it certainly shocked all the royal correspondents. This is the couple who used to be a Royal Couple who left Britain to live in California and drop all idea of being working members of the royal family. Now, they want to come home and live a life like everyone else. For this reason, I feel sorry for them because as soon as it is discovered where they are living there is going to be a mad stampede to follow their every move. Life will not be normal, like it was in California where the local people, used to celebrities, largely left them alone to get on with their Netflix lives. Back here, it's going to be drama every day, particularly for Meghan who has made it clear she wants to be left alone while at the same time enjoy as nuch publicity as possible. It's a contradiction that doesn't really work, not here anyway. I wish them luck, especially their children at school and I hope for their sake they are not "doorstepped" wherever they go, day and night. But the likelihood is that even now every photographic agency is planning ahead for the first big image scoop. Good luck, Harry and Meghan. I mean it.

Trump's threat to bomb Oman is bonkers

Bombing Iran hasn't got the result he wanted, so threatening to bomb Oman, an ally of the United States and, incidentally, a centuries-old partner with Britain, particularly to do with military, intelligence and security issues, would be madness. In fact, bonkers. Donald Trump can't have meant it, he just says these things without thinking and then starts to row back when questioned by reporters. He is angry because it looks like Oman and Iran will do a deal together which will allow/enable Oman on the south side of the Strait of Hormuz to take charge of shipping passing through their designated channel, while Iran on the north side will administrate the other channel. Whether it will involve tolls or service charges or some other clever financial penalty, is not yet clear. But Trump doesn't like it and posted that he would bomb Oman if it dared to do such a deal with Iran. Oman is a wonderful country with very friendly and very pro-British people, excellent hospitals, largely thanks to British doctors, and a famous beach where turtles come every year to lay their eggs. So, please, Mr Trump, no bombing. The questions is, will this threat change the relationship Oman has with the West? Will it do a deal with Iran under pressure from Tehran? What will Trump actually do if this deal is signed without US approval? The reality is, there is very little Trump can do to stop this Strait of Hormuz deal from going ahead. He'll rave and complain but Tehran is basically getting what it wants, at least as far as the strait is concerned. Bombing Oman is not an option!

Putin warns Britain

The British government, both under Conservatives and Labour, has been one of the most stalwart of supporters of Ukraine and its leader President Zelensky. Zelensky has been to 10 Downing Street more than any other leader for the last four years. The key difference today is that there seem to be no red lines as far as the UK is concerned about British-supplied weapons being used by Ukrainian against targets inside Russia. Everything supplied, from drones to cruise missiles, are now being launched against Russia, and London seems to be happy about it. Putin has noticed and he keeps up with everything that the UK does for Ukraine and against Russia, and he has warned of consequences. Two UK companies are known to be supplying Ukraine with medium-range drones which have been used against targets inside Russia. What is Putin planning to do? Well, he is already doing it, he is sending warships to frolic around in the English channel, and he is sending submarines to map all the super-sensitive cables running under the Channel, and his cyber-warfare specialist teams are attacking every aspect of British life every day. But could he do more? In other words, might he actually fire something at a target in the UK? This, of course, would be viewed as a direct aggressive move and could lead to an outright war between Russia and the UK (and thus Nato). Putin is far more likely to be somewhat more cunning than that. Cyber attacks could proliferate. When Putin is angry he tends to lash out. We will all have to be on our guard.

Jared Kushner, Trump's everywhere envoy

Jared Kushner never seems to stop. Today he is in Jerusalem seeing Benjamin Netanyahu, yesterday he was in Egypt talking to Hamas leader, Khalil al-Hayya and to the Egyptian President al-Sisi. The question is, how good an envoy is he? Is he a tough talker and negotiator or is he just a message carrier for his father-in-law? By now, after two years of being a Trump special envoy for everywhere, he must have acquired negotiating skills but will he persuade Netanyahu, for example, to row back on his rejection of Trump's 20-point peace plan for Gaza or will he come away as frustrated as Trump has become with the Israeli leader? Netanyahu has a huge amount at stake. He is due to stand for reelection in October and he dare not do or say anything which could look as if he is backing down vis a vis Hamas. He wants Hamas to totally disarm before he orders any Israeli troop withdrawals. That's presumably what he will tell Kushner. But what Trump wants to hear is that Israel will withdraw from Gaza at the same time as Hamas starts handing over its weapons. In other words, choreography. So far, Netanyahu says NO to that. Let's see whether Kushner has the balls and clout to get Netanyahu to show more of a compromise. It seems unlikely.

Has Trump lost his global clout?

Like the bee or butterfly flapping its wings can have an effect on the world's environment, so the words of Donald Trump used to shake every capital on the planet. But is that still the case? Does everyone jump when Trump comes out with one of his bold statements, like when he threatened to destroy Iran's civilisation? He still has the power to shock and surprise, but after so many U-turns and changes of mind, I would say the Trump Effect has now dwindled. Is Iran terrified at the thought of Trump reordering military strikes? I somehow doubt it. The Tehran regime has learned to treat some of his warnings and threats with a pinch of salt or a shrug of the shoulders. Does Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, jump to attention every time Trump barks at him? Not any more. Netanyahu rejected Trump's peace plan for Gaza because it didn't say that Hamas had to totally disarm BEFORE Israel start to withdraw its troops from the territory. Does Europe quiver at the thought of a Trump phone call, demanding this or that? No longer, I suspect. This must mean that for his final two years in Office, Trump is going to struggle to get his own way. This will make him increasingly frustrated which is probably not a good thpught.

Why Trump is on Iran's hitlist

The assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on February 28 has placed President Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, on a forever revenge hit list carried by Iran’s world network of militant Shia activists, a former Mossad official has told The Times. It was this revenge motivation which persuaded the US Secret Service to orchestrate the elaborate subterfuge which led to Trump being evacuated from Air Force One through a catering container truck to another plane at Ankara international airport for his flight home, following the end of the Nato summit in the Turkish capital on July 8. Among the mass of intelligence pouring in from all quarters over recent months, it is believed an intercepted conversation or directive from Tehran may have made reference to the option of using a man-portable missile launcher close to the airport when Trump was due to take off on Air Force One. There was a suspected sighting of such a weapon system on that day, according to the New York Times. “The Americans are looking at an enormous amount of information, and if there’s intelligence that suggests somebody, whether the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC] or the Iranian intelligence service or a terrorist group is seeking revenge on Trump for the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, then it has to be taken seriously,” Rami Igra, former Mossad official, said. “Ali Khamenei was a religious leader, the most important personality in the Shia world. There are 250 million people in this world who are Shia Muslim. So there is a huge religious incentive for seeking revenge for the death of their leader,” he said. “It’s most likely that it ws a technological source, rather than a human source, which provided the intelligence. Technological sources are hardcore evidence which would have come from an interception of a conversation or a directive about where someone should be and at what place and time,” said Igra who was head of Mossad’s hostage and missing-in-action (MIA) department. “The US Secret Service never takes chances. They’re not allowed to take chances. Their job is to imagine the worst all the time. Israel always passes on the intelligence it gets, even to unfriendly nations, if it will save peoples’ lives,” he said. He said Iran had a history of carrying out assassinations. “But the only assassination involving the Iranian intelligence service specifically was the attack on the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin against anti-Iranian activists in the 1990s [on September 17, 1992, four exiled Kurdish-Iranian individuals were killed. A German court ruled that top leaders of the Iranian government were involved].” “On the whole, the Iranian intelligence service is not in the business of assassinations. Its speciality is espionage. Israel’s Shin Bet counter-espionage organisation has picked up 30 Israeli spies, recruited by the Iranian intelligence service,” Igra said. Iran has two overlapping intelligence services, the Ministry of Intelligence (MOI), and the IRGC’s own organisation, both of which come under the aegis of the supreme leader. In addition, there is the IRGC’s Quds Force, the overseas operations branch which carries out intelligence-gathering, sabotage and support for Iran’s proxy militia forces throughout the Middle East. Major-General Qasem Soleimani was the head of the Quds Force when he was assassinated by a US armed drone outside Baghdad airport on January 3, 2020. he IRGC intelligence branch has been specially active in recent years, kidnapping Iranian dissidents and attempted abductions of Israeli businessmen. Both the MOI and IRGC are known to be active in Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. The US Justice Department revealed that the IRGC was behind an assassination attempt against Trump when he was on the presidential campaign trail in 2024. “It’s no secret that the Iranians have wanted to assassinate Trump and other figures from this first term like Mike Pompeo [then secretary of state], John Bolton [national security adviser], and Brian Hook [special representative for Iran] who were involved in the drone strike that killed Soleimani in 2020,” a former senior US diplomatic official said. “This desire for revenge has been quickened by the Israeli pager assassination plot that decapitated Hezbollah [in 2024], strikes against IRGC figures in Syria before the fall of [President Bashar al-] Assad and the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas in Tehran in 2024, not to mention the decapitation strikes that began the current war with Iran, including the killing of the supreme leader, and many senior leaders of the security elements,” the former official said. “Iran has not had much success, so far, with assassinating western senior leaders, as opposed to regime opponents, but they have demonstrated their reach by going after soft targets like the Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires [which killed 85 people in 1994] and [the US air base barracks at] Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996 [when a truck bomb killed 19 American airmen].” “The fact that they have, so far, failed to take out western leaders doesn't mean they will stop trying or that at some point they might not succeed.” The now-confirmed switch in planes at Ankara via the catering truck was not the first time that the US Secret Service has had to use deception to protect the life of the president. President Bill Clinton flew secretly to India and Pakistan in 2000 when a crisis was building over Kashmir between the two nuclear powers. He, too, switched from Air Force One to an unmarked aircraft. Both President George W Bush and President Barack Obama, used decoys and deception to visit, respectively, Baghdad in 2003 eight months after the start of the Iraq war, and Afghanistan to meet US troops in 2010.

Europe having to get used to extreme heat

This is the future and it doesn't look or feel good. Temperatures heading for 40C across the continent and in the United Kingdom, a summer of hot, hot, steamy weather and, in the UK at least, no air conditioning in homes. Outside, there is no wind, just oppressive hotness. This is not the future any of us wants but as the politicians throughout Europe and the rest of the world have failed, failed, failed to do anything serious about climate change, it is now hitting us very severely and there is very little we simple folk can do about it. The terrifying fact is that even if world leaders, including and especially Donald Trump and Xi Zinping, suddenly realise they have to do something, it's all too late. Temperatures have risen this year and will do so again next year and the following year. Green grass will vanish, trees will die, people will die, jobs will go, the world will creak and groan. and yet, still, the wars we now have will carry on as normal. What a future for our children and grandchildren.