Could Putin and Zelensky ever make a deal?

Warring parties often strike deals. Exchanges of prisoners of war, brief cessations of operations to allow for the delivery of humanitarian aid, covert talks between respective intelligence services to map out possible ways forward, and tentative peace feelers. Since President Putin ordered thousands of troops across the border into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, there have been no peace negotiations and no sign of meaningful compromise from either Moscow or Kyiv. And yet, after nearly three years of horrendous casualties and infrastructure destruction in Ukraine, preliminary talks are underway, according to the Financial Times, for a deal in which both sides would agree to stop or reduce attacks on energy installations. While it might seem a bizarre development, it’s now in Moscow’s interest as much as in Kyiv’s to end the continuous targeting of power plants. Ukraine has developed long-range attack drones which have effectively struck targets deep inside Russia, including oil refineries. From the beginning, Russian airstrikes have hit Ukraine’s power networks, knocking out about nine gigawatts of the country’s energy infrastructure. During the summer months, Russia bombed and destroyed half of Ukraine’s power generation capacity. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said it was “the power equivalent of three Baltic nations”. With winter approaching, if that level of destruction continued, Ukraine’s population would inevitably face freezing months with daily power blackouts. Talks, sponsored and mediated by Qatar, took place in August but any progress towards some form of deal was scuppered when Ukrainian forces invaded the Kursk region in western Russia and seized a wide area of territory. Moscow pulled the plug on the talks. However, the FT quoted a diplomatic source as saying there were “very early talks” about restarting discussions on ending strikes on energy facilities. The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, was dismissive of the report, describing it as fake news. But Peskov has a habit of protesting too much. Something is going on. In similar fashion, the so-called grain deal between Russia and Ukraine, now aborted, was constructed through the intervention of Turkey and the United Nations. It was a deal which seemed unlikely at the time, allowing Ukraine to continue exporting its grain stocks by cargo ship along a 357-mile corridor across the Black Sea to the Bosphorus Strait. Moscow promised to provide safe passage. The deal which enabled Ukraine to return to near pre-war grain export levels of around 6.5 million tonnes a month, operated from 22 July 2022 to 17 July 2023. Prior to the agreement, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its deliberate targeting of the country’s grain stores, spiked global food prices and led to warnings of famine in Africa. Russia also temporarily halted its grain exports, and the combination raised fears of a world food crisis. Turkey which controls the maritime routes from the Black Sea, hosted the talks that resolved the crisis. Since Russia scrapped the deal, Ukraine has cleverly adapted its export routes to avoid Russian attacks. Whether the reported preliminary talks on an energy infrastructure deal, originally initiated by the Russian and Ukrainian intelligence services, come to fruition, it does raise the question of whether back--channel negotiations might lead to something even more hopeful, such as ideas for bringing the war to an end. However, that would seem to be over-optimistic at present. Putin is going to be in no mood to do any deals with Ukraine’s President Zelensky while Ukrainian troops remain as an occupying force in Kursk. Indeed, thanks to his friend Kim Jong-un, several thousand North Korean troops are even now training in Russia to join the Russian counter-offensive units attempting to liberate the region. In the meantime, the European Union is doing its best to provide Ukraine with some of the energy supplies it requires to survive the winte. The current plan is for the EU to restore 2.5 gigawatts of energy capacity which is the equivalent of around 15 per cent of the country’s needs. However, about 80 per cent of Ukraine’s thermal plants (coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear) have been destroyed and a third of hydroelectric power is also out. So, even with the EU’s help, power supply is going to be restricted throughout the winter. Russia, too, has suffered from attacks on its energy infrastructure. Last month Ukrainian drone attacks hit the Moscow oil refinery and the Konakovo power station in the Tver Oblast which is one of the largest energy producers in central Russia. Kyiv has made it clear it intends to continue with such attacks with the aim of forcing Moscow to the negotiating table. The reported Qatar--sponsored talks could be the best hope for both Kyiv and Moscow to call a halt to this type of targeting. Then we will see if it leads to something more significant.

Joe Biden has just lost the election for his vice president

To every single pro-Trump Republican voter and undecided Republican voter it sounded like President Joe Biden called them all garbage.He didn't, or at least he didn't mean to say that but the way it came out it sounded definitely like he said exactly that. And it didn't help that Kamala Harris swiftly made a statement saying she doesn't believe that anyone supporting Trump is garbage, or words to that effect. Poor old Joe and poor Kamala. She's probably done for now in terms of grabbing any Republicans to vote for her. The White House put out a clarification, desperately trying to show that when Biden appeared to call Republican supporters garbage, there was actually an apostrophe before the 's' and that he was referring to the comedian who was so coarse and rude in his supportive speech at Trump's massive rally in Madison Square. The comedian, Tony Hinchcliffe, described Puerto Rico as a floating island of garbage. Biden's apostrophe was there all right in the written version of his remarks but it still came out badly from the president's lips, and Trump of course seized on it. With one week to go before the election, it could not have been timed better for the Republicans. Biden stumbles at the best of times but his latest mispeak may have caused irreparrable damage to Kamala's campaign for the White House, however many times she stresses that she wants to be a president for all Americans (even the garbage ones!)

Does Hamas want a ceasefire?

The president of Egypt has come up with the most modest of ceasefire proposals to try and generate new momentum to end the war in Gaza and bring the remaining 101 Israeli hostages home. Following the killing by Israeli soldiers of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, on 16 October, there was a degree of optimism, especially in Washington, that a ceasefire and diplomatic solution to the war in Gaza might be on the cards. The Biden administration hoped the death of Sinwar, an ideological opponent to all the most recent ceasefire attempts, would unblock the peace-making impasse. But Hamas survivors, hunkered down in their tunnels and bunkers beneath Gaza, appeared incapable, let alone interested, in making any sort of deal. Now President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has proposed a 48-hour ceasefire to facilitate the release of just four Israeli hostages in exchange for an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners detained by Israel. The Egyptian leader's objective is for the two-day truce to then lead to a longer-term ceasefire. He has suggested a ten-day negotiating period following the release of the four hostages. His proposal has coincided with the arrival in Doha, capital of Qatar, of the heads of the CIA and Mossad for renewed talks for a ceasefire/hostage-release framework. The deliberate limitations of the el-Sisi plan underline how challenging it has been for any of the peace negotiators to persuade Hamas, and Israel, to consider compromise. No Hamas representatives will attend the meeting in Doha between Qatar's prime minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, David Barnea, Mossad chief, and Bill Burns. CIA director. Egypt which was also represented has been intimately involved behind the scenes and last week hosted a group of Hamas delegates to guage their thoughts on el-Sisi's proposal and future negotiations. Is Hamas and its diminished leadership ready for a ceasefire deal that will undercut the red lines set in stone by Sinwar: an immediate end to the war and the total withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza in exchange for more hostage releases? Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has his own red lines but they read very differently. He wants Hamas to lay down tits arms and surrender, and to free all the hostages, alive or dead. At this point there would appear to be no room for compromise on either side. But the dynamics of the war in Gaza have changed dramatically. Hamas is crushed, albeit with some resistance still evident, Hezbollah, its unfailing supporter, has suffered near-terminal blows to its leadership hierarchy from Israeli assassination airstrikes in Lebanon; and Iran, Machiavellian orchestrator of all things turbulent in the Middle East and Israel’s arch enemy, has learned on two separate occasions in the last six months that it lacks the capability to protect its military sites – and thus, potentially, its nuclear facilities – from Israeli long-range ballistic-missile airstrikes. However, will these critical setbacks for Iran and its proxy forces lead to a shift in strategy on the part of the so-called Tehran-led axis of resistance, offering hope of a ceasefire deal in both Gaza and Lebanon, or will it all spiral into an even more dangerous period in which the United States will be dragged into a full-scale regional war? It is these two alternative scenarios which are currently driving the key external players in this Middle East conflict – the US, Egypt and Qatar – to find a new formula that will raise prospects for an end to the fighting, or at least the release of all the remaining hostages. Ceasefire hopes have come and gone over the last 12 months since the Hamas atrocities committed in southern Israel on 7 October last year. In between the negotiations, mostly abortive, the casualty toll in both Gaza and Lebanon has continued to rise relentlessly., as Israel has pressed on with its mission, ordered by Netanyahu, to destroy Hamas and to deal a fatal blow to Hezbollah. Washington still wants a deal that will embrace far more than the release of hostages and a long-term ceasefire. Washington’s framework for peace in the Middle East includes the normalisation of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. However, after Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes on Iran on Saturday, Saudi Arabia put out a robust statement, condemning the attacks which it said constituted a “serious violation of Iran’s territory and contradicts established international norms and laws”. Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, who was in the Middle East last week, made it clear that the grand vision of a more comprehensive peace framework for the region remained a priority for Washington. If Kamala Harris wins the election next week, it is presumed she would wish to continue pursuing this strategic objective. Meanwhile, the immediate efforts are focusing on trying to persuade all parties to agree a ceasefire., however short-lived. There hasn’t been a ceasefire in Gaza since November when fighting stopped for seven days during which 105 hostages were freed in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. There was also a brief pause in fighting in June along a road in southern Gaza to allow for United Nations food trucks to enter safely. But it wasn’t a ceasefire. Fighting carried on elsewhere. For President Biden and his foreign policy legacy, any sort of ceasefire that raises hopes of a better and more far-reaching deal in the future, will be welcome news. He has less than three months left of his presidency, and the possibility of his successor being Donald Trump, not his vice president.

Trump or Harris, who will the undecided choose?

The US election result is going to come down to a few million voters who right now have still not made up their minds. It's that close. It seems extraordinary that there should be anyone left in the United States who has not definitely decided who to support. Can doubters really be considering Donald Trumpo, rather than Kamala Harris? If this is the case, then I think Trump will probably win. Because if they havc serious doubts whether Harris can be a strong president, they will ignore all the bad stuff and go for Trump as the big bloke who will tell America's enemies to go hang. Some of the undecided will still be unable to vote for Trump and will take the risk of voting for Harris even though she has not inspired them as a candidate. They would prefer to vote for her than join the noisy lot who bellow for Trump. But I suspect these undecided are in the minority. The rest of the undecided will take a deep breath and hope that Trump doesn't become the dictator that all the Democrats say he will become if he gets hold of the White House again. Yes, these doubters will risk voting for Trump because they don't want to risk voting for Harris.

Will Iran strike back?

Israel and Iran are still fighting a shadow war, delivering punishment from the skies but playing it all down. It's a bizzare and potentially dangerous game. Both Israel and Iran have warned of battles to the end but clearly don't mean it which is fortunate. Nevertheless the you-hit-me and I'll-hit-you confrontation going on is escalating bit by bit, until one day, the restraints will be off and one side or the other, probably Israel, will launch an attack that will do really serious damage, like blow up an oil installation, causing conflagration, or target the Supreme Leader in his weekend residence. On October 1`, Iran carried out a much bigger attack on Israel than it did in April which was the first time Tehran had directly hit Israel. Israel's response was limited and now in retaliation for October 1, its air force bombers have increased their payload and targets, delivering a less limited but still restrained attack. And so it goes on. Unless it doesn't. Tehran is playing down the latest Israeli attack and wise people are saying this probably means they are going to call a halt to the tit-for-tats for now and not respond this time. But many, more extreme voices in Tehran will be saying it's vital to respond to show that Iran will not be cowed by Israeli attacks. Saving face is always a crucial ingredient in this tit-for-tat game. But the ayatollahs in Tehran know that if they approve a bigger hit on Israel, as promised a few days ago, Israel will come back with something bigger, too. Then what? Then it could be a real war. It's all psychology, but highly dangerous psychology. Wrong judgments can so easily be made. In the end I suspect Iran will follow a wait-and-see policy because the regime knows there is one man they can rely on to urge restraint on the Israelis, and that's the man who will remain as president of the United States until Januarty 19, 2025, Joe Biden.

Is Benjamin Netanyahu waiting for the US election to be over before striking Iran?

Benjamin Netanyahu is still waiting to give the go ahead for Israel's retaliatory strike on Iran. There have been stories about Iran "bracing" for the expected attack for weeks. That's a lot of bracing. Perhaps that's one of the reasons why Netanyahu has held back from attacking Irainian targets, hoping that Iran will be caught napping. But I suspect the main reason why we have this delay is that Netanyahu has decided to wait until the election is over in the US on November 5. He probably wants Donald Trump to win because Trump has said Israel should be allowed to get on with the job of destroying Hamas etc and, as president, he would help him do it. And Netanyahu would prefer to have Trump as the elected president waiting to take over on January 20 next year than the vice president to Joe Biden who has caused him such grief over the last few months. That doesn't mean the strike against Iran will be delayed until November 6, although it's not out of the question. But Netanyahu nill be studying the polls to see whether there is going to be any firmer insight into who is going to win. Right now it's so close, no one can tell. But in the last two weeks, a lot of undecided people are going to make up their minds and that could change things a lot. My guess is that Netanyahu, canny politician that he is, will order a mighty bombing of Iran on November 4, the day before the US election, hoping the undecided will vote for Trump to stop the Third World War from breaking out. Kamala Harris might not know what the hell to do, and Joe Biden, in the final throes of his presidency, won't be able to do anything. Thus Trump wins and Netanyahu gets what he wants.

Is it Biden's fault that the world is now in such a dangerous state?

Some of Donald Trump's former officials, such as General John Kelly, his former chief of staff, are saying the ex-president is a Fascist and a danger man who never listens. But others, such as Robert O'Brien, his former national security adviser, are saying that under Trump the world was a safer place. No wars. No invasion of Ukraine. No Middle East war. And that under Biden, his cautious, weak approach had been exploited to the full by, first the Taleban, then Putin and Xi Zinping, and Iran and, basically anyone with a grudge against the US. This is too simplistic. Even though the president of the United States has always been and is today a key figure in the way the world works it's far less so now and increasingly less so because of new alliances being formed against American domination, notably the one forged by Putin with China, India, Brazil and South Africa and others. But O'Brien is sure that if Trump had been in the White House in the last four years, Putin would not have been tempted to invade Ukraine. He says, in a piece in The New York Times, that Putin went for Ukraine because he took comfort from the chaotic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan under Biden's watch and thought he could get away with invading his neighbour without risking having a war with the US as a consequence. He was right. Biden sent billions and billions of dollars worth of weapons to Ukraine but made it clear from the start that he would never put American troops into Ukraine to fight Russian troops. Under the O'Brien thinking, Trump would have left that option in the air and it might have deterred Putin from invading at all. Who knows?

How dangerous is North Korea's dispatch of troops for the war in Ukraine?

On the face of it, it is extraordinarily dangerous and bizarre that Vladimir Putin has come to the point in his war in Ukraine that he needs to turn to North Korea for help. Thousands of North Korean combat troops have headed to Russia, according to Lloyd Austin, the US Defence Secretary. It is assumed by American intelligence officials that they will soon be in Ukraine joining Putin's invasion army in the east or perhaps initially helping Russia to drive Ukranian occupying troops out of the western regioon of Kursk in Russia where Kyiv's forces have been spreading their wings since August. No figures have been given of the number of North Korean troops but speculation is it could be as many as 11,000. These are combat troops but without combat experience, so the chances are they will just be more Putin cannon fodder, like the murderers and rapists released from Russian prisons to fight for him in Ukraine. Having no experience or specific training for this sort of attritional warfare, Kim Jong un's gesture to Putin could mean a lot of body bags returning to Pyongyang. Nevertheless, it's a significant moment and Kyiv will need all the help it can get from US intelligence assets to pinpoint the arrival of these North Koreans and target them as swiftly as possible. However well or badly they perform in Kursk and Ukraine, the North Korean leader is clearly hoping for some quid pro quo for sacrificing thousands of his soldiers. And this is where the real danger comes. Putin, to show his gratitude, might agree to help his buddy in Pyongyang to improve the range and accuracy of his intercontinental ballistic missiles to threaten the United States. That might suit Putin. He'd be happy for the US to be threatened by North Korea. It makes it even more important that if and when the North Korean troops arrive in Ukraine, they receive a very hostile welcome from the western-backed Ukrainian military. If Kim's soldiers fail to make a difference, Putin might be less eager to assist Kim's ICBM programme.

Will Netanyahu's strike on Iran be proportionate or punitive?

On 20 June 2019, President Donald Trump rescinded an order he had given for a military attack on Iran in retaliation for the shooting down of a long-range Global Hawk surveillance drone. He decided that a missile strike on Iranian military bases which might cause casualties would have been disproportionate. Global Hawk was unmanned. No American had died. The bombers, already en route, were summoned back to base. No one could suggest that Benjamin Netanyahu is facing the same decision. The circumstances are entirely different. There is no moral equivalence. On 1 October Iran launched nearly 200 ballistic missiles on Israel, and Netanyahu has vowed to respond with a significant retaliatory strike. However, there is one issue which does mirror the decision-making that went on in Trump’s mind late on Thursday June 20 five years ago: should a retaliatory tit-for-tat strike be proportionate or punitive? President Joe Biden, ever cautious and worried about the potential for a real war between Israel and Iran, has emphasised the need for proportion. The 180 ballistic missiles launched against Israel were mostly shot down by Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system and by US-led coalition warships in the region. Those that got through damaged the Nevatim airbase in the Negev desert in southern Israel but without destroying any of the F-35 fighter jets parked there, caused minor damage at other bases and fell relatively harmlessly near Mossad’s headquarters north of Tel Aviv. A Palestinian man was killed when he was hit by missile fragments in the West Bank city of Jericho, and there were minor injuries from falling debris elsewhere. The battle damage assessment, as the military like to call it, concluded that the Iranian attack had largely failed.: 180 ballistic missiles, one fatality. However, judging by the Israeli preparations for a retaliatory strike, leaked from a classified report produced by the US National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, have decided that a punitive, not a proportionate response, is required. The leaked documents, based on US satellite images of Israeli forces rehearsing an attack, indicated the thrust of the proposed retaliatory strike will involve air-launched long-range ballistic missiles identified as Rocks ALBMs and “Golden Horizon” weapons, believed to be from Israel’s Sparrow series of missiles with a range of 1,240 miles. When asked by reporters whether he knew what Israel planned to attack and when, Biden replied “yes and yes”. But he wisely divulged nothing further, other than to underline his hope that a ceasefire in Lebanon and possibly in Gaza might be on the cards following the killing by Israeli troops of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar on 16 October. Biden dispatched Antony Blinken, his secretary of state, to Israel and the Middle East region to devote yet more time and energy on trying to broker a ceasefire in what has become a spiralling conflict. Will Blinken, who arrived in Israel today (Tues), also try to persuade Netanyahu to limit what is viewed even in Washington as Tel Aviv’s necessary and justified determination to respond to Iran’s ballistic-missile strike of 1 October? It’s probably too late to beg Netanyahu to go easy. He has made it clear that this time round – in contrast to the last retaliation for an Iranian missile attack in April - Israel has to be more heavy-handed. Even though the 1 October missile launch killed only one individual, the clear aim of the Tehran regime was to cause serious damage. A proportionate response would look like failure in Netanyahu’s mind. The unknown question is how Iran will respond if Israeli Air Force bombers succeed in destroying or severely damaging key military sites . In other words, achieving far more destruction than Iran managed with its 180 ballistic missiles. The Israel Defence Forces claimed the missiles caused minor damage to maintenance and administration buildings at several airbases and did not harm critical infrastructure. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has warned that any attack by Israel, particularly if it targeted the country’s nuclear facilities, would be met with like-for-like strikes. He said in an interview with Turkey’s NTV network last Friday that specific military targets in Israel had been pinpointed. Israel has so far waited three weeks without retaliating. In the meantime, Yahya Sinwar has been killed, raising tentative hopes of a slowing-down of the war in Gaza, Hezbollah has launched drones against Netanyahu’s holiday residence in the Mediterranean coastal town of Caesarea in northern Israel and the US presidential election is just two weeks away. The political and strategic landscape has thus changed. But will it make any difference to whether Netanyahu and his cabinet go for a full-scale punitive strike on Iran or a more limited but precise attack which would highlight the country’s vulnerability and maybe force Tehran to think twice about another tit-for-tat bombing? In his current mood, Netanyahu seems intent on striking a mighty blow on Iran. The consequences could scupper ceasefire hopes and have an impact on the way Americans vote on November 5.

Trump is easing towards beating Kamala Harris

The polls are now so tight it's impossible to make a safe prediction about who is going to win on November 5. However, there are signs, just little ones, that Donald Trump is beginning to ease his way past the vice president and into a winning position. It's not copper-bottomed, but there's definitely a sign of Trump moving forward. There are only two weeks left and if that slightest of movements ahead for Trump continue, then he will get the White House back. This should energise the Kamala camp to start warning the whole country about what a second Trump administration could mean. But I reckon it's now almost too late. I suspect most American voters have taken everything into account, including Trump's odd ramblings, his felony charges awaiting trial, his past disgraceful remarks about women, his threats to put away his political opponents and his false claims, and yet still many of them will vote for Trump. I suspect three of the reasons are that Kamala is a woman, she is only 5ft 4ins tall and she seems to be a very nice person. Maybe American voters don't want a very nice person to be president standing up against very un-nice people like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong un and the Tehran lot. They would prefer to have a tall, overweight, bully of a man who, despite his eccentricities and outrageous tendencies will enjoy facing up to the world's dictators and try and see them off. So, is Kamala too nice to be president? This, I think, is the fundamental question which could be why Americans on November 5 will go for Trump.

Israel should avoid killing Iranians in its retaliatory strike

Why Israel has delayed so long before striking back at Iran for its October 1 launch of 200 ballistic missiles, we don't know, but it may be something to do with Benjamin Netanyahu's indecision over how devastating a response to make. He has said it will be significant, unlike the last time Israel hit back at Iran when airstrikes just destroyed an air-defence system at a military base. This time it will be much more. But Netanyahu would be wise to insist that the target should be structure, not people. Iran's attack on Israel was pretty comprehensive and large-scale but the missiles targeted an Israeli airbase, home for F-35 fighter jets. They didn't go for cities and civilians. That would have been dangerousaly escalatary and would have led to an instant attack by Israel, probably against Iranian cities, too. Iran is not stupid. It cannot afford an all-out war with Israel, so the message from the ayatollahs was this: We will hit you but we don't intend to kill Israeli civilians. Netanyahu should follow suit. Go for Iranian military sites and hit them hard, but avoid casualties where possible and definitely leave the Iranian people alone. A slaughter of civilians on the scale of the killing of Palestinian people in Gaza and Lebanese civilians in Beirut would lead to a war with potentially catastrophic consequences.

Gazans must have hated Yahya Sinwar

The people cheering loudest over the death of Yahya Sinwar, leader of the brutal Hamas organisation, must surely be the poor Palestinian people living in what's left of Gaza. What did Sinwar give any of them but repression, fear, starvation, a ruthless regime and war. They have never had a proper governing body to care for them and provide a decent future. The Hamas predecessors were corrupt and useless and when Hamas took over ruling the Strip, they proved to be nightmare governors who terrified the people into obedience. So, yes, the death of Sinwar, the most brutal of all the Hamas hierarchy, will have given the Palestinian people some hope of an end to the war. It won't be an end to their suffering because they have lost everything. Israeli air strikes have destroyed so many of their homes that Gaza is now a landscape of rubble. But if there are no real leaders to take Sinwar's place, perhaps the people themselves will rise up and demand an end to the fighting. I don't know whether anyone will have the courage to strike out against Hamas. But now is the time to do it, while the Hamas leadership is in turmoil. But the chances are slim and since Sinwar's death, the airstrikes have not stopped.So the misery of the Palestinian people will continue. Thanks to Yahya Sinwar, architect of the October 7 atrocity, the reason why the Israeli army invaded Gaza.

What next after the violent death of Yahya Sinwar?

When Osama bin Laden was killed by US SEAL commnandos, there were hopes that al-Qaeda would be so totally demoralised that the terrorist threat they posed around the globe would be emasculated and would crumble to nothing. Of course it had a major effect on the operational capabilities of the terrorist organisation, but a new leader was chosen and al-Qaeda kept going, albeit without their spiritual founder and without the apparent ability any longer to carry out a major attack on the scale of the 9/11 atrocity. Now that the Israelis have killed Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, will this spell the end of the Hamas organisation and bring the war with Israel to an end? First of all, it is true to say that the killing of the ooverall leader of Hamas and the architect of the October 7 brutal assault on Israel is going to set back the group so much that for the next few months they will just hide away and struggle to survive. During this period, Israel will no doubt capitalise on the death of Sinwar by aggressively going for the remnants of Hamas. Will this mean the end of Hamas? Finally? The tragedy is that whoever is picked as the new leader of Hamas, they still have 101 hostages, a third of them dead, and they will probably do everything they can to keep the war going, using the hostages as human shields. Sinwar is dead, but Hamas will fight on.

B-2 stealth bombers sent to hit Houthis and send a message to Iran

Dropping bombs sends messages. Overnight the United States sent B-2 Spirit strategic stealth bombers to hit underground Houthi weapons stores. The aim was to frighten Iran. Using America’s most potent bomber to hit bunkers controlled by a militia force which has no sophisticated air-defence systems might seem over the top – a superpower sledgehammer to crack an irritating nut. However, the early morning raid was far more than a strike on a militia force which has been a persistent threat to Israel and to western commercial shipping in the Red Sea, the Bab Al-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden. The Pentagon is not confirming what type of munition was dropped by the B-2s. But this bat-winged aircraft, part of the US strategic triad of nuclear delivery systems, is also the only platform in the US Air Force capable of carrying the mighty 30,000lb (15 tons) Massive Ordnance Penetrator or MOP which, with its dense steel casing, can plough through 200ft of earth, rock and reinforced concrete before exploding. The MOP, technically a GBU-57, has never been dropped in anger. Only 20 were ever built, and they were designed purely to be able to penetrate further underground than any other weapon on earth, apart from a nuclear bomb. So, whether or not one of these huge bombs – and each B-2 can carry two – was used against the underground Houthi target, the message was loud and clear to Tehran, backers and financiers and armourers to the Houthis: the B-2 stealth bomber with its immense conventional payload capacity is waiting in the wings. The timing of the B-2 raid, and the announcement of the stealth bombers’ involvement by the US defence secretary himself, Lloyd Austin, as opposed to a run-of-the-mill press release from Central Command, made the attack all the more significant. Iran, and Wasihngton, and the whole western world, is waiting for the Israelis to retaliate for the launching by Tehran of around 200 ballistic missiles against Israel on October 1. President Biden has pleaded with Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, not to attack either Iran’s nuclear facilities, for fear of uncontrollable escalatory repercussions, or its oil industry plants because of the potential consequences for oil prices; and Netanyahu has apparently given assurances that although the retaliation will be significant, his bombers won’t go for nuclear or oil targets. This is why last night’s B-2 raid on the Houthis was so much more than taking out underground bunkers stocked with Iran-supplied weapons. This was a direct message to Tehran., and a reminder to Netanyahu that if the time comes when Iran decides to leap ahead and build a nuclear bomb, the US, and only the US, has the means to deliver long-term damage to sites which are buried deep inside mountains. The statement from Lloyd Austin, a former commander of Central Command , drove home the message. “Today, US military forces, including US Air Force B-2 bombers, conducted precision strikes against five hardened underground weapons storage locations in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen. This was a unique demonstration of the United States’ ability to target facilities that our adversaries seek to keep out of reach, no matter how deeply buried underground, hardened or fortified.,” he said. “The employment of US Air Force B-2 Spirit long-range stealth bombers demonstrates US global strike capabilities to take action against these targets when necessary, anytime, anywhere.” Last night’s strike was the first time the B-2 had been used in an operation since the war in Afghanistan. If a MOP was dropped, it would not just be a demonstration of this weapon’s capability but it would also force Iran to review its calculations about the bomb’s penetration powers and whether their nuclear facilities would be vulnerable. Iran’s principal nuclear site at Natanz is burrowed in a mountain, and even the MOP might have difficulty in destroying the underground facility. The bomb was designed to target deeply-buried sites and has a 6,000lb high-explosive warhead. The key element of the bomb is its ability to delay detonation, with a modified fuse design, until it has reached the most vital part of the buried target. The Houthis also have weapons sites buried in mountains but they are not as sophisticated as Iran’s facilities, and their air-defence systems are crude by comparison with Iran’s Russian-built S-200s and S-300s which guard the facility at Natanz and at other nuclear plants. Yet, the US still went ahead with sending the B-2s which are housed at Whiteman Air Force base in Missouri, unless they had been forward-deployed to a location in the Gulf specifically for this mission. If the MOP wasn’t used on this occasion, the B-2s would have carried highly effective bunker-busting Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) with 2,000lb warheads and/or the GBU-72 bomb which has a 5,000lb warhead. They might have been sufficient to destroy the five sites mentioned by Austin. However, the deployment of B-2s against the Houthis, whatever weapons were on board, was supposed to strike fear in Iran. These bombers, each costing more than $1 billion, were designed to evade enemy air-defence radars and their use in combat in Kosovo, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan proved their worth as a unique bombing platform.

Trump's threat to use the military to quell enemy within

I don't know whether Donald Trump's threat to use the military to bash his opponents in the US is just rhetorical garbage but if he becomes president again it seems pretty likely he will not brook any criticism. This is why Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been warning of an end to democracy in the US if Trump returns to the White House. In several interviews he has called his critics scum and evil people and has, among others, Nancy Pelosi in mind, a woman who has given her working life to public service. Normally the enemy within refers to domestically-grown terrorists or anarchists but Trump is thinking only of his political opponents, especially those who want him in jail, and he has ventured to suggest that if necessary he would call in the National Guard or the regular army to keep his opponents in check. It's worth reminding everyone that this is the United States of America he is talking about where the president, while powerful, still has to adhere to the law and the constitution and to uphold democratic and moral values. It's safe to say, I hope, that if Trump does become president again, if he tries to order military chiefs to sweep the streets of his critics, they will refuse to obey their commander-in-chief. Whoever is appointed chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff under a new Trump regime is going to have a tough time. But the time I have spent with the US military and with their top generals and admirals convinces me that none of them would agree to do anything against the law or the constitution within the territory of the United States. So, threaten away, Mr Trump, but don't expect your orders to be obeyed.

The fact that Trump is a convicted felon doesn't seem to matter

If Robert Jenrick or Kemi Badenoch, the two remaining candidates for the leadership of Britain's Conservative party, were convicted felons, would they stand a chance of becoming the next Tory leader? Indeed, would they even be allowed to stand as a candidate? The answer is surely no. But in the United States, the Republican presidential candidate, one Donald Trump, was convicted of 34 business fraud charges and yet he is closing in on winning the election next month. In the US, things are different! But it has to be said, all the talk not that long ago of Trump having to fight his campaign from a jail cell or being barred from standing because of his convictions has been forgotten. Indeed, the legal problems facing Trump, in particular the charge that he tried to interfere with the election result in 2020, are hardly even mentioned. There will be no more trials, no more appearances in court and no resolutions to any of the remaining charges until after, well after, the November election, if they happen at all. Why isn't Kamala Harris shouting from the rooftops that her Republican opponent should either be locked up or should be soundly defeated in November for the sake of the country's survival? It is extraordinary how the federal charges have been pushed to one side, as if they are of no consequence. Kamala has been too nice, she should be warning the country every day of the dangers of voting for a man who is a convicted felon and is facing other charges that could send him to prison. She seems to be frightened to go all out against Trump. After all, when he was facing Hillary Clinton as his presidential opponent in 2016, Trump spent a lot of his time shouting "Jail her, jail her" for breaching the rules about using her private phone for government work as secretary of state. He won and she lost. Why isn't Kamala shouting, "Jail him, jail him"?

Will America's enemies fear Kamala Harris?

Mike Johnson, the House Speaker in the US, put his finger on it in an interview over the weekend. He posed the question whether Kamala Harris would be feared as US president by America's enemies and rivals? His opinion was that America's enemies would not fear Kamala but they would and do fear Donald Trump. Johnson is a Republican, so he is bound to come to that conclusion. But it's still a relevant question especially for the next decade when the whole world is going to be in some sort of uproar and upheaval, from wars, climate change and mass migration. Who would best serve US and the western world's interests? A charming, smiley woman with experience in foreign affairs by being vice president for four years and a former prosecutor, or a morose-looking, late seventies former president with a reputation for dilettante foreign policy-making and a bullish, bullying tendency? On the face of it, it is probably true to say that America's enemies, and allies, would be far more wary of a President Trump Part Two, than a President Harris. But is it important for a president to be feared? Yes, if it acts as a deterrent to adversaries but no if it provokes potential enemies into rash actions. Is the US safer if the president is a tough guy who doesn't like to be crossed, or is it safer with a president who uses diplomacy, persuasion and compromise to bring about a positive conclusion to a crisis? It's difficult to know for sure, but Joe Biden adopted the latter approach and it has to be said that the Taleban walked all over him, Israel carried on with its wars against Hamas and Hezbollah, never mind what Biden recommended and advised, and Putin just raged on in Ukraine, ignoring Washington. Kamala, if she were to become president, might be wise to adopt an approach that would combine toughness and no-nonsense with conciliation. The US is still, just, the most powerful country in the world, and the president needs to BE the most powerful leader in the world.

Former top US general says Trump is a "Fascist to the core".

I don't know whether he has been quoted accurately or fairly, but according to Bob Woodward's latest revelatory book about the goings-on in Washington. General Mark Milley, the former chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of staff, consudered Donald Trump to be a Fascist to the core. I assume he said this privately and whoever was in the room at the time spilled the beans about his or her memory of the remark to the Washington Post journalist and author. Every time a Woodard book comes out - and they are regular - everyone who was anyone in the Washington establishment at the time of the period covered in the book must regret ever making any remark about Trump or anyone else in a senior office appointment. Private or public, it gets whispered to Woodward. I like General Milley, I think he's a good guy, a solid military fellow with integrity and toughness and a ton of experience. If he thinks Trump is a Fascist then I guess a helluva lot of snesible people think the same but wisely don'y say so in private. Poor Milley, if he said it, he presumably felt he wouldn't be betrayed by voicing his opinion of the former president within earshot of others. But Milley is an honourable man and must now be worried that the man with such extremist views could once again become president. Trump will claim this is all fake news and will deny he has any Fascist tendencies, yet he is authoritarian by nature, he holds extreme right-wing views and wants to kick out millions of immigrants. Whether that means he is Fascist to the core, I don't know, but I would trust Milley's opinion against Trump's any day of the week.

Spare a thought for Joe Biden

I wonder whether Joe Biden is bitterly regretting standing down. It's all too late now, but it must be pretty galling for him to watch Kamala Harris, still his vice president, gadding about the country talking about herself and her hopes for the country without actually spelling out all the wonderful achievements of her boss, President Biden, in his near-four years in office. Although she hasn't promised anything much beyond what Biden has also espoused to, Kamala is still not telling people that she was so lucky and privileged to serve under Biden as president. Or if she has, it hasn't made any headlines. So, he stumbles on, trying to stop the death and destruction in Gaza and Lebanon without having much, if any, impact, on Benjamin Netanyahu, continues to support Ukraine in its fight with Russian invaders without actually bringing any hopes of an end to the war, and waiting for the effects of his huge investment in climate-change industrial and energy policies to make an obvious difference. It must be tough to be Joe Biden, finishing off his last few months in the White House and trying to build his legacy while everyone in the country is either focusing on Kamala and Trump battling it out or trying to rescue their lives from the latest hurricane. Biden has three months left of his presidency and is still hoping that diplomacy will win the argument in the Middle East when patently Netanyahu is not interested in any such thing right now. So, spare a thought for poor old Joe.

A president who lies or a president who equivocates?

The latest polls show that the fight between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris is getting so close there is hardly any light between them, especially in key must-win states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And there are only three weeks to go. This should be seriously worrying for Kamala Harris and her campaign team. You would have thought that by now most voters will have made up their minds about who they are going to vote for, but this isn't the case. And the reason is that while the vast majority of voters, whether Republican or Democrat, will have strong views about Trump - either for or against - Kamala Harris is still seen as a relatively unknown person, and the undecided voters want more reasons why they should go for her. This is also seriously worrying for Kamala. The main reason, apart from the fact that she only became the Democratic nominee when Joe Biden agreed to step down in July, is that in the few interviews she has given to TV broadcasters and newspapers, she never seems to answer the difficult questions. Often she answers a question with a question or just skirts round it by giving an anodyne reply which satisfies no one. One could argue that this is what politicians do, they don't want to give precise answers to tricky questions in case they get for ever lumbered with a reply which then hits the headlines for the wrong reasons. But she is standing for the White House for goodness sake. Voters are entitled to know exactly what she thinks and what she will do if she wins. In the case of Trump he just answers in any way he fancies at the time, more often than not coming out with a blatant lie. He claims something which isn't true or says he has done something which he hasn't. Voters don't seem to mind, at least not Republican supporters. So with such a short time left, Americans have to decide whether they want a president who lies all the time or a president who refuses to give answers to what are highly topical questions. It's apparently democracy.

Netanyahu brings out Joe Biden's swear words

Benjamin Netanyahu is set on a path which brooks no deviation. He wants victory against Hamas, victory against Hezbollah and, ultimately, victory against Iran. Over the 12-month period since the October 7 day of massacre by Hamas gunmen and hostage-takers, Netanyahu has played the diplomatic game with the United States: receiving constant visits from American officials from the State Department and Pentagon, listening to entreaties by President Biden for limited military action and appeals to protect civilians, and making encouraging noises about ceasefires. However, all along, the Israeli leader has been relentless in focusing, and then expanding on, his principal objectives which were to seek revenge for October 7 and to create a new security environment in which Israel’s enemies would be destroyed or damaged beyond repair. Indeed, as the war with Hamas and then Hezbollah continued aggressively, despite daily pleas from Washington to avoid escalation , Netanyahu became more confident both in his actions and words that he and his nation had reached an historically crucial moment . There could be no turning back. Now was the right time to strike at all of Israel’s enemies. Biden, in profanity-laden conversations with Netanyahu, according to the latest revelations from Bob Woodward, accused the Israeli prime minister of having no strategy as the bombs continued to fall. However, Netanyahu did and does have a strategy. It’s just that it doesn’t include Biden’s concept of strategy: a lasting ceasefire, a stabilised Middle East, a new alliance between Israel and Arab nations and a future, independent state for the Palestinian people. The objectives nurtured by Washington and those enforced by Tel Aviv are so far apart that relations between the US and Israel have become wholly disjointed. While American commitment to Israel remains “iron-clad”, the relationship between Biden and Netanyahu is at rock bottom. Woodward’s soon-to-be-published book, War, quotes sources as recalling a private comment made on one occasion by Biden about Israel’s leader., “A bad f****** guy,” he is supposed to have said. That pretty much sums up Biden’s total frustration with Netanyahu. If it was just a question of momentary bad temper on the US president’s part, it would not matter so much. Netanyahu must be used to bad mouthing in his own country. However, there is something far more important at stake. Washington has lost trust in Netanyahu and that has an impact across the whole Biden administration. Israel needs the US, perhaps more than ever before, and yet Netanyahu has increasingly gone his own way without even telling his American allies what he is planning to do next. Washington has been caught out on numerous occasions. Little if no notice was given about the airstrike on the Iranian consulate building in Damascus in April which killed seven of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers, including two generals, No one in Tel Aviv tipped off Washington that Mossad was about to seize the opportunity to assassinate Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas who, foolishly, had been photographed in Tehran for the inauguration of the new Iranian president in July. And Washington was kept in the dark about the decision made by Netanyahu shortly after his angry speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September, to authorise the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader at the organisation’s headquarters in Beirut. It was a question of lack of trust on both sides. Netanyahu must have known that if he tipped off Biden a few hours before any of these attacks took place he would have been earbashed by the US president to hold fire or at least to postpone the operations because of the potential escalatory repercussions. When trust breaks down between two such important allies, the winners can only be Israel’s opponents. The US has come to Israel’s aid, as has Britain and other European partners, defending the country against potentially catastrophic attack. When Iran launched 300 ballistic and cruise missiles and drones at Israel in April, the US and other navies, armed with anti-missile systems, were there to play their part in shooting them down. Israel depended upon and trusted its closest allies to help out. Now Netanyahu and his cabinet are drawing up plans to strike back at Iran following the second launch of nearly 200 ballistic missiles on Israel on October 1. But, again, Tel Aviv is keeping its own counsel, unwilling to reveal to Washington precisely what it has in mind. Biden has made his views clear: he accepts retaliation is justified but he is opposed to a strike on Iran’s nuclear plants or oil facilities for fear of potential repercussions. It's like Netanyahu and the Biden administration are going along parallel lines which can never merge and have different destinations at the end. Netanyahu wants victory at all costs. Biden, and his vice president Kamala Harris, want, above all, a ceasefire and an end to the spiralling death and destruction. Perhaps Biden was justified when he queried whether the Israeli prime minister was holding back any prospect of a diplomatic solution because of the possibility that Donald Trump might win the election next month. Trump has said frequently that Israel should be allowed to finish the job it started after the Hamas attack on October 7. Despite the breakdown in trust between Washington and Tel Aviv, Netanyahu still knows that if Iran responds to an Israeli strike in retaliation for the ballistic-missile attack on October 1, the US Navy will be ready to help shoot down whatever Tehran throws at Israel. That sort of trust IS iron-clad.

Biden swears a lot, apparently

Another Bob Woodward bombshell book is soon to come out and the stuff that has leaked sounds pretty unsalutary. That nice, gentle man, Joe Biden, swears like a trooper. He calls everyone he doesn't like or is fed up with a f......this or that, says Woodward. Bad language in the White House seems to be a pretty traditional way of talking whoever the president. Yes, Barak Obama, too, and certainly Donald Trump. But old Joe? Yes, according to Woodward who has written so many revelatory books about the Washington political world that every president must dread it when they hear a new book is about to come out. Apparently Joe uses the F word a lot, especially when he is talking about people like Vladimir Putin. Or Trump, of course. As for Trump, it seems unlikely he called Putin bad names because Woodward claims the former president has phoned Putin on numerous occasions since he left office, presumably for friendly chats. Trump's team furiously denies it. But someone must have told Woodward, someone from within the Trump camp who listened in or knew about the calls. The thing about Washington is that when word gets round that Woodward is writing another book, everyone wants to get in on the act by whispering things to him, probably in the hope that by cooperating with the journalist from the Washington Post he won't write anything nasty about them. Ho ho, that's not true I bet. If Woodward is told something, whoever it's about, it will appear in his tome. That's why his books are such bestsellers. So, as Joe Biden finishes off his presidency, just think of him as saying to all his staff, "F...off".

Is this what Hamas wanted when they killed and raped on October 7?

Did Hamas and its leaders want/expect an all-out war against them in Gaza after they committed the appalling atrocity on October 7 - a whole year ago today? Huge numbers of their members have been killed, swathes of Gaza have been destroyed, there's almost a full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah and the world is waiting for Israel to strike at Iran, Hamas's supporter, armourer and financier. Did they work out that this is what might happen and did they calculate that it would, in the end, benefit them in some way? If they did, they seriously miscalculated. The one thing that Israel has shown above all else is that it will never give up until Hamas and Hezbollah, and to a certain extent Iran, have been taught taught a lesson they will never forget or be able to recover from. This is the relentless message from Benjamin Netanyahu. So how could Hamas's leaders, or what remains of them, have thought that committing the October 7 massacre and kidnapping of hostages was going to solve anything vis a vis their future and the political future of Gaza? What they did has brought about the demolition of Gaza and the elimination of their power to rule Gaza ever again. And in the process they have lost their mighty supporter across the border in Lebanon. Hezbollah, too, is now hugely damaged, having seen half of their missile stocks destroyed by Israel. The October 7 massacre was a demonstration of man's inhumanity and Hamas should be regretting it to the end of their days, if they have any days left worth counting.

Trump is making more noise than Kamala

The imrpession given, rightly or wrongly, is that Donald Trump is rushing from one key state to another and making a lot of noise, while Kamala Harris is going about her campaign business quietly and with minimal impact. And there are only 31 days left before the November 6 election day, but a lot of Americans will have already voted by post, so time is running out fast. Will Kamala be shouted down by the larger-than-life Trump? Will Kamala lose like Hillary Clinton did, despite all expectations that she should win? Trump returned to Butler in Pennsylvania where he was shot in the ear and made a big fuss. It was headline news stuff. What has Kamala done this past week which caused major headlines? I can't think of anything. This is America. Big noise matters. If she carries on in her smiley, quiet way for the next four weeks, voters might forget she exists. This is seriously worrying for the nice, decent people of America who desperately don't want Trump back in the White House. Kamala should be appearing on televison every day, either giving confident, self-assured, policy-rich interviews or taking on reporters at press conferences or, for goodness sake, riding in a tank like Margaret Thather did when she wanted headlines. Come on Kamala, get with the beat and outshine Trump or he is going to win.

Is there any possibility of a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon?

The Iranian foreign minister arrived in Beirut and the first thing he said was that Iran would support the idea of a ceasefire in Lebanon provided the Israelis stopped bombing Hamas in Gaza. It's a quid pro quo too far for Benjamin Netanyahu I would say. His whole raison d'etre is to finish the job and that means keeping bombing Hamas and Hezbollah until they are either wiped out or reduced to such an extent they no longer present a threat to anyone. Israel is not there yet. Hamas may have lost half of its fighters but they are still putting up a fight, and Hezbollah has lost most of its leaders and half of its arsenal of missiles, but the rockets are still coming. So the idea of a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah and an end to any more bombing in Gaza will seem pretty unattractive to Netanyahu whose only hope of surviving as political leader is to win the two wars outright. That could take months. Meanwhile there is the little matter of Iran. Does Netanyahu want to destroy Iran as well? Or at least destroy Iran's arsenal of ballistic missiles and nuclear facilities. This would be both catstrophic for the Middle East and for the planet because it would lead to all-out war and bring in the United States and possibly Britain and other European nations. So there are big decisions ahead. Netanyahu is vowing huge revenge for the ballistic-missile attack on Israel by Iran, so in a way he is obliged to carry it out or lose face. Sometime in the next few days, Israel is going to launch a massive strike on Iranian targets. Then what? We don't know but the Iranian foreign minister's appeal for a ceasefire in Lebanon shows how scared Tehran must be.

Iran's Supreme Leader gives a sermon with a rifle in his hand

Reminiscent of Osama bin Laden who always liked to appear before his supporters on video with a Kalashnikov in his hand, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader, has given a sermon and said prayers to his people holding an assault rifle in his hand. The image is of a man wanting to be seen as a preacher warrior or perhaps a warrior preacher. During his address he said the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 was justified. The rifle was his prop. He also said Iran's missile attack on Israel was justified because any nation had the right to retaliate in self-defence for violent action against it. It has to be remembered that Iran sponsors violent action through its proxy militia/terrorist forces spread out in the Middle East to attack Israel and western merchant ships in the Red Sea and Mediterranean. This is all a vicious circle of weird logic by the Iranian leader. With such thinking it is difficult to see how Iran will ever again be part of the international community.

Will Iran rush to build a nuclear bomb?

First of all, you can't rush to build a nuclear bomb! It's said that Iran has now progressed so far with enriching uranium to near weapons-grade level that it could be completed in a matter of weeks. While, theoretically, this could be true - enriching from 60 per cent to 95 per cent wouldn't be that difficult - that doesn't mean the ayatollahs will have their hands on a nuclear device in weeks which they could launch against Israel. The most difficult part of developing a usable nuclear bomb comes after the fuel has been enriched to weapons-grade level, including reducing the fissile material to a manageable, miniaturised form, desgning the warhead and, most important of all, fitting it into the end of a missile. That could take up to a year and possibly longer if the Iranian nuclear scientists struggle with the complex design requirements. That's not to say they can't do it, especially if they get help from North Korea or Russia (pretty likely) but it does mean the US and Israel would have more time to plan what to do about it. In any event, Tehran is not going to be in a position to threaten Israel with a nuclear device for another six-twelve months and if the ayatollahs did try to "break out", as it's called, and move rapidly to weapons-grade nuclear material, the whole world would be alerted. Even Joe Biden would be forced to do something. But we are talking about a post-Biden world, either a President Harris or a returned President Trump. I doubt Trump would have much compunction about backing a US/Israel strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. Anyway, this is for the future. Now Israel has to decide what to target in retaliation for the missile barrage from Iran. Hitting any of the nuclear sites would be more symbolic than effective without the Pentagon's huge 15-ton Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) which can pierce deep into bunkers before exploding. Israel doesn't have these weapons, only the US. Israel's US-supplied 2,000lb bombs were effective in destroying the Hezbollah HQ bunker in southern Beirut. But Iran's key nuclear plants are buried under layers of concrete inside a mountain. This is where the MOP has to come in.

In his current mood, Netanyahu could go for Iran's nukes or oil facilities

Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to retaliate for Iran's brazen launching of 180 missiles at Israel yesterday and Tehran can't be in any doubt that the Israeli prime minister will do just that. But what sort of retaliation? It won't be a half-hearted bash at an Iranian air-defence site, like in April. This time it's going to be much much bigger, but will he go for an Iranian nuclear plant or a major oil industry installation? Netanyahu is in an angry, determined mood and he knows that whatever he decides he will increase his popularity ratings which have surged ever since he authorised the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, and half a dozen other Hezbollah commanders. Israel has one huge advantage over Iran. It has one of the world's most sophisticated and most effective anti-missile systems, so whatever Iran throws at Israel, Netanyahu can feel pretty confident that the damage will only be slight. Whereas Iran is seriously vulnerable to an airstrike or missile attack from Israel. Will Netanyahu strike at Iran's nuclear facilities? I think he might but without help from the US there will be no gaurantee of causing sufficient damage to put back by Tehran's nuclear-bomb programme by years. Only America's deep-penetration bombs can do that, and I doubt Joe Biden will want to attack Iran as he approaches the end of his term as president. He might offer air refuelling tankers to help Israeli bombers on the way there and back, but the strike itself will surely be left to Israel alone. This is why I suspect Netanyahu will hit Iran where it is guaranteed to hurt the most, a strike on its oil industry. Iran's economy is already teetering. If its oil revenues get shot to pieces, the country will be on its knees. The poor suffering Iranian people might actually then demand an end to the tyranny they have faced for so many decades under the revolutionary ayatollahs.

From focused incursions to full-scale war

Israel hasd declared it's only going to get involved in limited raids and incursions in southern Lebanon to try and set up a sort of buffer zone, pushing back Hezbollah positions. But you don't need two divisions as well as all the other paraphernalia of warfighting to carry out limited operations. This is going to be the full works, take my word for it. Israel feels it has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go all the way and impose on Lebanon, not just the south, a new political, military and territorial framework which will guarantee a terrorist-free region. It sounds an impossible task, but Benjamin Netanyahu has decided it is now or never. Hezbollah, infinitely more powerful than Hamas in Gaza, is going to be targeted until it is no longer a threat to Israel's northern border and beyond. Israeli military commanders have been talking about an historic moment and that is exactly how Netanyahu sees it. First Hamas and then Hezbollah have to be utterly destroyed, and in the process, Iran, their chief sponsor, financier and armourer, will be cut off at the knees, unable and certainly unwilling to risk all by launching a war with Israel which it knows it will lose. And lose badly. So far Iran has been cowed, threatening revenge but doing nothing. If Hamas and Hezbollah are crippled, Tehran will have no other option but to launch direct attacks on Israel. But the last time they did that it was a total failure, with nearly all of the 300 ballistic missiles being shot down by Israel, the US and other allies. The limited incursions in southern Lebanon, therefore, will develop into something much, much bigger because, potentially, if it works, the rewards for Israel and, hopefully for the Middle East in general, will be hugely positive.