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.

Netanyahu has gone for the a la carte war menu and chosen the lot

Benjamin Netanyahu clearly believes that he now has a unique opportunity to go for all of Israel's enemies all at once while the world waits for a new American president to enter the White House. Right now, nothing can stop him, certainly not the United States, and so he has grabbed his moment and issued order for the Israel Defence Forces to eliminate as many of the country's enemies as possible and to destroy their strongholds and command bunkers and missile stocks. In a whirlwind of military aggression, the Israeli leader has ordered attacks on Hezbollah, anti-Israel forces in Syria and Yemen and a decapitation operation which has already removed about three-quarters of the Hezbollah leadership hierarchy. President Biden can't stop him, no leader in Europe has any power to stop him and no one in the Middle East dares interfere. Netanyahu is on a roll and won't stop until he has completed his list of enemies to be annihilated. Whether that will involve a full-scale invasion of southern Lebanon we have yet to see, but all the signs are that one or maybe two divisons of troops and tanks will cross the border in an attempt to drive Hezbollah back. If there is an a la carte war menu, Netanyahu has chosen everything in the knowledge that at least for the next few months he will probably get away with it.

Mossad intelligence-gathering at its finest

No one will ever know for sure precisely how Mossad tipped off Benjamin Netanyahu that the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah would be at a certain address on a certain day at a certain time in a suburb of Beirut. But you can be sure that when the Israeli prime minister took the phone call from Tel Aviv shortly after his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Friday late morning, he was informed that 100 per cent identity had been confirmed and that a bunch of heavy bombs, probably 2,000 pounders, would do the trick to destroy the building and the bunker in which he was presiding over a meeting of surviving Hezbollah leaders and an Iranian general. What would Netanyahu have said? "Go ahead", or "Permission approved", or "Go for it", or perhaps there was a special code. But within minutes the 2,000 pounders attached to Israeli F-15 jets were airborne and on their way. Mossad has been showing in recent months that its intelligence-gathering is second to none. Unlike the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden which was only 60 per cent confirmed by the CIA, I suspect Mossad's confirmation was so positive Netanyahu wouldn't have had time to blink before he gave his go ahead. Mossad agents, whether disguised as Lebanese fruit sellers or passing taxi drivers or "homeless" bodies on the street opposite the Hezbollah HQ would have spotted the arrival of Nasrallah and then whispered into their hidden mics. Nasrallah, with his long white beard and turban would have been relatively easy to identify. Why he took the risk of entering the HQ building at all, again we will never know, except that Netanyahu's presence in New York at the UN must have been a gambling factor. Nasrallah and his security advisers were fooled. The Israeli leader was always ready to seize the moment when his Mossad agents came up with the goods. And what better time to do it when he was haranguing the UN and anti-Israel political leaders and pledging to win win win against Hamas and Hezbollah whatever the cost.

An angry Netanyahu at the UN gave the order to kill Hezbollah chief

Any lingering hopes in Washington of an end to the fighting in Gaza and Lebanon were given short shrift yesterday by Israel’s prime minister in his address to the United Nations General Assembly. In an uncompromising speech in which he accused the UN body of a history of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias, Benjamin Netanyahu laid bare his determination to end the war in Gaza only when Israel’s objectives had been met: the destruction of the Hamas terror organisation and the demilitarisation of Gaza. While the language he used was familiar, he was speaking at a time when the Israeli military appear poised to enter southern Lebanon to drive back Hezbollah, Hamas’s most powerful neighbour and supporter. The Israeli leader was in no mood to discuss ceasefires or concessions. The only way forward, he said, was to destroy the enemies who posed a threat to Israel’s existence. Such expectations in Washington and New York of a possible 21-day ceasefire to halt the burgeoning war between Israel and Hezbollah, but so quickly dashed. Netanyahu had already made it clear to Washington that while he was always ready to negotiate peace, now was not the time to hold back on confronting Israel’s enemies. Hezbollah and Hamas had to be dealt with so that the state of Israel could live without having missiles and rockets fired at Jewish communities every day. He condemned Hezbollah for attacking Israel with rockets the day after Hamas had carried out its massacre in southern Israel on October 7. More than 8,000 rockets had been fired by Hezbollah into Israel since October 8, he said., forcing 60,000 Israelis to abandon their homes in the north, near the border. Netanyahu had to face pro-Palestinian protesters outside the UN building in New York and some diplomats walked out of the chamber before he began his speech. The Palestinian delegations’ seats were empty. But there was scattered applause for him each time he made a particular point or raised his voice to emphasise the challenges facing Israel. Although the focus of Washington’s diplomatic efforts in recent days has been to prevent an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, Netanyahu was keen to emphasis the achievements already made in the war in Gaza. Hamas had begun the war with 40,000 members, 15,000 rockets and an underground tunnel network that was bigger than the New York subway which has 472 stations and 24 different lines. Netanyahu claimed 50 per cent of the total Hamas force had been eliminated, 23 out of the 24 fighting battalions had been annihilated and 90 per cent of the rockets destroyed. . “Now we will mop up,” he said. He claimed Israel Defence Forces had done more than any other army in wartime to protect civilians and prevent deaths and injuries among men, women and children. The casualty statistics put out by Hamas and by the Lebanese health authorities might tend to cast doubt on that claim. Indeed, Kamala Harris, Democratic nominee for the presidency and potentially the next incumbent of the White House, has on several occasions stated that the toll of civilian casualties in Gaza has been unacceptable. The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says 41,500 people have been killed, although Israel would stipulate that half of the deaths involved Hamas members. In Lebanon, more than 700 people are reported to have died since the Israeli airstrikes began on Monday. An unspecified number would have been Hezbollah fighters. Since Israel’s military retaliation against Hamas began after October 7, Netanyahu has had to fight what he sees as another war – a pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel war. This sense of persecution came out in his address to the UN. “I didn’t intend to come here this year. My country is at war , fighting for its life. But after I heard the lies and slanders levelled at my country by many of the speakers at this podium, I decided to come here and set the record straight.” In a direct message to Washington, he likened Hezbollah’s attacks in northern Israel which had driven Israeli civilians from their homes to a similar scenario happening in America. “Just imagine if terrorists turned El Paso and San Diego into ghost towns. How long would the American government tolerate that?” he said. He also had a warning for Iran, the principal sponsor for every act of terror against Israel. “I have a message for the tyrants of Iran. If you strike us we will strike you. There is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach,” he said. This was an angry Netanyahu, a man under huge pressure at home and abroad, committed to destroying Israel’s enemies but still hoping for a better and more peaceful future. He referred to the Abraham Accords, the agreements signed between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain for normalisation of diplomatic relations. But he spoke of the even more significant potential breakthrough still to come: full relations with Saudi Arabia. The October 7 Hamas massacre and the near year-long military action by Israel in Gaza brought the Washington-sponsored negotiations with Riyadh to a shuddering halt. Saudi Arabia wants, in return for diplomatic relations with Israel, the formation of an independent Palestinian state. But Netanyahu left out that crucial ingredient in his address. The future status of Gaza and the wider issue of reconfigured Arab/Israel relations seemed a long way off, as the Israeli leader grew more and more angry at the podium. AND THEN ISRAEL BOMBED THE HEZBOLLAH HQ OUTSIDE BEIRUT AND KILLED THE FOUNDING LEADER HASSAN NASRALLAH!

How good or bad is Biden's Middle East foreign policy legacy?

No one can accuse President Joe Biden of failing to do his utmost to prevent a full-scale war from breaking out in the Middle East. He and his indefatigable envoys have this year spent more hours of the day on the Middle East than any other issue. The intensive diplomatic efforts by Antony Blinken, secretary of state, Jake Sullivan, national security adviser, Bill Burns, CIA director, and Amos Hochstein, Biden’s man for Lebanon, among others, were supposed not only to find a workable solution to the myriad of crises but also enhance the president’s foreign policy legacy after what has turned out to be only one term in office. The Middle East has been a political and diplomatic graveyard for successive American presidents. But Biden’s hopes of forging an historic alliance between Israel and Saudi Arabia as part of a grand vision of fending off Iran, Israel’s Enemy Number One and the arch manipulator behind every theatre of conflict in the region, fell brutally by the wayside when hundreds of Tehran-trained Hamas fighters crossed the border from Gaza on October 7and committed the worst atrocity on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. The slaughter of at least 1,200 people and the kidnapping of around 250 threw all of Biden’s grand-design diplomacy into an abyss from which it has failed to reemerge in the intervening eleven and a half months. Biden now has about 16 weeks left of his presidency to broker some form of settlement, or a stepping back from a regional war at the very least, if he hopes to depart from the Oval Office in January with a Middle East legacy of which he can be proud. The omens are not good. Ever since October 7, Biden and his team have faced intransigent and obstructive players, seemingly determined to undermine or ignore his administration’s endeavours to bring a lasting ceasefire to the war in Gaza, a return of all the hostages, alive and dead, and to stop a disastrous repeat of the war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has agreed to many of Biden’s plans and proposals but in the end he has always gone his own way. By all accounts, Biden and Netanyahu have had frequent angry conversations over the phone, highlighting the frustration on both sides. In the midst of continuing ceasefire efforts by Washington with Egypt, Qatar and others, Netanyahu authorised the assassination of Ismael Haniyeh, political leader of Hamas (and principal ceasefire negotiator in Qatar) while attending the inauguration of the new Iranian president in Tehran, gave the go ahead for detonating thousands of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies with Mossad-supplied explosives, and lined up two reserve infantry brigades to launch an incursion into southern Lebanon. Now, Netanyahu has rejected the 21-day ceasefire proposal by the US, UK and other countries to suspend the firefighting between Israel and Hezbollah. Dealing with Israel, a longstanding friend, partner and ally to the United States, should have been the easy part for Biden’s diplomacy and foreign policy strategy . But Netanyahu, reliant as he is for his political survival on an extreme right-wing coalition which demands no concessions of any kind, has been unable or unwilling to contemplate anything other than the annihilation of Hamas, after October 7, and retribution against Hezbollah for supporting Hamas with constant rocket firings over the border into Israel. The succession to the political leadership role of Hamas by Yahya Sinwar, architect of the October 7 massacre who has refused to consider further ceasefire and hostage releases while Israeli troops remain in Gaza, has added to the Biden administration’s growing realisation that all the efforts made to bring this nightmare to a close are going to end in failure. They won’t give up but time is running out. Could Biden have done more? Could he have saved his legacy in the Middle East by adopting a much tougher stance with Netanyahu, notably by rigorously opposing the expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank which has led to violent clashes with Palestinians, and perhaps by demanding a quid pro quo: more arms for Israel in return for an agreed timetable to lay down the foundations for creating a new and improved Palestinian Authority to run Gaza as well as the West Bank once the war is over. The reality is that after October 7, there was never going to be a moment when Netanyahu would be ready, let alone, happy, to discuss Gaza being placed in the hands of the much-maligned Palestinian Authority. As for the two-state solution, Israel and a sovereign Palestine living amicably alongside each other, that scenario is further away than ever and there is nothing Biden can do about it before he hands over to a new president on January 20. President Jimmy Carter signed the Camp David Accords in 1978, a peace treaty forged after 14 months of diplomacy which ended hostile relations between Israel and Egypt. Under President Bill Clinton, the Oslo Accords were signed by Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation in 1993 after months of secret negotiations. Biden began his administration with high hopes of a new broad Arab-Israeli alliance which could have brought greater stability to the whole region. His legacy would have been assured. Instead, the war in Gaza continues relentlessly and without any sign of stopping in the near future, and a new war between Israel and Hezbollah appears unavoidable.

Trump is getting feistier about Zelensky giving nothing to Russia

Until now, all Donald Trump has said, over and over again, is that he would resolve the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of becoming president and that had he been president in 2022, Putin would never have invaded Ukraine in the first place. Neither statement is remotely checkable but it makes a good rallying call when he is campaigning and I experct a lot of people believe him. Now, however, he is turning against Zelensky, the Ukrainian pr4esident, who has done his best to turn from professional comedian to war leader since the invasion.Trump now openly blames Zelensky for failing to give anything to Putin, as if handing over part of your country's sovereign territory to your bully neighbour is a natural thing to do for any sensible leader. Had he surrendered territory to Putin there wouldn't have been all the deaths and destructions of cities, Trump is now saying. Well, I guess that's true. You could say the same about Hitler. If we had allowed him to take over Europe we wouldn't have had so many millions of deaths and countries ravaged by bombs and tanks. Sometimes, sacrifices have to be made for a better future. Assuming Trump has read about the Second World War, he should have come to that realisation. But in the case of Ukraine, his view is that Putin for some reason had a right to occupy large swathes of Ukraine and therefore Zelensky is somehow responsible for all the deaths and destroyed cities that have occurred since February 24, 2022. It's a pretty twisted argument, but if he becomes president, that is presumably what he plans to do. Give Putin what he wants and end the killings. But Putin, I suspect, won't listen to him and will carry on trying to destroy Ukraine whether he gets a territoprial concession from Zelensky or not. Then what will Trump do?

Iran president says he comes in peace

The new Irainian president Masoud Pezeshkian arrived in New York for the UN General Assembly and pronounced he wanted peace not war and hoped for better dialogue with the West. If only one could believe him. The reality says otherwise. He may not want war with Israel because he knows it will be devastating for his country and would probably involve the US. But he is still relying on Iran's proxie forces - Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis and Islamic militia in Iraq and Syria - to do Iran's dirty work for him. This is how Iran's strategy works. Let Iran's "forward defence" allies fight Israel while backing them with arms, training and money. But Israel isn't fooled. Its biggest enemy is Iran and if Benjamin Netanyahu can finally defeat Hezbollah and Hamas, neither of which looks likely at the moment, Iran is going to feel very very vulnerable. Which is probably why the new Iranian president is now in New York trying to convince everyone that it's all Israel's fault and he just wants to make Iran into an accepted member of the international community. While it's always a nice change to hear an Iranian leader talking about the need for peaceful dialogue, there are hard men in Iran, notably the leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard who have no truck with peace of any kind and just want to destroy Israel. War between Israel and Iran is, therefore, more, not less, likely at some point in the future, whatever President Puzeshkian says.

Zelensky's victory plan visit to Washington

President Zelensky is in the United States for his latest, possibly last, throw of the dice before the American election, in his attempt to prove that victory can be achieved against Ukraine’s Russian invaders. The redoubtable leader of Ukraine has brought what he calls his “victory plan” which embraces every facet of his nation’s future. It includes his strategy for forcing President Putin to end the war and for the West to guarantee his beleaguered country’s long-term security and economic prosperity. It’s a grand vision which he will present to President Biden in the White House on Thursday. There are a number of conditions which are dependent on American support whoever wins the election in November. It also envisages a time when Putin might be persuaded to accept that a for-ever war is no longer in Russia’s interest. Victory has been a word Washington has tended to avoid. Biden has been Zelensky’s fervent supporter and defender ever since Russian troops crossed the border two years and seven months ago and has always promised to back Kyiv however long it takes. But did that mean all the way to victory? When he was Chairman of the US Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley said the war would end by a politically-negotiated settlement, not by military prowess. That is the reality. But the longer the war has continued, the more entrenched the political view, not just in Kyiv, has been that Putin needs to be deterred from any future aggressive ambitions and that Ukraine, therefore, had to win the war. Donald Trump was asked during the TV debate with Kamala Harris in Philadelphia whether he wanted Ukraine to win. He replied he just wished to end the fighting and stop people dying. He was taken to task for this reply. But this probably reflects many private views even within the Biden administration. Indeed, for a long time officials in the National Security Council have been quite open about the need for the Kyiv government to recognise that a negotiated settlement had to be taken into account at some point in the future. The issue was always, if negotiations were to take place between Kyiv and Moscow, Ukraine had to be in a position of strength on the battlefield in order to achieve maximum advantage. This is where Zelensky’s new victory plan comes into its own. Although the fine details have not been made public, it seems clear that the Ukrainian leader will argue that now is the time -between October and December, he said – for big decisions to be made in Washington and by Nato as a whole. He is thinking, of course, of his desire for authority to use long-range western-supplied missile systems to hit multiple targets in Russia; and for Ukraine’s future to be embedded in Nato. Zelensky is hoping that attacks on air bases and missile sites deep inside Russia, using the Franco-British Storm Shadow cruise missile and the US ATACMS rockets, plus the continuing presence of Ukrainian troops in a large slice of Kursk in western Russia, will finally persuade Putin to come to his senses. Negotiating from strength. That’s what Washington has been saying for months and that’s what Zelensky is now offering. It’s probably unfortunate that he chose to call his blueprint a victory plan because victory implies the other side has been defeated. And Putin is not a leader who will ever concede defeat. Indeed, as the battleground stands at the moment, the Russian leader has seen his troops make progress in eastern Ukraine, he has brushed off the Kursk invasion and will be feeling quietly satisfied that his warning of war with Nato if Biden were to permit western long-range missiles to be used within Russia appears to have paid off. This is why Zelensky’s visit to the US at this time is so important. Apart from seeing Biden on Thursday, he will also have sessions with Kamala Harris, Donald Trump and Congressional figures. Can he use his undoubted eloquence and persuasive powers finally to convince Biden and the future American president, whoever it is, to back what would be the biggest gamble of the war: to go for Putin with all guns blazing and force him to the negotiating table. Biden has so far demurred. His vice president has shown no indication of adopting a different position if she wins the election, and Trump has made it clear he wants to impose his own plan on both Kyiv and Moscow to end the war as quickly as possible. Zelensky will make his pitch to the current and potential future presidents and will present his case for continued support when he addresses the UN General Assembly in New York tomorrow (WED). Will his victory plan make a difference in Washington? Only eleven days ago, Biden hesitated yet again when he met Sir Keir Starmer in the White House and discussed the question of authorising Zelensky to fire long-range US and British missiles at Russian targets. Starmer insisted the meeting was more about strategy than individual missiles. But Storm Shadow and ATACMS are inextricably linked in Zelensky’s mind with his strategy for winning the war. If Zelensky’s victory plan is met with mixed feelings in Washington, he will return to Kyiv at the end of the week with the bitter realisation that he will have no alternative but to fight on in the hope of gaining some advantage on the battlefield before the winter sets in. And then wait to see who wins the US election and start another round of presentations, armed with his blueprint for victory.

Israel and Hezbollah escalating towards disaster

We keep on hearing that neither Israel nor Hezbollah want a full-scale war but they are going about it in an odd way. Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon today killed more than 270 people, and Hezbollah has been firing longer-range missiles which have hit the suburbs of Haifa. Every day is worse, every day the escalation builds. The focus is suddenly away from Gaza and more on southern Lebanon. Everyone knows that Iran has helped Hezbollah build much more advanced and much longer-range weapons which have yet to be used. Why? Because Iran wants Hezbollah to keep these weapons for when there is a real threat by Israel against Iran itself, and, more specifically, against its nuclear weapons research facilities. So Hezbollah has yet to unleish these much more advanced missiles against Israel, under Tehran orders. But this may change if Israel launches a ground invasion of southern Lebanon as part of its determination to push Hezbollah further back away from the border with northern Israel to allow Israeli citizens to return to their homes in that area. A ground operation could be the final straw that forces Iran to authorise Hezbollah to resort to the weapons that can penetrate far into Israel. That would be a disaster for Israel and for the whole of the Middle East. Who is going to pull back from the brink? Israel is counting on Hezbollah blinking first.

What could go wrong for Kamala Harris?

The American historian Allan Lichtman who has nearly always correctly predicted who will win the US presidential election has said Kamala Harris will win in November unless something goes seriously wrong. What could that be? With seven weeks to go, any number of things could happen which might halt her progress to the White House. The first thing that comes to mind is u-turns. She is famous for changing her mind over the years, but right now she can't afford to go flippity-flop on any of the big issues. She did one of these this last week when she was quoted as saying that if someone broke into her house the intruder would be shot. The image was of the vice president standing in the hallway of her house with a shotgun in her hands and blasting the intruder. First of all it was a pretty inflammatory thing to say, even in America, but then her officials quickly stepped in and said she was just joking. She probably lost a lot of gun-possessing voters who would definitely open fire at anyone breaking into their homes. It was only a minor u-turn, but any bigger ones and she could be in real trouble. What she says about the economy, the war in Gaza, the war in Ukraine and immigration/the border over the next few weeks will be instantly compared with what she has said in the past. Voters like to know where their leaders and future leaders stand on all the major issues. If Kamala is going to win, as Allan Lichtman and polls seem to be suggesting, she dare not put a foot wrong between now and November. No wonder she seems so reluctant to hold press conferences.

Revenge killings in the Middle East

One of the notable aspects of the Israeli attacks in Lebanon this week has been the targeting of specific Hezbollah commanders. One of them has been on a most-wanted list for decades, not just a list compiled by Mossad but also by the CIA. Ibrahim Aqil was supposed to have been one of those who planned the catastrophic truck bombings in Beirut that killed more than 300 people. The targets were the US Marine barracks and US embassy in the Lebanese capital. This was in 1983. So, 41 years later, he has been killed. So the killing was a coup for Israel for tracking this man down and a coup for the CIA which, presumably, has been trying to track him down for four decades. The war against Hamas and Hezbollah has truly taken on a different character ever since the pager and walkie-talkie blasts this week. It's all-out war with Hezbollah, short of a ground offensive, although this cannot be ruled out. Israel has decided to throw everything at its enemies in the final weeks before the US election. We can expect many more targetings in Lebanon and probably an even more intense effort to find and kill the one man who has escaped the Israelis so far, Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas mastermind in Gaza. If they can get him before the US election, the incoming American president might find it easier to get a ceasefire deal. The next few week are going to be crucial for Israel.

How many more Russian dead before Putin cries halt?

The latest figure of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine is 70,000. Will this make Vladimir Putin sit up in shock as he starts his day in the Kremlin? Does he actually care? There will surely come a time when even Putin will decide that enough is enough and that some form of settlement must be negotiated. With Ukrainian troops still in the Kursk region in western Russia, and long-range drones hitting missile depots and airbases inside Russia, will Putin be making any moves in the near future to stop this terrible conflict? He will want to claim victory but the way things are going he will have to make some concessions. President Zelensky is in Washington next week with his new "victory plpan" which he will present to Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Donald Trump and people in Congress. Will it be any different from his previous ones, all of which would involve the withdrawal of Russian soldiers from currently occupied territory, including Crimea? Assuming Putin would reject this out of hand, what possible alternatives might there be. Only Trump has come up with a "plan" to end the war but Zelensky has already effectively rejected his proposals which would basically give everything Putin wants. Will Biden and Kamala produce something new? It seems unlikely, although officials such as Antony Blinken, secretary of state, and Jake Sullivan, national security adviser, must be advising a change in terms of the US position vis a vis Ukraine. A proper strategically sensible deal will have to be worked out which will involve concessions by both Kyiv and Moscow. I wonder if the new Zelensky victory plan makes any concessions. We will have to wait for next week.

What was the point of Israel attacking Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies?

What exactly was Israel's strategy in detonating explosives inside thousands of Hezebollah pagers and walkie-talkies? To prove they could do it and make Hezbollah feel vulnerable? Or was it a precursor to a full-scale war with Hezbollah? Or was it really a message to Iran? Or was it a way of telling Hezbollah to back off helping Hamas in Gaza and to move back from the border with Israel and stop launching rockets at Israeli towns and cities? The pager/walkie-talkie explosions killed three dozen people and injured thousands more. Was this Israel's intention, to kill and maim and to do it in a way that made the whole world think, Oh my God, this is the way war is going? Of course, nothing, absolutely nothing compares with the atrocities and rapes and hostage-takings carried out by Hamas on October 7. But this latest form of warfare against Hezbollah leaves a very uncomfortable feeling somehow. It was dastardly, it was brilliant espionage. But what was the real point of it all? Killing people in markets and in the streets and in their homes with technical wizzardry. What really is the message Tel Aviv is sending out? Will it help to bring the war in Gaza to an end? Surely not.

Mossad's technical department let loose on Hezbollah

Two days of an extraordinary low-tech war between Mossad and Hezbollah have grabbed world headlines. To what end, we don't know yet. But Israel's secret intelligence service has a history of dastardly targeting of the Israeli nation's enemies, from booby-trapped public phone booths to remote-controlled machinegun devices to the mass insertion of malware codes to destroy Iran's uranium-enrichment gas centrigue systems. So the blowing up of thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon, held by Hezbollah operatives, is the latest version of a war that has been going on for years. It's not high-tech sci-fi stuff, unlike the Stuxnet virus that was fed into Iran's nuclear weapons development programme 14 years ago. This is pure espionage with a Mossad killer touch added. First came the intelligence that Hezbollah had ordered neary 3,000 pagers from a company linked to a firm in Taiwan, then came the interception of the shipment and the insertion of one or two ounces of explosives fixed to the battery and a triggering device, then finally, all wrapped back into place and sent on its way to the eagerly-awaiting Hezbollah organisation which duly sent them out to all members for what was hoped to be discreet, untappable communication between leaders and operatives. Mossad had laid thousands of mini Trojan Horses among the Hezbollah members to be detonated whenever the government of Benjamin Netanyahu judged to be the right moment. According to US officials, Netanyahu was forced to give the go ahead to detonate all the tiny bombs prematurely because intelligence revealed Hezbollah was beginning to have suspicions that Mossad had interfered with the pagers and walkie-talkies. "Use it or lose it," one official said. So the bombs were triggered. Another coup by Mossad but the deaths and injuries that followed will not have helped to bring the war in Gaza to an end. In fact, the reverse. So Israel's action, or alleged action, may have scared Hezbollah like hell but I doubt it was well received in Washington where Joe Biden in his last few months as president is desperate to get a ceasefire deal in Gaza and an end to constant rocket-firing between Hezbollah and Israel.

Trump wins sympathy vote

Donald Trump has suddenly found that everyone is on his side. After the second assassination attempt which yet again showed up alarming weaknesses in the Secret Service protocols for protecting him both as a former president and as the Republican presidential nominee, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton et al have come forward to express their relief that Trump survived and have questioned whether enough is being done to keep him safe.The circumstances surrounding the latest attempt on Trump's life are totally bizarre. A man with a semi-automatic rifle just biding his time in the bushes for 12 hours -TWELVE hours - and no one spotted him. The Secret Service didn't check the perimeter of the golf course before Trump began his round. Extraordinary. Thus the total sympathy for Trump from everyone, including his political opponents. This will give Trump extra momentum in his campaign. This is not a cynical judgement, it's reality.The race between Trump and Kamala Harris is already very tight and this incident will narrow the gap even further. The polls may show Harris to be slightly ahead but the November election is won according to what the electoral college votes say, and for the moment Trump looks likely to win more of these votes than Harris. Trump will benefit from the sympathy vote for the next few weeks at least to ensure that the election if going to be a nail-biter.

How much longer can Ukraine fight Russia?

Wars can go on for ever. There was the 100-year war between England and France from 1337 to 1453 over English claims to the French throne. But the Ukraine/Russia war is different. While the former was a series of military skirmishes over more than 100 years, the latter is a full-scale modern war which has already lasted two years and nearly seven months. How much longer can it go on? Joe Biden has always said that the US-led coalition of 50 countries will continue to support Ukraine to defend itself against Russian aggression "for as long as it takes". But this is totally unrealistic if the war never stops. The war has to come to an end sometime, and the sooner the better. But how on earth is this going to happen without Putin winning much of what he hoped to gain when he launched his invasion on February 24, 2022? Biden and Keir Starmer held what they called strategic talks about the war in Ukraine at the White House last week, meaning presumably they discussed the end game. But is there an end game? The only one put forwaqrd so far is the vague "plan" of Donald Trump's to shut it all down if he wins the election in November. Judging by what JD Vance, his vice presidential running-mate has indicated, that will mean giving Putin everything he wants: hanging on to all the land he has seized in eastern Ukraine, building a demilitarised zone separating this vast area from the rest of Ukraine, giving Kyiv guaranteed independence but no right to join Nato or the EU. Putin doesn't get the whole of Ukraine under his wing as he had hoped but he gets pretty much everything else he wanted. Victory for Putin. Oh and Trump expects Germany and other EU members to foot the bill for reconstructing Ukraine, not Putin whose bombs and missiles have been destroying cities and towns throughout the country. All of thse options will surely be rejected by Biden and Starmer and obviously by President Zelensky. So will Biden and co come up with anything remotely realistic to end this war. I haven't heard Kamala Harris suggest any proposal.

Trump's eating pets jibe at Haitian migrants is a social media phenomenon

Normally when a politician makes a ridiculous claim or allegation he or she is lambasted as an idiot or a weirdo. But not in Donald Trump's case. He claimed that Haitain migrants living in Springfield, Ohio were eating people's pet cats and dogs. There is supposedly no evidence of this at all, apart from the odd rumour on social media about a dog or cat being snatched and eaten. But no one, until Trump latched on to it, has taken any of this seriously. But Trump claimed it was going on to underline his political position which is that millions of migrants should be deported. Instead of being castigated by everyhone, Republicans and Democrats alike, his claim has become a social media phenomenon. His words have been set to music and it's so hilarious that it has become a source of huge entertainment. One, in particular, by @TheKiffness, called Eating the Cats, is very slickly put together and has become a big hit. Trump will benefit from this huge interest in his comment because a lot of people in America believe everything Trump says. Haitians eating cats and dogs in Springfield is no doubt the talk of the dinner table across the country. This is social media gone mad.

Biden slowly slowly decides about long-range US missiles

Storm Shadow, Britain’s highly-prized, air-launched cruise missile, is not going to win the war for Kyiv against the Russian invaders. However, this particular weapon, along with the American ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) are literally waiting in the wings for Kyiv to launch a new-style, more deadly and more provocative strike on air bases and missile sites deep inside Russia. They could transform the near-31-month war into the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. President Putin has warned that if authority is given for these weapons to be used against targets inside Russia, it would mean war between Russia and Nato. Storm Shadow, a heavyweight weapon with a range of more than 150 miles, and ATACMS which can reach 190 miles, have already played significant roles in the war, but exclusively against Russian targets in occupied eastern Ukraine and Russia-annexed Crimea. Ever since the start of the Russian invasion on 24 February, 2022, the US-led coalition supporting Kyiv has ploughed billions of dollars’ worth of weapons and ammunition to the Ukrainian military to fight off the Russian aggressors – in the hope of protecting Ukraine’s sovereignty. However, there was from the beginning a proviso, set in stone by President Biden., that the weapons which progressively became more advanced and more sophisticated should be used to defend Ukraine from attack, not deployed to mount over-the-border strikes into Russia itself. To Kyiv this made no military sense. If Moscow could launch attacks on Ukrainian cities from the safety of the Russian motherland – stand-off cruise missiles fired by bombers well away from Ukrainian air defences- then why should Ukraine not do likewise and hit the very bases inside Russia from where the strikes originated. A basic military maxim is that you hit the enemy where it hurts the most. But Biden said no, fearful of pushing Putin too far, down the nuclear escalatory road. Other members of the pro-Ukraine coalition went along with Biden’s edict, although with less enthusiasm in London. All that has now changed, and for a number of reasons. First, Biden is slowly becoming persuaded that Russia deserves to be targeted in retaliation for the huge increase in destructive missile strikes on Ukrainian cities, and, in particular, attacks by heavy precision-guided glide bombs that can weigh up to three tons. Second, Ukraine is developing its own longer-range missiles which will be capable of hitting targets inside Russia. Kyiv already possesses long-range armed drones which have had some notable successes in striking Russian sites, although with only limited explosive warheads. Under this reasoning, the US and UK would just be contributing towards Ukraine’s own home-grown weapons capability. Third, there is a growing confidence, albeit with an element of having one’s fingers crossed, that Putin is never going to resort to using tactical nukes against Ukraine. The West sent battle tanks and F-16 fighter aircraft, both supposedly red-line escalatory moves in Putin’s mind, but his warnings of dire consequences proved to be bluster.Fourth, Iran has sent hundreds more short-range ballistic missiles to Russia, all of which will be used to hit Ukrainian civilian and military targets. Although Iran had sent ballistic missiles to Moscow earlier in the year, the continuing flow of such systems between Tehran and Moscow has begged the question: if Moscow can get arms from an overseas ally for use against Ukraine, why shouldn’t Kyiv be allowed to fire Western long-range missiles at Russian targets, wherever they might be. This is where Storm Shadow and ATACMS have come into play. Both are highly effective weapons which, with the benefit of their longer range, could cause significant damage to the bases from where Russia is currently launching aircraft with their payload of deadly glide bombs. The new Labour government in Britain clearly wants to be on the front foot as far as the war in Ukraine is concerned, and already appears to be persuaded that Storm Shadow, a Franco-British weapon which has performed to all expectations since its introduction into Ukraine last year, should be used to help Kyiv strike at legitimate targets inside Russia. David Lammy, the foreign secretary, and Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, who were in Kyiv together this week, appear to be of the same mind, that now is the time to concede to President Zelensky’s long-argued wishes for the US and UK to remove the caveat covering the use of these weapons. In Washington DC yesterday, Keir Starmer met Biden to discuss the Storm Shadow issue, and left without the approval that he badly wanted. The final decision, he hinted, could be taken at the United Nations General Assembly at the end of the month. Putin has only just got round to sending infantry and marine brigades to try and push Ukrainian troops out of the Kursk region in western Russia which they invaded last month. What would the Russian leader do if Western F-16s flew bombing raids with Storm Shadow cruise missiles over the border? Would it mean war between Russia and Nato? Does the West back down or call Putin’s bluff? It will be the biggest decision Biden has to make in his last four months as president.

Israeli commandos abseil to destroy Syrian missile bunker

Israel's special forces commandos have to be the most brazen military operatives on the planet. Last week, it has now been revealed, the Israeli Air Force carried out a series of airstrikes on a deep bunker buried in a mountain in Syria where the Syrians, Iran and Hezbollah have been developing new missiles and who knows what else, probably chemical and biological weapons. But because the bombs used by the air force couldn't penetrate deep enough, dozens of Israeli special forces abseiled from helicopters and entered the bunker, killing guards as they approached and then went right down into the depths, grabbed computers and documents and then laid time-fused explosives everywhere. Once they were back on the helicopters, the bombs exploded, destroying everything. Amazing. Israel had known about the secret bunker for about five years but every time the special forces' leaders came up with plans to destroy it, it was judged to be too risky. This time, Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, who could do with some good news for a change, gave the go ahead. This extraordinary mission will serve as a warning to Iran which has its own deep bunkers in mountains where Iranian scientists are developing a nuclear weapons programme. Only the US has the sort of deep-penetration bombs that could reach the depths of these bunkers. So Israel, if it ever carries out an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, knows that without the American bombs, it will have to do a similar operation as the one in Syria, with airstrikes and special forces ground attacks. Tehran will be on notice.

Trump may be right, it's time to stop the war in Ukraine

Britain's foreign secretary and the US secretary of state are doing the rounds together, in Kyiv and elsewhere in Europe, making up their minds and other people's minds about giving permission to Ukraine to use US/UK-supplied long-range weapons to attack targets in Russia. If authority is given which seems inevitable, Britain's Storm Shadow cruise missile and the US ATACMS missiles will be fired at Russian air bases and other targets to reduce or eliminate Moscow's launch points for strikes on Ukrainian cities. Militarily it makes sense to hit the enemy where it hurts. But Joe Biden has, until now, been reluctant for Ukraine to forge ahead with this strategy using US missiles. For obvious reasons. It will antagonise Putin and give him justification for accusing the US of directly attacking Russia. Likewise if Britain says yes to Storm Shadows hitting Russian targets inside Russia, rather than inside Ukraine. It would be a serious escalation but with Putin destroying Ukraine's infrastructure with missiles fired from inside Russia, the argument for striking back is sound and fully justified. Except that global politics are involved and if authority is given to Kyiv to do what they will with US- and UK-supplied long-range weapons, the war is going to get doubly dangerous and could lead to escalations we can only whisper about. So, before we get to this stage, surely it is time for some serious talks to be held about how this war can be brought to an end. Neither Ukraine nor Russia is going to win. Accept that as a basis for negotiations and start getting the two sides round a table. Trump is right. The war is just killing more and more people and destroying more and more property and there is no end in sight. Announce the decision that Kyiv can start hitting Russia with western weapons and then make a move to bring this terrible war to a halt. The facile question asked of Trump by the ABC interviewer during the TV debate with Kamaala Harris -"Do you want Ukraine to win the war?" - is meaningless. There will be no winner. Both Russia and Ukraine have lost. It's time to talk.

A good debate for prosecutor Kamala Harris

Judging by the ABC TV debate between the two presidential candidates, Kamala Harris stuck to her brief pretty rigidly and Donald Trump wavered off course, goaded by the woman next to him who dared to highlight his bad record. It was certainly Kamala's night. She came out on top and perhaps for the first time showed that she had the hutzpah to be the next president. She was tough and clear and decisive. Trump looked pretty put out. He had clearly hoped to diminish her in every way but failed. This doesn't mean she is guaranteed the keys to the Oval Office but Trump will have gone away with the awful thought in his mind that he might not win. That would mean two defeats in a row, never mind his claim he beat Joe Biden in 2020. He didn't and everyone bar him and a few other loyalists accept that. I doubt he will want another TV debate although Kamala said she is happy to do more. The Democrats will be cock-a-hoop. They have gone from having a candidate who could hardly get his words out, let alone his thoughts, during his debate session with Trump to an articulate woman with stars in her eyes. Yes, it was a good night for Kamala and a good night for the Democrats.