Andy Burnham to Saudi Arabia's rescue

Out of the blue, Andy Burnham has announced that he has approved the deployment of an RAF midair refuelling tanker to help Saudi Arabia in its fight against the Houthis in Yemen. When asked for help, Donald Trump said no, not wanting to get involved in yet another war. But a phone call to London, and suddenly the UK is happy to help out. I don't know how meaningful it is to send a tanker to the Saudis. But the timing is so obvious a three-year-old could work it out. Burnham has left for New York today for the United Nations General Assembly where he has fixed to have a special meeting with Trump. That's it, it's the real reason for the tanker. Burnham can boast to Trump that the UK is helping him in his Middle East war. Trump has been pretty pissed off with the UK government for failing to give full support for his war against Iran. Even though UK bases were used for some of the strikes on Iran, when Keir Starmer gave his aporoval, subsequently supported by Burnhan, the strikes were limited to defensive missions, ie when defending US and Gulf assets from attack. Although the line between offensive and defensive is pretty muddy, it was an attempt by the UK government to keep out of the war per se. Now, Burnham, having seen that Trumnp was reluctant to help out the Saudis against the Houthis, realised this was an opening for him. That may be a bit cynical but I can just imagine the arguments that must have gone on in Number Ten. Anyway, it's almost bound to achieve the result Burnham wanted which is a friendly session with Trump in New York.

Trump's triumphal arch with drone and sniper accessories

Donald Trump has come up with a brilliant idea. Instead of just building a 250ft-high Arc de Trump near the Arlington cemetery as part of his architectural legacy, he has decided to placate all his critics by announcing that in reality it's going to be a super stronghold for drones and snipers to protect Washington in particular and the whole country in general. He really does plan to stuff the golden arch with drones and men in boilersuits with fancy rifles. He did the same for his ballroom, after knocking down the whole east wing of the White House. It wasn't going to be just a place for dancing and banquets, no no no, it was going to house underneath a massive new security bunker for his safety and the safety of the nation. So a ballroom and an arch will be just a front for a military power base. The super bunker I can understand but an arch full of drones? For what purpose exactly? According to Trump, he was asked to include a storage place for drones by the Pentagon and so he obliged by offering his planned arch. Of course, it's all about politics. What Trump wants he gets, but to avoid criticism and prevent legal action, he can quote national security, the be-all-and-end-all excuse for getting something past any opposition, whether it be local residents or the courts. It's a smart move but almost laughable.

Donald Trump versus fake news

Ever since he became president the first time round, Donald Trump has raged against the media, claiming they pedal fake news. What he really means is that certain parts of the media don't like him and, therefore, write and report negative stories about him and his administration. There's a huge difference, but Trump sees all these stories as fake, ie made-up, deliberately aimed at harming his presidency and attacking him in person. There is no question that much of the media in Washington, newspapers and TV stations, are generally opposed to Trump and all his works. But then so is an increasing number of politicians and citizens in the US. His poll ratings are wildly unfavourable. Does that mmake opinion polls fake news, too? The latest organisations to be selected for Trump's anger are CNN, Politico and MS Now (a TV channel). Their journalists are all banned from entering the White House which means they can't attend any of his press briefings or other events. The reporting credentials have been axed. This is a sign of Trump's increasing determination to eliminate any stories which are critical of him. It won't work, of course. CNN will carry on doing what it does, whether it has reporters inside the White House or not. It's very easy to shout "Fake News" but I don't think his latest attempt to suppress freedom of speech, enshrined in the First Amendment of the US Constitution, will make a blind bit of difference, except make it a lot more challenging for the banned news organisations to do their job.

Trump gets his way in Greenland but only sort of

Well, there's a Greenland deal after months of negotiations, threats and warnings (the latter two by Donald Trump). No one has seen the small print yet and it won't be unveiled until next week at the UN General Assembly in New York. But it looks like it will grant carte blanche for the US to massively extend its military presence on the island, and a clause which stipulates that neither Russia nor China can ever ever put a foot on the place. So, there really isn't much more for the US than it had already under the 1951 treaty which granted the US the right to have a military base in the north of the island for missile-tracking. But Trump wants to develop his Golden Dome anti-missile shield over the US and if it ever goes ahead, Greenland will no doubt have a bigger role to play. So it makes sense both for the US and for American allies if there is a more substantial facility on Greeland. But it could probably have been done under the old treaty which allowed for the US to extend its facilties if it needed to. So all the hooha from Trump about wanting to take over the whole of Greenland - ie snatching its sovereignty from the islanders and extricating overall ownership fromn Denmark - was unnecessary, although Trump no doubt thinks that if he hadn't made such a fuss, neither Greenland nor Denmark would have signed up to the deal to be unveiled next week. Hohum.

Canada going all European is madness

Canada is part of the North American continent. Yet, under new ideas being pushed by the European Union, Canadians are being invited to join the EU as an associate member. It's all because of deteriorating relations betwen Canada and its neighbour, the United States, or more specifically, between Donald Trump and Mark Carney, the very elegant prime minister of Canada. Of course, there is nothing wrong with Canada becoming closer to Europe but this is all about snubbing Trump. And that's stupid. Canada and the US are neighbours, they share an immensely important strategic defence role together, and they trade together, although that is half the problem because of Trump's bitter tariff war. A breakaway from the North American partnership towards a somewhat geographically-stretched alliance with the EU may sound like a good dig at Trump but it rally doesn't make much sense. Trump and Carney need to make up and get on and do proper deals like adults.

Poor King Charles, the barbs keep coming

Every family has its moments of despair, trauma, rifts or just internicene arguments. But the Royal Family headed by King Charles has had more than its share of barbs thrown at it, from both within and without. Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, have caused more angst in the family than anyone in recent years, with Harry's outrageous book called Spare and Meghan's whingeing against the royals and their courtiers on the dreadful Opra Winfrey show way back when the couple first went off to live in California. Now they are back in the UK and still causing problems for Charles and his brother, Prince William. In addition, a new book coming out next week, written by Princess Diana's brother, Earl Spencer, is apparently full of nasty jibes at Charles, the most controversial of which is that he claims that soon after Diana died in the car crash in Paris, Charles (then Prince of Wales), told Charles Spencer that soon everyone would forget about the late Princess of Wales and seemed put out by the outpouring of grief for her death throughout the country. Officials speaking for the king have rejected the accusation and blamed Earl Spencer's recollections on poor memory coloured by grief.The book is being serialised in the Daily Mail and there are bound to be more hurtful passages to come. I would have thought the poor king has had just about enough of being targeted in this way with accusations that may or may not be false. The allegation that he cruelly dismissed Princess Diana as someone who would soon be forgotten (the mother of Charles's two sons for heaven's sake) can be resolved only one way. Either King Charles admits he said it and apologises to the nation or Earl Spencer admits he made it up or at least may have got it wrong and apologises to the nation, and the publisher recalls all the books and removes the alleged quote from the king. Then we can all get on with our lives.

The new Houthi/Saudi war has dangerous possibilities

So far, Saudi Arabia is on its own fighting the Houthis. Despite an appeal to Trump, the Saudi de facto leader, Mohammed bin Salman, was offered no military help from the White House. Trump is stuck with the war against Iran and doesn't want to get involved in Saudi Arabia's current confrontation with the Houthis in Yemen, even though bin Salman is supposed to be his big buddy. Now there's talk of Britain helping out the Saudis. This would be disastrousw and should be rejected by Andy Burnham. The last thing this country needs right now is engagement in a never-ending war in the Middle East. The UK said no to Trump about getting involved in the war with Iran. It should say no to Riyadh now. The Houthis have taken a very aggressive posture towards the Saudis, firing off missiles and drones at Saudi energy plants and blocking oil tankers from going through the Bab el-Mandab chokepoint at the end of the Red Sea which they now control. Today the Houthis claim to have shot down a Saudi jet fighter, and a drone has landed in the vicinity of Mecca, according to Riyadh. It can only get worse. The Saudis, in the past, carried out fairly indiscriminate air raids on the Houthis some years ago and hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians were killed. An all-out war between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis would massively disrupt oil supplies going down the Red Sea from Saudi ports. The economic blows to the world's economies would follow. Inflation is already rising at a rapid rate. Trump says the ecoomic pain will all be worth it when Iran collapses and loses the war with the US. But does anyone, apart from him, believe this?

Is Pete Hegseth out of his depth?

Back when Pete Hegseth was still just a television presenter, the former Army National Guard officer who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan explained how he returned to civvy street. “I separated from an Army that didn’t want me anymore,” Hegseth wrote in his book, The War on Warriors. “The feeling was mutual. I didn’t want this Army anymore either.” Fast forward two years and Hegseth finds himself at the Pentagon, trusted by President Trump to overhaul America's armed forces, the leadership of which he still does not seem to want. Twenty months after he was named as defence (now war) secretary, he undertaken a purge of top commanders that shows no sign of slowing, causing turmoil, anger and resentment among the US armed forces. Hegseth appears to be a man on a mission: to eliminate wokery and what he views as an obsession recruiting and promoting military personnel to meet cultural trends that have no place in the armed forces. The 46-year-old who is loyal to a fault to President Trump has sacked more top commanders than the combined total of his seven predecessors. More than 80 rising stars have had their promotions blocked, many of them black or women. The disruption to the leadership of the military has been so dramatic that some of the key appointments, including the chief of staff of the army, remain vacant, after the then incumbent, General Randy George, an officer with an impressive pedigree, was summarily fired after clashes with Hegseth. On September 1, Dan Driscoll, the highly regarded army secretary, the top civilian job in the service, resigned and went to see Trump to complain of the damage being done by his war secretary. At a time when the United States is at war with Iran and the two big-power rivals, China and Russia, are making their moves to exploit perceived American military weaknesses, the Hegseth revolution at the Pentagon has turned the second largest office building in the world upside down. Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina has urged Trump to sack Hegseth. “I have never witnessed more inept management of the brave men and women who serve our country,” he said in a social media post. Eric Edelman, defence policy chief at the Pentagon in the George W Bush administration, warned in a recent subscription-only podcast called Shield of the Republic of “the potential institutional damage that the poseur who claims he is the secretary of war is doing to both the uniformed military services and the department of defence more broadly”. “Much but not all of this personnel churn has been directed at the US army and so it was not surprising when the secretary of the army, Dan Driscoll, in the wake of all these acts of self-harm to the officer corps, resigned after warning the president about the damage being done to the fabulous military that he likes to tout which has left the army rudderless in the midst of a war,” he said. Despite the turmoil in the Pentagon, no one in the military can claim they weren’t given early warning. Hegseth’s personal mission was laid out in his 6,000-word address to more than 800 generals and admirals, summoned to hear what he wanted from them during an unprecedented gathering of top brass at the Marine Corps’ Quantico Bay base in Virginia on September 30. Overweight generals padding around the Pentagon corridors, fat troops struggling to train to the proper standards, gender-changing military personnel, beards and women in combat roles, all emerged as his pet hates. “We became the woke department, but not anymore. No more identity months, DEI [diversity, equity, inclusion] offices, dudes in dresses, no more climate change worship, no more division, distraction, or gender delusions, no more debris.” Hegseth told his stunned audience. Since then, Hegseth, the 29th defence secretary, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan as an infantry officer in the US Army National Guard, has sought out commanders who remind him of his wartime heroes, General Norman Schwarkopf who led the US and allies to victory in the 1991 Gulf War – the only US military victory in nearly 50 years – and General George Patton. of Second World War fame. However, General Chris Donahue, a commander who would appear to fit that bill, fell foul of Hegseth for reasons that have not been fully explained, and he was forced into premature retirement. Donahue who had spent much of his army career in the dark world of special forces missions had been put forward as the next supreme allied commander Europe (Saceur). But Hegseth blocked it. By all accounts Donahue was punished for being the last man to leave Kabul when all US troops were evacuated in a shambolic end to the war in Afghanistan. Trump who described the troop evacuation as “the most embarrassing moment in the history of the United States”, wanted heads to roll. Unlike two of his predecessors, Robert Gates and Leon Panetta, both regarded as distinguished secretaries of defence, Hegseth has had no experience of managing a large government department, let alone one the size of the Pentagon which is responsible for 2.8 million people, uniformed and civilian, and has a budget of nearly $1 trillion. Gates, 22nd defence secretary, and Panetta, the 23rd, were both formerly directors of the CIA. Panetta also served as the director of management and budget in the Clinton administration. However, Trump thinks Hegseth is “one of my best”. When the president secretly swapped planes in July from Air Force One via a catering truck at Ankara airport after a Nato summit following warnings of a suspected plot to assassinate him, he took only one cabinet minister with him: Pete Hegseth.

Putin's most outrageous plot

While he was gathering with fellow leaders at the bizarre summit with the leaders of China, India, Iran and others in New Delhi, Vladimir Putin must have given the go ahead for one of his more outrageous acts against the West at a railway station close to the Ukraine/Poland border. A jet-powered drone with a 90-kilogram high-explosive payload crashed into a locomotive at the railway station only a short time after a train had left for the Polish border carrying VIPs, including Boris Johnson, all of whom had been attending a summit of officials in Kyiv with President Zelensky. Everyone knows, including Putin of course, that the Ukrainian government runs a train shuttle between Kyiv and Poland, and the "diplomatic train", the one that ferries important visitors very regularly, must have been on Moscow's mind for a hit for a long time. The drone didn't attack the train with the former British prime minister on board because, it seems, it left earlier than the timetable planned. The drone struck a train which had been emptied of its passengers fifteen minutes earlier after word got through that a drone was on the way. Russia has begun attacking railway stations and railway lines in Ukraine but this looked like a deliberate attempt to strike at Zelensky's latest visitors. If the drone had hit the diplomatic train and people had died, what would have happened? It doesn't bear thinking about. But it seems Putin was prepared to take the risk.

The European Union still reliant on Russia for gas supplies

After all the sanctions and bans imposed on Russia since the invasion of Ukraine nearly five years ago, it is staggering that the European Union still relies on Russia for 12 per cent of its gas requirements. The EU promises to bring this to an end in January but the way the world is going right now and the shortages everywhere in oil and natural gas because of the disruption of the energy market since the war with Iran began, it's likely this partial dependence on Russian gas will continue for longer. It's one of the gravest lessons learned by the West, that it became too sucked into cheaper Russian oil and gas when relations with Moscow were relatively stable It is true that Europe has become far less reliant on Russian energy but the fact that nearly five years later, the EU still can't fully shake off the Russian connection when it comes to energy supplies is sobering. Vladimir Putin presumably knew for certain that the West would not be able to shut off all supplies from Russia and has benefited hugely as a result, helping him to fight his war with Ukraine. Things have gone badly for Putin since the invasion but thanks to the world's demands for oil and gas he has managed to keep going and build better and more powerful weapons to hit Ukraine. It is a sad commentary on the state of affairs we see in the world today.

Everyone has underestimated the Houthis

When they started becoming a nuisance way back, the Houthi rebels as they were then called were a pain in the neck, like a cloud of mosquitos buzzing away in the wrong places. Now, they are a force to be reckoned with and are always known just by the name, Houthis. The world knows who the Houthis are because they pop up whenever they want and cause trouble. Today, they are playing a leading role in forcing oil prices up beyond $100 a barrel. They have taken control of the whole coastline of Yemen, effectively putting them in charge of the Bab al-Mandab Strait, another one of those wretched maritime choke points through which Saudi Arabia, in particular, transits its crude oil to Asia. The Houthis are saying that after their lightning military advance to grab the Red Sea coastline and key coastal towns,such as Mokha, as well as an island in the middle of the strait called Perim Island, they can dictate which tankers can transit and which can't. So far they have said their focus is to stop all Saudi tankers going through the strait. How the Houthis have managed to build themselves into such a major strike force is hard to comprehend. Of course they have had help from Iran but the Houthis are also a fiercely independent organisation and they clearly have effective leadership. Literally, no one, not the United States, not Saudi Arabia, not the Gulf states, know what to do about the Houthis. They are running rampant and getting away with it.

AI is beginning to sound truly scary

Progress in developing artificial intelligence (AI) systems has reached a level where experts are warning AI could destroy the human race within ten years. Most people would have seen that prediction and laughed because it seems more fantasy than reality. However, the warning came from someone in the AI industry who can see how the rapid developments could be turned against us if the new super AI systems end up in the wrong hands. The apocalyptic warning suggested that evil people might use AI to produce biological weapons which could wipe out the human race. It’s bad enough that the world is facing dramatic climate change, producing dangerous heatwaves in many countries, widespread fires and flooding from glaciers melting. There is no easy way for the world to combat these growing threats but a consensus for action among all politicians in the United States and among US allies would go at least some of the way towards finding solutions. Unfortunately, there are so many other threats and dangers, such as the war between the US and Iran, the war between Russia and Ukraine and the negative effects they are having on the world economy that the dramatic warning of AI’s capacity to ruin all our lives has not really had the impact on public opinion it deserves. When AI was first developed the focus initially was on the good it would do for humanity, particularly in medical research. But now, because the big players in developing AI, such as Anthropic, OpenAI, Nvidia, Microsoft and Google, have made such rapid advances it seems it is almost too late to stop the technological momentum. Every government in the western world now has AI experts as part of its administration. But do they have sufficient influence to bring some common sense into this new technological era? The trouble is, potential adversaries of the United States are pursuing the same dream of producing AI-controlled weapons that will, like the armed drone today, transform conflicts of the future, with robots replacing humans. China, a big-power rival of the United States, has recently demonstrated its success in producing robots that can run faster than any human being. The omens for persuading the world to step back from developing advanced super-intelligent AI systems that will replace humans – advocated last week by Senator Bernie Sanders - are not good. The world has failed to take adequate measures to stop global warming. Whatever steps are taken in the future will only help to reduce the impact of climate change on our lives, they won’t be able to stop the damage already done. It could be the same with AI. Unless measures are taken to forge an international agreement on limiting the potential threat of AI, the momentum will just carry one. Then, the warning of a threat to the human race might just be facing us all in the next decade or so.

Iran is literally asking for trouble

For reasons that only the generals of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps can explain, Iran has taken it into its head to start firing ballistic missiles at US warships. In response, US Central Command, ready round-the-clock for retaliatory strikes, struck back at five Iranian oil tankers, putting them out of action. This may make Iran think again but somehow I doubt it. If the IRGC generals could actually hit a US warship and cause damage and casualties that would be a big feather in their cap and give them motivation to try again. Every missile fired at an American ship has been brought down, and it goes without saying that if the IRGC did manage to get a missile through the defences, that would be a huge blow to the US military. Donald Trump would demand huge revenge. Trump has said this is not a war at the moment. But any damage to a US warship and the gloves would be off. The IRGC generals know this but they seem to believe that it's still worth having a go. Trump has said the confrontation is likely to continue until after the American midterm elections on November 3. In other words, these strikes and counter-strikes are going to continue until then, with Iran hoping that the midterm elections will go badly for the Republicans, and therefore badly for Trump. Sounds like a war to me.

Violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinian communities is appalling

Ed Milliband, the foreign secretary, has been condemned by Israel for accusing Jewish settlers of ethnic cleansing in their attempt to drive out Palestinian communities from their homes on the West Bank. The only experience I have had of witnessing ethnic cleansing was during the war in Bosnia when all three ethnic communities, the Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims committed atrocities in efforts to expel ethnic groupings not matched with theirs. It was frightening, brutal and criminal, and up to 100,000 people were murdered, at least 65 per cent of them Muslims, and tens of thousands of women and girls were raped, again, mostly Muslims, over a period of three years from 1992 to 1995. This was ethnic cleansing on a vast scale, although not by comparison with the atrocities caused by the Nazis in the Second World War. What we have on the West Bank is an attempt by far right Jewish settlers to brutalise the local Palestinians out of their homes to make way for more settlements and to extend the territory of Israel itself. For the Palestinians driven from their homes and olive groves, it must seem like ethnic cleasing. Nevertheless, one should always be cautious about using phrases which have such terrifyingly apocalyptic historical connotations. Comparing the excessive violence shown by the Jewish settlers to the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and, more significantly, to Nazi Germany, is, therefore, unwise, inaccurate and dangerous. That does not undermine the argument, however, that what is going on in the West Bank every day is wrong and hateful and should be condemned by everyone, including and especially by the Israeli government.

Trump's envoys thank Putin for wonderful memories

Clearly Putin laid out the red carpet for his two American visitors. So enthused were Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner that they told the wqorld they left Moscow with wonderful memories. Presumably they were talking about the exceptional food and drink, the plushness of their hotel bedrooms and the charming people they spoke to during their 24-hour visit. Never mind whether they actually achieved any breakthrough over ending the war in Ukraine - no sign of that. In fact, it seemed the only message they came away with was Putin's pronouncement that Russia was winning the war and wanted to finish it off. Putin's analysis of the war doesn't really bear any serious scrutiny. The ground element of the war has been in a stalemate for as long as one can remember. The drones and missiles keep flying, but Ukraine has caused so much damage to targets, especially Russia's navy, inside Russia, that most observers would say Kyiv has achieved more than Moscow and has more leverage than Putin has to persuade Witkoff and Kushner that actually Ukraine is winning the war. The Ukrainian military certainly hasn't lost it. But perhaps during his three or four hour chat with the two US envoys, Putin showed them a map of Ukraine to prove his claim that the Russians are marching on to victory. Neither envoy has a military background but they will have been briefed before they flew to Moscow that the amount of territory seized by Russia in the last year has amounted to a few dozen square kilometres. Nothing to write home about. Still, Witkoff and Kushner had a wonderful time in Moscow. Perhaps they will also have a wonderful memory of their visit to Kyiv today.

Putin orders weekend ceasefire

Putin has made a smart move by announcing a ceasefire while Trump's two envoys are around to talk about ending the war in Ukraine. Obviously it makes practical sense because the two message-carriers, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, are due in Kyiv tomorrow and it would be bit of a slap in Trump's face if missiles started landing in the Ukrainian capital while they are chatting to Zelensky. On the other hand, Putin could have ordered a missile strike elsewhere in Ukraine to remind Washington that he can do that whenever he likes. However, he chose the sensible option because he wants to demonstrate that he is in control and if he orders a ceasefire then the Russian military get a couple of days off. Zelensky would be wise to stop attacks on Russia for the weekend, so everyone gets a breather, and Witkoff and Kushner can gop about their business without having to pop into a bunker every half an hour. If these latest talks fail to deliver anything, then I think all bets are off and the war will rage on through the coming winter and another year will go by.

Trump's envoys off to Moscow

Whenever Donald Trump's two travelling envoys, Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner, go off to see Putin there is a sudden revival of optimism that perhaps this time the Russian president really will want to talk peace and not carry on destroying Ukraine. But can there really be an hope that the visit planned for tomorrow will make any difference? Putin says he likes having these two around. But that may mean he doesn't mind their vists because he is so good at winding them round his finger, as it were. He knows what he wants and he knows that the two envoys know what he wants. So there is little room for manouevre. Putin will talk about territory. He'll say he wants the whole of the Donbas region before he will negotiate seriously, and the two envoys will come away from Moscow with this meassage and pass it on to Zelensky who they are going to see on Sunday. But Zelensky has heard this message a million times. So it will make no difference. Swings and roundabouts.

Putin promises to continue helping Iran against the US

Puitn has reminded the world and in particular the United States that he is helping Iran to fight the Americans. Them about three minutes later, during a press conference, he said he remained "comfortable" with having visits from Trump's two main envoys, Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner, to talk about the war in Ukraine and possible peace negoatiations. He can't really have it both ways. If he's so happy with Trump's envoys why does he then tell everyone that he is helping Iran which is right now giving Trump more grief than anything else. Well, the answer is that this is the way Putin plays the game. He likes to keep all his options open and in play. He is obviously not interested in a peace deal with Zelensky. I don't think he will ever agree to meet him face to face. But he still wants to have the occasional visit from Witkoff and Kushner to sort of keep the ball rolling on a negotiated end to the war. It's play-acting, but it serves Putin well.

The Pentagon is in a permanent state of topsy-turvyness

There is about as much unity in the Pentagon right now as there is in the Royal Family in Britain. Many officials are either not talking to each other or when they do talk, they shout. The latest victim of this idiotic state of affairs is Dan Driscoll, the now former but extremely capable US Army secretary, the top civilian job in this service. He had just had enough of bashing his head against the brick wall, while trying to persuade Pete Hegseth, the ex-Fox News US War Secretary, to approve his plan to rebuild the army, make it more streamlined and better eqipped, not with tanks and heavy artillery but the latest high-tech stuff, such as drones, bought off the shelf. It all seemed eminently sensible the way wars are now being prosecuted. But Hegseth is obsessed with developing a warrior force that doesn't have women in it or anyone else who isn't a full-grown male, sure of his masculinity and sexuality. Whole layers of experienced army officers have been fired, including the top dog, General Randy George. He was kicked out with no notice and he has yet to be replaced. Tp say that the top echelons of the army, and the other services, are walking on eggshells gives a pretty good idea of the fear and anxiety that Hegseth has caused. Hegseth may be His Master's Voice, but he is causing such outrage in the higher ranks, it's no wonder everyone is fearful of their jobs. Dan Driscoll will be sorely missed. There was a time when his name was being put forward as the next war/defence secretary. Not surprising, perhaps, that Hegseth did everything he could to get rid of him.

Pentagon planning warfare at the speed of light

The drones were seen flying low near the Rio Grande Valley in Texas last week when the Locust shot them from the sky. It was the first time the US Army had used its new laser weapon in anger, destroying targets it claimed were flying in support of Mexican drug cartels. While previously the idea of laser beams replacing surface-to-air missile interceptors was considered to be a science fiction fantasy, laser warfare is becoming a reality. The Pentagon is spending about $1 billion this year on developing a variety of “directed-energy” systems, and several are already operational after more than two decades of research. The relatively low cost of laser defences is the driving factor. The Locust, whose name stands for “Low-Cost UAV Simulation Testing,” was recently sent to Texas to arm the 8,000-strong, Joint Task Force Southern Border, with a “Multipurpose High Energy Laser.” Built by AeroVironment, a defence company based in Arlington, Virginia, the vehicle-mounted weapon is capable of firing 20-kilowatt beams that can physically burn through targets. “Neutralising threats at the speed of light” is how AeroVironment promotes the weapon in a video on its website, showing animated quadcopters tumbling from the sky. The military did not reveal details about its use last week, or whether the drones were shot down over American or Mexican territory. But it stated that the unmanned aircraft had presented “a physical threat” to US military and US Customs and Border Protection personnel. The US Marine Corps has acquired the same mobile Locust system for operational use against small drones, and it has also been mounted on the aircraft carrier, USS George HW Bush, which conducted a successful sea test in October last year. “Using directed-energy weapons, such as this, is part of the future of warfare, and it’s better than us firing a $2 million missile at a [cheap] drone,” a Pentagon official said. Dozens of countries are trying to develop similar directed-energy weapons. The UK has a laser weapon called DragonFire which could be on Royal Navy warships by 2027. China has deployed a truck-mounted laser system and has also put laser weapons on amphibious warships. Russia has a portable anti-drone laser weapon which has been tested in combat conditions. Israel’s 100-kilowatt Iron Beam laser weapon is known to have shot down drones launched by Hezbollah in Lebanon during the current crisis in the Middle East.For the Pentagon, which has used a large proportion of its most expensive weapon systems in the war with Iran, in particular its stocks of anti-missile and anti-drone interceptors, the availability of directed energy weapons has become a priority. Instead of shooting down a $30,000 long-range armed drone with a multi-million-dollar, top-end interceptor like the army’s Patriot system or the navy’s Standard SM-3 missile, one shot from a laser weapon could theoretically cost a few dollars. In its overview of the last defence budget, the Department of War admitted that “peer adversaries” had succeeded in outpacing the US “kinetic weapon magazine depth and production capability with UAS [unmanned aerial systems], missiles, and advanced sensors”. “As threat vectors evolve, directed energy technologies redefine defence, delivering scalable precision and unmatched cost efficiency to secure the battlespace of tomorrow,” the Pentagon said. As well as testing the high-power Locust, the US Navy is already equipping its Arleigh Burke-class destroyers with ODIN (optical dazzling interdictor) and HELIOS (high-energy laser with integrated optical dazzler and surveillance) low-energy weapons, which are designed to blind the sensors and cameras of a drone rather than destroying it. But the ambition is for more power - of a kind that could quickly take out a cruise missile, a large drone or anti-ship missile. The Pentagon’s SCADE CTA (scaled directed energy critical technology areas) programme is aiming to develop a laser of 150 to 500 kilowatts in strength. Admiral Daryl Caudle, US Chief of Naval Operations, said recently he envisaged a megawatt-sized (1,000 kilowatts) laser weapon for the new Trump-class warships announced by the president in December last year. “I don’t think a one-megawatt laser is beyond what should be on that battery,” he said, referring to the battleships. In May, Trump himself posted an AI-generated image of a warship painted with a US flag lasering a drone with an Iranian flag, with the caption: “Lasers: Bing, Bing, GONE!!!” - although there is no such confirmed use of the technology this year. The potential for powerful laser beams to burn through fast-moving targets also poses new challenges, however, including how that power can be focussed and sustained. “One big problem is that weather patterns, such as fog and mist, can affect the tracking and the laser accuracy, and there’s nothing you can do about that,” said Mark Cancian, a former colonel who served three decades in the US Marine Corps and is a senior adviser to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “It’s basic physics. Fog and mist and dust can physically interfere with the beam. Lasers are seen as the long-term solution for counter-drone warfare because the price per shot is so low, compared with the huge cost of the systems we currently use to shoot them down. But it has been difficult to operationalise,” he said. “The other challenge is power. The army has a mobile power system but the navy would face a greater demand for power to keep the laser stable over a longer period,” Cancian said. “It’s harder to have an effective laser on a ship because it’s more often the case that the navy would be dealing with a larger missile which means they have to track over an extended time. The laser beam has to be spot on for a long time, whereas the army, for example, might be tracking a quadcopter which can be taken down quickly [like the three drug cartel drones],” he said. Trump is not the first president to enthuse about laser technology. In his famous “Star Wars” speech on March 23, 1983, President Ronald Reagan appealed to America’s scientists to come up with an anti-missile shield in space and on the ground to protect the US from a Soviet nuclear attack. His vision was to have exotic systems, including X-ray and chemical lasers and neutral particle beams positioned on space platforms, to target and burn up incoming nuclear warheads. Ultimately that vision was unaffordable. Trump breathed new life into Reagan’s dream, however, when he ordered the Pentagon to devise a “Golden Dome” missile shield over the US, including the the idea of space-based interceptors. Cost estimates of the Golden Dome have varied from $185 billion over ten years, according to the Pentagon, to $1 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

US and Iran strike back

A month of relative quiet and now it's back to tit-for-tat strikes. Clearly US Central Command got wind of a plot by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to lay mines in the Strait of Hormuz, so preemptive action was taken and the suspected site for the minelaying was blasted. Then Iran retaliated with strikes on Jordan and the UAE. This is the type of war which can go on for ever. It also shows that the IRGC is going to continue threatening the strait but the military leaders will have learned one lesson. Whenever they plan an attack, the US gets to hear of it. Nothing can be secret. It means it's almost impossible to plan any sort of attack without the US listening in. That should be a considerable deterrent. Yet the IRGC goes ahead with its plans anyway. This demonstrates, not for the first time, that the IRGC is never going to give up, whatever damage is done to Iran's economy through the naval blockade and sanctions. What is perhaps strange is that the US has not focused all its military action on the IRGC itself. I have no idea how many IRGC personnel have been killed in the bombing raids. But it's clear this military organisation feels it can just carry on threatening the strait because it remains and will always remain the best leverage it has against the US.

What is Putin going to do next?

It looks as if Putin is preparing to throw everything - bar nuclear - at Kyiv's energy plants to make sure the winter is a terrible dark experience for the Ukrainian people. There is probably very little Zelensky and the military can do about it. Putin is more desperate than ever because after nearly five years of war against Ukraine, he hasn't got much to show for it. Western experts are warning that in his frustration he might take on a Nato country and launch some form of incursion or mini-offensive to punish the West for backing Ukraine. But if he were to do that, Putin would be in even more trouble. He can't really believe that taking on Nato will improve his situation. So, I think Putin's next move will be to step up attacks on Ukraine by a magnitude, and maybe even send in more troops to restart the ground campaign which has stalemated. What Putin won't do is think about doing a deal with Ukraine. So, any efforts by the US or Europe to fashion some sort of negotiating stance is going to fail. Putin is not interested in peace with Ukraine. He is still determined to see Ukraine, or at least the Zelensky government, collapse. Zelensky has had huge problems, with the continuing evidence of corruption and the dramatic upheavals at the top of his government, after the dismissal of the popular defence minister. He will need to reunite his government and prepare for a tough few months before winter arrives. All the threats from Moscow about attacking Britain for backing Ukraine are just that - threats. Putin is right now in a very weak position and can't afford any more aggressive moves, especially against the Nato alliance.

Will the Venezuelan people benefit from this huge oil deal with the US?

The US is going to have its hands on 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil in a huge deal between Caracas and Washington that will bring private American investment into the earthquake-hit country. Ostensibly, this will be good news for the poor country which has been ravaged by corruption and super-corrupt leadership for so long. Ex-President Nicolas Maduro may be in a US jail awaiting trial on drug-trafficking charges. But he left behind the remnants of his power base in charge. The deal has been done with the interim president, Delcy Rodriguez. But will this really be a massive optimism boost for the whole country which is going to suffer from the earthquake damage for years to come? And will all the money be invested in improving the lives of the people or will it get salted away into private bank accounts? It is difficult to predict because the leadership during the Maduro era was awash with corruption. Is Delcy Rodriguez who was Maduro's vice president and therefore must have known what was going on all those years, now going to be the country's saviour? Trump decided that she was a woman he could do business with and this is why we now have this massive oil deal which will provide the US with all the oil reserves it feels it needs for the future. Is there any small print in the deal which offers guarantees that the quid pro quo for the oil will be a much-improved economy in Venezuela and a better standard of living for its people? The people who negotiated the deal were Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, and Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary. A very odd combination unless there is some sort of security guarantee included which we don't know about. The Venezuela story still has an unknown end.

Trump will never be able to declare victory in Iran

The first six months of the war with Iran have been a sombre lesson for the United States and for its commander-in-chief. President Trump’s Operation Epic Fury has failed to bring down the regime in Tehran because the White House and military planners underestimated their enemy. After months of bombing destruction, a naval blockade and unprecedented economic sanctions, the mullahs and generals in Iran have adapted their warfare response to undermine and eventually thwart America’s vast superiority in firepower. “Iran’s strongest strategy was not to win a conventional military contest against the United States or Israel. It was to make the war harder to contain,” Neda Bolourchi, a national security analyst, concluded in an assessment of the conflict for the prestigious Modern War Institute at West Point in New York state. “Persian Gulf capitals, shipping insurers, energy markets, fertiliser markets, data centres, US allies and domestic political audiences all became part of the battlefield,” she wrote. The US military planners knew there was a risk Iran would try to close the Strait of Hormuz as one of its main leverages against the armada of warships and missiles assembled by Central Command in the region. However, the aim of Operation Epic Fury was to cause such damage to Iran’s military infrastructure that one of two consequences would follow: the collapse of the regime or a peace deal weighted heavily in favour of Trump’s demands for an end to the nuclear programme, a huge reduction in Iran’s ballistic missile inventory, and a pledge by Tehran to stop funding its proxy militia, including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthis in Yemen. “As in Vietnam, we simply did not understand our enemy in Iran. The assumption that the leadership that succeeded Ayatollah Ali Khomeini would fold like an old tent proved fundamentally wrong,” a former senior Pentagon official said. “Strategy matters. We apparently had no Plan B if the initial air campaign failed to produce the desired results,” the former official said. “There are numerous options we could have put in place before going to war, such as a blockade [imposed more than a month after Operation Epic Fury began], support for resistance groups, or ground-force operations.,” he said. “We are also at the wrong end of the cost equation. We are defending ourselves with weapons costing an order-of-magnitude or more than those they intercept [a Patriot interceptor missile costs $3.9 million as opposed to an Iranian Shahed-136 drone at between $20,000 and $50,000} . Nor can we produce them at scale. And our national deficit just hit $40 trillion. We are pricing ourselves out of the market,” he said. The ground-troops option was never realistically on the cards because of America’s aversion to battlefield casualties. The decision to go for air and naval power, rather than boots on the ground, was to avoid American fatalities, although 18 US personnel have been killed in Iranian retaliatory strikes. Central Command still sent 2,200 marines and later more than 2,000 paratroopers from 82nd Airborne Division to the Gulf, in addition to the 50,000 troops already in the region.. All of them have been kicking their heels ever since. Trump’s threats to invade Kharg Island, which manages up to 90 per cent of Iran’s crude oil exports, never materialised into action by the marines or paratroopers, whose numbers were insufficient for even a short-term ground operation. The biggest lesson for the US is one that should have been learned a long time ago: that air power alone, even on the scale the American military can provide, rarely leads to a long-lasting and satisfactory political outcome. If the confrontation with Iran escalates into a new round of US military strikes, that basic lesson will still be valid which means Trump will never be able to declare victory. ends

Looking back at the Iran war with frustration

Donald Trump had every expectation that a mighty show of American firepower from the air and from the sea would make Iran tremble and plead for mercy. He was wrong. The one thing learned is that the regime in Tehran has an infinite capacity to absorb pain and survive in power. There seems to be no likelihood that this situation will change now or ever. The first six months of the confrontation have proved that the Tehran regime is so intent on staying in power, never mind the consequences for the 90 million Iranian people, that it doesn't seem to matter what Trump throws at them, whether it be bombs and missiles or economic sanctions. Iran also knows that it has China's back, and Russia's. So with these two big beasts on their side, the Iranian generals who are largely in charge, will battle on. This is seriously bad news for Trump who has tried everything and ultimately has failed to get the regime in Tehran to bow down to his demands. There would seem to be no prospects for any kind of peace settlement. So the confrontation, whether military or not, will just keep going. Perhaps for years. In other words, beyond Trump's presidency into the next one, whoever succeeds him.

China won't help Trump's economic war against Iran

Donald Trump needs China to play ball if his economic D-Day operation against Iran is going to work and drive the Tehran regime to the negotiating table. China is Iran's biggest trading partner, buying a huge proportion of Iranian oil. But China is not going to play ball. China never plays ball unless it's in its interest. I assume Trump was warned about this before he got his Treasury Secretary to announce the new sanctions against Iran and ordered all of Iran's trading partners to obey the new economic measures. China, I'm sure, will continue to trade with Iran. Other countries, too, will also risk Trump's sanctions and back Iran. So, like the military campaign, the economic campaign is not going to make such a difference if China and others just carry on as usual. Trade wars and tit-for-tat trade wars invariably make things worse, not better. Trump is due to see the Chinese leader, Xi Zinping, next month, and he won't want to screw that up before he even gets to Beijing. So D-Day might be a flop, although Scott Bessent, Treasury Secretary, seems pretty confident it will bring the mullahs and generals to their knees. But after years of international sanctions, Iran has learned how to get round them, just as North Korea has done all these years.

Why tell the world the UK is giving missile blueprints to Ukraine?

Why on earth has Andy Burnham, newish UK prime minister, announced to the world that he has approved giving missile blueprints to Ukraine so that Kyiv can make its own version of the weapon? Sure, it's good to remind Vladimir Putin that the West is on Ukraine's side. But something which should have been kept secret has been blurted out like it's intended as a slap in the face for the Kremlin. Good on yer, some might say. But the most important responsibility for Burnham is to keep this country safe, not Ukraine's, and telling Putin that the UK is handing classified blueprints to Kyiv seems to me to be foolish at the very least. Putin is already targeting Britain with cyber warfare, close-in submarines and warships. Why invite mnore aggression from Moscow? The blueprints are for components of the UK's Storm Shadow cruise missile which was jointly developed with the French who call it Scalp Mrk 2. It's a pretty fancy piece of kit which has been used by Ukraine since 2023 anbd is now regularly fired at targets inside Russia. The plan is for Kyiv to have its own factory churning out Storm Shadow/Scalps. But why the huge publicity? The first thing Russia will do is start hitting the factory. There are occasions when secrecy is justified. This is one of them.

US and Iran should do a deal

It's time for Washington and Tehran to stop threatening each other with military and economic action. Everyone in the world is fed up with the bickering and warnings and blackmail. It's all about ego and power abd status and money. Enough! Negotiators should get together and talk talk talk until a deal is done. The way things are going, the military bit of the war is going to start all over again and will make a deal that much more difficult. There is stillhuge US firepower in the region and Donald Trump might just have another bash but we know for sure that Iran will respond in kind by attacking US bases in the region and targeting energy plants in the Gulf. All pointless destruction for no reason other than to prove to Trump that the new regime in Tehran is not going to back down. Basically, the war was avoidable. There was a kind of deal on the table but Trump ignored it. Now he is stuck in an unholy mess and talking of an economic D-Day against Iran. The poor Iranian people, none of whom want this war to continue ruining their lives, will suffer even more. But they have leaders, both clerical and military, who don't care a fig for their personal suffering. All they want is to survive as a regime and mastermind hatred towards the US and the West. It really is time for all this hatred and revenge to be brought to a close. But I fear the presence of Trump in the White House and the bullies of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Tehran are going to make a deal impossible. This is a catastrophe for the world.

Prince Harry and Prince William are like non-brothers

Harry and Meghan are hoping that their return to Britain to live and educate their children will bring them back into the royal family fold. But there is one huge obstacle in the way. Harry apparently hasn't spoken to his brother, William, for years. William is so angry with his brother for breaching every royal protocol going that he has cut himself off from his exiled sibling. Once Harry is back, will William make any effort to reunite with his brother or will he cold-shoulder him and Meghan for ever? King Charles will probably try to intervene between his two sons to stop this huge divide, but the Prince of Wales is his own man and he might fight against his father's efforts. Also, Katherine and Meghan cannot endure each other, judging by what has happened in the past between the two sisters-in-law. Meghan and Kate are totally different human beings and I think it's fair to say that while Kate is loved by the public, Meghan is not. This is going to make life very difficult for both Harry and Meghan when they set up home in the countryside outside London, probably near where Charles has his beloved home in Gloucestershire. Could they even be sort of neighbours? But even if their change in geography makes it possible for the King to get to know his two grandchildren - the son and daughter of Harry and Meghan - it looks highly unlikely that Prince William and Kate will be making trips to the H and M new home for fun get-togethers. I fear it's all too late. There's too much animosity between the two brothers.

Prince Harry has to pay his share of legal damages

The troubles for Prince Harry just keep on coming. Having lost his case against Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Daily Mail, failing to impress the judge that the newspaper had used criminal and devious ways to breach his private life and that of his family, he now has to pay his share of more than £9 million in legal costs. Harry is a wealthy man but this will be a huge blow to his finances, just when he is in the process of buying or renting a mansion somewhere in the countryside back in England while apparently continuing to pay for his and Meghan's posh estate in California and their holiday home in Portugal. Harry was left a lot of money by his mother, Princess Diana, and by his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth, so his bank balance is not exactly empty. Nevertheless, with no regular income from employment, apart from Meghan's housewifery television programmes, things could get a little tight for the couple. Perhaps he hopes that by moving to England, King Charles will give him a bob or two to help him along. I somehow doubt it.

Harry and Meghan are coming home

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

Trump's threat to bomb Oman is bonkers

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

Putin warns Britain

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

Jared Kushner, Trump's everywhere envoy

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

Has Trump lost his global clout?

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

Why Trump is on Iran's hitlist

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

Europe having to get used to extreme heat

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

Secret Service caters for Donald Trump

Donald Trump is a big guy, so being shuffled into a catering container for his switch to another plane for a getaway from Ankara the other week must have seemed somewhat undignified. But he was under orders from the Secret Service. They wanted him to leave the Nato summit in Ankara by a method that at all costs evaded the possible threat of an Iranian missile hitting his normal plane, Air Force One. Of course it's the responsibility of the president's Secret Service detail to decide what's best for him, but it was certainly unusual for the president of the United States to be exited by subterfuge from a Nato country to return home. But this is the world we live in, or to be more precise, this is the world western leaders have to face when there are malign states intent on targeting them. It is true, of course, that Iran's own leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed on the first day of the US/Israel war which began on February 28th, and targeting Trump in revenge is something which the US intelligence services have been aware of since that decapitation strike. It's another reason why any peace deal between the US and Iran is highly unlikely while Trump is in the White House. Trump's "catering" experience at Ankara airpoprt will go down in history as one of the more quixotic evacuation procedures used to keep the president safe.

Is Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei in charge after all?

Despite facial disfigurements and other injuries to his body and his hideaway never-seen existence, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei who took over as Iran's supreme leader when his father was killed on the first day of the US/Israel war with Iran, seems actually to be in charge and making decisions which others are obeying. He seems to have taken the hardest-possible line on doing any sort of deal with the US and appears determined to put his stamp on the future of Iran. While the military in the shape of the commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, are the visible leaders of the country, the disabled supreme leader is still issuing orders. How it is being done is difficult to guage but clearly the courier system he is suspected of using from his command bunker is working effectively. Mojtaba, I am sure, has one driving motivation for taking the toughest line with the US. He blames Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, for the assassination of his father, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He no doubt wants revenge and the best way, I giess, is for him to put so much pressure on Trump by hanging on to the Strait of Hormuz, that the US will just give up. Whatever happens in the next few weeks, Iran's control of the strait is not going to be conceded in any future deal, if there is ever a deal. Mojtaba may have vanished into his bunker somewhere, but he is alive and dictating the terms for what he will see as Trump's surrender.

Will Venezuela be Trump's only triumph?

The way things are going wrong for Trump in Iran, Gaza and Ukraine, it may turn out that when he leaves office in January 2029 he will have only one foreign success story to his name and for his legacy. Mind you, even the Venezuela venture hasn't exactly worked out well for the people. American Delta Force commandos swept in by heliopter in the dead of night and captured the dreadful President Nicolas Maduro and his wife in their pyjamas and took them back to the US for trial on drugs charges. But has that meant a transformation for the Venezuelan people, with oil money back in the treasury coffers to be spent on housing and social welfare and better living standards? Definitely not. And quite what the arrangement now is between Washington and Caracas over how the country is to be run remains somewhat cloudy. Anyway, the whizzo military operation to seize Maduro was without question a coup for Trump. But that's all he has to boast about. Everything else has gone wrong. Gaza is still in a mess with Israel and Hamas locked in anger and retribution, Iran is a hopeless case with no end in sight to an intractable impasse over the Strait of Hormuz and everything else, and the war in Ukraine is a for-ever conflict. Not much to write home about for a president who vowed to end all wars.

Netanyahu says no to Trump's Hamas disarmament plan

It has taken him more than a week but now Benjamin Netanyahu has come out and said he rejects the Hamas disarmament peace plan announced with such fanfare by Donald Trump. Well, of course he has. Netanyahu will never agree to any plan which stipulates that Israeli troops must withdraw from Gaza in a phased programme while Hamas throws a few weapons on a pile. The Trump plan is doomed. Hamas agreed to disarm but only on the understanding that Israel would totally withdraw from Gaza. But Netanyahu's future as prime minister rests on him being able to claim victory over Hamas which, in his mind, means the terror organisation must be seen to be disarmed of all weaponry BEFORE he orders any of the Israel Defence Forces to start leaving the Gaza Strip. Currently the IDF controls and occupies more than half of the territory. Now, of course, this will give Hamas the excuse to say to Trump, 'sorry, we're not going to disarm while the IDF refuses to leave Gaza'. Bang goes Trump's dream. It may be a ploy by Netanyahu to stir things up and force Hamas to adopt a different approach. But it seems more likely that between now and the elections in Israel in October, Netanyau is not going to give an inch on Gaza or Hamas.

Iran is going to set new rules for the Strait of Hormuz reopening

It might seem as if a deal between Iran and Oman over the management and administration of the Strait of Hormuz is going to lead to the instant reopening of the chokepoint and a return to the flow of shipping to pre-Iran-war levels. No such luck. Tehran has a much broader concept in mind which will become clear very soon. To further humiliate President Trump, it looks like the Iranian negotiators want the reopening of the strait to be directly linked to every word in the now-maligned Memorandaum of Understanding signed by the US and Iran om June 17. That would mean the US agreeing to lift the naval blockade, allow full exporting of Iranian oil and the unfreezing of financial assets. Iran believes it to be in the ascendancy over the US, so the imminent Iran/Oman arrangement which is bound to include a facility for charging shipping companies for services rendered, will be dependent on a much broader deal with the US, before the strait is fully reopened. This will be the worst outcome for Trump and a huge victory for Tehran. How on earth did it get to this point?

Ending Ukraine war was going to be Trump's legacy

Famously, Donald Trump promised to end the war in Ukraine within twenty-fours of taking office for the second time. Now, no one even suggests in Washington that the US president is even thinking about Russia and Ukraine, let alone banging heads together and getting a deal. Trump is totally focused on Iran and Hamas, and seems to have forgotten his pledge about the war in Ukraine. It's a war that has no end. Ukraine was doing quite well and is now almost daily hitting targets inside Russia, especially oil facilities of every kind to try and reduce the amount of revenue for Moscow to spend on the war. But Ukraine is running out of anti-defence missiles. So Russia is helping itself and striking Kyiv and other towns whenever it likes, killing Ukrainians. The US is also running out of Patriot interceptors, so Zelensky is not going to get any more from Trump, and will have to rely on Europe for some form of missile interceptors. But Europe doesn't have an abundance of these defensive weapons either. So poor Kyiv is going to suffer hits every night without the means to protect citizens. So, the war in Ukraine is not going to end soon. In fact, by the time Trump leaves office in January 2029, the war will still be going on, I predict, and the next president will have the job of trying to get negotiations going. One thing he won't promise is to end the war within twnety-four hours of taking office.

Iran and Oman will do a deal never mind Donald Trump

It doesn't seem to matter any more what Donald Trump says or threatens, the war is going to stop between the US and Iran with the following result: the Strait of Hormuz will be under the control of Iran on the north side and Oman on the south side and both will charge shipping companies "service fees", the half-ton of 60-per-cent-enriched uranium will remain in Iran, buried for the moment under piles of crumbled concrete and earth, the new regime in Tehran will survive and become evem more anti-US and anti-Israel and will continue to threaten the whole region, and Iran's ballistic missile production will keep going. Therefore, nothing, apart from a huge amount of damage to Iran's weapons infrastructure, navy and air defence systems, will have been achieved to ensure any form of lasting peace. Iran will remain the biggest threat to the Middle East and will claim a sort of victory over the US. It's difficult to see how Trump can engineer any other conclusion to this disastrous war.

Is Trump going to allow Iran to control the Strait of Hormuz?

The only talks gpoing on about Iran are the ones between Tehran and Oman about joint administration of the Strait of Hormuz. The focus is on Iran charging a service fee for ships entering the Gulf waterway through the Strait, and Oman charging a similar service fee for ships leaving the Gulf. It looks like Trump had this in mind when he called off the new round of bombing and said there was a deal in the offing. How dramatically things have changed. Not that long ago, Trump and Marco Rubio, his secretary of state and national security adviser, said the only way ahead was for the Strait to be totally opened and free of any kind of fee or toll. This was, after all, the situation before the war was started by the US and Israel. Now, five months later, the Iranians apoear to be on the brink of getting something which is both counter to international maritime law and to the wishes of the White House and every shipping company which uses the Gulf waterway. What an extraordinary and perilous change in circumstances. It's victory for Iran, however it is put by American officials. Now we'll have the Houthis in Yemen saying they want control of the strait linking the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, and China will be making demands about the Taiwan Strait etc etc. This is definitely the way things are going re Iran because Trump is so frustrated by the way the war has hit him back in the face that he wants an end to it whatever the deal looks like. It's seriously bad news. However, the only alternative is war and more war.

Trump has laid bare the limits of superpowerdom

Iran has been a much much tougher nut to crack than Iraq.The fact that Donald Trump has called off his latest planned mass aistrikes on Iran's power plants and bridges is not a sign of strength on his part but a confession of weakness. He can't defeat Iran or bring its rulers to their knees. The Tehran regime is sinply not going to back down from its absolute red line which is that in future and for eternity the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is going to control the Strait of Hormuz, with or without sharing financial proceeds with Oman across the other side of the chokepoint. Trump said he stopped the strikes because Saudi Arabia and Qatar and Iran asked him to, in return for an imminent, almost-ready settlement deal. Whether Iran put in a call, we don't know. Iran denies it. And Iran has also denied that talks with the US are to renew this afternoon. In fact, the only talks going on have been between Iran and Oman, sorting out who gets what re the Strait of Hormuz to keep it open by way of charging every ship a fee for safe passage. So, there is no imminent deal to end the war. In fact, Iranian rulers, according to reports, have indicated to Trump that if he launches further strikes, they will just respond with widespread missile hits on energy plants across the Gulf region. In other words, Iran has called Trump's bluff. This mighty superpower has been found wanting. It's running out of missiles, both offensive and defensive ones, abd even if there was an inexaustible supply, which there isn't, the US would still not be able to defeat Iran which is a huge country run by people who enjoy war. This is a moment of true disaster for the US and for the US military. China will be grinning all the way to its arms factories.

Trump calls off the new bombing raids

Keeping up with Donald Trump is like running a marathon where the final tape changes location every few minutes. You never know in which direction to go. Yesterday, Trump was definitely in bombing mood and mode. Today, he has had a change of mind. Something happened overnight which made him think maybe Iran would be sensible after all. I don't believe it, the sensible bit, but obviously the leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps read the runes and rang someone to plead for peace. Well, mot peace, but renewed peace talks. Whether anything comes of it we will have to see. But this brinkmanship diplomacy does work sometimes. Maybe the IRGC, basically the rules of Iran, believe it when Trump warned, as he does, that he was planning to destroy every energy plant and bridge and reduce Iran to a pile of rubble. Anyway, a lot of leaders took fright, not just the Iranian ones. Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, rang Trump and urged caution. Please, no escalation, he asked. Others, probably the Pakistanis, Qataris etc, also made phone calls. Trump is suggesting that the new talks will lead, or will have to lead, to the total unhindered reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and no nukes. And he wants the agreement to be rapidly concluded. It's fingers-crossed time for everyone, especially for Trump.

Trump poised for more bombing

There has been a relatively quiet period for a few days but all the signs and signals in Washington are that Donald Trump wants to return to bombing Iran big time. He has been promising to knock out all of Iran's bridges and power plants and it might be on the cards for this coming week. Many of his advisers will be cautioning against it. For a start, it will be devastating for the Iranian people whom he promised to protect and help after the savage regime killed thousands of protesters in the streets of Iran's cities. But also, what will Iran's response be? It will inflame the whole of the Middle East. But Trump is getting more frustrated every hour as he sees the regime in Tehran staying resilient and unmoving. Perhaps Trump hopes that by warning of a massive bombardment in the comping days, the Iranian generals and mullahs will give in and start negotiating again.But if they don't and the bombing starts, no one, especially, Trump, will be able to predict the consequences.

Will Hamas really disarm?

No one imagined that Hamas would voluntarily hand over its weapons and turn to politics and peace in the Gaza Strip. Even when President Trump announced his Board of Peace and the 20 stages towards a settlement to end the war with Israel, the sticking point, every analyst insisted, would be the disarmament of an organisation designated a terrorist group by the United States, Britain, the European Union, Australia and many other nations. Now, after months of negotiations, involving Trump’s two Middle East envoys, and mediators, Egypt, Qatar and Turkey, carried out without any fanfare, the seemingly impossible has been achieved. In what could be on one his most auspicious Truth Social posts, Trump announced that Hamas had finally agreed to disarm. Nothing in the Middle East is as simple as that. There are conditions which at this point might also appear to be unresolvable. For example, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) will have to withdraw totally from their current occupation of around 53 per cent of Gaza. The announcement by Trump envisions a phased and concurrent disarmament and troop-withdrawal process. Under its new leader, Khalil al Hayya, appointed less than two weeks ago and with a reputation as a tough negotiator, it’s unlikely that Hamas will cooperate unless Israeli troops withdraw as per the agreement. Indeed, Hamas’s position prior to the Trump announcement was that the IDF had to withdraw from its so-called Yellow Line occupation before any disarmament took place. Nevertheless, the Trump Truth Social post provided the US president with the first piece of positive diplomatic endeavour for a long time. The five-month war with Iran has not gone the way he had wished and the Pentagon had promised, and the challenges ahead are becoming more complex and more frustrating for the White House as the strikes and counter-strikes continue. The Hamas breakthrough, if it turns out to be a genuine breakthrough, might just give Trump a new momentum towards his dream of a grand bargain for the Middle East, with or without the hardline mullahs and generals in Tehran. Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff, the president’s billionaire business friend, and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, have been putting in the hours along with the regional mediators to push Hamas to this point. But there is still a long way to go and a large part of the future focus will be on persuading Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, and his most right-wing cabinet members that this is a golden opportunity, not to be missed. Under pressure from Trump who has said he will be “very, very disappointed” if Netanyahu fails to back the progress that has been made in recent months, the Israeli government will have little choice but to react positively, although no doubt with a large slice of scepticism and caution. History has shown that terrorist organisations do disarm (the Provisional IRA in 2005 and the Basque separatist group ETA in 2017, as just two examples). However, so much more is at stake with the Hamas decision. Could this lead, as Trump hopes, to a new, democratic and incorrupt government in Gaza, a decent life for the two million Palestinian people, and ultimately an independent nation, living in harmony with its Israeli neighbour? All these political objectives might seem far-fetched today when one remembers what happened on 7 October, 2023. Will Hamas genuinely transform itself from being what Israel views as a band of murderers, rapists and hostage-takers to an organisation prepared to sacrifice its bloodcurdling past for a fresh start? There are too many questions to be answered before any judgment can be made. For example, despite the IDF’s destruction of much of Hamas’s weapons stocks and underground war tunnels, the organisation still has an, albeit limited, arsenal of anti-tank missiles, short- and medium-range rockets and rocket-propelled grenades, and the means to produce more in bunkered workshops. Who will they hand the weapons to, where will they be held, or will they be destroyed? And how will the withdrawal of IDF troops from the Yellow Line in Gaza be orchestrated? Trump talks of a new Palestinian government. But will Hamas be represented if the disarmament process is completed? And will the Israeli government under its present leadership ever agree to an independent Palestinian state? Netanyahu is standing for re-election in October. There would seem to be zero chance that he will accept any such concept if he wins.

More and more countries being absorbed into the war with Iran

The number of countries being caught up in the US war with Iran is increasing by the week. Now it's Egypt being targeted by Iranian drones. The military rulers in Tehran are trying to incite a total Middle East war. Why they think this will help their own country and the poor Iranian people is difficult to fathom. But the leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps don't need any reminding that they were set up as a revolutionary force. In other words, their job is to spread revolution throughout the Arab/Muslim world. Iran wants to be the dominating nation, so it's all in their interest to show they can project power in opposition to what they see as the interfering western nations, mainly the United States. This is a revolution without end, and therefore Donald Trump, having started the war, must now contemplate the reality that Iran is never going to give up, or more specifically, the IRGC is never going to give up. The IRGC rulers are lapping up the chance to target everyone in the region to bring them to their knees. Reports in Washington today say Trump is getting angrier and angrier that he can't persuade Iran to do a deal. That will only encourage the IRGC leaders to keep going. This war is not going to end any time soon. If ever.

Europe will never patrol the Strait of Hormuz with a war on

A new government in London and suddenly there is an expectation rising in Washington that the UK, France and other European countries will send their navies to help patrol the Strait of Hormuz and keep the Iranians out. It isn't going to happen. Wes Streeting, the government minister translated from Health to Defence, seems keen keen to muster up some warsips to ride alongside the US Navy as a signal to Iran that the western world is now united against them. I'm not sure how this enthusiasm has suddenly emerged because I just don't see it happening. The UK position has always been that naval help is available for the Strait of Hormuz but not, repeat not, when the war is still uhderway. Well, as we see almost every day, the war IS still on and ships in the strait are being fired at. So any warships from Europe in the Gulf would become targets. While Trump would be delighted if his European allies helped out - and that would help with dodgy relations between the US and Nato as a whole - it's never going to take off. Did Andy Burnham say to Trump in his phone call that he would send the Royal Navy to the Strait of Hormuz? Did Streeting say the same to Pete Hegseth, his counterpart in America, that the Royal Navy was ready and willing? If they did, then they did so without the backing of any of the other European partners who will continue to say non, non, non, nein, nein, nein.

Netanyahu makes his pitch with Trump

It could be a very tricky conversation for Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office today when the Israeli prime minister and President Donald Trump get together. The last time Trump spoke on the phone to Bibi, an expletive was used by the president. Netanyahu will be desperate to softsoap Trump and yet at the same time get his message across that the US cannot, must not, back out of the confrontation with Iran because it's now or never. The last thing the Israeli prime minister wants to hear is that Trump is desperate for the renewed peace talks to succeed so that he can end the war and claim victory. Netanyahu knows that victory against Tehran is still a long way off and however well the talks go, the likelihood is that the outcome will be bad for Israel. So there will be some sharp words today, I suspect, althugh Netanyahu knows how to play the game and he will want to leave the Oval Office with Trump's arms wrapped round him or at least holding on to his arm to show that he is once again back in his favour.

The hunt for Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei

It is the covert operation that is never officially discussed or confirmed but the hunt for Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei is preoccupying Mossad and the CIA. While President Trump considers his next move in the war with Iran, Israel’s foreign intelligence service and their American counterparts are jointly trying to trace the supreme leader who took power after his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on February 28. The challenge for the world’s most sophisticated intelligence agencies is that the target has gone silent. Mojtaba appears not to have picked up a phone or opened a laptop for about 150 days. He is somewhere in a deep shelter, his face disfigured from injuries sustained in the airstrike that killed his father, and he does not dare emerge into daylight for fear of being spotted by an American spy satellite. To track his father, Israel and the US used every cyber trick in the book, including hacking traffic cameras in Tehran to spot the vehicles used by the former supreme leader’s bodyguards and associates. Technology, orchestrated by the American National Security Agency (NSA) and Israel’s equivalent, known as Unit 8200, uncovered where Ali Khamenei and his principal military and intelligence officials would be on that day. They were all eliminated. This time, it is different. Whether or not it makes sense to try to assassinate the new supreme leader when it is clear the military is really in charge of Iran, the fact remains that Mojtaba has a key role in the regime and decisions on military action and he has gone missing. The key to pinpointing his location is now human intelligence (humint), not eavesdropping and surveillance technology. There are still people in the intelligence community who believe he may be dead and that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is faking his survival to legitimise its war with the US. So what is needed is proof of his existence and confirmation of where he is hiding, perhaps in one of the underground tunnels in Tehran or the military bunker close to the religious city of Qom, about 90 miles south of the capital. With cyber sleuthing less effective, Mossad, with its network of agents inside Iran, many of them demoralised and disillusioned Iranian nationals, is prioritising its efforts on these two questions: Mojtaba’s status and his whereabouts. “The challenge for Israel is the same problem we had in trying to find and release hostages in Gaza,” said Rami Igra, a former division chief of Mossad. “Israeli intelligence controlled the whole of Gaza, every toilet was rigged [bugged] to trace where they were being held but we didn’t find them. There was too much reliance on electronic technology and not enough on real people, human intelligence. “Mojtaba may not be using a phone but if he exists at all, he has other forms of communication, like little pieces of paper. They are using multiple layers of couriers carrying messages. “These couriers are unaware of what they’re doing, other than taking messages from one person to the next. So, if they [Mossad] find him it will be because of a human element. But the regime in Tehran is aware of this danger.” Just as Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaeda, was traced by the CIA through one of his couriers, so Mossad’s focus is on identifying and following those carrying messages to and from Mojtaba. “The only real way to get to Mojtaba is to recruit an agent who is in contact with him,” said Igra. “But this is very difficult because there is tough screening in Iran of all people close to him, and probably only two or three members of the IRGC know how to contact him. “We can also track other people using their phones and listen in on discussions about Mojtaba and where he might be. Iran is a country where the people are suffering from lack of money and we have ways of offering rewards on the internet for information,” he said. Are Mossad agents following key members of the regime to track Mojtaba? President Masoud Pezeshkian, for example, claimed he had spent two and half hours with the injured supreme leader and said he was fine. “This is bullshit,” Igra said. “The Iranian president never saw him.” Avner Avraham, a former lieutenant colonel in Mossad, identified another problem in the hunt for the ayatollah. “They are also using doubles, just like Saddam Hussein did,” he said. He added: “Mojtaba stays in different locations and people are employed to feed him. But what they don’t know is whether the food they are providing is for the real Mojtaba or a double. So they go home at night and believe they are looking after the supreme leader when it fact he’s probably a fake.” At some point, the Iranian people will demand to see their new supreme leader. He failed to appear for his father’s funeral this month. They only evidence for his existence is several official statements about the war issued in his name. Is it possible that to appease the Iranian people, Mojtaba might record a personal message, just like bin Laden used to do when he was hiding in the border area of Afghanistan and Pakistan? “Even if he doesn’t show his face, he could use his voice to give a message to the Iranian people,” Avraham said. “But that could make him vulnerable. It’s possible to glean information from the voice file, such as the type of recorder used and possibly the location where the voice was recorded.” A former senior US defence official said: “I am quite sure, given [the airstrike] on February 28, that Mojtaba is practising much better operational security and, as a result, human intelligence will be more important in the hunt for him. “I am sceptical about US humint since Iran has been a denied area for 40 years. Israeli human intelligence is clearly much better but it also has its limits.” If Mossad and the CIA manage to establish Mojtaba’s whereabouts, political leaders in the US and Israel will have to decide how to act on the information. A former leading US intelligence official summed up their dilemma: “I think we have probably dispatched enough Iranian leaders for the time being, unless there is very strong confidence that the current leader will be replaced by someone committed to a democratic future for Iran and who will ride in on a white horse.”

Tump's Qatari Air Force One scandal

When the Pentagon took possession of the gifted Qatari Boeing 747-8 airliner to convert into Donald Trump's temporary Air Force One - more luxury, less security - it was clear to all aviation experts that the plan to rush the new plane into use in less than a year for a mere $400 million was far-fetched, impractical, and potentially risky for the president. The Pentagon denied it and said the Qatari Air Force One would have all the relevant security features to make it safe for the president to use as his Air Force One wherever he went. Now we know this was simply not the case. When Trump took it to the Nato summit in Ankara, he was advised not to board it for the return journey because of fears of a possible Iranian-inspired attack on the plane. Why the concern? Because Trump's luxurily-fitted plane didn't have anti-missile defences. With a $400 millio price tag for the conversion of the Qatari plane, there wasn't enough money to install such crucial defensive systems. Clearly, the Secret Service was appalled which is why Trump had to return to Washington from Ankara on his old Air Force One which does have anti-missile systems and all the other security features which make it safe for the president to use in any part of the world. Now, surprise, surprise, the Quatari-gifted plane has been returned to the workshop for the full security adaptation. If it hadn't been for the fantastic stories by the New York Times, none of this would have materialised. But the story I wrote for The Times way back when Trump first accepted the Qatari gift said this: it would require at least $1 billion for the conversion work, all the crucial saftey features would be needed and it would take at least two years to get it done, all of which has proved to be right on the ball! PLEASE BUY AGENT REDRUTH, MY NEW SPY THRILLER. WATERSTONES, ROWANVALE BOOKS, AMAZON