World

Tuesday

James Tidmarsh

France’s toddler screen ban is pure state overreach

The French government is preparing to ban all screen time for children under the age of three. The measure, announced by the Minister of Labour, Health, Solidarity and Families, Catherine Vautrin, will form part of a broader national plan to combat screen use among the very young. Due to be launched in the autumn, the policy will ban tablets, televisions and smartphones in nurseries, hospitals, and other childcare settings, with sanctions for anyone who breaks the rules. The aim, according to the minister, is to change behaviour around early childhood and screen use. What next? A ban on loud toys? Fines for bedtime past eight o’clock? ‘This is how you

Jacob Heilbrunn

Will the Maga isolationists forgive Trump for Iran?

That was fast. In the space of a few weeks, President Donald J. Trump has gone from being the idol of the Republican isolationists to the hero of the hawks. Only a few days ago, the Wall Street Journal editorial page was complaining that ‘Maga isolationists want the President to pressure Israel to stop the war before Iran’s nuclear sites are destroyed’. Now, as Israel pounds Iran, Trump increasingly appears to be embracing the role, not of peacemaker, but of a war president – one ready and willing to unleash, or at the very least abet, fire and fury against the mullahs. The hawks are rejoicing, and they have plenty to rejoice about. ‘Bombs

Fabian Hoffmann

How Iran is piercing Israel’s state-of-the-art missile defences

Since the beginning of ‘Operation True Promise III’ – launched after Israel’s strikes on Iranian nuclear infrastructure, leadership targets, and military sites – Iran has fired over 370 ballistic missiles at Israel, according to the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office on Monday. This is not the first time Israel has faced large-scale Iranian missile attacks. Similar volleys were launched in April and October 2024. The difference this time is that the strikes have caused casualties inside Israel. According to the latest reports, 24 people have been killed and roughly 600 injured in Iranian missile attacks. Missile defence is often described as shooting a bullet with a bullet, except that the target travels

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Israel will not be cowed by Iran

Yesterday morning, as families in central Israel emerged from bomb shelters after yet another sleepless night, the air was once again rent by sirens and the thunder of incoming missiles. Fires ignited across multiple cities. In Petah Tikva, a building lay smouldering from a direct hit. In Haifa, Iranian missiles struck near the port, severely damaging a power facility and forcing Bazan, Israel’s major oil refining and petrochemicals company, to suspend activity at all its plants. With grim efficiency, medics and emergency teams scrambled to locate survivors. It was the largest barrage of the war so far – around 100 ballistic missiles launched in a single salvo. And yet, amid the

Robert Tombs

Is France succumbing to the British disease?

Sometimes one can almost get away from today’s worries. I spent the other weekend at a big family get-together in a village overlooking a famous cathedral city – the great church was visible on the horizon. There were people from all walks of life, all ages, and from many parts of the country. People smiled at strangers. The sun shone. And yet a familiar gloom kept breaking through in conversation. Nothing was working. It was almost impossible to get a GP appointment, so A&E departments were overwhelmed and people even died on trolleys. Accommodation, especially for the young, was non-existent or too expensive, as rents and house prices rocketed. Infrastructure

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Why is the US so reluctant to fight Iran?

MAGA (Make America Great Again) isolationists all agree: the United States must not be drawn into the Israel-Iran war. Donald Trump was not elected president to become entangled in pointless foreign conflicts. Over on Truth Social, Trump’s hokey-pokey routine continues – in, out, in, out, send the Fifth Fleet out? – and America Firsters despair at the prospect of the US fighting ‘a war for Israel’. In Jerusalem, the thinking is the exact opposite: Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly concerned that the unpredictable Trump could push Israel to conclude Operation Rising Lion before its military objectives are met. This is all very interesting as Kremlinology, but it also throws

Monday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Operation Rising: will Trump get dragged into the Israel-Iran conflict?

20 min listen

Relations between Iran and Israel are deteriorating rapidly, with comparisons being drawn to Israel’s 1981 strike on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be advocating for regime change in Tehran, reportedly encouraging the United States to take military action. Donald Trump, who previously came close to authorising a strike, is now said to be more cautious – mindful of the risks of exposing American forces abroad and being drawn into another protracted conflict, contrary to the non-interventionist platform on which he was elected. The Iranian regime, built on a foundation of resistance, is responding to Israel’s attacks while also expanding its network of regional proxies,

Jonathan Spyer

Iran is too weak to wage a ground war against Israel

As Israel advances its surgical reduction of Iran’s nuclear facilities and senior command, and Iran continues to launch missiles randomly at Israeli population centres in response, it is interesting to note what is not happening. Notably absent is any ground element to the war, which is currently being fought entirely between air and missile forces.   Israel has effectively reversed two decades of Iranian advance across the Middle East This brings home just how much the picture has changed in Israel’s favour over the last 20 months. It also reveals the deeper logic of this war. On 6 October, the Iran-led regional alliance stood as the most powerful strategic axis in the Middle East, pursuing

Jonathan Sacerdoti

The delusion of western Palestine activists in Egypt

As the news cycle shifts its gaze to Iran and the escalating war to prevent the psychotic Islamic theocracy from going nuclear, spare a thought for the few hundred virtue-signalling westerners who thought it would be clever to traipse through Egypt and attempt to approach the Gaza border, armed not with aid or expertise, but with slogans, smartphones, and a boundless belief in their own moral radiance. They came, allegedly, to show solidarity with Gaza. What they revealed, instead, was the sheer delusion of performative activism gone rogue. Egypt, they quickly discovered, is not Glastonbury These self-styled heroes of humanity had absorbed the wildest claims from Hamas propagandists: tales of

Michael Evans

Will Trump respond to Iran damaging the US embassy?

The US embassy in Tel Aviv has been damaged by an Iranian ballistic missile attack which landed close by, raising the prospect of President Trump retaliating against Tehran. The overnight incident, during a barrage of Iranian missiles fired at Tel Aviv and the port city of Haifa, came after Trump warned the US would attack Iran with its ‘full force’ if any American assets were targeted. The prospect of a military response to the overnight damage to the American embassy building is possible but unlikely It seemed the building was not directly targeted but the blast from the missiles caused minor damage at the branch office building. Mike Huckabee, the

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The quiet desperation of Macron’s Greenland visit

Emmanuel Macron spent his Sunday in Greenland on what can best be described as an anti-Trump visit. The French president dropped in on the Danish autonomous territory en route to this week’s G7 summit in Canada. Flanked by Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenland’s Premier Jens-Frederik Nielsen, Macron told reporters he was there in ‘solidarity’ with Greenland. Donald Trump has expressed his desire to annex the strategically important island but Macron said, ‘everybody thinks − in France, in the European Union − that Greenland is not to be sold, not to be taken.’ Macron is incapable of addressing France’s issues, so instead he visits far-flung corners of the earth

Charlie Gammell

How likely is regime change in Iran? 

The clue is in the name of Israel’s operation. ‘Operation Rising Lion’ is a direct reference to the Pahlavi flag used by Iran before the Islamic revolution, which shows a lion standing proud against the backdrop of a glowing orb, the sun. In Persian this is called the ‘Shir-e Khorshid.’ For many years now, Netanyahu has sought to speak directly to Iranians, attempting to transcend the Islamic Republic, and to present himself as the saviour of the Iranian people. These ongoing strikes are simply a continuation of this policy, and Israel’s determination to avoid civilian casualties (something we’ve not seen in Gaza) feeds into its desire for an anti-regime uprising caused by elite splits and popular rage. Israel should remember that Iranian nationalism is

Matthew Lynn

The markets don’t care much about Israel and Iran

As missiles fly across the Middle East as Israel and Iran embark on what could well become a wider regional conflict, you might expect turmoil in the financial markets. After all, if the beginning of a third world war doesn’t knock a few dollars off the Apple share price it is hard to know what would. But it turns out that investors, at least for now, appear indifferent. Investors, at least for now, appear indifferent Looking at a trading screen this morning you would probably think not much was going on in the world. The FTSE100 was up 30 points. Overnight, the Nikkei was up by 1.2 per cent; and

Jonathan Sacerdoti

The danger of recognising a Palestinian state

As Western leaders prepare to gather in New York this week to discuss international recognition of a Palestinian state, a stark signal from Washington demands their attention. US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has openly stated that he does not believe Palestinian statehood remains an American foreign policy goal. ‘Unless there are some significant things that happen that change the culture, there’s no room for it,’ Huckabee told Bloomberg News this week, adding that such changes ‘probably won’t happen in our lifetime’. The White House, far from rebuking him, referred reporters to past remarks from President Trump questioning whether a two-state solution ‘is going to work’.  Huckabee’s statement is, of

Sunday

Zoe Strimpel

Saudi Arabia’s soft power art attack

From roughly the 1970s to the mid-2010s, Saudi Arabia was the stuff of nightmares, referred to now, with understatement, as ‘the dark period’. Governed by the austere, brutal credo of the cleric Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, an 18th century Quran literalist who divided the world into true Muslims (Salafis/Wahhabis) and their mortal enemies, Saudi life was ruled by fear of the omnipresent religious police. Executions were commonplace, TV was banned, women were essentially locked up, and most foreigners and outward travel were blocked.  Wahhabiism has been softened a great deal since then. Since 2017, when the frenetic moderniser Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) became Crown Prince, a thousand laws have been dropped, and suddenly women, while still second-class

Nigel Jones

This is Netanyahu’s Churchill moment

History may not repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now finds himself in precisely the same strategic position as Winston Churchill in 1940: he needs to draw a reluctant USA into a war with a mortal enemy bent on his nation’s destruction. Although some may think it dubious to draw a comparison between the controversial and embattled Israeli Prime Minister and the British statesman widely seen as the saviour of freedom and western democracy, their respective positions today and early in the second world war are practically identical. Like Churchill back in the day, Netanyahu now needs America’s power and active participation in the

Saturday

Yossi Melman

Is Israel ready for a long war with Iran?

The spectacular Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear, missile and military sites and their commanders and scientists astonished the Israeli public as well as the world. It was a combination of accurate intelligence and brilliant execution by the Israeli Air Force and Mossad operatives. The intelligence preparations for this operation, codenamed‘ Rising Lion’, lasted more than a year. Mossad agents infiltrated Iran and created a network of agents, assistants, safe houses, workshops, vehicles, forged documents and cover stories – alongside advanced technologies. They also smuggled drone components into Iran, before assembling and hiding them there. These drones took part in the attack. In a sense the attack was reminiscent of the

Limor Simhony Philpott

Netanyahu wants to topple the Iranian regime

Last night, the Middle East witnessed its fiercest clash yet as Israel and Iran traded blows. A daring Israeli operation, orchestrated by Mossad and the Israeli Air Force (IAF), obliterated Iran’s top military commanders, including IRGC leaders, and struck ballistic missile sites and nuclear facilities. Iran initially retaliated with a barrage of drones, all of which were shot down. It then escalated its attack, firing over 200 ballistic missiles targeting civilians. Several missiles hit the densely populated cities of Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, and Rishon Lezion, killing three civilians and wounding over 75. Unlike Iran’s barrages last year, which inflicted minor damage, this assault overwhelmed Israel’s defences. A lot less

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Iranian rockets will not dim Israel’s resolve

Tel Aviv, Israel Israelis last night once again found themselves seeking shelter as the Islamic Revolutionary forces in Iran launched their long-anticipated retaliation for Israel’s 15-hour offensive against their nuclear and ballistic missile facilities. The Israeli strikes themselves had come as something of a surprise, not entirely unforeseen, but unexpected in their timing. Perhaps as part of an elaborate decoy, or perhaps as an unfortunate casualty of circumstance, the annual Tel Aviv Pride parade – whose stages, tents and other facilities had been installed and tested throughout Thursday – was dismantled on Friday before the event could take place. Caitlyn Jenner, perhaps the world’s most famous ‘trans’ activist, had flown

Jim Lawley

The post-Brexit Gibraltar deal is going down badly in Spain

Conservative and Reform politicians have denounced this week’s post-Brexit Gibraltar deal as a betrayal. ‘Gibraltar is British, and given Labour’s record of surrendering our territory and paying for the privilege, we will be reviewing carefully all the details of any agreement that is reached,’ Dame Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, said. Meanwhile, describing Labour as ‘the worst negotiators in history’, Nigel Farage called the agreement ‘yet another surrender’. Vox declared that ‘Gibraltar is a territory illegally colonised by the UK’ But Spain’s right-wing parties have, if possible, been even more damning. José Manuel García-Margallo, a former Minister of Foreign Affairs, described the agreement as ‘total surrender’, the ‘absolute renunciation’