World

Thousands of Iranians took to the streets this week to protest inflation and the collapse of Iranian currency on international markets. Tehran’s historic Grand Bazaar closed for business with many of its merchants leading the demonstrations. This will worry the government because traders there are normally seen as bridging the gap between clerics and Iran’s influential mercantile classes. The atmosphere inside the Bazaar is a useful barometer of Iranian political discontent. During the abortive Green Revolution in 2009 which challenged Ahmadinejad’s re-election, merchants from the Grand Bazaar offered only muted support. In 1979 they swung decisively behind the Islamic Revolution and helped unseat the Shah, having previously secured concessions from

OK, cards on the table: I’m a big Obama fan. I desperately hope he wins next month, and I’m reasonably confident he will. But even to my biased eye, he clearly put in the weaker performance of last night’s debate. He knew his stuff, and had plenty of good points, but threw them out in such a way that none of them really stuck. ‘Is the reason that Governor Romney is keeping all these plans to replace secret because they’re too good?’ would have been a great line had it not been smuggled out at the end of an overlong response. The President’s answers were just too waffling to make an

‘Are you better off than you were four years ago?’ That was the question Ronald Reagan told Americans to ask themselves when choosing their President in 1980, and it’s a line Mitt Romney’s campaign has been hoping would work for them this time around. ‘The president can say a lot of things, but he can’t tell you you are better off,’ Paul Ryan told a crowd in North Carolina last month. And it might be one of the ‘zingers’ Romney throws out in tonight’s debate. But the attack isn’t looking nearly as potent against Obama as it did against Jimmy Carter. For one thing, Ryan’s claim might not actually be

Expect to hear Barack Obama talking about ‘economic patriotism’ in tomorrow’s first Presidential debates. The idea is a simple one: that American’s should keep their money within the United States, place their deposits in American banks, and pay the full measure of their taxes. It’s providing an effective way to undermine Romney’s complex financial arrangements which place much of his money in offshore tax havens. By doing so, Obama claims, he is proving himself a poor patriot. In a new campaign advert, the President argues: ‘It’s time for a new economic patriotism, rooted in the belief that growing our economy begins with a strong, thriving middle class.’ Its subtlety is

A few years ago, I wrote a review of Eric Hobsbawm’s last collection of essays and noted  ‘Hobsbawm is now 94, and although I have no wish to usher the old boy from the room, I can see his obituaries now. Conservative and liberal writers will say that his loyalty to totalitarianism disfigured his writing, most notably, in his whitewashing of Soviet atrocities in The Age of Extremes, his history of the 20th century. Leftists will say he was the greatest Marxist historian of our times, whose sweeping accounts of the world from the Enlightenment to the present have shaped the way we think. Neither will acknowledge that both have

The results of stress tests on Spanish banks will be revealed at 5pm, and the rumour on the trading floor is that the country may also announce that it is asking for a bailout at the same time. Yesterday’s budget caused the markets to rally amid hopes that the country was preparing to ask for help, with economy minister Luis De Guindos increasing speculation by repeatedly pointing to the fact that the measures announced met requirements from the European Union. EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn agreed with the minister, issuing a statement saying: ‘This new structural reform plan responds to the country-specific recommendations issued to Spain and

Oklahoma will always be a red state on the political map, but the colour goes deeper than that. Everything here was red: red earth, red brick, red dust, red rust. At Little Sahara State Park, 1,600 geologically anomalous acres of iron-rich sand dunes were pinky-orange, the colour of thousand-island dressing. The sitcom Friends had a storyline in which a character accidentally went to Oklahoma, the implication being that that’s the only reason anyone would go there. The state’s position as an unfashionable backwater became a running joke over eight episodes, after which the Friend headed back to civilisation. It was not always thus. So-called ‘wildcatters’ were poking around in the

For years he was the face of radical Islam in Britain – a living caricature of the ‘mad mullah’ — the hook handed, eye patch wearing cleric Abu Hamza. Famous for holding congregational prayers on the streets of Finsbury Park and railing against the West, the era of Abu Hamza is now finally drawing to a close Yesterday, the European Court of Human Rights refused a request by Abu Hamza and four others to have their case referred to its Grand Chamber. This means they have now exhausted all their avenues of appeal through the Strasbourg courts and will soon be extradited to the United States. The Home Office has

Militants operating in the Sinai breached Israel’s borders for the second time in six weeks on Friday. One soldier was killed during the latest incursion, prompting demands that Egypt do more to reign in groups operating in the Sinai Peninsula. Mohammed Mursi acted swiftly last time militants crossed into Israel, but insists his hands are now tied. Tunnels between Gaza and the Sinai make the peninsula hard to govern while the terms of the 1979 peace agreement make it is a demilitarised zone. The absence of an effective military presence there has allowed Islamists to use the area as a springboard for attacks against Israel. It would not be unprecedented

England have just beaten Afghanistan in the Twenty20 Cricket World Cup currently being held in Sri Lanka. In the end, it was a comprehensive victory for Stuart Broad’s men but how wonderful it is to see cultural and sporting life returning to a country where such ‘frivolities’ were outlawed by the Taliban. This is Afghanistan’s second appearance at a major cricketing tournament and follows Rohullah Nikpai’s efforts in the Olympics a few weeks ago where he won the country’s second ever medal.

I have a piece in the magazine this week on the disgraceful behaviour of Hillary Clinton and other US officials in the latest round of cartoon wars. During the last week the US Secretary of State turned into a film critic, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – head of the most powerful and expensive military in history – relegated himself to a telephone-salesman offering up his country’s founding principles at a knock-down price, and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney decided that his job included condemning the work of amateur directors. But it gets worse. The same Jay Carney has now decided that his remit extends to