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Why shouldn’t Nato become a subscription service?
Today is the first day of Nato’s annual summit. Some have billed it as potentially the most important meeting in the alliance’s recent history, while others have played down any expectations of major announcements.
One issue which will undoubtedly concern the 32 Nato heads of state and government is the level of defence spending. Nineteen years after it was first agreed by defence ministers and 11 years after it was reaffirmed in the Wales Summit Declaration, the target of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence is expected to be met by all member states in 2025.
It is clear, however, that 2 per cent is woefully inadequate. Rutte said in a recent speech that this summit would agree a new target of 5 per cent – 3.5 per cent on core military requirements and the remaining 1.5 per cent on ‘defence and security-related investments, including infrastructure and building industrial capacity’.
No country’s membership, not even America’s, is priceless
Yesterday, former defence secretary Sir Ben Wallace took to the pages of the Times to frame the need for more spending bluntly. President Trump, he argued, should ‘declare this week that Nato will become an organisation whose membership is based on a subscription’, and that any members who fail to reach that level of 3.5 per cent of GDP by 2030 should enjoy ‘no protection from Uncle Sam’.
Wallace is not plucking this argument out of the air. He was the UK’s defence secretary from 2019 to 2023 (the third longest tenure ever), and was touted by many as a potential candidate for secretary general of Nato. He knows the alliance and he knows its defence ministers, either personally or by archetype. The new spending target is not a done deal: the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, believes he has achieved an opt-out, and this will make it hard to persuade low-spending nations like Belgium (1.3 per cent) or Italy (1.49 per cent) commit to 5 per cent.
It is often said by his defenders that President Trump has made Nato face the fact that many member states had underspent on their own defence capabilities for decades; they had relied on the knowledge that, in extremis, the alliance’s collective security delivered by US military power would protect them. Amid Trump’s catastrophically wayward attitude to governance, fantasy-based economic policy and systematic undermining of the US constitution, this is, to a large degree, true: even a stopped clock is right twice a day (though Trump does not manage that kind of regularity).
In 2014, three Nato members – the United States, the United Kingdom and Greece – were meeting the 2 per cent target. This year, all members are expected to. That owes a great deal to Trump’s threats and bullying: the fear, which may still be realised, that he will effectively abandon the alliance. (Section 1250A of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024 prohibits formal withdrawal without a two-thirds majority in the Senate or an act of Congress.)
Spain’s attitude is outrageous and unacceptable. Sánchez’s statement that by spending only 2.1 per cent his country can ‘acquire and maintain all the personnel, equipment, and infrastructures requested by the alliance to confront these threats with our capabilities’ is a grotesque abnegation of responsibilities and flies in the face of the fundamental spirit of collective security. Writing to the secretary general last week, Sánchez declared:
It is the legitimate right of every government to decide whether or not they are willing to make those sacrifices. As a sovereign ally, we choose not to.
It is indeed a right. But, through the lens Wallace proposes, it is also the right of the alliance of which Spain is a member to say that such self-interest is incompatible with membership and Nato can therefore no longer extend collective security. Spain has been a slow, grudging and reluctant member of the alliance since 1982, and it has spent less than 2 per cent of GDP for more than 30 years. No country’s membership, not even America’s, is priceless.
Trump envisaged Nato as a matter of paying in and receiving benefits at an infamous rally in South Carolina last February: ‘No, I would not protect you,’ he recalled telling the president of a member state. ‘In fact, I would encourage them [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.’ Trump, it should be noted, does not intend to commit the US to 5 per cent spending:
I don’t think we should, but I think they should. We’ve been supporting Nato so long… so I don’t think we should.
Nato does not operate on ‘bills’, on money paid in and services delivered. Each country funds its own defence. But Wallace does have a point: any club has to have a sense of mutuality and common endeavour. Spain cannot simply declare that it can somehow achieve with 2 per cent what everyone else will spend 5 per cent achieving.
Perhaps the idea of a ‘membership…based on a subscription’ will make the idea that every member state must pull its weight unavoidable. Any fundamental inequity will corrode Nato and quickly render it useless as a defence community.
Will Iran seize this moment for revolution?
Last night began with dramatic news: the Islamic Republic of Iran had launched a volley of ballistic missiles at the US-run Al Udeid airbase in Qatar, a retaliatory gesture following the devastating American strikes on the Iranian regime’s nuclear facilities. In Washington, President Trump entered the National Security Council, according to some reports accompanied by the nuclear ‘football’. The world held its breath in what was turning into the highest-stakes game of chess.
Soon it happened: Trump had indeed pressed the button and unleashed chaos and mayhem across the region. But it was not the one that launches missiles. Instead, it was the presidential CAPS LOCK. Trump took to social media with a volley of his own: a string of taunting, triumphant declarations, including ’14 Missiles Launched, 13 Intercepted, 1 Harmless, No Americans Harmed. THANK YOU for your Attention to this Matter!’ and the witheringly dismissive, ‘They have gotten it all out of their “system”.’ The rhetorical crescendo came with an all-caps benediction: ‘CONGRATULATIONS WORLD, IT’S TIME FOR PEACE!’
Trump posted repeatedly overnight, each time more jubilant, more exclamatory, more drenched in digital EXALTATION. His declarations of PEACE escalated at times into something approaching messianic fervour, even as Israeli airstrikes intensified across Iran, and Tehran continued to fire ballistic missiles at Israeli civilians. By the morning, as the CEASEFIRE time approached, we were once again rushing in and out of bomb shelters as our phone alerts blared out warnings.
Over the past 11 days, the Islamic regime in Iran has been unmasked
To be fair, it was never clear when the ‘Complete and Total CEASEFIRE’ would start or who, in fact, had agreed to it and when. The timings were confusing. It would start ‘in approximately 6 hours from now,’ he wrote, ‘when Israel and Iran have wound down and completed their in progress, final missions!’ It would last ‘for 12 hours, at which point the War will be considered, ENDED! Officially, Iran will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 12th Hour, Israel will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 24th Hour, an Official END to THE 12 DAY WAR will be saluted by the World. During each CEASEFIRE, the other side will remain PEACEFUL and RESPECTFUL.’ He concluded with characteristic flourish:
On the assumption that everything works as it should, which it will, I would like to congratulate both Countries, Israel and Iran, on having the Stamina, Courage, and Intelligence to end, what should be called, ‘THE 12 DAY WAR’.
But as six hours, twelve hours, twelve days – whatever it was – wear on, the explosions have only grown louder. Was it a desperate final barrage? A last act to cripple some keystone of the regime’s machinery? A parting statement of force? No one could say. Only that the war was not quite over when we rushed into our bomb shelters, clutching hastily made coffees. One barrage, again aimed deliberately at civilians, murdered four more people in southern Israel. So much for PEACE.
Trump declared with characteristic exuberance: ‘This is a wonderful day for the world, I think Israel and Iran will never shoot at each other again.’ But the cost, and the result, is clear. Iran’s nuclear infrastructure lies in ruins. Israel and the US have destroyed the core of the regime’s strategic capability. Israel alone eliminated two-thirds of Iran’s long-range launchers, decapitated its nuclear leadership, targeted its military elite and struck hundreds of regime sites. Tehran, in turn, killed 29 civilians, including three this morning, and struck civilian infrastructure, including the Weizmann Institute and a major power facility. Last night, another Iranian nuclear scientist was killed. Explosions continued across Tehran. Beersheba suffered fresh casualties.
As the dust starts to settle, we begin to see what was achieved. The Islamic Republic has suffered great humiliation through strategic exposure and symbolic degradation. Israel did not just target nuclear and military infrastructure; it dismantled emblems, too. Evin Prison, where the regime has long imprisoned and tortured dissidents and innocents, was hit. So too was the preposterous, bombastic countdown clock in Iran’s ‘Palestine Square’, a theatre prop absurdly ticking toward Israel’s destruction. Yesterday, Israel struck not just nuclear or missile-related sites, but alsoTehran’s Basij HQ and other IRGC internal-security foundations, killing ‘hundreds of IRGC members’ and devastating internal security command nodes. This was not mission creep or over-reach, but a series of deliberate acts of narrative demolition, essential for weakening the enemy’s grip and power to instil fear.
Iran’s retaliation on the US base in Qatar, meanwhile, was intercepted, ineffective, and diplomatically costly. Its missiles were shot down. Qatar condemned the attack. The Pentagon reported no casualties. The global oil market dipped in collective disinterest. Even the regime’s visual propaganda posted on X – a stylised image of an American flag in flames amidst ruins – couldn’t mask the gap between fantasy and fact. No US bases burned. No casualties fell. The only wreckage was reputational.
And then came Trump’s theatre: taunting, triumphal, and strategically belittling. While Tehran issued grand pronouncements, Washington delivered a barrage of digital dominance. The regime’s fearsome image collapsed into farce.
Today, a window opens. Not in Washington or Jerusalem, but in Tehran
Over the past 11 days, the Islamic regime in Iran has been unmasked. Its nuclear ambitions decapitated. Its military elite degraded. Its symbols desecrated. And, crucially, its aura of deterrence dissolved. The regime that once inspired fear now invites ridicule. It remains dangerous, but it is no longer as feared. And that shift, the erosion of fear, is perhaps the most lethal blow of all.
For decades, the Islamic Republic’s power rested not only on weapons, but on the perception of inevitability. That perception is now fractured. No one is pretending regime change can be delivered from abroad. But every intercepted missile, every mocking tweet, every shattered myth lays the groundwork for something more profound: the possibility that the Iranian people, stripped of fear, might one day confront their rulers not as subjects, but as a sovereign people. It is not for the US or Israel to remove the Ayatollahs from power, nor to find and nurture their replacement. Only Iranians can do that.
The same strategic logic applies to Gaza: it is not Israel’s duty to construct a Palestinian political future. It is Israel’s duty to dismantle those committed to its destruction. What arises from those ruins is not Israel’s to shape. If anything viable remains once the hatred and barbarity is defeated, it will be for Palestinians themselves to define. In both cases, Persian and Palestinian, the principle is the same: destroy the machinery of tyranny and terror; let the future be born in the vacuum that follows. Not imposed, not imported, but made possible through the clarity of defeat and a peace born of power and complete victory.
Iran’s regime is still cruel, still repressive. But it is weaker than it has been in decades. Strategically exposed, symbolically humiliated, and psychologically diminished. The emperor, finally, is naked.
But we must still be cautious. The world, weary of sirens and smoke, sighs in relief. And in doing so, it risks forgetting who this regime is: a theocracy driven by the doctrines of Khomeini, who wrote that ‘Israel is a cancerous growth that must be uprooted’. This is not rhetoric, but theology. A divinely sanctioned campaign to erase the Jewish state, not for policy, but for purity. To trust too much in peace with such a regime is to forget history, and to gamble with the future.
Today, a window opens. Not in Washington or Jerusalem, but in Tehran. A moment, perhaps fleeting, in which the Iranian people may see their rulers for what they are: brittle, exposed, afraid. The question is not what the West will do. The question is whether the Iranian people will act. Will the women who led protests in the streets lead something larger? Will the lorry drivers once again unite? Will fear, once lost, remain buried? And if not now, when?
Why is Starmer ignoring Britain’s tech sector?
The government’s hotly-anticipated industrial strategy has at last arrived. In it are a handful of bold new announcements, and a lot of old recycled ones. There are some big shiny spending commitments – a couple of billion pledged here, a few hundred million spent there.
But perhaps the most consequential element, especially for the tech sector, is a note right at the back of the document on page 152. It expresses an ambition for procurement rules to be consistent with the government’s wider industrial strategy to grow the economy – or as the document puts it in fluffy Whitehall-speak, contracts must ‘set at least one social value key performance indicator’.
I’ve spoken to several British tech firms who say that current rules have become rigged against them
More than £400 billion of the public sector’s annual budget relates to procurement contracts. The government is the single-largest customer for virtually every kind of private sector service, including in areas like software. So the way it organises procurement has huge economic implications, much more so than throwing some cash at AI research or helping build a supercomputer.
Current procurement practices in tech do not seem to align with the government growth mission. A cursory flick through the government’s procurement database finds that at least £15 billion in software contracts have been awarded or part-awarded to one of Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, Palantir and IBM since 2020, dwarfing any and all UK tech firms.
That is the continuation of a longstanding trend of the UK being far more likely than its peers to contract services overseas. According to a 2021 EU study of the procurement market, more than a third of major UK government contracts are awarded to foreign suppliers, well above the EU average of 22 per cent.
The UK approach is also quite different from that of the US, where there is a longstanding home bias in procurement. According to a World Bank report, ‘In the case of the US, the federal government openly and actively discriminates against foreign firms when making its sourcing decisions.’ That was written in 2023, long before the arrival of Donald Trump’s erratic America First tariff regime, which has massively accelerated this practice.
It would be foolish for the UK government to do the same thing, and game procurement rules to guarantee British firms get all the money – that would lead to inefficiencies and poorer quality services.
But I’ve spoken to several British tech firms who say that current rules have become rigged against them. Some have even been told they were ineligible to apply for contracts, despite having won the same ones a couple of years earlier. Whether that is due to successful lobbying of the all-powerful big tech firms, or Whitehall incompetence, is hard to say. But the door is now open for this to change.
The question now is whether the government will deliver – and there are some warning signs that it won’t. The Prime Minister seems far more interested in chatting with – and working with – US business leaders than he does with execs in Britain.
Since last year, Keir Starmer has tweeted a picture of himself in a meeting with a CEO on only three occasions: with Blackrock, Bloomberg and Apple. And in this week’s industrial strategy document, the government pledged training for UK workers by partnering with Microsoft, Google and Nvidia.
After meeting with Nvidia’s Jensen Huang earlier this month, Keir Starmer published a new ‘memorandum of understanding between the UK and Nvidia’ in which the two parties ‘are collaborating to support the upskilling and reskilling of the UK workforce across industry, research and the public sector’.
When the government set up a new board to advise on British industrial strategy in October, to the British tech sector’s astonishment, its pick for the chair was a CEO at Microsoft. Nine days later, Microsoft signed a five-year deal with the government on ‘digital transformation’ which would allow public sector bodies ‘access to cost savings’ when they procure Microsoft services – and earlier this month, that CEO was awarded a damehood.
This attitude pervades Whitehall, and can lead to big government spending decisions. Officials from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) meet with US companies far more frequently than they have British ones, departmental records show. DSIT officials met with Google on at least eight occasions in the fourth quarter of last year — more meetings than for any other company.
Starmer seems to think blowing billions on deals, collaborations and partnerships with big US tech firms will somehow support British industry. But if the government’s industrial strategy is to have any lasting impact, he must pick up the phone to British business instead.
Will Khamenei accept that it’s over?
It is a fair bet that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s ‘so-called supreme leader’ in the words of president Trump, didn’t expect it to end like this. Holed up in a bunker somewhere in Tehran, exchanging messages with a small and ever-diminishing group of allies, and impotently raging against the West, namely America and Israel.
Khamenei is no longer master of his own destiny
What can the 86-year-old Khamenei, plagued by ill-health in recent years, really be thinking? He has ruled Iran with an iron fist for more than three decades, but is now reduced to cowering for his life underground. Just as humiliating must be the realisation that he owes his life to the ‘Great Satan’, America.
Donald Trump said a few days ago that the Americans knew exactly where Khamenei was ‘hiding’, that he was an easy target but would not be killed, ‘at least for now’. Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not commented directly on reports that Trump rejected an Israeli plan to assassinate the Iranian leader, only saying that Israel will do ‘what we need to do’.
In other words, Khamenei is no longer master of his own destiny. The regime he has led for so long is at the mercy of forces beyond his control. Israeli jets can strike anywhere in Iran at will. Israel’s Defence Ministry said yesterday that it had hit more Iranian government targets, including the notorious Evin prison in the capital Tehran. The prison is a symbol of the regime’s repression and wider crackdown on political dissent. It houses political prisoners, human rights campaigners and foreign nationals accused of spying. The successful attack on Evin is a hugely damaging blow to a regime that relies on fear for imposing order on a restive population.
Israel also hit the security headquarters of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guards, another critical pillar of the regime. It follows Israeli strikes in recent days on other government institutions, including the state television headquarters in Tehran and police buildings.
Iran faces an existential crisis unlike anything since the 1979 revolution that brought the mullahs to power. Not even the bloody and costly war with Iraq in the 1980s posed such a direct threat to the rule of the clerics. How long Khamenei and his once-feared lieutenants in the military and security police can maintain even the semblance of control over events is increasingly open to question.
The regime is vulnerable. No one symbolises this more so than the supreme leader himself. He is a leader who cannot show his face in public, restricted to releasing just two pre-recorded videos in which he was seen in front of a brown curtain, with the Iranian flag next to him. It is hardly a projection of power or control.
No one really knows who is taking the key decisions behind the scenes or to what extent the country’s command structure is functioning after the killing of so many of its senior leaders by Israel.
Khamenei has reportedly been naming potential successors should he be killed. The supreme leader has enormous powers in theory. He is commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the head of the judiciary, the legislature and the executive branch. He is also Iran’s most senior guardian of the Shia faith. Normally the process of appointing a supreme leader drags on for months, with senior clerics picking and choosing names. Khamenei, it would appear, is eager for a quick orderly transition aimed at preserving his legacy. This is fantasy politics. This is no longer something in his power to decide.
Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, also a cleric and close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, was long rumoured to be a front-runner for power. A dynastic succession would have been hugely controversial in the Islamic republic of Iran, even before recent events. The idea of Khamenei’s son inheriting the top job must now be dead in the water. Just as unlikely is a revival of monarchical rule in Iran.
Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of the last shah of Iran, told a press conference in Paris yesterday that he is ready to lead Iran. He blamed Khamenei for the ‘devastating conflict’ and said that this was Iran’s ‘Berlin Wall’ moment, with the regime defeated and teetering on the edge of collapse. These are strong words indeed. Pahlavi is good on rhetoric but has few meaningful policy ideas. Ordinary Iranians resent his gilded life in exile. Plenty remember his father’s repressive reign, including the brutal activities of the secret police. Evin prison, lest anyone needs reminding, was built during the shah’s time in power.
The question of who leads Iran has never been the ostensible or stated aim of military action. It does, however, remain under discussion as one of the many imponderables thrown up by the latest events. President Trump weighed in on the possibility of regime change on Sunday. He posted on social media: ‘It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change’ but if the current Iranian regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change???’
The remarks caused the inevitable flurry of speculation. This misses the wider and more significant reality: regime change is already underway in Iran. Khamenei may remain the leader but only in name. He is old and unwell, and even if he survives the immediate crisis, his aura of absolute power and authority has melted away. He is at the mercy of his enemies at home and abroad. No one can know who, or what, will replace Khamenei – or exactly how and when – but his time in supreme charge of Iran is surely done.
Elizabeth II deserves better than this awful tribute
The winner of the contest to design a memorial to the late Elizabeth II has been announced, and it’s not very good. When the shortlist of five designs was unveiled last month, the most striking feature of the various hopefuls was how little they had to say about the much-loved Queen, or the country she ruled over. Instead, they were empty displays of kitsch, with the only halfway palatable one being Tom Stuart-Smith’s design of an oak tree from Windsor Great Park. Had that been picked, I would have shrugged and sighed, but at least it was inoffensive enough.
The mocked-up images suggest there might be an enormous, horrible-looking gold monstrosity squatting outside Buckingham Palace
Unfortunately, the winner is Foster + Partners’ series of designs, which includes (checks notes) ‘a bridge with a new cut-glass balustrade inspired by the late Queen’s wedding tiara’ and the unlovely likes of ‘figurative sculptures and a new Prince Philip Gate’. Naturally, we are promised that ‘artistic installations will celebrate the nation’s diversity.’
There is a surprising vagueness to what, exactly, these ‘figurative sculptures’ and ‘artistic installations’ will be, giving the impression that Foster + Partners have been winging it. The mocked-up images suggest there might be an enormous, horrible-looking gold monstrosity squatting outside Buckingham Palace, which Norman Foster himself has had the gall to suggest ‘[reflects] the inspiration of the original design of St James’s Park by Sir John Nash.’
Foster was the best known of the architects bidding for the project, and as the holder of an Order of Merit, was privileged enough to meet the late sovereign on numerous occasions. It would be unfair to suggest that his appointment carries a hint of noblesse oblige, but when Foster states that ‘We have sought to reflect these qualities of the formal and informal in our design, with an appeal across a wide range of ages and interests’, it is hard not to feel that he is merely spouting buzzwords.
He may suggest that his design has ‘discreetly stretched the boundaries of art and technology with a deliberately gentle intervention’, but that just makes you want to shout: ‘Lord Foster, what does that actually mean?’
It’s enough to make you wish Foster and his team of collaborators were expelled from St James’s Park, even before the Prince Philip Gate becomes a reality. Granted, the news release about the project hedges its bets by saying, ‘this design concept will be subject to change as it undergoes refining’ and that ‘the final design will be formally announced in April 2026, alongside a legacy programme’, both of which imply that public reaction to the announcement might affect the choice of sculptor for the memorial. Should there be an outcry at this lacklustre, derivative and strangely shallow decision, then perhaps something more interesting may yet be salvaged from the wreckage, but I doubt it.
It is the inevitable nature of memorials that the dead have no say in the buildings and sculptures chosen to remember them. I suspect the late Queen would have wished for something solid, unpretentious and no-nonsense to commemorate her and her unparalleled legacy; a new public building, for instance, or some tasteful and unostentatious sculpture. This uninspired, unfocused mess isn’t it.
Her former private secretary Sir Robert Janvrin may say that ‘Foster + Partners’ ambitious and thoughtful masterplan will allow us and future generations to appreciate Queen Elizabeth’s life of service as she balanced continuity and change with strong values, common sense and optimism throughout her long reign’, but I suspect his former employer would look at this uninspiring tribute to mediocrity and wonder if she was regarded with indifference by her subjects. Ma’am, you weren’t. It is the memorial, and the ambitions of those who have created and commissioned it, that is small, not you.
Brits don’t want digital ID cards
The vexed issue of compulsory ID is, once again, on the cards. ‘BritCard’ is being billed as a ‘progressive digital identity for Britain’ by Labour Together, the think tank that put forward the scheme earlier this month. The digital ID card has been endorsed by dozens of Labour MPs, and No. 10 is said to be interested in the scheme, which is being touted as a way to crack down on illegal migration, rogue landlords and exploitative work. But concerns about privacy appear to have gone out the window.
Tony Blair has been at the digital ID game a long time
Perhaps it is no surprise that Keir Starmer’s government appears to be warming to a rollout of digital ID cards. Tony Blair has been at the digital ID game a long time. He’s argued it’s necessary for public health, to save taxpayers’ money and to control migration. According to Blair, ‘digital ID is the disruption the UK desperately needs’.
On the face of it, all this presents a puzzle. Britain’s lack of appetite for compulsory ID is so marked that you could almost consider it a national characteristic, like a predilection for queuing or tea. Hence the pronouncement by Boris Johnson in 2004 that he would ‘take that (ID) card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it’.
Boris is not alone in being so vehemently anti-ID cards. So why does the spectre of digital ID keep reappearing? Perhaps the answer lies with an informal Labour establishment working behind, or alongside, the government. Labour Together was set up in 2015 by a group of MPs – including Steve Reed, the now-Environment Minister – who wanted to get the party back into power. The BritCard report’s lead author Kirsty Innes’ previous job was at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. In 2021, she wrote a report making the case for vaccine passports.
It looks as if the reason digital ID won’t go away is that, far from there being a groundswell of public demand for it, this half-hidden group really, really wants it. That might explain another puzzling thing: the extraordinarily poor quality of the public discourse about the subject.
Take Labour Together’s opening gambit in the report’s foreword by MPs Jake Richards and Adam Jogee: ‘This is your country. You have a right to be here. This will make your life easier. It is at the heart of the social contract’.
Such disjointed statements belong more to a speech by a propagandist than a serious policy document. A vague appeal to nationalist sentiments is followed by the promise of ‘convenience’ which seems to accompany so much of the sales talk around the expansion of the digital state.
The claim that digital ID somehow fulfils the social contract – the democratic concept which makes political authority conditional on respect for fundamental rights – is baffling.
Baffling until you read further and discover the link is an attempt to convince the public that digital ID might be the solution to tackling illegal immigration. In a poll which forms the basis for the main argument, respondents were asked to what extent they would support digital ID if used by employers, landlords and public service providers to check a person’s legal status. Some 80 per cent replied they would support such checks. And so Labour Together concluded that digital ID would be ‘immensely popular’.
But when asked about the ‘most significant benefits’ of digital ID, only 29 per cent thought it might deter illegal immigrants from coming to the UK or accessing public services. Meanwhile, 40 per cent feared that digital ID could be misused by government; and 23 per cent thought it could increase the black economy. The disparity illustrates something well known in the polling world: question is all. Frame something a particular way and you’ll get one result; frame it another and you’ll get something quite different.
Polls have become tools of political persuasion. Too often, those commissioning them appear to have decided what outcome they want. As a result, they can be used to create the impression there’s public support for something. That feeds into a lazy ‘we might as well – everyone else is doing it’ kind of thinking, a line children often use on their parents.
Polly Toynbee, writing in the Guardian, uses it in her comment piece on the Labour Together proposal. We might as well agree to digital ID, she suggests, because privacy is already lost:
‘Some will protest at the apparent loss of a romantic freedom, the right to vanish and start life anew, the call of the open road. But that’s a fairytale, a fantasy of a bygone era. Everyone knows everything already’. Algorithms throw up personalised adverts, ergo, she concludes, ‘better to control everything from one government-run base’.
This kind of unthinking deflection makes civil liberty campaigners put their heads in their hands. Privacy became a basic right in modern democracies for a reason: why are policy people proposing to casually abandon a core principle? And why are they disregarding very real concerns about putting huge amounts of personal information into a leaky centralised system?
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Andrew Orlowski points out that One Login, which links our personal identification documents to other government bodies and third parties, has a terrible track record on data security. ‘An insecure system has serious consequences,’ he says. ‘It not only puts individuals at risk of identity theft and impersonation, but also makes defrauding the government much easier…An ID system like One Login is where criminal gangs would go first, and BritCard will forcibly enrol you into it’.
Politicians and policy wonks throwing lines out until they finally get a bite from enough of the public won’t do. In a functioning democracy, public reasoning has to be of a certain standard if it is to lead to workable policies underpinned by genuine public consent. Shouting ‘yay! Disruption!’, as Blair appears to, won’t cut it – nor will Toynbee’s absurd claim that digital ID might help see off Nigel Farage. Radical departures from core values need proper consideration to ensure they serve the common good, not partisan interests.
The Home Affairs Committee has launched an inquiry into the potential benefits and risks of digital ID. Let’s hope that, as the parliamentary body charged with the scrutiny of domestic affairs, it will take a long hard look at both principles and consequences. The truth is that Brits don’t want, or need, ID cards.
Did becoming a chef make me a bad person?
I have been in charge of a pizzeria in St John’s Wood for less than a year and already I feel misanthropy taking hold. Most notably, a complete disdain for the general public; I used to think I hated them, but now I can confirm that I definitely, really, hate them. Service is the heart of the hospitality industry, but there’s a certain kind of person who mistakes the waiters and chefs for a cadre of private staff. I used to moan, but now I just numbly get on with putting ketchup in a ramekin for them to have with their sweetcorned pizza. They win – they always win.
Then there is the sycophancy. Is there anything more embarrassing than a fully grown man going doe-eyed at the thought of a mention on a website or Instagram page? I am sure my family would lose respect for me if they saw how I yearn for the approval of these keyboard warriors, offering endless free food for a modicum of praise. Maybe some people have got thicker skins and realise this is just how food criticism works, but I, for one, hate myself.
I used to think that years of professional experience should warrant respect. These days, I worry I’m becoming ageist. The same thing happens every time I offer a middle-aged man a trial shift. He comes in, tells me I’m doing my job wrong, reels off a list of better places where he’s allegedly worked, while glossing over the reason he needs a new job. In any other workplace, this would be considered an ‘interesting’ interview technique.
Next, doctors save the lives of their patients, soldiers save the lives of their comrades and miners play with their lives deep in the bowels of the earth. Each of them is a hero in their own right, and yet somehow none of them works as hard as me. Any mention from friends or colleagues of tiredness or stress will elicit a response that my life is more difficult in ways they could barely fathom.
Finally, I have quite a long address book. Expecting every person I know to visit my restaurant would be unreasonable. Making a list of those people would be deranged, because then I would have to keep track of which of my unsupportive so-called friends haven’t been to eat my delicious food. I would be forced, almost by accident, to really twist the knife when I see them, using it as evidence that they have actually always hated me. This is called emotional blackmail, and I would never, ever deploy it.
I might have been laying this on a bit thick. I’ve still got a smile and a kind word for most people, and still feel giddily grateful whenever we sell out; however, my sense of myself as a decent person has certainly declined. Most would look at the crushing prognosis, give their notice to the general manager and make a beeline for an office job – but I think I can speak for most chefs and say that will never be me.
In primary school, we each had to give a presentation on what we wanted to be when we grew up. While others wanted to be marine biologists or detectives, I spoke for half an hour about how I wanted to be a chef, complete with a biscuit-making demonstration. It went quite well.
There’s a certain kind of person who mistakes the waiters and chefs for a cadre of private staff
It took about 13 years, three science A-levels and a philosophy degree, but I got there. I know I’m odd, as trading in your social life, circadian rhythm and natural light requires an odd sort of motivation. I, like so many, was inspired by those who came before.
If you don’t know who Keith Floyd is, then you will almost certainly know of Anthony Bourdain. Both were head chefs of multiple restaurants, both charmed the world with their casual oratory and neither seemed to give a damn what anybody thought of them. As I was deciding on my future, I saw these men jetting around the world, eating, cooking and drinking – and asked: why not me?
What I missed was that behind the rock ’n’ roll globetrotter image of Floyd and Bourdain were two lonely men who died far too young. I, like many others, was blind to their melancholy, seeing them only in the throes of what they loved, and not whatever it was they were escaping.
It would be fair to say that cheffing has changed for the better since Floyd and Bourdain’s times. Cocaine is slowly being pushed out, ritual abuse isn’t tolerated and toxic competitiveness is being replaced with collaboration. But a full work-life balance is still out of the question, particularly if you are in a relationship with a non-chef.
All of that stuff seemed daringly romantic from the outside. Now I wonder whether becoming a chef is a symptom of unhappiness, or a cause. But right now my printer is spewing out orders, I’ve got 50kg of dough that’s about to grow legs and walk off, and I’m just simply too busy to think about any of it.
Forgive me father, for I have sworn
Perhaps it’s a sort of Original Guilt – Original Sin’s bastard offspring – that Catholics are born indoctrinated with a sense of the awesome sanctity of church, presumably predicated on the Real Presence. So for us there’s something viscerally shocking when it’s not observed. And yet…
I remember being about seven, going to Mass one Sunday, and my father struggling not to laugh as a frightfully well-spoken old Jesuit tried to remove the tramp slumped in the porch with the words: ‘Will you please just fuck off?’ I knew that was really naughty language because a girl had recently been asked to leave my convent prep for deploying the word one break time. For such an utterance to occur on hallowed ground, and for it to come from a man who’d recently heard one of my tame early confessions, was frankly mind-blowing. (I think it might have been the confession when I told the priest I’d taken two Brazil nuts and three banana chips from a local greengrocer – himself a wonderfully camp Catholic convert who rejoiced in unconvincing toupees.)
It wasn’t the first time I’d heard someone I respected swear on church turf. That had come much earlier in my young life when a particularly pious old shrew had scolded me for running around in the Lady Chapel during the sermon. This desiccated pensioner then waited in the narthex after Mass to reprimand my father for failing to control his wayward toddler. After she’d torn a strip off him, my father leant forward and whispered into her hoary old ear: ‘You iniquitous old bitch.’ Whether it was the horror of her expression or the kick my deeply conservative father got out of the exchange, it was a story he loved to tell.
Indeed, elderly women often seem to be the recipients of foul language in holy places. My maternal grandmother was one-dimensionally devout: she was truly good because she’d never had the daring, or even the imagination, to want to do anything bad. I wonder how much moral merit there is in that; possibly a great deal.
She would spend much of her day in prayer – she had her morning prayers, her afternoon prayers, her evening prayers, her quiet prayers, and her ‘out loud prayers’ which she liked to execute sitting on the prom at Eastbourne, where she had a holiday house, and which must have been diverting for the day-trippers. My grandmother went to Mass daily, and there was once a visiting priest, a missionary, at her London church. My grandmother thought she’d ask him to hear her confession. She kicked off in the usual fashion – ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been a week since my last confession’ – but then continued with the words: ‘Father, my problem is that I find it very difficult to sin.’ This sort of performative spiritual contrivance riled the priest, who’d seen some shit go down in sub-Saharan Africa. He responded with the memorable line: ‘Get out of here, you sanctimonious old cow.’ My grandmother didn’t go to confession again for some time.
The swearing may be shocking enough, but there’s something particularly remarkable when it’s coupled with physical rage. There’s the tale of a smart parish in London where it used to be the custom to read out in some detail the intention for which the Mass was being offered. (A priest friend of mine tells me he has a policy of never doing this because a great number of intentions are ‘absolutely crackers’.) On one occasion, the priest read out the name of the woman whose intention it was, but failed to read out that of the beneficiary of her religious generosity. She followed him into the sacristy afterwards to berate him for this oversight. At this, he picked up his missal and pitched it at her, saying: ‘Fuck off, you superstitious bitch!’
Any of us can fall short of the highest spiritual standards when booze is involved, and priests are no exception
Of course, any of us can fall short of the highest spiritual standards when booze is involved, and priests are no exception. There was apparently an alcoholic parish priest at a church in London many years ago who rather let down on of his most devout parishioners on the day of her husband’s funeral. She arrived with her family and friends, alongside the funeral directors and the pallbearers, to find the church locked. After waiting for some time, the story goes that the widow headed to the presbytery, her fellow mourners, the funeral directors and the pallbearers solemnly carrying the coffin, forming a cortege of confusion behind her. After knocking for a good quarter of an hour, the parish priest duly opened the door – puce with rage and booze – and screamed at the assembled gathering that they could ‘fuck off’. There was no funeral that day.
There are few anecdotes more pleasing, though, than that about the Australian-American actress and devout convert Coral Browne, responding to a friend who’d accosted her after Mass on the steps of the Brompton Oratory with some scandalous gossip: ‘I don’t want to hear this filth. Not with me standing here in a state of fucking grace.’
And unholy behaviour in holy places isn’t just confined to Catholics, obviously. I remember going to an Anglican wedding somewhere reassuringly rural, and shortly before the nuptials kicked off, a particularly flamboyant male friend exclaimed in the stagiest of stage whispers: ‘Jesus Christ! I’ve shagged the vicar!’ It’s fair to say it took several minutes for the sanctity of the church to be restored.
Why television can’t depict the posh
In her 1954 essay ‘The English Aristocracy’, the author Nancy Mitford popularised the descriptions ‘U’, i.e. upper-class or aristocratic, and ‘non-U’, to denote household terms. Although she did not coin the phrase (that credit belongs to the otherwise forgotten linguist Alan S.C. Ross), she brought it to wider public attention. When her friends John Betjeman and Evelyn Waugh added their own contributions, the result was the 1956 book Noblesse Oblige: An Enquiry Into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy.
Language termed ‘U’ included ‘loo’ rather than ‘toilet’, ‘vegetables’ rather than ‘greens’, and saying ‘what?’ rather than the apparently more polite ‘pardon?’ Although a few examples have now dated – I can’t imagine anyone unaffected saying ‘looking-glass’ instead of mirror – it’s undeniably true that Mitford’s once-U, and therefore exclusive, language has proved more enduring than the non-U equivalent. Sofas are ubiquitous in the homes of England’s middle classes, rather than settees or couches, and most would refer to a ‘dinner jacket’ rather than a ‘dress suit’.
If the average middle-class Englishman speaks in a more elevated – and indeed pleasant – style of language than we might otherwise have done, they owe a significant debt to Nancy Mitford, who is also responsible for two of the funniest 20th-century British novels, The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate. This makes the new drama about Nancy and her family – the unimaginatively titled Outrageous – a disappointment, swapping the Mitfords’s love of language and wit for something decidedly prosaic.
If you’ve seen the vast advertisements on billboards, you may be aware of the show, but it’s essentially standard-issue posh drama. It purports to be about the Mitford family, once excellently described by Ben Macintyre as ‘Diana the Fascist, Jessica the communist, Unity the Hitler-lover, Nancy the novelist, Deborah the duchess and Pamela the unobtrusive poultry connoisseur’ – although Macintyre omits Tom, the sole boy, who died fighting the Japanese in Burma in 1945: he refused to fight against Germany, because he admired that country’s spirit. Tom appears in Outrageous, along with his sisters, but it is a sign of the show’s witlessness that even Toby Regbo’s spirited performance cannot salvage a character swiftly pigeonholed as ‘handsome posho’ and left there, dangling.
The greatest flaw in Outrageous is common in contemporary British television drama: it doesn’t know what to do with the posh other than caricature them. Even on its own terms, the programme contradicts itself. It begins with a lavish, champagne-fuelled lunch at the Mitfords’s bucolic country estate, complete with heavenly-looking swimming pool – Instagram-worthy heaven, decades before even the (decidedly non-U) concept of an influencer poisoned society. Then, a couple of scenes later, James Purefoy’s splenetic patriarch David is telling his outraged children that, because of a decline in his investments, they will all have their allowances cut by half. It therefore becomes incumbent upon them – including Bessie Carter’s novel-writing Nancy – to marry advantageously and further their fortunes accordingly.
The greatest flaw in Outrageous is common in contemporary British television drama: it doesn’t know what to do with the posh other than caricature them
If this sounds familiar, that’s because it’s lifted straight from Pride and Prejudice. It was no great surprise to find that Williams also wrote 2007’s absurd Becoming Jane, in which Anne Hathaway (of all people) portrayed a young Jane Austen, secretly in love with James McAvoy’s dashing lawyer Tom Lefroy, only to be torn apart by financial woes. If Austen remains Britain’s premier chronicler of the toxic influence of money on relationships, Nancy Mitford is certainly one of her more devoted disciples. There is a nuance and sophistication to Mitford’s depiction of such matters that is entirely lacking from the broad brushstrokes of Outrageous. Here, the blonde Dietrich-alike Diana finds herself entranced by Oswald Mosley, spouting cookie-cutter ‘Make Britain Great Again’ slogans at a country house party like a more suave Nigel Farage. Before long, she’s fallen into his arms, desperately in love with his manly prowess, even though he resembles a better-looking-than-average door-to-door salesman.
If this were better written, the contrivances and silliness would be easier to forgive. But Williams’s dialogue is plodding and on-the-nose, wholly lacking the Mitford wit and sophistication. Purefoy and Anna Chancellor – the only name actors in an otherwise largely unknown ensemble – have the worst of it, but you’d never know from this show that the Mitford siblings were beloved for their intelligence and (often cutting) use of allusion and parody. Instead, their exchanges plod and thump like undistinguished soap opera. It has the inadvertent effect of making the Mitfords seem like tedious snobs rather than dazzling charmers. By the time Robert Daws appears in full caricature mode as a gulping Churchill at Unity’s coming-out party, it becomes hard to keep watching.
The Mitfords seem peculiarly susceptible to the vagaries of poor writing and uncertain commissioning editors. Emily Mortimer – who I used to respect – ruined The Pursuit of Love a few years ago with a dismal adaptation that showed no confidence in the wit that made the novel so charming, instead ladening it with pop music and anachronisms in a desperate attempt to seem ‘relevant’. Outrageous, clearly made on a tight budget, has now done its damnedest to put the average viewer off this particular family. The only thing that amused me, in fact, was discovering that the network broadcasting this show is itself called U: a misnomer, I fear, because Outrageous really is as non-U as it gets.
David Lammy has nothing to say
The day started badly for David Lammy. Well – we don’t know that for sure – it’s feasible that first thing this morning he won a great victory over his toothpaste tube, however his appearance on the Today programme wasn’t exactly a triumph. Asked by Justin Webb whether the US action was legal he told him that ‘we weren’t involved’. That’s the spirit: answer the question you want, not the question you were asked.
The Sage of Tottenham continued to manifest his dream interview rather than the one that was actually going on. We had a rather fun segue into the periodic table and percentages of uranium enrichment. ‘Oh Justin’, said Lammy at one point, ‘we’ve always been clear’. As a rainy day in Dundee.
Lammy continued his grand clarity tour in parliament where he made a statement on the state of the Middle East. It was hardly a great moment in the history of British foreign policy. Essentially, he told the House that there was almost nothing that Britain could or would do. ‘We will continue to persist with diplomacy’, was his repeated statement. As if this were some sort of active choice rather than the inevitable result of declining power. Imagine the equivalent statement in the natural world: ‘we will continue to persist with this tidal drift’, proclaims plankton.
At the end of Lammy’s clarity extravaganza, not much was announced
Once upon a time the foreign secretary would come to the House of Commons to tell them that Britain had sent gunboats to sort out a recalcitrant country: nowadays he comes to announce that ‘we’ve opened an email portal’. Next to Lammy sat Hamish Falconer, whose nepotistic rise in the contemporary Labour party makes the thousand-year Iranian Shahdom look like an exercise in raw meritocracy.
The government benches tut-tutted when Sarah Pochin of Reform UK asked whether the Americans had felt unable to launch their attacks from the Diego Garcia base, owing to the terms of the Chagos surrender deal. ‘Dear, dear’ harrumphed one back-bencher.
At that precise moment, Stephen Doughty, a flustered junior minister, was umming and ahhing before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee about whether the Mauritian taxpayer’s bonza payout was being funded from the UK defence budget. Stuttering commenced. Today’s mediocrity war was being waged on many fronts.
‘The Honourable Lady has got to get off social media,’ oiled the Foreign Secretary, accusing Pochin of ‘swallowing conspiracy theories’. ‘Answer the question!’ bellowed Richard Tice. A valiant effort but he might as well have been screaming at a lump of plasticine.
At the end of Lammy’s clarity extravaganza, not much was announced, even less concretely achieved. Britain’s foreign policy continues to look depressingly like a bald man giving his opinion on the design of a comb.
Reform’s ‘Britannia cards’ will cost £34 billion
Speaking today at Church House in Westminster, Nigel Farage announced that Reform will introduce a ‘Britannia card’ that will let wealthy foreigners pay a £250,000 fee to move to the UK, and live here exempt from all tax on their foreign assets. The move is an attempt to win over ‘non-doms’ alienated by Labour and Conservative governments and bring their wealth back into the country.
Farage may think his policy will attract ‘talented people’ from around the world, in reality it is more likely to deter them. Farage forgot about the Laffer curve
The party says the policy will raise between £1.5 and £2.5 billion annually. Our analysis of the data suggests it is more likely to cost around £34 billion over five years.
To understand why the policy will cost so much, it is important to look at the recent history of ‘non-doms’. For many years, anyone moving here paid tax on their UK income and assets but were exempt from tax on foreign income and assets (unless they brought them into the country). There were then a number of reforms which introduced a £30,000 fee to keep this benefit – a fee which increased over time. Finally, in 2024 the Tories scrapped the non-dom regime and replaced it with a four-year exemption from tax on foreign earnings. Labour slightly tightened that exemption this year.
Reform is proposing to go back to the pre-2017 position for the very wealthy, with a new fee structure. Non-doms will be able to pay a one-off £250,000 for a ‘Britannia card’ and become tax-exempt on foreign earnings and assets forever. There’s then a cute bit of populist politics: the £250,000 payments will be redistributed Robin-Hood style as a cash payment to the approximately 2.5 million workers earning a full-time salary of less than £23,000.
The party’s ‘low end’ estimate is that 6,000 people will buy a ‘Britannia card’ each year – and on that basis the policy will generate £1.6 billion, meaning a £600 payment to each low-paid worker. Farage went further when he introduced the policy, saying ‘tens of thousands’ would be tempted to move to the UK and the payment would be ‘just the tip of the iceberg of what these people will pay if they come back’ because of the likes of VAT and Stamp Duty.
There are several big problems with this.
First, whilst the proposal makes the UK more attractive to the very wealthy who can afford £250,000, it makes the UK much less attractive to the highly skilled and highly paid professionals we want to attract from abroad – such as doctors, coders, senior scientists and entrepreneurs.
Many other countries have special tax arrangements to attract these kinds of expats. Under Reform’s proposal, the UK would be very uncompetitive by comparison. Those unable or unwilling to pay the £250,000 upfront cost would suddenly have to pay full UK tax, and also any tax in their home country. Often these expats will have savings in their home country which benefit from a favoured tax treatment – much like an ISA. The prospect of those savings suddenly being subject to UK tax will not be appetising for them. Farage may think his policy will attract ‘talented people’ from around the world, in reality it is more likely to deter them. Farage forgot about the Laffer curve.
Second, Reform is planning to hand a windfall to a relatively small number of very wealthy people who were already planning to stay here and pay tax. They will now just have to pay a one-off £250,000, with the rest of their tax revenue disappearing.
The amounts involved are very large. The Office for Budget Responsibility suggests recent Conservative and Labour non-dom reforms will raise £33.9 billion from 2026-30, with most of this revenue coming from the Conservative’s 2024 reforms. When wealthy individuals stop paying tax after they buy a Britannia card, this money will be lost – and will have to be funded by tax cuts or spending rises, especially as any Britannia card revenue will be given directly to those on low incomes. The OBR figure takes ‘behavioural response’ into account, and the OBR’s record of tax projections is solid (their 2023 projection was just 4 per cent out).
Could this cost be overcome by attracting lots of very wealthy people to the UK?
That seems pretty unlikely. When the £30,000 annual non-dom fee was first introduced in 2008, only 5,000 people were willing to pay it. The idea that more than 6,000 people will pay £250,000 upfront is very optimistic. The idea that 6,000 will pay every year is almost inconceivable.
There’s another problem here for Reform. Because the rules around non-doms have changed so much in recent years, few billionaires will truly believe they will be forever exempt from tax if they purchase a Britannia card. After all, no parliament can bind its successors. Unless you think Reform are going to win two or more elections in a row, you’re unlikely to move here to benefit from the tax regime. That’s particular the case after other countries have rescinded their previously generous tax offers for expats. Spain lured highly paid foreigners with its ‘Beckham’s law’, but in the 2020s began to aggressively target people who’d used it. Portugal recently restricted its generous non-habitual residence regime.
High-net-worth individuals crave stability and predictability when making long-term decisions about where they are going to live. It’s unlikely many will be attracted by a ‘Britannia card’ that could be cancelled in a few years anyway.
Why the US will probably strike Iran again
It was bound to happen. Leaving aside, for the moment, the burning question of whether the US strikes on Iran will have set back Tehran’s nuclear programme by weeks, months or years, this moment feels in many ways like an apotheosis of sorts. The Omega (or perhaps Alpha depending on your sense of ontology) of US attempts at talking to the Islamic Republic, a culmination of decades of frustration at the Ayatollah’s unique ability to talk peace and negotiation while murdering and destabilising.
The Islamic Republic now has few good options
The history of the Islamic Republic, from its brazen assassinations to the long-drawn out nuclear saga, is one in which the public face of the regime – suave diplomats and highly intelligent negotiators – buy time while the Islamic Republic enriches itself, arms groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, and oppresses its own people. At some point, the Iranian regime would run out of road.
The Islamic Republic now has few good options. Its parliament breezily voted to close the Strait of Hormuz. This is a largely unwieldy notion that would bring it into direct conflict with the USS Nimitz Carrier task group (and the last thing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) needs now is yet another painful reminder of their technological and intelligence inferiority), alienate key regional allies, such as China and Oman, and cause a spike in global energy prices. Israel is knocking out Iran’s missile launchers with merry abandon, totally unopposed in the skies about Iran. Today’s blowing up of the gates of Evin prison was the clearest message yet that Israel is attempting to portray itself as an agent of positive change, not murderous killers from the sky. Even Tehran’s allies, proxy and nation-state, have done little more than performative ahems and some feet shuffling, leaving us to wonder where Tehran goes now?
Here we must go back to the strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. They were successful, but not a total destruction. The Islamic Republic will likely have squirrelled some centrifuges away. Undoubtedly, it has kept some scientists safe, seeking to ride out the bombs, survive, regroup and fight another day. This is something that Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump (and some regional allies, not traditionally fond of Tehran) all fear; a wounded regime with nothing to lose, causing merry hell in a region already on fire. It seems that the solution to the problem Israel and the US (and Iran) have created is a highly risky change of leadership in Iran. Which is why it is likely that this won’t be the last time the US will strike Iranian positions this summer, no matter what Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth says. The job is half-finished.
Yet those who hate the regime (and there are plenty) wouldn’t be seen dead protesting as the bombs are landing. They fear that their protests might become confused with treachery, crossing a massive red line marked ‘Iranian nationalism,’ which is stronger than we all imagine. For all Netanyahu’s efforts to ‘save the Persian nation’, to many Iranians, he is still a fat bloke with a combover who is bombing their houses.
But the point at which the bombs stop falling, and the regime is forced to reckon with the catastrophic failures of its intelligence agencies and its broken down revolution, will be the moment people flood into the streets demanding change – and wanting to know if Iran’s secret nuclear programme and its network of proxies actually made Iran a safer, more prosperous place or not. I think we know the answer to those questions.
If the fractures amongst the myriad of government factions become something more concrete, things could fall apart much quicker than we imagined. Regime figures such as Ali Larijani and former presidents Khatami and Rouhani have all popped their heads above the parapet to see what might be on the other side of Khamenei’s rule. These first stirrings of elite fracture will, like a crack in the windscreen, only get more serious.
Since this conflict started, so many people I’ve spoken with have been caught between a strong desire for the Islamic Republic to fall and the urge to pose a simple question: how many more innocent people have to die? Another question also presents itself: how can we be sure that what’s on the other side of this will be any better than what we have? But then, who am I, sat miles away in the safety of my home to ask, or even attempt to answer, such questions. Yet again, I would come back to the bravery of the Iranian people who have resisted, silently, openly and sometimes fatally, a group of men who think that rape, torture and execution are effective tools of domestic politics. History warns us against triumphalism in the face of a failed revolution. Perhaps this time it will be different.
Badenoch: Tories are ‘the adults in the room’
It is a year of two major anniversaries for the Tories. The first is the centenary of Margaret Thatcher’s birth; the second is the half-centenary since she was elected leader. To mark the occasion, the think-tank Policy Exchange is laying on a series of events to commemorate the Iron Lady. Today’s was a sit down interview between Thatcher’s biographer, Charles Moore, and Kemi Badenoch, one of Thatcher’s successors.
The conversation between the pair was an engaging one, aimed at highlighting Badenoch’s ability to grasp the major issues of our time. Some of her remarks were punchy: like her suggestion that the UK ‘is being cut out of intelligence’ on the Iran crisis ‘because we cannot be trusted’. Others were familiar: her insistence that Reform is ‘not serious… somebody has to be the adult in the room. We are the adults in the room, and sometimes it is not popular to be the adults in the room.’
There was a hint of policy too. Badenoch confirmed she ‘had looked at’ Denmark’s so-called ‘ghetto laws’, under which social housing areas with high levels of deprivation and a ‘non-Western’ population above 50 per cent are declared ‘parallel societies’. She said she wanted something ‘along the lines’ of this policy, noting the disparities in population ‘and so many other things that would require adjustments, but that sort of thing, yes.’ Much of it was good, sensible stuff for the various attendees nodding along in the think-tank’s headquarters.
But the question is: was anyone listening? The room might have been crammed been full of dozens of the great-and-the-good of the British right. Yet online, the likes of GB News, Daily Express and Policy Exchange struggled to get more than 40 viewers on their respective live streams. Lord Moore made a good point when comparing Badenoch’s leadership to the early days of her predecessor. Back then, in 1978, Thatcher only had to say one word on migration – ‘swamped’ – and the polls began to move in her favour. Now, with Reform on the right, the bar for cut-through has risen much higher.
Given the current pace of politics, it will be interesting tomorrow to compare the coverage of this event to that afforded to Nigel Farage and Robert Jenrick’s speeches today. Badenoch and her team believe that, ultimately, their patience will be rewarded. They point to her record in being proved right on self-ID and Kneecap’s funding in government; her victories in opposition by forcing Labour to U-turn on winter fuel and an inquiry into grooming gangs inquiry.
Yet to seize back power after a record defeat, she will need to not merely show that the Tories are not merely the adults in the room – but ones worth listening to as well.
How dare Sally Rooney ‘admire’ Palestine Action
I’m old enough to remember when it was neo-Nazis who smashed up Jewish-owned businesses. Now it’s so-called progressives. Not long ago, a Jewish business in Stamford Hill in London had its windows smashed and its doors kicked in and red paint sprayed all over its walls. Only it wasn’t Combat 18 or the oafish dregs of the National Front that carried out this mini-Kristallnacht – it was Palestine Action.
Israelophobia is the safest, most celebrated political position in Britain
Yes, the lobby group that is gushed over by Sally Rooney in today’s Guardian, and which is cheered by every bourgeois leftist with an X account, wielded its hammers against a Jewish-owned company. It was on 28 May. In the dead of night, three masked men laid waste to the offices of a landlord business in Stamford Hill, a part of London famous for its lively community of Orthodox Jews.
Palestine Action says it targeted the business not because it is Jewish but because it rents out premises to Elbit Systems UK, an Israeli arms manufacturer. But the business said this isn’t true. Speaking anonymously – because he feared anti-Semitic blowback – a spokesman for the company insisted it had ‘no connection with Elbit’.
To my mind, it’s immaterial whether or not the business has connections with Elbit – Palestine Action’s attack on it was disgusting regardless. You don’t need a PhD in the horrors of the 20th century to understand how distressing it is for Jews in particular to see their businesses smashed to smithereens. Those shards of glass on the streets of Stamford Hill will have triggered the most traumatic memories among the local population.
‘For Jewish people’, this kind of destruction is ‘very, very scary’, said the business’s spokesman. Shomrim, the Jewish neighbourhood security group, said it was horrifying to once again see ‘the criminal harassment of Jewish-owned properties’. Whatever Palestine Action’s political intentions might have been, the objective impact of its criminal assault on a business owned by Jews was to terrorise a Jewish population.
Jews whose families came to the UK precisely to escape those ‘nights of broken glass’ in Russia, Germany and other nations that turned on their Jewish populations found themselves surrounded by shattered glass in Stamford Hill in 2025. Unforgivably, even the business’s mezuzah – the scroll box some Jewish families attach to their front doors to remind them of their faith – ended up stained with the blood-coloured paint that Palestine Action splashed around.
It’s worth reminding ourselves of this woke Kristallnacht today as pompous leftists gather in Trafalgar Square to defend Palestine Action. The government has announced that it plans to proscribe the group under anti-terrorism laws following its trespassing and vandalism at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire last week. And the anti-Israel left is up in arms. Palestine Action are heroes, they say. Really?
It’s a shame that it is Palestine Action’s incursion into Brize Norton – serious as that was – that has hogged the headlines. Because for me, its incursion into Stamford Hill was far more indicative of what a morally dubious movement this is. That horrendous attack confirmed that when the self-righteous of England’s radical middle classes become feverishly obsessed with the ‘evil’ of the world’s only Jewish state, then there’s likely to be blowback for Jews here in the UK.
All Palestine Action did was ‘spray-paint a plane’, says Sally Rooney in the Guardian. No. They also spray-painted a Jewish-owned business. They also got paint on a mezuzah. They also made Jews ‘very, very scared’ by smashing a shopfront in a Jewish suburb. Does she still ‘admire Palestine Action wholeheartedly’? If so, then I humbly venture she is not on the right side of history in the way she seems to imagine.
Independent MP Zarah Sultana has also offered her solidarity to Palestine Action. Their direct action is not a big deal, she suggests, because ‘you can repair a plane, you can replace a broken window’. I sincerely hope Ms Sultana is not minimising the broken windows of Stamford Hill. I hope she is not downplaying the moral injury caused to Jews when they see the shattered glass their ancestors also saw. Perhaps she can clarify what she meant. This is important, Ms Sultana.
Some are saying the clampdown on Palestine Action is an attempt to silence criticism of Israel. Get over yourselves. Hating Israel is the dinner-party prejudice du jour. It’s the moral glue of the cultural establishment. You’re no one in polite society unless you pull on a keffiyeh and defame the Jewish state as the most bloodthirsty state. Quit the faux-radicalism – Israelophobia is the safest, most celebrated political position in Britain right now.
What worries me is its consequences. It seems unquestionable to me that when the influential single out the Jewish nation as the wickedest nation, the most twisted, genocidal ‘entity’ on earth, then ordinary Jews will get some heat. It’s already happening. Should Palestine Action be branded a terror threat? I don’t know. But I do know that, wittingly or otherwise, they terrorised the Jews of Stamford Hill last month.
Keir Starmer needs a new attorney general
A major plank in the Labour Party’s electoral platform last year was its policy of scrupulous obedience to international law. Attorney-General Lord Hermer has repeatedly pushed this view, swearing undying loyalty to everything from pyjama injunctions coming out of Strasbourg to arrest warrants from the Hague. Unfortunately this exercise in legal piety is now coming back to bite the government big-time. It is making it very difficult for Britain to play what cards it has in the new international game of thrones.
Most recently think of Midnight Hammer, the US bunker-buster strike on Iran. Britain, normally a keen supporter of the US, was unceremoniously sidelined. We could have offered help through the use of Diego Garcia or RAF Akrotiri as a staging post, or through more clandestine means best not described here. Yet we did not; nor were we asked to. Indeed, there is speculation that our diplomats may have privately told the US not to ask as a refusal might offend. Why? It seems clear that a major reason was our attitude to international law. Hermer had, it seemed, legally advised against the operation after poring over the terms of the UN Charter.
Those we have to deal with will simply note us down as being easy pickings
However principled and however uplifting to an academic legal expert with an article to write or a conference to address, this safety-first approach is dangerous. Businessmen in private practice look to their lawyers not as father confessors to tell them what they can’t do, but as enablers to help them do what they want. So too should nations. If our interests lie in a particular direction, we need to look for ways to further them. Simply giving up when we receive the memo saying ‘legal says no’ is a road to disaster.
True, with Midnight Hammer there is no guarantee we would have been asked to help: indeed the operation was mounted at least partly to let Trump’s top brass demonstrate that Uncle Sam could strike where and when he wished without outside aid. But diplomatically, an offer of assistance would have worked wonders: our cold feet on the issue of co-operation will have been noted, and will have the opposite effect.
Nor is this the first time. In the Middle East, Israel is the only power worth the name that is democratic, outward-looking and largely supportive of western values. We should be doing our utmost to support it. But we aren’t. To appease an International Criminal Court of doubtful impartiality, last October Hermer peremptorily threatened to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if he set foot here. And when aircraft operated by Tel Aviv took on Tehran’s medieval theocrats earlier this month, we pointedly stood aside and joined the international appeasers’ call for de-escalation. Why? Again, partly because of an over-cautious attitude to international law.
Yet again, all this is without considering the Chagos debacle. There was ample wiggle-room to obtain a much better deal for Diego Garcia, vital to the security of Britain and the West. But it was thought more important to avoid the possibility of a clash with the International Court of Justice, another court with increasingly anti-Western political leanings, by essentially entering into negotiations with a worryingly pro-Chinese and far-from-incorrupt ex-colonial government with an admission that it held all the legal cards.
Why are we doing this? The official line is that Britain needs to set a good example in an increasingly anarchic world; that we will be admired and respected as a result; and that other countries will be more amenable when we complain that our own rights have been infringed. Unfortunately, there is every indication that this is hogwash. Of course, other countries and the UN will on the surface be polite and even praise us for our stand: this is the language of the international diplomatic circuit. But those we have to deal with will simply note us down as being easy pickings who will not take strong steps to preserve our interests if our lawyers say no. If you don’t believe this, ask the Mauritians, who, according to the Daily Mail a couple of weeks ago, funded a major tax cut on the basis of our government’s pusillanimity.
Starmer is still feeling his way in the world strategy stakes. Despite having a great deal instinctively in common with Lord Hermer, he is slowly learning that principles adopted in opposition, whether on human rights, international courts or whatever, may have to bend in contact with the hard reality of Britain’s interests. To avert the gentle decline of a country shackled by misplaced legalism, he needs a legal adviser who sees himself not as the sea-green incorruptible Robespierre of the International Law Reports tasked with telling the nation what it can’t do, but as someone to help it achieve its strategic aims. Say it quietly, but Starmer desperately needs a new attorney general.
Kim Leadbeater’s office blunders again
Oh dear. It seems that the office of the Hon. Member for Spen Valley has put their foot in it again. Kim Leadbeater might have hoped for a quieter life now that her much-criticised Assisted Dying Private Members’ Bill narrowly scraped through the Commons by 23 votes on Friday. But Leadbeater has started the new week off in the worst possible way in her capacity as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy.
Leadbeater’s office gaily sent around an email to her Labour comrades this afternoon, giving them their lines to take at this week’s oral questions on Thursday. ‘Dear colleagues’, it began, ‘we’re writing ahead… to share a few suggested questions for tabling.’ There then followed a list of ten suggested ideas to fearlessly hold Nandy and her fellow ministers to account. Zingers included, ‘What steps her Department is taking to support the delivery of major sporting events?’ and ‘What steps her Department is taking to promote participation in sport?’ Talk about a curveball.
Unfortunately, with a trademark attention to detail, it seems that the planted Labour questions were sent to a bunch of Tory MPs too. ‘At least it’s not people’s lives this time’, said one of them to Mr S.
Forensic stuff indeed…
The NHS isn’t being honest about the maternity crisis
Wes Streeting has announced yet another inquiry into NHS maternity safety: this time a national investigation which the Health Secretary wants to address ‘systemic problems dating back over 15 years.’
This rapid review, modelled on the Darzi review of the NHS, will report in December 2025 and will work across the entire maternity system, using the findings of previous reviews and urgently examining the ten worst-performing maternity services in the country.
The resistance within the NHS to being honest about what’s really driving this maternity crisis would make it difficult for any review, inquiry or other format to promise real change
In a speech to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Health Secretary argued that the risk of childbirth to women and their babies is ‘considerably higher than it should be because of the state of the crisis in our maternity and neonatal services here in the UK.’ He listed the scandals which charted those system problems lasting more than 15 years, from Morecambe Bay to Nottingham. The picture he painted of the maternity system was grim – but not an exaggeration, and very familiar to those who’ve been through the maternity system over the past decade and a half. There are rising rates of maternal deaths, babies of black ethnicity are twice as likely to be stillborn, and black women two to three times more likely to die during pregnancy or shortly after birth than white women – with the gap closing slightly, only because more white women are dying too.
Streeting said he had met with families left bereaved, damaged and traumatised by the system, adding: ‘I’ve seen photographs of their children. I’ve seen the ashes of their children in the tiniest little boxes, and I’ve also seen more courage than I could ever imagine mustering if I had to walk a day in their shoes. Carrying the weight of their trauma.’
That paragraph was powerful enough, but the real punch came straight after, when he said that the trauma of those losses had been ‘compounded time and time again’ by the way NHS trusts had then dealt with them. ‘They describe being ignored, gaslit, lied to, manipulated, and damaged further by the inability for a trust to simply be honest with them that something has gone wrong.’
Streeting knows that none of this is really news: the Morecambe report was the first in a library of inquiries into the same kinds of failings, toxic cultures, dogma and refusal to be honest that are clearly endemic in NHS maternity services. He argued today that he was taking a different approach by commissioning this kind of review. Not only will it investigate the problems, it will also ‘pull together the recommendations from the other reviews… to assess progress and provide clarity and direction for the future, so that everyone in the system knows what they’re working to.’
Many campaigners feel that Streeting should have announced a full public inquiry, and there is much to be said for something with the statutory powers to compel witnesses, given the scale of denial and dishonesty within the NHS about individual cases, as well as the way the system is failing.
But if the review really does assess what has happened with the recommendations of previous inquiries, then it will be doing one thing that public inquiries really can’t do, which is ensuring there is change. The current legislation underpinning inquiries means there is no provision for follow-up once they have published their report and recommendations. It contributes to our dysfunctional cycle of scandal, inquiry, promises of lessons learned – and then failure to change.
Either way, the resistance within the NHS and politics to being honest about what’s really driving this maternity crisis would make it difficult for any review, inquiry or other format to promise real change. This review might be different – but then campaigners did hope that with all the ones that came before over the past 15 years too.
Home Secretary will proscribe Palestine Action
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has announced in the Commons this afternoon that the UK government will proscribe Palestine Action. The move comes after members of the activist group broke into RAF Brize Norton and graffitied two military planes. In a statement, Cooper said: ‘A draft proscription order will be laid in Parliament on Monday 30 June. If passed, it will make it illegal to be a member of, or invite support for, Palestine Action.’
And the Metropolitan police have taken no chances with them in London. The force has banned protests planned for today from taking place outside parliament, imposing an exclusion zone around Westminster. Meanwhile police have said that demonstrations by the group cannot begin before noon in central London and must wrap up by 3pm. If activists break these rules, they could face arrest. Crikey!
It hasn’t completely stumped campaigners, however, with the group moving their protests to Trafalgar Square instead. Announcing the new location on social media, Palestine Action fumed: ‘The Metropolitan Police are trying to deter support from Palestine Action by banning the protest from taking place at the House of Parliament. Don’t let them win!’ A gathering of around 200 people has met in the area, with some kitted out in face coverings and brandishing Palestinian flags. Placards that scream ‘Britain, US, Israel are terrorists… Hands off Palestine Action’ have been distributed, while volunteers on the ground have handed out ‘bust cards’ that give legal advice in case of arrest.
The protests come ahead of the Home Secretary’s written statement – in which she will lay out plans to proscribe Palestine Action, effectively branding them a terrorist organisation
The Home Secretary’s decision today comes as a security review begins at military bases across the country after the protestors managed to gain access to the RAF unit in Oxfordshire. But while the Cooper’s plans have garnered praise from across the political spectrum – with former Tory home secretary Suella Braverman among those lauding Labour – the move has also received significant backlash.
Amnesty International UK have raged that: ‘Terrorism powers should never have been used to aggravate criminal charges against Palestine Action activists and they certainly shouldn’t be used to ban them.’ Meanwhile left-wingers like independent MP Zarah Sultana and former adviser to Jeremy Corbyn, James Schneider, have taken to social media to slam Cooper’s decision, with Schneider writing: ‘Every freedom-loving person should oppose the proscription of Palestine Action.’ And Irish author Sally Rooney has even waded in, writing in the Guardian today that:
From the suffragettes to the gay rights movement to the anti-apartheid struggle, genuine political resistance has always involved intentional law-breaking… Proscribing an entire organisation under the Terrorism Act is not the same thing as prosecuting particular individuals for specific transgressions… If the government proceeds down this path, any ordinary person in the UK could in theory be sent to prison simply for expressing verbal support for non-violent activism. Quite aside from the broader principle, this would represent an alarming curtailment of free speech.
But pressure from the left didn’t manage to dissuade Cooper of her convictions in time…
Farage makes his pitch to non-doms
Reform UK are on the rise – quite literally. The party is planning to move one floor up in their headquarters at Millbank Tower, giving its 40-odd staff a commanding view of Westminster from their office. That change in circumstance was reflected in Nigel Farage’s speech this morning, when he strolled in to Westminster’s Church House to set out his party’s pitch to non-doms.
The Clacton MP told journalists that ‘tens of thousands’ of people would be tempted to the UK by the offer of the card
The party’s headline announcement today was the launch of a new ‘Britannia card’. This would be a one-off £250,000 fee which would allow non-doms – UK residents whose permanent home for tax purposes is outside the UK – to avoid income tax. The Clacton MP told journalists that ‘tens of thousands’ of people would be tempted to the UK by the offer of the card, with the one-off payment representing ‘just the tip of the iceberg of what these people will pay if they come back’ in stamp duty and VAT in the UK. The party estimates its policy would raise between £1.5billion to £2.5billion annually, which would be redistributed to the poorest ten per cent of workers.
Some referred to this as a ‘Robin Hood’ policy; but Disraeli is perhaps a better comparison. The presence at the speech of Nick Candy, multimillionaire property developer and the party’s honorary treasurer, demonstrates that Reform UK hardly see the rich as enemies of the poor. Farage’s argument is that it is necessary to create a ‘transparent link’ between the social classes and restore the ‘social contract’ which exists between them. Under a Reform UK government, ‘every wealthy individual who wishes to move here makes a tangible contribution to Britain’s lowest earners,’ said Farage.
The questions, inevitably, were dominated by Iran. No Foreign Office-style flim-flam here; Farage insisted that the Israel and the US were ‘right’ to try to destroy Tehran’s nuclear capacity. Noting his history of opposing regime change in Libya and Iraq, Farage argued it was ‘difficult to see’ what could be ‘worse’ than the current ‘evil’ Ayatollah. Asked whether he supported the UK joining military action in Iran, Farage said: ‘I doubt they are going to ask for our help but they could do with our support.’ For good measure, he accused Richard Hermer, the Attorney General, of ‘bordering on treacherous’ for his legal advice on the future of the Diego Garcia military base.
Overall, it was a pitch aimed squarely at a very different type of regime change: toppling the Tories as the primary opposition to Labour by the next election in 2029.
How the US bombed Iran’s nuclear sites
Over the weekend, the US Air Force attacked three nuclear sites in Iran in an operation codenamed ‘Midnight Hammer’. According to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Caine, the strike was ‘designed to severely degrade Iran’s nuclear weapons infrastructure’.
The operation involved seven B-2 strategic bombers flying from the continental United States to Iran and back, reportedly a 37-hour mission. The bombers were escorted by 125 aircraft in total, including tankers, reconnaissance platforms, electronic warfare assets and fighter jets.
While the US strike likely succeeded in damaging or disabling the targeted infrastructure, it did not yet achieve the broader objective of ending Iran’s nuclear weapons programme
In addition, a US submarine operating in the Gulf of Oman launched a volley of Tomahawk cruise missiles at Iran.
The B-2 bombers dropped a total of 14 GBU-57 ‘Massive Ordnance Penetrator’ (MOP) bombs against nuclear infrastructure near Fordow and Natanz. The GBU-57 MOP is designed to penetrate deeply into hardened structures before detonating its 2,400 kg explosive filler, maximizing damage against buried targets.
This was necessary, as the Fordow fuel enrichment plant is located around 80 to 90 meters underground and protected by several meters of reinforced concrete. In total, the site was hit by 12 bombs, distributed across six aimpoints.
Satellite imagery suggests these aimpoints were located above former ventilation shafts used by the Iranians when they were building the site, which they later filled in and covered. Despite being filled in, these shafts were likely ‘softer’ targets than the surrounding granite, allowing the bombs to penetrate deeper. Detonating the warheads inside the shafts may also have allowed the shockwave to propagate further, increasing the destructive effect.
The fact that 12 bombs were reportedly dropped on only six aimpoints suggests that the United States ‘double tapped’ each, meaning it launched two successive strikes against individual aimpoints, allowing the bombs to penetrate further by exploiting the tunnel carved by the previous projectile.
The remaining two penetrator bombs struck the Natanz fuel enrichment plant. Although the facility is similarly buried, it lies at a much shallower depth, requiring fewer bombs to achieve the intended level of destruction.
Finally, 30 Tomahawk cruise missiles struck above-ground targets at the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Centre. The centre houses uranium conversion and fuel plate fabrication facilities. In addition, the site is located near a tunnel complex where Iran is known to have stored enriched fuel.
Following the strike, US officials and decision makers assessed the Fordow site as severely damaged but not destroyed. This assessment is likely accurate. While the allocated payload was probably insufficient to fully collapse the structure, the highly sensitive centrifuge equipment inside was very likely irreparably damaged by the resulting shockwave and vibration.
In contrast, targets engaged in Natanz and the Isfahan Technology Centre were described as fully destroyed.
In terms of the targeted structures and the resulting damage, the attack was a success and likely achieved the desired levels of destruction. This has probably set back Iran’s nuclear programme by several months to years. It is though unlikely to have fully ended it.
Notably, several known Iranian nuclear sites have not been targeted. Most significantly, this includes a large underground facility in Natanz, which forms the core of Iran’s centrifuge production capability and likely also houses some enrichment capacity.
This means that unless follow-on strikes are carried out against this facility, Iran retains the ability to replenish its centrifuge stockpile and resume large-scale enrichment within a relatively short timeframe.
It also remains unclear what happened to Iran’s known stockpile of 60 per cent enriched uranium, which exceeded 400 kg in May this year. This material was reportedly stored in a tunnel complex in Isfahan, yet there appear to have been no major efforts to target that site.
Iran may have moved some or all of this stockpile at this point. Satellite imagery indicates that, prior to the bombardment, Iranian trucks were present at the storage site in Isfahan to seal the tunnels and potentially relocate the stored fissile material.
Before the outbreak of the war, Iran had informed the International Atomic Energy Agency that it was preparing to install centrifuges at a new underground site for enrichment purposes, the exact location of which remains publicly unknown. While American or Israeli intelligence may be aware of its location, this signals Iran’s continued capacity to establish new enrichment facilities.
As such, while the US strike likely succeeded in damaging or disabling the targeted infrastructure, it did not yet achieve the broader objective of ending Iran’s nuclear weapons programme.
In fact, if the United States halts its campaign at this point, it may accelerate Iran’s push toward a nuclear bomb.