Iran
Starmer’s war zone: the Prime Minister is in a perilous position
Sir Keir Starmer was alerted in the early hours of Friday by his national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, that Israel’s…
Portrait of the week: War in the Middle East, drought in Yorkshire and a knighthood for Beckham
Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, announced a full national statutory inquiry into grooming gangs (which he had previously…
Who’s pushing Trump to be an Iran hawk?
‘This never would have happened if I had been president,’ says Donald Trump, whenever the international news goes from bad…
What else could Israel do?
Over the past few days British readers have been able to enjoy a number of hot takes on the situation…
Striking Fordow will not solve the Iran problem
The world is watching Donald Trump to see if he will give his military the green light to use one…
War games
A satellite picture shows six American B-2 Stealth bombers parked on the runway at Diego Garcia. The planes – each…
Ukraine is just one part of Trump’s Great Game
Washington D.C. For Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, it’s a case of today Ukraine, tomorrow the world. In their much-hyped…
Extraordinary: The Seed of the Sacred Fig reviewed
The Seed of the Sacred Fig is by the Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof and all you need to know is…
Will the Syrian Civil War create another ISIS?
There are unintended consequences, and then there are unintended consequences. What we are seeing in Syria, as Aleppo and Hama…
A pause between wars
‘What is to stop it happening again?’ was the pertinent question put to me by a Lebanese friend this week…
Iran is playing a dangerous game
A drone exploded in a sleepy Israeli seaside town yesterday. The target of the attack was Benjamin Netanyahu. By luck,…
The Iranian diplomat trying to stop Armageddon
‘The embassy is being invaded. The ambassador has had to lock himself in his office upstairs, and there are people…
Israel was right to ignore the West
There are sources in the Jewish tradition that warn against exultation at the downfall of one’s enemies. But I am…
Is Israel trying to drag America into a war with Iran?
The American general David Petraeus famously asked of the invasion of Iraq: ‘Tell me how this ends.’ That’s the question…
Iran and Hezbollah don’t want a war with Israel
Hezbollah’s response to the killing of senior official Fuad Shukr, when it finally came, was a more minor event than…
‘I came here to escape radical Islam’: the asylum seekers who understand the rioters’ fears
Sousou is a 24-year-old Syrian-Palestinian woman who arrived in Britain a few weeks ago in a rubber dinghy from Calais.…
The new alliances dedicated to destroying democracy
Despite their diverse ideologies, autocracies in China, Iran, Russia and Latin America are increasingly collaborating to sabotage a rules-based international order
Anti-Semitism has returned to French politics
New Caledonia is an archipelago in the South Pacific not far from Australia. James Cook discovered it in 1774, but,…
Who has the worst voice in parliament?
For the first time in more than two decades we are dog-less, and the house feels horribly empty. Our Patterdale…
Gangs of Tehran: how Iran takes out its enemies abroad
‘It was Friday afternoon, around 2.45. I came out of the house and was going towards the car on the…
Inside the new Arab-Israeli alliance
As Jordanian fighter jets shot down Iranian drones heading for Israel on Saturday night, there were joyful cries of Allahu…
The Lebanese always return home
Beirut You might have thought that the threat of the Gaza war spiralling into an all-out regional conflagration, along with…
My letter from Chris Packham
I do not know Chris Packham, the BBC nature broadcaster, personally, but he wrote me a letter last month, enclosing…
How dangerous is the Sunni-Shia schism?
What unites the two groups is more fundamental than what divides them, says Barnaby Rogerson, and the more serious conflict among Muslims concerns ethnicity and language
Joe Biden’s Middle East diplomacy is a wreck
Joe Biden prides himself on his decades of foreign-policy experience, his ability to talk tough yet be kind, and his…
