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      David Lammy refuses to say if UK supported US strikes on Iran nuclear facilities

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      The UK foreign secretary has repeatedly refused to say if the UK supported the US military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities on Saturday or whether they were legal.Interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday for the first time since the US launched airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities, David Lammy also sidestepped the question of whether he supported recent social media posts by Donald Trump that seemed to favour regime change in Tehran, saying that in all his discussions in the White House the sole focus had been on military targets.Lammy said western allies were waiting for battlefield assessments of the impact of the strikes, but it was possible Iran still had a stockpile of highly enriched uranium, although the strikes “may also have set back Iran’s nuclear programme by several years”.Ever since the US strikes, senior figures in the Labour government have tried to make their criticism of the action only implicit rather than explicit.Lammy tried to focus on urging Iran to return to the negotiating table, insisting that Iran was in breach of its obligations by enriching uranium at levels of purity as high as 60%.The UK Foreign Office has denied Iranian reports that in a phone call on Sunday with the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, Lammy had expressed regret about the US strikes.Asked if the airstrikes were legal, Lammy said three times it was for Washington to answer such questions.But in the course of a 15-minute interview on BBC Radio 4, he at no point backed the US airstrikes, saying he was not going to get into the issues of whether they conformed with either article 2 or article 51 of the UN charter, clauses that permit military action in self-defence.Saying “there is still an off-ramp for the Iranians”, he admitted discussions with Iran involving France, Germany and the UK last Friday in Geneva had been “very tough”.He said: “Everyone is urging the Iranians to get serious about the negotiations with the E3 and the US.” Iran is currently refusing to talk to the US or Israel while it is under military attack.Lammy said he still believed Iran was engaging in “deception and obfuscation” about its nuclear programme, but added “yes, they [the Iranians] can have a civil nuclear capability that is properly monitored that involves outsiders but they cannot continue to enrich to 60 %”.His remarks left open whether the UK supported the US negotiating position of insisting on zero uranium enrichment inside the country, or whether he was prepared to accept that Iran could enrich to 3.67% level of purity, the maximum allowed in the Iran nuclear deal signed in 2015 and from which the UK, unlike the US, has not withdrawn.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe also refused to say if he agreed with the latest US intelligence assessment that Iran was close to securing a nuclear weapon, saying instead he relied on the report from the UN nuclear inspectorate, the International Atomic Energy Agency. In its latest reporting, the IAEA said it had no evidence that Iran was seeking a nuclear bomb.He said: “You can only deal with the Iranian nuclear programme diplomatically. If Iran is able to enrich beyond 60%, is able to get a weapon, what we will see is nuclear proliferation across the Middle East.”Asked about Trump’s references to regime change he said: “I recognise there is a discussion about regime change but that is not what is under consideration at this time. The rhetoric is strong but I can tell you, having spoken to the secretary of state, having sat in the White House, that this targeted action is to deal with Iran’s nuclear capability.”When pressed to comment on a claim by Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister, that by “being blind” on the issue of the legality of the US’s action, European leaders undermined their position on Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Russia, Lammy insisted there was no moral equivalence between the Russian invasion of a sovereign country and the actions the US had taken in Iran. More

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      Western leaders call for diplomacy, but they won’t stop this war – they refuse to even name its cause | Nesrine Malik

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      Since the war on Gaza started, the defining dynamic has been of unprecedented anger, panic and alarm from the public, swirling around an eerily placid political centre. The feeble response from mainstream liberal parties is entirely dissonant with the gravity of the moment. As the US joins Israel in attacking Iran, and the Middle East heads toward a calamitous unravelling, their inertness is more disorienting than ever. They are passengers in Israel’s war, either resigned to the consequences or fundamentally unwilling to even question its wisdom. As reality screams at politicians across the west, they shuffle papers and reheat old rhetoric, all while deferring to an Israel and a White House that have long taken leave of their senses.At a time of extreme geopolitical risk the centre presents itself as the wise party in the fracas, making appeals for cool heads and diplomacy, but is entirely incapable of addressing or challenging the root cause. Some are afraid to even name it. Israel has disappeared from the account, leaving only a regrettable crisis and a menacing Iran. The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, has called for de-escalation. But he referred to the very escalation he wishes to avoid – the US’s involvement – as an alleviation of the “grave threat” posed by Iran, all the while building up UK forces in the Middle East.The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, underlines the importance of diplomacy while making sure to assert that Iran is the “principal source” of instability in the region. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, had seemed to be inhabiting the real world, warning against the inevitable chaos that would be triggered by regime change in Iran and in repeating the mistakes of the past. But by Sunday France had fallen into line, joining the chorus calling for de-escalation and restraint in vague general terms, and reiterating “firm opposition” to Iran’s nuclear programme.If this seems maddeningly complacent to you, let me reassure you that you are not, in fact, missing something. The war with Iran is very bad news, and introduces a number of profoundly destabilising scenarios: regime change with no day-after plan, leaving a large cadre of armed military and security forces in play; the amassing in the region of western military forces that could become targets and flashpoints; or simply a prolonged war of attrition that would seize up the region and open a large festering wound of anger and militarisation. It’s also – and this is something Israel’s assaults have inured us to – killing hundreds of innocent people. To say nothing of the fact that it is, above all the extant risks, illegal.But most western leaders continue to treat it as just another chapter of unfortunate but ultimately fixed realities of the world to manage. And here is the sinkhole at the heart of the entire response to Israel over the past year and a half – a vacant centre. Trump is Trump. No one is expecting him to have a coherent, brave and stabilising response to Israel. But the problem predates him: a political establishment of ostensibly liberal, reliable custodians of stability that has no moral compass, and no care for the norms it constantly claims to uphold. Under its watch, international and human rights law has been violated again and again in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and now Iran. Its answer has been to get out of Israel’s way at best, and arm it and provide it with diplomatic cover at worst. Joe Biden’s administration set the tone, and European governments followed. Collectively, they have clung on to a status quo of unconditional support for Israel and, in doing so, shattered the legal and moral conventions that imbued them with any measure of integrity or authority.And yet they still carry on amid the wreckage. Their pronouncements about the importance of diplomacy sound like echoes from an era that has long passed – one before a livestreamed genocide demolished any semblance of a coherent system of international law. What the current moment has revealed is a cohort of regimes fundamentally unsuited to crisis, fit only for management; a crop of politicians whose very role is not to rethink or challenge the way things are, but simply to shepherd geopolitical traffic. Their mandate is indeed to stabilise, but only in the sense of locking in a world order of failing assumptions and hierarchies. It is not to make the world a better place, but to cast a veneer of credibility over why it is necessary that we live in this worse one.This is not to be confused with “pragmatism”. Pragmatism implies a lack of position or vested interest. What is obscured by the language of reluctant engagement is that it is underpinned by beliefs that are defined not by values, but by tribal supremacy. Iran is a country which, in the eyes of a liberal establishment, is never fully sovereign because it has diverged from western interests. It has no right of response when attacked (and in fact, must show restraint when it is). Its people have no right to expect a careful consideration of their future, or indeed the entire region’s. Israel, on the other hand, is a super sovereign, and never culpable.This default position is so naked in its hypocrisy, so ignorant and parochial in its worldview, so clear in its disregard for human life, that it represents a colossal erosion of sophistication in political discourse, and a new low in contempt for the public. Support for Israel can only be defended by facile, logic-defying references to its right to defend itself even when it is the aggressor, and Iran’s “threat to the free world”. Forgive me, but is that the same free world that backed unilateral attacks on four Middle East territories by Israel, a country whose leader is wanted by the international criminal court? At this point, the biggest threat to the free world is itself, which will sacrifice everything to ensure that not a single challenge to its power is allowed to pass.The end result is that such leaders are not only irresponsible, they are unrepresentative, unable and unwilling even to manufacture consent any more. An accelerating nihilism has taken hold. Mandates fray as centrist governments and political parties stray further and further from the public, which in Europe declares a historically low level of support for Israel. In the US (including Trump supporters), a majority opposes involvement in war with Iran. And so the gap between a detached politics and bloody reality widens even further. The managers of western hegemony hurtle into the void, taking all of us with them.

      Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist More

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      Trump news at glance: US president talks regime change and ‘MIGA’ after Iran strikes

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      During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump campaigned on the promise of “no more wars” but global events have radically changed his views.In what could be his most consequential day as president yet, Trump decided to bomb three Iranian nuclear sites on Saturday in an operation he deemed “a spectacular military success”. Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities, he boasted, have been “completely and totally obliterated.”In a post to the Truth Social platform on Sunday, Trump took it a step further by addressing the issue of regime change in Iran, applying his Maga rhetoric to the Middle East.“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??? MIGA!!!” he wrote.Here are the key stories at a glance.Trump’s military attack on Iran reveals split among Maga diehardsSaturday’s US strikes on Iran provoked conflicting reactions from isolationist Republicans who support Donald Trump’s “Make America great again” (Maga) movement, catching them – like many Democrats – between supporting efforts against nuclear proliferation and opposing American intervention in foreign conflicts.Read the full storyJD Vance claims US is at war with Iran’s nuclear program, not IranJD Vance has said the US is “not at war” with Iran – but is with its nuclear weapons program, holding out a position that the White House hopes to maintain over the coming days as the Iranian regime considers a retributive response to Saturday’s US strike on three of its nuclear installations.Read the full storyUS bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities is Trump’s biggest gamble yet as presidentDonald Trump, a self-confessed risk-taker, has taken the greatest gamble – not just with his political reputation and the future of the Middle East, but arguably with the whole concept of military intervention as a way to solve intractable geopolitical problems.Read the full storyJudge orders release of Kilmar Ábrego García as he awaits federal trialA Tennessee judge on Sunday ordered the release of Kilmar Ábrego García, whose mistaken deportation has become a flashpoint in Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, while he awaits a federal trial on human smuggling charges. But he is not expected to be allowed to go free.Read the full storyMahmoud Khalil renews devotion to Palestinian freedom at New York rallyMahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian rights activist, freed from Ice detention on Friday, returned to Columbia University on Sunday to renew his commitment to the cause of Palestinian freedom and opposition to both the university and the Trump administration.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      ‘Ticking timebomb’: Ice detainee dies in transit as experts say more deaths likely

      Republican representative’s ectopic pregnancy clashes with Florida abortion law

      Gun-wielding attacker killed at church in suburban Detroit
      Catching up? Here’s what happened 21 June. More

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      Trump’s military attack on Iran reveals split among Maga diehards

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      Saturday’s US strikes on Iran provoked conflicting reactions from isolationist Republicans who support Donald Trump’s Make America great again (Maga) movement, catching them – like many Democrats – between supporting efforts against nuclear proliferation and opposing American intervention in foreign conflicts.The far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene – a loyalist to the president – reacted to the strikes by urging those in the US to pray that terrorists do not attack “our homeland” in retaliation.“Let us join together and pray for the safety of our US troops and Americans in the Middle East,” Greene wrote on X.But Greene had not been so supportive in a message posted 30 minutes before Trump announced news of the surprise strikes on Saturday evening.In that message, Greene wrote: “Every time America is on the verge of greatness, we get involved in another foreign war. There would not be bombs falling on the people of Israel if [its prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu had not dropped bombs on the people of Iran first. Israel is a nuclear armed nation. This is not our fight. Peace is the answer.”The former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon, who has been an opponent of US military intervention in Iran, hit out at the president for thanking Netanyahu in a national address shortly after the strikes.Speaking on his War Room web show, Bannon said, “It hasn’t been lost … that he thanked Bibi Netanyahu, who I would think right now – at least the War Room’s position is – [is] the last guy on Earth you should thank.”That came amid ongoing speculation that Trump’s decision to attack Iran’s nuclear sites on Saturday stemmed from information that Iran was close to developing a weapon – as supplied by Israeli, and not US, intelligence sources. The issue created an apparent split between Trump and the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.The president recently criticized Gabbard and the US intelligence community, saying they were “wrong” in assessing that Iran had not taken the political step of ordering a bomb. Gabbard has denied that she and Trump were not on the same page.Nonetheless, Bannon continued his criticism of the strikes, saying: “I don’t think we’ve been dealing from the top of the deck.”The former White House adviser also criticized Trump for leaving open the possibility of further US strikes if Iran fails to capitulate to US demands. “I’m not quite sure [it was] the talk that a lot of Maga wanted to hear,” he said. “It sounded … very open-ended.”Days earlier, amid signs of a Maga rebellion against the administration’s increasingly hawkish stance on Iran, Bannon told an audience in Washington that bitterness over the invasion and occupation of Iraq was a driving force for Trump’s first presidential victory. “One of the core tenets is no forever wars,” Bannon said.Bannon, though, said “the Maga movement will back Trump” despite its opposition to military interventions.But there are now signs that the Maga “America first” isolationist position may be more amenable to limited airstrikes. The administration has stressed that Saturday’s raids only targeted Iran’s nuclear enrichment and not manufacturing locations, population centers or economic assets, including the oil terminal at Karg island.The far-right influencer Charlie Kirk had warned of a Maga divide over Iran, saying “Trump voters, especially young people, supported [him] because he was the first president in my lifetime to not start a new war.”Yet on Sunday, Kirk reposted a clip of an interview with JD Vance on Meet the Press in which the vice-president praised the B-2 pilots from Missouri who carried out the previous day’s bombing.“They dropped 30,000 pound bombs on a target the size of a washing machine, and then got back home safely without ever landing in the Middle East,” Vance said in the clip. “Whatever our politics, we should be proud of what these guys accomplished.”In that interview, Vance suggested Trump had “probably” decided by mid-May that the diplomatic process with Iran was “not going anywhere”. But Vance refused to be drawn on when precisely Trump approved the strike, saying it probably came “over time”. More

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      Democrats say they were left in dark about plans for US strikes on Iran

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      Senior Democrats have claimed they were left in the dark about operation Midnight Hammer, the US’s highly coordinated strike on Saturday on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program.Neither Mark Warner, a US senator of Virginia, nor Jim Himes, a representative of Connecticut, both top Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence panels, were briefed before the attack, according to reports.But that came amid claims that Republican counterparts were given advance notice of the operation, which involved 125 aircraft – including seven B-2 bombers carrying 14 bunker busters weighing three tons – and 75 Tomahawk missiles launched from US submarines. Axios reported that the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, had been informed shortly before the attacks began at 6.40pm eastern time.Himes’s committee staff received notification about the strike from the Pentagon only after Donald Trump made the announcement on social media soon before 8pm, according to the outlet.The president’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, told a press conference early on Sunday that the strikes “took months and weeks of positioning and preparation so that we could be ready when the president called”.“It took misdirection and the highest of operational security,” Hegseth said, in part alluding to the US’s deployment of B-2 bombers to the Pacific island of Guam earlier on Saturday.The US attack of Iran came as most Democrats had left Washington for the Juneteenth holiday – but the apparent lack of forewarning to lawmakers on intelligence committees is striking. Top lawmakers are typically informed of military operations in advance.“Cost, duration, risk to our troops, strategy – the basics before we make a decision of this consequence,” said Chris Coons, a senior Democratic member of the Senate foreign relations committee, last week.Arizona senator Mark Kelly told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that the White House should have been “right up front” in coming to Congress “and asking for authorization to do this”.“That’s the constitutional approach to this,” Kelly said. “He could have talked to us about what the goal is and what the plan is ahead of time.”Tim Kaine, a Virginia senator who sits on the armed services as well as the foreign relations committees, said Congress needed to be informed ahead of time.“Congress needs to authorize a war against Iran,” he said. “This Trump war against Iran – we have not.” Senators are expected to receive a briefing on the strikes next week. But the signs that an attack was imminent were there to see: additional US military assets had been moved into the region, and the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, had postponed a briefing with the Senate intelligence committee last week.Moderate and progressive Democrats have been in conflict over the engagement of US forces in support of Israel. Trump’s use of force could now deepen the ideological schism.Senator Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, told CNN on Sunday that “the destruction of these facilities is a positive in the sense that it will set back Iran’s program”. But he warned that Iran could now “sprint for a bomb”.He added that the strikes were “not constitutional” and Congress should be brought in “on an action this substantial that could lead to a major outbreak of war”. But Schiff refused to be drawn in on whether the world was safer following the strike. “We simply don’t know,” he said.Schiff maintained that in absence of a briefing “this is an order that should not have been given”.Prominent Democrats with 2028 presidential aspirations have been notably silent on the 10-day war between Israel and Iran. “They are sort of hedging their bets,” said Joel Rubin, a former deputy assistant secretary of state during the Obama administration.“The beasts of the Democratic party’s constituencies right now are so hostile to Israel’s war in Gaza that it’s really difficult to come out looking like one would corroborate an unauthorized war that supports Israel without blowback.”But some had spoken out. Ro Khanna, a California congressman, called the White House threats of an attack on Iran “a defining moment for our party”. That came as progressive and isolationist lawmakers on the right found themselves uncomfortably aligned.Khanna had introduced legislation with the Kentucky Republican US House member Thomas Massie that called on Trump to “terminate” the use of US armed forces against Iran unless “explicitly authorized” by a declaration of war from Congress.Following the strike, Khanna posted on X: “Trump struck Iran without any authorization of Congress.”Khanna said Congress needed to “immediately return” to Washington to vote on the measure he and Massie co-authored. Kaine said he would bring a similar resolution to the Senate in the coming days.Massie said in response to the strikes: “This is not Constitutional.”The independent US senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who caucuses with the Democrats, said supporting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin “Netanyahu’s war against Iran would be a catastrophic mistake”. He introduced legislation prohibiting the use of federal money for force against Iran.The New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on X that the decision to attack Iran’s nuclear sites was “disastrous”.“The President’s disastrous decision to bomb Iran without authorization is a grave violation of the Constitution and Congressional War Powers. He has impulsively risked launching a war that may ensnare us for generations. It is absolutely and clearly grounds for impeachment,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote.Halie Soifer, the chief executive officer of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said in a statement: “This is an incredibly difficult moment for the vast majority of American Jews, who are supportive of Israel, concerned about the security and safety of the Israeli people and Jews in the United States and around the world, and fearful that president Trump lacks a clear strategy about what happens next with Iran.”On NBC’s Meet the Press JD Vance, the US vice-president, maintained that it was untrue to say that Saturday’s strikes in Iran exceeded Trump’s presidential authority.Schiff, meanwhile, declined to support calls for impeachment proceedings against Trump, saying the failure to brief Democrats ahead of the strike was “another partisan exercise”. More

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      Los Angeles is not a hellscape – no matter how much Trump wishes for it | Dave Schilling

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      The Los Angeles Dodgers lost on Thursday, 5-3, to the San Diego Padres. A mostly unremarkable game livened up by a hit batsman that led to a near-brawl between the two teams. But the real action took place well before the first pitch. Federal agents were seen attempting to enter Dodger Stadium’s parking lot earlier in the day, according to several reports. When asked, the agents declared they were with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). After the Dodgers said they had turned Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents away, Ice denied being at the stadium at all, while DHS said Customs and Border Protection vehicles “were in the stadium parking lot very briefly, unrelated to any operation or enforcement”. Yes, but what about, you know, the videos? The eyewitness accounts? All that evidence? Never mind that, I suppose.We’ve become quite immune to the confused realities of this administration. They could say the sky is purple, horses can carry on cocktail party conversation à la Mr Ed, and Justin Bieber is a recent Nobel laureate in physics and we’d respond: “Well, of course, carry on. Congrats to Justin, I suppose.” They’ve been doing it since Donald Trump’s first term, but really ratcheted up the bullshit during the immigration protests in Los Angeles. The administration’s party line is that Los Angeles was tipping into full-on, RoboCop-style anarchy and the only solution to that problem was a deployment of the national guard and the marines, against the wishes of the Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, and California’s governor, Gavin Newsom. This, despite the protests occurring within about 1 sq mile of a city that is, by my last count, absolutely enormous. Or, for those who don’t live here, 500 sq miles (1,300 sq km). To be exact.The protests have largely wrapped up, even as Ice has become more brazen in its activities – snatching people outside a Home Depot in Hollywood and dropping by our baseball stadium for unknown reasons. Despite the lack of conflagration, a federal appeals court recently affirmed Trump’s right to deploy the guard for this particular purpose, though going to the trouble of reminding the administration that such actions are not above judicial review. Of course, for the immigrant denizens of LA, this city does feel like a war zone, with the constant fear, anxiety and stress that comes with all of that. Public transit ridership is down significantly, businesses have to close to prevent their employees from being captured and stories of Ice raids trickle through communities like drips of poison. That’s our shared reality, but it’s not the one outsiders seem to care about. They’re more interested in the Waymos, I suppose.Despite the ongoing mischaracterization of the situation on the ground, Trump seems unable to manage to get the widespread clashes and chaos he so clearly desires. The military deployment in LA wasn’t much more remarkable than his birthday-party-cum-bring-your-army-to-work-day that nearly put Marco Rubio to sleep. Trump might have been asleep too, but his eyes have narrowed into such baggy slits that one can no longer make an accurate judgment. His eyelids now resemble two fluffy hamburger buns, with nothing but a layer of mayonnaise in between.Perhaps the president’s burger eyes are partially to blame for his lack of awareness of what is actually happening in Los Angeles. Our schools are in summer break, leaving the roads slightly less congested. A recent heatwave has me canoodling with my air conditioner, like two drunk celebrities in the back of the Met Gala dining room. Juneteenth celebrations in my area carried on as usual. Downtown, the site of the protest actions, is back to being a great place to urinate in an alley without being pelted by rubber bullets. I still can’t get my agent to call me back about that script. All is well here. And yet, the pretense of simmering violence is continuing to be used to justify a wholly unnecessary deployment of the armed forces.Speaking of armed forces, the Los Angeles police department totals nearly 9,000 officers, with tanks, riot gear and heavy weaponry. The LAPD is, in many ways, a little mini-army to patrol those aforementioned 500 sq miles of enormousness. When Bass said the LAPD could handle it, she meant it. This is another way in which perception taints the reality on the ground. LA has taken the place of countless other conservative boogeymen – San Francisco, Portland, New York City – as the pre-eminent scourge of so-called liberal lawlessness. Of course, LA, like those other cities, spends money on its police force like I do on The RealReal after one too many martinis. The most recent LAPD budget topped $2bn, which, while less than the purchase price of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team, is still quite a lot. It’s a billion dollars more than is spent on homelessness programs by the entire state. A city politician can hardly get elected without at least some support from the police unions, like our new district attorney, Nathan Hochman, who trounced the incumbent by running on a law-and-order platform.But the American conservative media apparatus can and routinely does tell a different story of Los Angeles. That it’s a liberal hellscape where God has been given his two-weeks’ notice and everyone gives each other anal beads for Christmas. If only that were true. Maybe this would be a more exciting place to live. In reality, AKA that thing that happens when you go outside, this can be a terribly boring place to live, especially when your agent doesn’t call you back. To be honest, I quite like how boring it is. It’s a lot easier to complain about mundane things, like every good restaurant closing on Mondays. Can we spread that out? Maybe some of you close on Sundays, so I don’t have to subject myself to Sweetgreen when I’m too lazy to cook. Just try it out. I could complain about how the DMV kiosk that’s supposed to make it faster to renew your car registration is actually becoming just as long of a line as the normal window because the payment system is constantly going down. Or that the San Diego Padres are the dirtiest team in baseball and their entire franchise should be sold to the Saudi royal family for scrap and moved to Riyadh. You know, normal things to complain about. The only time it’s not boring to live in Los Angeles is when someone (you know who) decides to send the marines in to walk around in a circle for two months. If the federal government could promise to let Los Angeles be boring again, I’ll promise to stop handing out anal beads during the holidays. A deal’s a deal.

      Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist More

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      No matter what Trump says, the US has gone to war – and there will be profound and lasting consequences | Simon Tisdall

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      Bombing will not make Iran go away. US bombs will not destroy the knowhow needed to build a nuclear weapon or the will do so, if that is what Tehran wants. The huge attack ordered by Donald Trump will not halt ongoing open warfare between Israel and Iran. It will not bring lasting peace to the Middle East, end the slaughter in Gaza, deliver justice to the Palestinians, or end more than half a century of bitter enmity between Tehran and Washington.More likely, Trump’s rash, reckless gamble will inflame and exacerbate all these problems. Depending on how Iran and its allies and supporters react, the region could plunge into an uncontrolled conflagration. US bases in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere in the region, home to about 40,000 American troops, must now be considered potential targets for retaliation – and possibly British and allied forces, too.Trump says he has not declared war on Iran. He claims the attack is not an opening salvo in a campaign aimed at triggering regime change in Tehran. But that’s not how Iran’s politicians and people will see it. Trump’s premature bragging about “spectacular” success, and threats of more and bigger bombs, sound like the words of a ruthless conqueror intent on total, crushing victory.Trump, the isolationist president who vowed to avoid foreign wars, has walked slap bang into a trap prepared by Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu – a trap his smarter predecessors avoided. Netanyahu has constantly exaggerated the immediacy of the Iranian nuclear threat. His alarmist speeches on this subject go back 30 years. Always, he claimed to know what UN nuclear inspectors, US and European intelligence agencies and even some of his own spy chiefs did not – namely, that Iran was on the verge of deploying a ready-to-use nuclear weapon aimed at Israel’s heart.This contention has never been proven. Iran has always denied seeking a nuclear bomb. Its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa banning any such programme. Netanyahu’s most recent claim that Iran was weaponising, made as he tried to justify last week’s unilateral, illegal Israeli attacks, was not supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) or US intelligence experts. But weak-minded Trump chose to believe it. Reading from Netanyahu’s script, he said on Saturday night that eliminating this incontrovertible nuclear threat was vital – and the sole aim of the US air assault.So, once again, the US has gone to war in the Middle East on the back of a lie, on disputed, probably faulty intelligence purposefully distorted for political reasons. Once again, as in Iraq in 2003, the overall objectives of the war are unclear, uncertain and open to interpretation by friend and foe alike. Once again, there appears to be no “exit strategy”, no guardrails against escalation and no plan for what happens next. Demanding that Iran capitulate or face “national tragedy” is not a policy. It’s a deadly dead-end.Iran will not go away, whatever Trump and Netanyahu may imagine in their fevered dreams. It will remain a force in the region. It will remain a country to be reckoned with, a country of 90 million people, and one with powerful allies in China, Russia and the global south. It is already insisting it will continue with its civil nuclear programme.These events are a reminder of how profound is official US ignorance of Iran. Unlike the UK, Washington has had no diplomatic presence there since the revolution. It has had few direct political contacts, and its swingeing economic sanctions have created even greater distance, further diminishing mutual understanding. Trump’s decision to renege on the 2015 nuclear accord (negotiated by Barack Obama, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the EU) was a product of this ignorance. Ten years later, he is trying to do with bombs what was largely, peacefully achieved through diplomacy by his wiser, less impulsive, less easily led predecessors.View image in fullscreenPeace seems more elusive than ever – and Netanyahu is celebrating. The US cannot walk away now. It’s committed. And, as Netanyahu sees it, he and Israel cannot lose. Except, except … Iran cannot somehow be imagined away. It still has to be dealt with. And the reckoning that now looms, short- and long-term, may be more terrible than any of Netanyahu’s scare stories.Iran previously warned that if the US attacked, it would hit back at US bases. There are many to choose from, in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan and elsewhere. The Houthis in Yemen say they will resume attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. The strait of Hormuz, so important a transit point for global energy supplies, may be mined, as happened in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war. The result could be a global oil shock and markets meltdown. And Iran is still reportedly firing missiles into Israel, despite claims in Jerusalem that most of its ballistic missiles bases have been destroyed.Reacting to Trump’s attack, Iranian officials say no options are off the table in terms of retaliation. And they say they will not negotiate under fire, despite a call to do so from the British prime minister, Keir Starmer. Rejecting Trump’s unverified claims about the total destruction of all nuclear facilities, they also insist Iran will reconstitute and continue its nuclear programme. The big question now is whether that programme really will be weaponised.Two radical longer-term consequences may flow from this watershed moment. One is that Khamenei’s unpopular regime, notorious for corruption, military incompetence and economic mismanagement, and deprived of support from Lebanese Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza, may crack under the strain of this disaster. So far there has been little sign of an uprising or a change in government. That’s not surprising, given that Tehran and other cities are under bombardment. But regime collapse cannot be ruled out.The other is that, rather than surrender the cherished right to uranium enrichment and submit to the Trump-Netanyahu ultimatum, Iran’s rulers, whoever they are, will decide to follow North Korea and try to acquire a bomb as quickly as possible, to fend off future humiliations. That could entail withdrawal from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and rejection of the UN inspections regime. After years of trying to play by western rules, Iran could really finally go rogue.The supposed need to acquire nukes for self-defence is a grim lesson other countries around the world may draw from these events. The proliferation of nuclear weapons is the biggest immediate danger to the future of the planet. What Trump just did in recklessly and violently trying to eliminate an unproven threat may ensure the proven danger of a nuclear-armed world grows ever-more real.

      Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator More

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      I study the history of Nazi resistance. Here’s what the US left can learn from it | Luke Berryman

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      Around the end of 2022, I had an idea for a book about the history of resistance to Nazism. I wanted to show that Nazism has faced nonconformity, refusal and protest ever since it was born in 1920. I also wanted to explore beyond a handful of famous heroes and cast a spotlight on people who changed history without entering popular memory. When I began my research, Donald Trump had just announced his candidacy for the Republican ticket in 2024. When I gave the manuscript to the publisher a little over two years later, he was president-elect.His comeback, the darker version of Maga that came with him, and the Democratic party’s collapse gave fresh relevance to the stories of resistance to far-right extremism that I was finding. Even as I was piecing them together, they began to intrude on the present. It was a haunting transformation – and it helped me to understand why the resistance to Trump has been flawed from the moment he stepped on to the political stage.We’ve never been shy about broadcasting our opinions. We’ve worn pussy hats, put up lawn signs, and trolled Trump and his supporters, both online and off. But while such acts may get attention, their capacity to create change is less certain.This can even be true for mass protests. Americans have sometimes underestimated the effectiveness of protest – recent demonstrations in Los Angeles and across the country are an important part of resistance. In the era of social media and the 24-hour news cycle, though, protests can risk becoming a spectacle. And when the government is given a chance to portray them as violent, their effectiveness is extinguished – because they end up benefiting the forces they mean to challenge. The resisters that I researched, by contrast, were laser-focused on creating change. Whether they were satirists drawing anti-Nazi cartoons in 1920s Germany or former neo-Nazis becoming peace advocates in the 21st-century US, they sought to improve life for themselves and others in the here and now, in any way that they could, no matter how small.The German activist Emmi Bonhoeffer is a powerful example. She built a support group for the Holocaust survivors who testified in the 1960s Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, where Nazis were tried for their roles at the death camp. In doing so, Bonhoeffer resisted the Nazis’ desire for both their crimes and their victims to be forgotten. Her group – most of them homemakers – ultimately helped nearly 200 people as they took the stand. They inspired similar groups to form around other war crimes trials in Germany, too. But they didn’t advertise. They didn’t have a slogan or an outfit or a flag. They didn’t even bother to give their group a name. Their first and only concern was to clear a path toward justice for at least some of the Nazis’ victims. For Bonhoeffer, resistance wasn’t about getting attention. It was about creating change.What’s more, the resistance to Trump has always been stained by a judgmental streak. Whether we’re denouncing them as a “basket of deplorables” or mocking them on social media, we invariably devote too much energy to belittling his supporters. This has convinced us of our own moral rectitude. In turn, this has made us complacent, and complacency only deepens our inaction.The resisters that I learned about pulled no punches when it came to judging Adolf Hitler and his inner circle. But they spent more time judging themselves than his supporters. Consider the German émigré Sebastian Haffner. In the late 1930s, he wrote an extraordinary autobiographical book about his life as a so-called “Aryan” in Hitler’s Germany. It was only published in 2000, posthumously, after his son discovered it hidden in a desk drawer. For Haffner, publication didn’t really matter. The book was, first and foremost, an imaginative space in which he subjected his own behavior and thinking and privilege to relentless scrutiny. Through this process of self-scrutiny, he grew into one of the Nazis’ most effective critics in exile.The judgmental streak has also given some of our attempts to resist Trump a holier-than-thou quality that diminishes our capacity for empathy. We’re too quick to believe that 77 million Americans voted for Trump out of stupidity, not desperation or disenfranchisement. By contrast, I was always struck by the sense of shared humanity among the resisters that I discovered – like the lower-level British intelligence officials who persuaded members of the German public to help them smoke out Nazi war criminals after 1945; or Leon Bass, the Black American soldier who drew on his own experiences of segregation to deepen his understanding of the suffering of the Jewish people he liberated from Buchenwald.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLike every far-right leader in history, Donald Trump has intoxicated his supporters with nostalgia for a past that never existed in order to push a corrupt and hateful agenda of his own. Eventually, many will realize that he’s lied to them. Perhaps they’ll lose their jobs because of his economic policies, or see law-abiding friends and family deported because of his immigration policies. Perhaps their children will suffer from measles because of his health policies. Whatever the case, when their moment of realization comes, we must be ready to embrace them, and to weep with them for what they’ve lost. If there’s one thing that I learned while writing my book, it’s that effective resistance to the far right is never just about defeating the enemy. It’s about creating a better future for everyone.What’s giving me hope nowTeachers and librarians are championing the written word as a tool of resistance. Colleagues in the field of Holocaust education are collaborating on free and innovative events to inform the public about the collapse of democracy in early 20th-century Europe – and to establish what we can learn from it today. And, as I argue in my book, the arts can connect us to our own humanity, and to the humanity in others. Supporting your local art museum, attending a concert or joining a book club should all be cause for hope – because in a divided, partisan society, such acts constitute resistance.

      Luke Berryman, PhD, is an educator and author of the forthcoming book Resisting Nazism, to be published by Bloomsbury in 2026 More