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    Three Iranians Accused of Targeting People in Britain

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    The charges against the men come as concerns have grown about Iranian operatives carrying out operations against British residents and citizens.Three Iranian men appeared in court on Saturday in London, accused of helping Iran’s intelligence service by targeting individuals in Britain.Mostafa Sepahvand, 39; Farhad Javadi Manesh, 44; and Shapoor Qalehali Khani Noori, 55, have been charged under Britain’s National Security Act with engaging in conduct likely to assist a foreign intelligence service between Aug. 14 last year and Feb. 16.They are also accused of carrying out surveillance and reconnaissance as part of a plan to commit serious violence against an individual, who was not identified.The arrests come amid growing concern about efforts by Iranian operatives to target British citizens and residents.The Metropolitan Police said in a statement that the men had been arrested and detained on May 3. “The foreign state to which the charges relate is Iran,” the statement added.The BBC reported that the three had been accused of targeting journalists working for Iran International, an independent, Persian-language broadcaster based in London that has been critical of the Iranian government.All three defendants, who live in London, had illegally entered Britain between 2016 and 2022, and two were among the thousands who have traveled to the country on small boats from France.“The charges that have been laid against these three individuals must now take their course through the criminal justice system, and nothing must be done to prejudice the outcome of those proceedings,” Yvette Cooper, Britain’s home secretary, said in a statement.“But we will also take separate action to address the very serious wider issues raised by this case,” Ms. Cooper added. “The police have confirmed that the foreign state to which these charges relate is Iran, and Iran must be held to account for its actions.”Thanking the police, Ms. Cooper said, “We will not tolerate growing state threats on our soil.”In a speech last year, Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, Britain’s domestic security service, identified Iran as a country of growing concern to the counterterrorism police. He said that since January 2022, the security services had been investigating 20 Iranian-backed plots that posed potentially lethal threats to British citizens and residents. More

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      Massive Iran Port Explosion Kills 4 and Injures Hundreds

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      There was no immediate indication that the blast was caused by sabotage or a deliberate attack. State media said it was likely caused by containers of chemicals catching fire.A massive explosion on Saturday at the Iranian port of Shahid Rajaee in Bandar Abbas killed several people and injured hundreds, according to state media. The exact cause of the blast was not immediately clear, although there was no suggestion of an attack or sabotage.Mohammad Rasoul Moradi/Islamic Republic News AgencyA massive explosion at a port in southern Iran on Saturday killed at least four people and injured more than 500, according to state media.The exact cause of the blast at the Shahid Rajaee port in the city of Bandar Abbas was not immediately clear. But Iranian authorities did not suggest it was sabotage or a deliberate attack.The state-run Islamic Republic News Agency quoted an official as saying the ignition of containers of chemicals most likely set off the explosion. The blast sent up clouds of black smoke, according to footage from the scene distributed by an Iranian broadcaster and video from social media that was verified by The New York Times.Bandar Abbas is strategically located along the Strait of Hormuz, a busy Persian Gulf shipping lane for the world’s oil and natural gas.In 2020, Israel launched a cyberattack that hampered operations at the Shahid Rajaee port as part of its long-running shadow war with Iran.Israeli officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday’s explosion.The explosion came around the time that American and Iranian officials began meeting in the Gulf sultanate of Oman on Saturday for a third round of talks on Iran’s nuclear program.Last week, The New York Times reported that Israel had planned to attack Iranian nuclear sites as soon as next month, but it was waved off by Mr. Trump, who wanted to negotiate an agreement with Tehran instead. But Mr. Trump has also vowed to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, including by military action if necessary. More

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      Why Saudi Arabia Supports Trump’s Nuclear Talks With Its Rival, Iran

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      The agreements are shaping up to be very similar. But Gulf support for a nuclear deal shows how much the region has changed.Ten years ago, when former President Barack Obama and other leaders reached a deal with Iran to limit its nuclear program, Saudi Arabia was dismayed.Saudi officials called it a “weak deal” that had only emboldened the kingdom’s regional rival, Iran. They cheered when President Trump withdrew from the agreement a few years later.Now, as a second Trump administration negotiates with Iran on a deal that might have very similar contours to the previous one, the view from Saudi Arabia looks quite different.The kingdom’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement recently saying that it hoped the talks, mediated by neighboring Oman, would enhance “peace in the region and the world.”Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman even dispatched his brother, the defense minister Prince Khalid bin Salman, to Tehran, where he was received warmly by Iranian officials dressed in military regalia. He then hand-delivered a letter to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a man whom Prince Mohammed once derided as making “Hitler look good.”What changed? Relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran have warmed over the past decade. As important, Saudi Arabia is in the middle of an economic diversification program intended to transform the kingdom from being overly dependent on oil into a business, technology and tourism hub. The prospect of Iranian drones and missiles flying over Saudi Arabia because of regional tensions poses a serious threat to that plan.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Gives Conflicting Signals and Mixed Messages on Iran Nuclear Talks

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      Just a few weeks ago, President Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz, a longtime hawk on Iran, cast the administration’s goal in negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program in crystal clear terms.“Full dismantlement,” he said. He went on to list what that meant: Iran had to give up facilities for enriching nuclear fuel, for “weaponization” and even its long-range missiles.But what sounded like a simple, tough-sounding goal on a Sunday talk show has started to unravel. In the past 24 hours, officials have left a contradictory and confusing set of messages, suggesting the administration might settle for caps on Iran’s activities — much as President Barack Obama did a decade ago — before backtracking on Tuesday.Some of this may simply reflect inexperience in dealing with nuclear weapons programs. Mr. Trump’s chief negotiator is Steve Witkoff, a friend of the president’s who, as a New York developer like him, has spent a lifetime dealing with skyscrapers but only began delving into Iran’s underground nuclear centrifuges and suspected weapons labs a few weeks ago.But the inconsistency also appears rooted in the splits inside Mr. Trump’s national security team as it grapples anew with one of the longest-lasting and most vexing problems in American foreign policy: How to stop Iran’s nuclear program without going to war over it. So far, the result is a blitz of mixed messages, conflicting signals and blustering threats, not unlike the way Mr. Trump and his aides talk about their ever-evolving tariff strategy.The issue came to the fore on Monday night when Mr. Witkoff began talking about his first encounter with Iran’s foreign minister last Saturday in Oman. The meeting went well, he said, plunging into the complex world of Iran’s nuclear program, which has taken it to the very threshold of building a weapon.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      It’s a Mistake to Leave Human Rights Out of Iran Talks

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      When the Islamic Republic of Iran marked its 46th anniversary in February, protests erupted in the remote southwestern city of Dehdasht. Iranians chanted anti-regime slogans and held signs reading, “From Dehdasht to Tehran, unity, unity.” The demonstrations were part of a national movement that has been simmering since 2022, after the killing of a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, prompted tens of thousands of Iranians to take to the streets to seek justice and demand freedom. The Women, Life, Freedom uprising has continued through rooftop chants, daily defiance of the regime’s hijab law and sporadic, smaller protests across the country.President Trump should not forget the Iranian people’s resolve when his Middle East special envoy, Steve Witkoff, sits down for talks with Iran’s foreign minister over its nuclear program on Saturday in Oman. The Trump administration has reinstated a maximum pressure policy designed to stop Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon and counter its influence abroad. But so far, the administration has conspicuously omitted a critical issue for Iranians: human rights. It’s a stark departure from Trump’s first-term agenda, which condemned violations in Iran and framed human rights as a fundamental component of its foreign policy vision.More important, it’s a grave miscalculation. Decades of U.S. precedent show that upholding human rights has been integral to helping keep America secure. The Carter and Reagan administrations, in particular, used human rights diplomacy as a critical tool to negotiate with the Soviet Union, using public and private pressure to secure arms control agreements, advocating for oppressed populations behind the Iron Curtain and bringing to a close one of the most dangerous eras of the 20th century.Mr. Trump still has an opportunity — arguably, an obligation — to push for human rights as a central element of talks with Tehran. Doing so would place him on the right side of history, bolster U.S. credibility among many Iranians and strengthen his negotiating position. Without it, many Iranians who oppose the Islamic republic will see any potential agreement as merely throwing a lifeline to an increasingly unpopular regime. Uprisings are bound to persist amid heavy repression. Without accountability, justice and improvement in the human-rights situation, these waves will almost certainly cause instability in Iran and the region.Protests that erupted in December 2017 — at the time, the most widespread geographically since the 1979 revolution — sparked waves of uprisings against the regime’s mismanagement, corruption and repression. According to the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Fact-Finding Mission on Iran, human-rights violations during the 2022 uprising amounted to crimes against humanity: Security forces killed at least 551 protesters and bystanders, including 68 children, and arrested as many as 60,000.Since then, the clerical establishment has continued to discriminate against women and girls, in what Iranian activists and human-rights defenders — including the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, who is on furlough from a more than 13-year prison sentence — call gender apartheid. A draconian hijab and chastity bill passed in December imposes still harsher restrictions on women; penalties now include death. While the law has been paused, parts are being enforced.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Forget the Signal Chat. The U.S. Strike on the Houthis Was a Necessary Blow to Pressure Iran.

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      It’s unfortunate that the recent uproar over the use of the Signal messaging app by senior leadership in the Trump administration has obscured the importance of the event they were discussing: a strike against the Houthis on March 15. The attack marked the beginning of a necessary military campaign and a potential turning of the page for the United States in the Middle East.The Biden administration mostly chose to ignore the growing threat to world commerce posed by the Houthis, an Iran-backed group that President Trump has designated a terrorist organization. Its responses were telegraphed and thoroughly watered down to avoid any possibility of escalation by Iran, and, concomitantly, any lasting damage to the Houthis. As a result, the impact on the group was ephemeral at best.It’s important to know that striking the Houthi position in Yemen serves United States interests first and foremost. By trying to assure safe passage through Bab el-Mandeb, the strait that leads into the Red Sea and is critical to international shipping routes, we’re doing much more than simply aiding European commerce. Instead, we’re pursuing several broader goals: First, we’re asserting the importance of free passage on the global commons; we are the world’s greatest maritime nation, and the concept of uncontested transit is fundamental to our security. Second, China is watching us, and will draw conclusions from our actions with Yemen about what we will or will not tolerate happening to Taiwan.Finally, striking the Houthis weakens the one still-fully functional arm of Iranian malfeasance in the region. Hezbollah, Syria and even Hamas are already significantly degraded; now the Houthis, too, are under attack for their reckless actions.Meaningful success will not come easily. Using air power alone to defeat militias has traditionally been difficult. In this case, though, there’s a distinction that has been overlooked by many critics: The goal is not to eliminate the Houthis, or create good governance. Instead, it is to force them to cease using high-technology missiles and drones to attack ships at sea. This is a much narrower and more achievable mission. The Houthi attacks have an electronic and visual signature that is uniquely discoverable, and it plays into our high-tech approach.It is quite likely that the Houthis will use the Yemeni population as human shields, just as Hamas has done with civilians in Gaza. This means that despite our very best efforts, there will be civilian casualties. Those are regrettable, and our forces will work hard to minimize them, even as the Houthis will almost certainly work to maximize both the actual casualties and the anti-American messaging about them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump news at a glance: ‘I’m not joking’ – Trump says he could seek third term

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      Donald Trump has said there are “methods” – if not “plans” – to circumvent the constitutional limit preventing US presidents from serving three terms, in an explosive interview in which he also said he was “very angry” with Vladimir Putin, threatened to bomb Iran and did not rule out using force in Greenland.In the interview, which aired Sunday on NBC, Trump told host Kristen Welker regarding a third term that “there are methods which you could do it”. Trump has repeatedly raised the possibility of serving a third term but has often masqueraded it as a joke. But on Sunday, he confirmed he was “not joking”.Trump makes clear his interest in a third term is seriousIn the interview, Welker alluded to a purported loophole some Trump supporters have fantasized about finding in which he could be the running mate to his vice-president, JD Vance, or someone else in the 2028 election. The person to whom Trump would be the running mate in that scenario could then immediately resign after winning and being sworn in as president, letting Trump take over by succession.Trump said it was “far too early to think about” trying to defy the two presidential term limit, but asked if being president a third time would be too much work, he said: “I like working.”Read the full storyTrump says he’s ‘pissed off’ with PutinTrump has said he is “very angry” and “pissed off” with Vladimir Putin over his approach to a ceasefire in Ukraine and threatened to levy tariffs on Moscow’s oil exports if the Russian leader does not agree to a truce within a month.The abrupt change of direction came after Putin had tried to attack the legitimacy of Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday, Trump said. Appearing on Russian television, Putin had suggested Ukraine could be placed under a temporary UN-led government to organise fresh elections before negotiating a peace deal.Read the whole storyFinnish president plays a round of golf diplomacy with TrumpFinnish president Alexander Stubb said Trump was losing patience with Putin’s stalling tactics over the Ukraine ceasefire after spending several hours with the US president – including winning a golf competition with him at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Saturday.Stubb, who also spent two days with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, last week in Helsinki suggested in a Guardian interview a plan for a deadline of 20 April, by which time Putin should be required to comply with a full ceasefire.Read the full storyThe Atlantic’s Goldberg dismisses Waltz’s Signal defense: ‘This isn’t the Matrix’.The Atlantic magazine’s chief editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, has dismissed as implausible the explanation offered by national security adviser Mike Waltz that his contact was “sucked in” to his phone via “somebody else’s contact”.“This isn’t The Matrix,” Goldberg told NBC’s Kristen Welker on Sunday’s Meet the Press. “Phone numbers don’t just get sucked into other phones.”Read the full storyMinnesota officials seek answers after Ice detains graduate studentOfficials in Minnesota were seeking answers in the case of a University of Minnesota graduate student who was being detained by US immigration authorities for unknown reasons.University leadership said Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detained the student on Thursday at an off-campus residence. Officials said the school was not given advance notice about the detention and did not share information with federal authorities. The student’s name and nationality have not been released.Read the full storyAdvertising giant WPP cuts diversity references from annual reportThe British advertising giant WPP has become the latest company to cut the phrase “diversity, equity and inclusion” from its annual report as the policies come under attack from the Trump administration.The agency, which counts the US as by far its largest market, boasts the storied “Madison Avenue” agencies J Walter Thompson, Ogilvy and Grey among its top brands. In WPP’s annual report, which was released on Friday, the chief executive, Mark Read, told shareholders that “much has changed over the last year” due to political events.Read the full storyWhite House correspondents’ dinner cancels anti-Trump comedian’s appearanceComedy is off the menu at the annual White House correspondents’ dinner, a once convivial get-together for reporters to meet with federal governments officials that has become too fraught for light-heartedness amid the second Trump presidency.The dinner, scheduled for 26 April, is organized by the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), and it typically features a post-meal comedic interlude where a comedian sets to work on the powerful. Beginning with Calvin Coolidge in 1924, every president has attended at least one WHCA dinner – except for Trump.Read the full storySmithsonian Institution braces for Trump rewrite of US historyVisitors have come in their millions to the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s biggest museum, education and research complex, in Washington for the past 178 years. On Thursday, Donald Trump arrived with his cultural wrecking ball.The US president, who has sought to root out “wokeness” since returning to power in January, accused the Smithsonian of trying to rewrite history on issues of race and gender. In an executive order entitled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”, he directed the removal of “improper, divisive or anti-American ideology” from its storied museums.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Trump said he “couldn’t care less” if tariffs make car prices go up and is facing a backlash from some members within his own party over the measures.

      Candidates are gearing up for special elections in parts of Florida, Texas, Arizona and Wisconsin in what’s being seen as a litmus test of Trump’s first weeks in office.

      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 29 March. More

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      Is Trump’s authoritarian lurch following the playbook of Iran’s Ahmadinejad?

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      It reads like an inventory of Donald Trump’s first two months back in the White House.A newly elected demagogic president, renowned for his rabble-rousing rallies and provocative stunts, makes a whirlwind start on taking office.He upends the country’s international relations in a series of undiplomatic demarches.State institutions are gutted or closed in an outburst of radicalism aimed at transforming government.Law enforcement authorities stage performative public roundups of those deemed, accurately or not, to be violent criminals.Critics complain of statutes being routinely broken. Universities and media are targeted in a clampdown on free expression.A widely revered cultural institution undergoes a government takeover and is given a conservative makeover.Wrongfooted opposition politicians try to recover ground by highlighting the rising cost of dietary staples and the failure to address the kitchen-table issues that voters elected the president to solve.Fitting as all this might be as a summary of the helter-skelter opening phase of Trump’s second presidency, it also describes events that followed the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran 20 years ago.Ahmadinejad emerged as an arch-nemesis of the west after rising to power from obscurity in 2005. His offensive diatribes against Israel – which he suggested should be erased from the map – and repeated denials of the Holocaust were the stuff of cartoon villainy, sharpened further by his hawkish championing of Iran’s nuclear programme.He was also an electoral populist in the Trump mould, as adept at drawing vast crowds with his message of championing the left-behinds and dispossessed as he was at riling his opponents.View image in fullscreenIranians have noticed the matching personas. “There was a joke in Iran during Trump’s first term that when he became president, Iran finally managed to export its revolution,” said Vali Nasr, an Iranian-born international affairs scholar at Johns Hopkins University. “Trump was basically Ahmadinejad in the US.”In a striking twist, Ahmadinejad even addressed Columbia University – an institution now threatened with grant cuts by the Trump administration over an alleged failure to combat campus antisemitism by tolerating pro-Palestinian protesters – in a 2007 visit to New York. The university’s then president, Lee Bollinger, assailed him to his face for his Holocaust denial and called him a “cruel and petty dictator”, a description that seemed to presage the criticisms of many of Trump’s opponents.The parallels, however, are superficial – and the differences just as significant.Ahmadinejad, remembered for his trademark man-of-the-people white jacket, defined himself by his frugality and surrounded himself with like types; Trump flaunts his wealth and seems to have space in his inner circle for billionaires, for whom he favours huge tax cuts.Moreover, any comparison between Iran and the US must come with a health warning.Iran, under the stifling religious regime that seized power after the 1979 revolution that toppled the country’s former pro-western monarch, Shah Mohammad Pahlavi, was hardly a flourishing democracy before Ahmadinejad’s presidency – even after a period of relatively liberal reform under his predecessor, Mohammad Khatami.“He came to power in an already deeply authoritarian regime,” said Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who was in Iran when Ahmadinejad became president. “He took what was already a seven on the repression scale and made it a nine.”Yet the fact that any analogy can be drawn at all attests to the uncharted territory the US has entered under Trump.In recent weeks, as the president and his allies have assailed judges and hinted that they could flout court rulings, commentators and experts have warned of a looming constitutional crisis and lurch towards authoritarianism and even dictatorship.Scholars have touted a variety of global precedents in a quest for a parallel that might act as a guide for where US democracy is headed.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenCommonly cited examples are Hungary and its strongman prime minister, Viktor Orbán; Turkey, whose president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has held power for 22 years and has purged the judges and military general who upheld the secular state structure created by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk; and Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin. The ascents of all three are often viewed as instances of democracies and once-independent institutions being emasculated and elections gamed to sustain the incumbent.More encouraging portents are seen in Poland and the Czech Republic, where rightwing populist nationalist forces lost power in the most recent elections to parties or presidential candidates committed to the liberal democratic mainstream and to international institutions such as the EU and Nato.Yet none seem to rival the sheer ferocity with which Trump has eviscerated federal agencies, denounced judges and churned out landscape-changing executive orders.The problem was summed up by Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist and author of books on democracy’s decline and autocracy’s rise, who told the New York Times that he had seen nothing like Trump’s assault on democratic institutions.The first two months under Trump had been “much more aggressively authoritarian than almost any other comparable case I know of democratic backsliding”, he said. “Erdoğan, [Venezuelan leader Hugo] Chávez, Orbán – they hid it.”Other observers agree that Trump’s moves are of greater magnitude than those seen in other democracies turned autocracies.“The best parallel that I can see is the collapse of the Soviet Union,” said Nader Hashemi, professor of Middle East and Islamic studies at Georgetown University and another academic of Iranian origin.“A political order that everyone thought had a long shelf life rapidly collapses, is completely disorienting, and people are trying to figure out what comes next.“We don’t really have precedents similar to this moment where you have a longstanding existing democracy that’s a major power that collapses so rapidly and quickly and is moving in the direction of authoritarianism. I think its impact will also be felt globally.”View image in fullscreenNasr said Trump confounded comparisons with previous democracy-subverting authoritarians, likening the current White House to the court of King Henry VIII, the 16th-century monarch recalled for his six wives and for triggering the English reformation.“The way he’s setting up authority in the White House looks more like a Tudor monarchy than modern authoritarianism,” he said. “The White House looks more like an imperial court.”Trump, argued Nasr, “has a theory of rapid, massive change” that recalled the approach of military coup leaders in the third world who judged that their agenda was incompatible with democracy.The common bond between Trump and Ahmadinejad may be the forces that brought them to power.“One could say that the very first kind of backlash in our era against what economic liberalisation can do to a society happened in Iran,” said Nasr.Under Ahmadinejad’s two presidential predecessors, Khatami and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, liberal economic reforms intended to generate prosperity after years of post-revolutionary austerity produced an affluent, consumerist middle class – but left behind a disaffected population group that felt it had lost out.“It created a class in Iran much like the people who voted for Brexit [in Britain] or people who voted for Trump,” Nasr said. “So [Ahmadinejad] was anti-establishment in the way Boris Johnson was during Brexit, or Trump was during his two campaigns. There is definitely a parallel there.”Hashemi saw another parallel in Trump’s attacks on universities and the media – a trend which Iran witnessed (accompanied with much greater repression) even before Ahmadinejad took power, as hardliners tried to snuff out the freedoms that reformists had introduced.“Then Ahmadinejad comes and continues in an authoritarian direction,” he said. “The parallel between that period and now in the United States is that authoritarian regimes hate independent institutions, the press and particularly universities, because they foster free thinking, they hold power to account. That’s why we’re seeing this attack on Columbia University and other universities.”Ahmadinejad, having stoked inflation with populist cash handouts and facilitated the Revolutionary Guards’ takeover of the economy, was ultimately thwarted by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader and most powerful cleric, who marginalised him while using Ahmadinejad’s authoritarian impulses to accrue more autocratic powers to himself.Trump – having subjugated the Republican-ruled Congress, and who is now limited only by a constitutional bar on seeking a third term that some of his supporters are already clamouring to amend – is subject to no such constraints.“In a way, Trump’s conduct is more sinister because he’s trying to turn a democracy into an autocracy,” said Sadjadpour. Given the odium in which Ahmadinejad’s detractors once held him, it seems a particularly ominous verdict. More