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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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      JD Vance claims US is at war with Iran’s nuclear program, not Iran

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      JD 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.In an interview Sunday with NBC News’ Meet the Press, the US vice-president was asked if the US was now at war with Iran.“We’re not at war with Iran,” Vance replied. “We’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program.”But Vance declined to confirm with absolute certainty that Iran’s nuclear sites were completely destroyed, a position that Donald Trump set out in a Saturday night address when the president stated that the targeted Iranian facilities had been “completely and totally obliterated” in the US strikes.Vance instead said that he believes the US has “substantially delayed” Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon.“I’m not going to get into sensitive intelligence about what we’ve seen on the ground there in Iran, but we’ve seen a lot, and I feel very confident that we’ve substantially delayed their development of a nuclear weapon, and that was the goal of this attack,” Vance said.He continued: “Severely damaged versus obliterated – I’m not exactly sure what the difference is.“What we know is we set their nuclear program back substantially.”An Iranian member of parliament claimed on Sunday that the Fordo enrichment plant, the focus of seven B-2 bombers armed with 14 premier bunker-busters from the US arsenal, was not seriously damaged.Those bombers returned to Missouri on Sunday.Separately, Bloomberg News said satellite images of the site undermined the Trump administration’s claims that Iran’s underground nuclear sites at Fordo and Natanz had been destroyed.Satellite images distributed by Maxar Technologies showed new craters, possible collapsed tunnel entrances and holes on top of a mountain ridge. But the main support building at the facility remained undamaged, the report said.Maxar said in a statement that images of Natanz showed a new crater about 5.5 meters (18ft) in diameter over the underground facility – but they did not offer conclusive evidence that the 40-meter-deep nuclear engineering site had been breached.The chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Dan Caine, said at a Pentagon briefing on Sunday: “Final battle damage will take some time, but initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction.”Nuclear non-proliferation analysts are conflicted on whether the strikes will be effective in bringing Iran to the negotiating table or convince them to move more decisively toward enriching uranium stockpiles to weapons-grade, assembling a bomb, and manufacturing a delivery system.In a statement to Bloomberg, Darya Dolzikova, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said there were slim prospects that the US entering the war would convince Iran to increase International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) cooperation. The nuclear watchdog has said it is not sure where Iran’s 400lb stockpile of 60% uranium is.“The more likely scenario is that they convince Iran that cooperation and transparency don’t work and that building deeper facilities and ones not declared openly is more sensible to avoid similar targeting in future,” Dolzikova said.Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said he planned to fly to Moscow to meet with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, on Monday morning for consultations. Separately, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said his forces were progressing toward its goal of destroying Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile threats.“We are moving step after step to achieve these goals. We are very, very close to completing them,” he said. 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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      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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      What a difference a week makes: Trump falls into the Netanyahu trap

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      When he was elected, Donald Trump suggested he could hammer out a new relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister who was used to getting his way with the White House. But after just over 150 days in office, it appears Trump has fallen into the same trap as his predecessors – and launched the most consequential strike on Iran in generations.From early suggestions that the Trump administration would rein in Netanyahu’s military ambitions, it now appears that the Israeli PM has manoeuvred the US into striking Iranian uranium enrichment sites directly after a series of military attacks that Washington was unable to deter the Israeli PM from. And the US is now bracing for a retaliation that could easily bring it into a full-scale war.Days before Trump’s inauguration, his envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, barrelled into Israel with a demand to meet Netanyahu on Shabbat in order to strongarm him into negotiating a ceasefire deal with Hamas in Gaza.Senior officials at the time chalked that up to the “Trump factor” – a reference to the unpredictability and dealmaking prowess of the US president – which could provide a decisive edge in dealing with the forceful Israeli PM.While Netanyahu had been able to manoeuvre previous administrations into supporting his military adventures in the region, some critics of Israel began to laud Trump for his ability to resist Netanyahu’s pull.But after the events of Saturday – when US B-2 bombers pounded targets in Iran for the first time since Israel began to launch strikes last week – it was clear that Trump’s intuition had changed. Members of his inner entourage also shifted from a Maga isolationist approach to foreign policy to a more hawkish stance.Trump’s public aversion to war and his promises as a candidate not to embroil the US in further conflicts abroad was evaporating less than 200 days after he re-entered office.When he appeared in public, Trump sought to put rumours of a troubled relationship with Netanyahu to rest. And he tried to show that US policy was in lockstep with Israel, rejecting suggestions that Israel had blindsided the US by pursuing an aggressive bombing campaign against Iran.“I want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu,” Trump said. “We worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before, and we’ve gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel.”It was a far cry from the initial US reaction to Israeli bombing raids on targets in Iran, when the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, called the strikes “unilateral” and said the US was “not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region”.What a difference a week makes. The US now appears to have fully endorsed the Israeli strikes and joined the attack, potentially setting the stage for a series of escalations that could lead to a new war in the Middle East.What does this mean for the future? Trump has claimed in public and private that the US strikes on the Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan enrichment sites were one-off missions and could be contained. US forces in the Middle East have been warned of the potential for Iranian retaliation attacks, and Trump has told Tehran that the US is ready to carry out further strikes if it is targeted directly.Yet Trump’s own administration officials, including the vice-president, JD Vance, have warned of the potential for a limited strike to creep into a longer-term mission in Iran if Tehran retaliates.For now, Trump continues to try to tread a middle ground, launching strikes but suggesting that he can prevent an escalation leading to a protracted war.Yet the key US ally in the Middle East appears only emboldened by Trump’s raid.“Congratulations, President Trump, your bold decision to target Iran’s nuclear facilities with the awesome and righteous might of the United States will change history,” Netanyahu said in a video statement. More

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      Thousands of Afghans face expulsion from US as Trump removes protections

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      Thousands of Afghans who fled to the US as the Taliban grabbed power again in Afghanistan are in mortal dread of being deported back to danger in the coming weeks amid the Trump administration’s anti-immigration crackdown.Many, including some who assisted US forces in Afghanistan before the botched withdrawal by the military in 2021, are contending with threats to their legal status in the US on several fronts.Donald Trump revoked safeguards from deportation for those in the US covered under temporary protected status (TPS), by taking Afghanistan off the list of eligible countries then, not long after, put Afghanistan on the list of countries affected by the revamped travel ban.Afghans are also affected by Trump’s refugee ban and that all comes amid almost daily news of stepped-up arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) affecting undocumented immigrants and also many with a legal status, from Central and South America, parts of Africa and Asia and other regions, caught in the dragnet and sending terror rippling through other communities.Shir Agha Safi, the executive director of Afghan Partners in Des Moines, a non-profit in Iowa where there are 500 families who evacuated from Afghanistan to escape the re-empowered Taliban, said members of his community are “traumatized because they have seen what happened to Venezuelan immigrants in other states”.The loss of TPS for Afghans, which also provides employment authorization, goes into effect on 14 July.With the government’s announcement, Safi said some in his community are too afraid to speak openly but had told him “they would choose suicide over being tortured and killed by the Taliban”.Asked to elaborate, he said: “They have said this because the Taliban is still there and if you send an Afghan back to Afghanistan that would mean a death penalty.”The US government initially granted Afghans in the US TPS in 2022, because the Biden administration agreed that it was too risky for them to return to Afghanistan due to the armed conflict and political turmoil that has forced millions to flee the country. Even before Trump returned to the White House their foothold in US society was uncertain.Now the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) argues that Afghanistan is safe to go back to.“Afghanistan has had an improved security situation, and its stabilizing economy no longer prevent them from returning to their home country,” homeland security secretary Kristi Noem said in a recent statement.The department cited rising tourism as a factor, with the Federal Register’s item about revoking TPS for Afghans saying “tourism to Afghanistan has increased, as the rates of kidnappings have reduced”. It quotes that from a US Institute of Peace report that assessed conditions three years after the Taliban took back control and does include that sentence – but the majority of the report describes negative conditions in poverty-stricken Afghanistan, where “the rule of law has been replaced by the rule of force, where justice is not administered in courts but meted out through fear and violence”.The US state department website, meanwhile, puts the country in the highest-risk advice category for US citizens, warning: “Do not travel to Afghanistan due to civil unrest, crime, terrorism, risk of wrongful detention, kidnapping, and limited health facilities.”But immigration advocates and Democratic lawmakers say Taliban-controlled Afghanistan remains a dangerous country for many, especially minorities, women and those who assisted the foreign war effort, including humanitarian work. Some foreigners living in Afghanistan have been arrested by the Taliban this year and detained for weeks.California state senator Aisha Wahab, the first Afghan American woman elected to US public office, challenged the Trump administration’s decision.“Pushing these individuals to Afghanistan again – Afghanistan being a country that lacks basic human rights, basic women’s rights, basic humanitarian support, a legal and justice system – is problematic,” said Wahab, who represents some of the largest Afghan immigrant communities in northern California.“Afghanistan is a country that is landlocked, that struggles with trade, that more than 50% of their population are not allowed to get an education beyond sixth grade. It’s a fact that it is led by a deeply religious regime that has a lot of problems,” she added.Hundreds of Afghans have been publicly flogged by the authorities since the Taliban took over in 2021, the Guardian reported last month.In a bipartisan approach, US Senators Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, and Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire, have written jointly to secretary of state Marco Rubio.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We are writing to express profound concern over the recent decision to terminate temporary protected status (TPS) for over 8,000 Afghan nationals currently residing in the United States. This decision endangers thousands of lives, including Afghans who stood by the United States. This decision represents a historic betrayal of promises made and undermines the values we fought for far more than 20 years in Afghanistan,” the letter reads.It added that revoking TPS, especially for women and minority groups, “exposes these individuals to the very real threat of persecution, violence and even death under Taliban rule”.While the US government hasn’t laid out a deportation plan, it has encouraged Afghans who lose their TPS status to leave the country.However, a DHS official said: “Any Afghan who fears persecution is able to request asylum. All aliens who have had their TPS or parole terminated or are otherwise in the country unlawfully should take advantage of the CBP Home self-deportation process to receive a free one-way plane ticket and $1,000 financial assistance to help them resettle elsewhere.”Bipartisan efforts to give Afghans permanent legal status in the US previously stalled for three years, with the Biden administration creating temporary avenues for those in limbo.Many Afghan families in the US still depend on the future of TPS, said Jill Marie Bussey, the director for legal affairs at Global Refuge, an immigrant rights group that has helped thousands of Afghans settle in the US.“Protection from deportation is the center, but the work authorization associated with the status is the only thing that is allowing them to send money to their loved ones right now and keeping them safe,” said Bussey.“I have a client, whom I message with almost on a daily basis, who is absolutely distraught, at a very high level of anxiety, because he fears that his spouse and children, including his four-year-old daughter, whom he’s never met in person, will suffer greatly if he loses his work authorization.”According to government data, since July of 2021, US Citizenship and Immigration Services has received nearly 22,000 asylum applications by Afghan nationals. Nearly 20,000 of them were granted.But given the immigration court backlog, which totals 3.5 million active cases and an average wait time between five to 636 days, many Afghans still haven’t heard any news on their applications on other status available to them, Bussey added.In a similar scenario are those who worked for the US government in Afghanistan and arrived on American soil. Many are still waiting for an approval from the US Department of State that would validate their eligibility for a special immigration visa (SIV), Bussey added. “Some were hesitant to apply for asylum because they were eligible for SIV and were waiting for their approval in order to apply for their green card,” she said. But things are badly held up in the backlog.“They were promised that green card based on their allyship to our country and then applying for asylum felt like a betrayal, an imperfect fit for them,” said Bussey.The Guardian requested information on how many Afghans currently protected by TPS have also been granted other legal status, but DHS did not respond. More

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