Does Donald Trump fear a nuclear Iran more than he hates war?
The most consequential decision of Donald Trump's presidency is now on pause for two weeks. We examine how the choice pits two sides of Mr Trump against one another. India is an advanced-manufacturing powerhouse, but can it become a hub for high-tech innovation, too? And as 'Jaws' turns 50 our correspondent says its hero is probably not who you remember. Runtime: 24 min
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Telegraph
24 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Whitehall launches hunt for mole who leaked Hermer's Iran advice
The Government has launched an official hunt for the Whitehall mole who leaked Lord Hermer's legal advice on Iran. The Cabinet Office's Propriety and Ethics Team (PET) has been instructed to carry out an official leak inquiry after it was reported that the Attorney General did not believe the UK should join Israeli strikes on Iran. On Wednesday The Spectator said Lord Hermer had told Downing Street that he had ' concerns about the UK playing any role in this except for defending our allies'. The Telegraph understands the advice was given after Israel's first attack on Iranian nuclear facilities last Thursday, although it was not reported for another six days. Lord Hermer was concerned that the UK might breach international law if it joined Israel in striking Iran directly. The United Nations Charter says that countries can only launch an attack in self-defence, to defend an ally, or if the UN Security Council passes a resolution authorising military action. The leak has placed Lord Hermer in a difficult position because he is not allowed to discuss the content of his advice and Downing Street is keen to avoid any public discussion of its plans in the Middle East. The disclosure came as Donald Trump was considering sending an American 'bunker buster' bomb into Iran to destroy a nuclear fuel enrichment facility in northwestern Iran. In response, No 10 urged world leaders to keep 'cool heads' and said that it maintained a policy of 'de-escalation'. The UK has not participated in any offensive action against Iran, nor defended Israel, since the latest round of the conflict began. While it is commonplace for the Attorney General, the government's chief law officer, to give an opinion on defence policy as ministers draw up their response to a crisis, the advice must be kept a secret. The Ministerial Code, the official handbook for serving in government says that 'the fact that the Law Officers have advised or have not advised, and the content of their advice, must not be disclosed outside government without their authority'. The Cabinet Office's team will now attempt to find the leaker, who may be one of the officials or ministers who attended official meetings about the Middle East conflict on Thursday or Friday last week. Lord Hermer's legal advice has previously attracted criticism after sources said he was acting as a 'freeze on government' by trying to block various government policies on legal grounds. He has also been criticised for controversial clients he represented while working as a barrister, including the alleged terrorist Abu Zubaydah and Gerry Adams. The Labour peer is a former human rights lawyer and long-time friend of Sir Keir Starmer. His position on the Israel-Iran conflict has since been backed by Left-wing Labour MPs, including Dame Emily Thornberry, the former shadow attorney general and chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. She said on Thursday that 'any of those justifications' for war in the UN Charter do not apply because the UK is 'not under threat ourselves,' an air strike would not be defensive and there is no Security Council resolution. Downing Street, the Cabinet Office and the Attorney General's Office declined to comment.
Telegraph
38 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Trump's ‘made-for-TV' security chiefs iced out from Iran inner circle
Donald Trump didn't even bother to conceal his contempt of Tulsi Gabbard's assessment of Iran's nuclear ambitions. 'She's wrong,' the US president said on Friday, speaking to media en route to his Bedminster golf course in New Jersey. Mr Trump has assembled an unusual team for his White House and Cabinet, drawing on close loyalists, Fox News presenters and veterans of Capitol Hill. But with tensions boiling over in the Middle East he has made the unusual move of sidelining two key national security figures, relying instead on old friends and military insiders. It means Ms Gabbard, the national intelligence director, and Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, both surprise picks who had impressed Mr Trump with lively performances on Fox News – have found themselves on the outside of discussions. Instead, he has turned to JD Vance, the vice-president, Marco Rubio, and Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, and Steve Witkoff, the Middle East envoy. Mr Hegseth, who was confirmed to the Cabinet by a single vote in the Senate, has seen his stock with Mr Trump fall in recent months. The 45-year-old accidentally leaked US military plans to bomb Yemen's Houthi rebels after a journalist was added to a group chat on Signal, the messaging app. In the wake of 'Signalgate', he sacked three close advisers over a Pentagon leak investigation, and his chief of staff resigned shortly afterwards. Mr Trump was also rumoured to have scolded his defence secretary after being underwhelmed by his military birthday parade.
NBC News
40 minutes ago
- NBC News
What the explosive growth of 'blowout counties' means for U.S. politics
Look at a few national election results and it's easy to think of the United States as a 50/50 nation overall, split down the middle between Republican red and Democratic blue. But that's not the reality in vast and growing swaths of the country, where political competitiveness at the local level is being replaced by landslide loyalty to a single party. Across the country, 20-point margins in counties Republicans were winning at the turn of the century have turned into 50-point margins or more in recent years. Meanwhile, the number of counties that flipped from one party to the other in each presidential election has shrunk. Data compiled by the NBC News Political Unit has shown the demographic trends that have organized our current political coalitions. But the geographical trends also help show how much of the reorganization has clustered along community lines over the last quarter-century. If some people talk like they've never had political conversations with people who disagree with them, it could be because that's more possible than ever before in today's politically clustered United States. Looking at blowout county wins George W. Bush's Electoral College win in 2000 was famously razor-thin. But his average win across the country's 3,100-plus counties was about 17 points. Democrats' advantage in population-dense urban cores bolsters their popular vote count election after election. But Republicans' advantage in rural counties has been a core part of the Republican playbook, with small-county wins with margins of 50 points or more adding up, bit by bit, to a substantial coalition. These were the counties where each candidate had 50-plus-point-margin wins in the 2000 election: Bush captured major wins across the Plains states and up through the Mountain West, while Al Gore racked up margins of 50-plus points in the densely populated New York City boroughs, Philadelphia, Baltimore and some scattered rural areas with large Black populations. But more than two decades later, President Donald Trump has dramatically expanded the number of blowout win counties. Trump has grown Republican political advantages east of the older GOP bulwarks and has captured Appalachia, which was once a reliably Democratic region, continuing to drive up margins in rural America. The average size of a Trump blowout county was about 10,000 voters last year. On the flip side, Democrats have grown their advantages in population-dense cities and suburbs, with the San Francisco Bay Area; Portland, Oregon; and Seattle emerging on this map as heavily Democratic areas. The average size of a blowout county for Kamala Harris was 210,000 voters. Some of the most important political coalitions for Democrats emerge on this map, especially in comparison with 2000. The 2024 map shows the birth of Democratic vote powerhouses in majority-Black DeKalb and Clayton counties in Georgia and in Wisconsin's Dane County, home of Madison and the University of Wisconsin, with its heavily white and college degree-holding population. Both coalitions are essential to Democratic wins in those states in recent elections. Overall, there are four times as many blowout counties today than there were at the turn of the century. Counties flipped One consequence of the sharp rise in blowout counties: a precipitous decline in swing counties. Back in the 2004 election, 227 counties flipped from one party to the other compared with the 2000 election. But last fall, only 89 changed their party preferences from the 2020 election. The total number of flipped counties has dropped over the century. The biggest spikes occurred in the 2008 first-term election of Barack Obama and the 2016 first-term election of Trump — moments when the party coalitions changed dramatically. Trump's 89-county flip in this last election was actually an increase over the 80 counties that flipped in Joe Biden's victory in 2020. The last election was also statistically notable for another reason: Harris became the first candidate this century who didn't flip a single county compared with the previous election.
