The dangers of imported American culture wars
The US anti-abortion movement is more emboldened than it has been in years, largely due to Trump removing nearly all protections for abortion providers. He has instructed federal prosecutors to limit enforcement of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (Face), which was introduced in response to violence against abortion clinics and staff, including the murder of doctors. In January, Trump also chose to pardon 23 anti-abortion activists who had been jailed for invading and blockading abortion clinics under the Face Act.
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The chilling events of the weekend should give us pause for thought here in Scotland. The hard-won Safe Access Zones Act, which keeps anti-abortion protesters 200 metres away from hospitals providing abortion services, came about in direct response to the importation of US-style clinic protests. Although many of the protesters were locals, they were recruited and organised by Texan anti-abortion organisation 40 Days for Life. I first witnessed the protests while living near the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow, and the unmistakably US overtones – the signs, the fanaticism – made my blood run cold. Abortion rights in Scotland are under attack with the help of US dollars.
When anti-abortion activist Rose Docherty flouted the new buffer zone legislation, she was swiftly lionised by the Alliance Defending Freedom – an American legal advocacy group categorised as an extremist homophobic hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Centre. She was framed as a persecuted victim of state overreach, rather than someone deliberately undermining public health protections.
An even more disturbing example came when JD Vance grossly misrepresented Scotland's buffer zone laws, which led to a surge in abuse directed at MSP Gillian Mackay. Mackay, who spearheaded the buffer zones bill, was called a 'baby killer', received emails suggesting her abusers knew her home address, and was even sent rape threats – all while she was pregnant.
The recent events in America are existentially terrifying, threatening our sense of freedom, peace, and democracy. It would be a grave mistake to assume that such extremism cannot reach our shores. It already has. Attempts to undermine our laws and the will of our parliament are not theoretical – they are happening right now.
Yet, watching so many Americans take to the streets in defence of the freedoms they cherish gives me hope. I have faith in them – and I have faith in us.
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The Independent
22 minutes ago
- The Independent
What's the point of the UK talking to Tehran? More than you might think…
Europe's frantic diplomatic mission in Geneva may go down as one of its most arduous ventures on the world stage – and also one of its most consequential. The foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany must persuade a battered Iranian regime to kow-tow to the US and Israel over its nuclear ambitions, or face likely annihilation. All three European powers would, of course, love to see the back of supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei's corrupt and brutal theocracy. But they rightly fear the regime's capacity to unleash death and destruction before it goes. If Trump joins Israel in the war on Iran with US bunker-busting bombs on nuclear sites, and it succeeds in killing Khamenei, there will still be plenty of Iranian hardliners left who will be willing to fight to the death. Previous inhibitions will not apply. That could mean use of a dirty bomb in the West, or chaos unleashed in the Strait of Hormuz, through which 90 per cent of the Gulf's oil passes. For the world at large, the stakes are that high. British foreign secretary David Lammy – after meeting his US counterpart, Marco Rubio, and presidential envoy Steve Witkoff in Washington on Thursday – said that the UK was 'determined that Iran must never have a nuclear weapon". He thinks a window now exists within the next two weeks to achieve a diplomatic solution, as Trump dithers over whether to attack the regime, as US neo-cons and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu are demanding – or whether to heed the no-more-wars mantra of his Maga base. And so, in search of a diplomatic solution, Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi is meeting with his European counterparts in Switzerland. But what can be achieved? For all their good intentions – French president Emmanuel Macron said the diplomats would make a "comprehensive, diplomatic and technical offer of negotiation" to Iran – the Europeans are unlikely to persuade the Iranians to pull back from the brink. At least not on their own. While one Iranian diplomat said Tehran was willing to pursue 'a balanced and pragmatic policy in its dealings with Europe, and engage rationally with both East and West', Araghchi said there will be 'no talks' with the US over Iran's nuclear programme while the Israeli bombardment continues: 'The Americans want negotiations and have sent messages several times, but we have clearly said that there is no room for dialogue.' But there is a useful point to holding talks on neutral ground with Tehran – and it's not simply to ask them nicely and face-to-face if they wouldn't mind stopping with their nuclear enrichment programme. Rather than relaying Trump and Netanyahu's demands to Iran, Geneva is about feeding back to the White House – translating Tehran's position for the US president. The Europeans aren't there to stop the war, they're Trump-whispering for the Ayatollah. It's not clear that European diplomats have the connections they need to have a greater role to play than this, useful though it will prove. But when it comes to a practical breakthrough, some of the Gulf states might, however. Behind the scenes, figures in what some dub 'Iran's deep state' – many of them members of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – are talking to representatives of Oman and Qatar; it might be these Middle Eastern countries that can make the difference, in a second stage of dialogue. Qatar, for its part, will likely hold more sway over Washington than London or Paris. All the peacemakers, though, will be battling the plans of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Nothing less that the obliteration of the regime in Tehran will satisfy him. Worryingly, Israel's premier appears to have been joined by an increasingly pro-war Fox News, with Sean Hannity this week declaring that Iran 'is the biggest existential threat to the entire western world'. The West should have learnt by now – after the disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya – that enforced regime change in the Middle East is best avoided. Andreas Krieg, a leading Iran expert at King's College London thinks regime change in Iran would 'not be clean or peaceful'. If the current theocracy falls, there is no significant alternative political-social structure to lead this country of 92 million into the light. The IRGC, a ruthless military-industrial complex, would not easily cede control of the Iranian economy. Instead, with 190,000 personnel and a similar number of Basij paramilitaries to call on, it might well create a military dictatorship. The West and Israel would be back to square one. And the Iranian people would be no better off. Ironically, the last time the West brought about regime change in Iran – by booting out, in 1953, the democratically elected premier Mohammad Mosaddegh (for which we have British Petroleum and the CIA to thank) – it laid the groundwork for the emergence of the current Islamic Republic in the 1970s. In between rounds of golf, as he ponders his next steps in the Middle East, you can't help wishing Potus would be shown – by Lammy or anyone else – the relevant pages of a history book. It is within the president's power to unleash hell – or stop history repeating itself. After the Geneva talks, let's hope he listens to what the Trump-whisperers tell him.
Telegraph
39 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Has Trump ‘chickened out' on Iran? Five reasons for his two-week delay
On Tuesday evening, Donald Trump appeared poised to join Israel's war against Iran. Having left the G7 summit in Canada early, he convened an emergency meeting of his national security advisers. JD Vance, his vice-president and a staunch opponent of foreign military entanglements, signalled that the president was contemplating action. Mr Trump issued a series of increasingly bellicose warnings, demanding Iran's 'unconditional surrender'. 'We know exactly where the so-called 'Supreme Leader' is hiding,' he wrote in a social media post. Yet within 48 hours, the president had pulled back. To some observers of US politics, this will seem like another instance of Mr Trump living up to his 'Taco' instincts – 'Trump Always Chickens Out', the acronym that so palpably infuriates him. There are, however, several plausible reasons for delay. Domestic disputes Mr Trump's flirtation with war has sharply divided his base. Maga loyalists, whose foreign policy instincts are overwhelmingly isolationist, are aghast at the prospect of their standard-bearer dragging them into a new conflict, especially after campaigning so forcefully against just such adventurism. 'Anyone slobbering for the US to become involved in the Israel/Iran war is not America First/Maga,' Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of Mr Trump's most ardent Congressional allies, posted on social media.
The Guardian
44 minutes ago
- The Guardian
We're on the brink of a disastrous, illegal conflagration in the Middle East. Trump must be stopped
Like the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, Israel's war on Iran is neither legal nor just. It is a war of choice, not of necessity – and should the US or its European allies, particularly Britain, join in, they risk being dragged into another disastrous and unlawful conflict in the Middle East. A US military intervention would be in direct contravention of international law. Already, the US, once the architect and guardian of the international order, is now among its chief violators. Instead of pressuring Benjamin Netanyahu to end his siege and destruction of Gaza, Donald Trump has fully sided with Netanyahu and called Israel's attacks on Iran 'excellent'. He has demanded Iran's 'unconditional surrender'. Trump is considering military strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. Doing so is explicitly prohibited under article 56 of the additional protocol to the Geneva conventions because of the danger of nuclear contamination. Britain, meanwhile, must tread carefully. The attorney general has reportedly warned that any UK military involvement beyond defensive support would be illegal. Richard Hermer, the government's top legal adviser, is said to have raised internal concerns about the legality of joining a bombing campaign. The foundation of Israel's justification for launching pre-emptive strikes and of Washington's quiet complicity is alarming. The core claim is that Iran was rapidly taking steps to 'weaponise its uranium', with Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, repeatedly warning that Tehran is approaching a point of no return in developing a nuclear bomb. But Netanyahu's narrative flatly contradicts the US intelligence assessment, which found that not only is Iran not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon, it remains at least three years away from having the capability to do so. The CIA disputes the Israeli claim that Iran is close to crossing a nuclear threshold. Trump's director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, testified in March that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon and that the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, had not authorised a nuclear programme, one that was in fact suspended in 2003. Even if Iran was making a bomb, international law doesn't give Israel and the US the right to bomb Iran. The UN charter is clear on the use of force in international relations. Yet, when pressed about this contradiction, Trump dismissed the intelligence outright. 'I don't care what she said,' he told reporters. 'I think they were very close to having it.' Netanyahu and Trump's narrative also stands in direct opposition to findings by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), whose director general, Rafael Grossi, confirmed on 17 June that there was 'no proof' Iran was systematically developing nuclear weapons. Set against this backdrop, US military intervention would rupture the rules-based international order further and make future conflicts more unpredictable and dangerous. Other powerful states could launch offensive wars under the pretext of pre-empting real or imagined threats to their national security. Today, it's Israel and the US. Tomorrow, China could use the same rationale to justify attacking Taiwan. The echoes of the Iraq war should also raise alarm bells. Then, as now, war was sold on manufactured intelligence. Netanyahu was a vocal supporter of the neoconservative movement that led the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq and justified it with claims about Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction and ties to terrorism. George W Bush sold that war with the now-infamous line about Hussein's 'massive stockpile' of biological weapons, despite the CIA stating it had 'no specific information' on quantities or types. Bush went further, claiming: 'We do not know whether or not [Iraq] has a nuclear weapon,' contradicting his own intelligence. He knew, and he lied. Trump, for his part, publicly criticised that very deception, saying Bush's decision to invade Iraq was 'the worst decision any president has made in the history of this country [the US]', adding: 'There were no weapons of mass destruction, and they knew there were none.' Yet Trump today appears to borrow a page from Bush's playbook. Although there is no plan for a US ground invasion of Iran, any attack on Tehran risks spiralling into a full-blown regional war. Iran has repeatedly threatened to retaliate against US bases in Iraq, Bahrain and the wider Gulf. A mission creep could easily escalate, triggering a cycle of strikes and counterstrikes. For example, Iran could mine the strait of Hormuz, a critical choke point for global energy flows. The effects could reverberate globally, hitting energy markets and causing an inflationary cycle, weakening confidence in the US dollar, and potentially plunging the US economy into stagflation. Even the Houthis, with far fewer military capabilities than Iran, have managed to severely inflict damage and disrupt shipping in the Red Sea. If the US joins Israel's war, Iran could cripple global trade routes and send oil prices soaring. If the US joins Israel's war on Iran, it could backfire spectacularly, and potentially strengthen the regime rather than weakening it. One likely outcome is that the clerics will dash forward towards making a nuclear bomb, pointing to Israel's attack and attempt at regime change as justification. Meanwhile, in the UK, Keir Starmer would do well to remember the bitter legacy of Tony Blair, who led Britain into Iraq alongside the US. Fawaz Gerges is professor of international relations at the London School of Economics. His most recent book is The Great Betrayal: The Struggle for Freedom and Democracy in the Middle East
