Will AI wipe out the first rung of the career ladder?

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. This week, I'm wondering what my first jobs in journalism would have been like had generative AI been around. In other news: Elon Musk leaves a trail of chaos, and influencers are selling the text they fed to AI to make art.
Generative artificial intelligence may obviate the job you got with your diploma still in hand, say executives who offered grim assessments of the entry-level job market last week in multiple forums.
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, which makes the multifunctional AI model Claude, told Axios last week that he believes that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and send overall unemployment rocketing to 20% within the next five years. One explanation why an AI company CEO might make such a dire prediction is to hype the capabilities of his product. It's so powerful that it could eliminate an entire rung of the corporate ladder, he might say, ergo you should buy it, the slogan might go.
If your purchasing and hiring habits follow his line of thinking, then you buy Amodei's product to stay ahead of the curve of the job-cutting scythe. It is telling that Amodei made these remarks the same week that his company unveiled a new version of Claude in which the CEO claimed that the bot could code unassisted for several hours. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has followed a similar playbook.
However, others less directly involved in the creation of AI are echoing Amodei's warning. Steve Bannon, former Trump administration official and current influential Maga podcaster, agreed with Amodei and said that automated jobs would be a major issue in the 2028 US presidential election. The Washington Post reported in March that more than a quarter of all computer programming jobs in the US vanished in the past two years, citing the inflection point of the downturn as the release of ChatGPT in late 2022.
Days before Amodei's remarks were published, an executive at LinkedIn offered similarly grim prognostications based on the social network's data in a New York Times essay headlined 'I see the bottom rung of the career ladder breaking'.
'There are growing signs that artificial intelligence poses a real threat to a substantial number of the jobs that normally serve as the first step for each new generation of young workers,' wrote Aneesh Raman, chief economic opportunity officer at LinkedIn.
The US Federal Reserve published observations on the job market for recent college graduates in the first quarter of 2025 that do not inspire hope. The agency's report reads: 'The labor market for recent college graduates deteriorated noticeably in the first quarter of 2025. The unemployment rate jumped to 5.8% – the highest reading since 2021 – and the underemployment rate rose sharply to 41.2%.' The Fed did not attribute the deterioration to a specific cause.
The likeliest outcome of AI's impact on entry-level jobs is that companies will reformulate them into something new. The job market may settle somewhere between Amodei's AI Ragnarok and the antediluvian days before ChatGPT. Familiarity with AI will be required in the way that Microsoft Office has, and bosses will demand a higher standard of productivity. If a robot can do most of the coding for you, a junior software engineer, then you should be producing five times the amount of code as before, they may say.
Speaking of Microsoft and software engineers, CEO Satya Nadella claimed in late April that AI writes 30% of Microsoft's code. That may be the future of software development. It is possible that is true; it is also possible that Nadella, head of the company that has reaped enormous gains from the AI boom, is trying to sell by example, overestimating how much of that code is usable. Meta's Mark Zuckerberg has been more pointed in his assessments, asserting that his company will no longer need mid-level coders by the end of 2025. Shortly after, Meta announced a 5% staff reduction.
The short-term readjustment, however, is the pain point. Recent classes have graduated without AI being an integral part of their school life, and employers won't believe those interim graduates have the necessary familiarity for a new professional landscape.
That is not the fault of the graduates: Employers themselves don't know what they want yet from AI. Axios followed up Amodei's doom and gloom with a piece about how AI job cuts are jumping the gun. Companies are not replacing departing workers, betting that AI will be able to perform the same functions, if not now, then hopefully by the time it would take to hire replacements.
The example of journalism may be a canary in the coalmine. Entry-level jobs in journalism often involve aggregating news items from other outlets in the style of your own employer, a task AI is well suited to if the facts are straight. I spent several years doing just that when I started out. In the same way that we see Amodei's predictions taking shape in LinkedIn's data, I see the entry-level diminishment beginning in my own industry. Business Insider, a digital outlet focused on financial and business news, laid off 20% of its staff late last week. CEO Barbara Peng said the newsroom would go 'all-in on AI' and become 'AI-first' in her note eliminating the jobs.
Axios itself footnoted its Amodei interview with a disclosure about its own practices with regard to AI.
'At Axios, we ask our managers to explain why AI won't be doing a specific job before green-lighting its approval. (Axios stories are always written and edited by humans),' the disclosure reads. The parenthetical indicates that Axios editors know that AI's involvement in writing is bad for the brand. The part said outside the parentheses indicates Axios executives may not be backfilling vacated jobs, waiting for AI to catch up and close those openings.
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Elon Musk announced he would leave the White House last week, ending a contentious and generally unpopular run as a senior adviser to the president and de facto head of the so-called 'department of government efficiency' (Doge). Donald Trump hosted a press conference for his departure, the same day that the New York Times reported that Musk had heavily used drugs on the campaign trail.
My colleague Nick Robins-Early assessed the mess Musk leaves in his wake:
As Musk moves on, he consigns a mess of half-realized plans and gutted agencies to his acolytes installed in key positions across the federal government. His departure throws Doge's already chaotic impact on the government into an even grayer limbo, with questions over how much power the nebulous taskforce will have without him and who, if anyone, might rebuild the programs and services it destroyed.
Musk's initial pitch for Doge was to save $2tn from the budget by rooting out rampant waste and fraud, as well as to conduct an overhaul of government software that would modernize how federal agencies operate. Doge so far has claimed to cut about $140bn from the budget – although its 'wall of receipts' is notorious for containing errors that overestimate its savings. Donald Trump's new tax bill, though not part of Doge and opposed by Musk, is also expected to add $2.3tn to the deficit, nullifying any savings Doge may have achieved. Its promises of a new, modernized software have frequently been limited to artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots – some of which were already in the works under the Biden administration.
The greater impact of Doge has instead been its dismantling of government services and humanitarian aid. Doge's cuts have targeted a swath of agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organization, which handles weather and natural disaster forecasting, and plunged others such as the Department of Veterans Affairs into crises. Numerous smaller agencies, such as one that coordinates policy on homelessness, have been in effect shut down. Doge has brought several bureaus to their knees, with no clear plan of whether the staff Musk leaves behind will try to update or maintain their services or simply shut them off.
As Musk returns to Tesla and SpaceX, the agencies he laid waste to are left to pick up the pieces.
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While Musk is returning to his tech empire, many of the former employees and inexperienced young engineers whom he hired to work for Doge are set to remain part of the government. One of the largest questions about what Doge's future looks like is whether these staffers, some of whom gained near unfettered access to the government's most sensitive data, will retain the same powers they enjoyed under Musk.
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Would you buy instructions for ChatGPT?
Two weeks ago, the Instagram account @voidstomper, which posts grotesque videos generated by AI to 2.2m followers, offered a novel kind of sale. Up for grabs were 10 prompts used to prod AI-powered engines into generating the videos that the account itself had posted.
Voidstomper posted a video captioned: 'I didn't want to sell these. But I'm broke and these still go viral. So here: 10 raw horror prompts straight from my archive. Some got me hundreds of millions of views. Some barely make sense. All of them work. Use them in any AI video tool. Just don't pretend you wrote them. VAULT_DUMP_1 is live. Link in bio. No refunds. You're on your own.' The account's administrator did not respond to a request for an interview.
The account is not alone. Marketplaces exist for the sale of AI prompts. Ben Stokes, the founder of the PromptBase, says there are some 20,000 sellers on his site hawking prompts, with thousands sold monthly and, to date, seven figures paid out to their writers since 2022. He said social media influencers and other content creators selling their prompts is 'still quite niche' and serves as a side hustle for graphic designers, artists, and photographers.
Voidstomper put prompts for sale that had been used to create specific videos. The product a user might receive when purchasing a prompt on PromptBase is likely to be closer to a generalized template than a finite sentence, Stokes said.
'For example, if the prompt that creates posters of famous landmarks in a vintage style, there'd be sections within the prompt in square brackets like [LANDMARK NAME] that you could change to the landmark you'd like to create a poster for, like the local pier in your town,' he said.
Why buy a string of text when you could type out your own, though?
'There is a specific group of people who are looking for high-quality, robust prompts for their business applications. Specifically, they are looking to integrate AI into their product or workflow, which usually requires a prompt, and want to ensure it works well and produces great consistent outputs,' said Stokes. Though the general public thinks of ChatGPT as free, running enough generations to obtain specific and correct outputs can be quite expensive for businesses, he added. It may be more cost effective to buy a prompt.
Even within the niche of AI-generated art, some consider the sale of prompts ridiculous. The Instagram and TikToker HolyFool36, an AI art Instagram account that has been interviewed in this newsletter before, said he would never engage in the practice.
'Frankly, I find it as an insult to my sensibilities,' he said via email. 'Generative AI requires no skill – almost anyone can figure out how to reverse engineer his prompts for free.'
'I personally know Void Stomper and have had many interactions with him. I've explained that the best way to monetize this stuff is to build a brand and then sell real tangible products within that brand. He has clearly, directly, stated that he does not have the discipline to do that. I don't judge him, everyone's gotta pay rent somehow, I'd just never go about it that way personally,' he added.
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The Guardian

43 minutes ago

• The Guardian

How the carefully planned US bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities unfolded

Late on Friday night, eight US B-2 bombers took off from Whiteman air force base in Missouri and turned westwards towards the Pacific. Amateur flight trackers plotted their progress on social media as the black flying-wing warplanes joined up mid-air with refuelling tankers and checked in with air traffic controllers once they had reached the open ocean. The movement of the B-2 bombers towards the US Pacific base on Guam triggered speculation that Donald Trump was arranging pieces on the board before a decision on whether to join Israel in bombing Iranian nuclear facilities. On Thursday, Trump had let it be known that he would make that decision over the following two weeks, suggesting a window remained open for some last-ditch diplomatic alternative to war. He angrily denied a Wall Street Journal report that he had already approved a strike plan. The British, French and German foreign ministers seized the opportunity to meet their Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, for talks in Geneva on Friday but to little or no avail. Trump himself was characteristically dismissive of European efforts. 'Nah, they didn't help,' he told journalists. We know now that and the B-2 flights over the Pacific were part of the same elaborate ruse to ensure Iran was off its guard and looking the wrong way, and that the president's declared two-week diplomatic window was likely to be part of the same ploy. The Pentagon described the eight bombers that were spotted flying west as a decoy, a deception effort known only to an extremely small number of planners and leaders in Washington and at central command headquarters in Tampa, Florida. As they were tracked across the western states and then the Pacific, another seven B-2s took off from Whiteman base and headed in the opposite direction – eastwards. These seven planes made no communications with each other or with the ground as they crossed America and flew unnoticed over the Atlantic. The planes and their two-pilot crews flew all day and into Saturday night, refuelled mid-air along the way by tankers that had been deployed to Europe over the previous week. The careful orchestration and prepositioning, some of it predating the Israeli surprise attack on Iran on 13 June, raises questions over how early Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu decided to join forces to go to war against Iran, and over how much of the US president's professed interest in a diplomatic solution, and apparent effort to discourage an Israeli attack, was all part of the charade. As far back as May, during a visit to Doha, Trump went out of his way to denigrate the B-2's design, declaring 'I'm not a huge believer in stealth', because it made for an 'ugly plane'. By the time the flight of seven of these ugly planes arrived in the Middle East at the eastern edge of the Mediterranean, it was midnight local time on Saturday. The mission they had been assigned was codenamed Midnight Hammer, and to carry it out the bombers were joined by an escort of US fighter jets, surveillance and reconnaissance planes deployed in the region earlier – 125 aircraft in all. Together they flew on eastwards, with hardly a word exchanged between the pilots, to maintain the all-enveloping secrecy surrounding the operation. At the same time as the warplanes reached the Lebanese coast, a US submarine loitering somewhere in the Arabian Sea launched Tomahawk cruise missiles, synchronised to reach their targets in Iran at the same time the bombers arrived. The Tomahawks flew low over the Gulf of Oman and up over south-east Iran as seven B-2s and their accompanying fighters crossed Lebanon, Syria and Iraq (according to a map provided by the Pentagon on Sunday) and entered Iran from the north-west at about 1.30am local time. The chair of the US joint chiefs of staff, Dan Caine, described the whole operation as 'a complex, tightly timed manoeuvre requiring exact synchronisation across multiple platforms in a narrow piece of airspace, all done with minimal communications'. The primary target was the farthest north, near the Shia religious centre of Qom, the underground enrichment facility at Fordow, generally thought impregnable to every conventional weapon with the possible exception of America's biggest bomb, the 30,000lb (13,500kg) GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator. The seven B-2s approaching from the north were each carrying two of them. The second target was Natanz, Iran's first enrichment facility, and the third was a complex of facilities outside the ancient city of Isfahan, which is linked to other parts of the nuclear fuel cycle, and which had already been partly damaged by Israeli bombing. Before the bombers arrived at these targets, according to Caine's account, their fighter escort swept the area for any sign of Iranian warplanes, released decoys and opened fire on air defence sites on the ground. Apparently, there was no return fire. The Pentagon was 'unaware of any shots fired at the US strike package'. Iran's defensive shield had been flattened over the preceding week by relentless Israeli sorties. The bombers struck between 2.10am and 2.35am Iranian time, the Pentagon said, hitting Fordow at 'several aim points'. It was the first time the enormous GBU-57 bunker-busting bomb had been used in a US operation. It is unclear how many of the total of 14 were dropped on Natanz or Isfahan. The Tomahawk missiles fired by the navy were all aimed at Isfahan, Caine said, and landed slightly after the other two facilities were struck. The US warplanes turned around and headed back the way they had come, leaving Iranian airspace at 3am. By that time, reports had surfaced on Iranian media of explosions in the region of the nuclear facilities, and a quarter hour later, Trump confirmed the operation in the way he has made most of his presidential announcements – on his private online platform, Truth Social, complete with key words in all-capitals. 'A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow,' Trump wrote. 'All planes are safely on their way home. Congratulations to our great American Warriors. There is not another military in the World that could have done this. NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!' Addressing the nation a little later on television, Trump said the targets had been 'totally and completely obliterated', a claim that was modified over the course of Sunday to 'severely damaged'. The president appealed once more for Iran to sue for peace, which he has made clear would involve a surrender of all its nuclear programme. The message was repeated by other members of the administration throughout the day. Midnight Hammer would be a one-off US intervention, as long as Iran did not try to fire back and complied with the terms laid down by him and Netanyahu. Any retaliation, Trump said, returning to all caps on Truth Social, would be met with 'FORCE FAR GREATER THAN WHAT WAS WITNESSED TONIGHT'. By the end of Sunday, however, there was no sign of compliance from Tehran. Araghchi, vowed that Midnight Hammer would have 'everlasting consequences' adding that Iran reserved the right to 'all options to defend its sovereignty, interest, and people'. Iran played down the impact of the US bombs, saying that the country's reserves of high-enriched uranium had been removed from Fordow long before, and all the damage inflicted could be repaired. On Sunday morning, Iran launched a new salvo of missiles at Israel, one of which flattened most of a city block in north Tel Aviv. By the end of the day, Iran's parliament had approved a bill calling for the closing of the strait of Hormuz, the gateway to the Persian Gulf, through which over a fifth of the world's oil needs flows daily. Iran's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, warned that the US must 'receive a response' to its attacks. Tehran has previously threatened to target US bases spread across eight countries in the region, if the US were to join the Israeli attacks. In reality, its military capabilities are constrained by the withering attacks of the past 10 days, but late on Sunday the regime was saying it would explore all its options, while making clear that submission was not one of them.

The Sun

an hour ago

• The Sun

US warns it WILL strike again and world ‘should listen to Trump' as Iran leaders jet to meet Putin after nuke bomb blitz

THE US has warned it will strike again and that the world "should listen to Trump" after unleashing an unprecedented blitz on three nuclear facilities. It comes imminently after the Iranian foreign minister revealed he is to meet with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and warned the West of "unprecedented danger". 4 4 4 4 US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said Operation Midnight Hammer was 'an incredible and overwhelming success' that took months and weeks of planning. He added Trump has been clear that "any retaliation by Iran" against the US would be "met with force far greater" than what was seen on Saturday night. Hegseth said: 'Iran would be smart to heed those words. He's said it before, and he means it.' The Defence Secretary went on to praise the US leader, calling it "bold and brilliant, showing the world that American deterrence is back". He urged: "When this President speaks, the world should listen." Iran's foreign minister Abbas Arghchi has said he is going to Russia today to meet mad leader Putin. He revealed: 'I'm going to Moscow this afternoon, and I have a meeting with President Putin tomorrow morning.' Arghchi called Moscow a 'friend of Iran,' adding 'we always consult with each other'. Fears loom that the conflict could spiral into a world war, with Putin puppet Dmitry Medvedev making a veiled threat to supply Iran with nuclear weapons. He said: "A number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their nuclear weapons." After declaring the US strikes as being a success, Trump warned that further action could be taken if Tehran doesn't agree to an adequate peace deal. He said in a nationally televised speech at the White House: " Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier." "There will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days." 'Remember there are many targets left. Tonight's was the most difficult of them all, by far, and perhaps the most lethal. 'But if peace does not come quickly we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill. 'Most of them can be taken out in a matter of minutes. There's no military in the world that could have done what we did tonight." And shortly after speaking on-camera, he posted to Truth Social: "This cannot continue. There will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days. "Remember, there are many targets left. Tonight's was the most difficult of them all, by far, and perhaps the most lethal. "But if peace does not come quickly we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill." Meanwhile Iran's foreign minister Abbas Arghchi dubbed the strikes "outrageous and will have everlasting consequences". He also called the military action "a grave violation of the UN Charter, international law and the NPT by attacking Iran's peaceful nuclear installations". Today, 15:46 By Annabel Bate Iran says UK foreign sec 'expressed regret' over US strikes UK foreign secretary David Lammy had a phone call with his Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi. According to the readout in Tehran, the two discussed "the latest developments related to the United States' aggression against our country's peaceful nuclear facilities". It added: "In this telephone conversation, our country's foreign minister strongly condemned the aggressive act of the United States and considered it a gross violation of international law. "The British foreign secretary, expressing regret over this act, rejected any role or cooperation of his country and called for the continuation of diplomacy." A readout from the UK side has not yet been released. Today, 15:30 By Annabel Bate Iran's Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant after US strikes Today, 15:27 By Annabel Bate Underground damage at Iran's Fordow site is 'unclear' While it's clear that US airstrikes overnight hit Iran's enrichment site at Fordow, it is not yet possible to assess the damage done underground there, UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi told CNN on Sunday. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency that Grossi leads have not been able to inspect Iran's nuclear facilities since the first strikes on them by Israel on June 13, and Grossi said he hoped they would be able to return to Fordow and other sites as soon as possible. Today, 15:21 By Jack Newman US warns Iran not to retaliate US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has cautioned Iran against seeking retribution for the devastating blitz. He warned retaliation would be "the worst mistake they've ever made". It echoes comments by Donald Trump and his Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth who threatened to strike Iran again if they tried to fight back. Today, 15:18 By Jack Newman Iran votes to close Strait of Hormuz In a dramatic escalation, Iran has retaliated to the US bombardment by voting to close the Strait of Hormuz. The passage is one of the most important shipping lanes in the world, with 20 per cent of global oil and gas transported through the waters. Its closure could send oil and gas prices skyrocketing internationally and wreak havoc for trade and international shipping. The final decision to close the Strait will be taken by the Supreme National Security Council. Today, 14:13 By Annabel Bate Close-up view of craters after US strikes on Iran's Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant Today, 14:08 By Annabel Bate Middle East conflict is 'highly volatile' says Canadian PM Canada's prime minister Mark Carney has warned that the conflict in the Middle East is 'highly volatile'. He said on X: "Iran's nuclear programme is a grave threat to international security, and Canada has been consistently clear that Iran can never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon. "While U.S. military action taken last night was designed to alleviate that threat, the situation in the Middle East remains highly volatile. "Stability in the region is a priority. Canada calls on parties to return immediately to the negotiating table and reach a diplomatic solution to end this crisis. "As G7 leaders agreed in Kananaskis, the resolution of the Iranian crisis should lead to a broader de-escalation of hostilities in the Middle East, including a ceasefire in Gaza." Today, 14:05 By Annabel Bate Iran says nuclear know-how 'cannot be destroyed' Iran said its knowledge in the nuclear field "cannot be destroyed" after the United States carried out a series of strikes Sunday on atomic facilities in the Islamic republic. "They should know that this industry has roots in our country and the roots of this national industry cannot be destroyed," said Atomic Energy Organization of Iran spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi, according to Tasnim news agency. "Of course, we have suffered damage, but this is not the first time that the industry has suffered damage." Today, 13:49 By Annabel Bate US sending 'public and private messages to Iran' US defence secretary Pete Hegseth revealed that there were "both public and private messages being directly delivered to the Iranians". He added that they were being delivered "in multiple channels". Hegseth added: "Iran understands precisely what the American position is, precisely what steps they can take to allow for peace." Today, 13:47 By Nick Parker Operation named 'Midnight Hammer' Chairman of the US join chiefs of staff Dan Caine revealed the operation was named Midnight Hammer. Caine said that at midnight on Friday, a gargantuan B-2 strike package of bombers launched from the US but - to stay under the radar - some flew west into the Pacific. This was dubbed as a "deception effort". Caine explained: "It was planned and executed across multiple domains and theatres with coordination that reflects our ability to project power globally with speed and precision at the time and place of our nation's choosing." Today, 13:39 By Nick Parker Watch: The Sun's Foreign Editor reports from Israel The Sun reports from inside as Israel as tensions flare following US air strikes Today, 13:15 By Annabel Bate Hegseth boasts strikes on nuke facilities were 'incredible and overwhelming success' US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Sunday that US military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities were "an incredible and overwhelming success" which took months and weeks of positioning to carry out. Hegseth said the strikes did not target Iranian troops or people, but they did obliterate Iran's nuclear ambitions. "The operation President Trump planned was bold and it was brilliant, showing the world that American deterrence is back. "When this President speaks, the world should listen," Hegseth said. By Martina Bet Comment: Starmer is 'trying to have it both ways' Sir Keir Starmer says he's focused on 'de-escalation' but it's clear the UK wasn't in the driving seat when America launched its dramatic overnight strikes on Iran. He insists the Government was 'given due notice' but that's just diplomatic code for we were told, not asked. Britain played no part in the military action, didn't offer its bases, and wasn't in the room when the trigger was pulled. For a country that calls the US its closest ally, it's a humbling moment. While the PM has backed the goal - stopping Iran from building a bomb - he's skating carefully around the method. He won't say if the strikes were legal. He won't say what it would take for Britain to get involved. He's trying to have it both ways: supporting Washington while staying out of the firing line. So far, it's a delicate balancing act, but one that gets harder by the hour. If Iran strikes back, especially at US or Israeli targets, pressure on Britain to act will skyrocket. Meanwhile, the opposition is flexing its muscles. Priti Patel says the strikes were 'absolutely essential' and questions whether the UK even offered help. She's urging the government to move faster, act tougher, and stop hiding behind process. And she's not wrong to ask: if Britain has the capability to help stop a nuclear Iran, why didn't we step up? The PM of course, wants to sound strong, act calm, and avoid war. But when your closest ally goes in hard, and you're stuck on the sidelines, questions start piling up. Today, 12:42 By Annabel Bate Revolutionary Guard warns of using options 'beyond understanding' The Revolutionary Guard said it would 'use options beyond the understanding' of the US and Israel that 'must expect regrettable responses'. It described retaliation as 'its legitimate right to self-defence'. 'The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is well aware of the terrain of this combined and full-scale imposed war and will never be intimidated by the clamor of Trump and the criminal gang ruling the White House and Tel Aviv,' a Revolutionary Guard statement said. Today, 12:34 By Annabel Bate Air defences activated in parts of Iran - state media Air defences have been activated in parts of eastern Tehran, Iranian state media reports. It reportedly happened in the eastern Tehran province and the Yazd province. Today, 12:19 By Annabel Bate Trump pictured with national security team in Situation Room of the White House on Saturday

Telegraph

an hour ago

• Telegraph

The world is safer without a nuclear-armed Iran

During his first term as president in 2019, Donald Trump pulled back from ordering an attack on Iran even as US warships locked missiles on to their targets and bombers were in the air. The American military was 'cocked and loaded' only to be stood down with just 10 minutes to spare. The abandonment of a major operation at such a late stage was seen as emblematic of the president's deep reluctance to involve his country in another conflict in the Middle East, and what he called the region's 'forever wars'. Yet on Saturday night his reticence evaporated. He sent US stealth aircraft armed with so-called 'bunker buster' bombs to destroy Iran's nuclear weapons programme once and for all. Mr Trump declared the operation a great success, though it will be several days before it is known whether the three sites have been 'obliterated', as the president has claimed. The whole episode has been a classic Trump performance. First he issued the threat to back up Israel's assault on the Iranian nuclear weapons plants, only then appearing to retreat once more by indicating nothing would happen for a fortnight. Whether it was brought forward in order to catch the Iranian regime off guard is not clear. It is more likely that the intelligence reports of the Iranians moving their enriched uranium away from the plants expedited the mission. Dozens of lorries were seen at the Fordow site, which is buried deep in a mountain, probably removing enriched material to another location. The president may have feared that waiting another week or so risked leaving him in the same position as George W Bush, who invaded Iraq to stop Saddam Hussein's arms programme only to find the weapons of mass destruction had gone or were never present. Mr Trump was critical of that decision and his America First doctrine gave the impression he would keep the US out of any foreign conflict unless directly threatened. But he has discovered, as have past presidents all the way back to Woodrow Wilson, that things are not that simple and isolationism is very hard to sustain. As the most powerful defender of democratic values against despotisms, the US cannot, and should not, just depart the scene. The geopolitical ramifications of these strikes on Iran are profound. Mr Trump may perhaps now care to reflect on his ambivalence towards Russia's invasion of Ukraine, where similar criteria apply, of an autocracy threatening the existence of another country. Will he now be more critical of Vladimir Putin and more supportive of Nato, which is holding its annual summit in the Hague this week with an across-the-board promise to increase defence spending dramatically? If Iran has moved its enriched material, is Mr Trump prepared to order further strikes or will it be left to Israel to follow up? The president might well hope the strikes have indeed obliterated the sites and no more US help is required; but once involved in a war, it can be hard for a country to extricate itself easily from it. There is also the threat from Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz through which almost a quarter of the world's oil and gas is shipped. However, this may not be possible for Tehran, both because of the presence of a US carrier group, but also because China relies heavily on energy supplies coming through the Gulf. A blockade would be calamitous for the Chinese economy and for India's. Tehran will be keen to get both these countries into their camp in a stand-off with America. Furthermore, there is a very real risk of terrorist attacks on US assets, which include shipping and some 40,000 troops in the region. Iran will hope its proxies Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis will step up their activities against Israel, but their ability to do so has been severely degraded. It will also seek to sponsor violent action abroad. Here in the UK we have already seen how the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has targeted émigré Iranian dissidents and engaged in spying and cyber warfare. It is possible that the damage inflicted on Iran and the assassination of some key military figures will hasten the demise of the theocratic rulers and the removal of the zealots who have caused so much trouble in the region and the world for so long. Washington says it is not seeking regime change and the idea that it would be replaced by a benign, Western-style democracy of the sort never seen in Iran is fanciful. More likely is that the IRGC would take over in a military coup with unknown consequences. There are many uncertainties, but one thing is clear. Despite the calls from Sir Keir Starmer and others for 'de-escalation', the world is a safer place without a nuclear-armed Iran. As Benjamin Netanyahu put it: the most dangerous regime in the world has been denied access to the most dangerous weapons. The Israeli prime minister, who scored a diplomatic coup by convincing Mr Trump to act, believed it would usher in a period of 'peace and prosperity' for all in the region and beyond. We can but hope, but history is not a happy guide.