The battle of Harvard: When education, funding and politics collide

With the cancellation of grants to Harvard University, the revocation of visas for foreign students, and the withdrawal of research funding, the Trump administration is moving forward with its agenda to cut public spending. These measures are widely seen as an attack on the state of Massachusetts, which traditionally votes Democrat and whose economy heavily relies on research and pharmaceutical industries that have developed around the Ivy League university. Arnaud Zajtman and Frédéric Cristea report.

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France 24

3 hours ago

• France 24

NATO scrambles to overcome Spain block on summit spending deal

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Thursday threw a last-minute hand grenade into preparations for the gathering in The Hague by coming out strongly against the agreement. In a blistering letter to NATO chief Mark Rutte, Sanchez said that committing to a headline figure of five percent of GDP "would not only be unreasonable, but also counterproductive". The outburst from Madrid's centre-left leader has sparked fury from other NATO members who fear it could derail the carefully crafted compromise designed to keep Trump happy at the summit. Ambassadors held a round of negotiations at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Friday, but broke up without a deal being reached. Several diplomats said talks could drag on through the weekend in an effort to reach a breakthrough or the start of the summit on Tuesday. "There is no clarity yet," one diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing deliberations. In a bid to satisfy Trump's demand to spend five percent of GDP on defence, NATO chief Rutte has corralled allies towards a diplomatic trade-off. That would see them agree to coughing up 3.5 percent on core military needs, and 1.5 percent on a looser category of "defence-related" expenditures such as infrastructure and cybersecurity. As a string of reluctant European capitals fell into line, officials believed they were comfortably on track to reach the deal for the Hague summit. Washington's allies fear that Trump -- who has previously threatened not to protect countries he thinks don't spend enough -- could blow a hole in NATO if he doesn't get what he wants. Spain has been one of the lowest spending NATO countries on defence in relative terms. The country is only set to hit the alliance's current target of two percent this year after a 10 billion euro ($11.5 billion) injection. Sanchez is facing a difficult balancing act of aligning with NATO allies and cajoling his junior coalition partner, the far-left alliance Sumar, which is hostile to increasing military spending. © 2025 AFP

France 24

7 hours ago

• France 24

Netanyahu's other battle: swinging Trump and US behind Iran war

In his daily calls and public statements, Israel's longest-serving prime minister has mixed praise and deference for the US leader, while also arguing that the strikes on Iran benefit Americans. "Do you want these people to have nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to you?" he asked during an interview on Fox News last Sunday. "Today, it's Tel Aviv. Tomorrow, it's New York," he told ABC News a day later, arguing that Iran was working on longer-range missiles that would be able to reach US shores in the future. His media blitz came after intensive and not always harmonious exchanges between Netanyahu and Trump this year, with the Israeli leader welcomed twice to the White House since the Republican's return to power in January. The New York Times, citing unnamed US administration sources, reported Tuesday that Netanyahu had asked Trump for US-made bunker-busting bombs capable of reaching Iran's underground Iranian nuclear facilities in an April meeting -- but had been refused. Having been elected in opposition to US entanglements overseas and supposed "war-mongers" in the Democratic party, Trump was seen as reluctant to commit Washington to another unpopular war in the Middle East. Much of his right-wing Make America Great Again (MAGA) coalition is staunchly anti-interventionist, including Vice President JD Vance, his head of national intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard, and influential media figures such as Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson. But speaking Wednesday, the former tycoon stated clearly that he was considering joining the Israeli campaign directly, raising the possibility of the bunker-busting GBU-57 bombs being deployed against Iran's main underground uranium stockpile facility in Fordo. "I may do it, I may not do it," Trump told reporters at the White House when asked if he had decided on US air strikes. His final decision will come "within the next two weeks", he said Thursday. Influence Yossi Mekelberg, a Middle East expert at the London-based Chatham House think-tank, said Netanyahu had been clever in his dealings with Trump, appealing to his "vanity" with charm as well "using his weaknesses". Once he had received an "amber light" in private from the US leader to launch the attacks last Friday, "he knew Trump's personality and knew that Trump might come on board if there was a chance of claiming glory in some way or claiming some sort of credit," he told AFP. Trump has openly praised the success of the Israeli military campaign which has combined targeted assassinations of key military personnel, destruction of Iran's air defences and repeated strikes on nuclear sites. Eliot A. Cohen, a veteran former US State Department advisor and international relations expert at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, cautioned against overstating Netanyahu's personal influence, however. "I suspect this is much less about Netanyahu's influence than Trump's own view of the Iranian nuclear programme, his memory of the assassination plot against him in 2024 by Iranian agents and the success of the initial Israeli operations," he told AFP. An Iranian man has been charged in connection with an alleged plot to kill Trump before his election last November. Cohen said Netanyahu's lobbying could succeed for several reasons. "They are not asking for anything other than the bombing of Fordo," he said, referring to the deeply buried underground uranium enrichment facility. "Nobody is talking about an invasion or anything like that." "Many if not most Americans understand that a nuclear Iran is particularly dangerous, and that the regime is deeply hostile to the US," he added. Public opinion A poll by the survey group YouGov for The Economist magazine conducted last weekend found half of Americans viewed Iran as an "enemy" and another quarter said it was "unfriendly." But it found that only 16 percent of Americans "think the US military should get involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran". It found that majorities of Democrats (65 percent), independents (61 percent) and Republicans (53 percent) opposed military intervention. Speaking on his War Room podcast Wednesday, former Trump strategist Bannon seethed that Netanyahu had "lectured" America and started a war he couldn't end on his own.

France 24

9 hours ago

• France 24

The battle of Harvard: When education, funding and politics collide

With the cancellation of grants to Harvard University, the revocation of visas for foreign students, and the withdrawal of research funding, the Trump administration is moving forward with its agenda to cut public spending. These measures are widely seen as an attack on the state of Massachusetts, which traditionally votes Democrat and whose economy heavily relies on research and pharmaceutical industries that have developed around the Ivy League university. Arnaud Zajtman and Frédéric Cristea report.