This is Netanyahu's Churchill moment
History may not repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now finds himself in precisely the same strategic position that Winston Churchill was in in 1940: he needs to draw a reluctant USA into a war with a mortal enemy bent on his nation's destruction.
Although some may think it dubious to draw a comparison between the controversial and embattled Israeli Prime Minister and the British statesman widely seen as the saviour of freedom and western democracy, their respective positions today and early in the second world war are practically identical.
Like Churchill back in the day, Netanyahu now needs America's power and active participation in the war to ensure that a decisive blow is turned into a final victory
As soon as he was brought to power in May 1940, Churchill was clear about his principal aim: to get the might of the neutral United States under President F.D. Roosevelt into the battle to save Britain, Europe and the world from Hitler's genocidal tyranny. Similarly, 'Bibi' Netanyahu has to bring US power to bear on the Islamic Republic of Iran to ensure Israel's survival in the face of the existential threat posed by the murderous Mullahs of Teheran.
In particular, if the danger to Israel posed by Iran's nuclear weapons programme is to be permanently removed, only the deep penetration 'bunker busting' GBU-57 bombs deployed by America's B52 stealth aircraft can reach the underground vaults where Iran's nukes are stored. So far, despite the damage inflicted on Iran's nuclear facilities by Israel's devastating raids on the Islamic Republic, these bunkers remain largely untouched and inviolate and only the US super weapons can reach them.
Like Roosevelt in 1940, President Trump is deeply reluctant to get the US involved in another conflict. Indeed, he was elected on the promise of not entering another 'forever war' in the Middle East. A war weary American public is deeply sceptical of sending more US boys into another war like the disastrous interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So far, President Trump has put his faith in negotiations with the Ayatollahs to achieve a 'deal' to halt Iran's drive to acquire nuclear weapons. Those talks were due to have resumed this weekend, but the process was rudely interrupted by Israel's attacks on Iran which Netanyahu declared was the only way that Israel's safety and security could be guaranteed.
But, as Iran's lethal retaliation raids on Israel with drones and missiles proves, Iran's military capability may have been crippled, but it retains an ability to hit back hard. Like Churchill back in the day, Netanyahu now needs America's power and active participation in the war to ensure that a decisive blow is turned into a final victory.
Eighty-five years ago, it took Japan's direct assault on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in December 1941 to finally draw America into the struggle against the Axis powers and ensure a final Allied triumph. Like Trump today, Roosevelt had been willing to supply a desperate Britain with military help – ships and weapons – but it took the surprise raid on Pearl Harbor to actually bring the US into the war.
Trump has written on his Truth Social site that, 'If we are attacked in any way, shape or form by Iran, the full strength and might of the US Armed Forces will come down on you at levels never seen before.'
If Iran carries out its threats to hit US bases in the Middle East, then and only then will Donald Trump be dragged kicking and screaming into Israel's war for sheer survival.
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The Herald Scotland
41 minutes ago
- The Herald Scotland
Are you ‘upset'? The dangers of flags in Scottish schools
Ms McDonald also said in the letter that she'd spoken to her pupils and explained the symbolism and association of flags and symbols to different groups of people, and how using the pictures was contrary to the school values of respect and kindness. 'I hope this helps everyone understand where mistakes have been made,' she said, 'and we can move on enjoying the rest of the end-of-term celebrations.' The language, the tone, the phrasing – 'inclusion', 'acceptance', 'offensive', 'upset', 'I hope this helps' – is a good example of the way some people in the public sector have learned to talk, indeed feel they must talk: plaintive, patronising, passive aggressive. I also dread to think what Ms McDonald said to the pupils when she 'explained the symbolism and association of flags'; if her letter's anything to go by, she's the last person who should be explaining it. But as I say, the headteacher has now said sorry through her council, East Renfrewshire. A council statement said she'd never meant to suggest the union flag was sectarian and 'apologised for any offence and upset that has been caused' (more upset and offence you'll notice). The council issued its statement after the local MSP, Tory Jackson Carlaw, said he was angry about the head's letter and that equating the Union flag with sectarianism was deeply offensive (I think we may need to ban the o-word). We also need to put all the apparent offence and upset in perspective. It would seem that someone saw the pictures of the event, noticed the Union flags, and contacted the school to say they were upset. The headteacher then reacted in the way she did, writing her letter, which upset other people, meaning the headteacher then had to apologise to them as well and suddenly we're in a spiral of offence and apology. The problem is that, in a hyper-sensitive culture, we assume someone being 'upset' requires some kind of reaction: a there-there, a soothing letter or placating policy announcement. Consult your granny: it does not. Read more These are the latest plans at the Glasgow School of Art. Really? No more Edinburgh Book Festival for me – where did it all go wrong? A Scottish legend says cancel culture is over. Yeah right The fact that someone was upset by the pictures of the event at Arthurlie Primary is also an indication of how flags work. Stick a flag up a pole – any flag, any pole – and you'll immediately please some people and upset others. The Union flag makes a particular type of Scottish nationalist puce with fury – God forbid any Scottish supermarket that puts it on British sausages – and increasingly the same applies to the saltire and a particular type of Unionist. The situation also got a lot worse after 2014, but we are where we are. What it means a decade on, in 2025, is that putting up a Union flag, or a saltire for that matter, in a school, or anywhere, is not a neutral act. Maybe there was a time, before the Scottish referendum, when flags went up without much comment; I also used to think, with some satisfaction, that a lot of Scots find naked patriotism and flags a wee bit embarrassing. But the referendum changed things, flags led to more flags (flagflation) and now there's anger because the flag you see isn't the 'right' one. Hence someone looking at a picture of an event at Arthurlie Primary and getting upset. There-there. The position the school takes now is that it was not their intention to imply the Union flag is sectarian but beyond that, it's unclear what their policy is. The council statement says the school should be 'focused on a diverse British society' and 'foster an ethos of respect for diverse perspectives and national identity'. So does that mean it's OK to put up Union flags to reflect one of the diverse national identities? Or does it mean it's not OK to put up Union flags because it only reflects one of the diverse national identities? They may have withdrawn the 'sectarian' accusation but where they actually stand on flags is uncertain. Jackson Carlaw (Image: PA) Perhaps if Ms McDonald had chosen her words more carefully, we wouldn't be in this position. The use of 'sectarian' was certainly ill-advised given its connection to the Troubles and traditional religious tensions which still bubble in parts of Scotland. She also failed to take into account that many Scots, including some of the parents of kids at her school, will feel positively about the Union flag and so ended up committing that most heinous of modern crimes: offending someone, while trying to avoid offending someone. She also appeared to be handing a kind of veto to people who get upset by the Union flag but get over-excited by saltires. You know the type. And why is it always me who ends up sitting next to them at parties? Anyway, expressed in a different way that didn't appear to single out the Union flag, perhaps the headteacher could have explained that there are dangers in all flags in schools. There will be some who argue that the Union flag is different and that it's the national flag of the UK and therefore represents everyone, but I'm afraid – given everything we've been through in the last ten years – that would be naïve at best or evasive at worst. Best, perhaps, for schools to just try to be neutral and, crucially, consistent: no Union flags, no saltires, no flags at all, not mine, not yours. The risk you run otherwise is that you start to introduce the kind of stuff that comes with flags. You may remember a few years ago Michael Gove suggesting 'British values' should be taught in English classrooms, no doubt draped with union flags. Some Scottish nationalists also talk about 'Scottish values' and maybe one day they'd like to teach them in schools plastered with saltires. But in this country, we're rather sceptical about all of that or used to be – it's something the Americans do, not us. And maybe that's something we should try to keep hold of. And maybe the best place to do it is in a classroom free of flags.
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
How Trump and Netanyahu could kill Khamenei
Iran's supreme leader has been moved to a highly secure location where he is under the protection of a top-secret elite unit, The Telegraph has learned. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has ruled Iran since 1989, has entrusted his survival to a previously unknown group of deeply vetted bodyguards, amid increasingly overt threats from Israel on his life, according to officials in Tehran. Believing Israeli intelligence has comprehensively penetrated the regime, the unit was kept so secret that even senior officials within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were unaware of its existence. 'He's not hiding from death, he's not in a bunker,' said one Iranian official. 'But his life is in danger, and there is a unit responsible for his protection that no one even knew existed to avoid any chance of infiltration.' Khamenei has long spoken of his impending 'martyrdom' and is believed to have expected that Israel would one day attempt to assassinate him. But the killing of at least 11 senior military officers and 14 nuclear scientists in targeted strikes since Israel launched hostilities a week ago has accentuated the risk. Following a missile strike on a hospital in Beersheba on Thursday, the Israeli government has grown more explicit in its calls for Khamenei's death. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has refused to rule out an attempt to kill him, saying it ' could bring an end to the conflict '. His defence minister, Israel Katz, went further, calling him a 'modern Hitler' who 'cannot be allowed to continue existing'. Although Donald Trump reportedly vetoed an Israeli plan to assassinate Khamenei, the US president has also adopted more threatening rhetoric in recent days, saying on Tuesday: 'We know exactly where the so-called 'supreme leader' is hiding. Mr Trump added that the US had no plans to target Khamenei, 'at least not for now', but described him as an 'easy target' should he change his mind. First job will be pinpointing Ayatollah's hideout For either Israel or the United States to undertake a mission of such magnitude, they would first have to locate Khamenei. Despite reports that regime officials were preparing to flee to Moscow, there is no evidence that Khamenei is planning to leave Iran. Few expect him to follow the example of Bashar al Assad, Syria's former leader — and a close ally — who escaped to Russia as his regime crumbled in December. 'He is in Iran and is not going anywhere,' the official said. 'He won't flee like the coward Assad. At a time of this foreign aggression, the nation's morale depends on his survival.' The 86-year-old leader has traditionally lived and worked out of the Leadership House complex in Tehran's District 11. But his recent video appearances suggest he has changed location. He now speaks against a brown curtain, sometimes adorned with a portrait of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution that toppled the Iranian monarchy in 1979. The setting differs markedly from the location of his usual briefings. Video analysis suggests these briefings were filmed at the IRGC's media operations centre in central Tehran — indicating that he could be living nearby, or possibly beneath the building itself. Given the recent spate of mysterious car bombings in Tehran and the death of so many colleagues, it is considered highly unlikely that Khamenei is travelling around the city by vehicle. Mossad's long arm Khamenei's precautions are understandable. Israeli intelligence has a long history of assassinations and kidnapping far beyond its shores, dating back to the abduction of Adolph Eichmann — a principal Nazi architect of the Holocaust — from Argentina in 1960. The principle of 'rise and kill first', is deeply ingrained in Mossad's culture. It is not merely a military doctrine, but one with roots in religious teachings found in the Jewish Talmud. Mossad, which rarely acknowledges its operations, has carried out assassinations in at least a dozen countries — including several in Europe — often with chilling ingenuity. In 1996, Yahya Ayyash, a Hamas bomb maker, was killed by an exploding mobile phone — a precursor of last year's detonating pagers and walkie-talkies that wounded thousands of Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon. In earlier decades, the agency is believed to have used letter bombs to kill German nuclear scientists in Egypt, poisoned a Palestinian militant leader's toothpaste in East Germany and attempted to assassinate another by spraying nerve agent into his ear in Jordan. Khamenei was reportedly deeply unnerved by the killing in 2020 of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the country's top nuclear scientist, with a remote-controlled killer robot. Last year's assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, showed inventiveness of a different sort. Although the full details remain unclear, it is believed that an explosive device was hidden in his flat — possibly inside a lavatory — weeks before he arrived in the country for the inauguration of Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran's president. The leaking sieve Such assassinations underscore the scale of Israeli infiltration into Iran's most secure circles. No single killing is said to have shaken Khamenei more than that of Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, who died last year when Israel dropped 'bunker-buster' bombs on his subterranean headquarters beneath a Beirut tower block. Khamenei was reportedly perturbed not just by the loss of a trusted ally and friend, but also by the suspected source of Israel's intelligence — it is believed the information in Nasrallah's whereabouts came not from within Hezbollah but from Tehran itself. Given the extreme sensitivity of such details, the leak must have come from someone with direct access to top-level information. It is little wonder, then, that Khamenei is, in the words of Yaakov Amidror, Israel's former national security advisor, 'probably one of the most cautious people in the world.' 'He understands that he must be the next target,' Gen Amidror said. 'I am sure that he is moving from one place to another, trying to find a place where he feels comfortable.' How and when to strike Israel has almost certainly spent years gathering information on Khamenei's movements, using a blend of human, operational and artificial intelligence. Mossad is likely to have attempted to embed agents within his inner circle by recruiting disillusioned officials, resentful guards, or even low-level staff with access to his quarters. Signal intelligence would also be crucial. While Khamenei himself avoids electronic devices, the same cannot be said for those around him. Intercepted phone calls, emails and encrypted traffic would all be monitored by Israeli analysts. Artificial intelligence systems would then process that data to identify probable locations and track patterns in his movements. Once confirmed, a kill operation could then take many forms: a drone strike, a street-level assassination, or an air force attack. Special forces might even be deployed by helicopter, as in the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. 'How we would do it depends on the intelligence,' said Gen Amridror. 'If he's in a bunker, you use the air force. If he's in an apartment, you use a drone. If he's in a car then you use an agent in the street.'
New Statesman
an hour ago
- New Statesman
Where have all the anti-war Democrats gone?
To bomb or not to bomb? President Trump treats waging war with the same gravity he might deploy when deciding whether to play golf. He said this week that 'I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I'm going to do'. Call it strategic ambiguity, or flagrant honesty. You get the sense that the president doesn't know himself whether he will give the order. The White House line right now is that the president will decide over the next two weeks. Cue chatter that this is a ruse to discombobulate the Iranians before an imminent American strike. Whatever he decides, Trump's attempt to save face after Netanyahu ignored his plea to leave the negotiations with Iran alone has exposed fissures between the neo-cons in his administration and the Maga isolationists. The Maga activist Laura Loomer has started a list of those who criticised the president, presumably for a future purge. What, then, are the Democrats doing to exploit this chink in the normally preternaturally cultish Maga movement which rarely turns on itself? Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, issued an milquetoast statement when Israel first struck Iran. Hakeem Jeffries, his counterpart in the House of Representatives, issued a similar statement but called for American troops not to be put 'in harm's way'. As Peter Beinart wrote in the New York Times, neither Democratic leader instructed the President that the authority to go to war resides with Congress. (Schumer later did, but took no action to that effect.) There is a tendency within the party to treat war as a non-partisan issue, as if bombing another country in the name of national security is a foregone conclusion. A rally-around-our-troops effect takes hold. This might be a missed opportunity for the Democrats to become the anti-war party, a position Trump has dominated since he won in 2016. A YouGov/Economist poll found that 60 per cent of Americans don't think Trump should get involved in the war, including over half of Republican voters, with only 16 per cent supporting action. Yet, the anti-war Democrats are confined to the party's populist left, or what you could more generously call the left who wants to be popular. Bernie Sanders has introduced a No War Against Iran bill in the Senate. Ro Khanna, the progressive Democratic representative, has emerged as the party's leading anti-war figure. Khanna opposed the Iraq war in 2003 and sees interventionism in the Middle East as yet another example – alongside globalisation and a pro-rich tax policy – of how communities in states such as Pennsylvania were shunted to the bottom of Washington's priorities. It's a message Trump has put to good use for over a decade. Democrats' pitch to voters could now include both opposition to Trump's militarism at home and abroad. Challenging Trump's potential strikes could become a chance for the Democrats to tap into that populist anger which Trump has so deftly mined for so long. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe [See also: Is Trump the last neoconservative?] Related
