All posts by jmb82BBp

Iran has no cards left to play: Trump has broken the regime

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 22 June 2025. © Richard Kemp

We should expect Iran to lash out after Trump’s bunker busters bombed its nuclear sites last night. Here in Israel, after an unusually missile-free 24 hours or so, we saw a barrage of up to 30 ballistic missiles fired at population centres.

Nothing new there: Israel has been targeted almost every night in the week since it launched its pre-emptive attack campaign and that is likely to continue until the ayatollahs decide discretion is the better part of valour or have their armoury wiped out or expended.

But now that America is fully in the game we should also expect retaliation against it and its other allies. That can come in various forms and may be immediate. Iran is known for strategic patience but at the same time might feel the need to act speedily to shore up a regime that has now been even further humiliated.

Already the Houthis, an Iranian proxy in Yemen, have cancelled their “ceasefire” with the US announced a few weeks ago. Iran also has proxies in Iraq that are heavily armed with missiles. They recently threatened to respond if the US attacked Iran.

Tehran itself, or any of these proxies, could attack energy infrastructure in Gulf states as well as US bases in the region. Iran, and the Houthis, could revert to their previous aggression against international shipping and potentially might block the Strait of Hormuz.

Hezbollah in Lebanon, once the most powerful terrorist organisation in the world, and also an Iranian proxy, was supposed to be a major player in exactly the situation Tehran faces today. But it was shattered by Israel last year and so far has not joined the fight for fear of being totally destroyed.

That may also account for an absence so far in this war of terrorist attacks beyond the region. Hezbollah has sleeper cells across Europe and in the US that were created under the direction of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to retaliate against Israel’s and America’s allies if Iran came under fire. Continue reading

After the Brize Norton attack, Britain should be placed on a war footing

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 20 June 2025. © Richard Kemp

Many were astonished recently at Russia’s inability to defend its military aircraft when Ukraine carried out drone strikes against them deep inside Russian territory. Well now the inadequacy of our own air base security has been exposed, although thankfully in a far less serious way. For now.

RAF Brize Norton was attacked not by external forces but the enemy within. This was not a protest; it was a deliberate act of sabotage against military assets used to defend our country. What is shocking is that these saboteurs were able to access a highly defended base, put two air to air refuelling tankers out of action, and leave without being detected.

That should not have happened at any time. But right now military bases should have been on a substantially heightened state of alert. Whether or not we are providing any assistance to Israel in its defensive operations against Iran, Tehran certainly believes we are. They see us as a key ally of Israel and also attribute to Britain a disproportionate level of influence over US actions.

We are therefore a high priority target for Iranian terrorism. Don’t forget only weeks ago seven Iranians were arrested here on allegations of preparing terrorist attacks and other security offences. And in 2015 our security service disrupted an Iranian-backed bomb plot on the outskirts of London. The threat from Tehran has significantly increased since the latest arrests, with Iran under attack and the ayatollahs desperate to find effective ways of hitting back at Israel and its allies.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has long positioned sleeper cells in European countries including the UK for precisely the situation they find themselves in now. This was a known specific threat back in the early 2000s, when I was working for the UK Joint Intelligence Committee. We don’t know exactly their capabilities but it would be irresponsible not to assume that terrorist attacks in Britain could be initiated from Tehran at any time.

The fact that the British Government has repeatedly refused to proscribe the IRGC as a terrorist organisation suggests a dangerous degree of complacency. That should have happened a long time ago and certainly should happen now.

Beyond the very real and immediate threat from Iran there is Russia. Putin has identified Britain as its number one enemy in Europe. We have led the way in supporting Ukraine both economically and militarily. British intelligence and surveillance have been a critical element of Kyiv’s operations against Russia. Donated British tanks and other armoured vehicles are in Ukraine now and our long range missiles have been used to attack Russian forces both inside Ukraine and on Russian sovereign territory.

Furthermore, like Iran, Putin has previously ordered terrorist strikes on UK soil, including a nerve agent attack in Salisbury in 2018. Since then suspected Russian sabotage has been suspected here and cyber attacks carried out against government and private sector targets.

Security, even of military bases, can never be 100 per cent; but this penetration of RAF Brize Norton by the Palestine Action activists, brazen enough to cross the airfield on electric scooters, shows the most serious shortcomings. What if they had been armed not with paint but explosives?

Those planes could have been destroyed, not temporarily disabled, and airmen could have been killed. What we have seen amounts to an open invitation to even more serious saboteurs and terrorists to attack.

The threat is going to get worse, not only from Iran and Russia, but also from people here who hate our country and want to cause us harm. The thousands of illegal immigrants pouring in on small boats, with no way to screen, document or control them, adds yet another dimension.

All of Britain’s military bases, as well as other critical targets, should immediately be placed on a war footing, where they should have been at least since we started supporting Ukraine and even more so since Iran came under attack.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Here in Israel, it’s very clear: Iran cannot seriously damage this nation

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 19 June 2025. © Richard Kemp

Hezbollah was the dog that didn’t bark when its Iranian masters came under attack. That’s because it had been muzzled by Israel. Over decades Tehran had built up a massive arsenal of missiles in Lebanon using its number one proxy, Hezbollah. That had a specific purpose which was to deter Jerusalem from attacking Iran, and if it did, to unleash hell across the length and breadth of Israel. But Hezbollah’s fighting capabilities were severely written down last year with huge numbers of missiles and launchers taken out by attacks from ground and air. And Mossad decapitated the terrorist organisation in a breathtaking wave of attacks against terrorist leaders with explosive-laden pagers. The IDF eliminated many others with precision air strikes, including the long-standing Secretary General, Hasan Nasrallah.

Perhaps the ayatollahs should have paid more attention to both elements of Israel’s operations against Hezbollah, because they gave a devastating foretaste of what was to come on their own territory. Now, reeling from strike after strike over the last week, its military rudderless and deprived of its primary deterrent, Tehran is having to rely exclusively on an armoury of ballistic missiles to hit back. Its fleets of drones – considered by many to be the future of warfare – have achieved nothing. Of 1,000 launched, not one impacted on Israeli territory.

I have been in various parts of Israel since the start of this war and can confirm that the most widespread effect of Iran’s missile campaign has been sleep deprivation, with most salvoes fired during the night and citizens repeatedly sent running to their bomb shelters. That is not to understate the tragic deaths of 24 Israeli civilians, the wounding of many others and destruction and damage to buildings, the most recent being a direct hit on Soroka Hospital in Beersheba. As with all Iranian missile impacts in this war which have struck civilian population centres, firing at a hospital is a war crime. Tehran claimed that it was aiming at a nearby army base but there are no military installations within 2 kilometres. With all the patients inside shelters, fortunately there were only light casualties.

That is one reason why Iran’s barrages have had only limited effect so far. Israel has engineered a highly-developed alert and shelter system, and it is estimated that, had every citizen taken cover as instructed, the death toll would have been only three. There are two other reasons for Tehran’s failed counteroffensive. First, a very sophisticated intelligence and surveillance system that has been able to provide up to half an hour’s warning of most missile launches. Second, ground, air and sea based air defences. The US Navy and Air Force have made a significant contribution, and Israel’s Arrow ballistic missile defence system has been backed up by America’s Thaad and Patriot launchers based inside Israel.

Then there has been the relentless air campaign against Iran’s weapon stocks, launchers and production facilities which has taken out an estimated 40 per cent of launchers and many missiles. Iran has only managed to fire some 400 missiles since the war began, with at least 80-90 per cent successfully intercepted. Just 23 have hit urban areas.

Tehran had by far the most powerful ballistic missile capability in the Middle East, with an arsenal of 2,000-3,000, although many of these did not have the range to reach Israel. Tehran was estimated to have the capability to produce 50 missiles per month which is not adequate to meaningfully replenish its ever-dwindling stocks. In any case, probably nothing like that number can be achieved now following Israel’s attacks on production facilities.

With their military strategy failing, the ayatollahs might decide to change tack, and start using some of their short-range missiles against energy facilities or US military targets in the Gulf. Iran also has anti-ship missiles capable of attacking maritime targets in the region. It has threatened to block the Straits of Hormuz to strangle global oil trade. Any of these moves would increase the chances of President Trump’s direct intervention in the war, something that may be imminent in any case. Khamenei, now in a desperate situation, with his most trusted military advisers all dead and the IDF rampant in his skies, seems to fear that the most. His request for a meeting in the White House has been rejected and his foreign ministry is about to meet its appeasement-seeking European counterparts to discuss nuclear disarmament.

Although that will achieve nothing, the last thing the Europeans should be doing now is to throw this tottering terrorist regime any kind of lifeline. Instead they should be joining forces with Israel, at least diplomatically, to hasten the end of Iran’s war on the West, which began at the dawn of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The best outcome is not a badly wounded Khamenei who can lick his wounds and live to fight another day, as the Europeans might like, but a more enlightened Iran under new management that does not have the arrogance to provoke a militarily stronger power and believe it can prevail.

Iran-Israel war outcome talked up by commentators that’s actually highly unlikely

Article published in The Daily Express, 18 June 2025. © Richard Kemp

There’s a surprising truth that may seem counterintuitive to those watching from the West.

We now have an argument about whether Iran is really in pursuit of a bomb, with an apparent spat between President Trump and his Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. In March, she assessed that Iran had not yet decided to build a bomb. That may have been true. But it is also irrelevant. Iran has been enriching uranium to near weapons grade for years.

The International Atomic Energy Agency a few days ago said the Islamic Republic now has enough such material to manufacture around 10 bombs, with the final stages to achieve weapons grade possible within two weeks, according to US intelligence. Iran has some missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads. We have seen their ballistic missiles penetrate Israeli air defences in the last few days. The final component is weaponisation, turning weapons grade uranium into a viable nuclear device.

The ability to identify that programme through intelligence has always been a major challenge given it can be achieved very discreetly. Recently Israel confirmed it had intelligence that Iran is now in fact making progress on weaponisation.

So with the components in place, all that would be needed is for Ali Khamanei to give the order to put them together. It would be suicidal to wait until intelligence confirmed that order had been given. And anyway there could be no certainty such a decision would be identified by intelligence.

Given the enormous stakes Israel had no other choice than to strike when it did. There are some risks you do not take. Perhaps the greatest is to allow acquisition of nuclear weapons by a fanatical religious tyranny with a track record of unrestrained violence that repeatedly declares its intention to annihilate you.

No Israelis that I have spoken to over here in the days since Israel launched its pre-emptive war doubt the need for it. Even opposition leaders, sworn political rivals of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are four-square behind his actions, unheard of in this country.

Of course all Israelis recognise the current dangers to themselves, and almost all of them have been forced to take refuge in bomb shelters several times every day since last weekend. But they do understand they would face hugely greater dangers in just sitting back and watching Iran becoming a nuclear armed state.

Another concern is escalation into a region-wide conflict. That is Continue reading

Real reason Israel had to launch pre-emptive strike against Iran

Article published in The Daily Express, 17 June 2025. © Richard Kemp

Israel and Iran are not ‘trading blows’ as some have phrased it. Israel is dealing strategic devastation on Iran, eliminating much of the terrorist regime’s military top brass and key nuclear scientists , and attacking nuclear weapons sites, air defence systems, and offensive drone and missile capabilities.

Meanwhile Iran is lashing out with drones and ballistic missiles, fired into Israel’s population centres, deliberately killing and wounding civilians in places like Tel Aviv, the most densely populated city in the country. Here, for the last two nights I have heard ballistic missiles roar overhead and seen Israel’s impressive air defences knock some of them out of the sky.

Those missiles that did get through told a terrifying story. What if just one of them had been armed with a nuclear warhead? Vast numbers would have been killed. That’s why Israel had to launch this pre-emptive assault on the Islamic Republic. Israeli intelligence and the International Atomic Energy Agency both saw that Iran was on the cusp of obtaining nuclear weapons capability.

Had they been allowed to get to that point we must assume they would use them in pursuit of their frequently declared intent of destroying Israel. That Jerusalem has nuclear weapons would not have deterred them.

The fanatical ayatollahs in Tehran wouldn’t care how many of their own people were sacrificed in pursuit of their religious duty of annihilating the Jewish state. As for the rest of the world, it should be grateful to Israel because a nuclear armed Iran would have threatened us all.

The ayatollahs have repeatedly shown their unbridled thirst for violence before, including killing British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and attempting terrorist attacks in our country.

All wars are terrible but sometimes they have to be fought to prevent an even worse evil.

Image: Mehr/Wikimedia Commons

Iran strikes back: but Israel is talking less and hitting harder

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 13 June 2025. © Richard Kemp

When I was woken up this morning at 3am by sirens that sounded across Israel I knew exactly what was happening. Now the sirens are sounding here again as Iran attempts to retaliate against Israel’s deadly, effective strikes against its nuclear weapons enterprise.

But the signs had been piling up for the last few days: International Atomic Energy Agency declaring Iran in breach of its obligations, US pulling non-essential staff out of embassies, hospitals in Israel made ready, a warning issued to Hezbollah in Lebanon against attacking; the list goes on. But the signs of the inevitable had also been there for many years before.

Iran has been a rogue state since the ayatollahs seized power in 1979. The Islamic Revolution that year was built on ‘death to Israel’ and ‘death to America’. The US was the ‘Great Satan’, Israel and Britain the ‘Little Satans’. These were not mere words. Iran was behind the suicide bombings that killed 241 US and 58 French military personnel plus six civilians in Beirut in 1983, as well as 63 deaths at the US Embassy there six months before.

Iran’s dirty work was also responsible for the killing of 85 people at a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires in 1994, as well as 29 in an attack on the Israeli embassy in the same city in 1992. Iran and its proxies killed at least 1,100 British, American and allied troops in Iraq between 2003 and 2007 as well as an unknown number of coalition troops during the Afghanistan campaign. They have targeted US bases, international shipping and oil fields in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

And they have been attacking and killing Israeli soldiers and civilians for decades. That eventually culminated in the October 7 pogrom in Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and many were taken hostage. There is much more to add to Iran’s catalogue of terror: a bomb factory in London, for instance, that was disrupted by British security services in 2015 and alleged attempted terrorist attacks in the UK leading to arrests last month. Iran has also been the major supplier of drones and missiles to Russia which have been used against civilian and military targets in Ukraine.

For decades the Tehran regime has been working to develop nuclear weapons. Although Iran sometimes paused its programme when it feared punitive action from either the US or Israel, it has refused to stop; its upward trajectory has now reached a point where the IAEA believes it now has enough highly enriched uranium to make at least ten bombs.

Iran’s ballistic missile capability has also been proceeding apace, giving it a nuclear capability to span the region, and of course there are also other more covert means of delivering nuclear weapons. Until recently the missing part of the intelligence jigsaw was weaponisation, the ability to turn fissile material into a viable bomb. Today Israeli prime minister Netanyahu revealed that Iran has indeed been working on that important final step.

With all diplomatic pathways to prevent Iran becoming a nuclear armed state closed off, Israel had no choice but to attack. The alternative would have been unthinkable: a regime that has repeatedly proven its capacity for unlimited violence acquiring nuclear weapons capability.

But Iran’s dictators are now in a desperate situation. Israel has decapitated their armed forces and destroyed significant parts of their offensive capability. The IDF will continue to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities and to degrade its capacity to strike, although we don’t yet know whether it will be completely neutralised.

If not, like Hitler in his bunker, the unhinged ayatollahs might try to lash out at oil states in the region – either with their own remaining armoury and or using what terrorist proxies remain to them. They might even attack US bases in the Middle East, which they have threatened to do, even though they know that could bring about their Armageddon.

All of that might lead to insurrection in the country. Much of the population in recent years has reached new heights of hatred for rulers that have oppressed, imprisoned, tortured, murdered and impoverished them. But it is far from clear that there is a viable opposition able to step up; one scenario is perhaps some kind of military coup.

Until then Iran and Israel will trade blows: but my money is on Israel talking less and hitting harder.

Khamenei and his Guards are militarily defeated. The rest is up to Iranians

Article published in The Daily Express, 1 June 2025. © Richard Kemp

Operation Rising Lion has inflicted on Iran the most grievous penalty possible in Middle Eastern culture: humiliation. And the ayatollahs’ attempts to restore honour have only led to even more humiliation. Their retaliation so far has been ineffectual.

Three hundred and fifty ballistic missiles each containing half a ton of high explosives as well as more than 100 drones have killed 24 Israeli civilians and damaged or destroyed a few buildings. Each of these deaths is a tragedy, but this is hardly the devastation repeatedly promised by Khamenei and his henchmen following Israel’s pre-emptive attack. The IDF has shot down around 90 per cent of missiles fired from Iran and only about 5-10 per cent have hit residential areas.

The sporadic missile attacks we have seen so far, only 30-60 in each barrage, were always far less likely to overwhelm Israeli air defences than a smaller number of mass strikes combined with drone swarms. IDF interdiction may have prevented hundreds being fired at a time, but it seems almost as if the Iranians have been trying to show strength to their own people rather than having any real hope of inflicting severe damage on Israel.

They have a dire need to show such strength because all they have shown so far is weakness. Israel has total superiority over Iranian air space. IDF planes can fly as freely over Tehran as they can over Tel Aviv. The ayatollahs have been unable to protect even the upper levels of their military command, which has been decimated almost at a stroke. This is unprecedented in the annals of warfare.

The same goes for some of the most important nuclear scientists who should have been among the most protected people in the country. Heavily guarded nuclear sites have been repeatedly struck, as has energy infrastructure. Substantial numbers of ballistic missiles and drones have been destroyed before they could be launched. Israeli special forces have been operating on the ground in Iran with impunity and the extent of intelligence penetration of the regime and its military seems breathtaking.

An evacuation order from Israel is enough to see huge numbers of Tehran’s citizens on the move. In short, the regime has lost sovereignty over its own territory. Can it survive this and the even more powerful blows that are likely to come? Israel is a long way from the culminating point of its military domination. We have already seen protesters on the streets in large numbers, chanting “death to Khamenei” and “death to the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps]”. Multiple car bombs have exploded near government buildings.

Israel denies involvement, so who is doing it? There are many underground groups representing various factions in Iran and they will certainly be emboldened by the increasingly glaring weakness of the regime. The army, not thought to be the greatest fans of Khamenei or his IRGC, perhaps might step into the breach.

Israel is not seeking to impose a new government on the people of Iran. But as a by-product of its actions in the last few days, for the first time since 1979 it is giving an opportunity to Iranians to replace the widely hated dictators with whatever leadership they themselves decide. Prime Minister Netanyahu has appealed directly to the Iranian people to unite against the regime and free themselves from oppression, a message met with widespread enthusiasm among many Iranians.

Other world leaders should also do what they can to encourage an end to the rule of the ayatollahs that have been responsible for so much bloodshed, repression and instability, rather than more empty talk about the dangers of a nuclear Iran accompanied by contradictory calls for de-escalation.

Britain is inciting violence with sanctions against Israeli ministers

Article published by Ynetnews.com, 12June 2025. © Richard Kemp

The British government has sanctioned two Israeli ministers for incitement to violence. By this despicable action against the State of Israel it is they who are inciting violence, both at home and abroad.

First, they are guilty of the most appalling double standards. The British, along with Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Norway, indict Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich but completely ignore the dictatorial Palestinian Authority’s encouragement, financing and glorification of terrorism.

Why has UK Foreign Minister David Lammy not sanctioned their ministers and officials, at the very least? What about Mahmoud Abbas, time-expired PA president and infamous Holocaust denier, who has praised Hamas’s genocidal invasion on 7th October? Instead, accusing Israel and not the PA, Lammy is de facto approving of their violent actions and encouraging them to do more. There is no other way to read it.

Lammy does concede a half-hearted condemnation of Hamas and says he wants the hostages returned. But his actions say something entirely different. With Britain and its four international accomplices ganging up on Israel, they are sabotaging a potential peace deal and hostage exchange in Gaza by giving Hamas hope at a time they sorely need it.

The fact that Hamas applauded an earlier statement from Britain, France and Canada threatening sanctions should surely have told Lammy something. Instead he demands that Israel end the conflict. What does that mean? Israel withdraws from Gaza, Hamas survives and the hostages remain captive. That is the only alternative to prosecuting the war until Hamas is destroyed or forced to give up.

The British Foreign Office cites the two ministers’ inflammatory rhetoric. That is undeniable, but how many other government ministers around the world has the UK sanctioned for such words, and you can be sure there is no shortage of targets for such ire if they wanted to find them. But unlike many of them, Israel is a democracy with a hugely powerful judicial system. It can itself deal with such allegations if they amount to a crime, without the former Mandatory power shoving its nose in where it has no business to be.

Israel has done exactly that many times before. Indeed Ben-Gvir was convicted in 2007 for incitement and support for extremist groups. In any case, should Britain really be casting the first stone? Don’t forget that until 2017 the murderous IRA terrorist leader, Martin McGuinness, was Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, part of the UK’s apparatus of government. His crimes were infinitely worse than anything Ben-Gvir and Smotrich have been accused of. And McGuinness was far from the only former terrorist to hold political office in the UK, and many are still in power.

The reality is that none of this is about Israel. It’s all about British domestic politics and a Labour Party plunging in the polls and desperate to shore up its position ahead of the next elections. Continue reading

There are no ‘journalists’ in Gaza. Just Hamas propaganda operatives

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 10 June 2025. © Richard Kemp

Britain and the world’s views of the rights and wrongs of the Gaza war are so often shaped by what the BBC reports. That’s mattered more than ever in recent weeks, amid the feverishly heated coverage of Israel’s new Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) scheme to deliver aid to the Palestinian people and bypass allegedly Hamas-controlled NGOs.

Hamas-linked sources claim Israeli soldiers have repeatedly shot and killed Palestinian civilians waiting for GHF food with their families. Stories bearing the bylines of BBC ‘journalists’ in Gaza largely tell this version of events, albeit including the denials of the IDF.

News organisations using Gazan reporters say they have no choice, given the IDF’s refusal to allow in outside journalists.

But that’s no reason not to exercise care and employ the same editorial standards as they would on any other story.

For critics of the BBC, the results have been a disaster for the Corporation and its standards.

They point to the stories that have not been told, or have been largely overlooked, by these reporters almost throughout the war: of Hamas’s tyranny over the people of Gaza, its torture and murder of opponents, and of the courageous Palestinians who defy its rule.

And why is there such scant coverage of Hamas using the civilian population as a human shield by placing tunnels under civilian buildings and military bases in hospital?

Where are the stories of Israeli hostages being moved across Gaza?

Why is there no footage of Hamas firing rockets or their gunmen on the move?

There is an obvious answer: it appears that these reporters are either pro-Hamas, or too afraid of reprisals from terrorist gunmen to tell the truth.

It is a charge that BBC Global News Director Jonathan Munro entirely rejects.

Almost spluttering in disbelief recently at the suggestion that ‘some of the people you’re using in Gaza might be under pressure, might be restricted in what Hamas allows them to see’, resulting in a ‘partial view’, he insisted: ‘There’s no restriction on what they can see, what they can show and what they can film when they’re on location.

‘There’s no suggestion at all that any of those very brave people are under any political influence.’

Munro’s denial shows an astonishing disregard for the well-documented reality of life in Gaza.

Take a recent report from the well regarded NGO the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). It tears apart the notion that press freedom exists in Gaza.

According to the CPJ, journalists there have been subject to ‘detentions, assaults, obstruction and raids’ going back to the start of Hamas rule almost twenty years ago.

While detailing numerous violent assaults on members of the press in Gaza, the analysis warns that violations by Hamas are ‘underreported’.

Some journalists who have been assaulted are believed to be too afraid to say anything at all; others have gone to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS) but say they do not want to go public for fear of retaliation.

Note that both the CPJ and PJS are the staunchest critics of Israel. There can be no doubting the credibility and accuracy of their accounts on this matter. The picture they paint is light years removed from Munro’s suggestion of unencumbered press freedom in Gaza.

Some of the journalists in Gaza used by the BBC have been exposed as having deeply hateful views of Israel and Jews, making them entirely unsuitable as journalists.

Yet there is a problem that goes far beyond any individual, if Munro and other executives cannot understand the reality of reporting from Gaza.

TV producer Leo Pearlman has proposed the solution: ‘The BBC make a huge deal of adding to every news script from Gaza by saying that Israel doesn’t allow independent access for journalists.

‘What it never says – and maybe should start doing – is that no journalist can operate freely in Gaza under Hamas control.’

Until they start doing so, Munro and his fellow BBC executives are not only deceiving audiences but also themselves.

Trump is running out of time to crush Iran’s nuclear ambitions

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 8 June 2025. © Richard Kemp

As President Trump works to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran, the Islamic Republic is feverishly building up its offensive military capabilities. The most recent International Atomic Energy Agency report says Tehran has been producing enough 60 per cent enriched uranium to make one nuclear weapon every month and now has enough material to build ten bombs.

It would take no more than two weeks to further enrich this to the 90 per cent required to achieve weapons-grade. It seems likely that the pace of enrichment has if anything increased since nuclear negotiations began.

The IAEA board is due to meet today and may vote on a noncompliance resolution against Iran. Logically, this would lead to snapback UN sanctions under the 2015 Obama nuclear deal, unless Tehran starts to comply with IAEA inspections which it has failed to do up to now. Snapback wouldn’t necessarily happen immediately and no doubt the European signatories would coordinate with the White House given Trump’s live negotiations.

The president gave the ayatollahs two months to reach a deal, threatening military action if not. That two months is up now and all proposals have apparently been rejected.

Iran’s nuclear programme threatens the world and especially the Middle East, with Sunni Arab countries viewed as sworn enemies in Tehran’s maniacal eyes. But Israel is most immediately in Khamenei’s cross-hairs with his repeated guarantees to annihilate it. It is the only country other than the US that is capable of damaging Iran’s nuclear project, but is now on the horns of a dilemma.
Israel can hardly attack while its number one ally is in negotiations on exactly this issue. And if Trump eventually agrees a deal which does not fully dismantle nuclear production facilities – which is a distinct possibility – it will be faced with a decision on whether to go ahead anyway against Trump’s likely desire.

Israel is also certain to face obstruction from European leaders who will cravenly do what they can to avoid conflict no matter the consequences. If Trump’s negotiations grind to a halt and snapback Continue reading