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Wednesday briefing: Inside the Guardian’s investigation into Nigel Farage’s custom video clips

Good morning. How did Nigel Farage become wealthy? It is a question with many responses. But Cameo, an app that allows the public to pay celebrities, actors and sportspeople to record a custom video message, is certainly part of the answer. Got a relative’s birthday coming up? Farage will record a clip for aunt Janine wishing her well. Does your friend need a pep talk after a nasty breakup? Farage will send a short motivational speech to cheer them up. For a fee, of course – £71 at the time of writing. Alongside Jay from the Inbetweeners and a YouTuber pretending to be Jesus Christ, the Reform UK leader is a smash hit on Cameo. He has charged a total of at least £374,893 for his videos since he joined the platform five years ago, making an average of about three a day. But a new investigation by the Guardian has found that some of the recordings have a darker side, with Farage selling videos in which he endorsed a neo-Nazi event, repeated extremist slogans and supported a man convicted over his involvement in a far-right riot. For today’s First Edition, I spoke with Henry Dyer, an investigations correspondent who broke the story with Michael Goodier from the Guardian’s data team. So, make a cup of tea and read about Henry and Michael’s reporting. First, the headlines. Five big stories Iran | Britain’s national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, attended the final talks between the US and Iran and judged that the offer made by Tehran on its nuclear programme was significant enough to prevent a rush to war, the Guardian can reveal. Assisted dying | The Scottish parliament has voted against legalising assisted dying after critics and religious groups led a concerted campaign to block the measures. Health | Worried parents are contacting pharmacies in an “increasingly desperate” effort to get their children vaccinated against meningitis after an outbreak in Kent killed two young people and left 13 seriously ill. Politics | Angela Rayner has said the very survival of the Labour party is at stake and warned Keir Starmer that he “cannot go through the motions” in the face of declining support. Afghanistan | Witnesses and survivors have described the horrific scenes of a Pakistani air raid that hit a drug rehabilitation centre in Kabul, killing more than 400 people, who were burned in their beds or crushed by the collapsing building. In depth: ‘Most politicians have to pay to get their message out there’ “Most politicians have to pay to get their message and persona out there. On Cameo, Farage gets paid to produced messages that are designed to be propagated. It is flipping political messaging on its head,” Henry Dyer tells me as we sit at his desk in the Guardian newsroom. “It is a sizeable chunk of income.” Henry clicks on to Cameo to show me how it works. Farage’s profile is classified as a “fan favourite”, with a 4.96 out of 5 average rating. There is a stream of sample clips to flick through: a short intro video and a string of sample birthday wishes. “They call me Mr Brexit … some people say I am controversial, and I couldn’t care less,” his bio reads. *** ‘These are phrases used by the far right’ Earlier this year, a Guardian reader contacted Henry to highlight a trend in Farage’s Cameo videos, which he thought he should investigate further. Along with Michael Goodier, they were able to analyse 4,366 clips that Farage had uploaded since he joined the platform in 2021. By looking at the publicly available source code in each video, they realised that they could also see the requests – or prompts – to which the former Ukip leader was responding while making the recordings. Henry shows a video to give me an example. “It’s my Christmas present for my grandad, he’s a big believer in you, Reform UK, he even flies English flag in his garden,” a video prompt for Farage reads. As Henry and Michael went through the videos, they started to notice trends. The first was the use of the phrase “If it doubt, keep them out” or “kick them out”. Together, they found 26 occasions where the Reform leader is asked to use these phrases, with him using it or alluding to it on about 20 of them. One of the videos that really stood out related to the Road Rage Terror Tour, a show organised by the leaders of a Canadian neo-Nazi group. Farage was paid £141 to record an address to the mayor of the city where the event was being held, encouraging her to attend. Within hours of uploading the video, the group had incorporated the clip into promotional videos for the event alongside white nationalist and antisemitic messaging, including slides depicting Jewish men as drug dealers “stealing our birthright”, and south Asian people as “strangers at our doors, taking what’s ours”. “Maybe he did not do research into the group. But he could have done very easily,” says Henry. *** ‘The occasional mistake can occur’ When contacted by the Guardian, a spokesperson for the Reform UK leader said: “Mr Farage has recorded many thousands of videos for genuine supporters to celebrate weddings, congratulate friends or send novelty messages. At that scale, the occasional mistake can occur.” They said that Farage’s Cameo videos “should not be treated as political statements or campaign activity” and added: “He has long been clear in his opposition to extremism and political violence.” They also said that it was out of Farage’s control if others “misuse or repurpose” a Cameo recording. For the full report, you can read Henry and Michael’s story here, which includes the original clips. Just before we sign off, Henry pointed out that there is little evidence that the Reform UK leader is likely to stop. “Farage was making Cameo videos on the morning our story was published. He last completed a video just before 9am. So, you know, he’s very active,” says Henry. “Farage’s use of social media is deliberate and thoughtful. And I think that is one of the lenses through which to look at this is: ‘what can you get Farage to say for money?’ And, if he’ll say this for money, what would he say for power?” What else we’ve been reading I’ve mentioned before that suddenly becoming interested in birds and bird-watching appears to be a universal manifestation of middle age, but Claire Rosen’s portraits against incredible wallpaper backgrounds are sensational. Martin Human rights lawyer Michael Mansfield writes powerfully in this column on Labour’s plans to cut jury trials for many minor crimes. “A sacred principle is being sacrificed and scapegoated to falsely explain systemic failure,” he writes. Charlie Lindlar, newsletters team This Donald McRae interview with Tony Powell, a secretly gay professional footballer in England in the 1970s, is incredibly moving, and touches on the tragic story of Justin Fashanu. Martin I have read few more urgent, nor more necessary, essays than this from Ralph Jones on why we must end the comedian travel show. Charlie Nat Guest writes eloquently in this post detailing the constant immense sensory overload she feels, and how it can make everyday interactions absolutely unbearable. Martin Sport Football | Manchester City were eliminated from the Champions League, losing 2-1 at home to Real Madrid. PSG appeared to be coming back to the form which saw them win the competition last season, as the French club crushed Chelsea 3-0 in London. Arsenal’s dream of a quadruple remains alive after they beat Bayer Leverkusen 2-0 at the Emirates Stadium. Football | Morocco have been awarded a 3-0 win in January’s Africa Cup of Nations final after Senegal were sensationally stripped of the title in an unprecedented ruling. An appeals board said Senegal “forfeited the title” after their head coach and several players left the pitch for 15 minutes in protest at Morocco being awarded a penalty. Tennis | Aryna Sabalenka says she may never return to compete at the Dubai Tennis Championships after she and Iga Świątek were harshly criticised by the tournament director for their withdrawals from the tournament last month. The front pages The Guardian leads with “Iran nuclear deal ‘had been within reach’ before conflict”. The i has “Your war on Iran is based on a lie, says Trump’s security chief – in open letter to America”. The Financial Times follows the same story with “Trump camp shows first cracks over Iran war as counterterror chief quits”. The Telegraph says “Trump: BBC is against me winning Iran war”. The Mirror goes with “Britain hit by … Trumpflation” The Times leads with “Fatal meningitis outbreak declared national incident”. The Mail reports “Meningitis outbreak worst we’ve ever seen, say experts”. Finally the Sun follows the same story with “I was blinded by the killer bug”. Today in Focus What Nigel Farage will say for money The Reform UK leader has a lucrative extra gig sending paid-for Cameo messages. But an analysis of more than 4,000 show they include videos for a neo-Nazi group and a rioter. Henry Dyer reports. Cartoon of the day | Ella Baron The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad Yesterday, the Eden Project turned 25. The brainchild of Tim Smit, a Dutch entrepreneur who wanted to reconnect people with nature, the Cornish site has since welcomed more than 25 million visitors and, according to its latest impact report, generated £6.8bn in total economic impact for the south-west of England. It has also been a vital home to thousands of varieties of plants, from 1,500-year-old olive trees and endangered jade vines to a coco de mer plant whose huge double-lobed seeds are aptly named “bum nuts” – a favourite with the non-profit charity’s younger visitors. “Eden inspires people and reminds them that we’re custodians of the planet,” says Catherine Cutler, the head of horticulture, who has worked at Eden since day one. “I hope the impact is far-reaching and far greater than we’ll ever know.” Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply

A wealth tax for schools: Frederiksen’s shift left stirs debate before Denmark’s early election

Only four months ago, Copenhagen student Sven Li’s view of the prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, was, like many Danish voters, less than favourable. The 21-year-old, who was about to host an election event for Green Left (Socialistisk Folkeparti, known as SF) in his cramped but cosy halls-of-residence kitchen, said the woman who had led Denmark’s centrist coalition government for the past three and a half years had shown herself to be a “very cold, calculating figure”. Her Social Democrats were suffering too, going down to sweeping defeats in municipal elections in November and losing control of Copenhagen for the first time in more than a century. But since then, and as Denmark prepares for an early general election on 24 March, Li’s view of the prime minister has transformed, first as a result of her handling of the geopolitical crisis with Donald Trump over Greenland, and second because of her recent shift to the left in some areas – including a 0.5% wealth tax to fund smaller class sizes in schools. “I am very proud that Mette Frederiksen and [current coalition partner] Lars Løkke Rasmussen, as much as I think that they have undercut general welfare in Denmark, are very competent statesmen and are solid leaders in a time of crisis,” said Li, who had the words “socialist activist feminist” written across the back of his red hoodie. According to the polls, which show Frederiksen to have benefited from a “Greenland bounce”, this sentiment could be widely shared. Like many on the left, Li is hoping for a “red” government formed of the Social Democrats, the Danish Social Liberal party (Radikale Venstre), the SF, the Red-Green Alliance (Enhedslisten) and the Alternative (Alternativet). “I want to see something that would account for the fact that inflation and rising housing prices, especially in Copenhagen, have eroded people’s quality of living,” he says. “And I want to see a direct effort to combat child poverty, which we are seeing rise across Denmark.” The wealth tax, which Frederiksen announced in the Danish parliament, the Folketinget, as she called the election, is a 0.5% tax on assets held by an individual worth more than 25m kroner (about £2m) that will, among other things, lower class sizes for six- to nine-year-olds from about 26 to 14. According to the Danish Union of Teachers, such a tax would address “serious challenges” facing schools, including a teacher shortage and a failure to include children with special needs. “It’s a very classic Danish welfare approach,” said Niels Jørgen Jensen, the union’s vice-chair. But the proposal has outraged Denmark’s super-rich. Henrik Andersen, the chief executive of wind turbine giant Vestas, declared “enough is enough” and suggested he may leave the country if it was introduced. Meanwhile, the shipping magnate Robert Mærsk Uggla, who is the chair of the board of directors of Maersk and the chief executive of AP Møller Holding, said it would be “harmful to Denmark”. The chief executive of Lego, the Danish company that is the world’s biggest toymaker, also told the Financial Times he believed it would “impact society pretty hard in the long run – less job creation, less tax generated from companies, less competitiveness for a broad range of Danish companies”. On Sunday, the Danish confederation of business joined the criticism, branding the policy “effectively a tax on companies”. Frederiksen’s shift left does not, however, include immigration. On top of Denmark’s already restrictive asylum laws, Frederiksen has proposed deporting foreign nationals sentenced to a year or more in jail for criminal offences and taking action to prevent future asylum seekers, including those from Iran. “We must avoid at all costs a repeat of the situation in 2015, when more than a million refugees and migrants, especially from Syria, came to Europe,” Frederiksen said last week. Arriving at Li’s kitchen loaded with food shopping, Sadek Al-Amood, 26, a Copenhagen parliamentary candidate for SF, has held about a dozen similar “dürüm and debate” events, where voters are invited to come for free food and a chat about politics. The key issues among students, he said, before dozens piled in for the event, are affordability and climate justice. The current government – a coalition between the Social Democrats, the centre-right Venstre and Rasmussen’s centrist Moderates – had, he said “shown itself to be incapable of answering some of the biggest issues there are in society” but he said he had hope for a future coalition. “Even though she doesn’t say it outright, it seems like Mette Frederiksen wants to do at least more left-leaning policies,” he said. “It feels like the pieces of the puzzle are there to get a really progressive government the next time around after the lacklustre centre government we’ve had.” The justice minister, Peter Hummelgaard, widely seen in the Social Democrats as Frederiksen’s heir, told the Guardian after a campaign event in the Copenhagen suburb of Kastrup for workers at the city’s airport that the party was focused on inequality, which he said “creates the kind of gaps that those who want to divide, those who want to sow insecurity in society” can feed off. “During the past three and a half years in a centrist government, we have actually made very large tax reductions on especially working incomes,” he said. “So there is also thinking that, while we lower the taxes on working income, we would like to balance it out with a little bit higher tax on wealth.” Geopolitical turmoil was, however, a “constant backtune on everything”, Hummelgaard said, and he added the Greenland crisis is not over for Denmark. “We do not perceive that this dispute or crisis has been resolved,” he said. “Now it’s a working group format with the US, but we haven’t concluded that the desire for the American president to take control of either whole or parts of Greenland has gone away.” His government’s handling of Greenland is only one element of why his party is seeing an increase in support, Hummelgaard said. But many voters say it is a key factor. Christian Kaaber, 65, a deputy manager of an antique book store in central Copenhagen, said he leans conservative but that the blue opposition bloc is too “immature”. He is hoping for another centrist government, but fears the outcome will be more left-leaning. “Personally I dislike Mette Frederiksen, but she is the most competent leader we have had for decades so I think I’ll just close my eyes and put my cross,” he said leaning on a bookshelf outside the shop. “The outside world is more important than ever and I hope as many as possible will have that view – that we need competent people at the stern in this situation.”

Lords urged to ensure women criminalised for abortion are ‘not left behind’

Women who have been arrested, investigated and convicted under abortion legislation in England and Wales “must not be left behind” if the law is changed to prevent women being criminalised in future, campaigners have said. Last summer, the House of Commons voted to end the criminalisation of women who terminate their pregnancies outside the legal framework, through a new clause in the crime and policing bill. The House of Lords will consider its own series of amendments to the legislation on Wednesday, including two that would end active police investigations into suspected illegal abortions and pardon women who have already been criminalised. “When I heard how the system has treated these women and girls when they are at their most vulnerable, and how they may have to explain this every time their [disclosure and barring service] check gets renewed, it was clear this cruelty had to be stopped,” said the Lib Dem peer Elizabeth Barker, who has put forward one of the amendments. “Although there are far fewer who have been convicted, that conviction is a life sentence – it prevents them getting jobs, and even when renewing their car insurance every year they’ll have to explain they have a lifelong criminal record.” Becca was 19 and working as a healthcare assistant in a hospital in the north of England when she realised she was pregnant. She had had no signs of pregnancy over the prior months. She was still wearing her normal dress size and had even been at the seaside in a cropped top the weekend before. As such, Becca assumed she had only just conceived. Deciding she wanted a termination, she went to a clinic and saw a doctor who gave her abortion pills. But when she did not experience the bleeding she had been warned to expect, she called NHS 111, who advised her to go to A&E. “I told them 100% the truth of what was going on, and what I had done, and how long I thought I was,” she said. Eventually, Becca was taken for a scan. “And I remember just seeing my partner’s face drop and all the nurses around me’s faces drop,” she said. “I was like ‘Oh my God, what’s happened?’ and the sonographer said: ‘I’m really sorry you’re six months pregnant.’ “It was just such a humongous, big, big shock,” she said. Within an hour she had given birth to her son Harry. Becca’s mother, Anne, said: “She was still living at home and there was honestly no way you could tell [she was pregnant]. She looked absolutely normal. So there was no indication at all that she was further along than she thought she was.” Because Harry had been born at 28 weeks, he was moved to a hospital that was better equipped to deal with premature babies, and then, as he got stronger, he was moved to a third hospital. “And that is the hospital that ended up calling the police on us,” Becca said. A few weeks after Harry was born, Becca was at home. As her pregnancy had come as such a surprise, she had never had a baby shower or a gender reveal, so her mother and aunt had been out to buy decorations to put up. A day later, the police knocked at her door. “We sat down and that was when they told me I was under arrest for attempted child destruction. I didn’t even know what that meant,” she said. “They were telling me that they would do me a favour by not coming in a marked police car and not putting me in handcuffs and not wearing uniform. And I just remember thinking: ‘I don’t care what you’re doing, you’re arresting me, I don’t care how nice you’re being about it.’” During questioning, police asked Becca whether she might have stolen the drugs from her workplace or whether her boyfriend had forced her to take them. “And it was just like: ‘What are you talking about? I’ve told the truth from the moment I called 111 and asked for help,’” she said. While Becca was arrested at home, her partner was arrested several miles away, at the hospital where he had been visiting their son. Their electronic devices were confiscated by the police. They were later told by social services they were not allowed any unsupervised contact with their son. This went on for several months, and it was not until 15 months later that the police investigation was dropped. However, the arrest still has implications for Becca, now 21, that will last for decades to come. Abortion offences are classed as violent crimes, so even without a conviction, the fact of an arrest can still be disclosed on a disclosure and barring service check. If Becca were to look for a new job, she said: “You don’t want to have to tell such a traumatic event to a random stranger who’s going to be your boss.” If the law was changed so that her arrest records could be erased, “I think it would just be almost like a release from it. We could just be able to live a normal life, because it’s having an impact on job applications and plans for the future.” Anne said: “She’s thinking of training to be a nurse or a midwife, and all of that, I mean it’s possible now, but it’s going to be awkward because she’s going to have to declare it. If that’s gone, she can just carry on just like any 21-year-old making plans.” “It would just be such a relief for everyone,” Becca said, “such a weight off everyone’s shoulders and maybe the last step in it being behind us.” Nikki Packer, who was last year cleared of carrying out an illegal abortion, said she thought about her experience often, “and the police investigation and the trial were by far the worst part. The time women are spending under investigation is ruining lives. “This is why the decrim vote in the Lords must pass on 18 March, and the police must step back and show some accountability.” “The lasting effects on myself and other women placed under investigation aren’t something I can simply ‘get over’,” Packer added. “The current law is ancient, it’s time it reflects modern society.” Dr Alison Wright, the president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said the college was calling on peers to follow the House of Commons and support clause 208, “ensuring that women are no longer at risk of investigation or prosecution for decisions about their own healthcare”. “It is also vital that the harm already caused is addressed. That is why we are also urging peers to support amendment 426B, which would pardon women previously prosecuted under outdated and unjust abortion laws. Women who have faced investigation or conviction should not have to continue living with the consequences of this archaic legislation.” Heidi Stewart, the chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, said: “Pardoning these women and expunging the records of investigations would recognise the profound injustice of criminalising abortion in the first place. If the law is to be finally brought into line with modern values, the women who have been harmed by this legislation must not be left behind.”

‘Old masters too’: Ghent exhibition celebrates female artists of the baroque

Judith Leyster, an artist of the Dutch golden age, was thought to be about 21 when she painted her self-portrait in 1630. In the picture she presented to the world, Leyster exudes cheerful confidence. Clad in shimmering silks and a stiffly starched lace collar, she leans back in her chair, palette and brushes in hand, a painting by her side. This work, completed in the year she was admitted to a painters’ guild in Haarlem, proclaimed her arrival as an established artist. It was one of the first self-portraits by an artist in the Dutch republic, a device most male painters did not adopt until years later. While celebrated in her lifetime, Leyster was quickly forgotten after her death. A posthumous inventory attributed some of her paintings to “the wife of the deceased”, referring to her artist husband, Jan Miense Molenaer. Then she disappeared. Her works were attributed to Frans Hals, other male contemporaries, or, simply, “unknown master”. Those paintings under her name were little esteemed. In the 1970s a major US museum sold one; other institutions left her work unseen in their vaults. Now the painter, who has been enjoying a revival for some time, is back in the spotlight, one of more than 40 female artists who worked in the Low Countries during the baroque period to be featured in a new exhibition. Unforgettable: Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600-1750 opened this month at the the Ghent Museum of Fine Arts (MSK), after an earlier run in Washington DC. The exhibition seeks to restore women to one of the most feted periods of art history, best known for works by Rembrandt van Rijn, Johannes Vermeer and Anthony van Dyck. As MSK puts it in its slogan: “Old masters were women too.” Co-curator Frederica Van Dam said the exhibition asked visitors to reflect on “why haven’t we seen artworks by women before? Why has no one ever questioned this”? The catalogue mentions 179 women who were active in the art economy of the Low Countries, which corresponds to the modern-day Netherlands and Flanders, in northern Belgium. Many of them were admired in their lifetimes. Still-life paintings by Maria van Oosterwijck adorned palace walls throughout Europe. In 1697, the Russian tsar, Peter I visited the Amsterdam home of Johanna Koerten, who specialised in paper-cutting – using scored lines to make art on paper, a craft at the intersection of drawing, calligraphy and sculpture. Koerten was paid handsomely for her talents: a work of “woven silk in a rustic manner” made for the holy Roman empress is estimated to have earned her more than twice what Rembrandt made for The Night Watch. The exhibition is part of growing rediscovery of women who were long absent from the tomes of art history, from Italian baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi and her near contemporary of the southern Netherlands, Michaelina Wautier, to the Belgian modernist Marthe Donas and American impressionist Mary Cassatt. Women were written out of the story in the 19th century, when art history became a discipline. Art historians, mainly men, “decided what was good art, what was worth writing about,” Van Dam said. When women had a walk-on role, they were deemed imitators. That fate befell Rachel Ruysch. Although collectors had long sought her floral still lifes – admired for their astonishing attention to detail and refined brushstrokes – scholars dismissed her work as derivative. The 19th century was also when painting became the apex of the art museum, overshadowing the applied arts that women excelled at, such as paper-cutting, calligraphy and lace-making. In the early modern era, lace commanded fabulous prices, although the poorer women, nuns and orphaned girls who usually made the exquisite fans, veils, aprons and tableware earned a pittance. These artists remained anonymous in their lifetimes, signing their name with an “X”, in contemporary records. While many female artists will remain lost to history, some are being rediscovered. The painter Catrina Tieling had been almost entirely forgotten until 2025, when a Dutch art historian re-examined works long attributed to her brother, Lodewijk, and concluded they were in fact signed “CT”. The exhibition includes Catrina Tieling’s rustic scene of two shepherdesses resting beside a herd of cows, a rare example of an Italianate landscape by a woman. It also charts some women’s life-changing and unconventional decisions. Louise Hollandine converted to Catholicism and entered a convent to maintain her artistic freedom. The daughter of exiled royalty, Hollandine had a gilded childhood in The Hague, becoming a talented portrait painter of friends and family. But she fled her comfortable princess life in 1657 to become a French Benedictine nun, rather than marry her nephew, as sought by her family. At the convent, she switched to religious genre scenes, although many did not survive the French Revolution. The exhibition shows self-portraits of Hollandine in both lives. In the first, she is cool and poised, resplendent in rich silks and a big beribboned hat; in a later work, she makes an austere impression, wearing a cross and dressed in a black and white – but still lustrous – nun’s habit. Van Dam hopes to see more research into female artists and efforts to make their work accessible. Through this exhibition, she said, “you get an impression of how valuable they were for the economic and artistic blossoming at the time”.

How ignorance, misunderstanding and obfuscation ended Iran nuclear talks

In the many bizarre exchanges that occurred in the run-up to the US-Israeli attack on Iran, perhaps the most unexpected was an invitation by Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff for the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, to join him and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, for a visit to the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group. The idea that Araghchi would leave talks in Oman about the future of Iran’s nuclear programme to tour a ship sent to the Gulf in an effort to dislodge his government seemed idiosyncratic at best. But it was symptomatic of the unorthodox way in which Kushner and Witkoff approached the nuclear talks that stretched through last year and this, and have twice been halted by Israeli and US airstrikes. One Gulf diplomat, who has direct knowledge of the talks and is furious with Witkoff and Kushner’s behaviour, described the pair as “Israeli assets that had conspired to force the US president into entering a war from which he is now desperate to get himself out of”. Witkoff does not pretend to regional expertise – in one of his recent interviews he referred to the strait of Hormuz as the “Gulf of Hormuz”. Similarly, he admitted in an interview that his knowledge of Iran’s nuclear programme was sketchy, but insisted he “was competent to discuss it since he had studied it”. Yet, in the five sessions of the first round of talks last year – held before the 12-day June war – Witkoff rarely took notes and brought with him only Michael Anton, a hawkish essayist and political philosopher with no specialism in the Iran nuclear file. Anton was supposed to have an unnamed technical team back in Washington, and at times, as in May 2025, they could produce hard-core technical demands, but this level of expertise was never in the talks. When talks resumed in Oman on 6 February, Witkoff, in a breach of protocol and to the surprise of Oman’s foreign minister, Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, arrived in Muscat with Adm Brad Cooper, the commander of US forces in the Middle East, in full naval uniform. Witkoff’s explanation was that “he just happened to be in the neighbourhood”. Cooper was politely asked to leave the talks by his Omani hosts. In contrast, the Obama administration sent 10 senior officials from four different departments to talks with Iran in Vienna in 2009. The talks stretched over, in effect, three 24-hour days, and the negotiators were in constant touch with Washington to check details of the proposed deal. Quite why these indirect talks failed is not just a matter of historical curiosity, or a retrospective exercise in allocating blame for the start of such a disastrous war; it is relevant to whether a nuclear deal only is feasible or whether a broader agreement will be necessary now. This matters because after the war, if Iran’s government survives, calls inside inside the country to obtain a nuclear weapon will inevitably grow. Last week’s purported statement from the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, made no reference to whether the fatwa banning the use of nuclear weapons set out by his late father remained in place. Protesters outside the foreign ministry in Tehran have demanded no return to talks with America. Those involved in the negotiations say misunderstandings about how Iran’s complex nuclear programme worked – including, for instance, the purpose and uranium needs of the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR), the scope of Iran’s planned future nuclear programme, and the offer for US firms to be involved in Iran’s economy – all contributed to the march to war. Witkoff also compressed the time available so that on 17 February he also held talks with Ukraine, allowing just three-and-a-half hours for the Iranians. Since, at the Iranians’ behest, these talks were being conducted indirectly, the exchanges were frustratingly short. The Iranians now say they believe the talks were always a subterfuge, designed to create space for the US to assemble its military armada. Witkoff, for his part, said the Iranians were being “deceptive”, “full of subterfuge” and “smelled fishy”. One Gulf diplomat said: “Greater time and expertise would not have guaranteed an agreement, but it would have helped. What I will say is that in all the explanations of what went on, it is the Iranians that have normally been telling the truth.” The Geneva offer Iran has to take some responsibility. It has never published its seven-page written offer for a new deal, including the annexe, which was shown to Witkoff during the final round of talks in Geneva, despite calls from inside Iran to do so. Araghchi has said he hoped the truth of what happened on the final day of talks, 26 February, would soon become known. He could do this himself by publishing Iran’s offer – one that Jonathan Powell, the UK national security adviser who was present at the talks, thought worth pursuing. Kushner admitted a deal could have been presented that was better than the Obama nuclear deal secured in 2015. It may also have been a mistake not to allow Witkoff to keep a copy of the offer, since he could at least have shown it to technically more competent officials in Washington. Witkoff would later describe their reticence to hand over the document as a “tell” that they were not interested in a deal, and were just playing for time. However, Kelsey Davenport, the director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association (ACA), said it was understandable the Iranians did not want to hand over their negotiating position given Trump’s record of publishing confidential material on his Truth Social web platform. “If I were Iran, I’d assume that Trump would share details of the negotiations on Truth Social and with [Benjamin] Netanyahu and there would be even more concerted pressure from the Israelis to undermine the diplomatic process,” Davenport said. “So I’m not surprised that Iran didn’t want to share.” But the kernel of what was proposed in Geneva is slowly emerging. British officials briefed on its contents thought it was a good deal, and something to be built on, partly because, unlike the 2015 nuclear deal, there were no sunset clauses. A plan for a US-led regional enrichment consortium, which had been central to the previous round of talks, had gone. A broad agreement was made for the return of full International Atomic Energy Agency oversight. Under IAEA monitoring and verification, Iran would get rid of its stockpile of 440kg of uranium already enriched to 60%. The stockpile, now thought to be under the rubble of the Fordow plant, would not be exported abroad, as had been proposed in the past, but down-blended, a process recognised as largely irreversible.. The biggest roadblock was that Iran refused to abandon its insistence on the right to enrich uranium for its future nuclear programme, and this would require eventually being allowed to run 30 centrifuges, far fewer than at present. The threat they posed depended on the quality of the inspection regime. Iran accepted that due to the destruction of their Fordow and Natanz enrichment plants there would be a multiyear pause in enrichment. On the final day of talks in Geneva, Iran offered a three-to-five-year moratorium, taking the pause past the end of the Trump presidency, but after a phone consultation with Trump during a lunchtime break, Witkoff came back insisting on 10 years. The US said it would pay for nuclear fuel to be imported over that decade. By that final day – two days before the US and Israel launched their attack – the two negotiating teams had also reached agreement on the lifting of 80% of the sanctions imposed on Iran, a source involved in the talks said. Oman said at least three more months were needed to work on the details. It was certainly closer than the maximalist US demands on 29 May last year, a fortnight before Israel launched the 12-day war on Iran on 13 June. Before the final talks, Iran again allowed it to be known that the US would face a “commercial bonanza” if it signed up to the deal. Hamid Ghanbari, a deputy foreign minister, told Iranian businesspeople this month that “common interests in the fields of oil and gas, including joint fields [with neighbouring countries], as well as investments in mining and even the purchase of civilian aircraft, have been included in the talks with the US”. Once the Geneva talks ended, with both sides only signing up to a statement about progress made, it was obvious to the Omani foreign minister that war was imminent, and he dashed to Washington to explain how close he felt the the two sides were to a breakthrough. But his proposal of zero stockpiling did not have the same force as zero enrichment. The dash across the Atlantic reflected Oman’s belief that Witkoff and Kushner, either knowingly or through ignorance, were not feeding Trump the truth about the progress in the talks. There was also doubt about Trump’s focus. One previous attempt to engage Trump on the status of the talks deteriorated when the president switched the conversation to one of his favourite topics: shoes. In retrospect it might have been better to send a more senior emissary to try to hold Trump’s attention. A day later the war started. ‘So many issues could have been resolved’ Since the war started, Witkoff has claimed Iran suffered a “Perry Mason moment” in the talks when it was revealed to have been caught secretly stockpiling highly enriched uranium at its research reactor. This evidence, however, has long been in the public domain. US briefings since the outbreak of hostilities have also revealed inconsistencies in whether the Iranian ballistic missile programme was a red line that had to be included in the talks. Katariina Simonen, adjunct professor at the Finnish national defence university, said: “The Trump administration is very impenetrable. It is a closed circle. The US arms control community has been at pains to offer real expert advice on nuclear physics, but the Trump team does not seem interested. Probably the biggest frustration is that this deal would have allowed the IAEA back into Iran, and so many issues could then have been resolved.”

Iran says it will retaliate after key figure killed – as it happened

Hello and thank you for tuning into our live coverage of events in the Middle East. We are closing this blog, but you can continue to follow our coverage in our new blog. For now, here is a quick recap of the latest developments: The Iranian army has vowed revenge for the killing of security chief Ali Larijani in an Israeli airstrike, with Iran’s army chief threatening to launch a “decisive and regrettable” retaliation. Iran also confirmed the death of the Basij militia commander Gholamreza Soleimani, after Israel earlier claimed its military assassinated him. It marks the highest level assassination in the war since joint US-Israeli strikes killed the former supreme leader Ali Khamenei on 28 February. The Israeli military called on residents of a central Beirut neighbourhood to evacuate early Wednesday, warning of an imminent attack on the Lebanese capital targeting Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah. In a statement on social media, the military’s Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee issued “an urgent warning to residents of... Bashoura neighbourhood”, saying Israeli forces would operate against a Hezbollah facility there. Donald Trump continued to lash out at Nato allies, claiming “we don’t need” their help in the Iran war after pressuring them to help the US secure the strait of Hormuz, but added that “they should’ve been there”. Trump said Nato was making a “foolish mistake” and once again framed the issue as a loyalty test for the alliance. The US military said it targeted sites along Iran’s coastline near the strait of Hormuz because Iranian anti-ship missiles posed a risk to international shipping there. US Central Command said US forces successfully employed “multiple 5,000-pound deep penetrator munitions” in the strikes. Trump’s former director of the national counterterrorism center Joe Kent quit, saying he “cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran”. In his resignation letter, Kent accused “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media” of deploying “a misinformation campaign” that ultimately “sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran”. Israel’s assault on Lebanon has killed at least 912 people, including 111 children, and wounded 2,221 others, per the Lebanese health ministry, with over a million people displaced. Israeli attacks on residential buildings and civilian infrastructure in Lebanon may amount to war crimes, the United Nations human rights office said. The Israeli military earlier issued a fresh evacuation order for the coastal Lebanese city of Tyre and its surrounding villages and Palestinian refugee camps, sparking an exodus of residents from Lebanon’s fourth largest city. A projectile hit the premises of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant on Tuesday night. But no damage to the plant or injuries to staff were reported, Iran told the UN nuclear watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Ukraine war briefing: Kyiv deploys 200 anti-drone experts to Middle East

Volodymyr Zelenskyy said 201 Ukrainian anti-drone military experts are now in the Middle East to help defend the region against Iranian-designed Shahed drones, and another 34 were “ready to deploy”. “These are military experts, experts who know how to help, how to defend against Shahed drones. Our teams are already in the Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and on the way to Kuwait,” the Ukrainian president told British MPs on Tuesday during an address to the UK parliament. European nations should prepare for attacks by criminal networks, terror groups and lone attackers as drone technology advances, Zelenskyy warned British MPs. Zelenskyy, in London to meet UK prime minister Keir Starmer, said it was no longer just “a wealthy madman like Putin” who could afford mass attacks, Pippa Crerar reports. The EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, warned Russia stands to gain from higher energy prices and the rerouting of advanced air defence systems from Ukraine to the Middle East. But, she said, Ukraine “remains Europe’s top security priority and attention for Ukraine will not be allowed to fizzle out”. Kallas also pushed back against a call by the Belgian prime minister, Bart De Wever, to normalise relations with Moscow and regain access to cheap Russian energy. “If we just go back to business as usual, we will have more of this – more wars,” Kallas said. “We have seen this before, so we have to be very vigilant and not to actually give Russia what they want because their appetite will only grow.” Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb, agreed with Kallas, saying the Iran war was bad for Ukraine, “mainly because of the oil price which feeds the Russian war machinery. The Russian economy was actually doing extremely badly a couple of weeks back. Now it’s bouncing back.” The US has temporarily waived some Russian oil sanctions in a bid to ease pressure on global supplies triggered by war in the Middle East – a move criticised by some European leaders. Ukraine has accepted the EU’s offer of technical support and funding to restore oil flows through the damaged Druzhba pipeline but also signalled any resumption of Russian crude deliveries to Hungary and Slovakia was still weeks away. In a letter to the EU released on Tuesday, Zelenskyy said repair work was nearing completion and the pumping station was expected to be restored in 1-1/2 months, “in the absence of any further attacks by Russia”. Hungary and Slovakia have been cut off from Russian oil deliveries via the Druzhba since late January after Kyiv said a Russian strike hit pipeline equipment and would require time for repairs. The Hungarian and Slovak governments – both of which have kept up political and energy ties with Russia despite its invasion of Ukraine – accuse Ukraine of delaying the resumption of oil flows. Kyiv denies this. UK officials are preparing for a possible court case against Roman Abramovich after he missed a deadline to release £2.4bn he raised from selling Chelsea FC, Kiran Stacey writes. The Russian billionaire sold Chelsea in 2022 under pressure from the British government after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Because he was under sanctions at the time, the government granted him a licence to sell the club as long as the money was spent supporting victims of the war. The two sides have been deadlocked over whether the money should be spent exclusively in Ukraine or whether it can be used elsewhere. Spokespeople for Abramovich have been contacted for comment. Romania’s defence ministry said on Tuesday it was looking for drone fragments reported to have fallen near the village of Plauru across the Danube river from Ukraine, after a Russian overnight attack on its infrastructure. Romania scrambled two F-16 fighter jets to monitor the attack and alerted local residents to take cover. The Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, reiterated that Turkey is ready to host the next round of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, during a phone call with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday, Turkey’s foreign ministry said.