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Middle East crisis live: Trump claims ‘very good chance’ of deal to prevent Iran obtaining nuclear weapon

Iran remained defiant in statements issued on state media after Donald Trump’s announcement he’d paused an attack on Iran, with Tehran warning the US and its allies against making any further “strategic mistakes or miscalculations” in striking Iran. The Islamic republic also contended the Iranian armed forces were “more prepared and stronger than in the past”. Iran’s top joint military command, Khatam al-Anbiya, said Iran’s armed forces were “ready to pull the trigger” if the US began new strikes, Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported. “Any renewed aggression and invasion ... will be responded to quickly, decisively, powerfully and extensively,” the Khatam al-Anbiya commander, Ali Abdollahi, was quoted as saying.

‘Remain calm’: Japan is gripped by fears of a naphtha shortage. What is it and why are people worried?

Japan’s government is fighting to cushion the economic impact of the Middle East war, as the shortage of oil sends inflation rising, with the crisis threatening to undermine prime minister Sanae Takaichi’s wide poll lead. Amidst it all, new polling shows that Japan has seen a surge in concern over shortages of naphtha, a crude oil product that is used to make a wide variety of products. But why the concern about a product that few had heard of just several months ago? What is naphtha? Commonly used to refer to a range of highly flammable liquid mixtures derived from oil (and other sources), it is used in the production of petrol, but also a wide range of materials including plastics, insulation foam, adhesives, medical supplies such as syringes, and printing ink solvents. Naphtha is used in manufacturing all around the world, but Asia is particularly vulnerable to the current disruption as it constitutes the largest market for exports of the product from the Middle East. Why is the Japanese public worried about something it didn’t know existed a few months ago? Pronounced “nafusa” in Japanese, the word recently began appearing in news reports about the impact that the strait of Hormuz blockade was having on supply chains. But it was the announcement by Japan’s biggest snack maker – Calbee - on 12 May that the colourful packaging of its flagship potato chips were going monochrome that brought home the seriousness of the geopolitical fallout. Data shows that Japan’s wholesale inflation accelerated in April at the fastest pace in three years, with the price of naphtha spiking 79.4%. While Japan has significant national stockpiles of petrol, there have been suggestions that the government is playing down the risk of disruption to other industries. Japanese television networks and newspapers have been running segments and articles explaining what naphtha is and how shortages could affect everyday life. A Kyodo News poll over the weekend found more than 70% of respondents had expressed concern about supplies of Naphtha being disrupted. What is the Japanese government doing in response? Japan sources more than 90% of its oil from the Middle-East and so is very sensitive to the current supply problems. After Calbee announced it was switching to black and white packaging, the government’s deputy chief cabinet secretary was forced to reassure the public that adequate supplies of naphtha for ink had been secured after questions from the media. Prime minister Sanae Takaichi has also made multiple statements insisting that Japan is finding alternative sources for oil and resisted making the calls to reduce consumption that some of Japan’s Asian neighbours have been forced to issue. But the lack of naphtha is already reported to be hitting plastic production, leading environment minister Hirotaka Ishihara on Friday to echo the assurances previously made on ink supplies: “We have secured the necessary supply of garbage bags. Please remain calm and avoid panic buying.” Japanese media have also reported that, in contrast to government claims, supply chain disruptions are already being felt in sectors such as construction, dry cleaning, food processing and paint production. Is it affecting Takaichi’s popularity? The cabinet’s approval rate did fall 2.5 percentage points to 61.3% in the poll released Sunday by Kyodo News. But that should be seen in the context of a decline from very high poll numbers in the honeymoon after her landslide election victory in February. It is unclear just how much impact the Middle East crisis is having and how much responsibility the public believes Takaichi bears for the situation. More than 70% of those surveyed said the government should call on the public to conserve energy.

‘Dodgy’ shops handling criminal cash targeted by new specialist unit

“Dodgy” retail outlets such as vape stores, barbers, mini-marts and sweet shops suspected of being used to launder £1bn of criminal money will be targeted by a new specialist unit, the government has said. A £20m National Crime Agency cell will run and coordinate investigations and raids into UK businesses suspected of acting as fronts for gangsters, the Home Office said. The NCA and police forces in Greater Manchester, the West Midlands, Kent and Essex will recruit 75 officers to boost the effort. Labour vowed to crack down on “dodgy” outlets such as US candy shops in its general election manifesto, amid investigations into tax evasion and the sale of counterfeit goods. The move comes as Reform UK and the Conservatives blame Labour for a decline in UK high streets, as household brands collapse and shoplifting rises. Trading standards departments will receive an extra £6m to bolster the response to sham businesses in at-risk local authorities, according to the latest announcement. New training will help officers identify suspicious businesses, strengthen compliance and boost enforcement. The cash will come from a £30m pot put aside by the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, in last November’s budget. There is growing concern that many such businesses act as fronts for money laundering, tax fraud and illegal work. The NCA estimates at least £12bn of criminal cash is generated in the UK each year, with £1bn laundered through high street businesses such as mini-marts, barber shops, vape stores and sweet shops. Some businesses are also connected to the sale of fake goods, tax evasion, illegal working and illegal drug supply. As many as half of convenience stores and vape retailers in some areas are estimated to have links with organised crime, according to trading standards, while up to a third of American candy stores and one in four takeaways in specific areas are suspected of being a front for criminal activity. A new High Street Organised Crime Unit, to be chaired by the security minister, Dan Jarvis, has also been established to bring together government departments, policing partners and trading standards. Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, said: “Criminal gangs have exploited our high streets to launder their dirty money and undercut honest businesses. “We are hitting back with a nationwide crackdown to shut these fronts down, seize dirty cash and drive organised crime off our high streets and put bosses behind bars.” Coordinated raids of illegal retail outlets have been launched by the NCA under Operation Machinize 2, which targeted cash intensive businesses in the “grey economy”. The NCA, the body responsible for fighting serious and organised crime, helped plan the raids of more than 2,700 premises, leading to 924 arrests. Police seized more than £10.7m of suspected illegal proceeds, 111,000 illegal vapes, 70kg of cannabis and 4.5m illegal cigarettes. Research released in January showed that people feel high streets have declined more than any other part of their local area. Improving shopping precincts was the third most important local issue for voters, behind good healthcare and reducing crime, according to polling conducted by YouGov. Reform UK supporters were more likely than anyone else to say their area had significantly declined, underlining what researchers called a “deep sense of place-based resentment” towards Westminster.

Trump claims planned attack on Iran postponed after Tehran makes new proposal to end war

Iran has made a new proposal for a deal to definitively end the war in the Middle East, officials in the region said on Monday, with Donald Trump claiming he had postponed new military strikes so talks could continue. But while the US president has regularly used social media to threaten Tehran, and to claim that a peace deal was within reach, there has been no sign of an immediate breakthrough in the stalled negotiations to end the war. A ceasefire has paused most violence after six weeks of US-Israeli airstrikes and Iranian retaliation, but there has been little progress since Trump said the ceasefire was “on life support”, with some Israeli media reports suggesting a resumption of hostilities is imminent. In a post on Monday, Trump said he had been asked by the leaders of several Gulf countries to “hold off on our planned Military attack [on Iran], which was scheduled for tomorrow, in that serious negotiations are now taking place”. Trump claimed that the leaders of Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia had approached Washington because of the chance of reaching a deal that would be “very acceptable” to the US, and preclude Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. The US president said he had instructed military leaders that “we will NOT be doing the scheduled attack of Iran tomorrow, but have further instructed them to be prepared to go forward with a full, large scale assault of Iran, on a moment’s notice”. The announcement came as Iran’s foreign military spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, claimed Pakistan has shared Tehran’s latest proposal with the US. There were contradictory reports from Islamabad, which has been mediating between both sides. A Pakistani source appeared pessimistic, telling Reuters that Washington and Tehran “keep changing their goalposts” and that time was running out to find agreement. Other regional officials said Iran had made or reiterated some concessions, including a long-term suspension of its nuclear programme and transfer of its highly enriched uranium to Russia, as well as a phased reopening of the strait of Hormuz. The semi-official Tasnim news agency, citing an unnamed source close to the country’s negotiation team, reported on Monday that the US had agreed to waive sanctions on Tehran’s oil exports during the negotiation period. There was no independent confirmation of the claims, and talks have been marked by a series of misleading statements made by Iran, the US and mediators to try to publicly frame the talks to their advantage. Rhetoric on both sides has remained defiant in recent days. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps threatened on Monday to impose permits on internet cables passing through the strait of Hormuz, while other officials have said the waterway would remain under Iranian “management”, implying Tehran would impose tolls on shipping, which Washington has said it cannot accept. Axios reported that Trump was expected to meet national security advisers on Tuesday to discuss options for resuming military action. At the weekend, the US president said in a post on Truth Social “the Clock is Ticking” for Iran, adding: “They better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!” Baghaei said Tehran was prepared for all scenarios, telling a televised press conference: “As for their threats, rest assured that we are fully aware of how to respond appropriately to even the smallest mistake from the opposing side.” Though US-Israeli airstrikes have ceased and Iranian retaliation has been scaled back, drones have been launched from Iran towards Gulf countries hosting US military bases. One drone strike caused a fire at a nuclear power plant in the United Arab Emirates, officials there said on Sunday, and Saudi Arabia reported intercepting three drones. Iran stepped up attacks on the UAE this month after Trump announced a naval mission to try to open the strait of Hormuz, which he suspended after 48 hours. Analysts say the conflict is now deadlocked, with both sides facing significant pressure to bring the war to an end, but without sufficient incentives to make painful concessions necessary for a deal. Trump, who faces midterm elections in November that could go badly for his Republican party, held talks with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, last week in Beijing without securing an indication from China that it would help resolve the conflict. White House officials worry that Trump’s foreign policy gamble in Iran, and its effect on US fuel prices, may derail Republican chances of keeping control of Congress at a time when voters are more concerned with the cost of living than conflicts abroad. Iran faces a deepening economic crisis and potential damage to its oil infrastructure. Inflation is soaring and some officials fear a surge in popular discontent with the radical regime. The Human Rights Activists news agency (HRANA), a US-and Netherlands-based monitoring group, said it had documented at least 4,023 arrests in Iran between 28 February, when the war started, and 9 May. Charges included espionage, threats to national security and communicating or sharing content related to the conflict with foreign media, it said. There has been growing alarm over executions in Iran. Rights groups have said that since the start of the war, Iran has executed 26 men seen as “political prisoners” – 14 charged over January protests, one over 2022 demonstrations, and 11 accused of links to banned opposition groups. Six men have been hanged by Iran on charges of spying for Israel since the war began, according to reports in Iranian official media. HRANA said it had documented at least 3,636 fatalities, including 1,701 civilians, due to US-Israeli attacks on Iran in the war. Israel carried out new airstrikes in southern Lebanon on Monday, Lebanese security sources and the state news agency said, while Hezbollah announced new attacks on Israeli forces, continuing the war in Lebanon despite the extension of a US-backed truce first announced by Trump on 16 April. A 45-day ceasefire extension between Lebanon and Israel is now in effect after a third round of US-hosted talks. With Reuters and Agence France-Presse

Pope Leo to issue text on human dignity and AI with Anthropic co-founder

In the first major text of his papacy, Pope Leo will address the rapid rise of artificial intelligence. The Chicago-born pontiff will present the document, known as an encyclical, at the Vatican next week during an event attended by Christopher Olah, the co-founder of Anthropic – a US-based AI firm that has clashed with Donald Trump’s administration. The encyclical will address “the protection of the human person in the age of artificial intelligence”, the Vatican said on Monday. In a break from tradition, Leo, who was elected pontiff in May last year, will launch the document during a public presentation on 25 May. He will be joined by lay speaker Olah of Anthropic, which is in the middle of a high-profile lawsuit with the Trump administration over the ethics of AI, as well as theologians Anna Rowlands and Léocadie Lushombo. Encyclicals are one of the highest forms of teaching from a pope to the Catholic church’s 1.4 billion members, and typically outline his priorities while highlighting the major issues in society. Leo is expected to consider how AI is affecting workers’ rights while lamenting its use in warfare. “His encyclical is going to be a response to the dazzlingly rapid technological revolution that is happening right now,” said Andrea Vreede, a Vatican correspondent for the Dutch public radio and TV network NOS. “So he will say things like AI shouldn’t be used in warfare, that is obvious. But he will also try to be positive and offer workable answers to modern challenges.” The Vatican said Leo signed the document, which is entitled Magnifica Humanitas, or Magnificent Humanity, on 15 May – 135 years after his namesake, Pope Leo XIII, signed his most significant encyclical, which focused on the Industrial Revolution that was under way at the time while addressing workers’ rights and capitalism. “The fact that Leo signed the document on the same date as Leo XIII signed his encyclical is significant,” said Vreede. “The 1891 document was a response to the Industrial Revolution, when there were immediate and practical consequences to society, and this one addresses the technological revolution.” Christopher White, the author of Pope Leo XIV: Inside the Conclave and the Dawn of a New Papacy and a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life, said the Vatican had been seriously engaged on questions surrounding AI for several years now, pointing to regular dialogues with Microsoft, Google and other major technology firms. “Leo’s new encyclical is likely to build on that tradition – not from a perspective of doomerism but one of caution that as technology advances, the human person should be kept at the centre of the discussion,” said White. “Like Pope Francis, Leo will likely raise concern about the dignity of work and the need to ensure that technological advancements don’t override the dignity of workers and their rights. And he’ll likely insist on the need for stringent regulation and a ban on lethal autonomous weapons.” Traditionally, a pope’s encyclical is presented by cardinals. While the main presenters will be the Vatican’s top cardinals, doctrine chief Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández and development chief Cardinal Michael Czerny, the fact that lay speakers have been invited – along with Leo’s attendance – is also significant. Vreede said: “That’s a very clever strategic communication move, because if the cardinals do it, nobody really listens, but if the pope is there, all the cameras will be there, and we will all listen.”

No ‘tailor-made’ deal for UK if it wants to rejoin bloc, say former EU Brexit officials

Britain would not be able to rejoin the EU on the special terms it enjoyed in the past, veterans of the Brexit negotiations have said. The warnings came as senior Labour politicians jostling for the leadership of their party and country talk openly about wanting to return to the union at some point in the future. Georg Riekeles, a former adviser on the EU’s Brexit taskforce, said he expected member states would take “a very warm, welcoming” stance but also a “hard-headed” one to a British membership application. “There is a strategic need for the EU and the UK to work together, but I don’t think there would be an appetite for opening up new decades of British exceptionalism,” he said. “The price of re-entry would be membership on normal terms.” During its 47 years of EU membership, the UK achieved an unprecedented special status: opt-outs from core policies, such as the single currency and the Schengen passport-free zone, as well as a rebate on EU budget payments, while carving out an agenda-setting role. Sandro Gozi, Italy’s Europe minister from 2014-18, said “certainly we will start” with those standard terms, when asked about the euro and Schengen zone membership in any re-entry negotiations. “It is clear that the tailor-made suit is gone, and it is clear that the negotiation of the UK should tackle all the issues which are foreseen for any candidate.” Gozi, now an MEP and chair of the European parliament’s delegation to the EU-UK parliamentary partnership assembly, predicted EU member states would welcome a British application to rejoin despite the uncertainty of a possible Nigel Farage premiership. Wes Streeting argued over the weekend that the UK should rejoin the EU in the future. Even though the former health secretary’s allies say this could not happen without an election or referendum to gain permission from British voters, his comments reignited long-dormant rifts over Europe at the top of the ruling Labour party. Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, who is seeking a return to Westminster to challenge the prime minister, has previously said he wants Britain to rejoin the bloc within his lifetime. However, on Monday he clarified that he would not try to make that happen if he became prime minister in the short term. Gozi said: “[Brexit] has been a major disaster for the UK, but it has also been a loss for the EU … If in a moment of such a huge global turmoil, the UK decided to ask to rejoin the EU, I think that for our political model it would be a great victory.” He stressed this was not a victory over the UK but about “our attractiveness”. Britain, he continued, had other options, such as “being associated with the single market” and being a founder of a new European security council, a proposed defence leadership body that could involve up to a dozen members, but has yet to be fully detailed. “I think that the options are more than simply the full accession. But that would be very much up to the UK to make up their mind, to understand what they want,” he said. Poland’s anglophile foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, has also warned Britain not to expect a similar deal to its “de-facto à la carte membership” of the past. British elites, he said earlier this month, needed to “internalise” the fundamental European deal “that you get more benefits in return for pooling of some aspects of sovereignty”. An application from the UK – a former member that went through a bitter divorce – was also regarded as unlike any other. Riekeles, now an associate director at the European Policy Centre, said many in European capitals and Brussels were welcoming “the spirit and signals” from the UK but stressed this was a long way from a formal process. “The EU would need to see a durable national consensus that the UK has really changed its mind.” Reflecting on his own experience, he said: “The EU can work with a UK that knows what it wants. It struggles with a UK that wants the benefits of integration while keeping the politics of separation.” “The world of Brexit is gone,” he said alluding to Russian militarism, Chinese economic coercion and Donald Trump’s “America first” policy. “I think everybody with their full senses should see that the UK and the EU are part of the same strategic space. If this was the national consensus [for the UK to rejoin] … I think the EU would engage all in, very seriously. But are we there now? Not yet.” The European Commission’s chief spokesperson, Paula Pinho, declined to comment on potential negotiating terms. Referring to an upcoming EU-UK summit, widely expected in early July, she said: “There are discussions on closer cooperation on a number of areas. That is where we are and that is also what we are doing, precisely in preparation of the next summit, rather than speculating about big, new or renewed issues.”

‘It’s heartbreaking’: panic in eastern DRC over return of Ebola

“On public transport, in bars and at mass gatherings, everyone is talking about Ebola,” said Gloire Mumbesa, a resident of Mongbwalu, a mining town in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He said cases of the disease had been reported locally and panic was engulfing the area because of the lack of a vaccine for the Bundibudyo strain. “The fear is that this disease may spread to many other areas.” Residents of Ituri province in eastern DRC, where the World Health Organization announced an outbreak of Ebola last week, are living in growing fear of the possible continued spread of the disease and its deadly impacts, nearly six years after the last outbreak in the region ended. “We’re stunned by the resurgence of Ebola in our region,” said Dieudonné Lossadekana, a resident of Bunia city, where the first suspected case was reported. “We’ve already recorded several dozen deaths. For us, it’s heartbreaking.” The economic impacts of the outbreak are a serious worry, and residents are concerned that authorities may impose restrictions that would hinder them from earning a living in a region plagued by armed conflict and where people are already struggling financially. “We live in a region where poverty is rife and people live from hand to mouth,” said Claude Kasuna in Irumu territory. “When a health emergency like this one strikes, it hits us hard economically.” The WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, declared the outbreak a “public health emergency of international concern” after more than 300 suspected cases and 88 deaths were reported in the DRC and two deaths in neighbouring Uganda. The majority of the deaths and suspected cases have been reported in Ituri province, a business centre and migratory hub that borders Uganda and South Sudan. The gold-rich province is the centre of a long-running conflict between militias allied to the Hema and the Lendu, who are fighting over land and the mineral. The fighting has killed more than 50,000 people since 1999. A health worker who was the first suspected case reported fever, haemorrhaging, vomiting and other symptoms on 24 April and died at a medical centre in Bunia, according to WHO. Jean Pierre Badombo, a former mayor of Mongbwalu, which is at the centre of the outbreak, told Reuters that people started falling ill in mid-April after a large open-casket funeral procession arrived from Bunia. “After that, we experienced a cascade of deaths,” he said. On Monday the Congolese health minister, Samuel Roger Kamba, said the government would open three treatment centres for Ebola in Ituri. The WHO regional office for Africa said on Sunday that 35 experts from the organisation and seven tonnes of emergency medical supplies and equipment had arrived in Bunia. Elsewhere in eastern DRC, one case was reported in rebel-controlled Goma, a woman who travelled to the city from Bunia where her husband had died of the disease. Heather Kerr, the DRC country director at the International Rescue Committee, said the conflict in the region made containing the Ebola outbreak “all the harder”. “Eastern DRC’s years of conflict and displacement have left health systems on their knees,” she said. “With dozens of lives already lost and an already overstretched health system, we need to act fast.” Manenji Mangundu, the DRC country director at Oxfam, said the outbreak was “hitting a country already stretched to breaking point” due to ongoing conflict and years of aid cuts. First identified in 1976 in what is now the DRC, Ebola is a highly contagious and often fatal viral disease that affects humans and non-human primates. It spreads through body fluids or contaminated materials and causes organ damage, blood vessel impairment and sometimes severe internal and external bleeding. WHO has said the current outbreak involves the rare Bundibugyo variant, which has no approved treatment or vaccine. It is named after the district in western Uganda where it was first discovered in 2007. Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum, the director general of the National Institute of Biomedical Research in the DRC and a co-discoverer of the Ebola virus, said some candidate compounds for a Bundibugyo vaccine were expected to enter trials by the end of May or in June. In the meantime, he said, the government was implementing public health preventive measures including protecting healthcare workers and treating cases based on symptoms. “This is how we brought the Bundibugyo strain outbreak under control in 2012 in Isiro, not far from Ituri,” he said. This is the 17th Ebola outbreak in the DRC. From August 2018 to June 2020, the country recorded the second largest outbreak of the disease in history globally, and the country’s deadliest, centred in North Kivu and Ituri provinces. It caused more than 2,000 deaths. In Ituri, authorities have to address enduring stigma and misconceptions and rumours associated with Ebola in fighting the disease, just as with past outbreaks. Kasuna, the Irumu resident, said: “Our people tend to believe in false myths rather than rely on scientific evidence. We need to raise awareness to save people’s lives.”

‘Disposable’ operatives for hire are a new menace for western countries

When on Friday a 32-year-old Iraqi was brought before a court in New York to be charged with planning to attack Jewish community sites in the US, a curtain was suddenly lifted on a corner of a shadowy world. The detention of Mohammed Saad Baqer al-Saadi in Turkey last week revealed rare details of Iran’s efforts to use terrorism to sow discord among communities in Europe, the UK and the US – but also the outlines of an uncertain and threatening future. Al-Saadi is a senior commander of the Baghdad-based Kataib Hezbollah, a powerful militia with close links to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). He is accused of being connected to 18 separate attacks including firebombings of synagogues and community centres in Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK. Among them also is the stabbing in Golders Green, which left two Jewish men badly injured last month. The criminal complaint against al-Saadi, who has not yet entered a plea and whose lawyer says is a political prisoner, describes a new form of long-distance instigation of violent terrorist acts that has left western states scrambling. Once, a hostile secret service had to send a skilled and experienced operative to commit assassination, sabotage or terrorism thousands of miles away, or activate networks of sleeper agents, or find and train ideologically committed recruits ready to betray their country. Such schemes took years to prepare. Now spymasters can use a series of proxies, each thousands of miles apart, to find candidates for recruitment. Their new operatives might be less capable than their predecessors but are easier to find in significant numbers. “You don’t have to be in even the same time zone as your agents … They are disposable … They are cannon fodder, useful idiots in the genuine sense of the word,” said Tom Keatinge, director of the Centre for Finance and Security at London’s Royal United Services Institute. Though there have been some notorious examples of terrorists for hire before – such as the notorious Illich Ramírez Sánchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, in the 1970s or Sabri Khalil al-Banna, better known as Abu Nidal a decade later – such mercenaries have long been the exception not the norm. Spies – or their preferred proxies – can now just put out a call on social media and recruit – for a few hundred pounds, euros or dollars – someone who may not even have any sympathy whatsoever with their cause. Encrypted messaging platforms, social media and virtual currencies have created new ways such recruits can be directed and given vital resources. In recent Iranian attacks in Europe paltry payments have been offered for crimes that could earn a convicted offender decades in prison. Al-Saadi is alleged to have used cryptocurrency to pay an FBI undercover agent $3,000 as an advance. Another $7,000 was to follow if attacks on a synagogue and two Jewish community centres in the US had gone ahead – and been recorded. “There have been discussions in recent years about hiring criminals who provide a service … so we are now entering an era of terrorism as a service,” said Peter Neumann, a leading expert in terrorism at King’s College London. Recruitment has occurred on Snapchat and Telegram, frequently in groups or channels where people trade drugs or organise other criminal activity. Sometimes, individuals involved in organised crime are enlisted to recruit low-level operatives who often appear to have little or no idea of what they are getting themselves into. “It is still terrorism, it still has a political agenda and is an attack meant to terrorise a particularly community, whether that is the Jewish community or an entire nation but the perpetrator is not necessarily radicalised as such. One big question is whether it still makes sense to talk about radicalisation of a perpetrator if they are just interested in getting paid,” said Neumann. Outside western Europe and the US, Iranian secret services or their proxies often look for recruits in communities where some “baseline sympathy” might exist. Last month, the United Arab Emirates said it had broken up a network dedicated to sabotage and terrorism that was linked to Iran. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have made arrests too. Frequently, those detained are from Persian-speaking or Shia Muslim communities. In western Europe and the US, this is harder. The FBI informant that al-Saadi hired to commit attacks was posing as a Mexican drug cartel boss. According to the criminal complaint, al-Saadi told him that the campaign in Europe was “going well”. Russia is the principal pioneer of such tactics in recent years, even if unconventional proxy warfare has been part of the armoury of Iran since the immediate aftermath of the revolution in 1979. Experts talk of Moscow’s campaign of “hybrid warfare” in Europe, which has included arson attacks on warehouses, strikes on railways carrying aid to Ukraine, and vandalism designed to foment social unrest. Like the Iranian campaign, the aim here too is to disorientate, distract and divide. Neither Moscow nor Tehran expect that such acts alone will bring total victory but this is not a world where anything is as clear as winning or losing. Every burning synagogue, bombed kosher restaurant or midnight alarm at a US bank is a low-cost win. It is the targeted communities – and the willing idiots – who pay the price.