Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani has been discussing the US-Iran ceasefire agreement in a phone call with Donald Trump, the Qatari state news agency reported. Al Thani added Qatar would continue coordinating with partners to support mediation efforts led by Pakistan.
Donald Trump is sending his Middle East envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Pakistan to resume negotiations to end the war with Iran, which has lasted nearly eight weeks. The White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt confirmed the travel on Friday, saying that Witkoff and Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, would meet Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, in Islamabad. She said: “We’re hopeful that it will be a productive conversation and hopefully move the ball forward to a deal.” Araghchi had announced a tour of Pakistan, Russia and Oman in an effort to see if there could be a basis to reopen peace talks that could end with a permanent US-Israeli commitment to cease attacks on Iran, now one of Tehran’s key demands. The vice-president, JD Vance, who led a US delegation to Islamabad in the previous round of peace talks, is not travelling to Pakistan but will remain on “standby” in case of a breakthrough. “The president, the vice-president, the secretary of state, will be waiting here in the United States for updates,” said Leavitt, and Vance was “on standby” and would “be willing to dispatch to Pakistan if we feel it’s a necessary use of his time”. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the leader of the Iranian negotiating team in the first round of talks, is also not expected to attend at this stage. Araghchi is also likely to discuss a potential permanent new arrangement on governing the strait of Hormuz with Oman, which oversees the south of the strait. Iran had said it would not restart talks until the US lifted its blockade of Iranian ports, while the US was demanding verifiable assurances that Tehran would end its nuclear programme and lift its own crippling blockade of the strait. In one new idea being canvassed, Iran is considering parcelling up its 400kg stockpile of highly enriched uranium, and agreeing to dilute sequentially the enrichment level of each parcel in return for the lifting of specific sanctions. Iran is also still looking to see if China can be drawn in as a guarantor of any agreement. When Araghchi visits Moscow, Russia is likely to revive its offer to Iran to take some of the stockpile, something it has done in the past. The Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, speaking on Iranian TV, said the main subject in the negotiations was no longer the nuclear issue, but instead “ending the war in a way that secures the country’s interests”. He added: We accept the ceasefire only if it is the first step to bringing the war to an end on all fronts. With respect to the country’s demands, issues such as compensation, the strait of Hormuz, lifting sanctions – all these issues are critical to the country’s future.” He stressed commitments to non-aggression were required not just from the US, but also from Israel, which has not been party to the talks. Trump has extended the ceasefire in Lebanon, a move that Israel resisted. Baghaei said the lifting of the US blockade had, in Iran’s view, been part of the original ceasefire agreement. “If you do not fulfil your minimum commitments in the ceasefire how can there be trust in you for the implementation for a comprehensive settlement?” he asked. At a Pentagon briefing, the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, said Trump had said the US “had all the time in the world and we are not anxious for a deal”. He said a total of 34 ships had been turned back as part of the US blockade of Iran’s ports, adding that a second aircraft carrier would be joining the blockade next week. The blockade, he said, had gone global. “No one sails from the strait of Hormuz to anywhere in the world without the permission of the United States navy.” The Iranians were acting like pirates with flags, he said, by trying to stop ships crossing the strait and by laying mines. “If there’s attempts, recklessly and irresponsibly, to lay more mines, we’re going to deal with that. It’s a violation of the ceasefire.” The US navy would without hesitation shoot and kill anyone in boats laying mines, he said, comparing the exercise to the targeting of drug boats in the Caribbean. He also took another swipe at Europe over countries’ refusal to intervene militarily: “We’re not pinning our hopes on Europe, but they need the strait of Hormuz far more than we do. “Maybe it’s time for Europe to talk less and stop holding fancy conferences – perhaps they should just hop on a boat and come over. This is their fight more than ours.” Iran has so far attacked five ships and captured two in its effort to enforce the blockade. Hegseth said some transit was occurring through the strait. “There are paths that are open,” he said. “Transit is occurring, much more limited than anybody would like to see and with more risk than people would like to see, but that’s because Iran is doing irresponsible things with small, fast boats.” Dan Caine, the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, said the US military was on standby to resume major combat operations as soon as an order was issued by Trump. Anwar Gargash, the United Arab Emirates diplomatic adviser, claimed Iran’s “callous” behaviour toward the Gulf states meant it would take decades to restore trust and predicted more countries in the region would want to open political communication with Israel, since they now regarded Iran as the strategic threat. “Relations are bound to come back at some stage, but trust and confidence are different. Iran will be seen as the strategic threat for the region for many decades to come.” He also claimed there was political jockeying inside Iran between the military and political wings, with no possibility of the old cohesive political order being recreated. The UAE has always been one of the Gulf states closest to Israel. It is in its interests to drive Saudi Arabia in particular towards closer relations with Israel off the back of the Iranian attacks on Gulf states. Gargash also predicted the deadlock in the strait of Hormuz could last another two weeks, but said it was in the interests of both Iran and the US to reopen talks. “The tug of wills in the strait will take some time, but cannot go on for ever,” he said.
A Syrian former regime official suspected of leading a notorious civilian massacre revealed by the Guardian – and who became one of the country’s most-wanted fugitives after the fall of Bashar al-Assad – has been arrested by security forces, Syria’s interior ministry announced. Amjad Youssef was captured in the Ghab plain area about 30 miles (50km) outside the city of Hama and had “been taken into custody following a carefully executed security operation”, the interior minister, Anas Khattab, said in a social media post on Friday. Mugshots released by the ministry showed Youssef, 40, in a striped prison uniform, while videos circulated on social media showing the former military intelligence officer in custody in a vehicle, his face bloodied, being sworn at and slapped by uniformed men. In footage, apparently from the raid, posted to local social-media pages, security forces storm a beige concrete home in a rural area shouting “God is great”, mobbing Youssef, who is dressed in a red hoodie and impassive as he is surrounded and dragged away to a security vehicle. Youssef had been hiding in the Ghab plain area since the overthrow of Assad at the end of 2024, a security source told Reuters. He is one of the most prominent suspects in what has become known as the Tadamon massacre, the slaughter of an estimated 288 civilians, including 12 children, in a southern Damascus neighbourhood in 2013. It was documented in a series of videos taken by the killers themselves and leaked to researchers in Europe, excerpts of which were published by the Guardian in 2022. • Warning: contains graphic images More than 24 videos showed uniformed Syrian security officials and pro-government militiamen leading groups of blindfolded civilians to the edge of a pit, forcing them inside and then shooting them dead. Their bodies were burned and buried using a bulldozer, all of it captured in detail by the perpetrators. The footage offered a glimpse into the brutal treatment of civilians by Assad government forces in disputed areas across Syria and was also extraordinary for the manner in which it emerged. A whistleblower discovered the videos on a government laptop and secretly passed them to activists in Paris, who sent them to two researchers based in the Netherlands, Annsar Shahhoud and Prof Uğur Ümit Üngör, from the University of Amsterdam and the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Over the next two years, Shahhoud and Üngör worked to identify the location of the killings and the identities of the victims as well as the perpetrators, including their alleged ringleader, a young man with a distinctive scar on his left eyebrow whom they called “the shadow man”. Shahhoud eventually found a Facebook page, the profile image of which bore a resemblance to the man, which belonged to a Syrian intelligence official named Amjad Youssef. She posed as a pro-Assad researcher based in Europe and spent the next year conducting interviews with Youssef which she secretly filmed. After the Guardian revealed the massacre in text and published excerpts of Shahhoud’s secret interviews in a two-part podcast miniseries, the US state department and the EU announced sanctions against Youssef, and France said it was commencing a war crimes investigation. News of Youssef’s arrest was greeted with joy in Tadamon, with mass celebrations after Friday prayers. “I don’t know what to say, I am so happy,” said Maher Rahima, a young man who lived through the era of the killings. “At the same time, I cannot forget the images of the children and women who were killed and burned. They must never be forgotten.” Residents have said the atrocities in Tadamon continued until at least 2015, with the true death toll likely to exceed 1,000 people, many of whom were interred in mass graves around the area. Tadamon became a symbol of the crimes committed against Syrian civilians. After Assad’s fall, media outlets, human rights groups and people from across the country rushed to the area to find the burial sites of victims and to interview witnesses. The area depicted in the leaked footage has been labelled on Google Maps as “the site of the Tadamon massacre”. Residents refer to the site as “Amjad Youssef’s pit”. Ahmed Adra, a Tadamon resident and a member of the neighbourhood committee, told Reuters that victims’ families had been celebrating in the streets since morning. “We will take white roses and plant them at the site of the massacre and tell the victims that their memory is alive and that justice is being served,” he said. Footage from Tadamon posted online on Friday showed a gathering of people at the pit, where the mass grave was marked out by a circle of concrete blocks. A local man addressing the camera said it was a “great day, which has brought relief to the hearts of the believers”. “Why was the world so affected by this massacre, which was first uncovered by the British newspaper the Guardian in 2022?” he asked. “Because they actually witnessed the act of killing. Syrians have seen hundreds of massacres, the regime used to bomb with barrel bombs and they would see their martyrs. Why did the world react so strongly to Amjad Youssef? Because there was a camera involved.” Other footage showed hundreds of people marching through the neighbourhood, parts of which are still in rubble, handing out sweets, waving Syrian flags and chanting religious slogans. Youssef’s capture is a major symbolic arrest for the Syrian government headed by Ahmed al-Sharaa, who swept to power 18 months ago promising to hold Assad-era officials and supporters responsible for their crimes. But progress towards accountability has been uneven, with some powerful figures under Assad striking deals with the new government to provide information, negotiate the handover of weapons or hostages, and negotiate peace deals in apparent exchange for immunity from prosecution. They include Fadi Saqr, a former commander of the National Defence Forces (NDF), a pro-Assad militia that took part in the mass killing of civilians in Tadamon. Saqr has denied any involvement in the massacre, claiming he was appointed as NDF commander afterwards. Shahhoud told the Guardian: “I am extremely happy for the families. However, it remains to be seen what shape the trial of Amjad Youssef will now take, and whether we will get a transparent account of what he has to say. After all, this may incriminate many other perpetrators, including those who currently made a settlement with the new government, such as Fadi Saqr. “While Youssef is the most famous perpetrator, the NDF and many other actors also participated in the mass killing of civilians in Tadamon. Without a fair and transparent trial it is unlikely justice will be served.” After feeling for years that Youssef was trying to track her in retribution for her work, Shahhoud said: “I feel safe now.” Rumours of Youssef’s whereabouts had circulated for years after Assad’s government fell in December 2024, including reports he had fled to Lebanon or to Europe and had undergone plastic surgery to change his appearance. Syrian security forces finally arrested him about 125 miles from Tadamon looking much the same as he had in 2022, with the same scar on his left eyebrow, but older, frightened and bruised in the custody of a new, rebel-led government.
Nearly eight weeks after Donald Trump launched his assault on Iran, the White House has shifted from a strategy of shock-and-awe bombardments and leadership decapitation to a plan of sustained economic pressure as it tests the will of a regime practiced over decades at wars of attrition. Since the negotiations stalled, the White House has begun to shift its messaging to say it is willing to wait to strike a more durable deal with Iran – despite the growing economic toll inflicted on the world economy by the closure of the strait of Hormuz. The reason, senior officials have said, is because the joint US-Israeli strikes were so successful that they have fractured Iran’s leadership and prevented a new consolidation of power. “Don’t rush me,” Trump told reporters on Thursday when asked how long he was willing to wait for Iran to respond to the US’s latest ceasefire proposal. “We were in Vietnam, like, for 18 years. We were in Iraq for many, many years … I’ve been doing this for six weeks.” Reminded that he told people in the US that the war would end in four to six weeks, Trump added: “Well, I hoped that, but I took a little break.” The whiplash of Trump’s diplomacy – as well as the growing cost of the war – has unsettled career officials at the Pentagon and state department, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in Congress, as well as foreign allies who increasingly view the US as a destabilising force. The White House’s latest strategy coalesced earlier this week during a meeting of Trump’s national security team – including Vance and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state: continued economic pressure on Iran to open the strait while waiting for Tehran to provide a unified response to US offers for a ceasefire deal. But the lack of a sustained strategy to end the Iranian war – and in particular to address the closure of the strait of Hormuz – has convinced US allies that the White House is running out of ideas to manage the threat from Tehran. “We don’t see a clear strategy – and we don’t think that there is one,” said one senior European diplomat in Washington. “And we are worried we will be left with the fallout.” Increasingly, Washington has signaled that it will punish its Nato allies for failing to support it more openly – while they suffer the worst economic consequences from the closure of the vital waterway. “We are not counting on Europe but they need the strait of Hormuz much more than we do and might want to start doing less talking and having less fancy conferences in Europe – and get in a boat,” said Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, during a press conference on Friday. While oil futures have remained stable, an energy crisis is spreading across the world from Asia to Europe, with airlines beginning to cut thousands of flights as supplies of jet fuel run critically low. Former negotiators have said that the closure of the strait of Hormuz is a powerful new bargaining chip for Iran that will complicate any hope for a new deal that would allow the US to walk away from the conflict and claim victory. And with Republicans bracing for a brutal midterm election in November, the administration is increasingly facing a time crunch to open the strait of Hormuz and stabilise markets and prices before the expected economic shock. Yet even as a third US aircraft carrier arrives in the region – the highest number in decades – and other military assets continue to flow in, it appears the White House is hesitant to seek a military solution to reopening the waterway. The US could theoretically begin escorting ships through the strait of Hormuz in an operation that has been loosely compared to the 1980s Operation Earnest Will to protect Kuwaiti tankers traveling through the strait of Hormuz during the “tanker war” period of the Iran-Iraq war. But the US was not a combatant in that conflict, just one factor that could fail to persuade shipping companies and insurers that a US escort would provide sufficient protection. And over four years nearly 450 ships were struck in the strait in a costly period that left more than 400 civilians and dozens of US sailors killed. “We have done this in the past,” said Emma Ashford, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, a Washington DC-based thinktank. “The whole thing was extremely costly. It did keep the oil flowing, but I just don’t know if there’s the appetite for that risk today.” And that emerged before the US faced the growing threat of drone strikes in the region, which have depleted prewar stockpiles of key munitions that would be needed for other conflicts. According to an analysis this week by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the US has expended up to 1,430 of its estimated prewar stockpile of 2,330 of Patriot missiles. Each costs nearly $4m. “The diminished munitions stockpiles have created a near-term risk,” read the report. “A war against a capable peer competitor like China will consume munitions at greater rates than in this war. Prewar inventories were already insufficient; the levels today will constrain US operations should a future conflict arise.”
As an analysis of rightwing populism, Daniel Trilling’s argument works well enough (The impossible promise: are we witnessing the return of fascism?, 18 April). We cannot assume that fascism will always take the same form, rather than adapt to, and try to provide answers to, events as they unfold. Fascism might best be seen as history’s punishment for the failed universalism of the Enlightenment project – the failure to deliver on the promise of universal equality. The resurgence of the far right is a reactionary response to the broken promises of social democracy. Working-class supporters of the far right, having seen the fight for equality for all replaced with a neoliberal war of all against all, simply adopt the logic of the day. At grassroots level, the strategy of the far right seems to work – if you say immigrants are draining resources from your community and protest against asylum seekers in hotels, and see them bussed out as a result, that can feel like a win. It is this aspect that Trilling misses. There is a Strasserite component to today’s far right, organised around the likes of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. Strasserism was the political ideology formed around Nazism’s working-class base. This can be antagonistic to the populism of the likes of Nigel Farage, because it believes Farage will sell out his working-class supporters. Can a resurgent class politics split this base? Denying reality is not the best place to start. When, for example, local workers say that eastern European workers are driving down wages by working at lower than the average local rate, there is no point in saying how much immigrants contribute to the economy. Capitalism only uses the free movement of workers to its own advantage. Better, however hard, to try to establish trade union control over wages and enforcement of the minimum wage, and an end to casualisation, so that native and immigrant workers are raised up. Nick Moss London • Daniel Trilling’s long read on fascism may have missed one broader longer-term element. We are, perhaps, also witnessing the continuing debate between two opposing trends in the western European Enlightenment: Hobbesian strongman-led and Lockeian property-based democracy on one side, and Voltaire’s freedoms with Rousseau’s people’s rights on the other. Dictatorships and gross inequalities of wealth and power, now significantly enabled by cloud capitalism, are again challenging liberal social democracy after just 75 years of a partial lessening of wealth, power, gender and racial division. Steve Jefferys Emeritus professor of European employment relations, London Metropolitan University • Nesrine Malik’s profound commentary on the nature of our current evil (Trump’s presidency is what evil looks like: absurd, frightening, cruel, 20 April) explores the bizarre mixture of horror, emptiness and performance that saturates our sociopolitical world, recalling what Hannah Arendt termed “the banality of evil”. Malik’s piece reminded me of a 1951 essay by Theodor Adorno in which, drawing on Sigmund Freud’s book Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, he describes the characteristics of fascist leaders. Such leaders, he explains, have to draw to themselves the identification of the masses; to do so they have to convey their possession of superhuman powers (having a special access to a peculiar omnipotence which exempts them from any moral law/ordinary humanity), and at the same time must, so to speak, be just one of the boys. Adorno writes: “One of the most conspicuous features of the agitators’ speeches [is] the absence of a positive program and of anything they might ‘give’, as well as the paradoxical prevalence of threat and denial … the leader can be loved only if he himself does not love. Yet Freud is aware of another aspect of the leader image which apparently contradicts the first one. While appearing as a superman, the leader must at the same time work the miracle of appearing as an average person, just as Hitler posed as a composite of King Kong and the suburban barber.” Dr David Bell London • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
Astrid Barltrop’s essay was brilliantly incisive (How will attitudes change if students like me aren’t taught the truth about British colonial history?, 16 April). It always struck me as strange that we – the heirs of universal suffrage – should spend so much time empathising with the political priorities of Victorian aristocrats who detested the concept. When I was doing my A-levels, Tony Blair was invading Iraq. I see now, as I did not so clearly then, how neatly Cromer’s Egypt maps on to it – the same script, revised and updated. Emma Jones Abingdon, Oxfordshire • Surely we should be aware of a critical equation with regard to Keir Starmer’s premiership. Two big pluses: keeping this country out of the damaging American war and rolling back the damage caused by Tory policies to the social fabric. Then one minus: appointing a dodgy ambassador to the dodgy head of a warfaring country. On balance, this equation is positive for Starmer. Jean Rushby Hayfield, Derbyshire • Never a Chelsea fan, but the sacking of Liam Rosenior (Liam Rosenior leaves Chelsea three and a half months into contract until 2032, 22 April) while Keir Starmer remains in post? The times are out of joint. Keith Flett Tottenham, London • Cryptic crossword No 29,985 (20 April) introduced me to a new word: “kakistocracies”, meaning governments by the worst. Is this a sign of our times? Dr Nigel Martin Pity Me, County Durham • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
Berlin’s top culture official, British-born Sarah Wedl-Wilson, has stood down over a funding scandal involving the the irregular distribution of €2.6m in public money for programmes to fight antisemitism. As culture senator for the Berlin regional government, Wedl-Wilson had already sacked a state secretary in her department, Oliver Friederici, over the affair this week, but the opposition called him a mere scapegoat. The city’s mayor, Kai Wegner, who is waging a tough fight for re-election in September, said on Friday he accepted her resignation. “Sarah Wedl-Wilson has assumed political and personal responsibility – for that she deserves respect,” said Wegner, who must now find a replacement to manage the department with a €110m annual budget for the remaining five months of his term. Wedl-Wilson, who for weeks had resisted accepting blame in the affair, earlier on Friday declared she was leaving office “above all to prevent harm to the vital fight against rising antisemitism in Berlin”. A state auditor’s investigation released this week found that the funds were “arbitrarily” and “clearly unlawfully” distributed to 13 projects on a list compiled by lawmakers from the co-ruling Christian Democrats (CDU), despite concerns raised by culture office staff that the groups had not been properly vetted. Media reports said Friederici, whom Wedl-Wilson fired on Tuesday, was among the most outspoken whistleblowers. Wedl-Wilson, who does not belong to a political party, signed off on the funding nevertheless, after a pressure campaign by the CDU representatives. The public inquiry focused on recipients including the Zera Institute, an “interdisciplinary thinktank”, which received €390,000 in support from the public purse. Soon after its founding in 2024, the director, Maral Salmassi, called the Jewish billionaire philanthropist George Soros, a frequent target of antisemitic propaganda, a “parasite” on social media, according to the news magazine Der Spiegel. She later apologised. Last September, Salmassi compared the Guardian to the Nazi publication Der Stürmer over a report in which Israelis were asked about their opinions of the war in Gaza. Salmassi described her remarks as a “polemical provocation”. Matthias J Becker, who was hired by the institute to research antisemitism online, allegedly falsely claimed to work at the University of Cambridge, Der Spiegel said. He told the magazine he had not misrepresented his affiliations. After the report, Salmassi posted a statement on the institute’s website condemning a “politically motivated press campaign” against her and the organisation. The review by the Berlin auditing office that led to Wedl-Wilson’s resignation focused on the process of awarding funding to the 13 groups and not the merits of their work. It must now be decided whether the organisations will have to pay back any public financing they received. Wedl-Wilson, who has British and Austrian nationality and a background in classical music management, took office last May, succeeding Joe Chialo of the CDU, who stepped down over swingeing cuts to subsidies for the arts in the capital. She thanked Wegner for the trust he had placed in her as a political outsider. “As a British woman and an independent, it is by no means a given that I was able to hold and shape this office,” she said. German officials have raised the alarm over a sharp rise in antisemitic offences since the 7 October 2023 attacks by Hamas against Israel and the ensuing Gaza war. Pro-Palestinian activists have challenged the definition of such acts as too broad for also encompassing criticism of the Israeli government. Werner Graf, the opposition Green party’s candidate to unseat Wegner, said the affair had undermined the fight against anti-Jewish hatred in Berlin, the city where the Holocaust was planned. “This has caused immeasurable damage not only to the fight against antisemitism, but also to trust in democratic institutions as a whole,” he said in a statement.
Brussels officials will draw up a plan on how to use the EU’s little-known mutual assistance pact in the event of a foreign attack, as Donald Trump’s criticism of Nato intensifies. EU leaders have agreed that the European Commission “will prepare a blueprint” on how the bloc will respond if the mutual assistance clause is triggered, according to Nikos Christodoulides, the president of Cyprus, who is hosting the talks. They discussed the mutual defence clause, article 42.7 of the EU treaty, on Thursday night, before reports emerged that the US was exploring how to suspend Spain from Nato. Trump, a long-term critic of the transatlantic military alliance, has stepped up his invective at “very disappointing Nato” after European countries refused to get involved in the US-Israeli war on Iran. This month he said he was “absolutely without question” considering withdrawing the US from Nato, pushing the 77-year-old alliance into the worst crisis in its history. Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister – who has been the most vociferous European critic of the war in Iran – said on Friday that Spain was a loyal Nato member, while renewing his criticism of “the failure of brute force in the Middle East”. In that context interest has been rekindled in the EU’s mutual assistance clause, which puts on member states “an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power” if a fellow country is attacked by a foreign government or non-state actor. Speaking on Friday, the European Council president, António Costa, said: “We are designing the handbook [on] how to use this mutual assistance clause.” There had already been “a test case” in Cyprus, he added, referring to a recent drone strike on a British base on the island at the start of the latest Middle East conflict. Costa said: “Greece, and then France, Italy, Spain and [the] Netherlands mobilised military equipment and forces … to help Cyprus to defend from external attacks.” The Royal Navy, meanwhile, was heavily criticised for having a limited number of warships available for deployment. France is the only country to have triggered article 42.7, after the 2015 Paris attacks, when militants killed 130 people in bars, restaurants, a stadium and at the Bataclan concert hall. France called on other member states to reinforce its overseas military commitments so it could redeploy troops for domestic security. The lack of detail in the EU treaty on article 42.7 was previously seen as a strength, enabling a flexible response, but member states now feel uncertain about how it would work. Christodoulides said: “Let’s say France triggers article 42.7. Which countries are going to be the first to respond to the request of the French government? What are the needs of the government or of the country that triggers article 42.7?” Such issues would be part of the blueprint, he said, to “have an operational plan to put in action” if and when article 42.7 was triggered. Cyprus, which is not a member of Nato, wants the EU to take the clause more seriously after a drone hit Britain’s RAF Akrotiri airbase on the island in March. But some EU members are cautious about any steps that could be perceived as undermining Nato’s collective defence clause, article 5. One EU official said there was a need for shared understanding of how triggering the clause would play out. “Nato remains the bedrock of collective defence,” the official said. “But the EU has tools available that are complementary to Nato – such as sanctions, financial assistance and humanitarian aid – which could come into play in an article 42.7 situation.” Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, briefed EU leaders about continuing work on the clause. In a sign of unease over Trump’s comments, the prime minister of Poland, one of the staunchest allies of the US in Europe, expressed doubts about Washington’s commitment to Nato. Donald Tusk told the Financial Times that Europe’s “biggest, most important question” was whether the US would be “ready to be as loyal as it is described in our [Nato] treaties”. Meanwhile, Sánchez played down reports that the Pentagon was considering punishing Nato allies deemed insufficiently supportive of the US offensive against Iran by suspending them from the alliance. A US official told Reuters that an internal memo was circulating at the highest levels of the Pentagon that outlined retaliatory options, including suspending Spain from the alliance and reviewing the US position on Britain’s claim to the Falkland Islands. The US official said the policy options were set out in an email that expressed frustration over some allies’ perceived reluctance or refusal to grant the US access, basing and overflight rights – known as ABO – for its strikes on Iran. The email described ABO as “just the absolute baseline for Nato”, and said that options included suspending “difficult” countries from important or prestigious positions within the alliance. Nato officials say the organisation’s founding treaty does not include any mechanism for the expulsion of a member. Sánchez riled Trump last year by rejecting Nato’s proposal for member states to increase their defence spending to 5% of their GDP, saying the idea would “not only be unreasonable but also counterproductive”. Speaking in Cyprus on Friday morning, Sánchez said: “We don’t work on the basis of emails; we work with official documents and statements made by the US government. The Spanish government’s position is clear: absolute cooperation with allies, but always within the framework of international law.” But Sánchez also renewed his criticisms of the US war in Iran. “The crisis that this illegal war has brought to the Middle East shows the failure of brute force – and has prompted demands for international law to be respected and for the multilateral order to be safeguarded and reinforced,” he said. EU senior diplomats are expected to hold tabletop exercises in May exploring different scenarios should article 42.7 be triggered. After France activated the mutual defence pact in 2015, some member states increased their contributions to EU and UN missions in the Sahel, Mali, Central African Republic and the Mediterranean to allow redeployment of French troops from those areas. The UK, then an EU member, allowed French aircraft to use the RAF Akrotiri base in Cyprus. EU member states also pledged to increase intelligence sharing and counter-terrorism cooperation.