Read the daily news to learn English

Middle East crisis live: Trump casts doubt on Iran war ceasefire over continued closure of strait of Hormuz

Iran’s deputy foreign minister for political affairs, Majid Takht Ravanchi, said Tehran does not want a ceasefire that will allow the US and Israel to attack again. Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported remarks he made during a meeting today with foreign ambassadors and heads of organisations in Tehran. A translation of his remarks read: “We do not want a ceasefire that allows the aggressor enemy to re-arm and launch another aggression.” He also claimed that “it has been agreed that Iran’s 10-point plan will be the basis for negotiations”.

Hungary election campaigns enter final stretch as Orbán fights to remain in power – Europe live

in Hatvan Magyar shows up pretty much on time to a rock star welcome from high hundreds of supporters. The crowd has grown massively in the last half hour. As is now customary, he walks into the crowd with his flag as he poses to some pictures and selfies before delivering his campaign speech and reminding people of how little time is left in this campaign. He’s got eight more rallies to go, ending in Debrecen tomorrow night.

War has given Iran new leverage for nuclear programme, say US former envoys

Former US envoys who dealt with Iran have said that the US-Israeli attack on Iran and Tehran’s subsequent closure of the strait of Hormuz have given Iran new tools and resolve to resist pressure to shutter its nuclear programme. Two senior negotiators for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Obama-era agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear uranium enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief, said the Trump administration’s war had handed Iran a coveted weapon by demonstrating its ability to cut off the strait of Hormuz, an economic chokehold that one negotiator said would help Iran “balance the asymmetry of power” with the US. “This administration, to say it more politely, cannot unsoil the bed,” said Alan Eyre, a former diplomat who helped negotiate the JCPOA. “There’s no way to get back to the status quo ante before this war started.” In 2018, Donald Trump withdrew the US from the JCPOA which barred Tehran from enriching its uranium to weapons-grade. Trump called the deal, which lifted some sanctions on Iran, “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions” the US had ever entered into. But after a strategy of high pressure – first through returning sanctions and then, after Trump’s return to power in 2025, a war that was meant to destroy Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities – the current US administration has found itself in more complex negotiations than before its campaign of economic and military strikes. “The strait of Hormuz is such a good strategic deterrent [and] to an extent it makes the nuclear programme less crucial,” said Eyre. “It would have taken a lot of time and a lot of risk for them to weaponise [nuclear arms] … But they’ve got a really cool threat now, which is incredibly easy to turn on and off.” Diplomatic sources have indicated that the Iranian delegation believes this is an unprecedented set of circumstances to negotiate on favourable terms, as the Trump administration appears keen to exit the conflict quickly. A US delegation led by JD Vance will meet Iranian negotiators in Islamabad, Pakistan this weekend. The vice-president has been a less vocal booster of the war than other members of the administration such as the secretary of defence, Pete Hegseth, and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio. But while the US could withdraw its air power from the conflict, it has not presented a clear plan for reopening the strait of Hormuz – either through force or a negotiated settlement. Robert Malley, a Yale lecturer who was former special envoy to Iran under Joe Biden and a lead negotiator on the JCPOA, said: “The strait of Hormuz wasn’t an issue before the US decided to strike. You have all the issues inherited from the past, but you just added a few, because the US has handed Iran a tool that it always had, but it never thought of using, or never felt it could.” The chances for a comprehensive agreement addressing all of the US and Iran’s grievances appear slim. While the Obama administration sought to negotiate exclusively on Iran’s nuclear programme in the lead-up to the 2015 agreement, the Trump administration has sought a broader deal limiting Iran’s ballistic missiles programme and its support for regional proxies, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. But a catch-all deal appears to be fraying at the edges. Israel’s continued strikes on Lebanon, a country which Iran believed was part of the deal but the US has said was not, have already threatened its full collapse, with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps maintaining its blockade on shipping and top officials publicly questioning the ceasefire. As Malley noted, the Obama administration had chosen to seek a more limited deal with Iran because “for every element that the US and others will put on the table, Iran will put a reciprocal element on the table. This is not a one-way street.” “I think Trump has been driven by two objectives that were in clear tension,” said Malley. “One was he wanted to be able to declare outright victory, and the other a clear victory. And the other one is he wanted a quick exit.” “Even though he may claim victory … It’s being it’s being contradicted every day, or not every day, but every hour by what’s happening on the ground.”

Trump ‘reaping bitter fruit’ of thinking Iran intervention as easy as Venezuela, says former diplomat

Donald Trump is “reaping the bitter fruit” of erroneously thinking that the capture of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, offered a blueprint for toppling the Iranian regime, according to one of the US state department’s most respected former Latin America experts. John Feeley, a Marine helicopter pilot who later served as the US ambassador to Panama, believed Trump had been “flush with the victory from Venezuela” when he made the ill-fated decision to attack Iran in February, leaving a trail of destruction across the Middle East and dealing a hammer blow to the global economy. Maduro was seized during a special forces mission on 3 January, with the remnants of his authoritarian regime quickly capitulating to US demands under the leadership of his replacement, Delcy Rodríguez. More than 100 Cuban and Venezuelan troops lost their lives during Trump’s Operation Absolute Resolve but not a single member of the US military was killed. “This was one of the most stunning, effective, and powerful displays of American military might and competence in American history,” Trump boasted last month, calling his attack proof the US had “the strongest and most fearsome military on the planet”. Feeley accepted Maduro’s capture had shown Trump’s administration was “willing to use force to get rid of somebody they don’t like”. But he and other former senior US diplomats believed it had also lulled the US president into the false belief that removing Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and his regime would be as straightforward as overthrowing the South American autocrat. “We are now literally reaping the bitter fruit of a decision made in large [part] to go into Iran based on the unbelievable good luck that he had in Venezuela,” said Feeley, emphasising that his comments were not a criticism of the elite forces who snatched Maduro. “As somebody who flew in those units … I can’t tell you how many things could have gone horribly wrong,” he said of the night-time raid involving Delta Force commandos and members of an elite aviation unit known as the Night Stalkers. Feeley, who left the foreign service during Trump’s first term, said the Venezuela assault had led Trump to expect a similarly “marvellous little two-week, three-ribbon war” in Iran. “I think it’s very true that the success of the Venezuela episode led him to give the green light … and begin the Iran episode,” he said, voicing fears that a similar miscalculation might soon be made in Cuba, which Trump recently vowed to “take”. “I think these guys will make the very jejune and naive mistake of thinking that Cuba is going to be just like Venezuela, in the same way they misunderstood that Iran was going to be just like Venezuela,” he said. “These are 70-year regimes, 50-year regimes in the case of Iran. They’re decentralised, the ranks are trained, they’ve been indoctrinated … That’s a very different scenario than Venezuela, which was a criminal mafia that had only really consolidated its position in the last decade. But I think this administration is shortsighted enough … to still foolishly believe: ‘We’ll just go in there’.” Thomas Shannon, a Venezuela specialist and former ambassador to Brazil who was responsible for Latin America policy under George W Bush, was also convinced Trump’s Venezuela intervention had caused him to make a grave miscalculation in the Middle East. “He actually thought Iran was going to be the same thing. I mean, [Trump] knew that they couldn’t sweep in and arrest the supreme leader. But he thought they could go in and kill him and that they could kill any number of other leaders, both civil and military, and that that display would have the same impact the raid on Caracas had,” said Shannon, who believed Trump had hoped to replace Iran’s ayatollah with a compliant, Rodríguez-style figure. No such leader has emerged. Shannon said: “In many ways, Venezuela becomes the wrong example. But it’s the one that the president has in mind when he decides to join the Israelis in the 28 February attack. The problem is that the circumstances are quite different and the Iranians are different. And they have a resilience and a kind of internal capacity and structures to endure these kinds of assaults without having to surrender or to pretend to surrender.” Feeley saw an irony to how, by yielding to Trump’s January attack, the US president’s longtime foes in Caracas had inadvertently lured the US into making such a damaging misjudgment more than 7,000 miles away in Tehran. “Obviously, hard power is hard power and there’s nothing that they could do to prevent Trump doing what he did [in Venezuela],” Feeley said. “But their ultimate revenge is that they kind of laid down and made it look easy – and so [Trump] thought: ‘Oh, I’ll try that in an ancient Persian empire, a millennial civilisation. Threaten to blow the whole civilisation up.’ And we are where we are.”

’He’s mentally unstable’: Iranian American in Congress condemns Trump’s war and pushes for his removal

Donald Trump is an “evil human being” who “wants to be an emperor” and should be removed from office over the war in Iran, Yassamin Ansari, an Iranian American member of the US Congress, has told the Guardian. Ansari, the daughter of Iranian immigrants who decades ago fled the regime, spoke out after the president threatened to wipe out Iran’s civilisation before backing down and announcing an uncertain two-week ceasefire. As news of the truce broke on Tuesday night, Ansari said in a statement she was “momentarily relieved for the 90 million Iranians who just spent the worst 24 hours of their lives thinking they were about to face nothing short of a nuclear catastrophe”. But the Arizona Democrat maintained that Trump’s dire promises of genocide and war crimes warrant intervention by the cabinet or Congress. Earlier on Tuesday, Ansari warned that the president represents a clear and present danger to Iran, the US and the world. “There is no doubt in my mind he is mentally unstable and not all there but I also believe he is a deeply troubled, evil human being that only cares about himself and his family,” she said in a phone interview. “He has shown that throughout his entire life. He has shown that throughout his presidency by ripping away healthcare and basic necessities from the average American, while he and his family have made billions of dollars.” On the presidential campaign trail, Ansari noted, Trump promised an “America first” ideology that would keep the country out of bitter foreign entanglements such as those in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Instead his second term has gone in the opposite direction, with the president launching military strikes on seven countries. “The one thing that even some Democrats were excited about when he was running for office was that he seemed to campaign on this promise of ending endless wars, and yet, over the last six months in particular, he has demonstrated he is not just a wannabe authoritarian but wants to be an emperor.” She pointed to an array of rogue foreign policy manoeuvres: the possibly illegal abduction of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, threats to seize Greenland, the systematic ruin of the US’s standing within Nato and casual talk of taking over Cuba. And in Iran, she argues, the Trump administration has already committed what legal experts define as war crimes by deliberately bombing schools, bridges and hospitals. “I cannot believe we are in this moment. I cannot believe that this is happening in the United States and I cannot believe there are not more people doing everything that they can to stop this.” Ansari, 34, is the sole Iranian American Democrat in Congress. Her father came to the US in the early 1970s on a student visa and intended to go back but, in the wake of the Islamic revolution in 1979, deemed it unsafe to return. Her mother arrived in 1981, fleeing the regime’s clampdown on women’s rights. Some of Ansari’s extended family still live in Iran but, she said, are “in a constant state of anxiety about what is to come and what hell will break loose”. In January this year, thousands of Iranians were killed in a violent crackdown on nationwide protests – the deadliest period of repression by the regime in decades. When the US and Israel launched military strikes on Iran on 28 February, Trump urged the people to rise up and overthrow their government. Ansari reflected: “I knew in that moment that Iranians had recently undergone a horrific massacre at the hands of their own regime, where thousands were brutally murdered by the Islamic Republic for protesting and demanding a better future. Iranians have tried to rise up against their regime for 47 years to no avail and, because of that desperation, many were asking for intervention or foreign help. “But I know Donald Trump: I’m an American congresswoman, I’ve been living this reality for 15 months and I have lived through the first Trump administration. I knew that these were false promises being made to Iranians. “Donald Trump does not care about Americans; he doesn’t care about democracy or freedom or human rights for the American people; so in what world would we ever believe that he cares about freedom or human rights or democracy for Iranian people? It is just a fantasy.” The death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at the dawn of the war brought thousands of Iranian Americans to the streets of US cities to celebrate, with some even imitating Trump’s YMCA dance routine. A group of Iranian Americans chanted “Thank you Trump!” at last month’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Texas. But others are having unsettling doubts. Ansari said: “Similar to the 30% of Americans who are still blindly supporting Donald Trump and Maga despite the fact that every action he’s taking is against their interests, sadly there is a segment of the Iranian diaspora that is doing this. I think it’s wrong. “But I can tell you that the tide has changed significantly as this war has gone on because even some of those who initially felt hope and this could lead to positive change have now seen the true intention of the United States and Israel and the action, which has been to bomb universities, commit war crimes, talk about Iranians as though they are animals. “Donald Trump has said just in the last weekend that he will bomb the country into the stone ages, that there will be no civilisation left. Doesn’t get more apocalyptic than that.” If anything, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps appears to have tightened its grip on power. Khamenei, who was 86, has been succeeded by his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, who is 56. Trump himself acknowledged this week that citizens know staging a protest could result in their execution. Ansari observed: “This regime has not gone anywhere. The regime in Iran is deeply entrenched.” It is able to exploit the destruction of civilian infrastructure for its own propaganda purposes, she added. “They will be able to say, ‘Look, the United States and Israel are our enemies, as we’ve been saying.’ They’re not going anywhere. This is an ideological fanatical regime that is willing to die for the cause. There’s also an issue of just a lack of understanding of who they are dealing with when it comes to the Islamic Republic. “Iranians are going to be worse off after this with all of their civilian infrastructure destroyed, a more repressive regime and an economy absolutely in shambles. There will be mass starvation in the country. There will be a food security crisis in the country. I’ve talked to people inside Iran about how hard it’s been and this joint fear of the bombs and the lack of regard for human life from those who are bombing Iran to the threat of the regime that will continue to crack down.” The regime has deliberately cut off the internet to plunge the population into darkness, making communication nearly impossible. But this week Ansari spoke to a 25-year-old doctor in northern Iran using a VPN. “He described to me both the horrors that he witnessed in January during the massacres but also explained to me that, since this war has started, the price of everything has doubled and the economy was already in a horrific state. “The message that he asked me to relay to the administration and publicly in the United States was: please do not hit civilian infrastructure, this only plays into the hands of the regime, this will only strengthen them and hurt the civilian population of this country that historically has always been very pro-west, that wants regime change, that wants a better future, and these actions that we’re taking are again completely playing into our enemy’s hands.” This stands in contradiction to Trump’s recent press conference claims that the Iranian people actively welcome the American bombing of their cities. Ansari commented: “To say that they want the bombing of civilian infrastructure like bridges and power plants and schools and hospitals – that is absolutely incorrect and wrong and heartbreaking that the president of the United States would make such a disgusting claim.” Ansari has called for the cabinet to step in and invoke the 25th amendment to the constitution to remove a president who is deemed unfit for office. “I do not understand how Vice-President JD Vance, who is somebody with a history of campaigning against endless wars, has not spoken up, has not started organising the cabinet to remove Donald Trump.” Next week Ansari also intends to introduce articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, for repeatedly violating his oath of office and duty to the constitution. “He has committed a number of impeachable offences throughout his tenure already and it is far past time that he go,” she explained. “His willingness to carry out Donald Trump’s orders and commit war crimes so callously and without any remorse is not somebody that should be holding such an important position that could result in loss of life for not just thousands but millions of human beings, so I had no other choice but to file articles of impeachment and I expect to get a lot of support from colleagues.” Ansari will be working to enlist colleagues and organise days of action and protest across the country. She warned: “I believe this is a five-alarm-fire moment like we have never before seen in our country’s history, at least in modern history, and we should all be doing what we can to stop it.” The US and Iran have been estranged for more than a generation since the militant takeover of the US embassy in Tehran by Islamist revolutionaries in 1979 and holding for 444 days of 52 US hostages. President George W Bush put Iran in the “axis of evil” along with Iraq and North Korea; the Trump administration has labelled it the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. The Iranian embassy in Washington lies empty. Ansari, who speaks Farsi and wrote her college thesis on Iran’s nuclear breakout capacity, thinks most Americans lack understanding of Iran. “We have had 47 years of a hostile relationship between the United States and Iran and, very tragically, most Americans don’t know what the average Iranian is like,” she said. “They don’t know this is a civilisation that dates back thousands of years, that originally was Zoroastrian; Islam came to the country much later. “They don’t know about the food and the music and the very hospitable culture of Iranian people and traditions around the spring equinox and dance and singing. This is a very vibrant culture, a very educated population that very tragically has been repressed by a horrific regime for 47 years. But bombing the civilian infrastructure of a country like this will not liberate its people.”

Hungary elections: what is at stake and who is likely to win?

Hungarians go to the polls on 12 April in Europe’s most consequential election of the year, with Viktor Orbán, the country’s illiberal prime minister and global far-right icon, facing possible defeat, after 16 years in power, by a former loyalist, Péter Magyar. What is the story and why does it matter? The EU’s longest-serving leader, Orbán has since 2010 turned Hungary into what he calls an “illiberal democracy”, declaring himself Europe’s defender of traditional Christian family values against an onslaught of western liberalism and multiculturalism. His four successive governments have comprehensively eroded the rule of law in Hungary, packing the courts with judges loyal to him and turning up to 80% of the country’s media in effect into a propaganda machine for himself and his far-right Fidesz party. He has become the EU’s disruptor-in-chief, battling with Brussels – which has suspended billions of euros in funding – over policies including on justice, migration, LGBTQ+ rights and, more recently, aid for Ukraine, which, along with sanctions against Russia, he has consistently blocked (including the latest €90bn loan). Orbán is the EU’s most Moscow-friendly leader, continuing to buy Russian oil and gas and to meet Vladimir Putin since Russia’s full-scale invasion. Recent allegations that Budapest shared confidential EU information with the Kremlin have sparked EU outrage. Orbán has inspired like-minded EU-obstructive leaders such as Slovakia’s Robert Fico and the Czech Republic’s Andrej Babiš, and boosted nationalist challengers such as France’s Marine Le Pen and the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders. In short, this month’s election will have consequences far beyond Hungary, a country that accounts for just 1.1% of the EU’s GDP and 2% of its population but has, under Orbán, come to play a role on the international stage out of all proportion to its size. Who are the key players and what are their platforms? Orbán, 62, has been endorsed by Donald Trump, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, and Alice Weidel of Alternative für Deutschland. US vice-president JD Vance visited Budapest to campaign for him this week and on Friday Trump posted that “I AM WITH HIM ALL THE WAY!” He was an anti-communist youth leader during the cold war and – with funding from his subsequent arch-enemy, the philanthropist George Soros – briefly researched “the concept of civil society in European political thought” at Oxford. His Fidesz party’s 2010 supermajority enabled him to rewrite Hungary’s constitution and pass laws consolidating executive power, curbing NGOs and media freedoms, and severely weakening judicial independence. This year, Orbán has run a classic populist campaign. He has sought to frame the vote as a choice between war or peace, telling voters they can preserve Hungary as “an island of security and tranquility” by electing him, or drag it into chaos and war by choosing Magyar, whom he paints as an agent of Brussels and Kyiv. Polls suggest voters are more concerned with domestic issues such as healthcare and the economy, which has stagnated for the past three years. Food prices have risen to near the EU average while Hungarian wages are the third lowest in the bloc. Magyar, 45, formerly a Fidesz disciple and loyal member of Orbán’s inner circle, burst into the limelight two years ago after his ex-wife, Judit Varga, resigned as Orbán’s justice minister when it emerged that Hungary’s conservative president, Katalin Novák, a key ally of the prime minister, had pardoned a man convicted in a sexual abuse case. Magyar, a former diplomat who trained as a lawyer, distanced himself from Fidesz, accusing it of corruption and propaganda, and launched his Tisza (Respect and Freedom) party. It won 30% of the vote in the June 2024 European elections in Hungary, finishing second to Fidesz. Magyar has pledged to return Hungary to a pro-EU orientation, end its dependence on Russian energy, restore an independent public media and judiciary, boost the economy, halt huge Orbán-era corruption, sanitise public procurement and unlock frozen EU funds. How does the election work and who is likely to win? Since 2010, Orbán has made hundreds of changes to electoral rules, including nearly halving the number of parliamentary seats to 199 and creating 106 unevenly sized single-member constituencies (the remaining MPs are elected proportionally using party lists). The result is a Fidesz-friendly system, with far fewer votes needed to win in pro-Fidesz districts. Orbán has also made it easier for the mostly pro-Fidesz Hungarians living in nearby countries to vote, and handed policy sweeteners to mostly loyal voter groups such as pensioners. This means Tisza, which has an 8-12 percentage point lead among decided voters in most polls (although pro-government pollsters put the ruling party ahead), may need a six-point win over Fidesz to secure a majority. Polling averages put the opposition party on 50% of the national vote and Fidesz on 39%. However, up to 25% of respondents are undecided, and experts warn that national polling does not reflect the complexities of Hungary’s gerrymandered constituencies. Fidesz is more popular among retirement-age voters, polls suggest, leading Tisza by 50% to 20% in some polls, while Tisza is strongly ahead among under-40s and urban voters. Turnout could reach record heights of more than 80%, pollsters say. What could happen? Broadly, observers see three possible outcomes: a Magyar majority that Orbán accepts; a Magyar majority that Orbán does not accept; or an Orbán majority. All would come with consequences. For the reasons outlined above, Hungary’s elections can be categorised as free but not fair, and the chances of an Orbán victory cannot be excluded. If he wins, he would almost certainly double down, conflict with the EU would intensify and domestic authoritarianism would increase. If Orbán loses, especially by a narrow margin, he could contest the result. That would place the EU in an entirely unprecedented position and, despite likely opposition from Orbán allies, could eventually lead to the suspension of Budapest’s voting rights. A Magyar victory acknowledged by Orbán would certainly ease EU-Hungary relations, although the opposition leader is hardly a progressive, and Hungarian policy on hot-button issues such as immigration is unlikely to change much. Domestically, moreover, unless Tisza wins a supermajority (133 seats), it is unclear how much a Tisza-led government would be able to do: Orbán has ensured many laws need a supermajority to be changed and has stuffed all major state institutions with loyalists.

Gulf states rethink security in light of US-Israel war on Iran

Gulf nations will seek to add security partners as they rebuild battered economies after the US and Israel’s war on Iran and deal with an emboldened Tehran. The Gulf will have to live with a continuing threat from the regime in Iran and its remaining missile arsenal. American bases on their soil turned them into targets for Iran, as it retaliated against a joint attack by the US and Israel. But, the countries say they can’t tolerate Iran keeping control of the strait of Hormuz, through which most of their trade flows. In agreeing to a ceasefire this week, Iran insisted it would retain the hold it took during the war over the waterway, which would allow Tehran to throttle the Gulf at will. The future of the strait will be one of the main disputes to be negotiated between the United States and Iran, in talks in Islamabad due to start as soon as Friday. Gulf nations trumpeted success in largely intercepting the Iranian barrage of missiles and drones over the five weeks of the conflict, showing they can defend themselves. The countries are, however, split over future relations with Iran, with a hawkish grouping led by the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain taking a harder line, and other nations hoping for peace through renewed ties with Tehran, experts say. Iranian state media said on Wednesday that the UAE was probably behind an attack on its oil facilities on Lavan Island, hours after the announcement of a ceasefire, and Iran hit back. It would be the only known offensive action by a Gulf nation in the conflict. The UAE has not commented. Saudi Arabia and Iran on Thursday held their first official contact since the conflict began, in a call between the two foreign ministers that “discussed ways to reduce tensions to restore security and stability in the region”. Bader Mousa Al-Saif, a professor at Kuwait University, said the Gulf should reconsider its security, forming partnerships with countries such as Turkey and other middle powers, as opposed to relying solely on the US. He said that the region must get away from the danger of conflict repeatedly erupting now, so that economic foundations can be reset. “It behoves all the countries in the region to rethink the model,” said Al-Saif. “The question is how to insulate the region as a whole from going into a forever war.” The likes of Turkey and Pakistan, which have large and capable militaries, look set to play a bigger role in the Gulf. There were moves in this direction even before the war. In recent months, Saudi Arabia forged a defence pact with Pakistan and the UAE announced a defence partnership with India. During this conflict, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar hurriedly signed defence agreements with Ukraine, to tackle the threat from Iranian drones. There have been calls for a “Muslim Nato”, but that idea is considered highly unlikely. A new alignment emerged in March of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan, “Step”. However the rivalries between those countries, and the lack of clarity on whether they are protecting against Iran or Israel complicates the relationship. Turkey and Pakistan border Iran and do not want to see confrontation with Tehran. The UK, which helped defend Gulf skies during the war, could also be involved. Arriving in Jeddah on Wednesday, Keir Starmer discussed with the Saudi crown prince “how the UK and Saudi Arabia could further deepen their defence industrial cooperation to boost capability and mutual security”. Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a political science professor in the UAE, said that he expected security ties with the US to deepen and others to join the UAE in having relations with Israel – a partnership that includes military and intelligence ties. The UAE was hit hardest by Iran, targeted by 2,256 drones and over 563 missiles, with more than 90% intercepted, according to the authorities. That compared with about 850 projectiles fired by Iran at Israel. “Iran has evolved over the past 40 days as public enemy number one, to the UAE and to the other Arab countries,” said Abdulla. “With that kind of public enemy number one, you really need to be on guard for 24 hours, seven days a week.” Yasmine Farouk, Gulf project director at the International Crisis Group thinktank, said that Saudi Arabia was better positioned to recover, with its oil pipeline and ports on the Red Sea, the size of its territory, and energy infrastructure not hit as hard as some other Gulf nations. However, reconstruction costs may impact Riyadh’s signature drive to diversify its economy by 2030. “Saudi Arabia has strategic depth, and the resources to recover. Its geography helped it a lot,” said Farouk. Andreas Krieg, an associate professor at King’s College London, said the Gulf would not seek to replace American protection, but layer on security partnerships with others, especially Europe. He expected Gulf countries to invest more in air and missile defence, hardening of ports and desalination plants, maritime surveillance, and alternative export routes. “The United States is still the only outside power with a real military architecture in the Gulf, but it now looks to many Gulf leaders like an unreliable and very expensive security provider in a relationship where the Gulf often pays heavily and still bears the retaliation risk,” said Krieg. “The bases will stay, but they now look less like shields and more like tripwires.”

Japan confirms release of more oil reserves as concern over energy crisis grows

Japan will release additional oil reserves early next month, the prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, said on Friday, as concern grows over energy shortages caused by the crisis in the Middle East. It will be the second time that Japan, which is heavily dependent on Middle East oil, has dipped into its strategic reserves since the US-Israel war on Iran started in February. Last month Takaichi approved the release of 50 days’ worth of oil – the government’s biggest ever release – as the government attempted to head off a spike in prices. “To ensure the stable supply of crude oil, we will release starting in early May the equivalent of roughly 20 days’ worth [of oil] from the national reserves,” she said at a ministerial meeting held to discuss the conflict. Japan has enough oil in reserve to last 230 days, but it is also imports 95% of its crude oil from Middle East, most of which is transported through the strait of Hormuz. Most of Japan’s reserves – 143 days’ worth – are state owned, with the remainder belonging to the private sector and oil-producing countries in the Gulf. Japan is also trying to secure oil from locations that do not ship via the strait of Hormuz, amid uncertainty over whether the waterway will fully reopen after a two-week conditional ceasefire announced by Donald Trump this week. By May, Japan should be able to secure more than half of oil imports via other routes, Takaichi said, although she did not provide details. The industry ministry has said that potential new sources for imports could include Yanbu on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast and the Port of Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates. Japan has also contacted suppliers in the US and Malaysia, as well as countries in central Asia, Latin America and Africa. The government has asked domestic suppliers to prioritise sales of stockpiled fuel to certain sectors of the economy, including healthcare, transportation and agriculture, Takaichi said. The decision to tap into oil reserves for a second time came as pressure grew on Japan’s government to resist US pressure to become militarily involved in the conflict. More than 100 demonstrations were held across the country on Wednesday, with protesters urging Takaichi, a conservative, to abide by the postwar constitution, which forbids Japan from using the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes. An estimated 30,000 demonstrators rallied outside the National Diet building, many of them waving light sticks and carrying banners in support of the war-renouncing article 9 of the constitution. Fears that Takaichi could use her party’s huge majority in the lower house of parliament to push for constitutional reform have strengthened since the start of the war. Last month, she turned down a request by Trump to send Japanese Maritime Self-Defence Forces to the strait of Hormuz, telling him that any military involvement could violate the constitution. Trump has since criticised Japan and Washington’s other north-east Asian ally South Korea for staying out of the conflict. After singling out Nato countries, Australia and South Korea for not joining the war, Trump directed his frustration towards Japan. “You know who else didn’t help us?” he said during a press conference on Monday. “Japan. We’ve got 50,000 soldiers in Japan to protect them from North Korea.” Setsuko Sasaki, a protester in Tokyo who was attending her first demonstration, said: “It is always ordinary civilians who suffer in wars, so I decided to come here to make my voice heard. I knew I would regret it if I did nothing.” Agencies contributed reporting.