As the official programme is about to start in Ankara, you can follow the summit with us here: But I will also obviously bring you all the latest here, so don’t feel you have to watch it. I will make sure you don’t miss a thing.
The IRGC said a member of its navy was killed this morning in a US drone attack in the southern Iranian port city of Bandar Mahshahr, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.
Good morning. I was hoping to be writing today on the late Ali Khamenei’s vast, week-long funeral in Iran. Given yesterday’s events in Westminster however, I’m afraid we’re instead turning our attention to Nigel Farage. Please accept my sincere apologies. Yesterday afternoon, flanked by union jack flags, the Reform leader delivered an extended, wide-ranging and frankly rather rambling statement on his “future in public life”. He complained at length about investigations into the vast sums of cash he has received as gifts, and chastised the public for being ungrateful at the sacrifices he has made on our behalf during his time in office. He bemoaned life in the “communist country” that is Great Britain. And then, Farage announced his resignation as the member of parliament for Clacton-on-Sea. Don’t crack open your bottle of state-produced vodka quite yet though, comrade. Farage immediately clarified he has every intention to run in the byelection that will follow. With characteristic modesty, Farage declared the race to be a “people v the establishment” contest. The plan for today’s First Edition was to explore how one leader delegitimised dissent and avoided accountability. Instead, we’ll look at how another (would-be) leader is seemingly attempting to do just that. First, as always, the headlines. Five big stories Benefits | Disability benefits in England and Wales are “not fit for purpose” and the entire assessment system must be redrawn as part of a radical welfare overhaul, the government’s landmark review of personal independence payments will say. UK news | Prince Harry and six other prominent figures are facing a legal bill of up to £50m after losing their case against the publisher of the Daily Mail over claims it used unlawful methods to source stories. Iran | Iran has accused the US of violating the agreement aimed at ending the war between the two sides, after the US military launched strikes around the strait of Hormuz and revoked a temporary sanctions waiver for Tehran to export oil. France | The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has announced she will run for the presidency in 2027 and will lodge an appeal to France’s highest court over her sentence to wear an electronic ankle tag for the embezzlement of European parliament funds. Defence | Donald Trump has revived his bid for the US to acquire Greenland, threatening to pull all American armed forces out of Europe after the continent repeatedly pushed back. In depth: ‘I’ve decided that the people of Clacton should be the judges of my actions’ For much of the last decade, Nigel Farage has been omnipresent in print and on our screens – popping up for press conferences, photo ops and TV appearances with astonishing regularity. It has made his general absence from public-facing events over the past few months particularly conspicuous. Reform would never admit it, of course, but it just so happened that Farage’s (brief) retreat from public life aligned with a staggering story broken by the Guardian in late April: Farage was given £5m by the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne shortly before announcing he would stand in the 2024 British general election. Farage failed to declare the huge gift to parliamentary authorities. A standards investigation is ongoing, and Farage maintains he has not broken any parliamentary rules. Timing really is everything. At 1pm yesterday, a deadline the Guardian had given Farage to comment on the latest update in our investigation passed. Our City editor, Anna Isaac, revealed that Farage’s £5m gift was reported to the National Crime Agency by bankers who were concerned it may have been laundered money. An hour later, his resignation video was streaming. In his address, Farage made up for lost time in front of the camera. It took him a full 15 minutes to get to his resignation announcement. Before that, he celebrated Reform’s remarkable May local election success (and failed to mention the party’s drubbing in June’s Makerfield byelection). He protested his innocence at great length. “Let me be absolutely clear, I have done nothing wrong,” Farage said. “Making money is not a crime.” At one stage, it seemed Farage might be launching a crowdfunder: “I had a very, very good high-earning career. I gave that up at a huge cost.” (In Brussels, Farage took home €101,808 a year before tax. His MP’s salary is £98,599. Since entering Westminster, he’s pocketed an estimated further £2m and counting). This weekend, the Sunday Times published another investigation into the Reform leader’s finances. It reported that Farage did not declare gifts and benefits provided by crypto entrepreneur and convicted fraudster George Cottrell, which included social media staff, security and accommodation at his rented five-storey townhouse near Buckingham Palace. Farage has insisted he followed the rules over the support he had received from Cottrell. “They can’t beat us fairly, so they’ve chosen to use foul means,” Farage complained of the apparently undisputed reporting. “The new attack from the media is that somehow I am a crook. I am dishonest. Yet another reason to hate me.” And then came the resignation. “I’ve decided that the people of Clacton should be the judges of my actions … It’s a chance to stick two fingers up to the entire establishment, to frankly tell them where to go.” Farage’s hope, surely, is to reassert support from his political base, regain momentum in the polls after months of stagnation, and bury the growing list of sleaze allegations that he just can’t shake. *** What happens now? Technically, a byelection could take place as soon as August, but early indications are the vote will be held in early September. While parliamentary procedure sets a general timeline, as the incumbents Reform can control the specific timing. When Farage was elected in 2024, he won his seat with more than 21,000 votes – a majority of more than 8,400. By yesterday evening, the Conservatives, Labour, the Green party, Restore Britain and the Lib Dems all confirmed that they would not stand candidates to run against Farage. Perennial novelty candidate Count Binface, meanwhile, has thrown his shiny, bin-shaped hat into the ring. In Clacton, Guardian reporters found weariness among constituents about the impending election. Keir Starmer described the move as a “a desperate stunt from Nigel Farage” adding “he is up to his neck in sleaze”. Lib Dem leader Ed Davey said “This new stunt is his latest attempt to escape consequences for his biggest grift. We won’t let him”, and Tory leader Kemi Badenoch accused Farage of throwing a “hissy fit”. Rupert Lowe, leader of far-right party Restore, was quick off the mark too: “The people of Clacton do not need a media circus descending on their town over a busy tourist season because their MP has made a series of bad decisions … He should have declared that £5m. He knows it. We all know it. Now he is going to weaponise a byelection to distract from that.” For good measure, Team Burnham chimed in, labelling the whole thing a “gimmick” (and not a cheap one, mind). The Makerfield byelection required £226,208 of taxpayer cash to be set aside to cover the cost of voting. Yesterday afternoon, Nigel Farage made a point of declaring Reform’s offer to local authorities in Clacton to cover the cost of the byelection his resignation forced. There is, however, no mechanism through which this could actually happen. There’s precedent for other parties standing aside in vanity project/point of principle byelections. In 2008, the Conservative MP David Davis resigned his seat only to re-stand in protest of the Labour government’s 42-day terror detention plan. Neither Labour nor the Lib Dems ran against Davis, in order to take the wind out of his sails. Farage’s opponents are similarly attempting to rid the election of pizzazz. There were inescapable echoes of Donald Trump in Farage’s statement yesterday, not just in its long-winded nature: attacks on the media, a refusal to take questions, and a notable wholehearted defence of profiteering. It’s clear that Reform’s opponents are lining up to frame this vote as a vote on sleaze. Farage, it seems, has a different calculation in mind. The president has pocketed $2bn since returning to the White House, and his base doesn’t seem to care. Farage is surely hoping the Clacton electorate will afford him a similar privilege. *** Evading scrutiny? If anyone on Team Farage was hoping a resignation would help him avoid scrutiny, they’re in for disappointment. As evidenced by the media scrum in Makerfield, the political press pack loves a high-drama byelection to report on – and this one is even closer to London. Simply mouthing off at reporter questions – as he did this week at Heathrow Airport – won’t cut it in front of voters. And what’s more, investigations into misconduct by parliamentary authorities don’t automatically end if an MP steps down. As the code of conduct outlines: While ongoing investigation(s) will be suspended during the byelection period, it can and likely will resume again after, regardless of whether Farage wins or loses. There’s also the very real possibility that Farage will win this byelection, only to be soon forced to face another. If the House of Commons Committee on Standards orders the suspension of an MP for 10 days or more for breaching parliamentary rules, only 10% of voters in said constituency need to sign a recall petition for an MP to lose their seat, triggering a byelection. Given the scale of Farage’s alleged misdemeanours, it’s highly possible he’d receive that level of punishment. So brace yourself. There could well be not one but two Farage fests before Christmas, and we’d be footing the £500k bill. What else we’ve been reading Tim Burrows heads back to Epping a year on from the protests against a hotel that housed asylum seekers in the town. Patrick I really appreciated Lanre Bakare’s thoughtful interview with the photographer Misan Harriman and precise dissection of the social media firestorm that has engulfed him of late. Libby Savina Petkova, a self-described “practising non-monogamist”, writes about the significance of The Invite, which she argues is Hollywood’s first major poly-romcom comedy. Patrick World Cup 2026 On the pitch Argentina 3 - 2 Egypt | Enzo Fernández scored a stoppage-time winner to put Argentina into the World Cup quarter-finals with a win over Egypt, who led by two goals deep into the second half. Switzerland 0-0 Colombia | After a goalless draw with Colombia, Switzerland won a penalty shootout 4-3 with Ruben Vargas converting the winning spot-kick to book their place in the quarters against Argentina. Off the pitch Fifa | Football’s top governing body has hit back at Uefa after they criticised Fifa’s decision to lift a suspension on USA striker Folarin Balogun following pressure from Donald Trump. England | Jacon Steinberg has written about the rise and rise of Jude Bellingham ahead of Saturday’s quarter-final in Miami with Erling Haaland’s Norway. Podcast | With the quarter-final line up complete, Max, Barry and the team have been digesting what lies ahead for the last eight in the tournament on the Guardian’s Football Weekly podcast, which has run every day this tournament. No fixtures tonight - the quarter-finals kick off tomorrow Sport Tennis | Jannick Sinner eased into the Wimbledon semi-finals with a 7-5, 7-6 (4), 6-3 victory against Jan-Lennard Struff. In the women’s draw, Coco Gauff progressed to the semis – she’ll face Karolína Muchova, who beat Naomi Osaka in straight sets. Cycling | Mads Pedersen won stage four of the Tour de France from Carcassonne to Foix, which took place in extreme heat. Rugby |After an easy win against England, our rugby union correspondent Robert Kitson reflects on South Africa’s blistering form ahead of next year’s World Cup in Australia for The Breakdown newsletter. The front pages “Farage’s £5m gift reported over money laundering concerns”, is the Guardian’s splash today. The Times leads with “Labour and Tories won’t fight Farage’s ‘fake contest’”, the Mirror goes with “Desperate” and the Telegraph says “Farage gamble turns to farce”, and the FT has “Farage gambit falls flat after rivals refuse to contest ‘fake’ by-election”. The i Paper says “Farage quits and gambles his future on new by-election – amid investigation into £5m crypto gift” and Metro says “Farage’s big by-election gamble”. The Express’s take is “Let the people be the judges of my actions”. Elsewhere, the Mail, on Prince Harry losing his case against its publishers, leads on “Vindicated”. And the Sun’s take is “Harry caned”. The Latest Nigel Farage resigns to stand in ‘people v establishment’ byelection Nigel Farage has announced his resignation as the MP for Clacton, triggering a byelection in which he intends to stand as a candidate. The Reform UK leader is under scrutiny over his finances, with two investigations by the parliamentary standards watchdog over undeclared gifts. During a 15-minute press conference, he accused the media of a “pile-on” over his personal finances, and harassment of his family. He said his decision was part of “sticking two fingers up at the establishment” and would prove the public want him to stay on as an MP. Lucy Hough speaks to policy editor, Kiran Stacey. Cartoon of the day | Ella Baron The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad Trinidadian Jason Jones has been fighting for a decade to remove his country’s homophobic laws, which derive from laws introduced by the UK to its colonies during the British empire. This week he will make legal history when he brings his fight to the privy council in London, which remains the Caribbean island’s final court of appeal. Since beginning his campaign to decriminalise same-sex intimacy, he’s won friends and supporters along the way. A previous court victory inspired Trinidad’s inaugural pride event and legal challenges by activists in other countries, including India. Speaking in the UK parliament earlier this year ahead of this final court hurdle, he told a meeting attended by lawyers and LGBTQ+ activists, including the former Love Island winner Amber Rose Gill, whose father is Trinidadian. “I’m nothing special. I dropped out of college. I survived HIV. All I am is a very angry gay man. I think about all the friends and lovers I’ve lost over the last 40 years. This is a dream we couldn’t dream back then.” Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply
The attack in Ein Arik came in the middle of the night and was aimed at the rudiments of life: the earth, water, roots and seedlings. Ilham Karajeh awoke on Friday last week to find her family allotment raided and ruined. The thin black irrigation pipes had been sliced, grape vines cut and 70 young olive trees, the embodiment of the family’s aspirations for the future, had been uprooted. On Sunday, Karajeh and her husband, Mohammed, were collecting the severed branches. “See – they are still wet with sap,” she cried out in horror at the cruelty of the act. There was no doubt in this West Bank village about the perpetrators. Since a new settler outpost had been established last year on a neighbouring hill, violence has flowed down into the valleys in a gathering tide. The outpost, which now calls itself Maoz Tzur, began with just a handful of Israeli settlers but they quickly set about seizing territory. Their first target was the Bedouin shepherd community on the surrounding hills and valleys. Then the pressure was turned up on the villagers. For more than a year they have been prevented from reaching family olive and citrus groves and springs on the hillsides to the south, nearest the new settler outpost. Those brave enough to venture in that direction were repeatedly attacked with clubs and stones. The night attack on the Karajeh family’s small farm reflects an acceleration in the intimidation campaign around Ein Arik, extending northwards and up the slope towards the neighbouring village of Deir Ibzi. It is part of a surge of settler aggression across the West Bank driven by the febrile dynamics of Israeli politics. Elections are looming. They must be held by the end of October at the latest and as things stand, Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right bloc is facing the prospect of defeat after more than three years of political domination. The radical settler elements in the coalition are scrambling to impose facts on the ground in the West Bank before the vote. A landscape that has endured for centuries, of steep terraced hills, olive groves, vineyards, lemon trees planted around springs, and fields of herbs and vegetables in the valleys, is consequently being ripped apart at breakneck speed. “These are going to be very tough months,” said Dror Etkes, the founder of Kerem Navot, an advocacy group dedicated to monitoring the unfolding land grab in the West Bank. “Firstly, it doesn’t look good for the current coalition, so there could be a new government. Secondly, all the attention is on the elections so the settlers can use this period to do whatever they want.” Throughout 2025 and the first half of this year, the creeping de facto annexation of the West Bank has broken into a gallop, driven primarily by farm outposts such as Maoz Tzur. They require none of the planning and construction work of established settlements, just a small, highly motivated vanguard ready to use violence to drive Palestinians over a wide swath of territory. According to a report published on Monday by Kerem Navot and its fellow activist organisation Peace Now, farm outposts now control more than 1m dunams (100,000 hectares), 18% of the entire West Bank. Nearly a third of that wholesale seizure took place in 2025 alone. The report concludes that “the government has advanced de facto annexation at an unprecedented pace”. “It has done so through structural governance changes, settlement expansion, the retroactive authorisation of outposts, land seizures, the expulsion of Palestinian communities, and increased Israeli control in areas previously under Palestinian Authority responsibility,” the report says, arguing that at its heart, the process relies on a sustained pattern of violence. “These amount to thousands of incidents, ranging from verbal abuse to murder. The vast majority of these incidents are neither documented nor counted by any authority, as they do not meet the threshold for news reporting,” the report notes, adding: “This violence is part of a funded and institutionalised system whose purpose is to expel Palestinians and take over their land.” At the top of this system sits Bezalel Smotrich, a hardline settler who was considered far too extreme for mainstream politics until Netanyahu – his grip on power shaken by a string of corruption scandals – first brought him into government in 2019. Smotrich is now finance minister but his power is far wider than the title suggests. He has taken over the authority to approve settlements from the defence ministry and used the power to retroactively legitimise farm outposts such as Maoz Tzur. In April, Smotrich came to Maoz Tzur to celebrate its recognition as an official settlement and its 12 “core families” who he hailed as “pioneers”. Outposts like Maoz Tzur, Smotrich said, would “completely destroy the idea of a Palestinian state within our heartland”. The settlers of Maoz Tzur have no near-term prospect of taking over the Karajehs’ plot in Ein Arik. The aim of such attacks appears to be to demoralise the population while isolating them by blocking the roads between Palestinian communities with steel gates or blocks of stone, and overlaying them with new roads, accessible only to settlers, connecting the new outposts, thus developing a new circulatory system in the West Bank by cutting off the old. “When you connect something, you always dissect something else – that’s the principle they act on,” Etkes said. Recourse to the law has also been cut off almost entirely for Palestinians, since another settler extremist, Itamar Ben-Gvir, was made national security minister by Netanyahu at the end of 2022. Villagers in Ein Arik said it has proved futile to complain to the police or go to court for redress. “We went to so many lawyers but they all said there is nothing they could do as the government is with the settlers,” Ahmad Abu Mayala, whose family was the target of a settler attack on 22 May, said. “They said: ‘Wait for the election to see if it will change the government. Then maybe we can do something’.” The local mayor, Mohannad Othman, was pessimistic on that score. “The way things in the Middle East work, there will be someone even worse than Smotrich,” Othman said, though later he speculated that if Palestinian Israeli parties acted together, they could hold the balance of power after the elections, and perhaps bring change. Othman has only been in office a month and is thinking of inviting representatives of foreign embassies and organisations to accompany villagers into the hills for the olive harvest in the hope it offers some protection against attack. Last month, the UK, Australia, Canada, France and Norway imposed sanctions on what they called financial and enabling “networks” behind the “horrific levels of settler violence” on Palestinians. France also banned Smotrich from entering the country. He was banned from the UK in 2020. Such measures are unlikely to have a significant impact at a time when the Israeli government has the support of the Trump administration – which opposes formal annexation but has allowed the continuing informal seizures of territory – and there is disunity within the EU, where Germany and Italy have led the resistance to the suspension of the association agreement with Israel. Without sustained external pressure, Etkes is pessimistic about how much a new Israeli government could or would do to hold back settler violence. “Any attempt to change policies in the West Bank will be confronted with the very strong opposition of the people who are today in the government, who will be out there in the field with strong political back-up,” he said. “So it would be very, very hard for any new Israeli government to try to reverse things.” Quique Kierszenbaum contributed to this report
Ukrainian drones have attacked a dozen tankers from Russia’s “shadow fleet” over the past two days that were delivering fuel to Crimea, Kyiv’s military said, as it intensifies efforts to isolate the Russian-occupied peninsula. Ukraine’s drone forces said they had struck eight vessels subject to sanctions in the Sea of Azov, each with a deadweight of about 7,000 metric tons. Two more tankers were hit later in the day, they added. Ukraine’s capital Kyiv came under a Russian missile attack early on Wednesday, triggering fires and injuring at least two people, the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said. Klitschko said strikes in the capital caused a fire in a storage area and a non-residential building. Two people were injured, with one requiring treatment in hospital. The air alert lasted for about an hour. The latest onslaught comes after Russian strikes – including multiple missile hits on Kyiv – killed 30 people in Ukraine on Monday. A missile strike in the southern port of Odesa earlier in the evening injured 10 people, the regional governor, Oleh Kiper, said. Eight were being treated in hospital. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, made a fresh appeal for his country to be allowed to join Nato, saying his country’s armed forces are highly experienced and would boost the alliance’s defense capabilities. He highlighted Ukraine’s ability to strike deep inside Russia and hit oil refineries and other energy targets. He said Ukraine’s armed forces were “eliminating” on average 30,000 Russian troops every month. He is to meet with the US president, Donald Trump, on Wednesday in Ankara. “Frankly, we take no pride in this,” Zelenskyy said, noting that the war with Russia – now in its fifth year – is one “we did not seek but one we are forced to fight.” When asked about his meeting with Zelenskyy, Trump said he had spoken to the Ukrainian president and Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, before the Nato summit about ending the war. “I think they both want to make a deal. It’s too bad it took so long … Something’s going to come out,” Trump said before the summit. “They both want to get it settled now.” Zelenskyy said on Tuesday that Ukraine had signed three more “drone deals” with Denmark, Estonia and the Netherlands, making available its expertise gained from more than four years of war with Russia. Ukraine has developed a highly sophisticated drone industry after having only limited expertise in the sector when Russia invaded its smaller neighbour in February 2022. The deals are unique to each country, but typically involve Kyiv providing blueprints for drone technology in exchange for royalties, investments and other military hardware. Ukraine’s foreign ministry denounced as “troubling” the International Olympic Committee’s decision to lift the Russian Olympic Committee’s suspension and urged both countries and international sports bodies to maintain restrictions on Russian participation and use of state symbols. “The IOC’s decision to cancel the recommendations on limiting Russian athletes’ participation is a troubling signal for the entire international community,” the ministry said in a statement. It called on countries hosting competitions to uphold a ban on Russian state symbols as “under this flag an unprovoked war is continuing in Ukraine.”
Iran has accused the US of violating the agreement aimed at ending the war between the two sides, after the US military launched strikes around the strait of Hormuz and revoked a temporary sanctions waiver for Tehran to export oil. The US military said that it hit more than 80 targets in the early hours of Wednesday in response to Iranian attacks on three commercial vessels that were transiting through the strait of Hormuz on Tuesday. “Iran’s demonstrated aggression was unwarranted, dangerous, and a clear violation of the ceasefire,” US central command said, referring to the three tankers, including a Qatari LNG vessel, that were struck within hours in the strait. Iran responded by launching attacks on US military sites in Bahrain and Kuwait, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps claiming 85 facilities had been targeted. Air raid sirens were heard in both countries and the Kuwaiti army said air defences were confronting “hostile” missile and drone attacks, but there was no confirmation of any damage. Wednesday’s attacks were the latest in a string of ceasefire violations between the two sides, despite a truce that came into effect in April, and the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) last month that began 60 days of negotiations to resolve the issue of Iran’s nuclear program and bring a permanent end to hostilities. US officials speaking to multiple media outlets said Wednesday’s attacks targeted Iranian weapon launch sites, air defences and coastal surveillance system. Iranian state media reported a series of explosions on the Iranian island of Qeshm in the strait of Hormuz, and in the city’s of Sirik and Bandar Abbas. US media reported that Donald Trump signed off on the strikes while attending the Nato summit in Turkey. Speaking on Wednesday morning, Nato’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, backed the US attacks, saying: “When you have a ceasefire and Iran is basically violating the ceasefire, I think it is totally crucial that the U.S. forcefully react.” Iran’s foreign ministry accused the US of repeated violations of the MOU and warned that it would take “decisive measures” in response. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Tehran’s chief negotiator in the talks with the US, said violations of the MOU included interference in the strait of Hormuz, Israeli attacks in Lebanon and strikes on southern Iran. Ghalibaf also cited the US treasury’s decision on Tuesday to revoke the temporary suspension of sanctions on Iranian oil sales. The US lifted sanctions on Iranian oil exports last month after signing the MOU, but re-imposed them on Tuesday after the attack on vessels in the strait of Hormuz. The waiver on Iranian oil exports proved to be controversial among critics of the Trump administration’s Iran agreement, who said it amounted to the surrender of a key tool of economic leverage, before negotiations over the nuclear program had even begun. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations centre (UKMTO) said a Qatari tanker, Al Rekayyat, was among the vessels hit on Tuesday as it tried to travel south out of the strait toward the Gulf of Oman. Qatar has been acting as a mediator in the talks between Washington and Tehran, but its foreign ministry spokesperson, Majed al-Ansari, called it a “serious and explicit violation” of international law and said Qatar would hold Iran fully responsible for the act of aggression. All three tankers were hit close to Oman, which has proposed a new shipping corridor close to its coastline, a suggestion which Iran opposes as it wants to charge ships to use the waterway. Iran said on Tuesday that Washington’s efforts to open up new routes through the strait constituted a breach of the memorandum of understanding the two parties had signed. Tehran claims the memorandum is specifically worded to leave it, in consultation with Oman, to manage the reopening of the strait with the aim of commercial traffic returning to prewar levels within 30 days. Experts have said that the vague wording of the MOU has left both sides interpreting the agreement in different ways, with the repeated misunderstandings a continuing threat the ceasefire. Wednesday’s strikes from the US came during the days-long funeral for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed at the beginning of the war. Tuesday saw huge crowds mourning Khamenei in the holy city of Qom, with hundreds of thousands of people carrying flags and banners comparing Khamenei to revered Shi’ite martyrs. Some bore placards and banners reading “KILL TRUMP“.
Michael Owen, a man who once quipped he had never drunk tea or coffee, isn’t known for his adventurous palate. Safe to assume, then, that the former England striker was out of his comfort zone sipping Roxburgh rose juice and eating chilli-wrapped rice noodle rolls during his recent visit to south-west China’s Guizhou province. The 2001 Ballon d’Or winner dusted off his boots for a match in Rongjiang county, the birthplace of viral amateur football league Cun Chao, also known as the Village Super League. Scoring twice in a 4-3 loss for local side Rongjiang Niubi, Owen endeared himself to the thousands in attendance, even if some weren’t familiar with the former Liverpool and Real Madrid player. “Many people didn’t know who he was. The older generation doesn’t even know who David Beckham or Cristiano Ronaldo are,” May, a Rongjiang local whose family helps run Cun Chao, says. “But what left a deep impression was watching him play football with the local players. There were also very young schoolchildren who had been preparing for days to interview him in English. Owen was very patient in communicating with them.” Guizhou’s amateur tournament became an unexpected viral hit in 2023, drawing the attention of tens of millions on social media, including from Owen. Tourists began flocking to the rural, mountainous community, as crowds of more than 10,000 watched farmers, construction workers and students represent their local village teams. “When it started, Guizhou was amazing. Chinese tourists found there was a place where ordinary people played football … It became an internet sensation,” says Rowan Simons, a China football expert who founded one of the country’s first amateur networks in the early 2000s. “It’s quite remarkable that China is latching on to amateur football 150 years after the rest of the world.” The league’s success – the fourth season of Cun Chao that kicked off in January had 137 village teams – has inspired similar initiatives by local governments across China hoping to replicate its popularity. Amateur football has since become a national phenomenon, drawing larger attendances than many European professional leagues. It has even drawn praise from the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, who said in his 2024 new year’s speech that it “presents a vibrant and flourishing China to the world”. ‘China is fundamentally a top-down country’ Yuming, a 24-year-old lifelong fan of Chinese Super League (CSL) club Beijing Guo’an in the top tier of professional football, says China’s amateur leagues fill a “similar gap to college sports in the US and non-league football in England”. “The local feel is the single biggest attraction to these competitions,” he says. “It was easy for people to jump in since the [geographical] allegiance is already there.” But while this nascent love affair with the local game has drawn comparisons to British football’s formative years, in which amateur sides evolved into today’s multi-billion pound industry, experts remain sceptical that China has finally found a formula to develop its long-absent grassroots football scene. Mark Dreyer, the Beijing-based founder of website China Sports Insider, doesn’t believe authorities will allow the amateur game room to grow organically. “The more successful it becomes, the more it’s going to get co-opted by the state and the football association and the sports ministry. Then all of their bad decisions are going to start impacting these more organic leagues,” Dreyer says. Poor governance has long held back China’s professional game. In 2016, the country’s football association outlined its vision to become a “world football superpower” by 2050, including getting 50 million children and adults playing by 2020. What followed was an ill-fated spending spree, in which international stars were handed lucrative contracts to join the CSL. The splurge ended in the early 2020s as several clubs folded amid funding issues and corruption scandals. Today, China’s men’s national team has made little progress, languishing 91st in the Fifa world rankings and failing to qualify for a sixth consecutive World Cup this year. Dreyer says this failure is due to Chinese authorities applying their customary top-down approach to football. “Football needs to be bottom-up, but China is fundamentally a top-down country. Everything stems from the top, so they focus on the elites instead of focusing on the base of the pyramid,” he says. “Every country has done it, it’s not rocket science. But China doesn’t work that way.” The Chinese Football Association was contacted for comment about the state of the grassroots game but had not replied by time of publication. Local leagues like Cun Chao, and its copycats, may seem to offer the antidote. But Simons cautions that even provincial tournaments that have sprung up in Cun Chao’s wake can’t truly be considered “grassroots”. “It happened [organically] in Guizhou, and other provincial governments jumped on the bandwagon,” he says. “It has appeared from nowhere in two years … regional governments saw the cultural and tourism benefits and created these amateur leagues.” Crucially, the amateur leagues aren’t part of a larger pyramid connected to China’s professional game, and so their potential as a talent pipeline is limited. “There still isn’t a pathway to go from amateur through to professional,” says Simons. But that’s of little concern to the regional governments running the roughly 13 leagues that have sprung up around China since 2023. Football is almost a “sideshow”, says Dreyer, with match days serving as hyperlocal celebrations of ethnic heritage, food and culture. Beijing Guo’an fan Yuming says the matches are accompanied by “non-footballing activities like a food market before and after, half-time shows featuring local cultural icons, which makes it more of a spectacle”. An amateur match with a crowd of more than 60,000 The model is hugely popular. The most successful Cun Chao clone is Jiangsu province’s Jiangsu Football City League, known as Su Chao, which consists of 13 teams. The league’s final in November saw 62,329 fans – just shy of China’s spectator record of 65,769 for a domestic club match – pack into Nanjing’s Olympic sports centre. The league’s average attendance in the later rounds of the competition exceeded 30,000. In France, the average attendance across the whole Ligue 1 season was about 27,500. “It’s a great way to bring more people into a football stadium to see the beautiful game,” Yuming says. “Who knows, maybe our next generation of footballers might have gotten into football because they attended Su Chao games as a small kid?” Dreyer doubts the transformative potential of these leagues, but agrees that “anything that gets people playing or watching football is a fantastic thing”. Back in Rongjiang, local May describes Cun Chao’s appeal to her community, and also captures the sentiments of amateur football fans worldwide. “These [players] are our own people; it all happens right here among us, and they’re all our relatives and friends,” she says. “Since the players are so closely connected to us, we pay much more attention than to the Chinese Super League, or even the World Cup.” Additional reporting by Yu-chen Li
The US military launched a series of “powerful” strikes against Iran, it announced on Tuesday night, in response to what it said were “unwarranted, dangerous” Iranian attacks on three commercial vessels in the strait of Hormuz. In a statement on social media, US Central Command accused Tehran of a “clear violation” of the ceasefire agreement between US and Iran, which was signed last month. The attacks were designed “to impose heavy costs for targeting and attacking commercial shipping crewed by innocent civilians in an international waterway”, it added. Qatar has warned Iran it will bear full legal responsibility after three tankers, including a Qatari LNG vessel, were struck within hours in the strait. All three were hit close to Oman, which had suggested a new shipping corridor close to its coastline – a proposal Iran opposes, as it wants to charge ships to use the waterway. Iran blamed the US for the incident on Tuesday, saying Washington’s efforts to open up new routes through the strait constituted a breach of the memorandum of understanding the two parties had signed. Tehran claims the memorandum is specifically worded to leave it, in consultation with Oman, to manage the reopening of the strait with the aim of commercial traffic returning to prewar levels within 30 days. At a briefing in Tehran, foreign ministry officials insisted Iran had a right to impose fees on all ships using the strait. “Securing the strait for navigation for safe passage is itself a service,” said the foreign ministry spokesperson, setting terms for the long-term management of the strait that are likely to be rejected by Oman and western shipping interests. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations centre (UKMTO) said a Qatari tanker, Al Rekayyat, was hit near Limah, Oman, as it tried to travel south out of the strait toward the Gulf of Oman. In a mayday call, the Al Rakayyat crew were heard sending out a message: “We’re being hit by a drone top of port side near engine room.” It was the first time a Qatari ship has been struck since the start of the war between the US and Iran on 28 February. Qatar has been acting as a mediator in the talks, but its foreign ministry spokesperson, Majed al-Ansari, called it a “serious and explicit violation” of international law and said Qatar would hold Iran fully responsible for the act of aggression. Iran’s foreign ministry claimed the memorandum left it alone to manage the reopening the strait, “but the US has been trying somehow to open new routes”. The spokesperson also rejected a proposal from Oman to build a new authority for the strait modelled on the Malacca and Singapore strait, where fees are charged only for specific navigational services not including security. “For a long time we have been generous enough not to ask for anything. Providing security is costly, and Iran and Oman have been doing that for a long time. So from now on we’re going to ask for necessary costs when we provide related services, including securing the safe passage,” the spokesperson said. He added: “When you provide in the English Channel you call it deep sea piloting, for instance, you call it different names, but that’s the same.” However, deep sea pilotage in busy waterways is regarded as voluntary. Iran will face criticism that it is demanding ships pay a compulsory fee or risk being attacked – a situation close to a protection scheme. Tehran argues the strait became contested only because of American aggression. Iran’s foreign ministry also firmly rejected proposals from France and the UK that they start to de-mine and secure the southern route through the strait close to the Oman shore. The spokesperson said: “When France and others said they were ready to help, we said ‘no thank you’ – this is for Iran to do it and we know how to do it.” Saudi Arabia condemned Iran’s targeting of the Saudi-flagged tanker Wedyan and the Qatari tanker Al Rekayyat as they transited the strait of Hormuz, saying the attacks threatened international navigation and global energy supplies. “The kingdom stresses its demand that Iran immediately stop all actions that threaten the security of the region and the safety of international navigation and energy supplies,” the Saudi foreign ministry said in a statement on Tuesday. The ministry said Saudi Arabia held Iran “fully responsible for these attacks, their damage and all their repercussions”. Qatar summoned Iran’s deputy ambassador to Qatar to register its protest amid reports the ship’s crew had abandoned the vessel. Reports that at least three other ships had been attacked in the past 24 hours have not been confirmed.