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Middle East crisis live: Israel resumes strikes across Tehran and Beirut; finance ministers prepare to discuss surging oil prices

French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that France will send two frigates as part of the EU naval mission Aspides in the Red Sea, Reuters reports. “We are in the process of setting up a purely defensive, purely escort mission, which must be prepared together with both European and non-European states,” Macron said after meeting with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Cyprus.

‘Bitter result’ for Friedrich Merz as Greens win in German car heartland

Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats (CDU) have stumbled into a busy election year with a defeat to the Greens in a key state poll, as his embattled party struggles to fend off a challenge in other pivotal races from the far right. The German chancellor’s conservative CDU had enjoyed a double-digit lead in the south-western car production region of Baden-Württemberg just weeks ago but the Greens and their charismatic candidate Cem Özdemir eked out a half-point-margin win in Sunday’s poll with 30.2%. Merz, who has travelled to Beijing and Washington in the past two weeks to defend German and European interests amid growing global turbulence, called it a “bitter result” and said the onus was on his government to win back voters. “We will now have to make more substantial progress with the necessary reforms so that we in Germany can emerge from this difficult economic situation,” he told reporters on Monday. The surprise Greens triumph is expected to make Özdemir, a former federal cabinet minister and party co-chair, Germany’s first state premier from the large Turkish diaspora community, more than half a century after the first “guest workers” arrived. Özdemir, 60, whose parents moved to Germany in the 1960s, has said he wants to continue the decade-old Greens-CDU coalition government after a hard-fought campaign in the prosperous state of more than 11 million people. He would succeed Germany’s first and so far only Green state leader, Winfried Kretschmann, who is retiring after 15 years in charge. The far-right Alternative für Deutschland party zeroed in on deindustrialisation fears in the state’s automobile heartland, home to Mercedes-Benz and Porsche, and nearly doubled its score from the last election five years ago to almost 19% – its best ever in a western state. That was below the party’s announced target of 20%, and the third-place finish proved something of a disappointment to the AfD, which had hoped to project its impact far beyond its traditional strongholds in the ex-communist east. But the result still underlined its ability to expand beyond immigration as a mobilising issue, to capitalise on economic anxiety and win robust support deep in the wealthy west. Merz’s CDU garnered 29.7%, while its junior coalition partners on the federal level, the Social Democrats, suffered a wipeout with 5.5%. The SPD co-leader Lars Klingbeil, who is also Germany’s vice-chancellor and finance minister, spoke of an “utterly bitter night”. Merz, 70, has stumbled in efforts to jumpstart a recovery in Europe’s top economy, a prospect he said on Monday was increasingly under threat by a spike in energy prices from the Iran war. His popularity ratings have also taken a hit from rhetoric often seen as divisive in a country that puts a premium on harmony and consensus in politics. Sunday’s was the first of five state elections this year. The next, on 22 March in neighbouring Rhineland-Palatinate, pits the national governing parties against each other. It has been led since 1991 by the Social Democrats, who are running neck-and-neck with Merz’s CDU. In September, there are elections in Berlin and two regions in the east, where the AfD hopes to win its first absolute majority and seat a state premier. The political scientist Albrecht von Lucke called the Baden-Württemberg result a “catastrophe” for Merz’s government. “The defeat has had a devastating effect right at the start of the year,” he told the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper, noting that the regional CDU “certainly received no tailwind from Berlin”. “If Rhineland-Palatinate is now also lost … the party will be in a very poor position ahead of the extremely important [eastern] state election in Saxony-Anhalt” where the AfD could win outright. He said Merz’s ruling coalition would struggle if state elections continued to show diminishing support. “This will increase the fear, even panic, in both parties – and their efforts to distinguish themselves from each other,” he said. “This means that we will face even more difficult negotiations [on government policy] at the federal level, which in turn will benefit the AfD.” Özdemir ran a pragmatic, centrist campaign for the Greens, who are polling at just 12% nationally. Analysts said that should serve as a wake-up call to the “Fundi” or hardliner wing of the party, whose influence has grown since it fell out of government in Berlin last year. Climate campaigners pointed to the Greens’ win as proof that support for EVs, as highlighted by Özdemir, over CDU-backed combustion engines could be a vote winner, even in car country.

Video shows US Tomahawk missile hit base next to bombed Iranian school

A video has shown a US Tomahawk missile hitting the Iranian naval base next to a primary school in Minab where more than 168 people, mostly children, were killed – adding to evidence that indicates the US was responsible for the school strike. The video, released by the Iranian news agency Mehr and geolocated to the site by the investigative collective Bellingcat, shows the missile hitting the Minab compound on the morning of 28 February, when US-Israeli strikes on Iran began. Combined with other evidence from the site, including videos verified by the Guardian, photos of the aftermath and satellite imagery of the strike, the new footage indicates that Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school was hit during a set of strikes by the US, as it targeted an adjacent Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) naval compound. The strike demolished approximately half the school, killing scores of seven- to 12-year-old girls as they attended morning classes. The evidence directly contradicts statements by the US president, Donald Trump, on Sunday that Iran was responsible for the school bombing. “In my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran,” Trump said, without offering any evidence for his claim. “They’re very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions. They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran.” Munitions experts say the missile shown in the video is clearly a Tomahawk, which is only used by the US in the current conflict. “The video shows a Tomahawk missile striking a target. Given the belligerents, that indicates it is a US strike, as Israel is not known to possess Tomahawk missiles,” said NR Jenzen-Jones, the director of Armament Research Services, an intelligence consultancy that provides munitions analysis to governments and NGOs. He added: “Despite various claims circulating online, the munition in question is clearly not an Iranian Soumar missile [as] the Soumar has a distinctive external engine located towards the rear, on the underside of the munition.” Satellite imagery of the aftermath of the bombing shows that at least four buildings were hit in the strikes: the school, and three buildings in the IRGC compound. While the primary school’s building was once part of the wider IRGC complex, it had been walled off from the IRGC compound for at least eight years, and had clear markers of being an educational building: its playing fields and colourful wall murals were visible in satellite images. US military spokespeople have said they are “investigating” the strike. The school bombing has been described by Unesco as a “grave violation” of international law, and Human Rights Watch has called for it to be investigated as a war crime.

Istanbul’s mayor in court for mass trial decried as politically motivated

A mass trial of 400 people including the jailed mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu, has opened in Turkey in a sprawling corruption case critics say is a politically motivated attempt to scupper his chances of challenging Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for the presidency. Hundreds of former and current employees of the Istanbul municipality are due to give evidence, including more than 106 people already in jail. All stand accused of involvement in a broad network of corruption and organised crime centred on İmamoğlu’s office. İmamoğlu, the mayor of Turkey’s largest city, was arrested last year during a raid on his home, shortly after announcing his intention to run for president on behalf of the country’s largest opposition party, the Republican People’s party (CHP). As all protests banned within a 1km radius of the courtroom have been banned, supporters gathered at a distance, waving images of İmamoğlu and more than a dozen other CHP detained mayors, according to an Agence France-Presse reporter. After his election in 2019, İmamoğlu quickly rose to become Erdoğan’s nemesis, occupying a position the president once held and rising in political stature to challenge him on the national stage. After declaring his intention to run for president, Istanbul University annulled İmamoğlu’s diploma, a requirement to run for Turkey’s highest office. His arrest sent shockwaves through Turkish society, sparking nightly mass protests around the municipality building that contained his office where hundreds were detained. The CHP vowed to fight the arrest, holding a symbolic vote to name İmamoğlu as their candidate for president in an election expected to take place next year. Prosecutors produced thousands of pages of indictments claiming that Imamoğlu’s corrupt activities dated back to 2014, years before he was elected mayor in an upset to Erdoğan’s ruling party. Late last year, the former Istanbul prosecutor Akın Gürlek said Imamoğlu’s corrupt network caused 160bn lira (£2.85bn) in losses to the Turkish state over a 10-year period. If convicted on all charges against him, the Istanbul mayor and presidential candidate faces a prison term of more than 1,900 years. Observers and rights groups have branded the trial politically motivated, citing the use of secret witnesses as well as a sweeping effort to detain mayors belonging to opposition parties, particularly the CHP, across Turkey. Human Rights Watch said the trial represented “the culmination a 17-month campaign by the Turkish authorities against the main opposition party through criminal investigations, detentions, and other lawsuits targeting İmamoğlu, other elected officials, and the party leadership, pointing to a concerted effort to remove İmamoğlu from politics and discredit his party in ways that undermine democracy”. Since his arrest last year, İmamoğlu has been incarcerated in an infamous high-security prison near Istanbul as charges mounted against him. In addition to the charges concerning his university diploma and corruption, the jailed mayor was indicted on espionage charges last month, accused of leaking voter data to foreign countries. “The trial of mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu follows more than a year of weaponizing the criminal justice system against his party and other CHP elected officials while he sits in jail,” said Benjamin Ward, deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. HRW noted that the broad investigations ensnaring leading figures within the CHP began after Gürlek was appointed as Istanbul’s public prosecutor. Last month, Gürlek was appointed justice minister in a cabinet reshuffle.

Ali Khamenei’s son Mojtaba chosen as Iran’s new supreme leader

Mojtaba Khamenei, the second son of the late Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been chosen as his successor, as the war enters its 10th day and fresh missile and drone strikes reverberate across the Middle East. After members of the clerical body responsible for selecting Iran’s highest authority announced the decision on Sunday, Iranian institutions and politicians, from the foreign ministry to lawmakers, issued statements expressing their allegiance. “We will obey the commander-in-chief until the last drop of our blood,” a statement from the defence council said. The move could lead to a further escalation of the war, given Donald Trump had already acknowledged that Mojtaba Khamenei was the most likely successor and made clear he considered him an “unacceptable” choice. The US president said earlier on Sunday that Iran’s next supreme leader was “not going to last long” if Tehran did not get his approval first. When asked about the appointment during an interview with the Times of Israel published late on Sunday, Trump was reported as saying: “We’ll see what happens.” In the same interview, Trump said a decision on when to end the war would be a “mutual” one, together with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump also asserted that Iran would have destroyed Israel if he and Netanyahu had not been around. “Iran was going to destroy Israel and everything else around it … We’ve worked together. We’ve destroyed a country that wanted to destroy Israel,” he was quoted as saying. The Israeli military said it had launched a wave of strikes on Monday targeting “regime infrastructure” in central Iran, the first such announcement since the appointment of the new supreme leader. The military also announced strikes on the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran and its proxies appeared to have launched attacks, too, with rocket and drone strikes targeting a US diplomatic facility near Baghdad’s international airport that were intercepted by the C-RAM defence system, said police sources. A drone strike targeted a US military base near Erbil airport in Iraqi Kurdistan, security sources said, while Saudi authorities reported intercepting a drone east of its northern al-Jawf region. In Bahrain, the health ministry reported 32 people were wounded overnight by an Iranian drone attack on the island of Sitra. They include a 17-year-old girl who suffered severe head and eye injuries, and a two-month-old baby, according to the ministry. Iranian state media also showed a projectile said to have been launched at Israel bearing the slogan: “At your command, Sayyid Mojtaba,” using an Islamic honorific. The appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei was welcomed by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who are backed by the Iranian regime. “We congratulate the Islamic Republic of Iran, its leadership and people, on the selection of Sayyid Mojtaba Khamenei as Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution at this important and pivotal juncture,” the group said in a statement on Telegram. Mojtaba Khamenei’s elevation marks the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution that Iran’s supreme leadership has passed from father to son. It is a development likely to ignite debate inside Iran about the emergence of a dynastic system in a state founded explicitly to overthrow hereditary rule after the shah. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who ruled for 37 years, was killed in a US-Israeli strike on Tehran on 28 February, on the first day of the war with Iran. Across Iran’s political and security establishment, officials moved swiftly to welcome the appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei as the country’s new supreme leader. Khamenei would lead the country under the current sensitive conditions, the top Iranian security official Ali Larijani said, calling for unity around the new leader. State media reported the leadership of Iran’s armed forces pledged allegiance to him, while the speaker of parliament hailed the decision and described following Khamenei as a “religious and national duty”. The Revolutionary Guards declared they stood ready to follow him, signalling broad backing from the country’s core institutions. Earlier in the day, in a post on X in Farsi, the Israeli military said it would continue pursuing every successor of Ali Khamenei and would pursue every person who sought to appoint a successor for him. For many analysts, Khamenei’s appointment is a symbolic move designed to make the regime still appear strong and determined not to bow to western pressure. The 56-year-old cleric has never held elected office nor formally occupied a senior position within Iran’s government. He has spent much of his life at the centre of power in Iran while remaining largely out of public view. Born in 1969 in the north-eastern city of Mashhad, Khamenei was raised within the political and clerical world that emerged after the 1979 revolution. As a young man he studied theology in the seminaries of Qom and reportedly took part in the final stages of the Iran-Iraq war. Unlike many figures in Iran’s leadership, Khamenei never pursued elected office or a prominent government role. Instead, he gradually became an influential presence inside his father’s office, where he was widely seen as part of a small circle managing political access to the supreme leader. Over the years he cultivated close relationships with conservative clerics and elements of the Revolutionary Guards, a connection analysts say strengthened his standing within the system. His name surfaced publicly during the disputed 2009 presidential election, when reformist figures accused him of playing a role in supporting the security crackdown that followed mass protests. But he has never discussed the issue of succession publicly. To his supporters, Khamenei represents continuity with the ideological line established by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and maintained by his father. To critics, his rise raises uncomfortable questions about the concentration of power – and the possibility of hereditary leadership in a state founded in revolt against monarchy. Oil prices surged more than 25% on Monday to their highest levels since mid-2022, as major Middle Eastern oil producers cut supply because they cannot safely send shipments through the strait of Hormuz to refiners worldwide. Traffic through the strait was largely closed after Iran attacked at least five ships, with a limited number of tankers transiting, choking off a key artery accounting for about 20% of global oil and LNG supply.

Monday briefing: How are Iranians abroad grappling with loss and uncertainty from afar?

Good morning. War has broken out in the Middle East. As the Iran war broadens and spills out into neighbouring countries, media agencies have rightly focused on trying to understand how the conflict came about, where bombs have fallen, and how many have died, while many states globally fear spikes in energy prices and wonder how the war will impact their economies. What can easily get lost are the voices of the people directly affected. Iran is one of the world’s 20 largest countries by population. More than 60 languages are spoken there and its relatively young population – the average age is about 34 – is made up of many ethnic groups. It is not a monolithic society. Its population is spread across the world – and many more Iranians will find themselves displaced amid the ongoing attacks. For today’s newsletter I spoke to Dr Hosnieh Djafari-Marbini, an NHS consultant anaesthetist and local councillor in Oxford, to hear how the US and Israeli assault on the country is being experienced and understood abroad. As you will see, the views in the Iranian diaspora, which is thought to number between two and four million people, are far from uniform. First, the headlines. Five big stories Iran | Mojtaba Khamenei, the second son of the late Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been chosen as his successor. UK politics | Keir Starmer sought to repair fractured relations with Donald Trump over the war with Iran on Sunday, as a Labour backlash gathered pace over Tony Blair’s assertion the UK should have supported the US’s initial airstrikes on Iran. Energy | Great Britain has only two days of fossil gas stored after a decline in energy reserves, as more tankers carrying liquefied natural gas are diverted from their course to Europe towards Asia because of the Iran war. Meanwhile, global oil prices surged past the $100 (£74) a barrel mark for the first time since 2022. Health | More than 400 lives may have been saved as a result of Martha’s rule, which lets NHS patients request a review of their care. Thousands of patients were either moved to intensive care, received drugs they needed or benefited from other changes as a direct result of over 10,000 calls to helplines. AI | ChatGPT is driving a rise in reports of organised ritual abuse and “witchcraft, spirit possession and spiritual abuse” against children – which is historically under-reported in the UK – as survivors of “satanic” sexual violence use the AI tool for therapy. In depth: ‘It feels like living in a parallel universe’ Dr Hosnieh Djafari-Marbini is a local councillor in Oxford who moved to Iran when she was one month old, then came to the UK from there aged 13, speaking no English. By the age of 18 she was studying medicine at university. She tells me the days since Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu launched the assault on Iran have felt like “living in a parallel universe”. “One where life carries on normally – looking after patients, talking to colleagues – while at the same time you open your phone and see the destruction of places that mean so much to you,” she says. *** ‘Everyone thinks this war is madness’ Djafari-Marbini’s father was a refugee who had been involved in the Iranian revolution at the end of the 1970s. “Later he and his friends were unwilling to stand by some of the regime’s actions,” she says. “He ended up serving five years in prison when I was little. We still have aunts, uncles, cousins and old friends in Iran. “My memories of the streets we grew up in are very vivid. Seeing those same streets being bombed now – so indiscriminately – is heartbreaking. These are sights I prayed I would never see.” An anaesthetic consultant at Oxford University Hospitals, she says her colleagues have been very supportive. “People from all backgrounds, faiths and political perspectives. From my experience, everyone I’ve spoken to thinks this war is madness.” YouGov survey data has shown that 49% of Britons are opposed to the attacks, compared to 28% who favour it and the 23% who put “don’t know”. Matthew Smith, YouGov’s head of data journalism, explains, “Attitudes differ significantly by party, with the majority of Reform UK voters (58%) and a plurality of Tories (49%) backing the strikes, but the majority of Labour and Lib Dem voters (63% and 64%) and Greens (70%) opposed.” “The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed attacks on health infrastructure in Iran,” and schools have also been hit, Djafari-Marbini says. “It’s horrific to think that the very people trying to keep others alive during war are being targeted. Even talking about it now makes me feel nauseous.” *** War seen from afar Much of the news reporting on Iran has focused on the polarised opinions felt towards its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the strikes. For some, Khamenei was revered: viewed as an unflinching leader, who refused to be threatened by the US and Israel. For others, he was despised: a brutal leader who led a repressive regime that subjugated women and killed possibly tens of thousands during widespread protests in January. And yet, it seems people on both sides show little enthusiasm for the way he was killed. “Iranian civil society activists – women’s rights activists, trade unionists, people who have spent time in prison – have spoken out against foreign intervention,” Djafari-Marbini says. “They oppose both the regime and the idea that a foreign power should determine Iran’s future.” In her view, Iranian voices are too often forced into a binary. “Either you support the regime or you support war. In reality, many of us reject both.” Protests have taken place around the world since the attacks. Shiite Muslims in India-controlled Kashmir demonstrated against the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, while anti-war protesters gathered across the US, including outside the White House and in New York’s Times Square. “I understand why some people who have suffered terribly under the regime might have felt a moment of satisfaction at the news of Khamenei’s death,” Djafari-Marbini says. “But that feeling quickly disappears when it comes alongside news that children have been killed in bombing raids.” *** Fear for civilians Human rights groups have warned that Iran’s internet blackout could worsen the human toll of war, as state media broadcasts limited or gave contradictory information about airstrikes, and orders to flee specific locations from the attacking countries remain invisible to most civilians. “Another thing that’s often overlooked is how diverse Iranian society is,” Djafari-Marbini says. “There are major class differences and many ethnic groups.” The children killed in the Shajareh Tayyebeh school bombing in Minab, she notes, came from very poor backgrounds. “Their experiences are very different from many people in diaspora communities who now live in the west.” Military investigators now believe it is likely that US forces were responsible for the strike. The strike killed up to 168 people, and in this visual guide the Guardian pieced together the incident and its aftermath using verified footage and images. *** A diaspora divided The concerns of Djafari-Marbini (pictured above) are shared by some Iranians abroad – but the reaction across the diaspora has been far from uniform. Before the US and Israel launched their attacks, the Guardian’s community team asked Iranians how they felt about the possibility of US military intervention. Some respondents said repression in recent years had convinced them outside help was necessary. A 28-year-old student from Tehran now living in the Netherlands said many felt they had run out of options. “No one likes a foreign country invading their homeland,” they said. “However, many of us believe other countries must intervene and help us fight this regime.” Others said they feared the consequences of a widening conflict. In north London, the Guardian’s Amelia Hill spoke to Iranian people in the area sometimes known as “Little Tehran”. One resident told her the celebrations that followed the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei left her uneasy. “Even though he was a terrible man, it felt barbaric to celebrate his death,” she said. For many abroad, the most immediate worry has been family. Guardian Australia’s community affairs reporter Adeshola Ore spoke to Ehsan Hakimi, who grew up in Tehran and now lives in Sydney, who said he had been watching footage of rubble in the neighbourhood where he once lived. “This is just 200 metres away from my home,” he said. “It is so hard to see your country bombarded in this scale.” Others report a very different mood among relatives inside Iran. Saeid Zand, in Melbourne, said his mother in Shiraz called him shouting: “He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead. They have been waiting for this for decades.” *** Fears about what comes next For Djafari-Marbini, the greatest worry is what happens if the conflict deepens. With the war widening, and millions set to be displaced, she won’t be the only one. “If it leads to civil war,” she says, “the west has already signalled it doesn’t particularly care about the country’s long-term stability.” Reports suggest the US has encouraged Kurds in Iran’s north to join the US-Israeli war effort. “What makes me so fearful,” she says, “is that I cannot see how this leads to a stable, democratic outcome.” What else we’ve been reading Our regular Flashback feature is always fun, but this week’s photo of Nick Mohammed, with accompanying anecdote, is particularly sweet: “I look half delighted and half terrified to ride a pony. I probably got to feed a guinea pig at some point, too.” Toby Moses, head of newsletters It sounds like Charlotte Edwardes had a “testy” time with Louis Theroux in this interview ahead of his latest documentary, in which he digs into the manosphere. Charlie Lindlar, newsletters team Simon Tisdall makes a strong case that Keir Starmer should be worrying less about the UK’s traditional rivals, and start waking up to the fact that Donald Trump is a real and present danger. Toby Emma Beddington has a lovely column on being an “oblivious idiot” going into motherhood … and why she wouldn’t have had it any other way. “If I’d known more, might I have hesitated? Maybe,” she writes, “but I’m happy with the trade-off for everything my sons have given me”. Charlie The attack on Iran, and the backlash is affecting the whole of the Middle East – but even Cyprus, which was hit by a drone last week, and its traditional tourist hotspots like Ayia Napa are suffering as a result of Iran’s retaliation. Toby Sport Football | League One Port Vale stunned Sunderland in the FA Cup fifth round, winning 1-0 to secure a place in the quarter-final thanks to a winner from Ben Waine, pictured above. Cricket | India retained the T20 World Cup, defeating New Zealand by 96 runs thanks to a quickfire 89 by Sanju Samson and Jasprit Bumrah’s four for 15. Formula One | George Russell won the Australian GP for Mercedes, with his teammate Kimi Antonelli coming in second. The front pages “Fears for global economy grow as Iran threatens oil facilities” is the Guardian splash. The Telegraph says “Defiant Iran turns to Khamenei’s son”, the Times has “Ayatollah’s son chosen in challenge to Trump” and “US and Israel intensify strikes on Iran” is top story at the FT. “Have you learned nothing, Mr Blair?” questions the Mirror, while the Mail splashes on “Starmer’s humbling phone call to Trump”. The i Paper has “Easter holidays at risk as fallout from Middle East war spreads” and the Sun leads on “Huntley: the final letter”. Today in Focus Who really took one of history’s most famous pictures? The photo of a Vietnamese girl running away from a napalm strike is one of the most famous in history. But who actually took it? Film-maker Bao Nguyen and war photographer Gary Knight talk Annie Kelly through their investigation. Cartoon of the day | Artist Name The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad In this week’s A new start after 60 column, Paula Cocozza meets Craig Munns who, at the sprightly age of 62, finally unearthed the career for him: paleontology. His work involves fewer dinosaurs than you might expect, however. “I’m more of an invertebrate sort of guy,” he says – think worms, insects, lobsters and other spineless creatures. “I don’t understand this retirement stuff,” he says. “It doesn’t make any sense to me. Why would I do that?” 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

Belgium at risk of becoming ‘narco-state’, judge warns

International drug crime poses a danger to social stability in Belgium, a senior judge has said, after his colleague warned the country was evolving into “a narco-state” where mafia groups were forming “a parallel force” in society. Bart Willocx, the president of the Antwerp court of appeal, said Belgium was vulnerable to criminality from drug smuggling through the city’s vast port, one of the main entry points into Europe for cocaine smugglers. “The amount of money that is involved – to influence people, to corrupt people and to bribe – it is so big that it is really a danger for the stability of our society,” he told the Guardian in an interview at his court. Last October the Antwerp court took the unusual step of publishing an open letter from an anonymous investigative judge, who warned that Belgium was evolving into a narco-state. Extensive mafia structures had taken hold, the anonymous judge wrote, “becoming a parallel force that challenges not only the police, but the judiciary”. Willocx said Belgium was working to avoid becoming a narco-state: “But it is an evolution and it is a pressure – it is a threat.” Speaking alongside him, Guido Vermeiren, prosecutor general for the Antwerp and Limburg regions, said he agreed with the anonymous judge. “We are becoming a state with a lot of corruption, with a lot of threats,” he said. More than 70% of cocaine entering Europe came through Antwerp and Rotterdam in 2024, according to Europol, although the agency said last year that criminals were making greater use of smaller ports. Belgium’s problem stems from surging amounts of the drug coming from South America, mostly Colombia. According to the EU drugs agency, a record 121 tonnes of cocaine was seized in Antwerp in 2023, fuelling violent crime. Seizures fell to 44 tonnes in 2024, which the agency suggested could result from better chemical concealment of the drug and criminals shifting operations to smaller ports. Organised drug gangs were thought to be behind a plot to kidnap a Belgian interior minister in 2022 and a spate of shootings in Brussels in 2025. The senior officials detailed the pervasive criminality, which has spawned violence, shootings, kidnappings, torture and money laundering. “We really have a problem and we should make more investments in staff and in other resources to cope with it,” Willocx said. In one instance, criminals paid more than €250,000 to a port worker to move a single container, Vermeiren said. Port employees who hesitate or refuse to help the gangs face threats and bombings. “They received letters, photos of their children. There were attacks at their homes with homemade explosives,” Vermeiren said. Children as young as 13 were paid small sums to break into the port and steal cocaine, the prosecutor said, adding that the gangs “are not interested in what happens with those people”. Vermeiren also described how gangs groomed young people, helped them find jobs in the port and then put pressure on them to do their bidding. He also described an incident in March 2024 when police foiled an attempt by four men armed with automatic weapons to steal more than 1,500 tonnes of impounded cocaine from a customs warehouse. Police and hospital employees had been bribed or intimidated into providing confidential information about public servants, such as home addresses of judges, Willocx said. Belgian judges were increasingly having to live in safe houses. Vermeiren said he knew of multiple people who were under permanent protection. The anonymous judge spent four months in a safe house. Willocx said it had been very hard for his colleague: “From one day to another, you have to leave your house, you have to leave your family and you are going to live somewhere where nobody knows where you are.” Meanwhile judges at the Antwerp court of appeal are still waiting for the installation of scanners to check bags at the entrance. Willocx said they had been waiting two years for the security equipment promised by government. Court officials felt nervous whenever defendants or convicted criminals arrived at the court with large bags, he said. Both men agreed it was possible for judges to conjure up a procedural error to avoid a conviction. “It could happen,” Willocx said. “There is too much pressure on prosecutors or judges. What you see is that if we go on like this, a number of judges will prefer not to work in criminal affairs because of safety reasons, because of the enormous pressure.” Vermeiren thought it possible that the scale of the threat may already be having an unconscious influence on judges. The anonymous letter was published as part of the Five to Twelve campaign launched by Antwerp courts and prosecutors to warn that the Belgian justice system was counting down to doomsday. The movement began with street protests by judges last May and has since evolved into a broader campaign to raise public awareness about what is described as a crisis in the justice system that threatens the rule of law. The judges have proposed 100 reforms, ranging from safer courts, to tackling endemic prison overcrowding, and more attractive salaries and pensions for clerks and judges. Vermeiren said the government – a five-party coalition led by Flemish Conservative Bart De Wever – “recognise the problem, but then it stops”. Judges say that the Belgian courts system is at breaking point after decades of underfunding. Doubts about adequate resources remain, despite a pledge from the justice ministry last November to spend an extra €1bn by 2029. Willocx said underfunding courts and prosecutors left the system vulnerable to calls for further reductions because it was deemed to be not working well, which he said was “a vicious circle”. The scale of organised drug trafficking was exposed when investigators in Belgium, France and the Netherlands cracked the encrypted Sky ECC messaging network used by hundreds of criminals to organise narcotics smuggling, plan money drop offs and order murders. Nearly five years after the first arrests, on 9 March 2021, Belgian authorities announced last month that 1,206 people had so far been convicted, mostly for drug crime, violence, corruption, violation of professional secrecy and weapons possession. Nearly 5,000 potential suspects have been identified. Cracking the network gave prosecutors real-time insight into a criminal organisation stretching from Dubai to South America. “It was even worse than we thought,” Vermeiren said.

US orders government employees to leave Saudi Arabia – as it happened

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