Saudi Arabia has destroyed six drones over its eastern territory, its defence ministry said in a series of posts on X over the last few hours.
The population of monarch butterflies in Mexico increased 64% this winter, compared with the same period in 2025, offering a glimmer of hope for an insect considered at risk of extinction. The figures, released this week by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Mexico, showed that the area occupied by monarchs expanded to 2.93 hectares (7.24 acres) of forest from 1.79 hectares (4.42 acres) the previous winter, the largest coverage since 2018. “The monarch butterfly is the symbol of the trilateral relationship between Mexico, the United States and Canada,” Mexican environment minister Alicia Bárcena Ibarra said at a news conference on Tuesday. “Its conservation is a collective commitment we must maintain for the future.” Every fall, tens of millions of the butterflies travel nearly 3,000 miles from Canada, across the US and finally to the forests of western Mexico. There, the orange insects cover entire trees and flutter through the air in spectacular fashion. But a combination of habitat loss from deforestation, climate crisis and the use of herbicides has seen their numbers plummet over the last 30 years. In the US, the increasing use of herbicides like glyphosate and dicamba has seen the amount of milkweed, the only plant that monarch caterpillars can eat, drop considerably, with butterfly numbers also plummeting as a result. Because of this decline, the Biden administration had proposed listing the monarch as threatened under the Endangered Species Act at the end of 2024, but Trump officials have since delayed the decision indefinitely. In February, two environmental groups filed a lawsuit to compel the Trump administration to set a date for protections. “It would be unforgivable for [the monarch’s] epic migrations to collapse because of political cowardice on enacting range-wide protections for them,” said Tierra Curry, endangered species co-director at the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups behind the lawsuit in a statement. “Even the Trump administration has to think twice about letting these iconic butterflies collapse toward oblivion.” In Mexico, the spread of avocado farming in the state of Michoacán has seen vast swaths of forest lost to illegal logging, driven partly by organized crime groups who have infiltrated the highly profitable avocado trade. Compared with a peak of nearly 18.21 hectares (45 acres) in the winter of 1995, the area covered by monarchs in Mexico today is just a sliver, and well below the 6.07 hectares (15 acres) that scientists say are necessary for the species’ survival. The involvement of cartels in logging has at times become deadly: in 2020, Homero Gómez González, one of the best-known monarch butterfly conservators in Mexico, was found dead, with his family suspecting he was murdered by organized crime groups intent on clearing the monarch’s habitat. Still, conservation efforts have slowed logging in recent years: from a peak of nearly 500 hectares (1,235 acres) of forest in 2003-2004, just 2.55 hectares (6.3 acres) between February 2024 and February 2025 were affected. “One of the greatest achievements of this work is that illegal logging in the core zone of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve has been virtually eradicated since 2008,” María José Villanueva, WWF Mexico’s director, told reporters. “This means that the forests that represent the fundamental habitat for the monarch butterfly’s hibernation are being protected and conserved.”
Donald Trump has called Nato allies “cowards” for not wanting to “help open” the strait of Hormuz, with the US reportedly preparing to send three more warships and thousands more troops to the Middle East amid fears about the economic damage being caused by the war on Iran. The US is reportedly considering plans to occupy or blockade Iran’s strategically crucial Kharg Island to pressure Tehran to reopen the strait. The reports from US media organisations emerged as Iran’s military threatened it would “hunt down” officials and military commanders from the United States and Israel wherever it could find them in the world including at world tourist destinations. “We are watching your cowardly officials and commanders, pilots and wicked soldiers,” the Iranian armed forces spokesperson Abolfazl Shekarchi said, quoted by state TV. “From now on, based on the information we have on you, the promenades, resorts and tourist and entertainment centres in the world will not be safe.” The reports that Washington is considering plans to occupy or blockade Kharg Island come despite earlier suggestions by Trump that he was not leaning towards putting “boots on the ground”. Any attempt physically to occupy Kharg Island would probably entail high risks, exposing American forces there to Iranian drone and rocket fire in a geographically confined space. Just 8 sq miles (20 sq km) in size and situated 16 miles (25km) from the Iranian city of Bushehr at the northern end of the Gulf, the Kharg Island terminal exports about 90% of Iranian oil and is supplied by pipes from nearby offshore fields. Iran is heavily dependent on revenue from fossil fuels, and any attempt to seize such a key strategic asset would almost certainly be resisted. Writing on social media on Friday, Trump said: “Without the U.S.A., NATO IS A PAPER TIGER! They didn’t want to join the fight to stop a Nuclear Powered Iran. Now that fight is Militarily WON, with very little danger for them, they complain about the high oil prices they are forced to pay, but don’t want to help open the Strait of Hormuz, a simple military maneuver that is the single reason for the high oil prices. So easy for them to do, with so little risk. COWARDS, and we will REMEMBER!” The Pentagon has already deployed the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, a rapid-response force of about 2,200 marines, to the Middle East. Military officials have not said what missions the marines being sent to the Middle East would be assigned to carry out. Officials said that the USS Boxer, with the Marine Expeditionary Unit onboard, were also leaving the US about three weeks ahead of schedule. It is not clear what their mission is. The Trump administration and its Israeli allies have given contradictory briefings about their intentions in the war. Descriptions of plans appear to change on an almost daily basis, reflected in statements by administration officials grappling with a war whose consequences have spiralled beyond their control. A White House official said: “As President Trump said, he has no plans to send troops anywhere – but he wisely does not broadcast his military strategy to the media, and he retains all options as commander-in-chief. The United States military can take out Kharg Island at any time.” The war showed no signs of de-escalating on Friday, with an Iranian drone attack hitting a Kuwait refinery and the US and Israel striking 16 Iranian cargo vessels in port towns on the Gulf. “Following the American-Zionist air attack, at least 16 cargo vessels belonging to citizens of the towns of Bandar Lengeh and Bandar Kong were completely burned in the fire,” a local official from the southern Hormozgan province said, quoted by the Tasnim news agency. Heavy explosions also shook Dubai as air defences intercepted incoming rockets, as people were observing Eid al-Fitr, the end of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. Separately, Israel attacked Syrian government positions, only days after US officials had anonymously suggested using the same Syrian forces to disarm Hezbollah in eastern Lebanon. As violence continues across the region, from Tel Aviv and Haifa to the Caspian Sea, oil and gas prices are soaring and there are warnings of a spreading global economic shock that has been exacerbated by the increasingly incoherent messaging from Washington. As a fourth week of war approached, Kuwait said two waves of Iranian drone strikes hit its Mina al-Ahmadi oil refinery, one of three oil refineries in the tiny, oil-rich country on the Gulf. The refinery, which can process about 730,000 barrels of oil a day, was already damaged on Thursday in another Iranian attack. Iran stepped up its attacks on energy sites in Gulf Arab states after Israel bombed Iran’s massive South Pars offshore natural gas field in the Gulf on Wednesday. Explosions could be heard in Jerusalem after the Israeli army warned of incoming Iranian missiles. In a rare statement, Iran’s new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who was reportedly wounded in the initial US-Israeli strikes, said Tehran’s enemies needed to have their “security” taken away. Khamenei has not been seen since he succeeded his father, Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the first day of the war. His remarks were part of a statement issued on his behalf and sent to the president, Masoud Pezeshkian, after Israel killed the intelligence minister, Esmail Khatib, this week. The renewed attacks followed an intense day during which Iran hit energy infrastructure around the region and launched more than a dozen missile salvoes at Israel after the attack on South Pars. South Pars, the Iranian part of the world’s largest gasfield, is located offshore in the Gulf and owned jointly with Qatar. With about 80% of power generated in Iran coming from natural gas, the attack posed a direct threat to the country’s electricity supplies. Late on Thursday, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the country would hold off on any further attacks on the gasfield at the request of Trump after the Iranian response sent oil prices soaring. Netanyahu claimed Iran’s capability to produce ballistic missiles had been taken out, but the paramilitary Revolutionary Guards said in comments released on Friday that they were still in production. “We are producing missiles even during war conditions, which is amazing, and there is no particular problem in stockpiling,” a spokesperson, Gen Ali Mohammad Naini – who was killed in an airstrike on Friday – was quoted as saying in a state-run newspaper. “These people expect the war to continue until the enemy is completely exhausted,” Naini said. “This war must end when the shadow of war is lifted from the country.”
A French member of Islamic State has been convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity for atrocities committed against Yazidis in a historic judgment that highlighted the atrocities committed by jihadists. The Paris criminal court found Sabri Essid, who was tried in his absence, directly participated in an organised system of killing, raping and enslaving members of the Iraqi ethnic and religious minority who are descended from some of the region’s most ancient roots. The case was based on harrowing evidence from two Yazidi women who were “owned” by the Toulouse-born terrorist in the IS Iraqi-Syrian declared caliphate between 2014 and 2016. One victim told the court an IS member had bought her in exchange for a car and a gun before selling her to Essid, who made her his sexual slave, raping her every day, often in front of her two-year-old daughter. Her ordeal lasted more than two years. “I would like Yazidi voices to be heard, not only in France, but throughout the world,” the woman told the court. A number of women who had managed to escape IS identified Essid as their “owner”, stating he had bought them for between $40 (£30) and $100. Judge Marc Sommerer read chilling extracts from transcripts of conversations from a Telegram group headed “market for caliphate soldiers”. It included posts from IS members selling young children to be sexual slaves. The youngest girls fetched up to $14,000 and were considered by IS to have reached sexual maturity at the age of nine. Bahzad Farhan, the founder of Kinyat, an NGO documenting the Yazidi genocide, obtained the transcripts by infiltrating online discussion groups. “All girls over 10 and boys over 12 were taken from their mothers. The girls became sexual objects; the boys fighters,” he said. A document listing women and girls between the age of one and 50, and fixing a “market price”, was shown to the court. The Yazidi genocide started with an IS massacre in the Sinjar mountains in August 2014 that left thousands dead. The Islamist group enslaved an estimated 6,000 Yazidis, of whom 2,000 are still missing. An investigator from France’s general directorate of internal security described how IS had a plan to wipe out the religious minority, involving the killing or forced conversion of men and boys and the enslaving of women, girls and younger children. Essid is the stepbrother of Mohamed Merah, the French terrorist who killed three soldiers and four Jewish people, including three children, in Toulouse in 2012 before being killed in a shootout with police. Essid travelled to Syria’s northern border with Iraq in 2014 and was later joined by his wife and children. He was presumed killed in 2018, but his wife believes he may still be alive. He gained notoriety after appearing in a video next to a 12-year-old boy who he encouraged to kill a hostage by shooting him in the head. Clémence Bectarte, representing three Yazidi women and eight children, none of whom were named, said the trial allowed them “to recount the hell they endured at the hands of Isis”. “Fighting for justice means fighting against being forgotten,” Bectarte said. “This verdict was achieved through the courage and determination of the Yazidi survivors who attach great value to this first conviction of a French Isis member for genocide and crimes against humanity.” In a landmark hearing in Germany in November 2021, Taha al-Jumailly, an Iraqi member of Isis, was sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide and crimes against humanity for leaving a five-year-old Yazidi girl and her mother held as slaves to die of thirst.
… and on that note, it’s a wrap for today! Nato has moved its personnel from Iraq after a series of attacks from Iran and amid “worsening” security situation in the region, the alliance said (15:28, 16:08, 16:53). This comes as US president Donald Trump doubled down on its unrelated criticism of the alliance, calling allies “cowards” for not joining his war against Iran (15:20). Separately, Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, reacted to the crisis provoked by the Iran war by unveiling a €5bn, 80-point package of measures to help Spaniards weather the economic uncertainty (13:24, 13:27). Speaking after an emergency cabinet meeting, Sánchez also reiterated his outspoken opposition to the “illegal” conflict (13:39). And earlier, The French navy has boarded an oil tanker in the western Mediterranean, which was flying a Mozambican flag and had departed from Russia (12:36, 13:03). France’s president Emmanuel Macron said the vessel belonged to the Russian shadow fleet and stressed that “the war in Iran will not divert France from its support for Ukraine” (12:42). If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com. I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.
The boom reverberated so loudly over Dubai marina that the windows of the surrounding skyscrapers and exclusive hotels gave a loud, disconcerting rattle. “That sounded close, do you think a missile has hit something?” said a young man to his friend as they sipped coffees. Moments earlier, all mobile phones in the vicinity had sounded off with a shrill alarm, the new normal for those living in the Gulf, warning of missile and drone strikes in the area. Customers barely looked up. Another alert came moments later. The United Arab Emirates air defence systems and fighter jets had successfully intercepted “ballistic missiles … drones and loitering munitions” and all was safe in Dubai – for now. Footage from the previous night captured these systems in action, shooting down a drone in a fiery ball over Dubai’s convention centre, debris raining down like fireworks. For 20 days, since the US and Israel began their bombing of Iran, the Gulf states have faced a relentless barrage of thousands of Iranian drones and missiles fired at their airports, hotels, ports, military bases, financial districts, datacentres and apartment blocks. Though it has represented an unfathomable attack on their sovereignty, security and economy – in Dubai, shattering an economically crucial illusion of safety and glamour – Gulf countries have so far only responded defensively, spending billions on interceptors that have managed to shoot down about 90% of Iran’s ballistics. The overarching priority among the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – the political grouping of the Gulf countries – has been to avoid getting dragged into a war that is not theirs and they had tried furiously to stop. But the past few days have been marked by growing fear that the Middle East war is entering a new, even more dangerous frontier; one that poses an existential threat to the Gulf countries – and pressure is mounting for them to retaliate. After Israel attacked Iran’s South Pars gasfield, the first targeted attacks on its fossil fuel production since the war began, the Iranian regime vowed to show “zero restraint” in hitting back at energy infrastructure in the Gulf, its closest and easiest target. Iran has been true to their word. In Qatar, almost a fifth of its liquefied natural gas export capacity was knocked out in a strike on its Ras Laffan gas complex. Authorities in Abu Dhabi in the UAE were forced to shut down operations at its Habshan gas facility and Bab field, calling the attacks a “dangerous escalation”. Kuwait’s state oil firm, KPC, said its Mina al-Ahmadi refinery was hit by multiple drone attacks early on Friday, and Saudi Arabia said two of its oil refineries were targeted. Meanwhile, Iran has continued to blockade the strait of Hormuz, through which most of the oil and gas produced in the Gulf is exported to the rest of the world. “From the GCC perspective, this war has exposed a deeply troubling reality: all three parties involved are becoming increasingly irrational and detached from reality, each pursuing agendas that threaten to drag the region and the world into a very dark place,” said Ali Bakir, assistant professor of international affairs, security, and defence at Qatar University. Though small, the petrostates of the Gulf are largely very rich and armed up to the hilt with advanced weapons and aircraft bought from the US. As a collective of six states, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, the GCC countries collectively have about 2,000 F-15 and F-18 military aircraft, while other western powers are queueing up to sell them more weapons. However, only Saudi Arabia, and to a lesser extent the UAE, have experience in large-scale air warfare. Bakir said Iran was “playing with fire” as it escalated its attacks on energy infrastructure in the Gulf. “The pressure will mount for the GCC states to switch from a defensive to an offensive posture – especially as interceptor stocks run low,” he said. Since Donald Trump began bombing Iran, Washington has been pressuring the GCC states to join “his side”. Yet, as Bakir and others emphasised, the long-term consequences of military intervention could still prove too costly for the Gulf states to justify, and risked becoming a dangerous geopolitical trap. Not only would it legitimise a war the GCC had vehemently opposed, say analysts, but mistrust of Trump now runs deep among the Gulf leadership and there is a palpable fear that GCC striking back against Iran would be used by the US as a foil to withdraw and declare victory. “The GCC would be left with a bloody, open-ended war with Iran that would scar generations,” said Bakir. Saudi Arabia has been among the most bullish in its response to Iran. Speaking on Thursday, the foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, said Saudi Arabia “reserved the right to take military actions if deemed necessary”. Yet the comments were perceived by analysts more as an effort by the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, still sore after attacks by the Houthis in Yemen, to project strength domestically. Few believe that Saudi Arabia would act alone in joining the war due to the risks to itself and of blowing the conflict open even wider. Meanwhile, a GCC agreement on any collective intervention appears elusive. Gulf states also remain suspicious that the US is acting as a proxy for Israel, and its perceived attempts to gain hegemony over the Middle East. Writing in the Economist this week, the Omani minister Badr Albusaidi said the US had “lost control of its foreign policy”. One Gulf leader privately described Trump as Benjamin Netanyahu’s “poodle”. “I doubt very much whether any Arab Gulf state would ever join the American-Israeli war because, as they have all said repeatedly: this is not our war,” said Fawaz Gerges, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics. “They believe it’s not even America’s war.” Nonetheless, as Gerges emphasised, the Gulf found itself “in an impossible situation, between a rock and a very hard place”, balancing the need to defend their sovereignty while also protecting their regional security in the future. The reality now facing Gulf leaders is that Iran’s regime remains entrenched, and the US and Israel’s assassination of the supreme leader, Ali Hosseini Khamenei, the head of the supreme national security council, Ali Larijani, and intelligence minister Esmail Khatib, as well as dozens of other defence and security officials, have so far all failed to bring about a surrender. “Iran has crossed every red line,” he said. “But Arab Gulf states have to think about the future and what a postwar Iran might look like. An injured, enraged and a bleeding Iran could really threaten Gulf security and economic interest for the foreseeable future. A military offensive only risks antagonising them further.” He also cast doubt on the likelihood of the Gulf states joining Trump’s call for warships to secure the strait of Hormuz, which geographically favours Iran and is notoriously hard to secure. “I doubt it very much, because they don’t have the naval resources, and sending navies into the strait of Hormuz is a trap for getting engaged in warfare,” said Gerges. But as the hopes for an imminent diplomatic solution have faded, there has also been a hardening of opinion among Gulf leaders and thinkers on Iran, and a growing push for the US to continue with a total decimation of Iran’s military capabilities. “The GCC countries understand that this regime is now extremely dangerous, even unhinged – we don’t even know who is really running the country,” said Muhanad Seloom, assistant professor of international politics and security at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, and a former Qatari diplomat. “The US decapitating the Iranian regime for good is definitely the only option we have now. Otherwise, any time Iran is under pressure, they know they can hit the Gulf, they know they can blockade the strait of Hormuz, and that will be effective. That’s an existential threat for the GCC.” Seloom was echoed by Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, associate professor of political science at the United Arab Emirates University. “America wanted this,” he said. “So let them finish it.”
In one telling of the story, the golden fields of a proud farming nation are under attack. Besieged by an industrial sprawl of solar panels, they are being smothered at the behest of an urban elite. That narrative has failed to thrive in conservative heartlands such as Texas and Hungary, which have embraced solar power while lambasting green rules. But it is taking root in Denmark, the most climate-ambitious nation on Earth. “We say yes to fields of wheat,” said Inger Støjberg, the leader of the rightwing populist Denmark Democrats in a speech in 2024. “And we say no to fields of iron!” Jernmarker, or iron fields, was chosen as the Danish word of the year in December after the solar backlash swayed municipal elections and prompted some councils to pull projects. The spectre of barren metal landscapes has since returned to the campaign trail as Danes prepare to vote in national elections on Tuesday. “We need more common sense in the green transition,” Støjberg said in the first televised debate between party leaders last month. Pockets of resistance to clean energy have hardened across Europe as far-right parties focus on climate action as their second target after migrants. Until now, solar panels had escaped the wrath of powerful campaigns that have stymied the rollout of wind turbines, heat pumps, electric cars and plant-based meat. But in Denmark, which generates 90% of its electricity from renewables and aims to cut planet-heating pollution faster than any other wealthy country, the spread of solar power has alarmed some regions in which construction is concentrated. Solar tripled from 4% of Danish power production in 2021 to 13% in 2025. And a handful of villages have found themselves surrounded by silicon. Opponents of solar farms say the photovoltaic panels are ugly, destroy nature and deflate property prices in neglected hinterlands. As drone shots of encircled farmhouses have become a symbol of urban overreach, the campaign has led even some established parties to soften their support of solar. The backlash had been brewing locally, but Lukas Slothuus, a climate politics researcher at the University of Sussex who grew up in a rural town near the Danish-German border, said the Denmark Democrats had provided a “clear vector to articulate that discontent politically” across the nation. “The far right have realised – and decided – that climate is a potent electoral battleground,” he said. “It’s just about finding one issue to centre it around.” The resistance has led to cancelled projects. The municipality of Køge voted in January to cancel a renewable energy park in Vallø, and in Viborg, the council voted last month to stop a planned solar farm in Iglsø while approving only the wind and biogas components of another project in Vinge. In Samsø, the first island in the world powered entirely by renewables, councillors from across the political spectrum voted last year to reject a solar park. In Ringkøbing-Skjern, the country’s solar heartland, the appetite for new projects has dried up. Mads Fuglede, a Denmark Democrats politician who was elected to its council in November, said: “Solar panels have become a symbol of the political elite that wants a green transition and doesn’t care about what happens to the countryside. Because that’s not where they live or where their voters live.” Unlike some of their political counterparts across Europe, who deny climate science and oppose cutting pollution, the Denmark Democrats say they support the shift to a clean economy. Fuglede said the party was not against solar as a technology. “You can get your solar panels, but put them up where you live in the cities. There’s no need to cover farmland.” Denmark has long enjoyed public support for its shift to a clean economy and ambitious green rules such as the world’s first tax on farm pollution. A poll in November found 77% of people whose vote was influenced by green energy projects were in favour of them. But among the two biggest rightwing-populist parties, whose voter base is concentrated in rural regions, more than 80% were opposed. Some argue that the political noise surrounding solar power does not match the scale of the issue. Solar panels cover the equivalent of only 0.2% of Danish farmland, according to the Danish Solar Association, and about one-third of solar capacity is installed on rooftops. Some municipalities have responded to the backlash by advancing projects with less fanfare. Camilla Holbech, the vice-president of renewable energy at Green Power Denmark, said: “Municipal politicians that are in favour have been green hushing: not being too vocal about it, they’ve just gone out and done it.” The resistance has raised wider questions about how clean energy developers can win the support of local communities as renewables boom. Henrik Stiesdal, an inventor who built one of Denmark’s first wind turbines in the 1970s and went on to build its first offshore windfarm in 1991, said: “The thing that has changed since the first decades is Facebook. Even though the greater population feels things are good, you can get enough local people and enough not-local-but-angry people to provide opinions.” Ultimately, the bigger threat to solar may be its own success. Projects in Denmark have few sunny days a year in which they can make money, and as more solar panels have been laid, the number of days with negative electricity prices has soared, leading to a cannibalisation of profits. The slow electrification rate and congestion in the electricity grid has further frustrated developers. Torsten Hasforth, the chief economist at Concito, a Danish climate thinktank, said: “Over the next 10 years, the official expectation is a very large rise in the amount of solar produced. But that kind of clashes with the reality on the ground – they can’t make money.” He said some developers had done a poor job of engaging local communities but that the backlash was “something that can be handled”. “Opponents of solar cells are always happy to show drone images,” he said. “But no one watches the world through a drone. We’re a flat country. It’s fairly easy to hide them.”
When HMS Anson – a British nuclear submarine – surfaced just off the coast of Perth last month, it was hailed as vindication of the Aukus triumvirate: “a historic new phase” in Australia’s path towards commanding its own nuclear submarines. The submarine’s arrival, it was argued, was demonstration of the political will behind the ambitious Aukus deal: manifestation of Donald Trump’s exhortation the agreement was “full steam ahead”. But the Anson’s arrival brought with it no small amount of consternation also. Anson is now the only attack submarine in the British fleet that can be put to sea, of a supposed complement of six. The others are all in maintenance, being refitted or have been stripped for parts to keep other subs afloat. “Perhaps more local concerns should be the priority?”, the news site Navy Lookout queried, unconvinced by foreign adventurism. And so it came to pass. When war suddenly broke out in the Middle East and the Anson abruptly ended its engagement in Australia early – called back to a potential deployment in the strait of Hormuz – there was no fanfare, none of the triumphalism. Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email It was, perhaps, a neat metaphor for the Aukus agreement itself: political intent aplenty, but capacity lacking. The spirit is willing, but the flesh … A ‘demanding’ timeline In the gallons of newsprint spilled over the Aukus deal, forensic attention has been paid to the capacity of the US to spare three Virginia class submarines for Australia from the early 2030s. Given sclerotic – and thus-far stubbornly unshiftable – rates of shipbuilding in the US despite billions in Australian taxpayers’ assistance, the Congressional Research Office has openly considered that instead of the US selling any Virginia-class submarines to Australia, it would instead rotate its own US-commanded vessels through Australian ports. But Australia’s use of the American submarine is only ever intended as a transitory capability. Far more than the US, Australia must depend on the UK. For its own, sustained nuclear submarine capability, Australia will rely on Britain’s capacity to design and build the first of an entirely new class of nuclear submarine: the SSN Aukus. Some have argued the UK’s nuclear submarine industry is beyond salvation. “The UK is no longer capable of managing a nuclear submarine program,” rear admiral Philip Mathias, a former director of nuclear policy at the Ministry of Defence, said last year, blaming “gross mismanagement” and a “catastrophic failure of succession and leadership planning”. Even the booster-ish House of Commons inquiry into Aukus heard it was “a source of national shame the way we’ve treated the nuclear submarine building enterprise in this country”. Lord Case, formerly the head of Britain’s civil service, told the defence committee: “somehow, we became the world’s most embarrassed nuclear nation”. The published “optimal pathway” forecasts the first Aukus class submarine being built by the UK for the Royal Navy in the “late 2030s”. The design of that vessel will form the basis for Australia’s own Aukus submarines, to be built in Adelaide. Australia’s first Aukus submarine is due in the water in the “early 2040s”. It is, by even the most optimistic accounts, a “demanding” timeline. And the UK has more pressing priorities. It must first complete the seventh and final boat in the Astute class (Britain’s nuclear attack submarine, of which the Anson is the most recent into active service). But the UK also has, in construction, four Dreadnought class nuclear ballistic submarines, the basis of the UK’s nuclear deterrent. All of these are being built by BAE Systems Submarines at Barrow-in-Furness, in Cumbria. Put frankly, one senior UK defence source told the Guardian on condition of anonymity, while upholding Aukus is politically important to the UK, other boats must, and will, take precedence. Back of the queue That leaves Australia in an invidious position. If the US is unable (by its own legislation) to provide Virginia-class submarines, and the UK’s timeline to build the Aukus class falters, those countries still have nuclear submarine fleets. Australia will be left with nothing (its ageing diesel-electric Collins class submarines already having been extended far beyond their slated working life). Australia has the most at stake in Aukus, but the least control over how it unfolds. For while Australian tax dollars –A$1.6bn of a committed A$4.7bn to the US and A$452m of A$4.6bn to the UK – flood into foreign shipbuilding industries, Australia finds itself intractably at the back of the queue. Decades of neglect of the UK’s ship and submarine-building industries cannot be undone by prime ministerial paeans to the “crucible of British marine engineering … the historic vast maternity ward of these steel leviathans”. The UK government insists it can build Aukus submarines to a drumbeat of one submarine every 18 months. By comparison, the smaller Astute class submarines have been launched at a rate, on average, of one every three or four years. HMS Agamemnon, the penultimate Astute class boat, entered service last September: it took more than 12 years to build, the longest construction time of any British submarine ever. Okopi Ajonye, co-director of the Nuclear Information Service, argues “a lot of the UK industry’s problems are rooted in the fact that it’s highly consolidated: there’s only one site that makes all the submarines.” “The Dreadnought fleet needs to be built first, but the Dreadnought program has experienced considerable delays, and the program’s end date was not disclosed in the latest annual report on the UK’s government’s Major Projects Portfolio.” BAE Systems, the contractor building all three classes of submarine, faces immense logistical challenges in expanding its shipyard facilities, training thousands for a vastly expanded workforce, and streamlining construction processes that have remained stubbornly resistant to productivity uplifts, despite massive injections of new money (much of it Australian). Ajonye cites the UK government’s own reports for specific examples of looming, intractable delays. For four years in a row, the UK’s National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority has rated the Rolls-Royce-led project to build nuclear reactor cores for Britain’s new submarines as “unachievable”, citing in its most recent report the vagaries of “ongoing challenges”. Earlier reports flagged “major issues with project definition, schedule, budget, quality … which at this stage do not appear to be manageable or resolvable”. The reactor core is essential: without it, there is no nuclear submarine. Says Ajonye: “If I were an Australian politician, or in defence, I would have very low confidence in the timely delivery of the Aukus submarine.” Ajonye argues too that the UK experience carries lessons for Australia, in the submarines’ nuclear legacy. Despite having nuclear submarines since 1963, the UK still has no permanent storage for the high-level nuclear waste its submarines leave behind, toxic waste that will remain hazardous to humans and the environment for millennia. The Australian government promised to outline a process for identifying a waste site “within 12 months” more than three years ago. There is still no site, nor any process. The UK has decommissioned 23 nuclear submarines, but never dismantled a single one. Ten of Britain’s retired subs remain nuclear-fuelled, most sitting in water in docks around Britain. The UK government has committed £200m over 10 years to “revitalise” Barrow and its industrial base. Lord Case, formerly Boris Johnson’s head of the civil service, now leads “Team Barrow”, committed, he told a parliamentary committee, to regenerating the city whose “fortunes have waxed and waned” alongside those of the shipyard. Booster for Barrow though he is, Case concedes the Aukus timeframe is “a very demanding target”. “That will be a real challenge to deliver. The thing that we are under pressure to do is deliver housing, schools and hospitals to make sure that the workforce is there to produce the boats on time. We are behind where we need to be.” Dr Marion Messmer is director of the International Security Programme at Chatham House. She argues the UK’s investments are starting to bear fruit, with the Dreadnoughts meeting construction milestones, and capacity expanding at Barrow-in-Furness. And she argues that a shifting geostrategic landscape is also compelling all three Aukus partners to uphold the deal. “One of the elements in favour of Aukus continuing at pace, particularly in the UK, is that these kinds of defence capability investment have received so much more attention since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So much public and private money is flowing into these industrial spaces. I would be the first person to say ‘there’s a big challenge here’; but as far as we can see at this point, I am encouraged that things are going ahead according to schedule.” Messmer says the UK has underinvested in heavy industry and military production capability, “essentially since the end of the cold war”, a neglect that will take years to turn around. “It’s clearly not going to happen overnight that the UK is back at full capacity in terms of that kind of shipbuilding, but I am more confident now than in, say, 2021.” The UK, Messmer tells the Guardian, can find itself beholden to a “pessimism and defeatism” when it comes to its defence capabilities. She argues that some of the criticism is unjustified. “I would be incredibly surprised if, by the time the first Aukus submarines are in service, we would see that everything went exactly to plan and exactly to cost. When was the last time that actually happened? “But at this point in time, there’s nothing to suggest to me that we’re actually going to see anything beyond the usual delays and cost slips that you almost have to expect on a project of this size.” Questions to be asked Marcus Hellyer, head of research at Strategic Analysis Australia, describes himself as “Aukus agnostic”. “I don’t jump in and say ‘it’s all doomed’ or ‘it’s the greatest policy idea ever’, but there are certainly questions to be asked about the process that got us here, and how it is going.” Hellyer says Aukus was announced to the Australian people without any public debate or a proper assessment of alternative defence strategies, such as hypersonic missiles. And, he argues, while focus has been on the US capacity to deliver surplus Virginia-class submarines, Australia will ultimately have to rely far more heavily on a UK naval nuclear enterprise that has been “chronically underfunded”. “Now the UK government would say ‘well, where we’re addressing that, we’re funding that’, but there is a massive backlog in both investment required and work to be done.” Also, Hellyer says, it is hard to pin down exactly how far progressed the design for the new Aukus submarine is. “It’s really hard to get any kind of reliable information out of any of the players about the maturity of the assets in this program. We keep being told by admirals that the Aukus design is ‘mature’. Well, define ‘mature’.” “We’re not in the detailed design phase, so we’re still nowhere near starting construction … when are we actually going to start building this thing?” There is, too, the adversary argument. Since Aukus was announced in 2021, zero additional Aukus-nation submarines have been built beyond those already in the pipeline before the agreement was revealed. The US has built seven of its own nuclear submarines, the UK has launched one for its navy. In that time, China, the superpower Aukus is designed to counter, has launched 10 nuclear submarines. Historically, great naval powers have always had significant civilian industries upon which they can draw. China is now the world’s largest civilian ship builder. The US now accounts for just 0.1% of global shipbuilding. “And their shipyards are successful not because they’ve got gazillions of lowly paid unskilled people banging away with hand tools,” Hellyer says, “they have significant technology and they are absolutely driven by efficiency, by delivering on time and on budget. “That’s why the Chinese will continue to outcompete us in terms of building ships and increasingly submarines … and now they’ve made that policy switch: they’re now bringing that to their undersea domain.”