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Iran attacks US allies in Middle East as renewed conflict enters second week

Iran launched a wave of attacks against US allies in the Middle East, as the renewal of US strikes on Iran entered a second week and fighting escalated over the strait of Hormuz. Kuwait has accused Iran of targeting civilian sites and vital infrastructure in the country, such as a power and water desalination plant. Kuwait, which is extremely arid, relies on desalinated water for about 90% of its drinking water. The country was forced to briefly close its airspace as it intercepted Iranian missiles and drones, and said several Kuwaiti firefighters and a worker were injured while battling blazes sparked by Iranian strikes. Bahrain also activated its air sirens on Saturday, warning residents to shelter after it detected possible incoming drones or missiles, while Jordan’s state-run Petra news agency said that the kingdom’s air defence systems had downed Iranian missiles. Two US military personnel were killed in Jordan on Friday defending an Iranian attack, US Central ⁠Command said in a statement on Saturday. The Iranian attacks on US allies in the region came in response to US attacks on civilian infrastructure including bridges and power facilities. Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, on Saturday warned of “unforgettable lessons” if the US continues attacks. The statement attributed to Khamenei, still unseen since the war began, was read out on state television. The secretary-general of the Gulf Cooperation Council condemned Iran’s attacks on Kuwait, saying strikes on civilian infrastructure amounted to “war crimes”. “Iran’s actions constitute a highly dangerous escalation, a grave violation of international law and the United Nations (UN) Charter, as well as war crimes requiring international accountability and prosecution, given the deliberate targeting of infrastructure and civilian facilities,” Jasem Mohamed al-Budaiwi said in a statement. Reports also indicate Iran targeted an oil facility in Kuwait, resulting in a number of injuries and “significant material losses”, the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation told reporters. “The repeated targeting of these vital facilities reveals a systematic hostile approach targeting civilian sites and vital infrastructure that endangers the lives and safety of civilians,” the foreign ministry of Kuwait said. Late on Friday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said two oil tankers directed by “deceptive American intelligence agencies” had exploded after hitting mines in the strait of Hormuz. The US military said that claim was false. The IRGC also said on state television they had “stopped” four ships trying to transit the critical waterway, and had destroyed at least two US fighter aircraft and three other aircraft during a missile and drone attack early on Saturday on a US base in Azraq, Jordan. A US military support centre at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait was hit and a US radar facility at Ali Al Salem airbase in the country was destroyed, the IRGC said. The IRGC also targeted a site in Bahrain where US combat aircraft were gathered at Sheikh Isa airbase and an intelligence datacentre, Iranian state media reported. US Central Command said that its strikes, which began at 7pm last night for the seventh consecutive night, were designed to “continue degrading Iranian military capabilities”. The US managed to hit Iranian “surveillance sites, military logistics infrastructure, underground weapons storage, and maritime capabilities” overnight, US military said on Saturday morning. Iranian media reported explosions heard or strikes carried out in the cities of Sirik, Ahvaz and Yazd. US strikes have killed 50 people and wounded more than 500 since hostilities resumed, according to Iran’s health ministry. The country acknowledged there had been successful US “attacks on power infrastructure” for the first time on Friday when the Iranian energy ministry issued a call for people to use less power in southern provinces “experiencing extreme heat”. The ministry did not specify what was hit. Maj Gen Mohsen Rezaee, a senior military adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, said Tehran will resume “full-scale offensive operations” if US strikes against it continue for another two or three days. “Iran will no longer limit itself to retaliatory, like-for-like responses … and no political border will be safe,” Rezaei said, according to the Iranian news agency IRIB.

Germany’s CDU party chair resigns after using surrogacy to become parent

A senior German politician and ally of the chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has resigned as parliamentary group leader of the Christian Democrat (CDU) party after he and his husband used a surrogate mother to become parents, a practice he has criticised in the past and his party is vehemently opposed to. Surrogacy is banned in Germany, a policy Jens Spahn refused to relax when he was health minister in 2020, so he and his husband, Daniel Funke, used a surrogate mother in the US. After writing, in 2015, that “as a gay man and a Christian I find it personally very hard to warm to the idea of a rented womb”, Spahn welcomed the child on Wednesday, telling the German newspaper Bild: “Georg is our greatest joy. This feeling is almost impossible to put into words.” The announcement immediately attracted criticism from people inside and outside the Christian Democrat party, with many levelling charges of hypocrisy at Spahn. “Politicians who set standards for others must be measured by them too,” Marion Rosin, a Christian Democrat in Thuringia and part of the Women’s Union, told the BBC. “If that credibility is gone, resignation is a matter of consequence.” Under the 1990 Embryo Protection Act, surrogacy in Germany is punishable with three years’ imprisonment or a fine, so many German couples opt for surrogacy pregnancies abroad. In February, when the surrogate mother of Spahn’s child was around four months pregnant, the Christian Democrats (CDU) voted to maintain the ban at a party conference. Spahn, 46, a prominent voice on the CDU’s rightwing flank who has been pushing for a more hardline stance on immigration, initially sought to defend himself in interviews with the media. He told Bild he had “wrestled with myself for a long time, including on the issue of surrogacy” before the couple decided to go ahead. But this failed to pacify his critics, including prominent members of his own party. “Jens Spahn is no longer tenable as chair of the parliamentary group and must resign,” Daniel Peters, the leader of the CDU in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, told the Bild newspaper on Friday. He added it was “completely unacceptable” for Spahn to vote one way as a senior CDU politician and then “act quite differently as a private individual”. Janosch Dahmen, a member of the Green party, also said the issue was about double standards and Spahn’s political credibility, not about his child. “Anyone who advocates for rules politically should be able to explain clearly why those rules apparently do not apply to them personally,” Dahmen said. As the calls for Spahn’s resignation mounted, Merz declined to comment on Spahn’s future in the party, telling reporters on Friday the issue would be discussed at the party’s next executive meeting. That day, Spahn told Bild in an interview: “One thing is clear to me: For me, and this becomes clearer to me every hour, there is nothing more important than my family.” On Saturday, Spahn resigned from his position in the party. “In recent days, I have come to realise that my personal happiness in starting a family with my husband and becoming a father is incompatible with my political office,” Spahn said. In a post on X, Merz described Spahn’s decision to resign as “right and inevitable. Credibility is the most valuable asset in politics,” he wrote.

Dismissal of Ukraine’s defence minister highlights wider issues for Zelenskyy

Volodomyr Zelenskyy’s abrupt dismissal of Ukraine’s youthful and innovative defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, at precisely the moment Kyiv appeared to be gaining advantages in several spheres of its war with Russia has exposed, not for the first time, a troubling flaw in the president’s leadership. The move, which has startled senior European officials and caused consternation, and demonstrations, in Ukraine, is all the more shocking given Fedorov’s role in pushing a clear strategy to prosecute the war, leveraging Ukraine’s rapidly developing technological advances in drone and missile technology. Aged 35 and appointed in January, Fedorov was feted by admirers for beginning to grasp several issues that have plagued Ukraine’s armed forces, streamlining military procurement and challenging systems prone to corruption, introducing competitive tendering, and seeking solutions to the army’s persistent recruitment and training crisis. Fedorov was also seen as one of the key drivers of Ukraine’s highly effective drone programme, beginning during his time as minister of digital transformation. A former marketing executive close to Zelenskyy, who had never served in the army, he grated with senior officers thanks to his casual style, freewheeling speeches and insistence on a data-driven approach to reforming Kyiv’s war efforts. “We will take all the data and see what works,” he said after his appointment. “Everything that works well will proceed.” That included a killing-for-points scheme designed to reward the most effective army units, which some in the military dismissed. In addition, Fedorov was credited with persuading Elon Musk to turn off unauthorised Russian Starlink access on the battlefield earlier this year, described by frontline troops as a significant advantage. Born in the year of Ukraine’s independence from Moscow, Fedorov is seen as part of a generation unencumbered by the experience of Soviet bureaucracy, in sharp contrast to the country’s 60-year-old military chief of staff Oleksandr Syrski, a graduate of Moscow higher combined arms command school, who began his career as an artillery officer. With hindsight, the conflict between the two men and their ideas about how to fight the war was inevitable: between an older – and old-school – general, micromanaging a bruising war of attrition against a more numerous foe, and Fedorov, with his tech-driven, more improvisational approach that appeared in recent months to be showing dividends. While bitter competition between key wartime leaders is hardly new, the failure, not least in the opinion of Fedorov and his supporters, has been in Zelenskyy’s handling of the rivalry, which had seen Fedorov request the removal of Syrski. “When the president said he did not plan to replace Syrskyi, I said I would learn to work with him,” Fedorov said at the press conference after his removal, suggesting the general sought to block the defence minister’s initiatives at every turn. “All the initiatives we proposed began to be blocked,” he added. “And he was not prepared to discuss any of the problems we have spoken about today personally, face to face and openly. “Instead of finding a way of defeating Russia asymmetrically – which is the commander-in-chief’s job – he’s found a way of splitting our country,” Fedorov said. Zelenskyy’s own parsing of the situation, at a joint press conference on Thursday with the outgoing British prime minister, Keir Starmer, was unconvincing as he appeared to complain that he was being asked “to choose between sides [when honestly] what I want most is unity”. All of which has led to inevitable suggestions that Zelenskyy and his circle – not for the first time – had sidelined someone seen as popular and a potential future political rival. “The decision,” an editorial in the Kyiv Independent said, “bears all the hallmarks of Zelenskyy’s tendency to dismiss top officials and commanders who get too popular, ahead of hypothetical elections that will never happen if Russia overwhelms Ukraine. “Forced to choose between the man who was turning the war of attrition around with technology and intelligent strategy on one hand, and the man who was sabotaging it with micromanagement and Soviet thinking on the other, Zelenskyy thought about it and chose the latter.” As demonstrations over Fedorov’s removal continued for a second day, the question now is what lasting impact it will have as a fifth defence minister is appointed in as many years. For Zelenskyy, it underlines again the fact that, impressive as he is on a global stage and as a wartime figurehead for Ukraine, he has struggled to assemble and retain a cohesive team of senior officials around him, balancing competing interests to ensure continuity in the war effort. While Russian military bloggers have celebrated the ousting of Fedorov, Zelenskyy’s move to appoint Yevhen Khmara as interim defence minister suggests that, despite the feud between Fedorov and Syrski, the emphasis on technology and long- and medium-range drone strikes is likely to persist. Khmara is a former head of the state security service’s Alpha unit, which has been heavily involved in drone strike operations. Zelenskyy has indicated he wants Khmara to push forward with a number of Fedorov’s key reform programmes. The question many Ukrainians find themselves asking, however, is whether anyone can genuinely be empowered to be effective in the role.

Air quality warnings remain in place across US as wildfire smoke continues to swathe country

Warnings of dangerous conditions are expected to remain in place on Saturday across swathes of the US, amid uncertainty about where the heavy wildfire smoke swirling from the Canadian province of Ontario and the US state of Minnesota will head next. Some parts of the US mid-Atlantic and north-east regions will continue to endure poor air quality until Saturday afternoon, where there is a high chance of thunderstorms, which could bring some reprieve from the poor air but come with other risks like flash flooding and high winds. Meanwhile, parts of the midwest and Great Lakes regions will continue to see dangerous air quality. The smoke also leaves questions swirling about the air quality in New Jersey, where the World Cup final between Spain and Argentina will take place in East Rutherford on Sunday. However, winds continue pushing the wildfire smoke east in the US, so conditions should be more improved on match day on Saturday. But while there may be pockets of relief at times, such as this weekend, the smoky conditions won’t be gone anytime soon as the fires continue to burn largely unchecked, Bob Oravec, a lead forecaster at the National Weather Service based in Maryland, told the Associated Press. Out-of-control wildfires continue to burn in Ontario as well as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota, which US officials have closed as they fight to put out the blazes. For much of the past week, tens of millions of people across Canada and the US have been breathing in unhealthy air, which has triggered everything from eye irritation to the temporary shuttering of some businesses to the cancellation of many outdoor events. Flames in northern Ontario have destroyed the Namaygoosisagagun First Nation community, and almost a dozen other communities have been evacuated or were being evacuated. On Friday, communities in Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan and the US north-east, including Detroit and Washington DC, registered some of the worst air quality in the world, according to IQAir, an air quality monitoring website, with skies a hazy orange hue for much of the day. People, particularly those with heart or lung disease, older adults, pregnant women and children, were urged to limit or avoid going outside until air quality improved. Officials in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and other north-eastern states also distributed free K95 face masks for people to wear if they had to go outside. Long-term exposure to smoky conditions can complicate existing health problems and lead to chronic and deadly issues, including respiratory illness, cardiovascular and neurological diseases, and premature death. Wildfire smoke is linked to tens of thousands of deaths a year, and scientists estimate that the human-driven climate crisis is responsible for a growing share of them.

‘Profound, resigned hopelessness’: people across US and Canada share effects of wildfire smoke

As smoke from hundreds of Canadian wildfires continues to spread across large parts of North America, bringing hazardous air to tens of millions of people, outdoor activities are being canceled, businesses disrupted and vulnerable residents are being kept indoors as officials warn the unhealthy conditions will likely persist. Air quality alerts were issued across more than 20 US states as smoke from wildfires burning in south-central Canada, northern Ontario and parts of Minnesota drifted south. About 109 million Americans across the midwest, mid-Atlantic and north-east experienced unhealthy air this week. For many Canadians, however, the smoke has become an increasingly familiar part of summer. With hundreds of fires still burning in Canada, forecasters warned smoke could continue affecting communities on both sides of the border in the coming days. “Much of the coverage focuses on the US, but multimillions of Canadians are faring as badly or worse,” said Tenille Bonoguore, who lives in Waterloo, Ontario. “In a country where we get through winter by anticipating summer, we are locked indoors gazing at hazy streets visibly full of smoke.” Bonoguore said families are increasingly being faced with a dangerous decision; the choice between keeping windows open during hot weather or closing them to keep smoke out. “Those without air conditioning have the battle of choosing between dealing with heat or smoke,” she said. “For many of us, this is the second or third or fourth summer facing these conditions that were nowhere near normal even just a decade ago.” The smoke is coming from more than 180 active wildfires burning across northern Ontario, part of another intense Canadian wildfire season that has repeatedly sent smoke across the international border. The deteriorating conditions have also hit workers whose jobs cannot simply move indoors. In Hamilton, Ontario, self-employed carpenter Ted Brearley said the smoke has forced him to reduce work hours and send employees home. “My business has experienced a huge loss in production,” Brearley said. “Sending staff home early and then losing hours and pay as well.” He questioned whether governments have invested enough in wildfire response. “With wildfires getting worse and worse, year after year, why is our government not stepping up to the plate?” he said. “Freebies don’t help when I can’t breathe, can’t work, or can’t feed my family or keep a roof over my head.” South of the border, residents who made even brief trips outside described air conditions as noxious. Chicago recorded the world’s worst air quality on Thursday evening, according to IQAir’s global rankings, with Detroit and Minneapolis also ranking among the most polluted cities. In Skokie, Illinois, 26-year-old student Zeff said the smoke carried a pungent chemical smell. “The air stinks of burnt plastic, like it’s been poisoned,” he said. “It’s impossible to take a deep breath without my nose and throat burning.” He said the ominous haze has settled over neighborhoods throughout the day. “There’s a mirage hanging on the treetops, white fog blanketing everything in the distance,” he said. “Everybody I speak to voices a profound, resigned hopelessness.” Vlad, a data engineer who has lived in Chicago for two decades, said he had never experienced conditions this severe. Concerned about his son, who has asthma, Vlad said he has kept him indoors and plans to replace his home’s HVAC filter and buy an indoor air quality monitor. “This is the worst it’s been in Chicago since I moved here 20 years ago,” he said. “If you go outside, you can taste the air, and it tastes toxic. My body is actively trying to tell me this is not good to breathe.” As the smoke spread farther east, communities began altering daily routines to limit outdoor exposure. The smoke had stretched into New York, where orange skies and the smell of smoke lingered over the city. In Farmington Hills, Michigan, children’s librarian Michelle Stiennon moved an outdoor story time event inside as conditions deteriorated, joking that the event had become a “story-time apocalypse”. “Our library also made N95 masks available to staff and the public,” Stiennon said. She added that attendance remained high early in the day before the smoke intensified. “I was surprised by how many kids showed up, but it seemed parents were using us as their one activity before sheltering at home,” she said. “We were mostly empty after one [o’clock], when the smoke started to really thicken.” She also described the pressure on local hospitals. “A co-worker accompanied a sick family member to the hospital for an unrelated illness,” she said. “She said the hospital was slammed with patients, mostly for asthma or breathing issues. It was a five-hour wait for a bed.” Health officials have repeatedly warned that wildfire smoke can worsen asthma, heart disease and other respiratory illnesses, particularly among children, older adults and those with underlying medical conditions. Those impacts are already being felt in Baltimore, Maryland where smoke pushed air quality into the “very unhealthy” range early Friday. “My own breathing has been affected by the poor air quality levels due to wildfires in Canada,” said Charlotte Watts, a primary care physician in Baltimore. “The respiratory health of my patient population is also significantly affected.” She said many of her patients have little choice but to remain inside, but not everyone has access to clean indoor air. “A lot of them are relegated to spending more time indoors due to the worsening respiratory symptoms when they exit their homes,” Watts said. “But many of my patients don’t have adequate air filters or air-conditioning to keep them safe at home.” Watts said that at this point, with wildfires and the climate crisis becoming increasingly difficult to overcome, she has become “primarily concerned with the future habitable nature of this earth”, adding that she believes “corporations and governments don’t really care about the health of their populations”. “Maybe they all think that they’re going to go to outer space and live in sci-fi colonies,” Watts said. “But it’s all a pipe dream.”

Cuba edges toward breakdown as power cuts and US meddling push society to brink

When Cuba’s national grid collapses, as it did for the third time in 10 days on Tuesday, a collective groan spreads across its cities and people wonder, again, whether the island’s antiquated electricity system may soon become unrecoverable. The 777-mile Caribbean island of 9.5 million people has been sweltering under a six-month-long oil blockade imposed by the US, part of a pressure campaign to bring down its communist government. But the parlous state of Cuba’s infrastructure goes far further back. “The backbone of the system is still the big power plants,’ said Jorge Piñon, a senior energy researcher at the University of Texas. “And they’re old, broken and tired.” With summer temperatures now in the mid-30s and humidity at 80%, tempers on the street have begun to break. For many, the nationwide collapses mesh seamlessly with already withering local blackouts. Where once salsa filled the streets, now the drumming of pots and pans has become the country’s soundtrack, cacerolazos that represent the shared misery of no sleep, ruined food and fading hopes of reprieve. Electricity returns only sporadically. “An hour isn’t enough time to run the pump to get water or to charge phones,” Alberto, a middle-aged man, yelled through a cacophony of pans in Havana’s Vedado neighbourhood last week. “People want the government to act right now.” The government, however, says it has few options. “We’ve said it before, there is a total absence of fuel,” said Vicente de la O Levy, the minister of energy. “And we do not have access to spare parts for our thermoelectric units.” Ever since 3 January, when the US military abducted President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, Donald Trump has promised Cuba will fall. “Whether I free it, take it, I think I can do anything I want with it,” he told reporters at the White House in March. In its efforts to achieve this, Washington has used sanctions to destroy Cuba’s industries. Foreign companies doing business on the island, from hotel operators, airlines, miners and shipping companies, have been driven out (or in cases such as the Canadian nickel miner Sherritt, have drawn up plans to stay in by selling its interests to Ray Washburne, a former adviser to Trump). “We have seven containers in Kingston and another 40 in China, but we have no idea when, or if, they will arrive,” said an electric car importer. In May, a court in Florida charged 95-year-old Raúl Castro with murder, 30 years after the shooting down of small planes out of Miami dropping leaflets on Havana, and opening the possibility of a Venezuela-style extraction. Even before the US cranked up the pressure, the Cuban state was weak, having fallen into the grip of hyperinflation during the pandemic. Now, services are faltering. Cuba was for years one of the safest countries in Latin America, now crime is blossoming with fights on the streets, cars and houses being broken into, and muggings with violence. Police, once ubiquitous, are hard to find, and victims complain they take hours to turn up. They are still there though. Prisoners Defenders, a Madrid-based group, said the number of political prisoners had risen to 1,306, with newcomers such as Héctor Ochoa Vergara “detained after taking part in a peaceful demonstration against blackouts and water shortages in Ciego de Ávila”. But Cuba’s most famous political prisoner, the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, was on his way to exile in the US on Saturday after serving a five-year term for disorderly conduct, is being held in an unknown location for a week while his visa is arranged. The Cuban government’s determination to appear united has appeared to be under strain. For months now, the US has been leaking its discussions on a possible deal over political and economic reforms, negotiations channelled through Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, the grandson of Raúl Castro. Last week, the 42-year-old Rodríguez Castro gave an interview to USA Today, inviting reporters to one of his grandfather’s old offices in Havana, then to Antojos, a smart city restaurant. He was wearing Hermès sneakers, a Rolex and carrying official documents in a Salvatore Ferragamo bag. “It pains me that many people can’t live the way I do,” he told the reporters, adding that while he had no interest in politics, “if at some point the revolution needs me to step up, I will do it”. The result was an uproar from musicians, academics, former diplomats and just people on the street, who were outraged by such a display from someone who is, in the words of the respected academic Julio César Guanche, “without recognised institutional public functions”. Most telling, though, was the anger of younger Cubans associated with the government. “To usurp the functions of government, to assume a public role for which no one elected you, to proclaim yourself spokesperson for measures or new directions for the country … would anyone else be allowed to do that?” wrote Michel Torres Corona, whose Con Filo programme on Cuban television was recently considered the epitome of state propaganda. Early in the crisis, the US made clear it had been looking for someone to be its “Delcy”, the equivalent of Venezuela’s Delcy Rodríguez, who took Maduro’s position as president of Venezuela and is now working hand in glove with Washington. But Michael Bustamante, the chair of Cuban and Cuban American studies at the University of Miami, thinks Rodríguez Castro’s USA Today interview may signal a collapse in such negotiations, calling it instead “a cry for relevance”. He said: “I think there’s an open question as to who exactly he speaks for, and whether the channel of communication with him is ongoing or not.” Certainly, having gone into a lull during the World Cup, war drums are once again banging in the US, 90 miles to the north. In the unlikely surrounds of the Biltmore hotel in Coral Gables, Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, stood next to an Iranian Shahed drone and attempted to link Cuba with Iran over (unconfirmed) reports that Cuba has bought 300 attack drones. “I think it’s important to recognise that Iran has consistently been working with Cuba,” he said. In the White House, Trump followed up, saying: “We’re not going to allow that to happen.” Meanwhile, Cuban government efforts to show willing by opening up the economy, announcing 176 as yet to be enacted measures expanding the private sector and inviting in investment, were dismissed by the US state department as “superficial smoke signals”. The grid was reconnected at 7am on Wednesday, with people cheering if their block received electricity. But everyone knew it was only temporary, and since then, across Cuba, the blackouts have been worse than before. Laura Garcia, an illustrator and single mother from Havana’s 10 de Octubre neighbourhood, said her neighbours now lived only in the present. “What I hear is a level of desperation that doesn’t allow the distance to discuss the future,” she said. She had just gone 72 hours without power, and when pushed for further comment, only muttered: “What has to fall doesn’t fall.”

Why is Trump risking midterm disaster by resuming an already unpopular war with Iran?

For half a century, Donald Trump has performed a public high-wire act based on high-stakes risks and shattering time-honored norms to get what he wants. The approach has paid off handsomely, helping him survive multiple bankruptcies to reach billionaire status and numerous legal and political scandals to be elected US president twice. Now a leader who once owned some of the world’s best-known casinos may be about to take the biggest gamble of his presidency by restarting a war with Iran less than a month after agreeing to a ceasefire that he hailed as necessary to stop an economic crisis on a par with the Great Depression. In the past week, Trump has ordered a resumption of strikes against Iranian military and infrastructure targets after concluding that the memorandum of understanding (MoU) he signed in the Palace of Versailles on 17 June was dead in the water. Iran has retaliated with drone and missile strikes against US allies in the Gulf. The MoU was the subject of biting criticism from the Republicans’ neoconservative wing, who denounced it as a capitulation to Iran. Less than four months before November’s midterm elections in which Democrats are seeking to recapture both houses of Congress, Trump appears to be flirting with electoral disaster in re-stoking a war that is already unpopular with voters – not least for its inflationary impact on fuel and living costs. “There’s basically no timeline in which this makes any sense for preserving [Republicans’] midterm performance,” said Curt Mills, executive editor of the American Conservative, a magazine promoting isolationist foreign policy goals favored by Trump’s “American first” supporters. “I think it’s a total loser. It’s evidence that Trump doesn’t really care about the midterms. He’s like Icarus with the sun with this stuff – it seems to be a personal vendetta with the Iranians.” Beyond the electoral impact, experts warn that escalation could lead inexorably to a land invasion of Iranian territory – a decision which could in turn bring on the sort of long-term “forever wars” he previously foreswore and condemned past presidents for. “My initial assessment was that this would just be another blip, some cyclical violence, and then we go back [to the ceasefire and negotiations],” said Nate Swanson, a former state department and White House adviser on Iran. “But the escalation has already exceeded what I thought was possible. “I see this as an effort to re-establish leverage and try to renegotiate the MoU, but it is highly risky with potentially devastating consequences – and, in my view, likely to be a failure.” At the heart of the renewed violence is control over the strait of Hormuz, a strategically-vital waterway which was a conduit for 20% of the world’s energy exports before the war started on 28 February and which has now emerged as Tehran’s biggest bargaining chip as it seeks to resist pressure to make concessions on issues such as its nuclear program and support for proxies such as Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia group. The MoU was intended to pave the way for a 60-day ceasefire during which negotiations would take place on Iran’s nuclear program. At the same time, Iran would reopen the strait – having closed it in response to the US and Israeli attacks, causing global oil prices to soar – in exchange for significant sanctions relief, including the right to sell its oil in international markets and the unfreezing of billions of dollars of assets. Problems emerged within days. Iran fired on commercial vessels belonging to neighboring Gulf kingdoms after they used, with US naval protection, a shipping lane close to the shores of neutral Oman rather than previously used routes off the Iranian coast, where Tehran’s officials could control passage and charge “service” fees that Washington DC and its allies say are tantamount to illegal tolls. Some analysts have blamed the flare-up on poor US negotiating, supposedly leading to misunderstandings and ambiguities in the MoU, which makes no mention of shipping lanes. But Vali Nasr, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies argued that the MoU’s collapse was a consequence of US and Iranian miscalculation. “I don’t think there was a misunderstanding. I think this is exactly what Trump intended,” he said. He cited recent comments by JD Vance, the US vice-president, suggesting that the MoU was signed to give an opportunity to replenish strategic oil reserves, thereby weakening Iran’s negotiating hand while temporarily easing the pressure on fuel costs. “The MoU was mainly a breather for Trump to try to get what he wants, which is to get control of the strait or take it away from Iran,” Nasr said. “Trump is trying to take it away from them before he negotiates, so they are not in a position to resist his demands on the nuclear issue or anything else. “Iran also made a gamble that it could basically use the 60 days in order to get some economic relief by bringing imports into the country, while making its position stronger. The bottom line is that there may have been a miscalculation. But there is no misunderstanding. “Trump may have overestimated what he can do militarily, and again falls short [and decides] ‘I have to set up something else.’ The Iranians are also overestimating how much they can resist. This is something neither side knows.” The potential for miscalculation is heightened by the absence of Iran specialists in Trump’s administration. Swanson – who has said he was forced out of his state department post after a critical tweet from the rightwing influencer, Laura Loomer – blamed the deficiency on Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, who he said had “physically removed” key personnel. “I’m struck by some of the leaks that have come out about decision-making in this war, where Rubio is reportedly skeptical about the regime change aims that the Israelis propose to Trump, but then says nothing,” said Swanson, now with the Atlantic Council. “He’s basically neutralized the [state] department, then stays quiet [but] privately tries to clear his name in the aftermath.” Instead of seasoned Iran specialists, Trump has relied on his tried-and-trusted negotiating team – namely Steve Witkoff, his chief envoy, Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, and latterly, Vance, who opposed the initial decision to go to war and was a key figure in negotiating the MoU. “That is how he fundamentally misunderstood his adversary,” said Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC. “Expertise would have come handy for the president, to actually listen to folks who’ve watched this Iranian system, and would have told him ‘They’re not businessmen from New York. They’re made of a different type of DNA.’ “Trump now has an adversary that is willing to suffer a lot more than he thought. They are willing to risk on playing the strait of Hormuz card because it puts them in charge of so much of the global energy supply and turns some of the wealthiest countries in the Gulf into their hostages.” Iran’s readiness to gamble could drive Trump to further raise the stakes, making further escalation – including a ground invasion – more likely. Regime change – a goal explicitly sought at the start of the war with the assassination of the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, in the first hours, followed by other key figures – seems off the table for now. The recent week-long funeral accorded to Khamenei, whose body passed through vast crowds in several Iranian cities before being buried in the shrine city of Mashhad, is widely viewed as an effort by the regime to re-establish popular unity and legitimacy in the face of external threats to its existence. With Iran willing to retaliate against US Gulf allies such as the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and even Oman – countries that the regime paints as “collaborators” with Washington – Vatanka warned of a possible five- or 10-year conflict. “You can imagine the United States bombarding Iran repeatedly over the course of many weeks and months,” he said. “But looking at the situation, now, I don’t know how Trump’s going to defeat the regime militarily, unless he wants to occupy the place.” One option short of that could be an invasion of Kharg Island, the hub of Iran’s crude oil export business. But such a move would be of limited usefulness, argued Joseph Votel, a retired US general and former head of US Central Command during Trump’s first presidency, who said an effective strategy must involve diplomacy, including reaching out to Nato allies whom the US president has repeatedly insulted. “It’s important that we focus on reducing the points of leverage that Iran has,” said Votel. Some of that can be done by offensive military operations. Others can be done by more defensive measures. “We’re seeing a sustained tit for tat over military operations. We strike, they strike. That leads me to conclude that this is going to take probably weeks to months. A lot of strategic patience is required – and there is a lot of risk involved.”