Israel asked Trump to wait on his Iran strike, but in doing so gave away the one thing it can’t afford to lose: the claim that it controls escalation. Right, so news has now emerged that Benjamin Netanyahu had asked Donald Trump to delay that expected strike on Iran. Not cancel it. Delay it. But he was so keen last June wasn’t he? What’s changed then? Well the reason being briefed is that Israel is now worried it can’t absorb what comes back if the US goes ahead. Not so cocky this time it seems! That single move removes a lot of assumed certainty. Because the country that has spent years presenting itself as escalation-proof, having learned the hard way last June that it isn’t, has gone even further in its reasoning. It is now warning about stretched defences, retaliation risk, and timing. Which means the confidence you were hearing about how this would play out has all now effectively been quietly withdrawn. At the same time, Israel’s intelligence chief is in the US trying to manage the fallout, a US senator is flying to Israel to push escalation anyway, and Iran is openly floating talks instead of war. So the old story, where confrontation was inevitable and controlled, doesn’t hold anymore, and its not just Trump holding back because he’s perhaps waiting on the Navy, but because Israel has panicked as well now. The machinery is still running, but the brakes are being argued over in public and who is actually driving at this point is anybody’s guess. Right, so Benjamin Netanyahu has it seems asked Donald Trump to hold off on that strike on Iran, another facet to this story now coming out; not because he’s suddenly found a conscience, but because Israel’s own missile-defence stocks are being described as depleted and its home front is being treated as the obvious target for retaliation if the US pulls the trigger.

The United States entered a strike readiness posture against Iran and then stopped - so is it all off or is there more to it? Right, so the US has moved to strike Iran, entered a readiness posture, and then suddenly it stopped. Was it because the forces in place weren’t enough to do it safely? Not all the pieces were on the board perhaps? Well maybe so. The regional bases were exposed, civilian airspace started closing, markets reacted, and only after that did Washington order an aircraft carrier strike group to cross half the planet to catch up with the threat it itself was responsible for making, because there was very much a distinct lack of naval backup. Once you realise the strike couldn’t be launched from where the US already was, suddenly this pause, whilst a strike group makes its way to the Middle East makes more sense. Those statements stop behaving like decisions and start behaving like stalling, and the people calling this restraint need to explain why hardware only starts moving after the threat has apparently now fizzled out. So has Trump had his bluff called by Israel, or has he simply realised he was going to attack Iran from the worst position possible? Right, so Trump has been threatening “strong action” against Iran, and then the most useful thing for any threat merchant to discover has happened: the physical conditions for a clean opening move weren’t there waiting for him. A US aircraft carrier strike group, that of the USS Abraham Lincoln has been ordered away from the South China Sea and is heading towards West Asia, with reporting that puts its arrival in the region at least a week away, and with all the accompanying destroyers named in that reporting, a full strike group, the type of thing that moves when you mean business, not just to flex. This is a deployment being briefed into the public record. The story is not a single decision, or a single phone call, or one of those “at this time” moments, it is a real repositioning of heavy kit because the existing situation for the US in the Middle East was not been enough to make the threat as credible as perhaps some might have wished and that’s before you even get onto the part where civilian airspace has been closing and rerouting in the background, as airlines hedge their bets that this isn’t a safe place to fly.

Israel has taken its Lebanon campaign north using F-35s, an escalation that hasn’t just breached the ceasefire again, but done so on steroids. Right, so Israel has been breaching the so-called Lebanon ceasefire from the moment it was signed, with regular strikes, incursions, and violations that everyone politely pretended were “incidents.” That fiction has now been stretched past breaking point, because Israel hasn’t just kept breaching it, it has expanded those breaches northward and done it openly with F-35s no less. The restraint people were relying on was never that Israel would stop, it was that the breaches would stay limited, stay south. That limit has now gone as well. The ceasefire isn’t failing, it’s always been irrelevant in practice and is now being treated even more so, and in full view of the supposed guarantors who were meant to make it mean something. Once that happens, a lot of confident commentary about enforcement and monitoring stops sounding reassuring and starts sounding evasive. Because what’s being tested here isn’t Israel’s firepower, it’s how much longer the rules people keep invoking we’re going to pretend mean anything. Right, so Israel has gone back to using F-35s over Lebanon and it has hit targets well outside the narrow mental box that people were being trained to keep this in, the “south only” box, the “border enforcement” box, the “it’s all still technically contained” box, and you can dress it up in whatever official vocabulary you like but it is still the same practical act, an air force with political cover striking another country at will. The Israeli government can give you a menu of justifications for that, and it will usually pick the one that makes it sound like a reluctant response rather than a chosen policy, but the part that matters for the public record is the act itself, the aircraft, the locations, the timing, and the lack of any visible restraint imposed from outside. When a strike campaign expands and there is no outward consequence, that expansion becomes part of the operating environment and everybody else has to think inside it.

A Bristol school cancelled a Labour MP’s visit, Labour responded by implying antisemitism instead of answering the objection. Now the parents fight back. Right, so Labour Minister Steve Reed has gone on a stage and implied a Jewish MP was blocked from visiting a school, and Keir Starmer has followed up by saying the people who stopped it will be “held to account”. A school decision that would normally sit under safeguarding and local judgement has just been dragged into national politics, with a moral label stapled to it before anyone is even allowed to hear the objection. Oh God forbid we actually hear the objection. The shortcut everyone relies on here is the same one they always reach for: say “antisemitism”, skip the facts, and treat the story as finished. That shortcut has just stopped working, because the parents have put their reasons in writing and they’re not the reasons being broadcast. So now the question isn’t whether a school did something naughty, it’s who gets to define what this story is, and who gets to be punished for not playing along. If you’ve wondered what the parents side of this story actually is, wonder no more. Right, so the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Steve Reed stood on a conference stage and described a school that had refused a visit from a Jewish MP, he also told a story about some antisemitic biscuits too, so this is the level we’re working with. He did not name the school. He did not name the MP. He did not describe the objection. He did not explain what had actually happened. He relied on implication, and he relied on the audience doing the rest.

Donald Trump has publicly urged unrest inside Iran while pairing that encouragement with threats of force - red lines very much crossed. Right, so Donald Trump has publicly urged Iranians to escalate unrest while pairing that encouragement with threats of force, and Israel’s Mossad has used intelligence-linked channels to address Iranians directly in Farsi, urging mobilisation, and that combination has just removed a shortcut a lot of people rely on when they talk about “outside concern” versus interference. The assumption that powerful states are merely commenting, merely watching, merely reacting, no longer holds, because the President of the United States and Israel’s foreign intelligence service have stepped into another country’s internal crisis in public and done so without even pretending otherwise. That breaks the comfort that whatever happens next can be treated as accidental, reluctant, or misread. It also breaks the media habit of pretending this is still just about protests rather than about who is shaping the conditions around them. Once Trump frames unrest as something to push, and once Mossad-linked messaging signals directly into the street, the idea that outside interference isn’t happening stops working, and a lot of confident narratives people have been leaning on quietly suddenly get binned, because they no longer work. Right, so as we know, Donald Trump has publicly encouraged unrest inside Iran all while threatening force, and Israeli intelligence-linked channels have directly urged Iranians to take to the streets. Not protests, not slogans, not speculation, but named actors acting in public, speaking directly into another country’s internal crisis, even as the truth is the protests have been winding down.

Airlines cancelled flights and allies pulled back after Trump escalated Iran strike talk, and that reaction exposes a reality he can’t retreat from. Right, so Donald Trump has publicly threatened Iran with imminent attack, encouraged unrest, and triggered live military preparations, and the immediate result is that embassies have shut, flights have been cancelled, bases have thinned out, and airspace is being treated as unsafe, because nobody who actually has skin in this believes this is just noise, nor is entirely certain of what is going on between the orange ones ears. The system is already reacting as if retaliation is credible and imminent, and that reaction doesn’t rewind just because a politician decides to sound calmer by that afternoon. The confidence you’re being sold right now, by spokespeople, by pundits, by people insisting this is all under control, that Trump is walking back on threats, only works if airlines keep flying and allies stay put, and they aren’t. So is Trump going to go ahead, or is he now backing off as realty finally dawns on him as to what this would mean? Right, so Donald Trump has publicly escalated towards a US strike on Iran while telling the world, in the same breath, that things are “stopping”, and the practical result is that governments, airlines, and the US military posture have started behaving as if a strike window is live, because they don’t get to gamble on his mood swings. Donald Trump has been posting and briefing in a way that keeps the military option deliberately “on the table”, and he has been framing it around a supposed humanitarian trigger, executions and street violence, while also issuing encouragement to protesters and implying external help is coming.

Somalia has cancelled UAE security deals, shut down port agreements, and cut off military access to its airspace and that's just for starters. Right, so Somalia has cancelled its security and defence deals with the UAE, torn up port agreements at Berbera, Bosaso and Kismayo, shut off military access to its airspace and territory, and the UAE has already started pulling people and kit out. So why have they done that then Damo? Well, what just disappeared is the assumption that you can always work around the Somali state if you don’t like what Mogadishu says, deal with the regions instead, keep the ports running, and wait for the noise to die down. Except this time the UAE overreached. That option just got removed at state level. And once that goes, even with much regional grumbling, a lot of very confident talk suddenly sounds fragile, because being present without permission isn’t influence, it’s liability and the UAE have packed their bags and scuttled off with all haste. But this doesn’t stop with Somalia, and it doesn’t stop with the UAE either, because the same shortcut has been treated as normal elsewhere for years. But here and now it’s being closed, in public, and it’s quickly become obvious who’s backing away and suddenly doesn’t want to test matters any further. Right, so President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s government has moved to cancel security and defence cooperation with the United Arab Emirates and to annul UAE-linked agreements tied to the ports of Berbera, Bosaso, and Kismayo, and it has done it in the only way a federal government can try to do this without pretending it controls what it plainly doesn’t: by putting the whole relationship on the chopping block at Cabinet level and then drafting law to stop regional administrations and private actors freelancing foreign policy behind Mogadishu’s back.

Iran jammed Starlink during the shutdown, and in doing so stripped away the last illusion that satellite internet is untouchable. Right, so Iran has just jammed Starlink during a nationwide internet shutdown. The Elon Musk unstoppable magic workaround everyone’s been banging on about didn’t work. The satellite didn’t sail above it all. The signal didn’t just “get out”. It got hit like everything else. Iran always manages to find a way. Now some might say that is a sign of Ayatollah nervousness and wanting to shut down dissent, but actually this completely screws the comfortable story such people might have been telling themselves, because it cuts both ways and those weaponising the protests, the Israeli AI, the Mossad agents reportedly on the ground – they get silenced too. Besides, for years now we’ve been assured that blackouts don’t really count anymore. States can try, but it’s fine, Starlink fixes it, it’ll be free internet access letting footage escape, and therefore the pressure builds as desired, end of story. Well no. Turns out if a state decides the access itself is the problem, it treats it like infrastructure, not a TED Talk and Starlink isn’t as infallible as it was once thought. So all that certainty about what can’t be controlled, what can’t be hidden, what always leaks — that’s just gone. Not debated. Gone. And a lot of loud commentary suddenly has to stand up on its own without pretending technology was doing the hard work for it. Right, so Iran has managed to deliberately interfere with Starlink satellite internet reception inside the country during a nationwide communications shutdown. We’re not talking “slow service”, not “temporary issues”, not a polite regulatory squeeze or even a case of “how many devices have those kids got plugged in”.