Israel-Iran live: Trump rubbishes reports of attack plan - as Iran denies attacking hospital
Donald Trump has rubbished reports he approved attack plans on Iran but is holding back on the final order. Meanwhile, Iran has denied attacking an Israeli hospital where dozens have been wounded. Follow the latest and listen to The World as you scroll.
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Spectator
16 minutes ago
- Spectator
Has Ursula von der Leyen seen the light on China?
Coming from an American politician, the accusations would have been unsurprising. Beijing is unwilling to 'live within the constraints of the rules-based international system' and its trade policy is one of 'distortion with intent'. It splashes subsidies with abandon, undercuts intellectual property protections, and as for China's membership of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), that was probably a mistake too. It is bold of von der Leyen to raise the WTO, and it will be intriguing to see how she is greeted at the EU-China leaders' summit Yet this tirade came not from an acolyte of Donald Trump, but from Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission during this week's summit of G7 countries in Kananaskis, Alberta. 'Donald is right,' she said during a roundtable. Could there have been something in that Rocky Mountain water? Or was this all a devilish ploy to curry favour with Trump and thereby secure a favourable trade deal with the US? After all, it will not have gone unnoticed in Brussels that the US-UK trade pact contained security and other provisions clearly aimed at excluding China from sensitive supply chains and cutting edge tech. But it wasn't only her words. The EU has also scrapped a key economic meeting with Beijing, which was to have been held ahead of an EU-China leaders' summit in the Chinese capital next month, citing a lack of progress on numerous trade disputes. It recently restricted Chinese medical device manufacturers from access to the EU's vast public procurement market, launched an anti-dumping investigation into Chinese tires and wind turbines and refused Beijing's demands to remove tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. The truth is that Brussels has lost patience with China, and the famous EU fudge is (at least for now) being jettisoned for a far more robust approach to what EU officials see as China's serial rule-breaking. Beijing's recent restrictions on the export of critical minerals, which threatened to bring the continent's motor industry to its knees, have been a painful reminder of the EU's dangerous dependencies and Beijing's willingness to weaponise its supply chains. The EU's trade investigations are being carried out under a new Foreign Subsidies Regulation, which unusually for the rather pedestrian EU bureaucracy is fast, focused and – so far – exceedingly effective. If a foreign-owned company bidding for a contract or involved in a takeover is suspected of unfair subsidies, the EU can demand detailed business information. Last year, the Dutch and Polish offices of Nuctech, a Chinese security equipment company, were raided by EU competition regulators, acting under the new powers. A Chinese railway equipment manufacturer pulled out of bidding for a large contract in Bulgaria, preferring not to hand over data that would almost certainly have revealed wads of subsidies. In spite of these growing tensions, Beijing believed it could use Trump's tariff war to prize away Brussels from Washington – a long-standing goal of Chinese policy. To this end, in late April it announced it was lifting sanctions it had imposed on members of the European Parliament in retaliation for EU sanctions on Chinese entities accused of human rights abuses in Xinjiang. President Xi Jinping also launched a charm offensive, calling for unity in the face of coercion and presenting himself as an upholder of free trade. This has backfired, being seen widely in Brussels as laughable hypocrisy. Looming large over EU relations with China is Beijing's support for Vladmir Putin, which is felt much more profoundly in European capitals than in Washington. But Brussels has also been willing to call out China on a range of security issues. These include the blacklisting of Huawei lobbyists earlier this year following allegations of bribery linked to the tech company's activities in Brussels. Germany has accused China of being behind a cyberattack on the federal cartography agency for espionage purposes, and the Belgian intelligence agencies have investigated Alibaba for 'possible spying and/or interference activities' at the cargo airport in Liège. It should not be forgotten that the term 'de-risking' in relation to China was first popularised by von der Leyen. She introduced it in a March 2023 speech to the Berlin-based Mercator Institute for China Studies. She said it meant being clear-eyed about China's growing economic and security ambitions. 'It also means taking a critical look at our own resilience and dependencies,' she said. 'De-risking' was soon adopted in other Western capitals, replacing the more clunky 'decoupling'. De-risking sounded more nuanced – a more orderly form of decoupling. It was vague, slightly murky, and open to interpretation. But therein lay its strength. It could be dialled up or down according to the circumstances, a flexible tool, with which few could disagree. It seemed like plain common-sense, which is probably why it so irked Beijing. 'It is just another word game. It will not change the 'ostrich mentality' of some countries to escape from the real world,' snarled the Global Times, a state-owned tabloid, at the time. When von der Leyen travelled to Beijing with French President Emmanuel Macron a week after her speech, Macron was given the red carpet treatment while the EC president was largely cold-shouldered in what was interpreted as a calculated snub. During this week's G7 meeting, von der Leyen said: 'We strongly feel that the biggest challenges are not the trade between G7 partners. Rather, the sources of the biggest collective problem we have has its origins in the accession of China to the WTO in 2001'. China's membership of the WTO is widely seen as a high point of western delusion about China. Beijing promised to improve the rule of law, to protect intellectual property rights, cut import tariffs, give greater access to its market, liberalise controls on its exchange rate, scrap trade barriers and much more. Few of these ever happened, or where one barrier was removed, another was erected. China has clung to the privileges of a 'developing' country. It has never provided a level playing field for foreign companies but was able to flood the world with its own cheap exports, while western companies flocked to outsource production and supply chains to Chinese factories, hollowing out manufacturing throughout the West. This led inextricably to the dependencies the West is decades later trying to unwind and has fuelled populist anger in developed economies. It is bold of von der Leyen to raise the WTO, and it will be intriguing to see how she is greeted at the EU-China leaders' summit, tentatively set for late next month to mark 50 years of bilateral relations. Few will be in celebratory mood, and Xi will probably concentrate on individual European leaders, believing he has greater influence with them than with the European Commission president. His main miscalculation has been to believe he can leverage the distrust of Trump to China's advantage, because while it is true that Trump is haemorrhaging trust, the grim truth for Xi is that Beijing never enjoyed much trust in the first place.
Daily Mail
16 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Russia's nuke warning to Trump: Kremlin tells US a tactical nuclear weapon strike on Iran would be 'catastrophic' as it warns America and Israel not to kill Khamenei
Russia has today warned Donald Trump any use of tactical nuclear weapons in Iran would be 'catastrophic' as the US President says he will decide in the next two weeks whether to join in Israel 's war. Russian news service Tass is reporting the Kremlin has issued a fresh plea for Trump to avoid using bunker busting bombs on Iranian nuclear facilities amid fears it could spark wider conflict across the Middle East. Last night, Iran-backed militias threatened to join in the war with Israel if the Trump administration enters the Israel-Iran conflict.
Telegraph
30 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Strike by strike, how Israel cleared a path to Iran's nuclear fortress
A week into Israel's Operation Rising Lion, its jets are able to criss-cross Iran and strike targets with impunity. Waves of Israeli aircraft fly sorties against Iran's military and nuclear sites, untouched by Tehran's air defences and air force after they were hammered in the first days of the assault. The extent and ease of the air superiority achieved in those first hours of the campaign have surprised even Israel's security figures and now allow commanders almost free reign to hit the regime's most important strategic sites as they choose. 'We thought it would be much harder,' Zohar Palti, a former Mossad intelligence director, said this week. 'It was much faster than we anticipated.' Satellite images of the aftermath of air strikes are now disclosing how Israel cleared a path to Tehran's missile and nuclear programmes. Taking Iran's airfields out of action The early hours of Operation Rising Lion saw heavy attacks on Iranian air defences and its air force to put them out of action for good, including direct strikes on runways. While Iran's decades-old F-14A Tomcat and revamped F-5 Tigers would pose little threat to Israel's aircraft, the strikes quickly made sure they could not even get off the ground. Images of Tabriz Air Base and Hamadan Air Base, both in western Iran, show main runways and taxi runways cratered by strikes. The same images reveal extensive damage to hardened aircraft shelters nearby. Elsewhere, the Israel Defense Forces posted infrared targeting camera footage of a pair of F-14A Tomcat fighters being destroyed next to hardened aircraft shelters at Mehrabad International Airport in Tehran. As well as air strikes, Israeli special forces and intelligence services claimed to have infiltrated Iranian territory to hit air defences with a swarm of short-range drones, in attacks likened to Ukraine's recent audacious attack on Russia's long-range bomber bases. Destroying air defences Overall, the Israeli assault is said to have destroyed dozens of air defence missile launchers and radar sites within the first few days of the campaign. This destruction then allowed Israeli planes to approach closer without fear of being shot down and to stop relying on long-range missiles to hit strategic targets in the capital, and at nuclear sites including Isfahan, Natanz and Fordow. Iran has a wide variety of air defence systems, including Russian-supplied S-300PMU-1/2 long-range and SA-15 short-range surface-to-air missiles, as well as homemade Sayyad-2 and 3 missiles. Yet Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said when the assault came, Iran had 'few technical answers' to the combination of Israeli F-35i stealth fighters that could quickly find and jam missile defences, and a wave of supporting F-16s and F-15s that could launch precision missile strikes from a distance. 'The speed with which the Israeli Air Force has established sufficient air superiority to use free-fall bombs rather than stand-off missiles against targets in Tehran, Isfahan, Natanz and Fordow has been impressive,' he told The Telegraph. Satellite imagery of one of the country's oldest missile bases, operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) near the western province of Kermanshah, shows significant damage. Several buildings appear destroyed along with two mountain-side tunnel entrances. Iran is known to keep its missiles buried deeply and in underground silos for precisely this reason, but the imagery suggests Israel was still able to target them. At another military site about 20 miles west of Tehran, at Bid Kaneh, which has long been associated with the missile programme, images reveal damage to multiple buildings. In one image, the roof of one large building appears to have been penetrated. The facility was the site of a large explosion in 2011, when several staff working on the country's missile programme were killed. There has been speculation that the explosion was the result of sabotage. Israeli military officials say their air dominance and their resulting ability to hit ballistic missile stores and launchers have stemmed the number of missiles Tehran can launch. Israel estimates it has destroyed more than a third of Iran's total missile launchers. Opening a path to nuclear facilities Central among Israel's targets are Iran's nuclear facilities. Israel has long warned that Iran is racing towards a nuclear bomb and has said its current attacks are needed to stop the imminent production of a weapon. However, America's own intelligence agencies have concluded Tehran is not building a nuclear weapon. The underground uranium enrichment plant at Natanz was an early target for the campaign, having been struck on Friday. Nuclear experts have estimated the strike destroyed the overground section of the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant, where cascades of centrifuges were producing enriched uranium. Images also show four 'critical buildings' were damaged in Isfahan, including a Uranium conversion facility and a fuel plate fabrication plant. Iran's petrochemical industry has also been targeted. On Saturday, Israel hit the Shahran fuel and gas depot north-west of Tehran. Yet despite the air superiority, Israel may now find the limits of what it can do by air alone, military analysts said. One key site, the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, located 20 miles from the ancient clerical city of Qom, is still thought to be untouched. The site's hardened underground halls are thought to be impervious to all but America's most powerful 'bunker buster' munitions. With Donald Trump, the US president, reported to have approved the plan of attack should America wade into the conflict, a strike of Fordow could be imminent. Thanks to Israel's efforts, any attempt to strike the nuclear fortress will likely go unchallenged. However, Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer at the School of Security Studies at King's College London, told Reuters that while Israel had achieved 'quite a lot of operational and tactical successes... translating that into a strategic success will require more than what air power can deliver'.
