Top World News

May 25, 2026 - World

Senior lawyers call on prime minister to request Indian prosecutors drop charges that would breach double jeopardy ruleFour senior lawyers, including the former attorney general Dominic Grieve, have written to Keir Starmer urging him to request that Indian prosecutors drop charges against the British national Jagtar Singh Johal on the basis that continued prosecution would be in manifest breach of the double jeopardy rule which prevents someone being tried twice for the same offence.Johal has been held in an Indian jail for eight years, and in March last year was acquitted of the terrorist charges laid against him in a court in Punjab. The court found the prosecutors had “miserably failed” to present any reliable evidence, despite having had seven years to do so. Continue reading...

May 25, 2026 - World

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) delivered a scathing assessment of Donald Trump's Iran ceasefire Sunday, welcoming the end of the war while warning that the deal represents a humiliating capitulation to Tehran that leaves the United States weaker than when the conflict began."If this deal with Iran is real, I will welcome it because every day this insane war goes on, America gets weaker," Murphy wrote in a detailed thread on X. "But make no mistake: these are Iran's terms. Our nation emerges humiliated."Murphy laid out his case methodically. The deal, as he understands it, gives Iran billions of dollars to return to essentially the same position it was in before the war started — while reports suggest it may also codify Iran's right to control the Strait of Hormuz, the critical waterway that has remained at the centerpiece of the violent conflict."What a disaster this whole thing was," Murphy wrote.On the nuclear question — the issue Trump cited most prominently as justification for the war — Murphy was equally dismissive. The one reported concession from Iran, a promise to ship out enriched uranium, was already part of Barack Obama's 2015 nuclear deal. And by dropping sanctions now, Murphy argued, the United States has surrendered the leverage it would need to extract further concessions in future negotiations.Meanwhile, Murphy noted, Trump has failed to achieve a single one of his stated goals. Iran's ballistic missile and drone program remains intact. Its navy retains the ability to close the Strait. The hardline regime is still in power."They took our best shot and beat us," Murphy wrote. "Iran emerges more powerful."The Connecticut senator was careful to separate his opposition to the war from opposition to ending it. Thousands of innocent people have been killed, he noted, and the American economy has been badly damaged by the conflict. But he argued that silence about the incompetence that produced the war would be its own kind of failure."That doesn't mean we should be silent on how incompetent Trump is and how insane this war was from the start," Murphy wrote.

May 25, 2026 - World

Donald Trump issued a sweeping ultimatum to nearly a dozen Muslim-majority nations Monday morning, threatening to cut them out of his Iran deal entirely if they refuse to simultaneously sign the Abraham Accords — and he did it in a Truth Social post addressed directly to their heads of state."If they don't, they should not be part of this Deal in that it shows bad intention," Trump wrote, in a message that named Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, and Bahrain as countries he expects to sign the Israel normalization agreements as a condition of participating in any broader Iran settlement.The demand puts enormous pressure on nations that have long resisted formal normalization with Israel for domestic political reasons — particularly Saudi Arabia, whose leaders have said publicly that any normalization would require a credible path to Palestinian statehood, a condition the current Israeli government has flatly rejected.Perhaps most striking was the manner in which Trump chose to deliver the ultimatum. Rather than through traditional diplomatic channels, he issued the demands in a rambling Truth Social post — and then instructed his own representatives to act on it in real time. "By copy of this TRUTH," he wrote, "I am asking my Representatives to begin, and successfully complete, the process of signing these Countries into the already Historic Abraham Accords."In other words, Trump's diplomats learned of their new marching orders at the same moment as the rest of the world.The post also floated the idea of Iran itself eventually joining the Abraham Accords — agreements that are at their core about normalizing relations with Israel, a country Iran has repeatedly called for the destruction of. Trump called the prospect "something special" and said several regional leaders had told him they would be "honored" to have Iran join the coalition.Trump closed with characteristic grandiosity, declaring the potential agreement would be "the most important Deal that any of these Great, but always in Conflict Countries, will ever sign" and that "nothing in the past, or in the future, will surpass it."

May 24, 2026 - World

Donald Trump's Truth Social post praising negotiations with Iran as "productive and professional" triggered an immediate backlash Sunday — not from Democrats, but from his own most fervent supporters, who accused him of repeating Barack Obama's mistakes and demanded military destruction of the Iranian regime instead."You cannot trust anything that Iran signs — it doesn't matter whether it is a good deal on paper or not," wrote one supporter in a reply that gained traction on the platform. "Neville Chamberlain had a great deal with Hitler, how did that turn out? I understand that the spin will begin on trying to convince people that you didn't pull an Obama, but you can't fool your base. They trusted you and you have now alienated your most vocal and rabid supporters."The same commenter, identified as "Patriot and Retired Air Force," added a stinging verdict: "You are off the pedestal and merely a better alternative than them. Sad!" — deliberately echoing Trump's own signature putdown back at him.The replies were thick with calls for military action rather than diplomacy. "Level them, they can't be trusted," wrote one MAGA user. "Anything they sign won't be worth the paper it's written on. Take them out now!" Another demanded "unconditional surrender" as "the only option," arguing that "leaving the current Radical Islamic Regime in power is a LOSS for the U.S."Others drew the Obama comparison directly. "Lifting sanctions is as bad as Obama," wrote one commenter. Another called for the elimination of the IRGC entirely rather than any negotiated settlement.An Iranian-American commenter cut to the heart of the base's frustration: "Any agreement with this criminal regime makes you no different from Barack Obama. Anyone who shakes hands with criminals is no different from Barack Obama — finish your job via military, not a deal with criminals."The revolt on Truth Social mirrors a broader rupture that has been building in conservative circles over Trump's Iran diplomacy. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — Trump's own top diplomat in his first term — warned Saturday that the deal being floated "seems straight out of the Wendy Sherman-Robert Malley-Ben Rhodes playbook," a reference to the architects of Obama's 2015 nuclear agreement. White House communications director Steven Cheung responded by telling Pompeo to "shut his stupid mouth."Trump's post insisted his deal is "THE EXACT OPPOSITE" of Obama's approach and vowed the blockade of Iran would remain "in full force and effect" until any agreement is "reached, certified, and signed." But for a slice of his base that spent years calling for regime change, the optics of any deal, on any terms, appear to be a bridge too far.

May 24, 2026 - World

Donald Trump took to Truth Social Sunday morning to praise what he called a "much more professional and productive" relationship with Iran — the same country he spent years branding the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism."Our relationship with Iran is becoming a much more professional and productive one," Trump wrote, describing ongoing nuclear negotiations as proceeding in "an orderly and constructive manner."The statement landed with considerable whiplash for anyone who followed Trump's career. In 2018, Trump withdrew from the Obama-era nuclear deal and launched a "maximum pressure" campaign of crushing economic sanctions against Tehran. In January 2020, he ordered the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force, in a drone strike at Baghdad's international airport — an act that brought the two countries to the brink of open war.Now, in his second term, Trump finds himself in the position of negotiating his own nuclear deal with the same government — and praising the relationship in terms his predecessor might have used.The post also contained a swipe at Barack Obama — using his full middle name, a longtime Trump dog whistle — calling the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action "one of the worst deals ever made by our Country" and "a direct path to Iran developing a Nuclear Weapon."But in the very same post, Trump described his own negotiations in terms nearly identical to what Obama-era diplomats might have said: both sides taking their time, getting it right, no rushing, proceeding carefully toward a verifiable agreement.The contradiction did not go unnoticed. Earlier Sunday, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — Trump's own top diplomat during his first term — warned that the deal being floated "seems straight out of the Wendy Sherman-Robert Malley-Ben Rhodes playbook," referring to key architects of Obama's Iran deal. White House communications director Steven Cheung responded by telling Pompeo to "shut his stupid mouth."Trump closed his post with a notable flourish, suggesting that Iran might one day consider joining the Abraham Accords — the normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab states that Trump brokered in his first term.