Some of Trump's posts on Truth Social are just unhinged. This for example:
And this one:
I mean, what can you say? Who goes on social media and claims they are right about everything?
The problem for Trump and Netanyahu now is what comes next. The whereabouts of Iran’s 408kg of enriched uranium is unknown, according to a much more measured article in the FT: Where is Iran's uranium? The US admits that it doesn't know.
"But as the Trump administration conducts its damage assessment, the critical question will be whether Iran’s programme has been destroyed, or simply pushed into smaller, secret facilities that are harder to find."
Richard Nephew, a former senior US official who worked on Iran in the Obama and Biden administrations, said: “On the basis of what we’ve seen at this point, we don’t know where the material is. We don’t have any real confidence that we’ve got the ability to get it any time soon.”
“I think you would be foolish,” he added, “if you said that the programme was delayed by anything more than a few months.”
What we can be certain about is that there will be no "Love, Peace and Prosperity" between the two warring nations in the foreseeable future and that Iran will redouble its efforts to get a viable nuclear weapon. If anything, the weekend's attack has only spurred them on. If they had nuclear weapons, they would have been safe - or certainly much safer.
How can the US and Israel be certain Iran won’t try to assemble a nuclear weapon in the future? It seems to me that getting any sort of commitment from the Supreme Leader is risky. Would Israel or the USA trust him? I doubt it. The only way to reassure yourself would be to conduct inspections on the ground.
However, this would simply revert back to the deal negotiated under Obama a decade ago. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was signed in 2015. Trump pulled out three years late during his first term. It was known that Iran wasn't cooperating fully with the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), and inspectors were finding it difficult to carry out checks.
Bombing the three nuclear sites has only pushed the issue back. At some point, it will return to the forefront and, unless the US wants to continue bombing every few months, a deal will need to be struck.
We would then return to the cat and mouse game that was going on between the IAEA and the Iranian government in 2017, back to square one. Would the US and Israel accept regular official reports prepared by IAEA inspectors as proof that Iran isn't developing nuclear weapons? Answer; probably not. That’s why Trump cancelled the deal in 2018 and why Netanyahu attacked the nuclear facilities to begin the crisis.
Let's be honest, the Iranian regime wants these weapons and is doing its damnedest to get them. There are only three possible solutions:
- Keep them under satellite surveillance and regular bombing if necessary
- Force regime change by encouraging an uprising
- Negotiate a deal with regular inspections backed by meaningful sanctions
A UK Industrial Strategy
The government has published its industrial strategy, a huge 160-page document focusing on what is called the IS-8, eight industrial sectors representing a third of the UK economy. They are:
- Advanced Manufacturing,
- Clean Energy Industries,
- Creative Industries,
- Defence,
- Digital and Technologies,
- Financial Services,
- Life Sciences, and
- Professional and Business Services.
As far as advanced manufacturing is concerned, the goals are laudable. The government wants to:
Reduce electricity costs for the energy-intensive manufacturers, • Strengthen supply chains by supporting foundational industries, • Drive innovation and commercialisation in our frontier industries by committing up to£4.3 billion in funding for the Advanced Manufacturing sector, • Accelerate the uptake of robotics and ‘lean processes’ through an expansion of our Made Smarter Adoption programme, • Build the sector’s skills base through wider reforms to the skills system in England and, • Making targeted regulatory changes to boost growth in frontier industries.
This is an ambitious long-term project which I hope is successful, although I worry that the next government will scrap it all and start again before anything has been achieved. That, I'm afraid is what usually happens.
These plans need to have cross-party support, plenty of long-term funding, and even more determination among British businesses to produce goods which genuinely are the best in the world.
At the moment all three are lacking.
