Assembly of Experts?

They bombed the Assembly of Experts, so it understandably elected as the new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, a real chip off the old block. Yesterday, Sarah Olney may have pledged the support of our own mighty Liberal Democrats to Reza Pahlavi, but today, Donald Trump has told Friedrich Merz that someone already inside Iran "would be more appropriate", although, "Most of the people we had in mind are dead." Take as long as you need. Still, Pahlavi might take it up with María Corina Machado, while Khamenei the Younger attended to the example of Delcy Rodríguez, likewise a notably hardline member of the regime that never was changed after all. If Khamenei offered Trump a good enough deal on control of where the oil and gas went, then, since he was already in office, nothing at all need change in Iran.

On 1 April 2024, the IDF took out exactly the right individuals inside the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, so it could not claim to be unable to identify or avoid a hospital or a church in Gaza. Likewise, having taken out the Supreme Leader in Tehran, it cannot claim to be unable to identify or avoid a girls' primary school in Minab. While they were unarmed and delivering humanitarian aid, the IDF bombed the British veterans James Kirby, James Henderson and John Chapman three times to make sure that they were dead, using arms from Britain and intelligence from the over 600 nightly reconnaissance missions flown for the Israelis, yet free of charge to them, from RAF Akrotiri. Again, then, it can spot a school. But such is the Epstein Class attitude to girls.

We continue to supply arms to Israel even though they have been used to murder three British aid workers. Here as in so many other cases, if Britain has a "robust" system of licensing arms exports, then what in the world would a lax one look like? All trials relating to Palestine Action have today been paused pending judicial review, but the lives are already ruined, and the "strictly protect" Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent, the former Ruth Smeeth MP, has today been made a Parliamentary Secretary in the Cabinet Office even while remaining a Whip. Not bad for having lost your Commons seat to Jonathan Gullis. Even with the departure of Josh Simons, there are now four Parliamentary Secretaries under Darren Jones, and three Ministers of State. This amounts to a Prime Minister's Department with, including Keir Starmer, nine Ministers, the most of any Department. What do they do? That is not a joke. They do something. What is it?