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Or does he? Our latest fit check, fact check is a welcome reprieve from heavy global headlines as new video has emerged that may indicate brighter spirits for the monkey that captured hearts worldwide.

The world was recently introduced to Punch, the baby macaque at Ichikawa City Zoo in Japan. Abandone…

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I’ve rarely been one to be at a loss for words but what we’ve seen unfold in Iran this month is truly beyond comprehension: a nation forced into darkness with no communication lines to the outside world while regime forces and imported militias cracked down on protestors demanding change. Human rights groups say fatalities exceed 10,000 whereas Iranian …

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I don’t think it’s a question that can be answered with certainty yet. But I do think we are past pretending this is just another protest cycle.

The current blackout in Iran began on January 8, hours after Reza Pahlavi called on people to take to the streets at 8 p.m. local time. Mobile networks slowed, then collapsed. Internet access vanished. Even landlines went dead. The regime moved quickly to seal the country off from itself — and from the outside world.

It didn’t succeed.

Despite the shutdown, Iranians have continued to get information out via satellite connections, particularly Starlink. Through those channels, a picture has emerged that looks very different from what state television is showing.

That is why I sat down for a full interview with journalist Ali Hamedani, who has been in direct contact with people inside Iran via Starlink. What he describes is not a fragmented uprising or a Tehran-centric moment, but something far broader.

According to Ali, protests began not in the capital, but in smaller towns across the country — places so obscure that even people in Tehran hadn’t heard of some of them. That reversal alone matters. It suggests this is not an elite or cosmopolitan movement, but a national one.

He relays accounts from cities rarely associated with unrest: Kerman, Zarand, Jiroft, Yazd, Mashhad, Shiraz, Rasht, Chaboksar. In Kerman, protesters reportedly set fire to a statue of Qasem Soleimani. At least 14 people were killed in one night there, according to sources who spoke to doctors. The next evening, people returned to the streets anyway.

Ali also describes something striking in the footage coming out: clarity. High-resolution video. Stable images. Fireworks, music, dancing. One citizen journalist described it as “partying for freedom.”

I spoke about this on Times Radio Breakfast, where I was asked whether the regime was merely wobbling.

“I think we’re past that, frankly,” I said on air. “I think this is actually the end of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The question now is what it evolves into.”

What makes this moment different is not just scale, but intent. In previous uprisings, Iranians demanded specific reforms: free elections in 2009, an end to compulsory hijab in 2022. This time, people are not negotiating.

As I said on the programme, “The people aren’t demanding anything like free and fair elections or the end of compulsory hijab. This time they’re just done.”

Part of that has gone underreported. In the lead-up to these protests, many areas of Iran had no electricity and no water. For an oil-rich country, that is a profound failure — and one that has stripped the regime of credibility economically as well as politically.

I was also asked about foreign involvement. Based on conversations with well-placed sources, I said that Israeli intelligence activity is widely believed to be present on the ground. Whether overt support helps or hinders protesters is still debated among Iranians themselves. But the overwhelming sentiment I hear is clear: people want the regime gone.

Both conversations — with Ali Hamedani and on Times Radio — point to the same conclusion. Even if the Islamic Republic survives this moment, it cannot govern as it has before. Something fundamental has broken.

This article is an invitation to listen for yourself.

Listen to my full interview with Ali Hamedani, who is speaking to Iranians risking everything to be heard via Starlink. And listen to my Times Radio Breakfast interview, where I lay out why I believe we are witnessing not a wobble, but the end of an era.

Will America help this time?

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The latest string of revelations about Prince Andrew - brother of King Charles - have caused panic in Buckingham Palace. A steady drip of detail about Andrew’s connections with Jeffrey Epstein have damaged perceptions of the monarchy, and leaked emails published in the Sunday Times this month turned out to be the final straw. They proved that Andrew had lied to the BBC in 2019 when he told them he’d cut off all ties with Epstein after they were photographed together in New York in 2011. And if the Prince had lied about that to the UK’s public broadcaster, what else had he lied about?

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Palace officials had hoped that Andrew giving up his royal titles including the Dukedom of York, and clearly withdrawing from all public and private events might draw a line under matters. But even this may not now be enough. The suggestion - in further leaked emails this weekend - that Andrew asked officials of the UK state including his police bodyguards and Palace officials to look for dirt on his accuser Virginia Giuffre - may now lead to a formal inquiry, driven by voices in Parliament who are dissatisfied with the measures the King has taken so far. Unthinkable? Perhaps when Queen Elizabeth was still alive. But the Epstein affair still represents a potentially existential threat to the UK monarchy, with the King all too aware that public consent has to be maintained to underpin the system as it stands.

We know that Prince William when he ascends the throne will be even less forgiving of Andrew than King Charles and Queen Elizabeth have been. Sources have made it clear Andrew won’t even attend William’s coronation. Meanwhile King Charles does not want further distractions from this week’s genuinely historic visit to the Vatican - an issue close to the heart of a spiritual King who famously described himself as a ‘Defender of Faith’. He won’t want any further questions about Prince Andrew this week - we dig into the monarchy’s role in the UK and how recent revelations have affected its standing.

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I woke up to a clip going viral: President Donald Trump on his way to the Holy Land on Air Force One, asked if he’s going to heaven, saying probably not. “This might be as close as I get,” he joked, before pivoting to the ways he believes he’s made people’s lives better. It was disarming and oddly reflective. By the time he walked into Israel’s parliament a few hours later, the tone was set.

Inside the Knesset, the room felt like a cross between a victory service and a history class. The Speaker welcomed him with a wink about the teleprompter working this time. Trump stuck to it for long stretches, then colored the margins with the off-script asides that make headlines. He called this “the historic dawn of a new Middle East.” He praised Netanyahu as “not the easiest guy to deal with,” which is what makes him “great.” When protests flared in the gallery, security moved quickly and the speech rolled on.

There was a through-line designed for posterity: the Abraham Accords as scaffolding for everything that came after. He said Arab countries didn’t walk away during the war because of loyalty and because they made money. He turned to Jared Kushner and said, “Bring more in. No games,” which everyone in the room heard as Saudi Arabia. He promised Gaza would be “immediately demilitarized,” Hamas disarmed, and Israel secure “in any way, shape, or form.” He did not say how.

The off-script Trump flickered in and out. He told an anecdote about Miriam Adelson and teased her with the question, “Who do you love more, Israel or the United States of America?” He mentioned his daughter’s conversion to Judaism to marry Jared, adding he hadn’t seen that coming but that they’re happy, “otherwise we’ve got a big story.” He joked about Secretary of War Pete Hegseth being “straight out of central casting” and suggested many of his team could get rich making movies. He praised Secretary of State Marco Rubio (who is also still National Security Advisor right?) and joked about when they used to be rivals running for president. “Now look at us.” He asked Israel’s president on the spot to pardon Netanyahu, then caught himself and said, “By the way, that was not in the speech.”

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Woven through the applause lines were bigger gambles. He talked about Iran the way a dealmaker talks about a rival across a table: Iranians “want to survive,” peace is possible, we’ll get there after “we get Russia done.” Steve Witkoff, the real-estate-guy-turned-envoy, got a shoutout for a marathon with Putin. He said they “ended eight wars,” a boast that will live or die in the fact-checks, but the point was the persona: the closer who ends eras.

It was also a day of raw emotion in Israel. Hostages came home. Many did not. On the other side of the fence, families watched prisoners walk out of Israeli jails, many in poor condition. My WhatsApp was full of friends trying to square relief with grief, hope with anger. One Gazan I’ve kept in touch with since 2023 told me he is “too tired and broke and homeless to celebrate.”

Hours later, Trump landed in Sharm el-Sheikh and the lighting changed from theater to fluorescent. President Sisi hosted a room where prize politics continued. In Jerusalem, Israeli leaders queued up to say out loud what Trump’s been chasing for years: the Nobel Peace Prize. In Egypt, Pakistan’s leader said he would nominate Trump. In Israel, top officials said they would too. Separately, Netanyahu said he would nominate Trump for the Israel Prize, the country’s highest civilian honor. The choreography mattered as much as the paperwork. It told you how the story is meant to be read: the peacemaker at the center of the frame.

Here is what wasn’t in the frame. Who disarms Hamas. Who polices Gaza next week. Who pays and who governs as homes become schools and roads again. Whether the Saudis can join an expanded Abraham Accords without something that looks and feels like a Palestinian state. This is the difference between ceasefire and peace.

If you’ve followed my reporting, you know I listen for the names tucked into the sentences. There were a few today. “New people” on the Palestinian side, Trump hinted, without saying who. My ears perked up. I’ll be making calls. And if you’re reading this and have a tip, my DMs are open.

For now, here’s how I’d translate the day without the theatrics. The Accords are the framework, Saudi Arabia joining is key, a Palestinian sovereignty pathway is the price of entry. Iran is both foil and possible future handshake, but the distance between rhetoric and a verifiable deal is wide. The hostages and prisoners exchange bought time and goodwill, but also risk. Reconstruction is where this either hardens into a peace process or dissolves back into grievance.

Did Trump make the case that he changed the region? In that room, yes. Did he answer the hard questions? Not yet. The real work starts when the cameras pack up.

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Zelensky’s February Debacle

Back in February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's last White House appearance had been a debacle. He had shown up in his wartime uniform…

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Trump’s most striking foreign policy pronouncements of the last few weeks – on both Gaza and Ukraine – have been met with incredulity from the international community. The promise to take Gaza ‘for real estate’ and, this week, to veto Ukraine’s NATO membership and abandon any attempt to return Ukraine to its pre-2014 borders have evoked a clutching of pearls from Munich to Brussels, and from Kyiv to Capitol Hill. Even by the standards of the first Trump term, the 47th President has set about slaying sacred cows in foreign affairs with an enthusiasm that has outraged the foreign policy establishment in Europe and the US.

And yet, as so often with this President, the outwardly crazy things he says contain more than a germ of truth that the establishment would rather not acknowledge.

Gaza: A Reconstruction Dilemma

Take Gaza: the reconstruction of Gaza will take at least a decade and require tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars. There is no route to completing that reconstruction that does not flow through both Israel and the United States. The Arab world would not foot the bill and take on the responsibility, even if it had the means to do so (and possibly only Saudi Arabia really has the resources to afford it). It is inconceivable that the US and Israel will back any Gaza reconstruction plan that offers the slightest possibility of Hamas or anything like it ever taking power again. The suggestion of emptying Gaza without the right of return is provocative and, to many, highly offensive, but it does engage with the reality of the dire situation on the ground – that Gaza is all but uninhabitable and that many younger Gazans would be prepared to leave for good if they had a credible promise of a brighter future elsewhere in the region.

Ukraine: An Unspoken Reality?

And on Ukraine, again Trump is saying out loud what many have discussed in private: that any peace plan has to offer the Russians some fig leaf of retaining some of their post-2014 gains, and that NATO membership is as much a provocation to Russia as it is a route to a solution. The former head of MI6, Alex Younger, speaking to the BBC this morning, made the point clearly – Ukraine’s NATO membership was vanishingly unlikely in any case over the next four years. On one level, Trump’s giving up two key negotiating points to the Russians before talks have even begun makes no sense. On the other hand, no progress has been made on any peace settlement since the war began. Trump’s favored technique – if you can call it that – is to upend the whole table before talks even begin and see where the chips land, with the possibility of jump-starting progress. He may yet turn out to be right, even if the result will please nobody. And that’s almost always the end result of any peace agreement.

Saudi Arabia: The Silent Powerbroker

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