President Trump formally informed Congress in a letter Friday that the ongoing ceasefire with Iran extended the timeline between the start of the war and the 60-day deadline invoked by the War Powers Act.
Friday marks 60 days since the president officially notified lawmakers of the U.S. military’s operations in Iran that began on Feb. 28.
According to the War Powers Act of 1973, by Day 60 of being notified of a conflict, the president must come to Congress to formally declare war or seek approval of military action. The president can also request a 30-day extension of the conflict if needed to safely draw down troops, according to the law.
During the opposition years, his defenders countered that a stolid technocrat was exactly what the country needed. They sold the former head of the Crown Prosecution Service as the polar opposite of Boris Johnson, who was driven from Downing Street in part by Starmer’s own forensic questioning. If only Starmer had lived up to the billing of his detractors, reluctantly conceded by his allies, he wouldn’t be in the hole he finds himself this weekend.
Instead, he now has to rely on a defence that is lawyerly in the worst sense of that word. To have knowingly misled parliament is, in political terms, a capital crime. So the PM has to proceed on two tracks, one for “knowingly” the other for “misled”.
The BBC understands Sir Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper lost confidence in Sir Olly Robbins and was effectively sacked after a Guardian investigation revealed Mandelson had not been security cleared.
The PM is facing calls to resign amid claims he misled MPs when he told them „full due process“ had been followed.
Senior minister Darren Jones said Sir Keir had not been told of the vetting recommendation until Tuesday this week, had not misled MPs and would not be resigning.
(April 16, 2026)
„Es ist unverzeihlich, dass kein Minister, nicht einmal Downing Street, informiert wurde“, kommentierte Premierminister Keir Starmer. Doch Starmer selbst geriet ins Visier der Opposition, die seinen Rücktritt fordert. Der Chef von Downing Street scheint jedoch nicht zurücktreten zu wollen. „Er wird nicht zurücktreten“, versicherte Starmers engster Vertrauter, Darren Jones.
(Thu 16 Apr 2026 19.16 CEST)
In September, in a letter co-signed with foreign secretary Yvette Cooper, Robbins told MPs that “conducted to the usual standard set for developed vetting.
The Guardian understands that Robbins was told he had to resign after Starmer and Cooper lost confidence in the civil servant.
Mandelson’s failure to secure vetting approval has not previously been publicly revealed, despite intense scrutiny over his appointment and the release by the government of 147 pages of documents supposed to shed light on the case.
Both Bahrain and Washington have blamed an Iranian drone attack for the March 9 blast, which the Gulf kingdom said injured 32 people including children, some seriously. Commenting on the day of the attack, U.S. Central Command said on X that an Iranian drone struck a residential neighbourhood in Bahrain.
In response to questions from Reuters, Bahrain on Saturday acknowledged for the first time that a Patriot missile was involved in the explosion over the Mahazza neighborhood on Sitra island, offshore from the capital Manama and also home to an oil refinery.
What was true in June still is true now: There’s no evidence the Iranian government is on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon (despite Netanyahu’s claims to the contrary for the past 30 years), the Iranian military do not have weapons that can strike the US (despite Trump’s claim to the contrary) – a fact confirmed by my old employer, the Defense Intelligence Agency – and Iran’s leaders had no intention of preemptively attacking US forces in the Middle East.
The Trump administration’s pained justification that Iran planned to fire missiles “preemptively, but if not, if not simultaneous, against with any actions against them,” is beyond dubious given that the Iranian government watched US forces posturing to attack for weeks and did not, in fact, launch a preemptive strike against them (and “simultaneous” is an exceptionally creative way to say “firing missiles after we start attacking them”).
If Iran really represented an immediate threat to the American people, why has Trump been telegraphing this attack since mid-January?
Let’s be very clear about this: the United States is in this war because Trump was determined to drag the country into it no matter what. Mere hours before Trump launched it, the foreign minister of Oman, which was mediating the last-ditch talks on a nuclear deal that took place yesterday, revealed the enormous concessions the Iranians had made in negotiations: not just agreeing to not stockpile uranium, making it impossible to build a bomb, but diluting the uranium it currently holds and agreeing to full verification by International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors. These concessions would have gone well beyond what Barack Obama had extracted in his Iran deal, and they came paired with an explicit vow that Iran would never have a nuclear weapon — something that its leaders have constantly said over the decades, and repeatedly so over the past week.
Didn’t matter.
(15 Feb 2011)
Since the fall of Baghdad, Curveball‘s identity had been sought throughout Iraq and Europe. He was finally outed in late 2007 as the main source for Powell‘s speech, but has tried to keep a low profile ever since, refusing — under the orders of the BND — the approaches of the few reporters who had tracked him downto Karlsruhe.
The only other time Curveball has agreed to be interviewed was in late 2007, when he told CNN that he had been set up as a fall guy by the BND and had never breathed a word to them about WMD.
(28.8.2011)
Diese bis heute verbreitete Darstellung ist unangenehm für die Bundesrepublik. Deutschland steht da als ein Land, das ein Doppelspiel betrieben hat: nach außen den Pazifisten geben – und hintenherum über seinen Geheimdienst einen entscheidenden Grund für die militärische Intervention liefern. Der Bundesnachrichtendienst nahm die Vorwürfe schweigend hin.
She argued more girls were harmed „that didn‘t need to be“ because of FBI inaction. Farmer had told the FBI that Epstein, who assaulted Maria, a figurative artist, and Ghislaine Maxwell had stolen photos of her younger sisters. Today‘s release confirms her complaint.
(December 19, 2025)
The woman, Maria Farmer, has for years said that she had called federal investigators in the summer of 1996, but the F.B.I. had never publicly acknowledged her original report, even to Ms. Farmer. Some people following the Epstein case had accused her of inventing the story. After the release of thousands of Epstein files on Friday, The New York Times contacted Ms. Farmer about a report stamped with the date of Sept. 3, 1996. She broke down in tears.
“I’ve waited 30 years,” she said. “I can’t believe it. They can’t call me a liar anymore.”
(October 25, 2015)
A political consultant once related how he lunched with Benjamin Netanyahu, who ordered a hamburger with fries. He was not supposed to be eating such foods – doctor’s orders. As they were finishing up, Bibi’s wife, Sarah, came in, saw the evidence and began to see red. Netanyahu, all righteous indignation, looked her straight in the eye and said he had eaten no such hamburger. The storyteller said he was convinced at that moment that Netanyahu himself believed it.
If apocryphal, it is definitely in character. Netanyahu regularly embraces bad ideas or even lies so totally that he convinces himself of their rightness. Others start to believe them too. His outlandish idea, uttered in a speech, was that Hitler would have been happy with just expelling Jews if a Palestinian, the then grand mufti of Jerusalem, had not suggested annihilation instead.
Oct 22, 2015
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Adolf Hitler didn‘t want to kill the Jews, but a Muslim convinced him to do it.
Holocaust historians disagree.
(May 28, 2025)
These findings add to the evidence not only that support for Palestinian rights and a Palestinian state are far higher than many within the political establishment have been willing to acknowledge, but that Democrats’ refusal to take these issues seriously has become a severe political liability.
Yet over four months into the Trump presidency, even as it positions itself as the party defending democracy, the Democratic establishment has failed to respond to public sentiment and signal any serious shift in its support for Israel.
(September 27, 2024)
The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”
I urge you to stand with The Nation and donate today.
Onwards,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation
(November 16, 2024)
“Secretary Blinken has continued to lie to Congress and should resign,” she said. “U.S. law is very clear. No nation blocking U.S. humanitarian assistance can receive U.S. weapons. The Biden administration cannot pick and choose when they comply with our own laws.”
“Children are forced to eat pet food and bug infested flour,” she went on. “But Blinken says there is no need to change our own policy. Shameful.”
Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had agreed to a 21-day ceasefire just days before he was assassinated by Israel.
The temporary ceasefire was called for by US President Joe Biden, his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron and other allies during last week’s UN General Assembly.
Christiane Amanpour: “Are you saying Hassan Nasrallah had agreed to a ceasefire just moments before he was assassinated?”
Abdallah Bou Habib: “He agreed. He agreed, yes, yes. We agreed completely. Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire, but consulting with the Hezbollah. The speaker, Mr. Berri, consulted with Hezbollah. And we informed the Americans and the French that that’s what happened.”
Christiane Amanpour: “So” —
Abdallah Bou Habib: “And they told us that Mr. Netanyahu also agreed on the statement that was issued by both presidents.”
(September 29, 2024)
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian stated that the assurances given by American and European leaders to establish a ceasefire in return for Iran‘s non-response to the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the political bureau of the Hamas, were outright lies, according to a report by the Associated Press.
(September 21, 2024)
He could have ended it with a phone call. The killing continued because he and his handlers wanted it to.
(October 25, 2015)
A political consultant once related how he lunched with Benjamin Netanyahu, who ordered a hamburger with fries. He was not supposed to be eating such foods – doctor’s orders. As they were finishing up, Bibi’s wife, Sarah, came in, saw the evidence and began to see red. Netanyahu, all righteous indignation, looked her straight in the eye and said he had eaten no such hamburger. The storyteller said he was convinced at that moment that Netanyahu himself believed it.
If apocryphal, it is definitely in character. Netanyahu regularly embraces bad ideas or even lies so totally that he convinces himself of their rightness. Others start to believe them too. His outlandish idea, uttered in a speech, was that Hitler would have been happy with just expelling Jews if a Palestinian, the then grand mufti of Jerusalem, had not suggested annihilation instead.
The U.S. government’s handling of USAID’s memo led to internal conflict, with one official in the State Department, Stacy Gilbert, resigning in May over Blinken’s statement to Congress.
“There is abundant evidence showing Israel is responsible for blocking aid,” Gilbert wrote in a statement at the time. “To deny this is absurd and shameful. That report and its flagrant untruths will haunt us.” (mehr …)
Blinken’s decision allowed the U.S. to keep sending arms to Israel. Under U.S. law, the government is required to cut off weapons shipments to countries preventing the delivery of U.S.-backed aid.
Blinken told Congress, “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting” aid, even though the U.S. Agency for International Development and others had determined that Israel had broken the law.
(09.01.2024)
Mansour said the Palestinian Authority, with the backing of Arab states, would start mobilizing support to go to the U.N. Security Council, which holds the key to membership because it must back a request before it can go to the General Assembly for a final decision. That means at least nine council members must vote in favor of the move, and none of the permanent five members can veto it.