Kernow Damo

Right, so Donald Trump decided the best way to make the Strait of Hormuz 'safer' was to lob a few bombs at an Iranian island because nothing screams 'secure shipping lane' quite like a handful of American explosives raining down from the sky.

A few hours later, Iran fired missiles and drones against American positions in Jordan and the UAE. Jordan reported that eight missiles had crossed into its airspace; the UAE responded to an unmanned attack. Ships were avoiding the Strait of Hormuz, and oil prices have exceeded the ninety-dollar mark.

Trump strikes, Iran returns, and the apparently "secured" shipping lane is once again about as free as a nightclub at four o'clock in the morning during a raid.

But as usual with all things Strait of Hormuz adjacent, the truth was somewhere Little Donnie wasn’t and retaliation is a b*tch. Anyway, let’s start this story properly with this:

"Almost total control," he says. Trump claims the mines are all gone, and oil prices will soon be falling, all in response presumably to his enormous ego because he’s got bu**er all else to be going on. Somebody should let the tanker crews, the underwriters, Jordan, the UAE, and the oil traders know about this edict that now been issued, because Trump's fantasy press office must have forgotten to send them all the necessary memo.

The picture Trump was drawing is of course very simple, because so is he. America has taken out the launchers, America has eliminated the threat, and now America is running the Strait.

Right, so Finland and Israel had already signed a military-technical co-operation agreement. So far, so bad enough. The contract was to be renewed every five years and covered development, research and procurement.

But when the old agreement was due for renewal in early 2024, Finland didn't just sign on for another five years. No, the Defence Ministry quietly wrote a brand-new ten-year memorandum that continued the military friendship until 2034.

Now this also included the usual military R&D and procurement sort of stuff, and the Defence Ministry didn't bother to inform the public because when do Defence Ministries ever cite transparency as their driving interest after all.

But now that people have found out, Finland's president, Alexander Stubb, beautiful Finnish name, has already been asked if Finland should continue to purchase Israeli weapons.

And this was his rather unfortunate reply.

Stubb is a perfect example of how to dodge a question so hard that you end up leaving a vapour trail.

He suddenly discovered that whatever was waiting at the end of that pavement was far more urgent than explaining Finland’s arms trade with Israel.

Right, so a British military aircraft flying from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus to Tel Aviv.

You can see it before you right there, so not exactly subject to supposition is it?

The only thing we can’t see is what was stuffed inside it, though thankfully we have independent media helpfully providing what it could be carry in the form of journalist Matt Kennard, who has picked up that it was an Airbus A400M Atlas, which according to him can carry a payload of 81,600 lbs or 116 fully equipped soldiers.

So what was in it? Why did it go? Why was an aircraft of that size required to carry whatever was inside? Of course we don’t know do we, yet aircraft taking off from RAF Akrotiri and going to Israel isn’t exactly new, it’s just the first time its been seen happening under Andy Burnham, so again, is this another case of no change from Starmer?

The plane flew to Israel, circled there for about an hour and then scuttled back to Akrotiri. Beyond that, the cargo and the mission have basically been filed under 'none of our business.'

But this flight is just one more reason why Burnham's carefully contrived bedtime story about Britain only ever giving defensive help is now being challenged.

And for all his promises of change and renewal, and of not being Keir Starmer with a northern accent, Burnham has already been caught in one of Starmer’s old tricks it would seem.

Right, so Ratko Mladić is dead.

And Israel has a problem it cannot put away with him as a result.

The files. No, not those files, another set of files. The files which gather dust like a guilty conscience, or would do if I thought Zionism had one.

Israeli records of arms-export licences and the Defence Ministry's decisions concerning the former Yugoslavia between 1990 and 1996 remain closed. Even the Israeli Supreme Court upheld the state's refusal to publish them under freedom-of-information law, considering their release might harm national security or damage foreign relations. Well it’s not as if your current genocide has done that much good either, but was Israel involved in this one as well?

Well, all the ruling tells us is that the state is still withholding these files. It does not tell us what is in them. So we cannot claim, as established fact, that Israel delivered weapons to Bosnian Serb forces, authorised any transfer, provided training, knew where weapons ended up, or that any Israeli-supplied material was used in Mladić’s crimes.

And yet Israel is not suspected of involvement here merely because it sealed some files. It is suspected because multiple wartime leads pointed towards Israeli weapons, training or intermediaries, and then the state refused to release the records most capable of confirming or knocking down those leads. Now why might they do that then?

Right, so Donald Trump's Iran war is eating away at the American Navy from the inside out, even more than we already knew about in fact. Not enough that sailors have tried throwing themselves overboard and have been wading through, their own effluence in the corridors, it seems that for the Trump administration they haven’t paid quite a high enough price yet, and I do mean pay.

You see the Navy is playing musical chairs with the payroll to offset war costs. A war tax. The music itself coming from a closed cash register that isn’t stumping up cash for anything else these troops need either. Military training? Only if cancelling the preparation for the next war counts as preparing for it. Maintenance? Maybe when hell freezes over. The USS Abraham Lincoln has been deployed for 279 days, over 200 in a combat zone, and nine months without a real port call. The crews work hours that would make a Victorian factory owner blush, and supplies of food and water have dwindled; getting post from home basically ceased and sailors have been pushed past the point of exhaustion. Mental health is going down the drain or even overboard, the sea more attractive than working another day on Trump's floating sweatshop. This much of course isn’t new, the vessel is now being relieved.

But the military magazine Stars and Stripes had dared to report the conditions in which life aboard the Lincoln had become and in retaliation for that, Pentagon officials have sent senior journalists packing. How dare you tell the truth!

Trump’s war now seemingly being paid with their wages now.

His big, strong fleet, but their cancelled training.

His photographic opportunity. Their nervous breakdown.

You would think, with one-point-five trillion dollars that have been so readily given to the military, that they would have been able to keep the war going without having to beg the sailors for their wages too? Beg not really the operative word of course – as if they asked!

Right, so Benjamin Netanyahu has been playing Donald Trump again and again.

Trump has handed Netanyahu exactly what he wanted: Israel gets to stay put in Gaza until Hamas has surrendered every single weapon.

And what has Trump got back for that concession?

No withdrawal. Not a deal. Not even a promise that Netanyahu will stop adding more conditions, because he’s always got another one hasn’t he?

Just another chance to stand next to him and pretend this is going brilliantly.

We are of course talking about Trump’s Gaza Board of Peace here. The body sold as the bridge between a ceasefire and Gaza actually being rebuilt.

Its job, in theory, was to oversee the handover from war to something resembling normal life again, which of course is what we all want to see: weapons dealt with under international supervision, Israeli forces withdrawing in stages, and a Palestinian administration taking over.

The Yellow Line is the Israeli military line inside Gaza. The point beyond which Israel was supposedly meant to begin pulling back.

Now, the Board did not throw every part of that plan in the bin. It only tore up the bit that made it an actual exchange.

Its own representative described a neat little dance: weapons decommissioned in stages, Israeli withdrawal in stages. One side performs, the other side has to move too.

But then the Board met Benjamin Netanyahu and then it announced that Israel would not leave beyond the Yellow Line until Hamas had completed full disarmament.

So Israel gets to remain on the line it already holds, actually having taken more than that and moving up to an orange line. Netanyahu had bragged on camera that they had control of 70% of the strip and would go for more, all while Hamas is expected to hand over the last rifle, pistol, slingshot and, presumably, every remaining scrap of dignity before Israel has to give up a single inch.

The Board took a phased, reciprocal arrangement and moved the risk almost entirely onto Gaza. What an absolute shocker, with people like the orange dunce and Tony Blair involved, I can’t imagine how this panned out.

Right, so Palestine Action, having undertaken their brisk tour of the airbase at Brize Norton last year, did of course give two RAF Voyager aircraft a makeover in that well-known colour, “international incident red.”

Keir Starmer, as he never misses an opportunity to overreact, responded by hurriedly slapping a terrorism ban on the movement. All of that we already know of course.

Now, you can think breaking into an RAF base and spraying military planes is irresponsible, reckless, criminal, all of the above. Fine. It was always going to attract attention, that was the point. This was not somebody glueing themselves to a council chamber door here.

But there is quite a leap, isn’t there, between prosecuting the people who got into the base and declaring the entire movement a terrorist organisation?

That was Starmer’s leap.

The man looked at a very obvious security failure by the RAF, saw two aircraft covered in red paint, and decided the problem was not the security at the base. It was the existence of people prepared to protest British military involvement in Gaza.

So he reached for terrorism law.

And when a government starts treating political protest as a national-security problem, it rarely stops at the first overreach. It gets ideas. It starts asking what else could be done. What new powers might help. What new systems could be built. How much further the definition of “security” can be stretched before it finally snaps.

Right, so, the orange menace currently passing himself off as the US President, and in his signature style, has now launched something called Operation Economic Outcast.

Nearly 60 sanctions targets across five sectors. Anyone still doing business with Iran is now facing threats that amount to the financial equivalent of being shoved into school locker after having your head flushed down a loo.

Unfortunately for the thuggish Trump, the Treasury avoided targeting the major Chinese banks it would need to confront if it truly intended to choke off Iran's oil trade.

And when Treasury sycophant Scott Bessent was asked why they had not simply imposed the harshest sanctions immediately, he came out with this. "Well, we are allowing everyone to remedy bad behaviour. Why would I want to blow up the global financial system?" Lovely. Wall Street can rest easy.

Apparently, Economic D-Day now comes with a risk assessment, a waiver form, and maybe even a particularly robust stress ball.

Trump's Treasury is going to cut every economic lifeline to Iran, at least until it looks like it might end up hurting itself in the process.

Before turning to China, though, it is worth listening to what Bessent actually promised, because this was not just a matter of adding a bit more pressure, another sanction, and a strongly worded letter.

This was presented as total isolation. "Today, in that same spirit, we are launching an economic onslaught against Iran's financial connections around the globe. Our objective is to sever every economic lifeline that sustains this tyrannical regime until Tehran stands alone." That is quite a promise. About as credible as a Trump University diploma, and just as likely to end in disappointment.

Right, so Israel's UN ambassador Danny Danon appeared on Sky News to state that the West Bank is "not occupied land", but "our land". Apparently international law now comes with a biblical opt-out clause. Then Israeli forces took over the UNRWA centre in Qalandia, a Palestinian village in the West Bank, removed all of the staff, and Ben Gvir sat in the director's chair to declare: "On my shift, there is no UNRWA", like a scene from the Capital on January 6th.

Not exactly a great moment for Danny to make his point land though is it?

Especially when you notice what his government is quietly preparing next.

But before we get to Ben Gvir strutting around someone else's office as if he owns it, let's listen to Danny Danon present his argument. So that's his position, as stated in his Arnold Schwartzenegger knock-off voice, all very Middle Eastern.

The West Bank isn't occupied. It's Israel's land. Jewish people have historical rights, biblical rights, and so Israelis living there cannot be considered settlers.

Well, that seems to settle international law then, someone please call The Hague and let them know, Danny Danon has spoken.

All those lawyers, courts, UN resolutions, and decades of diplomacy can apparently go home, since Danny Danon has found a religious text and decided it works as a property deed with extra commandments that Moses must’ve dropped.

Right, so Benjamin Netanyahu has a problem. Yes, another one, absolute rotten shame really isn’t it?

Donald Trump has just pulled Syria off America’s terror-state list, handing it a golden ticket back into trade and diplomacy that Israel now cannot destroy, no matter how many jets they send or how many times Netanyahu tries to order an airstrike as if he’s calling for pizza.

Washington has taken Syria off America’s terror-state list. It has removed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, HTS, the unelected Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s bunch of Al-Qaeda castoffs from a separate sanctions blocklist. Yet on the very same day, Israeli troops were still entering southern Syria and Israeli aircraft were still circling overhead.

So Israel can keep sending in the troops and it can keep making big holes in the road courtesy of an explosion or two, but one of the biggest weapons in Netanyahu’s Syria squeeze has just been taken away from him and it’s the same thing he’s failed at with regards to Iran as well.

Isolation.

Now, I know. US Treasury sanctions. Nobody has ever burst into a pub shouting, 'Drop your pints, lads, the Office of Foreign Assets Control just dropped an administrative update!' The only thing less exciting would be a live reading of the US tax code.

But this one counts for a bit more than just being yawned over.

The State Department formally removed Syria’s designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism.

It also revoked the Specially Designated Global Terrorist listing covering HTS and al-Nusrah, the Syrian arm of Al-Qaeda as that basically was and removed HTS from the Treasury sanctions blocklist.

That means Americans no longer require specific Treasury permission to transact with HTS, provided no other sanctioned person or prohibited activity is involved. Yes, I’m sure these fine and upstanding Syrian citizens will definitely all be on the level now and there won’t be anything to see here honest guv.