Iran has announced that Mojtaba Khamenei will succeed his late father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as the country’s new supreme leader, despite Donald Trump saying last week that the 56-year-old would be an “unacceptable” replacement. It’s the clearest sign yet, says David Blair in The Daily Telegraph, that the regime in Tehran is unwilling to “do America’s bidding or retreat in any way”. Stock markets have slumped as the price of oil surged to nearly $120 a barrel for the first time since 2022, threatening to send petrol costs soaring in the US and Europe and increasing fears of widespread inflation. G7 finance ministers are meeting today to discuss a possible joint release of emergency oil reserves to ease prices. Bruin, a clumber spaniel, beat more than 18,000 dogs to be crowned Best in Show at this year’s Crufts. The four-year-old fido, who had already won the gundog category earlier in the contest, was described by his handler Lee Cox as a “walking cartoon character in a fluffy white coat” and a “bit of a diva”.

The US-Israeli military campaign against Iran is proving extremely divisive among Americans, says Shira Efron in Foreign Affairs. In Israel, it’s the reverse. Some 81% of the country support the strikes, up from 59% before they began. The reason is simple: Israelis are “tired of being on a constant war footing”. Tourism has collapsed by 60% since 2023, and the central bank recently warned of labour shortages, inflation and a brain drain of tech workers. With the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the decimation of Iran’s military apparatus, many Israelis can for the first time in years imagine a region free of Tehran’s “malign influence”.

All of this is a “gift” for Benjamin Netanyahu. Polls taken before the war began suggested that the prime minister’s coalition would lose power in the election later this year, which would strip him of immunity to longstanding corruption charges. Now his government is seeking to reframe Israel’s military actions since the Hamas attacks as a triumphal “war of redemption” culminating in the final defeat of Iran. Netanyahu’s hope is that he can go from being the leader who was in charge during “the worst massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust” to the one who “eliminated the Nazis’ modern-day equivalent”. So far, it appears to be working. “In moments like these we stand together,” opposition leader Yair Lapid said after the first air strikes. “There is no coalition and no opposition, only one people and one IDF, with all of us behind them.” Plenty could change, of course – Washington may well “pull the plug” long before Israel’s goal of regime change is achieved. But the Iran war may still be Netanyahu’s “winning electoral card”.

🇮🇱📉 One striking longer-term trend is the precipitous drop in support for Israel in the US. A recent Gallup poll showed that for the first time in decades, more Americans express support for the Palestinians than for Israel. If backing the Israelis becomes a significant vote-loser for US politicians, that could have “dangerous consequences” for Israel.

The US and Israel are thinking about sending special forces into Iran to secure the Islamic Republic’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, say Barak Ravid and Marc Caputo in Axios. American officials say the mission would involve either removing the material from the country entirely or bringing in nuclear experts to dilute it on site. Also under consideration is sending troops to seize Kharg Island, where around 90% of Iran’s crude oil exports are loaded on to tankers. As one source says: “Boots on the ground for Trump is not the same as what it means for the media.”

When I was prime minister, says Boris Johnson in the Daily Mail, I was tasked with telling the then Prince Andrew that, following his disastrous Newsnight interview, he couldn’t attend some big public event for fear of “embarrassing his mother and the whole institution of the monarchy”. He wasn’t thrilled, so I tried to cheer him up by suggesting possible ways to slowly rebuild his reputation. Why not open a pub in the country and run it with his ex-wife Fergie? I got a particularly sharp look when I suggested he call it “The Duke of York”.

There’s a lot of talk about whether Donald Trump should stay the course in Iran or pull out before it gets too messy. In truth, says Wolfgang Münchau in UnHerd, he may not have a choice: the crisis in Western military supply chains means that even the world’s most powerful military may run out of key materiel in a matter of weeks. They cannot simply ramp up production because mining and processing the necessary raw materials is something the West outsourced decades ago. Our enemies weren’t so foolish. The specific advantage Russia and China have over the West is not merely their wealth of metals and minerals, it is their “unparalleled” ability to process them.

This is no accident: if Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping understand one thing it’s industrial supply chains. Putin wrote (or, possibly, plagiarised) his thesis on Russia’s mineral resources, concluding that they should be nationalised. Xi formed his economic views as a young man watching the decline of the Soviet Union with its reliance on smokestack industries. He became a champion of modern industry, pouring government money into the likes of rare earths, magnets, car batteries, electric cars, solar panels and robots. Can any of us name a Western leader with an interest in mining? Or even a basic knowledge of downstream industrial processes? Trump was a property developer; Emmanuel Macron an investment banker; Keir Starmer and Friedrich Merz lawyers. What happens when China decides it’s time to invade Taiwan? Or Putin – coffers bolstered by the surging oil price – pushes into the Baltics? America is running out of missiles after a week of fighting Iran. The West hasn’t a chance.

🚀😬 Few appreciate the extraordinary cost of producing anti-missile weapons, says Mark Urban in The Sunday Times. The ground-based Patriot and Talon missiles set you back, respectively, $3.9m and $12m a shot. And they are so complex to build that orders can take years to be fulfilled. During the first 36 hours of this war, the US and its allies fired 340 Patriots (worth over $1.3bn and accounting for roughly six months of production) and 70 Talons. “US forces bought only 73 Talons during the four years of the Biden Administration.”

Last month, says Ross Andersen in The Atlantic, someone placed a peculiar wager on the prediction market Kalshi, betting $100,000 that, by the end of the year, Donald Trump’s administration would confirm that “alien life or technology exists elsewhere in our universe”. Around 35 minutes later, the bet was followed by another almost twice as large, “possibly from the same person”. This might be just some “overexcited UFO diehard” with a hunch and cash to burn. But it wouldn’t be the first time an administration insider had made a bet with privileged knowledge and made a packet. The truth is out there.

Though Reform UK are leading in the polls, on 24%, they are also the nation’s “most disliked” political party, says Max Mitchell in UnHerd. A new poll by More in Common found that 38% of the electorate would vote tactically to block Nigel Farage’s party from power, up nine points since November. Labour are the second-most unpopular, with 34% willing to use their vote to kick them out.

It’s Utrecht’s “fish doorbell”, says BBC Newsround. Every spring, fish swim upstream in the Dutch city’s canals looking for somewhere to lay their eggs. But they often find themselves stuck at lock gates, so scientists set up cameras and a livestream with a “digital doorbell” that viewers can activate if they see a fish waiting. When enough fish are in the queue, the gatekeepers open the locks to let them through. Last year the buzzer was pressed more than 200,000 times – monitor it yourself by clicking here.