Donald Trump has warned Israel not to retaliate after its government accused Iran of violating a newly announced US-brokered ceasefire. The Israelis said the Islamic Republic launched a volley of missiles this morning – a claim denied by Iranian state television – and promised “powerful strikes” on Tehran in response. More than 100 Labour MPs are threatening to block the government’s £5bn welfare cuts in what would be the “biggest rebellion” of Keir Starmer’s premiership, says Politico. If the government is unable to pass these cost-cutting measures with a 156-seat majority, it bodes poorly for “future fiscal consolidation efforts”. A statue of Elizabeth II on horseback overlooking the Mall and another of her walking arm-in-arm with Prince Philip are part of Norman Foster’s winning design for a national memorial. Up to £46m has been set aside for the project, with final designs expected in April next year to mark what would have been the late Queen’s 100th birthday.

The Iranian regime is more fragile than we think

Donald Trump’s bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities raises one essential question, says Karim Sadjadpour in The New York Times: “Will this extraordinary act of war strengthen Tehran’s authoritarians or hasten their demise?” The Islamic Republic has long resembled a zombie regime – “ideologically dead but still repressive” – like the late Soviet Union. The chasm between the country’s ossified ruling class and dynamic population is perhaps the largest in the world, as if the ideologically rigid, nuke-mad North Koreans ruled over a population of modern, prosperity-minded South Koreans. The hated theocracy is maintained by a “highly armed, organised repressive apparatus willing to kill en masse”. The regime’s far more numerous opponents are “unarmed, unorganised and unwilling to die en masse”. Can Israel and America shift that balance?

It’s often said that external bombing doesn’t inspire popular uprisings but rather galvanises domestic support for autocrats. That can be true for revolutionary regimes in their early years: the Korean War strengthened Kim Il-sung’s grip on Pyongyang, for example, and the CIA’s Bay of Pigs failure consolidated Fidel Castro’s nascent dictatorship in Cuba. But for ageing dictatorships, military humiliations can expose their brittleness. Think of the USSR in Afghanistan, the Argentine Junta after the Falklands, and Slobodan Milošević after Nato’s 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia. Yes, authoritarian transitions tend to be “brutality contests, not popularity contests”. But there are many reasons to believe Iran could buck this trend: it has an “educated, globally connected population, vast natural resources and a proud civilisational identity”, not to mention a public yearning for rapprochement with the US. As America’s postwar partnerships with Vietnam and Japan show, “even the deepest wounds can heal”.

🪖💪 One effect of Israel’s bombing campaign is that it has allowed military hardliners to grab power from the clerics, says The Economist. In the first days of the war the ageing Ayatollah “disappeared from the scene” and delegated decision-making to a new council, or shura, dominated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Because Israel has assassinated much of the IRGC’s relatively moderate top brass, the military wing is now dominated by a new generation: one that’s impatient, dogmatic and “bent on redeeming national pride”. Iran has long pursued “reckless risk-taking and belligerence” under the mullahs. “The danger is the military men are worse.”