Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle says he reported Peter Mandelson as a flight risk to the Metropolitan Police, prompting the force to arrest the former US ambassador on Monday over his links to Jeffrey Epstein. Mandelson has described the claim that he planned to flee to the British Virgin Islands – which Hoyle reportedly caught wind of when he was there last week – as “complete fiction”. Donald Trump delivered the longest State of the Union address in history last night, declaring the US “bigger, better, richer and stronger than ever before”. In his one hour and 47 minute speech, the president claimed an economic “turnaround for the ages”, lambasted Iran for its “sinister nuclear ambitions” and declared the Supreme Court’s recent tariffs ruling “very unfortunate”. The T-Rex was significantly faster than previously thought. New analysis of the deadly dinosaur’s footprints suggest the predator ran in a “toes-first” style, making it 20% faster than original estimates, and meaning it would beat Usain Bolt over 100m by a crisp 0.81 seconds.

Donald Trump looks poised to strike Iran. Good, says Bret Stephens in The New York Times. The Islamic Republic is a danger to its neighbours through its violent proxies; to global stability with its deep ties to Beijing and Moscow, persistent threats to maritime trade and backing for global terrorism; and to its own people, thousands of whom it slaughtered last month. Nothing else has worked: decades of economic sanctions immiserated ordinary Iranians while their despotic rulers partied on, enriching themselves through sanctions busting, cybercrime, drug dealing and other black market shenanigans. Institutions like the International Atomic Energy Agency couldn’t curb Tehran’s dangerous nuclear ambitions; nor could years of diplomacy under Barack Obama and Joe Biden. The Iranian people are already in the streets and Trump has a historic opportunity to support them in bringing down an evil regime. He should take it.

The idea that a limited strike could force concessions without igniting a wider war rests on deeply flawed assumptions, says Ali Hashem in Foreign Policy. Conflicts escalate fast unless both sides want to keep them contained, and right now “that shared interest may be gone”. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has moved away from preaching “tactical restraint” and started using the language of confrontation “through the lens of Karbala”. This refers to a battle in 680AD in which the grandson of the prophet Muhammad, Imam Hussein, chose martyrdom over submitting to an unjust ruler. In the political consciousness of Shia Islam this is no mere myth but a core component in an all-encompassing moral and political code. The idea of “dying on one’s feet and not living on one’s knees” is alien to the US logic of coercive diplomacy. But Iranian theocrats believe it in their bones. What Washington hawks don’t understand is that if the mullahs go down, they will gladly try to take the world with them.