IRAN - The US has said Iranian claims that it had struck the USS Abraham Lincoln are a "lie", adding missiles launched by Tehran "didn't even come close" to the warship. In a statement carried by Iranian state media, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said four ballistic missiles were fired at the US Navy aircraft carrier in waters near the Gulf region. The alleged strike was described as part of what Tehran has dubbed “Operation True Promise-4,” a broader military campaign targeting American and Israeli assets. The Guards said in a statement shared by local media: "The US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln was struck by four ballistic missiles." They said "the land and sea will increasingly become the graveyard of the terrorist aggressors."

GERMANY - The nation’s ‘super election year’ starts next week and could deliver big gains for the AfD in the former West, where car-factory workers feel vulnerable. Mercedes-Benz manufactures and assembles vehicles in more than a dozen countries around the world, and high labour costs make Germany one of its most expensive locations. “If things keep getting worse, you start worrying the company might pack up and leave,” Schoeffler said. “Lots of suppliers and other companies depend on this plant, so they would have problems, too. And finding another job would be hard.” Elections will take place for a new state parliament, the first of five such contests across the country in what has been dubbed a “super election year”. Polls predict the strongest gains will be for the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) — thanks in part to growing support from workers...

UK - Does anyone have the faintest idea what the Labour Government’s policy is towards Donald Trump’s bombing of Iran. Is it for or against? Some may think that Sir Keir Starmer supports American and Israeli action. On Saturday he described the regime in Tehran as ‘utterly abhorrent’, and added that Iran ‘must never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon’. Yet at the same time Starmer is reported to have denied permission to the United States to use the British base on Diego Garcia, one of the Chagos Islands, to mount a strike against Iran. Not very helpful. Until 1956 and the Suez crisis, Britain was the pre-eminent Middle Eastern power. Even after having been displaced by the United States, we remained its most trusted and often indispensable ally, fighting together in both Gulf Wars... Now, under Starmer’s feeble leadership, we have become mere spectators. It is the first time this has happened in my lifetime. Donald Trump doesn’t care what we think or do as we sink into irrelevance.

UK - Polanski’s European cousins turned from doves to hawks when faced with realities of governing. In 1999, Joschka Fischer, then the leader of Germany’s Greens abandoned his pacifist principles just six months after entering government. As he savours a victory that cements his party’s status as a rising force, Mr Polanski may yet face his own Fischer moment. For now, he enjoys the moral clarity and ideological purity available only on the political sidelines. The contrast between his defence views and those of Greens who have tasted power elsewhere is certainly telling. Germany’s Greens, twice in coalition governments, grew markedly more hawkish after the pragmatic “Realos” prevailed over the purist “Fundis” in 1999. As Daniel Cohn-Bendit, an ally of Mr Fischer, told the jeering crowd in Bielefeld in 1999: “If you want to go into government, you take over the world as it is – not as you would like it to be.”

UK - What does the Green Party stand for? If, for example, you look through their hundreds of laughing TikToks, podcasts, cool memes, leaflets and press releases, you’ll struggle to find a single solid thought. Over the past 18 months, the Green Party stopped being the party of the environment — of serious, practical solutions. It became the party of something else; something darker.

UK - If you doubted that Britain is undergoing a national nervous breakdown, two incidents last night provided irrefutable evidence. Up in Gorton and Denton we saw the Green Party triumph based on a scurrilous campaign of sectarian grievance-mongering. But in London – indeed, in the heart of Westminster, opposite the same Houses of Parliament which Hannah Spencer is now set to enter – a single, reprehensible act of graffiti showed how the Britain that so many of us hoped we live in has been irretrievably lost. This is a grim, grim day.

IRAN - Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has been killed in a major assault on Iran launched by Israel and the United States. The Ayatollah’s body, riddled with shrapnel wounds, was recovered from the rubble after a daylight bombing raid aimed at toppling the regime destroyed his Tehran compound. Iranian state TV confirmed Khamenei’s death in the early hours of Sunday morning, hours after it was initially reported by Israeli media and declared on social media by Donald Trump. Israel and the US conducted 900 strikes in 12 hours on military bases, nuclear sites and government buildings across Iran using F-35s, F-22s and – for the first time – one-way attack drones. “The United States did not start this conflict, but we will finish it. If you kill or threaten Americans anywhere in the world — as Iran has — then we will hunt you down, and we will kill you,” he said in a post on X.

MIDDLE EAST - Many Gulf states believe Iran to be a danger to the region and a destabilising force. Saudi Arabia joined Israel in lobbying the US to launch strikes against Iran. Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, argued in favour of an attack during multiple phone calls with Donald Trump in the past month, sources told the Washington Post. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, also continued his long-standing campaign urging the US to join strikes on Iran, the Post reported. Iran has continued its retaliation after the US and Israel launched a barrage of strikes on Saturday morning, killing its supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran has so far launched attacks on six of its neighbours, inadvertently uniting the Middle East against the Islamic Republic. Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, the Emirati political commentator, told The Telegraph that Iran was the unifying threat bringing Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) nations together, “regardless of differences”. He said: “When things get tough, they come together.”

IRAN - The country’s fate now rests on whether the people can topple the regime before Khamenei is replaced. Now we know why America and Israel chose this moment for their joint onslaught against Iran’s regime. They must have identified a historic and fleeting opportunity to kill the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and bring his 37-year rule to a sudden and violent end. On Saturday evening, following air strikes on the Ayatollah’s compound earlier in the day, Donald Trump said: “Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead”. Before the US president’s announcement, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, had maintained that Khamenei was “safe and sound”. Evidence of his death was presented to Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. Iran eventually confirmed Khamenei’s death on Sunday morning. It appears that the proposition that the Islamic Republic can survive the loss of any single individual will now be tested in the harsh winds of reality.

IRAN - The first missile struck the compound of Ali Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader, at 9.55 am Tehran time. As many as twenty-nine more followed shortly after. There could be no doubt about Donald Trump’s mission. This was about taking down the Iranian regime. Mohammed Pakpour, the IRGC chief, was killed, as was Amir Nasirzadeh, Iran’s defence minister. Khamenei’s daughter-in-law and son-in-law were also killed. And then late on Saturday night, Donald Trump announced that Khameni himself was dead. Israel said his body had been pulled from the rubble. “To the members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the armed forces and all of the police, I say tonight that you must lay down your weapons and have complete immunity, or, in the alternative, face certain death.” Then he spoke to the Iranian people. “To the great, proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand… when we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”

PAKISTAN - Months of border clashes between Taliban fighters and Pakistani forces have now intensified into ‘open war’. Pakistan’s jets struck Kabul and Kandahar in the early hours of Friday in the most significant escalation between the two countries in years. Khawaja Asif, Islamabad’s defence minister, said the countries were now in a state of “open war” – with Pakistan now bombing the Taliban it spent decades supporting.

MIDDLE EAST - Oil prices could jump as high as $100 a barrel if the US conflict with Iran does not end quickly, wreaking havoc on the global economy. As missiles fly over one of the world’s major choke points for oil and gas, Brent crude could surge from the current $73 a barrel – with gas prices following suit. That would stoke inflation in Britain, sapping economic growth and potentially pushing up interest rates. Wider disruptions to commercial shipping and air freight could stack further costs on the UK economy, creating a major headache for Rachel Reeves as she prepares for her Spring Statement on Tuesday. “Even if strikes remain limited, we think Brent crude oil prices might rise to about $80 per barrel,” said William Jackson of Capital Economics. Donald Trump’s attack does not solely hit one of the world’s largest oil producers. It will draw in almost all the Middle East’s major energy players, and will send shockwaves throughout the global shipping industry.

IRAN - The country is now plunged into a period of even greater uncertainty, with eyes on potential successors and the possibility of civil war. As Israeli and American strikes continued into Saturday night, uncertainty over Iran’s future was deepening. The supreme leader may have painted himself as a revolutionary, but he was a brutal and repressive ruler who killed or sidelined every serious opponent he had. This January, he ordered the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and police forces to crack down on protesters who were calling for an end to the regime. According to Iranian activists they killed tens of thousands of people, many of them young pro-democracy protesters. For Khamenei and those around him, anything — including slaughtering their own people — was permissible to ensure the survival of the regime.

IRAN - Former IDF intelligence official Yossi Kuperwasser said Iran now views the conflict as an existential war, warning the regime is likely to escalate and use all military and proxy capabilities. The current conflict with Iran will only become more severe as the Islamic regime now understands that it is in an “existential war” threatening its continued rule, Brigadier-General (reserve) Yossi Kuperwasser, head of the Jerusalem Institute of Strategy and Security and former head of IDF military intelligence research, told The Jerusalem Post on Saturday.

IRAN - Critical infrastructure, official news sites, and security communications systems reportedly stopped functioning, leaving the leadership in a communications blackout at home and abroad. As fighter jets and cruise missiles struck IRGC command centers, a parallel front reportedly paralyzed the Islamic Republic from within. Reports on Saturday, February 28, 2026, indicated that Iran entered an almost complete digital fog, in what appeared to be a large-scale cyberattack accompanying Operation “Roar of the Lion.” Western intelligence sources said the damage to the IRGC's communications infrastructure was meant to prevent coordination of counterattacks and disrupt the ability to launch drones and ballistic missiles by Iranian cyber and electronic units. As the regime tried to rely on its isolated “national internet” network, reports suggested it also failed under the pressure of the combined offensive, leaving Iran exposed and isolated during a moment of acute crisis.