Russia was behind arson attacks targeting UK PM Keir Starmer, BBC reveals bbc.in/3Q3lOy1

For the first time in 12 years I genuinely believe Ukraine will liberate Crimea. It is inevitable.

Until the text of the US-Iran deal is signed and released, there is going to be a lot of spin on both sides. But here is my initial take. This war was a mistake, and it needs to end. The President thought that the Iranian regime would collapse quickly, but it did not. In fact, it has been strengthened strategically by its survival against a heavy US-Israeli assault and carrying out some effective counterstrikes. Many countries in the region are now courting Iran and looking to deescalate and rebuild ties. A sign of which way the wind is blowing. Getting the Strait of Hormuz open is the most important outcome of this MOU. Of course, the Strait was open before the war. Now we are paying to reopen it with sanctions relief. Iran has taken a theoretical point of leverage and turned it into a very real and powerful one, imposing costs across the global economy and rattling President Trump. As for the nuclear issues, there really is no agreement, other than to negotiate over the HEU stockpile and an enrichment moratorium. Iran knows how to drag out those negotiations, and try to pocket concessions along the way. It is possible that no deal will every be reached, and very likely that if one is reached, it will be worse than what we could have achieved through diplomacy before the war. Iran is not likely to take seriously that the US would return to war, certainly before the US midterms. So that means we will be conducting diplomacy without a credible threat of force. If any agreement ultimately reached actually safely puts Iran's nuclear ambitions out of reach, I'll acknowledge it. It's just too early to make that judgment. Trump is mainly focused on comparing his deal favorably to the JCPOA. But we are a long way from being able to make that comparison, and it may end up no better, or weaker than that deal. But in some ways, Trump's deal and the JCPOA are already similar. Nothing on ballistic missiles, nothing on proxies, nothing on weakening the regime or helping the Iranian people. And plenty of sanctions relief that will strengthen the regime, and be poured into the missile program and proxy network. Honest critics of the JCPOA will not twist themselves into pretzels to defend Trump's approach. Israelis are deeply disappointed in this outcome, but they should not be surprised. After some initial overlap of Trump's and Netanyahu's interests, there was a strong divergence. The United States needed this war to end. Netanyahu wanted to continue. Trump's claim to include Lebanon in the ceasefire and his harsh shutting down Israeli attacks on Hezbollah is also a win for Iran. After the JCPOA was signed, Obama and Netanyahu worked together to strengthen Israel's campaign of strikes in Syria to intercept Iranian weapons shipments to Hezbollah in Lebanon. So let's hope we see the removal of Iran's enriched uranium and a long-term suspension of enrichment, with full verification. But to achieve those goals, Trump's team is going to need to engage in far more sophisticated diplomacy, backed by qualified experts, than they have to date. If it is a phase one splash with no follow-up on implementation of later phases, like in Gaza, we will be much worse off after, and because of, this war.

O'BRIEN: Trump believed Ukraine had no cards, that he could bully Ukrainians into giving Putin very good deal. He didn't understand that Ukraine was developing their own capabilities and their willingness to fight. So, Trump failed for two reasons. First, Ukrainians adapted, and that wasn't expected by him. You can see there have been some changes in his rhetoric lately, where he has to grudgingly admit that Ukraine has actually done better. The United States completely underestimated Ukrainian resilience. Secondly, Trump thought Europeans would bully Ukraine along with him because they would be afraid of United States leaving NATO. He thought he could use NATO to push Europeans to force Ukraine to take a bad deal. Europeans eventually helped Ukraine more than he thought. They seem to understand that it's actually better for them to have Ukraine fight the war the way Ukraine wants. Trump didn't understand what Ukraine was capable of and he misjudged what Europeans would do.

Fiona Hill: Autocracies see the state as strong and society as irrelevant. Individuals have no real role. The fundamental difference with democracies is that societies still matter and in Ukraine, society has shown extraordinary resilience. 1/

A raccoon figured out that if he blocks the drive-thru, they’ll give him a donut to make him leave

"To host a World Cup, a nation need only be as democratic as the Argentine junta (1978), as transparent as Qatar (2022), and as peaceful as Russia (2018)." Read @Kasparov63 on Trump, FIFA, and the World Cup: thenextmove.org/p/the-trump-…