Lindsey Graham

"I like the structural path we are on here. As long as we help Ukraine with the weapons they need and economic support, they will fight to the last person." Lindsay Graham (2022)

I don't know where I copied this crom.

In December 2015, Graham looked into a camera and called Donald Trump a "race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot." By February 2016: "I think he's a kook. I think he's crazy." That May he wrote: "If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed... and we will deserve it." He refused to vote for him.

Then Trump won, and Lindsey Graham discovered golf. 

By late 2017 he was scolding the media for calling the president, yes, really, a kook. 

....In November 2020, Georgia's Republican secretary of state said Graham had called him asking about tossing legally cast mail ballots. Graham denied it, fought the grand jury subpoena all the way to the Supreme Court, and lost. 

On January 6th, with the glass still on the Capitol floor, he announced: "Count me out. Enough is enough." He was back at Mar-a-Lago within months.

He cheered the country into Iraq. Three weeks ago he was on television promising that if diplomacy failed, Trump was "going to take the Strait of Hormuz."

"

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said at the weekend that Israel is destroying everything in Southern Lebanon

“I said that Southern Lebanon would become Gaza. We would apply the Rafah model.

We would destroy everything there. We would deal with them in exactly that way.

And that is what we did.

The infrastructure has been destroyed.

Homes in 24 villages along the border, villages that had existed for hundreds of years and were used by Hezbollah as military outposts against Israel have been demolished.

The army systematically flattened the villages with bulldozers and explosives.

Ninety percent of the houses are gone.

Between 15,000 and 20,000 homes have been destroyed.”

A very bad man has died

Lindsay Graham is dead.

The Politician, dead and turned to clay,

Will make a clout to keep the wind away.

I am not fond of draughts, and yet I doubt

If I could get myself to touch that clout.

(Belloc)

Deploring the joy expressed at Ann Widdicombe's murder I feel a hypocrite but I feel absolutely no sadness about Lindsay Graham's death.

I never disliked a politician more.

He called for the US to attack Iran in 7 October 2023 and wanted Iran flattened like Hiroshima.

I do not rejoice but Clarence Farrow put it best when he said "I have never wished a man dead, but I have read many obituaries with great satisfaction".

Not many in my case. Very few but his yes.

Actually I am lying to myself and you. I am pleased he is dead, simply because while he lived he was doing enormous harm. Though if he was murdered this I strongly condemn like the murders of Arabs and Persians. 

Miss Widdicombe by contrast was a retired spinster living in a cottage in the countryside who did no-one any harm and who stood by Harvey Proctor when he was accused wrongly of paedophilic crimes. Homosexual lobbyists let him hang in the breeze.

Conspiracies

Max Blumenthal has repeatedly talked about how American NGOs pretended that a US Israeli regime change psychop in January was spontaneous and grossly exaggerated the numbers of dead.

Here is Ana Kasparian telling the story.

I knew this because I read the news with a sceptical historian's eye and have continuously said so since it happened. People have been disbelieving and even accused me of diffusing an antisemitic conspiracy theory.

This was the moment when I completely gave up on the mainstream media and on the American British defence establishments. Only the Financial Times mentioned mysterious men in black involved in the riots.

I used to dismiss conspiracy theories but all secret services do is conspire (and in some cases murder). 

Since January I no longer believe a word the US adjacent international defence establishment says or the media in the American controlled information space, which includes most of the world outside a few "enemy countries".

Murder most foul

I am very shocked by her murder and mourn the wonderful Ann Widdecombe, a great Englishwoman and Catholic concert, but what's wrong with calling her a "virgin", "spinster" and "old maid" as Adam Bolton did?

I remember browsing through a dictionary of offensive words and phrases in 1994 and read that old maid was offensive as it suggested an unmarried woman didn't have sexual experience and thought that the world had gone mad. 

In fact it had gone bad.

This is certainly no time to speak ill of the dead but I wonder why she and so many British conservatives gave the IDF complete support in Gaza. I don't understand it perhaps because I've lived in an all white,  extremely Christian country since the 1990s.

One can't help for a moment when reading about her murder in a village to think of Margaret Rutherford playing Miss Marple but Margaret Rutherford, whose father killed her grandfather, refused for a long time the role because murder is not to be treated likely, anywhere in the world.

There are lots of people on the internet expressing their hatred for Miss Widdicombe hecause she was a conservative and believed in Christian sexual morality. 

One hopes she died painfully which reminds me of this.

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) posted “Hurrah! She’s dead!” in response to the death of Ann Widdecombe. 

Why is it noteworthy that an unmarried Christian lady is a virgin?

AJ Balfour lived without sex and that didn't arouse comment. He did some snogging with pretty girls in summer houses one biography suggested. 

Edward Heath's lack of a sex life wasn't discussed when he was PM but is now. When I was a pretty undergraduate and lunches with him I noticed I made a hit with him and looking back I am sure he was a non practicing homosexual.

Axis of evil

The US deep state and Israel have brought disaster to the world starting in 2001. Nobody is held responsible.

The new axis of evil consists of America, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and American vassals like Frau Ursula Von Der Leyen, Mark Rutte, President Nicușor Dan and most of NATO. The other Gulf states are peeling off after Iran's victory because they have to.

America is now the evil empire, what Reagan accurately though undiplomatically called the USSR. 

It imposed sanctions on a third of the world's population, announces that it does not care about international law, attacks countries without provocation, murders, kidnaps, acts as a pirate arresting vessels on the high seas at its whim.

Please watch this short clip. George Yeo Foreign Minister of Singapore understands perfectly the new situation. 

He compares the NATO bombing of Kosovo with the Russian invasion of Ukraine to point up the lack of Western consistency.

I am completely on the Ukrainians' side against the Russians but Anglo-American folly in trying to make Ukraine a Western democracy from the 1990s onward led to the war.

Compare the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, the NATO invasion of Afghanistan, the American invasion of Iraq, intended by some to be the forerunner of an invasion of Iran, the Turkish and Anglo-American interventions in Libya and Syria, the Israeli invasions of nearby countries from 1967 onwards and the US attack on Iran after the CIA, Mossad and MI6's regime change operation failed.

What do they all have in common? All were completely illegal, as was the NATO bombing of Serbia, which I supported but all the Romanians to whom I spoke opposed.

Please don't think NATO is a defensive alliance.

Looking back September 11 2021 was the moment when the USA should have seen the consequences of allying with Israel and moved away.

However when attacked by foreigners people want revenge, just as so many Iranians who may previously have been well disposed towards America do now.

Here is Alastair Crooke in a four minute clip explaining where we are now.

Jewish-Canadian writer Aaron Maté a few minutes ago

About one-third of the world, including Iran’s 90 million people, live under crippling US sanctions. 

So under the current order, the US gets to crush foreign economies at will. By contrast, Iran is not allowed to use its own economic coercion over the Strait of Hormuz to raise money for the damage caused by an unprovoked US-Israeli war of aggression, and to help ensure one doesn’t happen again.

And the entire region, already hurt by decades of US-Israeli wars, has to suffer the consequences.

These lies are still widely believed

 

Iran threatens to expand war to Red Sea

The Daily Telegraph is the most wretchedly deceitful propaganda sheet in the world. 

Trump has just said the Gulf ceasefire is off (it was never on, always a US trick). 

Iran will protect herself as best she can (which is plenty) from the renewed US aggression and the top Telegraph headline is

<Iran threatens to expand war to Red Sea>

Inside we find:

Jake Wallis Simons

The three-word chant that demolishes the case for peace with Iran
Mourners screaming ‘death to America’ at the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei proves it’s nonsense to try to appease the Tehran regime

This is the funeral of a man murdered by the Americans remember, during peace negotiations starting an unprovoked, illegal war.

In other words this chant they have chanted since 1979 justifies the US making war on Iran, as if Iranians didn't have very ample reason to chant it, ampler with each passing year. I remember at the time of the revolution that chant endeared the new government to my reactionary heart. I am sure Michael Wharton (Peter Simple in the Telegraph) approved too but the Telegraph was conservative in those days.





Meanwhile Rutte of NATO backs this flagrantly illegal war because Iran levied fees to use persian Gulf in self defence after this unprovoked attack.




Please don't imagine the Guardian is not pro-Israel. In 2021 the Guardian fired US contributor Nathan J. Robinson following a sarcastic X post in which he said that the U.S. Congress is legally obligated to buy weapons for Israel, calling it a custom functionally indistinguishable from law. The U.S. editor-in-chief of The Guardian criticized the tweet as misleading, accusing Robinson of spreading "fake news" and promoting antisemitic "tropes" (dread word). Robinson deleted the tweet and apologised, but was fired anyway.

Quotations

"Solitude is not an absence. It is a form of fullness. Almost no one understands this. They call it emptiness, oblivion, cold, collapse, even pathology. And it is simply a language, the most ancient of all. Spoken by sages, eccentrics, exiles, writers and women who go out in the morning with a book under their arm instead of a companion." Sofia Proneikos, "Caryatid - The Vital Threads of The Soul"

"Gold, silver, jewels, purple garments, houses built of marble and other things of this kind offer a mutable and superficial pleasure;books give delight to the very marrow of one's bones. They speak to us,consult with us,and join with us in a living and intense intimacy." Petrarch

"Ah, the eternal burden of the intellectual - to pour all this knowledge into his brain through the three-millimetre aperture of the iris." Irvin D. Yalom, "When Nietzsche Wept"

"An intelligent man understands ideas. An intellectual believes in them." Alberto Moravia

"From the unreal lead me to the real, from darkness lead me to light, from death lead me to immortality." Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 1:3:18

From John Mearsheimer's speech to the Patriots for Europe conference at the European Parliament on November 10, 2025.

(The transcript is here.)

Some might argue that the EU, not NATO, was the main cause of European stability during the unipolar moment, which is why the EU, not NATO, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012. But this is wrong. While the EU has been a remarkably successful institution, its success is dependent on NATO keeping the peace in Europe. Turning Marx on his head, the political military institution is the base or foundation, and the economic institution is the superstructure. All of this is to say that, absent the American pacifier, not only does NATO as we know it disappear, but the EU will also be undermined in serious ways.




The conventional wisdom in the West is that Vladimir Putin is responsible for causing the Ukraine war. His aim, so the argument goes, is to conquer all of Ukraine and make it part of a greater Russia. Once that goal is achieved, Russia will move to create an empire in eastern Europe, much like the Soviet Union did after the Second World War. In this story, Putin is a mortal threat to the West and must be dealt with forcefully. In short, Putin is an imperialist with a master plan that fits neatly into a rich Russian tradition. There are numerous problems with this story. Let me spell out five of them.

The British should not feel guilty about slavery

Konstantin Krisin:

The strange thing about progress is that it only counts if you ignore where we started.

Every civilisation practised slavery.

The civilisation that ended it is now told it should feel guilty forever for having once participated. How does that make any sense?

I tried here to answer the question: Why do white Americans feel guilty about slavery?

Gideon Levy in Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, July 5: I Thought It Was AI or Art. It Was a Palestinian Zip-tied to a Pole in Gaza

What brings a young Israeli, someone serving in a combat unit, to torture a man by tying him to a pole? Did he wrong them somehow? He's their age, after all. Did they think about his life or his dreams? About his past, present and future?
Gideon Levy


He is lying in his underwear, almost naked, on his stomach. His eyes are covered with a rag. His face is pressed against a cot on which his kidnappers have placed him. His hands are behind his back, tied with plastic zip ties, tightly and painfully. His torso is tied to the bed with cords. On his leg, there are two red bruises.
So far, a routine picture of a detained Palestinian, but this time, the abuse also includes an original accessory: a wooden pole, the top of which is covered in iron for unclear reasons. It's tied across the length of his body, looking like an African spear. One might guess that its purpose is to prevent the victim from bending, even for a moment.

Ukraine's future looks very dark

"The defeat of Ukraine is inevitable. The real question is how much of Ukraine outside of the Donbas, Kherson and Zaporhyzhia will Russia capture?"

Larry Johnson, former CIA man on his website Sonar21 

"Russia is going to do to Ukraine what it did to Grozny."

Chas Freeman who was US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and has the mind of a first class history don, talking to Pascal Lottez on the latter's YouTube channel Neutrality Studies. 

I highly recommend the Ambassador and Neutrality Studies, which was not long ago shut down by YouTube for a wholly specious reason (sending spam) but returned. Our rulers do not like to be criticised and the channel may disappear in the future.

Quotations

"You get to choose your damn sacrifice. You don’t get to choose not to make one. And if you don't choose your sacrifice, time makes it for you, and it takes everything." Jordan Peterson

What life is there, what pleasure without golden Aphrodite? 

Mimnermus, fragment 1, line 1 (tr. Douglas E. Gerber)


If, as Mimnermus holds, without love and play
there's no enjoyment, live for love and play.

Horace, Epistles 1.6.65-66 (tr. Colin Macleod)

I think housework is far more tiring and frightening than hunting is, no comparison, and yet after hunting we had eggs for tea and were made to rest for hours, but after housework people expect one to go on just as if nothing special had happened.”
Nancy Mitford

Trump: I was shocked to see Iranians crying at Khamenei's funeral, as I thought people hated him.

Mr. Trump told Barak Ravid of Axios: I was shocked to see Iranians crying at Khamenei's funeral, as I thought people hated him.

He also said: "They are all there [at the funeral]. One shot and we can take them all out, but we are not going to do that because then we would have nobody to negotiate with...They are begging to make a deal." 

Mr Ravid is Israeli and "former" Israeli intelligence. There have been suggestions that millions or even billions have been made based on foreknowledge of things that he announces.

America has been at war for all but 6 years since 1776. The last war initiated by Persia (Iran) was from 1775 to 1776

I saw this on LinkedIn. I haven't checked its veracity.

American independence has really meant the start of their forever war. Only 6 full years from 250 without a war somewhere.

1775-1783 - War of Independence
1785-1795 - Northwest Indian War
1798-1803 - Quasi-War with France (at sea)
1801-1805 - First Barbary War (first expansion)
1811-1813 - Tecumseh's War
1812-1815 - Anglo-American War
1814-1819 - First Seminole War
1821-1826 - Clearing the Caribbean Sea of pirates
1823 - War with the Aricara Indians
1832 - Black Hawk War
1835-1842 - Second Seminole War
1836-1837 - Creek War, Indian deportation "Trail of Tears"
1846-1848 - Mexican-American War
1849-1886 - Wars with the Apaches
1855-1858 - Third Seminole War
1855-1855 - Invasion of Fiji and Uruguay
1858-1864 - War for the Bareheaded Hills
1861-1865 - Civil War
1865-1890s - Indian Wars, Great Plains
1890 - invasion Buenos Aires
1891 - invasion Valparaiso (Chile)
1893 - Overthrow. Queen of Hawaii
1894 - US Navy suppresses a mutiny in Rio
1894 and 1896 - invasion Nicaragua
1894-1896 - Operations of US Marines in Korea
1898 - Spanish-American War
1899-1902 - Boxer Rebellion in China
1899-1902 - Philippine-American War
1901 - Colombian Civil War (seized Panama)
1903-1914 - US involvement in Honduras, Dominican Republic, Panama, Cuba
1917-1918 - First World War

A series of "Banana Wars" - Interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean
1915-1934 - War and cleansing of Haiti
1916-1924 - Occupation of the Dominican Republic
1918-1920 - Intervention in the Russian Civil War
1926-1933 - War in Nicaragua
1934-1941 - Operations during the occupation of China
1941-1945 - Second World War
1946-1949 - Conflicts in China, Greece
1946-1950 - Occupation in the Philippines
1950-1953 - Korean War
1954 - Operation in Guatemala (US Air Force and CIA)
1954 - First Taiwan Strait Crisis (nuclear blackmail)
1954-1975 - Vietnam War (the last military defeat of the US)

Then the US waged wars not for military victories. The task was: to punish, to exhaust, to carry out coups.

1961 - Bay of Pigs landing in Cuba (epic failure)
1962 - Landing in Thailand
1964-1975 - Secret war in Laos and campaigns in Cambodia
1980 - Operation "Eagle Claw" in Iran
1982-1983 - Operations in Lebanon
1983 - Intervention in Grenada
1984 - Operation in the Gulf of Sidra against Libya
1986 - Operation "El Dorado Canyon" - air strike on Libya
1987-1988 - Operation "Honest Endeavor" - US Navy operations in the Persian Gulf
1989-1990 - Intervention in Panama (Operation "Just Cause")
1990-1991 - War in Iraq ("Desert Shield", "Desert Storm")
1992-1998 - Occupation actions in a collapsing Yugoslavia
1993-1995 - Operations in Somalia
1999 - Bombing of Yugoslavia
2001 - Operations "Enduring Freedom" - in Afghanistan, the Philippines, the Horn of Africa, Western Sahara
2001-2021 - War in Afghanistan
2003-2011 Second Iraq War
2011-present - Military operations in Libya, Syria, Yemen, etc.
2014 Coup in Ukraine and start of the proxy war against Russia
2026 invasion of Venezuela and attack on Iran

'Masha and the Bear' reminds me of the German waiters scare of 1910

Fifty members of the British parliament from six parties have written an open letter to Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy demanding that the Russian animated series Masha and the Bear be pulled from streaming services, BBC Russia reports.

The signatories include members from Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, the Scottish National Party, and Plaid Cymru. The series amounts to propaganda, the lawmakers argued, and “not subtle” propaganda at that. As an example, they mention an episode in which Masha, while guarding the Bear’s vegetable garden, first puts on a peaked cap with a blue band and a red star — resembling those worn by NKVD officers — and then dons a tank crew helmet.

The letter reminds Nandy that the NKVD was responsible for the mass deportation, execution, and persecution of tens of millions of Soviet citizens. In the lawmakers’ view, the series “actively normalizing Soviet military iconography for a global audience of young children.”

The warmongering press of 1910 in all countries led  to the end in  sense of civilisation, certainly Edwardian civilisation, to World Wars, Communism ruling half of Europe and to the modern Middle East. 

In some ways America started well but went badly wrong - perhaps in 1860, perhaps under FDR, perhaps after September 11

No American expected in the 1760s to see independence in his lifetime. Had someone like Pitt the Elder been British Prime Minister America would not have rebelled and would today have the same political status as Canada, self governing and with King Charles III not Donald Trump as head of state.

American Indians would have been better protected and slavery abolished sooner.

But the Whiggish ideals of the Founding Fathers are not the essence of America. Rather America is based on Anglo-Scottish tradition, culture and to some extent blood and very much based on Protestantism.

Americans borrowed their view of America being the light of the world from 18th British cant about Protestant British liberty.

Jordan Peterson who's a Canadian wrote today in a long paean on Facebook for America's 250th:

You bloody Americans value success, and you believe in its existence.
This is something that doesn't really happen anywhere else in the world. Even in other free democracies—the United Kingdom; Finland, Sweden, and Norway; Australia, New Zealand and Canada; Germany, France, and the Netherlands (great countries all)—a counterproductive cynicism too often reigns.
Success is equated with exploitation.
Ambition is looked upon with contempt.
This happens sometimes in the United States too—particularly among the miserable progressives, who confuse their resentment, ingratitude and unearned skepticism with wisdom.
But in your great country, by and large, striving is admired and success celebrated.
This means that more people strive and succeed in the US than anywhere else. And it's increasingly obvious. You remain stunningly more innovative and productive than any people anywhere else on the planet.

I like Jordan Peterson and he has a point, up to a point, but it is quite wrong to think "the American dream" of success is what the US founding fathers wanted. 

The second President John Adams in his Discourses on Davila warned that people "measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is" and if these materialistic drives for distinction and wealth go unchecked, they inevitably lead to oligarchy.

The American dream was an idea invented in the 1930s.

JP went on to say

Long may your admirable country dominate the world.

Long may your freedom and hope provide an example to those suffering everywhere at the hands of their malevolent states.

Unfortunately here he is out of date. The USA in its foreign policy has for years been more malevolent than almost any state I can think.


I say that not to defend Russia at all. I am utterly on the side of the Ukrainians but American folly and greed for power provoked her invasions of Ukraine and anyway invading Ukraine is a smaller crime than the illegal Anglo-American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and now the unprovoked war against Iran.

Then there's the kidnapping of the Venezuelan president and the threats to invade Cuba. And the murders of countless people by drones and more recently of alleged drug smugglers on the high sea.

It's been estimated that 38 million people have been directly or indirectly killed by America.

How many countries have China, Iran or Venezuela invaded?

The Americans accuse Iran of being a sponsor of terror but when it comes to terrorism what terrorists compare with the US armed forces? 

Severe weather has disrupted celebrations of the United States’ 250th anniversary of independence, including in Washington, DC, where a thunderstorm delayed a speech from President Donald Trump by almost two hours.

These things are a parable.

P.S. Brian Berletic in this podcast explains that America has been in a proxy war with Russia since 2014, a war with Iran and a dirty war using terrorists against China, aimed at cutting off Europe's and China's energy supplies and preventing the inchoate multipolar world from replacing American world dominance.

Europeans misled by the American controlled information space and still thinking in Cold War terms can't see it.

What a falling off is here. America has declined very much in 50 years

I always had love-hate feelings for America but my reasons for love and for hate changed a lot over the years. 

Finally I recently paid my first visit and to my surprise found I absolutely love the country. 

In a sense. 

I do not love America politically, America the empire. It is an international tyrant.

To wish America Happy 4th of July after Iran and Venezuela and the threats to Cuba would be like congratulating Germany or the USSR after they invaded Poland.

Of course the American Pope declined his invitation to today's party.

This is the moment for Americans to reflect on whether they are proud of their history since 2000 or 1990 or choose a date. Do they like what America has morphed into?

Trump was right to see that Western civilisation was in big danger and so was America but he is making bad much worse.

I remember the 200th anniversary and the Queen  dancing with Gerald Ford to "That's Why The Lady is a Tramp".

Then America was widely loved. 

Americans were what the English had been, the boyish masters of the world.

Obama got into trouble by attending the church of a black pastor who had once uttered the words in a sermon "Not God bless America. God damn America."

Now many people in the world think like that pastor and for good reasons. In Iraq, Libya, Gaza, in Iran, throughout the world.

Did Ukrainian spies explode bomb in Monaco?

Explosion in Monaco: Investigators leaning towards SBU [Ukrainian successor to the KGB] involvement, Figaro reports.

Can it be so? 

If proven Zelensky must go (to gaol?) 

Will European support for Ukraine continue?

The Ukrainians destroyed the Nord Stream pipeline with no consequences for the Ukrainian government. But Russia was the victim that time as much as Germany. This is different.

The murder of Dugin's daughter was said the loyal Western media probably a Russian false flag.

The Western media are controlled by the CIA and so American allies are protected from criticism, as you have noticed.

Hitlers

After eighty years of false and absurd Hitler analogies two men who really do behave like Hitler have finally come along at once. It's like waiting for a bus. 

But It's not just the two men but their countries that are now rogue terrorist states. Elections won't change this.

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you." (Nietzsche)

Quotations

American peace activist Rachel Corrie, crushed to death in Gaza in 2003 by an IDF bulldozer destroying sections of Rafah city, wrote in her diary:

“I just want to write to my mom and tell her that I’m witnessing this chronic, insidious genocide and I’m really scared, and questioning my fundamental belief in the goodness of human nature.”

Pope St John Paul II wrote in Love and Responsibility, “A person’s rightful due is to be treated as an object of love, not as an object for use."

"I wasted time, and now doth time waste me." Richard II, Act V

Holocaust

The President of Israel, Isaac Herzog's state visit to Romania concluded yesterday. It centred on a memorial service for the victims of the Iași or Jassy Pogrom, where over 13,000 Romanian Jews were murdered by Romanians.

Mr Herzog participated in a moving ceremony to rebury the recently identified remains of 22 pogrom victims at the Iași (Jassy) Jewish Cemetery, he toured the Iași Holocaust Museum and unveiled a dedicated plaque to solidify the preservation of history.

In his speech to the Romanian Parliament, he warned that the global moral infrastructure built after the Holocaust is currently at its weakest point in 80 years.

Deputies belonging to the SOS România party (the party has 14 in all) intended to bring into the chamber a Palestinian flag and protest banners but were prevented by guards.

Outside as you can see there were thirteen protesters.

Strait of Hormuz is not international waters

In case any of my readers doesn't know this: the Strait of Hormuz is not international waters.

Half the strait belongs to Iran, half to Oman, which is playing a difficult hand carefully.

Passage through straits is regulated by the Law Of The Sea which Iran signed but never ratified and which therefore does not bind her, apparently.

Other news in brief

What is described as a terrorist attack has taken in Monaco as a Ukrainian oligarch, sanctioned by Zelensky, is injured by bomb. Who is to blame?

The many rich Ukrainian exiles there have been described as the Monocan brigade.