UK - What happened to us? How did we fall so far, so quickly? Where is our moral compass, our self-respect, our pride? Sir Keir Starmer’s Britain stands alone, but for the most deplorable of reasons, unwilling to fight back when our bases are hit by drones, incapable of deploying what is left of the Royal Navy, unable to respond to the implosion of the old world order other than by incanting Leftist platitudes – debilitated, humiliated and disgraced.

UK - What’s the point of having aircraft carriers if we aren’t prepared to use them? The Royal Navy may be a shadow of its former self, but the UK’s aircraft carriers still represent a formidable defence asset. With the crisis in the Middle East becoming more perilous by the day, Sir Keir Starmer has belatedly realised it might be a good idea to ramp up Britain’s military presence in the region. The UK’s Sovereign Base at RAF Akrotiri has already come under attack in an Iranian drone strike, and an estimated 300,000 Britons are stranded in Gulf states. Only now has the Prime Minister reluctantly concluded that he has no option but to act. The Navy is sending a Type 45 destroyer, HMS Dragon, to Cyprus.

IRAN - The man expected to become Iran’s next supreme leader is unlikely to view the US as anything but an implacable enemy. Donald Trump claims the remnants of the Iranian regime are looking for an olive branch. The expected election of Mojtaba Khamenei as the new supreme leader suggests otherwise. Khamenei, the second son of the late Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an air strike on Saturday, is a shadowy, hardline conservative figure with deep links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Having reportedly supplied the intelligence to take out one ayatollah Khamenei, the US is unlikely to look favourably on another one rising in his place. And from the potentially new supreme leader’s perspective, the recent bombing campaigns have killed his father, mother, wife and son, while shattering its navy, missile depots and nuclear programme. Given his background, he could hardly have seen the US as anything but an implacable enemy. But the events of recent days will have given a personal edge to that hatred.

USA - US submarine sinks Iranian Navy warship off Sri Lanka with 148 suspected drowned as Iran launches missiles at Turkey as war spreads across globe. 'Yesterday, in the Indian Ocean, an American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters. Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo - a quiet death. The first sinking of an enemy ship by a torpedo since World War Two,' he said. The warship was returning from a military exercise in India's eastern port of Viskhapatnam at the time of the attack. This sinking comes as war has broken out in the Mideast, after Israel and the United States launched strikes against Iran. It comes days after the US military said it had struck Iran’s largest naval warship following the launch of Trump’s ‘Operation Epic Fury.’ Meanwhile an Iranian missile heading towards Turkey has been destroyed by NATO as violence from the US-Israel war with Iran spreads beyond the Middle East.

USA - Donald Trump's approval rating has fallen to an all-time low as the vast majority of Americans turn on the President over his war in Iran. A new Daily Mail/JL Partners poll found the President's approval now stands at 44 percent, down four points since Friday and marking the lowest rating recorded in Daily Mail tracking to date. The sharp decline comes as Americans grow increasingly uneasy about his spiraling conflict tearing apart the Middle East after six American troops were killed.

IRAN - Tehran knows that dragging out the conflict is their only chance of convincing the White House to leave them alone. In purely conventional terms, the US and Iranian militaries don’t stack up. The former is the world’s most lethal, professional and technologically advanced, possessing capabilities and intelligence assets that America’s adversaries could only dream of. The latter is a relic that belongs in a museum; Iran’s air force relies on aircraft that are decades old, its troops are proficient at killing civilians but not much else; and its navy, or what’s left of it, is geared more toward harassing larger ships than confronting them head-on.

UK - Keir Starmer accused Donald Trump of lacking a 'viable, thought-through plan' for the Iran war today as Transatlantic tensions rise. The PM sounded defiance over his refusal to allow UK bases to be used for offensive strikes, insisting he was worried about 'escalation'. Mr Trump condemned the premier as 'disappointing' and 'no Churchill' last night, as the situation became more personal. Sir Keir shot back that letting the US use UK bases to shoot down drones 'is the special relationship in action' but 'hanging on to President Trump's latest words is not'. The comments came as Kemi Badenoch battered Sir Keir at PMQs for failing to protect Britain's personnel in the Middle East, and insisted Labour is splurging on benefits instead of ramping up defence spending. Sir Keir said he wanted to act with 'clarity, with purpose... the protection of UK nationals is our number one priority'. The premier said that when the crisis erupted on Saturday he was not willing to 'join a war unless I was satisfied there was a lawful basis and a viable thought through plan'. He added: 'That remains my position.'

IRAN - Iran has showed off a sprawling underground network of tunnels filled with row after row of drones and rockets, amid fears the US and its allies are burning through expensive weaponry in their war against the regime. Footage released by the Fars News Agency, which is closely linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, shows long lines of missiles and Shahed drones. With a ticking clock playing in the background, the video used dramatic drone footage to show off the extent of their cheap arsenal. As war continues to rage on, there are now fears that the sophisticated weaponry favoured by the US and its allies may be too expensive and too hard to procure for a longer military campaign. And there are fears that Gulf states may soon run out of anti-air defences. A source told the Daily Mail: 'At the current rates the supplies could run out within four days.'

EUROPE - France and Germany dash Ukraine’s hopes of fast-track EU membership. The European Commission presented a proposal for Kyiv to join forces with the bloc at a dinner on Wednesday night organised by the two countries. But ambassadors for Paris and Berlin told their counterparts that Brussels needed to formulate a more “realistic” plan for Ukraine’s accession, diplomatic sources told The Telegraph. Officials in the two capitals, both staunch allies of Ukraine, are opposed to the quick-fire plan because it does not have the full support of member states and could ultimately see Kyiv fall victim to a wider argument over enlargement of the bloc. Ursula von der Leyen, the commission’s president, had hoped to welcome Ukraine into the bloc through a “membership lite” scheme. Her vision for an accelerated pathway offered Kyiv membership without the benefits, such as EU funds or voting rights, which would come at a later date.

USA - White House is scrambling to clarify its justifications for war to the president’s MAGA base. Donald Trump needed time to sell his war on Iran to the American people. The isolationist MAGA base that elected Mr Trump on his promise to stay out of foreign wars would need to be persuaded through consistent and effective messaging. This would take, the White House wagered, until April or late March at the earliest. Enter Benjamin Netanyahu, with high-level intelligence pinpointing a building in Tehran that, if struck at the right time, would see Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and tens of other Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders eliminated.

IRAN - Europe may face the wrath of Iranian missiles thanks to Trump's targeted decapitation of Iran's military, an expert has warned. Dr Sidharth Kaushal, a senior research fellow at RUSI, warned Iran's most destructive weapons could soon end up under the control of inexperienced officers if America and Israel continue to pick off the country's military elite.

IRAN - When you kill or otherwise dispose of a state leader – especially in dictatorships, which, unlike democracies, are built around people not institutions – you expect the regime to follow a familiar pattern: paralysis, factional struggle and possibly collapse. But the Islamic Republic is different. Its ideological foundations are neither institutional nor personal, but theological. And its theology, Twelver Shiism, holds that death – especially violent death – is not an end, but part of a sacred struggle (Shahadat) that never truly ends.

USA - Donald Trump has just made the most catastrophically ill-prepared military decision in modern American history — and the petrol pump is going to make sure every voter knows it. Here is the breathtaking reality. The man who promised to fill the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve “right to the top” launched a full-scale war in the world’s most energy-critical corridor while that same reserve sat at 415 million barrels — nearly 100 million barrels below the government’s own minimum “safe” peacetime level. He picked a fight in a burning building without checking whether the fire exits were unlocked. The consequences are now cascading through global energy markets at terrifying speed.

ISRAEL - Israel has vowed to assassinate Iran's new supreme leader, who will succeed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as new strikes were launched on military targets across Tehran. Israeli defence minister Israel Katz said the new leader will be a 'certain target' for the US and Israel amid reports the Ayatollah's son Mojtaba is the favourite to take over. Katz said: 'Any leader selected by the Iranian terror regime to continue leading the plan for Israel's destruction, threatening the United States, the free world and countries in the region, and suppressing the Iranian people, will be a certain target for assassination, no matter his name or where he hides.'

USA - Donald Trump last night launched another withering attack on Keir Starmer, dismissing him as 'no Churchill'. In a major blow to the Special Relationship, the US President said he was 'not happy with the UK' and branded it 'very, very uncooperative' over his assault on Iran. Sir Keir was also under fire closer to home as Britain yesterday scrambled to protect its RAF base on Cyprus, which was hit by a suicide drone thought to have been fired by Tehran's proxies late on Sunday night. The UK was left embarrassed as military minnow Greece will have warships in position to protect RAF Akrotiri days before the Royal Navy will be anywhere near the danger zone. And Sir Keir announced that Type 45 destroyer HMS Dragon, along with helicopters with counter-drone capabilities, would head to the Mediterranean only after Emmanuel Macron ordered a French frigate to the region.