It was a Labour MP who first used the phrase to me: the Miliverse. He was worrying, before PMQs, about a world where Ed Miliband gets a promotion to Downing Street – either as Chancellor or, even, as Prime Minister.

If he was worried then, he’ll have been even more worried after PMQs. Because yesterday, in the House of Commons chamber, Sir Keir Starmer seemed not just comfortable with the idea that he is a member of Miliband’s government – he was almost eager to admit it.

Under questioning from Kemi Badenoch over the decision not to issue new licences for North Sea oil and gas drilling, Starmer slipped into full legal mode. He was at pains to clarify that the decision over the Jackdaw and Rosebank oilfields rested not with him but with the Secretary of State for Energy. Legally, it was Miliband’s call. Badenoch pounced. “He is the Prime Minister!” she told the chamber, deriding Starmer’s retreat into proceduralism.

The Prime Minister was, in effect, publicly conceding what one shadow cabinet minister put to me: that Miliband is “the real prime minister”. Another shadow cabinet minister joked: “It isn’t something we didn’t already know.”

But it is worth pausing on what that actually tells us about Starmer, because the Miliband story is, at its core, a Starmer story. Miliband’s influence over this government is not merely a function of his own ideological energy, though that is clearly considerable. It is also a function of the vacuum at the very top.

This is the context in which Miliband has thrived. When the man at the top is reluctant to own his government’s most politically contentious decisions – whether that’s the North Sea, net zero, or the broader direction of economic policy – someone else will own them instead. His Labour manifesto read: “We will not issue new licences to explore new fields because they will not take a penny off bills, cannot make us energy secure, and will only accelerate the worsening climate crisis.” That is clearly what they truly believe, so why won’t Starmer say it rather than hide behind legal process? Miliband is happily continuing the message of the manifesto, and filling the vacuum at the top while doing it.

As I have written before, Miliband’s influence on this Labour government has been perfectly clear: “The push towards ever more stringent net-zero obligations continues apace, even when the immediate effect is to increase costs for British taxpayers and businesses.” The Spectator’s Tim Shipman even reported that it was Miliband who commanded the majority around the National Security Council table on any involvement in Iran, with Starmer taking direction rather than giving it.

In a profile with the New Statesman, Miliband himself was candid about the scope of what he is trying to achieve. “We are charting a course to a different economic settlement,” he said. “I talked about it as leader and didn’t get to implement it.” He is implementing it now.

And there is the question of what comes next. Nigel Farage, of all people, has reportedly told friends he expects Miliband to be Prime Minister by 2027. That prediction may flatter his instinct for provocation, but it is not entirely absurd with Starmer’s leadership on the rocks.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister yet again tried to protect himself by hiding behind Miliband, but only revealed more about his lack of leadership in the process. 

The Labour MP fretting in the corridors before PMQs, I suspect, finds that prospect deeply worrying – Ed Miliband’s world is not one he wants to inhabit. But without any voters say, the Miliverse seems to be ever expanding.

John Oxley is a consultant, writer, and broadcaster. His SubStack is Joxley Writes.

Few in the Conservative Party will be relishing the thought of the local elections. With just over a month to go, our prospects in the contests look bleak. The party has never gone into a set of locals with such a poor national polling position. The rise of Reform also means we are likely to face challenges in areas where we were previously strong. Though the electoral geography this time leaves Labour more exposed overall, few positives are likely to come from the night.  

When talking about these shifts, we tend to focus on the shockwaves the results will send through Westminster. Commentators question how much jitteriness it will impart on MPs who see their local council fall away. Whether it will tempt more into defections or trigger another round of party regicide. But there is another question, less dramatic, more fundamental, that these elections ought to prompt – about what Conservatives are here to offer at the local level.  

Defeat in the 2024 election required an examination of where the party stands and how it relates to the challenges and voters in the current national political landscape. Our subsequent challenges in local politics should prompt the same sort of thinking about how we wield power where it most directly touches voters.  When it comes to delivering services, fostering communities, and making a difference that people see, the question is not just about how the party wins back power, but what it does with it.  

Localism, after all, should be close to the heart of the Conservative Party. Our suspicion of big government ought to incline us toward placing power in the hands of those who understand their areas best, the people who actually live in them. We should celebrate a government that is local, accessible, and human in scale. And local institutions should be central to any serious conservative vision of how the country works, the little platoons of boroughs and counties, trusted to know their ground, doing what distant Whitehall cannot. 

The reality of local government in 2026 makes that vision harder to sustain than it should be. The decades-long failure to address social care has left most councils unable to do much else. Local authorities are crushed under the burden of these obligations and funding shortfalls.  Even the most prudently run councils are struggling, and many are close to insolvency. Everything else that councils do, the small civic institutions that give communities their texture, seems unsustainable.  

This is a particular problem for the right. The traditional offering of local Conservatives has been fiscal prudence – less spending, and lower bills. That has now been pushed to the limit. Many of our councils have done well in adapting to constrained times and have found new efficiencies and savings they can pass on to the taxpayer. Now there is little fat to trim. Even Reform councils that replaced us have been forced to admit this, arriving with grand plans of cutting waste and instead colliding with fiscal reality.  

The other canard of local government campaigning, opposing development, has also now come to haunt the party. The instinct and the electoral calculus behind blocking housing were understandable, but their cumulative effects have exacerbated a national crisis. The shortage of homes falls hardest on the young, and in courting the settled, propertied voter, local conservatism has too often had little to say to anyone else. There is a deeper irony too: in resisting development, councils have sometimes prevented the very renewal that would keep their communities vibrant.  

These pressures have arrived alongside new political challenges rather than in spite of them. Reform has taken the most seats, but the Lib Dems and Greens have made gains too, in very different kinds of places, for very different reasons. The breadth of that squeeze suggests something more than a temporary unpopularity. The same offer, made in the same way, is unlikely to be enough, whether the goal is to win back councils or to give conservative local government a renewed sense of purpose. 

The Conservatives need a proper vision of what modern local governance looks and feels like. This should go beyond simply keeping council tax rates down and NIMBYism. Fiscal prudence is part of it, as is responsible development. But it should also be about delivering effective and responsive services, facilitating cohesive communities, civic trust and stewardship. In short, pushing towards councils that are truly Tory.  

This also requires a better conception of the relations between local and central government. When in power in Westminster, Tories have tended to be jealous guardians of power. We’ve favoured centralisation, lest loony Labour councils run away with it. Ultimately, we should be more comfortable with this risk, letting local voters decide who to trust. Equally, we should engage seriously with Rachel Reeves’ plans for greater fiscal devolution. Incentivising local authorities by allowing them to keep more of the proceeds of growth changes the dynamics of development, giving communities a clearer path to share in the upside as well as the costs.  

The local election results will captivate Westminster for a few days, but whoever wins may wield power for years. The actual business of governing our localities is forgotten, as are its challenges and impacts. For associations facing elections, the next six weeks will be a hard slog, and many of the results will be disappointing. But they may also offer an opportunity for renewal, re-examining what the Conservatives offer, and making our case in more volatile electoral politics. The night itself matters less than what the party does with it, and whether it advances our understanding of what Conservative local governance can offer.  

While this election season may be bruising, there is, nonetheless, reason for optimism. Reform’s polling is declining, and where they have won local power, they have proven unimpressive. Their gains last year have been dogged by scandal, infighting, and failure to deliver on many of their proposals. The insurgent offer is already looking tarnished, and the Conservatives can maintain their position as the serious party of the right. That creates a genuine opportunity, but only for a party that has done the harder thinking about what it believes, what it will build, and what kind of local government it wants to be trusted with.  

The Conservatives have a long and proud history in local government. It should be central to what drives us: the Toryism of local communities and networks, of prudent stewardship and genuine civic belonging. That tradition is worth recovering, not merely because it wins votes, but because it reflects something true about what the party is for. It also means regaining our sense of how, at all levels, we use politics to make things better. The local elections will come and go. The question of what conservatism is for, in the places where people live, will remain. It deserves a serious answer.

Terri Bloore is the Conservative candidate for Mayor of Newham.

When Mark Carney took to the stage at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2026 in Davos less than two months ago there was deft silence followed by rapturous applaud. European’s and democrats saw his speech as somewhat anti-American. That conclusion says more about the current geopolitical mood than about what he said.

I was in attendance, wearing that odd combination of snow boots and a suit, and felt the atmosphere change, but in my view Carney’s message was not about turning away from the United States. It was about recognising that the world has changed and that countries in Europe and beyond must adapt accordingly.

With President Trump in attendance the American turnout was indeed palpable.  Yes ‘America House’ and its huge eagles dominated the promenade, yes there were robots walking streets and men dressed as polar bears – larger than life and a little more brash than years before. But the atmosphere was not anti-American.

In less than two months, the world has shifted dramatically.  The central theme of Carney’s speech was that a world order built on open trade, relatively stable institutions and strong American leadership is under strain and one we cannot take for granted. Since that speech, a lot has happened, not least the conflict in the Middle East. Looking back, it seems as though Carney was preparing us for this twists and turns that we are facing as soon as we turn on the news.

Economic policy, he argued, is increasingly becoming geopolitical policy. Supply chains, energy markets and trade are now instruments of power. For decades, many Western countries operated under the assumption that rules-based institutions and global economic integration would naturally reinforce stability. That assumption is now far less certain.

Carney’s argument was that countries such as Canada, the UK and many European nations can no longer simply rely on the system working as it once did. They must strengthen their resilience and work more closely with one another to protect shared values and economic stability.

None of this is particularly controversial in private discussions among policymakers. In Davos this year, it was practically the backdrop to every panel conversation. Yet the moment Carney suggested that middle powers needed to assert themselves more clearly, some observers interpreted it as a critique of the United States.

In today’s political climate, almost any conversation about strategic autonomy is quickly framed as a rejection of Washington. But that is not what Carney was arguing. Standing in Davos, the message sounded less like a rebuke and more like a pragmatic assessment of geopolitical reality. The world is becoming more fragmented. Economic competition between major powers is intensifying. Alliances must adjust.

The idea that Europe should have greater strategic confidence is not anti-American. In many ways it strengthens the Western alliance by making partners more capable and resilient. If Carney’s speech had truly been a rejection of American leadership, his subsequent positions would look very different.

Instead, when tensions escalated in the Middle East and the United States moved against Iran, Canada signalled its support for the broader security objectives shared by Western allies. That decision alone undermines the narrative that Carney was advocating a break from the United States. It demonstrated what most policymakers already understand: Western security and economic stability still depend heavily on cooperation between North America and Europe. The alliance may be evolving, but it has not disappeared.

What struck me most in Davos was not the speech itself but the reaction to it. In a world increasingly shaped by geopolitical rivalry, even moderate calls for strategic realism are quickly interpreted through a binary lens.

Pro-America or anti-America. Alignment or independence. Carney’s argument was more nuanced than that. The world is entering a period where the assumptions that once underpinned globalisation are weakening. Institutions are under pressure. Economic relationships are becoming more politicised. Strategic competition between major powers is intensifying. In that environment, middle powers cannot simply assume stability will hold. They must invest in their own economic resilience, cooperate more closely with partners and be prepared to defend the values that underpin open societies.

In many ways, the speech reflected the quiet consensus I saw across Davos this year.

The transatlantic alliance remains fundamental. But the world it operates in is becoming more volatile and more competitive. Recognising that reality is not a rejection of the United States. It is an acknowledgement that maintaining Western values in the twenty-first century will require stronger partnerships, greater resilience and a more honest understanding of power.

The Canary recently reported that Israeli occupation forces (IOF) tortured a young boy in al Maghazi refugee camp, in the Deir al Balah governorate of Central Gaza. This happened in front of his father, 25 year old Osama Abu Nassar, to pressure him into making a confession.

“Israel” destroyed Abu Nassar’s livelihood causing him to suffer mental health issues

But since the incident, which happened on 19 March 2026, there has been no news of Abu Nassar’s whereabouts. Concerns are growing for his safety, and are made worse by the fact that he is suffering from mental health issues. Until quite recently, he made an income by using his horse to transport people’s belongings. But the Israeli occupation killed his horse and, for the past two years, Abu Nassar has found himself unemployed, with no means of supporting his family. This has caused him a great deal of psychological trauma, and he has become mentally unstable.

Freelance video and photojournalist, Salma Kaddoumi, visited Abu Nassar’s family. She spoke with the Canary and told us:

Abu Nassar’s home is around 300 metres from the “Yellow Line”, East of al Maghazi Refugee Camp. When he and his one and a half year old son Jawad went to buy some food, Abu Nassar soon found himself trapped by the IOF.

Israeli occupation soldiers opened fire, shooting him in the shoulder, while a quadcopter drone hovered above and ordered him via loudspeaker to place his child on the ground and keep walking towards the IOF near the yellow line.

Advertisement

Kaddoumi says Abu Nassar was then stripped of his clothes and the soldiers took his son and began torturing him in front of his father. The child was detained for around 10 hours, inside the yellow line. The International Committee of the Red Cross called the family to tell them they had received their son.

The baby was then taken to hospital. According to the medical reports from Dr Bissan Ahmed, of al Aqsa Hospital, in Deir al Balla, the boy had been abused, and had cigarette burns on both legs.

Concerns grow for Abu Nassar who is wounded and has been abducted by the IOF

Abu Nassar remains in detention in an unknown location. His family are extremely worried and have been searching extensively for him. Since October 7, 2023, the fate of many thousands of Palestinian political prisoners like him remain unclear. And they have no access to legal representation, or International  Committee of the Red Cross visits. They are forcibly disappeared, with “Israel” Occupation forces, the police and Prison Services all refusing to disclose any information whatsoever on their whereabouts.

Under Trump’s 20 point plan for Gaza, as part of the so called Gaza “ceasefire” agreement in October 2025,  the first stage of the IOF withdrawal from Gaza was beyond a boundary known as the ‘yellow line’. This ‘line’ demarcates the more than 58 percent of the Gaza Strip currently under Israeli occupation control, and recent reports suggest the Israeli occupationcontinues to move the line deeper into Gaza. Many Palestinian homes and 60 percent of Gaza’s fertile agricultural land are beyond the yellow line but, as Palestinians are prohibited from entering the area, are completely out of reach to them.

But instead of withdrawing further the Israeli occupation aims to ethnically cleanse the area and steal more land – just like in Lebanon. IOF chief Eyal Zamir recently said:

The yellow line is a new border line, serving as a forward defensive line for our communities and a line of operational activity.

Since the so called Gaza “ceasefire”, on 10 October, 2025, as of 25 March, more than 650 Palestinians have been killed by “Israel”. It is now thought that the number of Palestinians killed by “Israel” is far higher than previously thought. According to independent research in medical journals, there were more than 75,000 “violent deaths” in Gaza between 7 October 2023 and January 2025, and the death toll continues to rise.

Featured images via Salma Kadddoumi

Royal Mail bosses have serious questions to answer from MPs at the Business and Trade Select Committee hearing, says the Trades Union Congress (TUC).

Postal workers’ union the CWU said bosses must prioritise working conditions to deliver a quality service. And TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said Royal Mail bosses “must get their house in order” and “must answer for the chaos” in the postal service. He was speaking ahead of a Business and Trade Select Committee hearing on 24 March.

Bosses at the 500-year-old institution appeared in front of MPs to explain the crisis in the service. Problems include failures to meet delivery targets and widespread service delays.

Crisis at Royal Mail

The hearing comes after a report by the committee earlier in March highlighted the “service failures” at Royal Mail. 219 million letters arrived late in a year and the company failed to meet quality targets.

The report found just 74.9% of first-class post arrived on time between April 2025 and January 2026, well below the target of 93%.

The CWU says the company is facing a “recruitment crisis” due to its decision to impose “gig economy standards” on recruits who joined the service since 2022.

The CWU says that since 2022, 27,000 new entrants have left the Royal Mail, with 50% leaving within the first year.

The union is currently in intense negotiations with the company over the Royal Mail’s decision to introduce the Optimised Delivery Model. This moves second-class mail to alternate-weekday delivery while keeping first-class deliveries six days a week and reducing delivery route numbers in a bid to save money.

But after dozens of offices piloted the model, the CWU says members are describing it as a “car-crash” strategy. Instead of being guided by workers’ ability to deliver a quality service in their working hours, the union says work cannot be completed in time. Instead, the postal worker comes back the next day with all the work from the previous day still to complete.

TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said:

The Royal Mail is one of our most treasured national institutions. But with staff overworked and underpaid, is it any wonder the company is in crisis?

Royal Mail bosses must answer for the chaos in the postal service. They need to get their house in order. That starts with listening to the workers who know better than anyone how to get the service back on its feet.

CWU general secretary Dave Ward also referenced EP Group, the sprawling business empire that owns Royal Mail. He said:

Royal Mail and EP Group have made excuse after excuse over why Royal Mail’s service has been consistently poor over the past few years.

Now it is time for the truth. The job of a postal worker has been devalued and shareholder profit has been prioritised over service to the public – this is what is creating the crisis.

The CWU welcomes the opportunity to speak for postal workers before the Select Committee. But parliament must begin thinking seriously about the situation Royal Mail is in, and take real action to prevent this great institution from sliding even further into managed decline.

Featured image via the Canary

As part of Labour’s nakedly discriminatory immigration ‘reforms’, the government is planning to expand ‘no recourse to public funds’ (NRPF) to settled migrants. Worse still, they have no real idea of how many children this ruinous policy will plunge into poverty.

In November 2025, the UK government published “A Fairer Pathway to Settlement: A statement on earned settlement”. It lays out changes that will make the UK immigration system yet-more hostile, with proposals including:

• Making permanent residency less available to people.
• Increasing the amount of time most people spend in the immigration system before they may apply for permanent residence.
• Reducing that wait if they have a higher level of English proficiency, if they are high earners, if they hold senior positions in a public service, or if they have undertaken ‘extensive’ volunteering.
• Increasing that time for people who arrive on a visitor visa, breach immigration rules, or have ever received public funds.
• Completely removing the option of permanent residency for anyone who has ever received a criminal conviction, has outstanding litigation, or has NHS, tax, or other government debts.

It’s currently the case that most migrants who are in the UK on a limited visa are subject to a ‘no recourse to public funds’ (NRPF) condition. However, as the government revealed in the ‘Fairer Pathway’ document, it’s now looking to expand NRPF to settled migrants, too:

The government believes that the development of an earned settlement system should include a reassessment of the benefits accruing to settlement and where the accrual of those benefits might in future sit in the journey to settlement and citizenship respectively. Under this option, new migrants granted settlement would continue to be unable to access specified benefits in line with existing visa conditions. This would have the effect of shifting the default position on access to benefits to citizenship rather than settlement.

‘Earned Settlement’ consultation

On 13 March, the Home Affairs committee published a report on its ludicrously short stitch-up of a consultation into the immigration reform proposals.

The inquiry highlighted that migrants can apply for fee waivers under certain conditions, including:

• being destitute, or at imminent risk thereof,

• reasons relating to a child’s welfare, or

• if they’re facing exceptional circumstances affecting their income.

It also included summaries of some relevant responses, including Anna Skehan, a solicitor at Islington Law Centre, who:

told [the government] that circumstances that might lead to an application to access public funds might include an injury or illness, a mental health crisis, or a relationship breaking down due to domestic abuse.

That is to say, the Home Office plans to penalise migrants for needing state support for disability, poverty, domestic abuse.

Likewise, the NRPF Network — an organisation that provides advice to local authorities on NRPF – highlighted to the committee that:

applying for access to benefits through a change of conditions is typically “a last resort”. The NRPF Network argued that penalising people for accessing public funds would increase risks of poverty, abuse and exploitation.

Labour — no idea of the impact

Now, a DWP minister has essentially admitted that the government has no real clue about the number/proportion of children in poverty living in households subject to NRPF.

Crossbench peer John Bird wrote in asking the government:

what estimate they have made of the number and proportion of children in (1) poverty, and (2) deep poverty, living in households subject to no recourse to public funds; and what assessment they have made of the impact of the Child Poverty Strategy on those numbers.

In response, DWP Minister of State Maeve Sherlock listed resources available for children from NRPF families. However, she notably failed to give any figures at all. Rather, she stated that:

We are continuing our work to develop our understanding of NRPF and its impacts. This includes work with the Home Office to develop questions on NRPF for inclusion in the Family Resources survey 2026/2027, a household survey undertaken annually to explore living standards in the UK. This will provide greater insight into how families with the NRPF condition are living in the UK and will help to inform future policy-making.

Sherlock’s statement here almost directly echoed Labour’s recent policy paper ‘Our Children, Our Future: Tackling Child Poverty’, published 13 March. It stated that NRPF families could access free school meals, and some free childcare schemes. Likewise, it also mentioned developing questions — and gave no figures whatsoever.

So, not only is the government planning to expand NRPF, it made its proposals and ran the consultation before gathering any formal data to understand the impact of NRPF on child poverty. Worse still, it hasn’t yet worked out how to even assess this consequence of NRPF.

Immigrant kids don’t count

In the foreword to the ‘Our Children’ policy paper, Keir Starmer boasts that:

The recent story of child poverty in Britain is simple. The last Labour Government reduced it by around 600,000 children. Yet since 2010 it has risen by 900,000 and now around 4.5 million children are in poverty. That is a staggering indictment of the previous Government’s policies. The statistics alone are shocking enough but think about the individual human cost. […]

The answer, in both first principles and evidence, is a resounding no. And so this child poverty strategy sets out a different path for Britain.

Starmer and his Labour Party talk a big game about tackling child poverty. However, they’re currently barreling towards an expansion of NRPF which will inevitably entrench poverty for the children of marginalised migrant and refugee families.

They haven’t studied the impact this will have, because they simply don’t care. Starmer’s Labour considers immigrants as collateral damage in their doomed bid to appeal to the far right. All child poverty is abhorrent, but for Labour, immigrant children clearly don’t count.

Featured image via World Vision UK

Iran’s military spokesperson has openly mocked US president Donald Trump over supposed peace talks. Lt. Col. Ebrahim Zolfaghari said Trump was negotiating with himself in a video statement published on 25 March:

The one claiming to be a global superpower would have already gotten out of this mess if it could. Don’t dress up your defeat as an agreement. Your era of empty promises has come to an end.

Have your internal conflicts reached the point where you are negotiating with yourselves?

Zolfaghari’s burn came as Iran rejected a US peace plan and published their own list of demands for any negotiations:

Per a report from the Wall Street Journal, Iran has responded to the Trump administration’s proposal for a ceasefire with demands that far surpass the characterization of maximalist. Iran has demanded the closure of all U.S. bases in the Gulf region, a new Strait of Hormuz… pic.twitter.com/XAQAzkUTsD

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) March 25, 2026

Advertisement

An Iranian official said the US proposals were “extremely maximalist and unreasonable”. The country also said the fact the US was still deploying troops to the region despite making a lot of noise about diplomacy was suspicious.

Abas Aslani, a fellow at the Centre for Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran, told Al Jazeera:

Washington’s decision to deploy additional forces to the region sends a signal that the strategy they are pursuing militarily does not align with the tone of their positions in terms of the negotiations.

The leadership of the US 82nd Airborne division have been ordered to the Middle East. The Intercept reported on 25 March:

The deployment includes the division’s “headquarters element,” support staff, and some personnel who manage logistics, planning, and command operations.

The outlet added:

Open source reporting suggests dozens of transport aircraft used to ferry troops and cargo have been flying out of airfields used by America’s most elite commandos, including the Army’s Delta Force and the Navy’s SEAL Team 6.

A flight-tracking account notes 35 C-17s flying out of airfields including those used by Delta Force (Bragg), SEAL Team 6 (Oceana), two of the three Ranger battalions (HAAF and JBLM), and the 160th SOAR.Looks a lot like staging JSOC in case it’s ordered to do the uranium recovery mission in Iran.

— Wesley Morgan (@wesleymorgan.bsky.social) 2026-03-23T22:58:55.943Z

Mocked by Iran

Al Jazeera reported that up to 50,000 US troops are in the Middle East already:

That includes 200 combat aircraft, as well as two aircraft carriers. In addition to that, we know the 82nd Airborne, composed of 1,000 additional troops, is the latest to supplement that.

As well, two Marine Expeditionary Units, consisting of 5,000 Marines and sailors, are also heading to the region. So again, what we see is the US speaking out of both sides of its mouth, for lack of a better comparison.

Iran’s parliamentary speaker posted on X that Iran was well aware of US plans to occupy coastal islands militarily:

Based on some data, Iran’s enemies, with the support of one of the regional countries, are preparing to occupy one of the Iranian islands. All enemy movements are under the full surveillance of our armed forces. If they step out of line, all the vital infrastructure of that regional country will, without restriction, become the target of relentless attacks.

براساس برخی داده‌ها، دشمنان ایران با پشتیبانی یکی از کشورهای منطقه، در حال تدارک عملیات اشغال یکی از جزایر ایرانی هستند.
تمام تحرکات دشمن تحت اشراف نیروهای مسلح ماست. اگر قدم از قدم بردارند، تمام زیرساخت‌های حیاتی آن کشور منطقه‌ای بدون محدودیت، هدف حملات بی‌امان قرار خواهد گرفت.

— محمدباقر قالیباف | MB Ghalibaf (@mb_ghalibaf) March 25, 2026

Trump has been mocked by Iranian-linked X accounts in recent days:

The Strait of Hormuz will be controlled by me and the Ayatollah😎😁 pic.twitter.com/IxIgo1Pn6S

— Iran Embassy SA (@IraninSA) March 23, 2026

The X posts have portrayed Trump as childish and inept:

Iran owns Trump with the latest Ai meme mocking his efforts at war @realDonaldTrump @WhiteHousepic.twitter.com/Qr5ovPSf7j

— KT “Special MI6 Operation” (@KremlinTrolls) March 23, 2026

One even portrayed America’s stalling war through the medium of Lego:

Iran propaganda slaps pic.twitter.com/qZxikP94nU

— Darth Powell (@VladTheInflator) March 24, 2026

The US-Israel attacked Iran first on 28 February without provocation. The country was offering unprecedented concessions in negotiations at the time. The Pentagon has since stated there was no imminent threat from Iran. And the UN’s atomic watchdog, the IAEA, has said there is no evidence Iran was developing a nuclear weapon.

Featured image via the Canary