Trump's threat to destroy Iran nuclear sites a clear red line
"If U.S. seeks a diplomatic solution, it must abandon the language of threats and sanctions," an unnamed Iranian official said, adding that such threats "are open hostility against Iran's national interests."
Trump told reporters, opens new tab on Wednesday at the White House: 'I want it (nuclear agreement) very strong where we can go in with inspectors, we can take whatever we want, we can blow up whatever we want, but nobody getting killed. We can blow up a lab, but nobody is gonna be in a lab, as opposed to everybody being in the lab and blowing it up.'
Trump has repeatedly threatened to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities if diplomacy fails to resolve a decades-long dispute over Tehran's nuclear programme.
Trump said on Friday that an Iran deal was possible in the "not-too-distant future."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
26 minutes ago
- The Independent
India calls Trump's tariff threat over Russian oil purchases ‘unjustified'
India condemned as 'unjustified' a threat by Donald Trump to significantly raise tariffs on the South Asian country's exports to the US, escalating tensions over New Delhi 's purchase of Russian oil. Mr Trump on Monday accused India of profiting from discounted Russian crude while disregarding the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. "India is not only buying massive amounts of Russian oil, they are then, for much of the oil purchased, selling it on the open market for big profits," the US president said on social media. 'They don't care how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian war machine. Because of this, I will be substantially raising the tariff paid by India to the USA." India's foreign ministry responded swiftly. 'The targeting of India is unjustified and unreasonable," spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said, adding that New Delhi would "take all necessary measures to safeguard its national interests and economic security'. Mr Jaiswal also highlighted the ongoing energy and industrial trade between Russia and the West. He pointed out that the EU had goods trade with Russia of £57.38 bn in 2024 in addition to £14.62 bn in services trade the previous year. The US, meanwhile, continued to import Russian uranium for its nuclear sector and palladium for electric vehicles. 'It is revealing that the very nations criticising India are themselves indulging in trade with Russia,' he said. 'Unlike our case, such trade is not even a vital national compulsion for them.' The escalating rhetoric marks a new low in a once-warm relationship between Mr Trump and Indian leader Narendra Modi, characterised by public camaraderie and joint rallies. Growing friction over trade, energy policy, and Mr Trump's overtures to rival Pakistan have strained US ties with New Delhi, and pressure from Western capitals to reduce its reliance on Russian oil is only piling up the pressure. Indian officials argued that the pivot to Russian oil was a market-driven necessity after traditional supplies were redirected to Europe following Western sanctions. India imported an average of 1.75 million barrels a day of Russian oil from January to June 2025, making it the largest buyer of seaborne Russian crude, up one per cent from a year ago, according to data analysed by Reuters. In recent months, however, public sector refiners in India, facing pressure and uncertainty, have started reducing Russian oil purchases. Imports in July fell to 1.6 million barrels per day, a 24 per cent decline from June and a 23.5 per cent fall year-on-year, according to tracking data from Kpler. Indian officials though maintained that there had been no formal policy change. Indian Oil Corp, the country's largest refiner, recently purchased 7 million barrels from the US, Canada, and Middle Eastern suppliers, Reuters reported, quoting unnamed trade sources. Mr Trump earlier imposed a 25 per cent levy on Indian imports, further unsettling bilateral relations. The US is India's largest trading partner. Indian exports to the US totalled £68.17bn in 2024 with a trade surplus of £35.88bn. India is not alone in importing Russian crude. According to think tank GTRI, China imported £49.45bn worth of Russian oil in 2024, compared to India's £39bn. Yet, Mr Trump has so far refrained from criticising Beijing. Eric Garcetti, former US ambassador to New Delhi, previously said that Washington supported Indian crude purchases from Russia to help stabilise energy markets. Indian energy minister Hardeep Singh Puri similarly defended the imports as both essential and sanctioned within the price cap framework. 'India helped stabilise global energy prices,' Mr Puri told CNBC. 'We were advised, including by our friends in the United States, to please buy Russian oil – but within the price cap.'
STV News
26 minutes ago
- STV News
'Overstretched' police force hit with £31.5m overtime bill
The overtime bill for Scotland's police officers and staff has climbed above an average of £85,000 per day, amid warnings of a 'chronically overstretched' force. A fall in rank-and-file numbers and a rise in police responsibilities have been blamed for the huge costs. New figures published in 1919 Magazine on Tuesday show that £28.15m was spent on overtime for officers in 2024/25, plus an additional £3.4m for police staff – a combined 10% rise on the previous year. Although this is down on 2022/23, when there was a major policing operation following the death of the Queen, there are concerns about the bill for the current year given the demands of President Donald Trump's recent visit to Scotland and forthcoming events like the sold-out Oasis reunion shows at Murrayfield Stadium. Police Scotland has praised officers and described the nature of policing as 'unpredictable', with overtime a 'flexible mechanism' used by the force. But the Scottish Police Federation (SPF) warned that the costs are a 'direct consequence' of the 'chronic shortage of police officers across the country'. SPF general secretary David Kennedy said: 'As demand on policing continues to increase – whether through major events, public safety operations, or everyday calls for service – there simply are not enough officers to meet the workload within normal working hours. 'The reality is that overtime is no longer a contingency – it has become a necessity to maintain even the most basic levels of public safety. This is unsustainable, both financially and in terms of officer wellbeing. 'Officers are regularly being asked to sacrifice their rest days, family time, and personal health to plug gaps caused by years of underinvestment in policing. 'We cannot continue to rely on a shrinking workforce to deliver a growing remit. 'The rising cost of overtime is not a budget management issue – it is a symptom of a wider crisis in police numbers that must be addressed urgently through meaningful investment in recruitment, retention, and support for serving officers.' STV News President Donald Trump's recent visit to Scotland is likely to see police overtime bill soar even further over 2025/2026 The data, obtained by 1919 through a freedom of information request, shows that £42,689,162 was spent on officers' overtime in 2022/23 – the year the Queen died – falling to £25,305,080 a year later and rising again to £28,150,447 in the most recent financial year. On top of that, overtime paid to police staff totalled £11.24m over the three-year period, with the figures broadly similar in 2023/24 and 2024/25. Periods of sickness, maternity leave, and annual leave are not included. Scottish Labour justice spokesperson Pauline McNeill told 1919: 'These eyewatering figures lay bare the immense pressure Police Scotland is under. 'Police officer numbers have collapsed over recent years and big events have piled pressure onto remaining officers. 'There is no evidence that the Scottish Government is taking any serious steps to address this, therefore this is likely to continue. 'Increasing reliance on overtime is costing Police Scotland thousands of pounds a day and exhausting police officers. 'Police officers cannot keep being forced to go above and beyond to paper over the cracks of SNP failure – the SNP must work with Police Scotland to ensure it has the officers it needs to keep our communities safe.' iStock A fall in rank-and-file numbers and a rise in police responsibilities have been blamed for the huge costs. Scottish Liberal Democrat justice spokesperson Liam McArthur added: 'SNP ministers pushed through the creation of a single national force with the promise of significant cost savings which could be invested elsewhere in the service. 'Instead we have seen falling officer numbers, police counters closing and officers run ragged. 'The cases that officers are being called to attend are increasingly complex and time consuming. 'One solution we have proposed to provide mental health workers to work alongside the police and help people in need. 'Officers should not be asked to work beyond their limits day after day. 'After so many years of worsening conditions, it will be hard work for the Justice Secretary to win back trust and convince officers she is in their corner.' While recruitment and deployment are operational matters for the chief constable, a Scottish Government spokesperson said: 'We are investing a record £1.64bn for policing this year, and our continued investment enabled Police Scotland to take on more recruits in the last financial year than at any time since 2013, with further intakes planned throughout 2025. 'Scotland continues to have more police officers per capita than England and Wales and recorded crime has fallen by more than half since 1991.' Get all the latest news from around the country Follow STV News Scan the QR code on your mobile device for all the latest news from around the country
Telegraph
26 minutes ago
- Telegraph
The 1939 manual that shows Trump how to wreck Russia's economy
It is unlikely that Donald Trump will tour the National Archives in Kew during his state visit to Britain next month, but if the president were to find the time, he could study the original instruction manual on how to wreck a national economy. Deep in the vaults lies Britain's Handbook of Economic Warfare, circulated on August 14 1939 and kept secret – or 'under lock and key', according to the emphatic instruction on its cover – right up until 1990. Its 52 pages, compiled on the eve of the Second World War, amount to an elegantly-written manifesto for economic havoc, filled with relevance for today's decision-makers. Perhaps most of all for Trump, who could this week punish Vladimir Putin's refusal to agree a ceasefire in Ukraine by taking what the President's supporters call a 'sledgehammer' to the Russian economy. The hammer in question would be a raft of American sanctions with one vital difference: they would be targeted not on Russia itself, but on any country that buys Putin's oil, with the aim of depriving the Kremlin of its customers and suffocating its single biggest source of revenue. The objective of these 'secondary sanctions' would be to choke Russian finances so severely that Putin would have to sue for peace in Ukraine. That goal finds its echo in said British handbook. 'The aim of economic warfare,' reads chapter one, 'is to so disorganise the enemy's economy as to prevent him from carrying on the war'. This amounts to a 'military operation, comparable to the operations of the three services, in that its object is the defeat of the enemy.' The 'weapons' include 'interference with trade' and 'withholding financial, shipping and insurance facilities.' The word 'sanctions' does not appear in the handbook; instead chapter two proposes a 'statutory list' of 'firms' and 'vessels' with which all trade and any contact would be banned. Just as Trump wants to compel other countries to stop buying Russian oil, so the handbook stresses the necessity of 'persuading or inducing neutral governments, firms and persons to refrain from transactions advantageous to the enemy.' Indeed, such is the text's relevance that it is now said to be back in vogue in Whitehall. Deputy National Security Adviser Jonathan Black has reportedly pointed colleagues towards the handbook in recent months, claiming it will help guide them as Britain deals with threats from the likes of Putin's Russia. Trump must now decide whether secondary sanctions are the right tool of persuasion even though America has used them only sparingly in the past, mainly against Iran, and no other Western country has resorted to them at all. Even the handbook, written when war was imminent, stops short of recommending them. On the surface, the president and his allies seem unrestrained. Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator representing South Carolina, has introduced a bill that would impose 500 per cent tariffs on any country buying Russian 'petroleum products', describing this as a 'sledgehammer available to President Trump to end this war' and a sanction of 'bone-breaking' power. Ukraine certainly hopes so. On Sunday, one of President Zelensky's key advisers, Andriy Yermak, said that Russia's economy was 'holding on only through the sale of energy resources' and it would be possible to 'strangle' Putin's revenues with 'secondary tariffs proposed in the USA.' On July 28, Trump said that Putin had '10 or 12 days' to accept a ceasefire in Ukraine or face unspecified consequences, a deadline that the White House later clarified would expire this Friday. Earlier, the president had threatened 'tariffs at about 100 per cent – you'd call them secondary tariffs' on any country importing Putin's oil. The biggest targets would be China and India, which buy nearly 75 per cent of Russia's seaborne oil exports. If Trump is in earnest, then the world's second and fifth biggest economies respectively will this week suffer American tariffs of 100 per cent, though there seems no immediate prospect of him endorsing Senator Graham's bill and its penalty of 500 per cent. The president is a master of bombast and empty threats, but the oil price still responded to his words by climbing above $70 per barrel. Faced with a choice between punitive US tariffs or abandoning Russian oil, China and India would probably have to choose the latter and cut Putin loose. Thanks to Russia's dependence on just two customers, that would make a big difference to Moscow's revenues. In June alone, Russia earned more than £6 billion by selling 2 million barrels of oil a day to China and 1.5 million to India. Add in exports of coal, gas and refined oil products, and Russia received a total of about £7.5 billion from the two countries in one month – representing about half of the Kremlin's global fossil fuel revenues. 'If those markets are lost, then clearly this would have a serious impact on Russia,' says Jonathan Eyal, an associate director of the Royal United Services Institute. 'But as always with the oil market, it's swings and roundabouts.' Secondary sanctions, if imposed, might be too successful for their own good. By choking off Russian oil, they could unbalance the market and cause the price to rise, damaging the world economy and forcing Trump's voters to pay more to fill up their cars. A higher price would also allow Putin to earn more from any remaining exports. Thanks to sanctions, Russian oil already sells at a discount on the market price. If that baseline was higher, then the Kremlin could raise more revenue even with the discount. And how would the sudden imposition of punitive tariffs on China square with Trump's wish to negotiate a trade deal with the world's second biggest economy? On Friday, Trump enacted a 25 per cent tariff on India in retaliation for its supposed protectionism against US exports. But he had publicly threatened an extra 'penalty' for the country's purchases of Russian oil. So far, no such 'penalty' has appeared and India's tariff is still lower than Canada's 35 per cent. Eyal points out that Trump has not yet given his backing to the Graham bill, and the president's separate announcements are 'muddying the waters', creating a 'typical Trump mess.' But there is no doubt that imposing different tariffs based on whether countries comply with America's foreign policy objectives violates World Trade Organisation rules. And deliberately placing a sovereign state under unbearable pressure to stop doing business with another sovereign state could break international law. 'As a principle, we've always argued that these measures are illegal because they effectively extend US jurisdiction to other countries,' says Eyal. Britain's Handbook of Economic Warfare from 1939 notes another familiar risk, namely that neutral countries, 'if pressed too hard', could 'throw in their lot with the enemy', just as excessive American pressure on China and India might drive them closer to Russia. Even when the Second World War was imminent, the British Government weighed the risks and decided against imposing secondary sanctions on neutral countries doing business with Nazi Germany. 'There will be no Secondary Statutory list,' says the handbook. 'That is to say, neutral traders will not be penalised merely for continuing to trade with another who has been placed on the Statutory List.' But the text stresses the importance of maintaining an artful pretence that secondary sanctions might at any moment be imposed, noting how this bluff had been highly effective during the First World War. 'The fear, which was discreetly fostered, that a Secondary Statutory List, might be enforced proved, however, extremely efficacious during the war of 1914-18,' says the handbook. 'There is evidence that some firms on the Statutory List were virtually boycotted by other firms for fear of consequences that we had no intention of permitting.' In the same way, just the possibility of America imposing secondary sanctions has already made companies in China and India and elsewhere wary of doing business with Russia. The fact that Putin must sell his oil at a discount is proof of this chilling effect. Yet Putin's incessant drone and missile attacks on Kyiv, which killed 31 people in one night last Thursday, suggest that he does not believe that Trump will go ahead with secondary sanctions against Russia's biggest economic partners. Instead, Putin's assaults on Ukrainian cities suggest that he is determined to ignore what he thinks is Trump's bluster. It will soon become clear whether Putin is right and the president is bluffing just as surely as Britain was in 1939. If not, this could be the week when Trump takes up his sledgehammer and wields it against Russia with a severity that would exceed Britain's actions against Nazi Germany in the countdown to war.
