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Middle East crisis live: Israel launches fresh strikes on Tehran; Iran UN ambassador says death toll over 1,300 people

Democratic US senators are worried Trump could put ‘boots on the ground’ in Iran, which they believe could put the US at risk. Speaking to CNN on Tuesday, Democratic senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire said a series of closed-door briefings from Trump aides have left them with more questions than answers, especially about the cost and expected duration of the war, and whether US forces would be sent into Tehran. We know that Russia is already helping with intel, providing that to Iran, and that there’s an axis with Russia and China, Iran and North Korea that puts at greater risk the United States and our national security. Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told reporters after a classified briefing from administration officials to the Senate Armed Services Committee the US “seemed to be on a path toward deploying American troops on the ground in Iran to accomplish any of the potential objectives here”. The American people deserve to know much more than this administration has told them about the cost of the war, the danger to our sons and daughters in uniform and the potential for further escalation and widening of this war. The Trump administration is reportedly considering the deployment of special forces into Iran to secure its stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU), which experts say could be used to make at least 10 nuclear warheads. Read more here:

Antonio Tejero obituary

Lt Col Antonio Tejero, who has died aged 93, terrorised much of Spain on 23 February 1981 when he led an armed assault on the Spanish parliament, the Cortes, in Madrid. At 6.23pm, some 250 civil guards burst into the semi-circular chamber of the lower house during the investiture of Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo as the new prime minister. For 18 hours the entire parliament was held hostage until a negotiated surrender the following morning; the Communist party leader Santiago Carrillo said he had expected to be shot. Tejero’s bushy moustache, angry stare and traditional civil guard tricorne hat became iconic images of the failed coup, the attempted return to the fascist Spain of the Franco dictatorship of 1939-75. Pistol in hand, Tejero strode to the rostrum shouting “¡Quieto todo el mundo!” (“No-one move!”). A few minutes later, with shots fired into the ceiling – since conserved to commemorate the defeat of the coup – he screamed the notorious phrase “¡Se sienten, coño!” (“Sit down, fuck it!”). The coup followed a year of crisis for the new democracy, born in the 1977 elections. The Basque terrorist group Eta had been killing members of the army and police every week. The government of Adolfo Suárez was in freefall in the midst of economic slump. Several politicians were irresponsibly calling for “a touch on the rudder”, ie a bloodless intervention to “correct” the faltering democracy. There were three main conspirators, Tejero, General Jaime Milans del Bosch, the head of the army in Valencia, who brought the tanks out on to the streets of the eastern city, and General Alfonso Armada. That night, Armada went to the congress, ostensibly to negotiate with Tejero and protect the kidnapped members of parliament. Armada had been secretary to the royal household, and the conspirators sought to give the impression that King Juan Carlos supported the coup. At 1.12 am, seven hours after the start of the coup, the king went on television in full military uniform to condemn the insurrection and defend the democratic process. By noon Tejero had surrendered. By coincidence, Tejero died the very day that government documents on the coup were declassified, 45 years after the event. The documents support the official version: that the king saved the day by vigorously opposing the conspirators. However, Tejero, in an interview with the online newspaper El Español in October 2023, said that he himself halted the coup when he realised that Armada wanted a “government of national salvation” including leftwing representatives, instead of a full-blown military dictatorship. He felt betrayed, used for the dirty work then, in the words of his wife, Carmen, “tossed aside like a used cigarette butt”. While in prison on remand after the coup, Tejero set up a political party, Solidaridad Española (Spanish Solidarity), with the striking slogan “Enter Parliament with Tejero!”. In the 1982 general election he received only 28,451 votes and failed to enter it by democratic means. Tejero, one of 32 conspirators to be tried, was convicted in June 1982 and sentenced to 30 years. Despite expulsion from the civil guard, he spent several years in a military prison in Figueres where conditions were comfortable and staff sympathetic. He was released in 1996. After leaving prison, Tejero devoted himself to painting and gardening. He lived between Torre del Mar, a coastal town near Málaga, and Madrid. He attended weekly mass. He kept a low political profile, but on the few occasions he appeared in public, it was clear that his politics had not changed. All his life he defended military dictatorship to conserve the unity of Spain. In 2019 the socialist government ordered the removal of Franco’s remains from his mausoleum at the Valle de Cuelgamuros and his reburial in the family tomb. Tejero was present, and was greeted by the crowd of fascists with cries of “Long live Spain! Long live Tejero!” He was rumoured to have written his memoirs in prison, but when in 2000 the publishers Planeta offered him a blank cheque for them, he was not interested. The 1981 assault on the Spanish parliament was not Tejero’s first military rebellion. In 1978 he had conspired to attack the Moncloa palace – the office and residence of the prime minister – and arrest the entire cabinet. The plot was named “Galaxia” after the Madrid cafe where the conspirators met. The coup was stillborn because someone invited to take part informed the police. Remarkably, Tejero was sentenced to only seven months in prison and was not demoted or expelled from the civil guard, which left him in a position to try again. Tejero was born in Alhaurín el Grande, near Málaga in southern Spain, into a poor family with military connections. His father was a rural school teacher. He attended the Military Academy in Zaragoza and entered the civil guard at the age of 19. He led a typical military life, posted to at least six destinations during the following 20 years, and was steadily promoted until becoming lieutenant colonel in the Basque country in 1974. In 1958 he married Carmen Díez Pereira, herself the daughter of a civil guard officer. She predeceased him. Tejero is survived by their three sons, three daughters and 16 grandchildren. • Antonio Tejero Molina, military conspirator, born 30 April 1932; died 25 February 2026

Iran is becoming more defiant in face of US-Israeli onslaught

Iran has spurned two messages from Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, seeking a ceasefire as its leaders sense it is not losing the war and the US president is at the minimum feeling the political pressure. The foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has further said a unilateral declaration from Trump that the US had won the war would not bring an end to the conflict. The implication is that even if the US announced a willingness to end its attacks, Iran might be willing to continue the conflict in some form, or keep its chokehold on shipping seeking to navigate the strait of Hormuz. Iran believes there can be no end to the conflict until it believes Trump has been shown the economic, political and military cost is so high that it is not worth repeating. It is instead insisting on a permanent deal that includes a US commitment not to attack Iran again. “If a ceasefire is to be established or the war stopped there must be a guarantee that aggressive actions against Iran will not be repeated. Otherwise if another attack occurs after a few months such a ceasefire would be meaningless,” said Kazem Gharibabadi, the deputy foreign minister. The defiance is remarkable for a regime that at the start of the war 11 days ago was seeking little more than its own survival. Nevertheless, the foreign ministry in conversations with the large number of countries offering to mediate is exploring whether it is feasible for the war simply to stop as it did in June last year, or must end with some kind of pact that might include a conditional lifting of US economic sanctions. But the overall mood among Iranian regime figures is that it is going to survive and should not at this stage seek any agreement. It will come under intense diplomatic pressure at the UN security council on Wednesday when more than 80 nations will sponsor a Bahrain-sponsored resolution condemning Iran for its attacks on the Gulf States, but voicing no criticism of the US or Israel. Russia may sponsor a separate motion calling for a ceasefire. “We are absolutely NOT seeking a ceasefire,” the speaker of the parliament, Mohammed Ghalibaf, posted to social media. “Let the enemy know that whatever they do, there will certainly be a proportionate and immediate retaliation […] We are fighting eye for eye, tooth for tooth, without compromise or exception.” The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has stressed that it will control the strait of Hormuz, which carries nearly 20% of the world’s crude oil and about 20% of liquefied natural gas. “At the beginning of the war we announced and we announce again no vessel associated with aggressors against Iran has the right to pass through the strait of Hormuz,” it said. “If you have doubts, come closer and find out.” The IRGC has also said it will allow ships though from countries that expel their US and Israeli ambassadors. Even the less militant president, Masoud Pezeshkian, sounded a defiant note arguing “the destroyers have come and gone. Iran remains.” Iranian diplomats argue that after two previous rounds of diplomatic talks being cut short by US-Israeli airstrikes, there is simply no basis to reach an agreement. Trump at his press conference on Monday night was meanwhile rehearsing the various arguments for a declaration of victory, possibly because the US had sufficiently damaged its ballistic missile launchers and nuclear programme that there was no need to continue the attack. But ultimately he refused to assert US victory was complete. Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said: “The regime overall think they can stay in this war and it might actually legitimise them because otherwise they have been a disaster for the country.” He blamed some of Israel’s attacks on energy infrastructure – which sent clouds of black smoke through Tehran – for alienating Iranian opinion. “Over the course of 24 hours you could sense the shift in Iranian public opinion from a war against regime to a war on Iran,” he said. Emile Hokayem from the International Institute for Strategic Studies nevertheless pointed to Iran’s significant self-inflicted problems. “The regime is still standing but faced a massive issue of resources,” he said. “Where do the resources come from when you have lost your ability to export when Hormuz is closed because of your own threats when the region does not want to trade with you and the United Arab Emirates is considering to freeze its assets.”

US weighs sending forces into Iran to secure nuclear stockpile, reports say

The Trump administration is reportedly considering the deployment of special forces into Iran to secure its stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU), which experts say could be used to make at least 10 nuclear warheads. Preventing Iran from acquiring a bomb is one of Trump’s stated war aims, and the 440kg HEU stockpile represents the greatest nuclear threat as it could be turned into weapons-grade uranium relatively easily. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has told Congress that “people are going to have to go and get it”. Rubio did not go into greater detail, but there have been US and Israeli reports on discussions between the two countries on how such a mission might be carried out by special forces from either or both militaries. But nuclear experts say the complexity and risk involved would be considerable. Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said on Monday that the UN watchdog body believed that 200kg of Iran’s HEU stockpile was in deep tunnels at its nuclear complex outside the city of Isfahan. He added that there was another “amount” of HEU in another nuclear centre at Natanz, where Iranians have constructed a new fortified and deeply buried facility called Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La, known to western analysts as Pickaxe Mountain. The HEU is in the form of uranium hexafluoride, which is solid at room temperature but turns into a gas when heated allowing it to be further enriched. It is believed to be stored in metal canisters each about the size of a scuba diving tank, stored down deep shafts. US and Israeli special forces have long trained for missions to extract nuclear materials from hostile environments, and the US has developed equipment, known as the Mobile Uranium Facility, designed to contain and remove HEU. But deploying it along with specialists and a force to protect them would involve major ground operations in at least two sites, both deep in Iran’s interior. “That would be tough. It is pretty well defended and it’s large and bulky, so you’re not going to just go in and pick it up,” Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear proliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. “Is a C-17 [military transport plane] going to land in the desert and you’re going to set up a security perimeter and cranes are going to drive off it? Or maybe you go in and blow it up and make a mess? All of these options seem fanciful to me,” Lewis said. Questioned on the issue on Saturday, Donald Trump acknowledged the challenge involved, and suggested such an operation was not imminent. The president said US troops would not be sent in until Iranian defending forces “would be so decimated that they wouldn’t be able to fight on the ground level”. He did not rule out a ground operation to secure nuclear material but said it would be at a later stage in the conflict. “At some point maybe we will,” he said. “We haven’t gone after it. We wouldn’t do it now. Maybe we will do it later.” The administration’s critics have expressed astonishment that a mission to secure the HEU did not appear to have been thought through before the war was launched. A Democratic congressman, Bill Foster, emerged from a classified briefing on the war last week saying he had heard nothing about a plan to address Iran’s nuclear capabilities. “Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium should be the administration’s primary focus. That is clearly not the case,” Foster said. Matthew Bunn, a nuclear policy analyst at the Harvard Kennedy School, said it was “just shocking to launch a military operation like this, justified by the nuclear danger, and not have a plan for dealing with the most urgent part of the nuclear danger”. “Clearly, something should be done to address that HEU stock – it’s the most important element of potential nuclear weapons capability in Iran,” Bunn said. He added that the best solution was a postwar deal in which the HEU was diluted or shipped out of the country. Such solutions were being negotiated in US-Iranian talks brokered by Oman that were under way when Israel and US launched their attack on 28 February. Trying to ship the HEU without Iranian compliance, blending it down or blowing it up where it is, all posed enormous problems, Bunn said. “For now, it appears the United States and Israel are relying on close monitoring of the site to make sure the canisters aren’t removed, while they figure out what to do longer-term,” he said. “As long as it stays in Iran, the plan is that if anyone gets near it, they will be killed. That is the strategy as it stands,” said Meir Javedanfar , an Iran expert at Reichman University in Israel. He added that the monitoring strategy was not foolproof. “Someone could build a tunnel and go seize it. You can’t be 100% sure.” Even if they were able to whisk the HEU out of sight, the surviving members of the Iranian regime meanwhile would also face enormous risks if they attempted to “race to a bomb”. Further enrichment, turning the weapons-grade uranium into a metal, shaping it, building an explosive device to trigger it and putting it on a missile or other delivery system, could theoretically be done in a few months, but doing it without being detected would be extremely hard. Robert Malley, who was the US special envoy to Iran in the Biden administration, said that was the dilemma that had faced the Iranian regime for years. “In the period I was there, there was increasing chatter openly in Iran and in other channels that suggested that they were thinking for the first time in a long time seriously about whether they should acquire a bomb,” Malley said. “I think the problem was always from the moment you make the decision to the moment you acquire the bomb, that’s the zone of maximum danger when you’re likely to be detected,” he added. “And if you’re detected you’re almost certain to be bombed. And that problem hasn’t evaporated.” He added: “I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it would be a really very dangerous gamble.”

Iranians living in UK tell Starmer that war will only strengthen Tehran regime

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is among three of Iran’s former political prisoners and more than 100 Iranians living in the UK who have urged the British prime minister not to get drawn further into the Iran conflict. They are all signatories in a letter to Keir Starmer saying the way the war is being conducted is strengthening the regime in Tehran. The letter acts as a counterpoint to those in the diaspora backing Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s former pro-western monarch, and who support the attacks on Iran as a prelude to regime change. Pahlavi has offered to lead a democratic transition, but Trump has said he is looking for an internal candidate to lead the Middle Eastern country. In their letter, they say: “Nobody can claim to want the end of the Islamic republic more than we do. But attacking the country in this way will have the opposite effect. It will entrench the authoritarians and give life to the fiction that has sustained them internally for decades: that they are fighting western imperialism. “When Netanyahu – a man charged with international war crimes after killing countless civilians in Gaza – assassinates Iran’s dictator, that kills the man but immortalises the myth. Iranians wanted him tried and punished for his crimes, not given the martyr-ending he craved.” The 86-year-old supreme leader, Ali Khamenei,was assassinated along with many in his family in Israeli airstrikes on the first day of the war. He has been succeeded by one of his sons, Mojtaba Khamenei. In the letter, the group set out a series of peaceful and practical steps to help the internal opposition, including those held in prison, such as providing Starlink to end the continued communications blackout inside Iran. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian dual national, was held in a jail on espionage charges mainly in Tehran for six years from 2016. Other signatories include the Iranian political prisoner Aras Amiri, a former British Council worker kept in jail for three years in Evin prison in Tehran, and Nasrin Parvaz, who spent eight years in Iranian jails from 1982. Others include high-profile artists within the Iranian community as well as academics and writers. They write: “A pro-democracy policy would protect political prisoners and ensure that Israel and the US do not bomb prisons like Evin. It is in those cells where the future democratic leaders of Iran reside. A pro-democracy policy would smuggle internet devices – not weapons – across the border, and break the blackout that is blanketing the country. A pro-democracy policy would call out Israel’s assassination policy even when it targets leaders we despise. There is so much that can be done in solidarity with Iranians. But joining in with Netanyahu’s forever wars is not it.” Starmer adjusted his policy of refusing any cooperation with the US attack on Iran when he said it became necessary to stop Gulf states coming under attack from Iran. The Iranian group say in the letter they are “overcome with grief. For decades we have been hoping for the day when Iranian democracy can finally flourish. Many of us have not been able to visit Iran for years for fear of imprisonment or worse.” And they criticise the Israeli leader, arguing that racism underlay his policy when he called on Iranians not to “sit with your arms crossed and instead rise up to finish the job”. They reject the presumption behind his remarks that “90 million people had been idly waiting several decades for his bombs”. They add: “This is of course not just Netanyahu’s war, Trump and the US are a significant part of it. But as US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said: ‘The president made the very wise decision – we knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.’ So the US followed Netanyahu into this war.”

Tehran endures ‘worst night of strikes’ amid mixed US messages about more to come

Tehran residents say the Iranian capital has endured what they described as its worst night of aerial bombardment, as the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, followed Donald Trump’s suggestion on Monday the war could soon be over with a warning of more strikes to come. “We are under heavy bombardment and I can hear back-to-back explosions. The place they hit has caught fire. It’s not clear where it exploded, but the buildings are shaking,” Niloufar, who lives in east Tehran said early on Tuesday, speaking under a pseudonym for security reasons. “They are destroying Iran,” they added, saying there were low-flying jets above. Israel, which launched an air campaign against Iran with the US on 28 February, on Tuesday said it had hit a weapons development facility among a wave of strikes. Other residents told the Guardian of rolling blackouts, and that much of Iran’s communications were down. The World Health Organization has urged Iranians to stay inside, saying “black rain” falling after strikes on oil facilities could cause respiratory problems. One Tehran resident described the city as “the last stop before hell”. At least 1,245 civilians have been killed, including 194 children, by the US-Israeli war on Iran, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists in Iran group. In Lebanon, at least 486 people have been killed by Israeli bombing, while 11 have been killed in Israel. Seven US troops have been confirmed dead and 140 injured, eight severely. As jets bombed Tehran, US officials issued contradictory messages as to how long the war could last. Trump said on Monday that “the war is very complete”, in a call with CBS News. Hours later, Hegseth said the war would end on “our timeline” and that the US would not stop until “the enemy is totally and decisively defeated”, promising Tuesday would see the most intense strikes in Iran yet. “It’s not for me to posit whether it’s the beginning, the middle, or the end, that’s [Trump’s decision] and he’ll continue to communicate that,” Hegseth said. Gen Dan Caine, chair of the US joint chiefs of staff, said US forces had hit more than 5,000 sites in Iran in a campaign aimed at destroying Iran’s ballistic missile and drone capacity, degrading its navy to reopen the strait of Hormuz, and hitting “deeper into Iran’s military and industrial base”. Iranian officials, meanwhile, said that they would not accept an end to the war until they had inflicted a painful price on the US and Israel. Iran’s head of the national security council, Ali Larijani, said in a social media post that the “nation of Iran does not fear your empty threats”, while implying Iran could target Trump himself. “Even those bigger than you could not eliminate the Iranian nation. Be careful not to get eliminated yourself,” he wrote, responding to the US president’s threat that Iran could be hit “20 times harder” if it blocked the flow of oil through the strait of Hormuz. Trump’s remarks came as US consumers began to feel the pain at the pumps and investors the world over reeled at the skyrocketing price of fuel. Economists said a continued disruption to Gulf oil production and to shipping out of the strait of Hormuz – a choke point for a fifth of the world’s oil transit – could plunge the world into an energy crisis not seen since the 1970s. Iran continued pounding Gulf states and Israel on Tuesday, part of its strategy to inflict as much pain as possible on the US’s influential Gulf allies and on the world economy to raise the price of the war. In Bahrain, a woman was killed and eight more people wounded in an Iranian attack on a residential building in Manama, while firefighters in the UAE tried to put out a blaze near petrochemical plants after an Iranian drone strike. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait said they had intercepted drones over their territory. In the glitzy Gulf city of Dubai, despite the bombardment residents said life was continuing much as normal. People still flocked to the beaches, malls and rooftop bars, although many tourists had fled. Commercial flights also restarted as the country’s airspace tentatively reopened, even as UAE’s leaders condemned the continuing “blatant Iranian aggression”. So far, four people, all migrant workers, have been killed by falling missile debris in the UAE. Nader Farid, 30, who moved from Egypt to Dubai five months ago to work in real estate, interviewed on the beach, said: “They say it’s a war but it’s caused no problem for us, we don’t really see it at all. “The first day was scary when they warned about incoming missiles. But now it’s been more than a week and life here just goes on, only business is a bit slower. I’m from Egypt, I know that nowhere is safe from war, but this one does not feel bad. We are very protected here.” In Tehran, US and Israeli jets operated virtually unchallenged. A resident of central Tehran said: “The air was clearing up a bit yesterday, but last night’s strikes, which I can tell you were the most intense in the past 10 days, were so scary that our buildings were shaking. The glass windows also shattered even though the explosions were not on my street. “Even in the past hour, I heard several explosions, and those planning to flee today are forced to stay home. The sky right now is grey and so polluted … there’s a burning smell of gunpowder in the air,” they added. The skies over Tehran have been grey for the past two days as smoke billowed out of oil facilities in Tehran and the nearby province on Alborz, which Israel targeted on Saturday. Residents reported “black rain” falling from the sky. “The black rain and the acidic rain coming with it is indeed a danger for the population, respiratory mainly,” a WHO spokesperson, Christian Lindmeier, said in Geneva. The WHO backed the advice by Iranian authorities for people to stay inside while air quality remained poor. Many people have fled Tehran in search of safety in rural areas, but older and less able-bodied residents were unable to leave. In Lebanon, Israel continued its strikes against what it described as Hezbollah targets, hitting the southern suburbs of Beirut and the south of the country on Tuesday. Hezbollah continued to target Israeli troops in the south of the country and to launch rocket salvoes and drone swarms at northern Israel, prompting Israel reportedly to consider a widened offensive against the group. The Lebanese Red Cross condemned an Israeli strike on one of its ambulances in the Tyre district of south Lebanon on Monday night, which injured two emergency workers.

It’s not just influencers who move to Dubai | Letters

Regarding Gaby Hinsliff’s article (Influencers sold the world a fantasy Dubai – and now it’s gone in a puff of missile smoke, 6 March), Dubai has certainly been marketed as a place of aspiration, often through social media. But the suggestion that recent events somehow represent a moral reckoning for those living there feels glib. Most residents are ordinary professionals and families who have built lives in Dubai over many years. When tensions rise in the region, their first concern is the safety of their families, not the preservation of a “fantasy lifestyle”. Many people move to places like Dubai not out of frivolity but because they are seeking a tax and regulatory environment that allows them to keep more of what they earn. Rather than dismissing those who leave as participants in a lifestyle fantasy, commentators might usefully ask why so many skilled workers are drawn to jurisdictions with simpler and often lighter tax regimes. Mark Husbands Nottingham • I cried when I saw the cartoon in the Guardian depicting an expat in Dubai – cried with fear and distress. My son is currently “sheltering in place” in Dubai as a result of the current crisis in the Middle East. He’s not an influencer or a tax dodger. He moved there during the pandemic for a graduate job opportunity when there were very few opportunities in the UK – a situation that sadly continues. He’s not asking for sympathy or demanding to be brought back to the UK, he’s showing incredible courage and continuing to work while under fire to pay off his student loan. I wonder whether the cartoonist has ever had been in imminent danger from missile and drone attacks? I doubt it – otherwise how to explain the lack of empathy shown in this cartoon published only three days after the crisis broke? Jessamy Hadley Ascot, Berkshire • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

Britain must end all participation in the US-Israel war on Iran | Letter

The US-Israel war on Iran is a catastrophic escalation in an already devastated region, and Britain must not be involved. It is causing appalling death and destruction in Iran and risks plunging the area into wider war. Already it is causing economic convulsions around the world. Its aims seem to change daily, but it is clearly an illegal and unprovoked war, one that started in the midst of negotiations. Its organisers have learned nothing from the carnage and chaos caused by previous wars on Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Unsurprisingly, the war is deeply unpopular here and around the world. We call on our government to end all participation, to stop allowing the US to use British bases to pursue it and to join others in calling for an immediate end to the attacks. Jeremy Corbyn MP Andrea Egan General secretary, Unison Maryam Eslamdoust General secretary, TSSA union Lindsey German Convener, Stop the War Coalition Jon Trickett MP Zarah Sultana MP and 50 others