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‘A devastating force’: how recent Mediterranean storms turned to tragedies

For Andrés Sánchez Barea, in Spain, it was the fear that arose when water started to spurt from plug sockets. For Nelson Duarte, in Portugal, it was the helplessness that hit as violent winds smacked down trees and tore tiles from roofs. For Amal Essuide, in Morocco, it was the reality that dawned when a corpse was pulled onboard a boat in the flooded medina. Each moment of horror is a fragment of the destruction wrought by an atmospheric machine-gun that in recent weeks has fired storm after storm at the western Mediterranean. Scientists do not know if climate breakdown helped pull the trigger, but research suggests it loaded the chamber with bigger bullets. In Grazalema, Spain’s wettest town, a year’s-worth of rain fell in a fortnight and overloaded the karst aquifer beneath it. Water rushed into homes through floors, walls and even electricity sockets. Authorities ordered everyone to evacuate. “I felt a lot of fear,” said Sánchez Barea, a guesthouse owner whose home is one of hundreds still in an exclusion zone. “At first we tried to get rid of the water. Lots of people came to help, but we realised it was impossible.” In Leiria, one of four regions in Portugal where extreme rain broke records in January, powerful winds added to the damage. Monte Real airbase logged a top wind speed of 109mph (176km/h) before the station was hit and measurements stopped. Storm Kristin took out electricity, internet, and telephone service in the early hours of a morning that would soon turn deadly. “It was around this time that everything seemed to be falling apart,” said Duarte, a beekeeper in Monte Real who lost half his hives. The house-rattling wind trapped him and his family indoors, where they could do nothing but avoid balconies and windows as they waited it out. “The wind became deafening and relentless, mixed with the sound of collapsing structures, flying tiles, breaking trees and violently banging metal sheets,” Duarte said. “The atmosphere was terrifying and conveyed the feeling the house might not hold up.” Duarte’s house held, but others’ did not. Ricardo Teodósio, an industrial painter in neighbouring Carvide, was fixing a garage roof with his father when it collapsed on them. Injured, the older man walked 1.8 miles to a fire station to get help for his son, who was trapped under the rubble. He was dead by the time they arrived. João Lavos, the commander of the volunteer firefighters of Vieira de Leiria, said Teodósio was one of two people to die in the Carvide-Leiria region that day. In the space of 24 hours, the firefighters were deployed to 50 storm-related events, 15 of which involved victims of accidents. “It was an unprecedented situation that caused immense damage.” Western Europe has been battered by 16 rapid-fire storms this season due to a shift in atmospheric currents that some scientists suggest will become more common as the planet heats up. While the role that the climate crisis played in the formation of the storms is still uncertain, early analysis from Climate Central found it made a marine heatwave that supercharged the storms in early February 10 times more likely. On Thursday, a study by World Weather Attribution (WWA), which uses established methods but has not yet been sent for peer review, found carbon pollution made the rains stronger and the floods worse. In Safi, the ceramics capital of Morocco, explosive mud waves shattered fragile pottery stores when rain swamped the souk at the end of last year. Most of the 43 people killed in storms across the country since mid-December died in the narrow, winding streets of its medina as water surged through. “At first, we didn’t think there would be big damages,” said Essuide, who watched the chaos play out from the roof of the hotel she runs in the old town, and who was picked up by a rescue team. “But after we entered the small boat, and they found someone dead, then we realised it was a very hard thing. It was scary.” Observational data show the most extreme rainfall days in Spain, Portugal and Morocco unleash one-third more water than they did in the 1950s, according to the WWA study, though climate models paint a more mixed picture. The researchers attributed an 11% increase in rain in the northern study region to global heating, but the effect on the southern study region was too uncertain to quantify using probabilistic methods. Clair Barnes, a scientist at Imperial College London and co-author of the study, said: “Trends in the region are mixed and are not represented by the climate models. However, other lines of evidence do suggest that climate change has increased the amount of water available in that weather system to fall as rain.” Last week, the EU’s official science advisers said Europe was failing to adapt to a hotter planet and the more extreme weather it brings. In Portugal, Duarte said emergency warnings failed to generate the necessary level of public alarm. “Nobody was prepared for such a devastating force,” he said, adding that the death toll could have easily reached hundreds if the storm had struck during the day, rather than at night. “It caught us all completely by surprise.” In Spain, meanwhile, people in Grazalema praised authorities for a timely evacuation. The centre-left leadership of the centre-left town came to a swift agreement with the centre-right authorities in Ronda, the town next door, which opened its doors to neighbours seeking shelter. “They did the right thing,” said Mario Sánchez Coronel, who runs a textile shop in Grazalema that flooded. “They acted under pressure, and it’s not easy to act like that.” In what Sánchez Coronel described as a “miracle”, his wool blanket factory suffered only minor flooding. He said he hoped to never see such rains again. “It was hard, because you think about what might happen next,” he said. “After the ‘bad’, will the ‘worst’ come?”

Jimmy Lai’s fraud conviction overturned by Hong Kong court in rare legal win for activist

A Hong Kong appellate court on Thursday overturned fraud convictions against the media mogul Jimmy Lai, a rare victory in the prominent pro-democracy activist’s legal battles. Lai, 78, an outspoken critic of China’s ruling Communist party who founded the now defunct Apple Daily, will stay in prison because weeks ago he was sentenced to 20 years after being convicted in another case brought under a China-imposed national security law. It is more than five years since he was arrested under the law, which was used in a years-long crackdown on many of Hong Kong’s leading activists. Lai’s plight has evoked grief over the loss of press freedom in the city and prompted an international outcry, though the city’s authorities insist his case had nothing to do with media independence. The conviction that was overturned on Thursday was from an earlier fraud case in which prosecutors alleged that a consultancy firm controlled by Lai had used office space that his media business rented for publication and printing purposes. Lai was sentenced to five years and nine months in prison in 2022 after being found guilty of two fraud charges. A lower court judge found that Lai and his co-defendant Wong Wai-keung had concealed that the firm was occupying space and violated lease agreement, saying he had used his media organisation as a protective shield. He also fined Lai 2m Hong Kong dollars ($257,000). But judges at the higher court ruled the prosecution had failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the defendants had made false representations, throwing out both convictions. Neither defendant appeared in court. The ruling could slightly reduce Lai’s total prison time. The judges handling Lai’s national security case allowed the two sentences to be served concurrently for only two years, with the other 18 years to be added after the fraud sentence. The lengthy sentence has raised concerns that he could spend the rest of his life in prison. Lai’s children have expressed hope that Donald Trump, who has said he wanted to secure their father’s release, could help do so during an upcoming visit to Beijing. The White House has confirmed that Trump will travel to China on 31 March through 2 April to meet the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping. The UK foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, has said Lai, a British citizen, was sentenced for exercising his right to freedom of expression and called on the Hong Kong authorities to release him on humanitarian grounds. Chinese and Hong Kong authorities have defended Lai’s sentencing in the national security case – the harshest penalty handed down for national security offences in Hong Kong – saying it reflected the spirit of the rule of law. They also insisted the security law is necessary for the city’s stability. Separately, a Hong Kong court on Thursday sentenced the father of a wanted pro-democracy activist to eight months in prison under the city’s national security law after he attempted to terminate her insurance policy and withdraw the funds. Kwok Yin-sang, 69, was found guilty earlier this month of “attempting to deal with, directly or indirectly, any funds or other financial assets or economic resources” belonging to an “absconder” under the city’s national security law. He is the first person in the city to be charged and convicted with the offence. He had pleaded not guilty and did not testify at the trial. His daughter, Anna Kwok, helps lead the Washington-based advocacy group Hong Kong Democracy Council, and is one of 34 overseas activists wanted by Hong Kong national security police. In Washington, before her father’s sentence was handed down, Anna Kwok told Reuters she found it “utterly despicable” that the Hong Kong government was going after her father. He was accused of trying to withdraw funds totalling HK$88,609 from an education savings insurance policy he bought for her when she was almost two years old. The acting principal magistrate Cheng Lim-chi said since Anna Kwok was a fugitive, directly or indirectly handling her insurance policy is illegal. With Associated Press and Reuters

Ukraine war briefing: Kyiv to accelerate placement of anti-drone nets across frontline

Ukraine will speed up the placement of anti-drone nets over roads in frontline areas, aiming to cover 4,000km of roads by the end of this year, the defence minister has said. A growing number of nets have been installed over the past year but more were needed, Mykhailo Fedorov said, adding that an additional 1.6bn hryvnias ($37m) had been allocated from the budget to bolster protection measures and counter Russian drones. Moscow has been targeting military supply routes and rear bases deeper and deeper into Ukraine with the remotely piloted aircraft and drones have also struck hospitals, infrastructure and civilian traffic. Nets can snag propellers and prevent drones from reaching their targets. “In just one month, we increased the speed [of coverage] from 5km per day in January to 12km in February,” Fedorov said on Telegram on Wednesday. “This significantly improved the safety of military movements and ensured stable functioning of frontline communities. In March, we plan to close 20km of roads per day.” Several explosions shook central Kyiv early on Thursday after officials warned of air raids in the Ukrainian capital before planned talks in Geneva with US representatives on ending Russia’s war. The Ukrainian air force reported high-speed targets heading toward Kyiv shortly before Tymur Tkachenko, the head of the capital’s military administration, said Russia was attacking the city with strike drones and ballistic missiles. “Air defence is operating. Stay in shelters until the alert is cleared!” he said on Telegram. Elsewhere, the authorities reported a “combined air attack” in Kharkiv with impacts in two districts, Zaporizhzhia being attacked with at least one person wounded, and a strike in the central city of Kryvyi Rig wounding an 89-year-old man and causing a fire that damaged a high-rise building. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a Ukrainian delegation would meet Donald Trump’s envoys on Thursday at the Geneva talks in the run-up to another round of trilateral talks with Russia. Rustem Umerov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, was due to hold talks with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Geneva, the Ukrainian president said on Wednesday. Thursday’s meeting would include addressing details of a possible postwar recovery plan for Ukraine, Zelenskyy said, adding that he had also tasked Umerov with discussing a possible prisoner exchange. Kyiv expected the US-brokered talks with Russia to take place next week, he said. Meanwhile, the Kremlin’s economic affairs envoy Kirill Dmitriev planned to travel to Geneva on Thursday to meet US negotiators for talks, the Russian state news agency Tass reported. Washington’s peace push has brought Russia and Ukraine to the table in Abu Dhabi and Geneva this year but the talks produced no breakthrough as the war enters its fifth year. Repairs to the Druzhba pipeline that carries Russian oil to eastern Europe cannot be completed quickly despite requests from the EU and protests by Hungary, Zelenskyy said on Wednesday. “Firstly, it’s not that fast,” he told reporters, adding that Russian strikes had destroyed the pipeline linking the Black Sea port of Odesa with Druzhba. “This is not their first strike, and they continue to hit the energy sector.” Shipments of Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia have been cut off since 27 January, when Kyiv says a Russian strike hit pipeline equipment in western Ukraine, and Slovakia and Hungary say Ukraine is to blame for the prolonged outage. The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said during a visit to Kyiv on Tuesday to mark the war’s fourth anniversary that the EU was asking Ukraine to speed up repairs. Zelenskyy said: “They advise us to repair it, but they know that there have already been attacks on Druzhba. Our people were injured so that it would work.” The first Ukrainian drone production plant has started its operations in Britain, Ukraine’s ambassador said on Wednesday. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, a former commander of the Ukrainian armed forces, said the producer, Ukrspecsystems, founded in 2014, had proved the efficiency of its drones on the frontline. “Ukraine is fighting a war amid constant missile strikes, infrastructure destruction and threats to production facilities,” he said on Telegram. “Therefore, the launch of production in the UK has a deep strategic logic.” Switzerland’s government announced that the purchase and import of Russian liquefied natural gas would be completely banned from 25 April, as the country aligns itself with the latest round of EU sanctions. It added that in the case of pre-existing long-term supply contracts, a transition period would apply until the end of the year.

Cuba says it killed heavily armed exiles who attacked from US-registered speedboat

Cuban forces killed four exiles and wounded six others who sailed into its waters onboard a Florida-registered speedboat and opened fire on a Cuban patrol, the country’s government said, at a time of heightened tensions with the US. Cuba’s interior ministry said the group was comprised of anti-government Cubans, some of whom were previously wanted for plotting attacks. They came from the US dressed in camouflage and armed with assault rifles, handguns, homemade explosives, ballistic vests and telescopic sights, it said. The wounded were evacuated and receiving medical attention, while a Cuban patrol commander was also wounded, the ministry said. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, told reporters it was not a US operation and that no US government personnel were involved. The Cuban authorities made the US aware of the incident, but the US embassy in Havana would attempt to independently verify what happened, he said. “We’re not going to base our conclusions on what they’ve [Cuba] told us, and I’m very, very confident that we will know the full story of what happened here,” Rubio told reporters while on a trip to the Caribbean nation of St Kitts and Nevis. “As we gather more information, then we’ll be prepared to respond accordingly,” he said. “Suffice to say it is highly unusual to see shootouts in open sea like that.” Florida’s attorney general said he had ordered an investigation into the incident. “The Cuban government cannot be trusted, and we will do everything in our power to hold these communists accountable,” said James Uthmeier. Cuba said it had identified the six detainees from the boat, two of whom, Amijail Sanchez Gonzalez and Leordan Enrique Cruz Gomez, it claimed were previously wanted in Cuba on suspicion of planning terrorist acts. The other four were identified as Conrado Galindo Sariol, Jose Manuel Rodriguez Castello, Cristian Ernesto Acosta Guevara and Roberto Azcorra Consuegra. In addition, Cuba said it detained another Cuban man in Cuban territory, Duniel Hernandez Santos, who it claimed had come from the US to the island in order to receive the infiltrators. One of the dead was identified as Michel Ortega Casanova. The other three dead had yet to be identified, Cuba said. The confrontation happened in an area where gentle farmland gives way to the Florida Straits in bleached beaches under swaying palms. The scattered keys offshore are highly militarised as it is a common spot for Cubans seeking to escape to the US to launch their rafts, and also for people smugglers to land in fast boats. There were several incidents in 2022, at the height of Cuba’s migration crisis. In June of that year, off Bahía Honda to Havana’s west, Cuban officials said they returned fire against a trafficking boat, killing one. That October, survivors said their boat was rammed by the coast guard nearby. Seven migrants died, including a two-year-old girl, Elizabeth Meizoso. It is almost exactly 30 years to the day since the Cuban air force killed four people when it shot down two small planes belonging to Brothers to the Rescue, a Cuban exile group who were dropping leaflets on Havana. They claimed they were helping people flee the island. That event, in which Carlos Alejandre, 45, Armando Costa, 29, Mario De la Peña, 24, and Pablo Morales, 29, died, ended a thaw between the US and Cuba. The US soon increased its sanctions on the island through the Helms Burton Act that allows US companies that had property confiscated during the 1959 revolution to sue foreign companies using those properties. It is one of the stickiest issues between the countries now, and two such cases are now being heard by the US supreme court. There are also moves in the US to bring charges against the former Cuban president Raúl Castro for the Brothers to the Rescue killings, in the hope of creating a similar pretext for intervention used for the abduction of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. The Trump administration has moderately eased an embargo on the delivery of oil from Venezuela to Cuba due to the growing energy and humanitarian crisis on the island that has been exacerbated by a US blockade. The US Treasury Department on Wednesday said it would now allow American and some international companies to resell Venezuelan-origin oil and petroleum products in Cuba, opening a potential lifeline between Cuban households and private businesses that have been devastated by the cutoff of fuel imports from Venezuela. The unusual guidance was made in “solidarity with the Cuban people” and was targeted at efforts to “improve living conditions and support independent economic activity”, the Treasury Department said. Tensions have soared between Washington and Havana since the US launched an operation in January to capture Maduro, removing one of Cuba’s chief allies in the region. Administration officials led by Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants and a hawkish opponent of the communist Cuban government, have called for additional US pressure on Havana at a time when the US is flexing its muscle throughout Latin America. The US cut a major lifeline to Cuba after its operation to capture Maduro, taking control of the export of Caracas’s substantial oil production. Before the raid against Maduro, Venezuela was a key supplier of oil to Cuba. The US has also threatened to slap tariffs on other critical suppliers such as Mexico to halt deliveries of oil and fuel to Cuba. The directives from the US Treasury and Commerce departments said that oil and petroleum products could be sold to businesses and private households but not to any government institutions, in effect relying on the Cuban government to respect the arrangement. “This favourable licensing policy is directed towards transactions that support the Cuban people, including the Cuban private sector (eg, exports for commercial and humanitarian use in Cuba),” the guidance read, but banned transactions with “the Cuban military, intelligence services, or other government institutions”. At present the Cuban government is believed to have issued 10 licences to private businesses to bring in fuel in so-called ISO tanks, which fit the standard container spaces on cargo ships. But this will not ease the crisis by much. To function well, Cuba is estimated to need 100,000 barrels a day. The embargo has led to an acute energy crisis on the island. Much of the country is affected by blackouts which can last from 12 to 20 hours a day. Regional leaders have said that the blockade and resulting economic crisis could affect migration, security and economic stability elsewhere in the Caribbean. Mexico’s foreign ministry announced on Wednesday that it had sent a second shipment of humanitarian aid on Tuesday, including beans and powdered milk. Canada for the first time also announced it provide would US $6.7m in food aid through the UN, rather than the Cuban government. “This is Canadian foreign policy,” said the Canadian foreign affairs minister, Anita Anand. “We are focused on the humanitarian situation.” Rubio was reassuring leaders at a meeting of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) on St Kitts and Nevis. The Jamaican prime minister and the outgoing Caricom chair, Andrew Holness, has said he supports “constructive dialogue between Cuba and the US aimed at de-escalation, reform and stability”. With agencies

Middle East travel warnings expanded as tensions between US and Iran increase

More countries have told citizens to leave Iran and the surrounding region as airlines scale back flights amid mounting tensions between Washington and Tehran. As a day of critical talks over Iran’s nuclear programme was set to begin, and as a vast US military buildup continued in the Middle East, the Trump administration warned of drastic consequences if Iranian negotiators failed to make significant concessions. Australia told dependants of diplomats in Israel and Lebanon to leave the two countries, its foreign ministry said on Wednesday. The Australian government has also offered voluntary departures to dependants of diplomats in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Jordan amid what the foreign ministry described as a “deteriorating security situation in the region”. The US itself pulled non-essential officials and eligible family members from its embassy in Lebanon earlier this week, citing a review of the “security environment”. The US president and his officials maintain that Iran is rebuilding its nuclear weapons programme, and must stop. JD Vance, the vice-president, told reporters on Wednesday: “The principle is very simple: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.” Of the negotiations, Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said: “I would say that the Iranian insistence on not discussing ballistic missiles is a big, big problem.” Tehran has repeatedly pushed back against Donald Trump’s bellicose rhetoric, accusing him of “big lies” and expressing hope that negotiations may pave the way for an agreement. For weeks, heightened fears of a military conflict between the US and Iran have prompted airlines to suspend flights to and over countries in the region. KLM said announced that it would temporarily suspend flights between Amsterdam and Tel Aviv as of 1 March. The Dutch arm of the airline group Air France KLM did not explicitly cite the US-Iranian tensions on Wednesday, but said in a statement it was not “commercially or operationally feasible” to operate flights to Tel Aviv. Australia is the latest government to start withdrawing dependants of diplomatic personnel and non-essential staff from some locations in the Middle East, or advising citizens to defer travel to Iran, amid rising tensions. Cyprus, Germany, India, Poland, Serbia and Sweden have told nationals in Iran to leave. Singapore advised citizens to continue to defer all travel to the country. Brazil recommended last week that its citizens leave Iran, after a similar alert to its citizens in Lebanon in January. The government last year recommended that Brazilians not travel to the two countries. Reuters contributed to this report

Jacinda Ardern living and working in Australia after move from US

The former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern is living in Australia with her family, a spokesperson has confirmed. “The family has been travelling for a few years now,” her office told the Guardian. “For the moment they’re basing themselves out of Australia – they have work there, and it brings the added bonus of more time back home in New Zealand.” Speculation that Ardern was considering a move to Australia emerged on Thursday, after reports in Australian media that she and her husband, Clarke Gayford, and their seven-year-old daughter, Neve, attended open home viewings in Sydney’s northern beaches. The high-profile family’s move to Australia could hit a nerve within New Zealand, as the country grapples with record numbers of citizens leaving the country because of a weak economy, high living costs and high unemployment. More than 60% of those moved to Australia, where average weekly incomes are higher and New Zealand citizens have work and residency rights. The spokesperson did not elaborate on when the family arrived in Australia nor what kind of work they were doing, but noted it was not unusual for former leaders to spend time overseas after leaving office. In 2017, Ardern became the world’s youngest-serving female leader, aged 37, and went on to make history as the second woman to give birth while holding elected office. Over the next six years, her leadership was defined by a series of national and international crises including the Christchurch attack and Covid pandemic. At a time when major western powers were lurching to the right, Ardern’s brand of politics made her a global icon of the left. Towards the end of her time in office, Ardern’s legacy at home became more complicated, and she faced criticism over her government’s failure to make headway on its promises to fix the housing crisis and meaningfully reduce emissions. As the pandemic wore on, a small but vocal fringe of anti-vaccine and anti-mandate groups emerged, leading to a violent protest on parliament’s lawns and threatening rhetoric directed at Ardern. In January 2023 she announced she was stepping down as prime minister because she no longer had “enough in the tank”. Since leaving office, Ardern has taken up dual fellowship roles at Harvard University, continued her work on the Christchurch Call – a project she established to combat online extremism, after the Christchurch mosque shootings – and joined the board of trustees of Prince William’s Earthshot prize. In 2025 she released a memoir, shortly after a documentary traversing her leadership and personal life premiered at Sundance.

Iran enters critical nuclear talks with US insisting deal is within reach

Iran enters critical talks on its nuclear programme with the US on Thursday, insisting a deal is in reach as long as Washington sticks by its willingness to concede Iran’s symbolic right to enrich uranium, allow Tehran to dilute its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, and not to impose controls on Iran’s ballistic missile programme. The three preconditions for success are seen as critical by Iranian diplomats, but it remains unclear whether Trump accepts these parameters. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said on Wednesday that it would be a “big problem” if Iran did not negotiate over missiles. The US special envoy Steve Witkoff, who is heading to Geneva for the talks along with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, had already accepted these principles in the two previous rounds of indirect talks, Iranian officials claim. But it remains possible that Trump could overturn these terms, a step that will inevitably lead to a conflict between the two nations that could rapidly consume the whole of the Middle East. It is understood that Witkoff has asked only that Iran agree to enrichment at below 5% purity, roughly the level it accepted in the 2015 nuclear deal and well below weapons grade. A source in contact with Iran’s negotiation team said members were surprised at the lax terms of the proposal submitted last week by Kushner and Witkoff as a first step. The key request, this source said, was that Iran agree to limit enrichment to 5% and convert the programme to civilian use. But, in turn, the source said there were no offers of immediate sanctions relief or diplomatic ties: Iran would be left in economic handcuffs. Still, the next step, the source said, would be negotiations to gradually relieve sanctions and opening dialogue. Before leaving for Geneva, the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said the aim was to achieve “a fair and just agreement in the shortest possible time”. “Our fundamental positions and beliefs are completely clear. Iran will never, under any circumstances, seek to develop nuclear weapons; at the same time we Iranians will never forgo our right to benefit from peaceful nuclear technology,” he added. “Achieving an agreement is within reach but only if diplomacy is prioritised.” In his State of the Union speech, delivered early in the morning Tehran time, Trump veered sharply away from the negotiating path adopted by Witkoff when he warned about Iran’s ballistic missiles reaching Europe, accused Iran of being the number one sponsor of terrorism and again claimed Iran had not promised to forgo nuclear weapons. He also claimed 32,000 demonstrators had been killed by the Iranian authorities in recent protests. The US president added that Iran had failed to heed a warning to make “no future attempts” to rebuild its nuclear weapons programmes after last June’s American strikes on the country’s nuclear facilities. “We wiped it out and they want to start all over again,” Trump said. He added Iran was “at this moment, again, pursuing their sinister ambitions”. Only two hours before the speech, Araghchi had written on social media that Iran would under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon. The Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei sought to compare Trump to Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister. He accused Trump and his administration of conducting a “disinformation + misinformation campaign” against Iran. “Whatever they’re alleging in regards to Iran’s nuclear program, Iran’s ballistic missiles, and the number of casualties during January’s unrest is simply the repetition of ‘big lies,’” Baqaei wrote on X. After a briefing with Rubio, Jim Himes, a senior Democrat on the US House intelligence committee, said: “We have not heard a single compelling reason why now is a time to start another war in the Middle East.” For Iran, the presence of Raphael Grossi, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog, at the Geneva talks along with mediators from Oman is regarded as significant, since Grossi has the legal authority to state if he thinks any access offered by Iran to verify its commitments on enrichment matches the inspectorate’s needs. Araghchi’s team are also willing to find ways for Trump to argue the deal he has secured is better than the one negotiated by Barack Obama in 2015. Tehran recognises that this is a prerequisite for Trump in terms of US domestic politics. Before heading to Geneva, Grossi said the US had made it clear it was not going to argue for weeks or months. “A very dangerous situation is developing against the backdrop of these negotiations,” he said in reference to the vast and now complete US military buildup in the region. Araghchi said in an interview with CBS this week that “enrichment is our right … this technology is dear to us”. The US has not been clear if its demand for zero enrichment within Iran would apply to enrichment for medical purposes. Speaking to the Iranian newspaper Entekhab, Hamzeh Safavi, a professor of political science at Tehran University, said: “It is unlikely Iran would accept zero enrichment but it is likely to accept symbolic enrichment. What is important for Iran is the right to enrich and that the issue of enrichment does not become a tool for hostage-taking.” An Iranian agreement on a suspension of enrichment is not unprecedented. In 2003 the then secretary of the supreme national security council, Hassan Rouhani, agreed with France, Germany and the UK to suspend all uranium enrichment and processing activities and to allow snap inspections by the UN nuclear watchdog. The Iranian negotiating team who are being asked to present specific proposals at the Geneva talks will seek irreversible sanctions relief such as the release of frozen Iranian assets held abroad. Across Iran, protests have continued at universities for the fifth day, nearly two months after demonstrations against the regime began..

Spanish officer who led 1981 coup dies on day documents declassified

The Spanish officer who led his armed followers into the Spanish congress in a failed military coup in 1981 has died on the same day that the socialist-led government declassified documents relating to the murky attempt to overthrow the country’s post-Franco democracy. Antonio Tejero, who died aged 93, was part of a network of rightwing police and military officers whose efforts to seize power were thwarted after King Juan Carlos refused to support the coup and ordered the generals to obey the democratic constitutional order. Photographs of Tejero wearing the tricorn patent leather hat of the Guardia Civil and brandishing a pistol at MPs on 23 February 1981 are among the most indelible images of Spain’s young democracy. Tejero, who had been involved in another attempted putsch in 1978, was sentenced to 30 years in jail for his role in the events of 1981, but was released after serving half that time. Tejero’s family announced his death in a statement on Wednesday, just hours after the government had uploaded 153 documents relating to the coup on its website. The statement said Tejero had devoted his life “to God, Spain and his family”. His lawyer, Luís Felipe Utrera Molina, also paid tribute to him in a message posted on X. “Lieutenant Colonel Don Antonio Tejero Molina has died,” he wrote. “A man of honour, of unshakeable faith and with a great love for Spain. May God grant him the peace that men have denied him.” The former officer remained emphatically unrepentant about his part in the failed putsch. “It cost me my career and my freedom, but despite that I don’t regret having tried,” he told an interviewer five years ago. Tejero was also one of the people who turned out to protest against the government’s decision to exhume Franco’s remains from the mausoleum in the Valley of the Fallen and transfer them to a suburban cemetery on the outskirts of Madrid in 2019. At the request of the Franco family, one of Tejero’s sons, the priest Ramón Tejero, said mass at the reburial. The Spanish government said it had decided to declassify and publish dozens of documents about the coup so people could find out more about what happened in 1981. “Truth, memory and democracy,” the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, wrote in a post on X on Wednesday morning. “Because remembering the past is the best way to move forward with progress, harmony and freedom.” Among the declassified files was a report from the ministry of defence revealing that members of the intelligence service were involved in, or had knowledge of, the coup plot. The document said there were “six people who either knew the facts before 23 February, or who drew up operational support and then tried to cover their involvement using an operation that sought to justify their movements that day”. In another document, one of the plotters lamented that the coup had failed because they had left Juan Carlos free and had “treated him as if he were a gentleman” when he was, in fact, “an objective to be removed”. Juan Carlos was lauded at home and abroad for using a TV address on the night of the coup to face down its leaders and defend Spain’s newly restored democracy. But there have long been questions about the precise aims of the coup – and about its backers and instigators. According to an interior ministry file released on Wednesday, an investigation had established that some of the plotters had subsequently attempted to “lessen their criminal responsibility” by trying to implicate the king himself in the plot. “Defence lawyers for those who really were involved – as well as political groups and political circles sympathetic to their cause – have pushed the alleged involvement of his majesty the king as the main reason for the coup attempt,” the report said. “In order to do so, they have twisted true facts, maliciously interpreted others, and come up with things that have existed only in the minds of those who thought them up.”