Iran: The Latest

French President Emmanuel Macron has announced the return of military service in the country, 25 years after mandatory national service was phased out. And he's not alone, with the German parliament set to vote on similar measures, while Belgium and the Netherlands have already introduced voluntary military service. But what do the measures entail exactly? How effective, or even necessary are they...

Donald Trump’s latest effort to end the war in Ukraine unleashed a week of diplomatic turmoil. And some of the most dramatic diplomatic twists and turns bear the finger prints of one man: Jonathan Powell, the British national security advisor, not only led a diplomatic rescue mission to recast Donald Trump’s original Russian-inspired proposals in Ukraine and Europe’s favour. His influence can also...

With conflicts raging around the world, aid budgets are being slashed in favour of defence spending.  But experts are warning that cutting aid may not just hurt the world’s most vulnerable, it could make life in Britain more dangerous. This week, Lord Dannatt, the former head of the British Army, tells Venetia and Arthur why cutting aid to boost defence actually makes us less safe.  Plus...

Xi Jinping is the most authoritarian and longest serving Chinese leader since Mao - and probably the most powerful man on earth. But what makes him tick, and what does is upbringing tell us about his behaviour today? Joseph Torigian spent nine years researching this question. The result is The Party's Interests Comes First - a biography of Xi's father, Xi Zhongxun. Torigan sat down with Roland Oli...

TNT, the unglamorous but indispensable ingredient of modern warfare, is now in critically short supply and Britain is feeling the consequences. A new parliamentary report warns that the UK’s war-fighting readiness is being eroded not only by dwindling stockpiles but by its failure to meet Nato Article 3 obligations to maintain the capacity to resist armed attack. The shortage of TNT is particularl...

More children are being killed by explosive weapons than at any other time in history, according to a major new report by Save the Children and Imperial College London. It’s clear there has been a shift in the way wars are being fought, and children are being caught in the crosshairs.  In this exclusive interview, Arthur and Paul ask George Graham, Executive Director for Global Impact at Save...

America is flexing its muscles in the Caribbean and the world is holding its breath. Washington has trained its sights on Socialist-run Venezuela, and the arrival of the colossal USS Gerald Ford has sparked the biggest military buildup since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Operation Southern Spear is now under way: a dozen warships, thousands of troops, and a barrage of so-called “anti-narco” strikes th...

The Syrian civil war raged for years, wrecked a nation, and then quietly vanished from the headlines. Last December, a jihadist faction once aligned with Al-Qaeda toppled Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship. Their leader, al-Sharaa is now President of Syria and he met Donald Trump this week in the Oval Office, yes, really. Al-Sharaa is calling it a “new era” for Syria, no enemies, just friends. He’s co...

For more than two years a vicious civil war has been raging in Sudan. It’s been defined by massacres, rapes, displacement, and starvation.  As the UN has long said, it is one of the worst humanitarian crises of the 21st century. Most media didn’t pay attention until Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab published satellite images of bodies and bloody sand. Suddenly, there was hard visual evidence...

Sanctions, nationwide protests, even Israeli airstrikes haven’t broken the Iranian regime. Could a drought finally bring the Islamic Republic to its knees? Iran is running out of water and now the president has warned that if the rains don’t come, all of Tehran may have to be evacuated. This isn’t a war fought with bombs or bullets, it’s far more devastating. Roland Oliphant is joined by The Teleg...

Germany is rearming, and fast. A sentence that once sent shivers down Europe’s spine is now a shocking reality. This isn’t the Germany of old; it’s a nation powering up for a new era of danger. With Putin’s war machine grinding on, Berlin’s gone from pacifist to powerhouse, pledging a staggering 3.5% of GDP to defence by 2029, outpacing the UK. So what’s behind this dramatic transformation? And is...

In Ukraine, tens of thousands of soldiers have returned from the frontlines without limbs. Most of them will require support in some form for the rest of their lives.  But not all of those amputations are purely the result of direct hits on the battlefield. Ukraine’s Chief Military Surgeon has said the improper use of tourniquets could be responsible for as many as one in four lost limbs.&nbs...

Donald Trump’s been on a triumphant tour of Asia, shaking hands, signing peace deals, and lapping up royal treatment fit for, well, himself. From Tokyo Tower lit in red, white and blue to 250 cherry trees gifted in his honour, it was a spectacle of ego and diplomacy rolled into one. In South Korea, they even played YMCA as he strutted past a military band. Trump’s “12 out of 10” meeting with Xi Ji...

There’s a rhythm to wartime atrocity. First come the warnings, ignored, dismissed. Then the whispers, the shaky videos, the satellite images that no one can quite believe. And finally, the horrific truth. That’s where we are today in el-Fasher, Sudan, where the militia calling itself the Rapid Support Forces is perpetrating a massacre that can literally be seen from space. The crime has refocused...

It's been over two weeks since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect in Gaza. While the full-blown war has stopped, the World Health Organisation is warning that Gaza is experiencing a health "catastrophe" that will last for "generations to come". How do we make Gaza healthy again? How do you heal a city that’s been under siege and rebuild a health system destroyed by war? To fin...

As the Arctic ice melts, a new Cold War is heating up. Russia and China are rewriting the rules of global power, testing missiles, flexing muscles, and pushing into the world’s last frontiers. A 294-metre container ship has just blazed through the Arctic route from China to Europe in record time. If trade can flow through, what’s to stop warships? Are we watching the start of a polar power grab? S...

The Caribbean is heating up and Trump’s fingerprints are all over it. U.S. warships, stealth fighters, elite troops… and whispers of  regime change . Is Donald Trump about to launch a full-scale invasion of Venezuela? Behind the “war on drugs” rhetoric, Washington has been quietly building up military power near Maduro’s shores, reopening bases and even authorising covert CIA operations....

Last month, Donald Trump raised the spectre of biological weapons at the UN, calling on the world to help him end their development. He said AI could help enforce the ban on these weapons. But scientists are increasingly concerned that technologies like AI and gene editing tools could also make them more accessible – and even more dangerous. So we’re asking: has the threat of biological weapons re...

Here’s a sobering reality: China could bring America’s military to its knees — without firing a single shot. The weapon? Rare earth minerals. These hidden elements power everything from fighter jets and submarines to missiles and drones. If Beijing pulled the plug tomorrow, Western stockpiles would run dry within weeks — and rebuilding them wouldn’t be easy. Now, with China tightening export contr...

We surface a story that’s been making waves. A Russian diesel-electric submarine, The Novorossiysk , is being trailed through the North Sea by NATO ships, sparking headlines about a “crippled” vessel and “embarrassment for Moscow.” But is it really in trouble? Or are we, once again, jumping to Cold War-style conclusions? Yes, it leaked fuel last month. Boats do that. It’s now heading home. They do...

War is the perfect petri dish for disease. In the conflicts of the 18th and 19th centuries, many more troops died of illnesses than in battle. And, at the start of the 20th century, the Spanish Flu pandemic emerged out of the chaos of the First World War. With anti-microbial resistance on the rise and HIV cases soaring among Russian soldiers, might ‘Disease X’ – the mystery pathogen that could cau...

China isn’t just spying — many Western security officials believe it’s waging a full-blown, whole-of-government campaign against the West. From hacking our systems to manipulating elections and social media, Beijing’s playing the long game to undermine Britain, America, and their allies. We speak to former FBI agent Michael Feinberg who quit under very controversial circumstances — he lifts the li...

In this explosive episode of Battle Lines , Venetia Rainey is asking the question everyone else is too afraid to: is Britain ready for a Russian-style drone onslaught? Drones have been spotted across Europe — Poland, Germany, Denmark, Belgium — sparking fears of a new kind of hybrid war. Could the UK defend itself if those drones turned up on our shores? To find out, Venetia is joined by ex-RAF pi...

Two years on from October 7th, Donald Trump is on the cusp of brokering a fragile peace deal between Israel and Hamas. But with Hamas showing signs of reconstituting itself and Israeli forces still in control of much of the Strip, few believe the war is truly over. In this episode, we hear from  The Telegraph’s  Jerusalem correspondent Henry Bodkin, fresh from an Israeli army embed...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Trump delivered extraordinary speeches to top military generals this week, declaring a war on the "enemy within" and signaling a radical transformation of the US armed forces. To decode what it all means, Roland Oliphant speaks with Mark Cancian, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former Marine Corps colonel. Are...