- Yemen’s Houthis launch second attack on Israel and vow to continue strikes, as conflict in the Middle East escalates
- US secretly plotting ground attack, says Iran’s parliament speaker, in remarks published to mark 30 days since start of US-Israeli war
- Five killed in US-Israeli strikes on Iranian city near Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s state media reports
- Regional leaders are set to meet in Pakistan to discuss ending war
The Scottish National Party (SNP) has pledged to support terminally ill people with energy costs.
As the war in Iran has caused a spike in energy prices around the world, Shirley-Anne Somerville, who serves as Scotland’s Social Justice Secretary, said there would be support available if her party is returned to power.
It is not yet clear what form that support would take.
“Terminally ill people and their families should not face additional costs and worry as a result of them receiving treatment in their own home,” she said.
“That is why I am proud to support this Sunday Mail campaign – and to confirm that a re-elected SNP Government will take action to support terminally ill people receiving treatment at home.
“This is vital help that shows what we can achieve when we use government to support people – and should give parties like the Tories pause for thought the next time they attack social security.”
The Brent crude oil price is on track for its biggest monthly gain on record in March after the Iran war caused mayhem in the markets.
Brent crude, the international benchmark, has climbed by 51 per cent since the start of March, LSEG data shows, beating the previous monthly record of 46 per cent in September 1990 after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, leading to the first Gulf war.
Brent closed at $112.57 a barrel on Friday, up from $72.48 a barrel on February 27th, the day before the US-Israeli war on Iran began. Brent traded as high as $119.50 a barrel during March, its highest level since June 2022, after Iran all but closed the strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of global oil and gas would normally pass.
Meanwhile, Anwar Gargash, the diplomatic adviser to the UAE’s president, said on Sunday that any political solution addressing Iranian attacks on Gulf states should include Iranian reparations for targeting vital facilities as well as civilians.
The solutions should include clear guarantees to prevent a repetition of the attacks, he said in a post on X.
Meanwhile, attacks in the Middle East conflict extended into a fifth week on Sunday, with Israel striking Tehran and Saudi Arabia intercepting almost a dozen drones, a day after Yemen-based Houthi militants entered the war.
The Iran-backed Houthis launched ballistic missiles at Israel on Saturday morning, following US-Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. Tehran also struck aluminum producers in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, along with a US base in Saudi Arabia, wounding a dozen American personnel.
The Washington Post reported that the US defence department was preparing for potentially weeks of ground operations in Iran, citing unidentified US officials.
Any mission would likely first target opening the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway through which a fifth of seaborne global oil flowed before the war but which has now slowed to a trickle, inflicting the biggest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.
The strait has emerged as Iran’s main source of leverage in the war, and Pakistan on Saturday said it had reached a deal with Tehran to allow 20 of its ships passage.
Saudi Arabia has managed to reroute some of its oil around the strait, with its East-West pipeline now operating at its full capacity of seven million barrels a day.
The Houthis could complicate that – the Red Sea port of Yanbu, through which five million barrels of Saudi exports are now flowing, is well within their missile range. The group said they would continue operations until US-Israeli attacks on the Islamic Republic and its proxy militant groups, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, cease.
British Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said she does not believe rationing fuel and oil in the face of potential shortages is the first thing the UK government should be doing, adding it should be drilling for its own oil and gas in the North Sea.
Badenoch told Sky News: “Rushing out to say the Government should be rationing fuel, that’s not the first thing I would be doing.
“The first thing they should do is start drilling our own oil and gas in the North Sea, it’s important for our energy security, our economic security, our national security – and they’re not doing that.”
Pope says God rejects prayers of leaders who start wars
Pope Leo XIV has said that God rejects the prayers of leaders who start wars and have “hands full of blood”, in unusually forceful remarks on Sunday.
Addressing tens of thousands of people in St Peter’s Square on Palm Sunday, the celebration that opens the holiest week of the year in the lead-up to Easter for the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, the pontiff said that Jesus cannot be used to justify any wars.
“This is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war,” Pope Leo, the first US pope, told the crowds.
“[Jesus] does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: ‘Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood’,” he said, citing a Bible passage.
Leo did not specifically name any world leaders, but he has been ramping up criticism of the Iran war in recent weeks.
The pope, who is known for choosing his words carefully, has repeatedly called for an immediate ceasefire in the conflict and said on Monday that military air strikes are indiscriminate and should be banned.
Pope Leo XIV celebrates Mass for Palm Sunday at St Peter’s Square in the Vatican on Sunday.
Iranian state media have published a message from Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf marking 30 days since the start of the US-Israeli war.
“The enemy openly sends a message of negotiation and secretly plans a ground attack,” Ghalibaf, who has served as speaker of the parliament since 2020, wrote in his message carried by the Tasnim news agency.
“The United States expresses its desires with a list of 15 points and pursues what it did not achieve in the war.”
“We are in a major world war, and we must prepare ourselves for the tortuous and difficult path ahead of us until we reach the summit,” he added.
Sadly the Pope’s words will go unheeded by many.
Money makes war. It is the root of most war. And people all too often demand war too. They take their cue from the politico who take their cue from the big money men. Indeed the Epstein revelations reveal just how deep political control by the money men is, Lord Mandelson and Prince Andrew being examples of the elite oligarchical circle of influence and control.
What stops wars, or at least big wars, is the big slaughter. Post WW2 there wasn’t a huge demand for more war. And of course later on Vietnam was an anti war antidote for the USA when it didn’t turn out the way they thought it would and the body bags came home. But the antidote wears off, the loss of loved ones becomes less immediate and as history tells us the circle starts again.
One wonders if folks would have it any other way, or more accurately would the money men let us have it any other way. It’s a good question in these difficult times. Guns before ploughshares the song remains the same.