The News You Need on Friday, March 27th, 2026.
The news you need today from Scott Horton and Charles Kaiser.
Life is So Different With a Sane Person Running your Government
Euro News
Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez speaking truth to Trump:
This is not the same scenario as the illegal war in Iraq. We are facing something far worse with a potential impact that is far broader and far deeper. We are going to demand that this war stop because it is unfair that some set the world on fire and others have to bear the ashes. It is not fair that Spanish men and women and other European men and women have to pay the bill for this illegal war out of their pockets. It is not fair that countries with fewer resources than the West–I’m thinking of Africa, I’m thinking of Latin America–are going to suffer the terrible consequences of the senselessness….Every bomb that falls in the Middle East eventually hits, as we are already seeing, the wallets of our families.
CK
Iran’s spies ‘recruit UK teenagers on Telegram’
The Times
Scott: Most Iran experts anticipated that acts of terrorism in Western cities would figure prominently in Iran’s response to the Israeli-US war against it. Thus far they have not, and this may be largely because Iran’s capabilities inside Israel and the US are modest, particularly in comparison with European states—which have not joined the war. But this may change as the war drags out. Season 5 of Slow Horses focused on something MI5 has been tracking for some years now: foreign intelligence services manipulation of young men with social disorders ("incels") to serve as cutouts for terrorist acts. It’s not an entirely novel approach (it figures, for instance, at the core of Joseph Conrad’s classic The Secret Agent (1907). At this point it's a well-documented phenomenon, pioneered by Russia and several other states. Now Iran’s intelligence service appears to be recruiting people on social media to carry out acts of terror and espionage on British soil by offering payments starting from £500 to film targets.
Weirdest detail: “Adverts are in English and Hebrew, appearing to target individuals looking to make easy money or Jewish people disaffected with Israel.”
The Times explores.
Overlapping Galaxies?
Charles: A 2012 composite of separate exposures. The two galaxies look as if they are colliding, but they’re actually separated by tens of millions of light-years, or about ten times the distance between our Milky Way and the neighboring Andromeda galaxy.
Having faith in humanity
Times of Israel
In the aftermath of the horrific terror attack against Temple Israel, when Jews in Detroit and across America were dazed, vulnerable and feeling alone, the 135,000-strong Chaldean community in Michigan embraced us. No strings attached. No hollow words.
SH
Iranian Military Spokesman: You’re Fired!
The Guardian [video]
CK
The delusion of easy victory from the air may have seduced the US into another war
The Guardian
Scott: A senior DEA figure told me some months ago that he was taken aback when briefing Trump about a proposed raid on a Latin American drug kingpin. It was to be a ground assault using a handful of agents and some explosives. Why not bomb the site from the air with huge explosions, all filmed for American TV viewers, Trump asked? This as it turns out tells a lot about Trump and his juvenile ideas about warfare and bombing. From Giulio Douhet to Donald Trump, delusions about airpower have led modern military forces to do some pretty stupid things. Aram Roston offers some fascinating takes on the quandary Trump has made for himself in Iran and the role strategic misassessment has played in the process.
Meanwhile Marc Thiessen Wonders: Why Is Anyone Worried?
Washington Post
Charles: The former George W. Bush speechwriter and current Fox News Commentator does his pitch perfect imitation of General William Westmoreland, talking about Vietnam in 1967. On the now desecrated Opinion Page of The Washington Post. Thiessen writes:
Speculation is flying that President Donald Trump, buffeted by rising gas prices and domestic political concerns, is desperate for an off-ramp and looking for a deal with Iran to end the war. These leaks, whispers and rumors are wrong. While others may be panicking, I know from well-placed sources that Trump has never been more determined to see this military campaign through to completion.
Nearly four weeks into Operation Epic Fury, the president is on the cusp of achieving all of the military objectives he has set — but he understands that none of them are yet fully complete. We are at the enemy’s 20-yard line, but the final yards are always the hardest. All the easy targets have been hit. What’s left are the most hidden, hardened and complex challenges.
“We’re in a red zone,” retired Army Gen. Jack Keane told me in a podcast interview. But to win, the United States needs to get into the end zone, and Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of U.S. Central Command, needs another three weeks for that. Given that time, Keane said, “the combined force will accomplish all assigned objectives … to include opening the Strait of Hormuz by force and keeping it open” and taking “nuclear enrichment … off the board completely by military operations.
I feel so much better now.
In Sarkozy Appeal, Documents Surface Concerning Libyan Payments
Le Monde
Scott: In the course of the appeal of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy's corruption conviction, attention has come to focus on documents about Libya's commitment to fund his campaign. Sarkozy drew support from multiple foreign states, most prominently Libya and Israel—both got concessions from Sarkozy. What you learn when you don't grant your head of state unheard of comprehensive immunity from criminal investigation and prosecution. While you’re at it, take a gander at Sarkozy’s prison diaries just up at Harper’s. They offer all the introspection of a cornered rodent.
Israeli Behavior in The West Bank Is So Awful, Even the AIPAC Boys Are Objecting to It
The Guardian
Charles: Alice Speri reports in The Guardian:
Ritchie Torres, a New York Democratic representative and one of Israel’s staunchest advocates in Congress, wrote in a statement this week that “the crisis of extremist settler violence in the West Bank must be confronted, and the perpetrators must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law”. He called for “zero tolerance for violent extremism, no matter what form it takes”.
Torres is facing re-election, and his opponents have made his support for Israel a central part of their campaigns.
Daniel Goldman, another pro-Israel Democratic representative seeking re-election in New York, also condemned the violence, which he called an “outrage”. He urged Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, to bring to a vote proposed legislation seeking to impose sanctions against those “undermining prospects for a two-state solution by committing illegal violent acts”, and criticized the Trump administration for rescinding sanctions against a number of violent settlers that the US government issued under Joe Biden.
Iran-US war live: Trump suggests taking control of Tehran’s oil
The Independent
Scott: How did the London tabloids see Trump’s buffoonish performance in the cabinet room Thursday morning? Unsurprisingly, Trump’s numerous incoherent eruptions got lots of attention, particularly the one in which he complained about Britain’s failure to turn over Ireland to him (he was apparently transposing Greenland for Ireland, and Britain for Denmark). But what drew the most attention was Trump’s announcement that he would be taking control of Iran’s oil refining going forward. Was this all about oil, and personal self aggrandizement? That’s seems more likely as time goes by.
Pete Hegseth’s Toxic Christian Nationalism
The Guardian
Charles: It infects everything he does. The Guardian reports this week Hegseth reorganized the military’s chaplain corps, because it had been “infected by political correctness and secular humanism.” Then he held a religious service at the Pentagon–all of which have been presided over by evangelicals since Hegseth arrived. He shouted: “Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation. Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”
This is what happens when you choose a Secretary of Defense whose only core belief is an unflinching advocacy of war crimes.
Black Holes and Neutron Stars: 218 Mergers and Counting
Scott: What is the sound of two black holes merging in deep space? Sound waves don’t propagate in vacuum, but gravitational waves do. In 2015 we were able to “hear” them for the first time and confirm one of Albert Einstein’s theoretical predictions. Each square on the grid of the featured image represents one of the gravitational wave detections announced so far by the LIGO-VIRGO-KAGRA Collaboration.
The €500mn hole in Chernobyl’s roof
Financial Times
Scott: We ignore this at the world’s peril. Putin sent a drone to punch a whole in the roof of the Chernobyl containment structure. EBRD says it will cost €500 mn to repair. Why? “Hour by hour, the fire spread through the space between the arch’s inner and outer layer, which was designed to keep a hermetic seal. Four days after the strike, it was completely ablaze. Worse, the fire had spread deep into an interior membrane made of polymers and other materials — wrapped all around the arch — that firefighters could not reach. There was only one way to fight the fire, and it involved cutting even more holes in the arch.”
US inflation will surge to 4.2% on energy shock, warns OECD
Financial Times
Scott: OECD speaks. They have a long track record of being on the money. The Middle East crisis will fuel a surge in US inflation to 4.2% in 2026, the highest in the G7, according to an OECD forecast that highlights the cost of the US-Israeli war on Iran. The Paris-based organization predicted that energy prices would sharply increase inflation around the world, with “significant downside risks” to growth if disruptions to energy exports worsened. While the OECD expects US inflation to jump from 2.6% in 2026, countries including China, South Korea and India also face a sharp increase in price growth because of the energy shock.
Your Online Moment of Zen
Charles: Glenn Gould
Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata pt. I
Glenn Gould
Edited by Imogen Sayers.
Correction: Date changed from 2025 to 2026 in abstract of Financial Times OECD inflation story.
It looks like the year is off in the abstract of the Financial Times’ article predicting an increase in inflation to 4.6%. Shouldn’t the year be 2026 and not 2025? 2025 is referenced again at the end. I can’t access the article to find out because I don’t a subscribe to the Times.
“The Middle East crisis will fuel a surge in US inflation to 4.2% in 2025”