LONDON — Britain has barred a Dutch far-right activist from entering the country.  The U.K. Home Office revoked Eva Vlaardingerbroek’s travel permission after deeming her presence not to be “conducive to the public good.” Vlaardingerbroek, an anti-vax commentator and former member of the far-right Dutch Forum for Democracy political party, on Wednesday posted a screenshot of the decision to X. She had previously spoken at a rally in London arranged by a far-right activist known as Tommy Robinson, using the platform in September to call for the “remigration” of immigrants and to talk about the “replacement of our people.”  Vlaardingerbroek linked the decision to her Friday post criticizing Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s action against X, as he seeks to address a backlash over sexualized deepfakes by Elon Musk’s AI tool Grok.  The reason given to Vlaardingerbroek read that her electronic travel authorization (ETA), which European citizens need to enter Britain under post-Brexit rules, had been revoked. A Home Office official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, told POLITICO the ETA had been “cancelled for being non-conducive to the public good.”

European diplomats were summoned to a closed-door meeting in Tehran with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi at which they “forcefully” objected to Iran’s crackdown on anti-regime protests, according to European officials. An EU diplomat, granted anonymity to speak freely, said all European ambassadors still active in Tehran had been summoned to the highly unusual meeting with Araghchi. The U.K. was also invited. The meeting started with Araghchi presenting the Islamic regime’s version of the uprising, describing protesters as rabble-rousers and anti-regime forces supported from abroad, the diplomat said. However, the European and British envoys used their speaking time to push back strongly against the minister’s account, voicing outrage over what Britain’s Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper called the “brutal repression” of protests. “The ambassadors forcefully expressed their concerns” during the Monday meeting, a spokesperson for France’s foreign ministry said in a statement. The closed-door meeting in Tehran was part of a piecemeal but escalating European response to the crackdown on protests, in which at least 2,571 people have been killed, according to the U.S.-based HRANA rights group. Speaking to journalists in India, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the Islamic regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was “finished,” adding that “we are now witnessing the final days and weeks of this regime.” Several EU countries, including Spain, France, Belgium, Czechia and the Netherlands, have summoned Iranian ambassadors to condemn the violence. Germany and the Netherlands are now pushing to get the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) listed as a terror organization in the EU, according to statements from the German and Dutch foreign ministers. That comes after EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said she will soon propose fresh sanctions against the Islamic Republic. The proposal for new sanctions will be put forward at a gathering of European foreign ministers in Brussels on Jan. 29, an EU official said. Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel said Tuesday he had summoned Iran’s ambassador to the Netherlands to “formally protest the excessive violence against peaceful protesters, large-scale arbitrary arrests and internet shutdowns.” The EU’s cautious approach contrasts with that of Trump, who is reportedly reviewing options to act against Tehran, including military strikes. Trump’s moves have been welcomed by Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s former shah, who has emerged as a possible successor to Khamenei. “Mr President,” Pahlavi posted Sunday on X. “Your words of solidarity have given Iranians the strength to fight for freedom. Help them liberate themselves and Make Iran Great Again!” In several conversations with POLITICO over the past year, Pahlavi said Iran’s military would either have to cooperate with protesters or stand aside if the current wave of protests is to succeed. Tehran has a history of brutal crackdowns on protests, with the last wave ending in a series of public hangings that brought formal protests from EU governments.

A year ago this month, President Donald Trump granted clemency to nearly 1,600 people responsible for the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. When Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political science professor who studies domestic political violence, heard about the pardons, he says he immediately thought it was “going to be the worst thing that happened in the second Trump presidency.” The first year of Trump’s second term has been a blizzard of policies and executive actions that have shattered presidential norms, been challenged in court as unlawful, threatened to remake the federal government, and redefined the limits of presidential power. But Pape argues that Trump’s decision to pardon and set free the January 6 insurrectionists, including hundreds who had been found guilty of assaulting police, could be the most consequential decision of his second term. “There are many ways we could lose our democracy. But the most worrisome way is through political violence,” Pape says. “Because the political violence is what would make the democratic backsliding you’re so used to hearing about irreversible. And then how might that actually happen? You get people willing to fight for Trump.” Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. On this week’s More To The Story, Pape talks with host Al Letson about how America’s transformation to a white minority is fueling the nation’s growing political violence, the remarkable political geography of the insurrectionists, and the glimmers of hope he’s found in his research that democracy can survive this pivotal moment in history. Find More To The Story on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, or your favorite podcast app, and don’t forget to subscribe. This following interview was edited for length and clarity. More To The Story transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. Al Letson: Bob, how are you today? Robert Pape: Oh, I’m great. I’m terrific. This is just a great time to be in Chicago. A little cold, but that’s Chicago. I was about to say, great time for you. I’m a Florida boy, so I was just in Chicago, I was like, let me go home. So Bob, I thought I would kind of start off a little bit and kind of give you my background into why I’m really interested about the things that we’re going to be talking about today, right after Charlottesville happened. When I look back now, I feel like it was such a precursor for where we are today. And also I think in 2016 I was looking back and it felt like… Strangely, it felt like Oklahoma City, the bombing in Oklahoma City was a precursor for that. Ever since then, I’ve just really been thinking a lot about where we are as a society and political violence in America. The origins of it, which I think are baked deeply into the country itself. But I’m also very interested on where we’re going, because I believe that leadership plays a big role in that, right? And so when you have leaders that try to walk us back from the edge, we walk back from the edge. When you have leaders that say charge forward, we go over the edge. And it feels like in the last decade or so we’ve been see-sawing between the two things. So let me just say that you are quite right, that political violence has been a big part of our country and this is not something that is in any way new to the last few years. And that’s also why you can think about this when you talk about 2016, going back to 1995, with the Oklahoma City bombing here and thinking about things from the right and militia groups and right-wing political violence. Because that in particular from the seventies through 2016, even afterwards of course, has been a big part of our country and what we’ve experienced. But I just have to say a big but here, it’s not just the same old story. Because starting right around 2016, it would’ve been hard to know this in 2016 and even really 2017, ’18 and ’19, you were there right at the beginning of a new layer, so to speak, of political violence that is growing. It’s not that the old layer went away, which is why it’s been a little bit, I think, mystifying and confusing for some folks, and that’s folks who even cover this pretty closely, like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League and so forth. Because it took a few years before they started to see that there was some new trends emerging, growing political violence. It was getting larger. The old profiles of who was doing the violent attacks were starting to widen. And in many ways that’s scarier and more dangerous than if they’re kind of narrow because we like our villains to be monsters who are far away from us and they couldn’t possibly be living next door to us. Whereas the closer they come, the more edgy it feels. So what you’re really experiencing there is the very beginning of where I date the beginning of our shift to the era of violent populism. We’re in a new world, but it’s a world on top of the old world. The old world didn’t go away. No, no, no. It feels like the old world is really the foundation that this new house of violence has been raised around. All of that that happened in the past was the foundation. And then in 2016, 2017, some people would say 2014, in that timeframe, the scaffolding began to go up and then Trump gets into office and then suddenly it’s a full-blown house that now all of America is living in. Well, if you look at the attacks on African-Americans, on Jews and Hispanics, except for going all the way back to the 1920 race time, except for that, these large-scale attacks have clustered since 2016. Then we have the Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018, that’s the largest attack killing, mass killing of Jews ever in the United States. And then we have August, 2019, the attack at the El Paso Walmart killing more Hispanics in a day than has ever been killed in our country. So there’s a pointed wave, if you see what I mean here. And race is certainly playing a role. So when you say how does this tie to the old layer or the existing layer, one of the big foundations here is absolutely race. What’s really sad and really tragic is in this new era of violent populism, that’s a term I like to use because it’s not just the same old, but it’s not quite civil war. In this new era, we’ve seen things move from the fringe where they were bad but happened more or less rarely, to more the mainstream where they’re happening more and more. And our surveys show this, people feel very fearful right now, and there’s actual reason for that. That’s not just media hype. There have been more events. We see them and they are real. We really have a time here that people are, I’m sorry to say, concerned. And there’s reason to be concerned. Yeah, as you say, the thing that pops up in my mind is the fact that white supremacy, which I think for a long time held sway over this country. And then I think that white supremacy in a lot of ways always held onto the power. But there was a time where being a racist was not cool and looked down upon. And so racism, while still evident, still holding people down, it’s built into institutions, all of that. I’m not saying that racism was away, I’m just saying that expressing it openly is now in the mainstream. I mean, we just heard President Trump recently talking about Somalis- Absolutely, yeah. In a very… I mean, just straight up, there is no difference between what he said about Somalis than what a Klansman in the forties in front of a burning cross would say about Black people, like zero difference. Yeah. So the reason I think we are in this new era, because I think you’re right, putting your finger on the mainstreaming of fringe ideas, which we used to think would stay under rocks and so forth, and white supremacy clearly fits that bill. But what I think is important to know is that we are transitioning for the first time in our country’s history from a white majority democracy to a white minority democracy. And social changes like that in other countries around the world, so I’ve studied political violence for 30 years in many countries around the world. Big social changes like that Al, often create super issues with politics, make them more fragile and often lead to political violence. Now, what’s happening in our country is that we’ve been going through a demographic change for quite some time. America up through the 1960s was about 85% white as a country. There was ebbs and flows to be sure. Well, that really started to change bit by bit, drip by drip in the mid 1960s, whereas by 1990 we were 76% white as a country. Today we’re 57% white as a country. In about 10 or 15 years, it depends on mass deportations, and you can see why then that could be an issue, we will become truly a white minority democracy for the first time. And that is one of the big issues we see in our national surveys that helps to explain support for political violence on the right. Because what you’re seeing Al, is the more we are in what I call the tipping point generation for this big demographic shift, the more there are folks on the right, and most of them Trump supporters, mega supporters, who want to stop and actually reverse that shift. Then there of course, once knowing that, there are folks on the left, not everybody on the left, but some on the left that want to keep it going or actually accelerate it a bit for fear that with the mega crowd you won’t get it, the shift will stop altogether. These are major issues and things that really rock politics and then can lead to political violence. Talk to me a little bit about January 6th, when that happened, I’m sure you were watching it on TV. Yeah. What were you thinking as all of it was kind of coming into play? Well, so I was not quite as surprised as some folks, Al. So on October 5th in Chicago, I was on the Talking Head show in Chicago, it’s called Chicago Tonight. So on October 5th, 2020, that was just after the Trump debate where he said to the Proud Boys, stand back, but stand by. Well, the Chicago folks brought me on TV to talk about that, and I said that this was really quite concerning because this has echoes of things we’ve seen in Bosnia with some other leaders that a lot of Americans are just not familiar with, but are really quite worrisome. And I said what this meant was we had to be worried about the counting of the vote, not just ballot day, the day of voting. And we had to be worried about that all the way through January 6th, the certification of the election. But you made a point earlier, Al, about the importance of leaders. This is part of the reason why it’s hard to predict. It’s not a precise science, political violence. I like to use the idea, the analogy of a wildfire when I give talks. When we have wildfires, what we know as scientists is we can measure the size of the combustible material and we know with global warming, the combustible dry wood that could be set afire is getting larger. So you know you’re in wildfire season, but it’s not enough to predict a wildfire because the wildfire’s touched off by an unpredictable set of triggers, a lightning strike, a power line that came down unpredictably. Well, that is also a point about political leaders. So it was really, I did see some sign of this that Donald Trump said too about the Proud Boys, stand back and stand by. And no other president had said anything like that ever before in our history, let’s be clear. And because of my background studying political violence, I could compare that to some playbooks from other leaders in other parts of the world. That said, even I wouldn’t have said, oh yeah, we’re 90% likely to have an event, because who would’ve thought Donald Trump would’ve given the speech at the Ellipse, not just call people to it, it will be wild. His speech at the Ellipse, Al, made it wild. You co-authored a pretty remarkable study that looked at the political geography of January 6th insurrectionists. Can you break down the findings of that paper? Yeah. So one of the things we know when we study as a scholar of political violence, we look at things other people just don’t look at because they just don’t know what’s important. We want to know, where did those people live, where’d they come from? And when you have indictments and then you have the court process in the United States, you get that as a fact. So now it does mean I had to have big research teams. There’s a hundred thousand pages of court documents to go through. But nonetheless, you could actually find this out. And we found out something stunning, Al, and it’s one of the reasons I came back to that issue of demographic change in America. What we found is that first of all, over half of those who stormed the capitol, that 1,576 were doctors, lawyers, accountants, white collar jobs, business owners, flower shop owners, if you’ve been to Washington DC, Al, they stayed at the Willard. I have never stayed at the Willard- Yeah. So my University of Chicago doesn’t provide that benefit. That is crazy to me because I think the general knowledge or what you think is that most of the people that were there were middle class to lower, middle class to poor. At least that’s what I’ve always thought. Yeah, it’s really stunning, Al. So we made some snap judgments on that day in the media that have just stayed with us over and over and over again. So the first is their economic profile. Whoa, these are people with something to lose. Then where did they come from? Well, it turned out they came from all 50 states, but huge numbers from blue states like California and New York. And then we started to look at, well, where are in the states are they coming from? Half of them came from counties won by Joe Biden, blue counties. So then we got even deeper into it. And what’s happening, Al, is they’re coming from the suburbs around the big cities. They’re coming from the suburbs around Chicago, Elmhurst, Schomburg. They’re not coming from the rural parts of Illinois. They’re coming… That’s why we call them suburban rage. They’re coming from the most diversifying parts of America, the counties that are losing the largest share of white population. Back to that issue of population change, these are the people on the front lines of that demographic shift from America is a white majority democracy, to a white minority democracy. These are the counties that will impact where the leadership between Republican and Democrat have either just changed or are about to change. So they are right on the front lines of this demographic change and they are the folks with a lot to lose. And they showed up, some took private planes to get there. This is not the poor part, the white rural rage we’re so used to hearing about. This is well off suburban rage, and it’s important for us to know this, Al, because now we know this with definitiveness here. So it’s not like a hand-wavy guess. And it’s really important because it means you can get much more serious political violence than we’re used to thinking about. Yeah. So what happens, let’s say if circumstances remain as they are, IE, the economy is not doing great, the middle class is getting squeezed and ultimately getting smaller, right? The affordability thing is a real issue. What wins? The first big social change that’s feeding into our plight as a country is this demographic social change. There’s a second one, Al, which is that over the last 30 years, just as we’re having this demographic shift to a white minority democracy, we have been like a tidal wave flowing wealth to the top 1%. And we’ve been flowing wealth to the top 1% of both Republicans and Democrats. And that has been coming out of the bottom 90% of both Republicans and Democrats. Unfortunately, both can be poorer and worse off. Whites can be worse off because of this shift of the wealth to the top 1%. And minorities can be worse off because of the shift. And you might say, well, wait a minute, maybe the American dream, we have social mobility. Well, sorry to say that at the same time, we’re shifting all this money to the top 1%, they’re spending that money to lock up and keep themselves to top 1%. It’s harder to get into that top 1% than it’s ever been in our society. And so what you see is, I just came back from Portland. What you see is a situation in Portland, which is a beautiful place, and wonderful place where ordinary people are constantly talking about how they’re feeling pinched and they’re working three jobs. Yeah. Just to make their middle, even lower middle class mortgages. I mean, this is what’s happening in America and why people have said, well, why does the establishment benefit me? Why shouldn’t I turn a blind eye if somebody’s going to attack the establishment viciously? Because it’s not working for a lot of folks, Al. And what I’m telling you is that you put these two together, you get this big demographic change happening, while you’re also getting a wealth shift like this and putting us in a negative sum society. Whoa, you really now have a cocktail where you’ve got a lot of people very angry, they’re not sure they want to have this shift and new people coming into power. And then on top of that, you have a lot of people that aren’t sure the system is worth saving. I really wanted to dive in on the polls that you’ve been conducting, and one of those, there seems to be a small but growing acceptance of political violence from both Democrats and Republicans. What do you think is driving that? I think these two social changes are underneath it, Al. So in our polls, just to put some numbers here, in 2025, we’ve done a survey in May and we did one in the end of September. So we do them every three or four months. We’ll do one in January I’m sure. And what we found is that on both sides of the political spectrum, high support for political violence. 30% in our most recent survey in September, 30% of Democrats support the use of force to prevent Trump from being president. 30%. 10% of Democrats think the death of Charlie Kirk is acceptable. His assassination was acceptable. These represent millions and millions of adults. That’s a lot of people, you see. What you’re saying is right, we’re seeing it. And I think what you’re really seeing here is as these two changes keep going, this era of violent populism is getting worse. Yeah, I mean, so I’ve seen that Democrats and Republicans are accusing each other of using violent rhetoric. So in your research, what’s actually more common in this modern area where we are right now, is it right wing or left wing on the violent rhetoric, but also who’s actually doing it? So we’ve had, just after the Kirk assassination, your listeners will probably remember and they can Google, we had these dueling studies come out almost instantly, because they’re kind of flash studies and they’re by think tanks in Washington DC. One basically saying there’s more right-wing violence than left. And one saying there’s more left-wing violence than right. Well, I just want your listeners to know that if you go under the hood, so my job is to be like the surgeon and really look at the data. You’re going to be stunned, maybe not so stunned, Al, because you live in the media, to learn the headlines and what’s actually in the content are very different. Both studies essentially have the same, similar findings, although slightly different numbers, which is they’re both going up. They’re both going up. So it’s really not the world that it was either always been one side or now it’s newly the other. So the Trump administration’s rhetoric, JD Vance is wrong to say it’s all coming from the left, but it’s also wrong to say it’s all coming from the right. Now, what I think you’re also seeing, Al, is that the politicians, if left to their own devices, rarely, I’m sorry to say do the right thing, they cater to their own constituents. But there’s some exceptions and they’ve been helpful, I think. There’s two exceptions I want to draw attention to, one who’s a Republican and one who’s a Democrat. On the Democratic side, the person who’s been just spectacular at trying to lower the temperature is Governor Shapiro. He’s a Democrat, the Governor of Pennsylvania. Josh Shapiro has given numerous interviews public, where he has condemned violence on all sides. He’s recognizing, as very few others are, that it’s a problem on both sides. He personally was almost burned to death, only minutes from being burned to death with his family here back in April. So he knows this personally about what’s at stake and he has done a great job, I think in recognizing that here. Now on the Republican side, we have Erika Kirk and what Erika Kirk, of course the wife of Charlie Kirk who was assassinated did, was at Kirk’s funeral, she forgave the shooter. But let’s just be clear, she’s a very powerful voice here. Now, I think we need more of those kind of voices, Al, because you see, they really are figures people pay attention to. They’re listening to people like that. They have personal skin in the game and they can speak with sort of a lens on this few others can. But we need more people to follow in that wake and I wish we had that, and that can actually help as we go forward. And I’m hoping they, both of those people will do more and more events, and others who have been the targets of political violence will come out and do exactly the same thing. I want to go back a little bit to January 6th and just talk about those insurrectionists. So when President Trump pardoned them, what was going through your mind? That it was probably going to be the worst thing that happened in the second Trump presidency. And I know I’m saying quite a bit. I know that he’s insulted every community under the sun many, many, many times. But the reason I’m so concerned about this, Al, is that there are many ways we could lose our democracy, but the most worrisome way is through political violence. You see, because the political violence is what would make the democratic backsliding you’re so used to hearing about, irreversible. And then how might that actually happen? You get people willing to fight for Trump. And already on January 6th, we collected all the public statements on their social media videos, et cetera, et cetera, in their trials about why those people did it. And the biggest reason they did it was Trump told them so, and they say this over and over and over again, I did it because Trump told me to do it. Well, now Trump has not forgiven them, he’s actually helping them. They may be suing the government to get millions of dollars in ‘restitution’. So this is going in a very bad way if you look at this in terms of thinking you’re going to deter people from fighting for Trump. And now of course others are going to know that as well on the other side. So again, this is a very dangerous move. Once he pardoned it, no president in history has ever pardoned people who use violence for him. Yeah. So you have the insurrectionist bucket. But there’s another bucket that I’ve been thinking about a lot and I haven’t heard a lot of people talk about this, and that is that under President Trump, ICE has expanded exponentially. Yep. The amount of money that they get in the budget is- Enormous. Enormous. I’ve never seen an agency ramp up, A, within a term, like so much money and so many people- It is about to become its own army. Right. And Al, what this means concretely is, we really don’t want any ICE agents in liberal cities in October, November, December. We don’t want to be in this world of predicting, well, Trump would never do X, he would never do Y. No, we’ve got real history now to know these are not good ways to think. What we just need to do is we need to recognize that when we have national elections that are actually going to determine the future of who governs our country, you want nothing like those agents who, many of them going to be very loyal to Trump, on the ground. We should already be saying, look, we want this to stop on October 1st to December 31st, 2026, and we want to have a clean separation, so there’s no issue here of intimidation. And why would you say that? It’s because even President Trump, do you really want to go down in history as having intimidated your way to victory? So I think we really need to talk about this as a country, Al. And we really want a clean break here in the three months that will be the election, the run-up to the election, the voting, and then the counting of the vote. In closing, one of the major themes of this conversation has been that America is changing into a white minority. The question that just keeps coming to mind to me is, as somebody who studies this, do you think that America can survive that transition? Well, I am going to argue, and I’m still a little nervous about it, but we are in for a medium, soft landing. Okay. One of the things we see is that every survey we’ve done, 70% to 80% of Americans abhor political violence. And that’s on both sides of the aisle. And I think in many ways there are saving grace and it’s why, Al, when we have public conversations about political violence, what we see in our surveys is that helps to take the temperature down. Because you might worry that, oh, we’ll talk about it, we’ll stir people up and they’ll go… It seems to be the other way around, Al, as best we can tell. That there’s 70% to 80% of the population that really, really doesn’t want to go down this road. They know intuitively this is just a bad idea. This is not going to be good for the country, for their goals. And so they are the anchor of optimism that I think is going to carry us to that medium soft landing here. I think we could help that more if we have some more politicians joining that anchor of optimism. They’re essentially giving voice to the 70%, 80%. And if you look at our no Kings protests, the number of people that have shown up and how peaceful they have been, how peaceful they have been, those are the 70% to 80%, Al. And I think that gives me a lot of hope for the future that we can navigate this peacefully. But again, I’m saying it’s a medium soft landing, doesn’t mean we’re getting off the hook without some more… I’m sorry to say, likely violence, yeah. Listen, I’ll take a medium. I would prefer not at all, but the way things are going, I’ll take the medium. Thank you very much. Bob, Professor Robert Pape, it has been such a delight talking to you. Thank you so much for taking the time out. Well, thank you Al, and thanks for such a thoughtful, great conversation about this. It’s just been wonderful. So thank you very much.

President Donald Trump has set his sights on several targets in the Western Hemisphere beyond Venezuela — from Mexico with its drug cartels to the political cause célèbre of Cuba. But one place is oddly missing from Trump’s list: Nicaragua. This is a country led not by one, but two dictators. A place where the opposition has been exiled, imprisoned or otherwise stifled so much the word “totalitarian” comes to mind. A place the first Trump administration named alongside Cuba and Venezuela as part of a “troika of tyranny.” Yet it’s barely been mentioned by the second Trump administration. That could change any moment, of course, but right now Nicaragua is in an enviable position in the region. That got me wondering: What is the regime in Managua doing right to avoid Trump’s wrath? What does it have that others don’t? Or, maybe, what does it not have? And what does Nicaragua’s absence from the conversation say about Trump’s bigger motives? Current and former government officials and activists gave me a range of explanations, including that the regime is making smart moves on battling drug trafficking, that it’s benefiting from a lack of natural resources for Trump to covet and that it doesn’t have a slew of migrants in the U.S. Taken together, their answers offer one of the strongest arguments yet that Trump’s actions in the Western Hemisphere or beyond are rarely about helping oppressed people and more about U.S. material interests. “The lesson from Nicaragua is: Don’t matter too much, don’t embarrass Washington and don’t become a domestic political issue,” said Juan Gonzalez, a former Latin America aide to then-President Joe Biden. “For an administration that doesn’t care about democracy or human rights, that’s an effective survival strategy for authoritarians.” Some Nicaraguan opposition leaders say they remain optimistic, and I can’t blame them. Trump is rarely consistent about anything. He’s threatening to bomb Iran right now because, he says, he stands with protesters fighting an unjust regime (albeit one with oil). So maybe he might direct some fury toward Nicaragua? “The fact that Nicaragua is not at the center of the current conversation doesn’t mean that Nicaragua is irrelevant,” Felix Maradiaga, a Nicaraguan politician in exile, told me. “It means that the geopolitical interests of the U.S. right now are at a different place.” Nicaragua is run by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, a husband and wife who take the term “power couple” somewhat literally. They are now co-presidents of the Central American nation of 7 million. Over the years, they’ve rigged elections, wrested control over other branches of the government and crushed the opposition, while apparently grooming their children to succeed them. It has been a strange and circular journey for a pair of one-time Sandinista revolutionaries who previously fought to bring down a dynastic dictatorship. Hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans have fled the impoverished country, some to the United States. Meanwhile, the regime has enhanced ties to Russia, China and other U.S. adversaries, while having rocky relations with Washington. Nicaragua is part of a free trade agreement with Washington, but it has also faced U.S. sanctions, tariffs and other penalties for oppressing its people, eroding democracy and having ties to Russia. Even the current Trump administration has used such measures against it, but the regime hasn’t buckled. Nicaraguan officials I reached out to didn’t respond with a comment. Several factors appear to make Nicaragua a lower priority for Trump. Unlike Venezuela, Nicaragua isn’t a major source of oil, the natural resource Trump covets most. It has gold, but not enough of that or other minerals to truly stand out. (Although yes, I know, Trump loves gold.) It’s also not a major source of migrants to the U.S. Besides, Trump has largely shut down the border. Unlike Panama, another country Trump has previously threatened, it doesn’t have a canal key to global commerce, although there’s occasional talk of building one. Nicaragua may be placating the president and his team by taking moves to curb drug trafficking. At least, that’s what a White House official told me when I sought comment from the administration on why Nicaragua has not been a focus. “Nicaragua is cooperating with us to stop drug trafficking and fight criminal elements in their territory,” the official said. I granted the White House official anonymity to discuss a sensitive national security issue. It’s difficult to establish how this cooperation is happening, and the White House official didn’t offer details. In fact, there were reports last year of tensions between the two countries over the issue. A federal report in March said the U.S. “will terminate its Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) operations in Nicaragua in 2025, partly due to the lack of cooperation from Nicaragua’s agencies.” The DEA didn’t reply when I asked if it had followed up with that plan, but it’s possible the regime has become more helpful recently. The U.S. and Nicaragua’s cooperation on drugs has waxed and waned over the years. In any case, although drug runners use Nicaraguan territory, it’s not a major cartel hub compared to some other countries facing Trump’s ire, such as Mexico. Some Nicaraguan opposition activists have been hoping that U.S. legal moves against Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro would expose narcotrafficking links between Managua and Caracas, providing a reason for the U.S. to come down harder on the regime. They’ve pointed to a 2020 U.S. criminal indictment of Maduro that mentioned Nicaragua. But the latest indictment, unveiled upon Maduro’s Jan. 3 capture, doesn’t mention Nicaragua. When I asked the White House official why the newer indictment doesn’t mention Nicaragua, the person merely insisted that “both indictments are valid.” A spokesperson for the Department of Justice declined to comment. Nicaraguan opposition leaders say that although the new indictment doesn’t mention the country, they still hope it will come up during Maduro’s trial. My sense, though, is that Ortega and Murillo are cooperating just enough with the U.S. that the administration is willing to go easy on them for now. It probably also doesn’t hurt that, despite railing frequently against Washington, Ortega and Murillo don’t openly antagonize Trump himself. They may have learned a lesson from watching how hard Trump has come down on Colombia’s president for taunting him. Another reason Nicaragua isn’t getting much Trump attention? It is not a domestic political flashpoint in the U.S. Not, for example, the way Cuba has been for decades. The Cuban American community can move far more votes than the Nicaraguan American one. Plus, none of the aides closest to Trump are known to be too obsessed with Nicaragua. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has long denounced the Nicaraguan regime, but he’s of Cuban descent and more focused on that island’s fate. Cuba’s regime also is more dependent on Venezuela than Nicaragua’s, making it an easier target. Ortega and Murillo aren’t sucking up to Trump and striking deals with him like another area strongman, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele. But, especially since the U.S. capture of Maduro, the pair seem bent on proving their anti-imperialist credentials without angering Trump. The results can be head-scratching. For example, in recent days, the regime is reported to have detained around 60 people for celebrating Maduro’s capture. But around the same time, the regime also reportedly freed “tens” of prisoners, at least some of whom were critics of Ortega and Murillo. Those people were released after the U.S. embassy in the country called on Nicaragua to follow in Venezuela’s recent footsteps and release political prisoners. However, the regime is reported to have described the releases as a way to commemorate 19 years of its rule. Alex Gray, a former senior National Security Council official in the first Trump administration, argued that one reason the president and his current team should care more about Nicaragua is its ties to U.S. adversaries such as Russia and China — ties that could grow if the U.S. ignores the Latin American country. Russia in particular has a strong security relationship with the regime in Managua. China has significantly expanded its ties in recent years, though more in the economic space. Iran also has warm relations with Managua. Nicaragua is the “poster child” for what Trump’s own National Security Strategy called the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which warns the U.S. will deny its adversaries the ability to meddle in the Western Hemisphere, Gray said. The White House official said the administration is “very closely” monitoring Nicaragua’s cooperation with U.S. rivals. But even that may not be enough for Trump to prioritize Nicaragua. Regardless of what his National Security Strategy says, Trump has a mixed record of standing up to Russia and China, and Nicaragua’s cooperation with them may not be as worrisome as that of a more strategically important country. With Trump, who himself often acts authoritarian, many things must fall in place at the right moment for him to care or act, and Nicaraguan opposition activists haven’t solved that Rubik’s Cube. Many are operating in exile. (In 2023, Ortega and Murillo put 222 imprisoned opposition activists on a plane to the U.S., then stripped them of their Nicaraguan citizenship. Many are now effectively stateless but vulnerable to Trump’s immigration crackdown.) It’s not lost on these activists that Trump has left much of Maduro’s regime in place in Venezuela. It suggests Trump values stability over democracy, human rights or justice. Some hope Ortega and Murillo will be weakened by the fall of their friend, Maduro. The two surely noticed how little Russia, China and others did to help the former leader. Maybe Nicaragua’s co-dictators will ease up on internal repression as one reaction. “When you get this kind of pressure, there are things that get in motion,” said Juan Sebastian Chamorro, a Nicaraguan politician forced out of the country. “They are feeling the heat.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Tuesday that Iran’s clerical leadership is in ruins, arguing the Tehran regime can no longer survive without violence. “If a regime can only stay in power through violence, then it is effectively finished. I assume that we are now witnessing the final days and weeks of this regime,” Merz told journalists during his visit to India. “I hope there is a way to end this conflict peacefully. The mullah regime has to recognize that as well,” he added. The chancellor’s comments follow more than two weeks of nationwide, anti-government demonstrations in Iran, which began over the country’s devastating economic situation. According to the Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights, Tehran’s regime — run by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — has killed more than 600 protestors and arrested more than 10,000 in a brutal crackdown. On Friday, Merz issued a joint statement with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron condemning the crackdown. “We are deeply concerned about reports of violence by Iranian security forces, and strongly condemn the killing of protestors,” the statement said.  EU top diplomat Kaja Kallas on Monday announced that she is prepared to push for tougher sanctions on Iran. In Germany, Merz’s conservative bloc has long supported putting Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the EU terrorist list. Recently, top German conservative lawmakers pushed their own ministers for action on that matter. Merz’s remarks came hours after U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans to impose 25 percent tariffs on countries that continue economic trade with Iran. 

LONDON — Reza Pahlavi was in the United States as a student in 1979 when his father, the last shah of Iran, was toppled in a revolution. He has not set foot inside Iran since, though his monarchist supporters have never stopped believing that one day their “crown prince” will return.  As anti-regime demonstrations fill the streets of more than 100 towns and cities across the country of 90 million people, despite an internet blackout and an increasingly brutal crackdown, that day may just be nearing.   Pahlavi’s name is on the lips of many protesters, who chant that they want the “shah” back. Even his critics — and there are plenty who oppose a return of the monarchy — now concede that Pahlavi may prove to be the only figure with the profile required to oversee a transition.  The global implications of the end of the Islamic Republic and its replacement with a pro-Western democratic government would be profound, touching everything from the Gaza crisis to the wars in Ukraine and Yemen, to the oil market.  Over the course of three interviews in the past 12 months in London, Paris and online, Pahlavi told POLITICO how Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could be overthrown. He set out the steps needed to end half a century of religious dictatorship and outlined his own proposal to lead a transition to secular democracy. Nothing is guaranteed, and even Pahlavi’s team cannot be sure that this current wave of protests will take down the regime, never mind bring him to power. But if it does, the following is an account of Pahlavi’s roadmap for revolution and his blueprint for a democratic future.  POPULAR UPRISING  Pahlavi argues that change needs to be driven from inside Iran, and in his interview with POLITICO last February he made it clear he wanted foreign powers to focus on supporting Iranians to move against their rulers rather than intervening militarily from the outside.  “People are already on the streets with no help. The economic situation is to a point where our currency devaluation, salaries can’t be paid, people can’t even afford a kilo of potatoes, never mind meat,” he said. “We need more and more sustained protests.” Over the past two weeks, the spiraling cost of living and economic mismanagement have indeed helped fuel the protest wave. The biggest rallies in years have filled the streets, despite attempts by the authorities to intimidate opponents through violence and by cutting off communications. Pahlavi has sought to encourage foreign financial support for workers who will disrupt the state by going on strike. He also called for more Starlink internet terminals to be shipped into Iran, in defiance of a ban, to make it harder for the regime to stop dissidents from communicating and coordinating their opposition. Amid the latest internet shutdowns, Starlink has provided the opposition movements with a vital lifeline. As the protests gathered pace last week, Pahlavi stepped up his own stream of social media posts and videos, which gain many millions of views, encouraging people onto the streets. He started by calling for demonstrations to begin at 8 p.m. local time, then urged protesters to start earlier and occupy city centers for longer. His supporters say these appeals are helping steer the protest movement. Reza Pahlavi argues that change needs to be driven from inside Iran. | Salvatore Di Nolfi/EPA The security forces have brutally crushed many of these gatherings. The Norway-based Iranian Human Rights group puts the number of dead at 648, while estimating that more than 10,000 people have been arrested. It’s almost impossible to know how widely Pahlavi’s message is permeating nationwide, but footage inside Iran suggests the exiled prince’s words are gaining some traction with demonstrators, with increasing images of the pre-revolutionary Lion and Sun flag appearing at protests, and crowds chanting “javid shah” — the eternal shah. DEFECTORS Understandably, given his family history, Pahlavi has made a study of revolutions and draws on the collapse of the Soviet Union to understand how the Islamic Republic can be overthrown. In Romania and Czechoslovakia, he said, what was required to end Communism was ultimately “maximum defections” among people inside the ruling elites, military and security services who did not want to “go down with the sinking ship.”  “I don’t think there will ever be a successful civil disobedience movement without the tacit collaboration or non-intervention of the military,” he said during an interview last February.  There are multiple layers to Iran’s machinery of repression, including the hated Basij militia, but the most powerful and feared part of its security apparatus is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Pahlavi argued that top IRGC commanders who are “lining their pockets” — and would remain loyal to Khamenei — did not represent the bulk of the organization’s operatives, many of whom “can’t pay rent and have to take a second job at the end of their shift.”  “They’re ultimately at some point contemplating their children are in the streets protesting … and resisting the regime. And it’s their children they’re called on to shoot. How long is that tenable?” Pahlavi’s offer to those defecting is that they will be granted an amnesty once the regime has fallen. He argues that most of the people currently working in the government and military will need to remain in their roles to provide stability once Khamenei has been thrown out, in order to avoid hollowing out the administration and creating a vacuum — as happened after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.  Only the hardline officials at the top of the regime in Tehran should expect to face punishment.  In June, Pahlavi announced he and his team were setting up a secure portal for defectors to register their support for overthrowing the regime, offering an amnesty to those who sign up and help support a popular uprising. By July, he told POLITICO, 50,000 apparent regime defectors had used the system.  His team are now wary of making claims regarding the total number of defectors, beyond saying “tens of thousands” have registered. These have to be verified, and any regime trolls or spies rooted out. But Pahlavi’s allies say a large number of new defectors made contact via the portal as the protests gathered pace in recent days.  REGIME CHANGE In his conversations with POLITICO last year, Pahlavi insisted he didn’t want the United States or Israel to get involved directly and drive out the supreme leader and his lieutenants. He always said the regime would be destroyed by a combination of fracturing from within and pressure from popular unrest.  He’s also been critical of the reluctance of European governments to challenge the regime and of their preference to continue diplomatic efforts, which he has described as appeasement. European powers, especially France, Germany and the U.K., have historically had a significant role in managing the West’s relations with Iran, notably in designing the 2015 nuclear deal that sought to limit Tehran’s uranium enrichment program.  But Pahlavi’s allies want more support and vocal condemnation from Europe. U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal in his first term and wasted little time on diplomacy in his second. He ordered American military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities last year, as part of Israel’s 12-day war, action that many analysts and Pahlavi’s team agree leaves the clerical elite and its vast security apparatus weaker than ever.  U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal in his first term and wasted little time on diplomacy in his second. | Pool photo by Bonnie Cash via EPA Pahlavi remains in close contact with members of the Trump administration, as well as other governments including in Germany, France and the U.K. He has met U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio several times and said he regards him as “the most astute and understanding” holder of that office when it comes to Iran since the 1979 revolution.  In recent days Trump has escalated his threats to intervene, including potentially through more military action if Iran’s rulers continue their crackdown and kill large numbers of protesters.  On the weekend Pahlavi urged Trump to follow through. “Mr President,” he posted on X Sunday. “Your words of solidarity have given Iranians the strength to fight for freedom,” he said. “Help them liberate themselves and Make Iran Great Again!” THE CARETAKER KING  In June Pahlavi announced he was ready to replace Khamenei’s administration to lead the transition from authoritarianism to democracy.   “Once the regime collapses, we have to have a transitional government as quickly as possible,” he told POLITICO last year. He proposed that a constitutional conference should be held among Iranian representatives to devise a new settlement, to be ratified by the people in a referendum.  The day after that referendum is held, he told POLITICO in February, “that’s the end of my mission in life.”  Asked if he wanted to see a monarchy restored, he said in June: “Democratic options should be on the table. I’m not going to be the one to decide that. My role however is to make sure that no voice is left behind. That all opinions should have the chance to argue their case — it doesn’t matter if they are republicans or monarchists, it doesn’t matter if they’re on the left of center or the right.”  One option he hasn’t apparently excluded might be to restore a permanent monarchy, with a democratically elected government serving in his name.  Pahlavi says he has three clear principles for establishing a new democracy: protecting Iran’s territorial integrity; a secular democratic system that separates religion from the government; and “every principle of human rights incorporated into our laws.” He confirmed to POLITICO that this would include equality and protection against discrimination for all citizens, regardless of their sexual or religious orientation.  COME-BACK CAPITALISM  Over the past year, Pahlavi has been touring Western capitals meeting politicians as well as senior business figures and investors from the world of banking and finance. Iran is a major OPEC oil producer and has the second biggest reserves of natural gas in the world, “which could supply Europe for a long time to come,” he said.  “Iran is the most untapped reserve for foreign investment,” Pahlavi said in February. “If Silicon Valley was to commit for a $100 billion investment, you could imagine what sort of impact that could have. The sky is the limit.”  What he wants to bring about, he says, is a “democratic culture” — even more than any specific laws that stipulate forms of democratic government. He pointed to Iran’s past under the Pahlavi monarchy, saying his grandfather remains a respected figure as a modernizer.  “If it becomes an issue of the family, my grandfather today is the most revered political figure in the architect of modern Iran,” he said in February. “Every chant of the streets of ‘god bless his soul.’ These are the actual slogans people chant on the street as they enter or exit a soccer stadium. Why? Because the intent was patriotic, helping Iran come out of the dark ages. There was no aspect of secular modern institutions from a postal system to a modern army to education which was in the hands of the clerics.”   Pahlavi’s father, the shah, brought in an era of industrialization and economic improvement alongside greater freedom for women, he said. “This is where the Gen Z of Iran is,” he said. “Regardless of whether I play a direct role or not, Iranians are coming out of the tunnel.”  Conversely, many Iranians still associate his father’s regime with out-of-touch elites and the notorious Savak secret police, whose brutality helped fuel the 1979 revolution. NOT SO FAST  Nobody can be sure what happens next in Iran. It may still come down to Trump and perhaps Israel.  Anti-regime demonstrations fill the streets of more than 100 towns and cities across the country of 90 million people. | Neil Hall/EPA Plenty of experts don’t believe the regime is finished, though it is clearly weakened. Even if the protests do result in change, many say it seems more likely that the regime will use a mixture of fear tactics and adaptation to protect itself rather than collapse or be toppled completely.  While reports suggest young people have led the protests and appear to have grown in confidence, recent days have seen a more ferocious regime response, with accounts of hospitals being overwhelmed with shooting victims. The demonstrations could still be snuffed out by a regime with a capacity for violence.  The Iranian opposition remains hugely fragmented, with many leading activists in prison. The substantial diaspora has struggled to find a unity of voice, though Pahlavi tried last year to bring more people on board with his own movement.  Sanam Vakil, an Iran specialist at the Chatham House think tank in London, said Iran should do better than reviving a “failed” monarchy. She added she was unsure how wide Pahlavi’s support really was inside the country. Independent, reliable polling is hard to find and memories of the darker side of the shah’s era run deep. But the exiled prince’s advantage now may be that there is no better option to oversee the collapse of the clerics and map out what comes next. “Pahlavi has name recognition and there is no other clear individual to turn to,” Vakil said. “People are willing to listen to his comments calling on them to go out in the streets.”

Josep Borrell is the former high representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and former vice-president of the European Commission. In too many corners of the world — including our own — democracy is losing oxygen. Disinformation is poisoning debate, authoritarian leaders are staging “elections” without real choice, and citizens are losing faith that their vote counts. Even as recently as the Jan. 3 U.S. military intervention in Venezuela, we have seen opposition leaders who are internationally recognized as having the democratic support of their people be sidelined. None of this is new. Having devoted much of his work to critiquing the absolute concentration of power in dictatorial figures, the long-exiled Paraguayan writer Augusto Roa Bastos found that when democracy loses ground, gradually and inexorably a singular and unquestionable end takes its place: power. And it shapes the leader as a supreme being, one who needs no higher democratic processes to curb their will. This is the true peril of the backsliding we’re witnessing in the world today. A few decades ago, the tide of democracy seemed unstoppable, bringing freedom and prosperity to an ever-greater number of countries. And as that democratic wave spread, so too did the practice of sending impartial international observers to elections as a way of supporting democratic development. In both boosting voter confidence and assuring the international community of democratic progress, election observation has been one of the EU’s quiet success stories for decades. However, as international development budgets shrink, some are questioning whether this practice still matters. I believe this is a grave mistake. Today, attacks on the integrity of electoral processes, the subtle — or brazen — manipulation of votes and narratives, and the absolute answers given to complex problems are allowing Roa Basto’s concept of power to infiltrate our democratic societies. And as the foundations of pluralism continue to erode, autocrats and autocratic practices are rising unchecked. By contrast, ensuring competitive, transparent and fair elections is the antidote to authoritarianism. To that end, the bloc has so far deployed missions to observe more than 200 elections in 75 countries. And determining EU cooperation and support for those countries based on the conclusions of these missions has, in turn, incentivized them to strengthen democratic practices. The impact is tangible. Our 2023 mission in Guatemala, for example, which was undertaken alongside the Organization of American States and other observer groups, supported the credibility of the country’s presidential election and helped scupper malicious attempts to undermine the result. And yet, many now argue that in a world of hybrid regimes, cyber threats and political polarization, international observers can do little to restore confidence in flawed processes — and that other areas, such as defense, should take priority. In both boosting voter confidence and assuring the international community of democratic progress, election observation has been one of the EU’s quiet success stories for decades. | Robert Ghement/EPA I don’t agree. Now, more than ever, is the time to stick up for democracy — the most fundamental of EU values. As many of the independent citizen observer groups we view as partners lose crucial funding, it is vital we continue to send missions. In fact, cutting back support would be a false economy, amounting to silence precisely when truth and transparency are being drowned out. I myself observed elections as chair of the European Parliament’s Development Committee. I saw firsthand how EU observation has developed well beyond spotting overt ballot stuffing to detecting the subtleties of unfair candidate exclusions, tampering with the tabulation of results behind closed doors and, more recently, the impact of online manipulation and disinformation. In my capacity as high representative I also decided to send observation missions to controversial countries, including Venezuela. Despite opposition from some, our presence there during the 2021 local elections was greatly appreciated by the opposition. Our findings sparked national and international discussions over electoral conditions, democratic standards and necessary changes. And when the time comes for new elections once more — as it surely must — the presence of impartial international observers will be critical to restoring the confidence of Venezuelans in the electoral process. At the same time, election observation is being actively threatened by powers like Russia, which promote narratives opposed to electoral observations carried out by the organizations that endorse the Declaration of Principles on International Election Observation (DoP) — a landmark document that set the global standard for impartial monitoring. A few years ago, for instance, a Russian parliamentary commission sharply criticized our observation efforts, pushing for the creation of alternative monitoring bodies that, quite evidently, fuel disinformation and legitimize authoritarian regimes — something that has also happened in Azerbaijan and Belarus. When a credible international observation mission publishes a measured and facts-based assessment, it becomes a reference point for citizens and institutions alike. It provides an anchor for dialogue, a benchmark against which all actors can measure their conduct. Above all, it signals to citizens that the international community is watching — not to interfere but to support their right to a meaningful choice. Of course, observation must evolve as well. We now monitor not only ballot boxes but also algorithms, online narratives and the influence of artificial intelligence. We are strengthening post-electoral follow-up and developing new tools to verify data and detect manipulation, exploring the ways in which AI can be a force for good. In line with this, last month I lent my support to the DoP’s endorsers — including the EU, the United Nations, the African Union, the Organization of American States and dozens of international organizations and NGOs — as they met at the U.N. in Geneva to mark the declaration’s 20th anniversary, and to reaffirm their commitment to strengthen election observation in the face of new threats and critical funding challenges. Just days later we learned of the detention of Dr. Sarah Bireete, a leading non-partisan citizen observer, ahead of the Jan. 15 elections in Uganda. These recent events are a wake-up call to renew this purpose. Election observation is only worthwhile if we’re willing to defend the principle of democracy itself. As someone born into a dictatorship, I know all too well that democratic freedoms cannot be taken for granted. In a world of contested truths and ever-greater power plays, democracy needs both witnesses and champions. The EU, I hope, will continue to be among them.

The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, is gearing up to pitch fresh sanctions against Iran following a government crackdown that has reportedly killed hundreds of people since protests broke out nearly two weeks ago. “The EU already has sweeping sanctions in place on Iran — on those responsible for human rights abuses, nuclear proliferation activities and Tehran’s support for Russia’s war in Ukraine — and I am prepared to propose additional sanctions in response to the regime’s brutal repression of protestors,” Kallas told POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook.  The proposal marks the strongest response yet from an EU official to Iran’s bloody crackdown. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said over the weekend that Brussels was “monitoring” the situation, while European Parliament President Roberta Metsola wrote on X that “Europe must understand its duty and need to act.” The comments coincide with a rising death toll. Iran Human Rights, an Oslo-based group, said Sunday that nearly 200 protesters had been killed since demonstrations broke out on Dec. 28. Other rights groups put the number at more than 500. “The regime has a track-record of crushing protests, and we see a heavy-handed response by the security forces,” Kallas added in the written comments. “Citizens are fighting for a future of their own choosing and risking everything to be heard.” The protests, which kicked off over spiking inflation, now want an end to the clerical rule of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader. Iranian state-linked media have reported the use of live ammunition against demonstrators, leading to what they described as “mass casualties.” On Friday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz issued a joint statement with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron. “We are deeply concerned about reports of violence by Iranian security forces, and strongly condemn the killing of protestors,” the statement said. 

PARIS — A court appeal begins on Tuesday that will determine whether Marine Le Pen or her protégé Jordan Bardella will head into next year’s presidential election as favorite from the far-right National Rally party. While Le Pen has been a decisive force in making the anti-immigration party the front-runner for the presidency in 2027, she is currently unable to succeed Emmanuel Macron herself thanks to a five-year election ban imposed over her conviction last year for embezzling European Parliament funds. She is now appealing that decision in a case that is expected to last one month, although a verdict is not due until the summer. Le Pen looks set to fight her appeal on technical legal objections and an argument that the ban is disproportionate, rather than going out all-guns blazing and insisting she is the victim of a political hit job. If she does overcome the very steep hurdles required to win her case, she will still have to deal with the political reality that the French electorate are leaning more toward Bardella. The party’s supposed Plan B is starting to have the air of a Plan A. A poll from Ipsos in December showed the 30-year-old overtaking Le Pen as the French politician with the highest share of positive opinions. And a survey from pollster Odoxa conducted in November showed Bardella would win both rounds of the presidential contest.  The National Rally continues to insist that Le Pen is their top choice, but getting her on the ballot will likely require her to win her fast-tracked appeal by setting aside her personal grievances and perhaps even showing a measure of uncustomary contrition to ensure this trial does not end the way the embezzlement case did.  Le Pen is not famous for being low-key and eating humble pie. Shortly after her conviction, she said her movement would follow the example of civil rights’ icon Martin Luther King and vowed: “We will never give in to this violation of democracy.” That’s not the playbook she intends to deploy now. Her lawyers will pursue a less politicized strategy to win round the judges, according to three far-right politicians with direct knowledge of the case, who were granted anonymity to discuss it freely.  “We’ll be heading in with a certain amount of humility, and we’ll try not to be in the mindset that this is a political trial,” said one of trio, a French elected official who is one of the codefendants appealing their conviction.  LINE BY LINE Le Pen and 24 other codefendants stood trial in late 2024 on charges they illicitly used funds from the European Parliament to pay party employees by having them hired as parliamentary assistants. But those assistants, the prosecution argued, rarely if ever worked on actual parliamentary business.  The National Rally’s apparent defense strategy back then was to paint the trial as politicized, potentially winning in the court of public opinion and living with the consequences of a guilty verdict.  The attorneys representing the defendants could did little to rebut several pieces of particularly damning evidence, including the fact that one assistant sent a message to Le Pen asking if he could be introduced to the MEP he had supposedly been working with for months.  Given how severely the defense miscalculated the first time around, lawyers for many of the 14 codefendants in court this week will pursue more traditional appeals, going through the preliminary ruling “line by line” to identify potential rebuttals or procedural hiccups, the trio with direct knowledge of the case explained.   A survey from pollster Odoxa conducted in November showed Bardella would win both rounds of the presidential contest.  | Telmo Pinto/NurPhoto via Getty Images Defense lawyers also plan to tailor their individual arguments more precisely to each client to avoid feeding the sentiment that decisions taken at the highest levels of the National Rally leadership are imposed on the whole party. The prosecution during the initial trial successfully argued that National Rally bigwigs hand-picked assistants at party headquarters to serve the leadership rather than MEPs.  Le Pen’s lawyers will also argue that her punishment — barring a front-running presidential candidate from standing in a nationwide election — was disproportionate to the crime for which she was convicted.  The appeals’ court ruling will have seismic consequences for French politics and Europe ahead of one of the continent’s most important elections. The path toward the presidency will be nearly impossible for Le Pen if her election ban is upheld. Le Pen has indicated in past interviews that she would throw in the towel if she received the same election ban, given that she wouldn’t have enough time to appeal again to a higher court.   Should Bardella replace her and win, the consequences for the French judicial system could be profound. One of the codefendants floated the possibility of a response along the lines of what U.S. President Donald Trump did to those who prosecuted him before his reelection.   “The lingering sense of injustice will remain and can eventually evolve into a quest for revenge,” the codefendant said.

House Speaker Mike Johnson will travel to London later this month to address the United Kingdom’s Parliament, becoming the first sitting U.S. speaker to do so. Johnson announced his invitation on Wednesday, saying he was “honored and humbled” to accept the invite from Sir Lindsay Hoyle, speaker of the U.K. House of Commons, ahead of America’s 250th anniversary of independence. “The U.S. and the UK have stood together as pillars of peace and security across generations,” Johnson said in a statement. “We forged this important friendship in the great wars of the 20th century, but the true source of our strength comes from our shared commitment to individual freedom, human dignity, and the rule of law, which together form the exceptional, joint heritage of the English-speaking world.” Johnson’s address on Jan. 20 will be one of many ceremonial events the U.S. has planned to commemorate this year’s anniversary around the country. “As America begins its Semiquincentennial celebration, I will be happy to visit one of the great shrines of democracy itself, where the principles that launched the long struggle for American liberty were debated and refined,” Johnson added. Though Johnson will be the first sitting speaker to address Parliament, Hoyle said he was pleased to continue a tradition from 50 years ago, when his predecessor invited then-Speaker Carl Albert to London to mark the 200th anniversary. Doing so, Hoyle added, continues to “acknowledge the enduring close relationship between our parliaments and people.” “Our UK Parliament is sited just miles away from where the cross-Atlantic relationship began more than 400 years ago,” Hoyle said in a statement distributed by Johnson’s office. “The courage of the Founding Fathers, who set sail on the Mayflower for the New World, built a bridge and connections across the Atlantic, which continues until today.” POLITICO London Playbook previously reported that Johnson was expected to visit Parliament.