Iran

Two weeks ago, Donald Trump messaged the Iranian people and its leadership that the US was “locked and loaded” and ready to come to the aid of the demonstrators.

This week he has despatched a “beautiful armada” to the region. Not to support the demonstrators. No, the objective has changed. He has sent the armada to force a deal on Iran’s nuclear programme.

This obviously means that Trump’s attack on Iran’s nuclear production facilities failed. At the time he said it was a “total success” that “annihilated” Iran’s nuclear facilities. Surprise, surprise, Trump lied.

But more importantly, he is also lying to the people demonstrating on the streets of Tehran and all the other cities in Iran. He led them to believe that the US was on the verge of military intervention in Iran to topple the increasingly unpopular mullahs.

Because of Trump’s words, Iranians continued to flood onto the streets to demonstrate. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard, for its part, continued to shoot the demonstrators. One human rights organisation estimates that 25,000 Iranians have been killed by the regime since demonstrations began at the start of the year.

Determined demonstrators continue to pour onto the streets. The regime’s soldiers are equally determined to keep the mullahs in power by quelling the riots with bullets and blood.

Using the military to force regime change is wrong, even one as despicable as the Iranian theocracy. It is against international law.  But it is immoral to encourage to take to the streets where they are murdered when you have no intention of helping them.

Minnesota

The murder of Alex Pretti has forced Trump to pull back in Minneapolis. He didn’t want to. It was obvious that the president preferred to follow the line of Kristi Noem, Secretary for Homeland Security, in branding the ICU nurse a “domestic terrorist.”

But “domestic terrorist” Pretti most clearly was not.  Anyone equipped with a pair of eyes  who bothered to watch the video of Pretti’s murder could only reach one conclusion: he was unlawfully killed by ICE agents.

Every murder—especially one by federal agents—is a tragedy and Minneapolis and and the state of Minnesota have suffered an unfair quota of tragedies. It started towards the end of Trump’s first term when George Floyd was killed by the Minneapolis police.

Then last June state representative Melissa Hortman, her husband Mark and their dog Gilbert were shot dead. At about the same time Minnesota state senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette survived another shooting.

With the arrival of 2025, relations in the city appeared to be improving. that 2025 was the first year since the George Floyd murder that the Minneapolis Police Department was able to recruit enough new officers to more than offset losses.  Crime rates were significantly down. Relations between the Minneapolis PD and most citizen organizations were improving.  The city’s centre-left mayor was re-elected by a good margin, rejecting the far left alternative by a wide margin. Things were calm.   Things were calm.

The improvement was marred in August by the mass shooting at Annunciation School in Minneapolis. Two students were killed and about 30 were injured.

Then there is the fraud case. Since 2022 there has been an extensive investigation into a fraud involving Medicaid, childcare and child nutrition programmes. More than 90 people were indicted. Many of them were from Minnesota’s Somali- American community. Trump claimed that tens of billions of dollars were stolen. That was a lie. But it didn’t matter. The fraud case gave Trump an excuse to launch the ICE crackdown in Minneapolis.

On December 4, 2025, the Trump Administration launched “Operation Metro  Surge”. Thousands of masked and armed men descended on the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St Paul. They started dragging people out of their homes and workplaces. There were reports of family separations, entries without warrants and detentions of individuals without criminal records.

Despite, the activities ICE agents many of the demonstrations were peaceful. That was not, however, the case after the New Year’s murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. So far there have been 3,000 arrests and two deaths since ICE descended on Minneapolis.

Trump  now appears to be backing down. The ICE agent in charge of Operation Metro Surge, Greg Bovino, has been pulled out, sent to California and had his social media account suspended. Tom Homan, the “border Czar” appointed by President Obama, has been flown from Texas to take charge of operations.

There have not, however, been any indications that the Trump Administration, will agree to an independent inquiry into the deaths of Good and Pretti. Neither is there any sign of any major change in policy towards immigration arrests and detentions. It is clear, however, that Trump has been hurt politically by Operation Metro Surge and its consequences.

There is a governor’s race and one U.S. Senate race In Minnesota this year.   A lot can change between now and the election in November.  However, Chris Madel, one of the leading Republican gubernatorial candidates, dropped out saying that what Trump has done has made it impossible for any Republican to win statewide office. He also said he needed to be able to look his daughters in the eye and say he did what was right.

Almost all republican candidates for office — and there are many running for the governorship, senate and other statewide offices — have been visibly uncomfortable talking about Operation Metro Surge.  They know if they speak out against what is happening, they will alienate the MAGA base and perhaps Trump himself, thus making their getting the party nomination unlikely.  However, they also know that by not criticizing the federal government, their chances of winning a general election are poor.

* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He also contributes to “The New World” magazine and lectures on world affairs. He is the author of “America Made in Britain,” two editions of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “The Falklands Crisis.”