تابع رؤية 2030
بذكاء سياقي

On the floor of Portmeirion’s factory in Staffordshire, staff are hard at work as clays are moulded, glazed and fired – an intricate process requiring precision and specialist skills honed over years of practice – to manufacture the company’s array of tableware. Portmeirion, a homeware brand founded in 1960 that employs 433 people, is based in Stoke-on-Trent, at the heart of British ceramics. The centuries-old craft is so integral to the area’s identity that the six federated towns that make up the Staffordshire city are known as the Potteries. “All my family were in the industry,” says Sam Pearce, the company’s chief operating officer. “It’s a really important part of the heritage of the city.” The UK ceramics sector employs 20,000 people, half of them in the West Midlands, and is regarded as an indispensable to the economy. Not only does it manufacture household essentials such as crockery, bathroom fittings, tiles and bricks, but also defence, security and technology components ranging from microchips to missiles. But this national heirloom is starting to crack as it suffers the blows of international competition, rising labour expenses and the soaring cost of energy, which leapt after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and has again been driven up by the US-Israeli conflict with Iran. View image in fullscreen Sam Pearce, Portmeirion’s chief operating officer. Photograph: Andrew Fox/The Guardian Illustrious names in the region have gone under or are teetering on the brink. In February last year, Royal Stafford went bust after nearly 200 years and Heraldic Pottery closed the same month. The world-renowned Wedgwood was forced to freeze production at its factory for 90 days, only restarting in January, and Derbyshire-based Denby, established in 1809, called in administrators on 31 March, with the group blaming escalating employment and energy costs. “The sector as such has been under huge pressure – there’s no denying that,” says Michael Scheepers, Portmeirion’s recently appointed chief executive. “I think everybody who has seen recent news of companies struggling and brands disappearing over time can see how it has impacted the overall sector.” The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, said the industry underpinned “our economic resilience” when she announced a £120m support package to support energy efficiency, decarbonisation and long-term competitiveness last month. The trade body Ceramics UK will work with civil servants on the design and implementation of the scheme. View image in fullscreen The Portmeirion homeware brand was founded in 1960. Photograph: Andrew Fox/The Guardian Rob Flello, the chief executive of Ceramics UK, says rising energy costs are central to the financial difficulties. Production processes require prolonged firing temperatures typically above 1,000C, but the cost of gas to power furnaces has soared, with UK month-ahead prices hovering around 118p a therm – 50% up on the 78.50p the day before the Iran war began. However, he argues high prices have been compounded by the government’s target to reach net zero emissions by 2050. That policy, championed by the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, came under fire in Tony Blair’s wide-ranging attack on Keir Starmer’s government last month. The former prime minister urged the government to “prioritise cheaper energy and electrification over net zero and use what is left of our North Sea oil and gas” – an intervention criticised as “bizarre” by experts in the face of energy and climate crises. However, it appears to resonate with some ceramics-sector leaders. “It’s no good us being zero carbon [in the] UK in 2030 if that’s because we don’t manufacture anything in the UK,” Flello says. He wants the government to “decarbonise sensibly rather than decarbonising by deindustrialisation, which is the path we’re on at the moment”. View image in fullscreen Spode Blue Italian designs in the showroom at the Portmeirion factory. Photograph: Andrew Fox/The Guardian “Energy is much much more expensive in the UK than in competitor countries,” he adds. “Our brickmakers pay effectively a carbon tax under the UK emissions trading scheme. Imports from Turkey, China and India don’t have to pay carbon tax. So the odds are very much stacked against British industry.” Alex Patrick-Smith, the executive chair of Dreadnought Tiles, a brick and clay roof tile manufacturer based in the West Midlands, agrees, saying Blair is “pushing the right buttons” and the current targets on net zero are “not realistic”. “I’m a great supporter of decarbonising. I do see global warming as a big threat,” he says, but adds: “We’ve lost a lot of our supply chain in our industry. The number of businesses that are left are dwindling in our industry and it just comes to a point where you’ve just got to stop. “This is strategically important for the country … If things get really tough in the geopolitical world and you can’t repair your bridges because you can’t make engineering bricks in this country any more, you’re expecting to import them from overseas. In doing so, all you’re doing is exporting your carbon to somewhere else – it’s not improving the global situation.” Flello says the ceramics industry is committed to decarbonising and has spent £750m on initiatives to do so, but it is inherently energy hungry and therefore one of the hardest to wean off fossil fuels. Patrick-Smith says his company has spent “hundreds of thousands” on energy efficiencies, including kiln upgrades and a heat recovery scheme. However, he says many of those investments were “eye-wateringly expensive and the returns are just not there”. In the hopes of addressing rocketing energy costs, all three industry leaders called on the government to extend eligibility to the British Industry Supercharger and British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme (BICS) – which provide relief from electricity costs for firms in areas such as steel and chemicals. When Reeves beefed up the BICS scheme in April in response to Iran war pressures, expanding the number of firms covered to 10,000, ceramics companies asked why they had been left out. Nearly 90,000 people have since signed a petition asking for the sector to be included. A government spokesperson said: “Manufacturing industries like ceramics are vital to the UK’s success and essential for growth, but we recognise the challenges they are facing, including on the cost of energy.” They highlighted the £120m support already announced for the sector, adding: “We continue to work closely with the industry to ensure we’re doing what we can to help them through tough times.” Ceramics are not only fundamental the UK’s economic resilience, the industry leaders argue, but also to the heritage and economy of the West Midlands. Flello, who was a Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent North from 2005 to 2017, says: “There was a saying locally that you either work in the pits or the pots. Pretty much everybody you knew worked either in one of those two. View image in fullscreen The UK ceramics sector employs 20,000 people. Photograph: Andrew Fox/The Guardian “Over the last 50, 60 years, the industry has dramatically contracted – rather than every town now having a brickworks there are probably about 36 across the UK.” Yet despite such decline, the industry still has passionate backers. The heritage brand Moorcroft returned to production in September after being saved from liquidation by the grandson of its founder. And this week rumours were swirling of a possible rescue for Denby, after Sky News reported that Home Bargains, one of the UK’s biggest homeware retailers, was pursuing an acquisition for its name and other assets. Scheepers says Portmeirion is determined to increase its production in the UK: “If we have clear, targeted support, I think that would be invaluable.” Flello also says that, despite the challenges, there are glimmers of hope. In particular, he says Reeves’s support package could be the springboard to signal “the industry can stop declining and start growing again”. He says: “There is definitely hope and with the £120m that’s probably the greatest cause of optimism. It all depends now on how the programme is put together. It does need some other things coming in behind it, but this is really a positive development.” Additional reporting Jasper Jolly

Iran is already preparing for the perilous transition from wartime unity to a fractious peace marked by hyperinflation, a 10% contraction in the economy, power cuts and calls for a triumphalist government to end its unprecedented hunting down of dissent. With peace not yet secured, the debates within the regime about Iran’s future are only just starting to emerge but its rulers are clearly thinking about how after surviving the war, they can survive the peace. Open discussions on channels such as Azad are heard on alternative future postwar directions for the country. There are advocates of greater openness, and others such as Saeed Ajorlou, close to the Iranian negotiating team, who say, now the myth of a weak Iran has been shattered in western minds, the country must seek development through autonomy. Much will depend on whether Donald Trump is really willing to lift the economic blockade on Iran by reducing sanctions and ending asset freezes, but few Iranian economists think the relief will be more than a small fraction of the estimated $270bn (£200bn) losses inflicted on the economy including its infrastructure, schools, energy, steelworks and housing. Iranian commentators such as Fuad Habibi, a sociology professor at the University of Kurdistan, are wary of terms such as social collapse but are very open that the conditions that led to the bloody protests in January have not been solved, and indeed made worse by war. He said: “Economic crises and livelihood dissatisfaction have clearly increased, even without precise statistics. We are witnessing a rare increase in prices due to the naval blockade and the consequences of the war. The internet blockade has also led to direct or indirect unemployment of at least 2 million. “Since we do not have a society in which protests are expressed through official channels such as parties, guilds and unions, you will always be surprised.” The current so-called cohesion is due to the existence of an external factor because, in the face of bombing and destruction by an enemy, internal solidarity is created. But as Hegel said, the moment a front wins is the moment a split begins within it. If a deal does happen to end the war, the Iranian economy would enter peacetime facing food inflation at its highest since the second world war, with the annual food inflation in May at 130% according to the Statistical Centre of Iran. Inflation for meat and chicken reached 176%. Health experts even warn of an increase in malnutrition, osteoporosis and growth stunting, due to the way in which Iranians are having to eradicate dairy products from their diet. The former communications minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi wrote on his Telegram channel: “Trump and Netanyahu’s next bomb may not be gunpowder; it may be inflation. The battlefield is the people’s table, housing rent, and … gentlemen in charge, are you aware of the accumulation of dissatisfaction? Is the country’s economic defence ready, or, God forbid, will we be surprised again?” View image in fullscreen Masoud Pezeshkian, right, meets with members of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce in Tehran, Iran. The Iranian president appears to have been deputed to keep the domestic wheels of government working. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images The president, Masoud Pezeshkian, appears to have been deputed to keep the domestic wheels of government working, and has been repeatedly warning of hard times ahead, and the need to maintain social cohesion. The ministry of energy was forced to deny controlled two-hour blackouts would start as early as next month despite the damage to infrastructure. Arash Najafi, the head of the energy commission of the Iranian chamber of commerce, had warned this week: “To maintain production, people must prepare themselves for two hours of daily shutdowns.” Incentives such as 30% price discounts are being offered to those who cut their energy consumption by 10%. The sense of hardship is starting to emerge as internet censorship is slowly lifted, a decision so controversial that it has led to hardliners in the parliament trying to impeach the communications minister. Rahim Ghomeishi, a political activist, wrote this week: “We had been thrown out of a broken boat. Fear of bloodthirsty whales, fear of terrible waves had taken over our entire being. Now that we have returned to the boat, we cannot be content just because we have been rescued. “Poverty was not supposed to become normal in the country. We were not supposed to wake up to news of executions every morning. Most people were not supposed to be strangers unable to decide about their own lives and destinies, the most important concern in life was not supposed to be filling our stomachs.” Although much of the domestic political debate turns on the wisdom of negotiating with America, or an arcane battle about how long Iran should renounce a currently theoretical right to enrich uranium, many believe the true prize from the war will be the end of the economic straitjacket. But the sums likely to be involved are not a bonanza. Albert Baghzian, a professor of economics at the University of Tehran, told Khabar Online: “In an economy of the size of Iran’s economy, with this level of efficiency in the policymaking sector, it is wrong to think that the influx of $12bn or $24bn will lead to a major opening. In our economy, figures higher than this have been brought in many times, but because we had not planned properly, resources were wasted, we ended up where we are today.” But debates about how the economy could be reorganised and corruption tackled come up against the power of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The senior Iranian economist Mousa Ghaninejad hinted at the problem this week: “The main issue in the Iranian economy is the dominance of command-based governance over rule-based governance, meaning that decisions are made in many cases not based on stable and transparent rules, but rather on short-term expediency and political considerations.” Ever since the January protests, the repression has grown worse, reflected in new espionage laws, asset seizures of dissidents, executions and denunciations of dissidents in the nightly rallies. The national parliament is still banned from meetings in person. This drove the Islamic National Unity party, one of the leading reformist parties, this week to publish an open version of a letter sent privately to Pezeshkian urging him to stop executions, which only fuel internal divisions, do not meet the fundamental requirements for a fair trial and “tarnish the country’s image at a time of moral superiority during the war”. At least 22 political prisoners were executed between 17 March and 27 April. But the chances of pluralism are slim. It took the hospitalisation this week of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the former prime minister, who has been under house arrest since 2011 and whose home was bombed in the war, for the president to feel emboldened to intervene with the security forces. Extraordinarily, Trump seems to be content to coexist with this enemy. He said this week he had a good call with the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah, and he would be honoured to meet Khamenei, the new supreme leader. “In some circles he has a good reputation,” Trump mused. The IRGC and political leadership showed in the period between the 10-day war of 2025 and the renewed war in February 2026 that they could reorganise for battle. But the test is imminent whether they can reorganise for peace by addressing the problems, domestic and international, that hold the country back. If, after the end of the war, the economic blockade of Iran continues and there is no opening in international relations for the entry of capital, technology, raw materials and resources necessary for reconstruction, the devastation will not be repaired, but will become part of everyday life. The destruction will turn from a temporary incident into a permanent social condition, a situation in which people are forced to live in a context of scarcity, exhaustion and instability.

When the anniversary comes, later this month, few will be in the mood to look back. All the political talk will be of the Makerfield byelection, of the future of this government and this prime minister. And yet, it would be wise to reflect on what happened on 23 June 2016 – if only because the choices Keir Starmer and his would-be successors face, indeed the entire political and cultural landscape we now inhabit, are informed or were shaped by that event. We are living in Brexit Britain. A useful prompt comes from the upcoming two-part BBC series Brexit: A Very British Civil War, made by the master documentarian Norma Percy. Speaking to (nearly) every key player, it brings it all back – the red bus, “take back control”, the pantomime river battle of Nigel Farage v Bob Geldof. It reminds you of things some may have forgotten, including the extent to which this whole thing came about as a wheeze, a clever tactical ploy, plotted by the careless people who were then running the country. In 2013, David Cameron and George Osborne sought to placate noisy Eurosceptics in their own ranks by promising an in/out referendum after the next election – a pledge they assumed they’d never have to honour because they were sure they’d fail to win an outright majority in parliament, whereupon they would cheerfully trade the promise away as a concession to the Lib Dems. As if that were not cavalier enough, Britain’s place in Europe became dependent on the soap-opera dynamics of the Notting Hill set: it was all tennis in Regent’s Park and weekends at Chequers, Michael (Gove) letting down Dave and what will Sam (Cameron) think of Boris. Johnson insists he didn’t “give a fuck about being prime minister,” while Osborne begs to differ: “It was nothing to do with the EU, Britain’s place in the world. It was Game of Thrones. That’s what Boris Johnson was playing. And he could see the Iron Throne right there about to be vacated.” This stuff was all-consuming at the time – and yet what was at stake, as these Etonians worked out their schoolboy rivalries, was nothing less than the destiny of the UK. That recklessness with the futures of 70m people remains unforgivable – and the guilt belongs to Cameron and Osborne almost as much as to Gove and Johnson. More important than the origin story, however, is the legacy. We see that around us every day. Start with the economy. The remain campaign was mocked at the time as “project fear”, spreading gloom by warning that Britain outside the EU would be poorer, to the tune of 6% of GDP. Yet here we are a decade later and, if anything, remain was not pessimistic enough. The drop in GDP is now estimated to be between 6% and 8%, with investment down by as much as 18%. Trade is on course to be 15% less than it would have been had we stayed in the EU, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility, while a staggering 85% of those who import or export goods report problems that they didn’t have before. Remainers said that Brexit would be a slow puncture, as the air was let out of the British economy. So it has proved, except it’s not been that slow. Brexit’s other legacy, besides upending the old Labour-Tory duopoly, is not measurable in pounds or percentages but is just as real. It is visible in the coarsening and darkening of the national conversation, in the aggression and even hatred that, previously pushed to the margins, now loiter in the centre of the public square. This week the leader of the party that brought us Brexit warned of civil war. It would be wrong to cast the referendum as the sole cause of this shift – Brexit was, in part, a symptom of the change – and we can all see the role social media and the likes of Elon Musk have played in degrading the discourse. But Brexit both accelerated and intensified that process. An insouciance towards the facts – recall that “post-truth” was Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year for 2016 – was an enduring gift of the leave campaign. Percy’s documentary lays bare the knowing dishonesty of the claim that the UK was sending £350m to the EU every week, a gross figure – in every sense – that did not include the more than £80m that came back as a rebate or the money the EU spent in the UK. Johnson’s adviser Dominic Cummings would later brag that “The point of using that really was to try and drive the remain campaign and people running it crazy” – deliberately tangling up his opponents in dry factchecking over stats, while he could press the voters’ hotter buttons. “Love that bus,” an unrepentant Johnson says now, describing it as “the bus of truth”. In 2026, we wade through a swamp of lies and disinformation all the time, especially online – but it was the referendum that drove us into that swamp and at top speed. The currency of Cummings, Farage and the rest was fear and loathing. We see again Farage’s “breaking point” poster, with its brown-skinned men apparently massing on our borders, and the wholly bogus Vote Leave ad suggesting that 76 million Turks would soon be able to come into Britain via the EU, leaving a trail of dirty footprints behind them. These were racist and xenophobic messages, barely veiled – and they worked. So it’s hardly a surprise that, a decade later, we have the man who could well be in Downing Street after the next election – and who, tellingly, speaks of Brexit only rarely these days – complaining of “anti-white prejudice” and calling for “pure cold rage” after the murder of a young white man, even as that man’s parents pleaded for his death not to be used to turn Britons against each other. Restore Britain, a party that is endorsed by unabashed white supremacists and neo-Nazis, is on the ballot in Makerfield and might win 10% of the vote. There has always been a far right in Britain, but it used to be confined to the fringes. Brexit invited it in. By dividing us down the middle, leave or remain, Brexit polarised our politics in a new, starker way. Looking back, it’s clear that remain could never win a contest like that because it was never really about British membership of the EU. In effect, the question became: “Do you want things to remain as they are, or would you like to leave the current reality of your life for something better?” In that contest, there was only ever going to be one winner. What’s more, the remain cause was doomed by timing. Had the vote come now, in a world menaced by Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the folly of standing alone, apart from our nearest neighbours, would be clear. But Trump was a mere candidate in June 2016, and though Crimea had been seized two years earlier, Russia’s full-blown assault on Ukraine still lay in the future. The geopolitical lunacy of Brexit was not as obvious then as it is now. It’s a tragic tale – a once-confident nation making such a fearful, self-harming decision. Our economy, our politics, our daily lives in 2026 – all of it bears the imprint of that calamitous error. But this story is not over. The BBC documentary confirms the sheer determination that enabled the Brexiters to turn a lost, eccentric cause into a winning movement. All told, it took the leavers 41 years, from 1975 to 2016, to reverse our first vote on EU entry. Rejoin is already the settled preference of a majority of Britons, 56% to 35% at the most recent count – and besides, politics moves twice as fast now. If that calculation is right, and it will take 20 years to overturn the verdict of 2016, we should not lose heart – after all, we’re halfway there.

أعلنت <a href="https://www.alyaum.com/articles/6663427/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%AE%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%B1/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%85%D9%84%D9%83%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%8A%D9%88%D9%85/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D8%A4%D9%88%D9%86-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A5%D8%B3%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%85%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%AA%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%86-%D8%A7%D9%83%D8%AA%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%84-%D9%88%D8%B5%D9%88%D9%84-%D8%B6%D9%8A%D9%88%D9%81-%D8%AE%D8%A7%D8%AF%D9%85-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AD%D8%B1%D9%85%D9%8A%D9%86-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D8%B1%D9%8A%D9%81%D9%8A%D9%86" target="_blank">وزارة الشؤون الإسلامية</a> والدعوة والإرشاد اكتمال مغادرة <a href="https://www.alyaum.com/articles/6664985/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%AE%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%B1/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%85%D9%84%D9%83%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%8A%D9%88%D9%85/%D8%A3%D8%B4%D8%A7%D8%AF%D9%88%D8%A7-%D8%A8%D9%83%D8%B1%D9%85-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B6%D9%8A%D8%A7%D9%81%D8%A9-%D8%A8%D8%AF%D8%A1-%D8%A3%D9%88%D9%84%D9%89-%D8%B1%D8%AD%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D9%85%D8%BA%D8%A7%D8%AF%D8%B1%D8%A9-%D8%B6%D9%8A%D9%88%D9%81-%D8%A8%D8%B1%D9%86%D8%A7%D9%85%D8%AC-%D8%AE%D8%A7%D8%AF%D9%85-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AD%D8%B1%D9%85%D9%8A%D9%86" target="_blank">ضيوف برنامج خادم الحرمين</a> الشريفين للحج والعمرة والزيارة، المستضافين من 104 دول، بعد أن منّ الله عليهم بأداء <a href="https://www.alyaum.com/articles/6664898/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%AE%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%B1/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%85%D9%84%D9%83%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%8A%D9%88%D9%85/%D8%A8%D9%85%D9%86%D8%B8%D9%88%D9%85%D8%A9-%D8%AE%D8%AF%D9%85%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D9%85%D8%AA%D9%83%D8%A7%D9%85%D9%84%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%B3%D8%AC%D8%AF-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%86%D8%A8%D9%88%D9%8A-%D9%8A%D8%B3%D8%AA%D9%82%D8%A8%D9%84-%D8%B6%D9%8A%D9%88%D9%81-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B1%D8%AD%D9%85%D9%86-%D8%A8%D8%B9%D8%AF-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AD%D8%AC" target="_blank">مناسك الحج</a> وزيارة المسجد النبوي الشريف والسلام على رسول الله -صلّى الله عليه وسلّم -، في أجواء إيمانية سادها الأمن والطمأنينة.<br />وجرت <a href="https://www.alyaum.com/articles/6664985/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%AE%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%B1/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%85%D9%84%D9%83%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%8A%D9%88%D9%85/%D8%A3%D8%B4%D8%A7%D8%AF%D9%88%D8%A7-%D8%A8%D9%83%D8%B1%D9%85-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B6%D9%8A%D8%A7%D9%81%D8%A9-%D8%A8%D8%AF%D8%A1-%D8%A3%D9%88%D9%84%D9%89-%D8%B1%D8%AD%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D9%85%D8%BA%D8%A7%D8%AF%D8%B1%D8%A9-%D8%B6%D9%8A%D9%88%D9%81-%D8%A8%D8%B1%D9%86%D8%A7%D9%85%D8%AC-%D8%AE%D8%A7%D8%AF%D9%85-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AD%D8%B1%D9%85%D9%8A%D9%86" target="_blank">مغادرة الضيوف</a> عبر مطار الأمير محمد بن عبدالعزيز الدولي بالمدينة المنورة وفق منظومة خدمية اتسمت بالانسيابية والتنظيم، وذلك عقب رحلة إيمانية متكاملة اشتملت على برامج ثقافية متنوعة وزيارات ميدانية للمعالم الإسلامية والتاريخية في مكة المكرمة والمدينة المنورة، ضمن منظومة متكاملة من الخدمات والرعاية وفرتها الوزارة تنفيذًا لتوجيهات القيادة الرشيدة أيدها الله.<h2>عناية واهتمام المملكة بالضيوف</h2>وأعرب ضيوف البرنامج عن بالغ شكرهم وامتنانهم لخادم الحرمين الشريفين الملك سلمان بن عبدالعزيز آل سعود، ولصاحب السمو الملكي الأمير محمد بن سلمان بن عبدالعزيز آل سعود ولي العهد رئيس مجلس الوزراء -حفظهما الله-، على ما وجدوه من عناية واهتمام وحفاوة كريمة مكّنتهم من أداء مناسك الحج بكل يسر وراحة.<br />وشددوا على أن القيادة الرشيدة تسعى دائمًا إلى ترسيخ معاني الأخوة الإسلامية من خلال دعم المسلمين ومساندتهم وتلمّس احتياجاتهم.<br /> <h2>تنظيم متقن وخدمات متكاملة</h2>وأكد الضيوف أن ما لمسوه من تنظيم متقن وخدمات متكاملة يعكس الجهود الكبيرة التي تبذلها المملكة العربية السعودية في خدمة الإسلام والمسلمين ورعاية ضيوف الرحمن.<br />وأشادوا بالدور الذي تؤديه وزارة الشؤون الإسلامية والدعوة والإرشاد، في تقديم أرقى الخدمات التوعوية والتنظيمية، وحسن الضيافة والرعاية طوال فترة استضافتهم، داعين الله أن يحفظ المملكة وقيادتها، وأن يديم عليها نعمة الأمن والاستقرار.

From 5h ago 14.38 CEST Hezbollah leader rejects latest ceasefire agreement reached between Israel and Lebanon Qassem said that Hezbollah has rejected the latest ceasefire agreement reached between Israel and the Lebanese government, demanding a complete Israeli withdrawal. In a written statement read on Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV on Thursday, the Iran-backed group’s leader said the agreement’s demand that Hezbollah fighters leave southern Lebanon under fire would mean “surrender, defeat and achieving the enemy’s goals.” “What we are concerned about is an end to the aggression, ceasefire and Israel’s withdrawal,” he said. “We did not make any commitment to any party to stop resisting as long as there is occupation,” he added. Share 1h ago 18.31 CEST Closing summary Iran’s supreme leader Motjaba Khamenei said in a written statement read out by a cleric that “the enemy is experiencing a meaningful and profound humiliation in the field and the streets, and it is now focused on trickery.” “After Iran was able to repel the enemy, who was defeated on the battlefield, it now seeks to undermine the resilience of the Iranian people and sow discord. The US created a military base called Israel, and Iran will not back down from its stance toward Israel,” Khamenei wrote. Lebanon’s Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said on Thursday that as long as Lebanese villages were being bombed and people were being killed , northern Israel will not be safe. It comes as Israeli strikes killed at least four people in Lebanon, according to local authorities, and a UN peacekeeper was killed in the crossfire on Thursday. Qassem also said that Hezbollah has rejected the latest ceasefire agreement reached between Israel and the Lebanese government, demanding a complete Israeli withdrawal. In a written statement read on Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV on Thursday, the Iran-backed group’s leader said the agreement’s demand that Hezbollah fighters leave southern Lebanon under fire would mean “surrender, defeat and achieving the enemy’s goals.” Donald Trump has brushed off a House vote to rein in his powers to attack Iran without approval from Congress (see post at 12:34), saying it was “ meaningless ”. He singled out the four Republicans who joined Democrats to pass the bill in a vote of 215 to 208 yesterday. Lebanese prime minister Nawaf Salam said that the army would begin deploying in ‘pilot zones’ in the country’s south, a day after Israel and Lebanon agreed in Washington to implement a ceasefire. “The next step is practical and tangible: the deployment of the Lebanese army in pilot zones as a first phase,” Salam said, according to remarks read out by information minister Paul Morcos after a cabinet meeting, adding that “this does not prejudice our right to a full [Israeli] withdrawal, but brings us closer to it”. Israel’s Supreme Court has said Israel must allow visits to Palestinian prisoners by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), ruling in favour of a petition against a ban that was brought in at the start of the Gaza war. The bar on Red Cross visits to Palestinian detainees has restricted independent verification of their treatment, following reports of systemic abuse, starvation, and denial of medical care towards Palestinian prisoners. The UN peacekeeper who was killed in southern Lebanon (see post at 10:08) has been identified as a Serbian soldier. The Serbian defence ministry issued a statement naming the soldier as Milovan Jovanović. The UN nuclear watchdog has sent a report to member states repeating its calls on Iran to urgently inform the agency of the fate of its enriched uranium since its atomic sites were bombed a year ago and let inspections resume fully. “The [International Atomic Energy Agency] director-general has emphasised to Iran that it is indispensable and urgent to implement effectively the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) Safeguards Agreement... and that its implementation cannot be suspended by Iran under any circumstances,” the confidential report, seen by Reuters, said. Four Iranian-flagged oil tankers passed through the strait of Hormuz on Monday, a first since 15 April and the US blockade of Iranian ports, according to maritime tracking firm Kpler. In data published on Thursday, the firm detected the passage of the Hilda I, the Amber, the Silvia 1, and the Happiness I, which were carrying a total of seven million barrels of oil. In Gaza, at least nine people have been killed in overnight Israeli strikes, including members of the same family, according to Palestinian health officials. They were killed in at least four separate strikes in Gaza City, the al-Shifa hospital said, which received the bodies. Five members of one family were killed in a strike north-east of the city, the hospital reported, adding that 15 others were injured in the attacks. Share 1h ago 18.13 CEST Joseph Gedeon Donald Trump has two things to say about his war with Iran. The first is that it’s already over. And second, a symbolic congressional vote to end it – carried by four members of his own party – is a stab in the back that could derail the peace talks he’s conducting for the war that’s already over. By a 215-208 margin on Wednesday, the US House of Representatives voted to direct the president to withdraw US forces from hostilities with Iran, the first time either chamber has passed such a measure in the little over three months since Operation Epic Fury began on 28 February. By Thursday morning, Trump was on Truth Social calling the vote “unpatriotic” and blaming it on “Trump Derangement Syndrome”. The four Republicans who crossed the aisle, each with different ideologies, don’t exactly fit the bill for such a diagnosis. Thomas Massie of Kentucky is a libertarian-leaning constitutionalist who has opposed the war from day one, lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger, and has, in Trump’s estimation, nothing left to lose. Warren Davidson of Ohio is a West Point graduate, former army ranger, and ex-Freedom Caucus member who voted against the war with Massie in March, but flipped back until recently. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, a former FBI agent representing Philadelphia’s suburbs, is well known as a moderate who framed his vote in the plainest possible terms “You either follow the law, or you change the law,” he said. “You can’t violate the law. That’s not an option.” Trump’s Iran war messaging is not winning over Americans – or their representatives Read more Share 2h ago 17.50 CEST Four Iranian-flagged oil tankers passed through the strait of Hormuz on Monday, a first since 15 April and the US blockade of Iranian ports, according to maritime tracking firm Kpler. In data published on Thursday, the firm detected the passage of the Hilda I, the Amber, the Silvia 1, and the Happiness I, which were carrying a total of seven million barrels of oil. They all loaded their cargo in mid-April on Kharg Island, the country’s main oil terminal, through which 90% of the Islamic republic’s crude oil normally transits. The ships crossed the strait on Monday with their AIS transponders turned off. Share Updated at 17.51 CEST 2h ago 17.26 CEST Israel’s Supreme Court has said Israel must allow visits to Palestinian prisoners by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), ruling in favour of a petition against a ban that was brought in at the start of the Gaza war. The bar on Red Cross visits to Palestinian detainees has restricted independent verification of their treatment, following reports of systemic abuse, starvation, and denial of medical care towards Palestinian prisoners. “We take note of the decision of the court and stand ready to resume our work in visiting detainees in Israeli places of detention,” said Patrick Griffiths, a spokesperson for the ICRC. The ruling, which was issued late on Wednesday and covers those held in Israeli prisons and military detention, followed a joint petition by several Israeli rights organisations including the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) to end the ban. Share 3h ago 17.02 CEST Sanam Vakil The US-Iran ceasefire is entering yet another round of escalation since it came into effect on 8 April. This week, there have been further strikes on Iran by the US, and Iranian retaliation on Kuwait and Bahrain, alongside Israeli escalation in Lebanon. Earlier flare-ups over the past two months were quickly contained. Both sides have tried to keep the balance between no war and no peace. But as this ceasefire drags on it risks becoming yet another Middle East stalemate, albeit one with international economic and political consequences. Four obstacles are preventing progress. The first is trust. Iran does not believe Donald Trump can deliver a deal, much less stick to one. The fear is not only that Washington will walk away again but that the goalposts will keep moving, where first nuclear limits are imposed, followed by missiles, then regional policy and finally further political concessions dressed up as security guarantees. The second obstacle is the absence of meaningful contact. Since the Islamabad meeting in April between the US vice-president, JD Vance, and Iran’s speaker of the parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, there has been no direct channel capable of turning political signals into compromise. Instead, negotiations are moving through regional mediators and a serial exchange of proposals. The third obstacle is the gap between what each side needs. Iran wants details and commitments, such as which sanctions will be lifted, when revenues will be unfrozen, how enforcement will work, and what protection will exist against another US reversal. Trump wants a faster and looser memorandum of understanding that can be announced and sold as a breakthrough. One side is searching for guarantees and the other for a headline and victory. The fourth obstacle is domestic politics. Any agreement between Iran and the US is toxic for both sides. In Washington, it will be attacke