James' World 2

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A celestial spectacle is set to grace the sky on Tuesday: a total lunar eclipse will make the moon appear blood red to millions of sky watchers across the globe.

Eclipses happen when the sun, moon, and Earth align in precise ways. In this case, Earth will be positioned directly between the sun and the full moon, casting a shadow over our natural satellite. While Earth blocks some of the sun’s light, stray beams will pass around and through our atmosphere, turning the moon’s usually pearlescent surface red.

The lunar eclipse will be visible across the Americas early in the morning of March 3 , as well as to stargazers in Australia and eastern Asia on Tuesday night. The moment of totality—when Earth fully covers the moon in its shadow—will begin at 6:04 A.M. EST and end at 7:03 A.M. EST. Unfortunately for lunar enthusiasts in Africa and Europe, the spectacle will not be visible there.

Tuesday’s eclipse follows hot on the heels of a “ring of fire” solar eclipse that occurred on February 17, although only viewers in Antarctica caught it in all its glory. During that event, the moon passed between Earth and the sun, covering up our star so that only a halo of light was left visible.

This upcoming eclipse is particularly special because it will be the last total lunar eclipse until December 2028. Sky watchers hoping to glimpse Tuesday’s event will require no special equipment to see the eclipse. They just need to hope for a cloudless night, go outside when it is dark, and look up.

For viewers in the U.S., the fun will begin around 3:45 A.M. EST and will last until 9:23 A.M. EST, though on the East Coast, the moon will set well before the eclipse ends. It will be worth stepping out a few times during the eclipse: as the event progresses, Earth’s shadow will creep across the moon, turning it a darker shade of red as it slides into alignment before the color drains away again as the planet moves on.

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Donald Trump told reporters Monday night, “you will be finding out very soon” what will happen next in Iran, just hours after a pair of drones struck the U.S. embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

“The hardest hits are yet to come from the U.S. military,” Secretary of State Marco Rubioadded before briefing members of Congress about the Iran operation.

Soon after, the Israeli military it was conducting “simultaneous targeted strikes against military targets in Tehran and Beirut.”

Plumes of smoke were seen rising at sites of Israeli airstrike in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

The U.S. President took to Truth Social to claim that wars can be “fought forever” as the munition stockpiles have “never been higher or better”.

He said he expected the fighting to go on for around four weeks. “As was stated to me today, we have a virtually unlimited supply of these weapons. Wars can be fought ‘forever’ and very successfully using just these supplies,” Trump posted.

Earlier, the President also refused to rule out putting boots on the ground as the Pentagon insisted the US was not veering into another “endless war” in the desert.

Trump-Iran latest: Key Points

• Breaking: Israeli troops to advance in southern Lebanon
• Trump claims wars can be ‘fought forever’ as munition stockpiles ‘never been better’
• Israel and U.S. target nuclear facilities and missile infrastructure
• Iranian drones hit US embassy in Riyadh
• Netanyahu says war against Iran may take ‘some time,’ but not years
• Iranian foreign minister says U.S. entered ‘war of choice on behalf of Israel’

Breaking: Israeli troops to advance in southern Lebanon

Israeli troops have been deployed to southern Lebanon in order to “advance and take control of additional positions” in the country, Israel’s defence minister has said.

The military has been stationed at several points along the Lebanon border, in what it described as a tactical measure to boost defences for Israel’s border communities.

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US warns ‘hardest hit yet to come’ as its embassy in Riyadh hit in drone attack

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Hmmmm … Has the trump administration seriously over-reached?

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Six American service members were killed, and U.S. military jets were shot out of the sky. Investors are bracing for market turmoil, fearing prolonged disruption to oil supplies. President Trump says the military campaign against Iran could extend for weeks, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that “the hardest hits are yet to come from the U.S. military.”

With his decision Friday to authorize war against Iran, Mr. Trump is taking the biggest gamble of his presidency, risking the lives of American troops, more deaths and instability in the world’s most volatile region, and his own political standing.

Mr. Trump, facing declining approval ratings and staring down the possibility that Republicans will lose control of Congress in the midterms, plunged the United States into what is shaping up to be its most expansive military conflict since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In just over a year since taking office, Mr. Trump has authorized military action in seven nations, even after he repeatedly promised American voters that he would end, not start, wars. During his inaugural address, he said his “proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker.”

Even as he has struggled to provide a clear endgame for the military campaign, Mr. Trump has portrayed the operation as a resounding success. He has acknowledged the U.S. casualties as a cost of war but has spent more effort on boasting about the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, the destruction of military targets across the country, and his commitment to keeping Iran from ever being able to produce a nuclear weapon.

But interventions in the Middle East have bedeviled generations of American presidents. Conflicts there scarred the legacies of Presidents George W. Bush, who led the country into lengthy wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that came to be deeply unpopular, and Jimmy Carter, whose failed operation in 1980 to rescue American hostages in Iran has been top of mind for Mr. Trump.

Now it is Mr. Trump who is orchestrating a rapidly expanding military effort in a region whose history and religious and factional politics make it an especially complex battleground.

“Presidents are reluctant to engage in these situations unless we are provoked, attacked directly,” said Barbara Perry, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. “Then there is usually a rally around the flag effect. You’re not going to have that now.”

While a handful of prominent voices in his movement have publicly denounced the decision to go to war, Mr. Trump’s base appears to be standing by him, for now. Still, some of the president’s allies privately worry that there is little political upside to the attacks on Iran and huge downsides, particularly the loss of U.S. troops and rising cost of oil.

Dmocrats have seized on the strikes to paint Mr. Trump as more focused in foreign intervention than addressing Americans’ economic worries at home.

“Trump sold voters on a ‘pro-peace’ vision of himself as an America First candidate, yet in under 13 months, he has ordered strikes on seven foreign nations and plunged our country into more open-ended conflict using taxpayer dollars,” Ken Martin, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement. “While he’s distracted by foreign conflicts and shiny ballrooms, Trump has failed to deliver on his promise to bring costs down for working families, who are paying more every day because of Trump’s actions.”

Early polling after the attacks show most voters are not in favor of them. A CNN poll found 59 percent of Americans disapprove of Mr. Trump’s decision to launch strikes against Iran, and Reuters-Ipsos poll found that only 27 percent of Americans approve of the military campaign.

Should the conflict go badly or Iran descend into turmoil, it could leave Republican candidates in the midterm elections faced with difficult choices about whether to distance themselves from Mr. Trump on the issue.

And the war poses challenging questions for those looking to lead the party in the future, complicating the “America First” ideology at the core of the movement.

“This is not what we thought MAGA was supposed to be,” wrote former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican who broke with Mr. Trump last year and then resigned from Congress, in a social media post. “Shame!”

In a subsequent post, Ms. Greene called the Trump administration a “bunch of sick liars,” punctuating it with an expletive. “We voted for America First and ZERO wars,” she wrote.

Still, Matthew Boyle, the Washington bureau chief of Breitbart News, said he received almost no questions or comments from listeners during his weekly three-hour radio program on Saturday, hours after the strikes. The program, he said, provides a good window into the issues animating Mr. Trump’s base.

Mr. Boyle said he discussed the war extensively and played Mr. Trump’s early morning video announcing the attacks. Listeners, he said, were more interested in other topics. He said that was a stark contrast to the program he hosted after the United States captured Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela, a topic many listeners wanted to discuss.

This time, he said listeners were much more interested in the economy, immigration, and crime. But he warned that could change depending on how the operation unfolds.

“It all comes down to the results,” he said.

Sensing some of the fractures among Mr. Trump’s base, the White House on Monday started to respond directly to criticism on the right. Matt Walsh, a conservative commentator and a prominent voice among Mr. Trump’s supporters, posted on social media that Mr. Trump’s messaging on the U.S. objectives in Iran “is, to put it mildly, confused.”

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, responded to Mr. Walsh with a lengthy statement. She declared Mr. Trump put out “clear objectives” that would bring the end to Iran’s “brutal attacks and threats.”

Mr. Walsh seemed less than satisfied.

“This operation seemed like a bad idea to me before it happened, and I said so,” he wrote after Ms. Leavitt’s response. “Now that it is happening, I’m not going to suddenly change my tune. It still seems like a bad idea to me. I hope I’m wrong. But that’s how I see it.”

The Iran strikes are far from the first time that the president has tested his base’s capacity to support actions that violate his campaign promise to stay out of foreign conflicts. When he faced questions over whether his supporters would protest after U.S. forces attacked Venezuela, Mr. Trump had a succinct reply.

“MAGA is me,” he told NBC News. “MAGA loves everything I do.”

In recent months, the Make America Great Again movement has started to splinter over key issues, including Mr. Trump’s handling of the Epstein files and his struggles to address rising costs.

Raheem Kassam, the editor in chief of The National Pulse and a conservative activist, said the war with Iran would exacerbate those tensions.

“It’s not something I would have done, but it is definitely something Trump would have done,” he said. “He loves the idea of finishing the job that his predecessors couldn’t even start.”

Mr. Kassam said that Mr. Trump’s supporters trusted him to avoid U.S. casualties more than any of his predecessors, but expressed worries that the conflict does nothing to address a major vulnerability for the president.

He said Americans will only be “just starting to feel better about the economy right as they start voting because they spent too much time on Elon Musk’s failed DOGE project,” arguing Mr. Musk had failed to meaningfully cut government spending. He added: “I agree with the critics that is a big problem.”

More on the Assault on Iran

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• U.S.-Israeli Attack on Iran: Some of the structures destroyed inside the Tehran compound of Iran’s supreme leader had been constructed in recent months, according to an analysis of satellite imagery by The New York Times. The Israeli military said that airstrikes it has conducted since last June had destroyed about 200 Iranian ballistic missile launchers, roughly half of the launchers Iran currently has.

• Iran Retaliates: The country has fired nearly 400 missiles and more than 800 drones across the Persian Gulf, according to government reports, and has attacked energy installations in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, both key American allies. It has also struck at least six U.S. military facilities around the Middle East, according to our analysis.

• What’s Next for Iran: A badly weakened Iran will no longer intimidate or threaten its neighbors in the same way. The regional impact could be comparable to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Iran’s top security official struck a defiant tone, berating President Trump for harboring “delusional fantasies” about the toll of a broadening war.

• Israel Strikes Back at Hezbollah: The U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and its allies brought a new wave of displacement to war-weary Lebanon, after Israel retaliated for rocket attacks by the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia.

• U.S. Military Death Toll: The number of U.S. service members killed in the first three days of the war grew to six as officials said the remains of two more troops had been recovered.

• Effects on the Global Economy: The oil-producing countries in the group known as OPEC Plus said that they would increase oil production in April, which could help mitigate the impact on oil prices of disrupted shipments in the Middle East. Rising oil prices, volatile stocks, and potentially higher inflation are all weighing on investors’ minds as the military campaign continues.

• Strike on Girls’ School in Iran: At least 175 people, most of them likely children, were killed in a strike on a girls’ elementary school in southern Iran, health officials and Iranian state media said. Videos and images verified by The New York Times showed that at least half of the school was destroyed. It was not immediately clear why the school was hit, or which country’s forces had fired at it.

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President Trump leaving the White House on Friday. Interventions in the Middle East have bedeviled generations of American presidents. Credit…Anna Rose Layden for The New York Times

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“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king, the palace instead becomes a circus. — Turkish proverb,”

 

Hmmmmm…History is repeating itself yet again!

 

Isaiah 59:14

New Living Translation

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You might find these videos enlightening!

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A. R. Bernard: one of many

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The death of a star never looked so beautiful. New images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope reveal what looks eerily like a brain floating in space and housed inside a semitransparent skull.

This is the “Exposed Cranium” Nebula, also known as Nebula PMR 1. Located some 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Vela, it’s a massive, moribund star coming to the end of its fuel-burning life. As the star dies, it is shedding layers of its material, generating billowing clouds of gas and dust.

The new images show the nebula in both near- and mid-infrared light, revealing a dark channel that runs through the middle of the clouds of gas and dust—just like the longitudinal fissure that separates our brain’s right and left hemispheres. In the nebula, this feature may be caused by jets coming from the dying star, pushing the inner gas out. The outer layer of gas is mostly made up of simple hydrogen, but the inner gas clouds are more complex.

It’s unclear what will happen to the dying star. If it is massive enough, it will explode into a supernova. But if not, it will deteriorate until only its core remains, at which point it will become a white dwarf, a dense object that astronomers believe cools over time to become a black dwarf—a cold, dark object that exists only in theory, perhaps because the universe is too young for any to have formed.

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NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI (image); Joseph DePasquale/STScI (image processing)

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The Israeli military said it was carrying out “large-scale strikes” on Tehran on Monday, two days since the start of a US-Israeli campaign against Iran.

“The Israeli Air Force … has begun an additional wave of strikes against the Iranian terror regime at the heart of Tehran,” the military said in a statement, quoted by Agence France-Presse.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah has just claimed responsibility for the projectiles launched from Lebanon to Israel.

The militant group said it launched missiles and drones towards Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s supreme leader.

Israel’s military just said it had begun striking Hezbollah across Lebanon.

More now on the Israeli military saying projectiles fired from Lebanon had triggered air raid sirens in northern Israel – it also said it had had intercepted one of them.

“Following the sirens that sounded in several areas in northern Israel, a projectile that crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory was intercepted by the Israeli Air Force, and several projectiles fell in open areas,” the Israeli military posted on Telegram on Monday, cited by the AFP news agency.

Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said on Sunday it had a “duty” to support backer Iran after Israeli and US strikes.

But the group has not confirmed action since the US and Israel began attacks on Saturday, killing Iran’s supreme leader and sparking a wave of retaliatory drone and missile strikes.

Hezbollah has been weakened from conflict with Israel, which it entered to support Hamas after the Palestinian militant group’s deadly attack on Israel in October 2023 and the subsequent war in the Gaza strip.

Israel and Hezbollah signed a ceasefire agreement in November 2024, although Israel has continued to strike targets it says are linked to the Lebanese group.

Hezbollah did not intervene during a 12-day war between Israel and Iran last June.

Defence and intelligence experts are describing the strike on a UK airbase in Cyprus as a “possible Iranian one-way drone attack against RAF Akrotiri”.

The base is located over 600 miles (965km) from Iran.

Alerts, thought to have been put out by the UK’s Ministry of Defence, were sent to military personnel and their families by email and text message.

Cyprus authorities confirm drone strike on UK base

Helena Smith

Authorities in Cyprus have confirmed the drone strike. The sovereign base areas and surrounding areas will remain in a state of high alert amid fears of possible further strikes.

All roads to the military facilities have been cordoned off, the Guardian has learned.

SMS messaging sent to base personnel included this:

We are aware of an ongoing security threat. At this time please remain indoors and allow the emergency services access to react to the incident.

The Main entry point at RAF Akrotiri remains closed at this point …

A small Drone has impacted the airfield at RAF Akrotiri and all agencies are responding. There are no casualties but there is minor damage. However the incident is ongoing.

Further to the report that the UK’s Akrotiri air force base in Cyprus has been hit by a drone, we’ve have word that this SMS message was sent to base personnel before the strike:

There is an ongoing security threat. Please return to your homes and stay inside until further official notice. Move away from windows and take cover behind or beneath substantial, solid furniture. Please await further instruction.

Shares of Australia’s flagship carrier Qantas Airways slumped more than 10% to their lowest level in 10 months on Monday after the US and Israeli strikes on Iran.

The airline’s shares fell as much as 10.4% to A$8.92 each when the Australian market opened on Monday, the lowest level since 2 May 2025, Reuters is reporting.

Drone hits British airbase in Cyprus – report

The UK’s Akrotiri air force base in Cyprus has been struck by a drone, according to a report in the Cyprus Mail.

Personnel on the bases were informed that a “small drone” had impacted the airfield and that the bases’ authorities were responding, the report on Monday said.

There were no casualties as a result, but “minor damage” was caused.

The bases’ authorities instructed personnel to remain in place and await further instruction, warning there may be additional impact, the report said.

The explosion and siren sounds were heard in nearby Limassol.

The British bases had earlier declared a “security threat” shortly before midnight

The report could not be independently verified.

The Israeli military is saying projectiles have been launched from Lebanon, and sirens are sounding in several areas in northern Israel as a result.

We’ll have more on this soon as it comes to hand.

Oil prices soar amid war on Iran

Oil prices have jumped in Asian trade on the back of the turmoil in the Middle East.

In early trade in Asia on Monday, Brent Crude was trading at $80.20 per barrel, up 13% from the closing price of $72.87 on Friday, Bloomberg News reported.

• This is Adam Fulton picking up our live reporting – stay with us for the latest

2h ago23.05 GMT

Summary of the day so far

• Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, was killed on Saturday after the US and Israel launched a war on the country to trigger regime change. The US president had earlier announced the death of the ayatollah, who ruled Iran since 1989, in a post on Truth Social. Iran’s former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was also killed in strikes.

• Donald Trump warned on Sunday that combat operations in Iran were continuing and would carry on “until all of our objectives are achieved.” He continued to justify the operation, saying “an Iranian regime armed with long range missiles and nuclear weapons would be a dire threat to every American… I once again urge the Revolutionary Guard, the Iranian military police, to lay down your arms and receive full immunity or face certain death.”

• Trump told Fox News that 48 leaders have been killed in US and Israeli strikes on Iran. “It’s moving along. It’s moving along rapidly. This has been this way for 47 years,” he said. “Nobody can believe the success we’re having; 48 leaders are gone in one shot.”

• Three US service members have been killed in action as part of US military operations against Iran, the US Central Command said in a statement on Sunday. These are the first confirmed deaths since the US began launching strikes against Iran on Saturday. Trump warned in his Truth Social video that there would likely be more casualties.

• The death toll from a missile strike on a girls’ school in southern Iran has risen to almost 150, according to Iranian state media. Mizan news agency, the official news outlet of Iran’s judiciary, reported that the number killed in Saturday’s strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab in southern Iran had risen to 148 killed, with 95 others wounded. The school, which was struck on Saturday morning, appears to be the worst mass casualty event of the US-Israeli-led bombing campaign on Iran so far.

• Trump said earlier that Iran’s new leadership wants to talk to him and that he has agreed, according to an interview with The Atlantic. “They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them. They should have done it sooner,” he said.

• Just 27% of Americans approve of the US strikes that killed Iran’s leader on Saturday, while about half — including one in four Republicans — believe Trump is too willing to use military force, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that concluded on Sunday.

• UK prime minister Keir Starmer agreed to allow the US to use UK military bases to launch attacks that degrade Iran’s missiles. In a recorded statement, the prime minister said the “only way to stop the threat is to destroy the missiles at source in their storage depots or the launchers which are used to fire the missiles”.

The Philippine Embassy in Israel confirmed the death of a Filipino national in a missile attack in Tel Aviv, according to the Associated Press.

The victim, Mary Ann V. de Vera, 32, a caregiver from Basista, Pangasinan, had been working in Israel since 2019. Her identity was confirmed through biometric records at the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute, where her husband also positively identified her remains.

Ambassador Aileen Mendiola conveyed condolences to the family and assured them of the Philippine government’s full assistance, the embassy said in a statement.

Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel wrote Sunday on social media that his administration extended “heartfelt condolences” to Iran’s people and its government for what he called the assassination of Khamenei.

“The execrable act constitutes a scrupleless violation of all the norms of International Law and human dignity,” he wrote. “In Cuba, he will be remembered as a distinguished statesman and leader of his people, who contributed to the development of friendly relations between Cuba and Iran.”

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also issued a message of condolence over the death of Iran’s supreme leader.

In a post on X, Erdogan wrote: “I extend my condolences to the esteemed Khamenei, praying that the Almighty Allah grants him mercy, and offer my sympathies to the brotherly people of Iran; I convey my condolences on behalf of my country and my nation.”

He added: “Together with the people of Iran, we in Turkey will steadfastly continue our efforts to ensure that all our friends and brothers in the region regain the peace and stability they deserve, that the conflict raging in our region comes to an end, and that we return to diplomacy.”

Trump says attack ‘will continue until all of our objectives are achieved.’

Donald Trump warned on Sunday that combat operations in Iran were continuing and would carry on until all of Washington’s objectives are achieved.

“Combat operations continue at this time in full force, and they will continue until all of our objectives are achieved. We have very strong objectives,” Trump said in a recorded video statement posted first on Truth Social. He confirmed that three US service members had been killed and said there would likely be more casualties, vowing to avenge the deaths of Americans.

“As one nation, we grieve for the true American patriots who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation, even as we continue the righteous mission for which they gave their lives,” he said. “And sadly, there will likely be more before it ends.”

He continued to justify the operation, saying “an Iranian regime armed with long range missiles and nuclear weapons would be a dire threat to every American… I once again urge the Revolutionary Guard, the Iranian military police, to lay down your arms and receive full immunity or face certain death.”

This is the second video statement he has posted exclusively on Truth Social, his social media platform, which recently declared a big loss. The platform is part of Trump Media and Technology Group, a company whose share price has reached near all-time lows this month.

France and Lebanon are postponing a March 5 conference on the Lebanese army to April, the Elysee palace said in a statement on Sunday, following the launch of US-Israeli strikes on Iran.

France, Lebanon’s former colonial power, plans to mobilize international backing for the Lebanese armed forces and internal security forces at the conference.

The statement stressed that the gravity of the regional situation underscored the need to safeguard Lebanon’s stability, support its legitimate institutions, and ensure the full restoration of its sovereignty.

UK agrees to US request to use British military bases for strikes

Rowena Mason

Keir Starmer has agreed to allow the US to use UK military bases to
launch attacks that degrade Iran’s missiles.

In a recorded statement, the prime minister said the “only way to stop the threat is to destroy the missiles at source in their storage depots or the launchers which are used to fire the missiles”.

“The US has requested permission to use British bases for that specific and limited defensive purpose,” he said.

“We have taken the decision to accept this request – to prevent Iran firing missiles across the region … killing innocent civilians … putting British lives at risk … and hitting countries that have not been involved.”

In addition, British jets are in the air as part of coordinated defensive operations, which he said had “already successfully intercepted Iranian strikes”.

He said it remains the case that the UK was not involved in the strikes on Iran. “Our decision that the UK would not be involved with the strikes on Iran was deliberate,” the prime minister said. “Not least because we believe that the best way forward for the region and the world is a negotiated settlement.”

But he said Iran’s approach was becoming more reckless and dangerous to civilians, leading to the decision to allow the US to use UK military bases. He also revealed that there are at least 200,000 British citizens in the region – and urged them to register their presence and follow Foreign Office travel advice.

The leaders of Britain, France, and Germany have said they are ready to take steps to defend their interests in the region after the “indiscriminate and disproportionate” missile attacks by Iran.

In a joint statement on Iran, the E3 leaders said:

“E3 leaders are appalled by the indiscriminate and disproportionate missile attacks launched by Iran against countries in the region, including those who were not involved in initial US and Israeli military operations. Iran’s reckless attacks have targeted our close allies and are threatening our service personnel and our civilians across the region.

“We call on Iran to stop these reckless attacks immediately. We will take steps to defend our interests and those of our allies in the region, potentially through enabling necessary and proportionate defensive action to destroy Iran’s capability to fire missiles and drones at their source.

They continued: “We have agreed to work together with the US and allies in the region on this matter. We will take steps to defend our interests and those of our allies in the region, potentially through enabling necessary and proportionate defensive action to destroy Iran’s capability to fire missiles and drones at their source. We have agreed to work together with the US and allies in the region on this matter.”

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A smoke plume rises following a missile strike on a building in Tehran amid ongoing strikes by the US and Israel on Iran. Follow live for latest updates. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

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Experts say that Iran’s clerical rulers may be too deeply entrenched for Iranians to topple them, and that the U.S. and Israeli strikes risk setting off deeper radicalization or violence.

The death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is a watershed moment in the 47-year existence of the Islamic Republic. The scenes that followed — throngs of Iranians taking to the streets to celebrate, others turning out to grieve — signal the deep uncertainty about what comes next.

There are now three key questions: How will protesters respond to President Trump’s call to take over the government? Can Iran’s authoritarian system survive? And could the attack unleash a chaotic battle for power?

Mr. Trump and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, have made public appeals to Iran’s people, arguing that they have offered them a historic opportunity to topple their brutal authoritarian government. How they envision an unarmed population facing down a heavily armed, ideologically driven security force is less clear.

Though it has been only two days of strikes, some regional experts are skeptical that an aerial campaign alone could weaken Iran’s government enough that Iranians could bring it down with protests.

Nonetheless, Iran is headed toward a transformative moment, said Farzan Sabet, an analyst on Iran and Middle East politics at the Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland.

“Some kind of change will happen in the system,” he said. “But in which direction? We don’t know.”

Could Iranian protesters topple their government?

In some ways, Iranians are ever more defiant after facing a brutal crackdown on nationwide anti-government protests in January, in which security forces killed thousands. As the violent repression subsided, the risks were still high even before the bombardment began. Yet students still protested and held sit-ins, and the families of slain protesters used their memorial services to voice dissent.

After the authorities confirmed Ayatollah Khamenei’s death in the attack, many Iranians dared to celebrate publicly — but not to the point of risking bloodshed.

Arian, a resident of a suburb near Tehran, described seeing people “honking in the streets, shouting chants from windows.” Like all people interviewed inside the country, he asked to withhold his full name for fear of retaliation. On Sunday morning, Arian said, he saw people dancing and singing in the streets — until they noticed the arrival of armed members of Iran’s Basij, the volunteer militia force aligned with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. “When the Basij showed up, everyone got scared and quickly scattered,” he said.

Even under aerial bombardment, Iran’s domestic security apparatus was still making a show of force. Basij forces, estimated to be around one million strong around the country, have already been mobilized around the capital.

“The brutal killing of protesters in January suggests domestic unrest will be met with an iron fist,” said Ellie Geranmayeh, deputy head of the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “This time under far harsher wartime conditions.”

Some airstrikes have begun to target Basij and intelligence headquarters, but experts are divided as to whether airstrikes can inflict enough damage to weaken a deeply entrenched and complex network of security forces across such a large country.

“The problem is these are very multilayered targets,” said Abdolrasool Divsallar, an Iran expert at the Catholic University of Milan. “You hit one, but there are so many others. I am not sure how long it can be sustained, munitions-wise.”

Could Iran’s current regime survive?

Even as strikes wiped out several of Iran’s top political and military leaders, official statements went to great lengths to show the system was prepared for the shock and still functioning.

After Ayatollah Khamenei’s death, Iranian officials announced that the government would follow the constitutional framework for selecting the country’s next leader, and that a temporary leadership council would be formed.

Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, who is seen as the de facto leader behind the scenes, stressed that idea in televised comments urging unity after the ayatollah’s death.

“Throughout history, the Iranian nation has faced even greater challenges; even the Mongols plowed through the entire country, yet the people stood firm and defended their land,” he said. “Such martyrdoms make people resistant and steadfast.”

But the system could undergo a transformation from within. Mr. Larijani, seen as a pragmatist, is the type of figure observers say could potentially strike a deal with Washington now that Iran’s more ideologically driven supreme leader is gone.

Some ordinary Iranians said that such a deal, if accompanied by an easing of international sanctions on Iran, may be palatable to many residents who have suffered through so many months of instability and a collapsing economy.

“Most people aren’t chasing deep meaning,” said Payman, 45, a businessman in Tehran. “They just want a normal life: family, work, small goals. If that becomes possible, a lot of people might stop pushing for bigger change.”

But there is also the possibility Iran’s new leaders would turn the state in the opposite direction — making it even more radical. “The risk is that the more hard-line figures emerge,” Mr. Divsallar said.

The fact that the leadership change was brought about by American and Israeli attacks increases that possibility, he said. “That works completely against what people wished for,” he said.

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Iranians mourning their supreme leader at a rally in Tehran. Credit…Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

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Adults whose brains still have strong neuron production seem to have better memory and cognitive function than do those in whom the ability wanes, finds a study published today in Nature. The authors examined brain samples from deceased donors ranging from young adults to ‘super agers’ — people older than 80 with exceptional memory.

They found that young and old adults with healthy cognition generated neurons, a process called neurogenesis, at high levels for their age. The team estimated that the new neurons made up only a small fraction — 0.01% — of those in the hippocampus, a brain region that’s essential for memory. By contrast, in people experiencing cognitive decline, including individuals with Alzheimer’s disease, neurogenesis seems to falter: the researchers spotted fewer developing, or immature, neurons in those brain samples.

Surprisingly, a group of ‘super agers’ had an even higher number of immature neurons than did other groups, and significantly more than did those with Alzheimer’s. However, the group sizes were small, so the findings were not all statistically significant.

Maura Boldrini Dupont, a neuroscientist and psychiatrist at Columbia University in New York City, says that the small size of the groups — each had ten or fewer individuals — is a reason to take the results with a grain of salt.

Understanding the tools that the brain uses to generate neurons and maintain cognitive function in old age could help researchers to develop drugs that induce neurogenesis in people with cognitive decline, says co-author Orly Lazarov, a neuroscientist at the University of Illinois Chicago.

Controversy over neurogenesis

The findings support the idea that people’s brains continue to generate neurons even in adulthood. But that idea hasn’t always been accepted.

In the early 1900s, neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal suggested that the human brain could not form neurons after birth. Eventually, researchers found that neurogenesis did occur in childhood, but still thought that was the endpoint.

“That’s what they used to teach when I went to medical school,” Dupont says.

In the past few decades, however, this dogma was challenged by new evidence supporting neurogenesis in the adult hippocampus, fuelling an ongoing debate in neurobiology.

Although researchers know that neurogenesis occurs in some adult animals, including mice and primates, they haven’t been able to agree on whether it happens in the brains of human adults. That’s mainly because there are more tools for studying neurogenesis in animals than in humans. In mice, for instance, researchers can inject chemicals that trace the birth and development of neurons. This cannot be done in living people, and research in human brain samples has been limited, Lazarov says.

One tool researchers have used to study neurogenesis in humans, however, is protein markers. Antibodies can be used to detect certain proteins expressed by neural stem cells — which can turn into neurons — and immature neurons in donated brain samples. But Lazarov points out critics’ argument “that these proteins are not specific enough and could be expressed in other cell types, not just in neurogenesis”.

So scientists have turned to single-cell RNA sequencing to find more specific genetic markers of neural stem cells and immature neurons in the human hippocampus.

Into the future

Lazarov and her colleagues went a step further in their latest study. They not only used RNA sequencing to identify the genetic signatures of these cell types, but also uncovered their epigenetic signatures. Epigenetic markers are DNA modifications that control gene expression. The team used an assay that pinpoints parts of a cell’s DNA that are primed for expression to determine these signatures. Dupont says that the assay is a strong point of the study.

Lazarov says that the next step would be to understand the function of the neurons generated in the adult brain. “What we need is functional validation of these cells, to tell what they’re doing in the human brain,” she says, adding that this would require new imaging techniques that are sensitive enough to detect this activity.

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