In your briefing today:

📣 Donald Trump has warned Iran against further retaliation after yesterday’s Israeli attack on the South Pars gas field.

Iran attacked Qatar’s Ras Laffan natural gas facility, which prompted a long Truth Social post from the President warning Iran that the US would “massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars gas field”.

But the President also hinted at disagreement, or at least a lack of communication, with Israel: he said the US wasn’t aware of Israel’s plans to attack South Pars, and said they would not do it again “unless Iran unwisely decides to attack”. (BBC)

📣 “Frantic campaigning” and last-minute changes of heart among MSPs doomed the assisted dying bill, to the surprise of many. As one campaigner against the law tells the Times this morning: “No one would have expected progressive Scotland to do that.” The title offers strong analysis of exactly what happened to bring about the surprise outcome. (The Times - gift link)

📣 Scotland’s human rights watchdog is calling on ministers to “prioritise” talks on rewriting the prison service’s transgender policy, which it says fails to properly consider the rights of women. (Herald has the exclusive)

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📣 A former leader of North Lanarkshire Council has gone on trial accused of a catalogue of sexual offences against young boys and men over more than a decade. Jordan Linden denies 24 charges. (STV)

📣 Shamed rugby star Stuart Hogg has released an “online rant” about people “profiteering from feeding the media fake news” after he was arrested for an alleged breach of a non-harassment order. (Daily Record)

📣 A ferry link between Scotland and France edges closer today with the news Rosyth port is to be upgraded with new Border Force and Customs infrastructure. (Scotsman)

📣 An Edinburgh schoolboy has upset the chess world - Freddy Waldhausen Gordon, a 15-year-old who attends George Heriot’s - came through with a “stunning burst” to win the annual British Rapid Championship. (FT (£))

📣 NHS staff across England have been warned to be alert for signs of meningitis, as it becomes clear the outbreak in Kent is severe, and is causing “rapid deterioration” among patients. (Independent)

📣 The UK’s Covid inquiry is set to publish its latest findings today, examining how the healthcare system coped with the virus. It’s expected to find the NHS could not deal with another pandemic today. (Sky News)

📣 Two men have been charged with allegedly spying on London’s Jewish community on behalf of Iran. (BBC)

📣 U.S. Vice President JD Vance plans to visit Hungary in the coming days in support of Viktor Orban, who faces a difficult election next month. (Reuters)

📣 Owners of “designer” dogs report more behavioural problems, vets are warning. (BBC)

⚽️ English sides’ difficult Champions League season continued last night, with a staggering reverse for Newcastle United away to Barcelona. For a while in the first half, they were tied with the Spanish giants on the night (2-2) and on aggregate (3-3).

And then, so quickly, it unravelled and became a 7-2 thumping. Defensively lax and tactically naive, they were ruthlessly exposed in the second half, to an extent that raises questions not only about Newcastle but - taken with other results this week - about the standard of the Premier League this season.

🗣️ Where, exactly, does Donald Trump find himself? Is it… here?

We’re all used to Donald Trump’s reality-warping rhetoric; updates on that have become, accidentally and somewhat reluctantly, one of The Early Line’s most regular tasks, given he tends to speak while the UK sleeps.

But that rhetoric also creates a spectacle - a distraction - as we all cough and splutter and speculate about how other people - Starmer, Putin, Zelenskyy - will react. Less often do we actually look at the position Trump finds himself in and ask: where is he? That Tweet, above, invites us to look a little harder at the contradictions. And we find Trump’s political position is far from strong.

Columnist Rafael Behr goes there today, in the Guardian. “Donald Trump is teaching the world a lesson, but not the one he thinks,” he writes. “The attack on Iran was meant to be a dazzling display of military supremacy. It has instead illuminated chinks in the US’s armour.”

He spots a theme: that “America First”, that defining and supposedly isolationist election promise by Trump and his MAGA colleagues, keeps floundering on the realities of global economics.

“Trump seems not to believe in economic interdependence,” notes Behr. “He also has a zero-sum view of relationships, which precludes any recognition of mutual advantage. He measures success in any negotiation by the degree of humiliation inflicted on the other side.

“The war has been a masterclass in strategic myopia in Washington. For the Iranian leadership, survival now counts as a kind of victory.

“American consumers will not be protected by their country’s status as an energy exporter. The prices they pay at the pump – and for pretty much everything else, given the ubiquity of hydrocarbon derivatives in manufacturing and agriculture – track the global oil market. Trump’s boasts of defeating inflation, already unconvincing to many voters, could soon sound downright insulting.”

That’s not a universal view, of course. The Telegraph toasts the death of Ali Larijani, Iran’s national security chief, as “a stunning operational coup” and “further evidence that the broader war is not the disaster that some apparently consider it to be.

“We appear to be witnessing the slow dismantling of much of the threat posed by a regime that has relentlessly sought the destruction of Israel and the acquisition of a nuclear arsenal, has sponsored terrorism, and has threatened the security of global energy supplies,” it says.

When the dust settles, Trump’s actions will be judged on whether they have made America and the world safer, the newspaper says. Ridding the world of Iran’s previous level of menace is no bad thing, seen through that lens, the newspaper argues.

But that globalist win may not be popular at home. A warning from The Economist sounds the alarm. “Mr Trump’s war of choice is more unpopular with American voters than any recent conflict,” it notes, “and the odds of a thumping for Republicans at the midterms in November just grew shorter”.

Why so? Because, in the end, arguments about the geopolitical virtue of a war in Iran may not matter for Trump: his legacy will be sealed at home. And, as the Economist notes, “Every day motorists see big, bright reminders that fuel costs more than it did.

“History suggests that when fuel prices rise, voters are more likely to vote against the incumbent president. Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush all lost office after oil-price spikes.”

If you want a measure of how upset a hardcore part of the MAGA world is with Trump, look no further than Ann Coulter - a pundit so far removed from political norms during her peak fame she was Trumpian before Trumpism was a thing.

Now she writes a column that bemoans that “no matter how many times you vote for less war and less immigration, the government is going to give you more war and more immigration.

“It’s always the Second World War, we’re always fighting Hitler, and we always have no choice because we’ve got to stop [Fill In Target Country Here] from acquiring nuclear weapons. Even if we’ve just totally obliterated their nuclear program.”

Which brings us back to that Tweet, and the sense that - despite Trump’s bluster - voters are starting to spot the contrast between what he sold voters and what he’s delivering.

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