Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Edward Forman, PhD Candidate, Climate Tipping Points, University of Southampton

Imagine being tasked with counting every blade of grass in a field, noting every single species as you go. This is not far from the challenge many scientists face when analysing microscopic samples packed with thousands of tiny particles.

Imaging flow cytometry (IFC) solves this by guiding particles single-file past a camera and lasers, capturing detailed images of tens of thousands per second. It records the particles’ size, shape and optical properties, turning what was once painstaking manual work into automated analysis.

IFC has become a staple of biomedical research, with scientists using it to study blood viruses or classify tumour cells. It’s also increasingly used in environmental science – for example, to monitor water quality and detect microplastics.

Now, we’re using this medical tech on ancient mud, peat and lake sediments. It may help us identify exactly when ancient climate tipping points were crossed.

Blood to mud

To predict future climate change, we need to understand how things changed in the past. To do this, scientists use natural archives such as sediment found at the bottom of lakes or oceans, long “cores” drilled into peat or ice, or stalagmites and stalactites found in caves.

These archives effectively work as layered climate logbooks, recording environmental change over hundreds to thousands of years. As researchers dig deeper into sediment, peat or ice, they move further back in time. Each layer captures conditions at the time it was formed, from temperature and precipitation to the strength of ocean currents and wind belts.

Microscopic fossils and climate change

The abundance of certain microscopic fossils can be used to reconstruct these past conditions. For instance, the presence of certain species of pollen in peat or algae in lake sediments reflects changes in the climate system.

Pollen preserved in Amazon rainforest mud today is very different from that in Arctic tundra. In the far future, geologists will be able to tell from the fossilised form of this pollen which region once had tropical trees, and which had cold-weather shrubs.

This approach to reconstruction underpins a large portion of palaeoclimate research. Traditionally, however, it has involved counting thousands of particles by eye under a microscope. Because this is so time-consuming, only a small fraction of the total sample is analysed, while the rest is estimated by scaling up those results.

IFC dramatically speeds up counting, meaning climate reconstructions that previously took months can now be done much faster.

This makes it possible to produce higher-resolution records by analysing more samples, and to quantify rare species. Scientists using this technology can focus on questions that were previously too time-consuming to address, such as exactly when a certain environmental change occurred in the deep past.

Also, IFC digitises each sample, making results easier to share, reproduce and reanalyse, promoting more robust, open science.

Hidden patterns and tipping points

As IFC makes it feasible to count a much larger fraction of any given sample, it allows us to detect subtle changes that would have taken too long to detect manually.

Uncovering these small shifts in the particles found in a given place could provide early warning signals of abrupt climate change. For example, we can trace the migration of wind belts via the abundance of non-native pollen species at particular locations. Such movement of the winds may be responsible for triggering sudden change, perhaps by melting ice sheets or drying out a rainforest.

As a result, we may be able to precisely date the timing of past climate tipping points – and with that, the order in which these thresholds were crossed. This could let us distinguish between cause and consequence, as we can determine which changes happened first.

This approach also has the potential to uncover entirely new data, such as the presence of rare species at particular sites. These new records can then act as novel proxies for climate change – leading to more detailed reconstructions and deeper insights into how the climate works.

A tool designed to scan blood now offers us an exciting opportunity to read Earth’s history in finer detail and decipher hidden mechanisms. It could also help us predict abrupt changes in the near future.

Edward Forman is affiliated with Climate:Change.

Zoë Thomas receives funding from a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship.

– ref. How a repurposed medical device is helping us investigate ancient climate tipping points – https://theconversation.com/how-a-repurposed-medical-device-is-helping-us-investigate-ancient-climate-tipping-points-281417

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Katryna Niva, Cassar Lab, Duke University

We replaced the stove with plywood, turning the kitchen of the dive boat into an impromptu research lab. Plugging in wires and connecting tubing, we assembled a scientific instrument within the cramped cabin.

Then we cast off into Halifax Harbour, Canada, surveying the turquoise waters for signs of an unusual test: could we use the ocean itself to remove carbon dioxide from the air?

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is the most important driver of climate change, but it cannot be seen. Its build-up in the atmosphere is gradual. Its worst consequences take time to emerge. Even if emissions fell sharply tomorrow, the CO₂ already released would continue to warm the planet.

That is why scientists and policymakers are increasingly turning to carbon dioxide removal (CDR): taking CO₂ that has already been released back out of the air. So far, most large-scale CDR has focused on land, such as reforestation. But land is finite, competes with food production and biodiversity, and stored carbon can be lost through fire or deforestation. As emissions continue to outpace what these approaches alone can manage, attention has turned toward the ocean.

The overlooked role of the ocean in carbon storage

The ocean covers about 70% of the Earth’s surface and holds roughly 50 times the amount of carbon found in the atmosphere. Before the industrial revolution, carbon moved between air and sea in near balance. As industrial activity increased atmospheric CO₂, more of it dissolved into seawater and the ocean became more acidic.

All that dissolved carbon has resulted in the ocean storing about a third of human CO₂ emissions since the industrial revolution — substantially slowing the pace of climate change. The emerging question is whether we can build on this natural service. The field exploring that possibility is known as marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR).

All mCDR approaches aim to reduce the amount of dissolved CO₂ at the ocean surface, converting it into more stable forms. When surface CO₂ is reduced, more CO₂ from the atmosphere dissolves into the sea.

Reducing surface CO₂ – so the sea absorbs more

One approach involves adding alkaline minerals – often crushed or processed rocks like limestone or basalt – to seawater. This reduces acidity and increases the capacity of seawater to absorb more carbon and store it for centuries to come. This is the strategy under development by Planetary Technologies in Halifax Harbour, Canada. There, alkaline minerals have been introduced to seawater through the cooling water discharge pipe of a natural gas burning power plant.

Another approach relies on biology. The ocean is filled with microscopic organisms that photosynthesise, using dissolved CO₂ to grow and reproduce. Some of this carbon sinks into deeper waters, through a process known as the “biological carbon pump”. By adding the nutrients that these organisms need to thrive, this effort hopes to increase microorganism populations and, ultimately, strengthening the biological carbon pump.

How do we know it works?

Whether chemical or biological, these approaches face the same questions: how much additional CO₂ is actually being removed from the atmosphere? And what are the ecological consequences?

The processes involved are invisible to the naked eye. The organisms are microscopic. The carbon transformations are chemical. Yet if marine carbon removal is to scale to climate-relevant levels, it will require rigorous measurement, transparency and public trust.

In the Cassar Lab at Duke University, we develop instruments to detect subtle changes in seawater chemistry. They continuously measure dissolved gases and other tracers, allowing us to reconstruct what microorganisms are doing and how carbon is moving through the system.

In August 2025, we deployed one of these tools in the turbulent waters surrounding one of the world’s first coastal ocean alkalinity enhancement projects, off Nova Scotia, Canada. This instrument was a mass spectrometer that extracts and quantifies dissolved gases from seawater. These readings give us insight into the ecosystem’s balance between photosynthesis and respiration – and therein, an understanding of how stressed or healthy the surrounding ecosystem is. Working alongside researchers tracking the chemical changes of the mCDR work underway, we focused on understanding how marine microorganisms were responding.

Another instrument, known as the Gopticas, allows a precise quantification of how much photosynthesis is happening in a seawater sample. The Gopticas was recently exhibited Prototypes for Humanity, an international innovation initiative based in Dubai, highlighting how tools developed for fundamental oceanography can also underpin climate accountability. This allows stronger quantification of ecosystem health as well as carbon influx.

A scalable approach to mCDR monitoring

We are now forming a team that can deploy these tools to directly quantify the amount of CO₂ being converted into longer-lived forms – and to spot early signs of ecological disruption.

This kind of monitoring is crucial. It allows us to distinguish between carbon that is briefly cycled near the surface and carbon converted into forms likely to remain stored for centuries. It also provides early warning if an intervention begins to disrupt marine biology. The work in Halifax marked the first application of our instruments to mCDR initiatives, but we look forward to applying these same approaches across regions and mCDR approaches.

Developing robust methods to quantify both carbon removal and ecological impact before large-scale deployment is essential. Without credible verification, claims of carbon removal risk outpacing evidence. And without clear evidence of environmental safety, public support will falter.

If marine carbon dioxide removal is to make a meaningful contribution to climate mitigation, it must rest on precise measurement and accountability. Governments, regulators and investors will need confidence that reported carbon removal is real and durable – and that marine ecosystems are protected.

Standing on the deck of the dive boat, staring out at the plume of alkaline waters emerging from the pipe, it’s easy to be struck by a feeling of awe. This experiment is tiny compared to global climate change – a drop in the ocean. But it offers a glimpse into a more optimistic future.

---

This article was commissioned in conjunction with Prototypes for Humanity, a global initiative that showcases and accelerates academic innovation to solve social and environmental challenges. The Conversation was a media partner of Prototypes for Humanity 2025.

Katryna Niva works for Duke University. Her research is also supported in part by the Carbon to Sea Initiative.

This article was commissioned in conjunction with Prototypes for Humanity, a global initiative that showcases and accelerates academic innovation to solve social and environmental challenges. The Conversation was a media partner of Prototypes for Humanity 2025

Alireza Merikhi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The ocean is fighting climate change and we’re trying to help it – here’s how – https://theconversation.com/the-ocean-is-fighting-climate-change-and-were-trying-to-help-it-heres-how-271554

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stephen Coleman, Professor of Political Communication, University of Leeds

Every election is a storytelling contest, with campaigning parties competing to frame the plot. This year’s local elections, the largest test of voters’ mood since the 2024 general election, have been dominated by two master-narratives.

The first is about the demise of the old two-party system under which Labour and Conservatives have been the battling giants for almost 100 years. Vast regions of England have long been regarded as safe electoral zones. They have been disrupted only occasionally by strategic incursions by the Liberal Democrats or mid-term revolts against whoever formed the Westminster government.

The story of the 2026 local elections is one of a conspicuous public impulse to punish the old incumbents, resulting in the ascendancy of the new kids on the political block – Reform UK and the Greens.

In the 2024 general election, Reform won 15.3% of the vote in English constituencies and the Green Party won 7.3%. Since then, Labour’s poll ratings have fallen and the Tories have hardly recovered from their devastating result when they lost 238 seats.

But the story amounts to more than numbers. We are witnessing a pervasive and powerful expression of desire by the electorate – not just for radical political alternatives, but for a radical alternative to politics itself.

The rise of the outsider

This is a story about the rejection of anyone who looks or speaks like a conventional politician. Both Reform leader Nigel Farage and Zack Polanski, the leader of the Greens in England and Wales, have cultivated images of themselves as outsiders who eschew the caution and attachment to well-rehearsed cliche that has so discredited their opponents.

It was an election in which voters came to believe that what these political mavericks say is what they actually mean. Left-inclined voters might feel repelled by Farage’s strident nationalism and right-inclined voters might regard Polanski as a dangerous dreamer. But neither doubts that they are up against genuine commitments.

Meanwhile, Labour and Conservative candidates have continued to campaign in the way they have been for decades. This means they have often actually been talking about local policies relating to refuse collection, libraries and care services. The newcomers have tended to ignore the rules of the game and fought their campaigns on headline values rather than policy detail.

Reform UK has said that it planned to open migrant detention centres in areas where the vote for the Green Party is high, while Green candidates in Haringey produced an election video stating that if elected they would uphold the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people.

The fact that elected local councillors lack any power to place detention centres in other areas or determine UK foreign policy was ignored. Local elections were turned into a showcase for a style of politics in which cultural symbolism outweighed the prudential technicalities of local governance.

---

Read more:
After a year of Reform UK in local government, the cracks are starting to show

---

However, as Reform politicians are learning in the few areas where they already hold local power, attention to policy complexity calls for rather more than the repetition of populist slogans, leading several of their councillors to leave the party as the responsibility of hard policy choices has dawned upon them.

For many voters, these local elections present a chance to gamble on the promise of the untried. And this brings us to the second story of this campaign, which is taking place almost exactly a decade after the Brexit referendum.

That was a moment when the politics of “anything must be better than this” appealed to electoral gamblers. As an insurgency of the unheard, Brexit reflected a feeling that the political establishment needed a good poke in the eye. This was regardless of the consequences for the assailants.

A key story of this year’s local elections is that the division between Leavers and Remainers, far from fading into the distance, has hardened over the past decade. Socially liberal Remainers and culturally conservative Leavers have each sought political homes in which to complete what they see as unfinished business.

YouGov polling in early 2026 suggested that how people voted on Brexit is a key predictor of how they would vote in this year’s elections. Some 50% of those who voted Leave in 2016 intended to back Reform this year. Among Remainers, the largest number (28%) say that they will vote Labour, but both the Greens and the Liberal Democrats each have around a fifth of the Remainer vote, making them the largest political home for those who opposed Brexit ten years ago.

The results of these elections say a lot about how much voters are tired of the old incumbents and continue to dwell on changes that Brexit promised or threatened. In terms of how councils will be run between now and the next local elections, during a period of constrained public spending, hollowing out of services and energy insecurity, this election campaign has had precious little to say.

Stephen Coleman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. English local elections 2026: a story of a new kind of politics – https://theconversation.com/english-local-elections-2026-a-story-of-a-new-kind-of-politics-282409

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate Editor, The Conversation

In his 1873 book On War, the great Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz wrote that: “War is the realm of uncertainty.” He would have been at home in Washington this week where Clausewitz’s “fog of war” appears to have descended on the White House, at times obscuring reality.

On Tuesday, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, briefed reporters that the US plan was to get the Strait of Hormuz “back to the way it was: anyone can use it, no mines in the water, nobody paying tolls”.

This was, of course, the way things were before the war actually started.

But uncertainty about what this war was actually all about has been a hallmark of the past two months. When the conflict began on the last day of February, the US said it was about preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Although the US president, Donald Trump, added a layer of complexity by saying it was also about regime change.

Trump’s closest ally, the Israeli prime minister, added another later by insisting this was also about getting rid of Iran’s ballistic missiles and launchers and neutralising its proxies in the region.

Christian Emery, an expert in international relations at University College London – who specialises in US-Iranian affairs – sees this lack of coherence about what the war is for as underscoring “that this entire enterprise has been a colossal strategic failure”.

As things stand it now appears possible that an interim deal could well open the Strait of Hormuz to allow the global economy to return to something like normal. But the main reasons the US and Israel launched the war are unlikely to be resolved any time soon and the episode has proved to Tehran – and the rest of the world – that Iran can use its geography to its strategic advantage whenever it chooses.

---

Read more:
Trump administration claiming a ‘win’ against Iran – here’s a report card

---

For Bamo Nouri and Inderjeet Parmar, experts in international security at City St George’s Unversity of London – who have been regular contributors to our coverage of the conflict – the episode has been an object lesson in the limits of power. The US and Israel exercised considerable military superiority to Iran and have used it to devastating effect. But this is not how conflict works in the 21st century.

The US and Israel were chasing different outcomes so there was no strategic coherence to their war aims. And they underestimated Iran’s durability under pressure. Iran didn’t need to win, just to endure. “As the war progressed” they write, “the fantasy of decisive victory collapsed under the weight of economic, political and strategic reality”.

---

Read more:
Iran war has become a lesson in how power really works

---

Interestingly, the Trump administration is now saying that Operation Epic Fury finished about a month ago. US forces are now engaged in Project Freedom, a humanitarian operation to help ships stranded in the Strait of Hormuz to transit the waterway.

As Andrew Gawthorpe, an expert in US foreign policy from Leiden University, notes, this change of emphasis appeared to emerge as Republicans in Congress were insisting that the administration was legally obliged under the War Powers Act to seek authorisation for the conflict.

Gawthorpe believes the war’s unpopularity is allowing Congress to claw back some of the influence it had over the way the US uses its military.

---

Read more:
US declares war in Iran ‘over’ to avoid row with Congress over whether it was legal

---

As we’ve noted before, the main theme of the past few weeks, since the US launched its blockade of Iranian ports to match Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, is which side can absorb more pain and pressure. US consumers are facing increased prices at the gas pumps which has fed through to a higher inflation rate generally.

But the headline US CPI increase of 3.3% last month is dwarfed by inflation in Iran which is reported to have hit 50%. It’s worth noting that it was inflation and the general economic malaise which kicked off the huge protests that wracked Iran in January.

More pressingly, Iran’s inability to export its oil thanks to the US blockade means that sooner of later it will need to close down its oil production. As engineers and oil production experts Nima Shokri and Martin J Blunt explain, this can be done, but it’s by no means easy and risks seriously damaging the wells.

---

Read more:
Shutting Iran’s oil wells may be straightforward – but the consequences are not

---

Global affair

They’ll be watching this all very closely in Beijing of course. The US president is due to visit Beijing next week to meet Xi Jinping for the first time since the two met on the sidelines of the Apec conference in South Korea last October.

So it was interesting to see that Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, visited Beijing this week to meet with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi. In normal times, China buys between 80% and 90% of Iran’s seaborne oil exports – and it has been very clear that it wants to see the Strait of Hormuz opened and “a complete cessation of fighting…without delay”.

But China-watcher Tom Harper of the University of East London, believes that Beijing can see advantages in the US getting bogged down in a fullscale war in the Middle East and might go as far as to offer military support to Tehran if that happens. While China has denied providing shoulder-launched Manpad missiles to Iran, Tehran is using its BeiDou satellite navigational system (a sort of Chinese GPS) to aim its missiles.

If you find these expert takes on an increasingly dangerous world useful, please consider supporting us with a donation.

Wang also said that China recognises Iran’s “legitimate right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy” – something it sees as a sovereignty issue. Which should all make for an interesting encounter between Trump and the Chinese president, Xi Jinping (if the trip goes ahead, that is).

---

Read more:
China has played a key role in the Iran war – and will continue to do so

---

The surprise player in all this has been Pakistan, writes Natasha Lindstaedt, an international affairs expert at the University of Essex. But as Lindstaedt points out, Pakistan has a long diplomatic track record with both the US and Iran. In 1981, two years after Washington and Tehran severed relations in the wake of the revolution that brought the Islamic Republic into being, Pakistan established a dedicated section of its Washington embassy to handling Iranian affairs in the US.

Washington and Islamabad have had their ups and downs, but things have grown closer with Trump in the White House – and Pakistan has tried to do all the right things to court Trump, including nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize and joining his board of peace. Lindstaedt walks us through this intriguing ménage à trois.

---

Read more:
How Pakistan became the primary mediator between the US and Iran

---

– ref. Iran war has shown the limits of US power – https://theconversation.com/iran-war-has-shown-the-limits-of-us-power-282421

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sorin M.S. Krammer, Professor of Strategy and International Business, University of Southampton

Until recently, AI’s role in research felt like having a useful assistant. It could summarise a paper, clean up a dataset or draft an abstract. Researchers were still in charge of the thinking.

That changed in late 2025 when cutting-edge “frontier” AI models became capable of reasoning and planning reliably by themselves. A key feature of these models is “tool calling” – the ability to interact with external tools in order to act on the world, not just describe it.

This marks the rise of agentic AI: systems that do not just respond to instructions but can independently plan, execute and iterate. In science as in other fields, chatbots have become coworkers that can autonomously complete real work, end to end.

An example of this is Tokyo-based Sakana AI’s The AI Scientist. Unveiled in mid-2025 and now in its second iteration, the Japanese tech company bills this as “the first comprehensive system for fully automatic scientific discovery”.

The AI Scientist scans existing literature, generates hypotheses, writes and executes code, analyses results and produces a full research paper – largely without human involvement. It reasons, fails and revises, just as a junior scientist would.

The proof? An AI Scientist academic paper describing “a pipeline for automating the entire scientific process end to end” was accepted by the International Conference on Learning Representations and published in the scientific journal Nature in March 2026, following peer review.

This represents something genuinely new: an autonomous AI system passing a milder version of the Turing test by demonstrating scientific quality, if not (yet) machine intelligence.

Other significant achievements include Singapore-based startup Analemma carrying out a live demonstration of its Fully Automated Research System (Fars) in February. It produced 166 complete machine-learning research papers in roughly 417 hours for around US$1,100 (£810). That’s one academic paper every 2.5 hours at a cost that would sustain a research assistant for a couple of weeks.

And Google Cloud AI Research recently unveiled PaperOrchestra, which takes a researcher’s raw experimental logs and rough notes and converts them into a submission-ready manuscript, with figures and verified citations. In blind evaluations by 11 AI researchers, it easily outperformed existing autonomous systems in this area.

Having spent two decades researching disruptive technological innovations, I believe a significant threshold has been crossed. While there is a way to go before AI systems match the very best human-produced work, the era of fully automated research has arrived.

Implications for academia

The arrival of autonomous research systems lands on an academic system under severe strain in many countries. Over the last decade, the number of papers submitted to academic journals has grown much faster than the pool of qualified peer reviewers, leading to suggestions that the science publication system is being “overwhelmed”.

If systems like Fars can produce thousands of papers per year, the publication infrastructure of science faces a volume it was never designed to handle. Some academic reviews have already been identified as using AI-generated content. As submission numbers continue to rise, this may alter the role of a published academic paper as a definitive signal of the quality and skills of human researchers.

An optimistic take is that AI may shift academia away from its strong reliance on quantity-based metrics, in favour of how influential or innovative publications are. This is a reform critics of the current system have long called for.

Less optimistically, as AI research scales up, an academic system designed for coherent, methodologically defensible contributions may inflate the proportion of incremental, rather than radically novel, scientific contributions. Both the quality and originality of research could suffer as a result.

Science has always needed its heretics to advance. Italian astronomer Galileo, the “father of modern science”, was forced to recant his defence of heliocentrism before the Catholic Church’s Inquisition. Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis died in a psychiatric institution having failed to convince his colleagues that handwashing could save lives.

Yet historically, the ability of scientific institutions to encourage radical approaches has also been a mainstaple of how science has progressed. To sustain this, AI systems will need to be trained to maximise novelty and transformation, rather than plausibility and incremental progress.

AI’s impact on creative industries

The transformative effects of this new breeed of AI extend well beyond scientific research. A striking example is The Epstein Files. This fully AI-generated podcast reached number one the UK Apple Podcasts and Spotify charts in early 2026, drawing 700,000 downloads in its first week.

Music is further along and more conflicted. By mid-2025, the fully AI-generated band The Velvet Sundown had amassed over a million monthly Spotify listeners. In 2026, the platform was forced to introduce artist-protection features after AI tracks began displacing human music on popular playlists, while Deezer, facing roughly 50,000 AI-generated uploads daily, began excluding them from curated lists.

Ownership remains the elephant in the room. US courts have ruled that AI-generated works cannot be copyrighted, since human authorship remains a legal requirement. AI can produce at industrial scale, but no one can own the output legally.

This matters far beyond intellectual property law. In creative industries, it threatens the royalty streams, licensing deals and catalogue valuations on which artists, labels and publishers have built their entire business models for generations.

In science, meanwhile, it is destabilising the entire incentive architecture, which rests on the foundational assumption that knowledge is both generated and owned by humans. When that assumption dissolves, so does much of the institutional logic that has governed how we produce, reward and trust expertise.

The question, across all these fields, is no longer whether AI can produce the work. Rather, it is whether sufficient thought has gone into what we will gain and lose when it does.

Sorin M.S. Krammer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The AI scientist: now academic papers can be fully automated, what does this mean for the future of research? – https://theconversation.com/the-ai-scientist-now-academic-papers-can-be-fully-automated-what-does-this-mean-for-the-future-of-research-282161

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Natasha Lindstaedt, Professor in the Department of Government, University of Essex

Pakistan has emerged as a central diplomatic broker in the conflict between the US and Iran. When announcing a pause to the US operation to guide stranded vessels through the Strait of Hormuz on May 6, Donald Trump said he had made the decision “based on the request of Pakistan”.

The Pakistani prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, subsequently expressed hope “that the current momentum will lead to a lasting agreement that secures durable peace and stability for the region and beyond”. This latest intervention comes a month after Pakistan secured its biggest diplomatic win in years by brokering a ceasefire in Iran.

But how did Pakistan emerge as the most trustworthy mediator in this conflict, and what drove Islamabad to involve itself? Pakistan’s biggest advantage is that it enjoys relationships with both the US and Iran, which has helped it be seen as a neutral party by each side.

Pakistan has worked with the US in dealing with Iran for decades. Since 1981, two years after the US and Iran severed diplomatic ties following the Islamic revolution, a dedicated section of the Pakistani embassy in Washington has handled Iranian diplomatic affairs in the US.

Pakistan has also worked with the US in mediation efforts elsewhere. Most notably, it facilitated former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger’s secret visit to China in 1971. This paved the way for the normalisation of relations between the US and China later that decade.

Relations between the US and Pakistan have not always been smooth. In 2011, a decade after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Atlantic magazine in the US referred to Pakistan as the “ally from hell”. Whether or not it did so knowingly, Pakistan hosted al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden following the attack.

Trump himself also denied Pakistan military aid during his first term as president, saying it was not doing enough to combat terrorism. And Pakistan’s human rights record, particularly concerning democratic backsliding and restrictions on civil liberties, have at times led to tension with the US government.

However, Pakistan’s relationship with the US has improved markedly in Trump’s second term. Trump, who often uses personal ties to guide US foreign policy, has developed a strong relationship with Sharif and the chief of Pakistan’s army, Asim Munir. In June 2025, Munir was even invited to the White House for a private lunch. This was the first time a US president had hosted a non-head of state military leader at this level.

Pakistan’s recent efforts to court Trump have played a key role in building these ties. Over the past year Pakistan has nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, joined his Board of Peace and launched a collaboration with his World Liberty Financial crypto platform.

And in July, Islamabad signed a deal with the US to allow Washington to help develop Pakistan’s largely untapped oil reserves. “We read him [Trump] right,” said the former chairman of the Pakistani Senate’s Defense Committee, Mushahid Hussain Syed, in an interview with the Washington Post on April 20.

The relationship between Pakistan and Iran has also been characterised by ups and downs. While Iran was the first country to recognise Pakistan’s independence in 1947, their relationship has often been fraught with tension. This largely stems from Iran’s territorial claim to the Balochistan province of Pakistan, as well as from Pakistan’s ties with Iranian rivals.

As recently as January 2024, tensions between the two countries appeared to be escalating again over Balochistan. However, hostilities soon receded and both countries formally resumed their bilateral ties. They subsequently expanded their security cooperation and invited each other’s ambassadors and foreign ministers for a formal reconciliation ceremony.

Strategic necessity

Some commentators argue that Pakistan’s decision to step in as the primary mediator in Iran has been driven by strategic necessity. Its Balochistan province is currently grappling with an insurgency. Islamabad will thus want to avoid a situation where the Iran war spills into Pakistan, as this could destabilise its border regions even further.

There are also economic reasons explaining Pakistan’s involvement. Pakistan has been severely affected by the disruption to Gulf shipping. It imports between 85% and 90% of its crude oil from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and almost 99% of its liquified gas from the UAE and Qatar.

Before the war broke out, Pakistan’s economy had been starting to gain momentum. But higher oil prices are now affecting government revenues, increasing its fuel import bill from US$300 million (£220 million) before the conflict to US$800 million now. Pakistan’s authorities have been forced to raise consumer fuel prices by more than 50%.

Pakistan’s agricultural sector, which employs around 40% of the country’s population, is also vulnerable to the conflict due to its reliance on fertiliser imported through the Strait of Hormuz. Prices of urea fertiliser have surged by 50% since the war broke out. Prolonged disruption to the agriculture sector risks plunging some of the most vulnerable people in Pakistan further into poverty.

Remittances are another area that could be affected by a protracted conflict, with as many as five million Pakistani people living in the Gulf region. Pakistan received roughly US$30 billion in remittances between 2025 and 2026, 54% of which came from the Gulf.

If the war continues to affect Gulf economies, many Pakistani workers may be forced to return home. This will cause remittance revenues to fall, depriving Pakistan of a vital source of foreign exchange, while simultaneously pushing up domestic unemployment.

Pakistan’s relationships with the US and Iran put it in a strong position to intervene in the conflict diplomatically. But its mediation has also been a calculated effort to stabilise its borders and protect its economy.

Natasha Lindstaedt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How Pakistan became the primary mediator between the US and Iran – https://theconversation.com/how-pakistan-became-the-primary-mediator-between-the-us-and-iran-282342

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Bamo Nouri, Honorary Research Fellow, Department of International Politics, City St George’s, University of London

For months, the Iran war was framed through the language of military success. This was shaped in part by longstanding orientalist assumptions reflected in the rhetoric of leaders such as Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu about the relative weakness and fragility of states such as Iran.

Encouraged by Israeli intelligence capabilities, precision strikes and overwhelming American military superiority, many policymakers appeared to assume Tehran would eventually collapse under pressure. Iran, in this view, was too isolated, internally divided and economically weakened to withstand sustained US-Israeli escalation. Some even suggested American troops would be welcomed by sections of a population frustrated with the regime.

But this hasn’t been the reality of the past two months. The Trump administration now appears to be groping for any settlement it can sell as a “win”. This may be hard if, as has been reported, the US military campaign ends without Iran being forced to make any meaningful concessions over its nuclear programme.

If that transpires, it will suggest that the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, was right when he said that the US has been humiliated by Iran in a lesson about how power really works.

The problem was not simply military miscalculation. It was strategic incoherence rooted in assumption that Iran could not meaningfully endure prolonged confrontation. As the war progressed, the fantasy of decisive victory collapsed under the weight of economic, political and strategic reality.

No clear objective

At the same time, at least in public, America’s leadership appeared regularly to change its mind about what would represent a “win”. Was it destroying Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, neutralising its armed forces, forcing regime change, or ending Tehran’s regional influence? Throughout the conflict, the objectives shifted constantly. That ambiguity was not a minor flaw in strategy. It was the strategy’s central weakness.

Modern wars require a clear objective and a realistic path to achieving it. Throughout this conflict, the US and Israel never convincingly defined either.

If the aim was regime change, there was never serious appetite for the kind of occupation and state reconstruction that had in Iraq and Afghanistan already proved disastrously costly.

If the aim was simply degrading Iran’s military capabilities, that was always going to be a temporary fix – Iran has spent decades building a system designed around resilience, decentralisation and survival under pressure.

And if the aim was to end Iran’s role as a regional power, that has clearly failed. Iran remains intact. Its institutions survived and were able to install a new generation of leadership. And, as we’ve seen over Tehran’s ability to control the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s strategic relevance survived.

This was never going to be a conventional war about controlling territory. It was a clash between two very different understandings of victory. The US and Israel wanted a decisive and demonstrable victory. Iran wanted to endure. That distinction changed the entire war and handed the strategic advantage to Tehran.

Iran understood something many policymakers in Washington continue to underestimate: weaker states do not necessarily need to defeat stronger powers militarily in order to succeed. They simply need to avoid collapse while imposing sufficient economic, political and strategic costs that the stronger actor eventually recalculates.

This is not a new lesson. It runs through modern history, from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Superior military power does not automatically produce political victory. But more importantly, the conflict also revealed the increasing cost of escalation in an interconnected global economy.

Global battlefield

The war’s consequences spread across the global economy as oil prices surged, shipping routes faced disruption and already fragile supply chains came under renewed pressure. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz – through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s seaborne oil supply passes – was enough to trigger market anxiety. Iran does not need to fully close the strait to create economic shockwaves. In the modern global economy, uncertainty itself is a weapon.

The longer the war continued, the harder it was to remain politically sustainable – not just regionally, but globally. That is why, despite aggressive rhetoric, neither side now appears eager to return to full-scale war.

There is a broader lesson here that western powers repeatedly struggle to absorb: military power can destroy infrastructure and impose suffering, but it cannot easily manufacture legitimacy, political order or strategic clarity. That is why “winning” modern wars has become increasingly elusive even for the most powerful states on earth. Wars without realistic theories of victory tend to end the same way: through exhaustion, recalculation and negotiation. That increasingly appears to be where this conflict is heading.

The limits of power

Perhaps the greatest irony of the Iran war is that all sides now appear to recognise what should have been obvious from the beginning: total victory was never truly achievable. The war became a demonstration – not of the absence of power, but of its limits.

That matters in an increasingly fragmented global order where wars are becoming less about decisive triumph and more about endurance. States shaped by sanctions and prolonged isolation often develop a capacity to absorb pressure beyond what outside powers anticipate. Iran’s resilience was not created during this war. It was built over decades.

Military superiority still matters enormously. But the ability to endure politically, economically and socially matter just as much. Iran is a state with a complex, resilient structure, and depth of legitimacy especially when it comes to conflicts with the US and Israel. Iran understood that from the beginning.

It has taken Iran’s opponents too long to grasp the same facts. But they have now been educated by experience.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Iran war has become a lesson in how power really works – https://theconversation.com/iran-war-has-become-a-lesson-in-how-power-really-works-282391

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Christian Emery, Associate Professor in International Politics, UCL

Two months into the war in Iran, the reasons the US gave for launching this conflict – and Washington’s minimum criteria for claiming success – now appear unintelligible. So much so that US officials are now arguing the war had actually ended in America’s favour almost a month ago, when the ceasefire came into effect.

It is hard to think of a more damning indictment of Donald Trump’s catastrophic war in Iran than the spectacle of his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, telling reporters on May 5 that the main goal now was to get the Strait of Hormuz “back to the way it was: anyone can use it, no mines in the water, nobody paying tolls”.

This, he argued, was an entirely separate defensive and humanitarian operation and would only become a war if US ships came under fire – which they in fact did that same day. Rubio ignored the obvious contradiction that the humanitarian operation had been necessitated by the very war he was simultaneously presenting as already won.

Things took an even more absurd turn later that day. Trump announced he was suspending “Project Freedom”, his plan for the US Navy to escort tankers out of the strait, after just one day. The US president cited “great progress” toward an agreement with Iran. As has happened several times now, global stock markets rallied before falling back again.

While few doubt Trump is desperate to put this disastrous war behind him, particularly before heading to Beijing on May 14, he massively oversold the impression of a breakthrough. The Iranians were merely considering a 14-point proposal for 30 days of negotiations aimed at finding a durable end to the war.

The more convincing reason Trump abandoned Project Freedom is that it was already clear it would not solve the crisis. Most owners of the 1,500 ships currently stranded behind the strait were unwilling to risk passage even with a naval escort. Iran’s response, attacking shipping and launching missiles at the United Arab Emirates, also threatened the ceasefire itself.

Washington’s problem is that the Iranians will probably insist talks can only begin, and the Strait of Hormuz reopen, if Trump agrees to end the economic blockade of Iranian maritime trade. The US blockade is inflicting serious damage on the Iranian economy.

Apart from anything else, Iranian officials see ending the blockade as logical reciprocity. But they also understand time is running out before the closure of the strait causes lasting structural damage to the global economy – if it has not already. This gives them enhanced leverage at the moment.

Yet even if negotiations begin, the same problem that prevented a deal before the war remains. Trump lacks the detailed and institutionalised policy apparatus of his predecessor, Barack Obama, whose 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran the current US president so desperately wants to outdo. Obama’s deal took 20 months of intense wrangling to complete. Trump has neither the patience, technical expertise or direct diplomatic connections to achieve the same.

Added to this are new conditions created by the war itself. The fragmentation of Iran’s decision-making process and the empowerment of elites with an even higher tolerance for military and economic pressure have introduced uncertainty into the equation. And Iran has now realised the increased leverage it has through its ability to close a critical artery of the global economy.

Colossal failure

The answer on the nuclear issue may lie in a fudge. Iran could well agree to a moratorium on uranium enrichment while not yet agreeing to ship out or dilute its enriched uranium – though without ruling that out in order to prolong negotiations.

If slightly more moderate heads in Tehran prevail – and that remains a very big if – it would be an obvious concession to make. Iran’s geographic advantages and ballistic missile capabilities have established a credible deterrent against future attack.

The question is whether anything short of total surrender on the nuclear issue is acceptable to Trump, and whether he is willing to resist inevitable Israeli opposition to blurring this red line. If not, he has already threatened to resume bombing at a “much higher intensity” than before.

Yet there are serious doubts about whether he has the stomach for this. And even if he does, it is difficult to see how any amount of US and Israeli bombing can force the Iranian regime to surrender.

Trump’s shifting aims for the war and desperate scramble for an exit underscore that this entire enterprise has been a colossal strategic failure. It will define his legacy, reshape the Middle East and impose further misery on the Iranian people – the very opposite of what he has repeatedly said he wants to do.

The war has has shattered confidence among US regional allies that Washington can protect them. It has also alienated traditional US allies who were blamed and then punished for failing to solve a problem they neither created nor could resolve. The US and Israeli attacks have further entrenched a brutal regime that will now be even harder to negotiate with, while completely marginalising moderate voices inside Iran.

If negotiations can prevail, the successes the US president and his advisers trumpet – the destruction of parts of Iran’s military-industrial capacity and navy – are real. Though in the former case probably only temporary and in the latter, demonstrably not critical for maintaining freedom of navigation.

The only positive is that Trump’s brief experiment with military adventurism, an aberration even within his own muddled political trajectory, may now be ending.

Christian Emery does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Trump administration claiming a ‘win’ against Iran – here’s a report card – https://theconversation.com/trump-administration-claiming-a-win-against-iran-heres-a-report-card-282294

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Adriana Marin, Lecturer in International Relations, Coventry University

Netflix’s latest drama Legends offers a compelling window into the criminology of undercover policing, covert surveillance and organised crime.

Inspired by a real UK customs investigation, the six-part drama follows ordinary British customs officers sent deep undercover to infiltrate drug trafficking gangs.

Written by Neil Forsyth (also creator of Brink’s-Mat robbery drama The Gold), Legends balances tension and realism with a measured, slow-burn pace that prioritises character over spectacle. Steve Coogan plays Don, a former undercover police officer tasked with recruiting customs officers to go undercover themselves to infiltrate drug gangs.

Much of its strength rests on the central performance of Tom Burke, whose portrayal of the lead undercover officer, Guy, anchors the series emotionally. Burke brings a quiet intensity to the role, capturing the unease, vulnerability, and moral ambiguity of someone living between identities.

The supporting cast also does an exceptional job, reinforcing the drama’s grounded and realistic tone, capturing the collective pressure, uncertainty and emotional toll of undercover work.

Becoming a legend

Unlike elite operatives, these are everyday officials thrust into extraordinary criminal worlds, making the series not just gripping television, but a sharp exploration of how undercover work reshapes identity, morality and survival.

The title itself is significant. In undercover policing, a “legend” is the carefully constructed false identity, complete with backstory, relationships, habits and a believable past. These identities must withstand intense scrutiny from criminals, meaning success depends on absolute credibility.

In Legends, officers must abandon their real selves and convincingly live as criminals to gain trust. This demands constant performance, producing intense psychological strain as loyalty to the state clashes with the need to belong within a criminal world.

In criminology, this reflects the concept of identity conflict. Undercover officers must operate simultaneously as agents of the law and participants in deviance. Howard Becker’s labelling theory is particularly relevant here: labels do not simply describe behaviour – they shape it.

To be effective, officers must adopt the identity of the “criminal,” often participating in minor illegality or forming close ties with offenders. As former undercover cop Don explains, “Your legend has to come from you, or it won’t work,” emphasising that a convincing undercover identity cannot simply be performed, it must feel authentic and internally lived to be believable.

Psychological unravelling

The result is moral ambiguity, where the line between observation and complicity becomes increasingly unstable. As seen in Donnie Brasco (1997) and The Departed, (2006) prolonged immersion can erode the boundary between professional duty and personal identity, leading not to control, but fragmentation.

Legends appears to centre on this psychological unravelling. These are not distant professionals but ordinary individuals removed from everyday life, required to deceive family and colleagues while facing the constant threat of exposure. This is particularly evident with Guy, who appears increasingly weighed down by the demands of sustaining his legend.

Even in controlled situations, there is a sense of constant vigilance in his interactions – carefully measured responses, restrained body language, and an underlying tension that suggests the effort required to remain convincing. At the same time, brief glimpses of his life beyond the operation hint at growing emotional distance, reinforcing how the undercover role begins to dominate his identity.

Criminologists describe this as role contamination, where it stops being a performance and begins to reshape the real self. The deeper the infiltration, the harder it becomes to return.

The criminal world they enter is equally significant. The series focuses on drug gangs, which links directly to organised crime theory. Drug trafficking organisations are not chaotic groups of offenders, but structured systems with hierarchies, codes of loyalty and mechanisms of control. Trust is currency; betrayal is often fatal.

For undercover officers, success depends on understanding not just who controls the drugs, but who controls fear, respect and power. This aligns with criminal enterprise theory, which argues that organised crime emerges in response to market demand.

Drug trafficking persists because prohibition generates profitable black markets, and criminal groups operate much like businesses within them. In this sense, Legends is not simply about crime, but about parallel economies embedded within society – where criminals may wield more immediate authority than the state.

In many communities, organised crime groups provide forms of protection, employment and dispute resolution where trust in formal institutions is weak. Drug gangs can become alternative authorities. For undercover officers, this makes infiltration even more complex because they must navigate a world where legitimacy is not automatically attached to the police or the government.

Instead, loyalty may belong to the gang leader who provides security or income. As it goes on, Legends is likely to show how dangerous this balance becomes when officers must earn trust in a system built on suspicion.

Legends also raises pressing ethical questions. Undercover policing relies on deception, manipulation and at times emotional exploitation. Officers may form relationships with people who are unaware they are being investigated, blurring the boundaries of acceptable state power.

If the law depends on deception to enforce itself, where should the limits lie? As films like Sicario (2015) suggest, the pursuit of justice can itself become morally compromised. Legends will probably explore this moral uncertainty, showing that successful infiltration often comes at a personal and ethical cost.

Ultimately, Legends is far more than a crime drama about drug gangs. It is a study of how states confront organised crime by constructing false identities and sending ordinary people into extraordinary danger.

This makes Legends not only compelling television, but also a valuable exploration of policing, identity, organised crime, and the hidden moral costs of state power.

Adriana Marin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Legends: new undercover drama explores tense clash between state loyalty and criminal credibility – https://theconversation.com/legends-new-undercover-drama-explores-tense-clash-between-state-loyalty-and-criminal-credibility-282309

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anna Turns, Senior Environment Editor, The Conversation

We’re launching a new poetry award to bring science and creativity closer together. Too often, research can stay locked in academic language – but poetry offers a powerful way to make ideas felt, not just understood. This prize is for UK and Ireland-based researchers who want to explore the climate crisis through a different lens, blending insight with imagination to reach wider audiences and spark new conversations.

For this competition – the first of its kind for The Conversation – we are inviting academics to write a poem inspired by climate change research.

The climate crisis is also a communications challenge: how do we tell stories that move people, not just to fear the future, but to imagine and build a better one? That question sits at the heart of our climate storytelling series, and it’s what we want you to consider when writing your poem. The Conversation UK’s climate poetry award 2026 is all about bringing research to life in a different way.

Whether you’re an experienced poet or completely new to writing poetry, we want to hear your perspective on climate change. Your poem can draw on your own research, the work of others or your general field of expertise. Entrants to this competition must be enrolled in a research position at a university in the UK or Ireland. Poems must be minimum of three lines, maximum of 40 lines. No prior poetry experience is required.

The competition will kick off with a free introductory climate poetry workshop led by poet Professor Sam Illingworth of Edinburgh Napier University on May 13. Entries close on September 1 2026 (11.59pm BST).

The poems will be reviewed by a panel of judges: Senior Environment Editor Anna Turns, Senior Arts and Culture Editor Anna Walker and Professor Sam Illingworth. The winner will be selected from a shortlist by award-winning poet Professor Helen Mort, of Manchester Metropolitan University. Judges will be looking for creativity, a point of view and clarity of research communication.

---

Who can enter: UK and Ireland-based academics currently enrolled in a research position (including PhD candidates, postdoctoral scholars and lecturers).

What to submit: A climate-themed poem (3–40 lines) and a supporting statement of up to 250 words on the research that inspired it.

Entry window: Open for entries now until September 1 2026 (11.59pm BST).

How to enter: Via the official submission form.

Workshop: Free online climate poetry workshop on May 13 2026

Prizes: First prize: five-day stay at The Little Goat Barn Writing Retreat (North Wales). Shortlisted poems published in a The Conversation ebook anthology.

Judges: Anna Turns, Anna Walker, Professor Sam Illingworth

Final winner selected by: Professor Helen Mort

In need of inspiration? Check out some of our favourite climate poems.

---

The prizes

Shortlisted entries will be published in an ebook by The Conversation UK in the autumn.

The winner will be hosted for five days at the Little Goat Barn Writing Retreat, in the peaceful and beautiful countryside of the Vale of Conwy in North Wales courtesy of The Ruppin Agency. They’ll be welcomed and fully catered for by husband and wife Dr Emma Claire Sweeney, author and creative writing lecturer, and Jonathan Ruppin, former literary agent and bookseller.

While there, they will have access to the 5,000-volume library, full of places to read, write and relax, and housed in a 400-year-old converted barn vaulted with the timbers of an ancient ship – as well as space to write in their room if they prefer. As well as socialising with a small group of other writers, other activities such as hill walks, wild swimming and a film night will be on offer. See terms and conditions for full details.

The judges

Sam Illingworth is a full professor at Edinburgh Napier University, where his research and practise involve using poetry and generative AI to explore connections between science and society.

“This competition is a great way of exploring the different ways in which scientists can communicate their work outside of traditional academic publishing,” says Illingworth. “Poetry is, in my opinion, an extremely effective way of developing empathy for a subject. I hope that in writing and reading poems about the climate crisis, researchers can better understand the impact that their work is having on different audiences.”

Helen Mort is a professor of creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
She has published four poetry collections with Chatto & Windus and her work has won awards in the UK and Canada.

In 2024, she wrote a poetry collection called Field Notes during a research expedition to Greenland with climate scientists from Manchester Met University. These poems explored the emotional and sensory effects of the changing landscape they experienced while investigating climate change.

Enter your poem here

Terms & Conditions 2026 – please read carefully.

Many thanks to our sponsor for this competition, Little Goat Barn Writing Retreat.

– ref. Introducing The Conversation Climate Poetry Award – for UK and Ireland-based academics – https://theconversation.com/introducing-the-conversation-climate-poetry-award-for-uk-and-ireland-based-academics-281591