- ‘All the signals are that a US attack is imminent,’ Western military official says
- Trump says he believes the crackdown on protesters is easing
- US withdrawing some personnel from bases in Middle East as precaution, official says
- Israeli assessment sees US intervening, timing and scope unclear
- Western official: Iranian security apparatus remains in control
World
British PM seeks election Hail Mary with youth national service plan: 'Last attempt to fix a broken nation'
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has promised to institute a national service requirement should the Conservative Party win the general election on July 4.
“The appeal of the idea is particularly geared to more right wing voters who might have been leaning to vote for the Reform Party and may now switch back to Conservative,” Alan Mendoza, co-founder and executive director of the Henry Jackson Society, told Fox News Digital.
Sunak last week announced that the U.K. would have a general election, catching many in his own party off-guard. He made the announcement alone, standing in the rain outside the prime minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street while the 1997 Labour Campaign theme “Things Can Only Get Better” played in the background.
Sunak has since then started laying out his proposal for the next phase of his government should he win the general election — a feat that appears increasingly difficult as the polling puts the rival Labour Party ahead by around 20 points and the Conservatives look to replace some 77 MPs who have decided not to run for re-election, according to The Institute For Government.
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Chief among the prime minister’s proposals is the eye-catching national service requirement, which the U.K. abandoned as a practice around 60 years ago: The last mandatory service requirements occurred after World War II and ended in 1960.
The previous national service requirement meant 18 months of military training and four years on the reserve list, which would allow the government to draft citizens on short notice, according to the BBC.
Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak greets members of various British troops as he visits troops at the Julius Leber Barracks to meet troops and see military equipment on April 24, 2024 in Berlin, Germany. (Henry Nicholls/WPA Pool/Getty Images)
The new scheme would provide 18-year-olds with the choice to participate in either community volunteering one weekend every month for a year (totaling 25 days) in a service such as the National Health Service (NHS), fire brigade, ambulance service, search and rescue or critical local infrastructure or a year-long military participation in areas such as logistics, cybersecurity, procurement or civil response operations.
The Conservatives would establish a Royal Commission to design the program, with a pilot scheme accepting applicants in September 2025 with plans for a national rollout by 2029, The Telegraph reported.
Police officers detain a person as disruptors target shops during a shoplifting spree flash mob on Oxford Street in London, Britain, on Aug. 9, 2023. (Reuters/Suzanne Plunkett)
A YouGov poll from last year found around 45% both supporting and opposing any compulsory program, while the majority would support some voluntary version of the scheme.
British Home Secretary James Cleverly insisted the government would not force anyone to complete military training as part of their service, saying during an appearance on Sky News’ Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips: “There’s going to be no criminal sanction. There’s no one going to jail over this.”
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“This is about dealing with what we know to be the case, which is social fragmentation,” Cleverly said. “Too many young people live in a bubble within their own communities. They don’t mix with people of different religions. They don’t mix with different viewpoints.”
Cleverly said the scheme would seek funding from around $1.27 billion out of a possible $7.5 billion gained through a crackdown on tax avoidance and evasion, with Conservatives estimating that the scheme would require around $3.2 billion a year by the end of the decade, The Guardian reported.
Sunak has consistently faced criticism for “no longer representing right-wing people in the U.K.,” according to former Boris Johnson adviser Thomas Corbett-Dillon, but Mendoza argued that this new policy is an effort to appeal to that more hardline voter base.
“National Service tends to be a very popular idea with British voters,” Mendoza said. “The Conservative Party’s conceptualization of it has less to do with the 1950s imagery that has been derided by some commentators and much more with the Scandinavian models currently in use that stress responsible citizenship.”
Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer delivers a speech to supporters, members and local people during his visit to Lancing in West Sussex, while on the General Election campaign trail on May 27, 2024. (Stefan Rousseau/PA Images via Getty Images)
“All the evidence in those countries suggests young people view it as an essential part of their transition to adulthood, as well as teaching useful skills and community spirit,” Mendoza added.
Nigel Farage, the honorary president of Reform U.K., argued that the national service scheme aimed to appeal to his voters, as Reform and the Conservatives fight over voters in the upcoming election.
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“You follow what the focus groups say — you say, by doing this I can attack the Reform vote,” Farage told Sky News. “That’s what it’s all about. And look, it’s totally impractical. The army has shrunk from 100,000 to 75,000 in 14 years of Conservatism.”
However, Corbett-Dillon argued that the effort will not prove successful, ridiculing the government for resorting to a “last ditch attempt” to stoke patriotism, only for it to backfire.
Former MEP and Honorary President of the Reform UK party Nigel Farage speaks during the National Conservatism conference in Brussels, Tuesday, April 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
“So the government, in a last ditch attempt to fix a broken nation, suggested a National Service to bring the people together, an opportunity to serve your nation, to give back, to ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” Corbett-Dillon said. “And what happened? The new ‘multicultural’ generation laughed the whole thing off, ‘Why would I serve a country I hate?’ was the common message across social media.”
“The fact that the United Kingdom can’t even implement a national service shows you that it is now a failed nation — all thanks to ‘multiculturalism,’” he added, blasting the Conservatives as being “really Democrats” and claiming that Sunak would “very quickly take up a lavish Silicon Valley job” when he loses the upcoming election, pointing to former Deputy PM Nick Clegg, who now serves as the President of Global Affairs for Facebook.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer ridiculed the idea as just another of the “endless spinning around that Tory governments have subjected” the U.K. voters to over the past few years, arguing that the Conservatives present “a new plan every week, a new strategy every month.”
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Police and large groups of young people in Oxford Circus hours after the mass TikTok crime was due to take place in London on Aug. 9, 2023. ( Matthew Chattle/Alamy Live News)
“All this spinning round and round — it’s symbolic of the chaos and instability,” Starmer said during a keynote speech delivered in West Sussex as he gets his party’s campaign into gear. “You’ve seen it over the past few days with the desperation of this national service policy.”
Starmer claimed that the policy would receive funding from abandoned “leveling up” schemes, which would use taxpayer money to help revive business across the U.K. to create jobs and bolster the economy. Starmer insisted that the money should instead go to the National Health Service, which the Labour Party consistently keeps at the center of its campaign strategies.
Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Sec. Liz Kendall dismissed the plan, saying elections “should be about the country’s future, not fighting for a better past.”
“This is an unfunded commitment, a headline-grabbing gimmick. It is not a proper plan to deliver it. It doesn’t deal with the big challenges facing young people who are desperate to get the skills and qualifications they need to get good jobs, to have a home they can call their own,” Kendall said during an appearance on Sky News’ Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips.
WASHINGTON/DUBAI/DOHA, Jan 14 (Reuters) – The United States is withdrawing some personnel from bases in the Middle East, a U.S. official said on Wednesday, after a senior Iranian official said Tehran had warned neighbours it would hit American bases if Washington strikes.
With Iran’s leadership trying to quell the worst domestic unrest the Islamic Republic has ever faced, Tehran is seeking to deter U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to intervene on behalf of anti-government protesters.
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The U.N. Security Council is due to meet on Iran on Thursday at the request of the United States.
A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States was pulling some personnel from key bases in the region as a precaution given heightened regional tensions.
“All the signals are that a U.S. attack is imminent, but that is also how this administration behaves to keep everyone on their toes. Unpredictability is part of the strategy,” a Western military official told Reuters later on Wednesday.
At the White House, however, Trump suggested he was adopting a wait-and-see posture toward the crisis.
Trump told reporters that he has been told that killings in the Iranian government’s crackdown on the protests were subsiding and that he believes there is currently no plan for large-scale executions.
Asked who told him that the killings had stopped, Trump described them as “very important sources on the other side.”
The president did not rule out potential U.S. military action, saying “we are going to watch what the process is” before noting that his administration had received a “very good statement” from Iran.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Wednesday “there is no plan” by Iran to hang people, when asked about the anti-government protests.
“There is no plan for hanging at all,” the foreign minister told Fox News in an interview on the “Special Report with Bret Baier” show. “Hanging is out of the question,” he said.
According to the Norway-based Iran Human Rights Society, hangings are common in Iranian prisons.
TIMING REMAINS UNCLEAR
Two European officials said U.S. military intervention could come in the next 24 hours. An Israeli official also said it appeared Trump had decided to intervene, though the scope and timing remained unclear.
Qatar said drawdowns from its Al Udeid air base, the biggest U.S. base in the Middle East, were “being undertaken in response to the current regional tensions”.
Three diplomats said some personnel had been told to leave the base, though there were no immediate signs of large numbers of troops being bussed out to a soccer stadium and shopping mall as took place hours before an Iranian missile strike last year.
Britain was also withdrawing some personnel from an air base in Qatar ahead of possible U.S. strikes, The I Paper newspaper reported. The British defence ministry had no immediate comment.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to intervene in support of protesters in Iran, where thousands of people have been reported killed in a crackdown on the unrest against clerical rule.
Item 1 of 5 A woman reacts during the funeral of the security forces who were killed in the protests that erupted over the collapse of the currency’s value in Tehran, Iran, January 14, 2026. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
[1/5]A woman reacts during the funeral of the security forces who were killed in the protests that erupted over the collapse of the currency’s value in Tehran, Iran, January 14, 2026. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS Purchase Licensing Rights
Iran and its Western foes have both described the unrest, which began two weeks ago as demonstrations against dire economic conditions and rapidly escalated in recent days, as the most violent since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that installed Iran’s system of Shi’ite clerical rule.
An Iranian official has said more than 2,000 people have died. A rights group put the toll at more than 2,600.
Iran has “never faced this volume of destruction”, Armed Forces Chief of Staff Abdolrahim Mousavi said on Wednesday, blaming foreign enemies.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot described “the most violent repression in Iran’s contemporary history”.
Iranian authorities have accused the U.S. and Israel of fomenting the unrest, carried out by people it calls armed terrorists.
IRAN ASKS REGIONAL STATES TO PREVENT A US ATTACK
Trump has openly threatened to intervene in Iran for days, without giving specifics. In an interview with CBS News on Tuesday, he vowed “very strong action” if Iran executes protesters. He also urged Iranians to keep protesting and take over institutions, declaring “help is on the way”.
The senior Iranian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tehran had asked U.S. allies in the region to prevent Washington from attacking Iran.
“Tehran has told regional countries, from Saudi Arabia and UAE to Turkey, that U.S. bases in those countries will be attacked” if the U.S. targets Iran, the official said.
Direct contacts between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff have been suspended, the official added.
The United States has forces across the region including the forward headquarters of its Central Command at Al Udeid in Qatar and the headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.
GOVERNMENT DOESN’T SEEM NEAR COLLAPSE, WESTERN OFFICIAL SAYS
The flow of information from inside Iran has been hampered by an internet blackout.
The U.S.-based HRANA rights group said it had so far verified the deaths of 2,403 protesters and 147 government-affiliated individuals, dwarfing tolls from previous waves of protests crushed by the authorities in 2022 and 2009.
The government’s prestige was hammered by a 12-day Israeli bombing campaign last June – joined by the U.S. – that followed setbacks for Iran’s regional allies in Lebanon and Syria. European powers restored U.N. sanctions over Iran’s nuclear programme, compounding the economic crisis there.
The unrest on such a scale caught the authorities off guard at a vulnerable time, but it does not appear that the government faces imminent collapse, and its security apparatus still appears to be in control, one Western official said.
The authorities have sought to project images showing they retain public support. Iranian state TV broadcast footage of large funeral processions for people killed in the unrest in Tehran, Isfahan, Bushehr and other cities.
People waved flags and pictures of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and held aloft signs with anti-riot slogans.
Reporting by Elwely Elwelly and Jana Choukeir in Dubai, Bassam Masoud in Doha, John Irish in Paris, Lili Bayer in Brussels, Bo Erickson in Detroit, Susan Heavey, Joey Roulette, Doina Chiacu and Kanishka Singh in Washington, Michelle Nichols at the United Nations, Bhargav Acharya in Toronto; writing by Tom Perry, Peter Graff, Mark Heinrich and James Oliphant; editing by Frances Kerry, Alexandra Hudson, Gareth Jones, Diane Craft and Michael Perry
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
World
Armed Kurdish fighters try to breach Iran border as regional threat grows amid protests: reports
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Armed Kurdish separatist groups tried to cross into Iran from Iraq in recent days, stoking fears that the country’s spiraling unrest has attracted dangerous foreign militants who could destabilize the wider region, according to reports.
Iranian officials said the attempted breach came amid a sweeping crackdown on nationwide protests against the country’s regime, with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) leading the response, Reuters reported.
The Tasnim News Agency also reported armed militia groups operating in Iraq crossed the border in western and northwestern Iran, according to Middle East Monitor.
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Kurdish Peshmerga fighters gather north of Kirkuk, Iraq. (Reuters)
Reuters had reported that three sources, including a senior Iranian official, said Turkey’s intelligence agency, known as MIT, warned the IRGC that Kurdish fighters were trying to cross the Iran-Iraq border.
The Iranian official said clashes also broke out after the attempt to cross and accused the fighters of trying to exploit the unrest and create further instability.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations, around 30 million Kurds live in the Middle East, mainly in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.
TRUMP SAYS IRAN ‘STARTING TO’ CROSS US RED LINES AS PROTESTERS DIE IN GOVERNMENT CRACKDOWN
Kurdish separatists attempted an Iran crossing from Iraq amid protests. (Mustafa Ozer/AFP via Getty Images)
Turkey has designated Kurdish militant groups in northern Iraq as terrorist organizations and has carried out cross-border military operations against them. The Turkish military has also targeted PKK bases in Iraq.
In 2025, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) said it would disarm and end its decades-long battle against Turkey.
Reuters said MIT and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s office did not comment on the Iran crossing, though it warned that any interference in Iran would inflame regional crises.
‘LEAVE IRAN NOW’: US EMBASSY POSTS WARNING TO AMERICANS STILL IN THE COUNTRY
Iranians attend an anti-government protest Jan. 9 in Tehran, Iran. (UGC via AP)
Iranian authorities alleged the fighters were dispatched from Iraq and Turkey and said the Iranian regime has asked both governments to stop any transfer of fighters or weapons into Iran.
The number of deaths during the crackdown on protesters rose to at least 2,571 on Wednesday, accordin g to the Human Rights Activists News Agency.
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President Donald Trump said Wednesday he had been told the killings had halted, and he believes there is no plan for large-scale executions.
Asked who told him, Trump said they were “very important sources on the other side.”
Iran closed its airspace to most flights Wednesday, according to flight-tracking website Flightradar24, with the closure lasting a little more than two hours.
Airspace restrictions come amid fears that US President Donald Trump could attack Iran.
Published On 15 Jan 2026
Iran temporarily closed its airspace to most flights amid attack threats by United States President Donald Trump, according to the US aviation authority.
Most flights were prohibited from Iranian airspace between 1:45am and 4:00am local time (22:15 to 00:30 GMT) and again from 4:44 am to 7am (01:14 to 03:30 GMT) on Thursday, according to the notices posted by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
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The restrictions applied to all commercial flights without “prior approval” from Iran’s Civil Aviation Organisation (CAO), according to the notices.
FlightRadar, an online flight tracking service, showed just three aircraft over Iran as of 6:05am local time, with dozens of planes flying around the country’s borders. Iran’s airspace reopened at about 7am local time.
The FAA and CAO did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The airspace restrictions come amid threats by US President Donald Trump to attack Iran following Tehran’s deadly crackdown on antigovernment protests in the country.
The US and the United Kingdom on Wednesday withdrew a number of military personnel from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, after a senior Iranian official said Tehran had warned that it would target US forces in the Middle East region if Trump launched an attack.
A number of countries have also issued advisories to their citizens in the region amid fears of escalation.
Trump appeared to lower his rhetoric towards Tehran later on Wednesday, saying he had received assurances from “important sources” that the killings of protesters in Iran had stopped.
Safe Airspace, a website run by the aviation safety organisation OpsGroup, said the airspace closures could signal “further security or military activity” and warned of the “risk of missile launches or heightened air defence, increasing the risk of misidentification of civil traffic”.
In 2020, Iran’s air defences shot down a Ukraine International Airlines flight shortly after it took off in Tehran, killing all 176 people on board.
A 2021 report by Iran’s CAO concluded that the missile battery’s operator had misidentified the Ukrainian aircraft as a “hostile object”, and that officials had not properly evaluated the risks to commercial planes amid tensions with the US.
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