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Simon Tisdall

Simon Tisdall

The Guardian

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Donald Trump will huff and he’ll puff, but if Europe’s leaders rise to its defence, their house will stand

Donald Trump will huff and he’ll puff, but if Europe’s leaders rise to its defence, their house will stand
25.01.2025 8

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

The Israel-Gaza ceasefire deal hangs by a thread. This is what must happen for peace to last

The Israel-Gaza ceasefire deal hangs by a thread. This is what must happen for peace to last
20.01.2025 9

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

Who will tame Donald Trump this time? Roll up, roll up, for the White House travelling circus

Who will tame Donald Trump this time? Roll up, roll up, for the White House travelling circus
18.01.2025 10

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

This Gaza ceasefire deal is a fragile thing, beset by strongman egos. But it is our best hope yet

This Gaza ceasefire deal is a fragile thing, beset by strongman egos. But it is our best hope yet
16.01.2025 40

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

Joe Biden got plenty right at home, but on the world stage he let himself be taken for a fool

Joe Biden got plenty right at home, but on the world stage he let himself be taken for a fool
11.01.2025 10

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

Cocksure Kim Jong-un is raising the nuclear stakes. Is it time for South Korea to follow suit?

So-called frozen conflicts can suddenly turn hot without warning. Look at Ukraine, Syria or Armenia-Azerbaijan. Might Korea be next? For almost...

04.01.2025 10

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

Forget Risk, play Fantasy Football for Fascists: grudge matches, foul play and violent conduct guaranteed

It’s been a gloomy old year, often reflected in this space – so maybe it’s time to inject some festive cheer with an exciting new Swiftian parlour...

28.12.2024 8

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

Menaced by foreign foes, facing mutiny at home: how long before Iran goes nuclear?

Choices, choices. In life, there’s always a choice, or so that complacent saying goes. It didn’t really hold true for the people of Syria, bound...

22.12.2024 10

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

The world failed to save Syria. Now its people must be free to chart their own path

United in duplicity, if nothing else, Russia, Iran, Turkey and the US – key external players in Syria’s long-running drama – all agreed. The...

15.12.2024 20

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

Stephen Lillie on opposition to Keir Starmer’s ‘next phase’ for Labour – cartoon

08.12.2024 3

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

Assad’s murderous regime has been toppled – but what will fill the vacuum in Syria?

For once, use of the word “historic” is justified in describing the toppling of Bashar al-Assad’s regime after more than 50 years of brutal...

08.12.2024 30

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

Playing political footsie with Trump 2.0 won’t cut it for Europe. It’s time to get tough

Sucking up to Donald Trump is the order of the day as the European allies calculate what his imminent return to the White House means for them. The...

07.12.2024 2

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

Feeding off anger, fuelled by Russia… Enter Călin Georgescu, Europe’s latest radical populist

Politics in Romania can be a bloody business, especially on the right. The excesses of the Iron Guard, an insurrectionary, violently antisemitic,...

30.11.2024 10

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

Don’t be naive about the ceasefire in Lebanon. It may mean more horror and death in Gaza

Joe Biden is making the most of the cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon that he helped to broker. “It reminds us that...

28.11.2024 20

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

Keir Starmer played the China card in Rio – and sent a message to a hawkish Donald Trump

Both were lawyers before they became politicians, but that’s where the similarities between Keir Starmer and Richard Nixon end. The former US...

23.11.2024 4

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

Joe Biden’s last-gasp missile decision is momentous for Ukraine – but Putin will retaliate

US president Joe Biden’s last-gasp decision to permit Ukraine to fire western-made, long-range missiles at military targets deep inside Russian...

18.11.2024 10

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

Trump, Putin, Xi… Strongmen are at the gate but Europe’s leaders are too busy infighting to notice

Fiddling while Rome burns fairly describes the antics of party leaders in the European parliament last week. The EU is under siege from present-day...

16.11.2024 6

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

Contempt for human rights, trashing allies: the world’s populists are rubbing their hands with glee

Feelings are not the usual focus of a world dominated by macho strongmen, complex geopolitical challenges, wars and disasters. Yet every rule has...

09.11.2024 6

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

Donald Trump is a superspreader for a craziness that has split America in two

Is Donald Trump going mad? It depends how you define the word. But since he’s hoping to be elected US president on Tuesday, it would be handy to...

02.11.2024 5

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

Joe Biden’s big blunder: how the war in Ukraine became a global disaster

Reflecting the instincts of a cold war veteran, Joe Biden’s strategy was familiar: contain the conflict. When the US president spoke in Warsaw in...

26.10.2024 10

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

Netanyahu, the brutal chancer, will keep on bombing, but his brinkmanship may go too far

It’s blindingly obvious Benjamin Netanyahu does not want a ceasefire in Gaza or Lebanon or anywhere else – not yet, at least. The Biden...

22.10.2024 80

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

Kamala Harris has a problem with men. Will misogyny cost her the election?

Will the unsurprising yet significant fact that Kamala Harris is a woman decisively tip the knife-edge US election in Donald Trump’s favour?...

20.10.2024 3

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

A pause for peace is the best the world can hope for in the Middle East’s war without end

So it’s finally happening. The wider Middle East conflict that so many feared is igniting. Almost exactly a year after Hamas’s 7 October terrorist...

05.10.2024 4

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

Donald Trump meets ‘popular guy’ Keir Starmer – cartoon

28.09.2024 4

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

In their inhumanity, conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine offer a shared, brutal vision of the future of war

It’s a golden rule of politics that national leaders do not interfere in other countries’ elections. Tell that to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who jumped...

28.09.2024 2

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

Netanyahu’s lethal bombs will turn Lebanon into another Gaza. He must be brought down now

Benjamin Netanyahu must be stopped. The horror unfolding in Lebanon is another crime, to add to all the others. Are Britain, the US, the UN and...

24.09.2024 100

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

Autumn budget 2024: doom, gloom… and bloom – cartoon

21.09.2024 20

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

Xi Jinping’s ‘gunboat diplomacy’ risks driving his bullied neighbours into enemy hands

Whoever declared that in this world “nothing is certain except death and taxes” plainly led a sheltered life. Some authorities say Benjamin...

21.09.2024 3

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

The world should breathe a sigh of relief that Donald Trump wasn’t harmed in Florida

It’s worthwhile trying to imagine what might have happened had Donald Trump been shot and killed after playing the fifth hole at his Florida golf...

16.09.2024 10

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

In an unheroic age, Putin, Trump and Netanyahu are sick parodies of great men

The 19th-century idea that great men – exceptionally talented, courageous, charismatic individuals – direct and change the course of history by the...

31.08.2024 20

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

With Israel’s attack on Lebanon, the prospect of peace is moving even further out of reach

The abrupt, deeply alarming weekend escalation in fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon is exactly what the US, France and Britain have...

25.08.2024 4

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

China’s deadly divide-and-rule tactics in Myanmar risk shock waves across region

Things fall apart, if you let them – and ethnically, religiously, ideologically fractured Myanmar, formerly Burma, has never been a model of...

25.08.2024 20

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

New wars, old wars, famine, panic everywhere. So much for a quiet August

August is the quietest month – to mangle TS Eliot’s verse – or so news editors used to think. Politicians go on holiday, governments shut down,...

10.08.2024 7

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

Israel has all but declared war in the Middle East – a conflict it cannot hope to win

Failure to halt the war in Gaza lies at the heart of the latest lethal savagery in the Middle East. The assassination in Tehran of Hamas’s...

31.07.2024 70

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

Last Tango in Washington: how sad, sidelined Joe Biden may yet have the last laugh

Imagine an old man sitting by himself in a dingy all-night diner in downtown Washington. He has his back to the window, shoulders hunched, like the...

27.07.2024 2

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall

The post-Biden era may be uncertain for the Democrats, but for Trump it will be utterly dismaying

To borrow from Shakespeare, “Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.” Joe Biden might have clung on. He could, in his pain and pride,...

22.07.2024 50

The Guardian

Simon Tisdall