The countdown to Micheál Martin’s potentially excruciating encounter in the Oval Office is now on – and the pressure continues to mount.
America and Israel’s war on Iran shows no signs of abating – and there is no indication of an imminent surrender by the Iranian government or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Donald Trump says he is not interested in negotiating an end to the assault – and has suggested there could be no one left alive in a position to declare a surrender.
And it seems to be a case of “meet the new boss – same as the old boss” when it comes to the new supreme leader in Tehran. It has gone to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s son Mojtaba.
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Understandably enough, the deciding body was slow over the weekend to confirm the appointment – what with the Israeli military threatening to “pursue every successor” to the slain cleric.
The President of Ireland believes we are witnessing a “deliberate assault on international law”.
Catherine Connolly’s statement on Sunday said “violations of the UN charter” could not be ignored and the scenes from the region were “shocking and numbing”.
The statement appears to have been crafted to avoid explicit condemnation of the United States – but the President said these “assaults” on international law must be named “as such, without euphemism and without equivocation.”
Expect the Taoiseach to be asked to expound on this.
As for oil and gas prices, the US treasury secretary might believe the recent spikes on the wholesale markets will turn out to be short-lived – but traders appear increasingly ready to accept that this conflict is not going to be tidied up with a nice little bow on top.
When they went to work overnight, the price of a barrel of crude blew the lid off last week’s apparent caution – and has blasted clean past the $100 mark.
The Minister of State for European Affairs Thomas Byrne has said the Government is open to re-introducing cost-of-living measures should the turmoil persist.
The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which carries much of the world’s energy supplies, is an “unprecedented” development, says Byrne, and could have a much wider inflationary impact in Ireland.
The government will “look carefully at this” the Minister told RTÉ.
This course of action is well trodden by the two coalition partners – first deployed during Covid and then refined in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A policy of supporting households may also yield a better political outcome than simply urging Irish energy providers to behave themselves.
The prices at the pumps traditionally rise and fall broadly in line with the benchmark Brent Crude regardless of what the Government or the competition watchdog do and – as of last week – were well on their way back to €2 a litre.
Everyone will feel the pinch the longer the Strait remains a no-go area for tankers.
The French President was on the blower to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian over the weekend. Emmanuel Macron asked him to stop strikes on neighbouring countries in the Gulf and to reopen the vital waterway.
Of course, Donald Trump being Donald Trump – you never quite know what comes next. But the prospect of the US president declaring a win in Iran and sending the boys home before the St Patrick’s Day festivities now seems shrinkingly unlikely.
The US military is again reportedly considering a special plan to seize Iran’s enriched uranium.
It sounds just like the sort of special forces operation Trump could get excited about – and perhaps an opportunity to announce victory and move on to the next big thing. But, very, very tricky indeed.
War, rocketing commodity prices and citizens stranded abroad is eating up a lot of the Government’s bandwidth – but there are domestic concerns too that can’t be ignored.
Aontú had its Ard Fheis at the weekend and made clear its line of attack remains housing.
Lashing the Government’s immigration policy as “disastrous”, party leader Peadar Tóibín said it had failed to provide adequate infrastructure as the country’s population grew over recent years.
With planning permission figures for the back end of 2025 due to be published later this week, those Government housing targets will again be compared to actual progress – or not – on the ground.
