Quick update: Israel-Iran conflict

• Strikes – While the war’s tempo appears to have eased, Israel has now struck Iran’s state TV studios and is claiming a hit on Iran’s new military chief, barely days after killing his predecessor. Meanwhile, Israel has intercepted most of Iran’s own ~30 latest missiles, though there’ve been impacts around Tel Aviv.

• Evacuation order – President Trump’s tweet urging locals to “immediately evacuate” Tehran appears to have accelerated a highway exodus out of Iran’s capital, though it’s unclear what the president might’ve had in mind.

• Nuclear – President Trump has also reiterated Iran cannot be allowed nukes, after Iran’s parliament announced a possible bill to ditch the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (which Israel has long declined to sign).

• Talks – There’ve been rumours Iran is putting out feelers to re-engage in talks, prompting the US president to remark “they should have done that before” (though there are reports US-Iran talks could be back on this week).

• G7 – The G7 nations have backed Israel and called Iran “the principal source of regional instability and terror”, while President Trump has left the summit early to work on something “much bigger” than any ceasefire. He might be weighing up:

  • a) Hitting Iran’s underground Fordow nuclear site with US bunker busters — that’d fit his tough-on-Iran branding and further cripple Iran’s nuclear program, though it’d go against his more isolationist instincts, or

  • b) Pushing a weakened Iran to ditch its nuclear program — that’d fit his peace-through-strength branding, though might entail granting the regime an out (something Trump long criticised in earlier deals), or

  • c) Figuring this out as he goes (he’s open about his reliance on instinct).

• Meanwhile, the guy without a lot of options right now is Iran’s supreme leader — it’s hard to see his regime rebounding from this week, with his nuclear, ballistic, and proxy strategies all gutted, and his own credibility in pieces.

MI6 gets a new ‘C’

Every now and then, the public gets a glimpse beyond the veil. Take this week, with news the UK’s new foreign intelligence agency (MI6) spymaster will be Blaise Metreweli.

In his big reveal, PM Starmer endorsed her “excellent leadership” and noted she’s being promoted to ‘C’ (chief, though the ‘C’ derives from the surname of the original MI6 boss).

She takes the top job after several years serving as ‘Q’ (quartermaster — head of MI6’s famous high-tech division). But what else can we glean?

First, her limited public bio is no surprise — C is traditionally the only MI6 staff member publicly named, and it turns out the 47-year-old Metreweli has spent her entire 26-year career deep on the inside. But like any good spy, maybe she’s been hiding in plain sight:

• Turns out she’s a good rower and was on Cambridge’s winning 1997 team

• She’s appeared in some public records as a ‘civil servant’ over the years

• Some of the old public references to her are vague on dates (likely to allow a plausible explanation for her time off the grid doing MI6’s wild training), and

• Last year, the king himself honoured Metreweli, though he referred to her blandly as a foreign ministry “director general”, leaving her old college to then proudly (if conspicuously vaguely) highlight such a big win.

Second, it turns out Metreweli has spoken with the media before, including:

• A 2022 interview under the name ‘Ada’, to encourage more women to join, and

• A 2021 interview while on secondment to the domestic sister agency MI5 — referred to simply by her then ‘Director K’ job title (focused on thwarting threats from hostile states), she urged parliament to update the UK’s old espionage laws.

Third, from the clues above (plus her uncommon surname), a family story emerges:

• She likely grew up in Hong Kong due to her dad’s work as a top radiologist, and

• Her Georgian surname might’ve come via her great-grandfather, who escaped the Bolshevik invasion and then married a German woman, who in turn went on to appear in German media as one of her state’s oldest locals!

Then fourth, a vague professional picture starts to emerge, too:

• Metreweli studied anthropology at Cambridge and applied to become a British diplomat, but something about her application (like her intrepid upbringing) meant she got diverted into the MI6 recruitment process, and joined in 1999

• She’s served abroad in Europe and the Middle East — that’s typically posing as an embassy diplomat (official cover) or as someone out in the broader community (non-official cover), and

• She apparently speaks excellent Arabic.

On that last one, allow us to conclude with the ol’ diplomat language training joke, that only the first 20 years of Arabic are the hardest.

Intrigue’s Take

So after linking together all these breadcrumbs, here are three broader observations about what Metreweli’s appointment might mean:

• First, her stint as ‘Q’ is a reminder of tech’s role in today’s intelligence world: you need it not only so your teams and their sources can evade hostile surveillance, or thwart tech-enabled threats, but also to better fuse tech with MI6’s old-school human intelligence to stay ahead in an increasingly fragmenting world.

• Second, as a spook who’s already been in the media, she’s an example of how Western spies seem increasingly focused on preserving and strengthening their social license: democracies either demystify and humanise their security services, or sceptics will fill the void (all gleefully fanned by hostile states), and

• Third, the two points above hint at the tough gig awaiting Metreweli once she starts in October: Intriguers will already know our world is getting more hostile — her predecessor just warned the world is now at its most dangerous in 40 years. And that not only raises the stakes, but also (together with tech advancements) shrinks the space available for intelligence agencies to recruit new sources.

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Meanwhile, elsewhere…

Extra Intrigue

Our commodities corner is back:

• Sugar: Sugar futures have tumbled on expectations of a supply increase from India and Thailand, citing favourable monsoon rains and increased acreage.

• Diamonds: Anglo American seems set to sell its 85% stake in diamond giant De Beers, notwithstanding the state of the diamond market.

• Mining: South Korean refiner Korea Zinc has invested $85M in Canada’s The Metals Company (TMC), in a boost for TMC’s plans to mine the seafloor.  

Arts and crafts of the day

As lovers of foreign affairs, horticulture, and puns, you can imagine our delight at discovering the UK’s Lambeth Country Show annual vegetable sculpture competition, featuring a little papal ‘Corn-clave’ above, plus another classic called ‘Twin-Leeks’ in homage to legendary director David Lynch, who passed away earlier this year.

Today’s poll

Yesterday’s poll: How do you think this Israel-Iran conflict will end?

 🤝 A ceasefire and not much change (21%)
 🇮🇷 A weakened Iran agreeing to a nuclear deal (46%)
🚀 A nuclear-armed Iran (12%)
🇮🇱 A more isolated Israel (18%)
✍️ Other (write in!) (3%)

Your two cents:

• 🇮🇷 R.N: “Iran does not have the weapons to continue without help from Russia or China.”

• 🚀 V: “Israel can't bust the bunkers, Iran will rush to the bomb, and other regimes will take the lesson.”

• ✍️ P.M: “Regime change in Iran.”

• ✍️ C.D.J: “I've studied war for over a half century; practiced it over two decades; taught it for another two at military academies and even the Pentagon. When it comes to predicting war, I agree with Clausewitz that it is easier to start a war than control it.”