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Donald Trump hints at regime change in Iran, Tehran mulls its response, and the an electric passenge͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌ 
 
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cloudy Quito
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June 23, 2025
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The World Today

  1. Trump floats regime change
  2. Tehran vows response
  3. Markets react to Iran strikes
  4. Europeans back defense
  5. ‘Chinese dream’ dying
  6. Ecuador security crackdown
  7. Dutch return Benin bronzes
  8. PhDs struggle for jobs
  9. Electric plane lands at JFK
  10. Anti-porn campaign grows

The London Review of Substacks, and an ‘almost psychedelic’ new South Korean animated sci-fi.

1

Trump hints at Iran regime change

Donald Trump.
The White House/Handout via Reuters

President Donald Trump indicated openness to regime change in Iran, contradicting senior officials’ insistence that the US attacks were solely aimed at Tehran’s nuclear program. Trump’s remarks in a post on Truth Social came after American bombers hit Iranian nuclear facilities, and with Israel still striking Iranian targets. Israeli leaders expect to complete their campaign in the coming days, The Wall Street Journal reported, but since beginning the attacks more than a week ago, they have repeatedly floated the possibility of overthrowing Iran’s theocratic regime. Washington has insisted the strikes were successful, though Israeli analysis suggested that the underground Fordo uranium enrichment plant was not entirely destroyed, and there is evidence Iran may have moved its stockpile of the nuclear material.

For more from the White House, subscribe to Semafor’s daily US politics briefing. →

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2

Iran vows to avenge US strikes

Iran’s army commander in chief.
Iran’s army commander in chief. Iranian Army/WANA via Reuters

Iran vowed to respond to US attacks on its soil, although analysts said any countermeasure must be carefully calibrated to avoid a devastating escalation. Tehran has several options, wrote the BBC’s veteran security correspondent Frank Gardner: It could choke off the vital Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of global oil supplies are shipped; it could use its sophisticated cyber capabilities to strike US interests; or it could hit US bases, perhaps using drone swarms belonging to regional proxies. After threatening America with “everlasting consequences,” Tehran’s theocratic leaders face a stark choice, a regional expert told The New Yorker’s David Remnick: “If the Ayatollah responds weakly, he loses face,” but “if he responds too strongly, he could lose his head.”

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3

Markets take strikes in their stride

Two stopped oil rigs.
Agustin Marcarian/File Photo/Reuters

Global markets slipped but remained broadly stable in the wake of the US attacks on Iran. Oil prices rose around 2% before settling, while key US and European indexes fell fractionally. Investors’ relative calm is based on the expectation of a short conflict, one analyst told The Associated Press: “One big hit by the Americans… then [back to] business as usual.” A serious response by Iran, such as closing the vital Strait of Hormuz would change the calculus, but the US secretary of state said such a move would be “economic suicide.” Still, ING analysts forecast that, under a blockade, oil — currently around $75 a barrel — could rise to $120, or even $150.

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Semafor Exclusive
4

Europeans support defense hike

The Nato meeting venue in The Hague.
Yves Herman/Reuters

Europeans overwhelmingly support increasing defense spending, polling showed ahead of a key NATO meeting this week.  Half of the respondents in a European Council on Foreign Relations survey said their country needs to boost defense spending, with just 24% opposing the move. NATO member states agreed Sunday to raise their defense spending to 5% of GDP, as demanded by the US, though Spain opted out; the new target is more than double what most currently spend. However, stagnating growth across the region means many will struggle to invest more. “Russia was able to put Europe on the back foot precisely because of the continent’s failure to accept that economic security… is a prerequisite for national security,” Hadley Gamble wrote in a Semafor column.

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5

The ‘Chinese dream’ is slipping away

A chart showing average yearly Chinese GDP growth by decade.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s promised “Chinese dream” is slipping away from many as growth slows and unemployment rises, a leading columnist argued. In the past four decades, around 800 million people have risen out of poverty in China. However economic growth has slowed to its lowest level in more than 30 years — pandemic recessions aside — youth unemployment has risen to almost 17%, and wages are stagnating. As a result, “the Chinese dream no longer feels achievable,” The New York Times’ Li Yuan argued. “I’m stuck in limbo,” a former miner told her. “The better life is out of reach, and I can’t fall low enough to start over.”

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6

Ecuador’s security crackdown

A chart showing Ecuador’s murder rate.

Ecuador approved a security law aimed at cracking down on soaring murder rates, but critics warned it could lead to rampant human rights abuses. Violence has spiraled in recent years as Ecuador has become a key passageway for neighboring Colombia’s burgeoning cocaine trade: Murders are up 70% so far this year compared with 2024’s already near-record figures. President Daniel Noboa has pushed through the new law, which makes it easier to deploy troops and allows for foreign military bases to combat powerful cartels, but the legislation has stoked fears of army overreach and the government’s consolidation of power. Noboa “is right” that cross-border collaboration is needed, The Economist argued, “but his execution has so far been woeful.

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7

Netherlands returns Benin Bronzes

Benin bronzes.
Vining Ogu/Reuters

The Netherlands returned more than 100 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, one of the largest-ever restitutions of colonial-era looted art. The statues, stolen from Benin City in modern-day Nigeria, were looted by British troops at the end of the 19th century and sold on to museums across Europe. Western nations have in recent years faced mounting pressure to return treasures, although some question the net benefit of the moves: Benin artifacts previously transferred from the UK and Germany to Nigeria disappeared from public view, with some likely sold in private markets. “In the name of reversing old wrongs, modern decision makers are in danger of committing grave new ones,” David Frum wrote in The Atlantic in 2023.

For more from the continent, subscribe to Semafor’s Africa briefing. →

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8

PhDs struggle to find academic jobs

A graduate at a university.
Brian Snyder/Reuters

The number of PhD graduates worldwide vastly exceeds the number of academic jobs available. In the past, a doctoral degree was a reliable stepping stone to a lifelong university career. But the number of PhD holders in the OECD almost doubled between 1998 and 2017 and continues to rise, Nature reported, while China and India have also seen rapid growth. Academic roles have not kept pace: Two-thirds of UK doctoral graduates are now employed outside academia, and many are not working in their area of expertise. The shift raises questions around the value of PhDs: Doctoral graduates do not consistently earn more than masters’ holders, who typically spend just one year in postgraduate education, rather than three or more.

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9

Electric aviation takes off

The Beta plane.
Benoit Tessier/File Photo/Reuters

A fully electric passenger plane landed at JFK airport in New York City, in another step forward for electric aviation. Beta Technologies’ ALIA aircraft flew four passengers from East Hampton, about 80 miles away, earlier this month. Electric passenger aircraft have flown in the US before, but only in test flights: ALIA was under the jurisdiction of normal air traffic control, following US regulators’ move to certify air taxis and other electric aircraft in October. The successful flight is “a strong signal” that short-hop electric flights are a practical option, not a “futuristic idea,” a Fox News tech columnist noted. China is making even more rapid progress, with one uncrewed air taxi firm already running regular trials of a sightseeing route.

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10

Anti-porn efforts gather pace

A PornHub logo.
Flickr Creative Commons photo/CC BY 2.0

Global efforts to curb access to pornography are gathering pace, led by an unusual alliance of religious conservatives, feminist campaigners, and the manosphere. Anti-obscenity laws have been passed in several US states, and the largest adult sites have quit France over its age verification requirements. Unlike earlier crusades against porn, which were led by the Christian right, the modern movement is much broader, NBC reported: Feminists argue that it dehumanizes women, while masculinity influencers such as Jordan Peterson claim it can cause impotence and infertility in men. While adult sites have acknowledged that they have problems with deepfakes, revenge porn, and underage content, the science around porn’s negative effects is highly contested.

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Flagging
  • Russian President Vladimir Putin hosts Mali’s interim leader in Moscow.
  • EU foreign ministers meet in Brussels to discuss the Middle East conflict, Ukraine, and China.
  • Jurassic World Rebirth premieres in New York City.
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LRS
The London Review of Substacks

Bombs away

The US attack on Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend was a remarkable feat of logistics, with B-2 stealth bombers flying 6,000 miles to drop several 15-ton bombs to crack open underground bunkers. The damage to Iran’s uranium enrichment capabilities will not be clear for some time, wrote the former Australian General Mick Ryan, and the longer-term effects are even more uncertain: “How might the American attacks unify the Iranian people for a longer, broader struggle against Israel and America that plays out over months and years?” And what will the implications be for geopolitics? Iran is, after all, part of a loose grouping with other authoritarian states, including China, North Korea, and Russia.

Russia will likely be pleased; more focus on the Middle East means less on Vladimir Putin’s military atrocities in Europe, and if munitions are diverted from Ukraine to Israel, so much the better for him. But China may have a more ambiguous response. Given its own economic woes and how central Iran is to its oil supply, it may be keen to see the conflict end; on the other hand, “every ship, every missile, every bomb, every aircraft” deployed to the Middle East means a reduction of US deterrence over Taiwan.

Crime and punishment

There is a commonplace response to concern about crime. It goes something like: You have never been safer. Crime has been falling for decades; we have a PR problem, not a crime problem. “This is partly true,” says the writer Martin Robbins, “but entirely wrong.” It is, he says, irrelevant whether crime numbers are lower than they were in 1990. “People’s right to complain about a problem is not somehow abrogated by the fact that it used to be worse in the past,” he says. “Should I also be grateful that I can travel from London to Watford without having my stagecoach routed by highwaymen?”

It is true that — at least in the UK, where Robbins lives, but in other Western countries too — crime is way down in recent decades. But the experience of crime has, in important ways, worsened. If someone steals your phone or car, you can often literally see where it is via GPS, “yet if I provide this gift of omniscience to the police they do absolutely nothing with it.” There is a cast-iron rule for any organization, Robbins says: If your numbers and your users disagree, then you shouldn’t ignore your numbers, “but you definitely shouldn’t ignore your users,” because they’re almost certainly telling you something that your statistics aren’t capturing.

Service with a smile

Restaurants run on a strict rhythm. Your table might be penciled in for a two-hour slot, with perhaps a 15-minute buffer. If you’re booked for 6:30 it means someone else is probably lined up at 8:45. You turn up at 7:03, take half an hour choosing between burrata and bone marrow, then linger over your last glass of tempranillo. “You’re annoyed I’ve just asked you to start wrapping up,” writes the British restaurateur Dan O’Regan. “I’m annoyed you made me ask. Neither of us says it out loud.” But this is the bit diners don’t like to think about: The restaurant is a clockwork operation, and if a table runs late, it throws the whole mechanism off.

The “biggest myth in modern dining,” says O’Regan, is “take your time.” Servers say the line because it puts diners at their ease, but it’s conditional. “You don’t want to feel like you’re on a stopwatch [and] we don’t want to rush you,” but restaurants also need to plan, and be fair to later bookings. Good hospitality can mean saying no to a guest, and being a good guest doesn’t mean tipping big: “It means understanding that your night out is one of many we’re trying to deliver simultaneously… Because we’d rather give you 90 great minutes than three hours of flustered, resentful chaos.”

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Semafor Recommends

Lost in Starlight, directed by Han Jin-won. This Korean animated sci-fi, newly released on Netflix, is visually spectacular, says WIRED — especially the “truly cosmic, almost psychedelic” space sequences — but its heart lies in “the quieter, meaningful moments between its leads,” an aspiring young astronaut and a would-be musician. Watch Lost in Starlight on Netflix.

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Semafor Spotlight

Christian Klein, Chief Executive Officer, SAP, Germany speakingat the World Economic Forum in 2023.
Faruk Pinjo/World Economic Forum

In March, SAP became Europe’s most highly valued company, having leapfrogged the likes of Novo Nordisk, LVMH, and ASML.

Its market capitalization is still just one-tenth that of Microsoft’s, and Novo has been jostling for the European lead again. But, as SAP CEO Christian Klein told Semafor’s Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, the company’s success shows legacy tech companies can still dominate in the disruptive era of cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

For more insights from the C suite, subscribe to Semafor Business. →

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