As Week Four gets underway, we hope our readers and listeners around the world are staying safe: Saturday night was, says the Israeli Prime Minister, "a very difficult evening" for the southern town of Arad, where (at the time of writing) just under a dozen are dead and over a hundred are injured. The war has expanded, with Iran getting within a couple of miles of the nuclear facility at Dimona, and firing thousands of miles beyond all the way out to the Diego Garcia base in what (for the moment) remains the British Indian Ocean Territory.
As they say in America, go big or go home. The President began the weekend by suggesting he was minded to go home. Twenty-four hours later, he decided to go big:
🚨 "If Iran doesn't FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST..." - President DONALD J. TRUMP pic.twitter.com/htLz1A0Mf7
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 22, 2026
The deadline is 2344 GMT tomorrow, which is the small hours of Tuesday in the Persian Gulf or early Monday evening in Washington. That will dominate the headlines all the way to the eleventh hour and forty-fourth minute. Meanwhile, far below the fold are all kinds of curious stories:
Six people die after Qatar helicopter crash, defence ministry says
The chopper was on "routine duty", according to Qatar, when it suffered a technical malfunction and just dropped out of the sky, like that US refuelling 'plane the other day. Odd. Among the dead are a Turkish soldier and two Turkish civilians.
So a Qatari helicopter has three Turks on board, but it was "on routine duty"? Curious.
The war is hitting close to home for many of our readers, and "close to home" has an ever more expansive horizon. Steyn Clubber Alison Castellina writes from the English Home Counties:
So, having assumed that Iran does not have intercontinental ballistic missiles, I now find myself 'in range' in about-to-be-leafy, deceptively secure southern Britain. I also find that our PM, whose primary duty is our defence, has known this (and has allegedly suppressed it) for a couple of weeks, thanks to a couple of Iranian 'pot shots' at distant Diego Garcia....
Now, we find we have little or no appropriate air defences against aforesaid missiles and we are a 'soft target'. So, although MS may have a case in criticising America for not winning wars with goatherds 'armed with fertiliser', at least its leaders speak as if they still care about homeland security - and have thought about it in advance.
Alison's point re Sir Keir is a valid one. Iran in recent days has twice struck British sovereign territory - first at Akrotiri and then halfway round the world at Diego Garcia. For the benefit of Starmer's sidekick "Lord" Hermer, a man who uses legalisms as a cover for government treachery, lobbing missiles at remote colonies is no different in law from lobbing missiles at the Cotswolds. Is the PM too tied up with his Slav twinks even to make a pro forma objection?
We shall have more on this as the Administration's deadline looms. But the difference Alison identifies between the US and the rest of the west is the theme of this week's episode in my ongoing audio adaptation of the bestselling America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It. We explore the differences between what was then (pre-Starmer) an already enervated Europe and what Brian Reade in the UK Daily Mirror derided as "self-righteous, gun-totin', military-lovin', sister-marryin', abortion-hatin', gay-loathin', foreigner-despisin', non-passport ownin' red-necks, who believe God gave America the biggest dick in the world so it could urinate on the rest of us". And we also consider the other America - what I called, in deference to the Dems' pin-up du jour Howard Dean, "the bike-path left".
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Twenty-Nine of America Alone simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
~If you prefer more fictional fancies of a weekend, there are spy thrillers, comedy classics, tales of horror and historical romance and much more, all over at our Tales for Our Time home page. If you've a friend who might be partial to almost eighty cracking capers, we have a special Gift Membership that, aside from audio adventures, also includes video poetry, live music and more. And I'll be doing a live-performance Tale for Our Time at sea on the next Mark Steyn Cruise - sailing aboard the Queen Mary 2.
To become a member of The Mark Steyn Club, please click here - and don't forget that special Gift Membership. As soon as you join, you'll get access not only to America Alone but to nearly eighty gripping yarns in Tales for Our Time. Please join me next weekend for Part Thirty of America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.