Bhushan agrees - the chance to show her film at Cannes, facilitated by the Maharashtra government, has opened new doors.
Whether any of these potential recommendations will change much is up for debate, though. While government sources claim it will be "transformative" and hail a "bold new vision", others are playing down its likely impact. A former Conservative defence minister suggests ministers have "massively overegged" what the review will really promise, and "we'll get a lot of things that sound great, but not many things that actually get moving".A source involved in discussion around the review explained: "What will change? Substantively not much - there is a rhetorical change towards
, but it's not a major change in terms of capability - it's all pretty marginal."The Ministry of Defence's permanent secretary David Williams has already said in public that it won't be until the autumn that we'll get specific details about exactly what is going to be ordered, spent and when.The PM has already sped up his plans to spend 2.5% of the size of Britain's economy on defence by 2027, rather than the initial timescale of 2029. UK Defence Secretary John Healey said on Saturday there was
All that doesn't make the problems go away.The first is that after inflation and public sector pay rises, insiders question if 2.5% is enough to meet current defence plans - let alone the government's increasing ambition. Existing, expensive plans will remain - such as recapitalising the army, investing in nuclear, carrying on with the
with America and Australia, and the
- which will gobble up billions of pounds now and for years to come.Iran insists its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful and has long denied accusations it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
However, the IAEA stated that it "cannot verify" this, citing Iran's refusal to grant access to senior inspectors and its failure to answer longstanding questions about its nuclear history.In recent months, two of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's advisors - Ali Larijani and Kamal Kharazi - have suggested Iran might reconsider its long-standing position against building nuclear weapons if international pressure intensifies.
Such statements have raised alarm among Western diplomats, who fear Iran is edging closer to becoming a nuclear threshold state.The IAEA board is expected to meet in the coming days to discuss next steps, amid mounting international pressure on Tehran to fully cooperate with inspections and return to compliance with nuclear non-proliferation norms.