Iranian president Hassan Rouhani has warned of a wave of coming economic hardships worse than in the 1980s as “unprecedented” pressure from international sanctions brings the country to its knees.

"During the war we did not have a problem with our banks, oil sales or imports and exports, and there were only sanctions on arms purchases," Mr Rouhani said.

"But I do not despair and have great hope for the future and believe that we can move past these difficult conditions provided that we are united," he said.

The leader’s comments, made to activists in Tehran, come as US-Iran relations, frosty since President Donald Trump pulled out the nuclear deal a year ago, hit a new low.  

Last week, the US deployed forces including an aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers to counter what it says is a rising threat from Iran to US forces there.

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The presence of USS Abraham Lincoln, replacing a carrier rotated out last month, has been seen as a clear provocation by Iran’s security establishment.

"An aircraft carrier that has at least 40 to 50 planes on it and 6,000 forces gathered within it was a serious threat for us in the past but now… the threats have switched to opportunities," said Amirali Hajizadeh, head of the Iranian Guards’ aerospace division. 

"If (the Americans) make a move we will hit them in the head,” he said. In a parliament session on Sunday, the commander of the Guards accused the US of starting a “psychological war” in the region. 

The regional sabre-rattling is picking up pace, with an Israeli cabinet minister on Sunday warning that Israel may be in the line of Iranian fire if the standoff escalates. “Things are heating up,” Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said of the Gulf. "If there’s some sort of conflagration between Iran and the United States, between Iran and its neighbours, I’m not ruling out that they will activate Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad from Gaza, or even that they will try to fire missiles from Iran at the State of Israel," he told Israel’s Ynet TV.

Both Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad are Iranian-sponsored militant groups active on Israel’s borders. Back in Tehran, Mr Rouhani’s warning of hard times to come appears designed to rally support for his embattled government, which has been criticised by hardliners since Mr Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal a year ago. 

Despite the increasingly loud voices of hawkish members of his administration including national security advisor John Bolton, who led the military expansion into the Gulf, Mr Trump, at least, appears open to discussion.  "What I’d like to see with Iran, I’d like to see them call me," he said.

When Matteo Salvini  took to the stage in Milan on Saturday afternoon, he knew he was among friends.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s National Rally, had already warmed up the crowd. Geert Wilders, the leader of the Netherlands’ party of Freedom, tapped him on the shoulder to grab a selfie. 

And gathered in front of him on cathedral square were supporters of no less than 11 right-wing populist parties from across Europe. 

”People gathered here are not the far-right. The extremists are those who have governed Europe for the last 20 years," the Italian deputy prime minister bellowed at the crowd.  

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"Who betrayed Europe, the dream of our founding fathers De Gaulle and De Gasperi? It was the…

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Russia launched a nuclear-powered icebreaker on Saturday, part of an ambitious programme to renew and expand its fleet of the vessels in order to improve its ability to tap the Arctic’s commercial potential.

The ship, dubbed the Ural and which was floated out from a dockyard in St Petersburg, is one of a trio that when completed will be the largest and most powerful icebreakers in the world.

Russia is building new infrastructure and overhauling its ports as, amid warmer climate cycles, it readies for more traffic via what it calls the Northern Sea Route (NSR) which it envisages being navigable year-round.

The Ural is due to be handed over to Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy corporation Rosatom in 2022 after the two other icebreakers in the same series, Arktika (Arctic) and Sibir (Siberia), enter service.

"The Ural together with its sisters are central to our strategic project of opening the NSR to all-year activity," Alexey Likhachev, Rosatom’s chief executive, was quoted saying.

President Vladimir Putin said in April Russia was stepping up construction of icebreakers with the aim of significantly boosting freight traffic along its Arctic coast.

The drive is part of a push to strengthen Moscow’s hand in the High North as it vies for dominance with traditional rivals Canada, the United States and Norway, as well as newcomer China.

By 2035, Putin said Russia’s Arctic fleet would operate at least 13 heavy-duty icebreakers, nine of which would be powered by nuclear reactors.

The Arctic holds oil and gas reserves equivalent to 412 billion barrels of oil, about 22 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas, the U.S. Geological Survey estimates.

Moscow hopes the route which runs from Murmansk to the Bering Strait near Alaska could take off as it cuts sea transport times from Asia to Europe.

Designed to be crewed by 75 people, the Ural will be able to slice through ice up to around 3 metres thick.

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The leader of France’s main conservative opposition party, The Republicans, resigned on Sunday a week after their humiliating rout in the European elections.

In a dramatic announcement on French television, Laurent Wauquiez said: “I have decided to step back. I have decided to withdraw from the presidency of The Republicans. I do not want to be an obstacle. I think the Right has to be rebuild itself.”

Mr Wauqiuez, 44, a polarising hardliner who espoused policies close to those of Marine Le Pen, the far-Right leader, had been blamed by party activist for failing to connect with centre-Right voters.

Once seen as the natural party of government, The Republicans won only 8.5 per cent of the vote in the European elections, an even worse defeat than that suffered by the UK Conservative Party. Ms Le Pen said the resignation of Mr Wauquiez was “inevitable” after the result.

Gérard Larcher, the Republican speaker of France’s Senate, last week announced an ambitious initiative to re-invent the centre-Right and form a new party.

Mr Larcher, 69, had planned to chair a meeting of influential Right-wingers and centrists on Tuesday in a bid to begin forming a new, broad-based conservative party. It is now unclear if the meeting will go ahead.

Across Europe, the centre-Right has lost support as voters have drifted towards fringe parties.

Emmanuel Macron, the French president, is targeting centre-Right voters in an attempt to capitalise on the crisis in The Republicans.

Right-wing leaders believe he is bent on destroying the party.

Mr Macron is aiming to co-opt Republican party officials before local elections next year. Sébastien Lecornu, a former Republican now serving as his minister for local communities, told conservative mayors this weekend: “Quit The Republicans… Put your energy into helping us rebuild the country rather than your party.” 

Mr Lecornu said populist nationalists were plotting to take over local governments and Republican mayors should join forces with Mr Macron’s party to block the advance of Ms Le Pen’s National Rally. “They are not obliged to agree with us on everything,” he added.

Before Mr Wauquiez quit, The Republicans appeared in danger of fragmenting. A group of younger Republican MPs who issued an ultimatum last week to Mr Wauquiez to change policy or quit have expressed concern that Mr Larcher’s initiative is led by older, male conservatives. “We want the voice of a new generation of Republicans to be heard,” the group said in a statement.

The ranks of the party faithful have thinned since the 2017 election that brought Mr Macron to power. The Republicans’ presidential candidate, François Fillon, was sunk by a corruption scandal. The party has since expelled several MPs for working with the centrist president, including Edouard Philippe, his prime minister.

Some Republicans are calling for Nicolas Sarkozy, the charismatic ex-president, to return as leader. But Mr Sarkozy is embroiled in corruption investigations and failed to qualify for the second round of the 2017 presidential election.

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China is targeting Hollywood in a new escalation of its trade war with the United States, refusing to show Western films in cinemas and on television, and sacking American actors.

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The move is intended to damage an iconic US industry as tensions between the world’s two largest economies remain high.

It also comes as China is set to overtake the US as the country with the biggest box office takings in the world next year.

According to a new study released by PricewaterhouseCoopers, Chinese cinemas will gross $12.28 billion (£9.6 billion) in 2020, compared to $11.93 billion in the US. China already sells more tickets.

In recent years Hollywood has increasingly been banking on the success of its movies in China, with many of them being written, and cast, to appeal to Chinese audiences.

Even smaller US films have had huge success in China. In March, the low-budget drama Green Book made $71 million there.  

The squeezing out of Hollywood movies by China is retaliation for Donald Trump’s trade war. On May 10, Mr Trump raised tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods from 10 per cent to 25 per cent.

China then raised its tariffs on $60 billion worth of US goods. It also promised there would be other "countermeasures," and it now appears that includes suppressing films.

"It’s Hollywood, it’s a strong industry for America and it’s symbolic" Dan Harris an international lawyer advising clients doing business in China, told The Telegraph.

"With the film industry there are levers China can pull and push as much as they want. That’s what we’re hearing they’re now doing. It’s a matter of degree, but it’s being ramped up and and it will continue to escalate. All of a sudden you realise there are no Western movies."

There has been no official directive from the Chinese government but industry figures indicate not-so-subtle pressure has been brought to bear and a "de facto" policy is in place.

Disney’s X-Men: Dark Phoenix was still the big film at the Chinese box office this weekend, and Spider-Man: Far From Home was recently granted a Chinese release on June 28.

However, China’s Film Bureau has reportedly been indicating to distributors that US movies would not be given release dates in future, unless they were partly produced by China, as some major Hollywood movies are.

The Los Angeles-based Independent Film and Television Alliance, which represents independent film companies around the world, said the developments were an "extreme setback".

China propaganda puff

One industry insider said: "We just don’t know if it’s going to be possible to get release dates for American movies."

A clear signal of China’s intent to target US-produced entertainment came two weeks ago when Tencent, the Chinese internet giant, cancelled streaming of the final episode of Game of Thrones. The series is highly popular in China.

Over the Sea I Come to You, a Chinese TV series filmed  in the US with American actors, was also cancelled.

The plot involved a Chinese man sending his son to study in the US. As the trade war continued China Central Television announced it would be "using the art form of film to echo the current time".

It has started showing productions depicting Chinese soldiers defeating US adversaries. American actors based in China, having moved there as the countries’ film industries became more intertwined, complained that they are no longer being hired.

One, who asked not to be named, told Variety: "Essentially overnight many Americans have been left with no on-screen prospects. Some were fired, some had auditions cancelled, and essentially all our phones have stopped ringing."

The Chinese move mirrors its clampdown on South Korean films and music several years ago after the deployment of an American THAAD missile system there.

Joshua Wong, one of Hong Kong’s most renowned pro-democracy activists, vowed to fight the “long term battle” for the city’s freedoms after his surprise release from jail on Monday morning.

Mr Wong, 22, who became the face of the “Occupy” movement five years ago when he was just a teenager, was freed from the Lai Chi Kok Correctional Institute halfway through a delayed two month sentence for obstructing the clearance of a major protest camp during the 2014 mass protests.

The exact reasons for his release remain unconfirmed, but the timing suggests Hong Kong’s authorities may have been seeking to ease public tension after what may have been the city’s largest rally since 1989, when citizens flooded the streets in support of Tiananmen Square activists.

Protest groups on Sunday claimed that two million people had clogged the streets of the financial hub, demanding the resignation of Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam and the scrapping of a controversial extradition law that leaves citizens vulnerable to being renditioned into China’s opaque justice system.

Granting the freedom of a charismatic youth leader at a time when the grassroots protest movement is building momentum was an unusual move by the Lam administration.

But it perhaps indicated the government’s growing desperation to claw back public trust during one of Hong Kong’s worst political crises in decades.  

The announcement of his release was made late on Sunday after Ms Lam issued a rare apology for misjudging the public’s views and pledged to “adopt a most sincere and humble attitude.”

Addressing a media scrum on the side of the road in fluent Cantonese, Mandarin and English, Mr Wong said he was ready to rejoin the frontlines of the pro-democracy movement and immediately echoed their demands for Ms Lam to step down.

If she did not do so before the 22nd anniversary in July of Hong Kong’s handover to China, even more people would throng the streets to “join our fight until we get our basic human rights and freedom.”

Hong Kong protests against extradition bill, in pictures

Mr Wong praised the “spirit and dignity of the Hong Kong people” who have staged two massive demonstrations against the extradition bill within the past two weeks, the first on June 9, when organisers claimed one million marchers.

The cry to abolish the bill was only the start of the struggle, he said. “It is a long-term battle for us to fight for democracy under the suppression of the Communist party of China,” declared Mr Wong.

“What we are trying to do through civil disobedience and direct action is to let the whole world and the international community know that Hong Kong people will not keep silent under the suppression of President Xi and the Chief Executive Carrie Lam,” he added.

The strength of public opposition to the draft extradition law led to its indefinite suspension on Saturday followed by Ms Lam’s apology the next day when protesters failed to be placated.

Mr Wong was reluctant to declare a victory. “I have just recognised the achievement,” he said.

But Hong Kong’s most recent uprising, which has drawn support from a vast cross-section of its seven-million-strong population is in many ways a vindication of the perseverance of Occupy, also known as the “Umbrella” movement.

In 2014, they were eventually dispersed without achieving their objective of genuine universal voting to elect the city’s chief executive, but they appear to have inspired a younger generation of activists dedicated to fighting for their freedoms as their rights shrink under Chinese rule.

“In December 2014, during the final days of the Umbrella Movement, prominent signs proclaiming We’ll Be Back sprang up along Harcourt Road, one of the three major thruways occupied by peaceful pro-democracy protesters for nearly three months,” Mr Wong wrote from his prison cell last week in TIME.  

“That promise was fulfilled when more than 1 million people took to the streets,” he said.