Dear Carolyn: My fiancé and I recently got engaged. We graduated from college together last year and decided to live apart for a year to establish ourselves and settle into the work world. He is now applying for jobs in my area so we can move in together. Our university was about 20 minutes from his childhood home, and moving to join me would be the farthest from home he’s ever lived — although only a 90-minute flight away. He is the first of his family, including extended family, to move out of state.

My future mother- and father-in-law are loving parents but have been doubting and belittling my fiancé’s decisions since graduation, with the aim of getting him to move back.

He is now starting to doubt every decision he makes and losing confidence in his ability to navigate this already challenging time. Would it be out of line if I gently encouraged his parents to back off? Or would any interference in this family dynamic be counterproductive?

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— Engaged

Engaged: Oh, you’ve interfered plenty already. Don’t you see?

This is another one of those situations where I’m mostly kidding but 100 percent not.

This family has its own way of doing things, which apparently requires putting down roots within Sunday dinner range of Mom and Dad’s advice.

But then you enter his life, and his visits will soon involve AiRfArE!?!?

As an independent adult, you probably don’t see things this way at all. You’re one of two independent adults who are now a couple, so you’re making decisions together, as far as you know, and he just has “loving parents” … who, ah, happen to be “belittling my fiancé’s decisions since graduation.”

It’s wake-up time to the reach and tenacity of the dynamic you stumbled into.

Any independence your fiancé has demonstrated is a break from his family’s expectations — and what you’re witnessing now is how much the breaks have cost him.

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Nobody moves away, ever.

If you did intervene on his behalf with his parents — I think “gently” is grayed out on the menu with these two — then you would not only risk an in-law cold war, but you’d also undermine your fiancé’s independence push at its decisive moment. Ouch.

Because what would your involvement do except position you as Authority Figure 2.0? I’m seeing parents accustomed to a decisive level of influence over their son and plainly showing their displeasure with his rogue impulses. He doesn’t need his partner exerting counterinfluence over him to get him away from his family; he needs to summon his own strength to do that.

Or he needs to admit, for the good of all involved, he either doesn’t want to pull away or isn’t ready to yet. Choosing this, not defaulting to it.

Because if his extraction depends on your upper-body strength alone, then eventually your muscles will twitch with exhaustion — plus his parents can keep doubting and belittling (!) him on multiple telecommunications platforms. Not to mention, he will struggle to be fully present in his life with you if he feels guilty or conflicted just for being there. And think how tempted he will be to blame you when times get tough, instead of working through things as a co-owner and -author of your shared life.

Ooh, and the contempt you’ll nurse.

Talk to him. He’s your partner; he’s the one doubting.

Namely, remind him to breathe.

You’re reading an excerpt from the WorldView newsletter. Sign up to get the rest, including news from around the globe and interesting ideas and opinions to know, sent to your inbox on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” That was President Donald Trump’s demand posted on social media Tuesday afternoon, amid a series of posts where the U.S. president seemed to signal that his country was preparing to enter Israel’s expanding conflict with Iran. The spiraling attacks that started at the end of last week when Israel unilaterally struck key Iranian targets threatens to convulse the Middle East in chaos, upset global oil markets and carve a new swath of death and destruction through both countries.

Starting with his inauguration, Trump had cast himself as a man of “peace” and a “dealmaker” intent on stabilizing a febrile region and ending wars. But by Tuesday afternoon, after he cut short his appearance at a summit of the Group of Seven nations, Trump appeared set to join one. He proclaimed that the United States and Israel shared air superiority over Iranian skies. And he intimated that U.S. forces could, if they wished, target and kill Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran’s theocratic regime. Upping the ante the night before, Trump said the residents of Tehran — perhaps all 10 million people who live within the city limits of the Iranian capital — should evacuate.

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At the time of writing, it wasn’t clear whether Trump would commit U.S. airpower in the coming hours to hit certain targets in Iran and assist Israel’s strikes, or simply hope to leverage his threats into concessions from the Iranian regime. The developments mark a sharp turn away from Trump’s initial posture, where he had championed diplomacy in public and urged Israeli restraint in private. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies successfully pulled Trump into the conflict, convincing him of the imminent peril of Iran rushing to build a nuclear weapon — even though some U.S. officials did not share the same assessment regarding Iran’s nuclear intentions.

“We’re doing something in the service of mankind, of humanity and it’s a battle of good against evil. America does and should stand with the good,” Netanyahu said in an interview with ABC News.

On this episode, President Trump’s increasing involvement in Iran, and his 2024 financial disclosures reveal his biggest sources of profit. (Video: The Washington Post)

Israel insists that its operations are focused on the “existential” risks posed by Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. But in recent days since the war flared, it appears that Netanyahu’s goals may be more far-reaching. He also suggested killing Khamenei — that is, taking out the head of the regime — would bring a tidy end to the conflict. In a conversation with Iranian opposition media based abroad, he bluntly argued that now was the time for regime change. “A light has been lit, carry it to freedom,” Netanyahu told Iran International’s Pouria Zeraati. “This is the time, your hour of freedom is near, it’s happening now.”

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Even if Iran’s “hour of freedom” is not nigh — and one can expect the embattled regime to circle the wagons and desperately cling to power — Netanyahu’s moment of preeminence is here. He has built off Israel’s tactical victories over the past 20 months. The Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist strike by militant group Hamas on southern Israel triggered a wave of Israeli reprisals that has washed over much of the Middle East. Hamas is severely degraded as a fighting force and its base of operations in the Gaza Strip is a rubble-strewn ruin and site of a sprawling humanitarian catastrophe. Lebanon’s Hezbollah, a key Iranian proxy, has been reduced to a shadow of itself after relentless Israeli bombardments and a clandestine assassination campaign of the group’s top ranks. And after Hezbollah was humbled, Syria’s pro-Iranian regime was ousted last year, wiping out yet another crucial platform for Iran’s strategic depth in the region.

The right-wing Israeli leader spent decades calling out the Islamic Republic and urging partners in the West, especially in Washington, to confront it. Ten years ago, he agitated against U.S. efforts at the time to forge a deal with Iran that curbed its nuclear activities. Then, his persistence lay behind Trump’s decision in his first term to scrap the accord. After Trump broke the deal in 2018, Iran resumed uranium enrichment at levels previously thwarted.

Mutual antipathy toward Tehran underlay Israel’s normalization deals with a handful of rich Arab monarchies, including the United Arab Emirates. In international forums, Netanyahu kept warning about the risks of an Iranian nuclear weapon and the dangers posed by its militant proxies. His foreign and domestic critics said he was distracting from Israel’s unresolved conflict with the Palestinians, millions of whom live under Israeli military occupation.

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But he never let Iran out of his crosshairs, even as the Israeli war machine tore through Gaza. The focus still pays political dividends. After narrowly surviving a parliamentary vote last week that could have collapsed his government, Netanyahu now has the backing of his most vocal domestic rivals in his sweeping campaign against Iran.

In a Tuesday interview, Netanyahu said Israel’s military actions were paving the way for “a different Middle East.” It’s one where Israel, buoyed by ironclad U.S. support, has emerged as the paramount hegemon. Tiny in size and population, it nevertheless has been able to exert its superior capabilities across a wide sweep of countries and targets, at little to no political cost. What Trump and his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, hoped to achieve through back-channel diplomacy with Tehran has been swept aside by the new status quo Netanyahu is forging.

Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former Israeli foreign minister, argued that Netanyahu’s politicking is part of the reason why Iran’s nuclear capabilities are as advanced as they currently are. But the systematic degradation of key Iranian nuclear and military sites suggest an endgame that has little interest in compromise.

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“In line with his grand Churchillian ambition — and mirroring the perspective he has brought to his war against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon — Netanyahu is seeking ‘total victory’ over Iran,” Ben-Ami wrote. “This would render a nuclear deal unnecessary.”

Following Israeli lobbying, Trump, too, seems determined to “end Iranian enrichment,” as Vice President JD Vance put it in a social media post. Given considerable public disapproval in the United States for further military entanglements in the Middle East, it’s unclear how sustained U.S. support for Israel’s campaign may be in the days to come.

LONDON — British lawmakers voted Tuesday to decriminalize abortion in England and Wales after a lawmaker argued it was cruel to prosecute women for ending a pregnancy. The House of Commons approved an amendment to a broader crime bill that would prevent women from being criminally punished under an antiquated law.

Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi, the Labour member of Parliament who introduced one of the amendments, said the change was needed because police have investigated more than 100 women for suspected illegal abortions over the past five years, including some who suffered natural miscarriages and stillbirths.

“This piece of legislation will only take women out of the criminal justice system because they are vulnerable and they need our help,” she said. “Just what public interest is this serving? This is not justice, it is cruelty and it has got to end.”

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The amendment passed 379-137. The House of Commons will now need to pass the crime bill, which is expected, before it goes to the House of Lords, where it can be delayed but not blocked.

Under current law, doctors can legally carry out abortions in England, Scotland and Wales up to 24 weeks, and beyond that under special circumstances, such as when the life of the mother is in danger. Abortion in Northern Ireland was decriminalized in 2019.

Changes in the law implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic allow women to receive abortion pills through the mail and terminate their own pregnancies at home within the first 10 weeks.

That has led to a handful of widely publicized cases in which women were prosecuted for illegally obtaining abortion pills and using them to end their own pregnancies after 24 weeks or more.

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Anti-abortion groups opposed the measures, arguing it would open the door to abortion on demand at any stage of pregnancy.

“Unborn babies will have any remaining protection stripped away, and women will be left at the mercy of abusers,” said Alithea Williams, public policy manager for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, which describes itself as the U.K.’s biggest pro-life campaign group.

The debate came after recent prosecutions have galvanized support to repeal parts of the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act.

In one case, a mother of three was sentenced to more than two years in prison in 2023 for medically inducing an abortion about eight months into her pregnancy.

Carla Foster, 45, was released about a month later by an appeals court that reduced her sentence. Judge Victoria Sharp said that case called for “compassion, not punishment” and there was no useful purpose in jailing her.

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Last month, a jury acquitted Nicola Packer on a charge of unlawfully self-administering poison or a noxious thing with intent to procure a miscarriage. Packer, who took abortion medicine when she was about 26 weeks pregnant, testified that she did not know she had been pregnant more than 10 weeks.

Supporters of the bill said it was a landmark reform that would keep women from going to prison for ending their pregnancy.

“At a time when we’re seeing rollbacks on reproductive rights, most notably in the United States, this crucial milestone in the fight for reproductive rights sends a powerful message that our lawmakers are standing up for women,” said Louise McCudden of MSI Reproductive Choices.

A second amendment that would have gone even further than Antoniazzi’s proposal, barring the prosecution of medical professionals and others who help women abort their fetuses, did not get to a vote.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Israeli warplanes pounded Iran’s capital overnight and into Wednesday as Iran launched a small barrage of missiles at Israel with no reports of casualties. An Iranian official warned Wednesday that that any U.S. intervention in the conflict would risk “all-out war.” Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei delivered the warning in an interview with Al Jazeera English, saying “any American intervention would be a recipe for an all-out war in the region.” He did not elaborate, but thousands of American troops are based in nearby countries within range of Iran’s weapons. The U.S. has threatened a massive response to any attack.

Another Iranian official said the country would keep enriching uranium for peaceful purposes, apparently ruling out demands to give up its disputed nuclear program.

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U.S. President Donald Trump initially distanced himself from Israel’s surprise attack on Friday that triggered the conflict, but in recent days has hinted at greater American involvement , saying he wants something “much bigger” than a ceasefire. The U.S. has also sent more warplanes to the region.

Strikes in and around Tehran

The latest Israeli strikes hit a facility used to make uranium centrifuges and another that made missile components, the Israeli military said. It said it had intercepted 10 missiles overnight as Iran’s retaliatory barrages diminish. The U.N. nuclear watchdog said Israel had struck two centrifuge production facilities in and near Tehran.

Israeli strikes have hit several nuclear and military sites, killing top generals and nuclear scientists. A Washington-based Iranian human rights group said at least 585 people, including 239 civilians, have been killed and more than 1,300 wounded.

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Iran has fired some 400 missiles and hundreds of drones in retaliatory strikes that have killed at least 24 people in Israel and wounded hundreds. Some have hit apartment buildings in central Israel, causing heavy damage, and air raid sirens have repeatedly forced Israelis to run for shelter .

Iran has fired fewer missiles as the conflict has worn on. It has not explained the decline, but Israel has targeted launchers and other infrastructure related to the missiles.

Casualties mount in Iran

The Washington-based group Human Rights Activists said it had identified 239 of those killed in Israeli strikes as civilians and 126 as security personnel.

The group, which also provided detailed casualty figures during 2022 protests over the death of Mahsa Amini , crosschecks local reports against a network of sources it has developed in Iran.

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Iran has not been publishing regular death tolls during the conflict and has minimized casualties in the past. Its last update, issued Monday, put the toll at 224 people killed and 1,277 others wounded.

Shops have been closed across Tehran, including in its famed Grand Bazaar, as people wait in gas lines and pack roads leading out of the city to escape the onslaught.

A major explosion could be heard around 5 a.m. in Tehran Wednesday morning, following other explosions earlier in the predawn darkness. Authorities in Iran offered no acknowledgement of the attacks, which has become increasingly common as the Israeli airstrikes have intensified.

At least one strike appeared to target Tehran’s eastern neighborhood of Hakimiyeh, where the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard has an academy.

No signs of backing down

Israel says it launched the strikes to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon, after talks between the United States and Iran over a diplomatic resolution had made little visible progress over two months but were still ongoing. Trump has said Israel’s campaign came after a 60-day window he set for the talks.

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Iran long has insisted its nuclear program was peaceful, though it is the only non-nuclear-armed state to enrich uranium up to 60%, a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%. U.S. intelligence agencies have said they did not believe Iran was actively pursuing the bomb.

Israel is the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons but has never publicly acknowledged them.

Iran’s ambassador to Geneva, Ali Bahreini, told reporters that Iran “will continue to produce the enriched uranium as far as we need for peaceful purposes.”

He rejected any talk of a setback to Iran’s nuclear research and development from the Israeli strikes, saying, “Our scientists will continue their work.”

Trump demands Iranian surrender

Trump demanded “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER” in a post on social media Tuesday and warned Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that the U.S. knows where he is hiding but that there were no plans to kill him , “at least not for now.”

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Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about the evolving situation over the phone on Tuesday, according to a White House official.

Bahreini, the Iranian ambassador, said Trump’s remarks were “completely unwarranted” and “very hostile,” and that Iran could not ignore them.

He said Iranian authorities were “vigilant” about the comments and would decide if the U.S. crossed any lines. “Once the red line is crossed, the response will come.”

Israel welcomes first repatriation flights

Israelis began returning on flights for the first time since the country’s international airport shut down at the start of the conflict.

Two flights from Larnaca, Cyprus, landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport on Wednesday morning, said Lisa Dvir, an airport spokesperson.

Israel closed its airspace to commercial flights because of the ballistic missile attacks, leaving tens of thousands of Israelis stranded abroad. The conflict has disrupted flight patterns across the region.

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TEL AVIV — For five days, Iran’s ballistic missile salvos against Israel have torn through residential buildings and killed two dozen civilians, set cars and infrastructure ablaze, and have Israelis questioning their already fractured sense of security. In Tel Aviv, Israel’s otherwise bustling financial and cultural hub, the streets have gone quiet as schools and nonessential businesses have closed, public transportation has been scaled back and the military has banned public gatherings. Iran has fired missiles primarily at Tel Aviv and its surroundings, as well as at Haifa, a key port city in the north, after Israel began attacking Iranian military and nuclear sites Friday.

Some residents of Israel’s commercial capital, which has a population of about 500,000, have left their homes to stay with family outside the city. Others have stayed, fleeing to shelters at night, which is when most of the missiles rain down.

Dark smoke billows from a fire in Herzliya, Israel, on June 17, following a morning barrage of Iranian rockets. (Video: Heidi Levine/The Washington Post)

“The fact that you don’t know if the missiles are about to fall on you, that we are now living with this feeling of helplessness, it’s insane,” said Ella Keren, a nurse who was with her two young daughters at a Tel Aviv playground Tuesday.

Keren and her family are among the many in Israel trying to fill the unstructured days after sleepless nights. She said she does not see herself as an “anxious person,” but since the conflict with Iran started, Keren vacillates between “extreme fear, that if something happens — if I die — I will be separated from my girls,” on the one hand, and “radical acceptance, that this is just it,” on the other.

For the past 20 months, since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Israelis have grown used to war and a weakening sense of security. Israeli towns and cities absorbed waves of rocket, missile and drone attacks from Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and Iran. But the conflict that began last week feels different in scope and scale, some Israelis say, inspiring either hope that this era of insecurity will finally change, or fear that Israel may be stuck in an endless cycle of war.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the operation in Iran, cast as an effort to eliminate its nuclear program, will go on for “as many days as it takes.” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said Iran will continue its “legitimate self-defense against Israel.” In a social media post Tuesday, President Donald Trump demanded Iran’s “unconditional surrender,” amid speculation the United States could be planning to join in the attacks.

But on Israel’s home front, the casualties, including 24 deaths and more than 600 injured, have more Israelis wondering about the value of their missile defense systems; in recent years, one layer of that system, the Iron Dome, was estimated by the Israeli military to have intercepted more than 90 percent of the rockets fired from Gaza.

But the missiles fired from Iran are much more sophisticated. Since Friday, several have penetrated, including those equipped with heavier warheads, some of which have directly hit residential buildings in Israeli cities. More than 2,700 people have been evacuated from their homes, according to government figures.

“Each time, it’s like a new extreme, with everything even more uncertain, seeming even farther away from ending,” said Ido Tal Mor, 37, a theater teacher and Pilates instructor. He said the crisis has eroded what feelings of safety he had left after the Oct. 7 attacks.

On Friday night, during the first barrage, Tal Mor ran to the basement shelter in his building as alerts sounded on his phone warning of incoming missiles. He said he and his neighbors clung to the walls as the booms grew more deafening, shaking the foundation.

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When Tal Mor left the shelter, in a desperate search for his cat, he saw that the explosion had blown out the windows in his apartment. It took him days to recover from the panic attack he suffered that night, he said. He found his cat, but learned that buildings only one street over were downed in the attack during the same barrage Friday, trapping his neighbors under the rubble. He doesn’t know if they survived.

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Tal Mor is now staying at his parents’ house in the coastal city of Hadera, in northern Israel. But it also “does not feel safe,” he said.

Israeli officials have urged citizens to abide by the directives of the Home Front Command, but overnight Monday, four people were killed in the central Israeli city of Petah Tikva when a missile landed between two safe rooms inside a residential building.

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That same night, three others were killed in a missile strike on an oil refinery in Haifa. In Bnei Brak, a city near Tel Aviv, the shock wave from a missile strike collapsed a home, killing an 80-year-old man.

Dana Avesar, 34, works for a start-up in Tel Aviv but said she relocated with her husband to his flower and pineapple farm in Talmei Yosef in southern Israel over the weekend. The Iranian strikes, she said, reinforce “that the defense can never be bulletproof.”

Avesar said her apartment in Tel Aviv was only a few blocks from a building that was hit early Monday. But she hasn’t checked whether her building was damaged. She is too afraid to find out.

“I don’t want to go to sleep, because I don’t want another thing to happen,” she said. “But I also feel like, for the first time, this escalation with Iran offers a glimmer of hope, because it is a big move, and it could lead to a big change, and maybe, maybe, it is a unique chance to build a more long-term defense.”