Global News Podcast - Iran foreign minister responds to Trump intervention threats

Episode Date: January 12, 2026

As protests in Iran continue into their third week, the country's foreign minister claims the situation is "under total control". President Donald Trump has warned that the US could intervene and has "very strong options". In response, Iran says it's "prepared" for war, but "does not seek" it. Also: Myanmar is accused of genocide over attacks on the Muslim Rohingya minority in 2017. The chairman of the US Federal Reserve is facing legal action. He claims it's a political attack. Hamas says it's prepared to hand over power in Gaza -- but is it? We hear how the campaign to end child marriage in the US has some powerful opponents. And, the chimpanzee who beat humans at a memory test has died.The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: [e-mail]

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs.

Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Ritson, and on Monday the 12th of January, these are our main stories. Images of piles of bodies of protesters make it out of Iran, as the foreign minister tells the world the Theocracy is. is fully in control. The UN's top court opens a landmark case accusing Myanmar of genocide over its treatment of the Rohingya. The head of America's central bank says he's facing a criminal investigation because he won't obey Donald Trump and cut interest rates.

Also in this podcast. I was introduced to him in the morning and I was given away to him that night. He was a stranger to me. We investigate child marriage in the United States. Demonstrations in support of the government are taking place in the Iranian capital Tehran. The leadership in Iran says they're in complete control of the situation after days of deadly clashes between protesters and security forces. But despite a near total internet ban, footage of demonstrations against the government is still getting out. Human rights groups are reporting casualties in the hundreds. President Trump had threatened military action.

Now, he says the leaders. in Tehran wants to negotiate. On Monday, the Iranian foreign minister Abbas Saragchi said that Iran was ready for talks but they must be based on mutual respect. The Islamic Republic of Iran is not seeking war but is fully prepared for war. We do not want conflict but we are completely ready for it. The best way to prevent war is to be ready so that our enemies do not once again make a miscalculation. So what is happening at the moment inside Iran. We spoke to Gonsche Habibi Azad from the BBC's Persian service. The latest is that Iran's parliament speaker, Muhammad Bahlil Qadibov, was also present in

the post-establishment rallies in Tehran today. And he has threatened that if the US attacks Iran, Trump will be given an unforgettable lesson. And he has been saying previously that there are targets of the Middle East if the US attacks Iran, everywhere is a target, shipping and military targets as well. And we know that Iran targeted a U.S. military base in Qatar back in summer during the 12-day war with Israel. And this is the threats that have been going on. At the same time, Trump has said that he's like open to negotiations as well with the Iranian side. And this is a signal that we are seeing from Abbas-Arachi, Iran's foreign minister as well, that he has said Iran is ready for war and ready for negotiations as well. The Iranians are insisting they are back in control

the streets, are they? We can't say for sure because of the internet outage. The information that we are getting is very, very limited. BBC Persian is getting in touch with people via those who are using Starlink, Elon Musk is internet, satellite internet or other methods inside the country. But the information is very much limited. People are still chanting anti-establishment slogans from their homes at night. That's what we are hearing.

But at the same time, the connectivity, even text messages I've heard some of the text messages have been cut off and they're just receiving propaganda, what they're saying as propaganda text messages from the establishment, threatening them not to go out, and also they have been invited, as they say, by the text message, to participate in the pro-establishment rallies today. If the Americans did choose a military option,

they would presumably pick their targets carefully. It's been suggested, for example, the secret police headquarters, what would Iranians make of a limited, carefully chosen bit of military action by the US? Iranians inside, and there's much divided opinion between them, we can't say for sure that they do want the attack or they don't want the attack by the US. We can't say that if there are a majority or minority,

but there are voices inside that do support the attack by the US and there are voices as well that are opposed to it. Conche Habibi Azad from BBC Persian. And for more on the story, you can hear and see our international editor, Jeremy Bowen, go to YouTube, search for BBC News, click on the logo, then choose podcasts and global news podcast. The International Court of Justice in the Hague in the Netherlands has begun hearing a case that will determine whether the army in Myanmar committed genocide against the country's Rohingya minority. Evidence suggests that the Burmese military carried out a series of,

of atrocities against the Muslim ethnic group in 2017. The attack forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee over the border and into Bangladesh. The prosecution is being brought by the mostly Muslim nation of the Gambia in West Africa. Its Justice Minister, Dorda Jallo, told the court why they'd decided to bring the case. We did not bring this case lightly. We brought this case after reviewing credible reports of the most brutal and vicious violations imaginably inflicted. upon vulnerable group that had been dehumanized and persecuted for many years.

Sadly, Myanmar appears to be trapped in the cycle of atrocities and impunities. Nobody has been held responsible for the crimes against the Rohingya. Myanmar denies that it carried out genocide against the Rohingya and previously tried to stop the case going ahead. Our correspondent Anna Holligan joined us from the Hague. It was 2017. brought this case alleging that Myanmar committed genocide during clearance operations. So during that time, there was a military campaign involving the army, also Buddhist militias. And according to UN,

fact-finding report the following year, there were genocidal acts committed. They cited the torching of villages, the sexual violence, widespread killing. And so the Gambia brought this case because it says it has a responsibility under the genocide convention to ensure that genocide is not committed. So if you think back for those of us who are familiar with the term never again in the context of the Holocaust, Rwanda, Srebrenica, this case is one of the few concrete attempts to try to enforce that promise. So Myanmar, as you say, has argued that this was a counterterrorism operation, that it was a legitimate response to attacks by Rohingya military. But what we heard in court today is a packed courtroom both sides.

Myanmar and the Gambia, all of the benches are full public gallery too. It's attracting so much attention this case. And what we heard from lawyers representing the Gambia is that this was not a legitimate military campaign because if it's counter-terrorism in the proper use of that word, then efforts are made to protect civilians. And they said in this case, children, children. were thrown in fires. Women and girls were gang raped and mutilated. The villages were burned down and the army were shooting anything that moved. So these are strong allegations

from the Gambia and Myanmar will have a chance to respond in court once the Gambia has had its say. And of course there are still hundreds of thousands of people in those refugee camps in Bangladesh. How long are these proceedings going to take and when are we going to get a ruling? Three weeks and unusually for these types of hearings we will be hearing from witnesses or rather we won't be hearing from witnesses because those sessions will actually be closed to the public and the media but witnesses will be hearing in court. So survivors, Rohingya survivors, Myanmar is also calling witnesses. We don't know who they are yet. But this case, you know, it has a wider significance too because it's ultimately down to the interpretation of the law on genocide and the degree to which judges view intent as being so critical to that.

And the extent to which killings and other crimes under the genocide convention have to be proved to have a certain level of intent in order to be characterized as genocide. So that's why this case is being watched around the world, including especially in relation to cases involving Gaza, Ukraine and Russia too. Anna Holligan in the Hague. Federal prosecutors in the United States have opened a criminal investigation into the chairman of the US Federal Reserve. It relates to testimony Jerome Powell, who guides US monetary policy, gave to Congress about a renovation project at a Federal Reserve building. Mr Powell says the investigation. has much more to do with the central bank's refusal to bout a pressure from the White House to cut interest rates.

The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public rather than following the preferences of the president. This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation. The criminal investigation is the latest escalation and the long-running clash between President Trump and Mr Powell. I spoke to our business correspondent Nick Marsh and asked him if this investigation was unprecedented.

It does appear unprecedented. This is an investigation launched by the Department of Justice about the renovation of the Federal Reserve building, which has run several hundred million dollars over budget, and essentially whether Jerome Powell lied to concede. Congress about the scope of it. Is this another example of Donald Trump essentially using the courts to target political opponents? It's no secret that there is no love lost between President Trump and Jerome Powell, who was actually appointed by Donald Trump back in 2017 during his first term. But since then, President Trump has repeatedly aggressively criticized Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve for not reducing interest rates quickly enough.

But the Federal Reserve is independent from political interference, at least it's supposed to be, and Jerome Powell has repeatedly said that it's economic conditions that guide monetary policy, not whoever's in the White House, and the Federal Reserve has consistently said that inflation is still too high to justify the kind of rapid rate cuts

that President Trump has been consistently demanding. pressure work, though, might Jerome Powell bend when faced with a lawsuit? It doesn't seem to be the case. It's quite unprecedented for a Federal Reserve Chair to come out and give a public statement accusing the White House of political interference. It doesn't appear this will have any effect on any decisions that he makes on monetary policy, but his term is due to expire at the end of May this year. Donald Trump has already said that he knows who his successor is going to be. It's widely believed to be Kevin Hassett,

who's one of Donald Trump's key economic advisors, a close ally to Donald Trump as well. Jerome Powell does have until 2028 to see out his term as a governor on the board of the Federal Reserve. But interestingly, Donald Trump himself was asked by US media about this case, brought by the Department of Justice

shortly after the news broke, and he said he didn't know anything about it. Nick Marsh, how do you sum up someone's life in 175 words? According to research led by Michigan State University of 38 million online obituaries, 175 words is the average length posted by families and loved ones. And in those few sentences, across nearly 30 years of tributes, the qualities that families consistently chose to highlight to honour a life well-lived were those of kindness and tradition.

Anna Tremkin is Deputy Obituary's editor at the British newspaper The Times. First, does an emphasis on kindness feature in her own work. I think many people would broadly agree with this study from Michigan State that being kind and benevolent is more important than what you may or may not achieve in your career. But obviously, when you're researching and writing about someone who's lived there, life in the public eye and has had a role on the world stage. I think that question is very different. And certainly I think that newspaper obitories would be rather boring and uninformative reads if they just focused on how kind someone was. They wouldn't make for particularly illuminating

reads. Well, I suppose the other thing as well is the tradition crops up as something that seems to be very important to people or when a family's referencing it. I can't imagine that necessarily crops up a lot in the more official formal obituaries that you would write? No, that's right. And I think obviously there's a distinction to be made here between sort of memorial notices or death notices that appear in newspapers or, you know, memorial websites. There's a distinction to be made between them and a formal newspaper obituary because, obviously, that's much more detailed. It's much more a kind of short biography of the life. And it's meant to be written objectively, whereas memorial notices or

or death announcements are often placed by the families who obviously have a different perspective on the person's life. Indeed. I mean, what are you aiming to do to provide a sort of well-rounded account? Yes, absolutely. You know, the idea is that an obituary should be a well-rounded, short biography. It should give a balanced account of a person's life. And actually for that reason, that's why, you know,

the Times is one of the papers that actually doesn't publish obitories with bylines. They are anonymously written. so that it's partly so that the writer has the freedom to kind of give a very candid account of the person's life without fearing any potential backlash. But it's also so that it's more the sort of papers verdict on that person's life rather than the writers. How much research goes into it? As much as possible. I mean, obviously it depends on the amount of time that a writer has to put the piece together. If it's someone who is very much a household name and we've got to get into the paper that day and we weren't expecting

them to die and it's not someone who we've already prepared an obituary for, then obviously there's only so much you can do in the day that you've got. But as much as possible, we would always try to speak to a friend or a relative, someone who obviously knew the subject and can really give an insight into that person, their key achievements and their key personality traits. I mean, there is, to some extent you have to, when somebody has just died, gloss over the worst of their characteristics, don't you? I would actually disagree with that.

I mean, I think obituaries are, they're not hagiographies. You know, they're not eulogies. And actually, they have to acknowledge, or they should acknowledge a person's shortcomings as well as their successes. And so we do always strive to do that. And I mean, people are often surprised to learn, for instance, that the Times published obitts for people like Hitler and Stalin. So we do cover villains as well as heroes. And I do think it's important for an obituary to acknowledge a person's shortcomings as well as their successes. Do you have any particular favourites? Well, a good example on that note actually is

the obituary that we ran for James Watson, who died a few months ago. He was, of course, the American biologist who co-discovered the structure of DNA along with Francis Crick. And he was a really complex character. And actually, he became just as famous for his rather shocking and offensive remarks as for his scientific genius. And so the obituary was very candid about. And so the obituary was very candid about that and acknowledged the complexities of his legacy. Anna Tremkin of the Times newspaper was speaking to Sarah Montague. Still to come in this podcast. The sound of I, the chimpanzee, who's died at the age of 49,

acing a memory test. She played a vital role helping scientists understand the primate mind and, by extension, our own. Okay, new year, fresh start. And honestly, I'm starting with dinner. This year, I'm being smarter about where my energy goes, and dinner was taking way too much of it. I just signed up for Hello Fresh, and they take Fresh Start to a whole new level. Fresh high-quality ingredients delivered right to my door, locally sourced whenever possible. Everything pre-portioned, nothing wasted. Now, I'm not dragging myself through weekend grocery runs, or panic staring at the fridge at 5.30 trying to make something out of random. random leftovers. And I'm definitely not tossing out food I never used or falling back on expensive takeout apps because I ran out of ideas. Yeah, that happened a lot. Just simple, stress-free recipes and meals that help me save more, waste less, and for the first time in a long time, I actually look forward to dinner. Get your fresh start right now and get 50% off your first box, plus free sides for life with HelloFresh. That's right, free sides for life. Go to hellofresh.c.c.

and use code dinner 50. That's hellofresh.ca. Code dinner 50. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it.

It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. To Gaza now, are we about to enter the second phase of Donald Trump's plans

to bring peace to the territory following the ceasefire last October? Hamas has announced that it's ready to hand over control of Gaza's governing institutions to an independent Palestinian technocratic committee, which is still yet to be set up and approved. So is this a genuine offer to hand over power? After all, Hamas is resisting calls to disarm. Meanwhile, the post-seas-fired death toll has continued to rise in Gaza with both Israel and Hamas accusing each other of violating the deal.

Our correspondent John Sudworth spoke to me from Jerusalem. Well, these are comments that have come from Hazam Qasem, a Hamas spokesperson posted to his telegram. channel, essentially, as you've been outlining, they're calling for the speeding up of the establishment of this technocratic committee, which is meant to be taking over the governance of Gaza under the Trump-backed peace plan. Reports suggest that Egyptian officials are going to be meeting representatives of Hamas and various other Palestinian factions this week to put forward ideas of who might be on the committee. but we are a long, long way from not only having those names being made public, but knowing whether any of them will be acceptable to Washington or to the Israelis. There is, of course, meant to be no role for Hamas at all in the future governance of Gaza.

It's meant to be a technocratic, non-political body. Nor do we even know who's going to be on the Board of Peace, which is meant to be overseeing this new government body's work, And of course, that question of disarmament looming over it all. No clear idea yet on how the international stabilisation force another key part of the peace plan will be set up, who will be part of it, and how disarmament will be either verified or enforced. And that has to be key, doesn't it?

Because if Hamas doesn't disarm, and it's not offering to disarm, presumably the whole thing is meaningless. Yeah, I mean, this statement may be seen by some as something of a positive, sign of intent from Hamas. But you know, your right, disarmament is one of the big key sticking points, both Hamas and the Israeli government, clearly skeptical of the good faith on either side here, both Hamas's intent to disarm and also the question of Israel's intentions here. It is not yet, of course, fully withdrawn from Gaza. It's holding its troops at the yellow line and strikes continue on an almost daily basis. Yeah, which feeds into my next question,

is the ceasefire holding? Fragile at best, I think, is the way it can be described. Both sides accuse each other of repeated violations. Gaza's health ministry reports more than 400 Palestinians, having been killed in Israeli strikes since the truce was signed three months ago. And of course, the Israeli Prime Minister signalling he is keeping the option open for further military action. Hamas disarmament he has said can be done the easy way or the hard way. John Sudworth. More than 300,000 children were married in the United States between 2000 and 2020-21. Mostly girls wed to adult men.

Recently, child marriage was banned in Maine, Oregon, Missouri and Washington, D.C. But in California, for example, there is no minimum age. to get married. Those who want to ban child marriage say it's especially difficult to change the law there, with some progressive organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, supporting it. The BBC's Reagan Morris reports from Los Angeles. In California, it is legal for children to get married. As long as a parent approves the marriage and a judge rubber stamps it. Women who escaped child marriages want that to change.

I was introduced to him in the morning, and I was given away to him that night. He was a stranger to me. At age 15, Sarah Tasneem was forced by her father to marry a man nearly twice her age. I was legally trapped with no place to go, no education. By 16, Sarah was a mother. Her father and husband were part of a religious cult. Sarah was removed from school, and she was expected to raise her daughter the same way, to become a wife and mother,

while she was still just a girl. When I had my daughter, I think everything changed. It just made me understand that this is a much bigger life than just me. And whatever the impacts were of what was going on was going to impact her as well. I didn't know fully, I didn't know the entirety of what had happened to me was so why it was so wrong, but I knew that I had to get out for her. Child marriage is mostly practiced within conservative religious groups and cults. But in California, it is powerful progressive organizations, like the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, who oppose banning child marriage.

Both organizations declined interview requests, but in a statement they said they worried that a law outright banning child marriage could force young people in abusive relationships further underground and negatively impact children who want to get married. It is mind-boggling. Freddie Reese is a forced marriage survivor who runs unchained at last. So we're taking away a child's right to marry. That's like saying that banning child rape takes away a girl's right to be raped. I mean, child marriage is not a right. It's a human rights abuse. There we go.

Our next speaker is Chelsea Clinton. She's an advocate, an investor, a teacher, and the mother of three. The movement to ban child marriage has a powerful ally in Chelsea Clinton, But I would like for us to have some righteous anger about actual children being actually trafficked into statutory rape situations with judges and other institutions that should be protecting children, not only complicit but actively cooperating. On stage with Unchained at Last in Los Angeles, she urged the audience to help ban child marriage in California. I very much believe in the ongoing work of changing her. and minds, I also believe in the hard legal work of changing laws and enforcing those laws. And laws are changing. A decade ago, child marriage was legal across the U.S. Now it is banned in 16 states.

Many say it's time for the Golden State to do the same. Reagan Morris. Rewilding is a movement aimed at restoring damaged environments and increasing biodiversity. Here in Britain, a flagship project that's been going for 12. years has shown what can be achieved. The Nepp estate and the county of West Sussex in southern England has seen an explosion in wildlife since it began rewilding, with its bird numbers increasing tenfold in the past two decades and a variety of butterfly species doubling. Isabel Tree is a writer and conservationist who co-owns NEP. She spoke to my colleague Emma Barnett about what had been achieved. It's absolutely astonishing. It's sort of more than we could ever.

have possibly imagined when we started out on this project about 20 or so years ago. I mean, for example, we have now some of the most endangered species in the UK, including nightingales. Last year we had 60 singing males, which is about 1% of the population in the UK. So having gone from being a very depleted, polluted, dysfunctional farmland, we're on very, very poor soil here in Sussex. We've now become one of the most significant biodiversity hotspots in the UK. And it's not just the endangered species that we're seeing here, which is so thrilling, it's the abundance of life. And I think that's what this 20-year survey is showing. It's the enormous uplift in biodiversity, which is changing everyone's minds about how much the land can actually hold. We should be

much, much more ambitious, I think, for our nature reserves and our rewilding projects. Yeah, it shows that it can be brought back, even as you say from very humble soil and humble beginnings. What do you have to do when you're rewilding and when you were rewilding neb? How much of it is just leaving that land to its own devices or how much do you need to give it a bit of a helping hand to improve it? Well, I think rewilding really is all about letting go. It's about putting nature back in the driving seat. So it's different to conventional conservation where quite often you're protecting a tiny remnant of important habitat and you're doing everything to keep that in stasis, as it were. With rewilding, you're just giving nature free rain. So you're allowing thorny scrub to

recolonize, and that's where we have a 900% increase in breeding birds is in that thorny scrub. You're leaving dead trees standing. You're putting in drivers, so large roaming animals like cattle and ponies and pigs and deer, to sort of drive the system, to keep a kind of very dynamic mosaic of habitats. And that's what seems to be rocket fuel for wildlife. And for us, this is really important because in the UK, you know, we pledge to return 30% of our land to nature by 2030, and we're not doing that fast enough. We can see that with rewilding, it's a really powerful tool to get nature back in a relatively cheap way, actually. It's very easy to do, and it's very, very fast. Writer and conservationist Isabella Tree. A chimpanzee, which played an important role in the study

of memory and language has died in Japan at the age of 49. She was brought to Kyoto University from West Africa in 1977 and exposed to learning materials including computers from an early age. The female chimp named I was known for her intelligence, including the ability to recognise letters and numbers. Our reporter Pete Ross told me that she also had a remarkable memory. I think she displayed many kind of remarkable cognitive feats over the the many decades of research in which she took part. But yet, as you say, it's perhaps her memory and her performance and that of other chimps that took part in a series of memory tests in 2007 that first sort of grabbed the world's attention

and for which perhaps she's best well known. Now, during these tests, she and other chimps that took part showed astonishing powers of recall demonstrating a sort of photographic memory and easily beating their human counterparts the people that were competing against in these tests. The tests involved participants trying to put numbers that appear briefly on a screen before disappearing in the correct order. The way the test would work, you had the numbers 1 to 9 on a touchscreen, a computer touchscreen.

They'd appear briefly. And then when the chimpanzee selected the number 1, the other numbers would immediately disappear. And they would have to then try and put those numbers back into order, you know, 1 to 9, so 1, 2, 3, 4 and so forth. I think we've got a clip, or we've got a clip of one of the tests. Now, you're not hearing a lot here, but what you can hear is those clicks. And you hear how quickly those clicks are.

That's how quickly the chimpanzee is, you know, she's hitting number one, and then instantly they disappear, and within a second as you can hear, she's immediately putting those numbers in order. I'm actually quite blown away by the idea that chimpanzees could do that quicker than humans. Presumably scientists have looked at this. Why? How? Well, first of all, think about it yourself. You know, when do we have to kind of put numbers into order? These days, maybe when we're using our phones and we have a little code, I don't know about you, they're normally about six digits long. So to put nine digits from in the correct order placed randomly on a screen is pretty remarkable. Scientists say essentially the reason that this happens is that humans and chimps are on a DNA level almost identical. So at some point, we probably had this kind of ability to recall things, you know, take a snapshot, a photo. and we've lost it over a time. And essentially the reason for that is, is evolution.

Basically, you have to give something up in order to gain something. And what we've gained is our ability to communicate, our ability to have language, using tools and other things. And that therefore means that while in the past we did have this amazing memory, we've subsequently lost it. Pete Ross. And that's all from us for now, but there'll be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later.

and for one story in depth that gives you the backstory behind the headlines, you can seek out our sister podcast, the global story, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is global podcast at BBC.co.com. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag Global NewsPod. This edition was mixed by Chris Hansen.

The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Ritson. Until next time, goodbye. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it.

It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman. And in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.