Global News Podcast - Iran has increased its stockpile of enriched uranium

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

The IAEA says Tehran now has almost enough of the uranium material to make four nuclear bombs if enriched further. Also: Ukraine F-16 fighter jet crashes just weeks after it was donated by NATO allies.

Hello, this is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service, with reports and analysis from across the world. The latest news seven days a week. BBC World Service podcasts are supported by advertising. Life and death were two very realistic co-existing possibilities in my life. I didn't even think I'd make it to like my 16th birthday, to be honest. I grew up being scared of who I was. Any one of us at any time can be affected by mental health and addictions. Just taking that first step makes a big difference.

It's the hardest step. But CAMH was there from the beginning. Everyone deserves better mental health care. To hear more stories of recovery, visit camh.ca. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Global News, AmeriCast and The Global Story, plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free.

Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles, and in the early hours of Friday, the 30th of August, these are our main stories. The United Nations nuclear watchdog says Iran is now close to having enough weapons-grade uranium for four atomic bombs.

Israel and Hamas have agreed to a series of pauses in fighting to allow hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza to be vaccinated against polio. Also in this podcast, we go on a voyage of discovery on a riverbed. I love finding keys because you instantly think, what did that unlock? This is a medieval key. It's got this beautiful, beautiful pattern. This is a little bell. No wonder mudlarking, an activity involving the scavenging of the banks and shores

of rivers for items of value, is becoming too popular for its own good. A key reason why the current instability in the Middle East is so concerning is the prospect of Iran becoming a nuclear power. It's been six years since the United States pulled out of a deal that reduced sanctions on Tehran in exchange for Iran agreeing to international nuclear monitors visiting key sites. Earlier this week, Iran's supreme leader said he was not opposed to reopening talks with the US. Well, now it appears that were Tehran to agree to that, it would be bargaining from a position of strength. And that's because the UN's nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, has just released some worrying assessments about how close Iran is to producing four nuclear bombs. I asked our Middle East regional editor, Mike

Thompson, what more the IAEA had been saying. As you said, all looking quite worrying. It's saying that the big thing is the growth in the stockpile of Iran's uranium. Back in 2015, there was an agreement with world powers, which Iran said it would limit its enrichment to just 4%, or less than 4%, in fact. Now its stockpile has significantly grown. And according to this report report it's reached 60 percent which is not that far off weapons grade material. Added to that Iran apparently has continued to not cooperate with IEA inspectors monitoring cameras which are vital for assessing what's going on at various locations haven't been replaced after being removed and apparently Iran has continued to not explain the origins of man-made uranium particles at two locations that hadn't been declared as potential nuclear sites. Mike, we should mention that Tehran says its nuclear program is just for civilian use.

Indeed. Given that the Supreme Leader has said, look, we are open to the possibility of talks with the United States. And now this report coming out, which would suggest that Iran could bargain from a position of strength, if you like, what chances there do you think of talks reopening? Well, quite good, I think, because Iran's economy is pretty much on its knees, largely thanks to international sanctions. So there's been, I think, a lot of effort in Iran to try and reopen talks with the West. And that's why you've heard not just, in fact, from the new reformist president, Massoud Pesachkian, who has said he campaigned, in fact, in the recent presidential elections on reopening talks with the West, but even the country's supreme leader has said there are

no barriers to opening such talks. And the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog is heading to Iran. He hopes quite soon to have talks. Mike Thompson. The World Health Organization says the Israeli military and Hamas have agreed to several three-day pauses in fighting, and that's to enable more than 600,000 children in Gaza to be vaccinated against polio. The vaccination campaign is due to start on Sunday in central Gaza before moving to the south of the territory and then the north. Israel has said it will agree to an additional day if required. The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, stressed that the series of zoned three-day pauses did not amount to a ceasefire.

Rick Pieperkorn is the WHO representative in the Palestinian territories. He was asked if he thought Israel will stick to the agreement to allow polio vaccination to take place. Here in Gaza, everyone is on board. We've had these discussions with Israeli authorities, and that's for us, mainly COGA and CLA, and there where we have agreed to what we call humanitarian pauses. Humanitarian pauses for each zone, three days.

And based on our assessment and monitoring, when we need another day, we will do another day. Now, you ask me how confident am I in this. I think this is a way forward. I'm not going to say this is the ideal way forward, but this is a workable way forward. Not doing anything would be really bad. We have to stop this transmission in Gaza, and we have to avoid the transmission outside Gaza. And yes, we are confident it's a big war, but we are reasonable, okay with this approach, and everyone is planning accordingly. Of course, all parties will have to stick to this. Rick Pieperkorn. Well, the US and the European Union have both voiced concern over

polio in Gaza, after the first case in 25 years was discovered in an unvaccinated baby. Juliet Tuma is communications director at the UN Agency for Palestine Refugees, UNRWA, the agency in charge of implementing this vaccination campaign across the Gaza Strip. During the war, which started more than 10 months ago, UNRWA has been providing children across the Gaza Strip with routine vaccination. However, what happened is because of the velocity and severity of this war, a lot of people had to move. And what that meant in vaccination terms is that a lot of kids, especially newborns, have missed on their vaccination, including against polio. So it is not a surprise that

polio has returned to Gaza. What's really shocking is that it had come back so, so quickly in just over 10 months after it's been eradicated for the past 25 years. The conditions in Gaza, a place that I've been to during the war several times, they're not meant for humans. And so it made it the perfect recipe for diseases like polio to come back. People don't even have soap or cleaning water. The first round, we're hoping to get to over 600,000 kids under the age of 10 in different areas, so the south, the middle areas and the north. And with polio, as I'm sure you know, you need to give kids two doses, but two

rounds. So we're hoping that we would also be able to have another campaign end of September. That was the UNRWA communications director, Juliet Tuma. Ukraine says one of its new F-16 fighter jets supplied by NATO allies has crashed, killing its pilot. It was involved in an operation against a Russian aerial assault. Our correspondent Nick Beek, who's in the Sumy region of Ukraine, near the border with Russia, has more details. This happened on Monday morning when Ukraine had come under huge aerial bombardment. We'd known that the Ukrainians for the first time had used F-16 jets

to shoot down Russian missiles and drones. But tonight, the news that one of the Ukrainian pilots, Alexei Mez, known by his cool sign Moonfish, was killed in that effort. The circumstances are unclear. It's said that he wasn't hit by direct enemy fire and there's an investigation that's now underway. But he, along with another pilot colleague with the cool sign Juice,

had travelled to Washington as part of Ukraine's big effort to be given these F-16 jets but now both of those pilots have been killed in action. It's also a blow for President Zelensky. He personally campaigned to get these jets for the past two and a half years. He finally got them, the first of them, just a few weeks ago and now this has happened. There were these warnings that the Russians would target them and also crucially the airfields from which they take off and that is why President Zelensky has asked once again of his allies that they give him permission to use these foreign-made long-range missiles so that they can hit further into Russia and President Zelensky says if he's given that

permission, they can prevent these sort of attacks across the whole of Ukraine. But also they're better prepared to protect these really expensive and vital F-16 jets. That was Nick Beek. The UN special envoy to Sudan says there's still a lack of political will by the warring parties there to end hostilities. Tom Perriello has been trying to mediate a ceasefire for months but said the fighting has actually increased. Almost half the population of Sudan is now critically short of food and over 10 million people have been displaced there. In the latest report, Human Rights Watch has accused the Sudanese army and the rival RSF of committing war crimes, including torturing and executing people in their custody. The Horn of Africa director at Human Rights Watch, Letitia Bader, told the BBC that international investigations were needed to hold those involved accountable.

This is most likely only the tip of the iceberg. We need to see concrete evidence that both sides are investigating these types of abuses. But given what we've seen so far, that's unlikely to happen. So what needs to happen is ongoing international investigations. Our Africa regional editor, Will Ross, told me more about the findings of the Human Rights Watch report. A warning, some of what you're about to hear is distressing. It's looked at 20 videos of at least 10 incidents that have been uploaded onto social media platforms over the last year. And it's concluded that both the Sudanese armed forces and the rapid support forces, as well as the fighters who work with the RSF, they've all been executing people and torturing people

who they were holding in custody. Also, lots of acts of ill-treatment of detainees. And one issue it looked at, the mass executions, a total of at least 40 people it found who had been executed. Both sides, again, committing these atrocities but it said that was mostly the RSF that was committing that particular crime of mass executions and horrific evidence of mutilating dead bodies and it said this was mostly by the Sudanese soldiers who were doing this including a case where Sudanese soldiers brandished the heads of two people who we assume to have been RSF fighters. And the extraordinary thing is that

Human Rights Watch say that a lot of these terrible instances were actually filmed by the perpetrators. So they're obviously don't fear any kind of retribution at all. Exactly that. It's clear that it's a common occurrence, these war crimes, because the fighters appear to be so sort of blasé about taking out a mobile phone and filming what is horrific footage and then uploading it, not just keeping it on their phones. But it sort of says this is also a sign that there's absolutely no accountability, complete impunity.

So what's needed is not only for the two forces to stop doing it, but also for there to be investigations to ensure that there are sanctions against those people who are doing this or their commanders. The US Special Envoy, Tom Perriello, earlier, was saying that there's a lack of political will. Is he suggesting, perhaps, and others, that sanctions will create that political will?

It's hard to know. You've had sanctions on some individuals in Sudan for years, and, you know, you could look at the international arrest warrant against the former president, Omar al-Bashir, and that never stopped him from carrying out his excesses. It's difficult to know what is the best way forward, but any pressure, I guess, is worth trying. But what Tom Perriello is saying is that at the moment, it's pretty clear that both

sides are willing to fight on. We have also got, you know, external actors who are siding with both of these belligerents. There has been some progress in terms of allowing humanitarian aid in over the last week with aid convoys going in. But Tom Perriello also said that there's still some interference by the two forces stopping aid going in. And we've heard accusations over the last year that the Sudanese army and the RSF are using starvation as a weapon of war. Will Ross. Still to come. The fish were washed down this quite small river into the port of Volos and into the sea. How a harbour full of dead fish in a Greek town

could end up in a lawsuit. Life and death were two very realistic co-existing possibilities in my life. I didn't even think I'd make it to like my 16th birthday, to be honest. I grew up being scared of who I was. Any one of us at any time can be affected by mental health and addictions. Just taking that first step makes a big difference. It's the hardest step. But CAMH was there from the beginning.

Everyone deserves better mental health care. To hear more stories of recovery, visit CAMH.ca. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Global News, AmeriCast and The Global Story, plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free. Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership.

Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. The US Army has criticised the conduct of members of the campaign team of the former US President Donald Trump during a visit to the Arlington National Cemetery on Monday. The Army said the incident was reported to the police. Tom Bateman reports from Washington. The use of Arlington Cemetery for political campaigning is prohibited and Mr Trump's team was reportedly warned in advance it could not film or take photos in what's known as section 60 where troops killed fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq are buried. The army says during Mr Trump's visit on Monday a cemetery employee tried to ensure the

rules were adhered to but was abruptly pushed aside. Mr Trump's campaign has vigorously contested the claim, accusing what it called an unnamed individual suffering from a mental health episode of trying to block members of his team. Tom Bateman. Wind has emerged as one of the leading sources of renewable power generation, with thousands of turbines being erected around the world, both onshore and offshore. Well, on Thursday, Britain's biggest onshore wind parks on one of the Shetland Islands in the North Sea

has come on stream. It could, under the right weather conditions, generate enough electricity to provide power for half a million homes. $1.25 billion has been spent on the more than 100 turbines and cable to send power to mainland Scotland, 170 kilometres away. But it is raising questions about how easy the switch to renewable energy will be, as James Cook reports.

I'm in the centre of Shetland's biggest island, looking out over a rugged, blustery moorland of green and brown dotted with the odd purple thistle. And on the horizon are dozens of towering white wind turbines, their blades slicing through the sky and their tips actually disappearing into the low cloud that hangs over the land. They're part of the Viking wind farm, which at full capacity can generate almost 50 times as much energy

as Shetland itself actually needs. We drive up to the turbines with Alistair Phillips-Davies, chief executive of the operator, SSE. Shetland's got great wind resource. This is the first of the really big wind farms that may be built here. There'll be more projects to come. If we think about the targets the government have set for 2030, we need to do a lot more of these projects,

a lot more offshore wind projects as well, to make sure that we can decarbonise the energy system, but also, importantly, get security of supply. So does that mean that people will have to be prepared for more of the countryside to look like this? Yeah, I think so. But equally, we're here to consult on that. To get Viking's electricity to the British grid, SSE has built a 160-mile-long undersea cable from Shetland to Noss Head near Wick on the Scottish mainland.

Viking is far from the only renewable project now feeding into the grid, but carrying all this power through Scotland and into England and Wales comes at a cost, more and bigger pylons marching across the land. I'm back on the mainland now in Aberdeenshire, where I can see purple heather on the mountains, green trees in the forests, and the yellow of the wheat and barley shimmering in the fields. This land can't have changed much

since Lewis Grassic Gibbon described it in his classic novel Sunset Song around a century ago. But it has changed a little. On the ridge above me, there are wind turbines spinning around and people who live here are worried about what might come next on the field um not a pipe and drums pipe band at the glen burvey show kate matthews is campaigning against plans to erect pylons in Aberdeenshire and Angus. We're hugely worried about the industrialisation of our countryside. We live in one of the most beautiful parts of the world and we're looking at thousands of acres being taken up with essentially industrial projects.

The rest of the UK doesn't know what's coming. That report was by James Cook. Dozens of communities around Athens are still recovering from some of the worst wildfires to hit Greece in years. And now comes the long-delayed impact of another environmental disaster. A severe storm with heavy rainfall hit the eastern city of Volos last year, sweeping away roads and smashing bridges. And the harbour has now been inundated with dead fish. People there say they'll take legal action against those they say let it happen. Our Europe regional editor, Charles Haviland, told me more.

Upstream from Volos, there is a water body called the Karla Reservoir. And the severe flooding last year, which was one of a number of disasters recently, it meant that that reservoir overflowed And the severe flooding last year, which was one of a number of disasters recently, it meant that that reservoir overflowed and the fish there were displaced from that and possibly from other freshwater habitats nearby. Washed down this quite small river into the port of Volos and into the sea, being freshwater fish, they couldn't survive in the saltwater. But it seems that it's only now that they have been washed back in. I don't know how far out they had got, but Volos sits on this large,

almost enclosed gulf of the Aegean Sea called Parasitikos. It also seems that dry weather recently has lowered the water in that reservoir, causing further fish deaths due to lack of oxygen. And some of the fish may already have been dead when they were washed downstream. And the argument from the people who are taking this to court is that the authorities should have foreseen this. They should have taken measures to prevent this from happening. It's not entirely clear who holds governmental authority around this gulf, which has not only Volos, but several other towns that are also tourist magnets with beautiful beaches. But yes, they are saying that, for instance, some kind of net should have been placed over the mouth of the small river that empties itself into the Volos port.

The latest I've heard is that remedial action of this type is now being taken as efforts continue to scoop these fish up. It's extraordinary. I've read of 160 tonnes of dead fish having been gathered in in the last few days and they are being taken off for incineration. But, of course, the situation there is an ecological disaster and also a health hazard

because the dead fish will be polluting the waters. I've read that the Supreme Court of Greece, the top court in the country, has now ordered an investigation seeing the dead fish washing up at Volos as a matter of great urgency. Charles Havelant. The hosts, France, have won their first medal at the Paralympic Games in Paris. Roared on by the home crowd, Udo Didier won the 400m freestyle swimming. China, which topped the medal table in the Paralympics in Tokyo, have again started strongly with two golds in track cycling. The BBC sports reporter Shabnam Yunus-Jul was poolside at La Défense Arena and gave us her highlights. The swimming has got underway and the crowd have been sent wild here after France won their first gold medal in the first race of the evening. Hugo Didier took a

sensational victory in the men's S9 400 metres freestyle with a time of 4.12.55. World champion Simone Balaam had led the entire race but was overtaken on the final length by the home favourite. So that was amazing to see. Earlier, the first gold medal of the Games went to Caroline Groot of the Netherlands while defending champion Kadena Cox of Great Britain disappointedly suffered a fall and she afterwards admitted she wasn't feeling great.

She has MS and said she only got back on a bike two weeks ago following injury. And we've got to mention another highlight of the day. Former Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has been here at the Games. He was at the Parra at Badminton today to watch his friend of 20 years plus, Wojtek

choose it. Now, he was a promising footballer whose professional career was ended by a serious knee injury which eventually led to an amputation. And while he was rehabilitating, he was a promising footballer whose professional career was ended by a serious knee injury, which eventually led to an amputation. And while he was rehabilitating, he played a charity game against Klopp's mains. And they've been very close ever since. So Klopp's been here supporting him at the games. That was Shabnam Yunus Jewel. Now we're going to take you into the sludge of a riverbed in search of hidden treasures.

It's called mudlarking, scavenging the banks and shores of rivers, and it is very popular. Here in London, keen mudlarkers scour the River Thames for objects that tell them about the city's long history. It's now become so popular that the authorities have stopped handing out licences, much to the annoyance of mudlarkers, as Wendy Hurrell reports. Each tide brings new treasure to the shores of the River Thames to be discovered by mudlarkers. Lara Makelam has written three books on the subject, the latest which chronicles a year of her finds. Little things like the sole of a Tudor child's shoe.

I love finding keys because you instantly think, what did that unlock? This is a medieval key. It's got this beautiful, beautiful pattern. Sometimes you even hear history. This is a little bell. Again, 16th, 17th century. It would have been tied onto an animal's harness

so you could hear them coming through the streets of London. This one's really special. It's got tooth marks on it, rat tooth marks from a very hungry Roman rat. It's a nibbled game piece. Oh yes, you can see that. Charles Dickens was sitting at a desk. Duncan Hess has long shared this fascination. Lots of little bricks in the pebbles, you pebbles. What wall was that part of? Yeah, exactly. Who built it? Who lived in it? Was it destroyed in the fire in London?

If you find an 1850 hate me, was that person going to buy the latest edition of David Copperfield or Oliver Twist? Or was it a six-year-old boy's earnings for cleaning a chimney? It might have been Dickens' own. He might have been Dickens' own. He might have been walking across London Bridge and foolishly dropped a hate me in a river. It's so romantic, isn't it?

So finally, with some time on his hands, he applied to the Port of London Authority for the mudlarking licence one must have, but was frustrated to be told... To protect the unique historical integrity of the Thames foreshore, the ability to request new foreshore permits has been paused. Then when I said, so are you saying that people who've already got licences can keep them in perpetuity and no one can ever get a new one, they cut and paste the same reply. And I phoned a couple of times and, you know, nobody was

interested. It just strikes me as being very, very very unfair really. We've asked the PLA for further details but none were given. Mudlarking became very popular particularly over lockdown it was a great place for people to come and social media has snowballed since 2012 when I first started posting more and more people have done it. And I think they went from about 250 permits to 5,000. And they needed to put a halt on it, just to give everything a little while to settle down. Because when you buy your permit, you have a permit for three years. That may mean more licences in future, so new mudlarkers can connect to Londoners that went before us for thousands of years. That report by Wendy Hurrell. And that's all from us for now,

but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Craig Kingham. The producer was Liam McSheffery. The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Nick Mars and until next time, goodbye. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Global News, AmeriCast and The Global Story, plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free. Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts.