Global News Podcast - Iranian residents tell BBC about US and Israeli bombardment

Episode Date: March 11, 2026

The BBC hears from Iranian residents about life under bombardment, as the US says its military campaign is a "resounding success" - and ahead of schedule. Tehran accuses its enemies of targeting civilians. We also hear from one of the world's biggest shipping companies about how it's unwilling to risk its employees and vessels by sailing through the Strait of Hormuz. In other news, passenger trains are set to resume between China and North Korea. And why some people think it's important to distinguish between books written by humans and AI.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]

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Car gurus.ca. It's 2009 and we're in the German mountains. A man straps himself into a car on the world's most dangerous racetrack. He whispers to himself, It's time to put my balls on the dashboard. As he starts the engine. In 15 minutes, he's in an ambulance, unconscious. In 15 years, he's a billionaire.

This is Total Wolf, Formula One's most powerful. 4-14 boss and the breakout star of Drive to Survive. This week on Good Bad Billionaire, how Toto Wolf made his billions. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Celia Hatton, and in the early hours of Wednesday, March the 11th, these are our main stories.

People in Iran tell the BBC what it's like to live under bombardment from the United States and Israel. Iran's ambassador to the UN says civilians are being deliberately targeted, an accusation the Americans and the Israelis deny. Our correspondent tells us what the U.S. says it's accomplished and it strikes on Iran in the last 24 hours. Also in this podcast, we hear from the CEO of one of the world's biggest shipping companies about why he's not sending any of his vessels through the Strait of Hormuz.

As long as there are significant drone capabilities, no assurance of a truce, then it's very hard for us to put our colleagues and our ship in harm's way. Just over 24 hours since the U.S. President said his country's war with Iran was going to end very soon. That war is continuing to have very real and deadly consequences for millions of people across the region. And that includes people inside Iran. The US and Israel are continuing their assaults on targets there. We'll hear more from our correspondent in the US about that in just a moment. But first, communications networks with Iran are still patchy.

We're getting more information from people living there. This report is from Patty McGuire. A family that lived close by to me in London is Iranian. I saw the mother the other day and asked how they are and how their relatives are in Iran. You know there's an internet blackout, she said, so we hear very little. There was courage in her tone and a hint of fear in her eyes. But the other day, she continued, one relative did manage to get through on a phone for just one minute. He told us quickly that everyone is okay. Everyone is okay.

Everyone is okay. Internet monitoring organisations are calling this one of the tightest and most prolonged internet blackouts on record. But still some Iranians are finding ways to reach the outside world. Several have managed to get in touch with BBC Persian. This woman whose words have been voiced in English to protect her identity described a recent heavy bombardment in Tehran. She appears to support the goal of regime change that President Trump initially set out as his justification for going to war.

There was a strange white light in the sky last night. It seemed different from the nights before. When they hit, there were some fluctuations. Every few hours there are explosions. But even if it takes a few weeks now, it is still better than spending a lifetime living with the future. system. This man, also voiced in English, seemed to have lost faith in any efforts to change the system. I'm feeling terrible. They hit a street near us today. I just want to be able to sleep

tonight. I have had a horrible day. Our youth has been wasted. Some of the people who may have supported the anti-government protests earlier this year do appear to have serious concerns about the American and Israeli bombing campaign, even if they would like to see regime change. This man is in Tehran. I do not really want to leave the city. I love the sole purpose that we actually started a civil movement for freedom is not to be coerced to do anything. And I do not want to be coerced to leave my city, even whether it be it by the state or the foreign power. Despite the blackout, the official channels do remain open, both with Iranians and the outside world. In the last few hours, the Iranian police chief has warned on state TV,

that any potential protesters on the streets will be treated as the enemy. All our forces also have their fingers on the trigger, he said. That warning chimes with one British-Iranian woman, with family in Tehran and Isfahan. She told BBC your voice that people are constantly being sent messages on their phones with similar warnings. She said a friend in Tehran told her, Every night Revolutionary Guards pass through the streets on trucks with loud speakers.

In the city, armed forces are standing shoulders. shoulder to shoulder just watching people. We're like hostages here and we can't do anything but wait. There are no shelters or sirens in Tehran. People are sleeping under their beds all night in case there's a strike nearby. One thing remains clear as this war approaches the end of its second week, the government's grip has not loosened. Iranian officials say more than 1,300 people have been killed as the bombardments continue. Daily life in Iran is only getting more difficult. Paddy McGuire. Patty spoke there of the Iranian government.

One of its representatives on the international stage is Amir Syed Irivani, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations. He's accused the U.S. and Israel of deliberately targeting civilians. The United States and Israeli regime continue their massive attack against Iran and the Iranian people without pause day and night. They are deliberately and discriminated, targeting, civilians and civilian infrastructure across my country. They show no respect for international law and no restraint in committing these crimes. Densely populated residential area and critical

civilian infrastructure are deliberately targeted. These horrific crimes have resulted in the martyrdom of more than 1,300 civilians. Both the United States and Israel insist they do not intentionally aim at civilians. Israel has seen. said it's begun what it calls waves of attacks on Tehran and also on Beirut, targeting the Tehran-backed group, Hezbollah. The U.S., for its part, says it's destroyed 16 Iranian mine-laying vessels near the Strait of Hormuz. Caroline Levitt is the White House Press Secretary. Ten days in, this campaign has been a resounding success thus far, and America's warriors are winning this important fight at an even faster pace than we anticipated. More than 5,000 enemy targets have been struck so far.

The stated objectives for Operation Epic Fury remain the same. Destroy the terrorist regime's ballistic missiles. Raise their Iranian missile industry to the ground. Ensure their terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region and ensure that Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon. Our North America correspondent David Willis told me more about what the U.S. said it had accomplished in the last 24 hours. Well, the US Central Command Siliah says that American Navy ships have destroyed 16 mine layers near the Strait of Hormuz,

and it posted video footage of several boats being hit by projectiles and exploding. It seems that this has stemmed from US media outlets reporting that Iran had either started or was on the verge of mining the strait of Hormuz, which of course is that key supply route through which about 20% of the world's oil exports pass. That prompted President Trump to warn of, as he put it, unprecedented military consequences if Iran mined the area, although his message also contained the caveat that his administration had no reports of it attempting to do so at that time. And that was taken as an attempt, I think, to both reassure the financial markets, which have shown a lot of concern over the possible impact on the global energy supply of the conflict in Iran,

that America will deal with this matter, whilst at the same time not wanting to spook the financial markets into thinking that there might be mines in that area leading to disruption of key supplies. David, the U.S. Secretary of Defense said earlier that Tuesday's attacks would be the most intense yet. So does that mean the timeline for the end of this war is no clearer? It's no clearer. And yesterday we received that mixed messaging, didn't we, from the White House with President Trump saying that the war could end soon, is pretty well complete, but could go on further. And his administration clearly doesn't want a prolonged conflict, especially given the rise in petrol prices that we're seeing here in the United States already with the potential. of course, for wider economic fallout.

He's looking for an off-ramp, it would appear, but the appointment of Motaba Khomeini, the son of Ayatollah, Ali Khomeini, as Iran's new supreme leader, would appear to have closed the option of having an American-friendly leader in Iran. And it's thought that as long as Iran continues to attack countries in the region

and Israel still wants to strike on Iranian targets, unlikely that the U.S. would easily be able to withdraw from its conflict with Iran. Our North America correspondent David Willis, the most immediate economic effect of the war has come from the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that passes next to Iran. As David mentioned, around a fifth of the world's oil normally travels along the strait, as well as many other goods. President Trump has suggested he could deploy U.S. naval vessels to protect commercial shipping, but that doesn't yet appear to have happened. Adding to the confusion, the U.S. Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, posted a note on social media,

saying an oil tanker had been escorted through. His post was quickly deleted. So how has this war affected companies that rely on the Strait of Hormuz? Our business reporter, Jonathan Joseph, spoke to Vincent Clark, the CEO of the Danish container shipping company, Maersk. There's no doubt that the last 10 days I've had a profound impact on our business and I can break it down in three waves. The first one obviously started already on Saturday when we realized that this war had started and it was about securing our colleagues, securing our assets, securing our facilities across the region. The second wave of course is with the closing of

the Strait of Hormuz was to figure out what is all the cargo in transit, what is going to happen to it. And we do about 40,000 containers in and out of the Gulf every week. So this is going to pile up very fast, and there is very limited areas where you can stage that much cargo. You have a lot of perishable goods, food stuff, that absolutely needs to move or risks getting spoiled. So you go into a lot of the contingency. Then the third wave is the one that we're starting to deal with right now, and it is that for the first time, in a very long time, at least in living memory, the strait of Hormuz is closed, and it means that,

We are seeing important dislocation in the energy markets, and we are obviously an energy-intensive industry. We need a lot of oil to power our network. Just lay out the dangers for us if some of your ships did try to navigate these passages. What is it that you are concerned about? With the experience that we have had in the Red Sea, with the attack by drones from the hooties towards international transits there, we have learned an important lesson, which is that you don't need very sophisticated naval capabilities. you need to have sufficient drones that you can try to overwhelm the defense that those ships can have from the escorts that they might have. And so for us, the concern, the main concern, is the safety of our crews, is the safety of our assets.

And as long as there are significant drone capabilities, no assurance of a truce, then it's very hard for us to put our colleagues and our ship in harm's way and risk having an attack be successful and create damage or loss of life in the process. Another option that's being discussed by President Trump and President Macron is the idea that there could be some kind of Navy escort to get ships through the Strait of Homoos. Is that something that you would welcome? Do you think it's even a feasible idea? I'm not a military person, so I don't know how feasible it is, but I think this is a possibility, certainly, that would contribute to opening up trade again. We would need, I guess, significant escorts and significant capacity from the Navy

in order to guarantee safety through the Strait of Hormuz. I have personally a hard time seeing, though, that this is the permanent solution to the situation, because the traffic is very important, the strait is very narrow, and it seems like something that can provide temporary relief, maybe a long temporary relief, but that ultimately we need to get back to something

where freedom of navigation and peaceful navigation is restored, and that will depend on some kind of deal between the two sides in that war. Vincent Clarek, speaking to Jonathan Joseph's. And now an update on the dramatic events surrounding Iran's women's football team who were playing a tournament in Australia. We've been hearing more from the Australian authorities

about the decisions made by some team members to stay in Australia and to go into exile. All the team's players refused to sing the Iranian national anthem at the start of the tournament, the Asian Cup. And for that, they were labeled traitors by Tehran, raising fears they would be punished when they flew back to Iran. Seven team members had decided to stay in Australia, though we learned just before recording this podcast that one of those individuals has now changed her mind and has opted to return to Iran. The rest of the delegation has already left Sydney.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said a majority of them had been given the option to stay. This was his message. What we wanted to make sure of was that sometimes, possibly, for the first time, these individuals were meeting a government that said the choice is up to you. And here is the opportunity if you want to take it. But the choice and the dignity of that decision is yours. Nassim Hadim is from ABC News in Australia. And she's been following how the Iranian diaspora, migration officials and authorities have been

trying to ensure the team members were given a real choice on whether to stay or go. I think one of the really powerful things that came out in my conversation with a migration agent who actually what happened was they got them in a secret room. She was able to speak to them in Fossey and basically tell them about the visa process. And one of the very powerful things she said was that these women were even scared about why are police here. They didn't understand this concept of police and gregers. government being on your side because of course they come from a regime where the police and government arrest people, torture people, execute people. So there's a real distrust of authorities and they were

really scared. They didn't know what all this meant. And so just someone there being able to explain to them, look, this is the process. They're here to help you. They're not here to attack you. They had a lot of questions like, what does this mean for my family? What does this mean for my belongings? And let's not forget, these girls are young Celia. They're in their 20s. This is all new to them. So it was really about being able to give them independent advice. And some of them spoke to their families, you know, in making that decision. Once they made that decision, then the Australian authorities got involved and pretty quickly those humanitarian visas were issued. So what's happening now to the women who've left the team and are staying in Australia? The process,

is basically the humanitarian visas have been issued a 12-month visa, and then that gives them a pathway to permanent residency. And then, I mean, I imagine based on previous kind of applications in this form that they'd be working with them to help them settle now, you know, various things that you need when you're in another country, right? Housing, education, English, you know, all these sorts of things. One poignant detail that came out of the minister's interaction with journalist, that news conference, was the fact that the plane actually waited for some time because there was one person who was really wrestling with this decision as to whether to stay in Australia or whether to go back to Iran. What about the ones who bordered that flight out of Sydney?

What awaits them when they land in Iran? Oh, Celia, I don't know. I mean, I suspect like it's a really difficult decision, isn't it? Like, if you stay, you're potentially. risk your family being attacked. God knows what they do to these families. We can only go of what the regime itself, the Iranian state TV broadcasters have been saying. So we knew days ago there was an Iranian state TV broadcast where they basically said, called them traders for not singing the national anthem at the first match and that during wartime these traders need to be dealt with harshly. We know that this regime has a history. It has form in going after arrest. athletes in harassing their families, even in the lead-up to these athletes coming to Australia,

there was stories from diaspora media, from Iran International and others talking about how the athletes and their families were even being threatened before they came here. So what happens, I don't know. I only just, I really fear and feel deeply sad for these women. It must be enormously difficult to make that call about what you. do. Nasim Hadim, from ABC News Australia. Still to come in this podcast, why some people think it's important to distinguish between novels written by humans and those generated by AI.

There's something about the way we write, what we write, that I have a hard time leaving AI ever replicate. It's 2009 and we're in the German mountains. A man straps himself into a car on the world's most dangerous racetrack. He whispers to himself, It's time to put my balls on the dashboard. As he starts the engine. In 15 minutes, he's in an ambulance, unconscious. In 15 years, he's a billionaire. This is Toto Wolf, Formula One's most powerful team boss and the breakout star of Drive to Survive. This week on Good Bad billionaire, how Toto Wolf made his billions.

Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News podcast. So far, we've focused this edition. on the U.S.-Israel war on Iran. But while that war is playing out, violence is intensifying in another part of the region. The number of attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank is rising. At least six Palestinians have been shot dead by settlers since the wider war began 11 days ago. Israel's military has said there's zero tolerance for civilians who take the law into their own hands. And those, Those responsible for the shootings in the occupied territory will be brought to justice.

That said, more than a thousand Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the October the 7th attacks. Isam Ikir Mawi from BBC Arabic told Janat Jaliyah more about what was happening in the West Bank. Well, the attacks mainly happen against villages, and the perpetrators come from the neighboring settlements. So they attack olive groves. They cut down trees, they cut off water pipes, electricity, attack people in their own homes, set fire to vehicles, set fires to homes, beat up women, children, elderly, anyone they can find. And normally when these attacks happen, the settlers, according to eyewitnesses, that settlers will be in large groups, armed, some of them masked, some of them wearing army uniform, which shows that they're reservists.

in the Israeli army, but at the same time, they live in these settlements and they take part in these attacks. So they take various sort of shapes and forms. The people who have been killed in the last week, they're all farmers, villages, so none of them is like armed people or anything like that. They've just been attacked in their own homes or fields or that kind of thing. So where are the security services in all this, both Palestinian and Israeli? Well, it looks like the Palestinian security services are nowhere to be seen. And the reason for that is because the Israelis put too much restrictions on the movement of the Palestinian police. They're not allowed to operate.

They're not allowed to go to some of these areas. At the same time, the Israeli army was supposed to be taking care of the security side, often seen as watching from afar. There have been warnings, as we said, by some of the Israeli officers and officials and from the increasing violence by the settlers. However, the settlers feel emboldened by the support they get from people in the Israeli government itself, like Smotrich and Bingvir, who have been encouraging settlers to carry out what they call security duties on behalf of the state of Israel. And just tell us what the situation is right now in Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

are still living in tents. Is aid getting in for them? Well, the local Palestinians and the international agencies who have some kind of presence in the Gaza Strip speak of that since the beginning of this war, AIDS almost come to a halt. While the Israelis insist that aid is still getting in. But it's very difficult to verify anything because at the moment, you know, the Gaza Strip is a closed area. can get in or out. International journalists, not an event. International journalists organizations. Well, I mean, the Israelis have been putting a lot of

pressure on aid agencies. I think there were recently about 34 organizations between aid agencies and NGOs and things like that who have been told that they could not operate anymore. So there is a lot of restriction and obstacles before these organizations. Isam Ikir Mawi from BBC Arabic. And one thing to add, Israeli officials have said that existing supplies inside Gaza are expected to suffice for a while and that some shipments had been halted for security reasons amid the war with Iran. To East Asia now, passenger trains between China and North Korea a schedule to resume on Thursday for the first time since 2020 when they were stopped because of COVID.

Tourism used to be a big moneymaker for North Korea, which is largely closed off. and diplomatically isolated. It's been slow to open up again, even after the pandemic ended. So how frequently will the trains run? Here's Mickey Bristow. Initially, there'll be four trains a week between Beijing, the capital of China and Pyongyang. There'll also be daily trains between Dandong. That's a city on the Chinese side of the border of North Korea, daily trains between Dandong and Pyongyang. But as you indicated there, the opening up is going to go very, very slowly. So initially, only people who have business visas will be allowed to go into North Korea,

but presumably that will change in the coming months when they'll open up to general tourists from China. So what can visitors expect to do and see inside North Korea? Yeah, it's a good question because North Korea is not just isolated from the rest of the world. When you go inside North Korea, you can't just wander around anywhere. I went 15 years ago, and we had to go just to Pyongyang to a certain hotel and certain restaurants. It's all expensive, by the way, because foreign tourism is a big money earner for North Korea. You go around Pyongyang, we had to go with minders or guides, depending on your point of view, and to certain places.

We went to a mass dance performance, a military parade, a flower show. Interestingly, Chinese people like to go for nostalgic reasons. A friend told me a little while ago because China used to be like North Korea, closed off, communist, not developed. And so they go to have a look at what they're going to have a look at what they're. their country used to look like some time ago. Such an interesting point. I mean, China used to be North Korea's most important supporter, but it doesn't need it quite as much now, does it?

It doesn't. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has been isolated itself and it's looked for friends. So it's relied on North Korea to supply it with ammunition, weapons, even soldiers fighting in the war in Ukraine there. And in return, North Korea has got food, money, technical help, that kind of thing. So it doesn't need China quite as much as it used to do. But still China is North Korea's biggest trading partner. That's something that the North

Queens can't ignore. And before the pandemic, Chinese visitors used to be the most numerous there. So presumably they want them to come back, start spending money again. Mickey Bristow. And last, here's a question. How do you know the book your reading wasn't written by artificial intelligence? AI-generated books are. flooding the marketplace and now human writers are taking a stand. The Society of Authors in Britain has designed a logo which its members can download and display on the cover of their works to show they were conceived by mind, not machine. The novelist, Tracy Chevalier, told Anna Foster why she wants to put that logo on her books. What we're trying to do is give readers and consumers

information so that the human author logo will be placed on books so that readers can make that decision themselves. We're trying to aim for transparency. This is actually an initiative that's more about readers than it is about authors. I mean, we feel we need to do something because the AI-generated books out there at the moment, and there's an estimate, there's about 10% of self-published books on Amazon are AI-generated. They don't legally have to be labeled. And since you don't know that, we're trying to flip it and say, well, if they're not going to label it AI generated, then we are going to label ours human authored. Do you use Tracy AI at all for research? Obviously, historical fiction is your thing. There's a lot of research involved in

that. Have you tried it to see if it helps, if it speeds anything up? Yes, I do use it for research. And I have make no bones about that. I look at it as a research assistant. For historical research, If it's a very specific question, I'll ask it something to find it. It'll bring back stuff. And I always check the sources because it lists where it got this information from. Because you have to dig down because sometimes what it gives you is information that's been, that has itself been AI generated and isn't necessarily true. So you have to keep digging until you find the right source. But what I don't do is use AI to create my plots to write any of my words.

And it's in a way, it's to remind readers of the value of the human brain and telling stories. There's something about the way we write, what we write, that I have a hard time leaving AI ever replicate. It's almost, it's impossible to put it into words what it is to be human, but you can feel it when you read something that's really written by a real person as opposed to a machine. Tracy Chevalier talking to Anna Foster. And that's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at global podcast at BBC.com. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag Global NewsPod.

And don't forget our sister podcast, The Global Story, which goes in depth and beyond the headlines on one big story. This edition of the Global News Podcast was mixed by Derek Clark. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Celia Hatton. Until next time, goodbye. Bye.