Global News Podcast - Iran's top cleric defends strikes on Israel in rare public speech

Episode Date: October 4, 2024

Iran’s supreme leader tells a crowd in Tehran that the October 7th massacre was a 'legitimate act'. Also: EU hits China with EV sales tariffs, world's first ovarian cancer vaccine and Google Search's AI makeover.

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. 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 Thank you. Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. You're listening to the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We are recording this at 13 hours GMT on Friday the 4th of October.

Iran's supreme leader tells a huge crowd in Tehran the missile attack on Israel was the minimum punishment it deserved. Israel is weighing up its response while continuing to attack Lebanon. The EU approves tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, so is a trade war looming? And a potentially huge breakthrough in ovarian cancer treatment? Also on the podcast, dock workers in the US agree to suspend strike action and... I pointed it at a tree outside my window, holding on to it, and I asked, what type of tree is this?

And they have told me it is a money tree. I've since looked at Google images. It does look like it was correct. How to search simply by taking a video. In recent months, Iran has suffered a serious blow to its credibility as a powerful counterweight to Israel. In July, the Iranian security services were humiliated when the Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated in Tehran. Then Iran's most important ally in the region, Hezbollah, lost much of its leadership in Lebanon through Israeli attacks via booby-trapped communication devices and then airstrikes. On Tuesday, Iran responded by launching a barrage of ballistic missiles towards Israel,

but that did relatively little damage. Today, the Iranian supreme leader appeared in public for the first time since then, leading Friday prayers, a very rare occurrence. During his sermon, in front of an enormous crowd, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei defended Iran's attack on Israel. The Islamic law and our constitution and the international law. And let me say that this is really certain that every nation has the right to defend its soil, its sovereignty, its territorial integrity against an aggressor. The crowd in Tehran showing their support for the Ayatollah. Kazran Nadschi of the BBC Persian service monitored the speech from the Israeli city of Tel Aviv. So what did he make of it? Here, the feeling, first of all, is that the Israeli leaders are

deciding on how to respond to Tuesday's missile attacks. We're expecting some kind of attack any moment. No doubt the Israeli leaders were watching what was going on in Iran, too, in Tehran, where Iranian leaders, as you said, appeared in public. This was the first time, by the way, in five years that he appeared at Friday prayers. And today there were concerns about his security after what we have been seeing went on in the region in the last few weeks. But nonetheless, he spoke and he called for unity, he called for united action.

He said Arab countries, Muslim nations, must not give in to the divide and rule tactic of the big powers. And he said that they have to stand up and rise up to aggressions of Israel. I think what he wanted basically to do today was to claim that Iran has the backing of these countries and particularly what Iran calls axis of resistance. The militias in Lebanon, the Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and also the militias in Iraq and Syria. So he wanted to take credit for what happened on Tuesday night when Iran fired up to 200 ballistic missiles into Israel and convey that Iran is not impotent in the face of Israeli aggression, as they say. Yeah, will his allies be reassured, particularly in Lebanon? Because at one point,

he said Hezbollah would be responsible for responding to the assassination of its leader, suggesting Iran wasn't going to help. Well, in the speech today, there was no hint of any direct action by Iran, other than saying that they will respond strongly to any action by Israel. But he said, we will not rush into it. In terms of defending these militias, there was no hint of that. The hint was that we are here for you, we will support you. But that's more or less it. There wasn't a hint of physical or military backing. But nevertheless, the theme of his speech was that we have to be united, the whole of the Arab nation and Muslim nations.

Qasra Najji of the BBC Persian service in Tel Aviv. Well, as Israel weighs up its possible response to the Iranian attacks, its forces are continuing to target Lebanon. The capital, Beirut, was hit at least 10 times overnight in an apparent attempt to kill Hashem Safiuddin, a cousin of and possible successor to the assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Israel has also struck the Lebanon-Syria border and ordered residents of more than 20 towns in southern Lebanon to evacuate immediately.

For its part, Hezbollah has continued to fire rockets at northern Israel. Our correspondent Nick Beek is there and gave us this update. Overnight we heard a stream of Israeli jets high in the sky heading towards the Lebanese border in the last few hours. More, but not quite in the same sort of number. But it does give you an indication of how the Israelis are sending more troops on the ground and more resources in the sky towards the border as part of this operation. But of course it comes at a considerable cost to the Lebanese civilian population

in terms of people being displaced and also those being killed. The Israelis are saying that they're carrying out a series of operations which they describe as limited, localised and targeted. They say that in the course of these operations in the past 48 hours, a lot of Hezbollah fighters have fled and they've been able to examine what they left behind. And in many cases, they say that they've gathered up lots of weapons left behind. Now, we're also hearing that Israel has continued its operations in Gaza, the Palestinian territory in the south, with some of the highest numbers killed for some time. But we're also today getting reports that there have been sirens in southern Israel. Of course, the scene of that Hamas massacre nearly a year ago.

That's right, and that's the first time in two months that that part of the south of Israel, they've had the sirens wailing because Hamas have been able to launch rockets. And of course that's a reminder of the many fronts that the fighting is taking place on at the moment. Hamas still able to fire some rockets, clearly not as many as they were. And if we bring ourselves back to where I am, just looking out towards the Lebanese border, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says this ground invasion into Lebanon has to take place so that ultimately people displaced in the north of the country near the border can return to their homes and that they can live in peace there. But clearly

it is a big operation for the Israelis. We saw some Israeli soldiers killed just a few days ago. And to illustrate, Oliver, really how the Israelis are trying to move their resources in different directions. Last night, there was an Israeli airstrike. A jet was used to hit a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. There, 18 people were killed, including, according to local reports, a woman and her two children. The Israelis said that they'd killed a local Hamas leader. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority president

described that attack as a heinous crime and a massacre. Nick Beek in northern Israel. Despite efforts around the world to move away from petrol cars, electric vehicles remain beyond the means of many customers. Chinese-made electric cars can be cheaper thanks to subsidies, but Western countries worry they will flood their markets. Now the EU has voted to impose strict tariffs on Chinese imports, in line with an earlier action by the US. But this risks retaliation from Beijing,

and some firms say it will hamper Europe's green transition. I got more on the EU decision from our international business correspondent, Theo Leggett. It's decided to confirm tariffs on imports of electric vehicles from China, and how much each company will pay depends on what subsidies they're deemed to have received from the Chinese government, because the EU does believe that car firms based in China are receiving unfair subsidies from the government. Those tariffs will be backdated now to when the EU initially said it would do this, which was a few months ago. So what it means is essentially imports of electric cars from China will have extra taxes imposed on them. And those could be anything up

to 35% over and above the sort of standard 10% tariff for imported cars. Okay, so the tariffs are in. I keep seeing reports that there are negotiations continuing. So what's going on? Yes, negotiations with China have been going on for a lengthy period of time. The European Union is in a bit of a conundrum on this one because it wants to encourage the take-up of electric cars. That means it needs electric cars to be cheap. Chinese electric cars potentially could be very cheap.

But the problem is domestic manufacturers, EU manufacturers, have higher costs than their Chinese counterparts. They're trying to develop their electric car industry. And the risk is that if Chinese manufacturers come in, aggressively take market share now, there won't be any space left for the European manufacturers and they will decline. So the idea of tariffs is to redress the balance. But there's been a lot of opposition to this, particularly from Germany. And that's because German car makes, we're talking the likes of BMW, Mercedes-Benz,

the Volkswagen Group, which includes Porsche and so on, they sell a lot of cars in China and they're high value cars, which are very profitable. And they don't want any kind of tit for tat reaction from Beijing to upset that market and to cost them money. So while the EU is on the face of it playing hardball here and saying these tariffs will be imposed, we're going to redress the balance, we're going to stop unfair subsidies, at the same time it's in quiet discussions with Beijing about coming to some kind of a compromise that everyone's happy with.

So what might China do in response or they hold fire while these negotiations continue? So far they appear to have been holding fire, but they've condemned the tariffs. That's been happening in recent weeks. They've threatened to impose sanctions on other areas of the economy, other exports from the EU. So it doesn't just affect the car sector. And that's another reason, I think, why we're seeing this sort of lukewarm support for the tariffs within the EU itself. 12 countries abstained in today's vote, we believe. Five voted against. So there's not a lot of support for this measure, which has been enthusiastically pursued by the European Commission. And that is, I think, because

European nations are worried about the possible consequences of an expanding trade war with Beijing. Theo Leggett, we're staying with the business world and in the United States, from Maine to Texas, striking dockworkers have returned to work after a provisional deal on wages. For the past three days, container ships have had to queue up outside ports, threatening shortages of everything from bananas to car parts. It was the industry's biggest work stoppage in nearly half a century. Our New York business correspondent, Michelle Flurry, told us how it was resolved. This is more of a reprieve than an end. What has happened is that the International Longshoremen's Association, which is the union that represents the dock workers who are on strike

at these ports along the east and Gulf Coast, they have agreed to suspend their strike. They say that one of the issues, which was wages, the offer from employers has been improved to the point where they are comfortable to call off the strike temporarily to allow negotiations on other issues to resume. So this is a suspension of the strike until mid-January. And what we understand so far, but it has not been confirmed yet by the United States Maritime Alliance, that is also known as USMX, is that they have offered to increase wages by 62% over the course of a new six-year contract. That was less than the unions had been

looking for, but certainly better than they were offered at the outset. But remember, they were asking for 75%. And part of this was driven by lingering anger that they had to work throughout the pandemic. When many people were at home, they were there every day under the old contract. And what they saw during supply crunch times was shipping rates going up and profits increasing at these companies. And there were complaints, if you listen to what the union boss has been saying, that the CEOs had seen more remuneration, shareholders had benefited, but they hadn't. However, there are other issues that they had been pushing for, whether that was

relating to retirement benefits or healthcare. And then the big one that workers I've spoken to have said is automation. They're very concerned about their jobs disappearing and it echoes something we've seen in previous strikes here in the United States. If you think back to the Hollywood actors and writers strike, a lot of that was actors being concerned about being replaced by AI. Michelle Flurry in New York. Well, AI can have some benefits. Imagine being able to look at something and immediately find out what it is.

Google has invented a new technology that allows you to do just that. Katie Silver has been trying it out. Video search basically is letting people point their camera at something, ask a question about it and get search results. It's been released on Android and iPhones just in the last 24 hours or so. It's only in English for now. And in order for users to get it, they basically need to enable AI overviews in their Google app. So I've just tried it out and I pointed it at a tree outside my window, holding onto it. And I asked, what type of tree is this? And they have told me it

is a money tree. I've since looked at Google images. It does look like it was correct. This isn't the first time Google's attempted something like this. It has tried to incorporate AI into its search engine, not always successfully, I must add. It was criticized, for example, back in May. It provided an erratic, inaccurate answer, for example, at one point advising people to make cheese stick to pizza by using non-toxic glue. The Google spokesperson said that those times they were isolated examples and they've pointed to the fact that they're now going to be moving into other types of searches, for example, improving its shopping results,

incorporating reviews and pricing information from different sellers, and also trying to introduce a competitor to Shazam, which is owned by Apple. So at the moment it's only being released on Android devices, but the idea is that it's going to allow people to search for songs without leaving the Google app. Now, it's interesting. Google, for perhaps the first time in the couple of decades that it's been around, is facing growing challenges in the search space. Of course, OpenAI recently trialed its search GPT. It's still very much the dominant player in this market. It's

got about 90% of it, but it is having to move into AI and work out how it's going to leverage AI in terms of maintaining that market dominance. Our business correspondent, Katie Silver. And still to come on the Global News Podcast. We had a senior editor on. I said to him, oh, you want to talk about Scientologists? And he went, no, scientists. Asking a one-eyed interviewee if he was turning a blind eye to something. After a mistake by one of our colleagues here at the BBC, other journalists admit to their blunders. 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. Next to a potentially huge breakthrough in cancer treatment, British researchers are hailing it as the world's first vaccine for ovarian cancer. They say it could wipe out the disease entirely. The lead researcher is Professor

Ahmed Ahmed from the University of Oxford. He's been talking to Justin Webb. We have done a really important piece of research to show that the immune cells that reside in the fallopian tube, which we believe is the origin of ovarian cancer. These immune cells have memory to the tumor in patients with ovarian cancer. That's important because if they do have memory, then one can train these cells to exaggerate the memory, then to stop the cancer from starting in the first place. The second thing that we have done is that we have gathered mutations, alterations that happen very early in a cell transforming from becoming normal

to becoming cancerous. Those mutations appear foreign to the human body and therefore the immune system starts to make a strong response to them. So what we want is to test the ability of those mutations to induce the immune response in these residing immune cells and then prioritise which ones to take forward to start clinical trials. And if it works and if it becomes a widely available vaccine, are we talking about people at particular risk or would it simply be given to all women? The vaccine that we are designing is one that would be eventually, that have mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes because they have lifelong risk of ovarian cancer of more than 40% and some reports about 70%. We're used to talking about vaccines. We became very used to it during the pandemic.

Is this in a sense linked to the pandemic and the research that was done there? You're very, very right. I mean, a positive outcome that came out of COVID is the realization that vaccines can have a very, very strong impact and that actually developing a vaccine and testing it does not need to be a very lengthy process. So it's given the whole field encouragement to say, okay, let's try this in cancer. Because conceptually, cancer, as I mentioned, have a lot of these mutations that appear foreign to the immune system. So there is now a real enthusiasm in the field of trying vaccines in the context of patients with established cancer to help prevent recurrence of the tumor, but also more excitingly in the field of women who have no cancer

to stop cancer from developing in the first place. Ovarian cancer specialist Professor Ahmed Ahmed. Liz Cheney, once a leading figure in the US Republican Party, has reaffirmed her support for the Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris by joining her at a campaign rally in the key battleground state of Wisconsin. Watching was our North America correspondent David Willis. He told Charlotte Gallagher that such an endorsement would have been unthinkable in the pre-Trump era.

She is, of course, one of the grandest names in the grand old party, as the Republican Party is known, but speaking in the city of Rippon in Wisconsin, which is the symbolic birthplace of the Republican Party, she reflected on her formerly staunch loyalty and devout allegiance to the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan, and Bush, before unleashing this excoriating attack on the man who followed them, Donald Trump. Today, I ask all of you here and everyone listening across this great country, I ask you to stand in truth, to reject the depraved cruelty of Donald Trump.

And I ask you instead to help us elect Kamala Harris for president. In her speech, Ms. Cheney called Mr. Trump petty and vindictive, amongst other things. In contrast, she said Kamala Harris will be able to unite the country and would serve as a president, as she put it, for all Americans, regardless of their party affiliation. And do you think this will potentially sway Republican voters? It's a good question. I think the Harris campaign is looking to court disaffected Republicans, those who are repelled by Donald Trump's rhetoric and his brand of politics, and independent voters whose support in swing states such as Wisconsin, in fact,

could prove crucial to the outcome of the election next month. It doesn't seem likely this endorsement will have a major impact. A recent Reuters poll suggested that only a tiny number, around 5% of respondents in that poll who identified as Republicans said that they would support her. That's pretty close to the margin of error. But with the presidential race, of course, still pretty much neck and neck with just over what 30 days to go before polling day, a small number might actually be enough to tilt the result in a particular direction. And he's never usually shy in giving his opinions. Has Donald Trump

said anything yet about this? Well, his campaign has issued a statement attacking the records of both women. That statement reads in part, Liz Cheney is a stone-cold loser who is so desperate for relevance and attention she has debased herself by campaigning with a weak, failed and dangerously liberal Kamala Harris. And the statement concludes that both of them are made for each other, proponents of endless wars, killers of social security and enemies of American workers, Charlotte. David Willis. Meanwhile, the former US First Lady Melania Trump has signalled her support for abortion rights in a new video to promote her forthcoming book, Melania.

Individual freedom is a fundamental principle that I safeguard. Well, that stance appears to be in sharp contrast with the position taken by her husband, Donald Trump, as he enters the final leg of the US presidential race. More details from Stephanie Prentice. What we just heard there is from a black and white video, and it's showing Melania Trump speaking down the lens, appearing to take a resolute, even stern tone when discussing a woman's right to bodily autonomy. In fact, let's take a quick listen to the rest of it.

Without a doubt, there is no room for compromise when it comes to this essential right that all women possess from birth. Individual freedom. What does my body, my choice really mean? So she's promoting her upcoming memoirs and on Thursday, the UK-based Guardian newspaper, they published an excerpt from that book in which she writes that restricting a woman's

right to choose where to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body. Some are saying that video is just the tip of the iceberg. Naturally, this has invited a lot of speculation, people basically asking whether she could be trying to help or harm the Trump campaign in a race, of course, people basically asking whether she could be trying to help or harm the Trump campaign in a race, of course, where abortion is one of the key issues that matters to voters. Now, on Donald Trump's part, he does seem to struggle to find a clear line on the issue. He's been accused of trying to please everybody and going back and forth. At one point, we heard him sounding proud of that role he had in overturning Roe versus Wade.

But then recently, he said for the first time that he would veto a national abortion ban. In the vice presidential debate, his running mate, J.D. Vance, indicated a sort of softening in the rhetoric around abortion. That's particularly pertinent because up until late July, his own campaign website said he was 100% anti-abortion. So it's complex. Some have argued that Melania may be used as a tool to win over the pro-choice voters. She's definitely riled up anti-abortion campaigners. We've heard from one major group, that's the Students for Life of America, and they tweeted, Melania Trump's support of abortion is anti-feminist and clearly outside the teaching of our Catholic faith.

She is wrong. So whatever the motivations are for Melania honing in on abortion as an issue, what we do know is that November's presidential race is pretty much neck and neck. Kamala Harris currently leading nationally by a small margin, but the swing states incredibly tight, meaning every vote will really count, and every move that may win or lose votes counts too. Stephanie Prentice. And just a reminder that we are doing a special Q&A podcast on the US presidential election in two weeks. So if you have a question you'd like to put to our AmeriCast colleagues in Washington, then please send us an email, globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk, or tweet us at globalnewspod. And thanks to those who have already sent in voice notes.

A specially designed Arctic research vessel is expected to set sail today from northern France. The Tara Polar Station will drift around the Arctic Ocean for the next two decades, studying life underneath the ice and the impact of global warming. The Arctic is heating up four times quicker than the rest of the planet. Chris Bowler, scientific director of Tara Ocean Foundation, spoke to James Copnell. It's 26 metres long by 16 metres wide on four floors and it's built of aluminium to withstand the shock of the ice. And with an ovoid shape and a very flat hull, it can basically be lifted up on top of the ice and drift on the ice in the Central Arctic. The whole ice cap does rotate very slowly clockwise. And so if you get

yourself locked in the ice on the sort of Russian side, then you will slowly drift over the North Pole and come out on the Greenland side a year and a half, two years later, something like that. And this unique design, what has pushed you towards it? It's a series of different factors. Obviously, you need comfort for the scientists on board to be able to withstand the hostile conditions up in the Central Arctic during the polar night when it's dark, when it can be up to minus 50. We also have a moon pool inside the vessel, which is basically a sort of chimney, a hole, which gives access to the under ice environment. We can launch different equipment through that moon pool and use drones and

different kinds of scientific equipment underneath the vessel and explore the under-ice environment. It also has a very small carbon footprint. This is very important because we're measuring pollutants in the atmosphere up in the Central Arctic and so we don't want to pollute our own environment. What exactly will you be looking for? We are particularly interested in the ecosystem of the Arctic, the life that is found up in the Central Arctic. A lot of that life is really dependent on life that you find inside the sea ice, life, mainly microorganisms, plankton, that adapted to this

very hostile environment. These organisms that drive, that provide the energy, the food for the entire food web up in the Arctic. These organisms are believed to generate a whole range of gases which are active in the climate system. These gases can stimulate the formation of clouds, they can stimulate the formation of ice crystals from water. And so we believe that the biology of the Arctic is a very central component in driving the climate of the Arctic. Chris Bowler of the Tara Ocean Foundation. Finally, have you ever sent an email or WhatsApp message to the wrong person? Well, BBC presenter Laura Koonsberg was due to interview the former British Prime Minister

Boris Johnson this weekend, but had to cancel after accidentally sending him her briefing notes, a message actually intended for her production team. Journalists, would you believe it, do make mistakes from time to time, and some of our colleagues have come clean. Hello, I'm Paddy O'Connell, owning up to some of my many mistakes. I overslept on the morning of 9-11. We had a senior editor on. I said to him, oh, you want to talk about Scientologists, and he went, no, scientists. I went all the way to interview a trawler man and forgot my recording equipment. Sarah Montagu. I have such a long list of complete cock-ups. Not least, asking a one-eyed interviewee if he was turning a blind eye to something. That was on television. Good on him.

He just gave me a little smile and carried on as if I hadn't said such an idiot thing. I'm Johnny Diamond. Moments of horror include saying that the head of the Turkish military had threatened a coup when in fact he had expressly ruled out a coup. I'm John Sargent and I used to be the BBC's chief political correspondent. And I went with Margaret Thatcher and a large press group to Moscow in 1987. What excited us was that we were on an RAF plane, which meant the food was going to be better. And we'd be having vintage wines. It was all going to be marvellous. And the plane took off. I then settled down in front of me. There were three glasses, vintage wines. And I was just about to start the main course when Margaret Thatcher suddenly appeared at my side. I stood up and all the food and crockery

went onto the floor. You can imagine, Margaret Thatcher instantly threw herself onto the floor and turned to me and said, you stay where you are, I'll sort this out. Meaning you are another idiot male that can't cope. Sadly, I don't have any stories to add to that, at least not that I'd admit to. But thanks to all those journalists for being so open about their embarrassing mistakes. And that is all from us for now, but the Global News podcast will be back very soon. This edition was mixed by Gabriel O'Regan and produced by Nikki Verrico. Our editors, Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. 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 or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts.