Global News Podcast - Trump keeps world guessing on Iran strikes

Episode Date: June 18, 2025

US president meets national security team again to discuss next steps on Iran. Also: once called the Russian Davos, the St Petersburg International Economic Forum fails to attract western business leaders.

You're listening to the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. This edition is published in the early hours of Thursday 19th June. President Trump says he'll decide whether to attack Iran at the final second. Iran has warned America not to get involved. We'll look at the possible US bombing plan and ask if negotiations are still possible. Also in the podcast, once known as the Russian Davos, the St Petersburg International Economic Forum fails to attract Western business leaders. And later… 285, I'm sorry, you just missed the first pride in Thailand. 109, which is not…

No, I haven't got that either. Maybe next time. Why Thailand is planning to overturn its ban on gambling. President Trump says his patience with Iran has already run out, but he still hasn't decided whether to attack. I like to make the final decision one second before it's due because things change," he said. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the president has already approved strike plans but not yet given the final order to give Iran a chance to abandon its nuclear programme. There are reports that the Iranian foreign minister would be willing

to meet US officials to discuss a ceasefire. However, that may not be enough to win over President Trump. This was his response when asked about a possible military offensive. You don't seriously think I'm going to answer that question. Will you strike the Iranian nuclear component? At what time exactly, sir? I mean, you don't know that I'm going to even do it. You don't know. I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I'm going to do. I can tell you this, that Iran's got a lot of trouble. And they want to negotiate. And I said, why didn't you negotiate with me before?

All this death and destruction. Why didn't you negotiate? I said to the people, why didn't you negotiate with me two weeks ago? You could have done fine. You would have had a country. Have the Iranians reached out to you? Yes. And what did they say? I said, it's very late. You know? I said, it's very late to be talking.

Mr. President? We may mean it's, it's, they even suggested they come to the White House. That's, you know, courageous, but, you know, it's like not easy for them to do. What does unconditional surrender mean? Unconditional surrender. Two very simple words. Very simple. Unconditional surrender. That means I've had it. Okay, I've had it. I give up. No more. Then we go blow up all the nuclear

stuff that's all over the place there. Now, they had bad intentions. You know, for 40 years they've been saying, death to America, death to Israel, death to anybody else that they didn't like. They were bullies. And now they're not bullies anymore, but we'll see what happens. Look, nothing's finished until it's finished. You know, war is very complex.

A lot of bad things can happen. A lot of turns are made. So I don't know. I wouldn't say that we won anything yet. I would say that we sure as hell made a lot of progress and we'll see. The next week is going to be very big, maybe less than a week, maybe less. President Trump speaking at the White House. I asked our correspondent, Nomiya Iqbal, in Washington if there were any hints about which way he was leaning. No hints at all. Donald Trump's indecision, his vagueness as we just heard in that Respondent Nomiya Iqbal in Washington if there were any hints about which way he was leaning.

No hints at all. Donald Trump's indecision, his vagueness as we just heard in that clip that you played could be a tactic, could be a strategy, but it could also be that the president doesn't know what he's going to do. There were some reports that the Trump administration was leaning more towards involvement rather than diplomacy. But that would obviously be a seismic decision because it would really change everything Donald Trump has been saying over the last many years about no foreign intervention. And it's very easy to start a war, but it's very hard to finish one. And if the US did indeed send troops into the region to drop these bunker buster bombs to destroy Iran's nuclear facility deep underground we

don't know how Iran might react to that bear in mind there are up to 50,000 US troops across the Middle East so as of yet there is no real direction from Donald Trump he's keeping it purposely vague I imagine and if he is still open to negotiation he's really not indicating if he wants to do that either. Yeah, I mean, what are you hearing about possible negotiations? Well, he said there in that clip that the Iranians want to come to the White House, but they have completely dismissed that, saying that's not true. He went on to say very courageous of them, but not sure if it's easy for them to do. There are some suggestions that his Middle East envoy, Steve Wittkopf, and the vice

president, JD Vance, could have talks. But exactly, you know, what will that lead to? Remember, there was a U.S.-Iran nuclear deal that President Obama negotiated back in 2015. Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of that deal in 2018, saying it was a bad deal. He doesn't want Iran to have access to any kind of nuclear. Iran has always said it's its right to have nuclear, and its nuclear activities are entirely peaceful and point to the fact that Israel has nuclear weapons, which do not get inspected at all. But Donald Trump has said that he wants a better deal. And I think his view of a better deal is no nuclear weapons

whatsoever. Whether he could achieve that, how he can achieve that, we just don't know at this stage. Nami Iqbal in Washington. Well as President Trump kept the world guessing, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had some warm words for him. I want to thank President Trump, a great friend of Israel. I thank him for standing by us and I thank him for the support the United States offers us in defending Israel's skies. We speak constantly, including last night. We had a very warm conversation. But if the US does join Israeli strikes on Iran, what would it actually be doing? A question for our security correspondent Frank Gardner.

Well, the thing that Israel probably needs them to do is to bomb the deep underground nuclear enrichment facility at Fordow. That's beneath a mountain, site of Tehran. It's about 90 metres underground, buried beneath reinforced concrete and rock. Only the US has the kind of ordnance, the kind of explosive power to penetrate that far underground. Israel doesn't have it. The nearest thing they've got is stuff that's carried by their F-15 strike Eagles. The US has got bombers called B-2 Spirits, based in Missouri, at Whiteman Air Force Base. Sometimes they're based at Diego Garcia. In theory, they could

deploy from the continental United States, be refueled over the Atlantic, bomb Fordow and come back to the US. But this would be extremely risky for several reasons. One is that it wouldn't necessarily penetrate deep enough. The weapon that they carry or can carry is something called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator or MOP. And this is a 30,000 pound weight bomb. It's massive. That's 13 and a half thousand kilograms roughly.

And they can carry two of them, but they can only penetrate down to 60 meters. So there's no guarantee they would necessarily absolutely just, they'd have to do repeated strikes. And that of course would bring the United States into the war. We've already heard from Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that if the US joins in the war, there will be dire consequences for the US. What does that mean in practice? It means they would hit back at US bases up and down the Gulf from Baghdad to Oman.

They could even lash out at America's Gulf Arab allies, hit economic assets, choke off the Strait of Hormuz, try and restrict the flow of the world's oil supplies. There's any number of ways they could catastrophize this. If President Trump makes the decision to go, how long would it be before a mission like that could be launched? Could it be done straight away? Yes. But as I say, it's one thing to bomb Fordow from the air, as another to be certain that it had actually destroyed what was buried deep underground. And even if you do that, even if you destroy the physical elements of Iran's nuclear enrichment program, you can't kill knowledge in the same way. So there will be

years of accumulated experience stored on hard drives, stored in the minds of, in the brains of some scientists who haven't yet been killed by the Israelis. And if the Iranian regime survives this, and they probably will, they may not, but if they survive all of this, then there will be elements of that regime that say no more messing around, now we need to absolutely race to get a nuclear weapon as the best insurance possible against a future attack like this. Because they will look at the difference between Libya's Colonel Gaddafi, who gave up his weapons of mass destruction, his chemical and nuclear nascent programs in 2003, and ended up dead in a ditch eight years later. And Kim Jong-un and his father, who defied

Western sanctions and have accumulated up to 50 nuclear warheads, no one's attacking them in a hurry. Our security correspondent, Frank Gardner. In Iran, the authorities have imposed restrictions on internet access, some cash machines aren't working, and fuel is being rationed as Israeli attacks continue. The BBC is banned from reporting inside the country, but here's one of the messages we've been sent from Tehran. We were under heavy bombing and airstrikes throughout the night.

I've been following the news on state TV but they pretend everything is normal. They mock the situation and laugh instead of telling us what's really going on. It feels like they're laughing at us. While other cities have also been affected, Narges lives in the city of Isfahan, south of the capital. I can't afford to leave the city. My husband is paid daily. So if he doesn't work, we have no income. There are long queues everywhere in front of bakeries, at fuel stations, everywhere you look. Even the bakeries have stopped giving out flour. They can't bake because there's no electricity.

On top of that, food prices have doubled. Those who had money fled the main cities and are now safe in hotels. But we don't have the money and there is no shelter. Some of the messages sent to the BBC by ordinary Iranians. In a TV address on Wednesday, the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, rejected President Trump's demand for an unconditional surrender. He said the US would suffer irreparable damage if it joined Israel's bombing campaign. And that was echoed by Iran's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Ali Bahraini. Our military forces are monitoring the activities of the United States.

And there is a red line set for the United States. If the United States crosses that line, the response will come. We believe that the aggression made by Israel against Iran from the beginning has been with the approval of the United States. And United States is complicit to this crime from the beginning. I asked Siavash Adlan of the BBC Persian Service what he made of reports about possible negotiations. Well we've heard speculation and rumors that the Iranians have made overtures to the Americans that's what President

Trump said as well trying to restart the negotiations there was even talk that a meeting was scheduled between Iran's foreign minister and the US vice president. We also had another report that it plain carrying the Iranian foreign minister and diplomatic delegation had landed in Oman. Iran has denied all of it, has dismissed it. The Iranian admission to the UN said that this is just fantasy, it's not true. So that's where we're left. Why is Iran restricting internet access at the moment? Well, the Ministry of Communication issued a statement.

They confirmed these restrictions and they said that the Israelis are misusing national communication networks for military purposes. This comes after a hacker group that is thought to be linked to Israel, hacked a digital currency exchange and they stole a lot of cryptos from there. So Iran sees this as a way to prevent security threats. When you slow down the internet, you stop hackers from invading your cyber accounts and they also attacked a bank as well and they threatened to wipe out all the database of that enough of a private bank but Iran says nevertheless communications for internal and domestic communication platforms are still accessible to Iranians. Now Israel appears able to hit

targets in Iran at will how long can the Iranian regime hold on? Can it survive? That's a very good question. If you listen to the Supreme Leader today, his message was very subdued. He didn't promise any imminent victory or reassure people in that way. It seems like he's digging in and he's hoping that his regime could hold on to power longer in a war of attrition. Hence, you're seeing they're using their missile stockpiles very sparingly in the past few days against Israel. So if the US joins in, they probably need to keep those missiles if they need to use

them against the US as well. That's a whole different story. So the million dollar question is how much longer can the Iranian regime withstand this relentless battering? Siavash Adlan of the BBC Parsons Service. Let's look at some other stories now. It was once known as the Russian Davos, a symbol of the global rush to invest in Russia. But the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, which opened on Wednesday, is not attracting many Western business leaders, as our Russia editor Steve Rosenberg explains. Okay, so no Swiss mountains here, no ski resorts like in Davos, but still a stunning setting,

St Petersburg, Venice of the North. Although that label, Russia's Davos, no longer applies really. In recent years, CEOs of big Western companies have stayed away, particularly since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Nonetheless, the organizers of this year's forum maintain that representatives of 140 countries and territories will be taking part. And the Russian authorities will almost certainly try to use this event to demonstrate that attempts to isolate Russia on the world stage have failed. Now, one thing I'm going to be looking for this week is to see whether there are more American companies, American business executives here than in recent years.

After all, President Putin and President Trump seem determined to kind of repair US-Russian relations and boost economic ties. This is an economic forum, but geopolitics is never far away here. So we'll be looking for comments this week from President Putin on Ukraine, on events in the Middle East, on international security and on relations with Washington. Our Russia editor, Steve Rosenberg. Still to come on the Global News podcast. The crime often gets the headlines.

Actually the thing that worries me most is the crowd density and the potential for a mass casualty event. Why Europe's largest street festival is under threat. Austria is toughening up its gun ownership laws following a school shooting last week. Ten people were killed in the attack by a former pupil. Here's our Europe regional editor Danny Eberhardt. Austria's government is moving fast to tighten some of Europe's more liberal gun laws following the horrors of the Graz shooting.

It would see a rise in the minimum age for owning certain weapons, including handguns. There'd be stricter psychological tests and more sharing of information between agencies, including one supervising mental health. The Graz attacker passed checks to buy the weapons he owned legally, but it transpired he'd earlier failed a psychological test to join the military. Separately, the government has announced a fund of up to $23 million to help survivors and victims' families. It's proposing measures to improve safety at schools and prevent the radicalisation of young, socially isolated people. The attacker had not finished his schooling and spent much of his time playing violent video games. West Africa has become a dumping ground for unwanted waste from Europe. A lot of electronic waste ends up in landfill in Ivory Coast, for example.

Now an investigation by Greenpeace has found mounds of second-hand clothing from Europe dumped in protected conservation sites in Ghana. So what is going on? I heard from our correspondent Thomas Nardi in the Ghanaian capital Accra. Every morning when you go to Kantamanto market, which is arguably the largest second-hand clothing market in Western Africa, you often see traders scrambling for good second-hand clothing

because most of what is brought is waste. So they have to wake up early, go there to try to get the good ones in order to sell. This particular investigation uncovered that most of it ends up at landfill sites and protected wetlands. And that is quite dangerous for the environment. Just to put this in perspective, 40% of importers are hand-colluding

ends up at landfills and some of them are washed into the sea and synthetic fabrics are very harmful to marine life. So that has been one of the major concerns raised by this particular investigation. And it is not the first time activists or NGOs have uncovered this. It's always been a big problem. Even the BBC, we've done an investigation into this and we uncovered that the majority of secondhand clothing imported into this country is just waste.

But now it's going into conservation sites. I mean how is it getting there? Well, the continental market receives more than 1,000 tons of clothes every day. And so the authorities say that hundreds of tons of it leave the market daily as waste. They are only able to process just about 30 tons. We see that hundreds of tons of it leave the market daily as waste. They are only able to process just about 30 tons. So you can imagine the rest just ends up in landfills and wetlands. And that is because there's only one engineered landfill site in the region.

So that has been the challenge for the authorities. What happens is the country's landfills are now overflowing with waste from well-known international brands as highlighted by this particular report and that also has implications for marine life. You go to the shores of Ghana and you see most of these secondhand clothes washed up the shores, some buried in the sand. Textile waste like microplastics and dyes contaminates the environment. Some of them clogs waterways which can lead to flooding during especially rainy season and also poses serious health risk. So the authorities are limited in terms of how much waste they can recycle because the technology

is not there and so the majority of what comes into the country ends up in those protected wetlands. Thomas Nardi in Accra. The Notting Hill Carnival is Europe's largest street festival. It's been going since 1966 but there are serious questions about its future. The BBC has seen a leaked letter from the organisers to the British government trying to secure funding amid safety concerns. Karl Mercer reports. It's London's biggest street party. More than a million people go every year but the sheer numbers attending bring with them their own problems and after last year's carnival the Met Police's most senior officers expressed their concerns. It's a poorly run event. It's not run by experts and event management in the way that most

big events are. We're actually more worried about the crowd risks and the risks of a mass fatality event through a crushing incident. At the same time, Carnival organisers had ordered an independent review of safety and security. It cost £100,000 of public money but has not yet been released, despite being finished in April. But the concerns it addressed have been laid bare in a letter leaked to BBC London. Carnival chairman Ian Comfort last week wrote to Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy with an urgent plea for money, saying, The independently commissioned safety and security review identified critical public

safety concerns that now require urgent attention. It goes on to say, While we remain focused on delivering a safe and inclusive event, the scale and urgency of the measures now required exceed the financial capacity of a not-for-profit organisation. And the letter ends with this. Immediate funding is required ahead of the next event. Any further delay risks compromising public safety and jeopardising the future of the carnival.

A coordinated, well-resourced safety approach is essential to protect attendees and meet the operational demands of this major national event. The letter says carnival organisers, City Hall the operational demands of this major national event. The letter says carnival organisers, City Hall and the boroughs of Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea can no longer afford the extra costs needed and that only central government money can keep carnival going. The government is expected to make a decision in the coming days.

Karl Mercer reporting. Thailand has long banned most forms of gambling but now it's planning to lift the restrictions and allow casinos. The goal is to promote tourism but opponents argue that gambling is incompatible with Thai culture and its Buddhist values. Ed Butler has this report from Bangkok. So I come here and I buy my ticket. Yeah, the government price is 80 Baht per ticket. Along with my fixer, Mao, I've come to one of Bangkok's bustling markets to test my luck at one of the world's most popular national lotteries.

The clicking noise is dozens of women stapling their remaining lottery tickets onto display boards, the top prize around 180,000 US dollars. Mao and I approach one of the vendors. I see you have a picture of a Buddhist monk there on the wall. Is that for good luck? Yes, for blessing and good luck. Yeah.

It's not particularly Buddhist, this behaviour though, is it? Nothing to do with the religious. It's about something that you want to take some risks. You want to have some fun. The state lottery is a legal form of gambling in Thailand. An awful lot of other traditional Thai pastimes aren't. In May Sot, a town in the north of the country, there's regular illicit cockfighting, clearly popular with some locals, according to the cafe owner I met, who owns some of the fighting roosters.

We have events every week on Fridays and Saturdays here and in another town nearby. Mostly they come to gamble. Some people bet up to $300. You see the jackpot keeps rising if there's no winner. It's usually very popular. Gambling in Thailand takes many other forms too. Thanakorn Kamkris is secretary general of the country's Stop Gambling Foundation. It's about 20 to 30 million people or more than 60 percent of Thai citizens in Thailand involved with gambling.

And now they open an online casino game. It's recognized as hard gambling and creates lots of damage. So why then has Thailand decided to join the list of countries creating new casino complexes? General Tatchai Pithanilabut, who runs the Anti-Human Trafficking and Online Scam Centre for the Royal Thai Police, told me that liberalising the country's existing gambling restrictions was overdue. I am a supporter of legalisation. I think it's difficult to control the online gambling because it can set up any place in the world, any country. And then they can invite Thai people to join their activities. And it's not easy for the law enforcement to identify their whereabouts.

Is online gambling itself becoming more of a challenge in Thailand? Absolutely. Well, despite those arguments, there is now a permanent anti-gambling protest outside the parliament building in Bangkok. A Buddhist monk here speaking against the new casino complexes. Many opposition MPs are also concerned. Rangsiman Rome is one of them. The government proposed an entertainment complex like a spatial area, have casino inside, have hotel, the hall for the concert, have stadium. Health spa. for the concert, have the stadium, health spa, can be everything that entertains.

But the condition is must have casino inside. But the casino, we have many competitors around Thailand. So you know, it brings me the question that Thailand will end up like Cambodia or Laos or Myanmar. These are countries with a reputation for corruption and money laundering and all kinds of bad things associated with their casinos. Correct. In a statement, the Thai government has said that the new proposed entertainment complexes, if approved, would increase revenue, support investment in Thailand and solve illegal

gambling. It said they could boost the country's GDP by as much as 0.8 of 1%. So I'm looking at a podium now and various women in uniforms are holding up balls with numbers on them. And the first prize is 854685 and 042285. I'm sorry, you just missed the first prize in Thailand. 109, which is not... No, I haven't got that either. Maybe next time. Ed Butler reporting from Thailand.

Sprinters like Usain Bolt and Shelly-Anne Fraser-Pryser are now not just for the speed they could hit at their peak, but for staying fast into their late 20s. But what about running the 100 metres at the age of 80? Well that is what the British music star Sir Rod Stewart is doing and he's even hoping to break a record. Nick Palmiter takes up the story. up the story. Well before turning 80, Rod Stewart has been committed to his personal fitness. He's a lifelong avid footballer and fetches bricks from the bottom of his swimming pool for respiratory strength. But his latest goal, becoming the fastest man over 80 over 100 metres, won't be easily achieved. Just ask fellow octogenarian

Gina Little. He needs to be stretching and warming up and making sure he's done everything proper. Sprinting is quite hard and you can pull hamstring muscles and all sorts of things. The London Local is a veteran of more than 600 marathons. She's run the last 40 consecutive London events. She regularly runs up to six days a week. She believes the social aspect of long distance running is the key to her longevity. I don't find it a struggle. I enjoy doing marathons and enjoy,

we go away a lot and run away abroad. And then you meet other people that are doing the same thing that you're doing. It's a camaraderie of it all as well. The current 100 metre record for a man over 80 is an astonishing 14.21 seconds achieved by American Kenton Brown last year. Rod Stewart's personal best is a very respectable 19 seconds, but Miss Little has urged a cautious approach to his training regime. I think Rod is probably enjoying it,

but I just think he's really gonna push his body too much. We did track a few months ago, and we did some sprinting, and I pulled my hamstring, and I've been running for 40 odd years. Hamstring injuries happen to even the best of us. So after four decades of marathons, can Miss Little envision a time where she'll wind down and stop running?

No, I can't. I don't really want to. If I couldn't run, I would do something else. But all the time I can run, I'm going to run. That report by Nick Parmiter. And that's all from us for now, but the Global News podcast will be back very soon. That report by Nick Parmiter.