Global News Podcast - US allies reject Trump's call for help in Strait of Hormuz

Episode Date: March 17, 2026

The US President has repeated his call for other nations, particularly Nato allies, to help secure the Strait of Hormuz. Donald Trump says he has been surprised more world leaders were not "eager" to be involved in securing the key oil shipping route. Meanwhile, India has secured the safe passage of tankers carrying liquified petroleum gas, or LPG. Street vendors and biryani restaurant owners in Kolkata tell us how the current fuel shortages are threatening their livelihoods. And the Israeli military has now confirmed it has begun what it calls "limited ground operations" in Lebanon, as 800 000 people have been forced to flee their homes.Also: amidst a near total fuel blockade by the US, Cuba has experienced an electricity grid collapse. New figures from Interpol show that AI-enhanced scams are now almost five times more profitable than traditional methods. Researchers in Scotland have developed a way to turn discarded plastic bottles into a key medicine used to treat Parkinson's disease. Chelsea Football Club has been fined more than $14m, the Premier League's biggest ever fine, for breaking financial rules. Margareta Magnusson, who popularised the Swedish practice of Death Cleaning, has died at the age of 92.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. When you're car shopping on your phone, you need to see all the information. With the Car Guru's app, you can. Powerful search tools let you see deal ratings, price history and dealer reviews on listings, all in one place. And you can turn on real-time price drop alerts, so you'll never miss a great deal. It's no wonder Car Gurus is the number one rated car shopping app in Canada on the Apple app and Google Play Store.

Buy your next car gurus at car gurus.ca. Go to car gurus.ca. To make sure your big deal is the best deal. That's c-ar-G-U-R-U-S.ca.cair-Gurus.cairus.cairus. You're not at the office. You're solving murders in the Scottish Highlands. You're not in your car. You're in a candlelit carriage on the way to the ball.

This winter, see it differently when you string the best of British TV with Bripbox. Catch a new original series like Riot Women. Let's start a riot. New seasons of fan favourites like Shetland. The body's been found. And on parallel collections of Jane Austen, Agatha Christie and more. It's time to see it differently with Britbox.

Watch with a free trial now at Britbox.com. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles, and in the early hours of Tuesday, the 17th of March, these are our main stories. President Trump repeats his call to allies, for keeping the straight-off Hormuz open, but its folly on death is. In Lebanon, more than 800,000 people have been forced to flee their homes and towns because of Israeli bombardments.

The growing toll of daily life in Cuba from the U.S. fuel blockade. Also in this podcast. Some people do find it weird, but I mean, we're also Swedes. We have Bergman, we have, I am death, we have all these things. after the death of the woman who brought us Swedish death cleaning, a tribute to her work from her daughter. And the English Premier League club Chelsea is hit with a record fine for breaking football's financial rules. All is not going the way Donald Trump was hoping for in the war with Iran. Iranian attacks on commercial oil tankers in the strait of Hormuz have dramatically reduced the amount of oil and natural gas passing through that narrow stretch of water.

and that means fuel prices are rising, and governments and the rest of us are worried about what that means for the cost of living. So how is that going to change? Well, President Trump has again called on leaders from Europe and beyond to send naval vessels to secure the straits. But there is increasing resistance to that. More on that in a moment. But first, this was the U.S. president in the White House on Monday. I always said, you know, the problem with NATO is we'll always be there for them, but they'll never be there for us. And when I hear the UK, which we sort of considered the Rolls-Royce of allies, right, wouldn't you say? They were the oldest and they were going to be there. And I say it would be really helpful if you'd send over a couple of ships. And if you have some mind sweepers, which they do, be very helpful.

And the prime minister is a nice man. I think he's a very nice guy. He says, well, I'd like to ask my team. I said, you don't have to worry about a team. You don't have a team. You're the prime minister. you can make a decision. So it's very disappointing.

And then after we obliterated them, and it destroyed their military, the whole thing, and it became a much safer zone, he said, we're going to send over two aircraft carriers. I said, I don't want them anymore. Well, he went on to say that China and Japan should be thanking him and helping out, amongst others. Many of the countries, South Korea,

gets a tremendous percentage of their oil and therefore their energy from the straits, or as they go it, the strait. And they should be not only thinking it, as they should be helping us, what does surprise me is that they're not eager to help. Back in Europe, after a meeting of EU foreign ministers, the bloc's foreign policy chief, Kayakalas, said there was no appetite to send military vessels to the Gulf. The German Chancellor, Friedrich Metz, agreed.

NATO is a defensive alliance, not an interventionist one, and that is why NATO has absolutely no role to play here. Our State Department correspondent Tom Bateman has been following what he says is a frustrated president over the past few days. He named the UK once again and really singling out the UK, I think here as an example in his view of how countries were not showing the kind of commitment that he was calling for. He also alluded, I think, to Germany.

He talked about a country that has 45,000 US troops, on its soil that have been there for many decades and the US is protecting this country and he implied they're not going to help either and he's pretty unhappy about that. There was a sort of veiled threat really because he said, and he said this on Air Force One and he repeated it that he would remember the countries that in his view are not willing to help here. He said that he spoke to about seven countries that they've got in mind for this apparent coalition to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. At very best the US is getting a lukewarm response. from just a few countries over this.

There is a kind of guarded non-committal from some and then an outright rejection from others, particularly Germany. And I think what you're seeing here is clearly the strategy for the Americans is going pretty badly wrong here, given what's happened to global oil prices to the stranglehold that the Iranians have managed to maintain around the straight-of-form moves. And this is Mr. Trump now turning to America's traditional allies, having spent really many months insulting quite a few.

of them. There's no kind of clear, quick solution for Mr Trump, which is why his political opponents, I think, have been pointing to, in their view, the lack of a coherent plan in the run-up to this, given it was clear the kinds of things that the Iranians would try and do. As we heard there from Tom, a lot of uncertainty about what America's plan for this war is. Our international editor, Jeremy Bowen, has been looking at what could happen next. Wars often act as catalysts, speeding up changes. that were probably going to happen anyway, but then they get this turbo boost behind them.

So if you look at the Gulf, first of all, and we're seeing all the damage and those pictures coming out of it, loads more fires, those Gulf countries have had serious differences between each other, amongst each other. But now I think, and this is what I'm hearing, is that there's a sense now that they're going to have to reassess. Yes, of course they will keep close to America as much as they can.

But the word I'm hearing is things like diversify. We need to diversify our alliances because where has this alliance with America actually got us? How have they protected us? Where does this security alliance work? And of course, always waiting in the wings, China. They've shown a lot of interest in the Gulf in the past. And stronger language coming from the Europeans, from the EU, from the Germans, Boris Pistoris, the defence minister. This is not our war. We didn't start it.

You know, the split is back in a big way. And I think that now that they've decided, they've concluded that appeasing Trump doesn't work. It makes it easier to say no. And one more thing, and that is Iran itself. It's been known for a long time that the straight of Hormuz is a choke point in the world. But the conventional wisdom always was that the Iranians would not try and block it because they need it too. But actually, I think they're being shown now that however weak they get, as long as the regime is still there, survival is, of course, their absolute priority. Jeremy Bowen. Let's take a closer look now at the economic

impact of the war as those oil and gas prices rise. That in turn is hitting petrol prices, heating costs and family budgets around the world. In India, because of a liquefied petroleum gas shortage, street food stalls and restaurants are even changing their menus. Biryani is one of Kolkata's most famous dishes. Slow cooked for hours, it is energy intensive. And the restaurant owners are feeling the heat. Our work is with commercial gas cylinders and due to the ongoing scarcity we just can't find any right now. The stock we have

will only last us a couple more days at most. Since our restaurant is known for its biryani, we cannot stop serving that by any means. But there are some special dishes that are made to order. They have stopped those dishes completely. There are several people who work in this restaurant. Their livelihood is dependent on this. I have enough to start.

suffice for the next two or three days. There's a beautiful bazaar here during Eid. If the gas supply issue doesn't get resolved before then, all the shops here will shut down. But Iran has now allowed two Indian ships carrying LPG to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, with one arriving safely at Gujarat's Mundraport on Monday and the other scheduled to reach on Tuesday. Our correspondent in Delhi, Aronaday Mukuja, has more. Well, this is certainly going to be a big relief. given that the Indian government, as early as last evening, in a briefing, in a press briefing, had said that, look, the situation regarding LPG is a matter of concern, even though there is no need to panic. But, you know, these kind of supplies that are coming in at a very crucial time, will definitely be a big breather.

It also demonstrates, as the Indian government is trying to pitch it to be, the ability for the establishment to still have some sort of diplomatic channels available with Iran. That's what the foreign minister also mentioned in his recent interview to the Financial Times, which came out yesterday, where there are some sort of diplomatic conversations that are going on, which are allowing these tankers to pass through. So at least two of them have managed to cross over. You know, this is coming amidst reports of, in some points in India, people queuing up for their LPG cylinders. It is critical because still 300 million users are consumers of LPG.

So households, many of them depend on it, many small eateries, small businesses depend on it as well. so you can understand why this is critical. Having said this, the question still remains. You've got some tankers in, what about the future? What about the next few weeks? Because this is going to be a critical issue. So it doesn't solve the problem, but it definitely helps a little bit in the current pressure circumstance.

The second big front in the war in the Middle East continues to be Lebanon, where Israel is still firing, a barrage of air and artillery strikes on the south. And where the Israeli military has now confirmed it has begun what it calls limited ground operations, concentrating on targets associated with Hezbollah. The Lebanese Health Ministry says Israeli attacks in the first two weeks of this war have killed 850 people. The BBC's Karin Torbay in the Lebanese capital Beirut described the situation to my colleague Paul Henley. Over 800,000 people at the moment are displaced away from their houses. A lot of houses have been completely destroyed, a whole building side.

in some cases, completely reduced to rubble. These people first had to endure this for a lot of them, for the second time, in two years. You can imagine it's a very, very difficult and challenging situation. They left with nothing on them. And they are just counting on the very little support and aid they can receive either from the UN agencies, from the government, from local NGOs. but all of it doesn't really add up to even, you know, the very basics. It's just merely surviving on whatever little they can get. And all the signs are that the disruption is going to continue.

The IDF says it's conducting new ground operations, but it describes its offensive as limited and targeted. It's not going to be limited and targeted if they involve the number of reservists potentially being called up, is it? Well, they are calling up so many different units as well to take part and they call it as a defensive, limited operation, ground operation. But in fact, there are lots of questions in Lebanon and lots of concerns and uncertainty, whether this could be the start of something much bigger and much more dangerous, like long-term occupation of large parts of the country.

But this doesn't seem to be a walk in the park for the Israelis. They have been trying for the last few days. to hold more positions inside Lebanon, to consolidate already existing positions in the country, and to advance further deep into the south of Lebanon. It doesn't seem to be quite easy because there are met with lots of resistance from Husbalah that is launching two types of attacks against the Israeli forces. The first type of attacks is basically launching rockets towards Israeli positions and Israeli towns in Israel,

and also attacking troops, Israeli troops in Lebanon or as they are trying to get in Lebanon. And we have had reports of mental men-to-man confrontations in some cases and clashes. So it doesn't seem to be easy, but it seems to be a grand and big operation that the Israelis are bracing themselves for, and the Lebanese are definitely bracing themselves for its consequences. Corrine Torbay. And we have more on the U.S.-Israeli War with Iran on our YouTube channel. Search for BBC News on YouTube,

and you'll find Global News Podcast in the podcast section there. There's a new story available every weekday. President Trump and a number of U.S. presidents before him have been very explicit in their calls for a change of government in Havana. Last month, Washington imposed a near total fuel blockade on Cuba, and it's having a big impact. Early on Monday, was the first total collapse of the island's electricity grid. Since last night, it has been 24 hours without electricity. On some days, we have gone without for 17 hours, depending on how the connection to the system is and how the systems are doing.

It will be two or three days without electricity, and what little we have to eat spoils. Nobody says anything, and nobody has answers for anything. We can't do anything. I eat in the dark, I have breakfast in the dark, I shower in the dark, always everything in the dark all night. What else can I say? I got more from BBC monitoring's Pascal Fletcher, a former Cuba-based reporter who's now in Miami. I wouldn't want to minimise in any way that's sort of the really dire situation that exists there.

If you can just imagine, you know, everything that you take for granted in your daily life, electricity, water, piped water, pumped water, food, medicines, even the most basic aspirins, going to the doctor, public transport, everything for, you know, a couple of, for several weeks now, and even longer has been really seriously affected by this. And, you know, everyday life, economic life certainly, but even everyday life has pretty much come to a standstill. A few moments ago we heard one Cuban resident saying nobody tells us anything and nobody knows anything. Do people blame the Americans for this or the Cuban government? I think you'll find a bit of both, certainly.

You know, obviously there are people who still support the system, and they will tend to emphasize the, if you like, the measures being taken by the U.S. administration, you know, the shut off particularly of oil supplies. But it's also true that, you know, it's very visible, considerable discontent about the situation. And this has sometimes exploded into, you know, targeting the actual, you know, existing government. We did see on Friday an attack on a Communist Party municipal committee in a town in central Cuba, Moron. And that was significant. That shows you, and, you know, shouts of things like freedom and down with communism, graffiti on the walls. That shows you that there is considerable sort of anti-government sentiment as well. Pascal, as people coped on Monday without electricity, Donald Trump was asked about how he saw the future of Cuba. Let's hear what he had to say.

You know, all my life I've been hearing about the United States and Cuba. When will the United States do it? I do believe I'll be the honor of having the honor of taking Cuba. That's a big honor. Taking Cuba. Taking Cuba in some form, yeah. Taking Cuba. I mean, whether I free it, take it, I think I can do anything I want with it.

I ran about the same time as that. The Cuban government was saying that it would allow Cubans living abroad to invest back in the country, back in Cuba. see that as a coincidence that that was happening at the same time as this blockade? No, it's certainly not a coincidence. The, you know, the Cuban government is seeking to respond. We've already had some announcements of prisoner releases, although they didn't want to link it to US pressure, but certainly they're probably facing the most pressure they have for decades, maybe back since, you know, the collapse of the Soviet Union. When I actually was in Cuba, and even then we went back to, you know, ox carts and bicycles. But of course,

the resilience of the system, you know, we're 25 years on, is much weaker now. There's much less political support. So, you know, it really is a much worse in situation. But certainly they are trying to sort of, you know, make some kind of gestures. But I think, you know, with what Trump's saying, we don't really know what's going to happen next. Pascal Fletcher. Still to come in this podcast. It feels like just the start for what could be a really exciting point for, you know, industry and for the way that we use these bacteria. Researchers find an extraordinary new use for old plastic,

helping to treat Parkinson's disease. 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 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. There are, it seems, fewer and fewer areas of life untouched by artificial intelligence. And in case there was any doubt, we can now definitely add fraud to that list. New figures from the International Criminal Police Organization, or Interpol, show that AI-enhanced duping is now almost five-per-based.

times more profitable than traditional methods. An estimated $442 billion were lost worldwide last year to financial fraud, much of it orchestrated in part by AI. The BBC spoke to one victim from England, Sarah, not her real name, who was a victim of romance fraud. Not long after the death of her husband, Sarah fell for someone online who claimed to be an American serviceman. Soon afterwards, he started asking her for money. Eventually, she lost over $120,000. Her voice is spoken by an actor. And he said, well, you'll have to pay me because I love you.

And I said, well, it's a bit too soon to say, I love you. And he's like, well, I do love you because you know you're my only woman. Then one particular day he messaged me and said, oh, just to let you know, but my son has died in a car crash, but I need money to pay for the hospital. And then this year he was sort of saying, you know, I want to come over this, that and the other. And I said, no, because technically I have lost £90,000 to you, and I can't give you any more. Kelly Richmond Pope is a professor of accounting at DePaul University in Chicago.

She told my colleague Vishla Shreepadma, what types of fraud we should be particularly looking out for? We are still, as a population, very trusting. And I think what has happened is technology has allowed us to be even easier to be manipulated. And when I think about the prevalence of AI use in fraud techniques, it's quite startling. When you think about AI-powered voice cloning, deep fake videos and video calls, AI allowing you to create very, very personal fishing and spirit. fishing type campaigns to victimize people. I mean, AI has really made it easier for us to become victims and for us to not be able to detect the red flags that we once might have been able to detect very, very quickly. I often think about myself. I do a lot of speaking and my voice is

places. So it would be very easy for someone to sound like me and probably using some type of AI tool to create all the social media characteristics that you could become me and sound like me and maybe get through someone's security protocols. So I think we are at a very, very vulnerable place, all of us. And I don't know that we know how to really protect ourselves any longer. It's interesting because businesses, particularly financial services, for example, will be really keen on developing security systems. Do you think that's possible in the way that people that are trying to scam people out their money are becoming more sophisticated, do you think businesses are able to develop their security technology at the same pace?

I think that it is easier to rein in controls when you're only talking about security measures. But the minute you put a person, a human being in that equation, that's the issue. I mean, how do you tell a senior citizen who, picks up the phone that it's not their grandchild that might be traveling abroad, that they don't need $5,000 wired to them. So I think there are some things that can happen that organizations that financial institutions can do. But I think the minute you put a human being in the equation, all bets are off. It's a little bit harder to manage and control. Kelly Richmond Pope there. Scientists say that they found an extraordinary new use for one of the planet's biggest pollutants, plastic.

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland had developed a way to turn discarded plastic bottles into a key medicine used to treat Parkinson's disease. With more details, here's Lucy Acheson. Around 50 million tonnes of polyethylene-terethylate, the plastic widely used in food and drink packaging, is thrown away every year. Now scientists at the University of Edinburgh say they found a way to convert that waste into Levedopa, the gold standard treatment for Parkinson's disease, which helps restore dopamine levels in the brain and improve motor function. The process uses specially engineered E. coli bacteria.

First, the plastic is broken down into its basic chemical building blocks. The bacteria then transform those compounds through a series of biological reactions, producing the medicine in just over a day and at room temperature. Researchers say that makes it far less energy intensive than conventional pharmaceutical manufacturing. Professor Stephen Wallace, who led the study, says this could be the beginning of a new era. This is part of a sort of emerging technology that's called engineering biology. And we're only really sort of getting to grips with the potential that this technology could have for the future. It feels like just the start for what could be a really exciting point for industry and for the way that we use these bacteria.

The team is now working with industry partners to see if the process, can be scaled up. If it can, scientists say plastic waste could one day become a valuable raw material, helping to produce medicines while tackling one of the world's biggest environmental problems. Lucy Acheson, there's been a record broken on the world's most famous footballing stage, England's Premier League, except it's not a record those involved will be particularly proud of. Chelsea Football Club has been fined more than $14 million, the league's biggest ever fine, breaking financial rules. Our reporter Will Chalk told me this is to do with a period when Chelsea were riding high. Yeah, very much so. One fans will remember fondly. Between 2011 and 2018,

you've got manager Jose Marino, a club legend. He was in his second spell in charge and they won six trophies. Except, according to this 28-page ruling from the Premier League, many of the players who helped them win those trophies have been signed through secret payments to unregistered agents. So this ruling found the club have made 36 payments, adding up to more than $60 million, and they mainly went to third parties in the British Virgin Islands. Will, in a league worth tens of billions of dollars, many people might say that a $14 million fine is a drop in the ocean. Yeah, they well might. But the Premier League does say there are mitigating circumstances. So these are things like the fact that the club's current owners,

Blue Co, reported themselves for investigation. after noticing the discrepancies when they bought the club from the previous owner Russian businessman Roman Abramovich. And because of this, and I think the most crucial thing for most Chelsea fans, they've managed to avoid a points deduction or a ban on signing new players for now. Football finance expert Kieran Maguire from the University of Liverpool says that is unlikely to go down well with other clubs who have been sanctioned. If I was a fan of Everton or Nottingham Forest or Leicester,

all of whom have had significant points. seductions in the last two or three years, I would be asking why, why have Chelsea not suffered a point seduction? And I think the Premier League's response to that is that you only get a point seduction if you've lost more than £105 million over three years. And even if you put these payments into Chelsea's books, Chelsea actually never went above that limit. Now, as we've just heard, this is just one of the clubs whose financial dealings are under the spotlight at the moment. So this story and this issue, not going anywhere anytime soon.

Will Chalk. Now, getting your affairs in order as you approach the end of your life is something that many people try to do. It's a deeply personal and private act, but one that Marguerietta Magnerson became famous for popularising. Ms. Mons, a writer from Sweden, who herself has just died at the age of 92, brought out the best-selling book,

The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, back in 2017. This central idea was organising. possessions to avoid burdening loved ones. Here she is talking about it on a TV documentary. The outstanding is death cleaning. You want to get rid of. A lot of things that you have collected or have in your home for a long time. One day when you're not around anymore, your family would have to take care of all that stuff.

I don't think that's fair, really. Marguerietta's daughter, the filmmaker Jane Magnuson, has been speaking to Sean Lay. It's not weird at all because we will all die. She was very open to talking about it because she didn't want it to be a shock and she was working with her own death and demise for many, many years getting rid of all her stuff. She's been death cleaning for as long as I remember, and it's something a lot of women in her age group does in Sweden, but nobody ever talks about what old women do because they kind of disappear.

So nobody ever talked about death cleaning. And I was seeing a friend of mine in New York, who's a publisher at Penguin, he was kind of frantic about his father having en masse a huge amount of stuff and that he's going to have to take a vacation just to take care of it. And then I said, well, I don't have that problem. And he said, how come? And I said, well, my mother is death cleaning. And he asked, what is that?

And I told him. And then he was silent for a while. And then he said, hmm, I think there's a book in that. just a book, but what turned into a publishing sensation. How would you sum up the concept of Swedish death cleaning? Be sure to get rid of your stuff so nobody else has to do it when you're dead. So it's a kind of kindness to the next generation. And yet things are memories, aren't they? It's a sort of, it's a bit of a wrench. Was it a wrench for her too sometimes? No, I don't think so. I mean, it was a, it was a problem if she didn't get enough time to

death clean every day because she really liked doing that. She also liked. going through old letters and photographs and memories and diaries and all kinds of things because then she got to remember these things one last time before she chucked them out the window. I was intrigued to see that this was one book she published, but she then published another book titled The Swedish Way of Exuberant Living, which sounds very intriguing. It's advice to how to live your life when it's nearing the end. It's things like eat a lot of children.

chocolate. She was a very skinny woman, but she loved chocolate and she was like, oh, well, I'm almost dead. I've always wanted to eat more chocolates, so now I'm going to do that until I die. Sound advice. That was Jane Magnuson. And that's all from us for now. But if you want to get in touch, you can email us at global podcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag global News Pot. 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 Rebecca Miller. The producers were Guy Pitt and Stephanie Zacherson. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Miles

and until next time. Goodbye.