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hello. Just before lunchtime on Monday was one of those BBC news push alerts which got your WhatsApp groups fired up. It was the news that the BBC had sacked the presenter of the Radio 2 breakfast show, Scott Mills, somebody who'd had a decades long career at the corporation. So we will talk about that and the latest on the war in the Middle east in this episode of Newscast
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Newscast, Newscast from the BBC.
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D
Fat Boy Slim and me in the classroom doing our violin lessons.
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I was the tattletale in the class.
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Can I have an apology please?
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I trust almost nobody that daddy has
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to sometimes use strong language.
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Next time in Moscow.
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I feel Delulu with no Salulu.
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Take me down to Downing Street.
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Let's go have a tour.
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Blimey.
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Hello, it's Adam in the Newscast studio and we will start with that story that broke just before lunchtime on Monday that the BBC had sacked Scott Mills after decades and decades on the nation's airwaves. The person who's been covering the story all day is the BBC's culture and media editor, Katie Razzle, who's here. Hi Katie.
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E
Hello, Adam.
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B
Right, give us the timeline of how this story emerged.
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E
Well, let's give credit to the Mirror because the Mirror had the scoop, if you like, that Scott Mills had been sacked for personal conduct reasons.
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B
Oh yes, because they posted their story at 11:30 on the dot with the headline exclusive, which was roughly the same time as the BBC statement went out.
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E
Exactly. So we don't know the backstory to that. We don't know whether the Mirror had the story, went to the BBC, the BBC then investigated, or whether the BBC, you know, someone somewhere alerted the Mirror. We don't know any of that. But what we do know is the Mirror had it as an exclusive. We got this email, it was an internal note to staff, wasn't it, from Lorna Clark, who's director of music. Shall I read that?
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B
Yeah. Or read the most important bits.
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E
So it was a shock. I mean, she says, I wanted to personally let you know that Scott Mills has left the Breakfast show in the BBC. I know this news will be sudden and unexpected and therefore must come as a shock, not least to many of us who've worked with Scott over a great many years, because obviously, you know, he has worked across not just Radio 2 most recently, but Radio 1, 5 live, Radio 2 and of course TV. And then she goes on to say, of course, it will also come as a shock to our audience and loyal breakfast show listeners too. Yes. I mean, he, he took over Zoe Ball's Breakfast show last year. It has about 6.5 million listeners, so it is the biggest breakfast show in the country. And he became the face of it, obviously. Although. Can you say face when it's radio? Sort of.
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B
Everything's visualized.
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E
Exactly, yeah. Although not, it turns out not, because there's a key bit to this story which is last Tuesday he signed off his show. Yeah, he's handing over tomorrow and then didn't appear again. So it looks like they got wind of it and took him off on Wednesday. But when I tried to put that in my six o' Clock News piece earlier, it was only the audio. So you say everything. It's actually not.
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B
But going back to Lauren and Clark's email, I mean, the tone of that is interesting because that sort of. That's an email that is caring about the team and the staff and the listeners, not necessarily breaking the news to the wider world. That's not a public facing email, is it?
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E
No, that is an internal email and when we went to the BBC, obviously we've been given permission to use that internal email, but when we went to the BBC, their statement was, whilst we, While we do not comment on matters relating to individuals, we can confirm Scott Mills is no longer contracted to work with the BBC. Now, obviously behind the scenes, we were having conversations which confirmed that he had been sacked. It was for reasons of personal conduct, but we don't at all know what those reasons are or what that personal conduct or misbehavior is. And, you know, that's not to say that there might not be a story in a newspaper tonight or indeed we might get to the bottom of it at some point, perhaps tonight, who knows? But, but, but at the moment it's quite murky. Not murky, that's the Wrong word that makes sound nefarious. It's unclear.
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B
Is there anything that can be read into that phrase, personal conduct? Well, because that suggests maybe, and I'm completely speculating here, maybe something that's not office related.
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E
Yes. So the BBC always chooses its words carefully, doesn't it? Although it didn't put personal conduct in any of its emails or statements. But I think you're right that it seems to me I've reported on quite a lot of BBC crises, quite a lot of them involving presenters who've done various things, including obviously things that have been criminal. There is an issue, you know, in a way you can't account for what people do in their personal time as a boss, you know, you can't be held liable for what people do because some people, not just men, some people behave badly. What becomes a problem for the BBC is if it is something that its own culture allowed to happen or allowed to fester and indeed then its reaction to it once it emerges. So in some of the previous cases, for example, you know, and this is criminal, this is very different from what, you know, what we know about Scott Mill. So I'm not, I'm not saying what he's done is, is at all comparable, but when Hugh Edwards, when the Hugh Edwards scandal broke and obviously people will remember it was very slow. He wasn't named at the beginning, then he was. Then it emerged much later that this was actually criminal and then obviously he was convicted of making child abuse images. That there was a suggestion, and that is disputed by the BBC, but there was a suggestion that the culture at the BBC enabled someone like that, who's a big famous face who can throw his weight around that in enabled him to behave in a way that if the rest of us had behaved in that way, it wouldn't have been overlooked. Now I'm not saying that's true, but I'm saying that was the suggestion. And so, so the problem for this problem on the Scott Mills front is did any of this happen? Whatever happened, was it on BBC time? Was it something related to BBC? If it wasn't and it was something outside, then that's probably a very different issue.
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B
The other thing that strikes me about this is just the speed at which it happened. What, what do we think we can glean from that?
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E
Well, I think we can glean that the BBC held this cultural review after what happened with Hugh Edwards and other high profile scandals. It said, you know, Tim Davies, Samir Shah, the chairman of the board, they both spoke to mps at the culture media And Sport Committee gave evidence where essentially they said, no one's IRreplaceable at the BBC. Doesn't matter how famous you are, if you don't live BBC values, you're out the door. And Tim Davy very clearly said, this is a new thing, a new way of working. It's making that clear. So you could look at this and read it as well. This is the culture Review working in practice. So we've brought in new processes, says the BBC. We have looked at this very swiftly, reached a decision, a resolution, he's out the door. And now, of course, you could say that perhaps, and I don't know the answer to this, but one of the reasons why you could do this swiftly is if the person in question has said, held their hand up and said, well, actually, yes, that is correct. I have no idea whether Scott Mills did that, but it's clear that if he did do that, then that gives the BBC much freer reign to say, right, well, he's admitted it, so he's out the door. And it looks like you've made a. You made a really swift decision and indeed you have, but you've been helped to do that by the person in the center of it. Whereas, you know, we know that in other cases, people denied for weeks and months that they had done anything wrong
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B
or were suspended on full pay for quite a long time.
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E
Well, exactly right.
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B
Also, this is a bit of a sidebar issue, but it seems at one point we might have three Director Generals in the building this week.
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E
Well, it's true. So Matt Britton, the new Google executive, the new Director General who's come from Google after a little mini gap year, actually a bit longer than a year, he has been spotted here today. He was spotted in the canteen. He was, I'm told, spotted leaning over the atrium looking down. And he, he's definitely been here. So he's here starting this week, the actual person who is going to be acting Director General for a bit while Matt Britton gets his, you know, onboarding done and all the meetings he has to do and signs up to all the pro, you know, all the computer systems and everything. He's called Rodri Tavern Davis. And he's clearly a, you know, he's. So he's acting Director General and then Tim Davy, until Thursday, is the actual Director General, the outgoing Director General. And I think. I'm not sure Tim was here today, I don't know, but I do know that he's here on Wednesday and Thursday.
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B
I just was. The fact that we've got three DGs is interesting because it makes you. Who actually made the ultimate decision here? Because the all staff email we got confirming it to everybody was from Roger Talfan Davis, who's the acting Director General.
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E
Well, exactly right. And I don't know the answer to that, but I do think that if you were Tim Davey in your last week, when you want to be celebrating your triumphs and thinking about that and heading out the door, do you want to have your name against the latest BBC scandal to break on your watch? So I don't know the answer, but Rodri Tavern Davies is the one who sent out a later email to staff. We haven't heard anything from Tim Davy about this story.
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B
And actually Tim Davies said one of the reasons he announced his departure in the first place was he wasn't really feeling he had enough gas in the tank to deal with another scandal.
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E
Well, exactly.
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B
He said it had taken a real toll on him.
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E
Yeah, he has. It's definitely taken a personal toll on him and I don't know, there've been some rumors that perhaps he regrets his decision and I think perhaps having something like this probably reinforces, you know, it's a good time to leave. He, he, you know, a reminder that actually you don't want to have to preside over these sorts of unfortunate situations. Although I do think, and with some justification, both here, he and the Chairman of the board, Samir Shah, will feel that this is definitely a sign of their process is working, that you make a decision fast. That's one of the things we've always criticized them for in the previous scandals. It takes so long to make a decision. Oh, let's look into it, let's find out, let's investigate a bit more, let's check out our processes. Let's do this, let's do that, let's. No, in this situation, make the decision and out he goes.
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B
And then just a word on Scott Mills's career in. In this building and many other BBC buildings, because he was here for a very, very long time. 1998.
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E
Yeah. So he is somebody who has, you know, really, really achieved brilliantly. Right, so age 16, he was actually the youngest radio presenter in the UK when he got a job on, I think it was called Power FM in Hampshire. So. So like a teen local radio star who then, when he gets into the BBC, it does, do, you know, really, really well at Radio 1, people will remember those kind of pranks that he used to do with celebrities. He persuaded Jennifer Aniston to give his mate a sort of Nightmare interview. He played innuendo bingo, which he claimed Prince William was a fan of, where him and his friend Chris Stark and a celebrity guest sort of play out innuendos while trying to keep their mouths full of water. So he was a sort of popular person and, and clearly somebody that the BBC rated because when the BBC rates somebody, they try to give them higher, you know, more roles and sort of promote them so that it's a sort of. I don't mean self defeating, do I? A self perpetuating prophecy. No, whatever it is. Anyway, so it's, it's the thing where self fulfilling prophecy. Self fulfilling. Sorry, maybe I'll get my brain working by the end of this conversation. But yeah, so. So he present, got to present Eurovision and has done for, for years. He was a competitor on Strictly Come Dancing, I think back in 2014, in 2024, he won celebrity race across the world with his now husband. So he's been, you know, put, put out there across BBC channels and, you know, on Iplayer and whatever as somebody, as a face of the BBC and he earned a substantial amount of money and he did really well. And then, you know, culminating in getting this breakfast show gig from when Zoe Ball said she was gonna step down. This Radio 2 breakfast show, the biggest breakfast show in the country, suddenly like that, it's over. You're on air on Tuesday and then Wednesday you're taken off air or you don't appear again and then that's it, you're sacked by the weekend.
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B
So the BBC will have to find a new person to front that very, very high profile slot. Gary Davis has been filling in for the last few days. Scott Mills was also gonna be hosting the spinoff podcast of the new series of Race across the World.
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E
Well, see, I didn't know.
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B
Yes, and pop info. And Eurovision is coming up, so a new voice to present some of the Eurovision coverage.
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E
Because he usually does a semi final, doesn't he?
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B
Yeah, with Rylan. And then I wonder. Well, I suppose it depends if more stuff emerges or whether the guarantees of people's privacy that we have in the uk, especially when it comes to hr, means that actually people can ask a lot of questions, but there might not be a lot of answers.
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E
Yeah, I think that's the key thing. And for the BBC it's. Has it contained the scandal? Is this it? Nothing more emerges? He's gone. Move on. That would be. Assume how they hope it plays out. But if we get this sort of drip, drip, drip of people coming out of the woodwork and saying XYZ about him. Then it becomes something that continues to lead the headlines and and make make make the front pages potentially. And that that that so problem.
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B
And of course Scott Mills when he was at the BBC was paid a lot of license fee payers money as a salary.
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E
According to the last annual report, he's the BBC's 11th biggest earner on around between 355,000 and 359,999. Now that's obviously the public service side of things that on the, on the studio side they don't have to announce how much people.
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B
Oh, the commercial arm.
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E
Exactly, the commercial arm. We don't know really what people earn. But but on the public service side he is the 11th biggest earner and
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B
have have you managed to get in touch with Scott Mills or Scott Mills representatives?
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E
No, we've tried. I mean I don't know what the latest is obviously because we've approached the agent and perhaps while I've been editing for various programs we've heard but I don't believe we have and we certainly haven't managed to make contact with Scott Mills.
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B
Right. Katie, thank you very much.
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F
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B
Let's get an update now on the US And Israeli war against Iran and is often the way the update comes from Donald Trump posting on Truth so Social. And the post he put there on Monday morning is kind of in two bits. The first bit is him talking up the diplomatic process and he says there's serious discussions underway with a new and more reasonable regime in Tehran. So he obviously feels he's achieved something a bit like regime change there. But the second part is him ramping up the pressure militarily and basically if saying if he doesn't get what he wants, threatening to blow up electric generating plants, oil wells and Carg island, which is a crucial bit of Iran's oil exporting infrastructure. So let's join some of the dots and try and unthread some of the threads about what might be going on. Joining me here in the studio, returning from his travels, is the BBC diplomatic correspondent James Landale. Hello, James. Hello, Adam. How long have you been back from Ukraine?
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D
Well, it feels like a month, but it's actually only a week or so.
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B
And when you're in Ukraine, kind of in the midst of one war, are you able to keep across another war at the same time? How does it work?
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D
Actually the, the longer I was there, the more I realized that these two conflicts were bleeding into one another. Not I mean, not in a way that from a sort of clearly the Ukrainians and the Europeans would be making a strong argument that they are part of a broader war. That actually there are link linkages between Iran and Russia obviously. But actually just it's been fascinating to watch Ukraine and the government there respond to this, you know, mixed opinion, you know, fearful of being ignored, you know, is Ukraine could become a forgotten war.
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B
Also trying to be helpful to the rest of the world, but also now,
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D
as you say, trying to be helpful and learning to be a strategic actor in their own right offering advice how they do that, the complications of, of dealing with the Gulf, forming new relationships, which because if you think the culture between Ukraine and the Gulf, you know that there's an awful lot of cultural hurdles to get over. So it's been fascinating to watch that
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B
and it was really interesting speaking to Stephanie Flanders, our old colleague, last week on newscast when she was talking about the increased level of strikes by Ukraine on Russian oil infrastructure because, of course, Russia is benefiting from the conflict and
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D
as a result, Ukraine is now coming under pressure to reduce some of those strikes because from countries that are worried about the rising price of oil. So, yeah, everything flows into everything.
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B
Also joining us today, defense editor of the Economist, Shashank Joshi. Hello, Shashank.
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A
Hello. Good afternoon. Thank you for having me. I, I see James's two wars and I raise him three. I've got, I've got Ukraine, I've got Iran, of course. And I'm also keeping an eye on the bit that no one's talking about, which is the Afghanistan Pakistan war taking place just to the east of Iran. So we're unfortunately in a time of great turmoil.
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B
Do you know what? We might get a little sidebar from you on that third one a bit later on in this episode, but let's zoom in on the on the Gulf, then. Shashank. I' just been hearing one place name all weekend. It's an island in the Persian Gulf and it's called Kharg Island. Why does that suddenly become so important?
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A
Well, it's interesting because Haag island has always been really important. It's responsible for about 90% of Iran's oil exports as a terminal and a hub for getting them out. That's changed a little bit. We can go into the details, but actually, it's always been very important to Iran for that reason. And so it's always been it's almost like one of those places in military history, you know, like the bits of Eastern Europe that gets crisscrossed with invasions again and again. It was, you know, attacked by Saddam Hussein, bombed in the 80s. Jimmy Carter considered invading and occupying it after the Iranian hostage crisis, you'll remember, it was Ronald Reagan considered attacking it and destroying oil facilities in the 80s over the tanker war, when Iran was destroying tankers. And now Donald Trump has said, having already bombed it, that he may consider trying to seize it. And so it's back at the forefro of these Middle Eastern conflicts.
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B
And James, what's our theory about why it would be in Donald Trump's interests either to raise the idea of taking Hog island or actually just taking it.
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D
Well, I mean it's a really good question because it's not as, as obvious as you might think if you look.
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B
Because it doesn't automatically reopen the Strait of Hormuz, for example.
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D
No, I mean, look, the overt reason is that because this island is, is the source of a substantial amount of revenue for the Iranian government and the irgc. The Revolutionary Guard Cor argument is that by seizing this island, you then control and cut off this huge source of revenue for the regime and its war machine and you essentially gain a negotiating position for the United States. They use leverage to try and say to the Tehran right, okay, you've got to do a deal over, over ending the war and you've got to reopen the straight. That's the thesis. But if you. I was what struck me from the interview that Donald Trump did with the, with the Financial Times over the weekend was actually the way he was talking about that way we can get the oil and the, the, the, the journalist at the FT who did that interview said on the BBC that, that the impression that he got from the President was if uppermost in his mind was the Venezuela operation, where clearly there is a sort of energy, sort of economic benefit that the United States can get from that. Quite how he thinks the US Is going to benefit economically from this might give us a little insight into some of the other motivations that he's got.
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B
Yeah, because I thought on first reading of his truth Social post, I thought yeah, it's the, it's the leverage point. It's a threat of if you don't do what I want in a diplomatic process, this is the way the military process will, will escalate. But actually it does seem that there's more of a kind of mercantile calculation in his going on in his mind.
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D
I mean there are other options as well. I, you know, Shashank will tell you sort of, you know, surprise is often considered a good thing in military operations and heaven knows there's no sense of surprise involving this particular island. So the fact that so much has been talked about this has raised some speculation. Is there some, you know, is this just a bluff? Is there some deception operation going on here? Is this simply nothing more than an attempt to put pressure on the arrange say look, you know, there are potential costs down the line, therefore it'd be better for you to negotiate now.
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B
But Shashank, if it is a bluff by Donald Trump, he's putting a lot of effort into sustaining the bluff. Because he's sending all these Marines to the region, many of whom have arrived. And Marines are the kind of troops you would want if you were going to seize an island.
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A
Well, yes and no. He's sending these Marine Expeditionary Units. One of them is in the region already from Japan. That's the 31st MEU. There's another one called the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit that's on its way from California. I think that's still a couple of weeks away. And those, of course, are, you know, optimized for one thing, which is getting boots on beaches, as they say. The only thing is, if you were trying to seize Hog island, and I don't want to give unsolicited military advice to Mr. Trump, I don't think you do it from the beaches. I don't think you would want to send in lots of ships through the Strait of Hormuz in the other way for very obvious reasons, that they'd be pummeled with missiles. I think if there is an operation on Hog island, you'd be looking at an airborne operation, an air assault, because you also have the 82nd Airborne in the region. These, of course, are paratroopers. And you can look back at American operations against airfields in Panama, Grenada. They could seize the airfield and then bring in more forces by air. That still has its own problems. The only thing I want to clarify in all this discussion is on taking the oil. Let's be very clear. Hag is an oil terminal. You get oil from the mainland, it is sent by pipeline to the island and then exported. You seize the island, you control the transit hub, you can shut the oil supply off, although there are also three other sites further south that you'd also probably have to seize. What you don't have is a sort of free flow of oil. The Iranians will shut it off, and you've then got to get the oil on tankers, get it out of Hormuz yourself. And why would the Iranians let you do that? So America was. What I'm trying to say is America can take this island. It can halt the flow of oil. It really, really cannot do what it did in Venezuela, which is, say, by the way, I'm now selling Iranian oil on an ongoing basis.
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D
Shashank, one quick thought. If it were an airborne operation, would the United States require some kind of forward operating base in potentially in a regional ally that would have to allow the US to sort of base a lot of its forces that could then be used as a staging post before they get to Hog Island?
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A
Yeah, absolutely. I think that you would need search and rescue assets in the region. You look at the V22 Osprey, which is this fascinating plane. It's sort of used by Marines, it's got a pretty long range and it can sort of. It's like a helicopter. It can fly like a helicopter and also fly like a plane. It's tilt rotor. It can tilt. You may have seen it, you know, in presidential visits to the UK and things like that. You would almost certainly need, you know, Persian Gulf bases, access to those facilities to get an operation in. And you'd also want to resupply hag by ship from the other side of the Gulf. Even if you don't bring in ships, ships through Hormuz, you'd want to get some across from the Gulf. So I think this operation doesn't really work unless you have a pretty decent degree of cooperation from Bahrain, the Emiratis, others. I think you need quite a lot of help in sustaining that air bridge. That really is the problem, by the way, because Iran will be firing at your runways, it will be firing at your ships coming across. So even if you can land paratroopers on the island, they then need short range air defences, they need fuel, they need ammunition, and all of that has to be supplied. And that supply line is what becomes the vulnerability for the Americans.
- [27:05]
B
Of course, Shashank, there's another option that you could use those troops for, which would be to land on the beaches in the Persian Gulf on the Iranian mainland. If you were trying to take out things that were threatening the shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
- [27:18]
A
You could, though, and of course it helps if you're going after missile launchers that are buried in these nooks and crannies of the craggy Persian, Persian Gulf coastline. You know, hidden in caves, hidden in underground facilities. You might want Marines or Special Forces conducting raids ashore to try to root those out and find them, enable them to be bombed. And not all of that stuff is easily visible or bombable from the air. However, two caveats to that. Number one, there is 1,500 kilometers of Persian Gulf coastline. Look, you know, America's not going to be occupying all of that. Secondly, a lot of the strikes on shipping are not coming from things hidden on the coast. They're coming from Shahid drones. And as you probably know very well by now, Shaheeds can fly a long way. I think they can fly 1,500 kilometers more than that. You can fire these things from deep inside Iran, and Nobody is invading 1000km into Iran to stop that.
- [28:15]
B
So that's the military track. James, what have you managed to gleam about the diplomatic track? It's still quite murky, isn't it?
- [28:22]
D
Well, it is what it is. It, you know, messages are being passed. You know, we can have a semantic conversation about whether or not that that amounts to a form of negotiation, but there is a form of communication largely through the Pakistani government. There have been talks there in recent days with some regional foreign ministers, you know, the Turks and the Saudis and the Egyptians and others. So, you know, conversations are taking place. And yes, Donald Trump repeatedly says the talks are going well and progress is being made. He uses that phrase, talks. But both sides are still seemingly fixed into pretty maximalist positions. So the gap between both sides is huge, and neither side seems to be in that position yet where they feel they've exhausted military options, and which is when, of course, those kind of conversations take place. But, you know, there are, there are factors out there. There, you know, there is obviously the, the economic, global economic situation, there is the political situation in the United States and whether that has an impact on American thinking. There is also, you know, again, you know, we shouldn't ignore this, the thinking that's going on in Tehran. One of the curious aspects of this conflict is just how, how hard it is to report what's going on. Think about it. All sides are keeping a pretty tight control over what messaging is put out there, which is why it feels a
- [29:53]
B
bit like a computer game some days.
- [29:54]
D
Yeah. Because, you know, even, even, you know, in, even in the Gulf, where they're receiving quite a lot of fire from the Iranians, coverage of that is hard because of the rules about.
- [30:05]
B
Oh, yeah, because filming it on your phone is illegal.
- [30:07]
D
Is now illegal. We're obviously getting, you know, limited access out of Tehran because of the Internet, shut, shuts down. So. And, you know, and the Americans at the moment, we're largely reliant on a commander in chief who, who speaks a great deal, but occasionally in contradictory sentences.
- [30:26]
A
Could I add a word to that? Excellent point by James? Which is not only all of that is true, but one of the other ways that I and other defence correspondents traditionally looked at these conflicts was through commercial satellite images of the ground. You know, that's how we know, for example, that if an American very expensive AWACS radar plane was destroyed in Saudi Arabia on Friday. But what's happening is the fog of war is descending over that as well, because American satellite companies are saying, hang on, we don't want to help Iran target its missiles, they are shutting down supplier access to images. You know, one of the well known companies, Planit, which has always been very, very open, has put a 14 day delay on images coming out. And Chinese companies are filling a little bit of that vacuum with images of their own. So are some European companies. But if I wanted to call up a picture of, you know, US Air bases across the Persian Gulf near Hag island right now from this morning, most American companies would say, sorry, I'm not giving you that. So that really is making it hard for us to track this conflict in the way that we could have done even a few weeks ago.
- [31:30]
B
Interesting. And James, as the sort of the map of the conflict expands, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, they've become involved in the last few days, having previously they sort of stepped back a bit.
- [31:41]
D
Yeah, they've been sort of one of the dogs that hadn't barked so far in this particular conflict. And you know, obviously, you know, they are players. They are, you know, loosely aligned to Iran. They're not quite as sort of directly controlled by Iran as say, you know, Hezbollah or other organizations. And, but they have in recent days stepped up attacks on Israel. They, they've threatened to close that their own strai on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula with the Red Sea. They've yet to do it in this immediate context, but obviously they've done it a great deal in recent years until a peace deal. But at the moment, so that threat sort of hangs over another key choke point through which a substantial chunk of the world's oil, I think about 10% of the world's oil passes through that. There's the substantial amount obviously from Saudi Arabia, there's, that passes through. And yet it's one of those, I think sometimes when you have a conflict like this, you become very focused on the here and now and you, you forget sometimes that there are, there is a huge capacity for escalation. You know, so for example, the Houthis have not gone hard in yet. There has been some activity by pro Iranian militias in, in Iraq, but there's, there's greater capacity for them to become more active players. There is the possibility of Gulf countries actually fighting back against Iran. At the moment they're just defending.
- [33:13]
B
Although that possibility has been discussed for quite a few days now. It hasn't happened yet. But, but it's your point about unpredictability. People have different triggers and we never quite know where the trigger point might be.
- [33:23]
D
And we, and we always think that an unlikely thing is is unlikely until it happens. And then suddenly it becomes, oh, that's happened, has it? And I think, you know, the capacity for this to escalate is always there.
- [33:37]
B
Shashank. My latest obsession is this idea that after this is done, whatever this is and whatever done is, we end up with a situation where effectively there's an Iranian controlled toll booth on the Strait of Hormuz and whoever the regime is in Iran chooses which ships go through it at what volume and how much they have to pay to get through. Now that then becomes a global issue of freedom of navigation of the seas. Because a country's not really allowed to do that. That's what you could do in medieval times. You can't, you can't do it now. Then that would become, oh, Keir Starmer's problem maybe.
- [34:10]
A
Well, this is extraordinary. I mean, two weeks ago a U. S. Official messaged me and said, don't forget the toll booth risk, exactly as you say. And they said, they gave me two interesting examples. One of them was the Bosphorus, which of course, you know, sort of in Turkey's influence, and the other one is Suez, Suez, Suez Canal and the way that that's controlled waterway. And this is a huge problem. Freedom of navigation has been at the core of the international system for hundreds of years. You know, it goes back to Hugo Grotius, the Dutch jurist. It's such a fundamental idea. But the really worrying bit is not just that Iran's in control, it's that America doesn't care. You know, today we heard the view that Trump saying we could end this by bombing everything in Iran and leaving no suggestion he would leave by opening Hormuz. And worse than that, actually about a week ago, and I know he throws spaghetti to the wall and sees what sticks, but it was still very troubling to me. He said I might jointly control Hormuz with the Ayatollah. And by the way, this provoked one of the great memes. And I no way am endorsing Iranian state media or Iran's government. But the meme that Iran's embassy in South Africa published was a picture of a car, the caption saying, I will jointly control Hormuz with the Ayatollah. And then a picture of a little children's steering wheel stuck to the passenger side. So they're mocking this. But more seriously for Europeans, we are seeing America, the country that opened up global sea lanes, kept them open for world commerce, essentially abandon the concept of freedom of navigation and indeed perhaps collude in efforts to Completely overturn it. And I think that the likes of China in the South China Sea and others will be looking at this really delighted.
- [35:42]
B
And James, I know you've got to go, which you'll be gutted about, because we're just about to get into a conversation about Hugo Grotius and why he was such an important figure when he was alive from 1583 to 1680.
- [35:51]
D
But it does allow me to escape without having to tell you about how I once swam the Bosphorus. So I'm quite. I'm quite. Yes, I'm exactly. I'm quite aware of that particular pinch point.
- [36:03]
B
And also coming back to the Dutch in ancient history, I mean, Hog island where we started off was a Dutch possession, wasn't it?
- [36:10]
A
I didn't even know that. You've told me.
- [36:11]
B
I've gone further back.
- [36:13]
A
Straight away, I didn't know that.
- [36:14]
B
I've gone further back on the Internet than you have today.
- [36:16]
A
Yeah, you've lost me.
- [36:18]
B
Sorry, James, I'll let you go, but thank you very much. Good to see you back.
- [36:20]
D
Thank you so much.
- [36:22]
B
And Shashank, just picking up on that point you were raising about the other conflicts that people aren't talking about so much, just give a very quick rundown of why we should care about Pakistan and Afghanistan being in conflict.
- [36:33]
A
I mean, sure, look, this is a full fledged war, really, because Pakistan accuses the Afghan government, the Taliban, of sheltering a group known as the Pakistani Taliban, or the ttp, and they've conducted a suicide bomb coming, a very nasty one. A few weeks ago, Pakistan then attacked Afghanistan. And we're seeing airstrikes inside Afghanistan. We're seeing the Taliban send drones back towards Pakistani cities. And, you know, now we're seeing Pakistani shelling of eastern Afghan cities. So this has, you know, humanitarian consequences. We saw a really nasty Pakistani airstrike just a week ago that killed hundreds of people when they seem to have hit the wrong target. And of course there's refugee implications. You know, massive displaced populations here, lots of Afghans in Pakistan who are now displaced again. So this is the sort of thing, Adam, that would have been front page news two years ago, three years ago, but in our crazy times, gets completely lost.
- [37:29]
B
And it might have less kind of like direct political or economic consequences here in the uk. But back to James's point about conflict breeds instability and unpredictability, which can get worse.
- [37:40]
A
Well, I'll give you an example of how these things are weirdly connected. Right? I mean, so normally you think this is quite separate to Iran and the Iran war. But Pakistan, of course, under the new military leader, Field Marshal Asim Munir, is very close to Donald Trump. And Trump indeed has been calling him and talking to him about mediating Iran talks, as James will know very well. And so America is looking very favorably upon Pakistan right now and has back attacked the Pakistanis in their campaign in Afghanistan. Again, that wouldn't have happened 10 years ago when the Americans were quite irritated with Pakistan for their support for the Afghan Taliban, weirdly enough. And things have changed. And so these conflicts become intertwined in some quite curious and strange ways.
- [38:22]
B
And Shashank, just to go back to the Gulf, as we end the conversation, is there a particular aspect to this or place or thing or potential event that you've got your own eye on that maybe is a bit under the radar?
- [38:35]
A
For everyone else, I would just watch the build up. Let's see what they're sending into the region, track the planes coming in. It's a pretty small force right now. You know, the Marines I talked about, there's several thousand Marines, but there's only really a battalion's worth, you know, 800, 900 worth of actual combat capable forces. There's only a handful of F35s on this unit, so they can't do all that much. So we need to see how big does that airborne component get? How many cargo planes are coming into the region? Where are they going? Where are they staging? That will tell us something about the scope of what Donald Trump is going to be in a position to do.
- [39:10]
B
Shashank, thank you very much.
- [39:12]
A
Thank you so much.
- [39:20]
B
And I should just say the reason James was swimming the Bosphorus was it was back in 2018 and he was raising money for the Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust and some others. And he raised £10,000 having recovered from cancer himself. So well done, James. I'm not sure how hot or cold or choppy the Bosphorus is, and I'm such a bad journalist, I missed my opportunity to ask him those very questions. Right, that's all for this episode of Newscast. You're all caught up with headlines. We will be back with another one very soon. Bye bye.
- [39:52]
A
Newscast, Newscast from the BBC. Well, thank you for making it to the end of another newscast. You clearly ooze stamina. Can I gently encourage you to subscribe to us on BBC Sounds? And then, without having to do anything else, our meandering chat will miraculously make its way to your phone.
- [40:21]
F
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