US and Iran trade blows as Khamenei is buried

**Nick Miles** (0:00)
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.
I'm Nick Miles, and in the early hours of Friday, the 10th of July, these are our main stories. Iran's late supreme leader is buried as both Tehran and the US continue to breach their ceasefire agreement. We hear from people in Iran about concerns of a return to all out war.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:21)
Also, the soil that is available has been reused again and again. The soil itself is exhausted, as are the farmers.
No seeds, no fertilizer.

**Nick Miles** (0:32)
We have a special report on the huge challenges Gazans face to farm their way out of chronic food insecurity. And after the deadly quakes in Venezuela, the silent killer fears of disease spreading in the camps for the displaced. Also in this podcast, the Ghanaian man extradited to the US for allegedly running a romance scam, and France becomes the first nation through to the semi-finals of the Football World Cup.
We begin in the Iranian city of Mashhad, where the former Supreme Leader has been laid to rest after a six-day funeral procession.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in US-Israeli strikes at the start of the war. His funeral was marked by open shows of defiance towards Washington by some mourners and many officials. As he was laid to rest, Iranian state media reported that the US had targeted naval facilities in Koranak and a military headquarters in Boucher, where one of the country's nuclear plants is located. For its part, Tehran has attacked what it said were US military facilities in neighboring Gulf countries. This Iranian man sent the BBC a voice note.

**SPEAKER_4** (2:03)
If war breaks out again, God forbid, what will be targeted this time? People are exhausted by this situation. One day there is a ceasefire and the next it's violated.

**Nick Miles** (2:14)
Our chief correspondent, Lyse Doucet, has just returned from Tehran. I asked her what she made of the latest violence despite the US-Iran ceasefire technically still being in place.

**Lyse Doucet** (2:25)
This is yet another reminder one was needed about some of the difficulties in the deal signed last month between the United States and Iran. It was called a Memorandum of Understanding, 14 points. And it has been leading to misunderstandings ever since it was signed. Take the Strait of Hormuz, Iran reads and it can find in the text that it has been given some sway over this strategic waterway. When it saw oil tankers moving through the strait, closer to the coast of Oman on a route not decided by Iran, it attacked the oil tankers. That led the United States to accuse Iran of violating the Memorandum because it says that under the terms of the deal, and it does say it, that there will be a return to the free flow of maritime traffic. In other words, back to the status quo.
And Iran has made it clear that if the United States strikes, it will strike back. And this is a measure of how Iran's new leaders who survived the weeks of war have been emboldened. They are less cautious than the 86-year-old Ayatollah Khamenei, who most of his life, his main goal was to avoid direct confrontation with the United States. These new leaders, having survived it, no longer fear it.

**Nick Miles** (3:38)
And at what point do these breaches in the ceasefire lead to a total breakdown of it?

**Lyse Doucet** (3:44)
I think we're seeing a redefinition of the ceasefire. President Trump has said, well, a ceasefire in the Middle East is different than elsewhere in the world. The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, says that a ceasefire in this region now just means lesser fire. Look at what happened to the Gaza deal. Last October, President Trump announced with great fanfare, it was the biggest deal in peace in the Middle East in 3000 years. It was a breakthrough that he brokered, but it was basically the first phase of a ceasefire deal. Since then, there's really been no ceasefire. It's not all-out war, but it's certainly not a calm. In the same way that now President Trump hailed this agreement, it's an important agreement, but it will continue to be not all-out war and not permanent peace.

**Nick Miles** (4:30)
You talked about the new leaders in Tehran being emboldened. But if, as a lot of US hawks on Iran want, America reimposes a blockade, it's one thing having political capital in Tehran, quite another having the economic rug pull from under you.

**Lyse Doucet** (4:46)
For all the bravado of Iran's regime, they have suffered significant military losses. I mean, that's what happens when you go to war against the mighty American army backed up by Israel. But it does not feel it has been defeated. It is still able to wage war, to hit back. It still has ballistic missiles and it still has drones. But it has also suffered extraordinarily in terms of economic and financial losses. I was stunned when I went to Iran, not the most recent trip I've just returned from, which focused on the funeral. The trip before that, where inflation was a staggering 80 percent, millions of jobs have been lost and Iranians are really struggling.