US and Iran trade strikes for first time in weeks

**Oliver Conway** (0:00)
This is The Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 14 Hours GMT on Monday the 31st of August. US and Iranian forces attack each other for the first time in a month. One man has died and others are missing after a flash flood in the Grand Canyon. And Russia targets Ukraine's education system.
Also in this podcast.

**Dr. Oliver Griffith** (0:27)
The puggles are only in the pouch for about 60 days. After 60 days, it becomes too spiky and she needs to leave it in a nest.

**Oliver Conway** (0:37)
The rare egg-laying mammal being reared in a university.
The war between the US and Iran has been relatively quiet for the past month as the Americans switch from military to economic pressure to try to get the Strait of Hormuz reopened. But on Sunday, fighting resumed as the US hit what it described as Iranian mine launchers on Larak Island in the Strait. Iranian state media says two people were killed. In response, Iran said it had launched attacks on US bases in Jordan and the UAE. We got the details from our Global Affairs reporter, Sebastian Asha.

**Sebastian Ascher** (1:16)
Larak Island is one of the small islands the Strait of Hormuz that Iran uses both to monitor and to threaten ships that might still be using it down routes that Iran doesn't allow them to go.
So that's why it's a target for the US again, specifically to do with the threat that it poses, the military threat. So, rather than going for the economic aspect of it, as it might have done, it's going for one of these islands. And this is what we've seen time and time again. This is a resumption. We don't know if this will continue, obviously, but we haven't had tit for tat attacks like this for around a month. I don't think this raises the temperature hugely, but it shows that obviously the military front is still very much latent despite this move by the US towards economic pressure on Iran.

**Oliver Conway** (2:04)
But at the same time, President Trump has posted an AI video which he captioned Haag Island being blown to smithereens. Now he has threatened that island before. I mean, how much of an escalation would a US attack on that be?

**Sebastian Ascher** (2:17)
Well, I mean, first you've got to say it's nonsense to put our AI video showing explosions that don't exist. So that is hardly helpful. And as we've seen, I don't think it helps the US negotiation tactics with Iran. I mean, Iran is very much focused on the way that he moves back and forth between, you know, huge threats and then accommodation very quickly after that. So they've kind of got his measure as far as that's concerned.
If Hague Island was attacked, I mean, there have been attacks on it before, but the oil structures where has they haven't been attacked again, that would be a major escalation. But what has happened is Hague Island through which 90 percent of Iran's oil is exported, has to some extent been turned into something that doesn't have that capacity simply because the blockade by the US has been pretty intense, that it's reimposed as the Strait of Hormuz wasn't fully reopened, as was meant to happen under the Memorandum of Understanding. So it would be a major, major target if it were attacked. It would be a major escalation. But at the moment, its function as the main export route is pretty much out of the question in any case because of the blockade.

**Oliver Conway** (3:27)
Who has the upper hand at the moment? There was some suggestion that President Trump wanted a deal because he wanted to get this done before the midterms. Doesn't look like that's going to happen. Whose side is time on here?

**Sebastian Ascher** (3:40)
It depends if you're looking short or you're looking long term. Short term, it's in Iran's interest because of the political and economic pressures on the US. Long term, Iran is in desperate economic situation. It was before the war even more so. The blockade is really telling. But what the US would like to achieve, what Mr Trump would like to achieve would be to have major importing countries like China to very much change their attitude towards Iran. That's unlikely.
What Iran is bargaining on is that the US doesn't want to open up a major rift with China over this. If it decided to act against Chinese banks, for example, even the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bersent, said that that would be essentially almost economic Armageddon after that.
That's what Iran is factoring in. In the long term, if the US were able to get there politically, economically, Iran is being weakened week after week, month after month, to such an extent that can it withstand. And there are big elements within Iran, the president, for example, who do want a deal to be done.