US and Iran trade strikes in Gulf

**Uncle Desai** (0:00)
This is The Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hi, I'm Uncle Desai, and at 16 GMT on Thursday the 9th of July, these are our main stories. The latest from the Middle East, as the US and Iran trade strikes for a second night. It comes as large crowds aligning the streets in the city of Mashhad, where Iran's late supreme leader is due to be buried later. The BBC finds claims about Ebola are fueling violence against health workers in the Democratic Republic of Congo. And the president of Microsoft says young people are best place to take advantage of an AI revolution, reshaping jobs and the workplace.
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**Uncle Desai** (0:47)
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The prospect of a proper peace between the US and Iran is looking even dimmer after a second series of American strikes on Iranian targets and defiance from Tehran. The US military says it struck 90 sites, some near the very Strait of Hormuz, which is now at the center of the conflict. There are also reports of explosions in Bashar where Iran's main nuclear plant is located. Iran suggested some attacks had hit civilian infrastructure and accused America of a war crime. President Trump spoke about the latest strikes on Air Force One as he returned from a NATO summit in Turkey.

**Donald Trump** (1:41)
We just hit them very hard and I say we hit up 20 to one. Every time they hit us, we're going to hit them 20
We did it last night. We did a little something today, but it was really retribution for last night. They hit actually three boats, not two. And when they hit, we hit back much harder.

**Uncle Desai** (1:58)
But the American military might wasn't deterring Tehran. In response to the US attacks, Iran targeted American assets in neighboring Bahrain and Kuwait. All of which appears to suggest we're close to being back where we were.
Earlier, our global affairs reporter and Middle East expert, Sebastian Usher, talked me through the latest developments.

**Sebastian Usher** (2:18)
There do appear still to be strikes going on, reports in the Iranian media saying that the coastal city of Bandar Abbas, there have been explosions. In Boucher, which is where Iran's main nuclear power plant is, we've heard differing accounts, but one account saying that the perimeter of it was hit. So this is certainly causing concern over that memorandum of understanding and how long it can withstand this kind of pressure. We have been here before. It's a question of how much is it being calibrated, despite the talk from President Trump that they're going to hit harder and harder, that essentially that memorandum is now over.
It's what he actually does, what the US does that matters. I think from the other side, from the Iranian side, it's how much this is the hill that they're going to die on in terms of Australia Hormuz. If they give up all control of that, which I think is what they're concerned about at the moment, and they don't carry out some drone or missile strikes on ships that they say are going in areas that they haven't authorized, this is Iran and nobody else, then that shows that they are losing that grip and that's their key card and they feel that they haven't got what they want yet from the deal so that they have to continue doing this.

**Uncle Desai** (3:28)
And of course, all the while with the backdrop, Iran is on to the last day of the funeral of its former supreme leader.

**Sebastian Usher** (3:34)
Yes, we're hearing just now in Mashhad, which was its birthplace and also one of the holiest cities in Iran, again, tens of thousands of people lining the streets.
This has been six days that the Iranian authorities, I think, will have been quite happy with. They've allowed foreign journalists to come in. Now, of course, over the years, there's been a sense that people are being bussed in for these shows of solidarity with the regime. But certainly, there is a genuine element to this as well. It's what comes after. Does this show a country that has been united to some extent, despite the huge divisions there were, the mass protests that there were just back in January? Or does it show that temporarily, there can be a sort of coming together, but beneath that, those divisions are growing? And that's reflected in the leadership. We really don't know if the leadership now has become more hard-lined with the Revolutionary Guards now completely calling the shots, or whether those who signed the Memorandum of Understanding, the President, the Speaker of Parliament, those who are more pragmatic, whether they had the upper hand, that really, while their intentions are still going on, our strikes are still being carried out, we're not able to see through that.