Iran widens retaliatory attacks in Gulf countries

Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service.

“During serious civil war, Kurds there tried to build a society where men and women would be equal,”

but now they'll be ruled by a central government run by former Islamists. Join me Tim Hure as I ask whether their social experiment, including female fighting units, can survive. Listen, no, by searching for the documentary wherever you get to your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Jonathan Jaleel, and in the early hours of Tuesday, the third of March, these are our main stories.

On day four of the US and Israel's war on Iran, it widens its retaliatory attacks in the Gulf region, with two of its drones hitting the US embassy in Saudi Arabia. The Iranian red crescent says more than 550 people have been killed in the past three days of US and Israeli strikes. Tehran threatens to set fire to any ship trying to pass through

“the straight of Hormuz, a crucial transit route for oil and gas.”

Also in this podcast, videos of the Clinton's testimony to Congress about the late convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein, are released, as the former president says he did nothing wrong. He ran as broadened as retaliatory attacks on American targets in the Gulf region, as the US Israeli strikes on Tehran and other Iranian sites enter their fourth day. The US embassy in Riyadh was hit by two Iranian drones, causing a fire to break out.

Explosions were heard and clouded a smoke scene in Riyadh's diplomatic quarter. Qatar's Defense Ministry intercepted two ballistic missiles early on Tuesday, oil and gas facilities have been hit as well as cities and airports. Washington has urged Americans in the Gulf to leave as soon as possible. Lebanon has also been dragged into the conflict as Israel continues to carry out strikes on Hezbollah targets. The US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says that the US launched

its war on Iran on Saturday as a preemptive measure because it knew that Israel was going to attack the Islamic Republic. It was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone, they were going to respond and respond against the United States. If we stood and waited for

that attack to come first before we hit them, we would suffer much higher casualties.

And so the President made the very wise decision. We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces. And we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties. And then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn't act. Mr Rubio said the hardest hits on Iran were yet to come, but didn't specify a time frame

as other Trump officials sought to allow concerns that the US was getting entangled in yet another lengthy Middle Eastern war. The Vice President, J. D. Vance, told Fox News that the conflict would not drag on for years. There's just no way that Donald Trump is going to allow this country to get into a multi-year conflict with no clear and incite and no clear objective. What is different about President Trump and it's frankly different about both Republicans and

Democrats of the past is that he's not going to let his country go to war unless there's a clearly defined objective. He's defined that objective as Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon and has

to commit long-term to never try to rebuild the nuclear capability. It's pretty clear, it's

“pretty simple. And I think that means that we're not going to get into the problems that we've had”

with Iraq and Afghanistan. I got more on all this with our North America correspondent, David Willis, starting with that Iranian attack on the US embassy in Riyadh. The Saudi Defense Department says it was able to intercept and destroy eight suspected Iranian drones. Two drones hit the US embassy in the capital Riyadh causing a small fire were told, some minor damage as well, but no injuries.

capital's diplomatic quarters, well, which houses a various foreign missions. Now, President Trump

“told one of the cable news networks here that the United States would retaliate for this action.”

Quite soon, as he put it, and this is all part of a series of Iranian missile and drone strikes on Gulf states that play host to US bases and such as the growing danger, indeed, as far as those countries are concerned, that the US State Department has urged American citizens in more than a dozen countries in the region, to leave as soon as possible as concerns grow that this conflict is spreading. And Marco Rubio has come out with another reason for why the US launched

this war on Iran right now. We've heard about regime change, the nuclear program concerns,

missiles, and now Mr Rubio is saying that the US attacked Iran to stop Iran carrying out an

attack because the US knew Israel was planning to attack the Islamic Republic. Yes, it's a bit difficult to swallow, isn't it? See any members of the Donald Trump administration have kept their own counsel, since the bombing of Iran on Saturday, they had done so anyway, aside from some brief telephone interviews, the members of the White House press call, Mr Trump himself had confined his justification for the bombing campaign to two heavily scripted video messages.

“Well, today we heard from two of his key left tenants, the US Defense Secretary Pete Hegsa from”

the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and they appear to offer subtly different takes on aspects of the conflict from those of the president. And as to the question of why now for these strikes on Iran and Marco Rubio told reporters that the US had taken the decision to strike Iran as you say, Jeanette, after learning that Israel was planning to mount an attack of its own on Iran and knowing that the US would suffer much higher casualties from Iran's response, Mr Rubio said,

that prompted the Trump administration to strike first, mount a sort of preemptive defense,

if you like, in order to limit the damage to the United States. Now, that wasn't part of Donald Trump's narrative, and it is, as I say, a little difficult to swallow, given the close ties that exist between the United States and Israel. A lot of concern about how long this could go on for, and J.D. Vance, who has been notably silent for the past few days, has come out now saying that this isn't going to be a lengthy Middle Eastern war.

Yes, which is, slightly at odds with what President Trump had to say today, as well. President Trump has said that a big way for the attacks on Iran is imminent, and he said the operation was moving faster than expected as he put it, but it was still likely to last four or five weeks or possibly longer. He refused to roll out the deployment of ground troops in Iran, as did the Defense Secretary Pete Heggseth, and that's a move, of course, that it brings with

it considerably higher risk of service casualties. The number of American service members, by the way, killed in action in this conflict so far, now stands at six with 18, said to have been seriously injured in that. David Willis, the Iranian-requestance says more than 550 people have been killed in U.S. and Israeli strikes since Saturday. One of the deadliest was on a girl's primary school in Minab in southern Iran. Officials say more than 150 people, including children,

died in that one incident. Mr Rubio was asked by our correspondent, Tom Bateman, why the school came under attack. I see in those reports, I would refer you not because I'm not trying to answer your question, but I don't want to get it wrong. The Department of War would be investigating that if that was our strike, and I would refer your question to them, and I'll make sure they're aware that you have that question. Are there indications this was an American, an American missile?

Well, clearly, the United States would not deliberately target a school. Our objectives are missiles, both of the ability to manufacture them and the ability to launch them, and the one-way

“attract drones. That would be our focus, and that's what we would be focused on. We would have”

no interest, and frankly, no incentive to target civilian infrastructure. Well, Mr Trump is pressing ahead with his war on Iran despite warnings that it could harm the Republicans bid to hold on to both houses of Congress in this year's midterm elections. Given that Mr Trump campaigned on a pledge to end U.S. involvement in any more Middle Eastern Wars, what do Americans make of his decision to attack Iran? On also, America correspondent

Anthony Zerker spoke some voters in Texas. At a banquet hall here in Waco, Texas, Ken Paxton, a Republican running for Senate,

The U.S. midterm elections are still eight months away, but Texans are heading to the polls on Tuesday to select their party candidates. It was a chance for me to ask local conservatives what they thought of America's military strikes on Iran. Yeah, I'm kind of glad you did it. We'll have to wait and see how it turns out. I don't want to, and I don't think Trump wants it, and I know most of the people, I know we don't

want to end up in a quagmire like we were in Afghanistan, or even in Iraq, and so they just, you know, hopefully they can hopefully, like he says, the people step up and take over. That sounds like you see this as part of a bigger thing, this operation in Iran, part of a bigger strategy of the Donald Trump has. Yes, this is a much bigger perspective than just arms.

“And I think right now, we recognize that we can't keep playing this game,”

and kicking the can down the road as we have been in decades. I was an officer in the Marine Corps. I deployed to Afghanistan. I served in the northern Helman province of Afghanistan. I grew up in the era of the war on terror, and it directly affected me. Now, I think that we're in a different era now. I don't think that this is a continuation of the war on terror. But yes, I've watched this very closely. I trust the President and

Secretary of War Pete Hedsis plan. What we've seen with this president is he is very deliberate and specific in launching targeted strikes against known high value targets, which is exactly what happened in Iran. And I trust that the President is not going to want to get us involved in

a never-ending ground war. Like what I have the opportunity to serve in, has in Afghanistan.

Americans in Texas speaking to Anthony Zucker. Well, Iran has made a new threat to ships trying to pass through the straight-of-haul moves, a vital shipping route through which a fifth of the world's oil passes. With traffic already almost at a standstill, an Iranian official has warned that his country's forces will set fire to any vessel that tries to sell through. I also a business correspondent, Nick Marsh, whether this has caused a further rise in the oil price.

It didn't jump quite as much as it did yesterday. It's a couple of percent for Brent crude, and about one and a half percent for WTI. So yes, increases still, though, in the price of oil.

“I think traders are just weighing up basically how long this conflict is going to go on for,”

how long the straight-of-haul moves remains impossible. It's just more uncertainty, it's more worry about not so much the conflict itself, but how long this is going to go on for. And the straight-of-haul moves is now effectively closed. I mean, it's going to be very hard for any ship to go through after this threat from Iran to set fire to any vessels that try to. Yeah, exactly. I mean, U.S. Central Command says it's open, but I mean, in practice, that's

really not true at all. You mentioned that senior Iranian revolutionary guard official saying that

the country would set fire to any ships that try and cross the straight we've already seen the tax on a handful of oil tankers already. So no shipping company in its right mind would send anything through there, whether that's oil, whether that's gas or any other kind of cargo ship. The longer that that goes on for, the longer that's going to have an impact on the world market it's basically about a fifth of the world's entire all supply goes through the straight-of-haul

moves taking off from the Middle East, especially to places like China. The longer that no oil goes through there, the more the price is going to increase, because countries will have to look at alternative markets or alternative routes of getting oil out of the Middle East. And the longer that oil prices increase, then that means that manufacturing in places like China is going to go up

in cost and ultimately that will be reflected in how much we pay at the petrol pump and how much

we pay for our goods in general. And stock markets, no doubt, will be alarmed by the fact that the President Trump is saying that this could go on for a long time. Yeah, exactly. The word that I keep hearing from a lot of investors is duration. Markets can deal with a bit of disruption. They've been dealing with uncertainty geopolitically for several months, if not years now, to be quite honest with you. But this is a new level of uncertainty. You know, it comes to something like

oil, for example. The oil market has been over supplied for a while, so it's not like the countries are going to run out of oil or businesses are going to run out of oil. It's just the uncertainty of it that's going to be pushing up prices and the logistics which are going to increase. I was just looking the cost of hiring a super tanker to take oil from the Middle East to China has doubled since last week. It's now over $400,000 a day. So, longer things go on, the more we're

“going to see the cost of everything increasing. Nick Marsh. Still to come in this podcast?”

All the pigments were pigments that Rembrandt used in other paintings. The way the painting was

Master Rembrandt is re-discovered.

“Available now, on the documentary from the BBC World Service. During serious civil war,”

Kurds there tried to build a society where men and women would be equal. But now they'll be ruled by a central government, run by former Islamists. Join me, Tim Hure, as I ask whether they're social experiment, including female fighting units, can survive. Listen, no, by searching for the documentary wherever you get to your BBC podcasts. America is changing, and so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just the cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom

of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington DC.

I'm Tristan Redman in London, and this is the global story.

Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet.

“Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.”

I'm Crassie Van Overtwek from the Global Jigsaw podcast from the BBC, where we're asking who are the women of IS. The camps in Syria holding families of the Islamic State group are back in the spotlight. After guys' forces withdrew, they're now run by the Syrian authorities, who are in the process of closing them down. The global Jigsaw looks at the world through the lens of its media. Find us wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Hi, everyone. This is Cara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. And we want to tell you about pivot, our twice weekly podcast. That's right, Cara. What a thrill. It depends for us to break on all the big things happening in tech, business, and politics. Yes, and I keep you in check, so people can make it through each episode, whether it's digging into a constant change in the world of AI and social media,

or trying to keep up with whatever the f*** Elon is doing, we're here to give you our take on all of that. Every Tuesday and Friday morning, we drop a new episode about some of the major stories of the moment. And Scott is a prediction machine gazing into his crystal ball to tell you about where it's all heading. That's right. So if that sounds like a good time for you, especially Mr. And that's right, you can follow us on your favorite podcast app to get new episodes every week.

The US Congressional Committee investigating the late convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein has released its closed evidence sessions with former President Bill Clinton and the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The couple who were questioned separately, both deny any wrongdoing or knowing about Epstein's crimes. These two videos combined are just over nine hours long. Here is some of the exchange between the former President and one of the committee members.

Mr. President with the benefit of hindsight, where there are things you witness that could have suggested that Epstein was trafficking and sexually abusing young women and girls. I did all believe so. Our correspondent is in New York, and editor-fic has been looking through the recordings. For the former President Bill Clinton, it was such a wide range of questions. I mean, of course,

he was asked about those photographs of him that were in the latest Epstein files batch. And those were some of the most personal questions because in one of them, he's in a hot tub with a person whose face is redacted. And the committee asked about that photo. Now, Bill Clinton has

always denied wrongdoing. And he said this was part of the trip that he took for his charitable work

“that the Sultan of Brunei had invited them to this hotel. And he doesn't remember who was in the”

hot tub with him. And then he was asked if he had sex with that person. And he said no. So those were just some of the, you know, more probing questions he was asked. But he was also asked about things like how he met Jeffrey Epstein. He said it was actually his former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who at the time was a President of Harvard, who connected them, introducing Epstein as a big donor, who could offer him a plane to take him around for his charitable work and an exchange,

Epstein wanted to talk with Clinton about economics and politics. So it was interesting to see how this introduction was made. But Bill Clinton insisted that their brief acquaintance, it was a very brief

that President Trump told him he fell out with Epstein over a real estate deal. And he said he never

“got any sense that President Trump had done anything or knew about Epstein's crimes. And of course,”

also President Trump is not accused of any wrongdoing. Yes, and Hillary Clinton was also a question at length despite apparently never having met Epstein. Yeah, that's right. And we heard both her and the former President really criticized the committee for bringing her in when she told them that she had never met Epstein. And her deposition was far more feisty. You saw that she really thought this was all for a political gain. And so she was firing back at the committee

when she was interrupted by Republicans questioning her. You know, she said, you brought me here. I'm going to answer the questions. When she was asked for example, what she thought about her husband's photos in the hot tub, she said, I'm not going to engage in this line of questioning. I'm here

to answer the facts. And the facts for her were that she never met Epstein. And even when

Galine Maxwell went to Chelsea Clinton, her daughter's wedding, she said she was a guest of a guest.

“She doesn't even remember talking to her there.”

Nedatolfic. Ethiopia has unveiled its first unmanned police station. It's a fully digital space where citizens can report crimes without actually physically meeting an officer. The pilot project in Addis Ababa is part of Prime Minister Aviamids, pushed to modernised public services. But questions remain about access, trust, and whether technology can really improve every day policing. Here's Daniel Dazzi. It's a quiet room. There's no front desk.

No officer behind the counter. No paperwork. Instead, a row of tablets and phones sits inside partition boots. Their screens glow in with instructions. It feels closer to a text show room than a police station. But here in Addis Ababa, residents can now report incidents digitally without face-to-face interaction. Here's the head of technology for Ethiopia's police service,

“Commander Demis. If somebody has any info, you'll come here, you report directly. No police”

around here. Just he called to police officer to the center and he'd inform. However, what information does he have? And immediately he responds. If there is an issue, we have platforms around the station. We inform it to them to support the report. The project was launched by Prime Minister Abba Ahmed, a part of Ethiopia's wider push towards digital public services. Bringing the issue of crime into this agenda seems to shine a light on an issue with

Europeans that expressed concern about over the years. The status betting on this model to make police it more efficient, but for this model to be adopted here in Addis, El Swayne, Ethiopia, and perhaps even be exported to other parts of the continent, there will need something that software cannot guarantee. According to the Digital 2020-26 Ethiopia report, roughly one in five Ethiopians were using the internet by the end of 2025, even though the country had more than

93 million mobile connections. It's a gap that highlights how access to phones doesn't always

translate into meaningful online news. Zelalem Opion is a tech policy analyst. He believes that digital literacy gap is being addressed. Digital literacy will continue being a challenge, but there are enough policy-level frameworks as well as activities, especially within this digital Ethiopia 2030 strategy to tackle skill-based trainings as well as literacy trainings. For now, traditional police stations remain open alongside the new system. But officials are confident

that this quiet corner of Addis Ababa offers a glimpse of what's police in could look like in a digital future. Daniel Dadsey reporting A masterpiece that hung unrecognized on the wall of a private home for decades has been confirmed to be a work by the Dutch artist Rembrandt, is going on display at the Reichs Museum in Amsterdam this week. As Abiona Boya explains, it was a museum's researchers who after a two-year examination

finally confirmed that a painting thought to be worth thousands is now worth millions. The newly uncovered vision of Zacharias in the temple painted in 1633 had disappeared from public view in the 1960s after it was purchased by a private collector. Its provenance as a Rembrandt had long-divided art historians, with some believing that had actually been painted by a lesser known artist, Jan Lievens, whose early work closely resembled the Dutch masters. But two years ago,

for restoration purposes. Researchers then concluded that it could only be the work of Rembrandt himself,

“who would have been just 27 years old when he painted it. The curator of 17th century Dutch art”

at the Reichs Museum, Jonathan Becker explained the process. All the pigments were pigments that Rembrandt used in other paintings. The way the painting was constructed, the layers, different layers, that was typical for Rembrandt, and then we went and made comparisons with other paintings by Rembrandt and we used high-resolution photography photographs of those other paintings. The master piece depicts the biblical story of Zacharias being visited by the angel Gabriel,

who informs him that he will have a son, the future John the Baptist. Unlike his contemporaries, Rembrandt chose not to paint Gabriel as a visible figure. Instead, his presence is subtly suggested by a light streaming into the temple as a stunned Zacharias looks on. The Reichs Museum director Taco Dibits described it as a beautiful example of Rembrandt's unique way of visualising stories. Now, let's return to our main story, the rapidly evolving conflict in the Middle East.

The US and Israeli attacks on Iran have shown no sign of abating, and Iran shows no sign of capitulating as it hits back at countries in the region. But let's step back for a moment and consider how we got here. To end this podcast we'll hear some reflections from Rana Rahimpo, an Iranian British journalist, former BBC Persian presenter and reporter, currently living in exile

here in London. She told my colleague James Cumerosami that it had always been a question of when,

not if this war would happen. Since October 7th attack of Hamas on Israel, it was clear that Israel is going to change the Middle East forever. It was Hamas, then it was Hezbollah, then it was Bashar Assad of Syria. And when Bashar Assad fell, it was clear to many of us that Iran is going to be next. Especially since last June, we were waiting for this moment because we knew

“that Israel is not going to pack its bags and go home. I think we're looking at two different”

players and their own agendas. I think we have to look at President Trump from his rivalry with China, point of view. His agenda is getting access to Iranian oil or at least stopping Iran from setting its discounted sanctioned oil to China. And at the same time Israel wants an entire regime change. And I think there are stars aligned. So they found themselves on the same site. Rana, on that call that President Trump made on Saturday, at least even if the messaging has changed

a little bit in the last couple of days, what does your thoughts are? Will the Iranian people rise up? I mean, are they in a position too? Just now I was watching a video of a street in Tehran where armed police officers and plane-clothes people were stopping cars of ordinary Iranian passengers. And we could hear them being shot at. So in a country that has been basically under siege of

its own army and its own revolutionary guards, it's very difficult for the people to rise up.

It's difficult to see how they will mobilize themselves only six weeks ago, thousands of them were murdered and massacred by the Islamic Republic. So it's very naive to think that people who are being bombed at and are being shot at by the regime itself will be brave enough or right same mad enough to go under streets and risk their lives for a future that is very, very unpredictable and unknown. At the moment, the only name that comes up that potentially can

bring people some parts of their Iranian society together is Resopah Levy, son of the former Shah. But I want to take you back to the beginning of this and looking at the history of U.S. Iran relations and how he will be perceived by the religious parts of the Iranian society as someone who's been brought back by the United States after an attack at catastrophic attack of that conducted by Israel and the United States. There's going to be a lot of resistance.

“Rana Rohmpur. And that's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch,”

you can email us at [email protected]. This edition of the Global News Podcast was mixed by Abbey Wilcher, the producers were Carla Konti and Shivor Nlihi. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jonathan Jaleel. Until next time. Goodbye.

During series of war, Kurds there tried to build a society where men and women would be equal,

“but now they'll be ruled by central government, run by former Islamists. Join me, Tim Hewer,”

as I ask whether their social experiment, including female fighting units, can survive.

Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get to your BBC podcast. [BLANK_AUDIO]