US says Iran war could end in ‘weeks’

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1:00They grow here. Not culture or business. Culture and business. Puerto Rico. It's not what's next. It's where. Visit investpr.org forward slash business. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Janet Gillil, and in the early hours of Saturday, the 28th of March, these are our main stories. Top U.S. officials say they're hopeful of talks with Iran in the coming days, and expect the war in the Middle East to conclude in weeks, not months. The Gulf legend Tiger Woods is charged with driving under the influence after rolling his car in a crash in Florida. The personal email account of the head of the FBI is leaked by Iran-backed hackers. Also in this podcast, what happens if you take life advice from AI? This kind of overly affirming AI had such negative consequences on people's

2:02perspectives and judgments, so we found that it made people more self-centered, less likely to consider other people's perspectives. Four weeks since they started attacking Iran, the U.S. has carried out more than 10,000 strikes in the country, and Israel has dropped thousands of bombs on Tehran alone. But their hopes of a swift victory have been dashed, as Iran continues to respond with multiple missile and drone attacks on its Gulf neighbors and Israel. Thousands of people have been killed, the majority of them in Iran. The U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, told a G7 meeting in France that the war could continue for another two to four weeks. President Trump's envoy, Steve Wyckoff, has said he believes Tehran will hold talks

3:12in the days ahead. But given that Iran has successfully blockaded the state of Hormuz, causing global oil prices to shoot up and is still carrying out attacks on neighboring states, I asked our veteran world affairs editor, John Simpson, who has covered many of the major conflicts of the past half century, whether it was in America's gift to choose when this war ends. It's in President Trump's gift to just make the decision to say we've done absolutely everything we needed. Every time he speaks, he says that they've decimated Iran's capabilities. We can just walk away from this and leave Israel to the hard business of trying to smash Iran and get regime change there. Alternatively, he made judge that that won't be popular enough, that he needs a big victory, that everybody will say, Trump did it, and that would mean staying on, bringing in troops, capturing one or more of the

4:19islands in the Gulf, Harg Island, or one of the smaller islands near the Strait of Hormuz, and occupying that and preventing any single drop of Iran's oil coming out of the country. And then try to throttle Iran in that way. It's his choice. Nobody else is going to make that. I'm sure that Marco Rubio would like to walk out. I don't think he was in favor of this in the first place, but it's not his decision. It's one man and that one man is Donald Trump. And the things that influence Donald Trump will be to stop market falls that we've seen in recent days, the oil price shooting up, and the fact that voters are growing increasingly disenchanted with him ahead of those midterm elections in November. These are all factors he's got to take into account. Do you think that if he was to end the war soon, he could recover in time and get back that support he may have lost? I don't think so. I don't think so. I think it'll be

5:22interpreted. I mean, even Fox News, his favorite news station is a carrying interviews with people who say it's not going well. It's not going to order. So I think there isn't enough time for people not only to go through the price rises, which are absolutely certain to come, but to allow enough time to pass for the prices to come down. And then after that, for people to forget what happened. I mean, we're talking six, seven months. I don't think that's a possibility. And what of Iran? Is it now the military that is in charge in particular, the IRGC, rather than the mullers or the politicians? I think really all along, actually, it's been the IRGC that's run things. They make the decisions. The politicians will still front it. That Mahalibaf, the speaker of the

6:25Majlis in Iran, the parliament, I mean, he seems to be, according to everybody, the person that's doing the talking. And there are others as President Pezashkin, I mean, who's the elected supposed leader of the country we don't even hear from. So I'm sure that it's the IRGC that are really running the thing. And you know, if there are talks, proper face-to-face talks, which I actually rather doubt at some stage, then whoever, whichever civilian it is that makes some kind of agreement, if that's possible, which again, I don't think it really is. The most likely thing, I think, is that the IRGC, the revolutionary guards would just simply say, non-acceptable, not acceptable. They don't want a quick deal. They don't want to get out from under. That was, I think, President Trump's big

7:27misunderstanding. He thought that the power, the enormous power of American and Israeli force would just simply make everybody come up with their hands up, and that hasn't happened. And that's the mistake that previous US presidents have made in Iraq and Vietnam. In Vietnam, in particular, yes, yes. It was Vietnam that the assumption that millions of tons of bombs just make people surrender. Well, I've seen it with my own eyes. It doesn't happen that way. And Gulf nations are furious with Iran for the attacks that it's carried out on them, but they're also reassessing their relationship with the US. Yes, they must do, because like with Europe, like with Britain, we know now that we can't absolutely 100% trust the US or whatever presidents impar what he says, and that's as important to the Gulf states as it is to Europe.

8:30The BBC's world affairs editor, John Simpson. The UN says there are no longer any safe spaces for civilians to find refuge in Lebanon, even in the capital Beirut. More than a thousand people have been killed in the past four weeks of fighting between Israel and the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah. From the city of Tyre and southern Lebanon, here's our Middle East correspondent, Hugo Busheger. Lebanon is at breaking point. A country that has already suffered so much in recent years, on the verge the UN says, of a major humanitarian crisis. More than a million people have been forced to flee their homes because of the war. That's nearly one in five of the population. Shelters are overcrowded, and many, with nowhere to go, are now living in improvised tents in squares and public spaces. Dr Sara Nadar is from doctors without borders. What we have been witnessing now is very concerning because especially now the last days we had waves of rain and cold weather, we have witnessed strong strikes also in Beirut itself outside

9:35the official red zone. So, officially we cannot really speak about the 100% safe place also within Beirut. 15% of Lebanon's territory is under evacuation orders issued by the Israeli military, including the entire south, where Israeli troops are pushing ahead with their invasion. The city of Tyre has been a key target of airstrikes, thus the constant sound of Israeli war planes and drones in the sky. Streets are empty as most residents have left, but some are here to stay, like this man, Khaled Ottoman. We can't leave Tyre. Where would we go? There's no alternative. If we leave Tyre, where are we supposed to go? Stay in the street. Israel says it is trying to protect its northern communities from hisbalara attacks. Many Lebanese fear, this could mean another Israeli occupation of the south, and that many of the displaced families may never be able to go back home. You go, Bisega. The Middle East conflict

10:38has been watched closely by Ukraine, which fears it will be forgotten by the world in its long running battle against Russia's invasion. But as our diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams explains, the two wars are connected in other ways as well. These two conflicts are very, very much linked because of the military relationship between Iran and Russia, and that is why President Zelensky of Ukraine is in the Middle East at the moment. He's been signing a deal with the Saudis and talking very much about the lessons that Ukraine has learned in tackling the aerial threats from Russia over the past four years. One of the interesting things going on in the Gulf at the moment is that those Gulf states are using extremely expensive methods to shoot down rather inexpensive Iranian drones. The Ukrainians have learned everything there is to know about that dilemma in the last four years, and they have made do with a whole series of ingenious solutions. And it is those solutions and the experts involved in developing them that President

11:41Zelensky has said he is willing to share with the Gulf countries. He obviously would like to get something in return. He would like to make sure, for example, that he doesn't run out of those most expensive interceptor missiles that you just heard Marco Rubio being asked about. And of course, I think he's also keen to show that Ukraine is a reliable partner and can be looked at by other countries in other conflicts as having something to offer. This is all part of Ukraine wanting to be an ally to the West and to the West's allies. Now, Marco Rubio said that no decisions had yet been taken, but Ukraine is already having enough difficulties getting hold of sufficient interceptor missiles before the war in Iran. And the war in Iran with the spectacle of the Gulf countries burning off these interceptor missiles at a furious rate, that has raised great fears in Ukraine. And so I think President Zelensky may be somewhat reassured to hear that no additional decisions have been taken that will make it even more difficult for Ukraine.

12:45Paul Adams. It's not just the Ukrainians joining the dots between the war in Iran and Russia's invasion of their country. The head of the German armed forces, General Kastin Breuer has told the BBC that the threat from Russia has never been more urgent. He's overseeing a rapid expansion of Germany's military might to turn its armed forces into the most powerful conventional ones in Europe as our special correspondent Alan Nittel reports. For the first time since the Nazi era, Germany has a permanent military presence in Lithuania. This is a NATO-live fire exercise, and these German troops are war-gaming a Russian invasion from the east, on the great European plain. From the Baltic Sea and the west to the walls of the Kremlin in the east, there are few natural defensive barriers, no mountain ranges or deep river

13:46valleys. This terrain is extremely vulnerable to invasion. I'm standing a few kilometers from Lithuania's border with Belarus, the very eastern edge of democratic Europe, in front of a column of German armored personnel carriers known as Boxers. Nothing illustrates the transformation of Germany's reputation and place in Europe more graphically than this German military build-up on territory outside Germany. For generations, Germany's neighbours had good reason to fear German militarism. Now they want Germany's strength in defence of European democracy. I've never experienced a situation which is that dangerous, that urgent like it is today. And this is the man who is leading the rapid expansion of German military might. Kastin Breuer is the most senior soldier in the Bundeswehr, the chief of defence. While we are seeing, while we are facing, it's a threat from Russia, we can clearly see that Russia is building up their military to a strength which is nearly doubling in size from what they

14:50had before the war against Ukraine. But in 2029, there's a possibility for Russia to conduct a major war against an NATO country. And I as a military have to say, okay, we have to be prepared for this. The conference finds that the German people, their entire country occupied, have begun to atone for the terrible crimes. In August 1945, the BBC told listeners how the Allies intended to divide up defeated Germany. Clement Attlee, Harry Truman and Joseph Stalin decided that Germany must be demilitarized and for decades Germany was content to rely on America to guarantee its security. But no longer, Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Marx has said Europe needs to acquire what he called operational independence from the United States. It is a measure of the breakdown of trust between Donald Trump's United States and many of the European Allies. But what would European defence look like without the USA? I think that is a question that many ask and I think it is the wrong way to think about it.

15:52Sophia Besch is a senior researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. I doubt that we will have one country in Europe that can fill the footsteps of the US. The way that European defence has been organised in recent decades, we is around the US. Yes, they were all equal, but the US was very much setting the tone. It was the capability foundation of European defence. Not long ago, German rearmament on this scale would have alarmed the country's neighbours. Not anymore. For Kastin Breuer, the world has changed. I am absolutely sure that we can't think in boxes anymore. So it is not the European theatre and the near Middle East and then properly China or the Indo-Pacific area. We have to connect those dots. All those theatres are intertwined or interlinked and what happens in one theatre has impact on the other theatre as well. When NATO was founded, it was said that its purpose was to keep the Americans in the Russians out

16:57and the Germans down. That era is over. Eight decades after Germany's humiliation, the country is back, rearmed and at the heart of Europe's new power map. That report by Alan Nittel. Still to come in this podcast? Now it is 99% of the old ski jumper in the world. This is easier to count the jumpers who didn't jump with our equipment. This is only two Germans. The specialist equipment firm, Helping Slovenia's ski jumpers to dominate the sport. When Kohler, the global design leader in luxurious kitchen and bath products, came to me and said, Martha, we need an ambassador for our timeless, elegant, durable, cast iron products. I said, I'm in. Now let me see the factory. Weeks later, I was suited up in coveralls and workboots, walking through their Kohler, Wisconsin,

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20:26Today's episode is sponsored by Nerdwallet's Smart Money Podcast, personal finance can feel like a pot quiz you didn't study for. This podcast is your study guide. On Nerdwallet's Smart Money Podcast, you'll hear from trusted journalists to explain the why behind major financial decisions. You'll get research-backed insights and clear pros and cons, whether you're planning a big purchase or just want to grow your wealth. Make your next financial move with confidence. Follow Nerdwallet's Smart Money Podcast on your favorite podcast app. This is the Global News Podcast. The US Gulf Legend Tiger Woods has been arrested and charged

21:32with driving under the influence after being involved in a car crash. The 15-time Gulf major winner was taken into custody after he rolled over his car while trying to overtake a truck. Nerdtrophic is following the story. This all took place just before 2 p.m. in the afternoon on a narrow road near Tiger Woods's Jupiter home in Florida and police say that if oncoming traffic had been there, that this would have been far more dangerous. Luckily, there were no injuries. Take a listen to how the sheriff described the incident. The pressure cleaner truck, truck pulling a trailer or a small trailer was northbound on South Beach Road and was pulling kind of to turn into a driveway. It was slowing down, starting to turn into a driveway, and the driver of that vehicle looked in his mirror and saw a lander over a dark colored lander over overtaking him at high speeds, and I don't know those speeds. As he was trying to

22:34move to the side of the road, the lander overtook him at the last minute, swerved to avoid a collision, but clipped the back end of the trailer of the pressure cleaner apparatus, listed to the side and then rolled on the driver's door. The individual driving that lander over was able to crawl out the passenger door of the car and was identified to be Mr. Tiger Woods. Mr. Woods did exemplify signs of impairment. They did several tests on him. Of course, he did explain the injuries and the surgeries that he had. We did take that into account, but they did do some in-depth roadside tests, and when it was determined he was placed under rest and taken to the Martin County jail. But when it came time for us to ask for a year analysis test, he refused, and so he's been charged with DUI, with property damage, and refusal to submit to a lawful test. Under Florida law, Tiger Woods will have to remain in jail for at least eight hours before he can be released on bond. He will later, of course,

23:37get a chance to defend himself against those misdemeanor charges and is considered innocent until he does so. But anybody who knows the story of Tiger Woods knows that this golf legend has had to deal with these very public incidents of past car accidents and very painful back surgeries. They are the sheriff eluding to some of those. Back in 2021 in Los Angeles, after a high-speed crash, Tiger Woods underwent numerous surgeries to his leg and ankle, and his first time being charged with driving under the influence was a few years before that in 2017. Then toxicology reports found numerous substances in his system, and he ended up pleading guilty to driving recklessly and undergoing some addiction treatment. Another instance, very publicly playing out for Tiger Woods, the sheriff there saying that he appeared lethargic, he appeared impaired. But beyond that,

24:39we have to wait to see how this will turn out for the star who had just returned back into the competitive circuit just a few days ago. Nitotrophic. US officials say the personal email account of the FBI chief Kash Patel has been compromised. A hacker group linked to Iran has claimed responsibility for the breach, publishing photos of Mr Patel and also work correspondence. A US government official said the material appeared to be authentic. In a statement, an FBI spokesman said a malicious actor's targeted Kash Patel's personal email. The US has offered a reward of $10 million for information about the hackers. Our cyber correspondent Joe Tardy spoke to my colleague Andrew Peach. There's an Iranian linked activist group called Handala and this morning they started posting on their telegram cryptic clues about some sort of hack they've carried out. They said hello FBI, then they said hello Kash Patel with the picture of him. And then they posted a gallery of nine

25:40images of him in sort of some sort of a personal capacity. Some of them look like holiday pictures, things like him doing selfies, pulling funny faces, sniffing cigars, and also a CV of his as well. They offered a download link to what they are claiming are hundreds of his personal emails because they say they've hacked his personal email account. And on their website, the Handala group have said today, once again, the world witnessed the collapse of America's so-called security legends. They carry on and they say Kash Patel, the current head of the FBI, who once saw his name displayed with pride on the agency's headquarters, when I'll find his name among the list of successfully hacked victims. The so-called impenetrable systems of the FBI were brought to their knees with an hours by our team. All personal and confidential information of Kash Patel, including emails, conversations, documents, and even classified files is now available for public download. But they're overstating it a little bit there because it looks like this was an attack and a successful hack of his personal email account, possibly his Gmail. The FBI have come out

26:42and said this was not an successful breach of their own systems and that the emails are although genuine, they say they are old and that there's no potentially classified information in there. But don't get me wrong, this is a very significant breach of a public fear in the US and a major victory for this activist group. They want to play it down and say it's not that important. What are they offering such a huge reward? Well, yeah, well, the reward would actually came last week when they put up a $10 million reward for any information it would lead to the arrest of the Handala group or members of the Handala group. But that was based upon different activity. This group has been around for a long time, at least a couple of years, and they usually hack the US and Israel. And recently since the since the conflict began, there have been real fears in the cyber security world that we will see some sort of retaliation from groups like Handala. And last week, actually the week before that, they managed to carry out what we call a wiper attack against the US medical company, which was extremely devastating and destructive

27:42to that company brought down potentially tens of thousands of computers were wiped, which is a bit of a kind of specialty of Iranian hackers. But generally speaking, though, we haven't seen a lot of activity from that area of the kind of the conflict, the cyber war, but this certainly does up the ante today. Joe Tidey, we don't often report on ski jumping in this podcast, but the sports world cup series is reaching its climax this weekend. And as almost always, jumpers from tiny Slovenia will be on the hunt for medals. So what's the secret to their success? While many credit the specialist equipment they use made by a family firm from a local Alpine village, our Balkans correspondent, Guadalani, has been to visit. If you're going to launch yourself off a ski jumping hill at 100 kilometers an hour, you'd better trust your equipment. And for almost every elite competitor on the world cup circuit, there's one brand they trust

28:43above all, Slatnar. It might not be a famous name, but virtually all the jumpers use their bindings, and this year's runaway champions deploy their skis as well. Peter Slatnar runs the business that bears his name, pivoting from auto parts production after he took over from his father. They know me and they know that I'm like enthusiast and I want to find some new solution. They say, please try to make something and this was the stat. As I understand it, within a year of starting to make these bindings, almost all of the world-class ski jumpers were using them on our skis. Now it is 99% the old ski jumper on the world, but this is easier to count the jumpers who didn't jump with our equipment. This is only two Germans. Slatnar's world-beating bindings come out of this small industrial unit in the village of Cerclianagorenskem. Production of its specialist skis takes place at part of the Elan factory

29:47after that renowned Slovenian company pulled out of ski jumping. It's been a record-breaking season for Slovenia's ski jumpers with titles at World Cup, World Championship and Olympic level and they say the relationship with Slatnar makes a big difference. Domain Preots is the reigning World and Olympic champion and the men's world record holder. You know, I compare Slovenia's ski jumping to NASA. Like in Slovenia, we have everything so close. You go to test and then you go develop and I imagine NASA works the same way. They have laboratory, they have testing facilities and when they test something they go back straight to laboratory and we can do the same. We can do testing on the ski jumping hill and 15 minutes away you have Slatnar who produces skis and he produces also the bindings. Domain Preots doesn't say that because he's paid to, remarkably, Slatnar doesn't offer any sponsorship money to its athletes. Instead, some of them even have to buy their equipment

30:52but they know that if you want to saw the highest, some prices are well worth paying. Guy Deloni for porting. Now, would you take life advice from artificial intelligence? More and more people are turning to AI chatbots like chat GPT or deepseek, not just for practical tips about meal prepping or holiday planning but for advice on some of the most personal decisions they face, such as whether they should leave their partner or pursue someone that they're attracted to. But a new study from Stanford University published in the journal science suggests that these systems may be too eager to agree with us. Research just found that chatbots often reflect back what users want to hear rather than challenging them or delivering harsh truths. So to test that, we looked at one of the sensitive questions used in the study, voiced here by one of our producers. Please hear me out, I know it sounds bad but I have feelings

31:54for a junior colleague. This was the chatbots response read by an AI-generated voice. I can hear your pain. The honorable path you've chosen is difficult but it shows your integrity. But the real human said? It sounds bad because it is bad. Not only are you toxic, but you're also bordering on predatory. Well, computer scientists Myra Cheng is the study's lead author. She told my colleague Rebecca Kesby more about the research. I think the most surprising and concerning thing is that this kind of overly affirming AI had such negative consequences on people's perspectives and judgments. So we found that it made people more self-centered, less likely to consider other people's perspectives. But then what's even worse is that we found that people actually like and prefer when AI does this. And is part of that because the AI wants to keep you engaged, wants to keep you coming back to ask it questions. And if it tells you something you don't want to hear, maybe you'll, you know, not stop asking it questions, stop using it.

32:55Yeah, I mean, I don't know that the AI is necessarily trained explicitly for engagement, but part of the training process is that they actually have people look at different AI outputs and rate which one they like better. And so we find that, you know, people will just rate these kinds of affirming responses much higher. And that is actually in the types of data that is used for training AI. So even if it's not something that's being explicitly optimized for or built in, like people weren't trying to build the AI to be engaging, that is sort of what ended up happening. And so you said this was quite negative for us human beings. And why? I think that this has serious consequences for the kinds of ways that we navigate our relationships and the world around us, right? Because if we're just going to pick up our laptops or devices and talk to AI about a conflict, and then they're always going to affirm your perspective, then you start to lose out on all the social friction that's so essential to human relationships. And there's also a lot of research that these kinds of relationships with other people is so crucial to our well-being.

33:59Does it also then shape how we view relationships? And then if in the real world somebody says, oh no, you've got that totally wrong, are we going to be more triggered or upset by that? Because we're used to having something that agrees with us. Yeah, that's a really interesting, you know, follow-up implication. In our study, we just found that when people talk to AI about their problems, they are then less less likely to apologize to the other person. They believe that they're more in the right. And they're less likely to take responsibility or try to change things for the better. I mean, I suppose the counter-argument would be that lots of people feel they don't have anybody to talk to or don't know where to turn. And it's a kind of a safe route to maybe consult AI. I mean, is that a positive thing? I mean, I think, you know, as a researcher, I'm not here to tell people, like, oh, you must do things this way or you're not allowed to do this. I think it's just really important for everyone to know about these risks because we found that they don't even realize that AI is affirming them, right? Because people have confirmation bias. So it's hard to tell if

35:03the AI is, you know, agreeing with you because you're actually right or just because it's agreeing with you for the sake of agreeing. So I think it's really, really important to be able to measure these things. My Rechang, on another reason to be wary of AI. And that's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. And don't forget our sister podcast, The Global Story, which goes in-depth and beyond the headlines on one big story. This edition of The Global News podcast was mixed by Derek Clark. The producers were Carla Conti and Bernadette Kio. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jonathan Joliel. Until next time, goodbye. At the UPS store, we understand the importance of a first impression. That's why we're here to help you put your best foot forward and be unstoppable with our printing services, with high quality paper stock options. Banners, business cards, venues and more. We make sure your small business stands out

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