Donald Trump tells the BBC Israel did not defy him

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1:32This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Will Chalk, and in the early hours of Tuesday 9th June, these are our main stories. Tensions seem to have cooled in the Middle East, with Israel pausing its strikes on Iran for now. But did Israel ignore an order from Donald Trump by striking at all? A question our North America editor has put directly to the president. OpenAI has become the latest tech giant to reveal plans to sell shares to the public through a stock listing in the US. And in Sudan, despite four years of civil war, children have been returning to school, but with deep psychological scars.

2:14Also in this podcast, a leading football ref has been denied entry to the US for the World Cup, despite having valid paperwork and a marine invasion of the coasts of Britain. All the evidence is telling me that this is the biggest one ever. And also what's very significant now is that they are breeding quite prolifically. Why octopuses are showing up in numbers off England's coasts.

2:41The last couple of days have been perilous for the truce in the Middle East, with Iran and Israel once again launching missiles at each other. But both sides have since agreed to pull back for now. Here is what the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised address.

3:00Iran and Hezbollah are weaker than ever, and we are stronger than ever. But our fight with them has not finished yet. If Iran's terror regime makes the mistake of attacking us again, we will respond forcefully, because Israel has a full right to self-defense, and we will implement it as much as necessary. Even once tensions had calmed, though, a question that remained was whether Israel, when it attacked Iran, was directly defying an order from Donald Trump. Well, we've been able to go straight to the source for an answer. Our North America editor, Sarah Smith, has been speaking to the US president on the phone.

3:38A short while ago, I spoke to her on the phone and I started by asking her how long President Trump has had her on speed dial. Well, I took the chance of giving him a call at a point in his schedule where I knew he didn't have anything else booked in. And I was lucky enough that he, first of all, answered the call and then was prepared to speak to me. This is not wholly uncommon in Washington, although it is extremely odd that you can call the president directly if you have his mobile phone number, and there's a reasonable chance he might choose to speak to you, even if not for very long. I mean, my conversation with him was a little shy of a minute.

4:11But nonetheless, I was able to ask him a couple of key questions about what's been going on in the Middle East over the last 24 hours, which has been a very crucial period. Yeah, and crucially, you asked him about another phone call he had with Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu. Yeah, on Monday morning, he called the Israeli Prime Minister to ask him not to have any more strikes in Iran because Donald Trump is really concerned that these hostilities could derail the ongoing peace talks. And I was intrigued to know what it was that he had said to persuade Mr Netanyahu to stop the attacks. And he told me, all I did is say that we have to use common sense.

4:46We're very close to signing a very powerful deal, a very good deal, he said. But I did point out that wasn't the same as the conversation that they had had a few hours earlier on Sunday night, when Mr. Trump had specifically asked Israel not to retaliate against the missile strikes from Iran. And they had gone ahead and fired missiles at Iran nonetheless. So was that not Mr. Netanyahu defying Donald Trump's instructions, I asked him. And he said no, because by the time the two leaders spoke, they had already gone, he said, meaning the missiles, which is something that we didn't know up until that point.

5:19And that convenient timing does explain why, if Israel was ignoring what the US had told it to do, had we not seen the kind of furious response that you would usually expect from Donald Trump if he felt that he had been slighted or ignored. So do you think if that convenient timing, as you put it, wasn't actually the case, that Donald Trump would even admit it? Or do you think he would save face and say exactly what he said to you? I think it's not that he is telling an untruth about what happened. It may be coordinated, convenient timing that allowed him to speak to Benjamin Netanyahu and it was just too late to stop those missiles from being fired off.

5:57But no more than that, because actually the one other organisation Mr Trump's been speaking to is an Israeli television channel. And he told them that he had stopped the attack being much worse than it could have been. So if you put all that together, I think you get to a situation where actually Israel and America are on the same page about this, that something needed to be done to answer the Iranian strikes on Israel, but not something that went so far as to try and derail the peace talks. And finally, in the context of Donald Trump's approval ratings, which are dropping, how much of a loss of face do you think it would be if he was seen not to have authority over Benjamin Netanyahu?

6:34That would be very difficult for him because he is running an unpopular war that has seen prices of petrol, food, other goods going up in America. And voters are unhappy about that. There's also a significant section of his own Republican base who don't like the idea that American foreign policy is being led by Israel. There's growing opposition to that idea. So he has to be careful with the politics of that, as well as just being somebody who wants to be seen to be in charge. The very idea that any other world leader could be either telling America what to do or define the instructions of Donald Trump, who very much wants to see himself as the most powerful man on the world stage, that would be difficult for him to stomach.

7:17Sun North America editor Sarah Smith. Despite agreeing to pause attacks on Iran, Israel has continued to attack southern Lebanon on Monday. According to Lebanon's health ministry, five people were killed and eight were wounded in a strike on the city of Tyre. Earlier, the Israeli military issued an evacuation warning for residents in some parts of the city. Our Middle East correspondent Hugo Bichega filed this report from Beirut. In Lebanon, officials say Israel's campaign has killed more than 3 ,600 people, including many civilians. The Israeli military occupies a large part of the country's south and has vowed to expand the ground invasion.

7:57Hezbollah has reacted by targeting Israeli troops in Lebanon and with attacks against Israel itself. Mahmoud Kamati is a member of Hezbollah's political council.

8:10For Israel to be guaranteed security in its northern communities, Israel needs to withdraw completely from occupied Lebanese land and internationally recognized frontiers. There will be no security for northern Israel until there is security and safety for Lebanon.

8:29despite repeated announcements of ceasefires, the war in Lebanon has never stopped, and Iran is vowing to respond again to any more Israeli attacks in this country. Hugo Boushega there. So what does all this mean for the prospects for peace? Our international editor Jeremy Bowen gave us his assessment from Jerusalem. First of all, the Iranians have more or less succeeded in linking what happens here in this country to the wider issue of their negotiations with the Americans about what's happening in the Gulf. Now, they believe they're emboldened and they believe that they can improve their strategic situation and come out of this stronger than they were before it started.

9:12Now, Mr. Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, I think will be in not a particularly happy situation. He has been trying and saying repeatedly over the last couple of years that using Israel's force and power, he can remake the Middle East. Well, I think the Middle East is being remade, but not in a way that he wants. He is against this linkage with Lebanon, but it's something that he may have to accept if President Trump insists that that is the case. Now, there is a lot of coordination between Israel and the states, so it's quite possible that the Americans did know what the Israelis were doing and some of this row between them is a little bit performative that a message is being sent to Tehran but I think bottom line this is not going to end in terms of the consequences of the attack on Iran on the 28th of February these consequences are going to unfold not over weeks or months but over years and so we could be looking at a long and very unstable and dangerous period.

10:13So our international editor, Jeremy Bowen in Jerusalem. We're moving on to artificial intelligence, which has already changed the world massively in the few years that we, the general public, have been using it. But how companies make money from it is a different question. OpenAI, that's the company that makes ChatGPT, has today announced plans to sell shares through a stock listing in the US. And it could value the company at, wait for it, a trillion dollars. It's following in the footsteps of rivals Anthropic and SpaceX in announcing it's doing this. And they've all given themselves eye-watering valuations.

10:51Yet none of these companies are turning a profit. So is it a huge gamble? It's a question I put to our North America correspondent, Peter Bowes. It is a huge gamble, but I think for many potential investors, it is a gamble. it is a risk worth taking because they see this as one of those pivotal times in history where something comes along that could change the course of history, that this could be a technology, the next generation of computing that could dominate the tech landscape for decades to come. If open AI and Anthropic were just any old business that might seem like a good bet for the future, even though they weren't making any money now, I think investing in them would be highly speculative.

11:35But these are businesses that have the potential to become the backbone of the AI economy. So I think, yes, right now, given how much these companies are spending on their infrastructure, investing in them feels like a huge gamble. But think back to the early days of the internet and the big players like Amazon. They spent years losing money before becoming profitable and we could well be living through one of those times now with AI. As for OpenAI itself, like I say, following in the footsteps of its rivals, which may answer this next question actually, why now and how quickly is it all going to happen?

12:16Well, we don't know why now, they're not saying. OpenAI stress that it's in no hurry, but it says there are things it still wants to do that are easier while remaining a private company, hence the potential delay here. And this is quite common amongst fast-growing tech firms. As a private company, OpenAI has greater flexibility, greater freedom to make long-term decisions without having to explain its performance to shareholders. And going public brings much greater scrutiny from regulators and investors. In fact, OpenAI's chief executive, Sam Altman, said only last week that he would take the company public only when it made sense.

12:59So by filing confidentially now, it keeps the company's options open without committing to a timetable. Although this move we've heard about in the last few hours comes exactly a week after Anthropic said it was planning to go public, which seems to me the most likely reason why now. Peter Bowes there. The civil war in Sudan is now in its fourth year. And during that time, at least 150 ,000 people have been killed and millions have been forced from their homes. As headline numbers, they're shocking. And that's before you consider any of the knock-on implications. For example, about half of the Sudanese population is under 18, so millions of children have had their education disrupted.

13:44For the past year, some have been returning to classrooms in the capital, Khartoum. But as the BBC's Mahanad Hashim reports, the conflict continues to shape their lives. At a newly opened primary school on a dusty street in Sudan's capital Khartoum, small excited boys in uniform are sitting forward to a desk, ready for class to start. For some of the boys, it's their first real taste of school since the country was plunged into civil war three years ago, when the powerful paramilitary group the Rapid Support Forces, the RSF took on the Sudanese army. As the war spread, schools closed across much of the country and millions of children have lost out on their education.

14:28But in 2025, the army finally recaptured Khartoum from the RSF. So here at least, despite all the destruction, people are coming back, schools have been reopening. Mohamed Abdel Wahab is the head teacher. We are so happy. So as our kids. They are happy to meet their friends and they are happy to come back to school and come back to classes. Are you boys happy to be back at school? Yes! But both the teachers and the kids here have been through a lot. Many have seen death and destruction, endured shelling and drone attacks. Millions have been forced to flee their homes. 12-year-old Munzer was displaced.

15:08his return to find his own neighbourhood has been wrecked. How do you feel being back at school? I am very, very happy because I want to read. You like to read. What do you want to do when you're older? Builder. You want to be a builder? Because I want to build homes. Why do you want to build homes? Because I want people to live here. Amid all the joy of returning to school, of seeing friends, Teachers and parents are aware that many children have been changed by this war. I have a four-year-old son. He's so traumatised that any time he hears an aircraft, he'll jump and he'll freak out and run away.

15:47And at night, he'll sit up and just stare at you and come and cling to you. So you can imagine how his younger siblings are doing too. Selwa is part of a group of mums who stayed in the city during the war and its occupation by the RSF. When the school shut, they banded together to set up a school kindergarten for local children. Tahani is one of the volunteers. Most of the children who come to us here have experienced a kind of split in their lives. It's as if three years of war have separated them from their mothers. I think because most of them have experienced fear, real terror, and felt their mums couldn't protect them, couldn't make them feel safe.

16:27And with some kids now, we see involuntary wetting. They wet themselves. Some exhibit extreme loneliness. Children who want to be alone. Some don't even want to eat their meals. We're trying to help them with these things. Given what they've been through, some struggle to return to education. Hiba teaches at the University of Khartoum. During the battle for the capital, she volunteered to teach kids stuck in the city. People are losing their families, so there is no interest in education. Most of them, like, my parents forced me to come and that's what I'm doing. Even the humor is about fights and violence and killing.

17:04You miss the innocence of the plague. It will be hard to measure the true cost of this war on the youth here. But given that perhaps half the population is under 18, the damage could be felt for years to come. And if it's bad here in Khartoum, it's almost certainly much worse in more remote war-torn areas. In the meantime, it's left to teachers, parents and volunteers to try to mitigate the damage. Mahanad Hashim reporting. Still to come in this podcast. I will do my best to be part of something that will end sexual and gender-based violence. One woman's quest to end abuse of women in Africa in her lifetime.

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21:09This is the Global News Podcast. We may have mentioned it before in this podcast just a few times. We are mere days away from the start of the Football World Cup. It is massively exciting for football fans everywhere. But whilst it's the players that get all the attention, the tournament also brings together some of the best referees and officials there are. But one of them won't be there. The Somalian Omar Atam, regarded as one of Africa's leading football refs, has been denied entry to the US despite having valid paperwork. The head of America's World Cup task force, Andrew Giuliani, said he supported the decision by the US border authorities.

21:47There were some very terrible people that he was talking to. What I can tell you is it was the right decision by Customs and Border Patrol, and I support that decision. While we want players, we want coaches, we want referees to come here to the World Cup, we also want to make sure that we're not going to allow a soccer tournament to be the opportunity for terrorists to potentially get in the country or anybody who's actually talking to them. So do we know the details of why exactly the US turned him away? It's a question I put to BBC Sports' Manny Jasmin. They haven't given any details, but FIFA, the world football's governing body, have confirmed the decision and have said that ultimately it's down to the host country who gets a visa.

22:30There was equally no information on Saturday when one of Iraq's players, Ayman Hussain, was detained at Chicago Airport for seven hours before being allowed to rejoin his teammates after they all landed in the country. But Iraq's official photographer wasn't allowed. So he was also turned back at the gate without any official reason given. Safe to say we've not seen a World Cup like this before, have we? No. You've got to be really into football to have a favourite ref, I think. But for those who do, Omar Artan is considered the best of the best, is he? Well, you either have to be really into football or really naive about football to have a favourite referee, I would say.

23:17But Omar Artan, he's the current African referee of the year, which is the award that he received in 2025 from the body that runs African football. He's a top referee, maybe the best one from Africa. and he was all set to become the first Somalian official to take part and officiate in any World Cup. But all of those hopes have been dashed by his repatriation and we believe he's back in Turkey where he spent the last few months. As we've seen though, it's not just refs and players and even team officials having problems. There's been some quite incredible stories of fans spending a fortune on tickets It's only to not be allowed into the US.

24:02Yes, I read a piece about an Iraqi fan who spent a fortune just to get to Jordan from Iraq to have his face-to-face interview as he applied for a visa and didn't get it. There are so many countries that are on this US banned list, Iran and Haiti. No one from those countries can go. And anyone from Ivory Coast and Senegal are subjected to restrictions. So it's very difficult for fans to follow their teams. And very quickly, it's just one of the kind of problems overshadowing the start of this, isn't there? We've had other ticket problems. We've had water bottles. There's been all sorts. And no one's kicked a ball yet.

24:41This suggests that in the next five or six weeks, there may be other talking points away from football. Manny Jasmi. Poland's Prime Minister has warned his country's solidarity with Ukraine risks being destroyed. Donald Tusk was referring to a row which has broken out over the name of a Ukrainian army unit, an event which happened more than 80 years ago. Ankur Desai found out more from our global affairs reporter, Paul Moss. Last month, Vladimir Zelensky named a particularly successful military unit, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. That was a tribute to a group of partisans in World War II. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army fought the Nazis.