Germany and UK tell Trump this is 'not Nato's war'

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1:15Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your BBC podcasts. You're listening to the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

1:52Also in the podcast, what do the Oscars tell us about the future of film? And... Before even a year and a half, half of the kids are deceiving in our sample. They're probably not criminal masterminds or anything at that point. They're just really cleverly coming up with ways to get what they want. How babies learn to trick us at a very young age.

2:18After pulling its minesweepers out of the Middle East earlier this year, the US says it needs help to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran has reportedly laid mines as part of its strategy to stop oil tankers getting through. President Trump wants NATO allies to help clear the waterway and has warned that if they don't, the organisation faces a, quote, very bad future. Japan and Australia have already said they are not willing to send warships to patrol the strait. The British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, said reopening the waterway was not a simple task. He said the UK would do what it could, but would not be drawn into a wider war.

2:58Firstly, we are working with others to come up with a credible plan for the Straits of Hormuz to ensure that we can reopen shipping and passage through the strait. Let me be clear, that won't be, and it's never been envisioned to be, a NATO mission. That'll have to be an alliance of partners, which is why we're working with partners both in Europe, in the Gulf and with the US. For its part, Germany pointed out that at the start of the war, the US said European assistance was neither necessary nor desired. And the German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius rejected the US President's latest demands.

3:40What does the world expect? What does Donald Trump expect from a handful or two handfuls of European frigates in the Strait of Hormuz that the powerful American navy cannot accomplish there on its own? That's the question I ask myself. And before we make a decision, outside of NATO territory, by the way, we would need both an international framework and a mandate from the German Bundestag. I would think about that very carefully before we take that step. And I see absolutely no reason to do so. It's not our war. We didn't start it. We want diplomatic solutions and a swift end. Our chief international correspondent Lise Doucette told us more about the difficulties facing the US in getting help from its allies.

4:30President Trump keeps changing not just his narrative on what the end goal is for the United States President and Commander-in-Chief, but also keeps changing his narrative on what's happening on the ground. Our listeners will know that he's repeatedly said, oh, the war is almost over. We've destroyed Iran militarily. And remember, this is a war where there was no consultation with any allies except for Israel. And when Sir Kir Stomer, who initially refused to join the war effort, then came in and said, we'll help in a defensive way. And he said, no, we don't want people who join the war when it's already won.

5:10And now he's realizing, and it's extraordinary that this wasn't realized, wasn't made it clear to him by his planners, that Iran had an ability to basically close off this strategic waterway, the Strait of Hormuz. There are some tankers which are still getting through, which underlines to you that there are others who are trying different ways around this crisis. For President Trump, he now wants a Hormuz coalition, as he calls it, and is asked countries. And in that way, he often menaces them that if NATO allies don't come to his aid, then there will be consequences. But you have on the other side, the Indian Foreign Minister Jaishankar, who will join the EU meeting today to discuss this very issue of what they can and should do to try to get that straight open, has been saying, well, they're talking to Iran and they managed to get two Indian flag gas tankers through the strait this weekend.

6:07Turkey has also been talking to Iran. They managed to get a bulk carrier through. Of course, these are exceptions. This is not the bulk of the traffic. But we do also hear reports that other countries are talking to Iran. But President Trump wants countries to join him in a war where, as I said, he hasn't made clear what the overall aim of the war is. And it's also not clear what the war is in the Strait of Hormuz. In his interview with the Financial Times, he also said that he wants to knock out some bad actors on the Iranian shoreline. So this would mean that a whole lot of other countries would become belligerents in this war.

6:45And that's a very, very dangerous shift in an already dangerous war. Yeah, and there have been more reports of heavy bombing in Tehran. Do we have any idea of when this might end? It's an interesting aspect of this war. I think it's the only one I can remember where you have the two main combatants, the Americans and the Iranians, in a sense, talking past each other on social media. President Trump will say something on his Truth Social account. Iran will fire back. And then Iran, then America, mostly President Trump, but also members of his administration will do the same. Now, President Trump said on Air Force One, he said that U.S.

7:26is holding talks with Iran, but the Iranians aren't ready. And for the first time, Abbas Adachi said that there are proposals from neighboring countries that they're studying. Lise Doucette. Well, as well as pressurizing NATO, President Trump also called on China to help reopen the strait, saying the country gets 90 percent of its oil from there and hinting he might delay his summit with the Chinese President Xi Jinping if he doesn't get what he wants. In response, the Chinese foreign ministry said both sides were in communication about the expected visit. Trade talks are already underway between the US and China in Paris.

8:02This assessment from our Beijing correspondent Stephen McDonnell. Now the problem for Donald Trump is that he doesn't have the same leverage with China in terms of bullying that he does with other countries. I think most analysts would say that, again, he seems to have overestimated the extent to which he can push Beijing around. I mean, his problem here is basically twofold. One, China might say, well, we didn't start this war. Why would we go and help you sort it all out? And number two, already there are signs that Chinese ships are going to be let through. And so why risk sending the Chinese Navy anywhere near a dangerous place like that or any other Chinese assets to come to the US's aid, even if it is to keep these talks alive.

8:53I mean, Beijing definitely wants Donald Trump to come. We know this because of the sort of soft peddling of the rhetoric here, so as to not upset Washington to keep the momentum going towards this visit. And we're seeing these discussions still going on in Paris right now between Scott Besant and Hurley Fong as if the visit is going ahead. They're trying to nut out the various sticking points when it comes to trade, the supply of rare earths, the supply of chips, finding ways they can cooperate with one another. But in yet another indication that I think the US doesn't have the same leverage with China, we've got these trade figures that have come out showing that while Chinese exports to the US down by 11 % year on year for the first two months of this year, overall they've gone up by 22%.

9:48So it shows that China's getting markets elsewhere and doesn't need the US the way it used to. Stephen McDonnell in Beijing. Despite a reduction in its attacks in recent days, Iran has continued to lash out at targets across the Middle East. Overnight, Saudi Arabia said it downed dozens of drones, while Iraq and Kuwait also reported new strikes. In the United Arab Emirates, Dubai International Airport was again temporarily shut after a drone set a fuel tank on fire. Officials in the UAE capital Abu Dhabi say one person has died after a missile hit a car there. There's also been more disruption at the Fujairah oil facility.

10:27We heard more from our correspondent in Dubai, Azadeh Moshiri. All this only a day after the Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Archi said that Iran was not targeting civilian and residential infrastructure. That's obviously going to be little comfort to the United Arab Emirates that is seeing these multiple incidents that it's had to respond to. And it's extremely frustrating for a country that feels that it's been unjustly pulled into this wall. Iran may think that this is the sort of pressure that makes leaders here put pressure on the United States to end the wall. But the fact is, is that officials here are furious.

11:04One presidential adviser called this imposed terrorist aggression. And so this image that has taken so many years, so much effort to build of a safe and prosperous country, it's taking multiple blows and people are worried about the long term impact here. Yeah, I mean, earlier on, we heard about people fleeing, essentially, the UAE to try and escape these drone attacks. What is the impact of this opening and closing of the airport and disruption at the oil facility in Fujairah? I mean, life is still carrying on here in Dubai. For example, there is one regular fountain and light show at this artificial lake at the base of Burj Khalifa, a busy area, and they still are carrying on with those shows.

11:49Having said that, there are fewer people who are watching and people are generally very worried that a city and a country that is built on tourism is going to take a very big hit. And it's a major expat hub. Only 10 percent of people here in the UAE are Emirati citizens. The airport, Dubai International Airport, is one of the world's busiest airports with the most international passengers going through. There are about 90 million passengers that it dealt with last year. And so that's why they're so concerned that this image of a city built of glass towers, glitzy, luxurious, but most importantly safe, that it won't start attracting the same sort of business and the same sort of tourists in the same way.

12:33Azadeh Meshiri in Dubai. In the first days of the war, the Israeli prime minister said he could now fulfill his long held ambition to crush what he called the regime of terror in Iran. And Benjamin Netanyahu says the bombing campaign is already achieving some of his aims. Our Middle East correspondent Lucy Williamson has this report.

13:00Israel's wartime routine is now so familiar. Even the hospital entertainment continues in underground car parks turned into temporary wards.

13:13Several floors above, sirens sound daily as Iranian missiles are intercepted by Israel's air defences.

13:24This underground car park at Sherat Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem is now a fully functioning hospital. It's not the first time that Israel's hospitals have moved patients underground during war and what many Israelis are now asking their prime minister is whether this war with Iran will put an end to Israel's conflicts. It became very difficult, the situation, each time we have the bombs here, we want to finish this issue. Verbi Vash was visiting his father-in-law, recovering from a fall, his hospital bed neatly positioned on a numbered orange parking space. Do you think Israel will be in this situation again in six months, in 12 months?

14:07It might be. Unfortunately, it doesn't finish. Do you think this could finish it? This war could finish the wars forever? Most of this depends on Trump. Iran has been sending missiles towards Israel night and day. Yesterday, shrapnel from cluster bombs landed in several places. Israel's Prime Minister has been preparing for war with Iran for decades and says this conflict has already changed the Middle East and Israel's power within it, even with Iran's regime still standing. Iran is way weaker. Nimrod Sheffer, a former Air Force general, now part of the opposition Democrats' party, says victory in Iran will hang on recovering its stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

14:57They lost the Air Force, they lost the air defence, they lost most of its ballistic missiles capacity, they lost the navy, they lost tons of assets. Now they said, OK, we realise the game. We understand now. You will keep on attacking us until we have the nuclear capacity. It could be even a worse situation than before. Before this war began, many Israelis said they were tired of constant conflict, but were willing to fight Iran if it meant something fundamental would change. Their prime minister has repeatedly pushed for Iranians to overthrow their government. But with little sign of that happening, the war schedules of Israel and the U.S.

15:37may be starting to diverge. The political reality in America is very different than the political reality here. Michael Oren is a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Netanyahu, even people who detest Netanyahu in the opposition, are solidly behind him. The question is, the timetable is much more America's than it is Israel. We don't feel the economic crunch. We don't feel the rise in oil prices. We don't feel any of these pressures that are being brought to America are not being brought on the Israeli government. Israel's security strategy has changed since the Hamas attacks of 2023 and its power in the region has grown.

16:11Its military might in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran has proved itself time and again in containing threats, not resolving conflicts. Our Middle East correspondent Lucy Williamson. Still to come on the podcast... It doesn't make me feel great. I just get addicted. I can't help it and I just finally stop. Whistleblowers tell the BBC how social media giants allow more harmful content on their platforms to try to boost user engagement.

16:50We focus on the part of the internet that most people don't know about. It's called the dark web. Undercover in the furthest corners of the dark web, US special agents are on a mission to locate and rescue children from abuse. Move in now. Police! From the BBC World Service, World of Secrets, the darkest web follows their shocking investigations. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

17:23This is the Global News Podcast. Russia launched a rare daytime attack in Kiev on Monday morning using drones that Ukrainian officials say appear upgraded. Multiple explosions were heard throughout the capital city and elsewhere. As I heard from our diplomatic correspondent there, James Landau. There were attacks across the country in Dnipro where two people were killed in Zaporizhia, We think about three dead there. There was also, as you say, an attack on the capital here in Kiev. The authorities say about 30 drones attacked, they think, largely energy infrastructure targets in and around the capital city.

18:00And it was pretty loud. We could hear and see some of this from where we are in the city. Debris from some of the drones that were destroyed landed in pretty prominent parts of the city center, including the Maidan Square, where famously Ukrainians gather to protest and demonstrate and also increasingly remember their war dead. And as you say, yes, there have been some reports that some of these drones had new capabilities. I have to say, I mean, there are always drones is very much an evolving technology. And I think what the suggestion here today is that some of the drones that may have been used, and none of this is confirmed, had greater communication with the Russians that had fired them.

18:44The original drones were sort of launched and fired, and then once they were away, they could no longer be controlled. The suggestion is that some of the drones that came here were communicable with those who had launched it back in Russian territory. But there's a bit of uncertainty about what developments there were, because a lot of these drones are destroyed, so it's very early to tell from just going through the remnants of what had been destroyed. And how has the war there been affected by the fighting in the Middle East, if at all? Well, in lots of different ways, really. The Ukrainians fear that, you know, they're being forgotten as the world's attention turns on the Middle East.

19:21And that's inevitable. So President Zelensky and others have been doing their utmost to keep Ukraine in the news. He's been very visible, very prominent, talking to world leaders, visiting countries, giving lots of interviews. At the same time, he's been very vocal in saying, look, Ukraine has a lot to offer countries in the Gulf and elsewhere who are who are learning what it's like to suffer from cheap Iranian designed drones. The Ukrainians are also pretty aware that there are some downsides from this conflict. You know, Russia is filling its coffers with money because of the raised price of oil and the fact that the Americans have decided to waive some sanctions temporarily on Russia.

20:00They also know that the Gulf is firing off an awful lot of air defense missiles at the moment, which means that it'll be harder for Ukraine to purchase or get given more of those in the coming months. So it's sort of mixed view, I think, from here. But at the moment, I mean, we had a long session with President Zelensky over the weekend and several of us asked just how bad the moment it was. And he didn't give the impression that this was a game changing moment in the war. James Landau in Kiev. More than a dozen whistleblowers have told the BBC that social media companies have allowed more harmful content to appear on their platforms in order to maximise user engagement.

20:40They spoke to the BBC documentary Inside the Rage Machine. I heard more from our social media correspondent, Marianna Spring. I've spoken to whistleblowers and insiders across several of the major social media companies. Some of them work at TikTok. So one who's a TikTok employee actually gave me rare access to the company's internal dashboard of user complaints. So I could see evidence about how they prioritise in terms of this system, specific cases and so on and so forth. And they in particular highlighted how they were instructed to prioritise several cases involving politicians over a series of reports of harmful posts featuring children, which was really concerning to them.

21:19They also showed me some examples of content that were encouraging people to join terror groups, say, which wasn't as the top priority that they had to moderate and deal with. And I met this whistleblower over several months. They're incredibly concerned that these decisions are being made within the companies, not just to compete with the other social media companies, but also to maintain a strong relationship with political figures to avoid threats of regulation or bans. I also spoke to several people who work at Meta. That includes an engineer at Meta who said that they were told to increase borderline harmful content, that's like misogyny, conspiracy theory content, in order to compete with TikTok.

21:57Another senior researcher at Meta said that when they launched Instagram Reels to compete with TikTok, they didn't have sufficient safeguards in place. And I've seen internal research that shows an uptick in harmful content in the comments on Reels. Also, I spoke to someone called Brandon Silverman, who was another senior person who worked at Meta and described how they invested in lots of staff to work on reels, but then turned down a request for two specialist staff to deal with kids. Here's a clip of him. And I remember a moment when regular headcount planning process, and there were some integrity teams and safety teams were going to ask for two headcount to work on kids stuff and tend to work on elections.

22:34There was another team that went, oh, we just got 700 for Instagram reels. I was like, OK. It's worth saying I put all these allegations to the social media companies. TikTok said these were, quote, fabricated claims and the company invested in technology that prevented harmful content from ever being viewed. And I also put the allegations to Meta and Meta told me that any suggestion that we deliberately amplify harmful content for financial gain is wrong. The truth is we have strict policies to protect users on our platforms and have made significant investments in safety. And what do these kind of decisions made by the companies, what do they mean for the people who use their services?

23:12One of the things that was highlighted repeatedly by the people who work within the companies is how the prevalence of this kind of content, not preventing the spread of borderline content, say. The issue with that is that lots of younger people, including teenagers, use these platforms. And so they are then at risk of being exposed to this content, which is promoted by the algorithms. And in the documentary, I met a young guy called Callum. He's now 19, but when he was 14, he describes how he became effectively radicalised by the social media algorithms and adopted racist and misogynistic views.

23:44I also went into a school and spoke to some teenagers about their experiences, particularly how when they say they don't want to see some of this violent and harmful content using the tools in the platforms, they're still getting pushed in. Lockdown when I was like nine, we were at home all the time and that's the only way I could communicate with my friends. So I used it a lot more. Who thinks that they spend the most time? Five hours a day, maybe. I'm doing it, like, before school in the morning and then as soon as I get home from school. It doesn't make me feel great, but I just get addicted.

24:14I can't help it and I just finally stop. Are there things that pop up on your feed and you think, I don't really want to see more of that? Probably, like, the same, like, violence. It's like the bullying, the fighting, really. It just makes people think it's right. And then you report it. It doesn't come up for, like, a day or two and then it'll just pop back up. Now this documentary and investigation comes at a time where lots of countries around the world are thinking about whether to ban social media for under 16s for example. And I think that the crucial thing that it highlights and that I've found from doing this is just how what the companies, social media companies are saying to the outside world doesn't feel matched up with what the people on the inside doing the work are seeing and the risks they feel are being taken that ultimately affect users and particularly younger people.

24:59Marianna Spring. Hollywood may still be basking in the glow of its biggest night, the Oscars, but the film industry is facing some major upheavals, including corporate mergers, the growing use of artificial intelligence and mass layoffs. BBC Talking Movies presenter Tom Brook was at a watch party in Los Angeles for the Academy Awards ceremony. He's been reflecting on what it says about the future of film with our North America correspondent Peter Bowes. People could go away from tonight's proceedings and think, oh great, a Hollywood studio film, all two studio films doing really well. And the reality is, you know people who work in the industry here, people who are out of work, great anxiety about AI and whether it will bring about the promised land or destroy people's careers.