How will Trump's Hormuz toll work?

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. When you hear the phrase made in China, what do you think? I'm Tristan Redman. And I'm Asma Khalid. And together we host the Global Story podcast from the BBC. And today on our show, we look at the origins and evolution of made in China, because it actually wasn't inevitable. What we're talking about is the world's largest communist nation is at the beating heart of the capitalist system. For more, listen to The Global Story on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:04Hello and welcome to NewsHour live from the BBC World Service in London. I'm Rebecca Kesby. At what point do the tensions in the Gulf and the exchanges of fire constitute a full resumption of the US-Iran war? Some may argue it's already resumed. President Trump declared last week the ceasefire is over. And last night the US military carried out another wave of strikes on Iranian military targets. It's third consecutive night of US bombing and explosions have been heard along the Iranian coast in the past few hours. Meanwhile, Iranian forces have targeted two tankers from the UAE in the Strait of Hormuz today and US facilities as well in Bahrain.

1:46It's also fired ballistic missiles at US facilities in Jordan. The government there saying four missiles were intercepted with no damage to civilians. Well, yesterday, President Trump said he was bringing back his naval blockade and plans to charge a 20 % fee to Iranian and allied traffic passing through the Strait of Hormuz. That's due to come into force this evening. We're hitting them very hard. We had a deal yesterday or the day before yesterday. It was all done. And then they broke up that deal immediately because they found out there was something in the deal they didn't like. And they're wired differently and we're not going to put up with it.

2:23we are just going forward. We're attacking them tonight. We're taking out all of their capability for anything having to do with the strait, with the harmless strait. Well, oil prices are up again as a result of the latest tensions. And where do all these attacks on vessels in the Gulf leave international shipping? I've been speaking to Lars Jensen, chief executive of Vespucci Maritime Shipping Company, and I asked him for his assessment, is the war back on between the US and Iran. It seems that we are back to square one. We're basically back to where this started. Right, which is incredibly bad news for international shipping.

3:02Yes, and following the memorandum of understanding, at least there was an uptick in some vessel traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, nowhere near the normality, but an uptick that has basically been turned completely off over the last 24 hours. We are down to almost no vessels crossing. Yes, we've just had the data through from yesterday saying that nine fuel tankers or cargo ships got through the Strait of Hormuz yesterday. But in terms of what's being proposed now, the government of Oman today is calling for all parties to respect and abide by international law regarding navigation in Hormuz.

3:41Where does that leave the proposal by President Trump to charge 20 % on all vessels passing through Hormuz? That's supposed to be coming into effect, he says, later today. Yeah, the proposal by Trump is absolutely unworkable from any realistic angle for multiple reasons. First of all, there is no legal basis at all for doing this. Secondly, in doing this, that would mean the US does exactly what they have been criticizing Iran for doing and been claiming that Iran's approach was illegal. From a financial perspective, this is totally unworkable for anyone. If you look at oil, for example, that would de facto mean a 20 % increase in oil price on all oil from the Middle East.

4:23If you look at it on an annual perspective, you're talking$100 billion in protection tax. It's even worse if you look at container ships. If you look at cargo from, for example, China to Dubai, that would then have a sevenfold increase. So instead of paying$1 ,400 in freight rates, which was the norm before the war, you would now pay more than$12 ,000 in freight rate plus tax. So it would be financially completely unworkable. And last but not least, this is a fee for protection. But if you look at the reality on the ground, the last 24 hours, it's very clear that the U.S. cannot provide such protection.

5:03Well, yes, let's talk about that because we've had a number of tankers attacked in the past few hours. Is it obvious how much damage they've sustained and how serious are these attacks on the tankers? The information that has come out, I mean, information has been coming out last few hours, but it seems the attacks took place during the night and late last evening. Three tankers were hit. Two of them, the Iranians, have said they targeted with cruise missiles. Both of them caught fire, fires under control. But on one of these tankers, it unfortunately killed one of the seafarers and injured eight others.

5:37Then you have a third tanker that it's unclear exactly how they were hit. So whether they were hit by a missile or went into a mine, we simply don't know. Right. And of course, all of this has an impact on the insurance costs as well, which is another cost going on international shipping. It is, but in the situation we're in now, which is the same as early on in the war, the insurance premium is actually quite irrelevant for most. The decision for almost all shipping lines in this situation is to preserve the life and welfare of the seafarers. So it doesn't really matter how high the insurance premium is.

6:13When you are targeted by missiles the way you are now, most responsible shipping lines will simply not go through, irrespective of what the insurance is. Lars Jensen, the CEO of Vespucci Maritime Shipping Company. Well, to get a view from Iran, we spoke to Fawad Izzardi. He's Professor of American Studies at the University of Tehran. And I began by asking him if he thought Iran and the United States are now back to full-blown hostilities. Yes, we are. The ceasefire was born almost in a serious distress. Yes, Pete Hexed, the Secretary of War, threatened to attack Iran five hours after Trump signed the agreement, which was against Article 1.

6:59And Article 1 of the agreement, you were not supposed to threaten the other side. And this is what U.S. Secretary of War did. So the United States started violating the MOU from day one until today. They attacked Iran last night, the night before, the night before. We have lost over 30 civilians in the attacks in the last number of nights. I suppose the point is, though, that many analysts assessed that Iran had actually emerged pretty strong after this war. And up until the point of the Memorandum of Understanding, you know, the Iranian government didn't topple. It's still in place. The Iranians proved that they can block the Strait of Hormuz at will when they want to.

7:47The country's kept its long-range missiles and also had promises of economic concessions coming their way as a result of the MOU. That's all in jeopardy now, though, isn't it? That's what I mean by is this unnecessary to be, you know, continuing to try and block Hormuz? Iran is not trying to block Hormuz. Iran wants to make sure that Iranian territory is not attacked. Iran wants to make sure that ships go to the Strait of Hormuz without problems. It was the United States that attacked Iran illegally. It was the United States that blockaded Iranian ports, which is an act of war. And when a country is attacked, that country will respond.

8:37And Iran has said to the ships that if you go through Iranian route in the Strait of Hormuz, they can pass without any problems. The problem started when the United States wanted to create an American corridor. And the United States was forcing ships to use the American corridor because they want to control the state of Hormuz because Trump wants to make money out of the state of Hormuz. This is not the analysis of an Iranian professor. This is what Trump is saying in black and white. You must get 20 % from the ships that go through the state of Hormuz. That's Fawad Azadi there, professor of American studies at the University of Tehran, speaking to us a short time ago.

9:23Now, did Iran use malicious tracking tactics to locate US military personnel in the Gulf region during the recent war? Because of the targeting of US military bases in the region, many US servicemen and women were staying in hotels, some of which were bombed? Did Iran use commercial location data to identify US phones roaming outside their home networks and tailored advertising to work out where they were? The Financial Times has been looking into this and we're joined live now by Mehul Srivastava, the paper's senior foreign affairs correspondent. Mehul, welcome to the programme. Can you talk us through how this would work, first of all?

10:06Yeah, thanks for having me. You know, it took us a little while to piece this together. But what we found was that there are these roaming agreements that exist between Iranian telecoms networks and a whole bunch of Middle Eastern telecoms networks that allow telephones that are functioning perfectly normally to be tracked by what are called SS7 pings. We've had a couple of anonymous sources confirmed to us and some data backing it up to show that there were a large number of these SS7 pings traveling around these telecoms networks, which allow you to locate a specific phone to figure out whether or not the phone has a roaming agreement, whether or not you are able to connect to the network.

10:45And that gives you a rough location of where that person is. And separately, we also found that the Department of Defense in the U.S. has already admitted that during the early days of the war, they knew that adversaries were using something called ad tech to track some of their locations, the locations of some of these personnel. To be clear, they never quite confirmed to anybody if these attacks, you know, were immediately preceded by this tracking. But this is something that's quite worrying. Yeah, I mean, so it seems as if this was a known risk then, because it does sound as if it was relatively easy to do.

11:22What does this expose in terms of the security of military personnel? Not just military personnel. These are phones that are functioning perfectly normally. You would think a phone needs to be hacked for something like this but we quote an ex-CIA analyst Michael Stokes who describes it as digital exhaust you know those footprints your phones leave as you're kind of traveling through a country your location your wi-fi networks that you log into your a lot of things about your personal identity this has been rebundled and resold into commercial data which can then be probed to find exactly where you are this has been true for about 10 years.

12:00American senators have been warning about this. And for various reasons that are tied to politics, it has not been resolved. In this one particular theater of battle, it turns out to have been abused by America's adversaries. Our sources tell us that it was Iran. And there's a huge amount of concern from two senators, lawmakers, that we quote in our story, saying that the American Department of Defense should have taken greater steps to make sure this doesn't happen. And what would those steps be? I mean, what's the solution? I guess, what, not using personal phones at all or only using local phones?

12:36Well, absolutely. There's this idea in America called government furnished equipment. And you could require that government furnished equipment not leak this sort of sensitive data, especially locations. But people are on long deployments. They use their smartphones to stay in touch with their families. They want to get be in touch with their banks, etc. And this does leak all this kind of digital footprints that can be tracked by somebody who is as agile an adversary as Iran. And to be clear, this is something that the American government, the British government, the French government, all kinds of governments do to track their adversaries.

13:10And this is the complexity of modern life. You have a smartphone in a war zone, and it pinpoints your exact location. Very briefly, I guess it also puts civilians at risk if military personnel are staying in hotels as well. Yeah, this came up quite a bit during the early days of the war, because it turns out that when American personnel were placed in hotels like the Crown Plaza in Manama, hotels in Erbil, etc., and those hotels were then attacked, whether or not they were tracked via this digital surveillance, it puts the civilians at that hotel at risk, it puts the staff at the hotel at risk, it puts the hotel itself at risk in the city centre.

13:47Good to speak to you, Mehul. Thank you so much for coming on. That's Meho Srivastava there from the Financial Times.

14:00Coming up later on the programme, the story of a teenager who aced her piano exam, even though she can only play one-handed because of an injury.

14:16I couldn't pick up a pen I couldn't hold a hairbrush to do my own hair in the morning and then finally gave in to get it treated and at the start we didn't really know what it was and it took maybe about a year before we heard that it would be unlikely that I would be back to playing with two hands again It's an incredible story do stay tuned for that A reminder of our headlines this hour. Iranian state media is reporting new US attacks as the battle for control of the Strait of Hormuz continues. There's been a further sharp rise in oil prices as tanker traffic through the waterway slows.

15:01This is Rebecca Kesby with NewsHour live from the BBC. Now, within the next hour or so, the fossilised remains of a Tyrannosaurus rex will go up for auction at Sotheby's in New York. The T-Rex, named Gus, was discovered back in 2021 on a ranch in South Dakota and was then excavated. 67 million years ago, Gus would have been roaming about looking for his next meal. Now his remains go under the hammer and he's been valued at about$30 million, but could end up fetching far more than that. A few years ago, it was mainly museums that would be bidding for dinosaur remains. Now, super rich private collectors are also keen on acquiring them, which is pushing up the price.

15:46Cassandra Hatton is global head of natural history for the auction house. I think people have the misconception that you just dig a hole and you pull a skeleton out. And that is not at all how it happens. Gus is a 38 foot long, 12 and a half foot tall T-Rex. It's one of the largest and most complete ever found at 61 percent, with those bones making up 75 to 80 percent of the mass of the animal. It's a monster. A magnificent monster. Well, we can speak now live to Dr. Tori Herridge, who's a paleontologist at the University of Sheffield in the north of England, and Dr. Fian Smithic is an independent paleontologist.

16:27They both join us live. So how are people feeling about this auction then today, that Gus could be, well, he's valued at£30 million, but he could be sold for far more than that. Tori, do you feel comfortable with this? Well, I mean, I think we're quite used to it by now, and to a certain degree, these fossils have come up and they go for large sums. It seems to be the market value of beautifully prepared, complete specimens. Now, what's interesting there, of course, is that means that only a very small subset of people in the world can really afford them, and it's certainly not museums. Well, that's the thing, isn't it?

17:06I mean, is the danger that it takes these things out of the public domain and people won't have access to them, including scientists and researchers? Well, I think what is absolutely clear is there are very few institutions, maybe with the few exceptions of museums, maybe in the Middle East, who actually have the funds themselves. So even if a museum were to acquire the specimen, it would have to be through some kind of philanthropy or gift. To put it into context, the museum, that traditional museum in London, gets about£45 million a year from the government for its operations. so um yeah they can't buy a 30 million dollar t-rex they wouldn't be able to open their doors without any extra funds so um i mean if it doesn't get donated by whoever ends up purchasing the t-rex then yes it would effectively be lost from scientific study and um from the i guess the chance to inspire future generation of paleontologists if it ends up in a vault as an investment item or if it ends up in someone's private property where no one can visit or study it then it is effectively lost to the world it's certainly lost to science and it could have might as well stayed in the ground.

18:18Well Fian let's come to you because I mean I suppose one of the key things about this is that it actually does cost quite a lot of money to dig up something like this in the first place doesn't it? It cost a huge amount of time effort and skill for something like this. I think, as was mentioned in the piece, people don't understand the amount of effort and work that goes into finding, preparing and conserving specimens to the level that these are. I'm not involved with the North American dinosaurs myself, but I understand that this specimen took three years to excavate and countless hours to put back together and to conserve.

19:02So there is a huge amount of work that goes into this. But yes, it is the debate around these super high value ones and people coming into the market now and pushing the price up so high that museums are priced out that sort of turbocharged all of this. Yeah. I mean, we won't know how much he goes for in the end, but I mean, people are anticipating that it will be way over the 30 million mark. and again I suppose that does mean that you know potentially only a few people might ever get to view Gus the T-Rex. Yeah I mean that would that that would be tragic I think most of the collectors I've been collecting and preparing fossils my whole life and most of the collectors I know I'm not involved with complete dinosaurs quite at this level but most collectors I know want their specimens to end up in places where people can see them in museums and institutions and they want them to be available.

19:58And for something like Gus the T-Rex, it has a very high scientific value, but its real value is in its aesthetic, its appeal, the drive it will give for people to come and see and be enthralled by dinosaurs. That's the real appeal of this specimen. And really, it's finding a way in which these fantastic once-in-a-lifetime sort of specimens can end up in publicly housed collections while still allowing fair recompense for the people who put in the work to excavate and prepare them. Well, Tori, that's a good point, isn't it? Because, I mean, there are things like paintings or statues which are technically privately owned but do end up being displayed so that other people can appreciate them too.

20:40In museums, they're often loaned out. I mean, is that the sort of thing we're going to start seeing in the world of dinosaurs? I think it's really important to not confuse the intrinsic value of something scientifically or its value in terms of what it can do for science communication with the kind of market forces that drive up this kind of weird insatiable need to own a T-Rex, which is slightly different. Because, for example, an equally beautiful fossil, which takes the same amount of time to prepare, if it hasn't got that iconic value, won't reach the same sums. And so it's a bit disingenuous, I think, for the auction house to imply that this is a fair recompense for time spent.

21:19I mean, I'm sure Fionn doesn't earn that amount of money for the hard work he puts in. And you could certainly employ a large number of preparators and excavators to go out and find fossils for that amount of money. But that idea that this is something that has its value, its financial monetary value, has deviated, I guess, away from these other areas is the really key point here. Because if you think about it, you think there's this weird situation here where on one hand people are willing to pay tens of millions of pounds to own a T-Rex specimen. and they want to do that because of the iconic, amazing nature of dinosaurs, of extinct creatures, of the wonderful natural world.

21:58But at the same time, we've got museums that are struggling to keep their doors open and we aren't investing in those. And that's the interesting and difficult problem we should be discussing, I think. How do we come to this situation where we've got this huge gap? We can fix it to a certain degree by saying, okay, rich people, be a philanthropist and hand it over. but it hasn't actually addressed that massively widening gap in the middle. Because don't you think that's fascinating? You know, we love this stuff because of the science, because of the interest, because of the curiosity, and yet we aren't really necessarily putting the money where we need to.

22:31Well, and Fianne, I don't know if you want to come back on that, but I mean, in terms of the research, apparently Gus has got a big bite on his head, which may have been what led to his demise all those millions of years ago. So, I mean, he would be fascinating to study for somebody like you, surely oh undoubtedly yes and all you know every fossil has an intrinsic scientific value as well as aesthetic appeal or um educational interest and i always think from my personal perspective education is kind of the most important reasons for these fossils um you know i was inspired by fossils as a kid by going out and collecting myself and then going and buying an ammonite from a from a local shop and that's that's what sparked my curiosity um but i think um you know it's an interesting point that Tory makes and it's it's it's sort of interesting part of the problem is that the these dinosaur specimens there's sort of a the the tip of an iceberg uh they're what make the make the headlines get the public attention uh the vast sums of money being paid for these but there's a huge um diversity of fossils being found collected by both amateur professionals and museums and universities underneath and it would be very difficult for a museum and university if they could afford to buy one of these super valuable fossils to then be able to afford anything else.

23:47And they would have to decide, do I spend X million on a showstopper fossil like Gus or do we buy a few hundred fossils that might have more intrinsic scientific value but are less aesthetic? And Tori Herridge as well.

24:04When you hear the phrase made in China, what do you think? I'm Tristan Redman. And I'm Asma Khalid, and together we host the Global Story podcast from the BBC. And today on our show, we look at the origins and evolution of made in China, because it actually wasn't inevitable. What we're talking about is the world's largest communist nation is at the beating heart of the capitalist system. For more, listen to The Global Story on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. What do Beatles member Sir Paul McCartney, YouTube megastar Mr Beast and former Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg all have in common.

24:42They're all being discussed in the new season of Good Bad Billionaire, the podcast which explores the lives and fortunes of the world's super rich. That's Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Listen now and search for Good Bad Billionaire wherever you get your BBC podcasts. The CIA has been carrying out covert operations around the world for decades. How has it shaped how people feel about the US? I'm Asma Khalid. And I'm Tristan Redman. and together we host the Global Story podcast from the BBC. As part of our series to mark the United States' 250th birthday, we're exploring the CIA's hidden history.

25:18Do you think the word of the United States will be trusted in years to come? For more, check out the Global Story on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

25:30Welcome back to NewsHour. There have been demonstrations in Maine in protest against the fatal shooting of a Colombian man by ICE agents in the state. No KKK, no fascist USA! No ICE! No KKK, no fascist USA! Well, it's just a week since Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers shot and killed another migrant at a traffic stop in Texas, this latest incident in Biddeford. And officials say the man was attempting to flee the scene and therefore was a threat to public safety. But the Maine Immigrants Rights Coalition says the man, who hasn't yet been named, was authorized to work in the United States.

26:13Let's get some details from Dylan Tuszynski, who's a reporter with the Portland Press Herald there. Dylan, thanks for coming on the program. What can you tell us about what actually happened in this event? Thank you for having me. The details are still a little unclear, much as yet to be determined. We know the man in question was behind the wheel of a car at the time. Photos of the scene that our photographers captured showed at least four bullet holes in the windshield. But as to the precise events leading up to it, why this man was involved, we're still not sure. ISIS said he wasn't the target of a warrant or of any deportation action, but we're not sure exactly what preempted the killing yesterday.