Saudi Arabia joins US strikes on Iran-backed militias

0:03Hello, welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. We're coming to you live from London. I'm Paul Henley. A question to start today's programme. Is Saudi Arabia weighing into the war against Iran? Along with the US, the Saudis have carried out missile strikes against militias backed by Iran inside Iraq.

0:29That's the sound of a digger clearing debris after one of those US-Saudi attacks. They're thought to have killed at least 20 members of militia groups, Potentially, this is a significant escalation in the war in the Middle East. US Central Command said the strikes were against Iran-aligned terrorists, which Iran had directed to attack US forces and Saudi energy infrastructure. Well, a brief lull in hostilities in the Middle East seems well and truly over. The US said Iran had launched missiles at US forces in Jordan in what it called an attempted surprise attack. Tehran said the missiles had targeted a US airbase and a command centre in response to acts of aggression by the American child-killing army.

1:14Iran has also restarted attacks on oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. But has Saudi involvement in the last 24 hours added a new dimension to this conflict? Why the involvement with these strikes on militias? I've been speaking to Abdallah al-Mualimi, who was Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United Nations for 12 years until 2023. He's in Riyadh. Well, we are not drawn into the war. The position regarding the war is the same as it has been all along, which is that we're trying to de-escalate and trying to make sure that the parties continue the peace talks and reach hopefully a peaceful agreement.

1:55By attacking? No, not by attacking, by defending against attacks that were launched against Saudi Arabia. We cannot sit by idly and allow uncontrolled militias to send missiles and drones onto our territory and just do nothing about it. We have to make sure that we reply to the sources of attack and respond appropriately. Surely the party that will decide whether or not you're being drawn into the war is Iran. And are you opening yourself up to retaliation? Why? Iran says it has nothing to do with the militias in Iraq. It says these are not under our control. They disclaim any responsibility for them.

2:38So it would be inconsistent of them to allow themselves to come to their defence. US Central Command says that the Iranian military had directed its proxies in Iraq to target US forces and Saudi energy infrastructure. That's your point of view, is it? Yes. Has Saudi infrastructure, energy infrastructure been badly damaged by these Iranian proxies? I'm not aware of the extent of the damage that has taken place, but whatever attack must result in certain damages and we do not accept these damages, whether they are major or minor. Saudi Arabia has avoided being a direct combatant, But in May, it was reported to have launched secret strikes on Iran in retaliation for the attacks it faced, according to senior US officials.

3:33Can you confirm that that happened in May? I cannot, obviously. I'm not in a position of government and I do not know what these situations are. And you are describing them as secret events. So, you know, I'm not in a position to confirm any of this information. Can you comment on how much pressure is being put on Saudi Arabia by the US to get them involved in these strikes? I'm not in government at the moment and therefore I'm not aware of the degree of such pressure. But I don't think the United States is lacking in terms of military power vis -à-vis its campaign in Iran. So I don't think they need the direct involvement of Saudi Arabia.

4:14Is there a motive for Saudi Arabia to show that it's fully on side with the US at the moment, given the deals that are being made with the US? No, it is no secret that we are on side with the United States with regards to military cooperation and support that we have been receiving and have been providing. That is nothing new. We don't need to prove anything to anybody. We have an 80 years record of strong relations with various administrations in the US. And how much does that translate into going along with US policy on Israel? The Trump administration signed a nuclear deal, a civilian nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia.

4:57And shortly afterwards, President Trump qualified it by saying that the whole thing hinged on Saudi Arabia's willingness to recognise the state of Israel. And Saudi Arabia has consistently said that our willingness to recognise the state of Israel is contingent on Israel agreeing to the two-state solution to the establishment of a Palestinian state, to the granting of full political and civil rights to the Palestinian population, etc, etc. They can make their position clear, but Saudi Arabia can make its position clear as well. Abdallah al-Mualimi, who was a Saudi's ambassador to the United Nations.

5:35As we've been hearing, the US and Saudi Arabia have struck bases belonging to Iranian-backed militias in Iraq. The group they were targeting is Iraq's paramilitary popular mobilisation forces, or PMF. It's dominated by Shia militias. I'm joined now by Iraqi journalist, Haith Abdullah-Had, who's a correspondent for The Guardian newspaper and an author on the Middle East. He joins me from Istanbul. Welcome, Haith. We heard the former ambassador saying Saudi Arabia had to respond to attacks from these militias. What have the militias done to the Saudis to warrant strikes? Well, hi, thank you. So it's not, you know, it's a construct.

6:20The PMF is, you know, an official organisation that belongs to the Arab state. But it is formed of different components, different battalions. These battalions came, you know, supported by the Iranians in the fight against ISIS. And within these PMF, you have some forces that call themselves the Islamic resistance who have been accused of attacking Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan also. So that is where the kind of the problem that the Iraqis find themselves in. because in this war, I mean, there's a joke in Baghdad that the Americans, the Iranians, the Israelis, the Saudis now are all bombing, and the Iranians are all bombing Iraq, as well as Iraq bombing Iraq, because these part of these kind of militias have been targeting state institutions, counterterrorism forces in Iraq, and the oil industry.

7:11And because these attacks were on Iraqi soil, where does it leave the government now?

7:20What That is exactly the problem. The problem is, yes, of course, the problem are the Saudis, the Israelis and the Iranians and the Americans are all bombing in Iraq. But the problem is the Iraqi state itself is this, again, this post-2003 failed construct that it's incapable of telling the Americans and the Israelis not to bomb Iran from Iraqi airspace, nor it can tell the Iranians, our official allies, not to bomb Iraqi targets and now definitely cannot talk to the Saudis and tell them not to bomb. So the failure, I mean, of course, there is this whole issue of war, but there is another failure, which is the Iraqi state itself, where, you know, the prime minister was meeting Trump.

8:02And then a week earlier, he was attending the funeral of Khamenei. So because of Iraq sharing the border with Iran and the culture and religion, and because Iraq is an officially ally of the United States, it finds itself being bombed by everyone. And it's a tricky balancing act being stuck in the middle between the US and Iran. Of course. And it comes at the time when this prime minister came to power on the promise that within a month, two months, there is a deadline for all these militias to hand their weapons to the Iraqi state. Is he capable of imposing his authority on these militias? It's something that every single prime minister before has failed, not only because Iraq doesn't have weapons or men or money or whatever to impose its authority.

8:50It's just because it lacks the political will within these kind of organization. It's a country divided and its alliances, of course. Many thanks. That's Khayyf Abdul Ahad, who is an Iraqi author and journalist speaking to us now from Istanbul. bull. Let's talk to Farzeen Nadimi now, who's a senior fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, where he specializes in the security and defense affairs of Iran and the Gulf region. He joins us. Farzeen, welcome. What did these Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, what kind of threat did they pose to Saudi Arabia? Hi, Paul, and thank you for having me.

9:58that their distributed multi-domain pressure is consistent and active. And this multi-domain strategy consists of using ballistic missiles directly against U.S. bases in the region, just as they did against Jordan, to use their proxies to affect energy flow from this region and also to interfere with straight and foremost shipping. And they are actually doing all of this at the same time together. And they want to show that they are playing this long game. They are showing that they're not losing, but actually winning. And I have to remind your listeners that it was actually the United States that stopped attacking last Friday.

10:43And because, according to the Sankom commander, they reached their limits for this level of escalation and intensity. And Iran never actually declared a ceasefire. They never formally stopped their attacks. They continued to threaten shipping and they never acknowledged resumption of negotiations. And how significant is Saudi Arabia's involvement? I think it is significant, but again, expected because Iran has been using its proxies just a few days ago to attack one of the most strategic and important Saudi oil hub, which is the big oil processing facility, the same facility that was attacked by Iranian drones in summer of 2019.

11:30And I think that was a very significant and bold move by the Iranians through their proxies. And the United States and Saudi Arabia, they had it and they decided to teach the PMF a lesson. Because PMF is an umbrella organization, as your previous guest described, for these thought units and Shiite elements that continue to receive arms and drones from Iran. And in fact, there have been reports that there were explosions heard at the Iran-Iraq border post. Probably some convoys of weapons were crossing the border into Iraq, and they were attacked probably by the U.S. forces. So this is an ongoing fight.

12:22And I have to, again, I have to remind you that Iran has been attacking targets inside KRG with over 1 ,000 missiles and drones since February. And they are ongoing. And the Iraqi governments showed little interest in holding Iranian regime accountable for those attacks. Thank you, Farzin Nadimi, Senior Fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. You're listening to the World Service from the BBC. This is NewsHour.

12:59Coming up, an Israeli soldier who prefers not to be named talks about his experience of settler activity in a special report from the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Teenagers there look at you with hate. There was one who told us, I will put a bullet in your head. It's clear that it's not just few radical teenagers. In the Palestinian faces, I saw only fear, and I never saw any fear on any Jew that lived there. The headlines, criticism is growing of FIFA's plans to sell stakes in its football competitions, with the EU's top sports official saying, hands off our game. Iran's accused the United States of seeking to expand the war by attacking its paramilitary allies in Iraq and the former White House medical advisor Anthony Fauci is facing questioning in the Senate about the origins of Covid.

13:59I'm Paul Henley with NewsHour, live from the BBC. The Hollywood star and musician Jared Leto is facing allegations of criminal sexual conduct by four women who were all teenagers at the time of the alleged offences. The actor, who won an Oscar in 2014 for his role in Dallas Buyers Club, made his name with films like Requiem for a Dream, The Suicide Squad and more recently Tron Aries. His rock band called 30 Seconds to Mars is planning a tour next spring. The women who spoke to the BBC say they encountered the 54-year-old between 2002 and 2014. Nomia Iqbal reports, and her report contains details of alleged sexual offences that you might find upsetting.

14:44His band was having a concert. I was with another girl, and we were backstage. I was 17. He had sent an acquaintance of his, and he told me, Jared's seen you, and he was interested in getting your number. This is Clara, not her real name. She says she started texting Jared Leto in the mid-2000s when he was twice her age. handsome, great features, professional. And the Oscar goes to Jared Leto. The Oscar-winning actor, known for his roles in Dallas Buyers Club, The Suicide Squad, and more recently in Tron Ares, is facing serious sexual misconduct allegations in a new BBC documentary. We've spoken to 10 women, several of whom met Leto as teenagers through his band 30 Seconds to Mars.

15:32So sometime after that concert... Clara was invited to an exclusive hotel in West Hollywood by Leto and brought along a friend. He kind of waved us over, we sat down, my friend and I, just having some general banter about things. We had kind of drifted into the realm to talk about the age of consent. I had mentioned to him that my dad was in law enforcement, that I knew with certainty that here in California the age of consent is 18. He just kind of shrugged it off like it wasn't a huge concern for him. She says Leto then invited the girls to his house. He suggested to my friend, you can wait in the computer room while her and I hang out.

16:14Clara says they went on to have sex. Her age at the time means this would be classed as statutory rape in California, where the age of consent is 18. That's what I like about high school girls. I keep getting older and they just stay the same age. It's not the first time Leto has faced allegations of sexual impropriety against teenagers. An investigation by US publication Air Mail last year was met with a flat denial from the actor. And despite this and years of rumours, they have not held back his Hollywood career. But these new allegations could prove harder to ignore. Clara is one of four women accusing Jared Leto of criminal sexual misconduct from when they were teenagers.

17:00The other women's allegations include one of grooming and another of threatening sexual assault. Oh my gosh. You guys remember pictures? A fourth woman, who we're calling Isabel, told us how at 17 Leto visited the shop she was working at and asked her to meet him at his motel room after work so they could hang out. I didn't think much of it. I just was like, oh, he's still getting ready and we're going to meet up there and then we're going to go out afterwards. it's, um, that's where it gets hard. Instead, she says she was asked inside where he sexually assaulted her. You know, I'm in my 40s now.

17:39I don't think I ever, so recently, blamed him. I always blamed me. Despite repeated attempts to contact Jared Leto, he has not responded to the allegations put to him by the BBC. He's due to return to stage next year for a high-profile tour with his band, placing him back in the spotlight. That report from Nomia Iqbal, and you can watch if you have access to BBC iPlayer, Jared Leto, Hollywood's Dark Secret, there.

18:20The Oscar-winning Irish musician and activist Glenn Hansard has died in a motorbike accident in Dublin. Hansard, who was 56, was the frontman of the Irish band The Frames. He featured in the film The Commitments. He won an Academy Award for Best Original Song for Falling Slowly in 2007, which he co-wrote for the movie Once. Dave Fanning is one of Ireland's best-known music journalists and broadcasters. He knew Glenn Hansard well, and he talked to me just before we came on air. It's a blow to me personally as much as it is to so many other people involved in the Irish music scene of the last 30 years.

18:58It's as simple as that. He was an absolute kind of mainstay of the whole thing. He was always there. He was always part of it, doing so many different things that it's actually hard to kind of put so much of it into perspective. I mean, the first time we came across him, he was busking in Grafton Street in Dublin, the main thoroughfare in Dublin. And that's where he started doing the whole thing. He decided he had to have a band. He put stuff together. He made a demo tape. And he found himself in the studio listening to that demo tape with people like Ron Wood from The Stones, who he didn't know, Stuart Copeland from The Police and all that kind of thing.

19:29And I don't know how that happened, but it seemed to be the studio at the same time. and that was his band called The Frames. And The Frames ended up making about seven or eight albums and they were a mainstay of the live kind of scene in Ireland. And every single Christmas on Grafton Street, actually back where he started, he does a concert for the homeless, not a concert, a busk for the homeless on Christmas Eve and he's joined every year by Bono as well as other people as well. And he recorded a single with Bono and some Ukrainian refugees quite recently called Take Heart. So he's involved with a lot of things like that.

20:00What was Glenn Hansard like in person? It's really funny you should say that, because it's just recently, I do a television programme here with bands, and he came in and did something, and last year, I actually had to stop him talking. He sounded like so many people do when they have a child. They think they're the only people in the world that ever had one. Now, he was 53 when he had his first kid, and he said he just cannot believe the joy it's brought him. Like, the child is only two or three years old now. And he just, he said, do you know what he does? do you know read this? Do you know read that?

20:31Yeah, I do. And so does everybody else in the world. Can we just talk about the music for a second? He was obsessed with the whole idea of having such a gorgeous wife, of having settled down, if you like, and of having a child as well. So the anecdotes about the child, I had to stop him. He was just too sort of effusive and enthusiastic about the whole thing. But no, I mean, as a person, he was funny. He's got great stories. Some of the stories in terms of musicians and meeting famous people and Bob Dylan this and so on and so that. but hilarious stuff. And he was gregarious and he was a great talker.

21:02And he just loved two things, really. He loved being in the studio making music, but above all, he loved being on stage. So that's where everything came alive for him. And he'd do free concerts, lots of things like that. He was great. He really was. It was a dramatic, sudden way to die. It was horrible. I mean, it's just like it's 12 hours now, less. and it's just, I mean, it's just, every so often we all get reminders about just how weird it all is, this mortal coil, etc. But terrible, it's just very sad, it's terrible. The fact that he has achieved the happiness he has leaving, you know, his wife and a young child behind is just awful.

21:45It really is terrible. That was Irish broadcaster and music journalist Dave Fanning remembering Glenn Hansard, who was involved in a fatal motorbike crash in Dublin this morning. Don't forget, if you want to listen to NewsHour but miss the live broadcast, there's an online version available, updated twice a day. BBC NewsHour podcast is what you need to look for. And you can subscribe to the feed if you want to get it on a regular basis. I'm Paul Henley, and this is NewsHour live from the BBC World Service.

22:27Welcome back to NewsHour. Now fresh from the men's World Cup, football's world governing body, FIFA, has a new plan for the future of the competition. It's discussing the creation of a new company with stakes held by private shareholders. European football's governing body, UEFA, said that the World Cup was not an asset to trade and it's meeting in emergency session today. Miguel Maduro is a lawyer and former chair of FIFA's Governance Committee. He spoke to my colleague Julian Warica. I think it's one more example of the risks that result from a systemic conflict of interest that is at the heart of FIFA.

23:05That is, FIFA is both the regulator of football and the main commercial actor in that market. And what this highlights is the extent to which FIFA is prioritising its commercial activities and its profit maximization over its role as regulator of the football system. And unfortunately, that's no longer the case because profit maximization, the commercial dimension has taken over the dimension of regulator of football and to act on behalf of all the ecosystem of football. And this is simply one more example of that. This plan would need to be passed by a vote of FIFA's 211 member nations. Could you imagine that happening?

23:46Unfortunately, yes. I'm not even sure that it will need to pass through that. It might be depending on what exactly will be in question. It could be a decision by the council. But it is well known in the governance of FIFA, the extent of the power of the president of FIFA and the lack of appropriate checks and balances. And in reality, that is linked to that dominance of the commercial activities of FIFA, because it's through the maximization of the profits and revenues of FIFA that basically the president gets more money and uses this money to feed and keep in place a system of patronage that supports his power.

24:29That's why FIFA, for example, has already announced that they will give 20 million to each football association. I was about to raise that with you because the Infantino argument is that, yes, all member associations would be able to access up to$20 million. That's a one-off capital to fund development, they say. And Mr. Infantino adds every nation should benefit from the riches football creates. What's wrong with that argument in your mind? Well, in theory, there's nothing wrong with that argument. But the reality is twofold. First, in developing its own competitions and events, FIFA cannot be concerned only with that idea of maximizing revenue to then distribute it to the football associations.

25:13It needs to make sure, for example, that tickets remain accessible to all the fans. It needs to make sure that the calendar of events is such that the well-being of athletes is not put into question. And it's no longer doing that because everything is focused on simply maximizing revenues. And the second problem is that even if this money is given to the football associations, we don't actually know how it's being spent by football associations. And in many cases, there's even questions of lawfulness on how that money is being used in many national football associations. Miguel Maduro, formerly of FIFA, speaking to Julian Warica.

25:57This is NewsHour from the BBC. I'm Paul Henley. The UN's Office of Humanitarian Affairs says the number of settler attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank was the highest on record last month, with an average of six attacks a day causing casualties or damage to property. Settler attacks have risen along with a rise in Israeli settler outposts, illegal under both Israeli and international law. Israeli monitors say that more than 230 outposts have appeared across the West Bank under the current government in Jerusalem. Our Middle East correspondent Lucy Williamson has been talking to Palestinians in one village south of Nablus about the rise in settler attacks there.

26:45It's Saturday morning in the Palestinian village of Al Mughaya in the occupied West Bank.

26:54Israeli settlers have entered the village and surrounded the Abu Alia family home. Bashing at their gate with sticks. The Israeli army is in the streets. Residents are blocking roads and running from their jeeps. We've just heard two shots fired from down below in this village. The army and the settlers are both down near the Abu Aliyah house. The mosque is calling on people to come and protect the families. Don't change!