Trump's 'big decision' on Iran

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1:33Hello and welcome to NewsHour, live from the BBC World Service in London. I'm Rebecca Kesby. On the programme today, a six-year-old Chinese girl has broken the women's world record for solving a Rubik's Cube. She was consistently under five seconds. I've got my cube here and I'm told I've got till the end of the hour. to solve it. First, though, to the United Nations General Assembly, which got underway in New York today. And regular listeners to this programme will know that the world faces no shortage of crises at the moment, from seemingly never-ending wars to global economic instability, climate change, and now the spectre of uncontrollable artificial intelligence, or super intelligence, as President Trump said today he wanted to rename it.

2:21As we'll hear, there were some various glum warnings from speakers about the effectiveness of the UN as a global body that can improve any of those things. But French President Emmanuel Macron, taking to the stage in the past couple of hours, warned against despondency, saying that the world should choose the UN over what he called the law of the jungle. Meanwhile, at the heart of his 37-minute speech, President Trump took the opportunity to justify his war with Iran. Just imagine such a vile regime, wherever, empowered to carry out large-scale terror attacks from behind a nuclear shield. This was the reality we had to confront, a reality that far too many preferred to ignore.

3:07They all ignored it. Many presidents and many others just wanted to ignore it. They were unwilling to do anything about it, but they knew the problem. After giving Iran every chance for a deal, I took action to ensure that neither the United States nor any nation in this whole would ever have to face such a nightmare, such a catastrophic problem. As a result of Operation Epic Fury, all 159 ships of their Navy are now lying at the bottom of the sea. Likewise, their air force is gone. Their radar is gone. Their anti-aircraft equipment is gone. Their missiles and drone manufacturing capacity is almost gone.

3:51Their economy is gone. The only thing that isn't gone is inflation, which is destroying their country. Well, the president went on to muse upon his options now in the conflict with Iran. I have a big decision to make. Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before, maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world? Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?

4:41But I believe we'll make a deal right after the election because it doesn't make sense for them not to. Well, the BBC's Nedda Taufik is at the United Nations in New York, and I asked her if there'd been any reaction to Mr Trump's speech from the Iranian delegation. The Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Ar-Anchi actually left the hall after the Secretary General spoke and before Donald Trump spoke, so didn't want to kind of be there present during President Trump's speech. And we know that the Iranian President Masoud Pazeshkian is currently on his way to New York and that he wants to come to provide an opportunity, he said, to firmly defend Iran's position.

5:26And, you know, in the past, Iran has said that they want to deal in respect, that they won't be swayed by Donald Trump's threats, because this is rhetoric, of course, that Iranian officials have grown used to as Donald Trump tries to kind of exert this maximum pressure, believing it will help his negotiating position. And it was interesting there for him to suggest that Iranian officials believe the midterm elections are going to sway things. But for the Iranian delegation, it's also important to note that they've actually met with U.S. officials. It was a three-hour long meeting, at least from President Trump and his special envoy, Steve Whitcoff.

6:05They've described it as a very good meeting. And we'll see if President Trump does meet with the Iranian president. It's something he says he's open to, but there is nothing confirmed on that front. Yeah, you mentioned the midterms there, Neda, and there was quite a lot of domestic issues mentioned in Mr Trump's speech. But what else did he raise in terms of global issues? Well, you know, certainly he again took a hit at the United Nations, something he has done in the past. He has talked about how the U.S. is going to firmly control the Western Hemisphere. Of course, you know, the U.S. seizure of the former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in a, you know, a raid on his compound in Venezuela.

6:51That raised a lot of eyebrows here at the U.N., many believing it was against the U.N. charter. But President Trump, in his speech, saying that he will not hesitate from using military action in the Americas to secure the Western Hemisphere. again talking about the strikes on boats in the waters of Latin America, something that a UN report has decried as a crime against humanity, but which Donald Trump says is confronting drug trafficking. And then he also spoke, Rebecca, about AI. And this is so interesting. He, of course, somebody who loves branding. President Trump even changed the name to superintelligence instead of artificial intelligence and made clear he is against regulation.

7:31That's the BBC's Nedda Taufik speaking to us a short time ago from the United Nations in New York. Well, the tone of many of the comments today has been rather subdued. In his speech, Brazil's President Luis Anasio Lula da Silva said that inaction of the UN Security Council was a failure to fulfil its role and was holding everyone else hostage. The Turkish President Recep Tayyip Edouan took a similar stance, saying that the UN had become unable to fulfill its duty. The United Nations, established 81 years ago to maintain international peace and security, is no longer able to fulfill this mission.

8:13Or more precisely, it has been rendered unable to do so. Those in Palestine, in Lebanon, Sudan and in other crisis zones who have tied their hopes to the UN are deeply disappointed. Well, Richard Gowan oversees the International Crisis Group's work on geopolitics and global trends in conflict. He's in New York watching events today and this was his assessment of the mood at the General Assembly. The UN high-level week is always chaos. And when you're in the thick of it, it feels like you are at the centre of the diplomatic world. But I do think that coming into this week and throughout this week, there is an underlying sense of nervousness.

9:02There is a feeling that the UN is an organisation which seems to be stuck in a sort of open-ended crisis. It's short on money. It isn't making an impact on the situation around the Strait of Hormuz or Ukraine and other major conflicts. And people are starting to ask, well, what is this organisation really here for? So, I mean, were people encouraged, though, that President Trump actually turned up because some wondered whether he would, but he did. He gave a speech. He thanked the UN, I think, a couple of times we counted. It was a slightly different speech to the one he made last year when he was actually asking, what's the purpose of the UN?

9:43Yes, I think Trump was marginally less negative towards the UN than he was in 2025. I mean, you could tell that a lot of his speech was really for a domestic audience anyway. He was concentrating on his narrative of US economic success, and he has the midterms coming up. That said, we have seen some signs that the Trump administration over the last year has come to recognize that the UN is useful to it. having been very, very hostile towards the UN originally. The US is starting to put money back into UN operations, whereas it had previously cut budgets. It has acknowledged that UN relief agencies are the only entities that can deliver humanitarian assistance at large scale in conflict zones.

10:34And it's actually asked the UN to help it deal with a couple of crises like the breakdown of law and order in Haiti. So Trump is not a fan of the UN, but he is coming to appreciate it a little more. But in terms of actual power and influence of the UN, as you were saying, I mean, there are concerns about that. We heard from President Erdogan today of Turkey saying that the UN has become unable to fulfil its duty of preserving peace. And certainly in years and decades gone by, there would be articles being voted on on the eight wars that Mr. Trump likes to talk about that he's solved, or there'd be discussions about whether blue helmets should be sent into any of these war zones.

11:12And none of that is even on the table anymore. It is worth saying that the UN does continue to have about 50 ,000 peacekeepers around the world in places like South Sudan and the Central African Republic. It does still oversee quite a lot of sanctions regimes. When people say the UN is paralysed, I think that is an overstatement. But what is clear is that the UN has failed to grapple with a series of very major crises in the last five years in particular. That includes Russia's all-out aggression against Ukraine. It includes the war in Gaza. And now it includes the war between the US and Iran.

11:52And so there's a feeling that in a very turbulent world, when it comes to the really big crises and the crises that threaten to do large-scale global damage, yes, the UN is sort of missing in action. And of course, we've got the Xi Jinping meeting with President Trump later this week. He's not attending the General Assembly himself. What kind of message does that send? So I think that President Trump wanted to sort of show that Xi Jinping just wanted to talk to the US. It is creating a split screen moment later this week. On the one hand, you'll have the leaders of the world's two main powers sitting together negotiating in Washington.

12:34And then you'll have leaders and foreign ministers from lots of smaller countries continuing to give speeches at the UN. And I think a lot of people will reasonably look at that and say, where does power really lie? Where do decisions really get made? And Richard, you mentioned the issue of cash. Of course, that's been cut. A lot of the funding did come from the United States. and President Trump's policy is not to fund so many UN bodies. What kind of impact is that having on its ability to function? I mean, it's been felt very acutely. Antonio Guterres, the outgoing Secretary General, has had to cut jobs, and he's had to enforce some unpopular measures, like insisting that UN staff don't fly business class so much.

13:19But it also has a real impact on very vulnerable people around the world. The UN has had to cut the number of peacekeepers it has, in some violent places like South Sudan, it has also had to reduce the number of people that it is delivering humanitarian aid to, I mean, by tens of millions, in fact, of people. And so, you know, it's very easy to look at the UN and think this is a bloated bureaucracy, as the US likes to say, but it is also serving some of the world's neediest populations, and they are getting less food, they're getting less protection than they were before. That's Richard Gowan there from the International Crisis Group.

13:58And Richard mentioned there the importance of the sideline meetings at events like this. It's often where the real business happens. We know that President Trump has been meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. He's also just met the UK's latest Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, as well. And apparently Mr Trump has described him as a man he can do business with. More on that on the live page on the BBC website. Coming up on the programme, the British documentary TV series that has followed a group of people from the age of 7 to 70. Come 28, when I was married and having my children, you could see a sensibility sort of step in there and you realised what you said on that programme will stay with you for the rest of your life.

14:49More on that to come and our headlines this hour. As we've been hearing, Donald Trump says his officials have had a long meeting with senior Iranians on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. President Zelensky has said Ukraine is ready for an energy ceasefire with Russia. And a court in Sri Lanka has given sentences of 200 years to 15 men found guilty of involvement in the Easter Sunday bombings seven years ago.

15:27Oh, hang on. Nearly. No. Oh. Oh, sorry. Yes, we're still live. I was just trying to solve this Rubik's Cube puzzle. I think I'll have to leave it till the end of the programme. But this 1980s classic is back in the news because a six-year-old girl, Lian Yun-ji, from Sichuan province in China has just smashed the women's world record for the 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube. In fact, she smashed it twice in three days. Her new time is, and brace yourselves for this number, 4.27 seconds to complete a Rubik's Cube. I'm delighted to welcome Jessica Frederick to the programme. She's a pioneering speed cuber, as they're called.

16:11In fact, she invented her own method, which has been adopted by many. And Jessica, you've been cubing for some 40 odd years, but what did you make of this young six-year-old's performance? It's absolutely mind-boggling. Congratulations to her. She's going to be even better. When you see her, it's like magic. She's doing it so fast. And she's so small, just six years old. Yes, and it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable, especially the cubers from China nowadays. They are dominating speed cubing. If you look at the top six cubers, they're all from China. They're all very young. So it's a trend. And it's unbelievable that a six-year-old girl can do it in 4.27 seconds on average.

16:58That is nothing short of a miracle, basically. I mean, apparently she does spend two to three hours a day training on the Rubik's Cube. Is that something that's normal for a cuber, as you call them? I think she spends a lot more than that. Really? That's my personal guess, yes. Tell me why. Because you become a great speed cuber only if you get possessed by the cube. If it spells the magic all over you and you can't do anything else, basically. So I think two to three hours is an understatement. That's just my personal guess. So what is your advice then on even completing a Rubik's Cube, to be completely honest with you?

17:39Because, I mean, obviously she's doing it very fast. I just don't have the patience. I've been sitting with this thing now for half the programme and I still can't do it. So what would your top tips be? My top tip is to have fun and do it the way you like to do it and that brings you joy. If it brings you joy to try to chase the seconds and become one of the best cubers in the world, then do it. If you just want to be able to solve it or impress friends, do it. If you don't want to do it at all, don't do it. Well, I'm increasingly getting to that point myself. But I mean, would there be a trick to it or a system maybe that works?

18:19There is no trick to it. It's a lot of work. It's an incredible amount of work, an incredible memorization that you have to be willing to undertake, to memorize probably over a thousand of algorithms to be able to be this fast. It's like a magician, you know, like when you see a sleight of hand, when you see a magician manipulate cards, they are doing tricks. They are amazing you. Your mind is completely blown because you have no explanation for what's happening. It looks natural, but it took years and years to practice. Speed cubing is the same. You need to be possessed somehow by the cube. You need to feel the inner engine to keep doing it and keep doing it and the motivation to just get faster and faster and faster.

19:10And that's intangible. You either have it or you're done. Apparently there are Cuban conventions as well as all these competitions as well. Has it changed much over the years? Because I mentioned this is a kind of classic 1980s toy, but it was actually invented in the 70s, wasn't it? It was invented in the 70s and it took off right around 1980. 1982 was the first world championship in Rubik's Cup in Budapest in Europe. This is where I went to. I was representing Czechoslovakia at that time. The cube is completely different. We went through multiple, multiple generations. Nowadays, they are made in a way that allows a certain type of twisting to cube, certain type of handling that you would not be able to do back in 1980s or 1970s, because those cubes were hard to turn.

19:59The difference between a speedcuber today and back in 1970s, 80s, let's say, is that there was no internet at that time. And every cuber had to also invent their own system or their own version of a system to solve and to be fast. Well, while I've been speaking to you, Jessica, I've continued with my quest and I nearly have a whole side of orange, though not entirely finished. But give me another 25 years and maybe I'll be able to complete the whole thing. Don't underestimate yourself. That was Jessica Friedrich there, professor at Binghamton University on the east coast of the US, who's considered one of the pioneers of speedcubing.

20:44I can't do it. If anything, I'm making it worse and I'm going at the pace of a snail. You're listening to NewsHour live from the BBC.

21:01Now, drone warfare has developed considerably over the course of the war in Ukraine. Now, Russia's new jet-powered drones are causing a problem. In August alone, Russia launched around 2 ,800. That's up from about 350 in June. Until recently, Ukrainian forces had developed ways to successfully intercept most Russian drones. But these jet drones are much faster and have far more sophisticated capabilities to evade interception, making them difficult to shoot down. As the BBC's Abdul Jalil Abdurasulov explains, Kiev is now in a race to develop weapons that can counter this latest threat. Abdul Jalil has been with Ukrainian air defence units.

21:48A missile shoots into the sky, leaving a long, wide tail behind. Seconds pass very slowly.

21:59Destroyed, reports a Ukrainian soldier having spotted in a distance a blank plume of smoke from the explosion. His unit has successfully shot down a Russian jet-powered drone.

22:16These new drones are much harder to intercept, so for now Ukrainian forces primarily use fighter jets or Western-provided air defense systems to stop them. They might be very effective, but far too costly to use against a much cheaper threat.

22:37Soldiers from the 96th Air Defense Brigade show me their drone interceptors regarded a breakthrough technology just a year ago. A bullet-shaped device helped the Ukrainian military to shoot down up to 95 percent of Russian drones. But it's simply too slow against the new type of threat, says the crew commander Madzy. The speed of jet-powered drones is 300 to 500 kilometers per hour, which is twice as fast as our interceptors. This is like a cat-and-mouse game. We are inventing something. Russia is trying to invent, counteraction, and vice versa. Andrei Grytsenyuk, the head of Brave One, Ukraine's main defense technology alliance.

23:30And right now, more than 20 companies are building very fast drone interceptors on different levels of readiness. And out of them, six companies, members of Brevan, already deployed to the combat. And how effective are they? We have already a number of successfully destroyed Shahid and Bandarals. So we see that the trend is positive. The BBC's Abdul Jalil Abdurasulov there with Ukrainian air defence units. And President Macron has been speaking about Ukraine at the UN General Assembly. He says Ukraine must be defended more than ever as winter is coming. He's just been making those comments in the past couple of hours.

24:14And there's more details on what else he said on the website.

24:52The Haunted Library you get your podcasts.

25:00Welcome back to NewsHour. President Trump's tariff wars have hit the toy industry. The US trade body, the Toy Association, wants tariffs on imported toys scrapped altogether. It's pressing its case ahead of Thursday's meeting at the White House between Donald Trump and China's leader Xi Jinping. The BBC's Sam Fennec has been following the money behind a$30 toy.

25:29A box full of brightly coloured plastic. In an American toy shop, this sells for$30. Turn it over and there are three words on the back, made in China. That's true of nearly eight in every ten toys sold in the United States, according to the US Toy Association.