UN warns 'escalation is not what Yemen needs'

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

0:30West Indiana Honda dealer today. Based on 2025 Consumer Choice Awards from Kelly Bruegill, visit kpp.com for more information.

0:41Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. We're coming to you live from London. I'm James Menendez. In a moment, a second threat to shipping in the Middle East. With the Strait of Hormuz once again blocked, the Red Sea route to the Suez Canal is also coming under fire from Yemen's Houthis. Oil prices have been sent skyrocketing again. That is our top story today. Also coming up in the programme, how protests in Albania against a luxury resort development backed by Donald Trump's son-in-law are now threatening the country's prime minister. They're against a political leader who behaves as if he were the private owner of the country, who can sell parts of it to whomever he wants to, whenever he wants to, for his own political benefit.

1:27Albanians feel that the state does not work for them anymore. More from Albania in just under 15 minutes. But we are going to begin with the latest flashpoint in a Middle Eastern war that now seems to be getting worse by the day, with implications for all of us. The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, addressing the Security Council, spoke of the unbearable pressures being put on the region. The situation is getting out of control. It's tittering on the edge of the unimaginable. The region is being pulled into an ever-widening circle of confrontation. One crisis feeds another, one escalation triggers the next.

2:08In the past couple of weeks, the conflict between the US and Iran has centred on control of the Strait of Hormuz, once again effectively blocked to shipments of oil, gas, fertiliser and so on. Now there were second vital waterways under threat, the Bab el-Mandeb, or Gate of Tears, that separates Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa. Yemen's Houthi militia, which is backed by Iran, say they've hit two oil tankers belonging to their long-standing enemy Saudi Arabia. Well, that and the threat of retaliation by President Trump has caused oil prices to spike once again, hitting$100 a barrel for the first time in two months.

2:45More on that in a moment. But all this has also threatened to drag Yemen, already broken by years of civil war, into the wider conflict. I've been speaking to the UN special envoy to Yemen, Hans Grunberg, who's currently in Iman in Jordan. I asked him for his reaction to those Houthi attacks on Saudi vessels. What we have seen in Yemen for the last couple of weeks is a very worrying situation, which is very concerning because we've seen an escalatory trajectory that has led to the current situation. And that is obviously nothing that I have wanted to see. I think it's extremely worrying, especially for the sake of Yemen.

3:25I think one needs to remind ourselves that Yemen is one of the world's poorest countries. It's a fairly large country with 40 million inhabitants. It's not something that Yemen needs at this point. What Yemen needs at this particular moment is stabilisation and focus on getting back to a sense of normalcy for the sake of its own population. And I do want to ask you about the humanitarian situation in the country. But can I ask you this, because the UN Secretary General, and your ultimate boss, I guess, has said that the situation in the Middle East is on the edge of the unimaginable. What do you think he means?

4:00What you have seen in the Middle East lately, in these last couple of years, is a very challenging situation where you have a number of unresolved conflicts that have, in a very unfortunate and worrying way, gotten entangled with one another. and now lead us to a space which is creating solutions even more complicated. What one needs to do at this point is to disentangle these conflicts and make sure that you focus on them for the sake of their own inherent issues and address the grievances and the issues that are at stake. And that is very true for Yemen as well. That now risks getting entangled into this wider situation that we have in the Middle East.

4:43Yeah, I mean, it is a complex regional, a very complex regional picture. And as you say, all these things are interlinked in a way. With regard to Yemen, though, I mean, do you see this particular flare up as being between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia? I think it's always easy to try to simplify a situation when you face it and you want to try to understand it as quickly as possible. And I think that's, for a situation as the one we have in Yemen, that's a dangerous thing to do. Because Yemen is an extremely complex conflict. It's multilayered, or one can say that it's multidimensional. You cannot limit it to one set of conflicts.

5:24And that's why the discussions, the negotiations, and the mediation efforts that we have been engaging on have been so challenging. This is a result of over a decade of having not been able to get to a sustainable solution to the situation in Yemen. And that, I think, is the real issue at hand. Yeah, well, let me put it another way then. And rather, this is the view of the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. He said that the Houthis, quote, got snookered into this thing by the Iranians. So is that what's going on? Is it Iran desperate to drag Yemen and the Houthis into this wider war? Well, I don't want to try to...

6:05Comments from any other actor on this issue, they will have to defend their own comments. I wouldn't want to enter into analysing one or the other. I think what I am focusing on in terms of what I do is to make sure that we avoid seeing the type of escalatory trajectory that we're having at hand right now. And I understand that at some point, one or the other side might think that an escalatory path could lead to more pressure and greater pressure to achieve results. But it rarely leads to the intended results. And that's why you need to avoid it. And that is what I try to do is try to ensure that all sides avoid this type of path.

6:44Yeah. I mean, I'm sorry to keep pushing you. I'm just trying to understand, I suppose, where that escalatory pressure that you just spoke about, I mean, where that is coming from. Is that coming from the Houthis unilaterally or is it coming from Iran? We've had these Reuters reports that Iran flew IRGC commanders and equipment into Yemen earlier this month. I don't know whether you can confirm anything about that. I mean, do you see Iran as being behind this flare? No, I don't think it's up to me to speculate here about what is the driving factor. And that would be speculation from my end anyway.

7:17So I don't think that I would want to enter into that type of speculation with you. But instead, realizing the fact of the matter, and that is that we have an escalation, and that has been brewing for a while, and we now have it in front of us. And that brings unpredictability and a risk for further violence, which we need to avoid. Tell us about the humanitarian situation in Yemen. If there is a blockade through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, what will that mean for Yemenis? So the situation inside Yemen is one that requires stability. It requires an ability of humanitarian actors to be able to work.

7:56It requires necessity for commercial actors to be able to import and export goods without being afraid of military action. And it requires the possibility for Yemenis to travel across their countries freely and also outside of their countries freely. So the overall situation in Yemen remains extremely challenging and extremely difficult and will have to be, continue to be addressed. And that is something that the UN and other humanitarian actors have been working on and continue to work on on a daily basis. But when President Trump threatens major military punishment against the Houthis, I mean, that is potentially very bad news for people in Yemen, right?

8:39This is in line with an escalatory path that we're seeing right now. And I think that clearly, regardless of anything, it's not what Yemen needs. Hans Grunberg there, the UN's envoy to Yemen. He was speaking to me from Amman. So what is the likely economic impact of a Houthi blockade of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait? Anis Gambold is head of research for commodities at Aurora Energy Research. What will a blockade of the Red Sea mean for the flow of oil?

9:09Hans Grundberg:The blockade of the Red Sea has a very large impact on the oil markets. We already have conflicts affecting the Strait of Hormuz, which was a choke point for energy exports, particularly for around 20 % of global oil trade. Now, on top of that, if there's conflict in the Red Sea, meaning that vessels couldn't travel south from Saudi Arabia towards Asia, about 10 % of global oil had been transiting through that route. Right, because the point is Saudi Arabia had what, because the Strait of Hormuz had been closed, had been sending oil through a pipeline to its western coast and then shipping it out to the Gulf of Aden.

9:49Is that what was happening?

9:51Hans Grundberg:Exactly. When it comes to Gulf oil exports, there are only a few routes. There's the route through the Strait of Hormuz to Asia, there's this route through the Red Sea, and then there's a northern route through Egypt. However, the issue with rerouting oil through the Egypt route, which is currently now the only non-conflict route, is that oil would have to be transferred from the existing vessels into a smaller vessel in order to fit through the Suez Canal in Egypt, or the oil would have to be offloaded from vessels and put into pipelines. Both of them are possible, and in terms of volume, there is spare capacity to take these routes.

10:29Hans Grundberg:However, it will be much slower. And if you have a map in front of you, you can see that oil coming out of Egypt to the Mediterranean Sea in order to get to Asia, who are the predominant buyers of Gulf oil. The vessel would have to go around the west coast of Africa, around South Africa, and then end up in Asia. So that doubles transport. Yeah, so a very, very long journey indeed. And long journeys mean extra costs for those wanting to transport the oil. And that means higher oil prices. does it? Exactly. So whilst there's actually not a physical shortage of oil supply in the world, because so much more of it will be caught up in these long sea journeys, that is causing prices to rise and an immediate shortage.

11:14And we've already seen today oil prices back over $100 a barrel. I mean, how much higher could they go, do you think?

11:22Hans Grundberg:It's something that we're tracking quite closely. One driver or one player that we've been looking at is China, because what we noticed during the Strait of Hormuz conflict is that it seems that China's oil imports have dropped significantly. And we suspect it's because they have petroleum reserves to dip into, but they can also switch to other fuel sources. And if China were to go back to importing as much oil as it did before the Strait of Hormuz crisis, that could be very bullish for oil prices. However, it's said that China has multiple months of oil supply in reserves. So it's not likely that the price is going to continue rising much more above 100.

12:03Right. You don't think so? I mean, I saw one estimate suggesting it might rise as high as $140.

12:08Hans Grundberg:I mean, is that possible? It is possible. If China were to resume its pre-Straight of Hormuz levels of imports, if it's not possible for governments to pull even more oil out of stocks, then maybe 140. Yeah. And just finally, I mean, what about the impact at the pump in the United States. Are drivers in the US likely to see their costs go up? Yeah, so this is an interesting one. Although the US doesn't get any much of its crude oil from the Gulf, because it's a global oil market, they're still affected by prices. So what we've seen in the last month or so is that gasoline prices are way up in the US.

12:48And that was Anise Gambold, who's head of research for commodities at Aurora Energy Research on the possible impact of a Houthi blockade of that Bab al-Mandeb strait. There is more on this story and, of course, the wider war in the Middle East on our website, as ever, bbc.com forward slash news. We will also be returning to what is happening in Iran later in the programme. In the second half, we're going to be hearing from the scene of that attack on the first day of the war, that primary school that was bombed, leading to the deaths of at least 120 children. Our special correspondent will be reporting from the school, as I say, in about 15 minutes here on NewsHour.

13:37This is James Menendez with NewsHour live from the BBC. There have been clashes in Albania today, several weeks of protests converging on the Parliament building in the capital Tirana. Police used tear gas and water cannon to try to disperse the demonstrators. Their protest began over a controversial coastal resort project backed by Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner. Though environmental concerns about these luxury development plans in areas rich with biodiversity were the catalyst, the protests have now grown in scope, demanding the resignation of the Prime Minister Eddie Rama and a political class accused of corruption.

14:13Emilio Crickio has this report.

14:20This has been the sound in the streets of Tirana every evening for the past two months. Protesters gather outside the offices of the embattled Prime Minister, Eddie Rama, and then march throughout the various neighbourhoods in the city. No more dictatorship, they shout. This is the final battle, Rama to prison.

14:47What originally sparked over-environmental concerns around a proposed luxury resort project backed by Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has evolved into a wider movement against corruption, democratic backsliding and calling for the resignation of the Prime Minister and his government. I'm here, I'm protesting against the government. Our land has been sold. Our hospitals, we have no medicine. Our government's corrupt. Albania has been suffering so many years. We are here for the people, for the country. We need a new government. We need to bring this government down. Prime Minister Eddie Rama is so far refusing to resign and says the protests are a sign of a healthy democracy.

15:26Gressa Hassa, a researcher at the Faculty of Law and Centre for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz, explains, however, that this is the most pressure he has been under throughout his 13 years of rule. What we're seeing since two months now is an accumulated anger of 35 years. Albania emerged from one of the harshest communist dictatorships in the Eastern Bloc. And what replaced that dictatorship during these 35 years has been just different forms of semi-autocracies. And people have had enough of that. So they're not against developments in general, but they're against non-transparent processes.

16:09They're against an authoritarian form of governing. They're against a political leader who behaves as if he were the private owner of the country, who can sell parts of it to whomever he wants to, whenever he wants to, for his own political benefit. Albanians feel that the state does not work for them anymore. Some observers, however, like political commentator Ruel Domi, have concerns about the political organization behind the protests and whether they will eventually achieve any tangible success. Governments are not changed by screaming. They're changed by people voting at the ballot box. And so once the elections of 2029 come, assuming that there are no snap elections on the way, you can have a political party campaign in the right way and defeat Mr.

17:00Rama and run the country the way you want to. But the problem with one of my other criticisms that I've had about the current configuration of the protests is this very fact that they refuse to form a political alternative. Every single movement needs to have a couple of points they're based on. what change on the political, social, economic and cultural front they would like to ignite and how they're going to do that. And if you take all these things into consideration, none of these question marks have been answered so far and no real direction to these protests. Though it is yet to be seen whether these protests can actually bring about governmental change, they are certainly the centre of political attention in the country now.

17:44And there is a sense that the coming weeks and months will be consequential for the country's future. Emilia Krikia reporting there from Albania. Now, nearly seven months after the raid to seize the former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, what's happened to the money from sales of Venezuelan oil? After that raid, the US took control of the country's oil exports. This is what President Trump said back then. We're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.

18:29So where is it? An investigation by the Financial Times this week found that the Trump administration had collected an estimated$13 billion in revenues. Back in April, a senior State Department official said that around$3 billion had already been sent back to Caracas and that the firm KPMG was auditing the accounts. He also promised quarterly updates, but so far there's been nothing more. And all this in the wake of last month's devastating earthquakes. Well, I've been talking to Benjamin Gadan, senior White House official for Latin America in the Obama administration, now at the Stimson Center think tank.

19:04Where does he think the money is? Presumably it's an account somewhere in the United States, but there's been a startling lack of accountability, lack of transparency. It's a significant sum and there's very little oversight. Who controls the money and who should control it? I mean, is it the responsibility of Congress? So typically, the executive branch in the United States, the White House, doesn't have access to funds without the congressional appropriation process. So one would think that the money would either have to go through Congress or at least be supervised by Congress and how it's being managed.

19:40There's also questions about why the United States controls these funds in the first place. Obviously, these are revenues from the sale of a natural resource owned by the people of Venezuela. Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, it is Venezuela's money, and yet the reporting suggests that it's not showing up in their accounts. Yeah, to some degree, there's a reasonable argument that's been made by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others that the money is often diverted by Venezuela's unelected authorities used for corrupt purposes, to buy the loyalty of regime elites, and so that somehow maybe the United States could channel this money more effectively for development purposes.

20:17But the reality is there's not a clear legal argument for why the United States has control of these funds. What might be a mechanism for, well, I was going to say encouraging or forcing transparency? It depends on the outcome of the midterm elections in the United States in November. There is some suggestion that should the opposition Democratic Party win the midterm elections, you'll have efforts to track these funds and some requirement for testimony, the subpoena for documents to bring at least a minimal level of transparency about how this money is collected and how it's dispersed in Venezuela.

20:53Otherwise, there are very few tools right now to require greater transparency. Yeah. I mean, is there any precedent for this kind of arrangement that you know of? There's no precedent, certainly not at this scale. And there's the real possibility for mischief. I mean, if you recall the Iran-Contra scandal, it came about when the executive branch was trying to circumvent restrictions imposed by Congress on foreign assistance to the efforts to fight the Sandinista guerrillas in Nicaragua. And again, the problems arose from a White House that had access to funds with no congressional oversight. And I suppose the other aspect of all this is that it just reinforces this idea that the US is effectively running Venezuela.

21:39It doesn't just reinforce the perception the United States is running Venezuela. Functionally, the United States is running Venezuela. I mean, this is principally the only source of revenue for the government of Venezuela. And so if it doesn't have control of its own monies, it really can't exercise much control over decision making or over the administration of the state. And that was Benjamin Gadin, who was a senior White House official in the Obama administration. He's now a Latin America program director at the Stimson Center think tank. We did ask both the State Department and the Department of Energy in Washington for a response to all of this.

22:15We have yet to receive a reply from either, but we will let you know as and when we do. You're listening to NewsHour. Do stay with us. Lots more coming up in the second half of the program.

22:38welcome back to news am the european union has imposed a fine of 890 million euros that's just over a billion dollars on google for breaches of the bloc's competition laws the fine threatens to further inflame trade tensions between the u.s and europe one senior u.s official has said it posed a real risk to transatlantic stability. Barbara Moans is EU tech correspondent for the Financial Times. She's based in Brussels. And she's been telling me, first of all, the reasons for the fine. So the EU has these digital market rules, which aim to give digital companies a level playing field. And there are two things on which Brussels says that Google has not been complying with those rules.