Would Iraq-Syria pipeline solve Hormuz problem?

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1:34Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. We're coming to you live from London. I'm James Menendez. And our top story today is the battle for control for the Strait of Hormuz, that crucial waterway for exports out of the Gulf region. And it is a battle that seems to be intensifying by the day. A little earlier, the US military said it had carried out a new wave of strikes strikes on targets in Iran, lasting an hour and a half. That follows a much longer bombardment overnight.

2:10That's sound from footage released by US Central Command. It says its barrages are designed to degrade Iran's ability to attack commercial shipping in the strait. The rhetoric on both sides is also becoming more aggressive. Iran has threatened to block off other trading routes in the region. And this was President Trump speaking to Fox News last night. Next week, it gets really bad for them because next week comes the power plants. Next week comes the bridges. We're going to knock out all their power plants. We're going to knock out all their bridges unless they get to the table and negotiate.

2:47Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Qasem Qaribar Badi said on Tuesday that the US was seeking to prevent Tehran from exercising what he described as effective sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz and accused the US of tearing up the recently signed Memorandum of Understanding.

3:06Iran never left the negotiation table. It was the United States that destroyed the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding. We haven't done such a thing. The fact that they want Iran to return to negotiations is a request that will not be fulfilled. With the criminal activities of the US, the Islamic Republic of Iran will not be the first country to request negotiations with them. We will not request negotiations with the United States. Well, all this is having an impact on politics in the region as countries prepare for prolonged disruption. In a moment, we'll hear about plans to revive an oil pipeline between Iraq and Syria and how the conflict is changing Iraq itself.

3:52Indeed, the Iraqi Prime Minister, Ali al-Zaidi, was at the White House in Washington yesterday. President Trump praised what he called the country's tremendous potential because of its oil resources. Look, Baghdad, I think, and I and this country, we're going to make some tremendous music together. We haven't been dealing very much over the last four or five years with the previous administration. it. Iraq has tremendous potential because of their oil and because of other things, but because of their oil. And we're going to be doing a lot of deals. We're going to create a lot of jobs for both countries.

4:30And we're going to be taking out a lot of oil. A lot of oil is coming out. And the American companies are doing it, mostly American companies now. They don't want to do business with others. They want to do business with America. And that's good. Well, we're shipping through the straighter for moves so disrupted. The search continues for other ways to get the region's supplies of crude oil and natural gas out to world markets. One possible route is an old, largely disused oil pipeline between Kirkuk in northern Iraq and Banias on Syria's Mediterranean coast. The US State Department has said it is supporting efforts now to restore the pipeline with the help of American firms.

5:09However, it won't be easy. Let's talk to Andrew Tabler, Syria expert at the think tank, the Washington Institute. Andrew's in Damascus at the moment and joins us on the line. Welcome to NewsHour. What sort of state is the pipeline in? The existing Kirkuk-Banias pipeline is derelict and non-functioning. The Syrian civil war really did it in, but for decades it's been either bombed and closed by the United States in 2003 and also then by a lot of other parties and been subject to dispute. Some of it is remaining in the Syrian grid, but it also doesn't function. So a new one would need to be built.

5:53I mean, you're in Damascus. You're talking to the people involved. I mean, is this a go, do you think? Well, what's about to be announced, I think, will be a memorandum of understanding. It will not be a contract. It's a big difference, of course. But it is ambitious. It will, as I understand it, involve a pipeline that would carry about 1 million barrels of oil a day, depending on what speed, from Iraq out to the Syrian coast for export. And that would involve an investment, a very large investment, which is rumored to be or estimated to be about$10 billion. But, of course, there are a lot of figures being thrown around out there.

6:37How difficult will it be to secure the pipeline? I mean, now and in the future? I would say very. Those parts of Syria and Iraq are heavily dominated traditionally by ISIS and also Shia militia operate there that are aligned with Iran. So there's a large swath of territory. Anytime you have fixed infrastructure like that, energy infrastructure, it's going to be a target for sabotage. The designers of this apparently have some ideas. They think that they can secure it. They are going to put some fiber optic lines and other electronic ways of monitoring the pipeline route. But also, of course, there's been a change of government in Damascus, and it has a different relationship with the tribes in that area.

7:29Iraq is another thing. But it's probably the biggest question overhanging this, because traditionally, security and disputes over transit fees have done in pipelines in the Middle East in the past. Yeah. Do you think international companies are ready to start making these sorts of long-term investments in infrastructure in Syria? Yeah, this is a really good question. So there are things which are, so far, the contracts that have been announced have been low-hanging fruit. And what I mean by that is, you know, American companies going into Syrian Petroleum Corporation fields and trying to increase production that, you know, fairly lower risk.

8:12Building a pipeline is a whole other thing. But the understanding is that this project, if it ever gets to becomes fruition or gets to fruition, it would be a consortium of companies and some of which would be American and that they would operate on a build, operate, transfer basis. But again, the details aren't out there and they may be announced in the coming days. But briefly, I mean, it does rely on stability in Syria, political stability, doesn't it? It does. And, you know, Syria is traditionally the or one of the world's most unstable countries in the 20th century and in this century. um but um but but however there is a real need i think it's a combined thing that syrian people are exhausted from war they need to rebuild their country and they need to wait find a way to get some money to do that and the iraqis now because of the closing the straits of hormuz they're probably hurting among the most um so therefore they have a good reason to work together and the question is uh will the iranians allow this to take place without sabotage um i i would doubt it.

9:24But, you know, anything's possible. Andrew, thank you very much indeed. Andrew Tabler of the Washington Institute, joining us from the Syrian capital Damascus. Well, the war between Iran and the US is also driving other shifts in the region, especially when it comes to Iraq, one of Iran's closest allies since the demise of Saddam Hussein more than 20 years ago. Kamran Pallani, a senior fellow at the Middle East Peace and Security Forum at the American University of Kurdistan and joins us. Cameron, thanks very much for being with us on NewsHour. You've written a piece called Iran is losing Iraq.

10:00Why is it moving away from Tehran? First of all, thank you so much for having me. When I wrote that Iran's influence is on the decline or is losing Iraq, I should clarify I meant that from a comparative perspective. If you look back 10 years ago, Iran's position was quite different. Iran was in a much stronger position in the country, overwhelmed Iraq's different sectors. That said, Iran still has tools at its disposal. It has, over the past two decades, deeply infiltrated into Iraqi institutions and various sectors of society. But here is what has changed. And that is the core of my thesis and my article.

10:48Iran's allies, I mean, proxies and militias, are no longer able to unilaterally define the narrative. They are increasingly on the defensive. You know, a very important development is that, first of all, the Iran-U.S. rivalry or competition in Iraq should not be seen as a winner-take-all or a single round. We are looking at an ongoing series of contests and rounds. Right now, the U.S. has shown, especially in the current government formation, the U.S. has shown more leverage in this round. And it has vetoed who is going to be the prime minister. It has demonstrated a stronger influence of the direction of the current government.

11:33All of this collectively lead us to a new reality. Iran in general is on the decline rather than on the rise in the country. And in terms of the militias, the Iran-backed militias, I mean, they did seem to operate as a state within a state. I mean, is it that their power has waned or is it that their interests have now changed? So, first of all, the Iraqi militias, there are different types of militias. all of them collectively, at least on paper, integrated into Iraq's defense about 10 years ago. They are all paid by the Iraqi government, but many of them respond to the government in Tehran rather than the government in Baghdad.

12:17So that has been a significant barrier to any development of Iraq becoming an independent actor in the region. So being paid by the government, by the country, but responding, being loyal to the capital in the neighboring state. That's the first point. The second point, let's be honest. You know, in the political vocabulary of our analysis, we don't mention that Iran has military bases inside Iraq. But these Iraqi militias have been acting as military bases and facilities for Iran over the past two decades in the country, deeply weakening the country. So what is changing at the moment? Some of the militias who have not been completely Iranian proxies, such as Sarai al-Salam belonging to Muqtada Sadr and others now are announcing their integration into the state forces, creating a new political environment that if you want to be vocal in Iraq's politics, you need to act as a political actor rather than a military actor.

13:28So all of these push the Iran-backed militias inside the country into the corner, into the margins of Iraq's politics. And just very briefly then, I mean, is this shift going to be welcomed by people, please, to reduce their dependence on Iraq? Definitely. It is a significant, it's a very popular move. But let's be honest, it requires time. It requires a lot of work from the Iraqi government to demonstrate its agency. Iran just a few months ago three months ago Iran-backed militias turned Iraq into a battlefield attacking not only the American bases in the country but also attacking its own infrastructure and bases including a lot of the attacks took place inside the Kurdistan region so all of this has been taken place with no accountability Kamran, we'll have to leave it there I'm afraid we're out of time I'm Cameron Pahlani there speaking to us from Iraqi Kurdistan.

14:28You're listening to News Out. Still to come on the programme, the animated adaptation of George Orwell's acclaimed fable Animal Farm. All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. I remember vividly reading it on the bus when I was about, I think I was either 11 or 12 years old, and it was one of the first sort of young adult books that affected me emotionally. Just the way that the animals were manipulated and lied to just really deeply sat with me. We'll hear from the actor and director of that new adaptation, Andy Serkis. That's coming up in just over five minutes. Our main headline once again, the US says it's launched another wave of strikes against targets in Iran as the struggle for control of the Strait of Hormuz intensifies.

15:18And Ukraine and the EU have agreed to scale up joint production of drones, combining European capacity with Ukrainian technological know-how.

15:31This is James Menendez with NewsHour Live from the BBC. Let's head to Australia now, where the government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese today announced plans to regulate the growing AI sector. and in particular two issues, the impact of data centres when it comes to their near insatiable thirst for water and electricity and abuse of copyright. The proposals would ban AI companies from training their models on Australian books, music and so on without the consent of artists or payment to them. Well, all this follows the government's pioneering moves to restrict access to social media by under-16s.

16:06However, as with that, there are big questions around how these AI plans will work in practice. I've been speaking to Rita Matuluniti, Associate Professor in Law at Macquarie University in Sydney. Why have the data centres become such a big issue in Australia? Yes, we have seen in Australia very strong growth of data centres. We have them in hundreds and more are planned in a few years. And a lot of them are growing in big cities like Sydney and Melbourne. and people really started getting concerned about the fact that they're taking space, of course, using electricity, which would likely to increase prices, using water resources.

16:47And as you might know, Australia is the driest continent, so we don't have that much water. And also actually taking builders, taking away from building houses, they then occupied building data centres. So there was a bit of increasing concern among communities and actually even suggestions to establish moratorium. But the prime minister took a different position and said, we will keep building them, but we will legislate. We will require them to feed electricity back into the grid. He talked about that we have a lot of solar energy, we should be using it. We have a lot of space across our big Australia, so we maybe have to think about developing them outside the cities and so on.

17:27And what about the issue of copyright? Because, I mean, countries are really struggling with this. aren't they, that AI companies are using, you know, music books and so on to train their models, but the artists aren't getting the compensation they want. I mean, how would that work under law? I mean, would it work just simply by enforcing existing copyright laws, do you think? That's indeed another very controversial question in Australia. So government so far was actually quite strong on this. And despite of a lot of lobbying from AI industry to introduce an exception like text and data mining that exists in UK and Europe, the government said, no, last year, we're not going to do that.

18:10You will have to essentially license the content. And the prime minister today again reiterated that, that they will respect the copyright industry's choices. And it's not only about remuneration, it's sort of asking their permission as well. but they didn't provide no details how it's going to work. So I think the government doesn't yet know how to make it happen. There have been proposals by Entropic, for instance, that there could be a single fund to sort of where some compensation could be paid to right holders in exchange of tax and data mine exception. But the government said we won't introduce such exceptions.

18:48So I think they see licensing as a way to go, but we yet don't know how this exactly licensing will look like. Yeah. Is it also about this Australian government's well apparent desire to take the lead globally on some of these issues? We've, of course, seen Australia introducing the social media ban for under 16s. Do you think that that is the ambition? Certainly it is. Prime Minister has highlighted that Australia wants to lead AI policy. And I think by establishing the office and that national framework, they claim to be the first country to do that. Although I'm not sure if that's exactly true.

19:25We, of course, know that EU already has an AI Act for a few years. But Prime Minister and government, I think they want to position themselves as leaders in AI policymakers and also as a very attractive jurisdiction for international investment. They highlighted that they are also working very much on AI safety together with other leading jurisdictions like UK, US, Canada, thinking seriously about how to address all the public security concerns raised by AI. So that's certainly one of the main intentions of the announcement today. Rita Matuloniti of Macquarie University in Sydney.

20:14Now Andy Serkis is best known as a master of motion capture playing Gollum in Lord of the Rings, Caesar in the Planet of the Apes series and even taking on the role of King Kong. But now he's controlling creatures in a different way by directing a new animated film version of George Orwell's Animal Farm. We'll betire any children who decide to watch this instead of reading the book for school because there are plenty of changes. There's a new protagonist piglet called Lucky, this time modern autocracies are the target rather than communism. And there's even a third act, complete with happy ending.

20:48As you can imagine, not everyone is happy. Our entertainment correspondent, Colin Patterson, has been speaking to Andy Serkis. All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. The new frenetic and ferociously family-friendly big-screen animated version of Animal Farm, directed by Andy Serkis. This is our home. George Orwell's book made a huge impression on him as a child. I remember vividly reading it on the 273 bus to Ealing from my home in Ryslip when I was about, I think I was either 11 or 12 years old. And it was one of the first sort of young adult books that affected me emotionally.

21:29Just the way that the animals were manipulated and lied to just really deeply sat with me. And in 2011, filming an escape scene in Rise of the Planet of the Apes reminded him of Animal Farm and inspired him to make his own version. Do you want to be food or do you want freedom? It just took a long time. 15 years ago was when you first got this idea. we've had seven prime ministers since then things have changed they have because truth as a value that we all esteem seems to have vanished and that is such a central part of Orwell's storytelling we weren't about to set about making a version of Animal Farm that was a history lesson about Russia and we talked to the Orwell estate and it was what would he be wanting to express now where would his political targets be?

22:22Ah, so cute! Activate cute eyes. I'd rather gouge them out. Some people won't like it, and quite frankly, part of Orwell, the nature of Orwell, was being someone who stirs it up, who makes people think and gets people talking. And the ideal for us, for this, was to have a debate between young and old. I want people to have an opinion of a film they've seen, not a film they've heard about. That's the thing that hurts. It's when people don't go and see a film because of all the prejudging of a movie. And the rest of the world may have a completely different opinion to a US box office figure, which I'm pretty certain will be the case, actually.

23:01Andy Serkis was speaking from New Zealand, where he is directing and starring in the new Lord of the Rings film, The Hunt for Gollum. Anya Taylor-Joy will play the elf Seren, alongside Kate Winslet, Leo Woodall and Jamie Dornan, which prompted a question. Lord of the Rings, why are the casts so white? I mean, Tolkien himself was influenced a lot by Norse mythology. There's a lot of that feeling. The Shire feels very, very much like a very, very white. You know, they're not very concerned about what goes on beyond the borders of the Shire, but they know they don't want people coming in. Yes, there have been criticisms.

23:41This particular film is somewhat acknowledging that, but I don't think we will be doing a politically correct casting for the sake of casting and ticking boxes version of the film. So it's where relevant, basically. And with that, it was time for Andy Serkis to go and continue to direct the 10th biggest film franchise in history, Just Another Day on the Farm.

24:13Our entertainment correspondent Colin Patterson talking there to Andy Serkis. You're listening to News Air from the BBC. Do stay with us. Lots more coming up in the second half of the programme.

24:33How did the United States build the largest soft power empire in the world with the help of some tiny metal objects. I'm Tristan Redmond, one of the hosts of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. To mark 250 years of the United States, we speak to Roman Mars of 99 % invisible. This soft power, this influence was an incredible invention. For more, listen to the Global Story on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

25:08Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg all have in common. They'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. 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.

25:42What 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.

25:59Welcome back to News Hour. Now, is the US about to end the practice of moving its clocks forward by an hour in spring? and back again in autumn. On Tuesday, the US House of Representatives voted to make daylight saving time, as it's called permanent, by passing the Sunshine Protection Act with bipartisan support. It still has to get past the Senate, though, and it has plenty of opponents. Let's speak to Dr Beth Mallow, Professor of Neurology and Paediatrics at Vanderbilt Health and also a sleep specialist. Dr Mallow, welcome to NewsHour. You don't like this plan, do you? No, I think it's the wrong decision from a health perspective.