Afternoon Briefing Monday 16th June

0:00Ever wondered if you have what it takes to be a Formula One driver? I'm Andy Jay and in our final episode of The Business of F1, 2009 world champion Jenson Button shares his insights from the cockpit. How is trust built within a team? How do you cultivate the resilience required to make race-winning decisions at speed? Find out what business can learn from the high pressure of the track by listening to The Business of Formula One, brought to you by PwC.

0:29Welcome to the Times afternoon briefing on Monday the 16th of June. Iran's foreign ministry says it's preparing to withdraw from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The document from 1970 aims to prevent the spread of the weapons. Meanwhile, eight people have been killed in Israel after multiple strikes by Iran overnight. Israel's been targeting Iranian missile sites. There are concerns that Iran is getting close to weapons-grade enriched uranium. Mohamed Marandi is a professor at the University of Tehran. He's told Times Radio that uranium is a negotiating tactic. 60 % enriched uranium is leverage because at the negotiating table, the United States, which has imposed maximum pressure sanctions on ordinary Iranians, women and children, preventing food from getting into the country, medicine from getting into the country, all supplies.

1:20That's the objective, to strangle ordinary people, like in Cuba and elsewhere. So the 60 % enriched uranium is leverage. Fleur Hassan Nahum is an Israeli special envoy and former deputy mayor of Jerusalem. She's told Times Radio her country had to act. We are fighting a war against the dark forces of Islamic fundamentalism that is going to be a threat to the world and we're doing this alone. We have some defence support from the United States and, you know, ultimately we have an existential threat. People who have said many times they're going to wipe us off the map and have been building weapons of mass destruction in order to do it.

2:00The National Crime Agency is to carry out a nationwide operation targeting people who've sexually exploited children. Baroness Casey's findings on grooming gangs will be announced this afternoon. The Prime Minister says he now backs the National Inquiry after saying he was against one earlier in the year. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp has told Times Radio he needs to apologise. We saw what Keir Starmer really thinks about this when this was first put to him in January and he smeared campaigners and people like me as being jumping on a far right bandwagon. That's what he said when we called for that inquiry in January and now here we are six Six months later, he agrees with us.

2:38So I hope Keir Starmer will be apologising for smearing campaigners as, quote, far right. But Treasury Minister Emma Reynolds has told Times Radio that is just political point scoring. There was vile abuse online targeted at Jess Phillips and others, and we were right to call that out. But we are also right to listen to the rapid review from Louise Casey and do what's right by the victims. It's the victims that we need to put at the centre of this debate, not political point scoring. And there's going to be a female head of MI6 in real life, not just in the James Bond movies. Blaise Matroweli will take charge of Britain's foreign intelligence agency in the autumn.

3:22And you can follow The Times News Briefing on Spotify and listen live to Times Radio online.

3:31Ever wondered if you have what it takes to be a Formula One driver? I'm Andy Jay and in our final episode of the Business of F1, 2009 world champion Jenson Button shares his insights from the cockpit. How is trust built within a team? How do you cultivate the resilience required to make race winning decisions at speed? Find out what business can learn from the high pressure of the track by listening to the Business of Formula One brought to you by PwC.