Did the US carry out war crimes in Iran?

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All episodes available now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Nothing personal. Just business. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Celia Hatten, and in the early hours of Friday, the 18th of September, these are our main stories. Washington has rejected a UN report alleging the U.S. military may have committed war crimes in the early days of the war on Iran. NATO Secretary General tells us why he thinks Russia's Vladimir Putin is becoming increasingly desperate over Ukraine. And new research explains why caffeine affects some people more than others. Also in this podcast, it is largely drawn in black ink and decorated in reds and oranges and yellow, sort of burnt colors, if you will. A manuscript telling the story of the Aztecs returns to Mexico after more than 180 years. We'll begin with a new report from the United Nations that's getting a lot of attention. Investigators with the UN Human Rights Council say there are reasonable grounds to believe that the United States carried out war crimes in the early days of its war on Iran. A fact-finding mission looked at two deadly missile strikes in February that killed more than 170 people, one on a primary school in the southern town of Manab. Another airstrike hit a sports complex in the town of Lamar, also in the south. The Iranian authorities were also mentioned by UN investigators to Iran's accused of committing crimes against humanity during its violent repression of anti-government protests that started last December. Iran has previously denied wrongdoing, though it's yet to say anything about this latest report. As we'll hear in a moment, the US has responded. Tom Bateman is our State Department correspondent in Washington. He told me more about the findings, starting with that strike on the primary school in Manab. What this UN fact-finding mission says is that it believes like much of the reporting the US has backed as well, that there was a targeting database error. Basically, the Americans were using out of date information. It suggests about the school building itself, in effect, believing that it was still a part of a military compound, which it wasn't and hadn't been for many years. So the report says this amounted to more than mere negligence, going on to say that the US acted recklessly, and this gave the fact-finding mission reasonable grounds to believe the US committed a war crime under international law. So that's as related to Manab. It then goes on to talk about the strike on a sports centre in Lamur, in Iran, the same day which killed 22 civilians, also describing this as indiscriminate, and therefore saying that they believed that too constituted a war crime. And Tom, I understand there's already been a response from the US State Department. Well, the State Department has put out a response to this, because the fact-finding mission is appointed by the UN's Human Rights Council. The US has long had an issue with the Human Rights Council, it withdrew from the council itself some time ago, and says in response to this report that the council pushes, it says, "anti-American rhetoric and anti-semitism all the while appeasing repressive regimes". As such, say the Americans, we do not give credibility to the findings of this report. Interesting, because the State Department mentions anti-American rhetoric, but we should note that this UN report also criticised Iran's actions as well. Can you take us through that? Absolutely. I mean, this report is in two parts, and actually this fact-finding mission was established in 2022, and it was largely to look at human rights abuses in Iran, carried out by the regime. And so there is a very lengthy section on the uprising in the protest that took place at the very end of last year, the late December into the New Year, which the report says involved a widespread and systematic attack by the Iranian authorities against their own civilians. It talks about this having amounted to crimes against humanity and the view of the fact-finding mission, and goes into some detail about what took place involving unlawful killings, torture, arbitrary detention, and enforced disappearances. It talks about the official death toll that the Iranians had said had been killed in these clashes of more than 3,000 people. It says that the actual death toll was likely to be far higher than that official figure, and also they're saying, including at least 221 children reportedly killed some of those as young as two years old. Tom, I wonder our listeners might be thinking, "Well, what next for these findings, then? If human rights experts at the UN say they're grounds to believe the U.S. committed war crimes and that the Iranians committed crimes against humanity, what can be done with those accusations?" Well, largely because of the country's involved, these things really reach an end point with these reports because, for example, as far as the U.S. is concerned, I mean, the U.S. has largely tried to disempower multilateral institutions that have the ability to investigate and also to adjudicate, basically, in instances where countries themselves won't do that. You know, these reports are significant because they put this information and these findings into the public domain, but in terms of any further action, well, that I think is likely to be extremely limited if not non-existent. But what about the court of public opinion? I mean, this comes at a time when the U.S. war with Iran is relatively unpopular with American voters. Can the Trump administration brush off accusations of war crimes so easily? Well, I think particularly over the issue of the Manab school strike, it is something that has received coverage within the U.S. and across the U.S. media. What has been very notable about that is the degree to which the Pentagon under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has simply declined to say anything beyond its investigating and there has not been any publication of any findings and it was widely understood that there was an initial probe that found it likely that U.S. missile, a Tomahawk missile, was the cause of the strike on the school in the first place. But the Trump administration is simply not wanted to talk about these things and I think, you know, that has been noted among the public, but I think largely what the opinion polling suggests is that for Americans at the moment in the run-ups of the midterm elections, this war is unpopular, but the doorstep issues for Americans are because that has led to a rise in the price of gasoline and petrol and that has made Mr. Trump unpopular. Beyond that, he had said, you know, that he gained election on the basis of not taking America into what he and others are called forever wars, these kind of foreign entanglements. For parts even of his own base, he felt pretty aghast that he then appears to have done that in their view, that will cause him and he's causing him some problems in terms of the perception of his foreign policy. Tom Beatman in Washington. On Thursday, Siren sounded in Eastern Poland, military aircraft were scrambled, and two airports temporarily suspended flights after Russian strikes on Ukraine landed close to the Polish border. This is just the latest example of Russian military activity edging closer to NATO territory. Speaking to the BBC's Chris Mason, NATO's Secretary General, Mark Ruta, said this all points towards an increasingly rattled Vladimir Putin. It's a clear example of increasingly reckless behavior by Russia and its president, but also evidence of him being increasingly desperate. Should NATO intercept Russian drones that are over Ukrainian territory if they are approaching a NATO border? There is a limit to what I can in-go into in a public interview, but I can assure you we do everything to make sure that NATO stays safe, NATO territory stays safe, that we can defend every insult that's happening. Again, I can never get into those operational details. I was told afterwards drones were not at least yet intercepted by NATO while still over Ukraine. How worried are you? How worried should we all be that Russia will attack or invade a NATO country in the coming years? If you are willing to sacrifice 1.2 million of your own people in this crazy, unprovoked fight, let's not be naive about what Putin could do, but we are stronger. I mean, we are stronger. It could happen in the coming years. I'm so think so because we are strong, so strong that he will not try. But we have to make sure of is that we are as strong in 2, 3, 5 years from now. Cato Secretary General Mark Ruta speaking to Chris Mason. Now, are you someone who needs a cup of coffee in the morning to get going, but if you have a coffee after 3pm, you're up all night. Why does caffeine make some people buzz and others barely notice its effects? Our house reporter has been looking into this, but we also ask listeners to send us voice messages about their coffee drinking. There's two from Egypt, and then Tenerife. I do like coffee and I'm a little bit of a coffee addict. In Egypt, for instance, I'm always like to have two to three cups, which is a lot, and also changed with the age, because in the past, you know, it didn't really feel anything, but now I'm feeling the caffeine, maybe because of the consumption has increased. Most everybody takes a cup of coffee in the morning with the breakfast. It is very important because it is a stimulant to have energy and to finish waking up. As I mentioned, our health reporter Jim Reed has been investigating coffee and caffeine. He spoke to James Reynolds and began by telling him who drinks the most coffee. These figures are from the international coffee organisation, so take that as you will. Two billion cups a day is the figure. When you think there's only eight billion people in the world, it's an awful lot of coffee. I think it works out at around 26,000 cups a second that I can shoot around the world, in terms of which countries. So actually, when you look at the figures, Scandinavia and Northern Europe tops the list. So Finland is number one, four cups of coffee a day, a day on average in Finland, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, then you get the other big European countries, the UK, Germany, France, come down a bit, a little bit further down the list, the USA, Asian countries tend to be much lower. There are exceptions, but, you know, Japan, China, much lower in coffee consumption partly because there's more of a culture of tea drinking in large parts of Asia. So let's get to one of the points of the story. Coffee effect people differently, and clearly it does, looking at the different personalities in this newsroom, if so, how? Interesting thing with caffeine is it's a very weird drug for that reason. I spoke to researchers in Northwestern University in Chicago about this, they've done some work pretty recently, and a lot depends on how quickly you can metabolise or break down that coffee in your body, and that can take from six hours to 20 hours depending on the individual. The interesting thing with caffeine is it's not ever, it doesn't give you more energy. All it is doing is that there's a chemical that builds up in your brain all day called adenosine that makes you feel more sleepy, and all the caffeine is doing is blocking that chemical coming through. So it's not giving you really a boost in that sense, it's just stopping you being more tired. Tell us about building a intolerance. That's definitely something you can do, and this is where the body James is pretty amazing. So if you drink coffee over time, your brain can actually form more of the receptors that let that tiredness chemical adenosine get through. So caffeine seems to have less of an effect. Then if you suddenly sort of give up coffee for a couple of weeks, your brain can actually revert very quickly just in a matter of days or weeks to its normal state. Then you suddenly have a coffee again after a period of not drinking for a couple of weeks, and that is when it can really hit you because your brain and your body's just not used to it. So it's amazing how quickly your body can adapt to these things. How much is the limit? I mean, do people in Finland are they getting close to that limit? They're on four cups of coffee a day. It's pretty difficult because there's no great answer to that. It does depend on individuals. The exception is pregnant women because there is pretty decent evidence that intake of caffeine can be linked to low birth weight, other complications. So there the advice is for most health regulators, 200 milligrams of caffeine a day, that's about the same as two cups of filter coffee. The healthy adults, the advice again from regulators, anything under four cups of filter coffee, you're pretty safe. To be honest, you only get to really have a major health problem if you consume a lot more caffeine, and that is unlikely with coffee because you'll simply get jittery and stop drinking it. It is possible though, recently there's been a big fad for kind of caffeine powders and supplements, and that's where you can get in trouble because it's difficult to regulate how much you're taking in, and you can overdose on those and they have been, you know, handful, not very many, but handful of deaths connected with that in some European countries. So for the most part, completely safe, but in isolation and rare cases, it can be quite dangerous. Health reporter Jim Reed. His focus now on a manuscript from the 16th century, which tells the story of what happened to the Aztec people, who lived in what's now Central and Southern Mexico. The Codex Azcaticland depicts the fall of the Aztex after the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors. It's widely considered to be among the most valuable and insightful tellings of the history of Aztex civilization. Now the Codex is going on display in Mexico after more than 180 years abroad. It had been held in France since 1898, and it had already spent decades outside Mexico before that. Camila Townsend told Paul Henley about the Codex. She's a professor of history at Rutgers University in the U.S., and she's a specialist on the Aztecs. The Codex Azcaticland is a really beautiful work of art, one of the loveliest of the Mexican codices. It is largely drawn in black ink and decorated in reds and oranges and yellows, sort of burnt colors, if you will, and it proceeds in a very beautiful way through their history, from the earliest legends up to the period of the arrival of the Spanish. It is illustrating all sorts of aspects of Mexica, as they call themselves Aztec history, some warlike and some times of peace. For example, just describe what the figures look like, they're fairly primitive to some modernize, aren't they? Yes. I guess you might use the word cartoon, but I don't mean cartoonish. They are two-dimensional, but suggest three-dimensional. It's clearly by artists now art or native indigenous artists who had gone to school with the friars and learned about Western perspective. Everyone has the impression that they've learned to draw Western style quite recently, and so they're mixing Western presentation of the human body with all sorts of indigenous images and artwork. They show a road with a human footprint going along the path to indicate motion. And here and there, they do stop and war with their neighbours, but also do dances, sing songs, etc. So there they are, living their lives when the Spaniards arrive. And do we know for sure that it was Aztec artists that did it, and were these pictures drawn at the time or as historical documents? We are certain that these were Aztec artists, indigenous artists, because the imagery is so loaded with native iconography with stories that the Spaniards didn't even know. There would be no way for a Spanish person really to have created this piece of work in the colonial era. This is based on legends and history that were passed orally amongst the Nauas. And we know these stories because they sometimes stopped and wrote them down in their own language for each other. So the codex is coming home. How big a deal is that? It's a very big deal. The Mexicans know, and some level they all know, what a grand history they have, the extraordinary nature of the civilizations that existed in Mexico before the conquest. But very few of them have the time, energy resources to go and get their PhDs in this subject, so they don't know much about it. And of course, making matters worse, much of their heritage was taken from them literally removed from the country largely by the French, although some by English and Americans. Is there implied criticism of the Spanish, which wouldn't be surprising given that they were the invaders, the killers? The Spaniards appear not to good advantage on several occasions. They are violent, the people, even women and children are having their limbs cut off. The very last page shows friars involved in torturing indigenous people who are tied to wooden sticks. The Milletownsend. Still to come in this podcast? For me it's amazing that there is still new species waiting to be discovered, so we don't have to go to a volcano or an island or deep in the sea. We have it around us. A new type of cat hiding in plain sight in Bolivia. Even pot music ever be apolitical, I'm Tristan Redmond, and I'm Asma Khalid, and together we host the global story podcast from the BBC. One of the most successful pop stars in the world, Ed Sheeran, is facing the biggest controversy of his career because the rapper Macklemore has been dropped from poor after he made pro-Palestinian comments on stage. They're a successful business, but for their victims, that causes unbelievable chaos and puts a target on the hackers' backs. Nothing personal. - Just business. - Hey, it's Roman Mars, host of the 100 Object Series. This week, I'm joined by former Mythbuster Adam Savage to dial into the story of the bell telephone and invention that completely transformed the way we communicate. We'll uncover the history behind a very specific beloved model of the telephone, how it changed the world and the story behind when the most influential objects ever created. Listen to 100 objects on the 99% of visible feed, wherever you get your podcasts. (gentle music) I'm Chris, even overtake from the Global Jigsaw Podcast from the BBC, where we explore serious struggle for justice. The new authorities seek to hold figures of the Assad regime accountable for their crimes, but many of them remain beyond the reach of Syrian courts. We ask, how can victims find redress? The Global Jigsaw looks at the world through the lens of its media. Find us wherever you get your BBC podcasts. (gentle music) This is the Global News Podcast. A major new study has found that since 1979, more than 11 trillion tons of ice has melted into the oceans from ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. And researchers say all that melted water has led to an average sea level rise of three centimeters. That might not sound like a lot, but that water is distributed unevenly across the planet. And it means tens of millions of people in coastal communities face increased risks from flooding. And as the climate continues to warm, the rate of melting could accelerate, raising sea levels even higher. India's Otasaka, an ice scientist at Northumbria, University in England, led the research. 11.3 trillion tons of ice is a very large amount of ice. And if you convert that to sea level rise equivalent, that's three centimeters. We know that for every centimeters of sea level rise, about two to three billion people around the planet are put at further risk of annual coastal flooding. So that's obviously something that's very important and we really need to keep on tracking ice sheet melting. - Can you take us through that a little bit? 'Cause when I think about three centimeters of water rising, it doesn't sound like much. Why does it affect so many people around the world? How does that work? So here we're talking about three centimeters of global mean sea level. So that's really when you protect all of the water that's being released by the ice sheet when they melt onto the planet. And because of the effect of gravity, it's not redistributed uniformly across the world. So it doesn't mean that every way to rise by three centimeters, there will be areas around the planet where it's going to be much more than three centimeters. And some area, for instance, very close to the ice sheet, well, it will actually be a sea level four. - I see, okay. So tell us more about the report and how you collected the data in it. How can we be sure it's accurate? - Yes, we have used satellite data from 27 different satellite missions. We are tracking how much ice the ice sheets in greener than Antarctica are losing from year to year. And now we have extended the satellite data record backwards in time to the 1970s. And this really confirms that ice loss started around the 1990s and they have increased since then. In fact, we found that the pace of ice loss increased by a factor four between the 1980s and 2010s. - So how should we think about all of this then? The findings, what are the long-term consequences for sea levels if this trend continues and actually speeds up as you've indicated? - There's a really clear long-term trend during that glaciers are moving faster into the ocean. If we cross certain warming thresholds, then we could have even higher sea level rise than currently planned for. So for instance, by 2100 depending on the warming scenarios that we're going to follow, in a low emission, we have a total sea level that could be between 28 to 55 centimeters. But then if you look at high emission scenarios, then by the end of the century, that's around two meters. And then if you look at even a bit longer time scale by 2300, 15 meter sea level rise cannot be ruled out. - Wow, I mean, Inez, as you're talking, those numbers that you're throwing out there are just sound quite mind-boggling. - Yeah, and it will have really a lot of implications for coastal communities around the world because we know that about 40% of the global population are living in coastal areas. So it's pretty sure that we urgently need to develop plans for protecting our coastal communities from the impact of ice melting. - Ice scientists Inez Otasaka. Scientists have discovered a new species of wild cat hiding in plain sight in the forests of Bolivia. The small feline with leopard-like spots was long mistaken for another kind of tiger cat, which is normally found in Brazil until DNA testing revealed the Bolivian cat was a species all of its own. Helen Briggs tells us more. The story starts with a cat nicknamed "Tegrino" living at a rescue sanctuary in Bolivia. Researchers noted something unusual about his markings, but since tiger cats have very similar spots and stripes, even experts can struggle to tell them apart. To solve the mystery, the scientists compared DNA from living tiger cats with samples from museum collections. And the results show that Tegrino belongs to a distinct species, now named Leopardus Tulcaio, is the only known living tiger cat of his kind, though there are thought to be more living wild in the forests. Dr. Peola Nogales Asgaroon says it shows how much we still have left to discover. - For me, it's amazing that there is still new species waiting to be discovered, so we don't have to go to a volcano or an island or deep in the sea. The researchers say this is only the first step they need to find how many of these tiger cats exist and how to protect them. Helen Briggs. One of Syria's biggest stars, the singer Asala, has performed in the capital Damascus on her first return to the country for 15 years. Asala openly expressed her fierce opposition to the regime of Bashar al-Assad, as the uprising against his rule began. She was not based in Syria at the time, but her opposition led to what was effectively a ban on her return to the country. Our Middle East analyst Sebastian Usher told Pete Ross more about her. - These are big, big stars, the Arab female pop singers. And she's one of the biggest, I mean, she's known by one name, Asala. I mean, there you go, that's a big thing, isn't it? She has an extraordinary voice. She's a little different in her sound from a lot of the other big Arab singers. She's sounded a little bit the same. She's got a special timbre to her. - And she has been out of Syria for quite some time now. What were the circumstances that led to her leaving the country? - Before the uprising began in 2011, she was able to come and go to Syria. That stopped when the uprising began against Asad. He tried to put it down and she spoke out against it. And one of her songs became one of those sounds but the revolution as it was seen by the people with the uprising at the time kind of played and sang along too. So she wasn't welcome back in Syria. She even faced trouble when she was passing through Bayward Airport. Bayward Airport has been certain times, pretty much under the control of Hasbulla, which obviously was back in present Asad. That gives a sense of how the tentacles, the tentacles of Asad, regime was reaching out to her. So this is a big moment. She's been in Damascus for the past couple of days and she'll play a couple more concerts. But there's been moments kind of emotional significance for she needs to be back. One particular one is her father was a very well-known Ud player. And I don't know if this was set up, stage managed, but she went into the old suit, the old market in Damascus. And there was a guy there, an antique shop. He said, "I've got something for you." And it was the Ud that her father played, which she hasn't seen for all those years. Instead, I've kept a few for 13 years. So that's the kind of thing that kind of points to this sort of artistic and cultural renewal that's kind of perhaps happening in Syria. But it's not all that though, is it? As you can imagine, the culture ministry is very much selling this as being part of that renewal. And the more big names you can bring back. But it's part of also trying to make Syria seem like a normal country again. They want people to go back. They want tourism. But it's not all roses for her being there. One of the concerns when the new leadership took over was their roots in jihadism and extreme Islamic ideology. People feared alcohol, be banned, singing, dancing, all that kind of thing. It hasn't happened to any major-- it hasn't happened to some degree. And so you do have voices that are speaking out against her being there. Another major thing the Syrian government has been trying to do as new leadership is to bring back a sense of unity to Syria, the fractured country. And Asala plays into this very well, because her latest album is called The Syrian Album. You even hear her when she sings. She sings a different dialects. Her voice changes as a kind of text or two of the changes, according to those regions. So she is trying to represent a sense, both personally, her reconnection with those roots, but potentially a model of the Syria to follow. Sebastian Asher. And finally, the late Dolly Parton has been recognized with a posthumous lifetime achievement award after her death last month, aged 80, at the Americana Music Honored. and awards in Nashville on Wednesday. She was remembered for her songwriting and pure mountain voice, as well as her imagination library book giving initiative and her funding of COVID vaccine research. The award was obviously planned some time ago, because midway through the ceremony, there was a gasp in the audience when organizers played a video message from Dulley Parton, recorded before her death, accepting the Lifetime Achievement Prize. That's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag #globalnewspod. And don't forget our sister podcast, The Global Story, which goes in depth and beyond the headlines on one big story. This edition of The Global News podcast was mixed by Johnny Hall, and the producer was Rebecca Wood. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Celia Hatten. Until next time, goodbye. Pop music ever be apolitical. I'm Tristan Redmond. And I'm Asma Khalid, and together we host The Global Story podcast from The BBC. Now all of Sheeran's supporting acts have dropped out too. For more, listen to the global story on BBC.com or wherever you get your pots.