Trump's threat to end Iranian civilisation

BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts Hello there, welcome to News Out from the BBC World Service. We're coming to you live from London and I'm Sean Lay. Later in the programme we're going to catch up with the Artemis II Moon mission with the former head of NASA and we'll get reaction from a British rabbi over the anti-Semitism allegations towards Yale, Kanye West as you used to be known, which has led to the singer being denied entry to the UK. But first, President Donald Trump's blood-curdling threat that a whole civilisation will die tonight, unless Iran reopens the Strait of Hormuz to international shipping, could just be social media hyperbole. Here the words are read by BBC colleague. A whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have complete and total regime change where different, smarter and less radicalised minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, who knows? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the world. 47 years of extortion, corruption and death will finally end. God bless the great people of Iran. That was President Trump's post on his true social platform early on Tuesday. In the last hour, with barely four hours until the deadline expires, came this, a plea from the Prime Minister of Pakistan who's been trying to mediate. To allow diplomacy to run its course, wrote Shaba Sharif, I earnestly request President Trump to extend the deadline for two weeks. Pakistan, in all sincerity, requests the Iranian brothers to open the state of Hummus for a corresponding period of two weeks as a good will gesture, and we also urge all warring parties to observe a ceasefire everywhere for two weeks. He says this is to give diplomacy a chance of working. The White House told the Axios news website tonight that the President was aware of the Prime Minister's appeal and would respond. Nonetheless, there is a sense of expectation across the Gulf region that something, somewhere, will happen tonight. Iran has not spoken directly of retaliation, however Iranian media has published a warning to people in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain not to cross bridges and roads. The American Embassy in Manama in Bahrain has ordered its employees to shelter in place, a vice also given to all U.S. nationals in a country which has repeatedly been struck by Iranian munitions. Kuwait has urged its population not to go out at all tonight but to shelter at home. In New York, the Iranian representative to the United Nations, Amr Said Arivani, gave this response to President Trump's ultimatum. Today is the President of the United States again resorted to language that is not only deeply responsible but profoundly alarming, declaring that, quote, the whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back, unquote. It is regrettable and alarming that while in full view of international community, the President of the United States shamelessly and brisantly issues threats to destroy all civilian infrastructure in Iran, including bridge, power plants and energy facilities by setting a deadline and openly reveals this intent to commit war crimes and crime against humanity. I'm Amr Said Arivani. Well, with the internet mostly switched off inside Iran, it's difficult to communicate with people there, but the BBC's Persian service continues to receive messages. One voice note, which has been re-voiced by a colleague of mine, gave this reaction to President Trump's threat. People don't want to live in such a fear and distress. We don't want our children to stay out of school. It's true that the majority of us never wanted the Islamic Republic. But to be honest, we also never wanted this war too. The people suffered from sanctions, which were used against them as a tool and now Trump's bomb are taking people's lives. And it's ruining these hopes and would destroy the slow progress in the country. Well, I spoke to Bahmam Qabasi, who's a reporter with the BBC's Persian service in New York, and asked him what we know about how Iranians inside the country are reacting to this extraordinary threat from President Trump. There was a notable mood shift in the last few days before this message because of the reality on the ground, which is people increasingly witnessing civilian infrastructure being hit both by Israel and United States, notably that bridge. But more importantly, the steel industry, the petrochemical industry, this is places of employment directly and indirectly of tens of thousands of Iranians. So a lot of people who very much want this regime gone and as many welcome the very first days of the strikes against the leadership started realize that not only the regime is not going, but also they are and the civilian infrastructure that they use, the sustained life is being targeted by Israel and United States. And so that obviously resulted in somewhat of a shock and also dismay and anger and growing anxiety. We're getting a lot of reports about people worrying about basically the day after and many living with anxiety in major cities because day and night, the jets are flying over, bombs are dropping, the sounds are continuing, kids are not going to school. This is a very difficult situation to be in as it is. But when the aim of this war switches from the government or is no longer limited to the government, but is expanding to a form of collective punishment, then obviously, a lot of people are very, very worried about it. So to add to injury, this message in the morning crystallized what many feared that no longer the Iranian people are seen as separate from the regime, but there are clearly targeted their identity, their country, their infrastructure, everything is now part of the target list. The heading of a bunch of bridges of the railway today was also another example of clearly Israel and United States using this dubious idea that because the government officials use the trains, we're going to hit the trains. So that has obviously changed and moved in Iran. What about Karg Island because there have been some reports of infrastructure there being targeted, of course, that's key to the oil export industry that Iran enjoys. It's the second time that they have hit Karg Island. Both times they've said they've been in the United States and in Israel that this was also military targets, not the oil installations. But we are not far from oil installations being hit because they've already been hit in the South parts, which is a major gas and oil service center there. BBC Persia's Bauman Qabasi reporting from New York. Meanwhile, Israel has been conducting strikes, having warned Iranians earlier to stay away from trains. It bombed eight rail bridges and sections of road, etc, were being quotes used by the Iranian terror regime for transporting weapons and military equipment. I've been speaking to Brigadier Mark Kimmet, a former Assistant Secretary of State for Political and Military Affairs in the US Pentagon. I asked him what the practical implications of the threatened US strikes would be. I fear more than anything else that the Iranians will reciprocate with like attacks. They're very good about calibrating their reciprocation and their response. And the impact of those attacks on our Gulf allies, I think, would be substantial. And the implication there is presumably that they would hope that those allies would bring pressure to bear and maybe doing so as we speak behind the scenes for the Trump administration to ease off on some of these threats and carrying them out? Yeah, I think that's exactly what's happening right now. They're probably telephone calls lined up on President Trump's desk from those leaders saying, enough for this reciprocal attacks, we just can't take it much longer. Our people can't take it, our infrastructure can't take it. And if they hit the desalination plants, it's a completely different game. What do you make of the concerns that have been expressed by some in the United States, that the use of the language by the President could potentially create legal difficulties for the military trying to carry out his orders? Oh, I don't think anybody really takes the President's words at their face value. There's a saying over here, you can either take him seriously or literally, but you can't do both. Now, on the other hand, as they start looking at their air-tasking orders for the next 24 hours, I think if there is not a clear understanding of those targets being within the rules of and love land warfare, I think that's when you're going to see some of the officers step back and turn in their stars. Really, it could be that serious? Depends on the target. So if that was a requirement that was imposed on me or both morally, ethically and within uniform, you don't follow illegal orders. Just on the practicalities of that then, the Israelis have an explanation for some of their targeting. I just read it out. They say, look, these are bridges, for example, and train lines that are used by the Iranian military to transfer equipment that is used in hostile X. Therefore, from their point of view, that makes it militarily a legitimate target. Could the Americans not use exactly the same argument if they are deploying attacks on civilian infrastructure, not least on the railway, since that's something that President Thomas specifically mentioned? No, certainly. There's a dual-use provision. And candidly, we saw that happen in places such as Iraq. I mean, if you've got a terrorist firing from a mosque, that mosque loses its protected status and you can fire on it. The dual-use provision, and if somebody gave me an order for a dual-use attack, I don't think I'd have much problems with that. But when you have purely civilian targets, hospitals, so on and so forth, that's where you draw the line. What do you think the Trump administration hopes to achieve through striking infrastructure in this way? It hasn't so far in this operation, and it's been going on for more than a month, managed to get the Iranians to submit, to obey the demands that variously made, for example, of the nuclear program on ending their missile program on reducing their involvement with proxies around the region. What do they think this will achieve that all those weeks of military action have not? Well, I suspect they're thinking that it's the culmination of all these attacks which would compel the better behavior out of the regime. I don't necessarily subscribe to that. My Air Force colleagues might disagree with me by pointing to NATO, the 99 bombing campaign in Serbia, but the fact remains is strategic bombing never works with the exception of that one case. So that's almost the exception that proves the rule? Oh, I agree. Well, there's the other example which is the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but that's so far away from this discussion as to be nougatory. Let me ask you very briefly, finally, in the last 20 seconds or so, what is your biggest fear about this? The reciprocal nature of the attacks. I would not want to see the Gulf allies in peril running out of water, infrastructure destroyed. That would set back that region years and years. Former US Assistant Secretary for Defense Mark Kimmett, we should just say the US State Department says Mark Rubio has spoken with the British Foreign Secretary about the importance of restoring freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz. That's after a resolution at the UN to achieve exactly that was blocked by Russia and China. This is news out. Coming up as Donald Trump's latest deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz approaches, the US President has warned an entire civilisation will die unless a deal is reached. Later in this programme, we'll hear one historian's take on Persia and its people. One of the extraordinary features of Persian civilisation is its resilience. It survived Alexander, it survived Genghis Khan, it survived Timor, it survived the attempts of various colonial powers to smash some, particularly the Russians were trying for centuries to take over great chunks of the Persian Empire. It will survive Donald Trump. I've absolutely no doubt about that, although it'll be a rough 72 hours I think ahead. Our other headlines Russia and China, vetoed a UN Security Council resolution aimed at securing the Strait of Hormuz. And the US Vice President, JD Vance, has been trying to bolster the Hungarian Prime Minister's election campaign ahead of Sunday's vote. This is Sean Lay with News Out Live from the BBC in London. Yay, the artist formerly known as Kanye West has been blocked from entering the UK, and a festival he was to headline has been scrapped. The wireless festival invited the rapper to give three performances in London in July. The organisers did so, knowing that he had recorded a song last year called Heil Hitler, sold merchandising featuring the swastika symbol of the Nazis, and had been accused of anti-Semitism. As the rows escalated on Tuesday, Yay himself offered to meet members of Britain's Jewish community, writing, I know words aren't enough, I'll have to show change through my actions, adding, if you're open, I'm here. The Board of Deputies of British Jews said it would do so, but only if Yay's concerts were cancelled first. In the event that decision was taken out of the organisers' hand, when the Home Office, the British Interior Ministry, declared Yay, formerly Kanye West, would be denied entry to the UK. The festival was then cancelled. Prime Minister Sikir Starma said Yay should never have been invited in the first place. Well, earlier I spoke to a senior British rabbi, Dr Jonathan Romain, and asked him what he made of the singer being barred and the festival being cancelled. Well, I felt rather divided, to be honest, because half pleased and half sorry. The pleased bit was because actually, what he has said about Jews is pretty vile, and if he said that about black people or Asian or African people, there'd just be no question about not letting him into the country. And it's not just what he said, it's the context, because at the moment there is quite rising level of antisemitism, and therefore his remarks are even more toxic and can inflame an already difficult situation. Plus, words and songs can lead to actions, and only last week we saw the torching of three ambulances in North London, and in September in Manchester, in the north of the country, there were two people killed because of an attack on a synagogue. So it's not just a matter of, you know, do you like his music or his sentiments? This is really quite a dangerous person in many ways. However, I was sorry that he wasn't offered the opportunity, maybe to sort of remedy the situation, and the British government didn't say to him, look, you can come, but we want you to do two things. Firstly, to agree to a before your concerts, I think three nights he's doing, to read out a prepared text saying that you apologize, that you recant of your views, and that you condemn antisemitism, and it's just the same as racism, and anyone who's anti-racism should also be antisemitism, and that he should do that, but not just say it because that's not enough, but also to maybe donate part of his earnings from those concerts to a suitable charity. And that way, it's not so much the money, but the message, the message it gives to all those in the concert arena, but also those listening in and online who respect him, who like his music, but who may be sort of influenced by his views, and this way it could have turned a very unpleasant situation into a positive one. Right, and that hasn't happened, notwithstanding that I think Ye, as he's known Kanye West, said that he would be willing to meet members of the British Jewish community to kind of, I guess, repeat the apology he reported he made in November last year when he held a meeting with Rabbi Yoshio Yosef Pinto. In the light of the situation we're in now, what about the argument that in some ways he is, he can't retract what is already out there, but he can make some kind of commitment that these are not his real views. I mean, he is suggestive, for example, that this is a consequence of his bipolar disorder. He said, I've lost touch with reality, I regret him and deeply mortified by my actions in that state. Well, yes, and one can understand that he does suffer from bipolar, but bipolar doesn't last for three or four years. You know, there are spurts of a day, maybe a few days, even in a couple of weeks, but this has been an ongoing theme of his anti-Semitism, and it's only now that he's suddenly said when there's a chance of him being banned, in fact, has been banned from Britain, that he suddenly came up with this offer. And even if he wasn't banned, just meeting with a few Jewish leaders in private is not enough. He would have had to have a very public statement to show that he really had changed his life. And the other problem, of course, is that he's got formed. In the previous year, I think 2022, he made his anti-Semitic comments, then he issued apology in 23, and now again he made his anti-Semitic comments. So, in other words, he's apologized and then he relayed on his apology, and we drew it. He actually withdrew his apology. So this is a very unstable character, and we would have needed a really proper, solid commitment from him to make his visit more acceptable. Can we just pause a moment to hear from Hadley Freeman. She's a Jewish author and a columnist with the newspaper The Sunday Times. This is what she said on British radio to the BBC, just after the announcement that Kanye West was indeed going to be banned from coming to the UK. I'm always of the view that artists should be allowed to play, that banning art is not very helpful, but I understand the view of my fellow Jews that they think this is too sensitive. He's playing his extremely extensive back catalogue, which does mean a lot to millions of people around the world. Having a concert at Wireless Festival is different in terms of providing a platform than say if the Oxford Union had invited him on to express his views. Him singing songs from 20 years ago is not him defending Hyal Hitler at a student union. I understand some people will not see that distinction, but I do see that distinction, and I think we can separate art from artists, particularly when this artist is so mentally unwell. That was Hadley Freeman talking a little earlier today. Dr Jonathan, do you think it's possible to separate art and the opinions of the artist? Yes, I do. One does have to be nuanced in this situation, and there are many Jews, for instance, who love the music of Wagner, but disapprove of his politics. Similarly, I found Raoul Dahl, a quite unpleasant character, and he also said some very anti-Semitic things, but I didn't stop reading his stories to my children when they were young because I didn't want to deny them from actually some first-rate stories and why shouldn't they enjoy them. So you do have to be nuanced, but there's a difference between enjoying the art of someone and actually promoting it and headlining it and giving them a platform. So if Raoul Dahl had been doing a kind of a public reading of his stories, you wouldn't have gone along to that event. Exactly right. It was okay for me to read the stories, but I certainly wouldn't have taken my children to see him and meet him. But where does that leave with somebody like Kanye West? Because let's say much of his music is not anti-Semitic, it doesn't deal with any issues of that kind at all. If we leave aside the record like Heil Hitler, which is profoundly and deeply offensive, is it not possible to enjoy his music and his performances and all the other tracks that he's performed so successfully? I mean, he's hugely popular. By all accounts, the wireless website was crashing with a number of people who wanted to get tickets to one of his three performances. Oh yes, and I'm certainly happy to admit he's a musical genius and he's been highly influential. But the trouble is when you're in that position, a very privileged position, and you can influence people, not just in front of you in the arena, but online, worldwide, then you have to be very careful as to what you say. And if he's still saying some very unpleasant things about Jews, about anybody, then I don't think he has a right to be platformed if he's still promoting them and he's not publicly recanting. Could you ever imagine a situation in which he would go and hear him perform? I do believe in second chances. I do believe in people sort of saying, oops, I made a mistake in starting over again. And if he was to do that publicly and also followed up with some kind of positive action that showed he meant it, then why not? That was Rabbi Jonathan Romain talking to me about the announcement. Yay, the artist formerly known as Kanye West has been barred from entering the UK to perform at a festival in London in July. The wireless festival has now been cancelled. The organisers say all those with tickets will be constantly compensated. You are listening to news out from the BBC World Service. We will be back in just a minute. So do please stay with us. Welcome back to News Hour. The US Vice President JD Vance is pulling out all the stops in trying to persuade Hungarians to re-elect Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister since 2010, this weekend. Speaking in front of an audience in Budapest on Tuesday, Vice President Vance warned Hungarians not to listen to, in his words, the bureaucrats in Brussels. I see that those who hate Europe the most, who hate its borders, its energy independence, the people who hate its Christian heritage, they hate one man above all others, and his name is Viktor Orbán, and if they hate him, it means he's on your side. The they includes the party founded by Peter Magier after he left Viktor Orbán's party for Desh. Mr Magier and his new Tizor party campaign against state corruption, and that appears to resonate with voters. His is the most serious electoral challenge Prime Minister Orbán has faced. Ivan Najji is a Hungarian political journalist currently working for the Columbia Journalism Review. And I asked Ivan how important the visit is for Orbán's campaign. It is a visit that Viktor Orbán really wanted to happen. However, if there's another visit here that Orbán wanted to happen more, and that is meeting with Trump in Budapest, which was floated for a long time, and it never, never happened. It's Vance who came to visit instead of Trump. And that, I think, kind of signals from the US side the significance of this. You know, if it was an operation to save Orbán, I'm pretty sure that Trump would have come now. In terms of if it's going to change anything in the grand scheme of things and running up to the elections on Sunday, I am very much skeptical about that. And the reason I'm skeptical is that this is virtually a referendum on the 16 years of governance that Viktor Orbán has had at top of this country. Where is this election going to be won and lost then? For Orbán, this election can be won by holding together whatever he has left of his camp. Fidesz's supporters have historically been really, really strong and connected. And when it came to election day, their mobilisation has been fantastic. Fidesz has always known precisely where to find their voters, who to mobilise and which constituencies to win to get a two-thirds majority in parliament. Over the past couple of years, we've seen this fading as we've seen the rise of a Putin challenger in the face of Peter Magyar. Let me then ask you one other question on the Vance visit. How big a deal would it be for the United States to lose Viktor Orbán, to lose that ally in Hungary, given that his worldview seems to echo that of President Trump? It would be a large loss on an ideological sense and a very, very tiny loss in a practical sense. If we look at the weight of Hungary in international politics, it's really insignificant. Hungary is one of the poorest countries in the European Union, one of the smaller economies in the European Union, a bloc that Trump is actually opposed to. So if you look at it from that way, strategically, there's not much that Hungary brings to the table. And I don't think that Donald Trump would be losing sleep if he lost Viktor Orbán as an ally, because the country itself, the United States itself, would not really bleed too badly because of it. Hungarian journalist Ivan Naci. You're listening to NewsHour from the BBC with me, Sean Lay. This time yesterday, we were discussing what was likely to be an anxious 40 minutes with the crew aboard the capsule Orion as it passed behind the moon and communication with ground control would be abruptly cut off. Here's the moment when one of the crew, Christine Koch, called out to the mission team in Houston after coming back online. Houston, we have you the same and it is so great to hear from Earth again. Well, the crew has spent much of a Monday night recording impressions of what they'd seen on the other side of the moon, including this description from the pilot of the Orion capsule, Viktor Glover, of the Terminator. That's the dividing line between the illuminated and the dark hemispheres. There's just so much magic in the Terminator. The islands of light, the valleys that would look like black holes, you'd fall straight to the center of the moon. If you stepped in some of those, it's just so visually captivating that the Terminator is the most striking thing that I've seen so far. And Viktor Glover was also recording during a solar eclipse. It is bright and the earth shine is very distinct and it creates quite an impressive visual illusion. Wow, it's amazing. Well, Orion is now heading home. NASA expects it to return to us orbit on Friday, but where it's planned for the capsule to splash down has not been disclosed. Well, Charles Bolden was the head of NASA for seven years as an astronaut. He flew four space shuttle missions, spending a total of 680 hours in space. When I spoke to him an hour ago, I asked what has stood out for him most about the Artemis II mission. What has struck me the most has been the incredible interaction among the crew members and their interaction with the ground, particularly the science team. It's not normal in our human spaceflight that we have seen during my time with NASA, where there is much focus on the science as there has been on this particular mission. This is an example of the critical importance of science to getting humans back to the surface of the moon and then on to Mars. We can't do it without integrating science into what we have formerly considered to be human spaceflight all by itself. They go together. Right, they go together and progress comes from what they find out, what they establish. What most usefully will have come out of this mission, the Artemis II mission? Well, I think the biggest thing will be the knowledge of the backside of the moon, the far side of the moon that we just did not have prior to this mission. The thing that's been unique about this, we've had other crews who have seen parts of the far side of the moon. The Apollo 13 crew, for example, had, if I'm not mistaken, had a daylight pass, but they were so much closer to the surface that they didn't have the view of the whole ball. It would be like flying on the International Space Station today or flying in the space shuttle throughout the entirety of the life of the space shuttle program. We never saw the little ball because we were too close to Earth. My flight, when we deployed the Hubble Space Telescope, we saw a little bit more than half of the ball at one time because we were so high. We were 600 kilometers out in space. But this crew was at 4,000, almost a little bit more than 4,000 miles away from the surface of the moon. So they saw the entire disc, the entire ball, and in fact, they had the spectacular view of the solar eclipse when the moon passed between them and the sun. It completely blotted out the sun for them and gave them this sun glow. There is a name for it, and I forget what it is, but like a halo around the moon where the sun's light was sneaking around the edges of the moon. These are emotionally moving moments for astronauts. They must be. They must be part of this very small special number of people who have seen the Earth from up there, looking back on the world of their birth and the world that gave them life. I wonder from your perspective, having been an astronaut yourself from 1981, did you share in their sense of perhaps uncertainty when that 40 minutes was slowly ticking away, the 40 minutes when you knew that they could hear nothing apart from what was inside their capsule? Everybody makes... I think people misunderstand what's really happening for the crew. That's a good thing to have 40 minutes where the ground cannot talk to you, cannot interrupt you. There were a couple of times yesterday when the crew mentioned, when the ground would call it, you're taking me away from the moon to go do this thing for you or whatever else it is. Because of our communication systems today, the ground is talking to us almost 24 hours a day. We have short dropouts and planned dropouts and communications when you happen to be going between the coverage of an antenna when you're in low Earth orbit, or I'm not exactly sure what causes it while we're up in lunar orbit, but when you went behind the moon, there was no way for the ground to communicate with us. That was 40 minutes of just unbelievable joy for the crew to be able to just look and observe and talk among themselves about what they were seeing. My guess is they probably entered more data, more recorded voice data on what they were seeing than they did the entire time while they were out from behind the moon because that's all they had to focus on. I tell people all the time, my experience, because I'm asked, what was it like? What did you sense when you were in space? Did you feel powerful? I tell them quite the opposite. I felt insignificant. You look back at our planet, even from the vantage point of low Earth orbit, and you realize how insignificant we as individuals are, that we're on this incredible ball that protects us and nourishes us and allows us to live. Yet, there is no sign that humans live down here from that vantage point. No buildings. You see long linear features like roads and bridges and runways and stuff, but no sign of a human being. My guess is that's probably the way they really feel being out as close to the moon as they are, especially on the other side of the moon, where our home planet is a little dot. Over a fear of just drifting off into space and of being able to get back? No, not really. I did not. I doubt that they have. I think the people who I've heard, some of my friends who have done space walks, have said that when they're out there all alone and they are in a space ship themselves in their suit, I've heard them comment as to something like that where you realize you're the only one out there and you're all by yourself and all alone, but when you're in the capsule or in the shuttle or spacecraft, I never felt that way and I don't think anybody does. That's the former NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. I think the word he was searching for in relation to the eclipse is Earthshiner. Now, what does the daughter of the US President want with the beach in the Balkans currently home to only the odd sheep? Well, earlier this year, Ivanka Trump was spotted in Albania with a team of architects and surveyors, sizing up plans to build a luxury tourist hotel. Locals and environmentalists are fighting over the land and as the BBC's Emma Wither reports, ownership of land in post-communist Albania is still heavily contested through the courts. We've just come to the top of the village where up here you get a bird's eye view of the whole area. There are rolling fields of olive groves where blueprint show they want to build villas. Right now there's barely anything on the land. We're overlooking the long sandy beach where Ivanka Trump stood in January with reportedly 100 architects and surveyors. The secluded Nata Lagoon in Svanet's is a protected idyllic ecological site. Villages say her visit was shrouded in secrecy. He says that she will get all that part over there from Sazan Island to as long as I heard from the villagers. She will take away the whole village. Thanos grew up here. It's just across from the heel of the boot of Italy. Locals first learned of the development when plans were posted online by Jared Kushner's investment firm Affinity Global. They were baffled. The land sloping to the sea is both protected and privately owned. He says that everything that you can see belongs to the village and every part of the land is bordered with other lands which means that every land has an owner. Everyone knows everyone and everyone knows that what land belongs to them. The country spent nearly half a century under communist rule, largely cut off from the world. So almost by accident it has miles of unspoilt natural beauty and that's why it's caught the eye of this American power couple. We're really trying to design this to be a place that we would want to be, a place that we would want to spend the summer. And as I tell different friends and I show them different renderings of what we're doing, they all say, oh can we get a place there next to you. So I really think we'll build a tremendous community. But the land is subject to ongoing court cases with multiple claims of ownership. It's a nationwide issue that Vladimir Karaj, a local journalist with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, has been tracking for 20 years. Property conflict is one of the biggest conflicts in the country. More than 10 years ago at least a third of the murders, cases in Albania were related to property conflicts. And still there are cases, at least one or twice every year, cases of murder or heavy crime that happens because of the conflicts of properties. Land disputes are a legacy of Albania's past. Property was nationalized under communism, then shared out again after its collapse. They're especially bitter in high value areas like Svanet's. When Prime Minister Edi Rame came to power 14 years ago, he promised to resolve the crisis and return stolen land, but has had little success. Marina Sazau was a biologist with Pepinaya, Albania's first independent environmental group. They record the wildlife in the area. And we walk every summer in these areas across the side of the sand and the beach to monitor the sea turtles. And not only, also the monk seal, that it's Mediterranean monk seal, it's a highly important species. Edi Rame wants to tap luxury tourism, changing the law to allow development in protected areas. And a new airport is being built nearby. Marina's group is fighting it in court. I know for sure that everyone that wants to come here wants to come for this, like they miss this in their country. And I think people that are attracted to come here by car and to have luxury, they will miss everything because this will disappear. Albania wants what its neighbors, Italy and Greece have, tourism revenue. And standing here on this untouched coast, you can see what that vision could bring, but also what it would take away. Emma Wether reporting. President Trump has told NBC he can't provide any update on talks involving Iran. He criticised Iran's call for people to act as human shields around power plants, totally illegal. They're not allowed to do that, the president said. This is NewsHour. We're back in just a minute. This is Sean Lai with NewsHour, coming to you live from the BBC Studios in London. A reminder of our top story, President Trump's warning that a whole civilisation will die if Iran fails to reopen the Strait of Al Muz by midnight GMT. That civilisation is not the 47-year-old Islamic Republic of Iran, but the far more ancient culture of Persia. How important has the Persian civilisation been in human history? It's a question I put to this story of William Dalrymple, who presents the Empire podcast. He was talking to me from Delhi, where once upon a time, as you'll hear, Persian was read and spoken. Asked William Dalrymple first whether the words Persian and Iran had become interchangeable? Yes, they are really, but with an important nuance difference is Iran is what the Iranians call themselves. The word Aryan is the root for Iran. But I think in common usage, Iran communicates the modern state, the modern republic of Iran, while Persia in English summons the ghosts of the Achaemenids and ancient Persia. So there are different nuances, but yes, the words are basically interchangeable. And this civilisation, when did it flourish? When was its peak and how extensive was it? Well, it's one of the oldest states still surviving in the world, and it's one of the oldest civilisations. The great age of classical Persia probably dates back to Cyrus in the sixth century BCE. Cyrus conquers the Babylonians, frees the Jews, allows them to go back to build the temple in Jerusalem, and issues what many people regard as the world's first human rights charter at that point, and bases his empire on tolerance. The Cyrus Cylinder now in the British Museum is about religious tolerance and the freedom of subject peoples. It's an extraordinary document. How widely did this empire spread? The classical Achaemenid empire spread all the way from modern Pakistan, from the Indus Valley, right through to, well, obviously, it tried to conquer Greece. And as we know, the Battle of Marathon and Salamis saw it beaten back. While the Persian language spread even further, I don't think many people are always aware that the great diplomatic language of medieval India was Persian. And, you know, as far south as Maharashtra, people were speaking Persian as the court language. It was, in many ways, the Latin of medieval and early modern Asia. So, you know, often in the Ottoman Empire, right across Turkey to the west, you've got people speaking Persian. And with it comes this extraordinary tradition of Persian poetry from Sadi and Pradause, Omar Kayam, Rumi, you know, the world's favorite internet poet, and until recently, these are all the gifts of the Persian language. But there's also all these, I mean, you know, you can take any sphere of human endeavor, whether it's from poetry to religion, science, art, and Persia's left and influence that we're often unaware of, because our Western education system doesn't privilege it. So, for example, the algorithm is named after a Persian, al-Qurizmi, the idea of motorways and postal services, again, date back to Cyrus, the Persian miniature, which is such an extraordinary form of art across so many different traditions in India and so on, originates in Persia, the idea of a garden. Our word paradise comes from the Greek version of paradesa, a walled enclosure, the idea that a garden is within four walls, and that is paradise. That is a Persian idea, the idea of refrigeration, the idea of irrigation, the great grandfather of the guitar, the tanbo, these are all Persian ideas. How good has the modern Iranian government been at holding that cultural tradition, would you say? That's quite a complicated question, because I think many Persians regard that the Islamic regime puts modern Iran's Muslim identity ahead of its Persian identity, and I think many in the diaspora who are against the regime would answer that they haven't played the cultural Persianness so much as they've seen themselves as the center of the Shiite Islamic world, and many would look back to the achievements of Persepolis and the great ancient Persians as something associated more with the government of the Shah, and who famously had his party in Persepolis and so on. So, I think there are those who would say that the Islamic Republic has not played its cards as the inheritor of ancient Persian civilization so much as the front line of modern Shiite Islam. What do you think we should be grateful to Persia for? So much of our civilization does derive from Persian civilization, far more than we are taught. I think many people in the West are taught to regard Greece and Rome as the beginnings of all civilization, but so many of the ideas of Greece came from further east from the Persian world. One of the extraordinary features of Persian civilization is its resilience. It survived Alexander, it survived Genghis Khan, it survived Timor, it survived the attempts of various colonial powers to dismantle some, particularly the Russians were trying for centuries to take over great chunks of the Persian empire, it will survive Donald Trump. I've absolutely no doubt about that, although it'll be a rough 72 hours I think ahead. The other question I suppose about its relations historically with its neighbors, people often make the mistake that Iran is an Arab nation or a Muslim nation in terms of its history. What is the relationship between those different strands that make up that region now? They're not Arabs, they are completely different race, the Arabs are Semites, the Iranians are Aryans and they speak an Indo-European language and indeed Persian is one of the roots of Indo-European language, but as far as Islam is concerned they were conquered by the Arabs in the fifth and sixth century and so became at that point Muslim and from the Safavid period, which is the 15th century onwards, they became Shia and are now the great Shia nation. Do you think Persian culture is still very much alive in Iran? It's very much alive and Persians are very, very proud of it and there are millions of Persians in the diaspora all over the world who look to their civilization with enormous pride and with good reason and I think they are very frustrated, well two things, first of all that you know people and confuse them with Arabs which as your question just asked when they're very different and often look with some hostility on the Arab world and secondly when we in the west are simply not taught how much we owe to Persia, you know it's almost a sort of a party joke question, what did the Romans do for us, but it's very rarely asked what did the Persians do for us and the answer is much more than we realise and so much more of western civilization in fact arrives from Persia without us being taught about it in schools. That's William Dalropa talking to me from Delhi, he's the presenter of the Empire podcast. That's it for this edition of News Hour, do please join us again.