Iran warns of 'new cards' if fighting resumes

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.nl. That's Shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. We're coming to you live from the BBC studios in London. and in the chair this hour is me, Sean Lay. Coming up later, what the King of Horror has in common with the Bard of Avon. I was going in there thinking, I know there are connections between Stephen King and Shakespeare. They're both writing for popular audiences. They both didn't really get their due at the time from academic audiences, but they both are master crafts people and they know how to use language to stick in your heads. More from Stephen King's academic champion later in this edition of NewsHour. But first, between Iran and America, the question right now is not what concessions either side will make in talks, it's whether they'll get on the plane to reach the venue in the first place. So far, no delegation from Iran has departed for Islamabad, Pakistan, an announcer on Iranian state television declared. In Washington, the U.S. administration says that Vice President J.D. Vance has not left for Islamabad either. In a phone interview with the U.S. News Network CNBC this morning, President Trump said he believed the United States is in a very strong negotiating position with Iran. What I think is that we're going to end up with a great deal. I think they have no choice. We've taken out their Navy. We've taken out their Air Force. We've taken out their leaders, frankly, which does complicate things in one way. but these leaders are much more rational. It is regime change, no matter what you want to call it. The stumbling block between the two sides, preventing talks restarting, is the decision of the Iranians to close the Strait of Hormuz again as a result of a decision, they say, by the United States to impose a naval blockade in the Strait of ships arriving or leaving Iranian ports. Frustrating for people like Captain Rahman Kapoor, whose ship is moored and who is waiting. We are waiting for further instructions since the Strait of Hormuz was shut again within 24 hours. And it was very disappointing to get that news. And relief, we felt, turned to uncertainty again. It is very disheartening. There are hundreds of ships stranded inside this Persian Gulf zone. And there is not much movement of any ship and any cargo. cargo is not reaching to their destination. So whole world is suffering due to that. The seafarers have become the collateral victims here in this war. We are so innocent. We are just seafarers. We are not warriors and we are not trained for the war. And also many of us have completed our contract on board ship and we want to go back home. But delayed repatriation is another concern and because most of the airports are shut and sea routes are blocked so we cannot get down from the ship and we cannot go anywhere and that continuous sense of fear is always there whenever we hear any news regarding escalation of war. That's Raman Kapoor. Well if the talks reconvene they'll be held again in Pakistan's capital Islamabad where streets have been locked down at least since the weekend in expectation of further talks. But a sign that they are in doubt is that within the last hour, Pakistan's foreign minister has urged Iran and America to agree a ceasefire extension. Remember, the ceasefire is due to expire the early hours of Thursday morning, so there is very little time for talks to take place. It's probably better for them to look at extending the ceasefire, allowing more room for a timetable of agreed talks. Well, our correspondent in Islamabad is Caroline Davis. I spoke to her just before that news from the Pakistan Foreign Ministry and asked her what officials were saying about when the next round of talks would take place or whether they'd take place at all. Well, publicly, they are really trying, Pakistan's really trying to allow Washington and Tehran to be taking the lead on the discussion. So there's not a huge amount being said from their side. But behind the scenes, they have been quietly confident that these talks will be going ahead, which is interesting because, of course, we still don't have the Iranian side saying they're going to be taking part. In fact, we heard from Iranian parliamentary speaker Galabaugh saying that Iran would not take part in negotiations while there was the shadow of threats hanging over it. And on the American side, of course, we were expecting delegations. We've been hearing talk from President Trump initially said his delegation will be arriving there on Monday evening. But that time has come and been gone. And we still haven't had any confirmation that anyone from the principal part of the US team is here in Islamabad. So we're still waiting to see any images of Vice President J.D. Vance, whether he will be boarding a plane. We had heard some reporting coming out of the states that he was expected to be travelling today. We're waiting to hear whether or not he will be getting on board a plane. So still a lot of uncertainty. All the measures are still in place. We started getting that actually on Sunday morning indications that those sort of measures were starting to build up. The streets, as you say, are now, particularly around the diplomatic area, very much closed off. So we're in a sort of stalemate at the moment. We're not hearing from American's side about whether they're coming. We're not hearing when they're coming, rather. We're not hearing from the Iranian side about whether they're coming at all. And from Pakistan's side, they are waiting, poised, ready. But at the moment, we're not seeing any arrivals. It looked like a terrific opportunity for Pakistan to enhance its regional credentials, to boost that relationship it's been enjoying over the last year or 18 months with President Trump and to maintain good relations with Iran. But if it provides a venue, but no steer for the talks and they collapse, could this actually end up being a counterproductive exercise for Pakistan? I think it depends on how Pakistan's role is being perceived. I think the thing that has been clear all the way through is that Pakistan, it's not like discussions where previous bodies that are bigger than the other two countries are able to essentially strong arm them to the table and say, you will sit down and you will find agreement. No one has ever thought that Pakistan is going to be in a position where it can force the US and Iran to do this. It's very much just trying to facilitate and find some form of common ground, talk to both sides and try and persuade them that this is a territory where they can come and they can have those sorts of discussions. So it could be that I think what would be interesting as well is to see if we continue to see positive language, as we have done so far from both America and Iran towards Pakistan, saying how fantastic they've been doing as a sort of intermediary and their mediator between the two sides. That hasn't yet broken down, and that's obviously key to make sure that they have that level of trust. But it might be that if this deteriorates, the bigger risk for Pakistan is just the fact that if the conflict continues to escalate, they are in a very difficult position for a few reasons, not least the fact that they are very heavily dependent on imported oil and gas, a large amount of which does come through the Strait of Hormuz. And they are also in a defence pact with Saudi Arabia. At the moment, of course, Saudi Arabia has not got involved in the conflict, despite being hit several times repeatedly by Iran. But if that changes and Saudi Arabia decides to get involved in the conflict, decides to invoke that defence pact, that puts Pakistan in a very difficult position. It is Iran's next door neighbour. There is a very large Shia population of Muslims here in Pakistan, the second largest after Iran by many estimates. And it is very likely that if Pakistan were to decide that it would respond to Saudi Arabia's call were that to come. If they were to attack Iran, that would be incredibly unpopular here in Pakistan. But the alternative is they say no to Saudi Arabia, which is an important economic ally. So a really difficult position. Those are just two of the reasons of why Pakistan would probably not want to see this conflict escalating. So that is one of the reasons I think it's got involved as well to try to be a mediator here. The BBC's correspondent in Islamabad, Caroline Davis, she's in a city where Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed Ishak Dar delivered that plea for an extended deadline ceasefire during a meeting with the US Chartered Affair. I've been speaking with Nate Swanson, director for Iran at the National Security Council between 2022 and 25, who last year served on the US negotiating team for Iran. Does he think the Iranians have much of a choice here? They have the same choice as the Americans. They can either do what's in their interest and then attend talks or they can skip. But it's basically the same choice for both sides. ultimately I think both sides will show up because it is in their interest to show up and end the war. And we are with a deadline that was set to this ceasefire due to expiring in less than 48 hours. Somebody has to make a decision to get on the plane quite soon, don't they? Yeah, no, that's a fair point. But it's an arbitrary deadline, right? I mean, it was actually Tuesday, then Trump kind of unilaterally made it Wednesday. So, I mean, the war won't restart unless, you know, one party thinks it is in their interest to restart the war. And so I'm not as worried about the time itself. I'm more worried about the posturing being more important than the substance. You know, the fact that both sides seem to think they have the upper hand here and are bound and determined to make sure they have the tactical advantage is quite concerning and, you know, it could lead to a bad outcome for everyone. You have written recently that you think the president needs to develop a strategy for handling Iran and that it went into this war without one. What can he do to kind of strengthen the U.S. position, whether or not these talks themselves result in anything substantial? So, I mean, in the short term, the goal needs to be focused on, you know, exiting the war with as little long-term damage as possible. So, for instance, if we leave this war with Iran in control of the Stratum Hormuz, that doesn't make sense. But exiting the war absent that as quickly as possible for pain as little as possible is what he can do in the short term. Long term, I think he needs to realize that Iran is not going to capitulate to his maximalist domains. And you're going to have to actually have a strategy for both dealing with Iran in the long term that, you know, recognizes that they have legitimate rights and interests. And also that some of those rights and interests are counter to what the U.S. wants. And so you're going to have to find the middle ground on how to handle those. Some of it, you know, through diplomacy, some of it, you know, through containment. And he'll just have to, like, actually think about this as more than a short term news cycle. The strategy was, of course, was open before the war. Now, in a sense, the Iranians have changed the terms of engagement, haven't they, by saying that in future we want to have the power to control access to the Strait of Amurus, which we didn't exercise in the past. That becomes not just a problem for the Americans. It becomes a problem for the global community, doesn't it? Absolutely, right. I mean, I think it shows the folly of a ill-conceived war that now we're hoping to get back to where we were before the war started. So I think that's right. And you're right. I mean not only is it a massive advantage for Iran that they didn't have prior to the war, right? It is in some ways the most important aspect of their security architecture now and precisely because it has an impact over all of us. It impacts America and UK and everyone's global economy. And so it unfortunately a very useful tool that Iran always theoretically had but never practically had and now they have this going forward and this going forward And so we just gonna have to deal with it And you know I think it probably makes future conflicts less likely which is good But it's, you know, it's a sort of Damocles, basically, over the global community, which is really unfortunate. The Iranian delegation to the last round of talks in Islamabad was about 80 strong. Now, I'm quite certain a lot of those people didn't actually have any role to play in negotiations at all. So presumably part of it was about the image and the symbolism. but America is relying heavily on J.D. Vance, on Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. I just wonder if they have the negotiating heft to get the best deal out of this. Look, I mean, the president's putting people there that he trusts. So that's fine and understandable. And ultimately, I think the size of the delegation is less important than the objective of the negotiations what you're trying to achieve. If he's not trying to achieve like a, you know, a very complex detailed nuclear deal, that's fine. You know, you don't need to have a team of nuclear experts. But, you know, we just have to realise that it'll be, you know, a surface level deal and not a technical deal. Coming up, how archery is helping women in Spain overcome both the physical and mental challenges of breast cancer treatment. When you first pull the string, of course your arm hurts because of the surgery. It was hard for me to do, but day by day my arm got stronger and it's not as inflamed as it was at the start. It has already reduced quite a lot. Our headlines is how the United States and Iran are trading increasingly aggressive rhetoric as peace talks between the two remain in doubt. Two Palestinians, including a 13-year-old boy, have been killed during an attack by Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank. And a tiger from a Russian circus has escaped into a screaming audience, prompting a criminal investigation. This is Sean Lay with NewsHour, coming to you live from the BBC studios in London. It's now seven months since the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer sacked his country's ambassador in Washington over his close links to Jeffrey Epstein. But the scandal continues to dog the British government. Yesterday, Keir Starmer spent two and a half hours of his time before Parliament defending himself after it was revealed that the ambassador, Peter Mounderson, had apparently failed security vetting. No one told the Prime Minister and neither he nor any of his team bothered to ask. Given Lord Mounderson's history, which includes resigning from the Cabinet twice and lobbying for both Chinese and Russian interests, that's raised a lot of eyebrows. The charge laid by the Prime Minister against the former top official at the Foreign Office was that he should have told him. The Foreign Office official appeared before MPs today and told them that it wasn't for him to tell the Prime Minister any such thing. Towards the end of the session, Olly Robbins was asked if, with the benefit of hindsight, he would have done anything differently regarding Peter Maldeson's appointment. anything different that's very sweeping Mr Gemmell I clearly I've tried to be open there are various aspects of the system I think could be improved and maybe I wish I'd had the time to offer that as a general view about the way we operate the system at various points in my tenure but I think in the way you generously ask the question what I reflect on most is that the British state is dissecting itself to some extent in public over this. Well, our British Affairs correspondent, Rob Watson, was watching Ollie Robbins' committee appearance and asked him whether we got many satisfactory answers about what Ollie Robbins had done and about the Prime Minister's decision to sack him. Well, first, John, compliments on setting up a complex story so clearly. I think the answer to your question is we did get some answers. I mean, look, it was a complicated session about a complex issue, and that is how people are vetted for senior positions in the British government. And I think what we learned from that is that it was a complex process and that there were discussions between Mr Robbins and the person who's in charge of the whole vetting procedure. But actually, at the heart of it, it seemed to me, was something that was immensely damaging if you strip through all of that for the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, because Ollie Robbins, you know, essentially undermined Mr. Starmer's defence. Mr. Starmer's defence is, look, you know, had I known about the problems with the vetting, you know, I would never have carried on with the appointments. Well, what Mr. Robbins told everyone very clearly, MPs in the world is, look, you know, when I joined the Foreign Office as head in January 2025, Downing Street wasn't in the least bit interested in any of the security and vetting stuff, Sean. They just wanted to get on with getting there, getting Mandelson in Washington in time for the inauguration. And that is deeply damaging, Sean. In terms of how British government operates, it will still be surprising, I suspect, for a lot of people listening internationally to think that somebody can have really quite serious question marks raised about their security vetting. In other words, whether they should be given clearance to see the most confidential of documents. and yet it's left to officials without any political input at all to decide whether or not that should make a difference. Yes, well, I think some of the MPs found it puzzling, never mind people listening around the world, Sean. But the defence that Mr Robbins made quite powerfully was that, look, if politicians were going to be able to see the details of the vetting procedure and don't forget, you know, you have to say what are your sexual preferences, what your financial interests are, what your family are up to, who you know, what you've done, that that would put anybody off from ever applying for a senior job. And so Mr. Robbins' kind of case was, look, it's up to officials to decide whether to go ahead with recommending someone for a post or not. We will tell the politician, in this case Keir Starmer, of that final decision. But goodness, we don't want to get elected politicians involved. We don't want to bring politics into the process of vetting. So that, if you like, is the defence. That's our British Affairs correspondent, Robert Robertson. In Spain, breast cancer survivors are drawing back artery bones as part of their recovery. Post-treatment exercise can help with long-term effects such as swollen arms and fatigue. Claire Bates in southern Spain has been to meet a group of women aged from their 20s to their 60s who say they've seen encouraging improvements. On the outskirts of a small town called Tatana in southern Spain, a group of women are dressed as if for battle. Lined up in matching uniforms, each has a quiver of arrows slung over her hip and a bow in her hand. So there's eight women all in a row, and they've each shot about five or six arrows each. And I must say most of them have hit the yellow target. The group is called the Pink Arrows. The members are different ages and from different backgrounds, but they have some important things in common. They've all had breast cancer, and they're all living with the after-effects of treatment. During a break, I chat to Anna Bellen, who is 45. I have small children at home. Here I can disconnect and talk to people who have gone through the same thing as me, which is often not the case with the family. It's very good because it allows me to let go. but there's another quite unexpected benefit to archery. Ten years ago, a hospital in Madrid tried using the sport as a rehab exercise for patients following breast cancer. Doctors were surprised to find it didn't just improve flexibility, but also improved lymphedema symptoms. Lymphedema is a long-term condition, which causes painful swelling in the arms and hands. It affects around one in five breast cancer patients. The project was featured on Spanish TV where the news reached Ana Cano, a champion archer. She helped set up the pink arrows in her area. We didn't know about how to do it. We just started. We have to find the way they can shoot. So when we put the target in the ground, but they shoot many arrows, finally they can lift the arm. Ana says it's helped many of her students to manage their symptoms. One of them is Marie Huertas. She developed lymphedema following six surgeries to remove cancer and reconstruct her breast. When the arm swells, it hurts and it weighs a lot. It stops you doing things and you feel that the arm is useless, really. Was it difficult to pull the bow? Yes. When you first pull the string, of course your arm hurts because of the surgery. It was hard for me to do, but day by day my arm got stronger and it's not as inflamed as it was at the start. It has already reduced quite a lot. I went to see physio Marta Moreno to find out why archery was having such a big effect. She works at Virgin de la Casa de Lorca Hospital and has treated a lot of the women in the pink arrows. So when the arrow is fired by the archer's bow, there's a vibration in the upper limb that also helps to drain lymph fluid through the lymphatic system. When someone draws and releases a bow, they contract and relax various muscles, which acts as a pump that improves the flow of lymph fluid. And while not conclusively proven, it's widely thought the vibration of the strings helps with this process. I've seen cases where the swelling has reduced and the lymphedema has even stabilised. The patients notice it a lot in their day-to-day lives, especially when they work with their arms. They find they have a lot more freedom. Claire Bates reporting on that archery treatment for the after effects of breast cancer being used to some success by patients in southern Spain. she was reporting for News Out on the BBC World Service we're going to be disappearing now for about just over a minute but please do stay with us plenty more in the second half including a conversation with Stephen King's Uber fan a chair of Stephen E. King Literature at the University of Maine, his native state this News Out NLZiet. Slim bekeken. and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl. That's shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. Welcome back to NewsHour. In summertime, according to Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald's song, the fish are jumping and the cotton is high. Now though, it seems some fish are getting high too, and it's humans who are to blame. Cocaine ingested into our bodies is ending up in river water where there are signs, according to Swedish scientists, that it's affecting the behaviour of salmon. Will Chalk reports. The calming, crystal-clear waters of Lake Vatten in Sweden. It contains a mind-boggling array of marine life but it's also been home to some fish that are considerably more active than they should be Scientists have known for a while now that the drugs humans take and pass on can end up being ingested by marine life But researchers at the Swedish University of Agricultural Science wanted to find out more about how it affects that life. They knew the limitations of lab-based work, so decided to take an extremely hands-on approach. I spoke to one of the scientists, Dr Jack Brand. You gave cocaine essentially to a salmon. Yes, that's right. So we gave them either implants containing cocaine, its main metabolite, which I can never pronounce, I'm not going to try, and a control implant which had no drugs. And that gave us a real experimental precision in determining how these drugs actually affect fish behaviour in the wild. Those fish were then tracked, and it turned out that the ones implanted with cocaine and its main breakdown product swam further and dispersed more widely across the lake. So largely what you would expect. But it's also concerning because of what it tells us about the impact of our waste on the wildlife around us. In the animal kingdom, sort of movement is fundamental. You know, where fish are determines what they eat, what eats them, what habitats they occupy. So it could have sort of profound implications for their ecology and evolution. It also affects things like energy budgets. So things like energy budgets are fairly fine-tuned in wild animals. The energy expenditure has to be offset by the energy you bring in. And so in this case, an almost doubling of their movement rates is undoubtedly going to increase their energy consumption, which has to come from somewhere. Waterways are incredibly complex and diverse places, and the waste products humans pump into them are equally myriad. This is just one tiny slice of that. But it's hoped it'll increase the understanding of exactly how one impacts the other and what can be done to reduce the harm to wildlife. That was Will Chalk reporting and talking to Swedish researcher Jack Brand. The study published that, according to them, the salmon with cocaine in them ended up swimming nearly twice as far per week and travelling around 7.5 miles further from their release site than the salmon who had been released alongside them and hadn't been injected with cocaine. A study published last year found that wild salmon on anti-anxiety drugs, by contrast, were less fearful and thus more likely to be eaten by predators. This is NewsHour from the BBC World Service. Do stay with us. You're listening to NewsHour from the BBC World Service with me, Sean Lay. As a symbol, the apple has a bit of a mixed record. In the Garden of Eden, it symbolised temptation. It was a tool by which a wicked queen could poison Disney's Snow White. And in the 1970s, the city known as the Big Apple, New York, had chunks bitten out of it. Today, Apple is both the brand and the name of the world's most powerful and successful business. It's about to get only its eighth chief executive in its 50-year-long history. Tim Cook, chief executive of Apple since 2011, when co-founder Steve Jobs resigned shortly before his death, is now handing on the reins. Three years ago, for her podcast, British singer and songwriter Dua Lipa pointed out to Tim Cook that when he'd taken over, the company was near bankruptcy, but under his leadership, it had become profitable. He might be less famous than Steve Jobs, but did he feel he was given the credit? Steve was a original. I think only Steve could have created Apple. And we owe him a debt of gratitude. And there's no doubt in my mind that if he were still alive today, the company would be doing outstanding and he would still be CEO. That was Tim Cook talking three years ago. Well, his successor will be John Turnus, the current head of hardware engineering and Apple lifer who's been there for 25 years. He'll move desks at Apple HQ in September at a time when the churn of international events is a potential threat to a company which used to epitomise globalisation. With its ideas generated in California, most of its production in China and customers everywhere, it's having to adjust. Under pressure from the Trump administration, In December, Tim Cook turned up at the White House with two presents for the president, a glass plaque with a 24-carat gold base and a pledge to invest an additional $100 billion of Apple's money in the United States. In September, he'd been invited to the White House and arrived there with a dinner invitation for the president, who was full of praise for the boss of Apple and someone in the administration he said could do business with. Tim Cook, you've done an incredible job with Apple, a little company called Apple. Thank you, Mr. President. Very, very few people have been able to do what you've done. Congratulations. Thank you, sir. That means a lot to me. I want to thank you for including me this evening. It's incredible to be among everyone here, particularly you and the First Lady. I've always enjoyed having dinner and interacting. I want to thank you for setting the tone such that we could make a major investment in the United States and have some key manufacturing, advanced manufacturing here. I think that says a lot about your focus and your leadership and your focus on innovation. Tim Cook at the White House with Donald Trump last September. Well, in a post-entree social Thursday morning, President Trump said he'd helped out Apple in his first term when the company had an unspecified, fairly large problem only I as president could fix. He added, this guy is an amazing manager and leader. He makes these calls to me and he gets the job done quickly. Lance Ulanoff is the editor-at-large of website TechRadar. What does he think will be Tim Cook's legacy? For me, the thing that sticks out is services, which is not the most, it's not the sexiest part of the business. but it's grown to an insane multi-billion dollar revenue engine. And services, things like iCloud, Apple TV, all of that content, like friends and your friends and neighbors, shows that you're watching on F1, producing movies. And that's money that just keeps coming in. And he really built that, focused on that. Also, I would say the focus on Apple Watch wearables and health, in particular the health side of it. I think he was very invested in that. So there are some products and some portions of the business that will always have, I think, Tim Cook's fingerprints all over them. The other challenge for him has been the geopolitics, both the pressure from the White House to bring more of the work back to the United States, even though Apple had established a hugely efficient infrastructure of suppliers and assembly for, for example, his iPhones, mostly in China, but in other countries in the region like Vietnam. But at the same time, to kind of cleave close to China because of how important it was for ensuring, for example, the supply of rare metals. How has he managed that balancing act? You know, what's funny about Tim Cook is that he has always been a supply chain genius. It's one of the reasons that Steve Jobs brought him in in the late 90s. And it's been honestly one of the hallmarks of his ability to sort of navigate a changing world around him, to build an impressive supply chain, to keep products moving. And then in the face of these pressures to make really big and relatively fast adjustments to move certain parts of manufacturing out of China, not necessarily back to the U.S. because not always possible, but some portions have come back to the US. So he's managed to do all of that while keeping products flowing, which is what's really important. Products have maybe under his direction not suffered as many price hikes in the face of, for example, the RAM crisis. We're in the middle of this AI explosion, which has caused a RAM shortage and a lot of companies are raising prices because of that. Apple has not done so. And I think that has a lot to do with the way Tim Cook has managed things. I was just going to ask, you've met John Ternes, who's going to be his successor. Yes. Do you think he's going to be able to manage the transition from being kind of a behind the scenes figure, obviously very good at what he does at Apple, to being the kind of front man of an organization that often spends a lot of money and a lot of effort on its product launches? yeah i mean look tim cook wasn't really a name when he took over i mean the first time he took over briefly in 2009 i was literally like tim cook i really wasn't aware of him um and by the time he took over as ceo we had a better understanding but still he wasn't a dynamic personality but now people do impressions of him how he delivers on stage john tarrant is similarly people really don't know him that well i've interviewed him on and off for probably almost a decade, sat in rooms with him. He doesn't have a signature move. He doesn't have an Alabama accent. So he is a little hard to pin down. I don't really know exactly what type of CEO he will be, but I do know he is Apple through and through and also loves hardware technology. That's Lance Ivanov of TechRadar there. Some market analysis. Matt Britsman at Hargreaves Lansdowne says the real question for investors is what come next, not who steps in. Critisms of Apple in recent years have centred less on execution or more on whether or not it's lost its edge on product innovation. To Japan now, where after its defeat in the Second World War, the country turned its back on militarism. Gradually, though, over the last decade, its posture has shifted. Sanai Takaichi, the new Prime Minister, won her landslide election victory in part on the back of promising a more robust posture in dealing with China. Its latest move just announces the easing of restrictions on selling weapons overseas, in part, it says, to help its neighbours and so collectively strengthen the chances of maintaining regional peace. While Yuki Tatsumi, a Special Assistant for Political Affairs at Japan's Embassy in Washington, D.C., until recently, is now a Senior Director at the Institute for Indo-Pacific Security, asked her about the significance of the policy shift. Japan, for the longest time until early in the 21st century, essentially was not able to export any types of weapons at all. It has three principles, which doesn't explicitly prohibit Japan to export weapons, but they started applying those principles very, very strictly. So that essentially led to the total ban of any kind of arms. But as time passes, Japan obviously now buys a lot more weapons, mainly from the United States, but Japan's own defense industry has begun to be hollowed out because it only had one customer, which is Japan's self-defense forces. So any types of weapon development and acquisition has become much more expensive and simply is not affordable just by one nation's budget. And Japan's need to protect the defense industrial base of its own. There has been both internal and external pressure to Japan to start relaxing these principles. It's a curious paradox, isn't it, that part of the inspiration for the restrictions on sales was the pacifist constitution that came in after the Second World War as a result of Japan's defeat and arguably disgrace internationally. At the same time, the countries who most resent a lot of that militarism, like Korea, for example, suffered under Japan in the 1930s, could actually benefit from Japanese arms sales as it tries to strengthen its defenses against a possible future attack from China. It is a very ironic paradox And then also Japan desire to be able to export or transfer those equipment more to its partner nation actually is really driven by the pressure that has been feeling from China but then also more so from those other Indo countries like Philippines and Vietnam that also shares the same challenge from PRC. Having only one customer, has that been a problem for the Japanese defence industry, for the companies that make weapons? It has been absolutely the problem because it cannot produce in scale. Japan, in terms of budget size in dollars, it looks like it has a big military, but its total size is only 150,000 people. And with the aging population, that size of the humans that can occupy this position has been shrinking. And with the platform and systems that are driven by new technologies, those weapons have been increasingly expensive. Prime Minister Takeuchi has been in office only a matter of months yet. She's already met the US president twice. She publicly states herself an admirer of his leadership. Nonetheless, do you think this reflects any sense in Japan at political circles that maybe it can't rely on America in the way it had come to take for granted? I do think that there's that undertone that Japan needs to be more self-reliant in some sense. But there is the Trump administration, some of the approaches did create a certain level of anxiety within Japan, not just limited to the leadership, but in a broader society. And then I think Japan trails very closely in its sentiment and ebbs and flows with the countries like UK and Australia and France and Germany. China described it as reckless militarization when this announcement was made. And it's clear that relations of Tsao, not least symbolized by the withdrawal of pandas from Japan that had been a gift from China. Is that a problem, Ms. Tangechi, or do you think public opinion is with her on this? I think very much Minister Tangechi's direction has been by and large supported by the Japanese public. And whenever PRC talks about Japan's quote unquote reckless, you know, almost I would like to turn the mirror against them. And what are you doing? Kind of flipping the places. So I think public is very much with Prime Minister Takaichi on this. And in a certain sense, the more China tries to paint her as a reckless, warmongering, all that, I think it actually enhances her domestic support. That's Yuki Tatsumi, Director at the Institute for Indo-Pacific Security in Washington, D.C. She was talking to NewsHour on the BBC World Service. We are going to disappear for a few moments. We will be back in just over a minute's time. Our top story at this NewsHour. Within the last few minutes, the BBC's Chief International Congressman, And Elise Doucette has been told by the Iranian foreign ministry that the decision has still not been made on whether or not Iran will send a delegation to peace talks in Islamabad. Pakistan's foreign ministers urged the US and Iran to extend the ceasefire instead. It's due to end on Thursday. If talks do go ahead, President Trump has said he believes the US is in a very strong negotiating position with Iran, as he told US network CNBC. What I think is that we're going to end up with a great deal. I think they have no choice. We've taken out their Navy, we've taken out their Air Force, we've taken out their leaders, frankly, which does complicate things in one way, but these leaders are much more rational. It is regime change, no matter what you want to call it. This is Sean Lay bringing you NewsHour, live from the BBC studios in London. Now to a man who makes a living out of death. It's the night of the senior prom. For Carrie, it will be a dream come true. For everyone else, it will be a nightmare. Here's Johnny. I'm coming down! Film versions there of two of Stephen King's novels. Talking to the BBC five years ago, the author rebutted suggestions his work was less literature, more cheap thrills. I think that a lot of people enjoy horror stories because it allows them to express their anxieties in ways that don't have anything to do with the real world, if you see what I mean. It gives them a chance to experience emotions maybe that are not allowed in polite society, like aggression, fear, anger. All those things are great. And when you see a monster movie or when you read a scary book, it allows you to sort of test drive those emotions, which is a good thing, I think. I think it's good to get those things out. It's a kind of catharsis. But, of course, I would say that. Caroline Bix, author of a new book, Monsters in the Archive, My Year of Fear, with Stephen King, is Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine, which is King's home state. She's been speaking to Newshours' Paul Henley. A lot of people first read him when they're 12 or 13, and I was no different. And I was 12, and I saw a night shift staring out at me from the library shelf. This was 1979. and the Boogeyman story reverberated with my deepest anxieties and fears about what happens when your home space is not safe and mommy's not going to save you. And this project came out of the blue with a phone call, didn't it? Yes. I had been in my position as Stephen E. King chair at the University of Maine for four years. I was told you will never meet him, don't make contact, and I received a call from him at my home and he just said, hey, it's Steve King, I think we should meet. And that started a beautiful, a professional friendship. You genuinely got on? Yes, he was lovely. I invited him to campus to come speak to our students. He is an alum of our English department. And he was so generous and kind and patient, answered all their questions. And from that minute on, I knew I could be comfortable with him and that he learned he could trust me. Your professional life is more usually focused on Shakespeare, for example, but that's not That wide of the mark with Stephen King. There are characters tied to the bard in his things, aren't there? Well, what really drew me into this project is at the foreword of On Writing, he's talking about a conversation with Amy Tan, where they both are saying, how come at book events no one ever asks about the language? And I thought, well, here I have this opportunity to go into his archives, be the first one in there and ask about the language and really see how he's crafting these powerful word sounds and lines that stick in people's heads. And of course, as a Shakespearean, I'm already trained to the musicality of language. So I was going in there thinking, I know there are connections between Stephen King and Shakespeare. They're both writing for popular audiences. They both didn't really get their due at the time from academic audiences. But they both are master crafts people and they know how to use language to stick in your heads. Did the scholarly analysis not ruin the thrill, the terror for you? No, it was actually a profound coming together of who I am personally and who I am intellectually. It was a wonderful opportunity to bring joy and wonder and exploration to these incredible manuscripts. In a way, I can never do a Shakespeare since I'll never have a Shakespearean manuscript in front of me, much less have a conversation with William Shakespeare. So, no, it really aided me because I was already attuned to understanding how language makes impacts, but I could also bring my scared human self to the table. Yes. Some people, call them literary snobs if you like, might find the comparison between Shakespeare and King a bit crass. Obviously, you don't. No, of course not. Think of the people who were saying bad things about Shakespeare during his time. It was the academics. So I think Shakespeare had the last laugh on that. And I think Stephen King's going to have the last laugh on that as well. Any big surprises in the archives that you had access to? So many surprises. Probably the biggest one was The Shining. I had access to the first draft of it called The Shine that nobody has seen before really or talked about, where it's a completely different alternative ending. But also it's divided into acts and scenes like a Shakespearean tragedy. So that was the most profound surprise, I would say, that connected for me as a Shakespearean. Shakespearean. King famously didn't like the celebrated film of The Shining, Kubrick film, did he? Exactly. He had to pay one and a half million dollars to Stanley Kubrick to get the rights back so that he could write his own version that's much truer to the book. And working through those manuscripts, I can see why he didn't like that film, because even though he respects parts of it, because it's a psychologically complicated novel, which is why I think it sticks with people. It's about intergenerational trauma. You don't get any of that in the Kubrick version. So it makes sense to me. How is your enthusiasm for King connecting with students? Well, first of all, the fact that I now have the opportunity to bring them to Stephen King in person is connecting in a very profound way, as you can imagine. Just last semester, I was able to take my students to his house in Bangor, where he spoke to them for an hour about The Shining. so it is absolutely reverberating with them they see themselves in him many of them are creative writing majors want to be creative writers he's one of them you know he's a he's a main kid made good people might imagine him especially with that caveat that you weren't allowed to get in direct contact as a slightly grand but in the archive you find his early works written on cheap paper with small margins to save money. Tell me more. Absolutely. So he and Tabitha, his wife, were living on close to nothing with two small children in a trailer in 1973 when he finally gets carried to a publisher and gets the news that he might actually make some money from writing. So he comes from extremely humble origins and he still has that self-deprecating manner about him, which I think is what makes him so charming. And he's incredibly generous with other writers, including me, of course. So for him to say, go ahead, write this book. He never said, you can't say that, or you got that wrong. He's always been very generous in his responses to me, answering all my questions. And I think, again, it's because he really came from nothing and made himself into this king of horror. Paul Henley talking with Caroline Bix, who is the author of Monsters in the Archive. My Year of Fear, with Stephen King, and clearly a much more agreeable houseguest for Stephen King than writer Paul Sheldon's number one fan Annie Wilkes was in King's novel Misery. Thanks for joining us for this edition of News Hour. Do please come again. How did Pakistan become the key peacemaker in talks to end the war in Iran? I'm Asma Khalid, one of the hosts of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. For decades, the South Asian country has sat on the margins of global diplomacy. But now it's emerging as a key player trusted by both the U.S. and Iran. So how did Pakistan arrive here? And can it use this moment to raise its profile on the world stage? To hear more, check out the Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. FAMILY