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And suddenly you see a factory blackened, gone. Then you see a police station blackened, gone. And then you see a former military post also completely destroyed. A short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran. Today, President Trump says Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatah Ali Hami was killed IN THE ATTACKS. [screaming] THE PENTAGON IS WEIGHING A takeover of that island as a way to force the reopening of the street of Hormuz. Iran begged for this ceasefire and we all know it.
Does anyone really think that someone can tell President Trump what to do? Come on. I'm Venicia Rainey. And I'm Sophia Yam. And this is Iran the latest. It's Tuesday the 2nd of June 2026. the 95th day of war and the 55th day of the ceasefire. Thank you so much to everyone who's been writing in to share their feedback about our proposed pivot to broader coverage. It's been really great hearing from so many of you. I'm glad you appreciated us covering this conflict in depth. And it's also interesting to hear that I think nearly all of you agree that we should broaden out our coverage a bit,
but a lot of you have requested that we continue to cover the Middle East in some capacity every day. So, we'll definitely start off by doing that. And thank you all for your suggestions about what else we should be covering. China, Myanmar, Sudan, we hear it all. And we will plan some coverage on all of that kind of stuff in the coming weeks. So, thank you so much. And if you haven't had a chance to write in, please do. We're on Battle Lines atgraph.co.uk or you can find us on our socials in the show notes or you can comment underneath this episode. Later on in this episode, we'll be hearing from Yan Eglund. He's the secretary general of the Norwegian
Refugee Council, a humanitarian aid organization. He's been inside Iran and will tell us about what he saw from his drive from southern Turkey into the Iranian capital of Thrron. Plus, we'll be speaking to an analyst in Beirut about the situation there and what next for the Israel Lebanon war given its increasingly crucial role in the wider Middle East conflict and the search for a peace deal. But first, a quick summary of where we're at today. So yesterday, listeners will know we reported that Iran was pulling out of talks and even threatening to escalate the war in the Babel Mandab and other places after Israel ordered a strike on
Beirut and a big offensive push. It [snorts] looks like those talks are now back on. Donald Trump held a by all accounts very fiery call with Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu essentially telling him to call off the strikes on Beirut. I'm going to give you Trump's official statement on Truth Social and then Sophia will go behind the curtains a bit with the reporting on that. So Trump wrote, "I had a conversation with BB Netanyahu today asking him not to go into a major raid of Beirut, Lebanon. He turned his troops around. Thank you, BB. I also had a conversation with representatives of the leaders of Hezbollah, and they agreed to stop shooting at Israel and its soldiers.
Likewise, Israel agreed to stop shooting at them. Let's see how long that lasts. Hopefully, it will be for eternity." President Donald J. Trump. Sophia, what do we know about the call from reporting? Well, it seems like Trump has really steamrolled BB. He called him crazy, accused him of being ungrateful and pushed Israel to stop attacking into Lebanese territory. Israel has said it's attacking Hezbollah, but that is encroaching into land uh outside of Israeli borders. Now, I'm going to quote some of what Trump is said to have uh told Netanyahu on this call. It's laden with expletives just to give you a warning. If you're around kids, you know, things like this, you might want
to just take a beat. Uh, but this is what Donald Trump is saying. This is what's come out from sources briefed on the call and put forward in US media outlets, including Axio. Here are some of the lines. You're effing crazy. You'd be in prison if it weren't for me. I'm saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this. Other explanations and summaries of this call say that Trump was very quote pissed and at one point apparently yelled, "What the f are you doing?" So this is very strong language coming from Trump. He does often curse. You see this in his truth social posts. You see this and how he just speaks so off the cuff in front of reporters on television. And
uh it's just uh showing this particular weakness that Israel has at the moment. Israel does need the US to support its actions. Uh without that, Israel BB in particular is very much exposed. This particular war was launched as a joint effort between the Americans and the Israelis against Iran. Of course, it then spread very widely across the region. But it does also mean that Trump may be getting fed up. And you have to remember that Trump is a very fickle president. He does change his mind. I mean, he's changed his mind, for instance, on what the final goal would be for this war, not just once, but twice. And perhaps he'll change his mind again on this. And so, it just goes to
speak to that the alliance between the US and Israel could still change going forward. So, we're kind of back to where we were at the beginning of yesterday. There is now a partial ceasefire again between Israel and Hezbollah announced by Trump. That has now been confirmed by Lebanese authorities. But there are still active hostilities going on in southern Lebanon just as we've had ever since that ceasefire was declared in midappril. Despite this fighting is ongoing in southern Lebanon, the Israeli forces have killed eight people in attacks today alone. Um and Hezbollah has fired rockets at northern Israel earlier, including at the outskirts of the coastal city of Hifur. Meanwhile, it
seems that Iran is reviewing the final draft proposal for an interim ceasefire agreement with the US. So those back channels are ongoing. That's according to Iranian state media mea news agency. They said an agreement had not yet been sent back to mediators citing an anonymous informed source. We're going to get more into the situation in Lebanon shortly, but Sophia, there's a big appearance coming up in the US today. We're set to hear from Marco Rubio. What are we expecting? Yeah, Rubio, the Secretary of State for the US is set to testify in Congress. He is meant to present the annual budget request for the State Department. But very quickly, the focus of the discussion is likely and expected to
shift to the war in Iran, the unsteady ceasefire that's ongoing, the talks that haven't gone anywhere uh of which Iran has suspended. And this particular litany of questioning will be very interesting. It'll be interesting to see how Rubio decides to answer. He like many other Trump cabinet officials have largely defended the US president and his actions and it will be the first time again that Rubio is speaking and testifying in front of Congress since war began. Okay, so one to keep an eye on and we'll bring you any lines from that in tomorrow's podcast. Now, as we said, the situation in Lebanon has been escalating dramatically over the past few days and is increasingly pivotal to
any future peace deal between Iran and America. to dig more into what's going on there. We're joined now by Michael Young, a senior editor at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut and the editor of Dwan Carnegie's Middle East blog. Michael, welcome to Around the Latest. Um, you're joining us from a slightly dodgy phone connection. So, I hope our listeners will forgive us for slightly lower quality audio than we usually have. Can you just start by telling us what's the mood like in Beirut today? What are you seeing and hearing? The situation in Beirut is cal but there is still a great deal of confusion with respect to what happened yesterday. As you know at the end of the day Donald Trump announced that the
Israelis and Hzbollah had agreed to stop firing at each other. Uh but there was no indication that there was a formal agreement between them. And today it seems to be to a certain extent the Israelis have continued bombing. So, we seem to be in a situation that hasn't changed that much. And the latest news I've heard is that the Israeli defense minister KZ has announced that if Hezbollah targets towns in northern Israel, Israel would respond against Beirut, by which I presume he meant the southern suburbs of Beirut. Right? Because we heard yesterday that Netanyahu had ordered strikes on Beirut and then Trump mentioned that he had told the Israelis not to march on Beirut
suggesting that the ground forces were going to head towards the capital city. What was your understanding of sort of what was being threatened yesterday? That was quite confusing. Now my understanding is that the Lebanese speaker of parliament Nabia Beri the head of the Amal Shiite party precisely Nabi what I heard is that he believed that the Israelis were planning to march on Beirut to reach as far as Beirut. I find this a little bit difficult to believe. I don't think the Israelis today have the capacity to invade half of Lebanon given the problems they've had with their reserves. given the fact that this would really drag them into a quagmire. So I'm not sure you know what Trump meant when
he raised that issue in his truth social message. As I said, there's a great deal of confusion about what we're talking about here. You know, everyone heard read the truth social post by Trump. Many people are just confused about, you know, what this actually means. What do you think Trump can do to get Netanyahu to listen to him? There was a phone call, a pretty fiery one, between the two leaders after which Trump said that there was going to be some sort of partial ceasefire, but we've seen the
attacks continue into southern Lebanon. Uh, is there anything that can get BB to back down? I mean, he can do a lot. The question is that is he willing to do a lot? And I think that's the real problem. I don't think Trump is willing to put a lot of pressure on Netanyahu. By which I mean, you know, the United States can restrict certain transfer of certain armaments. The US can do a lot of things. But the reality is that I think Netanyahu understands that within the US, he has enough support to push Trump onto the defensive if Trump were to raise the heat on the Israelis. The Israeli attitude has been basically the following. It's that look, you want a ceasefire, we will go along with you, but if someone fires on us, we will
retaliate. Now, the fact of the matter is that there are no guarantees that anyone is firing on the Israelis. But the Israelis could always create a pretext that they were fired upon or that they are going to be imminently fired upon as a pretext to resume the conflict. This is the major problem and we saw this actually on April 8th. If you recall when Israel bombed simultaneously several targets in Lebanon killing you know I think over 300 people they said that you know there was an imminent plan to by hazwallah members to you know do something to attack and so they launched these attacks to preventah from acting. Is there any evidence that's correct? In fact none that I've seen. So the Israelis can always invent pretext to basically justify any of their actions
which means that Trump will find it very difficult to impose um a ceasefire on them. It's also a fact that Hezbollah continues to fire drones and missiles projectiles at northern Israel and at Israeli troops operating in southern Lebanon. I think there were more missiles fired overnight into northern Israel last night. And I know the Israeli army is now investigating whether Hezbollah is has now got drone capacity that might have thermal imaging capabilities because they are starting to get drone attacks at night which hasn't happened previously in the conflict. I guess my question is ditto re Hezbollah. Is there anyone who can restrain Hezbollah? Who are they listening to within the Lebanese system at the moment?
No, they're listening to Iran. I mean today is commanded by Iran. We have to differentiate between uh firing drones in Lebanon and firing drones against northern Israel. In Lebanon, basically you have an Israeli occupation. Andah is always going to say as long as someone is occupying the Lebanon, we have the right to attack them. With regard to northern Israel, what's happening there, frankly, is basically a new version of an old game. We saw this back in 1996 when essentially there was an agreement reached in Damascus where Hazbalah and the Israelis basically agreed on sort of rules and engagement between each side. At the time Israel was occupying southern Lebanon. By agreeing these
rules of engagement they almost impose a certain as I said certain rules sort of a deterrence agreement between each side. I think what's happening today is that the Iranians are trying to do the same thing with Israel. They want the Israelis to know that if they're going to pursue their actions in Lebanon, it's going to automatically provoke a response from so both of these sides are engaged in this uh in this battle. The Iranians want to impose, as I said, rules of engagement. The Israelis want to prevent this. So in this context, it's going to be very difficult to impose something durable on the ground.
What do you make of the fact that Trump said he had a very good call with Hezbollah representatives who also agreed to scale back fighting that's from his truth social post? I don't believe that an American president has ever spoken to before. Or have they? I suspect what happened is that Trump was uh in touch with uh probably Bri or someone who had spoken with B because B is of course the interlocutor with Hzah but I doubt very much that he spoke with anyone in the party. I think today the party is essentially led by members of the um IRGC in Iran. Just to read out that bit of his post, I also had a conversation with representatives of the leaders of HPA.
Okay. So you think that representatives of the leaders, you think that's B? Yes, I think so. I mean, I would suspect it's him. I mean, there aren't a hundred of them. I can't be absolutely sure, but my understanding is that Bri has been intimately involved in this effort to uh in collaboration with countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar uh but also Egypt and Turkey. All four countries along with Pakistan have been working hard in recent weeks to stabilize the region. And I think they're all very much alarmed by what Israel is doing in Lebanon. And so they basically try to persuade Trump to calm the game in Lebanon to sort of, you know, try to impose some kind of um an end to hostilities in Lebanon.
I'm wondering how you would assess Hezbollah's current capabilities. They suffered quite a bit in fighting against the Israelis, the pager attack, thinking back to that for instance, but now they seem to be putting up quite a decent fight. So where do they stand now in terms of their firepower and their capabilities? The war that is fighting today is not a war that requires a lot technically. What they've done is they've perfected these very simple drones to which they've attached rocket you know what are essentially rocket propelled grenades. And these drills have been very effective against the Israelis, but
this doesn't require really a lot of uh you know technological prowess. So while Hazwa was probably weakened significantly in 2024, you know, there was time for the Iranians to reorganize the party and to in a way uh focus its attention on maybe, you know, simpler weapons, but weapons that have proven fairly effective. In other words, previously Hezbollah made a big deal that it had precisiong guided missiles that could hit the major Israeli cities. Well, they haven't really used such uh missiles in this war. Um and in a way, what they've done is they've effectively drawn Israel into Lebanon. And now they're able to, you know, to hurt them, of course, at a terrible cost for Lebanon, but they're able to hurt them
through this these technologically very simple drones that they're using. So my point is that even if has been weakened, their ability to strike effectively against Israel has not been significantly weakened. Number one, they are taking losses. However, I mean the figures that are circulating is around 1,500, maybe 1,500 men who have been killed. Of course, the impact, the destruction on Lebanon has been immense. But in terms of the party, it can continue to fight this kind of lowlevel war in this way for I think a significant period of time. Can you tell us a bit more about the impact on Lebanon, the destruction? I know more than 3,000 people have been killed. So you're suggesting that the
figures going around suggest about half of those are Hezbollah militants and then the other half civilians. Not necessarily. No. I think 3,000 over 3,000 are probably civilians. hazwallah doesn't announce it's dead and I don't know if they're how many of them have been counted probably a portion of the 3,000 are people in one way or another associated withah but I think a significant number were also cidians the Israelis essentially are in the area south of the lethani the Israelis have systematically raised villages and I mean here predominantly Shia villages and the Israeli defense minister said, I think about a month and a half ago, he said that the Shia would not return to southern Lebanon in the
near future. There are non-shia villages. There are some Christian villages in the central region as well as the eastern region. You have Christian and Drews villages and Sunni villages that have not been raised to the ground. But by and large the Israelis have done tremendous damage to Bashia villages south of the Leani and they are systematically bombing towns and villages north of the Leani between the Leani River and the city of Siden where you know these areas also have a large Shia concentration. So this is really targeting one community and I think the Israelis want to create a humanitarian crisis for the community probably to essentially destabilize Lebanon, create conflict between the Shia community in Hezbollah and the
Lebanese state and perhaps between the Lebanese Shiite and non Shiite communities in such a way as to maintain Lebanon in a permanent state of instability in such a way that it would occupy Hazbala's attentions. for years to come. And how likely do you think that scenario is? I don't believe Lebanon, the Lebanese will go to civil war to be honest with you. But of course, the idea of instability is going to be is very real. I mean, you're dealing with, you know, hundreds of thousands of people whose villages and homes have been destroyed. Many of them are out of jobs. They're not working. So, you know, this is going to be a major problem to manage for both
the Lebanese state and even for Hezwando. That was Michael Young from the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. We're going to take a short pause now. Coming up after the break, we'll be speaking to the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, a humanitarian aid organization, about what it looks like inside Iran at the moment. Welcome back. You're listening to Iran the latest with me Sophia Yan and Venicia Rainey. We're going to take a rare trip inside Iran. Now on Monday evening, our colleague Roland Olphant spoke to the secretary general of the
Norwegian Refugee Council, Yan Eglund. He's been in Thrron the last few days and told us what he's experienced. Here's their conversation. How long have you been in Iran? Four days now. Came very early Friday morning. We drove all the way from uh Turkey. Good lord. And you're in Thran now? Now I'm in Tehran. Yes. And leaving tomorrow. That's quite a drive. I mean, one of the main things I wanted to talk to you about was just what you're seeing because it's so rare we get to talk to eyewitnesses on the ground. Maybe you
could just tell us about that drive from the Turkish border just entering Iran, what you saw on the way to Tehran. Then we can talk about what's in the city. This is a route we also used for people during the fighting when there was airspace was gone from Van in eastern Turkey. The 1,100 kilometers land to tear up. When you travel, you know, most of the buildings are fine. They are intact. Iran is a huge place. But then suddenly you see a factory blackened, gone. Then you see a police station blackened, gone. And then you see a former military post also completely destroyed. that the worst thing to witness really is in densely
populated urban areas like Thran that when they hit police stations, of course, the next door buildings would be apartment blocks. The windows were blown in, the doors were blown in. My colleagues in NRC lived in that kind of apartments. And thank God none were badly wounded, none were killed. But many lost their homes and then there are clearly as I witnessed myself schools, hospitals and then in one area I visited whole apartment blocks five, six, seventory buildings with apartment houses completely destroyed. Why is that? I don't know. I mean what I find is that toys and school books and sofas in the rubber. So you're you're confident those were civilian residential buildings.
Clearly civilian residential buildings we cannot control. Was there anyone there? Any thing there that we couldn't detect? Modern urban warfare in highly densely populated areas has an enormous toll on the civilian population. I saw that in Gaza. I saw that in Lebanon. I saw that in Syria. You cannot have thousand of impacts in areas like that without a high toll on the civilian population and violations of the basic tenants of humanitarian law. So you drove this long road through the mountains and so on all the way to Tehran and you saw these things along the way. You've just given us a little sense of Tehran. Just tell us a little bit about I mean the city. I know lots of people left Tehran during the war to avoid the bombardment. I think
lots of people are coming back. I was wondering if you could give us a sense of what you're seeing in terms of living conditions on the ground in terms of basics like running water and food and shops. I mean, is there an issue with people made homeless by the bombing? There are thousands of families made homeless from the bombing. Probably tens of thousands altogether. But Tehran is a city of 11 million people. So you travel through the city and it's a lively vibrant city, an enormous endless traffic jam in many ways and then you come to a place where the whole building is gone. And then I was in a in government buildings for meetings with people who whom we need to deal with to help the Afghan refugees here.
And you see that there is no windows uh because they are gone because of the nearby impacts. Perhaps the number one effect now of the war is the economic crisis. Shops have been sealed off. Factories have closed. Aran men who were breadwinners have lost their income because there is no building uh happening at the moment. They are construction workers. the women were domestic workers, the Iranian hosts family cannot afford them anymore. So the deep economic crisis is the next wave of suffering in a place like Iran with inflation also on top of everything.
Could you just explain exactly what the Norwegian Refugee Council, you deal with refugees obviously, what exactly is it you're doing in Iran and who you're helping? Iran is a middle inome country. is not the poorest place in the world. Why do they need your help? Because uh Iran indeed a an oil rich middle-income country hosted 4 and a half million Afghan refugees, many more than Europe combined. It's the largest refugee hosting place on earth. We came to the relief of um of communities that are particularly vulnerable among the Afghans as we did in Pakistan on the other side. But there was always much less aid for the Afghans in Iran than there were in Pakistan or
elsewhere. And now there are very few aid organizations left in Iran. We're the biggest non-governmental organization in the country. Uh, of course we specialized in hard-to-reach areas in difficult areas where frontline organization and that's because the needs of the refugees and particularly vulnerable civilians. Could you tell us a bit about your interactions with the Iranian government and Iranian officials? How are they treating you? Are they allowing you to work? What are the requests you are making of them? I'll be open with you. it's not an easy place to operate and many organizations have actually left Iran.
We've been able to negotiate access. We are there in the east. We're in Kerman. We're in Baluchistan which is close to the Afghan and Pakistani borders. Uh these are sensitive areas. We're able to operate there. We're all operating with uh Iranian partners, local organizations, but we need permits from the government and that has taken often a lot of time earlier. We needed to negotiate uh visas. We needed to negotiate memorandums of understanding. We needed to uh negotiate project clearance. Paradoxically, that has gone much better now of late during this recent war and crisis. And we could identify 9,000 homeless families, Iranian and Afghan, because of the war. And we have already been given them direct assistance, cash
assistance because they're homeless because of the war. Only two countries responded to our emergency appeal, Norway and Sweden. the other donors who professed for being so principled have not responded. I think it's political overtones and there shouldn't be someone in need whether the Afghan or Iranian civilian in great need should be getting assistance wherever they are. Wouldn't you accept that there are some serious question marks about working with a regime like the Iranian government, especially considering what they did to their own civilians in January, considering how that government uses money to wage wars in all kinds of places? Could you understand why other NOS's would be deeply reluctant to
operate in a place where you need their permission and you need their cooperation which is the situation in so many other places as well. I mean we're on both sides of the Sudanese conflict. No easy regimes in any of those places. Very difficult to get the permits. We do not punish Sudanese refugees, mothers, children because they have the leaders and the regimes there. We shouldn't punish Afghan refugees for the sins of of the government here, the authorities, the rulers here. The whole test is there abject needs that are uncovered and are we able to meet those needs? And the answer is yes in both of these cases. So I would say why politicize
eight when it goes to people in need in Iran and not in Palestine or in Sudan or in Colombia or Venezuela or any other of the difficult places where we operate. Since you're dealing with Afghan refugees and there is there are very large number there. Well, this is this is purely kind of anecdotally through a friend of an af Afghan family home was destroyed by bombing and as I understand the complaint is they're not getting help from the state because they're Afghans. Does this sound like a familiar story? And if so, why is that? Among the four and a half million Afghans, there are many registered refugees or they are passport holders and
several status. We help with our legal uh aid work. We help them to get status. Less than half of the population are registered as refugees. If you're registered refugee, actually you get free education and free uh healthcare. You're free to work anywhere. If you're undocumented, you fall outside of the system. You cannot uh register for education nor for health care. And that would be the case in uh of these people. And of course, there are also been deportations back to Afghanistan from Iran, especially last summer. Uh I was myself in Afghanistan and saw the thousands coming over the border every day. That was not voluntary, but those had not received refugee status. Unfortunately,
there's been a ceasefire for, I think, 6 weeks or more now. It sounds like we are getting closer to the war possibly resuming. What's your sense of the mood amongst the Iranians you're speaking to about that prospect? People are yearning for peace here. They're yearning for some normaly. They're yearning for the ports opening so they can the economy can be restarted. We will stay and deliver whatever happens. We scaled up during the war. UK has been a global humanitarian leader for all of the years
that I have been a humanitarian. I whether I was in the UN or the Red Cross system or NSC and so on. I hope that the UK will remember that it has this civilizationary view of how to help people in destit of armaments and stability in Europe now. It's also a question of stability elsewhere in the world. And that stability is gone if we are all withdrawing our investments in hope here in Iran, in Lebanon, in all of the other places where people are losing hope for a better future. That was Norwegian Refugee Council Chief Yan Eglund speaking to our co-host Roland Olphant. That's all for today's episode. We'll be back again tomorrow.
Until then, goodbye. Iran the latest is an original podcast from the Telegraph created by David Nullles and hosted by me, Venicia Rainey and Roland Dolphant. If you appreciated this podcast, please consider following Around the Latest on your preferred podcast app. And if you have a moment, leave a review as it helps others find the show. For more from our foreign correspondents on the ground, sign up for our new daily newsletter, cables, or listen to our sister podcast, Ukraine,
the latest. We're still on the same email address, battle lio***@t*********o.uk, or you can contact us on X. You can find our handles in the show notes. The producer is Peter Chevlin. The executive producers are Venicia Rainey and Louisa Wells.
