Name: Has President Trump lost control of the war in Iran? | BBC Newscast
Uploaded: 2026-03-20T16:32:36.000Z
Duration: 28 min 51 s
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And it's Chris in the newscast studio, Faisal, also in the newscast studio.

And please welcome back Jane Corbyn from Panorama.

How was it making a half hour documentary program, which is like a serious bit of work, but

the story's just unfolding around you and of course, your Panorama about the Iran war is on iplayer right now.

Well, we waited a bit before we started filming for that very reason, because we knew if we started immediately in three days time, it would be outdated.

It escalated enormously, obviously, in that first week and.

Yeah, well, I'm glad that you've found it useful and interesting and I hope people will watch it on iplayer.

It's extraordinary to put something like that together in a week in which so much happens, obviously in Israel, in Iran, of course, most of all in America and in all the Gulf nations.

And trying to pack it into a half hour program isn't that easy.

Well, let's see how we can do on this episode of Newscast.

Faisal, as we're recording on Thursday evening, it feels today in the uk, or maybe actually around the world, this felt like the day that the kind of the consequences of the war came home to roost, really.

We did have a big spike right at the beginning on the first day, but

I think what we got overnight was the sense of escalation.

Markets had been sort of treading water holding pattern.

It was almost like a 50, 50 split between.

This is all going to go away relatively quickly.

By that, I mean within weeks, and this is going to be the worst case scenario.

So we saw this exchange of fire with some of the most important energy facilities in the world.

And it was pretty clear that with those on fire, that this was the escalation that was much feared.

And you're suddenly like, well, the probability of this worst case scenario is now much, much higher.

And so we saw an impact on markets, you know, extraordinary overnight impact in markets with oil prices and gas prices.

And Jane, just to be clear, the reason this was so important is, and

the events that led up to all of this turmoil on the markets was Israel striking the natural gas field in the Persian Gulf, that half of which is in Iranian territory, and

then Iran retaliating by hitting Qatar, which is basically the world's largest producer of liquefied natural gas.

Yeah, that oil field straddles under the Gulf and south Pas.

Iran retaliated by bombing the gas facilities in Qatar.

And, you know, Qatar is a really a real linchpin in the Gulf and in what's happened in this war because it's kind of been an intermediary between all sides in the past.

The biggest American air base in the Gulf.

It hosted the talks between Hamas and Israel.

And in fact, for many years, Hamas had its headquarters in Qatar.

It's kind of managed to sort of keep everybody in play.

So hitting Qatar was obviously for Trump, for President, Trump was a bridge too far and he reacted accordingly.

And we can talk about his tweet in a second.

But, Faisal, I just wanted to rewind a little bit.

And you were talking about the worst case scenario.

Just explain what that worst case scenario is and why it's the worst.

Well, if we go back six months, maybe even three months, if you would have told me that the Straits of Hormuz would be blocked, and

obviously that's the reference to that sort of small bit between Oman, the Peninsula and Oman and Iran, where it's sort of navigable, 10, 15 miles, and

you were seeing missiles flying over the Gulf in either direction, aimed at capital cities and oil and energy installations.

I would say that is the worst case scenario.

But essentially we would be looking at record oil and gas prices.

We'd be looking at a supply issue that would primarily impact on Asia.

But then, because Asia would then seek to sort of back up their supplies by buying in global markets, would then have a cascading effect on Europe and then the Americas.

Because there'd be more competition stuff.

I mean, literally, I could show you a chart of astonishing.

You described them, these LNG tankers full of gas which were heading for Europe.

And then as soon as the Iran war breaks out, they do a massive U turn in the Atlantic and go back through the Panama is willing to pay more.

You are seeing extraordinary things like the US Treasury Secretary saying, well, actually

you know, all this Iranian oil, you can now buy it.

Because they want to, you know, they want to sort of calm down the oil price.

I think the big picture here is that the economic impact is not some accidental byproduct of this in terms of the Iranians.

It is their leverage is their counter weapon.

And so that Makes it very difficult to predict.

it seems to some, you know, you know, that explains their, then their military strategy.

It explains some of the sort of blood curdling threats that are made when you hear from their spokespeople.

It explains that the, you know, the American response from people at the Treasury Secretary to try and diffuse that, but

it makes it, it means that in trying to predict the economic impacts, as we try to do, as people at the bank of England try to do, is very, very difficult and it is starting to have economic consequences here in the uk.

And we saw that today when the bank of England made its decision to hold interest rates.

But, Jane, you've printed off Donald Trump's post on Truth Social, which having looked at a lot of Donald Trump posts, he posted it.

And it's full of the hyperbole that I think we would associate with his very middle of early hours posts.

But I think it feels the consequences of this are even greater than a lot of these, like, 2am posts.

Got a lot of capital letters in this post, and it's a very long post.

And he accuses, he's accusing Israel for violently lashing out at South Pas gas field.

It's sort of almost the language you'd think he would use about Iran, but

And then he says, you know, in capital letters, no more attacks will be made by Israel, and

we are taking the upper hand and we will do whatever we need to do without the help and consent of Israel, we will massively blow up the entirety of the South Pas gas field.

He's talking about if Iran was to retaliate against an innocent, as he puts it, which is Qatar in this instance of what happened overnight.

So, yeah, I think he's not mincing his words.

And Jane, this is where we get into the different war aims that America and Israel have here.

And what they regard as an end game, what they regard as the ultimate.