9/11 attacks remembered

0:00Hello and welcome to News Auf and the BBC World Service. Coming to you live from London, I'm James Kamarassami. It was a stark statement to a nation in shock and disbelief and it was delivered exactly 25 years ago today. Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country. And George W. Bush speaking on 9-11 after planes transformed into deadly weapons, flew into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York, causing it to collapse. Half an hour later, a third aircraft flew into the Pentagon, a fourth then crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after its passengers overpowered the hijackers. Almost 3,000 people died in total and tens of thousands more were injured. A quarter of a century later, memorial events have been taking place across the United States, watched by our chief North America correspondent, Gary O'Donohue.

1:03A simple haunting single bell rings out over ground zero, sight of the worst attack on US soil ever to take place. Six times each year on this day, the ringing of the bell marks the four separate planes that were turned into deadly weapons, together with the two moments when the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center crumbled and fell in front of the eyes of the world. This year, a seventh moment has been added, marking the nearly 10,000 people who have died subsequently from the direct health effects of that day, with fresh details released by New York's Muslim mezz or Mamdani, himself accused by some of sympathizing with America's enemies. As Vice President JD Vance and all four former living presidents looked on, the families

2:08of those who died stood on the stage reading out the names of every single victim. Their vow never to forget the cost and sacrifice of America's most vulnerable moment in living memory. Michael S. Bach. But this time, this normally apolitical ceremony was infused with anger and criticism. Terry Strada, wife of Tom Strada, who died that day and who is the national chair of the 9-11 families united, targeted leaders past and present for not holding Saudi Arabia to account. Most of the hijackers were from the kingdom. You are missed more with each year that passes, but how can it be 25 years? And still, we have no justice for the role that Saudi Arabia played in your murder. Another family member called on President Trump absent from New York today to release unredacted files which the families believe would give more details about Saudi Arabia's

3:08involvement. Just outside Washington, another ceremony was underway to mark the moment another plane American Airlines Flight 77 hit the side of the Pentagon, killing all 59 people on board and 125 inside the Pentagon itself. At dawn each year the stars and stripes are unfurled on the facade of the building where the plane struck, now the site of a chapel of remembrance. Donald Trump chose to be here today rather than at ground zero in New York where no speeches are made. He pay tribute to the dead and to those who ran towards danger that day. Not least the passengers of Flight 93 who decided to fight back against the attackers and brought down the fourth plane in a field in Pennsylvania. It had been headed for the nation's capital. And the president hinted at the relevance of those moments for the military challenges

4:12of today. We will never, ever forget. That's why we fight today. We don't have a choice. There can only be victory. We fight hard, we fight to win. We will always remember the victims and the families of September 11th, 2001, very famous, date, unfortunately. 9-11 is marked every year in this country, but this quarter century anniversary brings with it even deeper reflections. America spent 20 years in Afghanistan, eventually departing in an ignominious and chaotic fashion, with the return of the Taliban who'd harbored the author of 9-11, Assam Abid Laden. He would eventually 10 years later be tracked down and killed by the US in Pakistan.

5:13Our chief North America correspondent, Gary O'Donohue, reporting there. Of course, for anyone who was caught up in the 9-11 attacks, the memories of that day remain raw. Ron DeFrancheska, who is from Canada, was working for a company called Eurobrokers on the 84th floor of the World Trade Center's South Tower, that was a second to be struck. He thought to be the last person who managed to escape from the building before it collapsed. Ron suffered extensive burns, a broken vertebrae and serious injuries to his head and his eyes. Over the years, he has given talks about his experience, embracing positive psychology to inspire others and to help himself cope with the trauma. He has travelled to New York for today's anniversary, but before he left his home in Toronto, I spoke to him about his remarkable escape and his long road to recovery. I'm a Canadian. I was living in working in New York. I lived in New Jersey. It was a beautiful day, September 11th.

6:14The skies of vital blue. I worked on the 84th floor of the South Tower. I was a money market broker, so we traded US dollar in European currencies. I was at my desk taking calls. When back to the right, there was a slout explosion. Our building shuttered and we saw a huge fireball sucking in on itself and thousands upon thousands of pieces of paper loading in the air. We ran over to see what was going on and we saw a huge gaping hole in the side of the building. But you have to understand, given the size and scale of those buildings, we just thought of light aircraft that had gone off course and crashed in. As did everyone. That was what the initial reporting was, wasn't it? It was. They said on the speaker system too, that building two, which tower two, that I was in was secure. And please go back to your desks. But we saw people in the window there and they were anicking and frantic and some of

7:14them decided to jump, which was horrifying. I went back to my desk to call my wife, Mary, and tell her that I was okay and to turn on the TV and watch what was happening. I was at my desk and I got a call from a friend here in Toronto and started yelling at me to told me to get out of the building. I grabbed a colleague of mine and as we were leaving the second plane, hit our building, it went from 78th floor to the 85th floor and it's starboard wing, I think, cut right through our trading room. We got knocked flying and all the ceiling tiles came down and we picked ourselves up and we made our way to the stairwell. We started to go down and I guess about two or three flights of stairs and we met a woman being carried by two men telling us we couldn't go down. I was overcome with the smoke. I decided to climb back up. We climbed I guess to about the 91st floor and I realized now that all the floors are locked from the inside for security reasons.

8:17So at this point, you're above where the plane had crashed. Correct. We started to head back down. I told some people that I was with to lie down and try to get beneath the hot choking smoke and so we did and we were drifting off and then someone called me. I don't know if you're a god-believing person or a faithful person but somebody called me and said come this way. So I followed that voice into the thickest of smoke and then in the last of the effort for air I pushed against it and it really filled the staircase down below. And from the way you just described that event and the question you posed, I am surmising that there was no physical person attached to the voice. There was no one there and there was no one there on my way down all the way down. I ran into three firefighters coming up. I told them that I was having trouble breathing based suggested that if I go down I'll get

9:20help down below. And can I just pose the same question to you, are a man of faith? Correct. And you do believe that it was a higher presence speaking to you. I do. Some people may say it's an angel. Some may say it's God and some may say it's my adrenaline field synapsis working over time. And that is possible. But if I ever hear a voice that clear and calm again, I'd follow it. And that voice, whoever whatever it was, did lead you out, talk us through what happened then. When I reached ground level, I just wanted to run and get away from that place. But I came out facing the courtyard. There was a security guard. He told me I couldn't go out there. There was too much debris. So they made us go underneath in the path system. So as I started going down there, I ran into a colleague of mine. Him and I started walking. And that's when we heard the loud noises.

10:20I looked to my right and saw a huge fireball coming at us. I just yelled to John to run. And I ran as fast as I could. And that's all I remember. I remember getting hit on the head and then starting to drift off. I woke up three days later in the hospital. It burns on 60% of my body. And it took me a while to come through when I was in the hospital. I didn't know that the towers had come down. I didn't even know it was a terrorist attack. And was that kept from you for some time? Yeah. I was quite agitated. And my wife gradually told me, but I had colleagues coming in and checking in on me. And even one of my colleagues spouses who came in frantically looking for her husband. And I asked her how he was. And she said, oh, he's fine, Ronnie. And he perished that day. What were those initial weeks like? Because you had four young children then.

11:21How old were they when this happened? 10, 8, 6 and 3. 10, 8, 6 and 3. A lot for them to take in. You know, as hard as it was on me, I think it was harder on my wife. I was blank for a very long time. Didn't know if I wanted to live or die. I was frightened all the time. And she had to hold it together all through my physical and mental challenges. She had to support everybody. It took a while for things to start to come back to me. I was just on edge, loud noises, planes, things frightened me. You know, the kids screaming and anybody screaming bothered me. And how did you get to a place where you can talk about it in this detail? I didn't want to initially. I just I wanted to hold up. I didn't want my colleagues spouses seeing me. I got out and they didn't all carry my survivor's guilt with me to my grave. But after a while, being blank and a bit more of somebody said to me,

12:24it's just like you need to tell your story. People need a vision of hope if they can or resilience. And I tell people now I talk about resilience and gratitude and adversity. And if I can help somebody on their journey, then I believe it's important to do that. That was Ron DeFranchezco's thought to be the last person to escape from the South Tire of the World Trade Center on 9-11. You're listening to News Hour from the BBC World Service. And coming up later a short history of American presidents in Ireland. Over the years, stories in this place have become part of my soul. I am happy to be in Ireland. I am now a free man of Dublin. The wheels of the presidential airline over running on Irish soil. John F. Kennedy was in the land of his father's. We're hearing about the latest US president's forthcoming trip to Ireland

13:27in about 15 minutes' time. The headlines at this hour reports say the Iranian-backed Houthis have seized control of Yemen's entire Red Sea coast as well as strategic islands in the Bab Al-Mandebs straight, further cementing their grip on a key shipping lane linking Europe and Asia. We'll have more on that later on. And as we've been hearing, the US has been marking the 25th anniversary of the 9-11 terror attacks in which nearly 3,000 people died. You're listening to the BBC World Service. This is News Hour coming to you live from London with James Camarassami. It was a moment when satire got serious. In July, India's satirical Gen Z movement called the Cockroach Janta Party staged mass protests which eventually led to the resignation of the country's education minister. Well, now the CJP is embarking on a new campaign demanding improvements to the state of public schools. It says that it wants to keep youth issues such as education and jobs

14:29at the centre stage of national politics. So what can the CJP achieve and what might that mean for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his similarly named BJP? The BBC's international correspondent Yogy Tlaemaeh has been finding out. I'm at a rural public school in the Western state of Harashtra and we're following a new campaign launched by the Cockroach Janta Party or the CJP demanding that the condition of public schools be improved. The CJP, of course, is the online satirical movement that started after the Chief Justice of India made a crude comment in the month of May likening unemployed youngsters with cockroaches. It became a mass, Gen Z street uprising, demanding accountability from the government over exam paper leaks and eventually the education minister of the country was forced to resign. The main face in the founder of this movement,

15:31Abhijit Deepke, who was a student himself studying overseas in the US, he is going from one classroom to another. What I'm hoping to accomplish is that the students or the kids who are living in the rural India, they should at least give a dignified life because they have been neglected for the last seven eight decades. So what they've discovered at the school is that there is no toilet for female students that the food they are giving in school lunches, some of that is being made from expired products and I can see now that Abhijit the sitting surrounded by villagers from the area he's asked further number of the official in charge of the school he's called them and he's asking them questions about why these basic facilities are not available here. Aim of the cockroach gentha parties to change the political discourse of the country because since last 10-12 years we have been seeing that the political discourse has been around communal politics in the Muslim politics and we want to bring it to education and employment. Discontentment and anger has been simmering for a very long time in India about these issues

16:36but what the cockroach gentha party has managed to do is that it's given them a vent. It's brought them to a forefront in a way that we haven't seen in India in a very long time. So to get a sense of how acute this crisis of unemployment is we've come away from Orangabad to the national capital Delhi. We've come specifically to an area where there are numerous coaching institutes for students who want to join government services. In the last exam that happened a million students applied just around a thousand of them actually got through. Hi my name is Yogita what's your name? Devesh Shukla. I would say there are two core problems. One is income levels not rising in India so there is stagnation of income and the second is unavailability of jobs for the Genji. My name is Ahana Singh. It's very depressing honestly. I always tell this to people that the only people who are staying in India are not out of choice. They have been seen in India because they don't have a choice to go out. So it's evident that it's

17:36a really complicated picture here in India because what those voices are saying it doesn't really tally with a more than 7% growth rate that India's recently seen making it one of the fastest growing major economies in the world. And I think the question a lot of people are asking is will the protests have an electoral impact in this country? It's a question I put to the founder of the Kakroj Janta party Abhijit Dipke. I do believe that. Say we have been seeing across India all political parties have started to catering to the youths. They're trying to have a dialogue with them. I think the key question you've got the attention of the youth. How will you sustain that in the future? I think although the attention span of our generation or even the Genji's might be very short but one thing that I have realized is that if they care about something they are very old spoken about it. Weeks on from the euphoria of their win the Kakroj Janta party is now confronted with the difficult mandate approving it wasn't just a flash in the pan and that it is here to stay. Now as a baby sees a yogi to limae reporting. Now some weather records come in the form

18:46of destructive delugees, others in the form of scorching temperatures but the record that's been set today has appeared very quietly. That's because September 11th, 2026 marks the furthest point into an Atlantic hurricane season without a single hurricane being formed. I asked Dr Ryan a trushalute, a meteorologist and president of the consulting firm Weather Tiger, Weather the Record is down to the El Nino phenomenon. It absolutely is and El Nino is a kind of global climate pacemaker. It's defined by a warmth of tropical ocean waters and the Pacific Ocean but it certainly has weather impacts worldwide. In terms of tropical cyclones when there is an El Nino in effect you tend to see more tropical cyclones in the western and the eastern Pacific Ocean and many fewer than average tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Ocean. Now it's unusual to see zero hurricanes forming at what's generally regarded as about the halfway point of hurricane season here in the North Atlantic Ocean but this is no typical El Nino. It's one of the strongest of all time.

19:51Does it mean that there is just a delay? I mean could things come back with a vengeance in the second half of the season? Well you know never say never in this business. I've been forecasting hurricanes for the last 20 years and it really and truly does only take one hurricane to make it a bad hurricane season. 1992 was a very quiet hurricane season other than Hurricane Andrew which was a category five that hits South Florida. That being said the conditions that are causing the hurricane season to be so quiet in the Atlantic are highly unfavorable upper level winds over the Caribbean sea over what we call the main development region of the tropical Atlantic Ocean. I do not think that those are going anywhere over the next couple months. El Nino is only intensifying and I think those unfavorable upper level winds will continue to be in place. Now of course that doesn't rule out that storm could form closer to the continental United States, could form over the subtropical Atlantic and cause problems. So we may see some mean reversion but I think this hurricane season is going to end

20:58as one well well below normal and has a shot of being the quietest hurricane season of all time in the North Atlantic. Well as you say it's a different different story in the eastern Pacific. Well it absolutely is and in fact if you kind of integrate all the tropical cyclone activity in the northern hemisphere we're actually running about 25% above normal for 2026. So it's kind of a seasaw and you'll see this when there's a lamina typically we'll have more tropical cyclone activity in the Atlantic and less in the central and eastern Pacific. So in worldwide terms 2026 trouble cyclone season is quite busy but it's very very quiet and historically quiet here in the Atlantic. Yeah and we're talking about this as the first ever. It's what since the early 60s when actually records have been kept a specific and detailed records of from satellites isn't it? I guess we don't know going further back what patterns there might have been there. Well that's absolutely

22:00correct and we do have records of landfalls and the trouble cyclones that we know about going all the way back to the 1850s in the North Atlantic but if a hurricane happened in the open ocean you know it's the proverbial tree falling in the forests. We didn't have satellites. We didn't have you know other forms of global weather coverage like hurricane on our aircraft. We wouldn't necessarily know if there was an open ocean storm. So in fact we do have zero hurricanes on record in 1907 and 1914 we just don't really trust that that truly means that no hurricanes formed in those seasons. Now since 1950 there have been at least two hurricanes in the North Atlantic ocean every hurricane season. That was Dr. Ryan Truchel at a meteorologist and president of the consulting firm Weather Tiger. You're listening to the BBC World Service and this is News Hour coming to live from London with James Camarassani. President Trump arrives in Ireland on Saturday to meet the

23:02country's leaders in Dublin and then to watch the Irish open golf tournament at his resort in county Claire. Ireland has been a frequent destination for traveling American presidents as our correspondent Chris Page narriports. Since the 1990s Ireland has stood out among small countries as hosting a big number of US presidential visits often with huge public welcomes for the visitors. Over the years stories of this place have become part of my soul. I am happy to be in Ireland. I am now a free man of Dublin. The roots of the relationship lie in immigration during America's formative years. Almost one in 10 Americans now claim Irish ancestry. The wheels of the presidential airline over running on Irish soil. John F. Kennedy was in the land of his forefares. JFK was the first president to visit Ireland in 1963. This is the man whose great grandfather somehow scraped together the four pounds for a

24:06sailing ship passage and emigrated to the United States. Barack Obama is another president with Irish heritage and he paid homage with humor. My name is Barack Obama of the money goal of Obama. And I've come home to find the apostrophe that we lost somewhere along the way. One of the most visible and diplomatically valuable outworkings of the country's links happens every year on the 17th of March in Washington. Let me wish everyone a very happy St. Patrick's Day and on Ireland's national holiday the Irish Prime Minister, the Tishik, has a meeting under ceremony with the president. Time on a tradition I'm going to present the ball of Shamrock's president. Dan Mulholl is a former Irish ambassador to the US. I don't know of any other country that has a guaranteed annual outing in Washington. Some of our European colleagues kind of puzzled us to how I haven't managed to pull this off. Donald Trump's visit here to Dublin and to

25:07the west of Ireland will be different to most of his predecessors. He has no known Irish ancestry. There won't be a large public rally involving him. Protests are being planned, focused on US actions in the Middle East. Dr. Peter McLachlan believes the Reparallels with another visit that Ronald Reagan in 1984. The US was severely criticized at that point by people in Ireland. And what was going on in the Cold War broadly but very specifically in Central America. Many people in Ireland would have a cousin or someone who was serving abroad as a non-orup priest in Latin America and was able to bring back these first-hand reports of how there were very controversial associations there with US policy. And yet at the same time this was the US president who needed to be quoted and that was the start of the real investment of the US in Republic of Ireland and indeed Northern Ireland. I want you to know that for this great grandson of Ireland, this is a moment of joy. Ireland is more used to the most nations to hosting the holder of the most powerful office in the

26:09world. This weekend of diplomacy and demonstrations will be another episode in a story dating back decades. A story told by our Ireland correspondent Chris Page. You're listening to the BBC World Service. This is news hour coming to you live from London with James Camarassami. Even as senior figures in the US government were using today's 9-11 ceremonies to talk up America's progress in the war against Iran, a new dimension to that conflict has been rapidly taking shape, a new threat to global oil supplies. Because it's been reported that the Iranian-backed Houthi movement in Yemen has taken control of the entire Red Sea coast, including strategic islands which give it control over the Bab Al-Mandab Strait, a key shipping route linking Asia and Europe. That comes a day after the Houthis who control much of the north of Yemen, including the capital Sanaa, captured the Red Sea port city of Mokka. This all seems to be a significant moment in the Houthis struggle against the internationally

27:13recognized and Saudi-backed Yemeni government and a big setback for Saudi Arabia, which increasingly relies on the Red Sea for its oil exports. This is what the Houthi military spokesman YAHIA Sari had to say. Navigation remains safe for all shipping companies, except Saudi vessels in the Strait of Bab Al-Mandab, a strategic link between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, via the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. Earlier, I asked our chief international correspondent Lee's to set what she made of the last few days' developments. This is very, very significant. This is the largest military advances by the Houthis in many years. All the reports are that they've taken control of much of the West Coast along the Red Sea, but they have also been seizing islands, which are smack in the middle of that strategic choke point, the Bab Al-Mandab. And that means a second front has now been opened in this absolutely strategic area.

28:15Just south and east of there, of course, is that Strait, which has become a household name, the Strait of Hormuz on the Persian Gulf, where Iran has been losing some of its control over tanker traffic through that waterway. And so maybe it decided along with the Houthis, their closest ally, that now was the time to open up this front in the Bab Al-Mandab, the other vital choke point. It's been a possibility for a very long time. So the Iranians, this seems to be a moment where the interests of the Iranians and the Houthis are aligned. What about an American response to this? There have been reporting in American media that the Saudi crown prince, the de facto ruler, did call President Trump and asked him for American air power to attack the Houthis. The reports say that they've not done that. But the head of military command is now in re-ad. So consultation is going on, and I think it's very hard to say exactly what will happen, Ness. President Trump, as we all know, can be very unpredictable.

29:19He may not want to open a second front. He's already in two entangled in the Strait of Hormuz and tying down a lot of military hardware. But you remember a few years ago when the Houthis were disrupting traffic in the Red Sea, the Americans and the British were both attacking territory in Yemen controlled by the Houthis. So we don't know yet what the Americans will do. And interestingly enough, the Houthis spokesperson, as we just heard, are being very clear. They're not going to disrupt all maritime traffic just the Saudi vessels. Just briefly, Lee, this comes, of course, in the context of a long civil war in Yemen. I mean, there was a truce, wasn't there, which briefly seemed to hold. Just put this all into context within Yemen itself. So in 2020, the truce was agreed. The Saudis really wanted to get out of this long, long-running war. So they backed the forces in the south, fighting against the Houthis in the North. But the Saudis and the Emirates, who both have their own allies, fell out. And that may have

30:23led to a weakening of the government's line forces. Our Chief International correspondent, Lee's, do, said, while the United Nations says at least 46,000 people have been displaced in Yemen since the Houthis fight has launched their offensive last week. It says a number of displaced is rising at an alarming pace. Amna lives in Al-Makhrabah camp for displaced people near the Saudi border in northern Yemen. The area is mostly controlled by the Houthis and she fears the worst is yet to come. We have been displaced three times, not just once. There is fear in our hearts, almost like terror. We are frightened and terrified. When we hear a plane overhead, it fills us with fear. We huddle together because we are scared. If the plane strikes, we will all die together. There is no where to run. Al-Asim Bottomley is with the Norwegian refugee council in the Yemeni city of Aden. We spoke in with a lot of people that were living in displacement sites and they heard

31:25shelling. They grabbed their children and some of them told us they walked for 15 kilometers in the middle of the night. They were hoping to find shelter in another camp. But there's just been a huge wave of displacement and even if people can move, there's not that many safe places to go to. Everybody needs shelter. They need water. They need food. They're going to need health care. We hear about people just kind of sitting under trees because they're not quite sure where to go where they're going to find the level of support they need. Al-Asim Bottomley from the Norwegian refugee council will say al-Bucheti is a journalist in the Yemeni capital, Sana, he's close to the Houthi rebels and I asked him whether it was true that the Houthis now control the country's entire Red Sea coast. Yeah, they are now in control of the entire coast in the Red Sea. Before that, they have to control all the mountains that overseas the West Coast. It took maybe a few hours to take

32:26all the coast because the Saudi back forces they have to withdraw. So there was no fighting at all. So would you say that the Houthis now control essentially what comes in and out through the Babel Mandab waterway? They were in control who comes in and out of Babel Mandab in 2003. So you didn't need to be at the Babel Mandab to block it. I believe they have now started the strategy to liberate all Yemen. So the main goal is the liberation of Yemen and the West Coast was one of the most important areas because the largest United Arab Emirates and Saudi back forces bases were in that area. So why focus then on that particular area? They have said that they will allow shipping to pass through the waterway unless it's affiliated to Saudi Arabia.

33:26Is that then the goal to put pressure on the Saudis who are backing the government forces through this shipping pressure? No, I mean the control of Babel Mandab is not about to put pressure against the Saudi. Yemeni has already put pressure against the Saudi when they have declared that they will block the territory in front of all the shipping and so the Saudi is not now using the South of Red Sea all their ships they are going through the Swiss Canal. We've heard reports that tens of thousands of civilians are having to flee the fighting. There is clearly an element of distrust for the Houthi fighters from those civilians who are fleeing the area where the fighting has been taking place. Who have the responsibility of the civilians is the Saudi back forces? Of course there will be people who will be displaced but as soon as the fight will stop those people can come back. Yemeni journalist close to the Houthi rebels Hussain Al-Bukhati. Well let's turn to Saudi Arabia now it's relied on the Red Sea for exporting its oil since the

34:30straighter formals was shut down and by seizing the port of Mokha now, Perim Island and a couple of others the Houthi seem to have a chokehold on the Bab al-Mandab straight and so on Saudis oil exports. So how serious is this for Saudi Arabia as these Al-Gashan is a senior non-resident fellow at the Gulf International Forum. I'm on the line from the Saudi capital ReAD. I asked him how significant was this Hussain advance? Well it's incredibly significant and it's significantly concerning. I think firstly for Saudi Arabia directly I think any kind of increase in Houthi gained territories will simply just expand the scope and the breadth of the attack zone that the Houthis can use you know against Saudi Arabia. I think just the more territory there is the more difficult there is to manage this threat. So that's when it comes to Saudi Arabia of course directly but when it comes to the the Bab al-Mandab straights I think this is not exclusively a Saudi concern. This is clearly an international concern and I think even coming

35:35from the Saudi rhetoric it's clear that this is really what they're communicating and even they've been communicating this message since they started their campaign in 2015 and decisive storm. They've been saying that listen the Houthis are a problem that will pose an international threat. So I think this is quite significant and it's very concerning. Well how significant is it that as it's being reported in the United States the Crown Prince has asked President Trump specifically to take military action against the Houthis and that hasn't happened. Well this is part of I would say that one of the themes that is taking place in the Saudi-American relationship right now that's been coming that's been shedding or having something shed shed light on which is basically this Saudi frustration regarding the the dedication of American dedication to Saudi

36:38infrastructure and Saudi security. Quite frankly I've always said this that for a long time one of the characteristics of the Saudi-American relationship has been either friendship, strategic relations, a frustration but there is anxiety and I think when it comes to this situation it's very clear that sometimes American operations lead to you know whenever sometimes the United States wants to enter into a war like what they did in February and the Saudis wanted to go against that. It really puts the Saudis against their it goes against their interest but now since their the the reverberations of that war is increasing the United States is not there and that's part of the frustrations that Saudi ruling elite have had with the United States. In other words kind of American adventurisms while the Saudis and others in the region inherent

37:41the strategic ramifications of this. So a big headache for Saudi Arabia and a big migraine. A big migraine well but what what what is going to happen next because Arab states are going to Aman on Monday to meet Iran to discuss the straight of all moves the other front in all of this. How is Saudi Arabia going to react to Iran's demands for tolls or levies to get it all to international markets. I think that is just unacceptable and the reason being is that I think the Saudis in the past few years have deduced through their diplomacy that there is just a process of kicking the can down the road that this diplomacy is not really spilling over into addressing the core security issues that they have with Iran or the Haran and the Houthis. So here any kind of gesture financial gesture any financial commitment albeit very uh limitedly or on a small scale

38:42won't be accepted because or may I don't think they will try to do this because they will find this as some sort of extortion. They find they the Saudis are treating this as basically an extortionist policy an extortionist approach and what the Saudis and others don't want to do is to set a president for this to happen again. Aziz Al-Gashan from the Gulf International Forum speak to me from the Saudi capital ReAD and just to emphasize the pressure Saudi Arabia's feeling it's had to shut the East West oil pipeline it's been using to bypass restrictions in the state of foremost following attacks which it says have come from Iraqi territory. You're listening to news out from the BBC World Service. A reminder of our top story this hour the United States has been marking the 25th anniversary the 9-11 terror attacks in which nearly 3,000 people died. Earlier on the program we heard from the man thought to be the last person to escape from the South tire of the World Trade Center Ron DeFranchesco. I remember getting hit on the head and then

39:45starting to drift off. I woke up three days later in the hospital burns on 60% of my body when I was in the hospital. I didn't know that the towers had come down. I didn't even know it was terrorist attack. Another news report say the Iranian backed Houthis of seized control of Yemen's entire Red Sea coast as well as strategic islands in the Bab al-Mandab Strait further cementing their grip on a key shipping lane linking Europe and Asia. And the British military says it believes half a million Russian soldiers have been killed since Moscow launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. You're listening to news out from the BBC World Service. And let's return to our main story. Today the 25th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. In the United States today there has been a lot of reflection about how the events of that day change the country in the two and a half decades that followed. But what about the ideology behind the attacks? 9-11 was a spectacular propaganda

40:48success for the global jihadist movement. But these days al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group, which emerged later, seemed to have a much lower profile despite some continued regional successes, largely in Africa. I've been discussing all that with Meena Al-Alami, she's BBC Monitoring's Chief Jihadist Media Analyst. And we began with a significance of 9-11 for the global jihadist movement. 9-11 really put al-Qaeda on the map in an unprecedented way. And it was really the sheer audacity and the scale of the attacks. It kind of created this shock and awe effect. And for some Muslims who already were receptive to jihadist ideas or maybe held a similar worldview or the same narratives, that kind of in a way generated a fascination with al-Qaeda and drew some towards the group. So we saw in subsequent months and years al-Qaeda grew from just being a group in Afghanistan. It expanded considerably and it established branches

41:48in several parts of the world. So if you liked 9-11 was kind of a big propaganda and recruitment boost for the movement. And then of course we saw the Islamic State group develop as well. And there was a time when it was on the ascendancy, just talk us through how things have evolved over the past, I mean, I guess decade and a half or so. Yeah, so the emergence of IS, which was at some point linked to al-Qaeda and then broke ties with the group. There were two parts to it. So on the one hand, of course, it suddenly created a new threat to the world, but also to the jihadist movement sponsored by al-Qaeda. Because on the one hand, of course, they seized territory and declared their so-called caliphate that span areas across Iraq and Syria. And to some extent al-Qaeda benefited from that, although it was a territorial and ideological challenge to al-Qaeda, but in a way it kind of allowed al-Qaeda to present itself as the kinder face of jihad. Obviously it wasn't,

42:53but that's how it presented itself and tried to recruit. And IS, of course, their project was very fast, very brutal. It really wasn't sustainable. And of course, they relatively quickly lost their territory. But the presence of al-Qaeda, the appearance of al-Qaeda really created a key moment for the jihadist movement, negative one. It really divided the jihadist movement. And so it survived in some shape or form today, but really IS, as well as al-Qaeda, there are shadows of the groups that they were before. IS, of course, lost its bases in the Middle East and Iraq and Syria. And it's really been pushed to remote areas in Africa. What about the idea, though, of a global movement? Where is that? Currently, there is a very live and intense debate within the jihadist movement that you could see through books and debates online, especially on telegram, about whether the group, you know, the jihadist movement groups need to change or else they will become obsolete.

43:56The debate really is about whether to become more local and flexible and pragmatic to make political changes. This debate was really sharpened by HTS or Hey, at the Harilashan in Syria, which seized power in Syria in December 2024. Now, HTS had roots in both IS and the al-Qaeda, but then in abandoned both, it kind of turned its back on the global jihadist objective. Not only did it seize power in Syria, but it got a lot of support from the international community. So jihadists really started looking at that model with more, if you like, pragmatic jihadists seeing it as a way forward, and the hardliners seeing it as betrayal. There's no way that we can do that because if you do that, that is betrayal of the principles of the doctrine. But of course, I mean, I think one thing important to say is that the disagreement amongst jihadists, amongst what we call pragmatic jihadists and hawkish hardliners, is not about the ultimate goal.

44:57I think they agree that the ultimate goal is to seize power and establish a state ruled by Sharia law. But they differ on how to get there. Where does a Taliban fit into all this? So the Taliban has never really presented itself as a global jihadist group. It's always been, it's always insisted in its messaging ideology, but also its actions that it is only interested in Afghanistan, that it is trying to, well, of course, now it is in charge of the country, but during its struggle, during its so-called jihad, it said that its actions were aimed at creating an Islamic state in Afghanistan only, and that it had no ambitions beyond the borders of Afghanistan. And of course, Al Qaeda was there. The Taliban harbored Al Qaeda, bin Laden, and they suffered the consequences of that. That was Meena Al-Lami, BBC Monitoring's Chief Jihadist Media Analysts, with her thoughts on the evolution of the global jihadist movement in the years following the 9-11 attacks.

46:02That's about it for this edition of NewsHour, but we're going to end the program back in the United States with some of the sounds and the words from today's 9-11 Memorial events on the 25th anniversary of the terror attacks. From all of us here on NewsHour, thanks very much for listening. In my aunt Maria Teresa Conception Centilion, Tisa Maritas, even though I never met you, I'm honored to be named after you. I hope I'm making you proud knowing you were a great daughter, sister, friend, and much more. I wish you could celebrate my birthday with me tomorrow. Please continue watching over us and know we all love and miss you. God bless America. Ryan Daniel Fitzgerald, he loved and forever missed son, big brother, cousin and friend.

47:06Memories of happy times and laughing times with you bring everybody peace and joy every day. With the events of that morning, 2,977 beautiful souls were ripped from our world, and many more died in the weeks and years after horrible rotesque, injuries, so many were sustained. Today we renew the sacred oath that we first swore in their names, a quarter of a century ago, we will never, ever forget. A great, a great, a great, a great.