9.29 | Iran down to zero

The World and Everything In It

The episode covers a diverse array of global and domestic news, ranging from the tightening economic sanctions on Iran's oil exports to the social

Key takeaways

• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggests Iran's oil deliveries to China may cease within two weeks due to US sanctions.
• President Trump is hosting an AI summit at the White House to promote US leadership in development over regulation.

Main topics

• Iran oil sanctions
• AI regulation and innovation

Notable quotes

The mentorship experience is tax-free housing and utilities, a stipend to live on, and the growth opportunity of a lifetime.

Conclusion

The episode provides a comprehensive look at how geopolitical pressure

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) A quick reminder, tomorrow is the deadline to request your free 100 million download 15-year anniversary commemorative sticker. Thousands of them have already gone out, but there is still room for yours, too. Just let us know where to send it. We've Speaker 5 (0:14) made it super easy. Tap the headline for today's program on your podcast player. That opens episode notes, and there you'll find a convenient link. Tap it, fill in the short form, done. Or visit theworldandeverythinginit.org slash sticker. If you love the program, represent. Speaker 1 (0:32) Deadlines tomorrow. Good Speaker 5 (0:39) morning. Parents are being locked out of their kids' medical Speaker 4 (0:42) records. They've built this health care relationship with the family around the presumption that parents need to be kept at arm's length. Speaker 1 (0:49) Also today is China cutting off an economic lifeline to Iran. We'll talk with an expert. And why students are bringing Bibles to school. Later, a roommate program gives young adults with disabilities room to grow. The Speaker 6 (1:03) mentorship experience is tax-free housing and utilities and the growth opportunity of a lifetime. Speaker 1 (1:08) And Netanyahu at the UN. World's Cal Thomas has commentary. Tuesday, Speaker 5 (1:21) September 29th. This is The World and Everything In It from listener-supported World Radio. I'm Lindsay Mast. Speaker 1 (1:27) And I'm Nick Eicher. Good morning. Speaker 5 (1:30) Up next, Mark Mellinger with today's news. Speaker 2 (1:35) Those men arrested on suspicion of plotting a terror attack on a UK airbase used by the US are now free on bail. Police took the five British men, all in their 20s, into custody early Sunday near the RAF Fairford airbase. Monday, the men were released on bail, but counter-terrorism detectives say the suspects face stringent conditions while they're out. Lawrence Taylor, the head of UK counter-terror policing, says investigators are looking into every angle. Including that this may be actively committed Speaker 6 (2:10) by proxies or individuals either Speaker 2 (2:12) knowingly or unknowingly working Speaker 6 (2:15) on behalf of a foreign state. Speaker 2 (2:17) The U.S. has used RAF Fairford for limited bombing missions in Iran. The Iranian government had previously warned the U.K. any base used to attack Iran is a legitimate target, but Iran denies any involvement in this plot. President Trump says he's surprised the suspects were released. If it were up to the U.S., he says they would still be in custody. In the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. Speaker 2 (2:46) Emergency crews rushed to the aftermath of another Russian air bombardment. Drone strikes Monday killed at least seven people and left more than 80 others hurt among the targets, apartment buildings, gas stations and Ukraine's National Academy of Sciences. President Trump's looking ahead to a busy day with America's top artificial intelligence executives at the White House. The AI summit comes amid increasing reports of AI agents going rogue, sparking fears the technology could one day prove lethal to humans and leading some AI executives themselves to call for more government regulation. The president is dismissing those calls. Pressing for the U.S. to go full speed ahead and lead the world in AI development, his co-host for the summit, House Speaker Mike Johnson, agrees. We Speaker 1 (3:38) do not need a moratorium. We do not need to jump in and hyper-regulate this because we'll lose the race to China. Speaker 2 (3:43) Instead, Johnson says a key goal of the summit is to strike the right balance between innovation and safety. For the moment, OpenAI has paused training for its latest AI models, while the chipmaker NVIDIA is launching a new security tool to keep AI agents from going rogue. Southeast Iowa will be the home of a new $15 billion steel plant that President Trump says will be the nation's largest. The announcement came Monday at the Oval Office. The Speaker 6 (4:14) project. is expected to create up to 6,000 new construction jobs, nearly 2,000 manufacturing and mining jobs, and add another $95 billion Speaker 2 (4:25) to the U.S. economy. A Minnesota-based company owned by a conglomerate from India will build the plant, which is expected to be up and running by 2030. It'll be accompanied by a new $2.5 billion iron ore mine in Minnesota, meaning the steel will be produced start to finish. in the U.S. The White House is working to revitalize American industry to better compete with China. By the way, in the wake of last week's face-to-face meetings, the U.S. and China announced a new trade deal to reduce tariffs on $30 billion worth of goods from each country. The Federal Aviation Administration is asking Congress for $30 billion more, much of which it would use to upgrade air traffic control infrastructure across the country's airports. The proposed bill, called the Modern Skies Act, extends a push sparked by a string of airline crashes and close calls in recent years. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says if now's not the time for these changes, when will it be? When are we sick enough of the delays and the cancellations and the Speaker 6 (5:34) infrastructure that we use that's so old? When are we so tired of it that we say, no, make the investment? The Speaker 2 (5:40) FAA already got $12.5 billion for measures like air traffic control upgrades and last year's big, beautiful bill. But Duffy says that's not enough. Without more money, he says it'll take 300 years to replace all of the nation's control towers. It is touted as the most powerful launch vehicle ever built, and it blasted off Monday from Starbase, Texas. Five, four, three, two, one. Speaker 2 (6:11) SpaceX's Starship rocket successfully launched into low Earth orbit for the first time, even overcoming a malfunctioning engine to make it to the orbit stage. After reaching orbit, the Starship deployed more than two dozen of the company's Starlink internet satellites. SpaceX intends to use Starship for NASA's Artemis moon missions and eventually for taking humans to Mars. Speaker 2 (6:39) I'm Mark Mellinger. Coming up, why some parents can't access their kids' medical records, plus college students help disabled young adults move toward independence. This is The World and Everything In It. Speaker 1 (7:02) It's Tuesday, the 29th of September. This is The World and Everything In It from listener-supported World Radio, celebrating 15 years. Good morning, I'm Nick Eicher. Speaker 5 (7:13) And I'm Lindsay Mast. First up on The World and Everything In It, cutting Iran's China ties. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant on Sunday said a month of sanctions on Iran has scared off its neighbors and is drying up revenue from its oil. Audio from Fox News. Speaker 6 (7:29) Probably within the next two weeks. They are going to make their final deliveries of oil to China, and then they will have nothing. Speaker 1 (7:38) This comes days after President Trump hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington for talks on trade, AI, and Iran. Joining us now to talk about it is Max Meislisch. He's a research fellow for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Max formerly worked for the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control. Max, good morning. Good morning. Well, I'd like to start with what we just heard from the Treasury Secretary, Scott Besson, saying that Iran's final oil deliveries to China could happen within two weeks, which is a pretty striking claim coming just days after President Xi's trip to the U.S. Do you think there's something that we're just not privy to, something that happened in those talks we haven't heard about publicly? Speaker 3 (8:25) The Treasury Secretary very well could be correct on that timeline. There were several tens of millions of barrels of Iranian oil last month that were still on the water by the best estimates. The question really is why we are willing to accept that as an adequate solution to the problem that we're facing today, especially if we give consideration to the prospect that the Iranian regime may remain in power for quite some time. And these same sanctions of Asian networks will remain in place, ultimately with China benefiting through the form of access to discounted oil, which has long propped up the Iranian regime. Speaker 5 (9:04) Well, Max, U.S. Ambassador to China David Perdue said late last week the U.S. is working with China to counter what he called Iran's indirect support. What kind of support is he talking about? Speaker 3 (9:16) China has been found through various reports to be implicated in the provision of dual-use goods to Iran. There have been reports coming out over the last several months about China