Are we heading for World War Three?
The Global Story
BBC
3.8 • 667 Ratings
🗓️ 25 March 2026
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It has been almost a month since Israel and the US launched their war against Iran, and already there have been strikes in more than a dozen countries, with reports of over 2,000 people killed across the region. As the war drags on and more countries get involved, there are concerns this conflict could escalate into something truly global.
We speak to emeritus professor of International History at the University of Oxford, Margaret MacMillan, and explore how world wars start, how they end and what can be done to avoid them.
Producers: Chris Benderev and Lucy Pawle
Executive producer: James Shield
Sound engineer: Travis Evans
Senior news editor: China Collins
(Photo: US Military aircraft perform 4th of July flyover past New York City and New Jersey, 4 July 2020. Credit: Mike Segar/Reuters)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:06.0 | You might remember from history class that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 led to the First World War. |
| 0:14.6 | But our guest today, an expert on the history of war, says it's a lot more complicated. |
| 0:20.6 | There are masses of books and masses of articles. |
| 0:23.1 | It's been estimated there's something like 32,000 things, books in English alone on the origins of the First World War. |
| 0:29.5 | Seriously? Wow. |
| 0:31.2 | Because we still don't know. It's still debated. |
| 0:33.6 | It turns out, wars often spiral out of control for all sorts of unexpected reasons, |
| 0:40.0 | sometimes even by accident, miscalculation, and pride. |
| 0:45.4 | What started just over three weeks ago with the U.S. and Israel bombing Iran now involves |
| 0:50.6 | more than a dozen other countries. |
| 0:53.5 | And despite some signs that the Trump administration wants to negotiate, |
| 0:57.0 | it's not clear Israel and Iran feel the same way. |
| 1:00.7 | And that has some people wondering if there really is an off-ramp here, |
| 1:05.0 | or could this continue to ratchet up and become an even bigger conflict? |
| 1:09.7 | Is there a potential that this war could evolve into, dare I say, a World War III? |
| 1:15.6 | Could we be heading toward World War III? |
| 1:17.9 | Be a World War III? |
| 1:19.0 | Are we headed for World War III? |
| 1:21.4 | From the BBC, I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. |
| 1:25.2 | And today on the global story, could we really be on the verge of World War III? |
| 1:36.2 | My name's Margaret Macmillan, and I'm a retired professor of history at the University of Toronto |
... |
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