This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service.

Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. This is a special edition on the Israel-Iran crisis. It's Thursday afternoon on the 26th of June 2025, two days into the ceasefire brokered by President Trump after 12 days of conflict. We'll be answering your questions on what happened, what's next,

and what it means for Iran and the wider region.

Joining me, our Behrang Tajdin from the BBC Persian Service,

and our security correspondent, Frank Gardner.

Israel attacked Iran on Friday the 13th of June, two days before a sixth round of talks were due to be held on curbing the Iranian nuclear program.

Iran responded by firing missiles at Israel.

The US initially said it was not involved, but later joined the conflict, deploying what it described as bunker

buster bombs on Iran's nuclear facilities. A ceasefire was announced on Tuesday by President Trump.

Iran said more than 600 people had died in the conflict. At least 28 died in Israel. Well,

let's start with our first question, which comes from South Sudan.

I'm Darmalik. What I want to know about the conflict between Iran and Israel is why did the

USA get involved? Why is it really concerned? If you ask the Iranian supreme leader, Atollah al-Hamenei,

he said today that US got involved in order to stop the destruction of Israel, although this is

one narrative. I'm sure there are other narratives, including what we've had from the American officials. And also President Trump

implied it that it was trying to stop the war from escalating and going on and on.

Frank, why do you think America got involved when initially it said it wasn't having any part of it?

So there's a technical reason and then there's a conspiracy theory.

The technical reason is that Iran's hardest to reach enrichment facilities were buried nearly 100 metres below the surface of the ground in the mountain at Fordo in Com Province.

The US Air Force is the only Air Force in the world

that has the bombers, the kind of ordnance, the kind of bomb, something called a GBU 57 bunker-busting

bomb, that could penetrate down anywhere close to that. Israel doesn't have that. So in order to

...