this is bbc news, the headlines the united nations says houthi rebels trying to topple the government in yemen, are honouring a pledge to withdraw troops from key ports in the country. it marks the first significant step in a ceasefire agreement brokered by the un last december. an attack on a luxury hotel in pakistan has ended with the deaths of all three gunmen. at least one security guard at the pearl continental hotel was killed. a militant group said it carried out the attack, saying it was targeting chinese and other foreign investors. labour has announced plans to introduce a ten pounds an hour minimum wage for all workers, including those under the age of 18. at the moment 16— and 17—year—olds

get less than adults. jeremy corbyn said society shouldn't be "discriminating against young people." now it's time for dateline london. hello and welcome to dateline london. i'm carrie gracie. this week — measuring the risk of american miscalculation on china and iran. also, a pressing question for a british prime minister: resignation — is thatjust a state of mind or an imminent news event? my guests today are david aaronovitch of the times

newspaper, maria margaronis of the nation, agnes poirier of french news weekly marianne, and american writerjef mcallister. welcome to you all. "sit back and watch." the advice from president trump on friday as he hiked american tariffs on chinese goods. but when elephants fight, ants get crushed. should the rest of us sit back or take cover? jef, start us off. well, these tariffs of 25%, rather than a 10%, may hit the american economy in a different way, because a lot of chinese products will be frozen out of the american market at that level. that means people will feel it in a different way. there will still be repercussions with chinese tariffs on american agricultural goods, sectors have been hit by the trade war in the us and china, but i think this has a likelihood of spreading to a greater degree, and unpredictably, as trade wars do, sometimes.

as trump said, trade words are good and easy to win, and i think this is an area which he has convictions, unlike a lot of other things that he has in policy. since the reagan administration, when he started to think about running for president, he said america is getting kicked around by countries, china in particular. there is good argument to say that in trade terms, china steals intellectual property, forces other companies to give away their technology, is involved in great cyber theft, so there is a constituency, even among people worried about tariffs in the wall street class, for him making progress here. the other thing that is interesting is, he has calculated that it is in his political interest to out tough anybody in the democratic party who might want to say he is weakening. bill clinton said of george w bush, he has coddled dictators from baghdad to beijing, and it was enough to make him,

of all people, especially withjoe biden, trump considers to be the most likely opponent, biden said something last week, are china going to eat our lunch? i think trump will say, i'm the one who is going to stop joe biden from letting china eat our lunch. agnes, you are nodding, do you think the chinese need to take seriously the threat not even to stop the 25% tariffs he announced last week, but saying there will be another $300 billion worth coming down the line if they don't take that seriously? china is in a difficult situation here, because i think one miscalculation where one misreading beijing has done is they don't realise the level of hostility in washington towards china, with the initiative that is not looked very favourably, especially in europe,

when we know how italy embraced it and we all look a bit worried. so, it looks as if, really, and the fact that the democrats feel the same way, that china is seen as a real existential threat of the new world order. on the other hand, to think that to hike the tariffs, while you are having these negotiations, is weird. when you read that all the legislations have been taking place in english, everything written in english, of course, it had to be translated, and then it reached beijing and they started thinking, well, actually, perhaps not. and of course, now, they say that china is not being fair, well, they are just reading it in their language. there are so many things that don't

add up, because there will be a lot of revenue from that tariff increase, but then washington will have to use it to subsidise us farmers, who are trump's voters, they will be badly impacted in iowa and wisconsin. everybody loses, and of course, in europe, it is like watching a tennis match, we look at them, and we are stuck, because it is also going to affect all trade. david, are you agreeing with all of this? do you think if you are a supplier or buyer in relation to china and us, you would start to rethink your supply chains? i think everybody would be worried. if it does come about that there is no agreement somehow or other between trump and china, therefore, the tariffs go ahead and the chinese respond by counter tariffs, we have already had a situation whereby the european economy has slowed significantly,

partially because in the case of germany, mainly because of a slowdown in china and chinese economic policy. that is already happening and is a big part of why european growth is so slow. imagine what will happen if the growth in china slows even more, and their policies become even more difficult, in that case, europe might have a greater problem. the next question is, who is prepared to blink first? or will they come to some form of agreement? here's the question which we will hear in a different way in this programme, which is, how much does trump mean it when he says i will go to war with this one? just widen it out, maria, to the broader china and us relationship. we have one established and one rising superpower, is this just one component of a long struggle we will see on multiple

fronts? absolutely, you could say this is the new cold war. it has been interesting to see europe stuck in the middle of this. trump is being quite belligerent about it, the eu has been making proposals about how to engage with china and how to influence the situation through engagement. meanwhile, italy has allowed huawei in, china bought the port a long time ago, which is a long part of the road. the question of how the fading west deals with the rise of china is going to be with us for a long time. we will leave that question now, because we need to move on to another aspect of us foreign policy. david mentioned a moment ago, it is another one of the question of how seriously you take the threats from president trump?

a year ago, president trump pulled out of the treaty that promised iran economic relief in exchange for strict limits on its nuclear programme. the us has since done its best to cut iran out of the global economy and tehran now says it will no longer abide by the terms of the nuclear treaty. meanwhile an american aircraft—carrier strike group has just arrived in the persian gulf along with b—52 bombers and a patriot missile defence system. both countries have troops in iraq and syria. just how dangerous is this? i think we are at quite a high risk of an accident. i think that... i understand that the president of iran has been very patient, he has waited one year to respond to trump's unilateral withdrawal from the agreement obama negotiated. that withdrawal was largely

because obama negotiated it. he is now turning to the europeans to say, again, you need to find a way around this, otherwise, we will. .. yes, so he has given them just 60 days, the other signatories of the agreement, 60 days to make the economic promises under the agreement come through? yes, and i think the europeans are in an extremely difficult position, because you will not see european companies destroying their links with the us over this. in the us, we have an ambiguous situation also, we have the hawks in the white house, the national security adviser, mike pompeo, mike pence, also, who would love a war with iran, in some respects. this is a moment, coming up to the 2020 election, where trump is trying to look as tough and belligerent as possible. i don't think trump, as much as one can know about what he wants at all, would want a war with iran.

there are people in his administration who are more hawkish and who would like it. i think the president in iran is also in a difficult position, because of the american unilateral withdrawal, it has hit the economy, there is a problem with selling oil and other things. and he has people breathing down his neck. so there is a lot in play that could go very wrong. jef, what does president trump want from iran? i don't know. that is honest! i think the fundamental goal was not to be obama and screw up his signature foreign policy agreement. he always hated it and said it was the worst deal ever made. i don't know if he understood it well, but i think it was that primitive, to some degree, that he was going to be

different from obama in this respect. now what? he has the control now. i think iran is destabilising, and american allies would like to have... you mean in lebanon, iraq and syria and others? yes, all of that, there is a basis in which trump can get people to be more belligerent. i think he likes, to some degree, that iran seems to have very few good options. what can they do? close the straits and lead to a war? not a good idea. they can do proxy fighting, more missiles to israel, does it accomplish very much? does it get their economy going? in fact, the iranian strategy seems to be strategic patience, i believe they call it, which is waiting for trump

to get out of office. 20 months, 20 months! or, it could be a long time. they themselves see that there are not a lot of good alternatives. they have managed to maintain political control before over the younger generation, they have done something differently in iran. i think they think they will just keep doing it. the sanctions are good for the revolutionary guards to control the economy, because they can get the economic benefit for themselves. in terms of regime politics, sanctions are not necessarily bad. agnes, maria was talking about the pressure on the europeans to stitch the deal back together and get it to work, the nuclear treaty. or get the economic aspect of it to work for them. do you agree with her point of view that the europeans are not going to achieve that? they have tried, they are trying, but it looks tame and timid. there is the final mechanism that france, germany and

britain put in place, through which trade between europe and iran, especially on food and medicine, could avoid a us sanction, and therefore, at least theoretically, or in a timid way, could sustain. but, it is really timid and europe doesn't want to really anger the us. and they are not ready to really help iran. that is really terrible, because i have personally no sympathy for the iranian regime. go back to four years ago, do you remember? the agreement was not perfect, but it was a giant effort, it took so many years to achieve, and there was a feeling, remember, of positive, we were all positive and all going to travel to iran at last and discover this

wonderful country. and today, the economy is completely cut off, inflation is at a0%, the currency is down 60%, and they suffer massively. of course, rouhani is up for re—election in two years' time, the parliamentary election next year. but, you have to have sympathy for the iranians, and of course, they are feeling incredibly disgruntled and so are we in europe, because we feel hopelessness and impotence, and we are going to abandon the iranians and that deal, which was not perfect, but it was good. i haven't heard from david on this, do you think... does this keep you awake at night? maria was talking about the risks and the failures, are we going to see a nuclear armed iran in a slow burn crisis?

what you're looking at at the moment is brinkmanship. the iranian position is not tenable, if you think about it, because if you force the europeans into a binary choice, it will not come down on the side even of an agreement that has been so painstakingly constructed. if i were the iranians, i would seriously fight shy of that. what they want to do is get the europeans to put some kind of pressure on trump, but they know that does not work very well. so, it must be for domestic consumption inside iran, mostly. then comes the question of sending task forces here and there. that can create a crisis, they can shoot down the occasional airline for example, which has been done before. but i think this is a slow burn rather than a quick fuse thing. the thing that might set it off is something happening in lebanon or syria. maria?

there's a connection between these two stories, which is, for me, the contrast between the strongman politics, unilateralist politics of trump and the chinese, and in a sense the iranians also, and europe stuck in the middle of this, trying to preserve perhaps the traditional late 20th century way of doing things through engagement, negotiation, compromise, and that world is shrinking more and more. as opposed to the traditional early 20th century, and we know where that goes! jef, you wanted to come in? the obama vision was not of a nuclear agreement, but that slowly, the iranians would be led into more

communication with the outside world and it would soften the regime. the trump vision is essentially regime change by force. we will have to leave it there, because it is time to talk brexit. last week we saw an electrifying finale, but that was football. liverpool beat barcelona 4—3 on aggregate in the champions league semifinal after trailing 3—0 in the first leg. theresa may took heart from that. she told the british parliament: "even when the clock is ticking down and everyone is telling you to concede defeat we can still secure success if everyone comes together." but comedians now call her campaign "brexit, the infinity war." will all the prime minister?s superheroes now come to her aid so she can match the liverpool miracle? david. excuse me, you don't seem to have noticed the tottenham hotspur result, which was infinitely greater. ok, now let's move on from that. don't we feel as if we are now in an incredible...

it is like waiting for godot, isn't it? godot is always about to come, and the two characters that they're talking about are going round in circles. that's how we all are, we don't see the mechanisms by which we extricate ourselves, we don't see them any more this week than we did last week and no more than we did the week before. we have a prime minister and an opposition leader, the two characters. yes, we do. laughing we have a prime minister who is obviously stuck and cannot get agreement for the things she wants. as the time goes on, this becomes more toxic for her party, but without any clear strategy as to how that would assist the situation. we have an opposition party which is also split, because essentially, you have a leader of the party who wanted brexit, so you get a purer form of socialism than the eu would allow, but the majority of a party who don't want this. and we have no capacity to do what you would have done if this was 1931, which is form a government of national unity, but we don't know how to do

that in this country. we don't even know how to do governments of national disunity at the moment. meanwhile, the clock ticks down gradually towards the next set of deadlines and the next request that we might have to make of the eu for a further extension on our membership of the european union. of course, everybody says at some point or other, some part of this must break. theresa may will finally be told by somebody that she trusts that it is time for her to go, and she actually will. that is just a matter of faith. this becomes essentially a faith question after a while. you know, this unknowable semi deity, with theresa may, what do we anticipate? what do interpreting priests anticipate she will do? my interpretation is that she will stay. maria. and what if she goes? what does that solve?

what does anything sold? does mac solve. —— solve. before we deal with what if she goes, let's deal with the deity, the faith and priests and all the rest of it. do you think that, for example, graham brady, the chair of the 1922 committee, representing tory mps in parliament, do you think he will go to her next week, he is talking about a clear understanding of a timetable next week. we have eu elections coming up. i have no idea. this week, i watched a very interesting 2—part documentary called brexit: behind closed doors, which followed the europeans behind this. you said it is like waiting for godot, it is more like escape rooms, where you are stuck in a windowless room and you can't see out and you have to solve all these puzzles. what was striking about these documentaries was how, to the europeans, the team in the middle, britain is just a basket case. we have lost it, they are rolling their eyes and going, well,

what on earth do they want? what happens next? i can see that this programme would make brexiteers very angry, because there was joking and irony and cavalier attitude. but it also made me feel, how much we are stuck in this ridiculous cave off to decide where anything actually happening. let's get back to the positives, i started out positive, i'd like to say, with my liverpool image. you took us downhill with waiting for godot. and you kept us there with the escape room. agnes, up to you. let's find a different image, isjeremy corbyn going to climb off his fence, where he combines leavers and remainers in his party? he will not do anything more than he has been doing for the last two years, he is waiting for the tories to collapse.

and he is not serving the country, i must say. but, by being so passive, and also as david said, the labour party is also completely divided. some really want to believe that he is going to side with the second referendum, which i don't think he will do, and the other side are just watching each other... so you don't believe that the 23rd of may, the results following the eu elections, will move this along and break any of the pieces in this? it depends, i do believe that it is key that the british go massively to vote in the eu elections, because if they do, then it will have an impact somehow. laughing yes, but suddenly it dawns on me, that after listening

to maria and david, perhaps, nothing will happen until the next deadline, and it will be down to the french to say, no, you are out. because we're going there, and macron is really tempted now to be alone on this. mentioning macron, he said earlier this week that he felt sorry for british young people because they hadn't gone out to vote in big enough numbers in the referendum, and now, some of them were realising, in his language, that the future of the eu was all about climate change, geostrategic choices, economic models, and they hadn't taken the opportunity or been given the opportunity to... he needs the british youth to vote massively forthe lib dems, change uk, and the greens, so that the

centralist parties in the european parliament has as big a number as possible, and therefore, perhaps, serve his big scheme, but that is... but, you think it is possible that he will say enough is enough? he was tempted last time, very few were backing him. in the end, he just played a team. but, it is getting on everybody's nerves, and you can see how perhaps, he willjust use his vote on the 31st of october. jef. i think the european elections are likely to be not given a mandate, i imaging there could perhaps be a majority for remain parties, but the turnout will be low, it'll be hard to predict, everybody will find something except for the tories, meaning they continue to go on. the great escape remains, a second referendum,

it is the only logical way that the first referendum can be cancelled in constitutional terms, because parliament cannot do it. there is a lot of support for it, not including the labour leader, so it is difficult to see... some viewers will be throwing things at their tvs, we voted once in 2016, do you think it is possible that a second referendum might decide that the british people are firmly brexit rather than veering away from it? possibly, and if it is true, it will give a mandate in a different way than what has happened before. i think it is unlikely, because what the real brexit is so different from the brexit offered three years ago, a lot of people have learned that the tory party is killing itself over the fact that it cannot deliver what was promised. one word from david, who is waiting for godot.

i've never understood how we could resolve this in practice without a second referendum, and i have never understood how we could get there. it is a bit like the middle east peace settlement, there is light at the end of the tunnel, but no tunnel. ten seconds, maria. the elections are important in europe and britain, there are many candidates from other european countries who want to enter the european parliament to take the eu apart. right, thank you, all, everybody needs to vote. that's it for dateline london for this week — we're back next week at the same time. goodbye. hello there, good morning. sunday should be drier and sunnierfor more

of the uk but it will be a chilly start. frost more likely in scotland but colder for the eastern side of england than the previous night. maybe one or two short lived mist and fog patches. 0n the whole, are dry and sunny start. sunshine hazy in the far north—west at times and we should see some apache cloud bubbling up. more limited than saturday. the chance of a shower perhaps over the pea ks saturday. the chance of a shower perhaps over the peaks and pennines and over the downs in the south—east. —— patchy. a bit more sunshine around and the temperatures for many places higher during the afternoon. high—pressure is building in over the afternoon. high—pressure is building in overthe uk, afternoon. high—pressure is building in over the uk, limiting the chance ofa in over the uk, limiting the chance of a shower on sunday. it is moot —— not moving fast. keeping the weather fronts at a. a lot of dry weather well into next week and with more in the way of sunshine, you should be feeling a bit warmer as well. goodbye.

hello and welcome to bbc news — i'm reged ahmad. the united nations says houthi rebels trying to topple the government in yemen, are honouring a pledge to withdraw troops from key ports in the country. hodeida and a number of other smaller ports are crucial for the distribution of international aid, in a country where millions are on the verge of starvation. this report from our chief international correspondent, lyse doucet, contains some distressing images.