[00:00] Kiran: Mics camera. Action. Welcome to Takaro podcast, where we look at all the stories happening globally and then try and, you know, distill that, summarize it, give you a quick understanding of what's happening. And this week we are gonna be touching upon something that's on everyone's mind. I think everyone that I speak to, every child that I speak to as well is thinking about this.
[00:26] Debkanya: It's all around me as well. People are talking about what's going on? Is this going to become
[00:32] Kiran: Mm-hmm.
[00:32] Debkanya: Uh, what does this mean for me? Um, I think what is scaring a lot of people about the Iran War this time is it's coming closer and closer, uh, to home, and it's also affecting places that traditionally stayed out of any conflict. I think that
[00:49] Kiran: Who have been considered safe spots, right places like Dubai and Oman and Bahrain and all of those kind of places and, and I think that's where it suddenly started getting so much attention because it's actually affecting some of those cities and states and countries as well. So. Let's give you a quick background to that conflict.
[01:10] Kiran: We had touched upon the Iran war last year as well because there was aggression from us and Israel in June, I think of last year. It was where, um, we had done an episode talking about it, giving you a little bit of background, but it may be a good idea to recap a little bit. No, Debbie?
[01:28] Debkanya: Yes, absolutely. Let's, I mean, because ultimately we know, and this is something we've
[01:32] Kiran: Yeah.
[01:33] Debkanya: again and again on Takaro, every conflict that comes up is never a, um, a result of something that just happened overnight. Right? It is always based on a lot of history, a. Lot of
[01:44] Kiran: Yep.
[01:44] Debkanya: a lot of back and forth in Iran in particular. Now, remember where we told you Iran was, again, pull out a map, take a look. Iran is a very, very important country situated in the middle of, you could say Africa, Asia, and Europe. Very,
[02:00] Kiran: And it's a huge land mass. It's a very big country.
[02:04] Debkanya: Yeah. Yeah.
[02:05] Kiran: Perspective.
[02:06] Debkanya: And always been a power player. Always, I mean, has, has influenced a lot of things that have happened in the region. Now, if you
[02:13] Kiran: Yep.
[02:13] Debkanya: we've also talked about Israel. Israel is another country that plays a very important role in this story.
[02:19] Kiran: Mm-hmm. Yep.
[02:20] Debkanya: Here are the us, Israel, and Iran. Okay? So as we know, the US and Israel have been friends, have supported each other constantly. Iran is one country that has always actually maintain that Israel should not exist as a country. Remember we said Israel is a country that was set up for the Jewish people. Iran said, no, it shouldn't exist, and there's a lot of the conflict that began from there. The
[02:45] Kiran: They've always supported the Palestine
[02:47] Debkanya: of the
[02:48] Kiran: um, side of the story, the fact that Palestine needs to own their land and Israel has just come in, you know, bulldozed over a lot of that land. So they've always also, um, I would say financed a lot of that fight from a Palestinian perspective, Hezbollah, um, which is another group which is fighting for that freedom and that region.
[03:10] Kiran: So there's a lot of history. And just in June of last year, Iran, Israel, 12 days I think it was where Iran, Israel.
[03:19] Debkanya: Day War. Yeah.
[03:20] Kiran: So the 12- Day war started fundamentally because you know, US does not want Iran to be a nuclear power. And the reason for that is Iran actually has secret hoards and facilities of uranium enrichment. Now, the way a nuclear weapon works or the way nuclear itself works, you need different levels of enrichment for different use cases. You need a certain level of enrichment for using nuclear for power. You need certain levels of enrichment for using nuclear for, you know, other cases, maybe for research and whatever else. And then you need a very, very high level of enrichment of uranium to make nuclear weapons. So this enrichment of uranium is the big sort of bone of contention over here. Does Iran actually have enough enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons? Mm-hmm.
[04:18] Debkanya: And, and let's step back just a little bit over here right. Now, we know that certain countries are nuclear powers. The US is a nuclear power. Uh, Israel is a nuclear power and India is a nuclear power. And there are others as well. But you know, there's a whole group of countries that believe that Iran should not have access to nuclear power because they cannot be trusted with how they use it. Right. And that's where this whole conversation started. That, you know, they sent in, um, you know, watchdogs, watchdogs are basically this organization, the IAEA, uh, which basically went in. To check, okay, hey, how much nuclear power do you have? What are you using it for? How much enriched uranium do you have?
[04:56] Debkanya: What are you using that for? So that was where this whole thing started. And then, you know, they realized that, hey, you know what, Iran has told us that we don't want to be a nuclear power. We will never use nuclear energy, um, for defense or for, uh, weapons. But they're actually secretly, like you said, hoarding, extremely enriched uranium, which is weapons grade. Right. So that was the whole thing. Like, hey, you guys are
[05:18] Kiran: Yeah.
[05:19] Debkanya: But again, were a lot of negotiations. That's the other thing, right? There's been negotiations going on between the US and Iran for a long time. Oman in particular has been
[05:31] Kiran: Yep.
[05:31] Debkanya: role of mediator, you know, go between trying to get both parties to agree, trying to get iran to agreed to say that, hey, okay fine, we will follow the rules. We will do, we will do X, Y, Z, and we will not, you know, uh, use
[05:44] Kiran: Yep.
[05:44] Debkanya: to hurt people and the US
[05:46] Kiran: Specifically after this, uh, 12 day war, right. Uh, Oman has actually gotten even more involved. There have been talks held in Geneva in early 2026 as well. In Jan and Feb of, uh, 2026 of this year. There has been talks where US and Iran have come, talked about it and looked at how they could reach a settlement with Oman mediating all of this.
[06:12] Debkanya: Yes, exactly. But as it so happened, things escalated. Trump decided that he could not trust what Iran was saying.
[06:20] Debkanya: The watchdog, as we mentioned, found a a lot of enrich uranium, which was deep underground. So he's like, their word cannot be trusted no matter what mediation happens, no
[06:30] Kiran: In spite of all the mediation, if they have said they're going to reduce the uranium stockpiles, but you suddenly find out that, you know, maybe that's not true or they're not sticking to their word,
[06:39] Debkanya: Point
[06:40] Kiran: that's what really, yeah.
[06:41] Debkanya: point is the talks failed, right?
[06:44] Kiran: Correct.
[06:45] Debkanya: failed. They could not arrive at a peaceful solution. And that's where we are at today, where the US has now attacked Iran and now Iran has attacked them back. Uh, what Iran is doing is it is attacking a lot of US bases. Now remember again, this is a region which is a high conflict zone, but it is surrounded by a lot of peaceful countries, as we mentioned, the UAE, Oman, of course Kuwait and Qatar, for example, which is also famously a
[07:12] Kiran: Bahrain.
[07:13] Debkanya: Yeah. So all of these countries are generally peaceful and do not take sides. They are mega oil suppliers to the world. So you don't want conflict in this region because it affects how we get energy, right.
[07:25] Debkanya: A lot of, you know, we use fossil fuels and oil to run. right? Still, we haven't moved to other sources of energy, so very, very important. But because of that, the US has set up a lot of army naval bases in all
[07:39] Kiran: Yeah.
[07:40] Debkanya: right? Because this surround, uh, Iran in a way to make
[07:44] Kiran: Yeah.
[07:44] Debkanya: of their own interests.
[07:45] Debkanya: So what has Iran done?
[07:46] Kiran: Yeah.
[07:46] Debkanya: has gone and attacked these peaceful countries, but the the US bases. In these countries, and that has
[07:54] Kiran: Yeah.
[07:54] Debkanya: really, really scared. I have friends in Dubai who've heard these bombs, who've heard these drone attacks happening, seen it happen, in fact, just one kilometer away from their homes.
[08:04] Debkanya: And this was never expected in a place like Dubai, which is so tourism friendly, so safe, know, it's just that we, you know, it's, it's scary because you wonder how much is this going to escalate? What's going
[08:16] Kiran: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, by the way, on the US side, this is called Operation Epic Fury, and on the Israeli side it's called Roaring Lion. And so that's the name that they've given. Um.
[08:29] Debkanya: what the Iranian side is calling it.
[08:33] Kiran: But, but what happened is after a couple of days itself, it was confirmed that Iran's leader, the Supreme leader, , ayatollah khomeini, he basically was killed as part of the encounter, right? And as part of the, attacks. So one of the things that, you know, the US and Israel are going for is the fact it should be a total decimation of Israel's, leadership because again, this is not a democratic leader in Iran. It's not a party that has been elected into power in Iran.
[09:08] Debkanya: Around 45 years ago, uh, Khomeini was the religious leader who completely changed Iran's government. This was around
[09:14] Kiran: Correct.
[09:15] Debkanya: ago, and he brought in a system called the Rule of the Islamic Jurist, right, where it basically became an Islamic government where the
[09:22] Kiran: Yeah.
[09:22] Debkanya: would have a final say about how the country's run.
[09:24] Debkanya: Khomeini, who's who's, who was the supreme leader who died in these strikes just now. He took over in 1989 like. Again, you know, you can remember these dates, but just to give you an idea of how long it's been going on, because Iran used to be close to the US at one point,
[09:41] Kiran: mm-hmm.
[09:42] Debkanya: a time when Iran and the US were closed.
[09:44] Debkanya: They were friends. Uh, and then of course the leadership in Iran changed. It became very, very strict and very, very religious and, everything kind of went, to in another direction. Since then.
[09:55] Kiran: Yeah, the Shah of Iran, who was the king of Iran, was actually, a very, I would say liberal ruler. Ruler allowed like a lot of internationalization of Iran. After the Islamic Revolution, it basically changed the entire sort of, um, image of Iran and everything was clamped down, right?
[10:14] Kiran: And so that's where we are today. There have been multiple drone attacks, uh, missiles which are flying across countries like Bahrain and Dubai, and, many of those cities. And again, a lot of them are being intercepted. A lot of them are being intercepted. In fact, I think 99% of them are being intercepted by all of these countries.
[10:36] Kiran: What's interesting is there was always this concept or notion that maybe Iran is also attacking some of these peaceful countries so that they start putting pressure on the US to stop these attacks on Iran. Right. That's also one sort of thought process people have is that maybe the strategy for Iran is to, start striking Bahrain and Qatar and Dubai and UAE, and hopefully they will start talking to Trump and saying, Hey, please stop this madness because it's affecting our sort of image. It's affecting our citizens and it's not worth it. What's also interesting is what if they actually decide this is too much and now Iran's taken it too far and they join in as well.
[11:24] Kiran: That's the sort of. You know, question everyone has is, will that ever happen?
[11:30] Debkanya: Yeah.
[11:31] Debkanya: I think we have to just remember one thing though. There are, there are always, you know, repercussions of any war
[11:39] Kiran: Yeah.
[11:40] Debkanya: People are dying on both sides. A lot of Iranian people. Now, by the way, let's go back a little bit to the supreme leader who, who died in the strikes. A lot of Iranian people were not very happy with him.
[11:52] Kiran: Mm.
[11:52] Debkanya: Because we had done an
[11:53] Kiran: Yes.
[11:54] Debkanya: Talking about the protests that had taken place in Iran where thousands of Iranians were just randomly picked up and put in jail because they
[12:00] Kiran: Mm-hmm.
[12:01] Debkanya: against the, uh, leader and the government and the way things were running in the country.
[12:05] Debkanya: So there, there was unrest. Anyway, in Iran, it's not like Iran
[12:08] Kiran: Yep.
[12:08] Debkanya: happy and it was, everything was going well, it was not going well in Iran. So a lot of people are very sad about, the, the leader dying. A lot of people are, were very happy that, okay, now we will have a change.
[12:21] Kiran: Mm-hmm.
[12:22] Debkanya: in this warlike situation now. Everyone is affected, people have been killed. Um, essential supplies have been stopped. I met
[12:30] Kiran: Yeah.
[12:30] Debkanya: recently who has, you know, friends and family in Iran, and he's very worried about them. Business has stopped, so yes, it's bad for human lives. it is also actually really bad for business, right?
[12:42] Debkanya: Because
[12:43] Kiran: Yeah.
[12:43] Debkanya: like I said, Iran is positioned in such a significant location that it controls a lot of the oil supplies that go out to the rest of the world. Okay? There's this
[12:53] Kiran: Yeah.
[12:53] Debkanya: place called the Strait of Hormuz, which basically is a little water body. It's around, say, um, I would say 40 kilometers to a thousand kilometers wide.
[13:03] Debkanya: And a lot of ships carry oil, petroleum, diesel, all, you know, different forms of fossil fuels. It basically carries
[13:10] Kiran: Yeah,
[13:11] Debkanya: to the rest of the world. 20% of the world's supplies go through this Strait. Iran controls this strait, so it is
[13:20] Kiran: And, and it affects countries like India because apparently about 40 to 50% of India's oil comes from that region, right? And so automatically, you would've seen over the last one week or so, oil prices have gone up. stock Markets have really massively declined.
[13:34] Kiran: So a lot of those issues start becoming very real from a business perspective.
[13:40] Debkanya: Yeah, so India. India, like you said. Yeah, definitely because we get a lot of oil from there. And we've also said that we are not going to buy any more oil from say, Russia. Of course, now. mean, that's a separate conversation. We've been given permission to get to buy a little bit of oil from Russia to tide us through. Um, but that's a separate conversation, so we'll be fine
[13:59] Kiran: Yep.
[13:59] Debkanya: for now. Uh, but you know, ultimately the
[14:02] Kiran: But if it continues. Yeah, if it continues, who knows what's gonna happen, right? Because it's a very important part of the world. I mean, Dubai, Abu Dhabi has a lot of the financial muscle over there. Uh, a lot of financial organizations have been set up in those areas to, service, Asia, Europe, all of those regions.
[14:21] Kiran: Um. The world's oil comes from that region. So there's so many sort of repercussions that can happen if this continues. And I think that's what everyone is worried about is how long this can continue. And the fact that even a place like Dubai, which has been known to be the easiest, simplest, safest place to go to, has suddenly now become a really stressful place to be in. And yes, you have friends, my sister-in-law and brother-in-law who live there. And, um, there are constantly sounds that they hear and they see, they've seen these. I mean, just imagine someone you know is actually seen these missiles fly past, that's pretty crazy.
[15:06] Kiran: Right. Um,
[15:08] Debkanya: it is
[15:08] Kiran: so it is scary. Yeah.
[15:10] Debkanya: a human cost to a war and there's also an economic cost to a war. One of the things I was wondering about, and you know, maybe we should think about this as well, we rely so much on fossil fuels, on oil, uh, from these regions.
[15:23] Debkanya: Is it going to push more countries to think about renewable energy? Is it going to think, make us think of alternative sources of energy more so that things
[15:30] Kiran: Yeah.
[15:30] Debkanya: not
[15:30] Kiran: Yep.
[15:31] Debkanya: us? Maybe solar, wind, hydro, alternative sources of energy are, um, the need of the day.
[15:37] Kiran: In fact I think, um, you know, even from my own individual perspective, we've actually used the EV a little bit more over the last couple of weeks. Our EV car more than the petrol car, right? So it's, it's just simple behaviors that you will also start seeing.
[15:52] Kiran: So yeah, it's interesting times. Let's see how long this kind of continues. But also, you know, parting thought Debbie, was that all of these weapons are flying around. But the reason this entire war started is the, fright of more weapons being developed
[16:11] Debkanya: Built.
[16:12] Kiran: and that's why this war started.
[16:13] Kiran: But yes, let's hope it all stops fairly soon and, we'll anyway, keep you updated with what's happening. That's the end of this episode. It's been a long one, again, about the Iranian conflict, and therefore I am sure this week's quiz question has something to do about the Iranian conflict or the region.
[16:33] Debkanya: absolutely correct. But
[16:35] Kiran: Mm-hmm.
[16:35] Debkanya: do with geography and less about the war. It's about the straight of Hormuz. Remember I
[16:39] Kiran: Mm-hmm.
[16:40] Debkanya: uh, a little earlier? What I want you to go and find out, I love looking at an atlas or a world map, and I hope you do too, and that's what you need to do for this week's quiz question, which is which two important water bodies are connected by the strait of Hormuz. I'm gonna give you options. They are option one, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aiden, option two, Persian Gulf, and the Gulf of Oman. Option three, the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean, Option four, the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara.
[17:17] Kiran: Yeah, so please, please go and look at it in a map. Open up Google Maps, open up a, you know, globe, whatever it is, and try and find the answer. Don't just try to guess it because it is really interesting to see how the Strait of Hormuz is, uh, crucial to oil supply and to logistics, right?
[17:39] Kiran: So, so,
[17:40] Kiran: Just go and, uh, re research it, figure it out yourself. It's very, very interesting and if you get the right answer, send it over to takarokids.com. Fill up the form and give us your answer with your email ID or send it over as an Instagram message.
[17:55] Kiran: Ask your parents to send it over, and the lucky winner wins a gift certificate, and a Takaro Kids t-shirt. Like our winner from last week's episode. Should we talk about last week's episode and the question and the right answer.
[18:14] Debkanya: Yes, let's do it. Last week, the episode was all about ai, which is the other topic that everyone seems to be talking about these days. We asked you to find out who is the father of ai, who is considered to be the father of ai. Okay. Options were one. Paul McCartney, option two, Dr. John McCarthy, option three, McCaulay Kin, and Option four Machiavelli. And the correct
[18:42] Kiran: So. We got a lot of responses saying Machiavelli actually, which is unfortunately Yeah, which is unfortunately the wrong answer. It's not, it's not Macaulay kin neither. If you've watched Home Alone, you've seen Macaulay Kin. He's definitely not the father of ai. It's not Paul McCartney who was part of the Beatles. Um, so it is Dr. John McCarthy.
[19:06] Debkanya: Yes, Dr. John McCarthy was the man who actually coined the term artificial intelligence for the first time. I think this was way back in 1955. Uh, we where he actually spoke about and gave it a term or a name. Right? He's an American computer scientist and cognitive scientist Machiavelli, by the way. Uh, you know, since a lot of you picked that, he is.
[19:28] Debkanya: An Italian diplomat, author and philosopher. Uh, he's also known to be, you know, he's, he's famous because of a book that he wrote, which is called The Prince, uh, which is basically a guide for royalty at that time as to how to hold onto your power and get more power, right? So that's why he's, his name is usually used in a slightly negative way because, you know, if you're being
[19:51] Kiran: Yep.
[19:51] Debkanya: cunning, uh, then you are Machiavellian.
[19:56] Kiran: So Dr. John McCarty and this week's winner is Noah from Delhi. Congratulations Noah. Uh, you are gonna get your gift certificate and you are gonna get a Takaro Kids t-shirt as well. There may be a few of you are still waiting for your Takaro Kids t-shirts. We do apologize for that. We are reprinting them.
[20:16] Kiran: It'll happen. Fairly soon and you'll get it. What we've also started doing is, um, every episode, if you go to our website, we also have a classroom resource available. So you can actually now go to your educators, to your teachers, to your parents, and go through this resource to better understand each episode and its content and, maybe ask some questions and just have discussions around it.
[20:45] Kiran: So go check it out on our website, Takaro kids.com and until next week it is. Bye-bye