How the War With Iran Is Widening, and U.S. Hospitals See a Surge of Uninsured Patients
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm opening up cross play. I've been playing against Dan, my colleague at the New York Times. Kat's played another move. She played stoop for 36 points. I've got a Z, which is 10 points. I'm guessing tanga is not a word. Let's see. Tanga is a word. Oh. Dan played his last turn. Let's see who won. It's so close, but I did win.
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From The New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Thursday, July 30th. Here's what we're covering.
We're going to be hitting them very hard because it's our turn to hit them. They know it's coming. They're asking us not to do it.
In the Middle East, what had been a short pause in direct fighting is now over as the conflict between the U.S. and Iran has reignited.
It's our turn, and we'll see if we get there with an agreement at some point, but we're going to hit them very hard.
This week, Iran fired multiple ballistic missiles on American bases in Jordan. And last night, in response, the Pentagon said it carried out a heavy wave of strikes on Iran, hitting command centers, missile and drone sites, and surveillance facilities. The escalation comes as more and more countries are being pulled into the war. In recent weeks, Iran-linked groups across the region have helped draw Jordan, along with Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Yemen further into the conflict. Now, there's also Egypt, where two ships were hit and caught fire yesterday in what appeared to be a drone strike, according to marine tracking companies. One of the ships was a U.S.-owned natural gas tanker. It wasn't immediately clear who was behind the apparent attack, but analysts say that Iran has been increasingly trying to extend the battlefield.
And they say that while the U.S. and Israel went into the war promising a quick, decisive victory, Iran is trying to prove that it now has control of the conflict. One expert at the Middle East Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, told the Times that Iran is, quote, trying to seize the initiative or at the very least keep the U.S. and Israel on their back foot.
Over the past few years, The Times has been investigating how American soldiers are at risk of serious brain injuries, not from combat, but from routine parts of their jobs. The Times has found, for example, that there were signs of brain damage in artillery crews who fired thousands of mortar rounds during training, and in Navy SEALs who used shoulder-fired rockets, and fighter pilots who were catapulted off of aircraft carriers. Now, my colleague Dave Phillips, who has led this reporting, has been looking into the Coast Guard's elite rescue teams, whose job it is to rush into rough waters.
I was really surprised to learn that there could be a serious injury just from riding through the waves. But when someone explained the physics to me, it made total sense. When a body standing on a boat slams down into a wave, the body actually acts like a whip crack. And so a force that might be only six times the force of gravity on the deck, pretty manageable, by the time it whips up to the head is 60 times the force of gravity, which really is the equivalent of a car crash. When I started talking to rescue crews that are on these boats, many of them talked to me about having headaches or feeling hungover for days after. And over years of being exposed to this, people developed really serious problems.
How is the war between the U.S. and Iran escalating and what strikes were carried out?
It started with sleeplessness and headaches and progressed into anxiety and really serious mood swings. And some people, as this injury continued to progress, actually died by suicide.
Dave says the symptoms crew members described are all classic signs of brain injury. But he found that unlike other branches of the military, the Coast Guard had no regular testing for that and no formal briefings about the dangers of the pounding waves. There is a section about brain injuries on the Coast Guard's website, but it's more than a decade out of date.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–3:51
2
How is the war between the U.S. and Iran escalating and what strikes were carried out?
3:51–8:59
3
Which countries are being pulled into the widening Iran conflict and why?
8:59–10:10
4
How is Iran extending the battlefield beyond its borders and who might be responsible for recent ship attacks?
10:10–10:25
Speakers
5 identifiedMore from The Headlines
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