WSJ What’s News - How a U.S. Bomb Could Cripple Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions

Episode Date: June 18, 2025

A.M. Edition for June 18. Israel hits a nuclear facility in Iran’s capital, even as its ultimate target remains just out of reach. WSJ Middle East correspondent Benoit Faucon discusses the American weapon that could change that. Plus, the Senate passes legislation to regulate stablecoins pegged to national currencies in a key victory for the digital-asset industry. And Amazon’s CEO admits AI is likely coming for our jobs. Luke Vargas hosts.  Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It's Wednesday, June 18th. I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. We begin in Iran, where the Israeli military this morning said it struck a nuclear centrifuge plant in the capital Tehran. Iran, where the Israeli military this morning said it struck a nuclear centrifuge plant in the capital Tehran. Some 50 jets participated in the mission, which also hit missile factories. Israel claims that Iran's nuclear program is aimed at developing nuclear weapons, while

Iran says it's peaceful. The attacks come as President Trump weighs a potential U.S. strike on Iran, and as experts say that Washington could add a key bit of firepower to the fight in the form of a bunker-buster bomb potentially capable of hitting underground nuclear targets that have so far been beyond Israel's reach. Joining me with more on this is Wall Street Journal Middle East correspondent Benoit Faucon. Benoit, you've just written a story about this 30,000 pound so-called massive ordnance penetrator, a bomb which by the sounds of it was designed

almost precisely for what Israel is aiming to do here, right, to take out Iran's most hard-to-reach nuclear sites. Exactly. I mean, that's kind of the ultimate weapon, kind of the one tool that could disable Iran's deepest underground nuclear facilities. You have other underground alternatives which are much riskier, for instance, commando operation. But if you want to do it by the air, the most suitable solution is using a B-2 stealth bomber, which is a US aircraft. So as far as we know, Israel doesn't have B2s. And that means the US in one run over would have to help Israel.

Right. Given that, I imagine this is adding quite a bit of interest to each subsequent attack that we're seeing on Iran's nuclear sites, trying to determine if this weapon has been used and by extension, if the US has formally entered this conflict. Exactly. So that's where there's a dilemma. There's capability that only the US has. How do you either transfer it to Israel at this juncture, find a way for it to be an Israeli attack that could be still read as a US enabled attack because of the scale, because of the

technologies used. These are not run of the mill technologies. And therefore the US one way or another would be blamed by Iran and Iran would then be in a conundrum because they don't want a war with the US. Lots of considerations there you've just mentioned. But in terms of preparedness, can we determine how ready the US might be to potentially get involved here? We know this is something Trump is considering. Yes. So what is sure is there's an escalation that can risk any way to, for instance, Persian Gulf shipping. There is a risk that the Houthis, for instance, will increase their strikes. So the general context, regardless of whether the US decides to intervene or not, is risky

for US assets and general shipping in the region. So there is an increased presence in especially Persian Gulf waters of US naval assets. I've hit about 70 of them being deployed, which would be very large proportion of the overall number that is available to the US. So even if they don't decide to intervene, they're going to have to be much more deployed present on the ground to avoid the rest of the region being dragged into the conflict. That was Wall Street Journal Middle East correspondent Benoit Faucon-Benoit. Thank you as always. Yeah, thank you.

Have a good day. Back in Washington, the Senate has passed legislation to regulate stablecoins, a popular type of cryptoasset that's pegged to government currency like the US dollar. Angus Berwick covers cryptocurrencies for us and joins me now with more. Angus, this is said to be a massive win for the crypto industry, but before we go too in the weeds here, just explain to our listeners the appeal of stable coins, pegged as they are to fiat currency. I often associate crypto assets with big risk, big reward.

Yeah, exactly. Most cryptocurrencies, you're typically seeing big swings in their value each day. Stable coins, however, are pegged to traditional currencies, typically the US dollar. For the most popular, which is Tether, there should be one dollar backing up each Tether token, which is what keeps its value stable. Typically, it's quite difficult and cumbersome to move your traditional money from your bank account to then buy cryptocurrency. Often what traders prefer to do is that they'll swap between other more volatile cryptocurrencies and the stablecoin, effectively using it as a sort of crypto bank account.

The other kind of use for stablecoins, which is growing more and more around the world, is using them for cross-border payments in a way that in the past you would have used an international wire transfer. All right. Sounds like some pretty compelling use cases there. We report the market for these stablecoins is already roughly a quarter trillion dollars and expected to grow quite substantially in the coming years. We've got financial industry titans, the likes of Visa and MasterCard getting into the sector,

as well as big companies that are looking into this as well. Tell us a little bit more about why that is. Yes, these big companies are seeing the utility in the payment space as a way to remedy some of the frictions that we see in the traditional banking systems, particularly when it comes to sending money from one country to another. Quite a lot of tailwinds it sounds like for this industry and add to that now potential clarity coming from Washington on how this industry is going to be treated. What were the regulatory questions kind of swirling around stablecoins going into this bill and how can we now see that the Senate is proposing to tackle them?

There have been a number of concerns about stablecoins over the years. Firstly, it's about the kind of equality of the reserves that are underpinning the stablecoin themselves. So is the stablecoin fully backed by liquid secure assets? And secondly, about their uses for financial crime, money laundering and sanctions evasion. We've seen many, many kind of instances of this around the world. And you know, this bill seeks to address both of those concerns. Yeah, requiring issuers to hold a dollar of reserves, be that T bills, cash for each $1 of stablecoin, some of the major stablecoins also being required here to publish audited financial statements. This bill passed the Senate, though with some strong objections from certain critics who really wonder about other safeguards here and corruption concerns in particular.

Yes, you know one area of lawmakers concerns has been that the Trump family through the world Liberty financial venture have launched their own US dollar pegged stable coin. The bill prohibits executive branch officials and lawmakers from issuing stablecoins in order to address these concerns about conflicts of interests. It isn't yet clear how this would affect World Liberty Financial's own USD1 stablecoin because it will depend about how regulators would interpret World Liberty's ownership structure. I've been speaking to Wall Street Journal markets reporter Angus Berwick, who covers cryptocurrencies for us. Angus, thank you so much for the update.

Yeah, great to talk with you. Coming up in Appeals Court takes on President Trump's decision to federalize the California National Guard. And Amazon's CEO says the quiet part about AI out loud. We've got those stories and more after the break. This episode is brought to you by Dzone. For the first time ever, the 32 best soccer clubs from across the world

are coming together to decide who the undisputed champions of the world are in the FIFA Club World Cup. The world's best players, Messi, Holland, Kane, and more are all taking part. The The Trump administration is fighting back against a court order blocking its deployment of California's National Guard over Governor Gavin Newsom's objections. At a federal appeals hearing Tuesday, Justice Department lawyer Brett Shumate told the court that conditions in Los Angeles, where protests against Trump's aggressive deportation policy have at times turned violent, amount to rebellion against the authority of the United States. The court should immediately say the district court's extraordinary order, because it interferes

with the president's commander and chief powers based on an erroneous interpretation of the applicable statute. It upends the military chain of command. It gives state governors veto power over the president's military orders. It puts Article 3 judges on a collision course with the commander-in-chief, and it endangers lives. California's lawyer, meanwhile, said that any stay to the order risked escalating tensions in Los Angeles and would defy the preservation of state sovereignty, as well as the safeguarding of rights such as political protest. The UK and Canada have pledged new sanctions on Russia, capping a G7 summit with a show of support for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Zelensky had traveled to the summit hoping to convince the. to back new measures targeting Moscow, but wasn't able to meet with President Trump after he left ahead of schedule to focus on Israel's clash with Iran. European leaders, who have also proposed new sanctions on Russia, hope that continued pressure will push the country into accepting a ceasefire, a view shared by Zelensky. It's important for our soldiers to be strong at the battlefield, to stay strong until Russia will be ready for the peace negotiations. We are ready for the peace negotiations, unconditional ceasefire. I think it's very important, but for this we need pressure. Trump and Zelensky are expected to attend a NATO summit in The Hague next week.

And in Markets News today, Japan's exports fell in May by 1.7 percent, the first decline in eight months, raising fresh concerns about the impact of U.S. tariffs. U.S.-bound exports dropped sharply amid weakness in shipments of cars, auto parts and chip making machinery. Meanwhile, concerns about the economic impact of tariffs also helped to inform Sweden's central bank, which cut interest rates to 2 percent this morning, a move that comes just hours ahead of the Federal Reserve's latest decision. It's widely expected to keep rates on hold with investors instead focusing on officials' economic forecast and the so-called dot plot laying out projections for future rate moves.

And Amazon says that AI is changing how it works and will soon change who is doing the work. In a note to employees, CEO Andy Jassy called Generative Artificial Intelligence a once-in-a- in a lifetime technological change that will drive efficiencies across the business and reduce the company's corporate workforce over the next few years. While mass layoffs aren't expected soon, Jassy's note was among the starkest commentaries to date from a major company on AI's likely impact on employment. And on that note, that's it for What's News for this Monday

morning. Additional sound in this episode was from Reuters. Today's show was produced by Pierce Lynch and Kate Bullivant. Our supervising producer was Sandra Kilhoff, and I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening.