WSJ What’s News - Iran’s Nuclear Program Only Set Back by Months

Episode Date: June 25, 2025

A.M. Edition for June 25. An initial damage assessment prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency finds that weekend strikes by the U.S. on Iran’s nuclear facilities only delayed Tehran’s ambitions by a few months. WSJ Middle East correspondent Jared Malsin tells us what we know about the U.S. strikes’ impact. Plus, Zohran Mamdani deals a major blow to the Democratic establishment, topping Andrew Cuomo in New York’s mayoral primary. And we look at a landmark copyright ruling set to reverberate across the AI industry. 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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Find an agent today at Desjardins.com slash business coverage. A U.S. intelligence report finds strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities only delayed Tehran's ambitions by a few months. Plus, Zoran Mamdani deals a major blow to the Democratic establishment, topping Andrew Cuomo in New York's mayoral primary. Together we have shown the power of the politics of the future. Yeah! One of partnership and of sincerity.

Yeah! And we'll look at a landmark copyright ruling set to reverberate across the AI industry. It's Wednesday, June 25th. 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. U.S. military strikes on Iran last weekend only set back the country's nuclear ambitions by a few months, shutting off the entrances to a pair of nuclear sites, but not collapsing

their underground structures. That is the conclusion of a Defense Intelligence Agency damage assessment, according to people familiar with the intelligence, findings that are at odds with claims by the White House and President Trump who'd said that the targets of the raids were destroyed. Joining me now with more on how the administration is responding to the report and the potential significance of its conclusions is Journal Middle East correspondent Jared Malson. Jared, walk us through some of the details of this report, especially as they relate to what Iran might be able to do with its nuclear program going forward.

This is an initial assessment by one US intelligence agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, which is the intelligence wing of the Pentagon. And this is their initial take on how much destruction was caused by the US and Israeli strikes at these three Iranian nuclear sites. What this initial finding says is that those strikes likely only set back the Iranian nuclear program by a few months, that while it sealed the entrances to two of these underground sites, as you said, it did not destroy the underground buildings where some of this nuclear activity has been taking place. According to officials that we spoke with who are familiar with this report, Iran still has the ability to enrich uranium. Iran may

have also moved some enriched uranium from the sites before they were destroyed, and it may have other covert sites to enrich uranium according to one of our sources. And the significance of this is that it runs counter to what the president and what the administration has been saying, which is that the targets of the raids were, in the words of Donald Trump, totally obliterated. I'm curious how the administration is responding to this. So the administration has confirmed the existence of the report, but it is strongly denying the findings. Carolyn Levitt, the White House press secretary, said last night that the assessment is flat out wrong, and she said it was written by an anonymous low-level loser in the intelligence

community, in her words. So they are pouring cold water on this, essentially, and they are sticking to their line that the targets of the US strikes were totally destroyed. We should add the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees all of the intelligence agencies in the US government declined to comment on the report and the DIA, this sort of preparing agency here, didn't respond to a request for comment. That aside, if confirmed, I guess the implication here is that this Iranian nuclear issue may not be off the table.

Pete That's right. What's at stake here is the question of whether Israel and the Trump administration have achieved their goal of destroying or severely setting back the Iranian nuclear program. And we're going to see a lot more information come out about this. This is one initial assessment by one intelligence agency, and both Israeli and American intelligence agencies are going to continue to assess this question. It is a difficult question to address because the sites by definition are out of reach in Iran in a place where they are relying as far as we know on one source of information. For example, it could be satellites or signals intelligence to try to assess what happened in airstrikes where they were using these very large

30,000 pound bombs to try to destroy these underground facilities where the Iranians were enriching uranium. And finally, Jared, would it be safe to say Israel's assessment in the coming, I don't know, days, weeks is going to be very key here after all. They're the ones that said they had achieved their war goals relating to Iran, one of which had been to end Iran's ability to enrich uranium. This is a very important question because as you said what's at stake is whether Israel and the Trump administration have achieved the aims of

the war. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the other day that Israel was very very close to completing Israel's war aims which he said were removing Iran's ability to enrich uranium and destroying its ballistic missile arsenal. The world's intelligence agencies, including Israel's and the US's, will be looking at this question very closely. We're going to see a very intense debate play out over what exactly was destroyed or not in Iran. Donald Trump says that he wants to strike a deal with Iran, a new nuclear agreement that would prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

What capabilities Iran still has in this area is at the heart of that question. Is it still able to enrich uranium? To what degree, to what extent? And at what rate? Those questions are all at the heart of the diplomacy that's about to unfold. That was Wall Street Journal Middle East correspondent Jared Maunson. Jared, thank you so much for the update. Thank you. Well, speaking at a NATO summit this morning, President Trump was asked about how long he

thinks Iran's nuclear program has been set back. I think basically decades because I don't think they'll ever do it again. I just don't think they're going to do it. I think they're going to take their oil, they're going to have some missiles and they'll have some defense. I think they've had it. I mean, they just went through hell. I think they've had it.

The last thing they want to do is enrich. In the coming hours, NATO allies are set to pledge to more than double their defense spending, after which Trump is due to hold a press conference at 9 a.m. Eastern. Coming up, a Democratic socialist wins a surprising upset in the Democratic primary to be New York's next mayor, and a judge rules that AI models can use books and other copyrighted materials for training. We've got those stories and more after the break. In a stunning political upset, democratic socialist Zoran Mamdani has declared victory

in New York City's Democratic mayoral primary, triggering a concession by former governor Andrew Cuomo. In a speech to supporters, Mamdani, who drew strong backing from young and left-leaning voters, thanked the coalition of New Yorkers who got behind him. Today, eight months after launching this campaign, with the vision of a city that every New Yorker could afford, we have won. The official outcome of the race is still to be determined by a ranked-choice vote count. In addition to besting a Republican and independent candidate, the Democratic nominee would need to beat Mayor Eric Adams, who opted to skip the primary, and Cuomo hasn't ruled out returning to the race under his own party.

Back in Washington, President Trump is warning Republicans to get their one big, beautiful bill on his desk by July 4th, posting on social media yesterday that, quote, no one goes on vacation until it's done. Lawmakers are scheduled to leave Washington for recess next week, but have signaled they're prepared to stay and finish the bill. The House and Senate bills are broadly similar, with both extending tax cuts and increasing spending on border security. Despite that general agreement, dozens of sticking points ranging from deficit spending

to Medicaid are causing internal friction within the Republican Party as lawmakers aim to push the bill through Congress. A federal judge in California has found that Anthropic's use of books to train its artificial intelligence models was legal under U.S. copyright law in circumstances where it had purchased those books. However, the judge said the ruling doesn't apply to seven million books that Anthropic obtained through pirated means, over which it will face another trial. Legal experts say the ruling could have broad implications for intellectual property and

help to shape future litigation against AI companies. News outlets along with musicians, filmmakers, and authors have sued the likes of OpenAI, Meta, and Mid-Journey over what they consider unauthorized use of their copyrighted materials for AI model training. The National Transportation Safety Board says that Boeing's failure to provide adequate training as well as ineffective regulation from the Federal Aviation Administration both contributed to last year's dramatic blowout of a door plug on a Boeing 737 MAX plane. Here was NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy. An accident like this does not happen because of an individual or even a group of individuals. Aviation is much more resilient than that.

An accident like this only happens when there are multiple system failures. The FAA said it's fundamentally changed how it oversees Boeing and will continue aggressive oversight while Boeing said it would continue to make improvements. Shares of FedEx are down more than 5 percent in off-hours trading after the packaged shipping company said that tariffs are weighing on its international business. The company said it saw some of the biggest declines in shipping across the Pacific Ocean during the recently ended fourth quarter and didn't provide a full-year outlook. FedEx did say it's cutting some of its European workforce as part of a cost-cutting drive

amid uncertain customer demand. And speaking of package delivery, FedEx and UPS have a growing nationwide competitor, Delta Airlines. Delta is now carrying tens of thousands of packages a day through a dedicated parcel service it introduced last year. And journal reporter Esther Fung says that American and United are also making good use of the space under their passengers' feet, in turn creating a new and steady stream of revenue.

So the cargo units in these passenger airlines are partnering with different logistics companies, including freight forwarders that bring e-commerce packages to the aircraft and last mile delivery companies to bring these packages to your homes. And it helps to insulate against fluctuations of ticket sales. Now cargo, it's still a tiny, tiny portion of the airline revenue. It's less than 3%. But Delta says that this portion of their business is growing. They aim to deliver hundreds of thousands of packages a day in the U.S. in the coming years. However, Esther says there are some drawbacks in using commercial airlines for shipping

packages. Human organs and tissue deliveries and human remains get priority over other cargo. So the package typically gets bumped off to the next flight. But hey, there are 10 other flights your package could get on for that day. So you could still get your parcels delivered within two or three days. And this is something that customers want and this can be cheaper. One customer told me that Delta's on-time performance has been on par with FedEx and UPS and their delivery costs are 20 to 25 percent cheaper. And that's it for What's News for this Wednesday morning.

Today's show was produced by Daniel Bach and Kate Bullivant. Our supervising producer was Sandra Kilhoff and I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. As always, we'll be special delivering a brand new show for you tonight. Until then, thanks for listening.