WSJ What’s News - Israel’s Case for Its War With Iran

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

P.M. Edition for June 17. President Trump has called for Iran’s “unconditional surrender” as he considers a range of options, including a potential U.S. strike, against the country. WSJ national security reporter Alexander Ward discusses the key piece of intelligence around which Israel built its case for war, though the U.S. didn’t buy it. Plus, unemployment for recent grads hits nearly its highest level in a decade. We hear from WSJ economics reporter Justin Lahart about the factors at play. And Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy says that developments in artificial intelligence will lead to a smaller workforce. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

President Trump considers options against Iran, including a U.S. strike, though the U.S. disagreed with the Israeli intelligence assessment around which it built its case for war. There is no disagreement between experts, Israel or the United States, that Iran is relatively close to getting a bomb if they wanted to go and get one. No one's disputing the facts, they're disputing the assessment of what it means. Plus, why new graduates are facing roughly the highest unemployment rate in a decade

and how the US is planning an audacious reboot of its nuclear energy program. It's Tuesday, June 17th. I'm Alex Osela for The Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. We begin this evening with the latest about the situation in the Middle East.

President Trump is escalating his rhetoric against Iran. He called on the country to surrender without conditions to bring an end to its days-long conflict with Israel, saying the U.S. knew the location of the country's leader but was choosing not to take any action. Trump made the comments as the US expanded its military footprint in the region. Administration officials said that President Trump met with top advisors in the Situation Room today and is considering a range of options, including a potential US strike against Iran. Israel and Iran continued to exchange fire, and a human rights group said that the death toll in Iran rose to above 450.

In Israel, 24 people have died as a result of Iranian strikes. Now, we're exclusively reporting on a key piece of Israeli intelligence that the country shared with the US before it launched its strikes on Iran last week. Israel saw this intelligence as evidence that Tehran intended to make a nuclear weapon. But U.S. defense and intelligence officials weren't convinced. That's according to a senior intelligence official, another U.S. official, and two congressional aides familiar with the discussions. I'm joined now by WSJ National Security reporter Alex Ward. So Alex, the U.S. and Israel largely agree that Iran has in recent months put itself in a stronger position to build a nuclear bomb. Iran has insisted its nuclear program

is for peaceful purposes. What is the new intelligence in question here? Well, it depends on your definition of new, but let's go into what the intelligence is. The intelligence that Israel shared within about the last month or so with the US showed that there was Iranian research into technology that's necessary for building a nuclear weapon. And they described it as a quote unquote multi-point initiation system, which is a technique used to detonate multiple simultaneous explosions that would be used in a nuclear bomb.

So Israel obtained this information and they shared it with the United States within the last month. The split here between them on what this intel means is that the Israelis when seeing this they went, oh, so Iran does intend to build a bomb and time is running out because they could get one relatively quickly and in a timeline that is uncomfortable for the Israelis and so it was time to act now. The Americans seeing that intelligence

kind of shrugged. They went, okay, this is kind of old news. We sort of knew the Iranians were doing this kind of stuff. It doesn't necessarily show that Iran has the intention or has made the decision to go and assemble a nuclear bomb. You know, no one's disputing the facts. They're disputing the assessment of what it means. So in that vein, I mean, what do experts have to say about this? Nuclear experts we talked to sided with the US on this one in the sense of look

Iran clearly intends to have a bomb option so if Tehran were to decide today tomorrow whenever that they do want to acquire bomb there wouldn't be too much of a lag in between decision day and acquisition day but so far there's no indication at least in the US intelligence assessment that Iran has made that final decision but there is no disagreement between experts, Israel, or the United States, that Iran is relatively close to getting a bomb if they wanted to go and get one. Before the bombs fell last week, Trump urged Israel to hold off on those strikes because he wanted to go with the diplomatic process.

Obviously, the strikes happened anyway. Has this led to a rift between Israel and the U.S.? Where does that relationship between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Trump stand now? So there clearly was a rift. Trump kind of gave an implicit green light, let's say. It wasn't very explicit or enthusiastic, but he didn't stop the Israelis. And in fact, U.S. forces are also defending Israel against Iranian retaliation.

And we're now at this point where Trump is actually making pretty bellicose statements, right? Like we know where the Supreme Leader is, but we're not going to attack him right now. Or like we've got air superiority over Iran. And hey, Iran, you should have made a deal and now there's going to be loss of life. You don't really make those kinds of statements unless you're signaling some things to come, or you're really trying to use the military pressure as leverage to get a deal later. We don't know exactly what Trump's strategy is at the moment, but we do know that he is certainly seems to be a little more aligned with Netanyahu since the war started than before the war started.

That was WSJ National Security reporter Alex Ward. Thanks Alex. Yeah, thanks for having me. US stocks slipped and oil prices rallied after hopes for a quick resolution to the Israel-Iran conflict dimmed. Major US indexes closed lower. The Dow lost 0.7 percent, the S&P 500 dipped about 0.8 percent, and the Nasdaq fell 0.9 percent. Brent crude futures, the international oil benchmark, rose about 4%. We're exclusively reporting that India's richest man has joined the ranks of foreign

developers pouring money into President Trump's real estate firm. The president's annual financial disclosure report included a $10 million development fee from a unit of a company controlled by multi-billionaire Mukesh Ambani, licensing the Trump name in Mumbai. It's unclear what project Ambani has planned. His Reliance Industries is a vast conglomerate, and lobbying reports show that his companies have lobbied U.S. officials on tariffs, sanctions, and policies about oil. Real estate development hasn't historically been a focus of Reliance Industries, but in recent years,

the conglomerate has taken on large projects. Senate Republican leaders left members from both ends of the party unsatisfied with their new version of President Trump's big, beautiful bill. It's touching off a fast round of new negotiations to hit their self-imposed deadline of putting the bill on Trump's desk by July 4th.

Meanwhile, a new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office of the tax and spending bill that the House passed found that it would increase budget deficits by $2.8 trillion through 2034 after factoring in the projected economic growth the bill would create. The CBO's analysis undercuts one of Republicans' main arguments for the legislation, that the economic boom that the tax cuts create would throw off enough extra tax revenue to cover the $2.4 trillion gap between the bill's tax cuts and spending cuts. According to the CBO's projections, the economy would grow somewhat faster than if Congress did nothing and let the tax cuts expire. But when it comes to the federal government's bottom line, higher interest rates would cost the U.S. more than $400 billion, overwhelming the extra revenue coming from that growth.

Coming up, why more new grads are struggling to land jobs. That's after the break. Craft Heinz said it plans to remove the dyes from its US products before the end of 2027. The company said that nearly 90% of its products in terms of sales don't use artificial dyes. For those that do, including many Crystal Light, Heinz Relish, Kool-Aid, Jell-O, and Jetpuffed products, the company said it would remove, replace, or reinvent colors. The move comes as the Trump administration is pushing to strip artificial dyes from the U.S. food supply. The Health and Human Services Department and Food and Drug Administration said in April

that it aimed to work with the food industry to remove six synthetic dyes by the end of next year. Amazon plans to reduce its workforce in the coming years because increasing use of artificial intelligence will eliminate the need for certain jobs. In a note to employees, CEO Andy Jassy called generative artificial intelligence a once-in-a-lifetime technological change that is already affecting how Amazon deals with consumers,

other businesses, and conducts its own operations. He didn't specify how much the workforce at Amazon, the nation's second largest private employer, would be reduced, but said the efficiency gains from using generative artificial intelligence would result in cuts. Jassy said the company has already rolled out or is building more than 1,000 AI agents.

It's graduation season with a new crop of young people ready to jump into their futures. Except many of them are finding it's maybe tougher than they thought to land their first job out of college or even summer work after high school. Yes, the broader labor market is holding steady, but job seekers broadly are finding this to be a difficult moment, and that's especially true for recent grads. The overall national unemployment rate remains around 4%, but for new college graduates,

it's 6.6% over the past 12 months ending in May. Except for the pandemic, that's about the highest level in a decade. For more on this, I'm joined by WSJ economics reporter Justin Lehart. Justin, this isn't exactly a new problem, right? I mean, young graduates do typically face higher unemployment than people who have been in the workforce longer, but you write that the gap is growing wider. What are some of the factors driving down youth employment today? Yeah, the biggest factor right now is that companies really

have just pulled back on hiring. So this is true for the people who are unfortunate enough to be laid off, for anyone who's coming back into the job market after taking a spell out of it. But the group that really, really comes into the job market for those first jobs, those are new graduates. Why are these businesses slowing down hiring so much? Yeah, I mean, just think about what's going on in the environment. All the uncertainty

about the economy, about tariffs, the doge cuts, about, you know, sort of lots of things. Right? Even if a company is fairly, you know fairly optimistic about the economy, they don't really know where to deploy capital, where to put the new people. If I'm a manufacturer facing tariffs, if I'm worried that the tariffs are gonna really, really stay in place, then I might be expanding in the US

by adding manufacturing capacity. If on the other hand, I think that things are gonna settle down, I might be adding to port capacity, to capacity to bring stuff in. If I don't know, then I don't know what to do. And if I don't know what to do, then I'm not going to hire anyone. What does this mean for grads' long-term career prospects?

Like, if you can't land that very first job, where do you end up in five, 10, 20 years? There is a hangover. If you graduate into a very good job market, economists have found that years later you are much better off than people who graduated into a poor job market. I mean, this was really, really something that we saw after the financial crisis, the Great Recession, when it was just horrible for new graduates. And those folks are still struggling in a way. They were slower to get married, slower to get that first house. Their careers really had a big sort of setback.

That was WSJ Economics reporter, Justin Layhart. Thank you, Justin. Thanks. As the US aims to revive its nuclear power industry to achieve energy independence and compete with China's growing nuclear capabilities, venture capitalists have invested $2.5 billion since 2021 in the next generation of nuclear technology. Heather Somerville, who covers technology and national security for the journal, told our tech news briefing podcast why this is an unusual investment for venture capital.

One unique factor of this particular nuclear power renaissance that we're in is the involvement of private capital, private equity, and especially venture capitalists. Since 2021, venture capitalists have invested about $2.5 billion in US nuclear power projects. If you have any experience with venture capitalists, they have traditionally avoided regulatory intense projects, capital intense projects that need a lot of money upfront before they can make money and very complicated hardware and businesses that rely a lot on government involvement. We are seeing a huge exception here.

And the other thing is a lot of these smaller reactors and these new projects that are coming online in nuclear don't need the same amount of money that the big old reactors had of prior decades. So it is more feasible for venture capitalists to support them in their initial years as they're getting their research and development underway. That's new and that's a pretty powerful thing. For more from Heather, listen to yesterday's episode of Tech News Briefing. And that's what's news for this Tuesday afternoon. Today's show was produced by Pierre Bienimé and Anthony Bansi.

Our supervising producer was Matthew Walls. I'm Alex Osela for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening.