WSJ What’s News - No End in Sight for Iran War

Episode Date: September 3, 2026

A.M. Edition for Sept. 3. The U.S. is extending its troop deployments to the Middle East well into 2027, putting the prospects of an end to the Iran war further away. WSJ’s Jared Malsin and Matt Dalton explain what that means for the troops, the U.S. war effort and energy price-driven inflation. Plus, Russia gains the upper hand in Ukraine, with a barrage of new drones. And Uber’s global robotaxi push faces a litmus test on the mean streets of London. Luke Vargas hosts.  Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

There's no end in sight to the Iran War as Pete Hegzath extends deployments to the Middle East. There's a lot of physical and psychological pressure, especially on sailors, members of the U.S. Navy, who are spending a long time at sea. And I think what we're going to see is probably more strain on those forces as a result. Blaswillick, what that means for energy prices going into the winter heating season, And Russia gains the upper hand in Ukraine with a barrage of new drones.

It's Thursday, September 3rd. 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 our world today. Defense Secretary Pete Hexeth is extending the deployments of American troops in the Middle East well into 2027, part of an open-ended strategy that's named giving President Trump options for how and whether to continue the conflict. U.S. officials say that Trump has discussed declaring the war over, but has also told

aides that he thinks an economic pressure campaign, which includes a blockade of Iranian ports, will eventually force the regime to collapse. Journal Middle East correspondent Jared Moussin told me that so long as the U.S. wants to keep that option on the table, the military will need to be close by. It is a military operation. The blockade does involve, number one, redirecting ships that try to run the blockade. And they're also shooting at some of these ships. When ships don't comply with the Navy and their orders to steer away from Iran, they shoot at these ships and they disable them.

And sometimes those can be deadly strikes. There are thousands of sailors and soldiers involved, along with many warships, helicopters that are involved in policing the blockade. And for all of that to have an effect, it has to go on long enough for it to bite. In a letter to families, Pentagon leaders said they understood that. that the longer tour would weigh heavily on military households. While the prospect of an extended war in the Middle East is bad news for consumers, with oil and natural gas prices set to rise going into the winter heating season. That's being compounded by a lack of gas in storage,

with countries unable to buy cheaper natural gas earlier in the year, as energy reporter Matt Dalton explains. Prices are lowest kind of coming out of the winter and into the spring, even in the summer, and so you can, can buy cheaply, then you can avoid buying more expensively in the winter when prices are much higher when European gas demand peaks. And so now that pricing structure wasn't there. In fact, the price for delivery in the summer was more expensive than the price for delivery in the winter. So that gas is going to be more expensive than people were anticipating. And that is going to flow through

eventually into household heating bills and electricity prices. And while that may remind some listeners of the energy crisis following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Matt says that Europe. Europe has become more resilient since then. The continent's demand for natural gas is about 20% lower than it was then. The reason is Europe built a lot of renewables, which lowers gas needed for power generation. A lot of factories have become more energy efficient, and so that reduces demand. And also households have turned down the thermostat. So for all those reasons, that could ameliorate the crisis, then, you know, we also have new LNG export capacity coming online from the U.S.

The U.S. is now the world's largest LNG exporter, and those facilities will put new supply into the market and help keep prices down. They won't be able to replace the production lost from Qatar, but they certainly will help. Another potential factor is the prospect of an exceptionally warm and stormy winter. The World Meteorological Organization this morning said that El Nino has now become firmly established in the tropical Pacific and is expected to strengthen significantly. The WMO is forecasting the coming months we'll see an increased risk of floods in some places, drought in others, and additional extreme heat globally. Ukraine is facing a new threat from the air in the form of Russian drones powered by jets. For several days now, Kiev is faced almost continuous air raid alarms as upgraded weaponry slips past Ukrainian air defenses. or Anastasia Malenko.

It's here to discuss how Moscow's latest technological upgrade is reshaping the battlefield and whether and how Ukraine can respond. Anastasia, I feel like it wasn't very long ago. We were talking about how Ukraine had managed to puncture holes in Russia's air defenses and strike targets, sometimes hundreds of miles into Russian territory. And now it seems like the tables have turned to a degree. Indeed. Ukraine continues to strike Russia, of course. But in the recent weeks, Russia stepped up its attacks,

when it comes to the new generation of jet-powered drones that it's using to attack cities across Ukraine, but primarily cave these days. So as Russia has been attacking Ukraine with Shahat-type drones since fall 2002, and that basically set off an innovation race with Ukrainians coming up with various ways to shoot them down, ranging from mobile air defense units firing at these drones in the sky, to coming up with the drone interceptor technology, which basically meant that they would be sending intercepted drones to intercept shaheds flying in the sky. But because of the speed of these new jet power drones, it is way more difficult to shoot them down in these conventional ways. So right now, Ukraine is relying on F-16s as well as other types of air defense, but they have

fewer tools to combat this new threat. Not least when, in addition to their speed being an issue, but the fact that Russia is firing so many of them. Indeed, these drones just keep coming towards the capital, which has made the normal daily life quite difficult. So the Air Force said that since July, Russia has used five times more of this type of drones. So they're really scaling the technology since Thursday until Sunday. Russia fired about 1,500 drones to attack Ukraine, and about 800 of those were jet-powered. Okay, so this has gone, it seems like, to seemingly sort of the top of the pile in terms of the weaponry Russia is using here.

I guess where does that leave key of these things? really hard to intercept, especially at scale. Is there any equipment that could be useful? So I think when it comes to this technology, Ukraine is betting on its own innovation. Zelanski said that there are four companies which are currently working on the new generation of interceptor drones to start going after these much faster drones and shoot them down. He's hoping to scale this technology come fall. I mean, if they can do that, it's just more proof, right, of how quick these eras of technological innovation are in this war, because we're also reporting this week that Ukraine is rolling out its own weapons that are highly damaging to Russia.

There's just basically continual innovation here. Indeed. I mean, ever since Ukraine decided to take war to Russian territory and go after its factories and logistics hubs and military industrial complex, it's been really batting on its homegrown drone industry as well as its nascent missile industry. My colleague, Alistair MacDonald, he wrote about Ukraine's growing ability to strike deep inside Russia, which is in part thanks to long-range drones, which can fly up to 1,500 miles, and they're hoping to double that range to 3,000 miles by next year.

The defense technology companies are innovating very rapidly and very much prioritizing the range, the speed, as well as the payload of long-distance drones, trying to bring more of Russia within reach and basically hitting back its invaders. I've been speaking to Walter Uttaliannizabeth. Anastasia Malenko. Anastasia, thank you so much for bringing us this story.

Thank you for having me. Coming up, Ford rolls out an EV truck for the masses to compete with Tesla and an elitmus test for global expansion, autonomous cabs at the mean streets of London. Those stories and more after the break. Ford is setting an ambitious sales target for its upcoming electric truck, aiming to sell more than 100,000 units of the fathom in its first year. Starting around $30,000, the Kentucky-billed truck represents Ford's push into the mainstream market, following billions in losses on earlier, more expensive EVs like the F-150 Lightning.

We understand that CEO Jim Farley has dubbed the low-cost design Ford's new Model T moment. If met, a sales target would place Ford in rare company alongside Tesla, though the aggressive push comes as U.S. EV demand faces headwinds from the phaseout of federal tax credits. Open AI has been hit with 30 new lawsuits over a February mass shooting in Canada. Families of the eight victims alleged that the AI company was negligent, violated product liability standards, and aided and abetted the massacre by failing to alert police after the suspect described violent scenarios on chat GPT months before the attack. Open AI, which considered contacting authorities prior to the shooting but refrained, said it since tightened its law enforcement. enforcement referral protocols. The filings add to a growing wave of litigation testing whether AI

companies can be held liable for real-world harm linked to their chatbots. Broadcom has reported soaring Q3 profits thanks to demand for its custom chips. Large AI labs are driving much of that as Broadcom ships new product to the likes of Google, OpenAI, and meta. But even as CEO Hock Tan forecast that chip demand wouldn't let up in the coming years, he acknowledged, Wall Street concerns that data center construction could become a limiting factor. We can ship significantly more. Question to some in our mind sometimes is, are they going to be, even as we ship the chips, going to be deployed on a timely basis? Broadcom shares are down off hours.

And finally, we're on track to be live in 15 cities. year-end. We've got a neurolucid launch coming in the Bay. We've got Zeus coming in Vegas. We've got Wave in London and Tokyo. We expect to be in L.A. in San Francisco in 27. We expect to be in perhaps San Francisco and Miami in 2008 and then 28 different cities globally by 28 as well. That was the CEO of Uber last month, talking about its grand plans to roll out robotaxies worldwide. Ambitions that will be put to a test starting today as it begins offering rides around London in conjunction with British startup wave. Company officials say that success in the city,

which has 15 times as many cyclists and pedestrians on its roads compared to San Francisco, and which features a less grid-like street design would serve as a proof point that robotaxies can work basically anywhere. London's cabbies had mixed reactions to today's rollout. It took us four to five years to qualify to be a taxi driver. They're not going to be able to be able to. to navigate around the streets of London, no chance.

Without a driver, I think it's an excellent waiting to happen. If London cabbies do get phased out, I would be very sad. I think London and the world, but London most specifically would lose a unique thing, the knowledge and a bespoke taxi. But ultimately, people will decide. And if they don't want us, we'll go. Let us know in our Spotify comments, if your team Robo Taxi or Team Black Cab, I'll see you there.

And that's it for what's news for this Thursday morning. Today's show was produced by Hattie Moyer. Our supervising producer is Sandra Kilhoff, and I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with the news show. And until then, thanks for listening.