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Good morning and welcome back to FirstFT. Today’s agenda:
Donald Trump weighs his options vis-à-vis Iran
Altman accuses Meta of staff poaching
Martin Wolf on Trump’s “big, beautiful” bill
Beach-ready timepieces
Will the US join Israel’s bombing campaign against Iran? That’s the question consuming governments and investors around the world this morning as the Israel-Iran conflict enters a sixth day. Here’s what we know.
Trump calls for Iran’s “unconditional surrender”: Donald Trump opened the door to the US joining Israel after calling for Tehran’s “unconditional surrender” yesterday in a series of bellicose comments in which he also said his patience was “wearing thin” with the regime in Tehran and that supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was an “easy target”.
“We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform of Iran’s supreme leader. “But we don’t want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers.”
The Trump administration is actively debating whether to join Israel in attacking Iran, three people familiar with discussions told the Financial Times. Last night the president held an 80-minute meeting with members of his national security team in the White House Situation Room to discuss whether the US should join Israel and its strikes on Iran’s nuclear programme. Meanwhile, the US has pivoted to a more hostile military posture towards Iran by sending more assets to the region. These include the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and three guided-missile destroyers that had been in the South China Sea and air-to-air refuelling aircraft that the US would use if American fighter jets became involved in the conflict.
Meanwhile, Israel said it launched a fresh round of attacks near Tehran this morning and Iran deployed a hypersonic ballistic missile in its latest strikes. Follow our live blog for the latest updates.
Nuclear disaster? Israel’s attacks on uranium enrichment facilities have caused localised radioactivity, but contamination appears limited.
‘Iranian lioness’: State TV anchor Sahar Emami has become a symbol of resistance after she kept broadcasting amid Israeli bombing.
Tanker collision: A crash between two oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz has raised anxieties about GPS interference in the region.
Netanyahu: The Israeli prime minister has consistently misread the region since the 1980s, writes Kim Ghattas, dooming it to endless cycles of violence.
Here’s what else we’re keeping tabs on today:
US interest rates: War in the Middle East will play into policymakers’ thinking as they decide whether to cut interest rates from the current level of 4.25-4.50 per cent. Brazil’s central bank is expected to maintain the country’s benchmark Selic rate at 14.75 per cent. Here’s how economists assess the impact of the conflict on the global economy.
Economic data: The US Census Bureau reports on May housing starts and new issuance of building permits. Argentina’s statistics agency is set to release retail sales data for April.
Russia: President Vladimir Putin will welcome attendees to the three-day 28th St Petersburg International Economic Forum.
Five more top stories
1. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has accused Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta of trying to poach his developers with the promise of $100mn sign-on bonuses and even higher compensation. Meta has been racing to poach top researchers and engineers from rival groups as it seeks to build a new “superintelligence” team to develop AI. Read more on Meta’s poaching campaign.
More AI news: Big Tech groups, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta, are pushing for a 10-year ban on AI regulation by individual US states.
Amazon: The ecommerce giant has told white-collar employees that their jobs will be at risk from AI in the next few years.
TikTok: The White House has extended a deadline for another 90 days to allow the Chinese-owned social media app to continue operations.
2. China’s central bank governor has said he expects a new global currency order to emerge after decades of dominance by the US dollar, with the renminbi competing in a “multi-polar international monetary system”. Pan Gongsheng said the US dollar had “established its dominance” after the second world war but warned of “excessive reliance” on a single currency. He was speaking at China’s flagship financial forum in Shanghai.
3. HSBC is considering forcing staff back to the office at least three days a week. Chief executive Georges Elhedery has discussed the group-wide policy with executives across the bank’s businesses, people involved in the deliberations said, with some managers frustrated that many employees are still mostly working from home.
4. India’s aviation safety regulator said it had found no “major safety concerns” during inspections of Air India’s Boeing 787 aircraft following Thursday’s fatal crash of a flight from Ahmedabad to London. Independent experts have raised questions about the position of the plane’s wing flaps and have asked why its landing gear remained down in the seconds before it crashed. Boeing’s shares rose after the report’s release.
5. A mayoral candidate in New York was detained by law enforcement yesterday while trying to escort a defendant out of immigration court, his spokesperson said. The arrest of Brad Lander, who is also the city’s top finance official, highlights the rising political temperature in response to Trump’s deportation push.
The Big Read
Immediately after the Paris climate accord was signed nearly a decade ago, it seemed as if world leaders were finally in agreement, with several countries pledging to quit coal entirely to limit global warming. Many people from experts to politicians believed demand for the dirty energy source had peaked. They could not have been more wrong.
We’re also reading . . .
Edward Luce: Political assassination has moved into a grey swan zone in the US, with would-be killers swimming in increasingly hospitable waters.
Trump’s G7 exit: The US president’s abrupt departure from the Alberta summit raises fears over Washington’s commitment to global alliances.
Forever chemicals: A recent move to review how the controversial substances are defined is motivated by commercial interests, writes Anjana Ahuja.
Energy Transition: Big Oil’s sunset period, renewable ambitions and architecture’s sustainability push in this special report.
Chart of the day
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Whose interest does Trump serve? His “big beautiful” budget bill is a powerful example of “pluto-populism”, writes Martin Wolf. The rich receive most of the goodies; the poor become poorer; and the fiscal deficit stays huge, he writes.
Take a break from the news
Now is the time for a fun, no-nonsense, beach-ready watch. Louis Cheslaw reviews affordable and water-resistant watches for the summer.
