Israel: At Least 271 Hospitalized After Iranian Strikes - The Lead with Jake Tapper - Podcast on CNN Audio
Israel: At Least 271 Hospitalized After Iranian Strikes The Lead with Jake Tapper 87 mins
After days of keeping the world guessing whether the United States will take military action against Iran, President Trump now says he will decide within the next two weeks. This as the White House claims Iran has never been closer to having a nuclear weapon. CNN has teams on the ground at the White House, in Iran, and in Israel.
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Yahoo
14 minutes ago
- Yahoo
SoftBank Pitches $1 Trillion US AI Hub to TSMC, Trump Team
(Bloomberg) -- SoftBank Group Corp. founder Masayoshi Son is seeking to team up with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to realize what could be his biggest bet yet — a trillion-dollar industrial complex in Arizona to build robots and artificial intelligence. Security Concerns Hit Some of the World's 'Most Livable Cities' JFK AirTrain Cuts Fares 50% This Summer to Lure Riders Off Roads One Architect's Quest to Save Mumbai's Heritage From Disappearing NYC Congestion Toll Cuts Manhattan Gridlock by 25%, RPA Reports Taser-Maker Axon Triggers a NIMBY Backlash in its Hometown Son envisions a version of the vast manufacturing hub of China's Shenzhen that would bring back high-tech manufacturing to the US, according to people familiar with the billionaire's thinking. The park may comprise production lines for AI-powered industrial robots, they said, asking not to be named as the plan remains private. SoftBank officials are keen to have the Taiwanese maker of Nvidia Corp.'s advanced AI chips play a prominent role in the project, although it's not clear what part Son sees for TSMC, which already plans to invest $165 billion in the US and has started mass production at its first Arizona factory. Nor is it clear that TSMC would be interested. A person familiar with the chipmaker's thinking said that SoftBank's project has no bearing on TSMC's plans in Phoenix. Shares of SoftBank jumped as much as 2.3% in Tokyo Friday. TSMC's stock price rose 1.9% in Taipei. Codenamed 'Project Crystal Land,' the Arizona complex represents the 67-year-old SoftBank chief's most ambitious attempt in a career that's spanned numerous bet-the-house bids, thousands-fold-returns and billions of dollars in losses. Son, who's often expressed disappointment in his own legacy, has repeatedly said he means to do everything he can to hurry AI development. SoftBank officials have spoken with federal and state government officials to discuss possible tax breaks for companies building factories or otherwise investing in the industrial park, including talks with US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, the people said. The Japanese billionaire is also personally sounding out interest among an array of tech companies, they said. The project has been floated to executives at South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co., they said. Representatives of SoftBank, TSMC and Samsung declined to comment. A Commerce Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Son has pulled together a list of SoftBank Vision Fund portfolio companies that might take part in the Arizona manufacturing hub, the people said. SoftBank-backed startups working on robotics and automation technologies — such as Agile Robots SE — may set up production facilities at the industrial complex, they said. The plans are preliminary and feasibility hinges on support from the Trump administration and state officials. While the cost of the project as envisioned by Son may require as much as $1 trillion to execute — a sum previously reported by the Nikkei — the actual scale depends on interest from big technology companies. If successful, Son has floated building multiple cutting-edge industrial parks across the US. SoftBank is exploring the Arizona project as it also moves forward on plans to invest as much as $30 billion into OpenAI and plans a $6.5 billion acquisition of Ampere Computing LLC. It's also seeding money into the Stargate venture with OpenAI, Oracle Corp. and Abu Dhabi's MGX, seeking to ferry hundreds of billions of dollars into data centers and related infrastructure around the world. Those outlays come as SoftBank's cash stood at ¥3.4 trillion ($23 billion) at the end of March. The Tokyo-based company has since tapped its T-Mobile US Inc. stake, selling roughly a quarter of what it held in March to raise $4.8 billion this month. SoftBank also has net assets valued at ¥25.7 trillion, of which chip designer Arm Holdings Plc makes the single largest portion, allowing it to borrow billions more as needed. SoftBank's exploring project financing for Stargate data centers, a model that could be adapted to a big endeavor like Crystal Land. Common for large-scale infrastructure like oil or gas pipelines, the project finance template would allow the tech investor to raise funding on a project-by-project basis and require less money upfront. Son's restless search for growth has resulted in projects that proceed in fits and starts, making it difficult to gauge how committed he is to any one venture. The billionaire is often goaded by the desire to boost SoftBank's stock price and repay retail investors who've held onto the company's shares from before the dot-com boom and bust, people close to the SoftBank chief have said. Many investors have waited for decades for the stock to regain dot-com bubble levels — something it's flirted with only a few times since 2020. If Son's primary motivation is to clear the way for AI, it may be more cost-efficient to encourage partnerships that link manufacturing expertise with that of AI engineers and specialists in fields from medicine to robotics, and incubating smaller companies, according to Melissa Otto, head of research at Visible Alpha. But pouring cash into data centers may help lower the cost of developing AI applications and spur broader adoption, she said. 'He's a long-term thinker, and he takes risks,' Otto said. 'It's just too early to tell.' --With assistance from Debby Wu, Catherine Lucey, Yoolim Lee and Mayumi Negishi. (Updates with share price reaction in the fourth paragraph.) Ken Griffin on Trump, Harvard and Why Novice Investors Won't Beat the Pros Is Mark Cuban the Loudmouth Billionaire that Democrats Need for 2028? The US Has More Copper Than China But No Way to Refine All of It Can 'MAMUWT' Be to Musk What 'TACO' Is to Trump? How a Tiny Middleman Could Access Two-Factor Login Codes From Tech Giants ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Sign in to access your portfolio
New York Times
16 minutes ago
- New York Times
Iran's Foreign Minister to Meet With European Counterparts Amid War Fears
Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, was scheduled to meet with top diplomats from Britain, France and Germany on Friday in Geneva, in a last-ditch effort to avert a dangerous escalation in the weeklong conflict between Israel and Iran. With President Trump setting a new deadline of two weeks before he decides whether to join Israel's aerial campaign against military and nuclear sites in Iran, the European diplomats will deliver an urgent message to Mr. Araghchi that his government must make significant concessions in its nuclear program. Expectations for the meeting were restrained, given the wide gaps between Iran and the United States in their now-suspended negotiations. Yet Mr. Trump's reprieve, after a week in which he seemed to be marching inexorably toward war, buoyed hopes somewhat, suggesting that there was still time to act. 'Based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future,' the president said in a statement on Thursday, 'I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks.' Mr. Trump denied reports that he had already authorized an attack on Iran but withheld final approval to see if Iran's leaders acceded to his demand that they abandon the country's nuclear program. Among the issues on the table in Geneva, officials from several countries said, are giving outside inspectors unfettered access to Iran's nuclear facilities, as well as cutting its stockpile of ballistic missiles, which it has fired against Israel in retaliation for Israeli strikes on military bases and nuclear installations. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
17 minutes ago
- New York Times
Live Updates: Europe Pushes Diplomacy as Trump Delays Iran War Decision
News Analysis 'I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks,'' Mr. Trump said in a statement on Thursday. President Trump's sudden announcement that he could take up to two weeks to decide whether to plunge the United States into the heart of the Israel-Iran conflict is being advertised by the White House as giving diplomacy one more chance to work. But it also opens a host of new military and covert options. Assuming he makes full use of it, Mr. Trump will now have time to determine whether six days of relentless bombing and killing by Israeli forces — which has taken out one of Iran's two biggest uranium enrichment centers, much of its missile fleet and its most senior officers and nuclear scientists — has changed minds in Tehran. The deal that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rejected earlier this month, which would have cut off Iran's main pathway to a bomb by eventually ending enrichment on Iranian soil, may look very different now that one of its largest nuclear centers has been badly damaged and the president is openly considering dropping the world's largest conventional weapon on the second. Or, it may simply harden the Iranians' resolve not to give in. It is also possible, some experts noted, that Mr. Trump's announcement on Thursday was an effort to deceive the Iranians and get them to let their guard down. 'That could be cover for a decision to strike, immediately,' James G. Stavridis, a retired Navy admiral and the former supreme U.S. commander in Europe, said on CNN. 'Maybe this is a very clever ruse to lull the Iranians into a sense of complacency.' Even if there is no deception involved, by offering one more off-ramp to the Iranians, Mr. Trump will also be bolstering his own military options. Two weeks allows time for a second American aircraft carrier to get into place, giving U.S. forces a better chance to counter the inevitable Iranian retaliation, with whatever part of their missile fleet is still usable. It would give Israel more time to destroy the air defenses around the Fordo enrichment site and other nuclear targets, mitigating the risks to U.S. forces if Mr. Trump ultimately decided to attack. And it frees Mr. Trump from operating on a battlefield schedule driven by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who has been pressing Mr. Trump to enter the fray, with weaponry Israel does not possess. In fact, within an hour of the White House release of Mr. Trump's statement that 'I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks,' Mr. Netanyahu signaled that he was likely to use the time to try his own attacks on the deeply buried Fordo nuclear plant. 'I established that we will achieve all of our objectives, all of their nuclear facilities,' he said. 'We have the power to do so.' Image Smoke north of Tehran after Israeli airstrikes on Monday. Credit... Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times In fact, American and foreign experts say, the Israelis have been preparing military and covert options for years, examining how they might interrupt the massive electrical supply systems that keep the centrifuges buried in an enrichment hall under a mountain. Even the introduction of a surge or a pulse in that electrical flow could destabilize and destroy the delicate machines as they spin at supersonic speeds, like a top spinning out of control. In recent days, the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that Israel's destruction of the electric plant above another enrichment center, at Natanz, probably critically damaged the thousands of centrifuges spinning below. The Israelis have considered what it would take to bomb and seal the tunnel entrances into the facility, trapping workers inside and making it all the more difficult to bring near-bomb-grade fuel into the plant for a final boost that would make it usable in a weapon. That fuel itself, stored in the ancient capital of Isfahan, would also be a target for the Israelis, American officials say. But the first question is whether the Iranians have the political flexibility to seize on the time period Mr. Trump has opened up. Administration officials say Steve Witkoff, the president's special envoy, has already been in touch in recent days with Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, with whom he has been talking since early April. 'I think the question is, can the Iranians see this as an opportunity to avoid the significant challenges that would come from the destruction of their last remaining facility?' asked Laura Holgate, who served as American ambassador to the I.A.E.A. during the Biden administration. But she said that 'direct surrender is probably not on the table for them,' or 'total abandonment of enrichment capacity either, even now.' Robert Litwak, a research professor at George Washington University who has written extensively on diplomacy with Iran, said, 'Here is the diplomatic needle both sides need to thread: The U.S. accepts that Iran has a right to enrich uranium, and Iran accepts that it must completely dismantle its nuclear program.' The conflict between Israel and Iran has consumed the president's week, as he returned early from the Group of 7 meeting in Canada to deal with the war. He spent the early part of the week posting a series of bellicose threats on social media, seeming to lay the groundwork for the United States to join Israel's bombing campaign. He urged all the residents of Tehran, a city of roughly 10 million people, to evacuate, said the United States had 'complete and total control of the skies over Iran,' and said American officials knew where Iran's leader was hiding but would not kill him — 'at least not for now.' Many of the president's allies believed that the United States' entrance into the war was imminent. But on Wednesday, the president said he had not made a final decision about whether to bomb Iran, and he berated Iran for not agreeing to a new deal to limit its nuclear program. Still, he said it was not too late for a diplomatic solution. 'Nothing's too late,' he said. Mr. Trump's public flirtation with entering the war has sharply divided his base — so much so that Vice President JD Vance wrote a lengthy social media post on Tuesday seeking to downplay concerns that the president was abandoning his commitment to keep America out of overseas conflict. 'I can assure you that he is only interested in using the American military to accomplish the American people's goals,' Mr. Vance wrote. But some of the president's most prominent allies, including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican from Georgia, Tucker Carlson and Stephen K. Bannon have criticized the prospect of the United States getting involved in another country's war. 'Anyone slobbering for the U.S. to become fully involved in the Israel/Iran war is not America First/MAGA,' Ms. Greene posted on social media. On the other end of the spectrum, many of Mr. Trump's hawkish allies in the Senate, including the Republicans Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, are urging the president to take a more aggressive posture toward Iran. 'Be all in, President Trump, in helping Israel eliminate the nuclear threat,' Mr. Graham said this week on Fox News. 'If we need to provide bombs to Israel, provide bombs. If we need to fly planes with Israel, do joint operations.' Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.
