US, Israel Hit Nuclear Targets as Tehran Vows Retaliation

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2:02Now to the latest out of the Middle East. And to our live vlog we go, where it's reporting that strikes from both sides continue after President Trump's deadline extension. The U.S. and Israel hit nuclear and steel facilities in Iran. Tehran threatened retaliation against steel plants. And stocks are lower as Brent crude is higher, hovering around to$112 a barrel. The Strait of Hormuz remained largely closed to shipping. I want to bring in Ian Marlowe, Bloomberg News national security editor. He joins us from our Washington, D.C. Bureau. Ian, I want to go back to what we heard yesterday after the market closed from President Trump, pausing the period of energy plant destruction by 10 days to Monday, April 6, 2026, 8 p.m.

2:45Eastern time. The markets, we saw oil fall on that. We saw futures move higher on that news. And then fast forward to today, and it seems like things are not cooling down at all in the Middle East. What's with the mixed messages, the mixed signals? Yeah, you know, I think they seem to be pretty closely related in the sense that anytime stocks fall too much, oil prices rise too much, you hear signals from the Trump administration that talks are going well, negotiations are happening, the war is not going to last very long. And then you see market reactions. At the same time, we know that the market is anxious about unclear U.S.

3:31strategic goals in this conflict. There's not a lot of things the U.S. can accomplish short of opening the Strait of Hormuz now that would have a significant long-term impact. And so at the moment, there's no clear rationale or end point for the war short of Iran just exceeding to U.S. demands. And the 15-point plan that we've seen put forward by the U.S. seems to have a lot of the demands in it that Iran rejected in the talks leading up to the U.S. and Israeli strikes that opened this war. So it's, you know, we've seen a sort of very obvious interplay between, you know, Trump's comments, administration comments and, you know, oil and stock moves in the sense of just, you know, Trump trying to calm markets, essentially.

4:25And we've got a lot of mixed messages from different officials in the administration and from Trump himself, sometimes in the same day. So there's a lot of confusion and not a very clear end state in terms of where we get to with this conflict right now. So is the U.S. actually signaling flexibility here when it comes to enrichment and sanctions? And from Iran's perspective, why the hesitation to come back to the table? Yeah, I think in the 15-point plan the U.S. put forward, there's all sorts of things that basically go against what Iran has been doing for the last 40 or 50 years. not supporting militant groups across the Middle East, curtailing its nuclear program, curtailing its ballistic missile programs.

5:13All of these things are things that they have slowly built up over time to give themselves a security posture that they feel comfortable with. Obviously, the U.S. and the West don't want Iran to be doing any of these things. But, you know, as we've seen from previous U.S. administrations, this is a tough thing to get Iran to agree to. You know, we've seen things from former U.S. officials saying Iran is a problem to be managed, not necessarily a problem to be solved. And the issue here was the U.S. going into those talks ahead of the war, you know, with these extremely maximalist positions, you know, asking Iran to basically give up everything to get nothing.

5:56essentially. And Trump was the one who pulled out of the Iran deal that the U.S. struck with Iran before and has bombed Iran twice now in the middle of talks. So you can see from Tehran's perspective that they don't necessarily see the U.S. as a trustworthy negotiating partner and vice versa, given all of the Iranian attacks on U.S. troops and personnel over the last few decades. So there's a lot of ill will. And right now, one of the key aims of the war seems to be to open the Strait of Hormuz, which was something that did not exist. It was a problem that didn't exist before the war began. So we're in very strange strategic territory right now where the U.S.

6:40is asking for stuff it had wanted in talks that it themselves abandoned in order to start a war, which then created more problems, which the U.S. is now trying to address with talks. So it's a bit of a confusing situation for a lot of us following this on a day-to-day basis. And you can see the markets just sort of gyrating back and forth here with every utterance from the White House, which may indicate either it's escalating or talks are going well. Well, Ian, on the view from Tehran, I want to bring up a post on X from Abbas Argachi, Iran's foreign minister, who writes just in the last few minutes, Israel has hit two of Iran's largest steel factories, a power plant and civilian nuclear sites, among other infrastructure.

7:22Israel claims it acted in coordination with the U.S. The attack contradicts the president's extended deadline for diplomacy. Iran will exact heavy price for Israeli crimes. Does this contradict that extension, that extended deadline for diplomacy that we heard from the president yesterday, these attacks on infrastructure? Yeah, it's not clear. I mean, obviously, essentially any attack on any civilian infrastructure in wartime is essentially a war crime. And the deadline that Trump mentioned was specifically related to power plants, presumably that the U.S. themselves wanted to hit. This is not necessarily the first time we've seen U.S.

8:06and Israeli war aims diverge. That's been an issue from the very beginning of this conflict. but you're right in the sense that the US and Israel are in this together Iran sees them as linked they are only engaging at the moment with the US side seemingly on talks and the commentary out of Israel from Benjamin Netanyahu and others is that this war is very much continuing they have their own goals in Iran that are different from the U.S. And so this is not the first time this has come up as a problem. And if Iran is seeing it that way, it could be an issue for this deadline and the talks. Although, again, this deadline is a bit amorphous in the sense that it keeps getting extended as Trump kind of seeks off-ramps here to a conflict that is just totally rocking markets.

9:11Israel has come out and said that they did hit some of these nuclear facilities, but their justification for that was that these were plutonium, sort of enrichment-related facilities, not civilian nuclear facilities. They were designed for weapons-grade material. Very quickly here, we're hearing the 15 points versus 5 asks. Is there actually any real overlap to work with? I think there are things on both of those lists that we know are red lines for both sides. I cannot imagine, for instance, U.S. taxpayers or Israeli taxpayers supporting war reparations for Iran to help rebuild some of Iran's facilities.

9:58For instance, that's one of the Iranian asks, as is sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, which it didn't have before the war. So, you know, there's no way the U.S. is going to agree to those. And so that's why, to some degree, you're seeing this escalation, this intensifying of the conflict, even as we see, you know, Trump repeatedly saying he wants a ceasefire. I think the reality here is that we're not in traditional peace talks. We are in talks between two extremely hostile, long-term geopolitical enemies. And even as part of the ceasefire deal that Trump is trying to push, there are massive asks in there for Tehran.

10:49And so there is basically no way Iran will agree to this in the U.S. mind unless pressure is brought militarily. So that's the kind of issue we're dealing with right now. Ian Marlow, really appreciate you joining us. Ian is national security editor for Bloomberg News, joining us from our Washington, D.C. bureau. I want to drill down on some of those nuclear headlines that we saw. The Kandab heavy water research reactor targeted twice by U.S. Israeli airstrikes. That's according to the semi-official Fars News Agency. And Iran said its yellow cake production plant in Ardekhan Yazd province was targeted by U.S.

11:24Israeli strikes on Friday afternoon. That's according to state-run Naur News, who cited the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. For more on this, we're bringing in Spencer Farragasso, senior fellow at the Institute for Science and International Security. He specializes in Russian-Iranian advanced conventional drone systems and nuclear facilities in Iran and North Korea. Spencer joining us from Washington, D.C. Spencer, I want to start with those two headlines. And, you know, you specialize in looking at satellite imagery, understanding the extent of damage from attacks and what's actually happening at these facilities.

11:58I know it's still early days, early hours at this point. But what can you tell us about the Yellow Cake production plant in Yazd province and the Condob heavy water research reactor that was targeted twice, at least according to semi-official news agencies? So the Khandab Research Reactor is also known as the Iraq IR-40 reactor. It was a reactor that was built many years ago, possibly for the intention of producing plutonium. and plutonium is one of the key resources that are used in producing different types of nuclear weapons, for example. During the June 2025 war, it was targeted. The dome of the building was penetrated and likely the reactor was destroyed.

12:41It wasn't operating at the time, so there's no release of radiation, etc. Israel at the time also attacked the heavy water plant. They damaged one of the last stages in the heavy water production. Heavy water is a very important chemical compound that is necessary to operate heavy water reactors. It's also a source of neutrons in a nuclear weapon. So destroying this facility is incredibly important to creating bottlenecks in Iran's future ability to create nuclear weapons. What we saw at Artikon is also similar. Artikon was used to convert natural uranium into yellow cake. And yellow cake is what's converted into uranium hexafluoride, which is ultimately enriched to higher and higher levels and possibly weapon grade levels.

13:30So we're seeing Israel eliminate certain stages and steps that are vital for Iran to be able to continue its enrichment program and wider nuclear program. Are there any key red lines the international community is watching when it comes to this?

13:51Necessarily, it would be the enrichment up to 90 percent. That has been stated to be a massive red line that if Iran touches that in the past, obviously, many past presidents have stated that that would trigger strikes. But the key here is that Iran hasn't reached that yet. But what Iran has been doing, they've been accumulating very large quantities of 60 percent highly rich uranium over the last several years. They're the only country in the world that does that, that doesn't have a nuclear weapon. There's no civilian application for that type of enrichment. So there's no justification whatsoever.

14:31Spencer, can the U.S. and Israel destroy Iran's nuclear facilities without endangering bystanders through the release of radioactive material? Yeah, certainly. You wouldn't want to target something like a Bushir style nuclear reactor. That would have very large consequences. You wouldn't want to hit the actual reactor itself. But the other facilities such as Fordow, Natanz, Esfahan, etc., those are relatively isolated facilities. They're a good distance away from populations. And the actual risk of dispersion on a wide level is relatively low, it would be very isolated to the facilities themselves.

15:14Do the attacks in recent days on these facilities, do they call into question the official U.S. assessment of the damage assessment of the June 2025 strikes? Because I think a lot of folks thought, OK, well, based on the rhetoric and what we heard from the president at the time, the nuclear program in Iran was set back quite a bit. Yeah. So, you know, we had some issues with that initial assessment. I think you're referring to the assessment that said it was only set back a few months. We had some issues with that. Our analysis stated that the program was severely set back. The June 2025 war effectively destroyed Iranians enrichment program.

15:55And enrichment is a bottleneck in the ability to produce a nuclear weapon. If you cannot get to 90 % weapon grade material, it's very hard to build any sort of usable nuclear weapon. 60 % highly rich uranium technically, theoretically can be used to build a nuclear weapon, but it's not practical. It's very hard to deliver. It'd be a very large device. But what Iran had plans to do during its Ahmad plan that was ended in 2003 explicitly and continued in a more covert form was to build missile deliverable miniaturized warheads that would fit on a Shahab 3 ballistic missile. And so that's a very different thing.

16:39Our assessment was that their program was severely set back and would take years for Iran to recover what they actually lost. But that doesn't mean that Iran doesn't have options. So after the war, there's a few outstanding elements that were left over. For example, obviously, everyone's talking about the highly rich uranium, half of it, the 220 kilograms of the 60 % is likely in the tunnel complex at Esfahan. There's a lot of talk and chatter about that right now. Iran also produced a number of advanced centrifuges that they built, but likely never deployed. So there's questions about where is that?

17:15And then the wider state of what's the actual accounting of all this? The IEA has not been allowed to conduct inspections on the ground. So there's significant questions here and it leaves the wrong options for the future. Spencer, going to have to leave it there. Have a great weekend. We got to get you back on the program soon. Spencer Faragasso, Senior Fellow at the Institute for Science and International Security. This is Bloomberg. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this. They told us to expect change. They warned us about the transition. but honestly they forgot the best part this is the chapter where we finally focus on us life md delivers expert menopause and midlife care right from your home from hormone health to holistic wellness life md helps you feel your best for the best years of your life life md it's just getting good visit life md.com slash good life every business has an ambition PayPal Open is the platform designed to help you grow into yours.

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20:10digest right now. That's where Angel Sass comes in. He's professor and director of Asade Geo. It's the Center for Global Economy and Geopolitics at Asade, the business school in Spain. Also with us, Dimitra Casanita. She's Bloomberg Business Week senior editor. She leads Business Week's coverage of business schools. Angel, good to have you on the program. You are a business school professor, but you're also an expert in geopolitics, international business. the macroeconomic backdrop today, higher oil prices, barriers to free trade, increasingly countries looking inward. You teach a global community of business leaders who then become leaders, go out in this world.

20:50How are you looking at the backdrop today in the context of your research? Great. Thanks. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. So I think there are two ways to, we're looking at it. So one is to understand where we're coming from and where we are and I think one of the the the the difficulties of today for business leaders is that we are stuck with global value chains that are hereditary from that uh from those decades of open markets and we are now in an environment which are is not that open any longer so you are um you are uh you have many more vulnerabilities uh and risks um around you the second one is more short-term so what do do and I think there you can play with different scenarios and I think every what we were talking about in classrooms and with executive executives around in inside is to to look to see how how they can think about how long we're gonna have this crisis what are the different options and basically I think it comes down to whether hormones is open or not and how long how much how much long it It can be closed.

21:55And then try to make sure what are the transmissions that can affect the transmission channels that can affect business strategy. And, of course, there's oil prices, as you were saying. There's inflation. There might be effects on upstream in your value chain with critical inputs. It can be downstream with your exposure to markets. I think many business schools, for example, were open and doing business in the Middle East. And now we are on a standby. And then finally, I think what we're seeing is this new economic security paradigm in its full strength, which is what we're seeing is governments intervening markets to guarantee their energy security, unfortunately not in a global collective way, but at national level.

22:39So all these different companies are seeing how governments are interfering. Well, let's just hit on that for a second because oil prices, it's visceral. It's something that a lot of Americans see when they drive to work. It's not something Americans are used to. Other parts of the world, high gas prices are just, that's the cost of doing business. The government intervention, it can only be successful to a certain extent. Countries have strategic petroleum reserves or variations of that. You could subsidize, like we've seen in Japan, a little bit. What works? So, well, I think what we have seen in the past is that what usually works is when we have a collective solution to a global problem.

23:20And in fact, that's why the International Energy Agency was set up back in the first oil shock, because countries had to coordinate, in particular oil-consuming countries, to coordinate collectively to make sure that you don't start a war, an economic war among countries by all of them starting to impose export controls and controls on exporting gas and their derivatives. So I think what we know is we need a collective action. Otherwise, we're going to go into a beggar-thy-neighbor sort of policies, and this can be a sliding slope. And you mentioned the government intervention. It's been increasing, even in democratic countries, even in countries where you won't expect.

23:59I'm not going to name some. How do you think, is there a threshold there? And I know it can be hard to quantify, but if you use the case study of what's happening today to teach your students, what do you tell them? Well, I tell them that the world globalized because countries decided that they wanted to globalize and open markets, and they wanted to respect markets. And that's where we were coming from. That's over. Today we have countries that are not that interested in keeping borders open. And secondly, they have given up on the principle of the sanctity of markets, for good or for bad. And so what is happening, and even before this very severe crisis, we already had many countries coming up with two types of policies.

24:45One is economic security policies, where you start to see how they are affecting markets, companies, to check their value chains, make sure they don't get kit up with certain suppliers, which means they're really going down into the detail of how corporations operate. And the second one has been the way they go after industrial policy. So industrial policy is back in vote. Yeah, it is. Dimitri, come on in here. I see you nodding. Yeah, I was just going to say, I think that's a super interesting part of your research and the work you've done is what we've seen with the way that companies are going after this industrial policy and taking on, for example, lobbying more directly on their own rather than through associations or the way that we've traditionally thought about lobbying.

25:26And that's also another piece of this and something that Angel has spent a lot of time on. Angel, is that specific to the United States or specific countries? Because when I hear that, I think, OK, you know, lit Bhutan of Intel going to the White House and then that Intel, you know, over the summer, then the big Intel stake that the U.S. took. And critical mining, critical minerals, the ties that the Trump administration has with the business community. Is this happening outside the U.S. too? Oh, yeah. I think it's happening across the world. I think it's always happened, for example, in China.

25:54When China came up with Made in China 2025, back in 2015, we were all sort of scandalized. Today, we're all doing our own industrial policy. So I think that's not only the U.S. The U.S. is, of course, very visible, had been a leader of the free market, had been a leader of the West in that sense. So when you see this in the U.S., it's really, really surprising to see certain policies. And then the other thing is that the more industrial policy we are seeing, the more companies need to then get involved to design those industrial policies. Because industrial policy essentially means government going in and trying to affect and design markets in detail.

26:34It's fascinating stuff, Dimitri. I want to end with you because you oversee coverage of Business Week for Bloomberg Business Week. And business schools in recent years have become so international. Recent decades, I should say. What is it like now as countries increasingly turn inward? I mean, we're seeing that sort of trend towards the top U.S. programs are still the ones that are most in demand and the most desired globally. But I think that anecdotally and even in terms of the data that we're seeing coming out of certain bodies, there's a lot more happening and movement towards international programs.

27:12not just because of what's playing out geopolitically and maybe the type of programs and institutes you'll find in places like Asadi, but because of the perception that we are not really the most welcoming place for some of those students and what they're interested in pursuing right now. Dimitri Kessonidis, Bloomberg Businessweek Senior Editor, and Halsas, Professor and Director at Asadi Geo, Center for Global Economy and Geopolitics. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up. After this.

27:45Every business has an ambition. PayPal Open is the platform designed to help you grow into yours. With access to business loans so you can expand and hundreds of millions of PayPal customers worldwide. Your customers can pay all the ways they want today. With PayPal, Venmo, Pay Later, and all major cards. So you can focus on the future. When you need a partner trusted by millions, there's one platform for all business. PayPal Open. Grow today at PayPalOpen.com. Loan subject to approval in available locations. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other?