Trump Told Attack on Iran Wouldn’t Guarantee Collapse of Regime

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0:31Will President Trump order a military strike on Iran? Is he stepping back? Maybe.

0:36Ryan Dezember:There is a chance that this is an off-ramp and he takes it. It's also a chance that it's a delay tactic. And there's also a chance that he's good now, but if Iran continues his crackdown, he's not good later. Plus, Trump threatens to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota. And why a new way to extract copper could help feed the data center boom. It's Thursday, January 15th. I'm Alex Osola 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.

1:14It's been a busy day for the Trump administration. President Trump has been weighing attacking Iran, where the government has met widespread demonstrations with a heavy crackdown. Today, we're reporting that U.S. and Middle Eastern officials told the White House that a large-scale strike against Iran was unlikely to make the government fall and could instead spark a broader conflict. U.S. officials said they will monitor how Tehran handles protesters before deciding on a potential attack. WSJ national security reporter Alex Ward says there are other reasons why President Trump may be easing off.

1:47Ryan Dezember:Countries in the region are concerned about this moving forward because they don't want to see a lot of volatility in their region. Trump seems to be signaling that as long as the crackdown on protesters doesn't go forward, he's good. But we can't forget that last June, he announced to the world after the Wall Street Journal reported he had made the decision to attack that he was actually open to two weeks of diplomacy with Iran-Owish nuclear program and instead went ahead and attacked Iran anyway. So I'm talking to certain officials who are telling me it's possible. They don't know for sure, but it's possible that Trump is stalling for time because there are certain amounts of military assets that he would like to see in the region that we currently don't have that could, if you were to order it, lead to a much broader scale attack on Iran and help the U.S.

2:34Ryan Dezember:protect not only troops in the region, but also allies like Israel. Today, White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt suggested that military action wasn't off the table. The president and his team have communicated to the Iranian regime that if the killing continues, there will be grave consequences. She added that, quote, only President Trump knows what he's going to do. Trump is expected to order the Pentagon to send the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier from the South China Sea to the Middle East, a trip that would take about a week. That's according to U.S. officials and a person familiar with the move.

3:06Meanwhile, in Iran, the government's crackdown has forced demonstrators off the streets in some cities, although human rights groups say it's not totally clear what's happening due to the Internet shutdown. Analysts say the quiet is likely temporary. In the Caribbean this morning, U.S. forces seized another oil tanker. The Trump administration has now captured six ships in its campaign against the dark fleet that transports sanctioned oil around the world. Back home, President Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act against Minnesota. He said today on social media that he'd make a move if local officials don't stop the, quote, professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking ICE.

3:45WSJ National Political reporter Ken Thomas says the Insurrection Act has rarely been used in the modern era.

3:50Ryan Dezember:It's a law from 1807 that allows the president to use the military for civilian law enforcement purposes on U.S. soil under a narrow set of circumstances. It's been used a few dozen times in our nation's history, but it's been exceedingly rare in modern history. saw it used in the 1960s during the civil rights movement. But we have not seen it used since 1992 to deal with the civil unrest in the Los Angeles area after the acquittal of four police officers and the beating of Rodney King. Now, it's important to note that President George H.W. Bush did this at the request of California's governor at the time, Pete Wilson.

4:42Ken says it's not clear that Trump will go forward with invoking the Insurrection Act. If he does, it could face a number of legal challenges.

4:49Ryan Dezember:I think you would see opponents argue that he is fabricating an insurrection when it doesn't exist. I think you would also see legal opponents make the case that this is constituting an abuse of power or a bad faith effort to try to suppress dissent for political reasons, not to try to enforce federal law or to protect civil rights. The key thing here is that this has been used in our country's history, but not recently. And so any legal challenge would be plowing through new ground here. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat, made a direct appeal to Trump on social media today, asking him to turn down the temperature.

5:32He's urged demonstrators to protest peacefully. And the White House today released a health care framework called the Great Health Care Plan. It aims to codify executive actions Trump has taken on addressing health care costs, such as lowering prescription drug prices. Passing such legislation is likely to face hurdles in Congress.

5:54Strong earnings from investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and chipmaker TSMC lifted markets today. And BlackRock, the world's largest money manager, said its assets topped$14 trillion for the first time. The Dow led gains today in the major indexes, closing up 0.6 percent. Coming up, an Arizona mine that is a proving ground for the U.S. copper industry lands a major new customer, basketball's expanding game rigging scandal, and what was behind yesterday's Verizon outage. That's after the break.

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7:05An Arizona copper mine, the first new source of U.S. copper in more than a decade, has landed its first major customer. It's Amazon, which needs the medal for its AI data centers. Ryan DeZember, who covers commodities for the journal, is here to tell us more about the mine and what the Amazon deal means for the U.S. copper industry. So, Ryan, we've seen copper prices hit record after record recently. What is driving this demand?

7:28Ryan Dezember:So there's a problem brewing in copper where we won't have enough. We need globally a tremendous amount of copper. And that's because a lot of different things are happening. We have this move to improve the power grid, expand it, make it able to handle electric vehicles. You have countries in the developing world where people are, you know, getting air conditioning and refrigerators and appliances for the first time. And then you have this AI boom. These data centers are basically giant buildings filled with copper. Every wire circuit board component has copper in it to move the electrons around.

8:06Ryan Dezember:So they have a tremendous appetite for copper. And then, of course, President Trump has imposed a 50 percent import tax on copper products. How is that affecting things? Well, that's making things like wire and pipe more expensive to bring into the country. So there's really been a focus on how do we produce more of this stuff within the U.S. The problem is a lot of that material needs to be sent abroad to be processed into useful forms that manufacturers can use and then brought back. So there's a lot of effort into figuring out ways to produce ready-to-use copper in the U.S. That brings us directly to this mine in Arizona.

8:43So you write that it's using some new mining techniques. What are those and why is it important to this industry?

8:50Ryan Dezember:It's a relatively small mine, but it's important because a company called Rio Tinto, one of the world's largest miners, is basically running an industrial-scale trial of a new technology they've developed where they add bacteria to the acid that's normally poured over certain copper ores to extract the copper in solution. The resulting copper cathodes are like pure copper. They're ready to go. They can sell them right to automakers or tech firms for their data centers or companies that are making plumbing parts and pipe. So if Rio is successful, it's the sort of technology that they can take to a lot of other mines.

9:28Ryan Dezember:They're trying to see if they can take this cocktail of bacteria they've developed and make copper out of stuff that was essentially waste. This could potentially open up a lot of that material to become useful stuff for us. And maybe expand the U.S. copper mining industry? Absolutely. That was WSJ reporter Ryan December. Thanks, Ryan. Thank you. And if you've taken a real shine to copper, we'll leave a link to a recent episode we did all about the relationship of copper's price to the economy in our show notes. The company Vail Resorts said the number of skiers visiting its mountains this season was down 20 percent, mostly because there's been so little snow in the mountains out west.

10:10But its East Coast resorts had plenty of snow, which helped offset the effect of the lack of snow in the Rockies. Verizon said today that its hours-long wireless outage yesterday was linked to a software update. The company's offering a$20 credit to customers whose service went down. And Spotify's raising the price of its premium subscription in the U.S. from$11.99 a month to$12.99 a month. The new price takes effect next month. And finally, it's one of the most sprawling gambling cases in the history of American sports, the basketball betting scandal. And it's gotten even bigger. This morning, federal prosecutors laid out more details of a conspiracy to allegedly rig dozens of games, reaching from U.S.

10:52college basketball to the top professional league in China. The government says that for U.S. college ball, at least 39 players on 17 different Division I teams manipulated contests in 2024 and 2025. It's part of the same investigation that, in October, resulted in indictments against an NBA coach and a player. And that's what's news for this Thursday afternoon. Today's show was produced by Pierre Bien-Aimé with supervising producer Tali Arbel. I'm Alex Osula for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening.

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