Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will hold a meeting of the country’s security cabinet later today after his phone call with United States President Donald Trump, Israel’s Channel 12 reported Monday. Although there is no official confirmation of the call between Netanyahu and Trump, the two leaders are expected to focus on the Iran nuclear talks. Israel was said to have previously promised to refrain from a military solution against Iran unless Tehran’s negotiations with Washington failed to result in an agreement. Iran is expected to soon deliver its response to the latest US offer, while also emphasizing the country was not ready to give up pursuing a peace-time nuclear program. Although reports indicated the US proposal would allow Iran to maintain low-level nuclear enrichment, President Donald Trump publicly opposed allowing Tehran to enrich uranium.
Oil rose as stronger-than-expected US jobs data eased concerns about an economic slowdown that would crimp demand, spurring algorithmic traders to reduce short positions. West Texas Intermediate climbed almost 2% to settle above $64 a barrel, notching the largest weekly gain since November. Crude followed equities higher after US job growth in May narrowly surpassed economist forecasts, allaying concerns of near-term demand deterioration. The figures also pushed economy-sensitive diesel futures to a two-week high. “Trading is relatively quiet today, with macroeconomic factors continuing to drive the narrative,” said Rebecca Babin, a senior energy trader at CIBC Private Wealth Group. “The unemployment data is easing concerns that demand will sharply decline due to tariff uncertainty.” The positive economic data spurred commodity trading advisers to ease off of their bearish tilt. The funds, which can accelerate price momentum, liquidated short positions to sit at negative 9% short in WTI on Friday, compared with 64% short on June 5, according to data from Bridgeton Research Group. The rally was supported by enduring risk-on sentiment from optimistic signs on trade talks between the US and China, the world’s largest importer of crude. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, agreed to further negotiations over tariffs and supplies of rare earth minerals. The positive signals come against the backdrop of an oil market that has been increasingly rangebound in recent weeks. Prices have traded in a $5 band since the middle of May, and a gauge of volatility for US crude futures is at the lowest since early April. Oil has been buffeted in Trump’s second term as trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies menace demand. At the same time, the OPEC+ alliance has been adding barrels back to the market at a faster-than-expected rate, further clouding an already weak outlook for the second half of the year. The number of oil rigs in the US, meanwhile, plummeted to the lowest in about four years as shale explorers anticipate weakening global oil demand.
Grossi: IAEA can’t ensure Iran program ‘peaceful’
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi urged the US to “spare no effort” in nuclear talks with Iran as the watchdog cannot ensure that the country’s program is “exclusively peaceful.” “Unless and until Iran assists the Agency in resolving the outstanding safeguards issues, the Agency will not be in a position to provide assurance that Iran’s nuclear programme is exclusively peaceful,” Grossi said. Further, the agency found three undeclared uranium enrichment locations in Iran – at Varamin, Marivan and Turquzabad.
Grossi also warned that the Islamic Republic has the materials necessary to break out toward a nuclear weapon after the IAEA reported that Iran was still producing highly enriched uranium, a critical part of its nuclear talks with the US.
United States President Donald Trump said the National Guard is doing a “great job” in Los Angeles after he deployed it there to quell protests against his administration’s handling of immigrants. However, the New York Times reported that no members of the National Guard have been seen in the area. Trump accused California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass of being “incompetent” in dealing with the demonstrations. He also claimed the protests were started by “instigators and often paid troublemakers” and said that demonstrators will not be allowed to wear masks.
https://youtu.be/uaR1yPSynAQUnited States President Donald Trump warned Saturday that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk could face “very serious consequences” if he supports Democratic candidates opposing Republicans who back the GOP budget bill. In a phone interview with NBC News, the president also confirmed he has no interest in mending ties with Musk after their recent public clash. Asked if their relationship was over, Trump responded, “I would assume so, yeah.” He dismissed any plans to speak with the tech billionaire, stating he was “too busy doing other things.” Trump accused Musk of being “very disrespectful” and downplayed recent speculation over cutting Musk’s federal contracts, saying he hadn’t given it further thought. His comments came after Musk deleted one of his posts accusing Trump.
NN: for sure elon is a drug addict. a man who all of his wealth came from government subsidies and government contracts is proven addicted. to piss of the one man who can shut off his oxygen is really…… stupid
United States President Donald Trump threatened that if Iran did not stop enriching uranium, the US would stop it “the other way” during an interview on Air Force One. When asked about comments made by Ayatollah Khomeini that Iran has to enrich uranium,
Trump responded, saying that “no, they won’t be enriching,” because “if they enrich, then we’re going to have to do it the other way.”
WASHINGTON, June 6 (Reuters) – The United States has issued a new round of Iran-related sanctions targeting 10 individuals and 27 entities, according to a post on the U.S. Department of Treasury website on Friday.
The sanctions, which also target some entities in the United Arab Emirates and Hong Kong, come as U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is working to get a new nuclear deal with Tehran.
NN: as a direct result wti jumped $1.00 to $64.28. And brent is up $0.82 to $86.16
United States President Donald Trump told ABC News on Friday that he is “not particularly interested” in speaking to Elon Musk after the two engaged in an argument on social media yesterday. His response came following reports that the two are scheduled to speak later today. Trump said that Musk “has lost his mind” since leaving the administration last week. ABC News chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl, who spoke to Trump, said he “did not seem angry or even concerned about the feud.”
The price of Tesla Inc.’s shares continued to dive on Thursday as the brawl between United States President Donald Trump and billionaire and entrepreneur Elon Musk continued to heat up. The fight between the two, who were on friendly terms not too long ago, broke out earlier today as Trump expressed dissatisfaction with Musk’s latest comments about his “big beautiful bill.” While the US head of state insisted that the tech mogul was familiar with the details of the legislation, Musk denied this. He then went on to say that Trump would not have won the election without him, asking his followers on X whether the time has come for a new political party to be formed. Trump then threatened to cut contracts and subsidies for Musk’s businesses. The carmaker’s stock plunged 12.40% at 2:50 pm ET, going for $290.70 apiece.
Trump and Musk to speak on Friday after alliance descends into public feud
White House aides scheduled Friday call between Trump and Musk
Trump, Musk trade barbs on their social media platforms
Trump breaks silence on Musk in Oval Office
Musk says he’ll decommission Dragon spacecraft, then backs off
Musk appears to open door to detente in late Thursday post
WASHINGTON, June 6 (Reuters) – Donald Trump’s aides scheduled a call between the U.S. president and Elon Musk for Friday after a huge public spat that saw threats fly over government contracts and included the world’s richest man suggesting Trump should be impeached. A White House official said the two men would speak on Friday. The official did not give a time for the call, which could ease the feuding after an extraordinary day of hostilities – largely conducted over social media – that marked a stark end to a close alliance.
The Reuters Tariff Watch newsletter is your daily guide to the latest global trade and tariff news. Shares in the electric vehicle maker closed down over 14% on Thursday, losing about $150 billion in market value in the largest single-day decline in value in its history. In pre-market trading on Friday they pared some of those losses, rising as much as 5% after the news that the two men were scheduled to speak. Politico first reported the planned call. Musk had bankrolled a large part of Trump’s presidential campaign and was then brought as one of the president’s most visible advisers, heading up a sweeping and controversial effort to downsize the federal workforce and slash spending. The verbal punches erupted on Thursday after Trump criticized Musk in the Oval Office and the pair then traded barbs on their social media platforms: Trump’s Truth Social and Musk’s X. The falling-out had begun brewing days ago when Musk, who left his role as head of the Department of Government Efficiency a week ago, denounced Trump’s sweeping tax-cut and spending bill. The president initially stayed quiet while Musk campaigned to torpedo the bill, saying it would add too much to the nation’s $36.2 trillion in debt. Trump broke his silence on Thursday, telling reporters he was “very disappointed” in Musk. “Look, Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will anymore,” Trump said. As Trump spoke, Musk responded on X. “Without me, Trump would have lost the election,” wrote Musk, who spent nearly $300 million backing Trump and other Republicans in last year’s election. In another post, Musk asserted that Trump’s signature import tariffs would push the U.S. into a recession later this year. “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” Trump posted.
Minutes after the closing bell, Musk replied, “Yes,” to a post on X saying Trump should be impeached, something that would be highly unlikely given Trump’s Republicans hold majorities in both chambers of Congress.
Musk’s businesses also include rocket company and government contractor SpaceX and its satellite unit Starlink.
Musk, whose space business plays a critical role in the U.S. government’s space program, said that as a result of Trump’s threats he would begin decommissioning SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. Dragon is the only U.S. spacecraft capable of sending astronauts to the International Space Station.
Late on Thursday, Musk backed off the threat. In another sign of a possible detente to come, Musk subsequently wrote: “You’re not wrong,” in response to billionaire investor Bill Ackman saying Trump and Musk should make peace. Musk hit at the heart of Trump’s agenda earlier this week when he targeted what Trump has named his “big, beautiful bill”, calling it a “disgusting abomination” that would deepen the federal deficit..
The targets were Russian warplanes, including strategic bombers and command-and-control aircraft, worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The weapons were Ukrainian drones, each costing under $1,000 and launched from wooden containers carried on trucks. “Operation Spiderweb,” which Ukraine said destroyed or damaged over 40 aircraft parked near air bases across Russia on Sunday, wasn’t just a blow to the Kremlin’s prestige. It was also a wake-up call for the West to bolster its air defense systems against such hybrid tactics, military experts said.Ukraine took advantage of inexpensive drone technology that has advanced rapidly in the last decade and combined it with outside-the-box thinking to score a morale-boosting win in the 3-year-old war that lately has turned in Moscow’s favor. How deeply the attack will impact Russian military operations is unclear. Although officials in Kyiv estimated it caused $7 billion in damage, the Russian Foreign Ministry disputed that, and there have been no independent assessments. Moscow still has more aircraft to launch its bombs and cruise missiles against Ukraine.
Still, the operation showed what “modern war really looks like and why it’s so important to stay ahead with technology,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Where the West is vulnerable
For Western governments, it’s a warning that “the spectrum of threats they’re going to have to take into consideration only gets broader,” said Douglas Barrie, senior fellow for military aerospace at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London.In the past decade, European countries have accused Russia of carrying out a sabotage campaign against the West, with targets ranging from defense executives and logistics companies to businesses linked to Ukraine. Unidentified drones have been seen in the past year flying near military bases in the U.S., the U.K and Germany, as well as above weapons factories in Norway. High-value weapons and other technology at those sites are “big, juicy targets for both state and non-state actors,” said Caitlin Lee, a drone warfare expert at RAND in Washington. “The time is now” to invest in anti-drone defenses, she said. Low-cost options to protect aircraft include using hardened shelters, dispersing the targets to different bases and camouflaging them or even building decoys. U.S. President Donald Trump last month announced a $175 billion “Golden Dome” program using space-based weapons to protect the country from long-range missiles.Not mentioned were defenses against drones, which Lee said can be challenging because they fly low and slow, and on radar can look like birds. They also can be launched inside national borders, unlike a supersonic missile fired from abroad. Drones “dramatically increase” the capacity by a hostile state or group for significant sabotage, said Fabian Hinz, a missile expert and research fellow at IISS.“How many targets are there in a country? How well can you defend every single one of them against a threat like that?” he said.
Ukraine’s resourceful, outside-the-box thinking
In “Operation Spiderweb,” Ukraine said it smuggled the first-person view, or FPV, drones into Russia, where they were placed in the wooden containers and eventually driven by truck close to the airfields in the Irkutsk region in Siberia, the Murmansk region in the Arctic, and the Amur region in the Far East, as well as to two bases in western Russia.Ukraine’s Security Service, or SBU, said the drones had highly automated capabilities and were partly piloted by an operator and partly by using artificial intelligence, which flew them along a pre-planned route in the event the drones lost signal. Such AI technology almost certainly would have been unavailable to Ukraine five years ago. “The way in which the Ukrainians brought this together is creative and obviously caught the Russians completely off guard,” Barrie said. Experts compared Sunday’s attack to Israel’s operation last year in which pagers used by members of the militant group Hezbollah exploded almost simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria. Israel also has used small, exploding drones to attack targets in Lebanon and Iran. With drones, “we are in the phase of figuring that out, and things are changing so rapidly that what works today might not work tomorrow,” he said The Tu-95 bombers hit by Ukraine are “effectively irreplaceable” because they’re no longer in production, said Hinz, the IISS expert. Ukraine said it also hit an A-50 early warning and control aircraft, similar to the West’s AWACS planes, that coordinate aerial attacks. Russia has even fewer of these.
nn: The drone represents the biggest change in warfare since the cannon
The price of oil climbed 1.7% on Thursday as ongoing geopolitical hotspots in the Middle East and Ukraine remained in focus and amid the strained trade relations between the United States and China, the two of the world’s largest economies. Simultaneously, the Chinese media reported that US President Donald Trump held a phone call with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. If confirmed, it would mark the first time the leaders spoke since the beginning of Trump’s second term and could have wide-reaching implications on bilateral relations between the two countries and the global economy. West Texas Intermediate futures for July contracts rose 1.59% at 9:45 am ET to exchange for $63.85 per barrel while Brent for the same month’s settlements advanced 1.37% at the same minute to go for $65.72 per barrel.
