Pentagon Says Iran Attacks Don’t Rise to Level of Restarting War

President Trump downplays Iran's latest attacks, worrying U.S. allies in the Gulf. Plus, Beijing is using regulatory aggression to push back against the U.S. The people I talk to around the Chinese leadership keep telling me that Xi Jinping thinks he's, quote, cracked a code on Trump. And flavored vapes have become a point of tension between President Trump and the FDA. It's Tuesday, May 5th. I'm Alex Osalev 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. We begin this evening's show in the Middle East, where fighting has picked up again this week. That includes missiles and drones that Iran's firing at the United Arab Emirates, as well as attacks on commercial ships and American warships. During a press conference this morning, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth downplayed the attacks and said the ceasefire holds for now. Ultimately, the president's going to make a decision whether anything were to escalate into a violation of a ceasefire, but certainly we would urge Iran to be prudent. Hours after Hegseth's comments, the UAE said it was intercepting new attacks. Iran denied the attacks, but said there would be a, quote, crushing response if it's targeted by the UAE. Iran and other adversaries and allies are all watching the U.S. response for a hint of how the outcome of the conflict could ripple around the world. I'm joined now by WSJ Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Yaroslav Trofimov. Yaroslav, what is Tehran gleaning from the Trump administration's response to its most recent attacks? What they are saying is that they think that the U.S. is in a rush to extricate itself from the conflict, And the U.S. is clearly willing to look the other way as Iran escalates and attacks other countries. And what does the U.S. response signal to other Gulf states? There is a lot of consternation across the Gulf. It seems like even as Iran is violating the ceasefire and attacking the Gulf, the U.S. is not inclined to punish Iran for that. And so as one official told me it looks like the Trump administration has thrown the Gulf under the bus Once again this reinforces the conviction held by many governments friendly to the U that the U administration under President Trump is a transactional one There is growing fear that even though the U.S. is committed to helping especially its European treaty allies, as well as treaty allies in Asia, that President Trump would be very reluctant to come to help, at least if there is no perceived benefit to the U.S. in his eyes. That was WSJ Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Yaroslav Trofimov. Thanks, Yaroslav. Thank you. Geopolitical tensions are also playing out in Asia, where China has escalated its fight against the U.S. over Iranian oil. The U.S. had sanctioned five Chinese refineries for buying Iranian crude. Well, over the weekend, the Chinese government told companies not to comply with those sanctions. In the past, Beijing has been wary of openly violating U.S. sanctions. That's not the case anymore. Lingling Wei is the WSJ's chief China correspondent and the author of the WSJ China newsletter. And in this morning's edition, she wrote all about Beijing's latest moves. If you're a bank and you refuse to process a payment for one of those refineries because of U.S. sanctions, you can get sued in China. Same if you're the insurer who won't write the policy or the shipping company that won't carry the cargo. So suddenly, complying with American law could be an offense in China. And there's really no clear way out. Follow Washington, you get sued in Beijing. And follow Beijing, you lose access to the dollar system. This isn't the only way China is pushing back against U.S. economic interests. Last week, China banned Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus. Historically, when China didn't want the deal to go through, it would just slow walk it for many years until the parties gave up. This time, they just said no in one line sentence. So you will got two unprecedented moves in seven days, both one-sentence orders, both using tools that have been sitting on the shelf for years. That is not a coincidence. That is a posture shift. The people I talk to around the Chinese leadership keep telling me that Xi Jinping thinks he quote cracked a code on Trump that Trump can be outweighed can be exhausted that you can escalate without blowing up the whole relationship. Lingling says the timing is not a coincidence. These moves come ahead of the meeting between President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, planned for next week. Coming up, what the U.S.'s crumbling infrastructure means for cities' budgets. That and more after the break. Stocks climbed today, with the Nasdaq and S&P hitting their latest records. The Nasdaq led the gains and closed up 1%. The Journal has learned that PayPal plans to cut 20% of its staff, more than 4,000 jobs, over the next few years. The job cuts are part of the company's new plans to adopt AI and cut costs. Its stock closed down 7.8 percent. And Frontier Airlines expects to gain from Spirit Airlines collapse. Its parent company projected today that it will make 3 to 5 percent more revenue for every seat it flies as a direct result of Spirit's demise. From the earnings call. We have more route overlap with Spirit than any other U.S. carrier, uniquely positioning us to recapture the demand they left behind. Like other airlines, Frontier also plans to raise airfare prices this year to offset higher fuel costs. Its stock ended the day 6.9 percent higher. Heads up that we dropped a special bonus episode earlier today. In the latest What's News and Earnings, we look at how U.S. oil companies are navigating a world short on crude. That's in your What's News feed now. In health care news, doctors have long complained about the paperwork they have to do to get insurers permission for care. They say the process can lead to delays and denials. Now, UnitedHealth says it plans to stop requiring doctors to get approvals for things like certain outpatient surgeries and tests like echocardiograms. And in Washington, we're exclusively reporting that President Trump has pressured FDA Commissioner Marty McCary to approve flavored vapes and nicotine products. McCary hasn wanted to approve fruit flavors and others potentially appealing to children He was worried about the public health risks People familiar with the matter say McCary and Trump have discussed the FDA commissioner changing course In his 2024 campaign Trump had promised to quote save vaping A White House spokesman said that science is guiding the Trump administration's health policy. U.S. cities are facing huge liabilities that aren't showing up on their books. It's the dilapidated roads, bridges and buildings. And now a new study from a municipal bond expert tried to put a dollar figure on that wear and tear. It arrived at just over $1 trillion. While those costs are hypothetical for now, the study offers a glimpse at just how expensive those repairs and upgrades might be. And journal reporter Heather Gillers says those can have a real impact on city operations. This whole question of should cities have to account for their long-term cost of their infrastructure repairs on their financial statements is a very sort of nerdy academic question. It starts to feel a little bit less hypothetical if you think about what happened in 2014 with pensions. prior to 2014, cities didn't really account for the promises that they had made to workers and retirees to pay pensions to them until they died, which is a lot of money. Heather says that the city's debt skyrocketed when they had to account for the full future costs of those pensions. That was when you started to see things like higher taxes, service cuts and real strain involved in setting aside money to lessen the unfunded future pension liability. So while this seems like a very sort of hypothetical, don't have to worry about it now, future costs, it could become very real and front and center if the governmental accounting powers that be decide that cities need to face up to these costs a little bit more seriously. And that's what's news for this Tuesday afternoon. Today's show is produced by Danny Lewis and Anthony Bansi 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.