Iran Bets on Long War as US Weighs Nuclear Deployments, Spy Pick

The dominant story was an Iran war with no off-ramp. A widely reported assessment held that Tehran now sees a prolonged conflict as preferable to diplomacy, using the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and strikes on Arab states hosting US bases to drive a wedge between Washington and its Gulf partners, with hardliners in firm command after the collapse of the 2015 nuclear deal and subsequent US bombing. That turn had concrete signatures on June 2: Brig. Gen. MohammadJafar Asadi, deputy inspector of Iran's Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, said Iran had not revealed all its capabilities and was ready for direct confrontation with the US and NATO, while figures tied to acting IRGC commander Ahmad Vahidi were identified as the force behind Monday's suspension of indirect talks.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is alive and increasingly engaging -- the first official US acknowledgment of his condition since the US-Israeli strikes -- and said negotiations were continuing but that progress did not guarantee a deal. One path toward an agreement gained a backer: Kazakhstan formally offered to hold Iran's stockpile of more than 440 kg of 60-percent-enriched uranium as a neutral custodian, a proposal endorsed by IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi and President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.

Further from the battlefield, the Financial Times reported that US officials are in confidential talks to expand NATO nuclear sharing beyond the six current host states, with Poland and the Baltic states pressing to host dual-capable aircraft armed with US B61 bombs. The talks, meant to reassure allies as Washington shifts conventional forces toward Asia, would cut against the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, and officials stressed no agreement is imminent. On the Ukraine file, the South China Morning Post reported that Trump had urged Xi Jinping at their May summit in Beijing to use China's leverage over Moscow to revive collapsed Russia-Ukraine talks; the White House and the Chinese embassy declined to comment.

Domestically, Trump named Bill Pulte -- the Federal Housing Finance Agency director and a close ally with no intelligence background -- acting Director of National Intelligence, replacing Tulsi Gabbard, who resigned after her husband's cancer diagnosis. Pulte will keep his housing-finance post while overseeing the 18 US intelligence agencies, an arrangement that drew bipartisan criticism over the politicization of intelligence. The move lands as the Supreme Court enters its end-of-term stretch, with rulings expected before July on Trump's bid to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook and on his birthright-citizenship order.

On the economy, Trump amended tariffs on imported steel, aluminum and copper, while the Institute for Supply Management's manufacturing index rose to 54 in May -- a four-year high and a fifth straight month of expansion. Analysts cautioned that Iran-war energy shocks, tariffs and pre-emptive stockpiling were clouding the data, with factory payrolls down in 12 of the past 15 months. In Taipei, President Lai Ching-te opened the COMPUTEX summit by calling the cross-strait status quo the most responsible way to secure global technology supply chains, stressing Taiwan's role as a chip supplier to Nvidia and Apple.