A major question is what happens with negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. It is not entirely clear who in Iran has the authority to make a deal or even agree to reenter talks. Ray Takeyh, a former State Department official and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Iranian leadership is at a moment of disarray — making it difficult to return to the table.

“The country’s leadership and the regime is not cohesive enough to be able to come to some sort of negotiations at this point, especially negotiations from the American perspective, whose conclusion is predetermined, namely, zero enrichment,” he said.

Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, agreed, saying the biggest challenge right now is who is in charge in Tehran.”

“Is there an Iranian negotiation team empowered to make consequential decisions?” he said. “The issue is that (Trump) is dealing with an Iranian government whose longtime identity has been based on hostility toward the the United States.”

Witkoff said the U.S. and Iran are already in early discussions, both directly and through intermediaries, about resuming negotiations. “The conversations are promising. We’re hopeful.”

At the U.N. on Tuesday, Iranian Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani told the Security Council that “diplomacy and dialogue are the only path to resolving the unnecessary crisis over Iran’s peaceful program.”

In the aftermath of the U.S. strikes, Vice President JD Vance stressed that diplomacy is still Trump’s preferred method for ending the conflict permanently. “We didn’t blow up the diplomacy,” Vance told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “The diplomacy never was given a real chance by the Iranians. And our hope … is that this maybe can reset here.”

A classified briefing for House members about Iran and Israel that was scheduled for Tuesday has been postponed until Friday, House Speaker Mike Johnson said.

“Senior Administration officials will present the latest information pertaining to the situation involving Israel and Iran,” Johnson, R-La., said on X.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., questioned why the briefing was postponed. He said at a news conference that members of Congress received no reason for the postponement.

“Is it, in fact, the case that Iran’s nuclear program has been completely and totally obliterated?” Jeffries said. “There apparently are reasons to believe that that was a blatant misrepresentation made by Donald Trump to the American people. That’s one of the questions that needs to be answered by the Trump administration.”

It has now been more than an hour since the official conclusion of United States President Donald Trump’s ceasefire in Israel and Iran.

For now, it appears to be holding.

Trump, however, is about to begin various engagements as part of the NATO Summit being held in The Hague in the Netherlands.

US President Donald Trump talking with Secretary-General of NATO Mark Rutte during a family photo at the 2025 NATO summit in The Hague on June 24, 2025. (AP: Haiyun Jiang)

Based on information we have available to us, it appears that NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte is due to briefly speak within an hour, ahead of the formal beginning of day two of the summit.

That will be followed by various leaders entering the event, and a time slot has been listed at 5:55pm AEST for “short remarks” to be made by both Rutte and Trump.

We’ll cover all of those here, as they happen.

As for what could happen more generally with Trump at the NATO Summit, The Associated Press reports that a particular focus will likely be on the US’ commitment to mutual defense guarantees between America and NATO member nations.

There will also likely be discussions held about the idea of NATO member countries significantly increasing their defence spending.

“NATO was broke, and I said, ‘You’re going to have to pay,’” Trump said yesterday. “And we did a whole thing, and now they’re paying a lot. Then I said, ‘You’re going to have to lift it to 4 per cent or 5 per cent, and 5 per cent is better.’”

Reporting with AP

And now for a guest post by business reporter David Taylor:

The ABS’s May Monthly headline CPI reading has come in at 2.1 per cent.

But the whole data set is considered volatile, so despite this being an extremely encouraging number, it’s better to focus on the trimmed mean.

Yet even that has come in 0.1 percentage points under the midpoint of the RBA’s inflation target band of between 2 and 3 per cent.

On the surface, this suggests a cash rate of 3.85 per cent is too “restrictive” or crimping demand in the economy too much.

This could warrant a 0.5 percentage point interest rate cut from the RBA next month.

But independent economist Sharman Chan says not so fast.

“So what we can see is that inflation is now well and truly within the RBA’s target band right now.”

“Having said that, I’m not going to rule out a bit of a rebound in the coming months because of the end of the energy rebate starting 2026 and also the latest low inflation reading is in part thanks to a 10 per cent year-on-year drop in automotive fuel prices.

“So whilst we’re happy that the inflation readings are now within the RBA’s target band, let’s not be alarmed if there’s a bit of a rebound.

“I believe that there is a bit more room for the RBA to cut its interest rates in the second half of 2025.

“I think the RBA is likely to be monitoring a much broader set of economic indicators in the coming months and I would not be surprised if the RBA actually follows their US counterpart to adopt a bit of a wait and see approach,” Dr Chan said.

A satellite view shows an overview of Fordow underground complex, after the U.S. struck the underground nuclear facility, near Qom, Iran June 22, 2025.

U.S. missile strikes did not completely destroy Iran’s key nuclear sites, an initial American assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency found, according to three people familiar with the report who spoke to NBC News.

“We were assuming that the damage was going to be much more significant than this assessment is finding,” one of the three sources told NBC News. “This assessment is already finding that these core pieces are still intact. That’s a bad sign for the overall program.”

The assessment also found that the U.S. strikes set Iran’s nuclear program back by around three to six months. But Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed and Tehran’s centrifuges remain largely intact.

CNN first reported the existence of the report.

The assessment was based on U.S. Central Command’s analysis of battle damage from the bombings of three Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend. That analysis is ongoing.

The New York Times reported that the preliminary, classified report found the bombings did not collapse underground buildings of the Iranian nuclear sites.

The intelligence findings appear to contradict both Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who have asserted that the strikes completely “obliterated” the Iranian nuclear sites.

Asked for comment by CNBC, the Pentagon shared a statement from Hegseth that, “Based on everything we have seen — and I’ve seen it all — our bombing campaign obliterated Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons.”

“Our massive bombs hit exactly the right spot at each target — and worked perfectly,” Hegseth said in the statement. “The impact of those bombs is buried under a mountain of rubble in Iran; so anyone who says the bombs were not devastating is just trying to undermine the President and the successful mission.”

Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday, “The sites that we hit in Iran were totally destroyed, and everyone knows it.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told NBC News in a statement that the “alleged assessment is flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret’ but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community.”

“The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program,” Leavitt said.

She added: “Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”

— Kevin Breuninger