President Donald Trump’s negotiators face the arduous task of trying to convince the president that a deal he previously rejected is their best option in Iran.

Last month, Trump initially gave his blessing for a so-called “cash for uranium” deal, under which the US would release around $20 billion in frozen funds in exchange for Iran handing over its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, sources familiar with the matter tell WIRED.

Trump’s negotiators, vice president JD Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son in law, received repeated approvals from the president while they were in Islamabad, giving them confidence a deal was close.

But the deal unraveled, in part because Trump was warned by his team that there was a risk he could be seen as giving Iran “pallets of cash”—an echo of his own oft-stated criticism of Barack Obama’s Iran deal—and he pulled the plug, the sources said.

Except now, that’s once again the cornerstone of the current proposal.

The current negotiations for a memorandum of understanding that could guide talks on a nuclear deal center on Iran handing over its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, and a moratorium on further uranium enrichment for somewhere around 12 to 15 years, Axios earlier reported.

In exchange, the US would offer a combination of billions in sanctions relief and the gradual release of frozen funds after gaining control of the enriched uranium, in order to destroy it or blend it down so it cannot be used for a nuclear weapon.

While a memorandum of understanding might get Iran to the table, that framework is not materially different from what was discussed previously in Islamabad and rejected by Trump, who has repeatedly told advisers in recent weeks he is against sending money to Iran, sources tell WIRED.

Some of Trump’s advisers say the decision of whether Trump ultimately blesses the framework is likely to come down to how badly he wants a deal. There are few options to incentivize Iran, they add, and financial aid has been the most compelling.

“They are going to have to do something like that, and it’s better than the Obama deal, so he should take it,” one Trump adviser said on the condition of anonymity, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Trump has long criticized that deal for having provisions similar to ones currently under discussion, like a sunset clause on nuclear enrichment and the US lifting some sanctions.

For all the machinations in the West Wing, it has not gone unnoticed by Trump’s orbit that some of his top players have been conspicuous in their absence on Iran, according to two administration officials familiar with the matter.

Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and national security adviser, has been part of the group advising Trump on Iran and, physically speaking, spends most of his time in his West Wing office overlooking West Executive Avenue instead of at the State Department.

Rubio was happy to brief reporters on Tuesday, but he only did so at the request of the White House, a person familiar with the matter said, with his advisers wary of him getting involved in Iran negotiations that could as easily unravel as succeed.

In fact, given the downside risk, Rubioworld has been saying they were surprised that Vance asked to be a part of the Iran talks—a contention denied by people close to the vice president, who said he was ordered to by Trump.

Rubio instead has been more focused on Cuba, and on Venezuela, where assistant secretary of state Caleb Orr has been involved in overseeing new private equity investment to rebuild the country’s oil infrastructure.

Mexico City is one of the fastest sinking cities in the world. Now, a powerful satellite from the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) confirms the accelerated advance of this silent threat that puts nearly 20 million people at risk.

The satellite designed by NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), known as NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar), was able to capture with unprecedented precision the magnitude and evolution of this phenomenon in different areas of the Mexican capital. The analysis is based on preliminary measurements taken from space between October 2025 and January of this year, during the dry season in Mexico City.

Their findings were captured in a map that shows how the subsurface of the metropolis is shifting. In the map, NASA identified areas with subsidence greater than 2 centimeters per month (marked in dark blue). The agency specifies that the areas marked in yellow and red could correspond to background signals (or noise) that are expected to diminish as the satellite instrument collects more data.

The image also highlights the location of Benito Juarez International Airport, located near Lake Nabor Carrillo, which operates in the middle of an area with accelerated subsidence. “Images like this confirm that the NISAR measurements are in line with expectations,” said Craig Ferguson, deputy director of the project.

Mexico City sits atop the clay and lake bed of ancient Lake Texcoco. NASA explains that this process is a consequence of intense groundwater pumping and the increasing weight associated with urban development. Both factors have caused the compaction of the ancient lake soil for more than a century.

The phenomenon was first documented in 1925 by engineer Roberto Gayol. Between the 1900s and 2000s, some areas experienced a drop of nearly 35 centimeters per year, causing damage to infrastructure such as the Metro, one of the largest mass transit systems in the Americas.

A study conducted in 2024 by Dario Solano-Rojas, a remote-sensing specialist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, found that subsidence is not uniform. After analyzing changes in the city’s elevation between 2011 and 2020, the researcher and his team concluded that subsidence rates are highly variable: While some areas register up to 50 centimeters per year, in others the phenomenon is almost imperceptible.

This creates “differential subsidence,” where the ground sinks unevenly not only across square kilometers or city blocks, but even on a meter scale. When a street, railway, or building sinks differently at one end compared to the other, its stability is compromised.

Amid sky-high levels of fraud and financial crime, and the as-yet unknown real-world impacts of Anthropic’s Claude Mythos, the inaugural UK Financial Services Security Hackathon has brought together representatives of UK banks, fintechs, software and technology companies, and regulators for a security competition testing incident readiness, decision-making under fire, and skill at defending financial infrastructure against cyber attack.

A total of 33 two-strong teams representing 16 organisations took part in the competition,  hosted by Lloyds Banking Group, Google Cloud Security, and penetration testing and vulnerability discovery experts Hack The Box.

“This event demonstrated how simulated real-life exercises help organisations strengthen defensive capabilities, improve readiness under pressure, and build stronger collaboration across the wider financial services ecosystem,” said Lloyds Banking Group chief security officer Matt Rowe.

“In a highly connected sector, resilience depends not only on individual organisations, but on how effectively we prepare and respond together.”

Hack The Box chief operating officer Nikos Fountas added: “Cyber security is not just about what teams know, it is about what they can do when it matters most. Exercises like this move organisations from static training to proving real-world readiness. They prepare security professionals, test judgment under pressure, and benchmark performance against peers across the industry.”

The contest itself saw participants tackle challenges in areas such as web vulnerability exploitation, digital forensics, OSINT investigations, cryptography and payment systems security, and vulnerability discovery.

The organisers said the hackathon also highlighted how important measurable cyber readiness is in the financial sector, where highly interconnected systems, ever-evolving threats, and rapid incident escalation mean that how cyber pros perform in the earliest stages of a cyber incident can be critical.

And reflecting the advent of Anthropic’s Claude Mythos frontier AI model, which may yet be a game changer in terms of vulnerability discovery and exploitation, and its potential impact on the financial services sector, the challenges also reflected the role of AI in both offensive and defensive capacities, with teams combining their own technical cyber expertise with emerging capabilities.

The AI question, and more specifically the value of human expertise in security, was underscored by the eventual winners of the contest, Nine Lives With Zero Days – comprising a machine learning expert and a senior pen tester.

Although AI can clearly speed-up repetitive, or well-defined and scoped tasks, real-world cyber defence work cannot be bound by such simplistic definitions, said the organisers. It relies instead on factors such as context, judgment, adaptability, and the ability to navigate many possible pathways. Moreover, hands-on security experience is vital to build the instincts and decision-making abilities that AI will never truly have.

Fountas said: “As AI becomes more capable, the human element is still critical. It is much like chess. Although machines can outperform humans, people continue to study and play because the value lies in the thinking process – the pattern recognition, creativity, and decision-making. In cyber security, it is these instincts and the ability to make the right decisions under pressure that ultimately strengthen resilience.”

The winning team said they were both “shocked and thrilled” to win at the end of a challenging two days.