President Trump holds off on an Iran escalation amid declining stocks of U.S. munitions.

Plus, Apple and Micron lobby the White House on competing visions of whether American firms

should be able to use Chinese memory chips.

That's sort of the pickle for President Trump and his advisors how to sort of thread

this needle. They really don't want consumer prices to continue increasing, but they also

don't want to jeopardize negotiations with the Chinese. And wildfires bear down on Bordeaux,

as low rainfall turns southwestern Europe into a tinderbox.

It's Monday, July 27th. I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition

of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

President Trump is delaying a major escalation of his military campaign against Iran in order to open the door for diplomacy around the Strait of Hormuz.

According to officials, the U.S. military had been said on Friday to kick off a series of strikes on Iran

that could have lasted for up to two weeks.

But the operation was paused, as officials discussed the effect that a major attack could

have on a shrinking stockpile of Patriot and other air defense interceptors, a warning that came

from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In a statement to the journal, Trump denied

that dwindling munitions are a problem,

and his UN ambassador, Mike Walts, heard here on NBC News's Meet the Press,

ratcheted up efforts to shut down that narrative. I want to be crystal clear. The U.S.

military, and I've verified this every which way, has everything that it needs to conduct this campaign as

effectively as it needs to be. And I have to tell you, the people that are leaking this

nonsense deserve to be in jail.

Analysts outside the government have repeatedly cautioned that the large number of interceptors

...