Treasury Sec. Bessent: A Deal with Iran 8/4/26

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**Andrew Ross Sorkin** (0:58)
Bring in show music, please.

**Katie Kramer** (1:01)
Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod, two big interviews, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

**Scott Bessent** (1:10)
Sorry, Joe. A day late, a yen short.

**Katie Kramer** (1:12)
On the historic joint market intervention between the US and Japan, and here's news, he says a deal with Iran for freedom of movement in the clogged Strait of Hormuz is close.

**Scott Bessent** (1:23)
I think there is a chance we may have a deal today or tomorrow to open the strait and move towards a more normalized position in this conflict.

**Katie Kramer** (1:33)
And SNAP CEO, Evan Spiegel, he's built glasses or specs for this new artificial intelligence driven era, and he's ready for the next big invention.

**Evan Spiegel** (1:43)
What I'm really looking for are those sort of leading signs of, what are the new consumer products that are being invented? What are the new experiences that are going to drive more demand?

**Katie Kramer** (1:52)
All that ahead, it's Tuesday, August 4th, 2026 Squawk Pod begins right now.

**Scott Bessent** (1:58)
Stand back by in 3, 2, 1, cue please.

**Becky Quick** (2:03)
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We are live from the NASDAQ Market Site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick along with Joe Kernen. Andrew will join us later from the annual Aspen Economic Strategy Group meeting. Yesterday, the Dow closed at a record high.
You're going to see this morning, it's pulling back by about 7 points. Energy prices pulled back yesterday. And once again, this morning, you are looking at prices a little bit higher, up by about $1.50, $81.82. Brent crude is up by about 2.5% to $85.82.

**Joe Kernen** (2:34)
That's in peace. $7,600 closed.
You start getting uncomfortable if you got a $7,000 target for the end of the year? Perhaps.
I would think that if you had a $7,000 target to start the year with, you'd still be thinking, you know what, I'm sticking with my $7,000 because we don't know the war and everything else that's going on. That's just the mentality of people that are wrong a lot. And they will probably ride this $7,800, if it does, if it goes, or $8,000. And then finally, the towel gets thrown in and it just becomes, but I think at this point, they can still sort of wishfully think, I think there's so many things still staring us in the face that it could easily go, and it could easily go. And we just said Tom, Leon is saying there's going to be some type of pullback before we, he thinks we ended $8,000 for 2026 But in the meantime, he thinks a six-handle, possibly.

**Becky Quick** (3:36)
Right. Look, oil prices spike, something happens in the Middle East, and you can see some very quick moves on some of these things.

**Joe Kernen** (3:42)
An AI?

**Becky Quick** (3:43)
Yeah.

**Joe Kernen** (3:44)
Tips, chip software?

**Becky Quick** (3:46)
Just think about how different the narrative looks today than it did a week and a half ago, two weeks ago.

**Joe Kernen** (3:51)
Was that it?

**Becky Quick** (3:52)
That was it.

**Joe Kernen** (3:54)
That was the dip to buy?

**Becky Quick** (3:56)
I'm still convinced that this was that situational awareness, that that was a huge blip that came from that. But people get nervous.

**Joe Kernen** (4:07)
Did we get it out of our system, the worry that companies are spending too much on AI?

**Becky Quick** (4:13)
I don't know. You had the CEO of Hugging Face yesterday saying that he thinks China could catch up with this year. And by the way, they're already ahead, he thinks, in the open AI mountains.

**Joe Kernen** (4:22)
Well, we better spend some more money.
Palantir surging in the pre-market. The company beat second quarter earnings and revenue and said commercial revenue more than doubled from a year ago, US government revenue grew 90% to more than $800 million. In a CNBC interview, CEO Alex Karp reiterating his criticism of Frontier AI Labs, arguing that businesses shouldn't be forced to give up their intellectual property to work with the companies. He also didn't blame Chinese open source AI companies for distilling Frontier Labs' work.