US Memorandum of Misunderstanding with Iran Hits a New Low

Does Iran have a right to impose transit fees across the Strait of Hormuz and shoot at vessels crossing it?

Does Israel have the right to continue bombing Lebanon despite Trump's shoddy Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Iran?

Per AI:
An Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) is a maritime area defined by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) that extends up to 200 nautical miles (370 Km) from a coastal state’s baseline. Within this zone, the coastal state holds sovereign rights to explore, exploit, conserve, and manage all natural resources, both living (e.g., fish) and non-living (e.g., oil, gas), as well as jurisdiction over marine scientific research and environmental protection. But other states retain the freedom of navigation, overflight, and the laying of submarine cables and pipelines, provided these activities do not interfere with the coastal state’s resource rights.

Unlike the EEZ, a country's Territorial Waters extend only 12 nautical miles (22 Km) in which it has full sovereignty.

Since the closest distance between Iranian land territory and United Arab Emirates (UAE) land territory is 24 nautical miles (44 kilometers), which occurs across the Strait of Hormuz, a critical narrow stretch of water separating the two nations, it is clear that Iran has no legal or legitimate right to impose fees on transiting ships across the Strait, since its territorial waters do not encompass the remaining 22 Km of international/UAE territorial waters.

Be that as it may, Iran has managed to interfere with shipping across the Strait, which has caused oil prices to skyrocket, and in turn caused Donald Dumb to retreat from his war against Iran because he feared that high gasoline prices at the pump in the US would hurt the Republican Party's chances at the midterm elections in November.

After signing the American surrender document, the so-called "memorandum of understanding", Iran continues to invoke the right to control shipping across the Strait of Hormuz. And to poke the dumb criminal felon in the eye, it just attacked a vessel in the area, as if Iran is playing into the elections. If Iran manages to keep oil prices high by disturbing oil shipping, it could indeed increase the chances of Trump and his party losing Congress.

According to CNN, Iran struck a vessel in the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, demonstrating its continued ability to restrict the critical waterway, despite the agreement reached last week with the United States. A US official told CNN the vessel was attacked by an Iranian drone, challenging the Trump administration's claim that the strait is free and open once more.

The attack, the first since the US and Iran agreed signed the MoU last week, prompted a jump in global oil prices and came as Secretary of State Marco Rubio tried to sell the agreement to skeptical Gulf nations. 

This week, ship movements in the Strait of Hormuz hit their highest point since the war began in late February, with MarineTraffic data showing 70 crossings on Wednesday. Most of those vessels using a route that followed the coast of Oman, the maritime monitoring group said. Traffic dipped again on Thursday, however.

Iran sees control of the waterway as a key point of leverage in negotiations. On Thursday, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp warned that safe passage would only be given to ships via routes declared to Iran.

After the attack, the Persian Gulf Strait Authority – an agency Tehran recently established to manage the strait – said safe transit would not be guaranteed. "The consequences of traveling on unauthorized routes will be the responsibility of the owner, operator, and commander of the vessel," the agency said on X.

The current agreement between Washington and Tehran includes a commitment to reopen the waterway without tolls for 60 days, and has already seen the US lift its blockade of Iranian ports. But the 14-point memorandum also grants Iran a formal role in overseeing commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz alongside Oman.

Tehran began to enforce tolls on vessels wishing to transit the strait during the conflict, something the Trump administration has vowed not to allow under a long-term peace deal.

"The reality of it is that no country on Earth has a right to charge for the use of international waterways, and that will never be an acceptable condition of any deal," Rubio said at a meeting with foreign ministers of Gulf Arab states in Bahrain on Thursday. A joint statement later said the ministers "rejected any tolls, fees, or attempts to assert control over the Strait."

Tehran, which disputes the waterway being international waters, has previously raised the prospect of charging a kind of service fee, rather than toll, alongside Oman in the future.

The memorandum is meant to halt fighting, open the Strait of Hormuz and offer economic relief to Iran in exchange for a pledge never to develop nuclear weapons - just a pledge that can easily be broken. (The US under Trump broke its own pledges and signature by wantonly withdrawing from the JCPOA, the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran, the US and Europe).

But the MoU leaves the critical details, like Tehran's nuclear program and its stocks of enriched uranium, to be hashed out over 60 days of high-stakes negotiations.

The process has been riddled with stumbling blocks – including persistent fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, which threatened to derail US-Iran talks last week. Rubio has tried to separate the Israel-Lebanon talks from the US-Iran negotiations, even as Iran has repeatedly insisted that the issues are entwined. The agreement itself declared an end of fighting on all fronts, including Lebanon. But just as Iran has struck a vessel in the Strait of Hormuz, the US client Israel launched airstrikes on targets near Nabatieh in southern Lebanon. It therefore seems that Iran is trying to counteract Israel's continued attacks on Lebanon by its own attacks in Hormuz.

Iran has so far succeeded in driving a wedge between Israel and the US. As long as Israel's campaign in Lebanon continues, Iran says it will not cease interdicting oil shipping in the Gulf. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is skipping Israel on his ongoing Middle East visit, which some describe as a snub of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

No "Israeli Dream" for Zionist Colonial Settlers: Life in Constant Warfare

It is hard to imagine that Israelis actually dream of a life in peace and tranquility. When you're a foreign implant in a land that belongs to other people, when your numbers can never overwhelm the numbers of those indigenous people you raped, and when you "achieved" the feat of creating an artificial country with brutality and violence, uprooting people from their millennial homeland to make a place for yourself, you have to expect your life to be a constant struggle and on a war footing.

It's always the same story with colonial brutes. Algeria, India, Indochina, South Africa....Even back to the Greek and Roman Empires. It never ends well for the colonial settler rapist invader. The only time stealing another people's land works is when you combine: 1- an overwhelming demographic advantage over the invaded people you are raping, with 2- using such a high level of violence and brutality that you condemn yourself to eternal unrest, turmoil and conflict.

The Ottoman empire was created by invading hordes of savages from central Asia that forced their way into the West, essentially the Greco-Roman-Christian world, with such violence and brutality and in such overwhelming numbers that they managed to settle and become accepted. Today's Turkiye represents the nadir of that entire quest, after the empire was dismantled after some 500 years of existence. And even today, Turkiye is wracked by centrifugal forces that were not subdued sufficiently. The western part of Turkiye used to be Greece, and its eastern part will undoubtedly one day return to Armenian sovereignty and to an independent state of Kurdistan. Some one hundred years ago, Greece tried to reconquer the lands the Turks stole from them, but failed. That doesn't mean that the Greeks won't seize the first opportunity to try again.

Israel has overwhelming force, thanks to its breastfeeding English and American mothers, but only for now. But what it lacks is the demographic advantage. In fact, Israelis constantly worry about the so-called "demographic timebomb" in which the indigenous Palestinians' proclivity to procreate by far outweigh that of the foreign European and American settlers. More broadly, and despite the superficial "normalization" and pseudo-acceptance of Israel in the greater Near East through the Abraham Accords, the 400 million Arabs and the 1.2 billion Muslims worldwide are not likely to forget any time soon the brutality and savagery with which Israel was created. As long as there is a Palestine and a Palestinian people, Israel will not know peace.

The European Crusaders attempted the same "return to the Holy Land" at the turn of the first millennium AD, using the garbage Christian narrative of the birth of Jesus there some 1000 years before. They came, conquered with savagery and brutality, and were "normalized" for a while by their neighbors. But they lasted some 200 years before being expelled. During those two centuries, after atrocious massacres and barbarity, they settled, created artificial kingdoms, counties and principalities, bred with the natives, made peace deals and waged wars, and assumed that this new, rejuvenated Greco-Roman-Christian order will forever last.

Israel is yet another Crusader attempt, a Jewish (and fake) one, based on a similar garbage biblical narrative of a desert god by the name of Yahweh who, we are told, gave the land to his preferred tribe of nomadic goat and camel herders from the Arabian desert some 3,000 years ago. Like the Crusaders, Israelis conquered with barbarity and savagery, created their artificial state, settled, and seem to become slowly "normalized" with their surrounding peoples and nations. They wage wars and make peace deals while in a constant state of anxiety at their uncertain future. I assume that they assume to last forever. And Yahweh might, in the minds of the ultra-religious morons among them, intercede in their favor and split oceans and move mountains for them.

But if history is our guide, the "Israeli Dream" is unlikely to succeed.
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Forever wars: Israel’s cycle of conflict shows no finish line

Simon Speakman Cordall
Fri, June 26, 2026 

An overwhelming 92 percent of Israelis feel the US has signed away their victory over Iran, with almost half saying Israel should continue attacks on Lebanon and Hezbollah, irrespective of Washington's urgings.

Less than a week after the signing of the memorandum of understanding between Tehran and Washington brought the stuttering, three-month-long US-Israel war on Iran to a close – for now – the verdict of Washington's principal ally, Israel, was in.

According to a recent poll, an overwhelming 92 percent of Israelis felt the US has signed away their victory over a decades-old enemy, with almost half of those polled saying Israel should continue its attacks on Lebanon and the pro-Iran group Hezbollah, irrespective of the urgings of Washington, its principal ally and sponsor.

Israel has spent the years since the surprise Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, in Israel, which killed 1,139 people, fighting continuous wars across the region.

It has committed a genocide in Gaza, killing more than 73,000 Palestinians and razing large swaths of the territory to the ground. It has attacked Iran twice, killed thousands in Lebanon while fighting Iran ally Hezbollah, launched multiple ground incursions into Syria, and launched sporadic strikes on the Houthis in Yemen, also allies of Tehran.

Within Israel's fractious parliament, support for the country's wars offers one of the few points of consensus, even if individual politicians disagree on how they are prosecuted.

Going into the war on Iran, Israel's former chief of staff and one of the contenders to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Gadi Eisenkot, did not hold back. Speaking during an interview in early March, shortly after the joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran began, he described the unprovoked attacks on Tehran as "the most just war in recent decades against the most bitter enemy".

Opposition leader Yair Lapid was equally supportive of the attacks, with his enthusiasm for renewed conflict against Iran and Hezbollah only eclipsed by his anger following Washington's decision to make a deal with Tehran. He described the US decision as "one of the most shocking failures of Israel's foreign and security policy, and it is entirely on Netanyahu's account".

Israeli sociologist Daniel Bar-Tal from Tel Aviv University said little of this reaction in Israel is surprising. It was, he said, the outcome of a process across Israeli politics, media, and society that linked the Hamas 2023 attack with the "central anchor" of Israeli identity: the Holocaust. In this light, the attack was framed not "merely as a horrific event in its own right, but as the latest chapter in a much older story of Jewish historical trauma".

Bar-Tal added that the "justness of the national goals, glorification of the Jewish nation, [and] sense of collective victimhood", as well as "the delegitimisation of Palestinians", were ingrained into the consciousness of most Israelis, and therefore played a role in the support behind Israel's wars.

Gains and losses

Despite almost three years of almost constant and unquestioned war, few people in Israel believe that the country is significantly more secure than it was before October 7.

In Gaza, Hamas remains in control of large parts of the territory, while in Iran, the regime that Netanyahu is reported to have told his US allies would fall within days of the start of the war, remains steadfast.

"There is no particular achievement that will stop this eternal war," Israeli analyst and academic Shaiel Ben-Ephraim said.

"There are two main engines behind it," he said, describing the catalysts for the seemingly endless push for war. One of those engines, he said, was a reflection of Israel's immediate circumstances, while the other was a reflection of the fundamental shift in the consciousness of Israelis following the October 7 attack.

A member of a civilian response team looks at the sky as he searches for a hostile drone, in Metula, on the Israeli side of the Israel-Lebanon border [File: Amir Cohen/Reuters]

With elections looming later this year, Netanyahu enters the campaign still carrying the baggage of the October 7 attack, his ongoing trial on multiple corruption charges, and his apparent failure to finish the job in Iran and with Hezbollah.

"Netanyahu believes that as long as he has a war going on, he can avoid accountability for his corruption charges and responsibility for October 7 and his inability to prevent it," Ben-Ephraim said, of the immediate political fall out of the 2023 attack, with none of Netanyahu's rivals for government offering any meaningful alternative to the multiple conflicts embarked upon by the Israeli government since.

"The Israeli military and all the main candidates for prime minister – Netanyahu, [former Prime Minister, Naftali] Bennett, Eisenkot – have a doctrine of defence that believes in crushing any threat before it develops, and that there can be no deterrence or diplomatic agreement.

"This is the result of October 7, when, in the Israeli view, all these measures failed. The result is not only a desire to destroy Gaza and southern Lebanon completely, but also to take out Iran, Turkiye, and any other potential threat completely and irrevocably,' he said.

Whatever gains Israel may claim in Lebanon, the prospect of a future threat, from wherever it may come, makes the likelihood of a future war close to certain, Ben-Ephraim said.

"No potential or possible achievement will stop this," he concluded. "It is a pathology that comes from trauma and political need. Only a complete reversal of strategic fortune for Israel could change it in the future."

Hard-Right Dominated US Supreme Court: A White Supremacist Project 2025 Tool

Immigrants made - and continue to make - America Great because they have the entrepreneurial drive. Once "nativized" after one or two generations, Americans become dull entitled leeches who think the world owes them. Just look at the "native" white trash that populates the middle of the country.

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Supreme court conservatives accused of advancing ‘white-supremacist agenda’


TPS holders, union leaders and activists protest outside the supreme court in April. Photograph: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images
José Olivares
Thu, June 25, 2026 

Lawmakers and immigration advocacy groups on Thursday sharply denounced two US supreme court rulings that allowed the Trump administration to strip certain immigration protections and fundamentally reshape the asylum system.

Dozens of groups, advocates and members of Congress called the court's decisions "disastrous" and "cruel", while the Trump administration, Republican lawmakers and anti-immigrant groups celebrated the rulings.

"Today, Trump's loyalists in the supreme court have joined forces with him to deny immigrants' internationally recognized human rights and advance an authoritarian, white-supremacist agenda at home," said the Illinois congresswoman Delia Ramirez, a Democrat. "The supreme court's decisions put more than 350,000 TPS holders at risk of deportation and countless more asylum seekers' lives in danger."

One of Thursday's rulings from the supreme court stripped away temporary protected status (TPS) from hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians, who were living and working legally in the US and were protected from deportation. The TPS policy allows immigrants from specific countries to live and work in the US without the threat of deportation, due to violent or unstable conditions in their countries.

Despite the state department currently warning against traveling to Haiti or Syria, citing violence, Haitians and Syrians in the US on TPS are now vulnerable to deportation, even if they have applications for other forms of immigration status in progress.

"Simply put, the supreme court's ruling will directly result in thousands of innocent people dying violent, needless deaths," said attorneys Geoff Pipoly and Andy Tauber in a statement, who represented Haitians before the supreme court in the TPS case. "This decision will endanger Haitian TPS holders who fled their homeland in pursuit of what generations of immigrants yearned for when they made the painful decision to leave all they have known: to live in safety."

A number of Democratic senators and representatives – and even one Republican – agreed, adding that the 6-3 ruling on TPS will place hundreds of thousands at risk.

People with TPS have permission to live and work in the US because the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) deemed their home countries to be unsafe. The Trump administration has attempted to slash the program for various countries in its anti-immigrant crusade. Last year, the supreme court allowed the Trump administration to strip TPS for more than 300,000 Venezuelans.

Now, analysts fear that this decision may open the door to further cut TPS for all countries, in what would be the biggest de-documentation move in US history.

"The supreme court has opened the door to the president's broader effort to dismantle TPS for all 1.3 million holders," said Insha Rahman, president and director of the Vera Institute of Justice. "This ruling underscores a troubling reality: too many immigrants in the United States, who have spent years contributing to their communities, remain trapped in temporary statuses that can be revoked at the whim of political agendas."

Andrea Flores, an immigration expert and former director of border management on the national security council under the Biden administration called Thursday's TPS decision "the biggest delegalization moment in modern history".

Some groups decried the potential effects of the TPS decision on the US economy. A report from earlier this year showed TPS holders contribute about $29bn every year to the economy.

Similarly, the court's other immigration-related decision on Thursday has allowed the Trump administration to fundamentally reshape asylum policy at the US-Mexico border.

In a 6-3 decision, where the conservative majority on the nine-judge bench prevailed, the supreme court ruled that US government officials can turn back asylum seekers at the southern border – allowing officials to physically and indefinitely block people from requesting asylum in the US. The court ruled that US border officials do not have to accept any asylum claims from migrants who have not actually reached US soil.

Immigrant rights organizations, which originally filed a lawsuit in 2017 during the first Trump administration, argued that the US government was violating federal law by turning back asylum seekers at points of entry, a now-defunct policy dubbed "metering". Migrants turned back were left in dangerous conditions in Mexico. The Biden administration rescinded that policy and it has not been in effect. But the current Trump administration asked the supreme court to overturn a previous court decision declaring the policy unlawful.

"We believe that today's ruling violates international law," said Erika Pinheiro, Al Otro Lado's executive director. Al Otro Lado was the main organization that pursued the end to the metering policy. "This decision has destroyed the United States' position as a global leader in promoting the rights of refugees and threatens to serve as a dangerous justification for other countries that unlawfully prevent refugees from crossing borders in search of safety."

"In a world of increasing conflict and climate disaster, this hardening of borders to keep out the most vulnerable is sure to result in many more lives lost," Pinheiro added.

Although organizations argued that the metering policy violated federal law, including the refugee convention, the supreme court ruled border officials could deny asylum to people who had not entered the US, but arrived at the border.

"This ruling should sound the alarm for anyone who cares about human rights and the rule of law," said Melissa Crow, director of litigation at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies. Crow said that the court's decision suggests "the president may unilaterally override decades of established law and trample on people's legal rights if doing so suits his political agenda".

"The turn-back policy did not merely delay entry for people seeking safety. For far too many asylum seekers, the policy denied entry entirely. In some cases, that became a death sentence," Crow added.

UN: Israel Continues to Commit Genocide ... by Deliberately Targeting Palestinian Children

COLONIAL ZIONIST KILLERS OF INDIGENOUS PALESTINIAN CHILDREN:

Ben-Gvir, Netanyahu, Smotrich

UN: NOW THAT YOU'VE DOCUMENTED IT, BRING BACK YOUR ZIONISM = RACISM RESOLUTION. 

Does anyone still doubt that the Zionists, who actually believe that some Bronze Age god by the name of Yahweh still favors them over other Untermensch people, want to exterminate the Palestinian people whose very existence and persistence negate the very idea of Israel? Now inspired by racial and ethnic purification ideas they brought with them from Nazi Germany as settlers of Palestine, they have their own "Final Solution" to the question of Palestine: a carefully planned, well-thought of, strategic, and meticulous genocide and ethnic cleansing plan to snuff out Palestinian demographic growth by deliberately killing Palestinian children and eliminating any future for them and their people?

Zionist playbook: How to perpetrate genocide and ethnic cleansing from the crib.

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UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem:

Israel continues to commit genocide and other atrocity crimes by deliberately targeting Palestinian children

23 June 2026

GENEVA – Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip and war crimes in the West Bank, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel said in a new report today.

The Commission, which concluded last year that Israel had committed genocide against the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip, found that the intense scale and systematic nature of the Israeli military operations have continued – resulting in unprecedented death, injury and trauma of Palestinian children.

The Commission reiterates that the deliberate targeting of children is one of the key elements establishing genocidal intent of the Israeli authorities and security forces to destroy the Palestinian group, in whole or in part, in Gaza.

“The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces,” said Srinivasan Muralidhar, Chair of the Commission. “Even after the October 2025 ceasefire, children continue to be killed and seriously injured, with continued disregard by Israel for the ceasefire and for the protection owed to Palestinian children under international law.”

Severe physical and mental injuries, mass trauma, orphanhood, separation, disability, repeated displacements, starvation, and the collapse of education and healthcare have erased childhood and will continue to affect children in Gaza throughout their lives.

Palestinian children have been arrested and subjected to torture and other severe forms of mistreatment in Israeli prisons and detention facilities, with no information on their whereabouts. Israeli security forces have also used sexual violence against children as part of the collective shaming and oppression, entrenched within a prolonged, ethnic, gendered, and intergenerational pattern of Israeli occupation and hostilities.

Israel’s targeting of neonatal and maternity care centers in Gaza have directly harmed the survival of newborns and Palestinians’ reproductive future, including rises in miscarriages, birth defects and lasting vulnerabilities among newborns, resulting in the destruction of Palestinian newborn life and the population’s continuity. Starvation imposed by Israel through blockade and siege have further caused the death of Palestinian children and severely impacted the health of many others, depriving them of essential nutrition and increasing disease risks amid reduced immunization, food insecurity and destroyed health services.

In parallel, the dismantling and destruction of orphanages and education facilities in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, have obstructed children’s cognitive, social and emotional care and development and disrupted the foundations of Palestinian society.

“Even if the bombs and guns fall silent in Gaza and West Bank, Palestinian children will not simply recover overnight,” said Muralidhar. “The destruction of their health, education and development is irreversible.”

Palestinian children have suffered immense psychological harm, having been stripped of any sense of safety and future. Mental harm is an intergenerational condition, producing a distinctive “occupied psyche” in which the freedom to play, imagine, hope, and develop an identity has been eroded.

By targeting children, Israel is eroding the foundational structure of Palestinian society, weakening the demographic vitality, and overall capacity of the Palestinian people to sustain and exercise its right to determine its future as a people.

“The protection, care and survival of Palestinian children are inseparable from the Palestinian people’s right to self- determination,” said Muralidhar. “By targeting children, Israel is attacking the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist and to determine their future.”

The Commission calls for Israel to cease committing violations and crimes against and affecting Palestinian children. The Commission further calls for the end of Israel’s continuing presence in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in compliance with the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice.

The Commission has identified military units within the Israeli security forces responsible for killing and injuring of Palestinian children and makes recommendations to Israel and to all Member States to ensure accountability for such crimes.

The international community as a whole must uphold their international legal obligations and call for an end to the hostilities, for Israel to end its occupation and to prioritize accountability and access to justice for victims as an integral component of any political process, grounded in the meaningful participation of Palestinians, including children.

Trump's Hastily Clinched US Surrender to Iran MoU Beginning to Unravel

Not surprising that, having hastily signed his Memorandum of US Surrender Understanding with Iran because he feared that gasoline prices at the pump might cause his MAGA herd to lose the elections, Trump's postponement of the real issues at stake - nuclear issue, ballistic missiles, Iranian frozen assets, Iran's proxies.... - is now coming back to bite him in the ass as he pretends to solve all those issues in 60 days. This sounds more like his 2024 campaign promise of resolving the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours once in the white house, thanks to his stupid charm.

The dumbass is now screaming at himself. "Gasoline prices better start going down a lot faster than what I'm seeing!" he said on social media. Gasoline prices is the only thing on his mind right now. Forget nuclear, forget ballistic, forget Hezbollah, .... none of those weighty issues matter to the Great Moron because he doesn't understand them. They're too complicated for his white trash American brain.

Now that the celebrations at signing the toilet paper are ebbing, and sobriety is taking over the terror-inspired drunkenness, reality is setting in. The reality is that Iran got so much more than the US, and any expectation that Iran will within 60 days give in on all the issues for which dumbass Trump launched the war as he was led by the Zionist leash handler Netanyahu is an asinine expectation. The leash has a bit frayed between the two buddies because a moron friend like Trump is reckless, impulsive and unpredictable. Israel's military and political leadership were taken by surprise at the Great Moron throwing Israel under the bus just to get the Strait of Hormuz open and see gasoline prices in Glasgow, Montana, drop. I guess the "Judeo-Christian" bullshit is vulnerable to such momentous issues like the price of a gallon of milk at the local 7-11. The Israeli leadership is complaining that Israel's military freedom of action, particularly in Lebanon, which has never ever been challenged, is suddenly hostage to the diplomatic tug of war in Washington DC. Live and learn.

Perhaps Hezbollah should learn its lessons too, namely that warmongering and terrorism are a dead-end. But, as is the case now with the Lebanese government leading the negotiations in DC on behalf of Hezbollah, when military savagery is combined with civilized negotiations and diplomacy, there may be some gains to be made.

Predictably, we should expect Trump to now start lashing out at Iran just as he is lashing out at Netanyahu: Why? Because with every reckless decision he makes, he comes face to face with his own stupidity. And the "genius" that he thinks he is cannot look at himself in the mirror and see stupidity. How could the moron think that Iran will offer him concessions on a plate of baklava after refusing to make them for decades?

America, do not elect a businessman moron again next time around. NO, you can't run a country like you run a business, especially when the businessman in question is a weird hybrid of a moron and a criminal.
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US, Iran at odds on nuclear inspections, frozen assets in deal to end war
By Jarrett Renshaw and Tala Ramadan
Wed, June 24, 2026

LOWER MACUNGIE TOWNSHIP, Pennsylvania/DUBAI, June 23 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Iran had agreed to nuclear inspections into "infinity," while Tehran said it had made no such concession in negotiations, raising questions about the viability of their fragile peace deal.

The two countries, which ended a first round of negotiations in ‌Switzerland on Monday, also offered conflicting accounts about financial incentives for Iran, control of the Strait of Hormuz, and Israel's parallel war in Lebanon - all major aspects of their framework deal ‌signed last week aiming to end the war.

Nevertheless, Trump said negotiations with Iran were going smoothly. "We're getting along quite well," he said at a rally in Pennsylvania.

The United States also relaxed travel curbs on Iran's World Cup soccer team, allowing it to travel from ​Tijuana, Mexico, to Seattle two days before its next match instead of one.

In signs of withering domestic support for the war, Trump's poll numbers weakened while the Republican-controlled Senate defied the president and voted to halt the war, in a largely symbolic move that highlighted fissures in his party.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll found 35% of Americans think the U.S. is now in a weaker position with Iran than before the war, while 23% believe it is in a stronger position.

The Senate vote of 50-48 endorsed a resolution passed by the House of Representatives this month, reflecting growing concern even among some of Trump's Republicans about the unpopular conflict that began on February 28.

It ‌was the first time both chambers of Congress had passed a resolution ⁠directing a president to remove U.S. armed forces from hostilities under the War Powers Act, though it was not immediately clear how the votes might affect the conflict.

RESCUING SEAFARERS

Though prospects for a lasting peace are far from certain, the initial agreement between Washington and Tehran has allowed traffic to flow again through the strait, which typically ⁠handles one-fifth of global energy supply.

Trump said on Wednesday he had told the Justice Department to look into oil companies for not lowering pump prices in line with falling crude costs.

"Gasoline prices better start going down a lot faster than what I'm seeing!" he said on social media.

Oil prices fell more than 1% on Wednesday, extending this week's losses and trading near their lowest since before the war began on February 28.

The United Nations' shipping agency said it was ​working ​to evacuate 11,000 seafarers stranded when Iran closed the strategic waterway.

The agreement calls for Iran to allow traffic to ​flow freely for 60 days, though it has said it might impose tolls or ‌other fees on shipping subsequently.

In a joint statement on Tuesday, Iran and Oman, which controls the other side of the strait, stressed their "sovereign rights" in the waterway, adding that they would work together to manage traffic, along with associated costs.

Oman said it had coordinated with the International Maritime Organization to provide a temporary corridor for vessels seeking to transit the Strait of Hormuz.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, visiting Gulf allies unsettled by the peace deal, said Iran would not be allowed to charge tolls in the strait as part of any final agreement.

The deal calls for an immediate end to the war, including in Lebanon, lifting U.S. sanctions on Tehran and unfreezing Iranian assets held abroad. It also outlines a $300-billion investment fund for the Islamic Republic's reconstruction.

AT ODDS OVER NUCLEAR INSPECTIONS, FROZEN ASSETS

The framework itself sets no limits on Iran's nuclear program, ‌an issue to be tackled in 60 days of negotiations.

Trump claimed that Iran had agreed to allow international inspectors ​indefinite access to its damaged nuclear sites.

"Iran has fully and completely agreed to highest level Nuclear inspections long into the future (Infinity!!!)," ​Trump said on social media.

Iran denied it had discussed its nuclear program at the talks and ​said it had not agreed to invite International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors back to the country.

The two sides also disagreed on details of a provision that would give ‌Iran access to funds that have been frozen in overseas accounts.

Trump said any ​unfrozen assets would be used to buy food and ​medical supplies from the U.S., while Iran's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Ali Bahreini, said Iran would decide how to spend that money.

Washington has already agreed to waive sanctions on Iran for 60 days, allowing Tehran to sell oil and related products and receive payment for them.

Israel's parallel war against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon also remains a sticking point.

Bahreini said the deal requires ​Israel to withdraw its troops from Lebanon, while Israel has said it ‌will maintain a security zone in southern Lebanon and act to "neutralize" threats against Israeli soldiers and citizens.

Even as Israel and Lebanon renewed talks in Washington on Tuesday, Israeli gunfire killed ​two people in southern Lebanon, its civil defence and health ministry said, prompting Iran-backed Hezbollah to accuse Israel of violating a ceasefire that has largely held since Sunday.

(Reporting by Reuters ​bureaus; Writing by Lincoln Feast, Sharon Singleton and Clarence Fernandez; Editing by Gareth Jones, Cynthia Osterman and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Re-post: Will Hezbollah Mount a Coup Against the Lebanese State & Seize Power?

I am re-posting this writeup because it is becoming increasingly clear that Hezbollah risks losing its "resistance" pretext should Iran and the US make a deal. The tenor of Hezbollah's leadership commentary on is now extending beyond merely surviving the latest war. Like Trump, Hezbollah never admits defeat because victory for them is to survive total annihilation. 

Hezbollah's discourse now has become a frontal attack on the Lebanese State hierarchy, blaming it for colluding with Israel by engaging in negotiations with it, and accusing its critics of treason.

There is no question that there is no return to the status quo ante preceding the latest two years of war. Neither the Lebanese, nor Israel, nor the international community will countenance a resumption of an endless latent war between Hezbollah and Israel. This does not necessarily mean that peace will finally arrive to the tormented small country. 

Israel has clearly demonstrated its unwillingness to seize land it has invaded in the south because experience has shown it to be a very costly and unpopular option. But its leadership is standing up to Trump's demands that it ceases bombing Lebanese targets, and says that even under a ceasefire agreement, Israeli soldiers will hold on to territory they have seized and will not withdraw from south Lebanon, as Iran and Hezbollah say they are required by the Memorandum of Understanding  Which means that Israel prepares to occupy the Lebanese south - a Security Zone 10 km deep - by "remote control": Minimal presence of soldiers on the ground, coupled with unceasing bombing and destruction to prevent Hezbollah from reconstituting a new front.

Hemmed in by a Sunni-led Syria that is in theory hostile to Shiite Hezbollah on the north and east of Lebanon, by Israel on the south and west, and by the majority of the Lebanese population that has explicitly rejected Hezbollah's warmongering on behalf of Iran, Hezbollah will have to face two options: Either disarm voluntarily and somehow reintegrate the mainstream Lebanese political class as a demilitarized political party; or seek to ensure its survival as a "force" to be reckoned with that combined its military capacity with the political domination of the country.

As both the Sunni Muslims and the Christians of the country continue to hang on to a united but largely failed Greater Lebanon (as of 1920), but threaten to decentralize the state structure to escape Hezbollah's domination, Hezbollah might find itself isolated but still engaged in warfare with Israel that has occupied much of the Shiite heartland in the south. 

As Hezbollah claims yet another divine victory and is expressing undying gratitude to Iran for having defended Hezbollah's interests during the negotiations leading to the current agreement between the US and Iran, it seems likely that the Shiite community now high on its supposed victory will demand compensation for the sacrifices it made (thousands of dead operatives, a decimated leadership, and its villages and territories in the south and the east either occupied, destroyed or under constant bombing). It says it made those sacrifices for the "sake of Lebanon and its people" (the new slogan in Hezbollah's propaganda) when in the past its slogans were "leading the way to Jerusalem", it seems that Hezbollah has changed its focus from fighting the Israeli occupation of Palestine to demanding a bigger slice of the Lebanese pie. 

This may include rejecting the National Pact that divides the Lebanese communities (18 of them) into the duality of one Christian camp and one Muslim camp, and replace it with the triad of Christian, Sunni and Shiite. From the مناصفة ( a 50-50 division of power between Muslims and Christians) the Shiites will want a مثالثة (a 33-33-33 division of power between Sunnis, Shiites and Christians). I predict even a worse scenario where Hezbollah would actually seize power by force and impose its will on the rest of the Lebanese. A Hezbollah-led Lebanon will give Iran a beachhead on the Mediterranean.

Which is why Trump has suggested to relieve Israel of its failing attempts over decades to subdue Hezbollah, and instead assign that task to the Sunni-led Syrian regime. Just as the Assad regime was assigned the task to subdue Yasser Arafat's PLO in the Lebanon of the 1960s and 1970s. 

Whether a civil war ensues, as it did in 1975, remains to be seen. 

===========================================

[reposted]:

Israel has, as we write these lines, taken the entirety of the Lebanese Southern District. It is razing all the Shiite villages and towns to the ground south of the Litani and Zahrani rivers, such that, given enough time, nature would have re-asserted itself and all the boundaries, markers and hallmarks between villages and houses would have disappeared. Unless of course, Israel organizes a land rush for all the Yahweh-crazy Zionist settlers and invites them to build their kibbutzim and settlements. 

During antiquity, the city of Tyre in particular was both a friend and an enemy of the invading Hebrew nomads and their kings David and Solomon circa 800 BC. King Hiram of Tyre did help the Hebrew kings who, as nomadic desert-dwelling people, admitted to him to living in miserable goat-skin tents and being ignorant of masonry. Hiram sent cedar wood, engineers and masons to Jerusalem and built them palaces and the first Hebrew Temple in Jerusalem (modeled on the Melkart Temple of the Tyrian superpower). But when Phoenician Princess Jezebel, daughter of King Ithobaal of Tyre married King Ahab of Israel, she brought with her the worship of the Phoenician deities (Baal, Adonis, Asherah) and displaced the worship of Yahweh. The Hebrew religious conservatives of the time panicked and rebelled against her and killed her. From that point forward, ultra-powerful Tyre became a much maligned neighbor for the Hebrews and the Torah is replete with curses and hateful comments against it. It is even suggested that this breakup of the Hebrew-Phoenician alliance and the threat of the Assyrian empire invasion of the region is what prompted the Phoenicians of Tyre to create their mighty colony in Carthage in today's Tunisia.  

Back to May 2026. Israel appears to have no intention of withdrawing any time soon, if at all, which means that the Lebanese Shiites who have fled north and are now sheltering among the other communities (Maronites, Sunnis, Druze...) would need to find a more "permanent" place to settle in the near future. The other communities have been welcoming them on humanitarian grounds, even though there is a deep political resentment at Hezbollah's waging wars despite the objections of these other communities.

Back in the 1980s-1990s, Israel occupied a strip along the border with the help of local residents (both Maronites and Shiites) who had been cut off from the central government by the Palestinians first, then by Hezbollah. In that situation, Shiite villages remained relatively intact and became incubators of a guerilla warfare by Hezbollah which forced the Israelis to withdraw in 2000, turning the whole charade into a victory for the Iranian terrorist militia. 

This time, the Israelis seem to have learned from that bitter experience. This time, Israel is completely erasing villages and towns from the map, eliminating any hope for the Shiite villager supporters of Hezbollah to ever return, let alone wage a guerilla war against the new Israeli occupation. Israel is thus managing a minimalist occupation, leaving troops briefly on the ground only for operational purposes and relying mostly on air assaults. 

The question on the minds of the Lebanese is: What is Hezbollah going to do now that it has been deprived of its most valuable asset, the Shiite villages bordering Israel? 

The welcome mat of the other communities will sooner or later have to be removed. Schools, churches, official buildings... will have to be taken back. Tent camps for the refugees are typically installed on open terrain often belonging to the State or to religious orders. Residents of some neighborhoods are already contesting setting up these camps in the middle of residential neighborhoods, fearing a repeat of the Palestinian exodus of 1948 and 1967 during which refugees set up camps initially temporarily, thinking they'd be returning to their villages and towns that the Zionists ethnically cleansed. The 1975 War in Lebanon was essentially fought to prevent Yasser Arafat's PLO from taking over of the state, and the refugee camps around Beirut that he had turned into fortified and heavily armed holdouts were dislodged at great cost: Sabra, Shatila, Tel Zaatar, Jisr El-Pasha, Dbayyieh and others. No one wants a repeat of those events, and the otherwise jaded Lebanese have been adamant at preventing the creation of such camps.

Where will the Shiites go? They still have a dominating presence in the eastern Bekaa Valley and in the Hermel further north. They could conceivably end up settling there among other pro-Hezbollah Shiites. 

There are rumors, mostly from radical right-wing pro-Trump Maronites in the US who vehicle Zionist-inspired ideas and who are stupid enough to think that they can clone the strictly Jewish model of the Zionists in their colony in Palestine and set up a strictly Christian Lebanon that would have to constantly live on a war footing, when they are unproductive, disorganized, disunited, lack the organizational skills of the Zionist universe, and have no "interests" whatsoever to entice the West to help them. Still, the Zionists are prodding these idiotic Maronites to fall into their trap and believe in such an illusion whose tenor seems to fit well with the Zionist bullshit plans of redrawing the maps of the region. According to their hallucinations, the pro-Trump Lebanese Maronites think that the Lebanese Shiites may be somehow "induced" to leave Lebanon altogether, perhaps settle in Shiite-friendly areas of Syria, Iraq and even further afield in Iran. 

If these ideas have any currency, it is in the hope by these Zionizing Maronites that a Lebanon emptied or truncated of its Shiites would by default revert to the Maronite-dominated Lebanon that existed between WWI and 1975. Just like an Israel voided of its Palestinians would by default become a purely "Jewish" state. An amputated Greater Lebanon that would shrink back to the majority Maronite, semi-independent, Mount Lebanon Governorate , a.k.a. "Smaller Lebanon", that existed between 1860 and 1914 is something many Christians in Lebanon seem to be longing for after decades of bitter and coerced coexistence with the Muslims. 

To begin with, the latter wanted to be part of Syria and never wanted to be part of that Maronite-dominated Lebanon. They spent most of the post-1943 independence decades betraying and undermining the agreed-upon coexistence formula - neutrality, no East-no West - by shoving Lebanon into "Arab nationalist" causes that were given precedence over the agreed upon neutrality: Nasser of Egypt's revolution (the US landed 10,000 US Marines in 1958 in Beirut to protect Lebanon against Nasser), the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party (SSNP) of Syria that mounted a coup in 1961, the Baath Party of Syria's Assad regime that struck a deal with Kissinger in 1974 to protect Israel's seizure of the Golan and destabilize Lebanon, the Palestinian Liberation Organization of Yasser Arafat that waged a war against the Lebanese state (1973), and finally the Iranian terror militia of Hezbollah (beginning in 1982) that continues to this day to dislocate Lebanon into a dysfunctional degraded State. 

It is understandable that the Maronite Catholics of Lebanon want to separate from the Muslims, given the failure of integrating the latter into the Greater Lebanon monstrosity created by the Maronite Church in 1919. But separation does not need to be done a-la-Zionism, i.e. with brutality and violence. What the Maronites of Lebanon must do to survive free is to unify their positions, cease their chronic internecine infighting, abandon their feudal-tribal-sectarian socio-political organization, agree on a common objective, speak with international stakeholders with one voice, and politically negotiate their separation with the Muslims. The dysfunctional Greater Lebanon that created a state but failed to create a nation must be abandoned in favor of a decentralized confederation or federation in which the districts (some Christian, some Muslim), would become self-ruling, an idea that is gaining ground. 

For now, the bigger question is what will Hezbollah do "politically" now that it is deprived of its territorial asset? It is the only sectarian militia that is openly operational in the country. Neither the Sunni Muslims, nor the Maronite Catholics, nor the Druze exhibit signs of militarization: As far as one can tell, no one has a militia other than Shiite Hezbollah. But everyone fears Hezbollah. So, a civil war between the communities is possible but unlikely.

What is more likely is that Hezbollah might seize power by toppling the Lebanese government of Joseph Aoun and Nawaf Salam, split the army by calling on the Shiite soldiers of the regular army to quit and join its ranks, something the Sunni Muslims, then allied with the PLO against their own government, did in 1976 when a Sunni Lieutenant by the name of Ahmed Khatib led a sedition, created the Arab Army of Lebanon allied with the PLO and Syria, and proceeded to attack regular army barracks across the country.

The Lebanese army is poorly equipped, even though the Americans have been bragging for the last two decades about gifting it useless scrap and junk leftovers of ancient wars' vintage. So any resistance or opposition by the State and its army to a Hezbollah takeover is unlikely to turn things around. Hezbollah's existence rests upon its anointing itself as a "resistance" movement. By seizing power, it would re-constitute for itself a new resistance front against Israel's new and improved occupation, this time across the new "border" along the Litani and Zahrani rivers, assuming the Israelis stop their advance there.

But without its own Shiite "territory", community and villages, Hezbollah can only launch this new front if it has sole power over the country. Sunni, Maronite or Druze villages and towns would not willingly welcome a Hezbollah resistance from within their districts. 

One thing is certain: Israel will not abandon the Lebanese south this time; it may even annex it as it has done with the Syrian Golan. There will have to be a rearrangement of the pawns inside the Lebanese chessboard. For now, the Lebanese wait and see.  

Obama's 2015 JCPOA Was Much Better for the US than Trump's Surrender MoU with Iran

Trump's "deal" with Iran gives it billions it badly needs, lifts sanctions, lifts the US blockade, allows Iran to begin export-import trade, makes America's Arab Gulf Girls in their flowing robes pay $300 billion to rebuild what the US destroyed in Iran, allows Iran to sell its oil and make more billions that will allow it to heal its economy and the regime to reassert its domination after years of sanctions, etc... in exchange for what?

Opening the Strait of Hormuz? But this was never an issue to begin with. Smartass Trump awakened the Iranians to their possible extortion of the world by closing the Strait. In other words, Trump helped create the Strait of Hormuz problem. 

Iran's concessions in the MoU are only a slew of PROMISES, not tangible immediately-implemented concessions, in the hastily concluded MoU ... I repeat: Iran made only PROMISES in Trump's MoU that were already binding concessions in Obama's 2015 JCPOA deal, but not here because they still have to be negotiated. Trump is giving the Iranian regime 60 days to heal, rebuild its arsenal, rebuild its nuclear facilities, refurbish Hezbollah in Lebanon, AND do whatever the heck it wants to do while tergiversating and delaying and procrastinating. 

And all of this because Trump suddenly was seized by delirium tremens convulsions at the prospect of losing the midterm elections and becoming a sitting duck targeted by Congressional Democrats by innumerable hearings, investigations, and prosecutions. He wants to go into the November election period having made his herd of MAGA morons forget about his war - and his defeat - by Iran. You see, his only alternative to his speedy surrender was to order a land invasion of Iran. His Zionist handlers thought they could push the village idiot and incite the deranged orangutan into the war. Which they did. What they didn't know was how to maintain their control of the unpredictable coward imbecile when he suddenly balked at being bamboozled.

I suggest Donald Dumb rewrite his book and name it the FART OF THE DEAL. 

=============================================

KEVIN SHALVEY
Tue, June 23, 2026 

President Donald Trump announced "major combat operations" against Iran on Feb. 28, with massive joint U.S.-Israeli strikes targeting military, government and infrastructure sites.

Delegations from the United States and Iran arrived over the weekend at the Bürgenstock resort in Switzerland, where they entered negotiations aimed at a war-ending deal based on a memorandum of understanding signed last week by both countries.

President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Iranian officials agreed "fully and completely" to allow inspections of its nuclear sites, saying the Strait of Hormuz would remain open as long as Tehran held to those terms.

Iran's Foreign Minister spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, said early on Tuesday that Tehran does not "have any plans" to allow International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to access sites damaged during the war, according to Iranian state media.

Elisabeth Mandl/Reuters - PHOTO: Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency Raffael Grossi speaks to the media on the opening day of his agency's quarterly Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, Austria, June 8, 2026.

Despite Iran's "protestations and false statements to the contrary," officials in Tehran have "fully and completely agreed to highest level Nuclear inspections long into the future (Infinity!!!)," Trump said on social media on Tuesday. "This will insure 'Nuclear Honesty.' If they did not agree to this, there would be no further negotiations!"

"Based on this and other major concessions being made by Iran, I have agreed to allow the Hormuz Strait to remain OPEN, with no further Naval Blockade," Trump added. "However, all ships are remaining in place should it be necessary to reinstitute the Blockade, which seems, at this point, highly unlikely."

Iran and the United States agreed to allow traffic through the strait as part of the terms of the memorandum of understanding signed last week by both countries.

Iran does not "have any plans" to allow International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to access sites damaged during the war, the spokesperson for Iran's Foreign Ministry, Esmail Baghaei, said on Tuesday, according to Iranian state media.

"Fundamentally, there is no established protocol for such a situation," he said, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency.

Iran's delegation did not meet with IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi during the U.S.-Iranian talks in Switzerland, IRNA reported.

Vice President JD Vance said on Monday during a news conference in Lucerne, Switzerland, that Iran had agreed to allow the United Nations-affiliated IAEA inspectors to enter their country.

"The Iranians have agreed to invite IAEA inspectors back into their country," Vance told reporters at Bürgenstock, the Swiss resort where the talks were held.

He added, "That is a major milestone for the American people, and the first step in permanently denuclearizing or permanently ending a nuclear weapons program in Iran, and that's exactly what we wanted to do, that's exactly what we asked to happen."

-ABC News' Jamie Dorrington and Fritz Farrow

In addition to speaking with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, Secretary of State Rubio also held a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday to discuss "solidifying" a ceasefire and "future talks," a U.S. official confirmed.

As a result of those calls, the U.S. "started a monitoring mechanism via CENTCOM so that our policymakers have real time and accurate information about fighting in Lebanon," the official said.

The official also confirmed that another round of talks between representatives of Israel and Lebanon are set to take place in Washington this week over the course of three days.

-ABC News' Shannon Kingston

Vice President JD Vance left the first days of technical negotiations with Iran projecting optimism, telling reporters as he left Switzerland that he felt "great about the progress that we made."

"The fundamental thing we got is, No. 1, we set up the mechanism to ensure not only the Straits of Hormuz are open, but will stay open," Vance said.


Nathan Howard/Reuters - PHOTO: Vice President JD Vance speaks to members of the media before boarding Air Force Two, after the U.S. and Iran held high-level talks at the Lake Lucerne Summit, at Emmen Military Air Base, Emmen, Switzerland, June 22, 2026.

"... No. 2, we actually set up the right mechanism to ensure the regional cease fire to manage the inevitable conflicts that will come up," Vance said.

Vance reiterated his earlier comments in which he said Iran will be allowing IAEA inspectors into the country.

Vance said the U.S. will have to "see" what Iran "actually let[s] the inspectors do" once they are in Iran.

"We have the Iranians allowing weapons inspectors, nuclear inspectors into their country for the first time in a long time. We're obviously going to bolster those inspections, that inspection regime, to make sure they can never have a nuclear weapon," Vance said.

Inspections were part of the Obama-era agreement that Trump canceled during his first term, after which Iran stopped letting international inspectors in.

-ABC News' Emily Chang, Hannah Demissie and Michelle Stoddart

Hours after Vice President JD Vance announced from Switzerland that Iran agreed to let international nuclear inspectors into the country, President Donald Trump said on social media that Iran will have to "agree to have Major Weapons Inspections" for a long period of time.

"Everybody is fully aware that Iran will agree to have Major Weapons Inspections in order to ensure 'Nuclear Honesty' long into the future," Trump said in the post.

Inspections were part of the Obama-era agreement that Trump canceled during his first term, after which Iran stopped letting international inspectors in.

-ABC News' Michelle Stoddart

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is scheduled to visit the Middle East this week for the first time since the war with Iran began, with stops planned in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain, according to the State Department.

He is slated to leave Tuesday and return on Thursday.

-ABC News' Shannon Kingston

The Trump administration has formally issued a waiver on the sale on Iranian oil, following through on a promise from the Memorandum of Understanding signed by President Donald Trump.

The waiver legalizes the sale of Iranian oil and allows transactions involving vessels that had been previously sanctioned.

The sanctions will be waived for a 60-day period beginning Monday and ending at 12:01 a.m. ET on Aug. 21.

The waiver also allows for "any payment of funds owed to Iran, the Government of Iran, or any blocked person for the purchase of crude oil" to be made in U.S. dollars.

The waiver does not, however, allow the sanctions on Iranian oil to be lifted for people in North Korea, Cuba and parts of Ukraine like Crimea.

-ABC News' Shannon Kingston and Michelle Stoddart

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Israel Defense Forces will remain in the security zone in southern Lebanon as "long as necessary" to protect residents in the north and the citizens of Lebanon.


Abbas Fakih/AFP via Getty Images - PHOTO: Smoke rises from the site of a string of Israeli airstrikes that targeted the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh on June 20, 2026.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei said on Monday that technical talks between experts have begun in Switzerland under the framework of the memorandum of understanding, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported on Monday.

The technical talks follow Sunday's discussions between high-level U.S. and Iranian delegations. Those talks ended early on Monday, Pakistani Prime Minister Shebhaz Sharif said.

Baqaei told IRNA that Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran's deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, is leading the Iranian delegation in the technical negotiations.

According to a joint statement issued by the mediators, the technical working groups will focus on nuclear issues, sanctions, monitoring mechanisms and dispute-resolution procedures, with negotiations set to continue in Switzerland through the end of the week.

-ABC News' Somayeh Malekian and Victoria Beaule

The Iranian delegation in Switzerland has left the talks and is heading back to Tehran, Iran's state media reported early on Monday, citing the Iranian Foreign Ministry.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran's parliament, who is leading the Iranian delegation, "left the building where the negotiations were held on Monday, following approximately 18 hours of intensive dialogue and consultations," Iran's state broadcaster reported.

-ABC News' Victoria Beaule

=================================================

And.... here is what funny guy Jon Stewart had to say about Trump's toilet paper MoU:

On the Daily Show, Stewart joked about how Vice-Moron JD Vance was snubbed by Qatari leaders while in Switzerland for peace talks.

"Well, that is awkward," said Stewart, after playing footage of the vice-president looking awkward as world leaders exchanged hugs and greetings. "JD Vance really answers the question, 'What if a middle school dance were a person?  

"Things just went from bad to wallflower with Vance getting more and more exasperated, as the mean girls just couldn't see that he has a lot to offer too," Stewart added.

"So basically, JD Vance is just there to pick up the white flag, get it signed, hand out a couple of orange slices, call it a game," joked Stewart.

The US has pledged to help create a $300bn reconstruction fund for Iran, as well as to unfreeze the country's assets and allow it to resume selling oil.

"So the 'hard line, extremist regime' of Iran gets a nuclear stockpile, missiles and money?" asked Stewart with confusion. "Iran is a circumcision away from becoming Israel."

Vance has announced that Iran has allowed International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors back into its country as a result of the US peace deal, saying "that is a major milestone for the American people."

"Oh yeah, that's a big milestone," said Stewart sarcastically. "We haven't had nuclear inspectors in Iran since, oh, when you started bombing them last year.

"The Iran inspectors only went in there after the JCPOA, which Obama negotiated, and they only left when we attacked Iran."

Trump has called Obama's deal "the worst deal ever negotiated of any kind".

Stewart said: "I guess the theory is: why would you trade smaller concessions to Iran for peace, when we could instead lose a war with them and make bigger concessions?



"Well, I hope you learned your lesson, Iran," he joked. "There's plenty more concessions where that came from!"

Vance said that unfrozen Iranian assets would in fact benefit the US as they would be spent on American soy, wheat and corn, calling it a "classic Trump deal".

"Oh it's a classic Trump deal," said Stewart. "Announce a bold action with grandiose ambition, and then shit the bed and then state confidently that bed shit was the goal all along. And finally, name the bed after Trump."

More Senate GOP Morons Seek Redemption Ahead of Midterms

For more than a decade now, they've protected him. They allowed him to turn the GOP into a MAGA tribe beholden only to him. They repeatedly voted against impeaching him. They defended his abusive and illegal breaches of the law. They colluded with him in his insurrection and seditious attack on Congress in January 2021, forsaking whatever principles they claim they have and peddling favors from him. 

For a while, they were afraid of him. He could unseat them in elections. He could sue them. He could unleash his White Christian supremacy terrorists or his Zionist lobby against them. The bent and kissed the ring.

But now, all "good things must have an end". The American people are sick and tired of the Great Moron. They are tired of the bad economy. They are tired of not being able to afford groceries while the Great Moron and his family and friends are raking billions in blatantly crude deals under the guise of making war and peace decisions. Farmers are saying it is too late to fix the damage his tariffs have done to their livelihoods.

So, the crawling cold-blooded GOP-MAGA reptiles who found warmth under The Great Moron's cankled feet are beginning to smell the stench of their incestuous relationship with their criminal felon leader. And slowly, one by one, they are peeling off the MAGA tattoo and pretending to oppose him, now that it is too late after enabling his destruction of America's standing in the world, and now that they know the tide has turned and they face impending doom in November. They walked with Trump to protect their seats. Now they are walking against him to protect their seats. What principles! What character! What integrity! 

===========================================


Trump relationship with Senate GOP crumbling after repeated clashes
Alexander Bolton
Mon, June 22, 2026


President Trump's relationship with key Senate Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), is crumbling after repeated clashes over strategy on an array of issues. The two sides are splitting further apart as the midterm election nears and GOP lawmakers fear the potential loss of both chambers of Congress.

GOP senators say there has been a major loss of trust between the president and many members of their conference as the White House has repeatedly blindsided Thune and other Republican leaders.

Trump will have a chance to discuss his differences with Republican senators in person this Wednesday, when he is invited to speak to the Steering Committee on Capitol Hill. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), the Steering Committee's chair and a close ally of the president, extended the invitation.

The president undercut GOP leaders last week when he suddenly ordered Jay Clayton, his nominee to serve as director of national intelligence, to not show up at his Senate confirmation hearing. The reversal of the plan left Thune and other Republicans dumbfounded.

Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), who lost his Senate Republican primary runoff by 27 points after Trump blasted him as "very disloyal" and endorsed his opponent, said Republican colleagues are feeling betrayed by what some of them view as the president's lack of respect for them as senators and, in most cases, loyal Republicans.

"In my case, there was no real reason given my support for the president's agenda," Cornyn said, describing the confusion caused by Trump's unexpected attacks on him during the Texas GOP primary runoff, which came even though Cornyn had voted with Trump 99.3 percent of the time.

"When he endorsed my primary opponent, people realized you could never do enough to stop the president from endorsing your primary opponent. I think that destroyed what remained of any kind of trust. I think that changed the playing field in a way where you see a lot more what I would call transactional relationships as opposed to one based on trust," Cornyn said, describing the deteriorating relationship between Senate Republicans and Trump.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said Trump hurts Senate Republicans' chances of keeping their majority every time he ambushes them with a surprise announcement or keeps them in the dark about a key development.

"When we're five months out from a major election [when] we historically have headwinds, you've got to be pitch-perfect and you got to execute with precision. We can't surprise the president and the administration cannot surprise us. Every time we do that between now and November, we're diminishing our chances of holding our majorities," Tillis said.

He cited the extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the annual defense authorization bill as must-pass bills that are now in limbo.

Republican senators are growing more and more frustrated over Trump's unrelenting calls to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act, which would require people to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote and to show photo ID when voting, despite the fact that it has already failed five times on the floor.

Trump surprised Republicans again when he posted on social media Wednesday morning that he would not sign an extension of FISA's enhanced surveillance authorities unless the SAVE America Act is attached to it — something that is a complete nonstarter with Republicans.

Cornyn on Friday circulated a quote from The Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel, who criticized Trump for making unrealistic demands related to FISA that could risk national security and warned that failing to work constructively with GOP lawmakers is "accelerating his lame-duck status."

"Here's where things go off the rails: When the president fails to acknowledge some hills simply can't be held and charges up anyway. That's what happened in the fight over Bill Pulte, wiretapping and the SAVE America Act. His no-win standoff with his Senate GOP risks more than national security. It's accelerating his lame-duck status," Cornyn posted on the social platform X.

Democrats have said they will refuse to pass the FISA 702 reauthorization as long as Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency — whom they've accused of weaponizing mortgage records — is serving as acting national intelligence director.

Trump left Thune and other key Republican senators twisting in the wind last week by ignoring their requests for a briefing on the administration's memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Iran, leaving them unprepared to answer criticism of the deal.

Thune told reporters on Tuesday that he expected to get a briefing later in the week on the details of the deal with Iran, but that briefing didn't come before the White House released the MOU, leaving Senate Republicans scrambling to interpret it themselves.

The majority leader said "we're trying to get" the text of the memorandum, yet many GOP senators — except some of Trump's closest allies who participated in a call with the White House — were left in the dark.

Now Republican senators are facing questions about why the White House is so out of step with their leadership, and they are struggling to come up with answers.

When asked why Trump had derailed Clayton's hearing to serve as director of national intelligence, which Thune had hoped would clear the way for a speedy confirmation vote and a follow-up vote on a bill to extend FISA's lapsed authorizations, Thune could only mutter: "Good question."

"I've never been asked to slow a nomination down before," he said with an uncomfortable laugh when asked when Clayton's nomination would move and why Trump slowed it down.

A senior Republican aide said GOP senators are becoming numb to what many of them view as the president's irrational moves — such as the decision to block Clayton and to push for $1 billion in taxpayer money for the new White House ballroom.

"This is par for the course. Before, members might be appalled, then it becomes that members are frustrated. Now, it's members are resigned to these type of decisions that are inexplicable, there's not a good explanation," the aide said of Trump's sudden opposition to moving Clayton's nomination and his doubling down on attaching the SAVE America Act to the FISA bill.

"This is entirely an unforced error," the aide said.

Last week's snubs came after the Trump administration surprised GOP senators by floating a $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund just as they were prepared to move forward on a $70 billion budget reconciliation bill.

That move provoked a revolt, with GOP senators refusing to debate the reconciliation bill before Memorial Day, as Thune had planned, because they didn't want to vote on politically dangerous amendments to scrap the "weaponization" fund while acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the idea was still on the table.

Last month's meeting between Blanche and Senate Republicans in the Capitol's Mansfield Room turned into what one senator described as a "screaming fest."

The tensions have cooled since then between Blanche and Republican senators, but he still faces a rocky path to getting confirmed as attorney general for a longer term.

Just one Republican "no" vote on the Judiciary Committee would be enough to sink him.

He also may have a challenge in getting enough support on the Senate floor from Republicans such as Sens. Bill Cassidy (La.), Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), who are undecided on how to vote.

And Trump is starting to get more pushback from unexpected corners of the Senate GOP conference in recent days.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who is usually in lockstep with Trump, raised eyebrows on Wednesday when he balked at Trump's call on social media to cancel Clayton's confirmation hearing.

Cotton initially said he would still go forward with the hearing despite Trump's early morning rant on social media.

Cotton then postponed the hearing when it became clear that Clayton would not show up, calling Trump's interference "regrettable."

The Arkansas senator, who is the third-ranking member of GOP leadership as Senate Republican Conference chair, went on Fox News on Thursday to vent his concerns over Trump's peace deal with Iran.

He warned that unfreezing tens of billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets and lifting sanctions on Iranian oil exports could backfire on U.S. national security interests.

"We know that this terrorist revolutionary regime is not going to spend that money on daycares or on hospitals. They're going to use it to rebuild their drone stockpiles, their missiles, to fund Hamas and to fund Hezbollah," he said of Iran's leadership.

On Friday, when Hezbollah forces struck an Israeli tank in southern Lebanon, killing four Israeli soldiers, Cotton wryly commented on social media: "Apparently no one informed Hezbollah of the 'ceasefire.'"