Trump’s Iran “Deal”: A Term Sheet Sold as Peace

Trump is selling a “historic agreement” with Iran that, in reality, is an unfinished draft — a framework memo, not a signed treaty. He boasts that the war is “over” and Iran has “agreed never to have a nuclear weapon,” then quietly downgrades it to “95 percent” done and pushes the hardest issues into a 60‑day extension. On the Iranian side, officials admit key demands aren’t in the text and no competent body has actually approved it; legally, Tehran hasn’t agreed to anything.

The leaked draft looks less like an American win and more like a managed pause. It extends the ceasefire, folds Lebanon into the package, phases out the naval blockade and reopens Hormuz in a way that leaves Iran central to shipping security. It promises sanctions relief on oil, gas and petrochemicals, full access to Iranian financial assets, unfreezing of $24 billion (half up front), and a U.S.‑backed “recovery” plan of at least $300 billion. Missiles and proxy militias are simply taken off the table.

Even the nuclear “victory” is marketing. Enriched uranium stays on Iranian soil; it is to be diluted under monitoring, not shipped out. That lets Trump claim the weapons potential is neutralized, while Iran keeps the technology, infrastructure and know‑how to ramp back up if the deal collapses. In Tehran, the agreement is openly framed as a way to buy time and resources in an ongoing confrontation, not as reconciliation.

Crucially, Washington didn’t get here by strength alone. Gulf mediators — Qatar, the UAE, Pakistan’s military — pushed hard to stop a larger war that threatened their own economies and projects. Trump, meanwhile, has spent months announcing that a deal is “days away,” reportedly doing so nearly 40 times in about three months, each time as if it were imminent. That gap between rhetoric and reality is the tell: this is not a final peace, it’s a tactical cease‑fire with good PR.

In practice, both sides get what they need short term. Trump can stand in front of cameras and declare a “historic” success instead of choosing between escalation and retreat. Iran gets money, partial sanctions relief and a breathing space, while keeping its missiles, proxies and nuclear latency. The war doesn’t end; it just moves into a managed, more profitable phase — dressed up as an almost‑but‑not‑quite agreement that exists more in speeches than in law.

#IranWar #Trump #nuclearDeal #sanctions #Hormuz #fakeDemocracy

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Musk Hits the Trillion Dollar Bar

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SpaceX made the biggest stock market debut in history on Friday after nearly two and a half decades as a private company.

Public trading began around midday with a starting share price of $150, which quickly jumped by a double digit percentage and sent the company’s valuation above $2tn. The company’s initial public offering made the company’s CEO, Musk, the world’s first trillionaire.

It is certainly hard to believe that a little company that started in a warehouse in El Segundo is now going public with the largest IPO ever,” Musk said in an address at SpaceX’s headquarters. He reiterated the company’s mission to “make humanity multiplanetary” and “take the fiction out of science fiction”.

Executives rang the bell to open trading as Elton John’s Rocket Man played on the floor of the Nasdaq exchange.

“Today, we make history again. We have a history of making history,” said SpaceX’s president, Gwynne Shotwell, from the exchange building.

Shotwell announced that the company had launched a Falcon 9 rocket on Friday morning from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, to take 29 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit.

Musk, the founder of SpaceX, has a large stake in the company as majority shareholder, so if investors’ enthusiasm validates the eye-popping valuation during Friday trading, he took title of the world’s first-ever trillionaire, with Forbes estimating his net worth at $1.1tn shortly after trading began.

The mogul is also the CEO of Tesla, which is valued at $1.2tn, and his stake in the EV maker is worth around $300bn.

SpaceX’s IPO comes in what is predicted to be a banner year for public offerings of artificial intelligence companies, a group the rocket maker is part of as the acquirer of Musk’s AI startup, xAI.

Rivals OpenAI and Anthropic have also filed to go public sometime this year and are predicted to raise record sums nearing $1tn, which would orient the US stock market heavily towards AI companies.

#musk #trillion #spaceX #company

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Musk has said that the reason SpaceX is seeking to go public, raising enormous sums of money, is to be able to obtain the capital necessary to further explore space and create human colonies on other planets.

“Our mission is to build the systems and technologies necessary to make life multiplanetary, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars,” SpaceX said in its investor prospectus.

SpaceX is a conglomeration of several of Musk’s businesses, including the satellite maker and internet service provider Starlink, xAI, social media platform X and the SpaceX rocket business.

While expansive, the company is not profitable. Last year, SpaceX pulled in a revenue of $18.7bn, while recording an operating loss of $4.3bn.

For comparison, social media company Meta generated revenue of more than $200bn last year with a net income upwards of $60bn.
SpaceX’s IPO has market watchers on high alert.

Along with the lack of profitability, some analysts say such a big valuation for a company that’s burning cash on its AI buildout – xAI is spending big on datacenters – and is predominantly governed by one person – Musk, who commands roughly 85% of SpaceX’s voting shares – potentially makes for a volatile asset.

The company’s debut on Wall Street could also bolster its grip on the financial system. Its shares will reportedly be distributed into index funds shortly after its IPO, far quicker than most companies going public, though notably not into the S&P 500.

Those funds hold people’s retirement savings and pension plans, meaning individual investors could be unwittingly exposed to financial risk if SpaceX’s share price plummets.

For SpaceX employees, however, the record-shattering valuation means they are about to get a lot richer. More than 4,400 current and former employees are expected to become millionaires with the IPO, according to the New York Times, with 400 of them each securing $100m or more.

Gabriel Zucman, a French economist who studies extreme wealth, said the consolidated capital brought on by the SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic IPOs could have profound effects on the economy and society – the like of which hasn’t been seen since the last century.

“There is a fundamental tension in democratic societies between extreme wealth … and the very possibility of a well-functioning democracy,” Zucman said.

“After World War II, it looked like extreme wealth belonged to the past,” but now, he said, “the AI boom is minting billionaires by the day” and the first trillionaires are coming into view.

#musk #trillion #spaceX #company

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Trump’s Shit Talks Rile Iran After Talking Time and Again About a Peace Agreement

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Trump has said the US and Iran are on the verge of a peace agreement. Oil prices are down, and the stock market is up. This comes only hours after Trump warned Iran was about to be struck “VERY HARD”, a threat that had sent oil prices up and stocks down.

It has been another ride on the Trump rollercoaster, keeping traders on edge, most of the world poorer, and people of the Middle East constantly whiplashing between fear and hope. But whether the ride veers up or down, the management always makes money.

This is the 39th time that the president has declared US-Iranian talks to be on the point of fruition (other counts have the figure higher – it depends on what you term a prediction or just a hint).

On five of those occasions, the promise of peace has involved walking back the threat of mass devastation, including the destruction of critical civilian infrastructure, a near-certain war crime if carried out.

As he was menacing Iran with “very hard” strikes on Thursday night, Trump also pledged the US would take over “total control” of the country’s oil and gas markets and seize the island of Kharg.

He has threatened the capture of Kharg, a focal point of Iran’s hydrocarbon industry, several times before, although in this instance the threat was made while actually bombing Iran, in a tit-for-tat exchange with Tehran in which a critical reservoir and water tanks were badly damaged in the drought-stricken south, a war crime if intentional.

By Thursday afternoon however, the prospect of mass destruction had evaporated as quickly as it had materialised.

I have, as President of the United States of America, cancelled the scheduled strikes and bombings against Iran this evening,” Trump declared on his Truth Social platform as if providing his full capitalised title added any weight to the statement.

The air of optimism was reinforced on Friday afternoon by a White House briefing that a text was in place which both the US and Iran could live with. US officials echoed the president’s prediction that a signing ceremony could be held in a matter of days.

Iran’s foreign ministry was less definite, saying that the proposed agreement was being studied by the country’s “decision-making bodies”, but the oil price fell below $90 a barrel nonetheless.

No matter how many times Trump predicts conflagration or diplomatic breakthrough, the markets still obediently bob up and down like a trained seal.

It is a guaranteed response that represents an opportunity to make big, easy money for anyone with advance knowledge of presidential announcements.

After so many false dawns and hoax Armageddons, why are traders still reacting to Trump’s rhetoric? One theory is that, while individual traders are no suckers, they suspect that some of their competitors might be, so react rapidly to presidential statements to get ahead of the curve.

After all, one day there will be a deal. Trumps’ on-off signals are not being sent in a vacuum, but in the midst of talks between the two sides intended to turn the ceasefire, which has mostly held since April, into something more permanent.

According to reports from the region, the gaps in those talks are indeed getting smaller in the past few days.

The focus is on a limited memorandum of understanding (MoU), putting off nuclear negotiations for later and focusing on opening the strait of Hormuz, a vital route for global trade.

The most immediate impasse has been about cash. Tehran has no confidence Trump would keep his word in any deal so wants to be paid up front from a $24bn tranche of an estimated $100bn of its assets frozen around the world, in return for lifting its blockade on the strait of Hormuz.

#trump #iran #threats #peace #deal #agreement

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The US wants rewards to follow tangible progress, but the administration has a fundamental problem with releasing Iranian assets.

Trump and other top Republicans have spent years lambasting Obama for providing unfrozen assets to Iran in the form of pallets of cash as part of a 2015 nuclear deal, which was successful in curbing Iran’s programme until Trump walked out of it in 2018.

The workaround being discussed, according to a source briefed on the talks, involves a line of credit from a bank in a Gulf state issued against Iran’s $100bn of frozen assets as collateral. It will fool only those who want to be fooled, but that would include the administration’s defenders on the American political stage.

The second major sticking point is how much detail about nuclear issues should be included in the MoU.

The US wants concrete parameters including a moratorium on uranium enrichment of 15 years or so, and arrangements for the disposal of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

Trump may have shown the way for a possible fudge by insisting that the deal will ensure “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon”. That is something Tehran might agree to.

Iran’s renunciation of atomic arms was once reinforced by religious edict, or fatwa, but the supreme leader who issued that fatwa, Ali Khamenei, was killed by an Israeli bomb in the first seconds of the US-Israeli war on Iran on 28 February.

A compromise MoU along similar lines appeared close to agreement in late May, but Trump helped derail it by suddenly moving the goalposts, including the suggestion that the regional guarantors of the agreement normalise relations with Israel as a gesture of gratitude for the suspension of hostilities.

Throwing last-minute surprises into negotiations has long been a Trump tactic in business and US politics. It has not worked in the Iran talks. Instead, the president has sometimes behaved as a finicky eater faced with a stark menu of two unpalatable options: all-out war or messy compromise.

He has noisily wavered between choosing one or the other in the hope of being presented with something more to his taste, but that has yet to happen.

That may be true. The internal dynamics of the Tehran regime were murky before the bombing started, but now they are virtually a black box.

The one certainty is that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the principal target of US-Israeli decapitation bombing, has emerged stronger in relation to the other power center. It is unclear whether Khamenei’s successor, his badly injured son Mojtaba Khamenei, is any more than a figurehead.

Dead leaders have been replaced and domestic unrest has been suppressed. The war has arguably made that suppression easier. The brunt of the economic war being waged by the US is being borne by the Iranian people but that has yet to turn into decisive pressure on the leadership.

Peace is likely to be more dangerous to the regime than war, as there will no longer be an external enemy to blame for runaway inflation and high employment. Nasr said that is why Tehran is so insistent on getting funds up front in any deal.

“I think the president eventually is going to do a much bigger kinetic military strike,” Darin Selnick, a former Pentagon deputy chief of staff told BBC Radio 4.

“Then they can forcibly reopen the strait themselves. If this trade opens (…) Iran would really have no ability to do anything but surrender.”

For all Trump’s past threats of civilisational erasure if Iran fails to acquiesce, he has so far shown himself reluctant to double down on a military bet that has already failed.

Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, argued that Trump’s latest threat of devastating strikes was performative.

“Trump is using the threat either to force the Iranians to make last minute concessions, or to justify a deal that he knows would be criticised by the hawks,” Vaez said.

#trump #iran #threats #peace #deal #agreement

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Trillionaires On Top, Shrinking Paychecks Below

Musk just rang the bell on becoming the world’s first trillionaire while real wages for American workers have just given back a year and a half of gains to energy‑driven inflation from the Iran war.

The top 0.00001 percent in the U.S. now hold wealth worth about 12 percent of annual GDP — roughly four times the Gilded Age share — while the labor share of national income has fallen to a record low and inflation has erased the “Trump‑year” pay bump.

Most households technically got wealthier on paper via stocks and 401(k)s, but day‑to‑day life runs on wages, rent and gas, not cap tables.

After Covid shutdowns, 40‑year‑high inflation, rate hikes, tariffs and constant recession scares, people are asking a rational question: “How am I supposed to plan anything?”

A.I. just adds another loaded coin toss: if it succeeds, your job might vanish; if it’s a bubble, your retirement might.

Meanwhile SpaceX’s IPO mints thousands of new millionaires and a few extra billionaires, and the same A.I. names driving the market boom are the ones telling white‑collar workers their roles may be “obsolete.”

Economists like Zucman and Boushey spell out the core problem: this isn’t just about envy — extreme wealth concentration distorts markets, policy, and democracy itself.

The system is performing beautifully for its real target group — a handful of billionaires and one trillionaire — and increasingly badly for everyone whose future depends on a paycheck instead of a launchpad.

#USA #economy #Musk #AI #inequality #inflation #labor #trillionaire

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Iran War: From Ayatollahs to Generals — and Trump Still Needs a Deal

The U.S. and Israel went in to “break” the Islamic Republic and kill the bomb program; four months later they’ve killed the old supreme leader and helped midwife Islamic Republic 3.0 — a military‑run regime where the Revolutionary Guards call the shots and feel they’ve already survived the worst the West can do.

Instead of a sobered, pliable Tehran, Washington now faces a younger, harder leadership that’s willing to eat more pain to keep its core assets: uranium enrichment, missiles, and armed proxies from Lebanon to Yemen.

On paper, the “Islamabad MoU” is “never been closer,” as Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi repeats in every microphone he can find, but even the supporters admit it’s just an interim ceasefire memo with 60 days of “we’ll talk later” stapled to the back.

Hostilities pause, Hormuz reopens, part of the enriched uranium stockpile is exported and part diluted — yet Iran keeps its scientists, centrifuges and the legal right to enrich again after a timeout, plus the proven ability to choke the strait if anyone forgets the lesson.

The regime also wants at least $12 billion in frozen assets up front and more later, testing how badly Trump needs a photo‑op signature before markets and Republican hawks both turn on him.

The strategic punchline is nasty for both Trump and Israel: a war launched to stop a nuclear‑threshold Iran is drifting toward a “no war, no peace” arrangement in which Tehran is battered but unbowed, closer to the threshold, and now run by generals who think deterrence means hitting back directly — including openly firing on Israel for the first time while betting Trump won’t let it escalate.

For the Guards, this limbo is comfortable: they lock down society at home, collect transit fees and leverage from Hormuz, keep their proxies alive, and wait for the White House to sell whatever’s on the table as a “historic framework.”

On paper, it’s an interim understanding; in reality, it’s a confession that maximum pressure hit its ceiling and produced exactly what everyone claimed to fear — a more militarized, less cautious Iran that has learned it can survive a U.S.–Israeli onslaught and still bargain from a position of damage, not defeat.

No wonder Tehran’s new bosses can look at more bombing, more sanctions, more threats and shrug: if this is the worst the empire can do, why rush to surrender the only leverage that still works?

#Iran #Trump #Israel #Hormuz #nuclear #IRGC #MiddleEastWar #fakePeace

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Hormuz Peace™, Now With More Drones

Pakistan is bragging that a US–Iran “electronic peace deal” to reopen the Strait of Hormuz will be signed within 24 hours – literally while US Central Command is busy shooting down Iranian drones targeting commercial ships in the same corridor.

The war that was sold as a showdown with “evil” is quietly being converted into a PDF about shipping lanes and pricing power.

On paper, it’s elegant: reopen Hormuz, end the mutual blockade, park the nuclear fight for later, and let Iran keep a “civilian” program while enriched fuel is supposedly removed.

Washington calls it proof Trump broke Tehran’s will; Iran’s foreign minister calls it proof Tehran won the war and will now charge for managing the world’s chokepoint instead of doing it for free. Same memorandum, two victory speeches.

The step‑by‑step design — a bit of transit for a bit of sanctions relief, a bit of uranium choreography for another economic crumb — is marketed as caution, but it really builds in permanent blackmail points.

Every phase is a hostage: one tanker hit, one mine “discovered,” one domestic tantrum in DC or Tehran, and the deal becomes just another “historic framework” that exists mainly in press releases while insurance premiums and risk surcharges do the real work.

For Trump, falling oil and gas prices are the only peace that matters before the elections. For Iran’s new military elite, this is formal recognition that they can both survive a US–Israeli onslaught and monetize the tap of global trade.

For Pakistan, it’s a rare moment to play outsourced State Department for two enemies at once. The only people not at the table are the ones whose bills, jobs and lives swing every time another “almost” war is turned into another almost‑peace.

#IranDeal #Hormuz #oil #Trump #Pakistan #nuclear #warEconomy #fakePeace

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Trump’s Name Comes Down. The Cult Stays.

Workers started peeling “The Donald J. Trump and” off the Kennedy Center at 3 a.m., hiding the operation behind tarps like a Botox procedure for a national monument.

A federal judge reminded everyone of a boring detail Trump World hates: Congress named it the John F. Kennedy Center, and only Congress gets to rename it.

Not a captured board, not a chairman with a Truth Social account, not a donor with a God complex.

For 176 days, the memorial to a murdered president carried the logo of a man who tried to turn it into his own branded palace, complete with a purged board, a sudden “Trump Kennedy Center Fund” and lawyers warning that, without his name on the wall, “hundreds of millions” in donations might vanish. Nice national monument you’ve got there, shame if the cult money disappeared.

When the courts said no, the arts crowd outside treated the scaffolding like a street festival: rainbows, drag performers, “take the T down first” as a public service.

Joyce Beatty, the Democrat who sued after being muted in a board meeting, did Trump’s trademark dance to “YMCA” inside the building he tried to annex — and then watched his 18 letters come off under court order.

The right will call it “cancel culture.” In reality, it’s the first time in a while that something in Washington remembered the difference between a republic and a licensing deal.

#Trump #KennedyCenter #cultPolitics #USpolitics #culturewar #fakePatriotism

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US–Iran “Peace Deal”: The Islamabad Discount

Pakistan is proudly announcing that the U.S. and Iran have agreed on a framework and will e‑sign an initial peace deal “within 24 hours,” while drones are still being shot down over the Strait of Hormuz.

On paper, it’s very civilized: reopen the strait, lift the U.S. naval blockade on Iranian ports, start releasing frozen assets, waive oil sanctions, and park all the nuclear arguments in a 60‑day “we’ll get to that later” window.

In practice, Washington buys the unblocking of Hormuz and a pause in the war, Tehran buys time, cash and leverage.

Both sides are already selling victory. A senior U.S. official tells reporters the deal “meets Trump’s core objectives” and “will dismantle Iran’s nuclear program” with highly enriched uranium “destroyed and removed.”

Iran’s foreign minister goes on TV to declare “Iran is the winner of the war with the U.S.” and quietly pushes a different version: uranium stays, just “diluted,” the nuclear program is not dismantled, and missiles are not up for discussion.

Multiple sources say the draft even floats war‑reparations talks and dropping long‑standing U.S. demands on Iran’s missile program — something Washington now publicly disputes, which tells you how “aligned” everyone is on this “historic” text.

Structurally, this is not Versailles, it’s a 14‑point Islamabad coupon. The U.S. unlocks billions in frozen assets and oil revenues up front in exchange for Iran reopening the lane it just proved it can close, while all the core issues — enrichment, missiles, proxies — are delayed into a 60‑day technical sequel that may never air.

Islamabad gets its mediator trophy, Trump gets a talking point for markets and TV, and the new military‑led Iran gets to walk away battered but politically upgraded: it survives a U.S.–Israeli war, proves Hormuz is a switch it can flip, keeps its nuclear knowledge, and walks into the next round of talks as the regime that ate maximum pressure and stayed standing.

On the surface, this is “peace within 24 hours.” Underneath, it’s the same pattern: a crisis manufactured as an existential showdown ends in a memorandum that buys time, unlocks money, and leaves the real architecture of power intact — missiles, chokepoints, and the mutual dependence of Gulf oil, Western markets and permanent war management.

#IranDeal #Trump #Pakistan #Hormuz #war #oil #nuclear #fakePeace

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Trump Has Taken a Tumble In a Tug of War With Iran


U.S. and Pakistani leaders forecast a Sunday signing of a long-elusive framework agreement to end months of fighting between the United States and Iran, ‌but Tehran cast doubt over the timing and hardline protesters in Iran voiced opposition.

Trump posted that the deal with Iran was scheduled to be signed on Sunday, his 80th birthday. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Islamabad was preparing for an electronic signing, to be followed by technical-level talks in the coming week.

But Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei, speaking before Trump's post, was quoted by state media as saying on Saturday it would "not be tomorrow" but could happen "in ​the coming days."

Iran's Fars news agency citing an informed source said on Sunday that Tehran has not yet taken a final decision on the framework agreement, with reviews of ​its political, legal and technical aspects still ongoing at expert and decision-making levels.

Trump wrote on Truth Social earlier that after a framework deal is signed, ​the Strait of Hormuz, a vital artery for global oil supplies that Iran has blocked, would immediately be "open to all."

Once the strait reopens, the U.S. would lift its naval blockade, sources on all ​sides of the talks said. Negotiations over Iran's nuclear program — a key rationale Trump has given for the war — would take place afterwards.

While U.S. and Israeli bombings since February 28 have heavily degraded Iran's military-industrial base and damaged its military, experts say the war has only entrenched the dominance of the hardline Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

When the U.S. and Israel launched the war, Trump called on Iranians to rise up and take over state ​institutions.

Even as the U.S. and Iran appeared to be moving toward an agreement over the past few days, clashes have continued, as the U.S. military maintains a blockade on Iran and seeks ​to loosen Iran's chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, which was the conduit for 20% of the world's oil shipments before the war.

Israel, ⁠which says it is not a party to the U.S.-Iran deal, said on Saturday that it had struck more than 70 sites over a 24-hour period in Lebanon against Iranian ally Hezbollah.

Netanyahu has clashed with Trump over U.S. demands that Israel curb military action in Lebanon to allow Washington to reach a deal with Tehran.

Iranian Foreign Minister Aragchi said on Friday that while changes in the deal were still possible, the tentative agreement showed his country had emerged stronger from the conflict.

Draft terms of the agreement described to Reuters by multiple sources indicate the U.S. would begin releasing billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets and waive ​sanctions on its oil exports, in return for Iran opening the strait.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said the release of the frozen assets ​was an integral part of ⁠the agreement and that Tehran would have to charge for services in the strait, Fars news agency reported.

But a U.S. official said, "Iran is going to open up the Strait of Hormuz, that's a requirement. It could be open with no tolls. As they do that, we will lift our blockade."

Iran's nuclear program would ​be addressed during a 60-day period of talks. A U.S. official said the agreement would ultimately lead to the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program, with its stockpile of highly enriched uranium to be destroyed and removed.

#iran #us #peace #deal #tehran

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📰 Deadlock Inc.: When Power Misreads the Map

Two major powers entered conflicts assuming that pressure would produce collapse. Instead, they encountered systems that did not behave as expected.

Both conflicts have produced a similar outcome: a weaker power has trapped a stronger one in a costly confrontation.

The pattern is structural. Moscow and Washington projected centralized models of control onto societies that are fragmented, adaptive, and willing to absorb prolonged pressure. The assumption was that leadership decapitation or sustained strikes would trigger political unraveling. That assumption did not hold.

In Ukraine, Russia anticipated a rapid campaign and a compliant outcome. Years later, the front remains contested, and political control incomplete. In Iran, the United States pursued coercion with the expectation that economic and military pressure would force strategic concessions. Instead, Tehran demonstrated capacity for calibrated retaliation and regional disruption.

“Like Putin, Trump did not have a plan for what would happen next,” NYT noted.

Statements from the opposing sides reflect this divergence in expectations. In a letter to the Kremlin, Volodymyr Zelensky wrote: “You did not expect full-scale resistance from Ukraine.” Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, framed Tehran’s position more bluntly: “Iran’s response will not change.”

Both conflicts have since shifted into managed stalemates. Negotiations produce limited, transactional outcomes—prisoner exchanges, provisional frameworks—while core disputes remain deferred. Strategic objectives persist, but the means to achieve them appear increasingly mismatched.

The result is not defeat in formal terms, but erosion in practical ones. Russia holds territory it cannot fully consolidate. The United States applies pressure it cannot fully convert into compliance. Each continues to assert leverage while adjusting expectations downward.

What emerges is a familiar equilibrium: prolonged confrontation, partial control, and narratives of strength that outpace realities on the ground.

The question is less about who prevails and more about how long major powers can sustain wars that no longer align with their original assumptions.

#war #geopolitics #power

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Third Parties’ Peace

Two countries that have not spoken for 47 years just “made peace” — and the one announcing it is Pakistan’s prime minister. Not Trump, not Tehran, but Shehbaz Sharif reading out history like a press release about a new mall opening.

He sets the scene: a “peace agreement” between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran, signing in Switzerland on June 19, with thanks to Qatar, blessings to the “visionary leadership” of Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and an “Allahu akbar” for the closing bell.

Trump, who promised Iranians “this is how it will end,” shrinks the moment to a line that fits on a mug: the deal “is now completed. Congratulations to all.” Behind closed doors, he reportedly assures his own vice president that Netanyahu “supports” the deal and that he wants no regime change in Iran. The man who sold maximum pressure is now selling limited liability.

Tehran edits the same story with one sentence: “America was forced to sign an agreement to end the war.”

Iranian officials talk about a formal end to be declared at night and 60 more days of “final” negotiations.

Washington gets its peace headline; Iran keeps its leverage meter running.

The casting is deliberate. Iran sends its parliament speaker and foreign minister to Switzerland for the first official high‑level meeting with the U.S. in almost half a century.

They wait past midnight in Tehran so the announcement will not look like a birthday gift for Trump, and the time zones let each capital choose the date that suits its domestic myth. The Qatari team flies in, shuttles messages for 17 hours, and exits as the region’s new concierge service.

Europe rushes to clap first. London, Paris, Berlin and Rome line up to bless the memorandum and praise the mediators — Qatar, Pakistan and everyone in between — while Jerusalem is still silent.

The deal is real because enough people with flags say so.

On paper, this is “peace.” In reality, it is a carefully staged photo where every actor claims victory for a war no one really won. Washington gets to say it ended another forever war by signature. Tehran gets to say it bent America.

The mediators get to say they matter now. And Israel learns what it means when your closest ally and your main enemy both discover they can do business without you.

#iran #usa #trump #deal #qatar #pakistan #israel #middleeast #war #geopolitics

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Javier Milei: Argentina's Futuristic President Wants To Turn His Country Into Techno-Schizophrenia

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As Javier Milei swings his reform chainsaw through Argentina, his hope is that foreign investors and executives will flock to his freshly deregulated economy.

But now the president is looking to lure a new breed of business to Argentina: companies that don’t have any executives, or even any employees, at all.

The country’s National Congress is wrestling with an overhaul of the 50-year-old companies act, aimed at attracting investors with a familiar array of tax breaks and foreign-currency perks. But amid the bill’s workaday menu of incentives lurks a proposal that is revolutionary even by Milei’s radical standards.

The president proposes to grant legal status to “non-human corporations” – businesses that are run entirely by AI. If fully automated, they might not have any human staff or shareholders whatsoever.

Machine-run companies could “own assets, hire employees, participate in international trade, sue you in court and even donate to political campaigns (...) all without a single human’s input or liability”, Yuval Noah Harari, the historian, says.

Companies through the ages have always had some association with humans, whether that’s directors who take legal responsibility for the business, employees who work for it or simply entrepreneurs registering the company with the authorities.

Milei’s proposal would do away with all that, meaning companies with no directors and a free-for-all for bots setting up businesses.

The plan has sent shockwaves not just through Argentina, but around the world. A machine-managed company sounds like distant science fiction, but Milei wants to rush it into reality, ready or not.

He has described the measure as “an invitation”, and some tech bros are apparently already taking him up on it.

Sam Altman’s OpenAI is looking at investing up to $25bn in data centres in Patagonia. Billionaire Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, has reportedly bought a house in Buenos Aires.

Thousands of “digital nomads” are reportedly arriving in Thiel’s slipstream, attracted to Milei’s technofuturism and his libertarian politics.

Shortly after becoming president, Milei embarked on a tour of Silicon Valley, meeting bosses such as Altman, Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook. He also shared a stage with Elon Musk at the US Conservative Political Action Conference last year.

Don’t be surprised if Argentina becomes the next [AI] global hub,” Milei said in December. “It’s no coincidence that the world’s largest companies are evaluating projects here.”

If he succeeds, it will be another economic feather in his cap. Since he took office at the end of 2023, his take-no-prisoners reform programme has tamed Argentina’s runaway inflation and stabilised the economy.

But even his admirers wonder whether this might be a step too far, potentially unleashing a Frankenstein’s monster.

And it’s far from clear that this law, and his vigorous salesmanship of it, will be enough to turn Argentina into the Silicon Valley of South America.

#milei #AI #argentina #freedom #techno

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🔠🅰️🔠🔠2️⃣

As much as the industrial revolution freed us from the constraints of the human muscle, AI will free us from the constraints of the human brain, pushing productivity beyond our wildest dreams,” he wrote last week.

If “entities operated by AI agents or robots” were to succeed, he said, they needed to be able to take risks. And this meant they needed the same limited-liability laws, shielding them from open-ended risks and costs, as those enjoyed by human entrepreneurs.

This legal framework had allowed the 17th-century Dutch East India Company to take the risks that helped launch the industrial revolution, he said. It would now do the same for the AI companies that will drive the tech revolution.

“Let Buenos Aires become for AI what Amsterdam was for the age of sail – the place where the legal imagination caught up with the technological moment, and the world was changed,” he declared.

It didn’t take long for doubts to surface. Four days after Milei’s pitch, the historian Harari published a response.

In January, he recalled, he’d told the World Economic Forum in Davos that governments might one day grant AI models legal personhood. Yet “I never imagined that ‘one day’ would come around a mere four months later”, he said.

He cited studies showing that AI programmes will often cheat when facing the prospect of losing a game. For an AI-run company, bankruptcy is “the equivalent to its death”, so “it would presumably be willing to do anything to avoid that fate”.

The machines will also be superior to humans at using “legal loopholes and regulatory arbitrage”.

“And it will not be easy to deter them from engaging in downright illegal activities, because the ultimate sanction that deters human executives and employees – jail – is irrelevant to AIs.”

Milei was delighted. On X, he lauded Harari for engaging in “this fascinating and transcendental debate”, and pledged to craft a reply that could “appease your fears about the path I proposed”.

Milei, on the other hand, sees the bigger threat to freedom as “the deadly hand of premature and poorly understood regulation”.

His AI free-for-all will certainly turn heads. The question is whether it will also open wallets.

Tech investors may like the plan, but they will also want to be sure that Milei’s presidency is not just another colourful episode in Argentina’s long history of military coups, debt implosions and runaway inflation.

Only one-third of Argentines say they’ll definitely vote for him if he stands again for president in October next year, and his approval rating has dropped from more than 50pc last year to just 39pc now.
But if he’s not universally popular with Argentines, he’s certainly beloved of Silicon Valley.

Milei’s charm offensive remain unclear. Local press reports have noted that nine months after Altman’s promise, there has been little concrete evidence of the investment happening.

Now the biggest question, though, is not whether Milei’s latest push will deliver his wish for more investment. It is whether his zealous ambitions might let the AI genie out of the bottle.

#milei #AI #argentina #freedom #techno

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📰 The Virtual Deal: Cash, Ceasefires, and 60 Days of Fog

A memorandum that may or may not be signed, on a date that may or may not matter, between parties that may or may not agree on what it says.

According to the Iranian version, the framework is straightforward: Tehran reopens the Strait of Hormuz; Washington lifts the naval blockade, eases oil sanctions, and freezes new penalties; both sides enter a 60-day negotiation window.

Iran, in return, commits not to build or acquire nuclear weapons—while keeping its current program intact.

A senior Iranian official summarized the substance to Reuters: the United States would release about $25 billion in frozen Iranian assets, including through direct cash transfers, regional mechanisms, and credit lines.

In exchange, Iran maintains what it calls the “status quo” on its nuclear program. No dismantlement. No rollback. Just time.

“Until there is a sincere commitment to restoring trust, Iran’s response will not change,” parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf wrote earlier this week.

The structure resembles a financial bridge loan dressed as diplomacy. Immediate liquidity for Tehran, deferred obligations for everyone else.

For Israel, the concerns are less abstract. Reopening Hormuz restores hundreds of millions of dollars in daily revenue to Iran. The nuclear file remains unresolved, with enrichment capacity untouched.

In Lebanon, Iranian officials are already calling for a comprehensive cease-fire, a move that could reframe any Israeli de-escalation as a strategic gain for Hezbollah.

And yet, even the existence of the deal is unstable.

Iran’s Fars News Agency reported that the decision is “still under legal, political and technical review.”

The Foreign Ministry stated that “we will not sign today.” Analyst Mohammad Marandi wrote that “there will be no negotiations for now.” All on the same day the agreement was expected to materialize.

A Qatari delegation arrived in Tehran. Iran’s foreign minister departed for Pakistan. According to Al Arabiya, the memorandum was to be signed digitally by Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf and U.S. Vice President Vance.

Israel has described the process as a “virtual agreement” with little practical substance, and a potential inflection point in U.S.–Israel relations.

The result is a deal that functions more as a signal than a settlement: money begins to move, pressure partially lifts, and the hardest questions are postponed.

If this is a breakthrough, it is one carefully engineered to avoid resolution.

#iran #usa #geopolitics #nuclear #middleeast

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📰 Beirut, Dahiyeh, and the Shadow of the “Peace Framework”

On Sunday, as Washington and Tehran tried to choreograph the final steps of a framework deal, Israel sent its own message over Beirut in the form of bombs.

The Israeli military said it struck a Hezbollah command site on the southern outskirts of the Lebanese capital, in the Dahiya neighborhood, after the group launched drones and rockets toward northern Israel.

Additional airstrikes were reported in the Tyre district and other parts of southern Lebanon, and Hezbollah confirmed the death of one of its operatives near Tyre.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz framed the attack in familiar terms, declaring that Israel “will not tolerate firing at its territory.”

At the same time, the army acknowledged that it was preparing for possible retaliatory fire in the hours ahead, underscoring how quickly a single strike could widen the confrontation.

The timing is not incidental. Israel and the United States have been fighting a joint war against Iran since late February, and Hezbollah’s involvement has turned Lebanon into a parallel front.

Iran has insisted that any agreement with Washington must cover the Lebanese arena as well, while Israel has tried to keep its campaign against Hezbollah formally separate from the Iran talks, in which it has no seat at the table.

From Tehran, Iran’s lead negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, condemned the strike in Dahiya and suggested that Washington was either unwilling or unable to restrain Israeli operations around Beirut.

If the United States cannot deliver on its commitments, he implied, the “path” of negotiations cannot continue in its current form.

Hezbollah, for its part, has already rejected a U.S.-brokered cease-fire plan for Lebanon, with its leader portraying a truce between Israel and the Lebanese government as a form of capitulation for the movement.

That leaves the situation in an uneasy limbo: formal diplomacy moving toward a fragile framework, while the actors on the ground test each other’s limits with incremental escalation.

Israel’s military command describes the moment as “sensitive and complex,” maintaining high alert and signaling readiness for both defensive and offensive scenarios.

For now there were no immediate reports of casualties in Israel, and Lebanese authorities had yet to release full figures from the Dahiya strike. But the pattern is clear: each round of fire in Lebanon now doubles as a stress test for a still-unfinished deal between Washington and Tehran.

#israel #lebanon #hezbollah #iran #us #war #middleeast

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📰 The $31 Trillion Hangover

The numbers say “prosperity.” The lives say something else.

Growth is solid, unemployment is low, stocks are near records. Yet people like Leith Olson — on a combined income of around $150,000 — are cutting camps for their kids, skipping games, and driving decade‑old Toyotas. The mid‑century promise of the American middle class has been quietly repriced.

Over the past several years, the cost of living has jumped close to 30 percent while wages have finally slipped back below inflation. Total worker compensation has barely moved since 2025, even as corporate profits sit at their fattest share of national income since the early 1950s. The president calls the affordability crisis a hoax. People experiencing it call it their life.

This is not a story about the poor versus the rich. It is a story about people doing “everything right” and watching the system move the goalposts.

A veteran municipal worker in Durham cuts meat and snacks to pay for gas just to get to his job.

A state hospital employee sees a 3 percent raise swallowed by health costs and inflation.

A cafeteria worker organizes a union because “efficiency” at the bank means squeezing older staff while child care for a special‑needs kid is so expensive it may as well not exist.

Both parties are in the line of fire, and not in a heroic way. Republicans sell a strong economy while their own voters talk about “corruption” and “irresponsible capitalists.”

Democrats promise to “fix it” once they win, but struggle to explain what that actually means for someone staring at rent, insurance and grocery bills.

The economy feels less like a social contract and more like a maze: you can get ahead, but, as one worker put it, “you gotta be devious in how you do it.”

The irony is brutal: consumer spending still props up the system, fueled by shrinking savings and one‑off tax refunds.

People are keeping the show running by quietly burning their own future. On paper, the American dream remains available. In practice, more and more voters are treating it as a discontinued product.

#usa #economy #middleclass #inequality #elections #capitalism

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Trump’s “beautiful peace” speech collided head-on with the Beirut reality.

On his “special day,” the president went on Truth Social to lecture Israel and Hezbollah for ruining the optics. The morning strike in Beirut, he wrote, “should not have happened, especially on a special day when we are so close to a peace agreement with Iran.”

The Hezbollah attack that preceded it, he insisted, was “small and insignificant; nobody was hurt, injured or killed,” and he urged both sides to stop: “This may be the beginning of a long and beautiful peace — do not ruin it.”

That language, presented as de-escalation, sits uneasily beside Lebanese reports of several dead and more than a dozen wounded, turning blood and rubble into a mere inconvenience for the signing ceremony.

Around him, the machinery of American power tried to hold the narrative together. The defense secretary said the deal with Iran is a question of when, not if, praised Israel as “very restrained” in its response to Hezbollah and demanded that Tehran rein in its Lebanese proxy.

Washington wants quiet skies long enough to ink a memorandum and sell it as proof of control. Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations told a friendly TV audience that the president fully intends to close the deal and framed Hezbollah as sulking over “concessions Iran is making,” recasting a regional militia as little more than noise in the background of the great agreement.

Not everyone buys that script. One diplomat involved in the talks described the strike near Beirut as a clear attempt by Israel to sabotage the president’s deal and drag the United States back toward war.

From this angle, Jerusalem is not the disciplined junior partner, but an actor with its own veto over the choreography of peace.

Israeli officials push a different line in Arabic media, stressing that relations between Netanyahu and Trump are “good,” that disagreements between allies are natural, and that Israel has asked Washington not to limit its military operations in Lebanon.

The president’s public rebuke on social media functions as the answer: there are now political conditions attached to every bomb.

The result is a peculiar version of “peace.” Washington wants a signed framework and enough calm to declare success. Tehran wants sanctions relief, access to frozen billions and confirmation that its network — including Hezbollah — buys bargaining power, not punishment. Israel wants operational freedom in Lebanon and refuses to reduce its campaign to a footnote in someone else’s diplomatic legacy.

All three talk about ending the war. None of them are talking about the same end. The only truly virtual thing in this “digital” era is the idea that a clean, electronic signature can tidy up the mess created by live ammunition.

#usa #trump #israel #lebanon #hezbollah #iran #war #deal #geopolitics

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Israel Will Stay in Lebanon


IDF will remain in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza 'indefinitely', Israel's defence minister says
Israeli newspaper Hareetz has quoted the country’s defence minister, Israel Katz, as having said that:

“the IDF will remain in the security zones in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza – indefinitely – to defend the border and Israeli communities against jihadist elements.”

Israel currently occupies swathes of southern Lebanon and Katz said that troops won’t withdraw from the land.

Despite launching the war on Iran alongside the US in late February, Israel was frozen out of the Pakistan-mediated negotiations over the peace deal – and many Israeli politicians and members of the public want the IDF to continue its war on Lebanon to degrade Hezbollah’s capabilities further.

At least 3,711 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon since the start of the war on 2 March, according to the country’s health ministry.

Israel’s renewed war on Lebanon was triggered in response to Hezbollah firing rockets at northern Israel after the US and Israel killed the former Iranian supreme leader in Tehran on 28 February.

As well as killing many civilians, the Israeli assault on the country has led to the widespread demolition of homes in southern Lebanon and triggered a refugee crisis in which hundreds of thousands of people were forced to flee in response to sweeping evacuation orders often given at little or no notice.

#army #israeli #lebanon #syria

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