Trump managed to unfuck himself somewhat...

According to the White House, Iran has agreed to an immediate, toll-free reopening of the vital Strait of Hormuz to commercial international shipping, easing global energy market anxieties.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, however, stated directly to Iranian state media that transit through the Strait will no longer be free of charge. Araghchi noted that while international maritime law technically prohibits levying direct transit "tolls" on a international strait, Iran plans to circumvent this by maintaining strict control and charging a mandatory "service fee" for services provided to passing ships.

Simultaneously, the United States has authorized the complete removal of its naval blockade on Iranian ports in the Persian Gulf.

The agreement mandates an absolute termination of hostilities. This explicitly includes the Israel-Hezbollah front in Lebanon, though Israel itself is not a direct signatory to the U.S.-Iran MoU.

The White House maintains that the deal is performance-based, dictating that Iran permanently abandon its nuclear weapon ambitions and fully dismantle its nuclear program. U.S. officials state specialized units will eventually extract and destroy highly enriched uranium buried in bombed underground mountain facilities.

Iranian officials state they have agreed to maintain a "status quo" for the 60-day period (halting further uranium enrichment and facility expansion). However, Tehran prefers to "down-blend" or dilute its enriched uranium stockpile on its own soil rather than hand it over.

A good channel for China related news, Chinese Liaison writes,

> According to the White House, China will purchase at least $17 billion worth of American agricultural products annually. According to a US news bulletin, the agreement was reached at a recent summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

[ followed by a long text about how Trump's visit to China was worth it and China caved in ]

The agreement is groundbreaking, as, for example, in 2022, China purchased ~$44 billion worth of agricultural products from the US annually. Against this backdrop, classifying the current "now it will be $17 billion" as a "China caved in and America won" is baffling to me. A team of academics with calculators insists that this is a catastrophic reduction in purchases from the US, not the opposite. It's a worsening of the trade imbalance, not a balancing of it. But where are the academics, and where is Donny?

— 🇮🇱/🇱🇧/🇮🇷 NEW: A U.S. official also told Reuters that withdrawal from Lebanon is not part of the MoU, confirming the statement by Israel

If it isn’t, then why did Iranian officials say it is? And what was that alleged ‘last minute concession’ given to prevent an attack on Israel?

@Middle_East_Spectator

Pentagon prepares "limited" withdrawal of refueling jets from Israel's Ben Gurion Airport

Washington is preparing to withdraw "20 percent" of the refueling aircraft it has stationed at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport, Hebrew news outlet Channel 12 reported on 16 June, following recent complaints that the facility has been turned into a US military base. "The move comes after Washington and Tehran agreed on a memorandum of understanding that paves the way for a permanent end to the war," Channel 12 said.

...Channel 12 did not specify whether the aircraft would be removed from Israel entirely or relocated to Israeli Air Force bases. Israeli Transportation Minister Miri Regev had said recently that this may be the case. There have also been reports that the feet of US aircraft could be relocated to Europe, but will remain ready to deploy to the airport if war resumes...

...if when the war resumes.

@americanmajority

The calm in Hormuz could be dangerously brief

The latest US Iran deal, announced on Sunday evening, looks less like peace than a pause before the next crisis.

The news, which pushed oil prices down by 4%, appeared at first glance like a triumph of diplomacy. The US and Iran have agreed to end the latest phase of their confrontation and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Donald Trump, never one to miss a dramatic flourish, immediately declared on Truth Social: "Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!"

But anyone looking beyond the market reaction can see that the barrels of black gold still have to pass through a minefield. Yes, this is the most significant diplomatic breakthrough since joint US and Israeli strikes on Iran in February triggered a conflict that killed thousands and shook global energy markets. Yes, the Strait of Hormuz, blocked by Iran for months, is expected to reopen on Friday. But this agreement is not a final peace deal...

@americanmajority

We are the dystopia

There is something wrong with the world today. I know you feel it, deep in your bones, and I feel it too. But maybe it's just me. I mean, how can you really ever know how good life could be? Or should be? Every civilization has had to deal with its share of problems. We no longer need to worry about saber toothed tigers, or an Ebola outbreak, or a tribe of cannibals riding over the next hill to eat our children. But while technology has managed to solve the majority of our prehistoric worries, the 2000s has given us a slew of new ones. But the dystopia of today is difficult to define. It's like the way Neo felt in the Matrix, before meeting Morpheus. Neo also felt like there was something wrong with the world, he just couldn't explain what it was...

I accidentally stumbled into this blog post by Nick Alimonos, an American fantasy and science fiction author. It's interesting, read it. I mean, it's a bit silly and not worth a serious discussion (muh matrix), but it's still interesting.

The Palantir paradox ends: France's decade of sovereignty hypocrisy finally breaks

For ten years, France's domestic intelligence service ran core operations on an American data platform. Palantir's Gotham sat inside the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Intérieure (DGSI), France's domestic intelligence agency and the rough equivalent of the US FBI, after the November 2015 Paris terrorist attacks.

The platform remained in place long after that emergency had passed, even as French officials built formal machinery to track and reduce exactly this kind of foreign technological dependence.

Only in June 2026 did the state announce it was walking away. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said France cannot rely on tools developed by foreign powers. "We cannot rely on tools developed by foreign powers." "France must have its own tools," he stated. The decision came six months after Palantir quietly secured another three year renewal. By then, the dependency was no longer theoretical...

@americanmajority

Trump shifting focus back to Ukraine: Where do peace talks stand?

Moscow recently described the US mediated peace process as being in a "situational pause" due to the Iran war.

...At the G7 summit in France on Tuesday, Trump said Washington would turn back to trying end the Russia Ukraine conflict once the Iran war is formally concluded.

"Now that this [Iran war] is finished, we are gonna be focusing on that [Ukraine conflict] and see if we can get that one done," he told reporters, referring to a memorandum of understanding he is expected to sign with Tehran on Friday...

Russians still talking about a "US mediated peace process" while the US is the country that provoked, organized, and enabled the war, as well as the one that is directly participating in it, is laughable.

@americanmajority