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In this mailing:
* Pierre Rehov: Trump's Iran 'Deal'
* Amir Taheri: Iran: Did Trump Cave In?


** Trump's Iran 'Deal' ([link removed])
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by Pierre Rehov • June 21, 2026 at 5:00 am
* The 14-point text is unambiguous on the point the White House is most eager to fog. It commits the United States, "with regional partners," to develop a "plan with at least USD 300 billion for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran" -- $3 billion of which has, according to the unsurpassed journalist, Lee Smith, already been sent to Iran through by way of the United Arab Emirates. The president has called reports of that figure "fake news" and insisted nobody is putting up "ten cents." The clause nevertheless sits prominently in the document he signed.
* Only one question really matters: what does the agreement, if honored by Iran, deliver? It leaves enriched uranium inside Iran, concedes a right to enrichment that was recently a red line, permits the Iranian ballistic-missile program Trump now defends supposedly because other countries have missiles too, and pours reconstruction money into an economy whose ruling institution is the brutal Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
* An interim framework can easily be a device for extracting one concrete concession -- opening the shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz -- while the other clauses quietly expire.
* Trump has repeated that if the deal collapses he will return to force – but who will do that after he is no longer president?
* Each Israeli reprisal can trigger an Iranian walkout, and each walkout hands Washington a legal pretext to resume the war it paused. If Trump, however, is reluctant to use force against Iran again now, why should anyone think that he would be more inclined to use it later?
* Without a united opposition to inherit power and without an army to seize Tehran, talk of liberation is a consolation, not a strategy. The war degraded the regime; it did not remove it -- and nothing in this agreement will. In fact, the MOU promises to enrich the IRGC again so that it can tighten its hold on the Iranian people even more viciously.
* So the memorandum sits there, looking like the clumsiest concession an American administration has made to a sworn enemy in a generation...
* The regime in Tehran, which has waited out many American presidents and means to wait out another, is betting they are bluffing about everything except the check.

What does the agreement, if honored by Iran, deliver? It leaves enriched uranium inside Iran, concedes a right to enrichment that was recently a red line, permits the Iranian ballistic-missile program Trump now defends supposedly because other countries have missiles too, and pours reconstruction money into an economy whose ruling institution is the brutal Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Pictured: A Fattah ballistic missile is displayed during the annual military parade in Tehran, on September 22, 2023. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)

After a war launched in February to end the Iranian nuclear threat, the United States has agreed to a 60-day ceasefire, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the lifting of its naval blockade, the unfreezing of Iranian assets, and an immense $300 billion reconstruction fund for the very regime the U.S. Air Force spent weeks degrading. The triumph turns out to be a recipe for everything Iran wanted and could not win on the battlefield.

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** Iran: Did Trump Cave In? ([link removed])
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by Amir Taheri • June 21, 2026 at 4:00 am
* [Iran] continues to execute opponents, confiscate the assets of critics, organize mass arrests across the nation, and funnel funds to proxies in the region.
* The only change that has happened is that in the past few days it has raised a claim to the exclusive ownership of the Strait of Hormuz.
* The Majlis of which Ghalibaf is speaker has passed at least three laws forbidding any negotiations with the American "Great Satan".
* The Majlis also put a $50 million price on the US president's head.
* What we have so far is a 60-day extension of a shaky ceasefire with a list of desiderata to haggle over.
* Will the projected 60-days of talks produce anything resembling peace and stability in the region as many pray for? The outright answer I could give is a firm no.
* Gorbachev and Deng could achieve a change of course because the USSR and the People's Republic of China had a deeply-rooted party structure plus highly centralized armed forces.
* Neither of those two conditions exists in the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is a hodgepodge of political, economic and military baronies pulling in different directions while regarding the maintenance of the status quo as essential for their survival. Imagine a kaleidoscope that if turned this way or that produces different visuals and colors but remains fundamentally the same.
* The tactic Tehran will use is clear: drag out the talks until we see the back of Trump and Netanyahu, as we did with six other US presidents and as many Israeli premiers.
* If it actually happens, the 60-day stint may establish a roadmap pointing to several desired goals. The next phase would be labeled "confidence building easers" followed by a third named "modalities of implementation" -- in other words, a roadmap to lead Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner up the garden path.

The Majlis of which Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf is speaker has passed at least three laws forbidding any negotiations with the American "Great Satan". Pictured: Ghalibaf in Tehran on June 15, 2024. (Photo by Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images)

By the time you are reading this column US President Donald J Trump and his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian have electronically initialed from a distance of 6,000 kilometers a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to halt the latest episode of a war that started between the two nations 47 years ago.

Trump has already upgraded the MOU, the text of which wasn't revealed, by claiming that it will bring peace to the whole region.

He has also talked of a $300 billion reconstruction fund to revive Iran's decaying economy and, in the process, line the pockets of mullahs and jackboots still in power in Tehran seen by him in a glowing light.

Receiving UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan at the G7 summit in Evian, France, Trump had this to say about what is left of the leadership in Tehran:

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