nuclear-news

Trump Says Iran Deal Is “Over,” Signals More US Strikes Are Likely Coming

 July 9, 2026,  By Chris Walker, https://scheerpost.com/2026/07/09/trump-says-iran-deal-is-over-signals-more-us-strikes-are-likely-coming/

“Negotiators keep talking if they want, but I don’t see it,” Trump said on the status of future discussions.

In remarks at the NATO summit in Turkey on Wednesday, President Donald Trump claimed that the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the U.S. and Iran, negotiated last month, was no longer in effect, citing the resumption of military attacks between the two countries.

Trump’s comments come as the U.S. and Iran have exchanged fire over the past several days, with U.S. Central Command announcing on Tuesday night that they had completed strikes on around 80 targets.

The president was visibly upset when responding to questions from reporters about the war.

“I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them anymore,” Trump said. 

The U.S. president engaged in name-calling against Iran’s leaders, calling them “sick people” and “scum” — a noted departure from his positive descriptions of them when negotiations were going better. 

The MOU was not a final peace deal, but rather an agreement between the U.S. and Iran that aimed to end hostilities while a larger agreement was being brokered. Trump derided Iran for denying negotiated deals he claimed were being made during those discussions.

“We make a deal. They [Iran] go outside, talk to the press, they say ‘we never even talked about it,’” Trump complained.

Over the past month, Trump has made several baseless claims about the dealmaking process without confirmation from Iran, including that Iran had agreed to give up control of the Strait of Hormuz and that the country would agree to destroy its enriched nuclear materials. 

Asked whether he would engage in future negotiations with Iran, Trump demurred. “I don’t care,” he said, adding that he’d let “negotiators keep talking if they want, but I don’t see it.”

He also indicated that the U.S. would conduct more military attacks later on. “We hit them very hard last night. Probably hit them hard again tonight,” Trump said. 

On Tuesday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned that the U.S.’s continued threats and attacks against Iran, which violate parts of the MOU, would impede “negotiations on a final deal.”

CENTCOM said it hit 80 targets on Tuesday, with one U.S. official calling the strikes bigger than previous retaliatory ones. While the U.S. insisted its targets are military posts, the attacks are happening near larger cities and close to civilian infrastructure.

Iran media reported explosions near military targets in Bushehr early on Wednesday morning, a port city near the northern edge of the Persian Gulf that has a population close to 250,000 people. The city is home to the only civilian nuclear power plant in the country. 

The U.S. also appeared to bomb the city of Bandar Abbas, near the Strait of Hormuz, which has a population of over 526,000 people. Early morning footage showed fires from explosions and large smoke plumes over the city. 

And Iranian media said several explosions were seen in Sirik, a port city in the southern part of the country, with attacks reportedly hitting commercial and fishing piers. Several people also suffered injuries from shrapnel due to the attacks. 

According to figures compiled by Al Jazeera, around 3,468 Iranians have been killed in the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran since February 28. More than 26,500 Iranians have been injured due to the war. The true number of casualties is likely higher, as the figures were last updated in mid-June.

July 14, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Deferring a Crisis: The Iran-US Ceasefire Cracks

9 July 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/deferring-a-crisis-the-iran-us-ceasefire-cracks/

Ceasefires in the Middle East seem especially susceptible to revision, alteration and contradiction. Missiles still get fired; airstrikes initiated. Destruction to infrastructure, and death, follows. Yet despite the misunderstandings, the sniping and the harrying, these odd understandings are often described by those funny political coves as “holding”. In the case of the ceasefire between Tehran and Washington, articulated with some fanfare with a Memorandum of Understanding, only the most piously delusional would claim it was holding in any way.

The June 18 MoU stipulates from the outset that the US, Iran and their allies “declare the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon, and undertaken from now on not to initiate any war or any military of operation against each other, and to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other, and ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon.” The parties further understood that Iran would commit to a gradual reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping; the US would grant modest sanctions relief on Iranian crude, refined products and petrochemical products as well as lift its own naval blockade. Further talks would take place to reach a final agreement in 60 days.

The Lebanon side of the bargain has, from the outset, been a wretched shambles, with Israel continuing its operations with various shades of intensity against Hezbollah even as it seeks to occupy the south of the country. The Lebanese government has been increasingly confined to the status of humiliated water carrier. As for Tehran and Washington, the Strait of Hormuz has again become an area of rattling contentiousness.Despite being a mere 33 kilometres at its at its narrowest point, this humble body of water was, prior to the February 28 US-Israeli assault on Iran, responsible for the transiting of 20 to 21 million barrels of oil a day, making up somewhere between 20% to 21% of the total global consumption of petroleum liquids. Liquified natural gas to the proportion of 22% of global trade also took place through the strait.

Iran has continued to target vessels in the strait’s southern corridor, notably those transiting near the Omani coastline. Iran’s chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has declared in rather purplish terms that the Strait was a “divine gift from God granted us during this war and our greatest instrument of power.” Iran maintained sovereignty over Hormuz, though it would coordinate management matters with Oman and the Gulf states. Indeed, pursuant to Clause Five of the MoU, Iran and Oman had “already reached agreement on all legal and service-related matters.” It was only at the insistence of the Gulf states that transit fees would not be charged for 60 days.

On July 7, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations centre noted three attacks on commercial shipping in the strait. While Tehran is suspected of being behind these, given that the tankers were not seemingly travelling through Iran’s approved transit route, it has so far not claimed responsibility for the actions.

These incidents took place even as representatives gathered in the disagreeable atmosphere of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit just concluded in Ankara. US Central Command (CENTCOM) was swift in initiating strikes conducted “in response to Iranian attacks on three commercial vessels” transiting through the Strait. On July 8, another wave of attacks was announced by CENTCOM “to further degrade” Tehran’s “ability to threaten the freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz. The United States is holding Iran accountable for recent unjustified aggression against commercial shipping and civilian crews navigating a vital international waterway.” Sanctions have also been reimposed on Iranian oil sales.

The response from Iran was not long in coming, keeping to the script written at the start of the war. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (RGC) promptly announced drone and missile strikes against the US Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain and Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait. Again, the Gulf states must be rueing their misplaced reliance on Washington’s security guarantee.

The NATO summit provided the appropriate backdrop of perverse dysfunction for US President Donald Trump, who managed to berate bruised allies even as various arms deals were made. In responding to a question about whether the ceasefire with Iran had ended, he claimed, as far as he was concerned, “it’s over.” He had no further appetite to “deal with them anymore, they’re scum.” They were “sick people, they’re led by sick people, and they’re vicious, violent people. And if they had a nuclear weapon, they’d use it.”

Groping for some rationalisation of these latest US attacks – some 80 sites struck across southern Iran – military pundits sense a shift towards crippling Tehran’s maritime denial capability, notably the country’s menacing use of fast attack craft, small submarines and armed speedboats. (CENTCOM insists that 60 small boats had been targeted.) But the occluding language of Washington’s military-industrial complex, one so inured to the propaganda of muscular might over subtle sense (when in doubt, resort to the favoured word “degrade”), remains blinded to the continued resilience of Iran’s war machine.

Even Trump, for all his raging petulance, can see that the diplomatic trail has not gone entirely cold, if only because he has no other sensible option. At the summit, he made grumbling mention of his chief negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. “I don’t care, they can talk. But I think they’re wasting their time.” The Iranians were “a bunch of lying guys.” Given that negotiations, especially covering Iran’s nuclear program, have been placed in cold storage for the duration of the funeral obsequies for the late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, those lying guys will be waiting full of anticipation.

July 13, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Iran trumps US on Hormuz

Crispin Hull,June 30, 2026, https://www.crispinhull.com.au/2026/06/30/iran-trumps-us-on-hormuz/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_source_platform=mailpoet&utm_campaign=crispin-hull-column

The tit-for-tat breaches of the US-Iran 60-day ceasefire in the past few days certainly point that way. Let me explain.

Of 193 members of the UN, 44 are landlocked. The other 149 have coastlines linking each of their coastlines to the other 148 countries’ coastlines such that they can as a practical matter drive to those other nations by boat or ship with no natural barrier or no requirement to use easily blocked roads or railways.

The UN convention took eight years to negotiate in the 1970s. It was a triumph of diplomacy and law over the assertion of power and force. It resulted in one of the greatest trade-offs in history between powerful nations, on one hand, and less powerful nations, on the other. 

In short, before the convention, powerful trading nations saw their economic interests in both the unfettered exploitation of the resources of the oceans and in having freedom of navigation across the oceans to help free trade, but ultimately they were willing to forgo the former in order to secure the latter. 

The trade-off was enormous. Rich, powerful nations thought that freedom of navigation across the world’s oceans was so important for trade and hence prosperity that they were willing to grant poor and less powerful nations significant exclusive rights to their adjacent oceans in return for that freedom.

The question posed by the negotiators was how to achieve peace and greater prosperity. The answer was negotiation and compromise.

Each nation, even the militarily and economically weak, got the exclusive rights to all the ocean’s resources, particularly fishing and mining, up to 200 nautical miles from their shore and the total sovereign rights of territorial waters up to 12 nautical miles from their shore. 

n return vessels from any nation, especially militarily strong and rich trading nations could sail anywhere on the oceans, but if they came within 12 nautical miles of another nation’s shores they had to inform that nation of their passage, and make their passage expeditious – no more lingering with menace close to other nations’ shores (gunboat diplomacy).

The arrangement facilitated trade and made the passage of warships less threatening. Good all round. 

Before that, the three-nautical-mile limit was the general unwritten rule. Within that limit, nation states could do whatever they liked with their ocean and beyond that foreign vessels could do whatever they liked – from fishing to playing wargames.

Three nautical miles was of practical importance. In the nineteenth century that was the limit of a cannon shot. It meant that a ship outside that limit could not hit land and that land-based artillery could not hit a ship.

But It also meant that the nations either side of major choke points in world navigational routes – especially Gibraltar, Malacca and Hormuz – which did not have at least a little strip of international waters in the middle had to permit free passage of all vessels. 

The latest US-Iran talks and spats over Hormuz, now puts this arrangement in jeopardy. At its narrowest Hormuz is less that 24 nautical miles wide. It means that the territorial waters of Iran to the north and Oman to the south overlap in the middle. It means any ship travelling through has to identify itself to either Iran or Oman and travel expeditiously, or it could be prevented from passage.

Under the ceasefire agreement Iran agreed to allow free passage, but the agreement was vaguely worded. Vessels seeking passage opted to travel as close to the Omani side as possible. Iran read that as a breach of the ceasefire and fired on those vessels. The US retaliated by hitting Iranian targets on the coastline.

It is clear that Iran wants to come to some arrangement with Oman to charge vessels fees in the future in return for passage rather than allowing Oman to let its side of the Strait be used for free safe passage. Whether those fees are characterised as fees for services or a toll, they will still be contrary to the convention. And once one nation starts, others will surely follow.

With drones and rockets we now have the reverse of the 19^th century position. Instead of a nation worrying about ship-based weapons firing on its land, ships now have to worry about land-based weapons firing upon ships. 

It puts Iran in the box seat. With that threat in place Iran can insist on payment of a fee before guaranteeing safe passage. Iran can just use the insurance system to enforce payment. Without insurance no ship-owner will transit, and without guarantee of safe passage no insurer will grant insurance to a vessel.

All very foreseeable. But it would require thinking in a way that strategists usually think – asking the question: what would I do if I were in the enemy’s position? How would I react if I were the enemy? But Trump is incapable of viewing anything from any perspective but his own.

Arguably, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea has done more in the past 40 years to prevent hostilities and to create the certainty for shipping that generates trade and prosperity than all the force and threat of force that any single nation can muster.

But Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have always preferred force to negotiation.

From the start, they asked the wrong question and got the wrong answer. Netanyahu, facing an election this October, asked how could he stay in power after the Hamas-inspired attack on Israel in October 2023 so he does not have to face questions about how he allowed such a lapse of security? Trump asked, having torn up the well-negotiated Obama deal with Iran to prevent its acquisition of nuclear weapons, how can he ensure Iran does not get those weapons.

The wrong answer they got was: war. In Netanyahu’s case it was genocidal war. If only they chose negotiation and the rule of law rather than force, the world would not be facing an even stronger Iran and an indefinite economic threat to the world that its stranglehold over Hormuz now gives it.

If the world had insisted that Israel follow the 1947 UN resolution that called for the termination of the British Mandate and the partition of historic Palestine into independent, democratic Arab and Jewish states with guaranteed rights for all citizens, there would now be peace in the Middle East.

Trump has always preferred force and the threat of force over the rule of law – domestically and internationally. What he does at home is for the Americans to worry about. After all, they voted him into office. But there is little or no redress for those affected by what he does in the world – usually foolishly and impetuously.

That is why Australia should use whatever tools it has to steer international affairs towards the rule of law and negotiation and away from the use of force.

July 3, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

A Turning Point: What the Iran MoU Reveals About the Limits of US Power

June 19, 2026, By Iqbal Jassat, https://www.palestinechronicle.com/a-turning-point-what-the-iran-mou-reveals-about-the-limits-of-us-power/

The lessons from Iran, if incorporated in the study of international relations, will be that the era in which Washington could dictate terms without consequence is steadily eroding.

Events at the G7 Summit in Evian were overshadowed by news of the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). This was hardly surprising since the story broke about America’s dramatic turnaround and widespread speculation about the details of the MoU, as well as the reasons for it.

It would be fair to say, thus, that the most significant outcome of the G7 Summit in Évian was not the signing of the MoU. It was the public collapse of the illusion that military superiority automatically translates into political victory.

For months, Washington and Tel Aviv insisted that Iran would eventually be forced to surrender. The language was harsh, pointed and uncompromising. Iran’s missile program would be destroyed. Its nuclear capabilities would be dismantled. Its regional alliances would be broken. Its leadership would face collapse under the combined weight of military pressure, sanctions and international isolation.

None of those objectives were achieved.

The contradiction became impossible to conceal when President Donald Trump stood before the world at the G7 and defended Iran’s right to retain conventional ballistic missiles.

The same missiles that had been presented as an existential threat suddenly became acceptable. The same missile program that justified war was transformed into a reality that Washington was prepared to live with.

Contrary to the wishful thinking of some political pundits, this was not a minor adjustment in policy. It was a public admission that the original objectives could not be achieved.

Absent from much Western reporting is the extent of this reversal. The final agreement contains no dismantling of Iran’s missile deterrent. It contains no regime change. It contains no surrender of Iran’s political system. It contains no disarmament of Iran’s regional allies. Even the nuclear issue was largely deferred into future negotiations rather than resolved through force.

The shock registered on the gaping mouths of G7 leaders as well as Israel’s war criminals was obvious, for the outcome exposed the enormous gap between public rhetoric and strategic reality.

For years, American foreign policy has been built around the assumption that economic pressure, military dominance and international isolation can force adversaries to comply with Washington’s demands. Iraq was supposed to demonstrate that reality. Libya was supposed to reinforce it. The sanctions architecture imposed on Iran was designed around the same logic.

The MoU signed by Trump at the G7, demonstrates the limits of that model.

Iran’s leadership calculated that surrender would be more dangerous than resistance. Despite suffering enormous military and economic damage, Tehran retained enough leverage to make continued escalation prohibitively expensive for its adversaries.

The critical factor was not military strength alone.

The Strait of Hormuz exposed a vulnerability that military planners could not bomb away. As energy markets reacted and global supply chains faced disruption, the economic consequences of a prolonged conflict became increasingly unacceptable. Oil prices surged. Shipping costs escalated. Insurance markets were shaken. European governments demanded an end to the crisis. Gulf states that had quietly supported pressure on Iran suddenly became advocates for de-escalation.

The beneficiaries of the original confrontation were clear. Arms manufacturers secured contracts. Security establishments expanded their authority. Lobbying organizations intensified demands for escalation. Media institutions repeated assumptions about inevitable Iranian defeat. A vast ecosystem of political and economic interests promoted the belief that only one outcome was possible.

Though the MoU demolished that narrative, the reaction from Israel was even more revealing. The Israeli political establishment expected the conflict to fundamentally alter the regional balance of power in its favor.

Instead, Netanyahu and his criminal gang of genocidaires found themselves confronting an agreement negotiated largely without their input and one that preserved many of Iran’s capabilities Israel had spent years attempting to eliminate.

The frustration expressed by them and echoed across the regime’s media was not simply about the agreement itself.

It reflected the recognition that military escalation had failed to produce the strategic transformation that had been promised.

This is why the agreement carries implications far beyond Iran, particularly for governments across the Global South who are expected to study the outcome closely.

Indeed, so will Russia and China. The lesson they will draw is not that America lacks power. The lesson is that American power now operates within constraints that did not exist during the unipolar era.

The lessons from Iran, if incorporated in the study of international relations, will be that the era in which Washington could dictate terms without consequence is steadily eroding.

The MoU therefore marks something larger than the end of a conflict. It marks another stage in the transition from a unipolar order to a multipolar one. The significance of the MoU lies not in what was announced. It lies in what was conceded.

The campaign to impose American terms concluded with Washington accepting realities it once declared unacceptable.

June 22, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

US Finally Capitulates with ‘Memorandum’ of Surrender

Simplicius, Jun 17, 2026

The US has finally capitulated in its disastrously failed war against Iran, reportedly drafting a memorandum of understanding which is highly favorable to the Islamic Republic, and gains as concession nothing more than the promise that “Iran will not obtain nuclear weapons”—a position Iran had already long held.

The most explosive detail is the alleged $300 billion “reconstruction fund” that Iran will be entitled to once the deal is sealed.

Trump has downplayed or denied this point, with everyone seemingly perplexed as to what this massive sum entails, exactly. In the above article, Reuters writes the following:

The new fund is a private investment vehicle, not a reconstruction or reparations program and will not include any ⁠government money or grants, the source said, adding that companies based in the U.S., the Gulf Arab states, Asia, South America and Africa have agreed to commit financing.

Investments ​pledged span energy, logistics, manufacturing and transport, the source said.

They claim it’s not a reparations program, yet the official name of the fund is the ‘Reconstruction and Development Fund’. It appears to revolve around regional entities—both corporate and governmental—providing credit lines, direct financing, etc., to Iran. As can be seen above, over half of the fund is claimed to be already committed.

Some American propaganda pundits had claimed that this fund is being pulled from Iran’s frozen assets abroad, but Reuters begs to differ, citing that as an entirely separate negotiating track:

The investment fund is entirely separate from a parallel negotiating track over the lifting of U.S. sanctions and the release of Iranian sovereign assets frozen abroad, the source said, describing the two as distinct financial mechanisms with different purposes and timelines.………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/us-finally-capitulates-with-memorandum?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1351274&post_id=201961444&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=c9zhh&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

June 21, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Trump news at a glance: president claims Iran ‘no longer want a nuclear weapon’ amid peace deal hopes

Washington and Tehran express increasing optimism that weeks of halting negotiations may be drawing to a close – key US politics stories from Saturday 13 June at a glance

Guardian staff, 14 June 26, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/14/trump-news-at-a-glance-president-claims-iran-no-longer-want-a-nuclear-weapon-amid-peace-deal-hopes

Donald Trump says a deal with Iran to end the war would be signed on Sunday, and that the strait of Hormuz would be “open to all” immediately after.

Iran had offered a different timeline earlier in the day, but nonetheless signalled an agreement was in the offing, as both the warring parties and their mediators expressed increasing optimism that weeks of halting negotiations were drawing to a close.

“The Deal is scheduled to get signed tomorrow, and immediately after it is signed, the Hormuz Strait is OPEN TO ALL,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform. Since an 8 April truce paused the worst of the fighting, Trump has repeatedly insisted a deal was near only for the wrangling to drag on.

The Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmaeil Baqaei, had said earlier on Saturday that the date of the signing was yet to be determined, but “it will not be tomorrow”. However, he added: “The possibility of this happening in the coming days cannot be ruled out.”

June 17, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, politics international, USA | Leave a comment