Monday News Updates: Trump Tries to Sell His Iran Humiliation – 6/15/26
There's a lot going on this Monday
Hi all, Ben here. It’s Monday, June 15. There is a lot going on today, so let’s get into it.
Top stories we’re tracking:
Iran’s Foreign Ministry laid out what they believe the MOU actually requires and it is dramatically more than anything the Trump administration has admitted publicly
Israel is openly defying the Lebanon clause of the deal, with Ben Gvir and Smotrich threatening to continue military operations regardless
The Strait of Hormuz remains essentially shut down, despite Trump’s claims it’s “already partially opened”
A federal judge issued a scathing rebuke of the Trump administration’s effort to erase slavery and civil rights history from national parks
The AFL-CIO wrapped a successful convention with a defiant message to DOGE and the Trump administration
Trump’s $14 million no-bid Reflecting Pool renovation is now covered in green algae, and MAGA is blaming sabotage
Trump announced a July 4th rally at the Lincoln Memorial, replacing the traditional nonpartisan celebration with a Trump campaign event
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Let’s get into it.
Fact vs. Fiction Regarding the Iran “Deal”
Let me walk you through this carefully as there is a lot of noise and spin and it’s worth cutting through all of it.
What Trump has right now is a Memorandum of Understanding. That’s not a treaty, not a final deal, and not a completed agreement of any kind. An MOU is, by definition, a statement of intent to negotiate. Concepts of a plan, one might say. The actual deal still has to be written, and the 60-day technical talks that would produce it haven’t even started. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif confirmed the framework last night, calling it “the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon,” but then noted that “pre-implementation discussions” this week would “lay the foundation for the technical talks and the official signing ceremony.” Pre-implementation discussions to lay the foundation for technical talks before a signing ceremony for a document that precedes the actual deal.
Compare that to what Trump keeps trashing. The Obama-era JCPOA was an 18-page agreement with detailed annexes, 159 pages total, with specific, verifiable commitments on uranium enrichment limits, centrifuge counts, inspections, and enforcement mechanisms. What Trump has is concepts of a deal, with the text not yet released to the public, to Congress, or even to reporters. Trump said this morning it would be out “pretty soon.” He then walked that back in France, telling reporters it would come out “sometime after Friday,” which is the signing ceremony itself. He may not even attend. When asked, he told reporters: “JD is coming in for it. I’ll probably be gone by then.”
So we’re being asked to accept a deal we can’t read, signed by a president who may skip his own ceremony, for an agreement the other side is describing in completely different terms.
What Iran Says the Deal Actually Requires
Iran held a major foreign ministry press briefing today, and it is worth going through what spokesman Esmail Baghaei said, because it is substantially more than anything the Trump administration has publicly stated.
On sanctions: the American side is obligated to lift all of them — secondary, primary, UN Security Council sanctions, and relevant IAEA board resolutions — from the moment the MOU is signed on Friday. Iran says it must be able to sell oil and petrochemicals without any obstacle starting that day.
On the Strait of Hormuz: Baghaei drew a careful distinction, saying Iran never sought to impose “tolls.” He then immediately clarified that fees will be designed and collected for navigation services, environmental protection, ship insurance, and any other services Iran and Oman decide to provide in waters they now claim authority over. So no “tolls,” just mandatory fees for every service Iran decides to offer. Fars news reported the draft MOU gives Iran and Oman formal authority over navigation management in the Gulf. JD Vance sidestepped confirming a long-term, toll-free reopening of the Strait of Hormuz by stating that those details would be determined in upcoming technical negotiations. That’s a huge difference from what Trump has been saying.
On Iran’s nuclear material: Baghaei warned the U.S. directly in response to Trump’s Wall Street Journal comment about wanting to “go in and get it.” He reminded Trump’s team that they tried entering once, they saw the result, and if they are wise, they will not repeat it. Meanwhile, Trump told the WSJ he’d deal with “nuclear dust later on, when we’re ready to go in and do it” and called the nuclear material “harmless.” After all of this, now Iran’s nuclear material is “harmless?!”
And Vance said this morning that we’ve “fundamentally changed our relationship with Iran” and “feel that we’re at the place now” where Iran won’t have a nuclear weapon. Those three characterizations, from the president, his vice president, and Iran’s foreign ministry, describe three completely different realities.
On trust, Baghaei was blunt. Iran has no trust in Israel, no trust in America, and views the U.S. decision-making system as heavily influenced by what he called extremist and warmongering factions. Iran’s IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News Agency reported that Iran’s military headquarters declared the Iranian nation “was able to impose their will on coward enemies.” That is how Iran’s military is publicly framing this deal, as a victory imposed on the United States.
Vance’s big new talking point this morning was that the real win here is that we’re “friends with Iran now.” I am not making that up. That is what he said. We started a war, bombed Iran for three months, and the takeaway is that now we have a great relationship. I frankly have secondhand embarrassment just watching them try to spin this thing.
The Strait Isn’t Reopened, At Least Yet…
Trump posted this morning that “ships are starting to move, many loaded up with oil out of the Strait of Hormuz.” He called the waterway “totally safe, secure and pristine.”
The actual data tells a different story. Energy analyst Josh Young posted a MarineTraffic map of the Strait this morning with a simple observation showing the Strait looks mostly the same as yesterday, last week, and last month. Bloomberg’s vessel tracking data, updated every 30 minutes via AIS transponders, shows commercial cargo vessel crossings through Hormuz were running at 100-160 per day through 2025 and into early 2026. Around March of this year, they fell off a cliff, dropping to near zero, where they have remained ever since. Correspondent Michael McDonough noted the tracker would show immediately if ships started moving with transponders on. So far, they aren’t.
Israel Says It Doesn’t Apply to Them
Here’s another central problem: Israel is openly rejecting the Lebanon clause of this deal.
Iran’s Baghaei today confirmed that Lebanon “appears three times in the MOU” and that ending the war in Lebanon is “an inseparable part of the ceasefire agreement.” Pakistani PM Sharif cited the deal’s inclusion of Lebanon when announcing it. Israel’s Defense Minister Katz confirmed that Netanyahu communicated to Trump directly that the IDF will not withdraw from Lebanon, and that he personally reiterated that position to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Sunday.
National Security Minister Ben Gvir posted a lengthy statement declaring the agreement does not bind Israel. He made his operational demands explicit: continue destroying houses in southern Lebanon, continue pushing residents out, continue eliminating Hezbollah. Finance Minister Smotrich said Israel “will continue to act with every tool at its disposal to bring down this murderous regime in Iran.” Israeli policy, per Katz, is to maintain an indefinite military presence in security zones in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza, described as “the consequence” of October 7. Washington Post reporter Aaron Blake captured the central contradiction that Iran and Pakistan say the deal includes Lebanon, Israel says it doesn’t apply to them, and the fighting is continuing.
So, one side of the deal says it explicitly covers Lebanon. The other party to the conflict says the deal doesn’t bind them at all. And the Trump regime has said nothing publicly to resolve that contradiction.
The Green Reflecting Pool and July 4th
While all of this was unfolding, Trump was posting up a storm on Air Force One during his flight to France. Among his posts: a self-repost of a Breitbart headline reading “Thank You, President Trump: Reflecting Pool in D.C. Wows After Trump Renovations.”
The Reflecting Pool is currently covered in green algae. The $14 million no-bid contract to renovate it apparently did not prioritize the most basic requirement of maintaining a pool, circulating the water and filtering out algae. Anyone with a basic understanding of science could have told you that painting the bottom blue while failing to address filtration and circulation problems in a pool fed by the Potomac basin would accelerate the algae problem, not solve it. The humid conditions and low water levels this time of year make it worse.
The right-wing response has been cringeworthy. Conservative media personality Grant Stinchfield declared it sabotage by the left, calling it vandalism by people who “can’t stand Trump, American greatness and his quest to make DC beautiful again.” The post has 3.2 million views. The cause of the algae is stagnant water with poor filtration. Science. But sure, sabotage.
Trump also announced a July 4th rally at the Lincoln Memorial will now just be a Trump rally, with the algae-filled Reflecting Pool as a backdrop, more than 300 military band members, what he called “the largest fireworks show in history,” and himself as the keynote. The traditional July 4th celebration at the Capitol has been moved to July 3 to accommodate it. The national holiday has been converted into a Trump campaign event. If you’re someone who just wants to enjoy the Fourth of July regardless of party, regardless of politics, too bad. Everything gets Trumpified.
Courts Push Back on Historical Erasure
A federal judge in Massachusetts delivered a significant ruling Friday, striking down the Trump administration’s effort to remove historical markers from national parks under the March 2025 “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” executive order. The order directed the Interior Department to remove any content deemed to “inappropriately disparage” Americans, which in practice meant park rangers were ordered to discard educational materials about slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, harm to Indigenous people, and climate change.
Among the items targeted for removal: an 1863 image of Peter Gordon, an enslaved man whose scarred back became one of the most powerful documented records of slavery’s brutality, displayed at Fort Pulaski National Park in Georgia. An exhibit about the role of enslaved people at George Washington’s home. Indigenous history displays at Golden Gate National Park. A climate change marker at Fort Sumter, site of the first shots of the Civil War.
Judge Angel Kelley’s ruling stated the government’s stewardship of these park sites “carries a responsibility to present history in full rather than in favored fragments.” Democracy Forward’s Skye Perryman, who helped bring the challenge, called it “a whitewashing and in some instances a rewriting” of American history. The Trump administration will appeal. The Interior Department’s response to the ruling included a statement celebrating UFC event on the South Lawn.
The AFL-CIO Is Fighting Back
One more thing: The AFL-CIO just wrapped its convention in Minnesota, and the message coming out of it was exactly what this moment calls for. AFL-CIO President Liz Schuler made clear that America’s unions have never been more united and are ready to fight for a future that works for all working people. AFGE President Everett Kelley delivered what may be the line of the convention, speaking directly to DOGE and the federal workforce purges: “In the midst of what they thought would destroy us, it built us.”
The attacks on workers, on federal employees, on organized labor, they were supposed to demoralize and divide. Instead they’ve produced exactly the opposite. You can get engaged. You can get involved. The home front is where this is won.
We’ll keep covering all of it. Thanks for reading, liking, restacking, and subscribing!
Europe, please, please arrest Trump for war crimes while he's over there! Please!
Looks like JD is going to need 2 couches. One for serious psychotherapy.