Tangle - A possible peace deal in Iran.

Episode Date: June 15, 2026

On Sunday, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who has served as a mediator in peace discussions between the United States and Iran, announced that the two countries reached a deal to end their conflict. The Pakistani leader said that both countries would immediately cease military operations and formally sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on Friday, though the text of the memorandum has not been released. Ad-free podcasts are here!To listen to this podcast ad-free, and to enjoy our subscriber only premium content, go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠ and today’s “Under the radar” story ⁠here⁠ and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: How would you characterize the progress in negotiations between the U.S. and Iran? Let us know.Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast written by: Ari Weitzman and audio edited and mixed by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tango podcast, the place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of RR. take. I'm your host for today, Tango's managing editor, Ari Weitzman. While the rest of the team is coming back home from West Virginia, I'm still at home, which means the last couple days, I felt kind of by myself. The slack has been eerily quiet since Friday, which was giving me flashbacks to this time in elementary school when I was feeling a little sick. So I came to school late.

The entire class had gone to a field trip. So I was just sitting in an empty room next to the principal's office catching up on work. Does that ever happen to you guys? Just me? Well, anyway, it seems like the event in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, was a blast. The team's all buzzing from it. They're all coming home from their travel today. and like you all, I'm going to be looking out for the video when it drops soon.

A sad to miss out on the roundtable discussion, pleased to know that it took two people to replace me, but all the same, I'm interested to see how it turns out when that link drops, and we'll make sure you know about it when it does. But to turn the page to today, we're talking about the war in Iran, as well as a reader question about oil in Venezuela, a lot of geopolitical stuff going on since the G7s also starting today. So we've got a lot of ground to cover,

so I'm going to send it over to Whale to get us started. I'll be back for my take. Thanks, Ari. All right, let's get into today's quick hits. Number one, President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. military killed the alleged leader of the Trend de Aragua gang in an airstrike in Venezuela,

conducted in coordination with the Venezuelan government. Number two, Senator Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, was hospitalized for an unspecised reason on Sunday. His team said he is, quote, receiving excellent care, but has not shared further details. Number three, Anthropic announced it had disabled its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 artificial intelligence models in response to a U.S. government directive to restrict access to the models for all foreign nationals. The company said it blocked access for all users to ensure compliance with the directive.

Number four, Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire. after SpaceX, the company he founded and leads as CEO, began trading as a public company on Friday. And number five, the annual G7 summit, which brings together leaders from the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom begins today in France. Countries are expected to discuss topics, including the wars in Iran and Ukraine, online safety, and artificial intelligence. A peace deal to end the war with Iran is apparently in place. And President Trump says the Strait of Hormuz is back open tonight. And that Iran will sign the deal later this week. But Israel continues to attack Lebanon, making things tricky.

On Sunday, Pakistani Prime Minister Shabash Sharif, who has served as a mediator in peace discussions between the United States and Iran, announced that the two countries had reached a deal to end their conflict. The Pakistani leader said that both countries, countries would immediately cease military operations and formally sign a memorandum of understanding on Friday, though the text of that memorandum has not been released. The U.S. and Israel launched a coordinated military campaign against Iran on February 28, 26, and after more than five weeks of fighting, the two sides agreed to a ceasefire on April 7th. In the month since, the U.S. and Iran have

both conducted sporadic military operations, including exchanging air strikes last week, a U.S. helicopter collided with an Iranian drone. Tensions heightened on Sunday before the deal was announced after Israel carried out a strike against Hezbollah near Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. President Donald Trump confirmed the deal shortly after Sharif's post, adding that the Strait of Hormuz would immediately be reopened and the United States' blockade would end.

However, the president later clarified that the strait would not be reopened until after the signing of the deal on Friday. The deal's details remain unclear, as Iran and the United States publicly disagree about the requirements. The deal reportedly does not include a long-term agreement on the future of Iran's nuclear program, with negotiations towards a nuclear accord planned to begin after the deal is signed on Friday. However, Iran has said that these talks will not commence until the U.S. meets a series of demands, including releasing billions of dollars in frozen Iranian funds. quote, this is completely not true, a U.S. official told CNN regarding Iran's claim.

Quote, this is a pay-for-performance deal and no frozen funds will be released without the Iranians implementing their commitments. The agreement also calls for the cessation of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon. Israel's national security minister, Edomar Ben-Gavir, said in a statement that Israel will not pull troops out of areas it has seized within Lebanon. quote, Israel is not subordinate to the United States, and we are an independent and sovereign state, Ben Gavir said. Today we'll get into arguments from the right, left,

and writers in the Middle East on the potential peace deal, followed by managing editor Ari We're Weitzin's take. We'll be right back after this quick break. Here's what the right is saying. The right is mixed on the agreement, with some saying that the terms appear favorable for the U.S. Others suggest the president is trying to save face with a lackluster deal.

In the New York Sun, Conrad Black argued the deal looks like an unambiguous success for America and Israel. If the end of the Iran War just announced brings the removal or destruction of the enriched uranium and permanent and verifiable guarantees that Iran will not seek to become a nuclear and military power, and if it also contains verifiable promises not to subsidize international terrorism, which has been hinted at, then it has unambiguously been a successful war. for America and Israel. The more than $1 trillion in damage done to Iran and the complete destruction of its air defenses

and navy and most of its offensive missile and drone capacity only cost eight American combat fatalities. Mr. Trump never explained the war properly and fluctuated in his enunciation of his war objectives and strained both credulity and public patience as he oscillated between draconian threats and confident predictions of imminent peace. Yet any version of the outcome of this war that is now believable is a major strategic victory in denying Iran nuclear weapons, as well as driving a number of Arab states into the arms of the Israelis, and curtailing Iran's ability to generate terrorism, all at minimal cost in American lives. It is an undoubted Trump victory, and no one will remember the recent gas prices on midterm election day.

In the free press, Eli Lake wrote, Trump gives Iran a lifeline. and calls it peace. This is not a treaty, not a deal, and not a peace agreement. It's a memorandum of understanding to negotiate the terms of a broader peace over the next 60 days. Put another way, it is yet another ceasefire. Iran has not agreed to anything with regard to its nuclear material, ballistic missiles, or support for terrorist proxies throughout the Middle East. As for Trump's statements early on in the war, encouraging the Iranian people to seize their institutions and rise up against their oppressors, that objective has been placed inside a memory hole. Trump has bent to Iran's positions through the haphazard negotiations that led to the memorandum

of understanding. For example, the president has now acceded to Iran's demand to link Israel's war against Hezbollah, its proxy in Lebanon, to the broader U.S. Iran deal, something Trump initially had resisted. When he launched the war in February, Trump was on a role. Now, a battered and impoverished Iranian regime, can see a light at the end of the tunnel. The conflict has now moved from the battlefield to the negotiating table. Now here's what the left is saying. Many on the left argue that the U.S. has failed to achieve its military objectives in Iran. Others say Iran emerges from the conflict stronger than before.

In Zedio, Andrew Perez and Asa Wain Subasang called the deal a humiliation for Trump and Netanyahu. The initial goal of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran was to topple the Iranian regime. That didn't happen. The administration claimed the war would only last a few weeks. It stretched well beyond three months. The conflict only created more leverage for Iran, which successfully closed the Shred of Hormuz, stopping the flow of oil, causing energy prices to spike, and throttling the global economy. Israel appeared to try to torpedo the deal on Sunday by launching a new round of attacks on civilians in Beirut.

This time, however, the U.S. and Iran apparently managed to forge an agreement. As of Sunday, this peace deal would purportedly extend to Lebanon, where Israel has been leveling towns and villages. If this latest agreement is serious, Netanyahu and Israel could easily try to blow it up. And Netanyahu has made clear with the supposed ceasefire in Gaza that he may not feel bound to abide by any such deal negotiated by Trump. On the other hand, Netanyahu's attacks on Lebanon appear to help pave the way for Sunday's agreement rather than scuttle it. And Trump and administration officials do seem eager to end this disastrous war, and there is good reason to do so.

If the Strait of Hormuzes remains closed, oil reserves in the U.S. and elsewhere could soon reach crisis levels with fast economic consequences. In the New Yorker, Robin Wright suggested Iran can hold America hostage in either war or peace. Iran has demonstrated its ability to hold out, sometimes for years, for what it wants, while the U.S., with its two- and four-year election cycles, has limited patience. Washington countered Tehran's seizure of the strait with its own blockade of any ship coming from or going to Iran, but the conflict is costing U.S. taxpayers an estimated $2 billion a day.

Late on Friday night, Iran announced that Tehran and Washington were in the final stages of an agreement that would temporarily end conflicts in both Iran and Lebanon. That basically means that the U.S. U.S. will not engage in any actions to undermine or topple the Islamic regime. In other words, there will be no attempt at regime change. The agreement also establishes that in the future, the strait will remain under Iranian control and never revert to its pre-war status. All commercial traffic will have safe passage, but Iran will eventually impose a service fee for transiting vessels.

Both of these stipulations would be momentous long-term gains for Tehran. Trump also appears again and again to want to craft a victory narrative for his constituency. But a memorandum of understanding, despite its diplomatic title, is only a broad set of principles that still need to be laboriously negotiated, especially the nuclear program, which was the main reason that the U.S. and Israel originally went to war on February 28th. And now here's what writers in the Middle East are saying. Some in the Middle East say the deal would have wide-ranging consequences for the region. while others worried that Netanyahu could still derail the ceasefire.

In Arab news, Abdul Rahman al-Rashid described the U.S. Iran agreement's most alarming clause. One of these provisions, according to leaked information, is a mutual regional non-aggression agreement. It divides the region into two camps and forces the country of each camp not to attack those of the other. It stipulates that Iran and its allies will refrain from attacking the U.S. and its allies, while the U.S. and its allies will likewise refrain from attacking Iran and its allies. This is an ambiguous provision that requires analysis. First, who exactly are the allies? Well, Israel, the Gulf states in Jordan are considered U.S. allies.

The first conclusion is that if Iran signs such an agreement, whether in the framework agreement or in a final accord, it would be effectively signing a deal that ends its 40-year war against Israel. This is not the only surprise or shock. The second conclusion is that this hypothetical clause would make Hezbollah a recognized and protected actor, undermining the unprecedented efforts being exerted by the Lebanese state. The same applies to the Houthis, which Yemen's legitimate government and other Yemeni forces seek to remove from Sana'a and eliminate. In Heretz, Esther Solomon said, Netanyahu may set the Middle East ablaze.

One doesn't need to be a grizzled diplomat or cynical pundit to see that this deal in the making has the ingredients to be a disaster for Israel's national security. You just need eyes and a pulse. It appears that the details of Iran's nuclear program have been kicked down the road to be dealt with in the next negotiating period of 60 days. For Netanyahu, this is a failure on multiple fronts. The last year of U.S.-Israeli attacks were supposed to be a culmination of his decades-long obsession to comprehensively defang Iran's capacity to threaten Israel.

Instead, it seems more likely that Iran will emerge from its sanctions-laden financial deep freeze with the capacity to pump far more cash and munitions into developing its missiles and proxies. Sadly, what's bad for Netanyahu's election chances ends up being bad for the Middle East because you will only seek more extreme methods to win. In election season, everything from the independence of the judiciary, and the media to the West Bank settlement expansion to the lives of Palestinians and Lebanese is for sale to his rag-tag coalition. All right, that is it for what the right-left and Middle East writers are saying.

So I will pass it over to Ari for his take. Ari, over to you. Thanks, Will. All right, that's it for what the right-left and Middle East writers are saying, which brings me to my take. I'll just jump right in. I highly doubt that this current round of talks will bring. a lasting peace between Iran and the United States. In order to reach a long-term peace, Iran, Israel, and the U.S.

all have to agree on the Iranian nuclear program, Iranian sanctions, Iranian control of the Strait of Formos, and Iranian support of its proxies in the Middle East. In order to negotiate on those issues, each side is motivated to see different points in time as defining the original status quo. The U.S. may want to define the status quo as the period after the U.S. struck Iranian nuclear sites in June 2025, which is when Iran's nuclear program was vastly depleted, at least for the purposes of nuclear discussions. Iran may want to define the status quo as when the U.S. and Iran agreed to a ceasefire in April, at least with regard to control over the Strait of Hormuz. And Israel seems to be saying the status quo is just flat out intolerable.

Iran cannot be allowed to have materials to build a nuclear weapon or to continue to support its proxy networks in Lebanon, Gaza, or Yemen. Each topic under discussion is thorny on its own. The nuclear deal alone will take a long time to hammer out. Neither President Trump nor Israel will want to agree to any nuclear deal that's softer or even just perceived to be softer than President Obama's joint comprehensive plan of action, or the JCPOA or the Iran nuclear deal. And the Iranian regime is clearly willing to accept economic pain on behalf of its citizenry to maintain its leverage in the strait.

But I will concede the U.S. and Iran don't need to solve the nuclear question or any larger question right now. They just need to agree to halt hostilities. And as much as I'd like to see this war come to a close, I doubt they'll be able to agree to even that much for a few reasons. First, there doesn't seem to be a lot of mutual understanding in this memorandum of understanding. The U.S. and Iran have each said that signing the MOU will kick off a 60-day negotiating window during which Iran and the U.S. will lift their dueling naval blockades in and around the Strait of Hormuz.

They also agree that the ceasefire will commit the two sides to discussing a nuclear deal and sanctions rule. From there, though, the story is the verge. The U.S. says that in simply signing the MOU, Iran is committing to dropping its pursuit of a nuclear weapon. Iran insists it is only committing to discussing its nuclear program, along with sanctions relief. Also, Iran says the U.S. will pay $300 billion to help with reconstruction. Oh, and the U.S. will accept Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz and the future imposition of fees. Even on the preconditions for peace talks, Iran and the U.S. seem very far apart. Second, let's bear a mind that the United States has some pressing reasons to want to communicate that an agreement has been reached if or if not one even has been.

The G7 summit starts today, with Iran and Russia on the agenda, and President Trump's history at global summits indicates he'll want to have some achievement in hand to show enemies and allies alike. And when you zoom out, Trump also has domestic concerns to worry about. Inflated gas prices at home are increasing economic anxiety, which is hurting his party's polling coming into the midterms. All of that gives me reason to doubt that Trump's motivation is really to set the groundwork for a lasting piece, rather than achieve a short-term win that can bring gas prices down and boost Republicans' midterm prospects up. Third, whether the MOU applies to Israel is unclear. Iran is saying that the agreement will suspend all fighting, including exchanges between Hezbollah and the Israeli defense forces. The United States says the ceasefire applies to Hezbollah, but that Israel has the right to respond

if Hezbollah initiates an attack. Israel says it isn't bound at all, pledging to maintain a presence in southern Lebanon either way. You'd think that for even a basic ceasefire to hold, each side would agree on who exactly it even applies to. Otherwise, the ceasefire will likely proceed in name only with constant violations throughout, which brings me to my last point. The agreement that was in place between April and June was hardly fruitful. Since the beginning of the ceasefire, the U.S. and Iran never really seemed to be ceasing their fire. The United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Israel all report in missile and drone attacks on their territories the day the ceasefire was sign. Kuwait then accused Iran of further drone strikes on April 10th, and then Iran called the

April 13th U.S. naval blockade a prelude to a violation of the ceasefire. On May 5th, Iran also called the U.S. announcement of Operation Project Freedom to escort ships through the Strait of Ramoos a violation, and Trump walked back the announcement shortly after. And the list continues. Iranian forces launched missiles, drone, and small boat attacks on three U.S. warships on May 7th, The U.S. then struck Iranian military sites in southern Iran and Tehran in response. On May 25th, the U.S. performed defensive strikes on missile launch sites in southern Iran and boats in the Strait of Hormuz. On June 7, Iran launched ballistic missiles at Israel,

and Israel retaliated with strikes in southern Beirut and Lebanon. And most recently, tensions flared when the U.S. and Iran exchanged fire on June 10th. If all of that happened during a ceasefire, then it's clear that the sides involved in the war don't have the requisite trust in a mutual agreement to even temporarily suspend fighting. Iran's definition of a ceasefire seems to allow for drone strikes on U.S. regional allies in unfettered attacks from its proxies. Trump's definition seems to be, and this is a quote, shooting in a more moderate manner. Either definition accepts a lot of exchanging a fire. And when you add in all the reasons

to doubt this current memorandum of understanding, why would anyone expect this situation to carry out any differently. You wouldn't. But what would you expect? Iran understands the political leverage this year's elections give it in negotiations. And the U.S. and Israel have obvious military superiority. That all creates a strange kind of stalemate that can't be resolved by talking our way out of it. Obviously, that reflects poorly on the decision to enter this conflict in the first place, but now that we're in it, President Trump is well and truly on the horns of a dilemma. Either, accept a peace plan that leaves us in a worse position than we were in before the war, or commit more time, energy, and resources to get us to a better one.

So what's left? If there's one thing we can agree on with Trump, it's that he won't be eager to accept a deal that he can't sell as a win. So that really only leaves one option. And this may be cynical, but I expect we'll do the short-term ceasefire dance until at least after the midterms, when Iran will lose its electoral leverage and a lesser-reshing. Strain Trump will probably be able to follow through with project freedom to ensure safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

Regardless of how we got in this conflict, any real end to it will be hard won. Short-term declarations of peace are going to keep coming and keep going. We'll be right back after this quick break. That's it for my take today. So I'm going to turn to today's reader question, which comes from Gerard, who submitted his question through subtext. Gerard asks, with the U.S. controlling Venezuela's oil, why haven't we been able to increase production and reduce oil prices regardless of the mid-eust situation? To start, the premise is correct. In January, after a successful military operation to capture Venezuelan

President Nicolas Maduro and bring him to the United States to stand trial, the U.S. took control of Venezuelan oil exports. At the same time, the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline has increased from 283 per gallon in January to $4.7 per gallon today. After Maduro's arrest, the Department of Energy said that it had begun marketing Venezuelan oil on the global marketplace for the benefit of the U.S. and Venezuela. And it said that it had selectively rolled back sanctions to allow for easier disbursement and that it would begin to modernize and expand production for near-term growth. At the same time, Venezuela was exporting an average of 100,000, 20,000 barrels of oil to the United States per day, and that was down from the Premeduro daily

average of 800,000 daily barrels in 2013. As things stand right now, the U.S. controls the sale on exports of Venezuelan oil. The Council on Foreign Relations estimated the value of those exports at nearly $8 billion as of April, and crude oil exports from Venezuela to the United States have increased to a daily average of about 407,000 barrels. So to answer your first question, the United States actually has been able to significantly increase oil production from Venezuela. However, these increases are small relative to the national demand of over 20 million barrels per day. Furthermore, since heavy Venezuelan crude requires more processing than the approximately 400,000 barrels that came to the U.S. through the Strait of Hormuz, a larger increase of production from Venezuela would be needed to offset the Middle East oil.

So long story short, we are increasing the amount of oil coming from Venezuela, but that oil requires more refinement in order to offset what was lost from oil coming through the Shreda-Pormuz. The Trump administration plans to invest in Venezuelan oil production to stabilize gasoline prices more in the long term, but that investment will likely require several years before it pays off. That's it for your reader question today, so I'm going to send it back over to whale for the rest of the pod. Thanks, Ari. And now here is today's Under the Radar Story. The Supreme Court is expected to issue rulings in 20 cases before the end of June, including decisions on a slew of high-profile issues. Among other ongoing cases, the court has yet to rule on President Trump's executive order limiting birthright citizenship. The president's move to terminate temporary protected status for people from several countries, states attempts to restrict transgender athletes' participation in sports, and mail-in ballot counting rules. The next slate of opinions is expected on Thursday of this week, and some decisions could have an immediate impact on the 26 midterms. The Hill has a preview of the biggest remaining decisions,

and we'll drop a link to it in today's show notes. Next up is this day in history. In the aftermath of the battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, The Continental Congress deliberated over whether to send out a call for more militia formation or finally raise a standing army to combat the hostile incursions of British troops. Massachusetts Delegate John Adams urged Congress to raise a full army, hoping to unify the northern and southern colonies in the cause of resistance. One Virginia delegate, an officer who had served as a colonel in the Virginia Regiment during the French and Indian War just 17 years earlier,

arrived at deliberations in full military dress, conspicuously signaling his support for such a plan. On June 14, 1775, the Continental Congress issued in order to raise a standing army from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia to aid Massachusetts colonists in the siege of Boston. Their next objective was to choose a man to lead that army. Attention turned to that same Virginian veteran delegate.

On June 15, 1775, 251, 251, years ago today, the Continental Congress appointed George Washington to lead the first colonial army in Boston. Despite his initial reluctance to lead, Washington would accept the job and assume command on July 3rd in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And finally here is our Have a Nice Day story. Since 1973, every freshman at St. Benedict's Preparatory School in Newark, New Jersey, has had to check off the same grueling requirement before becoming a son. sophomore, a five-day, 55-mile hike along the Appalachian Trail. Many of the school's kids come from urban environments and have never hiked or camped before.

But in the spring, they train together, learning different skills that will allow them to collaborate and succeed on their journey. Then, in May, they head into the mountains with only each other to rely on. At the end, they cross a wooden bridge to meet their teachers on the other side. Quote, when life gets difficult, it's something you can refer back to, Administrator Glenn Cassidy said. Quote, there's a lot of raining days in life. Upworthy has this story, and again, we'll put the link to it in today's show notes.

All right, that is it for today's edition. Hope you're having a fantastic start to your week, and looking forward to being back with you tomorrow. Until then, have a great day, and peace. Our executive editor and founder is me. Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Wall. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Keeback and associate editors Audrey Moorhead, Lindsay Canuth, and Bailey Saul.

Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at reTangle.com.