Will Israel Blow Up Trump’s Deal? Jeremy Scahill on Iran Talks, Strait of Hormuz, Nukes & More

June 15, 2026
More than 100 days into hostilities, Iran and the United States say they have reached a preliminary deal to end the war. Israel, however, is not a party to the tentative deal and says it plans to keep occupying areas of southern Lebanon — a position still contested by Iran and the key sticking point to the partial ceasefire deal agreed to by the U.S. and Iran in April. Although the new agreement is set to be signed Friday, Israel’s unrelenting assault on Lebanon could once again spoil any deal.

“This is going to become the center of whether any actual agreement takes place,” says Drop Site News's Jeremy Scahill, who joins Democracy Now! to break down what we know about this latest round of diplomacy. As the U.S. now intends to end the war without accomplishing its initial goals of regime change and nuclear capitulation, it appears that Trump has “finally accepted some version of his manufactured and almost entirely false victory narrative.” Scahill, who has spoken extensively to Iranian officials about the negotiations, says it remains to be seen if Iran can successfully “decouple” the U.S.-Israeli alliance from Israel's expansionary front in Lebanon, or whether it has relinquished too much of its own “strategic leverage” by agreeing to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
 
AMY GOODMAN: Iran and the United States have reached a preliminary deal to end the war. On Sunday, President Trump posted a message online that read, quote, “The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete. Congratulations to all! I hereby fully authorize the toll free opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and, simultaneously herewith, authorize the immediate removal of the United States Naval blockade,” unquote. Trump went on to write, “Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!” unquote.
The deal extends the ceasefire by 60 days, creating a window for negotiations on other issues including the future of Iran’s nuclear program and the lifting of U.S. sanctions. But major questions remain. Israel is not a party to the tentative deal and earlier today said it would continue occupying areas of southern Lebanon. Iran’s deputy foreign minister appeared on Iranian television and said the peace deal includes a cessation of hostilities on all fronts, including in Lebanon.
KAZEM GHARIBABADI: [translated] Two immediate developments were supposed to take place, and will take place, starting last night or in the early hours of today. First, the immediate and permanent end of the war in military operations on various fronts, including in Lebanon. As you saw, the statement announced by the prime minister of Pakistan explicitly referred to the immediate and permanent end of the war on all fronts, including Lebanon. The second development was the lifting and ending of the naval blockade that the United States has imposed on the Islamic Republic of Iran, which was also announced by the U.S. president in his statement.
 
AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about the preliminary U.S.-Iran deal to end the war, we’re joined by Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of Drop Site News.
Hi, Jeremy. Can you start off by talking about what actually is an MOU, a memo of understanding? What do you understand this memo, that hasn’t been made public, says?
 
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I think the first thing that we need to recognize is that this hasn’t been signed yet. It hasn’t been formally agreed to. That presumably could happen on Friday, but there are a number of wild cards, not the least of which is the posture that Netanyahu and the Israelis are taking on Lebanon.
But just to give you a bit of background of what went down over the past 24 hours, Israel once again bombed Beirut. They hit the southern suburb of Dahiyeh. And the Iranians had made clear that this was a red line for them, that if the Israelis continued attacking Beirut, that Iran would respond in kind. And in fact, I was speaking to an Iranian official soon after that happened, and they told me that it was going to be within a matter of hours that Iran was going to launch missile attacks against what they called occupied Palestine, meaning the areas where Israeli troops have been positioned in the northern — or, along the southern border and, in fact, deep inside Lebanon, where the Israeli troops have gone north of the Litani River. And then you had this sequence of events where Donald Trump unilaterally announces that an agreement is going to be happening, the prime minister of Pakistan then posts it on Twitter, and from the Iranian position, they said that this was a unilateral announcement, but nonetheless they use that, they say, as an opportunity, then, to win some last-minute concessions.
A few days ago, I had been told by the Iranians that there were two primary sticking points still unresolved. And they wouldn’t expand on what those were, but, quite clearly, one of them involved this scorched-earth bombing and occupation of Lebanon. And so, what Iranians are saying is that as a result of the Israelis bombing Dahiyeh in Beirut and the Iranians agreeing not to launch retaliatory strikes, that Trump agreed to add that the Israeli troops had to withdraw from southern Lebanon. Now, we haven’t seen the text of this agreement. If that’s the case, then the Iranians could say that this was indeed a diplomatic victory, because earlier drafts of this had just envisioned a, quote-unquote, “ceasefire” or a cessation of hostilities in Lebanon.
So, we don’t exactly know all of the terms, but I think, in the broader picture, we have to understand this represents, at least in the short term, and in terms of this war that Trump and Netanyahu initiated on February 28th — this is a dramatic set of capitulations by Donald Trump. The main sort of victory of this is he’s reopened the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait of Hormuz was opened prior to the February 28th war. That’s not a victory. Trump is saying, “Oh, the Iranians are going to put in writing that they’re not going to develop or in any way seek to acquire or purchase a nuclear weapon.” Well, if you go back and you read the preamble to the 2015 JCPOA, Iran says precisely that, and, in fact, that’s been Iran’s position for a very long time.
The Iranians are saying that they have entirely deferred any negotiations on the nuclear issue, on the issue of their stockpile of highly enriched uranium, that those — that answers about those questions are only going to come with comprehensive sanctions relief and a massive — they’re asking for a $300 billion reconstruction fund, that the nuclear issue is not going to be under discussion or under any agreement until there is comprehensive sanctions relief on the table.
The Iranians are also saying that the Americans agreed to something that Donald Trump has been screaming up and down that he would not agree to, and that is the unfreezing or repatriation of billions of dollars of Iranian funds. Now, we may see some trickery here, where Donald Trump perhaps was working in concert with Gulf countries to try to surreptitiously slide some of Iran’s frozen assets back to Iran at the front end of this deal, so that Trump can say no money is exchanging hands. But my understanding is that the Iranians are saying that in this memorandum of understanding, or in the broader agreement with the Americans, that there is going to be a formal process of repatriating frozen Iranian funds that’s going to be linked to a 60-day negotiation period.
Now, there are risks for Iran, and there has been a ferocious internal debate within Iranian society that actually spilled out into the public, where you had small groups of people protesting against the foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, the speaker of the parliament, Mohammad Ghalibaf, who’s the lead negotiator for Iran, and urging them not to accept this deal. And the position that they’re taking is essentially that Iran has never had greater strategic leverage over the United States, that for roughly a hundred days it has fought off an attack by not one, but two nuclear powers and forced the most powerful man in the world, Donald Trump, to desperately seek an off-ramp, in which he was forced to accept terms from Iran that basically returned the situation to the status quo ante before Netanyahu and Trump launched this war.
 
AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy, can you talk about the role of Qatar and Pakistan?
 
JEREMY SCAHILL: You know, the Pakistanis were brought into this because the Trump administration, particularly Steve Witkoff, the special envoy, completely contaminated the relationship with the long-standing negotiator on nuclear issues between the U.S. and Iran, and that is the Sultanate of Oman. The United States used the foreign minister of Oman unwittingly to provide cover for this surprise launch of the February 28th war. He had traveled to Washington, D.C., a couple of days before the launch of the war, met with Vice President JD Vance, and then came out and said, you know, a deal is basically on the horizon. And then, less than 48 hours later, the United States and Israel launched this massive war against Iran.
And so, once the Omanis were sort of pushed out of the picture, Trump chose Pakistan. He views the Pakistani government as a malleable force that wants to curry favor with him. Yes, Iran has a long-standing friendly relationship with Pakistan, but behind the scenes, the Iranians started to conclude that Pakistan was just not able to close the deal with Trump. And there was a pattern where the Pakistanis would come back to the Iranians, tell them that the Americans had agreed to something, the Iranians would proceed on the basis of that understanding, and then Trump would turn around and announce that the opposite was going to be happening.
And so, Qatar was brought in, in part because of its deep role in negotiating the Gaza agreement last October, and because of a perception on the part of the Iranians that the Qataris held more sway with Trump. And in fact, just to give you one example, a couple of weeks ago, when Pakistan had made some announcements about progress in the U.S. position during the negotiations, a couple of hours later, the Qataris told the Iranians it’s just not true, that Donald Trump is actually not going to be taking that position. So, we’ve seen this pattern play out over and over again.
And I should say, Amy, that international mediators have begun talking about the erratic nature of Donald Trump, and the Iranians actually took this a step further. A few weeks ago, I was told by an Iranian official involved with the negotiations that Iran began enlisting the services of what they called senior psychologists in Iran to begin diagnosing Donald Trump, and they determined that he is operating from a position of mental illness and mental deficiency. And so, senior Iranian psychologists began working with the negotiating team to try to cater the messages that the Iranians were sending via mediators back to Donald Trump, to try to take into account what they saw as his specific mental illness and mental deficiencies. And they weren’t saying this in an ad hominem way; they were saying it as a matter of fact. And then, almost quite clinically, they said, “And we began to see this process yielding results as we worked with psychologists to send these communications to Donald Trump.” And they credit that, in part, with getting to this point where Trump finally accepted some version of his manufactured and almost entirely false victory narrative.
 
AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you — the G7 is happening in the French Alps, in France. Interestingly, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who said, “Trump’s agreement does not bind us. Israel is not subordinate to the United States. We are an independent and sovereign country.” Smotrich called it “bad for Israel and for the entire free world. Period.” Ben-Gvir has been banned from entering France, citing his “unspeakable” behavior of taunting Gaza flotilla activists who were detained by Israeli forces. And Smotrich is the second Israeli minister barred from France, after Itamar Ben-Gvir.
 
JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah, and, you know, this isn’t just these people that, I think, universally are viewed as extremists. This is the mainstream policy of Israel right now, that was expressed as recently as this morning by the minister of defense in Israel, where they’re saying that the United States has the file of Iran and has authority to make its own agreements there, but Israel is going to stake out its own position on Lebanon. And really, I think this is going to become the center of whether any actual agreement takes place.
What the Iranians have done here — and I think this is important for people to understand — is they’ve made these terms, that the United States is agreeing to at the front end of this deal, the implementation of those terms, contingent upon any discussion regarding the nuclear issue or highly enriched uranium. So, if the Israelis, while this week is going on, as we move toward a potential signing of a memorandum of understanding — if the Israelis continue to attack Lebanon, even after the president of the United States has assured mediators that the U.S. will be the guarantor of this cessation of hostilities, then the Iranians can say, rightfully, and according to the agreement, “We’re not going to proceed on these other issues.”
Netanyahu very clearly wants to continue his war against Lebanon. And, you know, a prominent Iranian analyst, Amy, told me recently that the strategy of the United States and Israel in engaging in these negotiations with the president of Lebanon is to try to decouple or split Iran and Hezbollah and to try to enlist the Lebanese government as a kind of domestic anti-Hezbollah force working in an axis alliance with the United States and Israel. The Iranians view the next phase of this as seeking to decouple the United States and Israel from this central front of Lebanon.
And so, I think one of the major questions that we’re going to see resolved in the coming days is what Iran’s position is, and if it is indeed a red line, as they’ve said, that the Israelis must withdraw from Lebanon and entirely cease their attacks and their state of siege. Many analysts in Lebanon over the months have been concerned that potentially Iran would have to use its leverage to deal with its own economic situation and some of its priorities. In recent days, the Iranians have stunned much of the world in how ferociously they’ve responded and retaliated against Israel for its attacks, and particularly its bombings on Beirut.
So, what’s different, in a way, from the JCPOA framework — and we’re far from having something extensive like that, but what the — in the approach of the Iranians, they are trying to embed within this documentable conditions that if the United States doesn’t follow through on them, the Iranians have the ability to try to resume. But there’s a question on whether or not Iran is, as some of the critics internally are saying, giving up too much strategic leverage. Could they then reimpose a kind of asymmetric state of closure on the Strait of Hormuz after the world economy gets back into motion, etc.? Yes, they could, but the narrative would be different.
And the last thing I would say is, whether the bombs stop falling or not, Israel, in the coming days, weeks and months, is going to intensify its internal covert operation campaign inside of Iran to try to foment and encourage even more unrest and violence to try to further destabilize the Iranian state.
 
AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill, I want to thank you for being with us, co-founder of Drop Site News.