The Daily Populous Friday June 19th, 2026 night edition
Authored by bbc.co.uk and submitted by BadahBingBadahBoom

The memorandum of understanding signed by President Donald Trump and President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran lays out the political, military and economic consequences of the ill-judged decision to attack Iran on 28 February.

The human cost is already clear. Thousands have been killed, many of them civilians, in Iran and Lebanon.

The US, and by extension Israel, have suffered a strategic defeat. The regime in Tehran faced its worst nightmare: a joint military operation to cripple or destroy it by the US, the world's strongest power, and Israel, the Middle East's superpower. The regime has not just survived. It has been empowered.

Its strategy of blocking the Strait of Hormuz, and with it one fifth of the world's supplies of oil and gas as well as other vital components in the global economy, has forced Trump to agree to a series of concessions that have infuriated and alarmed America's Iran hawks and the Israeli government.

The memorandum of understanding - or MOU - calls for an end to the war in Lebanon. Israel says that cannot happen. It wants a free hand in Lebanon, and that issue has the capacity to cause an even sharper rift between Israel and the US, and play into the hands of Iranian hardliners who oppose any deal with the Americans.

In return for reopening the Strait, the MOU's language says the US will lift its counter blockade of Iranian ports, waive sanctions allowing Iran to earn billions of dollars from exporting oil and start the process of returning billions more to Iran by unfreezing assets that it held abroad.

That is before they get down to the hard business of negotiating a nuclear deal. It is the price of returning to the way they were on 27 February, the day before the US and Israel launched the war. On that day the Strait of Hormuz was open for shipping and American and Iranian negotiators were discussing a nuclear deal.

The signing of the MOU means that the negotiators will go back to work and ships will be able to transit the Strait of Hormuz.

fuggitdude22 on June 18th, 2026 at 17:57 UTC »

Netanyahu told Trump that Iran was a couple bombs away from turning into a Liberal Democracy. He was dumb enough to fall for it.

For the past century, aerial bombardment has proven to be insufficient in propelling a regime change, it is only useful in accelerating armed resistance over the hump in cases like Kosovo or Libya.

Nevertheless, Iran's Mosaic Doctrine has been made public for awhile. Any regime change would require a war with the entire country because of its setup. It isn't like Saddam or Assad's regime in which they hold the country hostage by pinching control over urban centers.

MeatPiston on June 18th, 2026 at 17:40 UTC »

Better question was who encouraged the president, and why.

If attacking Iran was worth the trouble it would have been done decades ago. It’s probably been studied and war-gamed and mulled over more than any other scenario save an invasion of Russia.

It’s a known bad idea, but it was done anyway. Who’s behind it?

jojotortoise on June 18th, 2026 at 17:32 UTC »

Whatever the "war was for" we clearly failed. That's understood by everyone.

The only good thing I can say about Trump: at least he recognized that fact and folded rather than doubling-down (like, for example, Putin). He'll spin it as a win, in a way only Trump can. And that will annoy a lot of people. But getting out was the only good option, I think.