By John Haltiwanger and Rishi Iyengar
Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Situation Report, where John is still recovering from his journey to Kansas City to watch Argentina play Algeria—which involved walking along the highway and being interviewed by the local news about it. It was almost as tedious as getting tickets for said game, which you may have read about in his essay last week. (He did witness a Lionel Messi hat trick, however, so he isn’t that mad.)
Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: The White House deploys its No. 2 official to sell the Iran deal, Ukraine makes black rain fall on Moscow, and the Pentagon returns a combatant command to its old name.
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U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance takes questions during a news conference at the White House on June 18.Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance has become the face of the interim U.S.-Iran peace deal for the Trump administration, and he is set to serve as Washington’s lead negotiator in upcoming nuclear talks. At a press conference on Thursday, Vance sought to answer some of the biggest questions surrounding the memorandum of understanding (MOU) and what happens next.
Vance portrayed the MOU as a “win-win” for the United States, pushing back on skeptics who see it as a capitulation to Tehran and a weaker agreement than the Obama-era nuclear deal (known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) that U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from in 2018.
The MOU offers significant financial benefits to Iran, opening the door for immediate oil sales and some sanctions relief as well as eventual access to reconstruction funds. But Vance said that much of this is dependent on Iran complying with the agreement and changing its behavior. “If they don’t perform … they don’t get any of the benefits of the bargain,” Vance said.
Still, this is unlikely to appease the deal’s critics, including the Israeli government and some Republicans on Capitol Hill, who feel that the Trump administration has offered too many concessions to Tehran. Here’s a look at some of the most controversial elements of the deal and what Vance had to say about them.
The Lebanon dilemma. Iran was insistent on Lebanon’s inclusion in any peace deal and ultimately got its wish. The MOU declares an “immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon.” But these are just words on a page as things stand, as Israel and Hezbollah are not parties to the agreement and have continued to exchange fire this week.
The situation poses a major challenge to the peace process. As recently as Tuesday, Iran threatened Israel with retaliation over attacks on Hezbollah.
When asked about Lebanon on Thursday, Vance said this process is about “regional peace” and that the Trump administration expects that “Hezbollah is not going to be firing rockets and firing drones at the Israelis” and that the “Israelis are not going to be going wild in Lebanon.”
Vance said that this a situation that “we’re going to have to manage” through the diplomatic process, but the United States has its work cut out for it. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday vowed to keep troops in southern Lebanon “as long as Israel’s security needs require it.”
In a sign of the White House’s growing impatience with Israel on this, Vance warned Israeli officials against criticizing the deal. “If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world,” he said.
Iran’s missiles. From the onset of the war, the Trump administration repeatedly cited destroying Iran’s missile program as a key goal. The MOU, however, does not address Iran’s missiles.
Trump, Vance, and even some of their Republican allies on Capitol Hill are now saying that Iran can keep some of its missiles, arguing that it has a right to self-defense. “You can’t tell a country, whether Israel or Iran, they’re not allowed to have any self-defense,” Vance said on Thursday. This marks a sharp break from years of GOP rhetoric on the threat posed by Iran’s missiles. In fact, a major Republican criticism of the JCPOA was that it did not deal with Iran’s ballistic missile program.
But Vance also said that as part of a final deal, the United States expects that Iran will not be able to build the types of missiles that can “broadly threaten the entire world.”
Nuclear verification. The MOU states that Iran “reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons” and sets the stage for further negotiations over the next 60 days on things such as uranium enrichment to ensure this. But there are no guarantees that a final agreement will be reached. And even if a broader deal were completed, it wouldn’t eliminate Iran’s nuclear knowledge. This means that there will need to be verification mechanisms put in place, and there are fair questions to ask about what that could look like.
Vance said earlier this week that international inspectors will “absolutely” return to Iran as part of an agreement and that the International Atomic Energy Agency will work with the United States to destroy Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium. The MOU stipulates that “the minimum methodology” to accomplish this would “be downblending on site under the supervision of the IAEA.”
But keep in mind that it took years, not months, to negotiate the detailed verification mechanisms in the JCPOA. Vance is now supposed to do the same in just 60 days.
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Bill Pulte is expected to take over as acting U.S. director of national intelligence on Friday, after Trump abruptly forced the cancellation of a Senate confirmation hearing for his permanent candidate, Jay Clayton, on Wednesday. Clayton currently serves as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Trump said on Truth Social that his nomination would not move forward until Clayton’s replacement, Jamie McDonald, is confirmed as a U.S. attorney.
One casualty of this drama has been the renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)—a law that allowed U.S. agencies sweeping powers to spy on foreign nationals. Senate Democrats opposed to Pulte refused to vote on FISA until Clayton had been confirmed, and Trump instead opted to let the spying power lapse while also threatening to hold it up further unless Congress makes sweeping changes to the electoral process.
What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.
Moscow bombed. Ukraine hit the Russian capital on Thursday with one of its biggest drone strikes since the start of the full-scale Russia-Ukraine war in 2022, setting fire to an oil refinery that reportedly made “black rain” fall over the city.
“If Ukraine is going to burn, your Moscow will burn too,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, expressing hope that the attacks would persuade Russia to negotiate. “It is time to end the aggression, time to end this war.”
AI anxieties. Aside from Iran, artificial intelligence was the big buzzword at the G-7 summit in Évian, France, this week—particularly the United States’ sudden decision to prevent any foreign nationals from using tech giant Anthropic’s latest artificial intelligence model.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei addressed G-7 leaders on Wednesday alongside rival executives Sam Altman of OpenAI and Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind, with all of them reportedly urging the politicians in the room to cooperate on setting AI safety standards. EU officials are also set to meet with Anthropic in San Francisco on Thursday, a European Commission spokesperson confirmed.
You can read more on the underlying fight between Anthropic and the Trump administration in Rishi’s latest piece.
Hegseth roulette. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has continued his shake-up of the U.S. military’s global posture—both rhetorically and literally. Hegseth announced on Thursday that the Defense Department will review its troops and bases in Europe over the next six months “to ensure that NATO is moving fast and irreversibly toward Europe leading”—a project that he dubbed “NATO 3.0.”
The Pentagon also continued its renaming spree under Hegseth, restoring the old name of its Hawaii-based combatant command for troops in the Asia Pacific region. It will now be known as Pacific Command (the name that it was originally established under in 1947) rather than Indo-Pacific Command (the name that Trump changed it to during his first term in 2018).
“Restoring the legacy USPACOM designation honors the command’s deep historical roots, fostering a sense of pride and collective spirit among all who serve in the Pacific,” the Pentagon said, adding that the command’s mission and area of responsibility will remain unchanged. The move signals Trump’s desire to tone down both competition with China and cooperation with India, Derek Grossman argues in Foreign Policy.
Statues of former U.S. President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama are seen outside the Barack Obama Presidential Center ahead of a dedication ceremony in John Lewis Plaza in Chicago on June 18.Scott Olson/Getty Images
Tuesday, June 23: The 10th anniversary of the United Kingdom’s Brexit referendum.
Thursday, June 25: Poland hosts a Ukraine recovery conference.
“What a rotten deal we made with Iran. We get nothing (except laughter at our stupidity). They get everything, including delay and big cash!”
—Trump, in 2013, referring to the JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran signed by Obama.
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