SCOOP: Iraq’s Money for Iran

The Iran deal is still alive. For now.

Israel struck Beirut. Iran fired back. President Donald Trump said he was “not happy” and appealed to Tehran to return to the table. An MBN exclusive reveals Iran had already told Hezbollah to reject the Lebanon ceasefire and use it as leverage over the Hormuz talks. Lebanon’s President Aoun told Iran directly: “You are not trying to help us.”

Also this week: Iraq’s most ambitious push since 2003 to bring Iran-backed armed factions under state control, and how Iraqi politicians and businessmen kept Iran financially afloat during the war. In Lebanon, Hezbollah and Amal supporters clashed for the first time since their brutal conflict of the late 1980s. And in the Gulf, roughly 7,500 Pakistani Shia workers have been deported from the UAE since the war began.

Mustafa Saadoon, Dalshad Hussein, Rami Al Amine, Houda Elboukili, Sakina Abdallah, and Ghassan Taqi contributed to the Agenda this week. 

Follow our flagship MBN news sites (in Arabic or English) for the latest updates.
If you prefer to read the Agenda in Arabic, click here. Share your thoughts anytime at mbnagenda@mbn-news.com. And if the MBN Agenda was forwarded to you, please subscribe.

Washington Signals

Trump’s Terms

President Donald Trump had said a deal with Tehran to turn a ceasefire into a peace settlement was still “very close,” adding that he did not want Iran’s missile strikes on Israel to blow up the peace process. Then he ordered Israel and Iran to stand down. He posted on Truth Social: “Israel and Iran must immediately stop shooting.”

Trump’s frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu became public this week. Axios, citing three U.S. officials, reported that Trump called Netanyahu and ordered him to cancel planned strikes on Beirut. Netanyahu struck anyway.

On June 7, Israel hit Beirut’s southern suburbs, killing two people and wounding 20. Iran responded by firing approximately 10 ballistic missiles at northern Israel. Israel then struck targets inside Iran. Netanyahu announced a halt, then added: “Our struggle with them is not over yet.”

Trump told Fox News he was “not happy” that Israel had targeted Beirut, warning it would “not help” negotiations with Tehran. He appealed directly to Iran: “You’ve shot your missiles, that’s enough. Get back to the table and make a deal.” He told the Financial Times that Netanyahu “won’t have any choice” but to accept whatever deal the United States negotiates because Trump “calls all the shots.” Netanyahu’s decision was to strike anyway.

What Trump wants from that table is specific. In a “Meet the Press” interview, Trump said Iran had “conceded the fact” that it would not develop nuclear weapons, but he pushed for broader language. “I want to put the word, if they buy or purchase or acquire, they’ve got to have that in there too because that’s not developing,” he said. He has also said that if a deal is reached, both sides would “go together, take it out and destroy it,” referring to Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium. All sanctions relief, he has said, comes strictly after a final deal is signed.

Those demands are harder to reach as long as Israel keeps striking Beirut, and Iran has linked any Hormuz agreement to a full Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. Trump says Washington is working to separate the two portfolios. 

Trump wants a deal. The events of this week show how many parties can complicate one.

SCOOP

Iran’s Order to Hezbollah

Iran has told Hezbollah not to accept the Lebanon-Israel ceasefire. A Lebanese security officer told MBN the instruction came after talks between Tehran and Washington over reopening the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway through which one-fifth of the world’s oil flows, stalled.

The ceasefire had been announced after the fourth round of Lebanon-Israel negotiations in Washington on June 3. Hezbollah rejected it immediately. The commander of the Quds Force, the foreign operations branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said any ceasefire required a full Israeli withdrawal to pre-war positions. The Revolutionary Guard added that its condition for any regional ceasefire was a halt to hostilities on all fronts, including Lebanon.

Iran suspended the Hormuz talks and used Hezbollah’s rejection as leverage. President Donald Trump said Washington was working to separate the issue of Lebanon from the Hormuz question. Iran’s message to Hezbollah suggests Tehran is doing the opposite.

Iran insists on using it as a negotiating card. In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Aoun accused Iran of using Lebanon as a bargaining chip in its negotiations with the United States. Addressing Iran directly, he said, “You are not trying to help us. Our interests do not coincide with your interests.” 

Iran’s top diplomat pushed back, urging Aoun to focus elsewhere. The Lebanese president did not back down.

Read the full report here

Quote Of The Day

“Today, there is no Iranian navy. There is no such thing. There’s a bunch of Boston whalers with machine guns on them. But there is no navy.”

— U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, June 2, 2026, Capitol Hill 

Iraq Watch

Disarming Militias 

Iraq’s new government has launched its most ambitious effort since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 to bring Iran-backed armed groups under state control. MBN has learned from Iraqi security sources that the process is already underway.

The trigger was unexpected. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, one of Iraq’s most powerful political figures, announced the dissolution of his movement’s armed wing and its integration into state institutions. Two Iran-aligned factions that had previously conducted attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Kataib Imam Ali, quickly followed.

A senior Iraqi army officer told MBN the integration is designed to prevent factions from reconstituting inside state institutions. Fighters will be distributed across the security services “as individuals, not as groups,” with orders flowing solely from the commander-in-chief. Committees formed this week are already inventorying weapons for transfer to state authority.

The scale is significant. Al-Sadr’s armed wing has roughly 13,000 registered members and can mobilize tens of thousands more. Asaib Ahl al-Haq, whose leaders are designated global terrorists by the U.S. State Department, has an estimated 10,000 fighters. Kataib Imam Ali has approximately 8,000 members and controls key military facilities across Iraq.

Whether fighters, once integrated, remain loyal to their former commanders rather than to the state is the question no inventory of weapons can answer.

Read the full exclusive here.

Exclusive

Iraq’s Money for Iran

A drone view shows the Shalamcheh border crossing between Iraq and Iran in Basra, Iraq, March 24, 2026. Reuters/Essam Al-Sudani.

While strikes targeted Iran’s military infrastructure, part of Iran’s financial lifeline ran through Baghdad. Iraqi politicians and businessmen provided cash support to Iran during the war, MBN has learned from political and economic officials in Iraq.

The support operated through two channels. The first was direct cash transfers crossing land borders in areas controlled by Iran-backed factions. An Iraqi official told MBN that one businessman donated roughly $200 million during the 12-day Israel-Iran war last June, later assumed a position in the Iraqi state, and holds major government contracts.

The second channel was institutional. Two major electricity contracts were awarded before Iraq’s November 2025 elections to companies that appeared to be Iraqi on paper but were front operations for Iranian firms under U.S. sanctions, which are penalties that bar companies from doing business with Iran. A former Iraqi lawmaker told MBN that Iran’s Mapna Group, one of Iran’s largest energy companies, placed under U.S. sanctions in 2018, expanded its footprint in Iraq through exactly this kind of arrangement.

The network extended beyond Iran-aligned Shiite figures. Iraqi sources said prominent Sunni businessmen were also involved, motivated less by ideology than by a desire to build influence within Iraq’s political establishment.

MBN is withholding the names of several individuals for legal and editorial reasons, as they have not responded to the allegations. The pattern raises a question Washington has not publicly answered: Even as the U.S. presses Baghdad to cut ties with Iran-aligned factions, how much of Iraq’s contracting system is already running through the networks it is asking Baghdad to dismantle.

Read the full exclusive here

Lebanon Watch

Brothers at War, Again

Supporters of Hezbollah and the Amal Movement, the two dominant Shiite political parties in Lebanon, came to blows in the southern town of Bissariyeh last week. Both sides called it a personal dispute. The speed of that denial was itself a signal.

The two movements share a history most Lebanese politicians prefer not to discuss. Between 1988 and 1990, they fought a brutal internal conflict known as the War of the Brothers, leaving thousands dead. That history shapes everything about how they manage their relationship today.

Rula Talhouk, director of the Institute of Christian-Muslim Studies at Beirut’s Saint Joseph University, told MBN their alliance rests on a mutually beneficial arrangement: Amal provides Hezbollah with political cover inside Lebanon’s state institutions, while Hezbollah’s military strength has helped keep Nabih Berri, Amal’s leader, as Lebanon’s parliament speaker for decades.

The timing matters. The clash came as Berri was playing a central role in ceasefire talks between Israel and Lebanon. Hezbollah then publicly rejected a ceasefire formula Berri had indicated the Shiite alliance was prepared to accept, fueling speculation about a real divergence between the two movements.

Whether Bissariyeh was a local dispute or something deeper remains unclear. But the last time these two movements stopped managing their differences, during the War of the Brothers, thousands of Lebanese died.

Read the full story here

Gulf Watch

The Price of Mediation

A Pakistani Shia man who spent 15 years working in the United Arab Emirates was summoned to an immigration office, had his phone and wallet confiscated, and was deported. During questioning, he was asked: “Are you Shia?”

He is not alone. Reuters recently reported that roughly 7,500 Pakistani Shias have been deported from the UAE since late February, when the war with Iran began. Both UAE and Pakistani authorities denied the deportations were linked to religious identity, citing regulatory violations. The accounts MBN collected told a different story. One Pakistani worker told MBN his residency permit was valid through 2027. He was told to leave immediately with no explanation. Authorities searched his phone for Iranian contacts. His only apparent offense, he said, was his sect.

The context is Pakistan’s diplomatic prominence. Islamabad has been the primary mediation channel between Washington and Tehran. Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar met Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington last week. That visibility has drawn attention: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused networks “operating from Pakistan” of running online campaigns against Israel. No direct link between those allegations and the UAE deportations has been established. But the timing is difficult to ignore.

Kamran Bokhari, a senior fellow at the Middle East Policy Council, told MBN that the situation amounted to “guilt by association,” in which suspicion is shaped by religious identity rather than by proven misconduct. Human Rights Watch told MBN it is currently investigating the allegations.

Pakistan depends on remittances from the Gulf and cannot publicly confront Abu Dhabi. Its mediation role has come at a cost its own citizens are paying.

Read the full MBN investigation here