President Donald Trump signed a 14-point ceasefire and nuclear framework with Iran at Versailles on June 17. The Strait of Hormuz is reopening. The naval blockade is lifted. Trump called it “Iran’s unconditional surrender.” The stock market rose and oil prices fell.
On the ground, matters are more complicated. Israel says the deal does not bind it “in any way.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israeli forces will stay in southern Lebanon “as long as necessary.” Iran has argued that the continued presence of Israeli forces in southern Lebanon breaches Article 1 of the memorandum, which calls for an immediate and permanent end to military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon, and commits both Washington and Tehran to Lebanon’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. The memorandum contains no mention of ballistic missiles, no reference to Hezbollah’s disarmament, and no verification mechanism.
The fifth round of Israel-Lebanon talks opens today in Washington as the 60-day technical negotiations in Switzerland continue this week. And Gulf states are quietly diversifying their arms suppliers toward Turkey, after four months of this conflict exposed the limits of relying on Washington alone.
Also this week: the Arab world looks to alternatives to the Strait of Hormuz to get their oil out to the wider world, after Iran once again declared the key waterway “closed.” Turkey is emerging as a global military powerhouse, responsible for exporting two-thirds of the cheap armed drones that appear to have become essential to modern warfare.
Alex Willemyns, Joe Kawly, Waleed Saleh, Alexis Thomas, Leo Goldberg, Abubakar Siddique, Asrar Chbaro and Yahia Kassem contributed to the Agenda this week.
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Washington Signals
Strength and a Signature
The war with Iran is over, at least on paper. President Donald Trump signed a 14-point Memorandum of Understanding with Iran at Versailles on June 17, extending a 60-day ceasefire, lifting the U.S. naval blockade, and establishing a framework for nuclear negotiations. The stock market rose. Oil prices fell. Trump pointed to both as proof the deal worked.
Vice President JD Vance followed through with a detailed defense, drawing a sharp contrast with the 2015 nuclear agreement negotiated under President Barack Obama. “The Obama deal allowed enrichment,” Vance said Monday on Fox News. “Ours will not. The Obama deal gave them over a billion dollars of American money. This deal gives them zero.” He said 12.5 million barrels of oil were shipped through the Strait of Hormuz overnight, citing that as early evidence that the agreement was already working. The $300 billion reconstruction fund pledged under the deal, he said, would come entirely from Gulf partners, not American taxpayers.
Israel, which was not at the table, immediately made its position clear on the deal: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called it “bad for Israel and the entire free world.” National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said Israel was “not a banana republic” and the agreement did not bind it “in any way.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would remain in southern Lebanon “as long as necessary,” a direct contradiction of the memorandum’s language. Vance responded publicly: “If I were part of the Israeli government, I might reconsider attacking the only significant ally I have left in the world.”
Lebanon is mentioned three times in the memorandum, including a call for a permanent halt to military operations across all fronts. On June 22, Vance called Lebanese President Joseph Aoun to discuss consolidating the Lebanon ceasefire and a new deconfliction mechanism proposed by mediators Qatar and Pakistan. A Lebanese official told MBN that Aoun expressed preliminary support, provided the mechanism leads to a sustainable ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory. The fifth round of Lebanon-Israel talks opens in Washington on June 23 to discuss how to implement the deal on the ground.
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Quote of the day
The Middle East is standing at a fork in the road – one path leads to a durable ceasefire and regional de‑escalation, the other back to catastrophe.
— António Guterres, UN Secretary‑General, written statement welcoming the US–Iran ceasefire framework, June 20, 2026.
Global Signals
A World Without Hormuz?
Vessels in the Strait of Hormuz near the beach of Bandar Abbas, Iran, June 21, 2026. Amirhosein Khorgooi/ISNA/via WANA (West Asia News Agency)via REUTERS
An apocryphal quote attributed to Mark Twain says that war is God’s way of teaching Americans geography, but it’s fair to say that across the entire world knowledge of the Strait of Hormuz has skyrocketed since the United States and Israel launched their war on Iran in late February.
Tehran’s decision to “close” the key waterway in the wake of the U.S-Israel strikes sent shockwaves through the global economy, with Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE effectively cut off from the cheapest and easiest way of getting their oil to market. Some alternatives existed, including Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline, which runs from the Abqaiq port on the Persian Gulf to the port of Yanbu on the Red Sea. But in April, Iran attacked that pipeline, too, reducing Riyadh’s output by some 700,000 barrels of oil a day.
A UAE pipeline linking the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman, bypassing the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint, was also attacked by Iran in March and May, underlining the increased security risks Gulf states take onboard in their attempts to diversify away from the Strait of Hormuz. But with the Iranians over the weekend again saying Hormuz is closed to tankers – due to Israeli strikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon – the push for diversification seems likely to accelerate.
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The Go-Between
U.S. Vice President JD Vance speaks next to Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani at the start of a quadrilateral meeting between the United States, Iran, Pakistan and Qatar at the Burgenstock luxury hotel complex overlooking Lake Lucerne, Switzerland, on June 21, 2026. FABRICE COFFRINI/Pool via REUTERS
Munir, the chief of Pakistan’s defense forces, and experienced intermediaries from Qatar, another neighbor of Iran, leveraged their diplomatic acumen and connections with Washington and Tehran to broker the U.S.-Iran deal. That work began months ago and the mediators’ roles will likely persist as they try to solidify a deal that aims to end nearly half a century of hostile relations between the U.S. and Iran.
Turkey Watch
A taste for Turkish arms
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan speaks during a joint press conference with Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani in Doha, Qatar, April 27, 2025. REUTERS/Imad Creidi
With the United States facing its own manufacturing shortages of missiles and other arms after months of attacks against Iran, U.S. allies across the Arab world are also having to think about diversification in an entirely unexpected sector: arms. With Iran having proved the extensive damage it can inflict across the Middle East over the past four months of conflict, America’s friends across the region are having to reconsider their reliance on Washington.
In response, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar have all moved to strengthen arms-supply arrangements with Turkey, with a particular interest in Ankara’s short-range air defense systems and drones. The Turkish defense tech is viewed by the Arab states as the most efficient way to counter Iran’s cheap but plentiful missiles and drones.
The interest from the Gulf comes as Turkey has transformed itself over the past 20 years from a net importer of arms to a major world exporter of modern defense technologies like drones. The country now supplies an extraordinary 65% of the world’s armed drones, making it a new military powerhouse in a world where warfare increasingly relies on cheaper, low-tech arms.
Featured conversation
The view from Israel
Former Israeli National Security Advisor Maj. Gen. (ret.) Yaakov Amidror spoke with MBN’s Jerusalem correspondent Yahia Kassem about the U.S-Iran talks to end the war.
On claims Israel pushed for a war: “The Americans wanted the war. The president of the United States called the Iranians to get out onto the street and he said, ‘America is coming to save you.’ February as the beginning of the war was not convenient from the Israeli point of view.”
On Trump’s MoU: “I was so surprised by the flexibility of the Americans in this agreement and their readiness to pay cash and to get back only a letter of intent with so many ambiguities. I don’t know what will happen in the future. You see that when it comes to negotiations, the Iranians are very good negotiators – something that I cannot say about the American side.”
On Iran’s proxy network: “Hezbollah is fighting for its existence. Because of the collapse of the land bridge from Iran to the Mediterranean, because Syria now is hostile to Hezbollah, the Iranians cannot rebuild Hezbollah in Lebanon as they did in the past.”
On Lebanon’s role in the MoU: “The mistake of the Americans to give the Iranians a say in Lebanon is a huge, huge mistake because it brought the Iranians back to Lebanon with legitimacy from Washington, and even the government of Lebanon cannot say, ‘Okay, we will disarm Hezbollah,’ because the Americans gave Hezbollah and its ally, Iran, a say in Lebanon.”
Watch the full interview here.
