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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 15, 2026

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Deal reached to end Iran war

Details of the deal are not publicly available right now. However, Trump has authorised an end to the US naval blockade, and Iran has agreed to reopen the Strait.

Not surprisingly though, Israel continues to bomb Lebanon and refuses to cede lands seized in southern Lebanon.

But MORE surprisingly, Trump actually reprimanded Bibi.

Trump has pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop hitting Lebanon hard while a deal is near, but the prime minister has defied him. Trump told Fox News he had asked Netanyahu what he was doing, using an expletive. "What the f*** are you doing?" Trump says he told Netanyahu. Trump described the attack on northern Israel as "very small and meaningless, nobody was hurt, injured, or killed, and should not disrupt this important process".

Iran wants a ceasefire deal to include the fighting in Lebanon. It’s unclear whether that would mean Israeli forces' withdrawal and when. Most of Hezbollah's attacks in recent weeks have targeted Israeli troops inside Lebanon.

"A strong response is coming," said Ebrahim Azizi, who heads the Iranian parliament’s national security commission and is close to top leaders.

And Iran’s parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, a lead negotiator for Tehran, warned the US on X after Israel's strikes that "if you lack the will and ability to fulfill your commitments, speaking of continuing the path is not possible".

The deal does not solve the thorniest issues between the US and Iran, including Iran’s nuclear program or its billions of dollars in frozen funds, but offers a 60-day framework for technical discussions on those issues, according to Pakistani and regional officials familiar with the ongoing negotiations. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Under the deal being discussed, US and Israel appear to have fallen short of their original goals of destroying Iran’s missile and nuclear programs and ending its support for armed proxies in the region. It is not clear how the deal will address these issues, or if they will be part of the final agreement.

Critics in Trump’s Republican Party, struggling with an unpopular war ahead of the midterm elections, have criticised the emerging deal. Some said it did not improve on the terms of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that Trump withdrew the US from during his first term and which he still describes as "bad".

So it seems we were lucky to return to the pre-war status quo, even Trump had to tepidly admit that he bit off more than he can chew and Iran's regional dominance is not going anywhere.

Basic terms I’m seeing is like 20-25B in released frozen assets. On net I feel like this is a win for US. I think we degraded enough military etc to make it worthwhile.

That is some serious cope. We are releasing 20-25 billion to get rid of Iran's outdated military assets. If sanctions come off, they can reequip better than they had before with full access to raw materials from the world market.

Once they feel they have rebuilt enough they are free to close the strait again, this time with military assets better optimized to do so since they know it's effective leverage rather than theoretical leverage. By then Trump will no longer be president and it will be someone else's problem.

Iran will have to spend years rebuilding assets America destroyed in a few weeks. Therefore, Iran is stronger than ever.

Literally this.

Outside of Germany post WWI, I can't think of any national military in the past few centuries that got trounced thoroughly and then somehow this made them a BIGGER threat in the short term.

Warning: The "?si=" and "?pp=" portions that YouTube has started adding to any URL created with the "share" button allegedly can be used to reveal the YouTube username of the user who created that URL. For that reason, those portions of the URL should be deleted before copying and pasting.

Good to know. Also good to know that Firefox's "Copy Clean Link" feature automatically removes that info.