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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 15, 2026

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This is the crux of the text as is. Most concessions in both sides are in three buckets: what the belligerents offer right now regardless of any deal, what the belligerents offer later conditional on a complete deal, and what the belligerents can't offer personally but promise to pursue via other actors later.

For example, number 11 states "The United States of America undertakes to make fully available for use, the frozen or restricted funds and assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran upon the implementation of this MoU. The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran will mutually agree on the procedures related to the release of these funds during the negotiations."

This states that the US undertakes to make fully available, not immediately makes fully available, with the second sentence stating that the procedure for making available must be mutually agreeable based on later negotiations. Later negotiations, in turn, depending on the prospect of the final deal, until which the US side can claim no mutually agreed procedure has been achieved. While this does not necessarily need to be entirely tied to the 'final deal', the it can be as the US, not Iran, desires, with Iran likely going to push for more early and the US pushing for progress/concessions to get there.

Further, most frozen Iranian funds are not frozen under US jurisdiction. The US agreeing to issue all necessary licenses- which is again contingent on the mutual agreed procedure- does not give the US licensing authority over other actors. This turns into an angle where the holding countries have a veto authority over the return of frozen funds. After all, the US undertakes to make fully available, but anyone who reads this as an obligation to 'strongarm' the countries in question is significantly misreading who is liable to try strongarming countries one on one.

Further, most frozen Iranian funds are not frozen under US jurisdiction.

Most frozen Iranian funds outside US jurisdiction are frozen by people who were bullied into it by US secondary sanctions. Both the US and Iran know that they will be unfrozen quickly if the US wants them to be, and are negotiating on that basis.