Spencer Faragasso @SFnuclear

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) has formally announced that the blockade of all maritime traffic to/from all Iranian ports and coastal areas is lifted.

U.S. Central Command @CENTCOM

5 hours ago

Today, U.S. forces lifted the blockade on all maritime traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports and coastal areas, in accordance with the President's direction. American forces are not impeding the transit of vessels to or from Iranian ports on the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of

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These aren't new leaders in #Iran. These are the same people in slightly different positions committed to the same ideology. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the person the vice president is meeting with on Friday, was on the same Supreme National Security Council which ordered live fire against Iranians killing thousands in January.

David Brody @DBrodyReports

22 hours ago

EXCLUSIVE: Vice President JD Vance on why it would be difficult to arm the Iranians. “You can't just drop weapons from the sky here. There isn't really the infrastructure to get weapons to sort of the heart of the Iranian people.” More here. cbn.com/news/israel/ex… . Full story

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Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations has dispatched numerous firefighting helicopters to fight the massive blaze at the Moscow Oil Refinery.

It’s a Martian marathon! NASA's Perseverance Rover has surpassed a total distance of 26.2 miles (42.195 kilometers) of travel on the Red Planet. It crossed the milestone while exploring intriguing ancient terrain to the west of Jezero Crater.

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Finnish lawmakers voted Wednesday to overturn a Cold War-era total ban on nuclear weapons, allowing warheads to be imported into, transported through or held in the country, potential paving the way for the deployment of nuclear-capable military aircraft and weapons from France or the United States onto the territory of Finland.

More on nuclear in the newly available transcript of the MOU, but not better.  The production ban on nuclear weapons in an unofficial MOU released by Bloomberg and CNN earlier has become in the new more official MOU a ban to develop or procure nuclear weapons. But the production ban phrase should not be dropped. Development and production are different, and procure here is at best ambiguous (Trump referred to buying), and a good case can be made that Iran has fully developed a nuclear weapon, so also banning production, manufacturing, testing, otherwise acquiring nuclear weapons is needed to close loopholes that Iran has exploited in the past or could in the future. At a minimum, a ban on production should be added back.  The new MOU makes no mention of verification. The older one’s language could have made the IAEA’s verification harder or impossible to do, but silence may not be better. President Trump has stated orally that a tough IAEA verification regime is going to be applied; hopefully that is true, but why not state it in the MOU?  Did Iran refuse to allow such language after failing to convince the US to accept the old language in the MOU? Even worse than previously thought, the new one shows all nuclear issues are pushed to the final agreement, including dealing with the enriched uranium, whereas key US leverage is given up immediately in the shape of making frozen funds available, removing naval blockade and waiving oil sanctions and related sanctions on banking and transportation.  And why was the older MOU published by Bloomberg and CNN as the final version? We did an AI analysis last night that assessed that that MOU was a translation into English and should be approached with caution.  It could have been an earlier version in Farsi.  Hopefully, the final version of the MOU will be further improved than the most recent one.

This MOU is effectively a deal that opens the Strait of Hormuz, but allows Iran to reap huge rewards and benefits in return. Amongst several things, the deal proscribes that Iran and Oman play a role in “administering” traffic in the straight, a legal international waterway… Iran will get immediate sanctions relief in the form of oil sales that will enable it to fill its coffers and undoubtedly rebuild its offensive and defensive capabilities, or possibly its nuclear program in the future. All the while, the deal contains no real guarantees or provisions regarding negotiations around the nuclear program, ballistic missile program, or its regional proxy forces. For the next 60 days, iran will make billions of dollars selling oil to the world, while at the same time it can make no real concessions. Hard to see this as a win for the United States, let alone Israel (thats a whole other discussion). Read the text for yourself… semafor.com/article/06/17/…

A friendly reminder to all parties structuring this memorandum of misunderstanding. The $300B private fund to invest in Iran has a statutory problem: the Trump administration formally determined and reported to Congress in 2020 and 2025 that Iran's construction sector is IRGC-controlled. Set aside the criminal exposure from IRGC's FTO designation. IFCA §1245 imposes mandatory sanctions on the sector. The President can waive, but only 180 days at a time. No serious investor commits billions on a rolling six-month waiver cycle. So which is it? Will the administration return to Congress claiming the IRGC vacated Iran's construction sector overnight? Or will it revoke the IRGC's FTO designation to clear the path? The deal's architects need to explain how $300B in committed funds navigates this, or they need every Member of Congress to look the other way.

Reuters @Reuters

2 days ago

Exclusive: A $300 billion private fund designed to trigger investment into Iran is outlined in the US-Iran framework agreement and more than half that sum has already been committed, a source with direct knowledge of the deal told Reuters reut.rs/4xCIdTK

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Only one main paragraph on nuclear in the MOU text that is circulating and has been published by both Bloomberg and CNN. These versions agree on a very dangerous, leaky opening sentence, “Iran reiterates that it will never produce nuclear weapons.” This commitment is incomplete from normal standards and experience, since it has giant loopholes that could allow an ever devious Iranian regime to continue working on developing nuclear weapons and building components, while insisting it is not producing nuclear weapons. Perhaps, there is more, either in a newer version or a secret side deal. But at face value, this sentence needs serious amendment. It should immediately be changed to “never develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess nuclear weapons.“ This language would also include a ban on buying a nuclear weapon, something which Trump reportedly has pushed for, and as reported to be there in some German media. The rest of the paragraph does not provide confidence that robust IAEA inspections will be established that allow the inspectors to verify the end of Iran’s nuclear weapon program, albeit greatly reduced in size and scope by the two wars. Iran has never agreed to the level of needed access to military sites and personnel. That is why the IAEA Board has found Iran in non-compliance with its obligations. So, does the phraseology of the rest of the paragraph, promising to address “all other mutually agreed nuclear-related issues” exclude this highly contentious issue from further negotiations? As a result, “mutually agreed” should be dropped from the paragraph, since the issues are well defined by UN Security Council Resolutions, IAEA Board of Governors resolutions, and IAEA safeguards reports. Full paragraph in MOU we have: “The Islamic Republic of Iran reiterates that it will never produce nuclear weapons. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States have agreed that the fate of enriched material and the fate of all other mutually agreed nuclear-related issues, including Iran’s nuclear needs, will be adequately addressed in a final agreement; the final agreement will confirm the provisions of this Article.” A second paragraph of the MOU mentions nuclear.  Reportedly, "The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States agree that, pending a final agreement, they will maintain the status quo: Iran will maintain the status quo on its nuclear program, and the United States will not impose new sanctions on Iran or strengthen its forces in the region."  What is the status quo of Iran's program, given it has undeclared nuclear material it refuses to admit to and has worked on nuclear weapons? Moreover, who will verify it?

The text of the agreement does not describe in specific detail what commitments Iran has made on its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, according to a person who saw the text and described it to CNN, even though Trump and other officials have insisted the US will oversee its destruction. Instead, the agreement states in broad terms that Iran “reiterates that it will never produce nuclear weapons,” a commitment Tehran also made in the 2015 nuclear deal with the Obama administration cnn.com/2026/06/16/pol…

Read the full 14-point agreement between the US and Iran cnn.com/2026/06/17/mid…

If this is true, Iran wins. There should be zero sanctions relief day one.

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1/3 According to open sources, Russians have developed a jammer for Starlink satellites: "The countermeasure system is named "Volna Kupol Garant." This EW complex consists of an array of sat antennas and targets eight communication channels, each with a bandwidth of 62.5 MHz." t.me/bbespilot/2643

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Iran has no incentive to make concessions on its nuclear program once U.S. military and economic pressure eases, I discussed today with @i24NEWS_EN ⁦@benitalevin⁩.

"Unless you were homeschooled by a day drinker, no one's confident that Iran is going to do anything." Sen. John Kennedy gives his blunt assessment about how he thinks Iran will behave after the Trump administration's new agreement with the regime. The Louisiana senator says it's impossible to know what the Islamic Republic's next move will be as the U.S. tries to curb its nuclear ambitions.

The U.S. will allow Iran to immediately begin selling oil and fuel under the peace agreement - WSJ The MoU includes an immediate sanctions waiver on Iranian oil and covers necessary services including banking, transportation and insurance needed to facilitate the sales.

It may be surprising to many if Iran turned out to be willing to verifiably destroy or downblend their entire stock of enriched uranium. However, from an Iranian perspective this would make sense if, in return, they were able to protect 1) the remnants and the promise of rebuilding their uranium enrichment capability over time, ie its remaining centrifuges and the underlying program, and 2) the reason to produce HEU in the first place. The best long term strategy for the US would be to remove Iran’s reason to produce it, ie force Iran to come into compliance with the NPT and associated safeguards and have Iran declare all nuclear material and related activities, past and present, to ensure their activities going forward would be exclusively peaceful and not serving a nuclear weapons agenda. Once considered solely from a commercial perspective, Iran would sell its enriched uranium and end its enrichment program quickly and voluntarily. Making rewards conditional on Iranian compliance is good, but step by step processes, where Iran gets rewarded for steps that are reversible with time and money, are not good. isis-online.org/isis-reports/t…

These sanctions are some of the most powerful economic levers the U.S. has against #Iran's regime. The #IRGCterrorists will take the sanctions relief and run to rebuild and rearm while sending diplomats to meet in Switzerland and stall negotiations, removing incentives to produce real concessions down the line. wsj.com/world/middle-e…

Over the weekend, CNN reported that, “in recent weeks,” according to five “sources familiar with US intelligence”, “Iran has dramatically escalated efforts to seal off its cache of near bomb-grade uranium, deliberately collapsing tunnels and booby-trapping entrances with explosive mines.” We have been monitoring the sites believed to house enriched uranium – the Esfahan tunnel site, the underground Fordow enrichment plant, and the underground Natanz enrichment plant and associated tunnels. We reported on the US and Israeli attacks on the facilities and their entrances, specifically the Esfahan and Fordow tunnel entrances in June 2025, and Natanz enrichment plant entrances in March/April 2026, all of which were seen as logical denial of access attacks. Which additional tunnels Iran would have collapsed, and why the US would be concerned about this, is not included in the CNN report. We have also been reporting on measures that we assessed would facilitate or complicate retrieval of assets post June 2025, such as Iranian efforts during its rebuilding of entrances, activity near the entrances or weapon impact points, efforts to seal off entrances, and additions of earthen berms and chicanes along the roads. We also reported on events that would make ground offenses easier such as the destruction of defense establishments at the Fordow and Esfahan nuclear sites, or more difficult such as new Iranian revetments for military equipment along the road at Esfahan. The attacks on defensive sites did not surprise anyone and efforts by Iran to protect their assets should not either – they have been going on for months. In fact, following the June war, Iran quietly sealed a small tunnel complex just south of the Natanz enrichment plant. It also accessed two out of three Esfahan tunnel entrances in the fall of 2025, giving it ample opportunity to booby trap the entrances or even the inside of the northern tunnel portion, before it fully buried all entrances in February 2026. Largely overlooked is the immediate benefit of Iran having increased the difficulty of accessing any material, such as enriched uranium, on short notice, making it less valuable in negotiations, less dangerous in the short term, and solidifying the assessments that Iran has no immediate use for the HEU, i.e. nothing resembling an enrichment plant. As a reminder, before June 2025, Iran also had 60 percent HEU in multiple locations, but together with the HEU, three fully functioning enrichment plants ready to produce weapons grade uranium within days and no guarantee of immediate detection (the IAEA was able to visit the enrichment plants once every few days but had no remote or real-time detection mechanism of diversion of HEU or changes in enrichment). Figure 1 is a June 7 image of the Fordow enrichment plant, which shows the previously reported chicanes in larger numbers. It also shows small earthen piles near two of the tunnel entrances, which were added between May 3 and May 22. These earthen piles could be indicative of mines having been placed nearby but given the small size of even anti-tank mines, only very high-resolution imagery could show this. Figure 2 is a June 12 image of the Esfahan tunnel complex, and figure 3 is a May 29 image of the Natanz enrichment plant entrances. Figure 4 is a May 29 image of the Pickaxe mountain tunnel facility and nearby 2007 tunnel entrances. The 2007 tunnel entrances remain sealed. The eastern set of tunnel entrances for the pickaxe mountain facility has remained half buried since April 2026–as of now, this is the most likely “deliberately collapsed” tunnel, but it is not believed to hold HEU and we previously reported the burial. For more information, see: isis-online.org/isis-reports/c…

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What will they do with their unfrozen funds? Like what they did last time? Build more missiles, finance terrorism, cheat on the nuclear program? The final agreement must address all of these issues and ensure that the regime (now more emboldened, aggressive, and radical) does not use that opportunity to be itself! It would be no surprise to see Iran cheat, theyve done it time and again. They are a revolutionary government after all that is diametrically opposed to the West (aka liberal democratic values) as one of its founding principles.

Vice President JD Vance @VP

3 days ago

"If the Iranians are behaving like a normal country and if they make their country investable, then the Gulf Arab states may decide to invest in that country...Not a single dime of that money comes from the United States." — VP Vance🇺🇸

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