Robert Farley

Of course, we have until Friday before the deal is signed. Given the volatility of the cease-fire thus far, it would hardly be surprising if events interceded between now and then to upset the accord.

Judah is quite right; the follow up deal is extremely unlikely to get done, especially as sixty days from now puts us in late August, and there's no way that the Trump administration will want to resume the war just as the midterm campaign season kicks into high gear. The Iranians can both see and read, so they're quite aware of the constraints that Trump will face, and they're unlikely to give him a break. As for Israel… there was a time when Israel could have pushed hard at the deadline and probably drawn even a reluctant US President into the conflict, but that time seems to be over and I think that the electoral consequences of it appearing that Israel dragged the US back into war would be catastrophic for Israel's interests. Of course, I'm not sure the Israelis see it that way. BTW, if you want an entertaining scroll, head over to X and do a casual search on the Iran deal… you will find fury and confusion and general freaking out and it's all awfully funny.

We haven’t talked much about it here but for the last two months I’ve been absolutely obsessed with Widow’s Bay... Widow’s Bay arrived as a fully formed jackalope, so complete and natural in its combination despite its utter strangeness. The magic trick of creator Katie Dippold’s series, about a mayor named Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) who […]

The terms of the Memorandum of Understanding ending the U.S.-Iran war are now public. This analysis argues the deal is worth supporting as an off-ramp from a costly conflict — but that its terms, from sanctions relief and a $300 billion reconstruction fund to untouched missile programs, amount to an acknowledgment that the war was not worth its costs.

I'm sensitive to concerns about criticizing this deal from what amounts to a hawkish position… but this is a bad deal . A bad end to a bad war is still a good thing, but part of an evaluation of the war is taking seriously the consequences of putting the United States in such an untenable position.

A major flu outbreak has sickened nearly 160 troops at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas less than two months after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that U.S. troops would no longer be required to be vaccinated for the flu, defense officials said.

S ir Keir Starmer's days as prime minister are numbered. The triumph of his Labour colleague and rival Andy Burnham in a by-election in the northern constituency of Makerfield on June 18th means that Sir Keir will soon face a formal challenge to his leadership—one he is very likely to lose.

To be clear from the start; the flaws in the MOU between Iran and the United States are not nearly sufficient to oppose its signing. In this case, if not always, better to end the war on bad terms than keep it going. But at the same time, the utter unprofessionalism of the US team has had real consequences with respect to the structure of the agreement, and those consequences will make it different to turn the cease-fire into an enduring peace:

It's been a lively week in the Commonwealth, with dueling lawsuits on prediction markets. The first:

I was wandering around Fox News trying to determine if they were picking up on Racist Grandpa's bizarre claims about the Reflecting Pool, and came across a decent enough article on the differences between the US and Iranian approaches to this negotiation: