Iran…Trump…Conflict/War…Midday… June 16, 2026…Trump Taking Lumps…..

U.S. and Iranian officials are expected to gather at a lakeside resort in Switzerland on Friday to sign an initial agreement and kick off a 60-day cease-fire and negotiating period in which they will try to resolve issues that have kept the two countries at odds not just during the war, but for decades. The signing will take place at the Alpine resort of Bürgenstock, the Swiss authorities said.

Mr. Trump has said that Friday is also when the United States and Iran will lift restrictions they have placed on the movement of a significant portion of the world’s oil and gas shipping fleet through the Strait of Hormuz. But even that step comes with hurdles that the preliminary agreement may not be able to immediately eliminate.

U.S. forces are searching for mines Iran may have laid in the strait. Shippers need mine-free waters and a calmer atmosphere to feel comfortable moving through the narrows. Months of hostilities in the region have frayed nerves and left many skittish that a return to fighting could happen at any moment.

Iranian officials have also suggested that they may charge fees for ships passing through the strait — something they did not do before the war.

The thorniest points of contention are Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium and its proxy war with Israel. Israel’s armed forces and the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah have been locked in a pattern of tit-for-tat strikes since soon after the war with Iran began on Feb. 28. More than 3,600 people in Lebanon have been killed, and more than a million have been forced from their homes.

Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, said that under the terms of the initial agreement, Iran expected Israeli forces to immediately withdraw from Lebanon and halt their attacks in the country. But Israel has said its military will remain in Lebanon, where its forces have continued to launch strikes since the preliminary deal between Iran and the United States was announced over the weekend.

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump said that Israel was overly aggressive in that conflict and “too many people are being killed.” He urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to “be more responsible with respect to Lebanon.”

Here’s what else we’re covering:

• Oil prices: The price of Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, fell below $80 a barrel on Tuesday for the first time since March, far below its wartime highs but still well above the prewar price. Read more ›

• Securing the strait: Energy output is expected to take time to return to prewar levels because of the effort involved in restoring production and repairing damaged infrastructure. Read more ›

• G7 summit: At the meeting of the leaders of the world’s largest wealthy nations, on the south shore of Lake Geneva, the focus was on Ukraine and the Middle East as Mr. Trump sought help to clear the Strait of Hormuz. Follow live ›

• U.S. senators (don’t) react: Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill were reluctant to praise the preliminary deal without seeing its terms, including Republicans like Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close ally of the president. Read more

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The Iran Pursuit of a ‘Win’ against the ‘Mighty America’….

In the days after Iran and the United States reached a preliminary agreement to pause their war, Iranian politicians, generals, and clerics from a range of political factions described the deal as a victory that showed Tehran’s resilience against a far more powerful enemy.

That is the position Iran’s leaders are pushing even though the country lost a slew of its top political and military figures, suffered a battering to its stock of ballistic missiles and was left with an economy strained even further by a naval blockade.

“Iran has taken a major step toward final victory,” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian Parliament who has played a major role in negotiating the deal, wrote on social media on Monday.

As negotiators were nearing an agreement, Sadegh Amoli Larijani, chairman of a powerful appointed council that supervises the work of the government, wrote on social media on Saturday that Iranians had shown a “renewed spirit of resistance” and defeated U.S.-Israeli plans to overthrow the Islamic republic….

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The comments also reflect the genuine perception of Iran’s leaders, who can point to the fact that the terms of the agreement, though still not fully known, will fall far short of what President Trump had previously declared as his goals in starting the war: “total and complete victory” for the United States and “unconditional surrender” for Iran.

The style of Iran’s leadership has also changed as a result of the war. Some pragmatic figures, such as the national security official Ali Larijani, were killed, while the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — the military force that defends Iran’s system of clerical rule — has consolidated power. The long-term impact of those changes is still to be seen, but the shifts raise the question of how willing the military, now even more powerful, will be to make serious concessions at the negotiating table.

Mr. Trump’s rhetoric also appears to be adding to Iranian leaders’ confident tone. The American president has publicly excoriated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel for mounting attacks on Lebanon that nearly derailed the U.S.-Iran deal, and he has described Iran’s current leadership, including the supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, as pragmatists…

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With Iran entering those talks feeling confident, its negotiators may be unwilling to make compromises on the key points of disagreement, including the future of Iran’s current stockpile of enriched uranium.

“The nuclear negotiations will be the real test of the durability of this arrangement,” Mr. Boroujerdi said. “If tensions in the Strait of Hormuz have subsided by that stage, Trump may find it more difficult to extract major concessions from Tehran.”

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Trump Says He ‘Never Cared’ About Iran Regime Change

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Why Trump Is Keeping the Iran Deal a Secret