Iran Deal: Good News and Vance News

Also, meet Israel's Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Vice President JD Vance and Donald Trump shake hands during a formal ceremony in the U.S. Capitol. (JDVance/X)

It’s Tuesday, June 16, and “what we know is this agreement is going to make Israel safer, it’s going to make the entire region safer,” Vice President JD Vance told NBC News, adding that he “feels confident” Israel will join the U.S.-Iran deal “further down the road.” It is difficult to share Vance’s confidence when the rest of the cabinet has remained entirely silent on the matter.

Though that isn’t entirely true. According to Axios’s Barak Ravid, CIA Director John Ratcliffe told Donald Trump and other senior officials that evidence gathered by U.S. intelligence agencies raises serious doubts about Iran’s willingness to make the nuclear concessions the U.S. is seeking in any final deal. He was joined by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, both of whom expressed concerns and raised questions about the memorandum of understanding—while Vance and the White House’s Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, advocated for it.

I’ll try to sprinkle in some optimism and sweeten this bitter pill. But first, we should go through the details as they appear so far. Vance says the deal runs “about a page and a half.” That’s not a lot of room for an American victory—especially once you fit in all those Iranian concessions. Let’s look at what has been conceded so far:

Just a week ago, Trump declared there was absolutely no way he would release frozen assets before a comprehensive peace deal was signed. Yet by Iran’s account, the regime gets a significant signing bonus the moment the ink is dry. “The agreement says they are not getting a single dime of American money,” Vance insisted on Fox—reassuring, I’m sure, for American taxpayers, but a strange thing to stress, since he’s calming a concern no one raised. The money in question was never America’s; it’s Iran’s own frozen assets. The administration insists they’ll be released only as Iran complies with the deal, but given how compliant the U.S. has been to Tehran’s demands so far, I don’t see it holding the line on a few billion the moment Iran threatens to walk.

Trump also stated he would not agree to any arrangement that doesn’t include dismantling Iran’s proxies and halting their terrorism. No such language seems to appear anywhere in the MOU. In place of any written commitment to dismember the Axis of Resistance, the Americans simply claim the funds headed to the regime will be kept strictly out of terrorist hands. After all, the White House assured everyone, the bulk of the money is expected “to go into spending that improves the economy” they are under “intense pressure to deliver results at home”—whoops, that was Obama in 2015. Silly me. But we needn’t reach back that far: this is the oldest trick in the Hamas playbook—insisting Qatari or humanitarian aid serves purely legitimate, benevolent civilian needs, when in reality it just frees up other capital for far more nefarious ends.

Trump also once insisted on the destruction of all Iranian nuclear facilities and zero uranium enrichment. Now he has told The New York Times that Iran would be permitted low-level enrichment—meaning “zero enrichment” won’t even make it to the negotiating table.

The agreement reportedly requires Iran to “open” the strait. Vice President JD Vance asserts this means open and “toll-free” for the long term. Iranian officials and state media, however, claim they will merely pause fees for sixty days, but plan to resume charging “service fees” after that period, and maintain that keeping the strait “open” implies keeping it under Iranian and Omani management.

Israel is far from thrilled with this deal—just ask the markets. On Wall Street, the signs of peace sent the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite up about 795 points, a three percent jump and its best day in months. In Tel Aviv, the mood was the opposite: as global markets rallied, the benchmark TA-35 slid roughly 1.3 percent, with banks and insurers falling harder still—local investors reading the agreement as more likely to bring war than peace.

As Netanyahu told me yesterday: “You can stretch the rope with the Americans, but you must not tear it.” Israel can’t do much about the U.S.’s Iran policy—but it can still shape facts on the ground in Lebanon.

In a public statement congratulating Iran on its diplomatic victory, Hezbollah noted that the deal includes a comprehensive ceasefire across all fronts, and framed it pointedly as “a prelude to completing the liberation” of Lebanon.

Hezbollah continues to insist on a maximalist condition for any truce: the complete withdrawal of the IDF from southern Lebanon. One Hezbollah official told Reuters outright that the group rejects any IDF “freedom of movement” inside Lebanese territory, and Iranian media has amplified this line heavily, implying that an IDF withdrawal is built into the U.S.-Iran deal. U.S. officials, however, tell a different story: a senior official indicated that Israel will hold its current front lines—far forward of where they stood on the eve of the war—and retains the right to respond if attacked.

That leaves a single point of contention: whether Israel may act preemptively against an emerging threat. By “emerging threat,” I mean spotting a weapons depot under construction or rockets being moved from place to place. In terms Israelis know all too well: are we back to the October 6 paradigm, watching them arm themselves and doing nothing? That remains to be seen.

Here is the silver lining, thin though it is.

The Iranian people took to the streets over a horrific economic crisis at the end of 2025 and early 2026. Since then, their economy has deteriorated even further, suffering at least $300 billion in damages—one trillion if you take Netanyahu’s numbers—alongside galloping inflation. Even if $12 billion, or a bit more, is unfrozen and the blockade is ended, it’s just a drop in the bucket. Economically, the Iranian public is now nostalgic for the terrible conditions of January. We can hope that eventually, the Iranian people might finish the job themselves.

Unfortunately, we won’t be able to help them with that task—neither by supporting Kurdish factions nor through direct military strikes. It has been 165 days since Trump declared the U.S. would “come to their rescue,” and that has never looked further from the case.

---

MK Tally Gotliv attends a House committee meeting at the Knesset, June 15, 2026. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Ever since the days of the ancient Greek play Lysistrata, we have been raised on the belief that if women ran the world, there would be no wars. A visit to the Knesset Committee this week would have caused the playwright Aristophanes to second-guess himself. The lengthy discussion brought together three female agents of chaos, stoking discord and craving conflict: on one side Israel’sMarjorie Taylor Greene, Likud MK Tally Gotliv, on the other Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, and hovering over it all, the spirit of anti-Netanyahu protest leader Shikma Bressler.

At the center of the storm was the effort to preserve the parliamentary immunity of Gotliv—the Likud lawmaker who illegally exposed the identity of a covert Shin Bet intelligence officer just because he is married to protest leader Shikma Bressler. One could argue, quite rightly, that Israel’s Attorney General, Gali Baharav-Miara, enforces the law selectively. One could also argue until blue in the face that Bressler spent the eve of the war promoting a contemptible movement of military reservists refusing to serve. But there is no defending Gotliv’s unhinged treason conspiracies. Quoting a deranged conspiracy blog, Gotliv posted: “’Edna Carnival’ reports that the US intercepted calls between Shikma Bressler’s husband and Hamas mastermind Yahya Sinwar a few days before the October 7 massacre. The head of the Mossad summoned Bressler to a meeting... My sources are absolute rock-solid!”

The Likud MK, who terrorizes her own faction members, is a delusional conspiracy theorist and a walking disaster for both the right and the country. She has never contributed a single thing to advancing right-wing values—unless a barrage of ear-splitting, incoherent rants counts. She, personally, is responsible for the appointment of Yitzhak Amit as Supreme Court President, due to her egocentric run—against the entire coalition—for a seat on the Judicial Selection Committee, a run that culminated in the appointment of an opposition representative. She is such a tornado of ill directed chaos that Netanyahu was considering canceling the Likud primaries out of fear of what she might do to the party’s mainstream appeal.

But Gotliv “tells the truth” and “isn’t afraid of anyone,” even if it means recycling a vile, slanderous lie about treason. “Until 6:29 AM, the Prime Minister wasn’t notified. What were they (the defense chiefs) doing all night? Talking amongst themselves and keeping the PM completely in the dark. In my opinion, they were afraid the Prime Minister would do his job, deploy forces to the field, and prevent the attack.” Get it? Former IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi and Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar actively wanted not to prevent the attack. This week in the Knesset, she screened a manipulative video linking a military directive not to approach the Gaza border fence (which was actually issued due to anti-tank missile threats), voiceover snippets from prominent investigative journalist Ilana Dayan, and dramatic music to sow further discord and rumors in Israeli society. That is called aiding the enemy in wartime—and doing it completely pro bono.

Anyone who exposes the names of senior Shin Bet officials, under the guise of parliamentary immunity, cannot complain when Arab MKs do the exact same thing to Mossad intelligence officers. Gotliv, who is a relative newcomer to the right-wing bloc and Likud, is trying, in the classic manner of the newly religious, to be more Catholic than the Pope. So now, to meet her standards, one must commit criminal offenses, pick fights with the current head of the internal security service and notorious “Kaplanist” David Zini, scream in courtrooms, and naturally hint that everyone else is a spineless defeatist?

What sins did we commit as a society that we are forced to choose between these three women? Look how low Likud has fallen—moving from leaning on the writings of the intellectual Vladimir Jabotinsky to quoting the posts of Edna Carnival. And maybe Gotliv is actually a deep-cover mole planted in Likud by Baharav-Miara and Bressler to smash the party and the Netanyahu bloc? Otherwise, how else can Gotliv explain her late-night meeting with Yitzhak Amit and State Attorney Amit Aisman at her house on the eve of the hearing? It must be true; I read it on the Hedva Carnival website.

This is an excerpt from my weekly column in Israel Hayom.

---

English Editor: Ari Tatarka

---

If you enjoy the newsletter, you can show your support by becoming a paid subscriber—it really helps keep this going. I’m also offering a special monthly briefing for a small group of premium members. I’d love to have you join us—just click below to find out more.

Thanks for reading It’s Noon in Israel! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.