Riley on news · June 15th

President Trump posted on Truth Social Sunday, framing a new memorandum of understanding with Iran as a “great deal” that would bring peace and security to the region. He highlighted the opening of the Strait and the resumption of oil flow as signs of progress, positioning the move as a birthday gift to himself.

In reality, the document is a preliminary step, not a formal treaty or lasting peace agreement. It sets a 60‑day window for negotiations on broader terms, essentially extending the current ceasefire rather than delivering the sweeping stability Trump described.

The distinction matters because the promised “peace” hinges on future talks that haven’t yet materialized. Until those negotiations conclude, the region remains in a fragile pause rather than a confirmed settlement.

After nearly four months of war, President Donald Trump announced a “great deal” on Truth Social Sunday. “The deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete. Congratulations to all,” he posted. “I hereby fully authorize the toll free opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and, simultaneously herewith, authorize the immediate removal of the United States Naval blockade. Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!” The Secretariat of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council confirmed the naval blockade would end Sunday night, with the formal signing ceremony set for Friday in Switzerland—though the text of the memorandum has not been publicly released. The agreement is not a full peace treaty, leaves 60 days to negotiate a fuller deal, and is the latest twist in a war that has reshaped the Middle East and roiled the global economy. On February 28, the United States and Israel launched a joint military operation against Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei alongside dozens of senior Iranian leaders and severely degrading Iran’s nuclear program. The war’s opening weeks were swift and overwhelming—what followed was anything but. Iranian retaliatory strikes have caused significant damage at U.S. military installations in the Middle East; 13 American service members were killed and hundreds more wounded; and the Pentagon has acknowledged the war has cost $29 billion, a figure other estimates put much higher. At home, the war has driven up prices. The new Iranian regime is even more hard-line than the one it replaced. A shaky ceasefire has been in effect for 10 weeks—and even on Sunday, an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs threatened to derail a deal entirely. The agreement paves the way for negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, with sanctions relief and billions in frozen assets on the table. What happens next is far from clear, but this struck us as an opportune moment to ask a range of contributors to weigh in on an urgent question: Was this war worth it? Their answers vary widely—and reflect the heated debate over the war that serves as the backdrop to the negotiations between Washington and Tehran. Elliott Abrams: What Trump Could Still Throw Away Whether the conflict with Iran has been worth it depends on the terms of the deal ending it, and Trump’s willingness to enforce them. Right now, both are very unclear. Read more

The deal was announced early this morning, but the signatures haven’t been put down yet and the full document isn’t public. Both sides are already saying different things about what the agreement actually covers, so there’s a lot of ambiguity to sort through.

What we do know is that the talks were framed as a step toward easing nuclear tensions. The United States is saying the arrangement would limit Iran’s enrichment capacity and grant a phased rollback of sanctions, while Iranian officials are emphasizing a broader “peace” framework that includes regional security guarantees. Those two narratives don’t line up perfectly, and each side is pushing its own interpretation.

Because the text isn’t out, analysts are watching the language that each government uses in statements and press releases. So far, the U.S. has hinted at a conditional pathway—sanctions lift if Iran meets specific verification milestones—whereas Tehran is hinting at a more comprehensive deal that could involve broader economic cooperation beyond the nuclear issue. The mismatch suggests the final terms could still shift dramatically before anything is signed.

Keep an eye on the next round of statements; any clarification on the verification mechanisms or the timeline for sanctions relief will be the first real clues about how far this “peace” deal might actually go.

Did that really happen? Although I might or might not have consumed a beer on a public walkway last night, my memories of the evening are fairly intact. And when I woke up this morning, the New York Knicks were still NBA Champions, making for the eighth distinct champion in eight seasons. Objectively speaking, I can’t claim to be surprised — I literally bet on the Knicks! But between the Knicks, Cubs and Red Sox in recent seasons, we’re starting to run out of sports curses — though apologies to our readers who are fans of a Canadian NHL team or the Buffalo Bills. Silver Bulletin hasn’t been around that long, but if there’s anything resembling a tradition in these parts, it’s writing a piece of praise and analysis about the eventual NBA champion: This year’s edition is harder to write only because I’ve already exhausted a couple of the most obvious routes, having analyzed the Knicks’ transformation into a great basketball team before the Finals and written a personal tribute to the Knicks last year. (I “adopted” the team shortly after moving to New York City in 2009. I almost literally lived across the street from Madison Square Garden for more than a decade, so that’s my excuse.) So I’ll instead give you five spare thoughts, to coincide with the number of games the Knicks needed to close out the series. One constant in these championship write-ups is that analysis of what it takes to win the title can be myopic, with teams slotted into an overly narrow range of archetypes. Four of the past eight winners did not have a top-5 MVP finisher on their rosters — indeed, Jalen Brunson didn’t receive an MVP vote this season. The CW that a team can’t thrive in the post-season when a small guard is its best player also hasn’t held up well lately between Brunson and Steph Curry. And recent postseasons haven’t been particularly friendly to favorites. The Knicks weren’t even that unlikely to win, having been +900 (implying a 1-in-10 chance) in futures markets to start the year; the Spurs (at +6600) would have been far more unlikely champions (indeed, the most unlikely winners ever). Nevertheless, among the eight non-repeat champions, only the 2024 Celtics were preseason favorites or co-favorites. This reflects a reversal of a streak in which the favorite won the majority of the time — 18 out of 34 tries — between 1985 and 2018. This recent trend has contradicted the conventional wisdom that teams ought to basically adopt a variance-maximizing strategy of “dynasty or bust,” even being willing to tank entire seasons for the opportunity to acquire one or two superstars. We’ve even implicitly endorsed that attitude here at Silver Bulletin; our Future of the Franchise rankings are calibrated off our expectations for how many championships a team will win over its next 10 seasons, with everything else literally not mattering. (We had the Knicks 9th and the Spurs 2nd in the most recent edition.) I’d like to point out, though, that even during that streak of favorite dominance, 18 out of 34 is not a particularly large sample size. What if the Timberwolves had drafted Steph Curry instead of Ricky Rubio and Jonny Flynn? What if the Bulls hadn’t traded for Scottie Pippen on draft day in 1987? The 1979 pick that brought the Lakers Magic Johnson originally belonged to the New Orleans Jazz. Maybe the league is changing, and modern salary cap rules are making dynasty building harder. But it seems plausible that favorites ran a little bit above expectations during this stretch. In poker, there’s sometimes a debate about whether it’s worth adopting lower-variance strategies to minimize your risk of ruin. For instance, a more conservative approach that theoretically yields $100 in expected value per hour but has a standard deviation of ±$500 might be preferred to a more aggressive strategy that nets $150 in EV but has a standard deviation of ±$1000. Generally speaking, though, these approaches are not advisable: the best way to avoid a losing streak that makes you go bust is to play as optimally as possible and to build up a cushion against the inevitable unlucky periods. In the NBA, the situation is sort of reversed, with teams like the “Trust the Process” 76ers swinging for the fences and taking variance-maximizing approaches. But I wonder if that tactic is wrong, also, because it requires one too many things to go right. The Knicks have never been particularly rewarded by lottery luck; since taking Patrick Ewing #1 overall in 1985, the highest they’ve picked is 3rd (RJ Barrett in 2019). The Leon Rose-led Knicks, instead, could be typecast as a high-floor, lowish-ceiling team willing to “settle” for merely being pretty good, having indeed gone all-in on their current roster with the Mikal Bridges trade. Mitchell Robinson was the only important rotation player to be drafted by the team. But sometimes “planning” to win 50-something games, rather than gambling on a dynasty, pays dividends too.

Good afternoon, everyone. It’s been a very busy Sunday. The White House is reportedly terrified that recordings may exist from Situation Room discussions about Epstein, Israel, and other sensitive matters. If such recordings were to surface, it would represent a massive breach and could create a major political crisis for Trump. Meanwhile, the weather is not cooperating for Trump’s UFC event tonight, and the White House has somehow found itself attacking The Weather Channel. Democrats are also pledging Epstein hearings on day one if they take control of the House, and that’s just the start of today’s news. Our Epstein interview yesterday received major national coverage, and the White House has not been pleased with our exclusive reporting showing that pilots were being blinded by lights from the UFC octagon while flying into Washington. Here’s the news: As I mentioned above, those around the White House are not happy with my exclusive reporting. Here is Richard Grenell attacking me on Twitter: According to Axios, the White House is reportedly alarmed by the possibility that reporters may have obtained recordings or highly detailed accounts of Situation Room meetings. Officials fear some of the administration’s most sensitive conversations could become public, including those related to be the Epstein files. The concern stems from published excerpts containing remarkably detailed dialogue about discussions on Iran and the Epstein files. President Trump is said to be furious about the disclosures and the attention they are receiving. Aides worry that future revelations could create a major political headache and further intensify scrutiny of the administration. President Trump turned 80 today as reports surfaced describing occasional memory lapses and signs of fatigue, with some allies telling reporters he appears more tired than in the past. Former ally Tucker Carlson said Trump is uncomfortable with aging, remarking, “He’s really uncomfortable with it,” and described the president’s push for a new White House ballroom as “an older man building a monument to himself.” Trump’s own comments about aging, including a recent joke that he was “not happy” about his birthday and that it was “a number I don’t like.” While critics point to these episodes and the fact that Trump was examined by 22 medical specialists during his latest physical, the White House insists he remains mentally sharp and energetic. The weather for tonight’s UFC fight is not complying right now. This is the latest as bugs, wind, rain, and lightening are set to derail the fight: The White House is now attacking the Weather Channel: Democrats are preparing an aggressive oversight agenda if they regain control of the House in the 2026 midterms, according to Rep. Robert Garcia, who is expected to lead the House Oversight Committee under a Democratic majority. Garcia says Democrats would immediately pursue public hearings on the Jeffrey Epstein matter, subpoena senior Trump administration officials, and investigate what they describe as potential corruption involving the Trump family and its business dealings. Republicans, led by current Oversight Chair James Comer, dismiss the plans as partisan attempts to target President Trump rather than address government waste or accountability. Democrats also plan to scrutinize federal workforce cuts, DOGE-related actions, and other administration policies they argue harmed government operations. The article highlights the likelihood of major legal and political battles over subpoenas, compliance, and congressional oversight should Democrats win the House. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth defended U.S. military capabilities, arguing that no country produces better weapons or munitions than the United States and dismissing concerns about depleted stockpiles as a media-driven narrative. Journalist Margaret Brennan challenged that claim, pointing out reports of shortages and noting that Hegseth had previously testified under oath that rebuilding certain stockpiles could take years. Hegseth claimed the U.S. had maintained control of the strait throughout the conflict. Brennan pushed back, noting that the administration was simultaneously negotiating with Iran to reopen it. Israel carried out new airstrikes in Beirut’s southern suburbs after Hezbollah fired projectiles into northern Israel, killing three people and wounding several others, according to Lebanese authorities. The escalation threatens ongoing efforts to finalize a U.S.–Iran agreement, with Iran warning that Israel’s actions could jeopardize negotiations and vowing that the strikes will not go unanswered. President Trump publicly criticized the attack, saying it “should not have happened” and urging all sides to stand down as a peace deal appears close.

When the gavel fell at Sotheby’s London auction house in 1936, the academic world braced for a revelation. Up for sale were the “Portsmouth Papers”, a massive cache of unpublished manuscripts written by Sir Isaac Newton, the undisputed father of modern physics. Scholars expected to find the discarded drafts of Principia Mathematica, early sketches of calculus, or perhaps unrecorded optical experiments. Instead, they found madness. Or rather, they found a man who had spent his entire life searching for something far more profound than gravity. Of the 329 lots auctioned that day, more than a third were entirely alchemical and theological in nature. They contained over a million words, more than Newton ever published on science, detailing his obsessive quest to decode biblical prophecy, his secret denial of the Holy Trinity, and his decades-long attempt to reconstruct the architectural blueprints of the Temple of Solomon. John Maynard Keynes, the legendary economist who purchased many of these manuscripts, was stunned by what he read. He later delivered a lecture to the Royal Society that shattered the myth of the rational scientist: “Newton was not the first of the age of reason,” Keynes declared. “He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago.” The man who defined the laws of motion did not view the universe as a cold, mechanical clock. He viewed it as a divine cryptogram. And for his entire life, Newton was secretly trying to build the key to unlock it, a conceptual “God Engine” that would reveal the mind of the Creator.

There was a lot going on this past week, so let’s get into it. The FETAL PERSONHOOD movement continues to gain ground: Abortion, Every Day reported earlier this month that the Texas Republican Party is openly supporting Abolish Abortion Texas—a group that wants abortion patients charged with homicide and punished with the death penalty. The news wasn’t a total surprise: in 2024, AED broke the news that the Texas GOP called for abortion patients to be tried as murderers in their official party platform. Not everyone in the anti-abortion movement is thrilled about Republicans’ explicit extremism, though: a few days ago, we reported that Texas Alliance for Life is calling on the GOP to change their ‘abolitionist’ plank and pledge not to punish women. The ‘abolitionist’ sect has become increasingly mainstream across the country: over a dozen states have weighed legislation to charge patients as murderers, and this past week, Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback openly called for all abortion patients to be tried as murderers. (It’s an unsurprising position from a notorious, far-right groyper.) But fetal personhood is also latent beyond party platforms, legislation, and extreme campaign promises: in Illinois, a man was just sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to “voluntary manslaughter of an unborn child” after slipping his girlfriend medication abortion. Instead of going to prison for assaulting his girlfriend, the man will be jailed for “killing” her embryo. In other words: the born, living woman involved in this case isn’t recognized as the victim of a crime—her pregnancy was. (We told you about a similar case, last year, when a Florida man faced the death penalty for murdering his girlfriend—because she was pregnant.) Over IN THE STATES, there wasn’t a single slow day this week with state legislative sessions winding down. Good news in Rhode Island: the Senate passed shield law legislation to protect providers by allowing them to withhold their names from prescription labels for abortion pills. It’s an important protection at a time when states like Texas and Louisiana are cracking down on out-of-state providers who mail pills into the state. Anti-abortion states’ ultimate goal is to challenge shield laws at the Supreme Court, eliminate these protections, and trap everyone under their bans.

Sabina Cherner is a communications intern at the Renew Democracy Initiative, which publishes The Next Move. She is a student at Tufts University, where she is studying international relations and economics. The New York Knicks won their first NBA championship in 53 years last night, beating the San Antonio Spurs and capping off a near-perfect playoff run. Is it any coincidence that their only loss in the Finals was the one game that Donald Trump attended? To suggest that Trump was responsible for last Monday’s slip-up at Madison Square Garden might be delving a little bit too much into sports astrology. But the president’s appearance certainly brought down the mood. Sports, like the presidency, can be a unifying force—in brief moments, they collapse Americans of wildly different backgrounds into a singular rooting interest. Unity is not Donald Trump’s style. Last Monday night, Trump became the first sitting president to attend an NBA Finals game, seemingly over the objections of an entire city. That evening, the Knicks didn’t have to just beat the Spurs on the court—they had to overcome the chill that seemed to follow Trump into the arena. The city felt the difference. Ticket holders were asked to arrive upwards of three hours early to account for security checks. All bags were banned per request of the Secret Service—to the particular dismay of a devoted cohort of Knicks fans who see the orange clutch of Karl-Anthony Towns’s wife as an essential good-luck token. The beloved watch party outside the Garden—a neighborhood ritual throughout the playoff run—was canceled and displaced to Bryant Park. Trump arrived at the game via motorcade from a helicopter landing near Wall Street. The president claimed his seat in a bulletproof glass-walled suite flanked by his granddaughter Kai, son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Knicks owner James Dolan, among others. Surveying the nearly 20,000 fans below, armed with a bucket of fries and a Diet Coke bottle, the commander-in-chief had the distinct appearance of a man trying to look at home somewhere he hasn’t been in quite a long time. When Trump first appeared on the Jumbotron during the national anthem, the Garden erupted. The White House press pool described the reaction as “thunderous,” a cascade of boos that pivoted to roaring cheers only when the camera cut to Knicks Captain Jalen Brunson on the court. The Knicks lost the game, 115-111. Their 13-game winning streak, the second-longest unbeaten playoff run in NBA history, was over. Donald Trump grew up in Jamaica, Queens, made his name in Manhattan real estate, and built a persona so synonymous with the city that for a period of years it was difficult to imagine one without the other. Monday night was, in a sense, a sort of homecoming—but it was not a smooth one. Trump has often found himself spurned in the city of his birth. The loud-mouthed outer-borough upstart was often rejected by Manhattan’s more-refined upper crust. In the 2024 presidential election, Trump received fewer than 839,000 votes in New York City, compared with more than 1.9 million for Kamala Harris. His approval ratings now hover around 35% nationally, nearing the lowest of his political career. The city that made him could not bring itself to vote for him, and that sentiment was audible during Game 3. Unpopularity alone, though, doesn’t entirely explain what felt so unsettling about Trump’s attendance. It wasn’t just that Trump had shown up to a hostile audience. It was that he was so determined to show up at an event that his predecessors understood it was better for the president to avoid. Barack Obama understood that distinction. A lifelong basketball fan who even had the White House tennis court converted for basketball, Obama deliberately avoided the NBA Finals while in office. In a recently resurfaced podcast conversation, he explained: the motorcade, the Secret Service, the whole apparatus is such a disruption that rather than enjoying the game, he worried he’d be “making it a less pleasant experience for everybody else.” He stayed home. This instinct, to weigh the cost of one’s own visibility, has historically crossed party lines. Trump’s approach, of course, has been notably different. Since returning to the White House in January 2025, he has attended the Super Bowl, the Daytona 500, multiple UFC fights, a FIFA Club World Cup Final, and the US Open—more high-profile sporting appearances than any president before him. Now, whether these appearances are acts of civic participation or performances of it, is a question Monday night did little to resolve. Madison Square Garden itself was entirely enclosed by a makeshift wall (a wall that Trump actually finished!). New York adapted as New York does. Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who paid out of his own pocket for a standing-room spot at the game, organized watch parties for his constituents—another pointed contrast with the president’s approach.

On Sunday the New York Times’ Neil MacFarquhar had an interesting essay comparing Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine folly with Donald Trump’s Iran folly, and what those two follies have in common — namely, piss-poor perceptions of their targets: “Both conflicts have produced a similar outcome: a weaker power has trapped a stronger one in a costly confrontation,” Fiona Hill, who ran Russian and European affairs at the National Security Council during the first Trump administration, wrote in a policy paper for the Brookings Institution this week. “Like Putin, Trump did not have a plan for what would happen next.” The root of the issue is that both presidents sparked wars with limited understanding of the opposing side, Ms. Hill said in an interview. “Both projected their own centralized views of their own roles onto Iran and Ukraine, so they thought if they could decapitate the system it would fall,” she said. Mr. Putin did not anticipate fierce Ukrainian resistance, for example; Mr. Trump ignored admonitions that Iran could shut the Strait of Hormuz, and appeared to underestimate Iran’s capacity to retaliate and inflict damage on America’s allies in the region. Nor did the Iranian people rise up against their authoritarian leaders, as Israel and the United States had urged them to do. While the bombing campaigns of the United States and Russia have had devastating effects, analysts noted, air power alone has not proved decisive…. Ultimately, analysts said, the lack of a resolution makes both the United States and Russia appear weak, and could hasten a more decentralized international order. The rest of the article is well worth reading. I do think Hill is onto something when she notes that both Putin and Trump misperceptions of their adversaries led to their current imbroglios. The idea that both leaders have been too heavily insulated from critical voices is a solid observation. Vladimir Putin ostensibly has spent a generation trying to rebuild the Russian state, but he has exercised ever-greater control over the Russian government, sidelined his most competent advisors, and creating a culture of intimidation. As a result, Putin has plenty of loyalists but no one who can tell him when there is a problem. As for Trump, well, his hollowing out of state capacity and installation of an army of sycophants is well-trodden territory in this newsletter. That said, the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World also believes that while Putin and Trump share some commonalities in how they view the world, launching misbegotten wars that turn into strategic quagmires is hardly unique to them. Indeed, this is a moment when Occam’s Razor should provide some useful guidance. What does Occam’s Razor tell me? It is pretty simple: both Putin and Trump launched their wars of choice because their prior uses of military force had seemed to go well and they thought their past successes predicted future successes. It is worth remembering that prior to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, strategists were all a twitter about Russia’s success at gray zone warfare — what some called the Gerasimov Doctrine. Prior to 2022, the Russian military had successfully intervened in Georgia in 2009, Crimea in 2014, and Syria a year after that. In all three cases, Russia achieved its strategic goal without too much fuss or loss of life. With that kind of winning streak, it’s not surprising that Putin believed he could take all of Ukraine with a shock and awe campaign. Similarly, Trump also became enamored of using military force to solve his problems based on his prior track record. In 2020 he approved the drone strike that assassinated Qassem Soleimani. In 2025, however, his lust for military action increased dramatically with each action. Operation Midnight Hammer in Iran clearly failed in its objective — otherwise Trump does not approve Epic Fury eight months later. But at the same time, Midnight Hammer did not trigger a large-scale Iranian response, further emboldening Trump. The Venezuela operation against Maduro was also a tactical success, one that took less time than Midnight Hammer no less. Little wonder that he thought attacking Iran would be a quick and painless affair. Now both Putin and Trump are forced to adopt-second-best responses. For Putin, it means launching even more brutal airstrikes against Kyiv. For Trump, it means making a lot of concessions to obtain a regional cease-fire. So where do thigs go from here? Unfortunately, if Fiona Hill’s Brookings paper is any guide, the short-term answer is grim: Deadlock in Ukraine discredits Russia as a global military force. It corrodes Putin’s patina of indestructibility in the same way that the stalemate in the Persian Gulf undermines the United States and Trump…. So-called “second-rate powers” have diminished the standing of Putin and Trump, the men who started these ill-advised wars. Russia and the United States both have fewer means to exert power and influence than before.

I remember reading about Trump’s life in a book by his niece, that awful Mary Trump, and the book was meant to make people like me — resistance libs — hate Trump even more than we already did. When she told the story of Trump’s mother going to the hospital when he was a toddler and how he had to fend for himself emotionally, it caused a hairline crack in my hate and let just a small bit of empathy in. She hadn’t intended that result, but I finally saw Trump as a human being. Nothing they ever said he would do, he did. There are no mass graves or body bags. No one was thrown in jail for protesting. He didn’t start World War III. There are no real “concentration camps.” The case against Trump by the left exists in their collective imaginations. That has never meant his supporters don’t see his flaws or criticize him when he deserves it. It simply means they’d never go along with the mass delusions of the version of Trump they think exists. They haven’t let up, even today. Everything Trump does has to fail for them to “feel safe.” Despite that, Trump emerges as a winner in his 80th year. I made this video to celebrate the 2024 election, but I might as well post it here again - Happy Birthday to the GOAT.