Katherine Haynes

[Amit Segal @AmitSegal]

“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.

To read the rest of today's newsletter click here.

https://t.co/8XVOuyfbGs

[Pro Golf Critic @ProGolfCritic]

I mean can we just take a minute to acknowledge that Rory was quite literally the biggest proponent of changing the system & now he basically wants to go back to how it was? Hilarious. It just writes itself at this point. 😂

[Katherine Haynes @Haynes6]

If Iran really is committed to a new direction, it shouldn’t take 60 days to find out. If the regime won’t abandon its nuclear program, it prefers revolution. https://t.co/ztMB1Oah7J via @WSJopinion

[Katherine Haynes @Haynes6]

@GolfDigest As always, the voice of the PGA, you are full of shit

[Katherine Haynes @Haynes6]

You should have all of our contact information from three years ago. [email protected] customers have experienced this before even my husband and I did. You put us through the ropes thinking that we would just give up instead of handling this in a professional matter. Again, I implore any Angie customer who experience what we did to send me a private message.

[Miranda Devine @mirandadevine]

They look very wealthy and unapproachable

[Katherine Haynes @Haynes6]

See this Instagram post by @ariacker https://t.co/SIu1kdFxkm

[Katherine Haynes @Haynes6]

Orioles owner David Rubenstein married in surprise wedding https://t.co/z5bB5PcsSe Contrary what someone said, you really can begin again to find happiness and it is never too late!

[Katherine Haynes @Haynes6]

@AlanShipnuck I would get a Jack Nicklaus book rather than this one...But no pressure

[Katherine Haynes @Haynes6]

2026 Ride For The Living Promo Video https://t.co/JRyoC09028 via @YouTube

[TV News Now @TVNewsNow]

🚨 NEW: Fox’s @BritHume CALLS OUT fired CBS host Scott Pelley: “I’ve worked in this TV news business for more than half a century and I’ve worked for many different bosses, many I liked and admired, and a few I did not. But I’ve always found a way to work with every one of them as best I could.”

“I never thought myself as some great guardian of journalistic integrity who wasn’t open to the ideas of others who I might at first disagree. And I’ve never had a problem finding a way to do the work in a way to please me and whatever boss I had - or at least satisfy them.”

“These 60 Minutes correspondents, led by Scott Pelley, seem to think they are the guardians of journalistic integrity. But it’s worth remembering how that show works.”

“Like all these TV magazine shows, as prominent as the correspondents who narrate on cameras seem to be, these shows are producer driven and these correspondents become famous largely because of the good work of producers who do the interviews, writing, supervise the shooting and editing of the pieces. The correspondents get to become big stars that way on a show that has the best lead-in on TV - the NFL on Sundays.”

“So these people are a little self-important to say the least.”

[Katherine Haynes @Haynes6]

Scott Pelley’s firing caps a tumultuous week at CBS News as Bari Weiss reshapes “60 Minutes” https://t.co/7jDXuAmlDU via @WSJ

[Katherine Haynes @Haynes6]

What the U.S. Has Accomplished in Iran by @CondoleezzaRice https://t.co/fvLx8DsIMa via @WSJopinion

[Katherine Haynes @Haynes6]

Bill Gates’s employees spent years carefully cultivating his image—down to keeping a custom-size mannequin to test his outfits. Now his image has been shattered. https://t.co/Eq5h9bhHQG via @WSJ

[Katherine Haynes @Haynes6]

See this Instagram post by @jewishstorytelling https://t.co/Jb0u30fACB

[Katherine Haynes @Haynes6]

See this Instagram video by @thedennisprager https://t.co/KD8xEOrpwf

[Mark Penn @Mark_Penn]

NY Times Does it again

In the 1930s, they won a Pulitzer for romanticized reporting of Joseph Stalin that failed to uncover the deliberate starving of millions in the Ukraine.

Then the paper won a Pulitzer for reporting that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when it turned out to be false.

And then they won a Pulitzer for their coverage of the non existent Russia Russia hoax on the president that turned out to be an unsubstantiated Clinton oppo research scheme.

Recently, they won a Pulitzer for a photo purporting to show a starving child that turned out to be a child with severe prenatal birth defects and a healthy mother and brother (who was cropped out).

And now they publish an op ed (and let me tell you they fact check every single word of a moderate op ed for days) from Nicholas Kristof that carries unproven and impossible allegations of trained rape dogs from Hamas-affiliated sources.

No award in sight yet but give it time. I don’t know how many more “awards” our country can withstand for this outlet’s nearly hundred year history of the amplification of politicized propaganda.

[Katherine Haynes @Haynes6]

See this Instagram video by @itzhakperlmanofficial https://t.co/ySJYu3cXZA

[Katherine Haynes @Haynes6]

How Imperfect People Form a More Perfect Union by Neil Gorsuch https://t.co/7lpTAJj4B8 via @WSJopinion