Oliver Boyd-Barrett
OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT
Versailles 1789, 2026
What does Versailles remind you of? It reminds me, first of all, of the unbridled privilege and luxury of the courts of Louis XIV and Louis XVI, the causes, essentially, of the French Revolution of 1789. It reminds me, also, of the Versailles Treaty of 1919 that signaled the end of World War One and planted the seeds for World War Two.— Patrice Greanville (@AddisondePitt) June 19, 2026
Not the most auspicious location, therefore, for Trump to sign the MOU that is supposed to start bringing about an end to the war between the US and Iran - a war that the US and its proxy, Israel, have so far lost - reminding us, as it reminded Arnaud Bertrand earlier today (Bertrand), of what he calls the two other most famous US capitulation agreements: the Paris Peace Accords with Vietnam in 1973 and the Doha Agreement with Afghanistan in 2020. Was French President Macron rubbing his hands in glee at the prospect of a US now free to redirect its attention to assisting Europe’s Quixotic mission to liberate itself from the non-existent threat of Russian invasion as convincingly as Trump has liberated the US from the non-existent threat of an Iranian nuke?
The Concessions
Versailles 2026 differs from Paris 1973 and Doha 2020 in that this time, Bertrand argues, there is no face-saving concession for the US (given that the nuclear thing is a meaningless fiction fabricated from whole cloth by Netanyahu twenty years ago). The US concessions, on the other hand, are considerable (which is why we have to be skeptical about the theatrics):
- Permanent end to the war on all fronts, including Lebanon
- A US pledge to respect Iran’s sovereignty and not interfere in its internal affairs
- Full lifting of the naval blockade
- Withdrawal of all US forces from the region within 30 days after the final agreement
- A $300 billion reconstruction and development fund for Iran
- Termination of all sanctions: UN, IAEA, and every unilateral US sanction, primary and secondary
- Immediate Treasury waivers for Iranian oil exports and all related banking, insurance, and shipping services
- Full release of all frozen Iranian funds and assets, to be spent however Iran’s central bank sees fit
“So very concretely this is the US agreeing to 1) end the war and withdraw its forces, 2) end all hostile measures towards Iran that were in place before the war (the sanctions, the frozen funds, the interference in internal affairs, etc.), and 3) send hundreds of billions of dollars in what are, effectively, war reparations.”
AP has just reported close to midday, California time of June 18, that the U.S. has lifted its blockade of Iran, and oil tankers began freely moving through the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtab Khamenei has endorsed direct negotiations with the US.
Israel and Lebanon
Quite possibly, what we are going to see is a resumption of normality with respect to passage and trade, sanctions relief and unfreezing of Iranian assets, while all the other issues (Lebanon, enriched uranium etc.) move into limbo. On Lebanon there is no hope short of the collapse, not of the Israeli government, which will be odious in whatever form it assumes, but of the nation itself - which is now a conceivable reality in a way that it has not been for the past 78 years.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday has again said that Israel will not from southern Lebanon and end its war in the country despite the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding that calls for an end to the conflict. Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir (DeCamp) said yesterday that Israel cannot stop destroying homes in southern Lebanon
“We cannot allow the residents of southern Lebanon to return. We must continue to control the territory even if we disagree with Trump, we are an independent state.”
The stage is set for a US abandonment of Israel at least as robust as its abandonment of Ukraine, although in neither case do we see an existential rupture, yet. At least two people were killed today as Israeli artillery continued to shell southern Lebanon, and Israeli ground troops are reported to have advanced further north into Lebanese territory. Jason Ditz (Ditz) reports that:
“IDF troops had already gone deeper than the leadership suggested they would during the invasion in March. Officials initially presented the operation as going to the Litani River, already a substantial part of southern Lebanon, but they since expanded well north of the river, and toward the Zahrani River, particularly around Nabatieh District.”
Continuing Israeli War Crime Atrocities
Amnesty International (Amnesty) has decried Israel’s ongoing war crimes. Drawing on the report for Antiwar.com, Jason Ditz writes ((Ditz) that":
“Israel has been using evacuation orders against populated areas an inordinate amount of times, and similarly using no-return orders to keep the displaced from coming back home when the situation is over.
“That has not only led to the displaced numbers spiraling, it also effectively amounts to a forced population transfer, a serious war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Since these orders come in the wake of Israel advancing aplan in late 2025 to create a “Trump Zone” out of a forcibly depopulated and militarily occupied southern Lebanon, it’s difficult to argue this is purely unintentional.
“It is not uncommon for Israel to issue an evacuation order for dozens of villages any given day, and as the war expands, the number of formal “no return” orders issued has spanned in excess of 6% of Lebanon’s land mass.
“That problem is compounded because even if nominally “no return” zones aren’t imposed in a lot of southern Lebanon, Israeli forces have regularly attacked people trying to return, particularly to municipalities that were heavily Shi’ite, and after ordering the populations of towns and cities north of the Litani River, Israel also destroyed all the bridges over those rivers, making return logistics incredibly challenging, even if it’s not strictly disallowed.
“In the southernmost parts of the country, Israel has leveled some towns and villages, meaning the displaced will have nothing to return to at any rate, and with Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz saying those areas are going to remain security zones “indefinitely” and “cleared” of residents, again there’s not much room for plausible deniability.”
In Gaza, meanwhile, Drop Site News reports (Drop Site) that
“Israel has been steadily encroaching further into Gaza, moving the “yellow line” that demarcates its area of control from 53% of the enclave since the start of the so-called ceasefire in October to well over 60%, in violation of the agreement. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently ordered the army to take 70%.”
Escobar Assesses Iranian Victory
The most likely explanation for Trump’s MOU concessions is his fear of declining oil reserves and a consequent global recession, something that Trump himself has explicitly acknowledged. In interview yesterday with Glenn Diesen, Pepe Escobar also indirectly hints at the story broken a few days ago in collaboration with Larry Johnson and dependent, they say, on sources close to or even implicated directly in Pakistani’s mediation efforts, that Iran has been given a nuclear weapon. For reasons outlined in previous posts, I myself remain very skeptical about this and about the quality of their Pakistani sources but Escobar does have some very interesting things to say about Pakistani mediation.
Last weekend, says Escobar, Iranian prime minister had told the Americans through a telephone conversation with Pakistani prime minister Sharif that if they did not “behave” then Iran would have to do a “demonstration” (which I take to be a reference to a possible nuclear detonation in the desert). Iranian foreign minister Araghchi was in Islamabad last weekend and according to Escobar had warned the Americans through Pakistani mediators that if they did not stop bombing the Shia areas of southern Beirut, then Iran had its fingers on the “trigger” to hit Israel, which prompted Trump to warn Netanyahu and to sign the MOU. On the Iranian side, says Escobar, the Supreme Leader delegated the decision about whether to sign the MOU to the 13-member Supreme National Security Council, of which only two members are “reformist.” As of yesterday, according to Escobar, the Council has not signed the MOU (some other sources claim that it has been signed) but is expected to do so later this week.
