Sarah: For the first time this week
Sarah: we can hold the actual treaty text up against what both sides are doing on the battlefield — and ask
Sarah: clause by clause what's already in breach.
Sarah: If you're just joining us: the deal track's been running right alongside the shooting.
Sarah: Washington and Tehran had an interim framework meant to pause the war
Sarah: tie sanctions relief to Iranian behavior
Sarah: and keep negotiators moving toward a final settlement.
Sarah: Before today that framework was already wobbling — Washington revoked an oil-sale license tied to the arrangement
Sarah: and Iran warned final-deal talks wouldn't start while the threats kept coming.
Rich: This is Iran War Daily.
Rich: The BBC just put all 14 points in print — so today we stop guessing what's being violated and start reading it, with CENTCOM still firing.
Rich: Let's get into it.
Sarah: This one's from Al Jazeera:
Quote: The United States and Iran have traded attacks for a second day
Quote: straining their fragile ceasefire further after US President Donald Trump said the truce was “over”.
Quote: The US struck approximately 90 military targets
Quote: including missile and drone storage as well as logistics sites along Iran’s coastline late on Wednesday
Quote: said the Central Command (CENTCOM)
Quote: which oversees US military operations in the Middle East.
Sarah: Second straight day of exchanges, per Al Jazeera.
Sarah: CENTCOM says it hit roughly 90 targets — missile and drone storage
Sarah: logistics along Iran's coastline — and framed it explicitly as protecting freedom of navigation in Hormuz.
Rich: Ninety targets. At that scale, you're talking about a campaign.
Rich: And it lands the same day mediators are on the record begging both sides to uphold the MoU.
Sarah: And note the sourcing on each claim: the 90-target figure is CENTCOM's own
Sarah: and the vessel strikes that triggered it are attributed to the IRGC
Sarah: which says it hit key infrastructure.
Sarah: Two separate actors, two separate ledgers.
Rich: Trump's Truth Social line is the tell — 'retribution for yesterday's bombing of ships.'
Rich: A chokepoint the whole planet's oil moves through, and the president is running foreign policy in the language of tit-for-tat.
Rich: Brent's already at a two-week high.
Sarah: That's the part I'd handle carefully — mediators are urging restraint while both principals escalate.
Sarah: The diplomatic track hasn't collapsed, but it's running alongside the shooting, not instead of it.
Rich: Restraint. On day two of 'the ceasefire is over.'
Rich: Somebody's paying the shipping insurance premium on that gap, and it isn't the guys posting to Truth Social.
Sarah: BBC News writes:
Quote: The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran and their allies in the current war
Quote: by signing this MOU declare the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts
Quote: including in Lebanon
Quote: and undertake from now on not to initiate any war or any military operation against each other
Quote: and to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other
Quote: and ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon.
Sarah: Here's what changed today — the full MOU is public.
Sarah: A senior US official read all 14 points to reporters, the BBC among them.
Sarah: So for the first time, I can hold the actual treaty language against what's happening on the ground.
Sarah: And point one is broader than I expected — it names Lebanon
Sarah: commits both sides and their allies to end operations there
Sarah: and ties that Lebanon ceasefire directly to the whole deal surviving.
Sarah: Lebanon sits inside the structure of this deal, not off to the side.
Rich: Right, and the update writes itself — the 60-day window is opening under fire.
Rich: We've got the text of a peace deal, and the strikes are still landing while you read it.
Rich: And I want to know which clause covers Hormuz reopening and how it sequences against sanctions
Rich: because Washington yanked the oil waiver before day one of the sixty ever ran.
Rich: You can't reopen a strait on paper while lighting up the economics of it in real time.
Sarah: Hacker News, weighing in:
Quote: Will go down in history as the single largest defeat in US history.
Quote: Paying your enemy $300bn to repair their country while you do not even take of your own would be the end of any other president
Quote: yet here we are.
Rich: Look, the 'largest defeat in history' framing is a political brawl, not my beat.
Rich: But underneath the outrage is the hard part — 300 billion is the price tag attached to Hormuz staying open.
Rich: That's the trade, and nobody at the podium is pricing it out loud.
Sarah: Here's one from Hacker News:
Quote: Point 6: The United States of America undertakes with regional partners to develop a definitive
Quote: mutually agreed plan with at least $300 billion (£225 billion) for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of
Quote: Iran. The mechanism for the implementation of this plan will be finalised as part of a final deal within 60 days.
Quote: All required licenses
Quote: waivers and permissions needed for the relevant financial transactions will be granted by the United States of America. I have…
Sarah: This is point six so let's be precise — 300 billion dollars for reconstruction of Iran
Sarah: with the US granting the licenses and waivers
Sarah: and the mechanism to be finalized within the 60 days.
Sarah: The number's real and in the text, but the mechanics are deferred.
Rich: Mechanism finalized within 60 days.
Rich: Sure. And who's writing that check — because 'all required licenses and permissions will be granted' is a lot of confidence from the same
Rich: government revoking waivers this week.
Sarah: Over on Hacker News:
Quote: Bibi will fuck it up before the 60 days are up and we'll be back to square one again.
Quote: Trump has zero control over him.
Quote: What a stupid, stupid idiot you folk in the US elected (twice!).
Quote: Israel's been trying to pull the US into this mess for decades and no other president was dumb enough to take the bait until Trump.
Sarah: I'd separate the actors there.
Sarah: The deal is US and Iran and their allies — Israel isn't named as a signatory in the text.
Sarah: So whether Israeli operations can breach point one is exactly the seam this MOU doesn't obviously close.
Rich: That's the gap that matters, honestly.
Rich: A ceasefire that binds Washington and Tehran but leaves the party actually shooting outside the signature line — you don't need 60 days to
Rich: see where that cracks.
Sarah: From Keely Bastow at Washington Examiner:
Quote: “The United States is still committed to finding a resolution, and technical talks continue.
Quote: Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon,” a U.S.
Quote: official told Fox News, with other outlets reporting the same statement.
Quote: Gulf states that have been mediating talks between the U.S.
Quote: and Iran are reportedly working behind the scenes to put the pieces of the memorandum of understanding from June 17 back together
Quote: with officials from Qatar
Quote: Pakistan Turkey Egypt
Quote: and Saudi Arabia working to lower the tensions on both sides according to Axios.
Sarah: Here's the gap plainly: Trump, on the record at the Ankara NATO summit, said the ceasefire was over.
Sarah: And then a U.S. official — unnamed — tells Fox that technical talks continue.
Sarah: So you've got a named principal being contradicted by his own institution.
Rich: Technical talks. Which is a phrase you reach for when the political talks are dead and you don't want to say so out loud.
Sarah: And per Axios the same Gulf mediators from June 17 — Qatar
Sarah: Pakistan Turkey Egypt
Sarah: Saudi Arabia — are quietly trying to put the MOU back together while the strikes keep landing.
Rich: Five capitals doing salvage work on a document three weeks into a sixty-day clock — and that same clock has both sides shooting.
Rich: You can now read the text we just went through and watch it get violated in the same news cycle.
Sarah: The quote itself is narrow, though — 'still committed to finding a resolution, Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon.'
Sarah: Notice that's the one non-negotiable they'll put on paper.
Sarah: Not the hostages, not the strait. The bomb.
Rich: Right, because that's the line that survives contact with Trump calling their team 'sick.'
Rich: Great atmosphere for a technical round.
Sarah: From Janatan Sayeh at FDD's Long War Journal:
Quote: United States Central Command (CENTCOM) announced on July 7 that it had launched an attack wave on targets in Iran “to impose heavy costs”
Quote: in response to the Islamic Republic’s strikes against three ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
Quote: Although anonymous US officials told CNN that the latest kinetic campaign is a “punishment” and added that “it won’t be over for a bit,” the
Quote: targets were limited to military installations on Iran’s southern coast and not major cities like Tehran.
Sarah: This one has a command name and a date on it: CENTCOM
Sarah: July 7 an announced attack wave hitting military installations on Iran's southern coast — Bandar Abbas
Sarah: Qeshm Sirik — per the Long War Journal.
Rich: And the trigger was Iran hitting three tankers in the strait that same day — a Qatari LNG carrier and a Saudi crude tanker among them.
Rich: So we've now got Gulf-flagged ships getting shot at, which is the part that actually moves shipping insurance.
Sarah: The sequence matters here.
Sarah: Tehran was condemning the sanctions waiver revocation the same day CENTCOM struck.
Sarah: So which came first — the waiver pull, or the tanker attacks that CENTCOM says provoked the strikes?
Sarah: The report puts them side by side without ordering them.
Rich: And note the targeting — coastal military sites, not Tehran.
Rich: US officials are drawing that line in public on purpose.
Rich: Anonymous officials tell CNN it's 'punishment,' and quote, 'it won't be over for a bit.'
Rich: With roughly 90 targets, this is already campaign territory.
Sarah: Right — and this lands the day the BBC published the full MOU.
Sarah: So the strikes we just heard about in the Al Jazeera piece and this CENTCOM wave are running against a treaty text you can now read line by
Sarah: line.
Sarah: From Maziar Motamedi at Al Jazeera:
Quote: Tehran Iran – Iran has insisted on exercising control in the Strait of Hormuz after another flare-up of attacks that prompted United States
Quote: President Donald Trump to lash out against Iranian leaders.
Quote: Trump in the Turkish capital
Quote: Ankara for a NATO summit
Quote: told reporters he considers the memorandum of understanding (MoU) that Tehran and Washington signed last month to be over and called Iranian
Quote: authorities “sick” and “scum” after several ships were hit with drones in the waterway.
Rich: So Iran isn't backing off Hormuz control — Al Jazeera makes that the explicit stance, not some throwaway line in a forum.
Rich: And Trump's calling them 'sick' and 'scum' from a NATO podium in Ankara.
Sarah: Just to be precise: Trump said in Ankara he considers the MOU over.
Sarah: That's the named principal on the record — and it lands with America's closest allies sitting in the same room at the summit.
Rich: And Tehran's Foreign Ministry fires back by citing the exact provisions — cessation of military operations on all fronts
Rich: including Lebanon plus sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Rich: Now that the BBC's printed the full text, we can actually check whether they're right.
Sarah: Two things are moving at once here.
Sarah: The US struck southern Iran Wednesday morning — by Trump's own account
Sarah: twenty times harder than Iran's — and Treasury pulled the sanctions waivers.
Sarah: Iran shot projectiles at Bahrain and Kuwait and downed a US drone.
Host: If you’ve got feedback, story ideas, or corrections for Iran War Daily, we’d like to hear from you.
Host: Send us a note at iranwardaily at lantern podcasts dot com.
Host: What we’re watching next: the MOU’s maximum 60-day window for negotiating a final deal, and the U.S.
Host: commitment to fully end the naval blockade within 30 days of the signing.
Host: We’ve put links to every story we covered in the show notes, so if one caught your ear, you can read it in full there.
Host: That’s Iran War Daily for today.
Host: This is a Lantern Podcast.