IRAN WALKS OUT ON PEACE DEAL DUE TO TRUMP’S THREATS – w/ Prof. Seyed Mohammad Marandi
Mario Nawfal | June 21, 2026
Al-Jazeera demands punishment for Israeli officials following latest assassination of cameraman

The Cradle | June 21, 2026
Al-Jazeera Media Network condemned on 20 June Israel’s “deliberate killing” of one of its journalists in Gaza, Ahmad Washah, while calling on the international community to punish Israeli officials for this and other crimes against its media workers.
Ahmad Washah, a cameraman for Al-Jazeera Mubasher, was killed by an Israeli drone strike on a house in Al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza on Saturday.
He is the 12th Al-Jazeera media worker to be killed in Gaza since Israel began its genocide of Palestinians in October 2023.
The network called on “the international community and legal institutions to take urgent, practical measures to hold the Israeli officials involved in these appalling crimes accountable,” the statement added.
Washah’s brother, Mohammad, was killed in an Israeli strike just two months earlier, in April, also while working as a correspondent for Al-Jazeera Mubasher. Before Mohammed’s death, the brothers worked together as a team, with Ahmad filming for Mohammad.
“Together, they formed a media duo that documented the suffering of the Palestinian people and the unfolding events of the war,” Al-Jazeera stated.
After Mohammad’s death, Ahmad also took care of his late brother’s children.
On Saturday, the network denounced “the continuation of the crimes committed by the Israeli occupation forces against its correspondents and staff in Gaza.”
Al-Jazeera said it was determined to take all legal measures to prosecute the killers of its journalists. The Qatar-based channel stressed it will continue to cover Israel’s crimes against Palestinians in Gaza despite the Israeli army’s attempts to silence the voices of its correspondents in the enclave.
Israel has killed at least 262 journalists and media workers since the start of Israel’s genocide, according to the Gaza Government Media Office.
In August 2025, Israel killed Al-Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif and four of his colleagues in an airstrike in Gaza. Before his killing, Sharif became one of the most recognizable media voices from the front lines of northern Gaza.
In December 2023, his 90-year-old father was killed when an Israeli airstrike struck their family home in Jabalia. Sharif said the killing of his father came after Israeli officials threatened him by phone to cease his coverage.
Since October 2023, the ongoing war in Gaza has claimed the lives of countless other Palestinian journalists, including Al Jazeera staff members such as correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul, cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa, and correspondent Hossam Shabat, who were killed while reporting on the ground.
In May 2022, Israeli occupation forces shot dead another Al-Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, a US-Palestinian citizen, while she was covering an Israeli military operation in the West Bank city of Jenin.
Israel claimed she was killed by unintentional fire by its forces. However, multiple independent probes concluded that an Israeli military sniper killed her.
Israel has detained another 50 journalists since October 2023, holding them in detention facilities and prisons where torture and rape is common. Another three Palestinian journalists remain missing.
More than 420 journalists have been injured covering the genocide, which has killed 73,000 Palestinians by the most conservative estimates. Independent estimates reach into the hundreds of thousands of dead, in large part due to the direct effects of war.
Some of the wounded journalists have suffered serious injuries, leading to amputations and permanent disabilities.
Israel is waging the war in a bid to destroy Gaza and forcibly expel its roughly 2 million Palestinians. Israeli political and religious leaders wish to annex the strip to build Jewish settlements on the ruins of Palestinian cities and villages.
Iran delegation protests Trump’s threat at Switzerland talks, weighs ‘proper’ response: Source

Press TV – June 21, 2026
The Iranian delegation to talks with the United States has raised objections directly with the American side over President Donald Trump’s latest threat of further military strikes, and is now weighing its next steps, a source told Press TV.
“The Iranian delegation has raised its objections to the American side and is currently assessing the conditions to give a proper response to Trump’s verbal threats,” the source said on Sunday.
Trump on Sunday threatened to restart war with Iran, warning Tehran to rein in its allies in Lebanon or face renewed and more powerful US military strikes.
“Iran must immediately stop their highly paid PROXIES in Lebanon from causing trouble. If they don’t, we’ll hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder!!!” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform, referring to US war against the Islamic Republic, which started late February.
The threat was made as Iranian and American delegations were engaged in critical negotiations, mediated by Pakistan and Qatar, at the Bürgenstock resort in central Switzerland, where they are working to implement a 14-point memorandum of understanding.
The talks were the first to be held under the terms of the Islamabad MoU agreed a week ago.
Trump’s threat of further military action against Iran is a direct contravention of US commitments under the interim deal, whose clause 1 commits both parties “not to initiate any war or any military operation against each other, and to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other.”
A source close to Iran’s negotiating team later told Tasnim news agency that the Iranian delegation left the venue of talks with the United States in protest over Trump’s latest threat.
Securing Peace with Iran Compels Trump to Divorce Israel
Israel’s goals of territorial expansion conflict with the goals of the US president
By Harrison Berger | The American Conservative | June 19, 2026
After President Donald Trump signed a preliminary Iran peace deal on Wednesday, Israel’s occupation and bombing of Lebanon presents the central obstacle to a final agreement and lasting peace. Securing and upholding the final peace deal will require the kind of confrontation with Israel that Trump has avoided for most of his presidency, given Iran’s leverage over the Strait of Hormuz and global energy flows.
Iran has insisted that the ceasefire and now the framework peace deal cover the entire regional war and thus require that Israel end its occupation of southern Lebanon. Iran’s Supreme National Security Council declared Monday that under the framework deal, called a memorandum of understanding, “war and military operations on all fronts—including immediately ending the Lebanon front tonight and permanently—will conclude.”
That demand stems directly from the “long-term security guarantees” Tehran has invoked across its public statements since the beginning of the conflict. For those guarantees to mean anything, Tehran needs Trump to rein in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and ensure that Israel does not launch another surprise attack against Iran. The only way Washington can demonstrate that commitment is to pressure Israel now, in Lebanon. As Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute has argued, binding Israel to a ceasefire is a “test of America’s willingness, and its ability, to restrain its closest regional ally.”
Iran is right to doubt that Washington will exert that kind of pressure over Israel. After Israel’s latest bombing of Beirut’s southern suburbs, Iran’s Speaker of Parliament Mohammad Ghalibaf wrote that the incursion into Dahiyeh “has once again shown that America either lacks the will to fulfill its commitments or the ability to do so.” Recognizing that Israel’s violent quest to grab territory in Lebanon could only be accomplished with U.S. approval, Iran’s leading negotiator declared that “the game of bad cop and good cop is outdated.”
Up until that point, the White House had seemed to use Axios and other friendly outlets to give Iran the impression that it was pressuring Israel, even as it kept giving its protectorate in the Middle East the green light to occupy its northern neighbor. Indeed, while American audiences heard from the Axios reporter Barak Ravid that Washington was “furious” over the Lebanon strikes, Israeli audiences heard the opposite.
Miriam Adelson’s Israel Hayom newspaper reported that the United States and Israel were in fact “fully coordinated, both on the strikes in Dahiyeh in Beirut and on the Israeli response to the missile fire from Iran,” and that Secretary of State Marco Rubio in particular played a “significant role” in getting Trump to back Israel’s retaliatory strikes. The Israeli operation, the paper said, was “fully coordinated with CENTCOM, even though the Americans did not strike themselves.” The munitions used by the Israelis in Lebanon are further proof of U.S. involvement, with Courtney Bonneau, the American-Dutch journalist reporting from southern Lebanon, recently telling The American Conservative that the waste left by Israel’s demolition and bombing campaign is recognizably U.S.-made.
Trump wants to have it both ways. The political costs of the war are piling up and he wants an exit, but an exit requires confronting Israel and the lobby over Lebanon, and that is a political conflict he has avoided fighting directly even as he has criticized Netanyahu in recent weeks.
Israel is betting he will continue to avoid it. Shortly after a deal was announced, Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said that Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon would continue, and that it planned to stay “indefinitely” in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza. Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich likewise announced on Tuesday that “there will be no withdrawal from Lebanon, neither by Friday nor afterward. We will remain in south Lebanon and strengthen our presence there,” while National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said Monday that Israel is not bound by any agreement.
Though Israeli leaders insist they are carefully fighting “Hezbollah,” the death toll of at least 3,826 Lebanese civilians killed by Israeli attacks reveals that to be merely a pretext. Trump, though he has not skipped any payment when it comes to funding the conflict, admitted as much on Tuesday at the G7 Summit, telling reporters that Israel “does not have to knock down an apartment house every time [it’s] looking for somebody. There are a lot of people in those apartment houses and they’re not all Hezbollah.”
And though Israel invokes Hezbollah as its excuse for military action, there is little reason to believe the IDF’s occupation would end even if Hezbollah laid down its arms. In their public statements, Israeli officials have expressed interest in territorial expansion for its own sake and, increasingly, in the Judaification of Lebanese land through settlements—an idea Jewish Currents describes as “once fringe” but now backed by “an organized movement with broad governmental and public support.” Twenty members of Israel’s Knesset wrote to the cabinet in April urging “occupation and full control” of southern Lebanon alongside the “complete displacement” of its population, while a poll conducted by Direct Polls for i24NEWS found that 62 percent of Israelis favor occupying everything south of the Litani River.
Israeli occupation of Lebanon, like its ethnic cleansing campaigns in Gaza and the West Bank, works directly against American interests, in this case stopping a war that has wrecked the global economy. Washington has all the necessary tools to put a stop to this, yet has simply declined to use them. As Joe Kent, the administration’s former head of the National Counterterrorism Center and one of the most prominent America First critics of the war argued on X, “We can strengthen our chances of this deal holding by cutting all military/intel assistance to Israel,” who “took every opportunity to tank this deal & will likely do so again unless we take action,” adding that in order for a deal to hold, we must “take away every factor that we can control that could force us back into the war on Israel or Iran’s terms. Set all conditions that we can control in our favor.”
Though once unthinkable, Trump in recent days has shifted closer toward this America First position and away from the Israel First mindset that led to war with Iran. With Iran insisting any peace deal must cover “all fronts,” including Lebanon, and with the Israelis fully committed to the Greater Israel project, cutting off Israel is now the minimum price of the complete exit from the conflict that Trump says he wants.
Harrison Berger is a correspondent at The American Conservative. He has contributed to Drop Site News, The Nation, and Responsible Statecraft. Previously, he was a researcher and producer for System Update with Glenn Greenwald. His work focuses on civil liberties and U.S. foreign policy. He studied Political Science and Russian Studies at Union College (NY).
Strait of Hormuz closed over Israeli aggression on Lebanon
Al Mayadeen | June 20, 2026
The Strait of Hormuz is shut down in response to ongoing Israeli aggression on southern Lebanon, Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters announced, deeming Israeli actions a violation of Iran’s agreement with the US.
In a statement carried by Iranian state television, the Khatam HQ accused the United States of breaching its obligations under a memorandum of understanding related to ending the war, and also cited continued Israeli military actions in southern Lebanon, including ceasefire violations, killings, forced displacement of civilians, and failure to withdraw from Lebanese territory. It added that the measure reflects a response to the deterioration of compliance by the opposing parties and the persistence of hostilities on the ground.
“In light of the United States’ blatant violation of its commitments and breach of the provisions of Article One of the memorandum of understanding to end the war and in response to the ongoing and continuous violation of the ceasefire by the Israeli entity in southern Lebanon, the continued brutal killing and forcible displacement of the Lebanese people, and its failure to withdraw from southern Lebanon, it is hereby announced that the Strait of Hormuz will be closed to maritime navigation,” the statement read.
More steps to follow
The statement from Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters concluded by emphasizing that the measure was presented as an initial response to what it described as the enemy’s breach of commitments, warning that any continued escalation would prompt additional actions aimed at compelling compliance with its stated obligations.
“It is noted that this first step is a response to the enemy’s breach of promise, and if the aggression continues, further steps will be planned and taken to force the enemy to comply with its obligations,” it asserted.
37+ martyrs in continued Israeli attacks on southern, eastern Lebanon
Israeli occupation forces (IOF) carried out a fresh wave of attacks across southern Lebanon and western Bekaa on Saturday morning, killing at least 37 people and extending a pattern of aggression that has persisted despite an alleged ceasefire in place since April 17, 2026.
In the Nabatieh area alone, at least 25 people were martyred and another 35 were injured in an initial toll, as reported by the Civil Defense Operations Room of the Islamic Health Authority’s Jabal Amel II region. Rescue and ambulance teams are still clearing rubble and searching for missing people. Among those martyred in the Nabatieh area is a Lebanese Army soldier killed in an Israeli drone strike in Kfar Rumman.
Meanwhile, an Israeli attack on a residential building in the town of Qennarit in the Saida district killed 7 and injured 13 others, among them 5 children and 5 women, as per the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health.
In western Bekaa, Al Mayadeen’s correspondent reported that four people were killed in an Israeli attack on a house in the town of Sohmor, in addition to a person killed earlier in a separate drone attack that targeted a motorcycle in the same town, bringing the death toll in Sohmor to five. Lebanon’s National News Agency reports that a child remains under the rubble in Sohmor, with rescue teams working to save him.
Dozens of towns bombed
Local media reports that the IOF carried out at least 80 attacks on southern Lebanon and the western Bekaa since early morning on Saturday, comprising 65 airstrikes and 15 drone strikes, in addition to artillery shelling and sweeping fire.
The hardest hit areas are al-Nabatieh al-Fawqa (8 times) and al-Rihan heights (6 times). Kfar Tebnit and its surroundings, Jabal al-Rafi’, Shoukin, and Nabatieh city were each bombed four times, while Kfaroumman, Aramta, the al-Aroush quarry, Harouf, and Habboush were each bombed three times.
Sojod, the area between Toul and Kfour, Kfar Joz, Zebdine and its surroundings, and Shhour were each attacked twice, while Nmairiyeh, Arabsalim, al-Mahmoudiyeh, Borj Qalaway, Qabrikha, Barish, al-Qatrani, and Qennarit were each bombed once.
Drone attacks, artillery shelling
Israeli drones, meanwhile, attacked Nabatieh city four times and Arabsalim twice, with single drone attacks hitting Deir al-Zahrani, Doueir, Deir Qanoun Ras al-Ain, Kawthariyet al-Riz, Sohmor, Harouf, Jibchit, and al-Nafakhiyeh.
Israeli artillery also shelled Majdal Zoun, Habboush, Harouf, and Ali al-Taher, while occupation forces carried out sweeping-fire operations in Buyout al-Sayyad.
Friday’s escalation
Saturday’s strikes followed a sharp escalation on Friday, when the IOF expanded its attacks to include several southern villages, the outskirts and northern entrance of Baalbek, and the Litani Riverbed near the town of Zellaya in the western Bekaa, attacks that resulted in massacres of civilians.
The bombardment continued even as Reuters reported that a ceasefire agreement between “Israel” and Hezbollah had taken effect at 4 pm that day. Within moments of the so-called ceasefire taking hold, Israeli occupation warplanes launched more than 16 attacks on areas across the South, according to Al Mayadeen’s correspondent.
The Lebanese Ministry of Public Health confirmed that the intensified aggression carried out from midnight through Friday afternoon martyred 47 people and injured 97 others, an updated toll showed. The Ministry put the cumulative toll of Israeli attacks between March 2 and June 19 at 3,980 martyred and 12,001 injured.
‘Biased censorship’: Iran deputy FM slams X for stripping him of blue tick
Press TV – June 19, 2026
Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Kazem Gharibabadi has decried a recent “biased” move by the social media platform X to remove the blue checkmark from his account.
In an X post on Friday, Gharibabadi said that the online social network has removed the blue tick from his account after doing the same with the accounts of Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Minister Abbas Araghchi, and spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei.
“This biased and politically-motivated measure is the continuation of the pattern of censorship aimed at silencing the truth and the official voice of governments, as well as instrumentalizing digital credibility,” he added.
Since Elon Musk’s acquisition of X, formerly known as Twitter, in 2022, the platform has faced criticism for arbitrarily removing verification badges and deleting accounts perceived as politically inconvenient.
Since February, X has stripped many Iranian officials of their blue checkmarks and deleted without explanation hundreds of accounts supportive of Iran’s brave resistance against the US-Israeli war of aggression.
Hezbollah lawmaker says Israel has 60 days to withdraw from Lebanon
MEMO | June 19, 2026
Mohammad Raad, head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, said Israel has 60 days to complete its withdrawal from Lebanese territory, urging Lebanese authorities to study the understanding signed between the United States and Iran “carefully and objectively”.
In a statement issued on Thursday, Raad made the remarks as Israel continues its military actions and maintains its presence in areas it occupies in southern Lebanon.
He noted that the first clause of the agreement signed between Tehran and Washington calls, in part, for the “immediate and permanent cessation of military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon”.
The agreement also includes a commitment to “guarantee Lebanon’s territorial integrity and sovereignty” and confirms a “permanent end to the war on all fronts” in its final form.
On Wednesday evening, US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian electronically signed the “Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding”, which aims to end the war launched by the United States and Israel against Iran on 28th February.
A Pakistani mediator later announced that the memorandum had entered into force. Under the arrangement, Iran is expected to begin reopening the Strait of Hormuz to shipping, while the United States starts lifting its naval blockade on Tehran.
Raad called on Lebanese authorities to “read the text of the memorandum carefully and objectively and draw conclusions about the realities and prospects that will have a significant impact on the region and the world, including Lebanon”.
He also warned against “underestimating Iran’s ability to fulfil its commitment to deter the Zionist enemy should it insist on violating the terms of the memorandum”, according to the statement.
Iran rules out IAEA inspections of war-damaged nuclear sites
Press TV – June 19, 2026
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman has dismissed reports claiming that the Islamic Republic will invite the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect its nuclear sites damaged in two rounds of US-Israeli aggression.
Referring to the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by Iran and the US with the aim of ending the war on Thursday, Esmaeil Baghaei told reporters on Friday that the document’s clause 8 stipulates that negotiations on the nuclear issue will be held within a period of 60 days.
“Of course, this will require the fulfillment of the prerequisites for starting negotiations in accordance with clause 13,” he emphasized.
Baghaei stressed that, according to clause 9 of the MoU, the current status of Iran’s nuclear program will be maintained during the 60-day period, and accordingly, inspections of facilities such as Bushehr, which have been conducted so far, will continue.
He added that inspections of facilities to which the IAEA’s access was suspended due to the US-Israeli aggression hinge on the process of negotiations and their outcome.
His remarks come as US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, claimed that Iran will invite the IAEA to inspect its nuclear facilities and begin work on identifying and disclosing the locations of enriched materials possessed by Tehran.
This came during a special briefing by Witkoff to congressional leaders and members of the committees concerned with national security.
The MoU, signed remotely by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and US President Donald Trump, calls for a permanent end to hostilities across all fronts, the removal of the US naval blockade, the restoration of commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz within 30 days, a reconstruction plan worth at least $300 billion, and the lifting of US sanctions.
Under the MoU, the two sides have entered a 60-day negotiation period, with the goal of reaching a comprehensive final agreement.
The agreement followed an unprovoked US-Israeli war of terrorism against Iran that began in late February.
Israeli regime’s only interest is ‘permanent war,’ Iran’s FM Araghchi says

Press TV – June 19, 2026
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has condemned provocative statements by senior Israeli ministers advocating intensified attacks on Lebanon, warning that the only interest of the genocidal Israeli regime is permanent war.
In a post on X on Friday, Araghchi denounced comments made by Israel’s far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir following the deaths of four Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon.
Ben-Gvir wrote on X that “all of Lebanon must burn,” and that “for every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep.”
“This is not a rant by a random genocidal lunatic,” Araghchi wrote. “It’s a public post by the national security minister of the Israeli regime.”
“The genocidal death cult headquartered in Tel Aviv is a threat to all of humanity. It threatens all humans,” he added.
Araghchi said that Tel Aviv’s “only interest is permanent war.”
Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich also called for a harsher military aggression against Lebanon, writing on the social media platform that it was “time to speak with fire” and “open the gates of hell.”
Iranian officials have repeatedly warned that halting Israeli attacks in Lebanon is a key component of the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by the presidents of Iran and the United States on Thursday.
Israeli warplanes bombed residential areas in southern and eastern Lebanon before dawn Friday.
At least 31 Lebanese have been killed as Israel keeps attacking the country despite the US-Iran deal coming into force.
Lebanon’s National News Agency reported that strikes targeted inhabited homes in the towns of al-Sharqiyah, Harouf and Kfar Sir in the Nabatieh district.
In an earlier statement, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei underscored Washington’s direct responsibility under the current circumstances.
He said the Islamic Republic of Iran “will take all necessary measures to safeguard its interests, security and rights, as well as those of its allies.”
According to official Lebanese figures, the death toll from Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon has risen to 3,912.
More than 11,870 people have been wounded and over one million displaced, according to official figures.
Meanwhile, Reuters reported that a ceasefire has taken effect between Hezbollah and the Israeli regime as of 4 PM local time. However, Lebanese media outlet Al Mayadeen has reported Israeli strikes following the start of the reported ceasefire.
