After A Little Weekend Warrior Work, Iran Is Back In the M.O.U. Box

Duane Patterson 8:00 AM | June 29, 2026
AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

It's a lot more fun and less dangerous to spend weekends re-enacting famous battles in history. No one ever truly gets hurt, and it's a good way to get you mind off the rut of the work week and outside for a bit. But in most cases, once you've finished dying, or killing others in some gloriously overacted fashion, you still show up to work on Monday and nothing really has changed. That's pretty much what occurred in the Persian Gulf this past weekend after a brief return to kinetic activity between the remnants of the Iranian regime and the United States. Except the difference here is that we return to work on Monday with a lot more advantages over the Iranians than before we headed into the weekend. 

A week ago, Brent crude opened at $80 dollars a barrel, and WTI was at $76. It was poised to open up this morning at $71 and $69, respectively. All of the big three market indexes were expected to hit the ground running due to renewed optimism that last weekend's tit-for-tat-for-tit-for-tat is over, and the resumption of talks on a final Iran-U.S. peace deal will soon take place in Doha. 

So what happened? You wouldn't know anything about it by watching legacy news outlets, because they had breaking Reflecting Pool coverage to bring you and Sophie Cunningham pointing at everyone memes online. 

Momentous things did take place, however, and they signal an unstable Iranian regime that is acting very differently than their blustery rhetoric about getting the best of the Americans in the Memorandum Of Understanding. Let's walk through them. 

The M/S Ever Lovely, a Singapore-flagged cargo ship fleeing the Strait of Hormuz along with over a hundred other vessels last week, was hit by one of four one-way Iranian drones, damaging the ship's bridge but not inflicting casualties or stopping it from continuing its journey. The other three inbound drones were taken out by the U.S. Navy. 

In response, Friday evening Middle East time, at least three separate sets of explosions in and around Sirik, Iran were reported. Sirik has long been a suspected drone and fast-boat port on Iran's southern coast about halfway down the right leg of the Hormuz horseshoe. CentCom soon confirmed the rumors. 

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Vice-President J.D. Vance quickly added that while his hope was that the M.O.U. would remain in force, and that the Iranians would do well to return to the terms of it while further negotiations continued, violence would be met with violence. 

And for a few hours, it seemed like that indeed would be that. Until the Iranians took to social media. 

They shot at a Singapore freighter, and yet to them, our response is the violation of the M.O.U. 

Iran's hardline newspaper, Kayhan, called for negotiations to be suspended and a resumption of war. 

It continued to spiral into Saturday. 

And then this banger popped up. 

They had me at "Iranian Navy." Bolivia's got a more robust navy, and they're landlocked. But the bluster led to some Iranian to order up strikes in Bahrain and Kuwait in an attempt to strike U.S. assets. 

All inbound weapons, drones, and missiles- a dozen into Bahrain and a half-dozen into Kuwait- were all knocked down. Hell, despite what Iran promised would be delivered, did not materialize. Where Hell did arrive, however, was in the form of ten more strikes along the Sirik coastline and more of Qeshm Island. 

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U.N. Ambassador Michael Waltz delivered the diplomatic find out to Iran's weekend F'ing around. 

So why? Why did the Iranian regime begin this nonsense again when they're allegedly about to be awash in cash and sanctions relief? Why put that at risk so soon? Several reasons. 

Despite what CNN and the other Alphabet media outlets tell you about how Donald Trump got taken to the cleaners by the Iranians, facts are stubborn things. And the facts are that for Americans, we're already at oil price levels before the war went kinetic in late February. The trickling down of lower fuel costs through the supply chain to retail goods and services will still take time, but the President has all but restored 100% of the cost of America keeping the war going. Economic equilibrium here is headed back to where it was. And actually, the United States will be better off, because we're now the largest net exporter of energy in the world, where we were not before the war. How's Iran doing after signing the M.O.U? They're on track to get back about 20% of what they lost due to the war, according to Israel's Finance Minister.  

Inside Iran, you'd think ships full of Iranian oil finally leaving the Strait would be a boost to their economy. 

In Die Hard 2, a military warlord opened the plane door on the runway of Dulles Airport in a blizzard, looked to the heavens, and decried, "Freedom!" Bruce Willis, reprising his role as Officer John McClane, punched him in the mouth and said, "Not yet." Iran still has a world of hurt going on internally. They're not out of the woods yet. 

And to compound the issue, I don't think we can rule out that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has ceased messing with them every time they pull a stunt like this last weekend. Coinciding with Iran's attacks and Trump's response, Iran's banking system was doing the Tehran two-step all weekend. 

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To be fair, the Israelis could very much be involved here, but Secretary Bessent has shown time and time again that he's a stone-cold economic assassin. I wouldn't put this past him to keep turning off the banking system breakers in Iran when they quit playing nice with others. 

In short, Iran isn't seeing the instant relief they believe they bargained for in the M.O.U., and they're having buyer's remorse. 

They're angry that most of the traffic through the Strait is hugging the Oman coastline and avoiding the Iranian side where they have deluded themselves into believing the tollbooth fleecing operation will become a reality. 

Their defense industrial base is literally half of what it was four months ago, and they do not have the cash to rebuild it. They certainly don't have the money to go onto the international market and buy it. Regardless, the last stuff they bought was Russian and Chinese, and it failed miserably. For crying out loud, this army spokesman hasn't been paid, either. 

Araghchi was Zoltan all weekend long. He was spitting out predictions about what will be and what won't be on a whole host of topics.

The bottom line is it's the Iranians who are complaining about the M.O.U. far more than Iran hawks here in the United States or in Israel. But this is only part of the reason Iran acted out this weekend. If they think they fleeced Donald Trump, they've got a funny way of showing it.

The Israel-Lebanon peace deal announced Thursday is an absolute killer for Iran, and they know it. I'm not saying there won't be a trouble in the days, months, and years ahead between the two countries, but a tide definitely turned, and it's one that cuts off Iran from it's most potent terror proxy, Hezbollah - something which actually was one of the stated goals Donald Trump and the administration consistently made for going to war with Iran in the first place. What does the deal do? First and foremost, it establishes for the first time ever that Lebanon recognizes Israel's right to exist as a nation-state. 

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This is, quite simply, an enormous admission by Lebanon and a severe blow to Iran. As part of the deal, Lebanon also begins to sit on its hands at the United Nations instead of doggedly pursuing and prosecuting them. 

Third, as part of the ceasefire, Israel gets to maintain their positions inside Southern Lebanon for as long as necessary to root out Hezbollah. Once the Lebanese Army shows it can take over Lebanese territory and hold it from the terrorists, only then will Israel recede back below the Litani River. 

And there was a huge underground tunnel network a few clicks north of Israel's border in Southern Lebanon. I say there was, because after a carefully executed strike by the IDF, it's no more. 

Hezbollah was not amused. 

Protests began immediately in Lebanon, with supporters of Hezbollah setting fire to everything they could get their hands on and rioting. It looked like a Darializa Chevalier C.U.A.D. encampment at Columbia.

And as upset as Hezbollah was about having everyone around turn on them with no Iranian funding and support on the horizon, Iran did not like its knees being cut off by Marco Rubio, either. 

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I don't know who gets to be the lucky person to tell him, but Israel has been operating inside of Iran with relative impunity on an intelligence basis for years, and militarily for most of 2026. They'll be able to strike Iran at will for the foreseeable future. Hezbollah wasn't really much of a buffer protecting Iran from Israel before now, and they're going to be less so going forward. 

Going into Sunday, it began to look like the Iranians were of the opinion that this deal was getting worse all the time. 

It wasn't the weather that drove them back indoors. I think they did a head count, multiplied it by 72 virgins, and figured several of them were going to get short-changed, and meeting outdoors right after provoking the Americans again was not a terrific idea. 

The Trump administration has been calm, rational, and methodical applying both carrots and sticks where appropriate this past week. The Iranian regime, by comparison, has been flailing. 

And while they allegedly have no choice but to obtain the bomb and use it, and apparently strike their Arab neighbors with anything left in their arsenal that can fly, their plan now is to scrap talks with the Americans and enter into negotiations with the same people they've been attacking to develop a regional governance plan that excludes the Americans, but enables them to collect tolls on ships originating from, *checks notes*, the same Arab countries they're attacking randomly. 

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Just when you thought you were convinced the Iranians were going to dig in, and Donald Trump was going to have to finish the job (something I dearly wish he would have done already), Iran caved Sunday afternoon. 

Back to talks, everything's good, all boats are safe going through the Strait again...for now. The three indexes in pre-market trading all weekend were in the red. Once this news broke, fortunes on Wall and Broad reversed, and oil continued its drive to a pre-war equilibrium price. So why did Iran cave? 

Quite simply, Trump still holds all the cards and the money. The more time passes, and we learn what and how the particulars of the M.O.U. are implemented, Iran is still in a box from which their only escape is performing exactly as we demand. If there are sanctions lifted and money does come to them, it's nowhere near enough to rebuild what they think they want to quickly. And if they do use the money inappropriately, their economy won't hold together for much longer without large infusions of cash. 

IRGC hardliners might believe they're about to send help to the proxies once more, but my guess is both Secretary Bessent and the Israelis will be watching and have something to say about disintermediating them from that money if they attempt to use it the wrong way. The squeeze remains very much in place, and this weekend alone, you can tell its effects by how the regime has squirmed around. 

Sure, there were fireworks and grandstanding all around, but a week later, the markets are coming to Trump, and the available options for the Iranians continue to run out. Will they make this whole process as painful for the President and his foreign policy team as possible? Of course. I would expect nothing less from this regime. But you have to give credit where credit is due. 

Iran flexed their muscles this weekend very much in the same way it flexed them a couple of months ago. Then, it froze traffic in the Strait to a standstill for way too long and spooked the markets. This time, when Iran flexed, they got clotheslined by Secretary of State Rubio with the deal between Israel and Lebanon, lost more offensive capabilities in the Strait, and got forced in short order right back into the box they found themselves 96 hours ago. 

Haters will still hate, but any way you look at this past week, Trump came out on top. 

Tags:

DONALD TRUMP IRAN ISRAEL DEPARTMENT OF WAR

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