👀 This Week So Far
Quick Catch-Up
🇮🇷🇺🇸 Iran-US: The US and Iran pause attacks after ~4 days of strikes around Hormuz, then immediately disagree over whether Tuesday's Doha talks are even happening.
🇮🇷🇮🇶 Iran-Iraq: Iraq arrests 47 people in a Baghdad corruption sweep that appears to hit Iran-aligned power networks.
🇷🇺🇺🇦 Russia-Ukraine: Russian President Putin admits Ukraine's refinery strikes are creating fuel shortages inside Russia, with rationing now reported from Irkutsk to Crimea.
🇻🇪 Venezuela: Opposition leader María Corina Machado says she will return to Venezuela following the earthquake disaster.
🇷🇺🇺🇦 RUSSIA & UKRAINE
Fuel Giant Rejected?
Russia is now trying to import gasoline, an awkward look for one of the world's biggest oil exporters after Ukrainian drone strikes hit its refining system.
Shortage. The Kremlin says talks are active with unnamed countries, and Russian President Putin has admitted a fuel shortage while saying reserves are 1.7M metric tons, down 4% from last year.
Damage. The squeeze has pushed Russia toward import subsidies and market support while fuel demand is high from summer travel and farming.
Kazakhstan. Industry-source reporting said Russia discussed buying 50,000 metric tons of AI-92 gasoline from Kazakhstan.
However, Kazakhstan's energy minister said no official Russian request had arrived, but Astana would consider one if it did.
But one unverified rumor circulating online claims that Kazakhstan flatly refused Putin.
🇪🇸 SPAIN
Legalization Surge
Around 1 million immigrants in Spain have tried to legalize their status, making the regularization drive much bigger than the government planned.
Terms. Applicants could seek a 1-year renewable residence and work permit if they had spent at least 5 months living in Spain and had no criminal record.
Scale. Spain had received 900,000 applications by June 12, processed about 360,000 by mid-June, and now has 3 months to decide the rest.
Mix. Colombians made up 30% of applicants, followed by Moroccans at 14%, Venezuelans at 10%, and Peruvians at 9%.
Read. Spanish PM Sánchez is betting that labor needs and tax revenue will outweigh the severe backlash he’s receiving. It’s worth noting that much of Europe is starting to change course and take a harder line on deportations now.
🇮🇷 IRAN
Kurdish Front Flickers
An unverified CCTV footage circulating online, reportedly showing Kurdistan Free Life Party (a Kurdish militant group) killing an IRGC officer in Paveh.
Iran has a new problem in its Kurdish west: reported attacks have killed security personnel near the Iraq border, but the evidence still falls short of proving a coordinated Kurdish insurgency.
Paveh. Iranian state media said 2 local IRGC members were killed at home and 2 others wounded in Kermanshah province. A little-known group, Xore Heva, later claimed the attack as revenge for Iran's crackdown after Mahsa Amini's 2022 death.
Baneh. Gunmen also killed 2 police officers at a checkpoint in Kurdistan province. That attack has not been clearly attributed, and injury counts differ across reports.
Pattern. Kurdish-focused and opposition-linked outlets are also reporting clashes around Marivan, Mahabad and Baneh.
Leverage. Kurdish opposition figures argue any US-Iran deal would leave them exposed and strengthen Tehran. Iran's problem is that even small border attacks now look bigger while Washington and Tehran are trying to keep talks alive.
📌 Context. This isn’t a new problem for Tehran. Iran’s Kurdish minority lives mostly along the Iraq border, where armed Kurdish groups have periodically fought the government for decades over greater autonomy.
Earlier this year, President Trump said the US had tried to route weapons to Iranian protesters through Kurdish groups, but the weapons never reached the protestors. Kurdish groups deny this claim.
🇮🇷🇺🇸 IRAN & US
Talks Happened, “Indirectly”
In focus: Jared Kushner (left) and Steve Witkoff (right).
Initially, President Trump announced that Iran requested Doha talks. But Iran denied this, saying that there’s no meeting with the American side scheduled.
Well, it seems like US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner had Doha talks after all. However, Tehran can still say it did not technically sit down directly with the US, because they reportedly didn't talk to the US envoy directly.
What we know:
Qatar said Witkoff and Kushner met Qatari mediators, not Iranian officials. Iran also said no US meeting was scheduled, while leaving room for messages through Doha.
The technical talks now cover the MOU, frozen assets, Hormuz traffic, nuclear issues, regional security, and Lebanon.
MOU Execution
US President Donald Trump signing a US-Iran memorandum of understanding at Château de Versailles, France, on June 17.
Now, two weeks after the signing of the MOU, we need to look at how the agreement has been implemented in practice and compare that with what it promised. Despite it looking incredibly generous to Iran on paper, in practice, it seems like the the benefits are slower and narrower than Iran would like.
Some of this played out as expected, but some of it came as a surprise, namely, how the Israel-Lebanon situation and the lifting of oil sanctions unfolded:
💰 Assets. The US has not released Iran’s frozen funds yet, citing unmet conditions under its performance-based framework.
🛢️ Oil. Treasury has authorized Iranian oil sales through August 21, but buyers are reportedly still very cautious. Energy analysts say China is likely to remain the main buyer while others wait to see what happens during and after the 60-day period.
🇱🇧 Lebanon. Point 1 of the MOU protects Lebanon's "territorial integrity and sovereignty." However, it does not name Hezbollah (an Iran-backed paramilitary group in Lebanon).
This is where Secretary Rubio's Israel-Lebanon Trilateral Framework comes in.
The framework creates a "clear and structured process to restore Lebanon’s sovereignty, disarm Hizballah and dismantle its terrorist infrastructure, and enable Israel to return to its borders once that threat to its citizens is removed."
Since Lebanon’s sovereign government signed onto this, the US can argue that it is consistent with the MOU, while making Iran’s claim that Israel is attacking Lebanon more awkward.
Of course, Iran can still accuse the US of letting Israel hit Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. The harder argument is that Lebanon's own government just agreed that Hezbollah's weapons are the sovereignty problem.
Now and Future
Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran Mojtaba Khamenei (left), and US President Donald Trump (right).
So all in all, as things stand, the US seems to be holding most of the cards, despite the concerns many MOU critics had. Many are also giving Rubio credit for clarifying the MOU and making its first provision far less problematic through the Israel-Lebanon framework agreement.
Many of the MOU’s critics are starting to warm to the idea that it may have been a practical way to avoid a much larger global crisis.
The sentiment I’m seeing among these critics online is that, while negotiating with a terrorist regime is never ideal, if the alternative meant higher oil prices and greater disruption to the global economy, this may have been the best middle ground President Trump could realistically strike.
That said, most of the original critics still seem to oppose the MOU itself.
Trump's War Line
Perhaps calm the backlash over the MOU, we’re now seeing reports that President Trump weighed the option of an all-out war with Iran before deciding to stick with talks (for now).
The reported reason: another full-scale attack could wreck diplomacy, and Trump is fine if talks run past the August 18 deadline.
This seems to be in line with the current US posture: keep oil prices calmer, keep Hormuz partly open, slow-walk Iran's biggest rewards, and use Lebanon's government-to-government framework to shrink Tehran's gray-zone argument.
But what’s missing from all the recent discussion about Iran is the people of Iran. We keep talking about oil prices, negotiations, and practical trade-offs, while the regime’s continued executions of Iranian protesters seem to be largely forgotten.
