JD Vance is flying to Switzerland on Friday to sign a tentative deal to end the U.S. war with Iran, which is great news, except that the details are unclear, Israel isn't on board, and roughly 1,500 merchant ships are currently sitting trapped in the Persian Gulf waiting to find out if any of this is real. Other than that, very smooth diplomacy.
A Deal With Several Large Holes In It
Here's what we know. According to NPR, Vice President JD Vance will travel to Switzerland this Friday to sign a tentative ceasefire agreement with Iran. President Trump has declared that Friday is the day the Strait of Hormuz reopens, and merchant ships can once again sail freely through one of the most important shipping corridors on the planet.
Here's what we don't know. Pretty much everything else. The specifics of the agreement remain unclear, NPR reports, and serious questions linger about how quickly commercial vessels can actually resume transit and whether Iran will even permit free passage through the waterway. That's not a minor detail. That is the entire point of the deal.
Industry analysts tell NPR that approximately 1,500 ships are currently stranded inside the Persian Gulf, waiting for clearance to leave. Imagine being the captain of one of those vessels, watching a press conference on a laptop in the middle of the ocean, trying to figure out if the guy at the podium actually knows what he's talking about. That's the situation right now.
Israel Is Blowing Up the Ceasefire It Wasn't Invited To
The biggest wrench in all of this is Israel, which is the sentence that summarizes approximately the last three years of geopolitics. NPR's Aya Batrawy told the Up First podcast that Trump and every country in the region except Israel wants this war with Iran to end, because it is destroying their economies.
Iran's position is that any ceasefire must also address Israel's ongoing war against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran says the first clause of the deal mandates that attacks on Lebanon must stop before anything else happens. Those attacks have not stopped. So the first clause of a deal being signed Friday has not been satisfied as of Tuesday.
This has created what NPR describes as a significant rift between Israel and the United States. Trump has reportedly admitted to cursing at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during phone calls, which is a diplomatic development that would have been considered apocalyptically strange in any prior administration but now barely makes the B-block. Netanyahu is facing elections this year, and according to Batrawy, it's politically essential for him to demonstrate that Israel's military decisions aren't being dictated by Washington. So he's going to keep bombing Lebanon, the ceasefire terms won't be met, and Vance is still getting on a plane Friday.
Trump's G7 Press Conference: Confidence Incoming
Trump has spent most of this week at the G7 summit in France talking about the Iran agreement, NPR reports. He's scheduled to hold a press conference today at 10:30 AM Eastern before heading back to Washington.
The obvious question reporters will be pushing is how confident Trump actually is that Israel won't take some action in Lebanon that blows up the entire tentative deal before the ink is dry on Friday. This is a fair question. It is also the kind of question that historically produces answers like "Israel is a great ally and we have a tremendous relationship" followed by a pivot to something unrelated.
Watch the press conference if you enjoy either geopolitical developments or watching someone field questions they clearly do not want to answer. Both audiences will be served.
Meanwhile, Kevin Warsh Steps Up to the Fed Podium
Separate from the Iran situation but very much connected to it economically, new Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh holds his first press conference this afternoon. Trump picked Warsh specifically because he wanted someone who would push for lower interest rates. That plan has a problem.
According to NPR, the cost of living jumped 4.2% from a year ago in May, the largest annual increase since 2023. The primary driver of that surge is rising energy prices tied directly to the U.S. war with Iran. The Fed doesn't cut rates when inflation is running hot. It especially doesn't cut rates when inflation is being driven by an active military conflict that may or may not be ending via a deal nobody fully understands yet.
So Trump installed his preferred Fed chair to lower rates, then prosecuted a war that created the exact inflation conditions that prevent the Fed from lowering rates. Policy coherence is not the theme of this administration.
Georgia Said No Thanks to One Trump Pick
Back home, Trump absorbed a rare primary loss on Tuesday. Georgia Republicans nominated billionaire healthcare executive Rick Jackson as their candidate for governor, per NPR, defeating GOP Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones, who had Trump's backing. Jackson will face Democratic former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms in November.
Trump did get one win in Georgia. Representative Mike Collins, his preferred candidate for the Senate race, won his runoff and will now face incumbent Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff in what NPR describes as a nationally watched contest with Senate control hanging in the balance. So the night was split, which is not exactly the full loyalty test result the White House was looking for.
The Dingo Take
Let's just sit with the core absurdity here for a moment. The United States is signing a ceasefire deal on Friday. The first clause of that deal requires attacks on Lebanon to stop. The attacks on Lebanon have not stopped. The country conducting those attacks is not part of the deal and has no obvious incentive to comply. And yet: the plane is still leaving for Switzerland.
This is the diplomatic equivalent of planning a wedding when one of the two people hasn't said yes yet, and also that person is currently in a different country doing something that makes the wedding legally complicated. But the venue is booked, the flowers are ordered, and the press release is written, so we're proceeding.
The 1,500 ships sitting in the Persian Gulf are the most honest participants in this entire situation. They're not pretending anything is resolved. They're just waiting to see whether the people in charge of very large decisions actually know what they're doing. Given the evidence so far, those captains might want to get comfortable.
