The United States and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding on Thursday that extended a ceasefire by 60 days, including in Lebanon, to allow negotiations on a permanent settlement and to address issues including Iran's nuclear programme. The deal, brokered at the level of states and armies, now hangs over people in Lebanon and across the region while officials in Washington, Tehran, and Israel argue over who gained and who surrendered.
Who Gets to Call It a Deal
Haaretz described the memorandum of understanding with Iran as, from an Israeli standpoint, "an incredibly bad document" and "in large measure, and in total contradiction to the claims made by U.S. President Donald Trump, an agreement of American surrender, even though Iran was on the losing side in the warfare." The article said the memorandum of understanding with Iran, which it described as "to a large extent, an American surrender," was also "a failure for Netanyahu." Those are the words of the political class and its press organs, translating a ceasefire into a scoreboard for states and leaders while ordinary people remain the terrain on which these bargains are enforced.
The same article said Israel was trying to decipher whether the U.S. intended to enforce a full IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon any time soon, given that its activity there was already restricted. That uncertainty is the practical face of high-level diplomacy: military movement, restricted activity, and the possibility of withdrawal all decided above the heads of the people living with the consequences.
What the Powerful Are Arguing About
The Times of Israel reported that Vance slammed Israeli "freakout" over the Iran deal and said Trump was the "only world leader who still likes Israel." The quote lays out the transactional language of power plainly enough: alliances are treated like personal favors, and public panic is reduced to a "freakout" while the machinery of statecraft keeps moving.
Reuters reported that the ceasefire extension was part of a broader agreement that could redraw the Middle East and that Iran gained while rivals were alarmed. That is the language of imperial rearrangement, where borders, ceasefires, and nuclear issues are handled as pieces on a board by governments and their security establishments.
The Settlement Above the People
The memorandum of understanding extends the ceasefire by 60 days, including in Lebanon, specifically to allow negotiations on a permanent settlement. The agreement also aims to address Iran's nuclear programme. Those are the official terms, but the structure is the same one that always shows up when states negotiate peace: armed institutions decide, civilians absorb the consequences, and the public is told to wait for the next round of managed stability.
Haaretz also referred to former premiers and security chiefs breaking silence on settler violence, hardali rabbis trying to bar students from Armored Corps over women's integration, and a letter by the head of Israel's Air Force on an aborted Iran strike that drew Netanyahu's ire. Even in the same political moment, the apparatus is busy policing bodies, disciplining soldiers, managing settler violence, and fighting over who gets to command the violence and who gets to be excluded from it.
The Reuters report said Iran gained while rivals were alarmed. That is the clearest summary of the arrangement's immediate political effect: one state gains leverage, others scramble, and the people caught under the ceasefire and any future settlement are left to live inside decisions made by rulers, generals, and negotiators.
The memorandum of understanding was signed on Thursday. Its 60-day extension is now the frame through which officials will argue over permanent settlement, withdrawal, and nuclear issues, while the region waits for the next decree from above.