Leo Hohmann – Leo’s Newsletter June 17, 2026

President Trump said Wednesday that the proposed peace deal between the U.S. and Iran was “not final” and warned the U.S. could return to “dropping bombs” on Iran if it “didn’t behave.”

Speaking to members of the press on the sidelines of the G7 summit in France, Trump said:

“It’s a Memorandum of Understanding. If I don’t like it, if they don’t behave, we’ll go right back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head, okay? Because they’ve misbehaved for 47 years.”

The suggestion from Trump’s comment seems to be that for Iran to “behave” that means it cannot respond to Israel’s continued pummeling of Iran’s ally in Lebanon, that being Hezbollah.

Trump’s tough talk against Iran reflects a pivot from his conciliatory language earlier in the week, when instead of threatening Iran he scolded the Israelis for misbehaving. He appears to be serving in the role of school teacher trying to separate two petulent school boys intent on fighting each other.

How can he make peace when the two other parties insist on war?

One day he warns the Israelis to back off of their raids into Lebanon, the next day he’s warning Iran not to respond to the Israeli raids by launching its missiles at Israel. And what if Israel does back off but then Hezbollah fires rockets into Israel? There is no way Israel would refrain from taking action in that scenario.

Trump’s latest comments come after several media outlets published what is purported to be key points of his proposed memorandum of understanding with Iran, though the U.S. says the full text won’t be released until after a signing ceremony scheduled for Friday in Switzerland. After the signing, negotiations on the nuclear issue and sanctions relief for Iran will begin for a 60-day period, which can be extended if both countries come to terms on how to move forward.

But between now and then, expect Israel to do everything in its power to disrupt the peace process. If that requires the flattening of whole communities in Lebanon, then that’s what they will likely do. Israeli leaders, including the prime minister, have flatly stated they do not consider themselves bound by Trump’s deal with Iran, yet Iran considers the war in Lebanon to be part of the deal. Something has to give, and it’s not likely to lead to peace in the Middle East.

Trump lashed out at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this week, saying that Syria might be better suited to eliminate Hezbollah in Lebanon because Israel often overplays its hand and kills too many innocent civilians.

Antiwar.com reports:

President Trump on Tuesday suggested that Syria, which is led by former al-Qaeda commander Ahmed al-Sharaa, should “take care” of Hezbollah in Lebanon rather than Israel.

The president said he was “not happy” with Israel’s war in Lebanon, which has been supported by the US, due to the tactic of taking out entire apartment buildings, though his Pentagon employed similar tactics in Yemen and was responsible for major civilian casualties in Iran, most notably the bombing of the elementary school in Minab.

“Israel’s fighting Hezbollah for too long, and too many people are being killed. You don’t have to knock down an apartment house every time you’re looking for somebody because there’s a lot of people in those apartment houses and they’re not all Hezbollah, that I can tell you,” the president told reporters during a meeting with Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani on the sidelines of the G7 summit in France.

Trump said his proposed peace agreement with Iran is a “great deal for a lot of reasons” despite the fact that it achieves none of the pre-war objectives set out by his administration and reads somewhat like a conditional surrender by the U.S.

But Trump indicated that what has been published in the media is not the actual text by saying that “nobody knows what it is.” He also denied that it included a $300 billion investment fund for Iran’s reconstruction, even though that was included in the MoU text published by Al Arabiya, and Vice President JD Vance previously suggested such a fund could be available to Tehran.

“That’s false,” Trump said when asked about the fund. “People can invest if they want. I mean, what am I going to do — say nobody’s ever allowed to invest? We’re not investing. We’re not putting up ten cents. People can decide to do that, but that’s up to them… We do not have a fund.”

The president also acknowledged in his remarks that if the U.S. continued the blockade on Iran and the Strait of Hormuz remained closed, it would cause a “worldwide depression.”

Trump, by starting an unpopular war back on Feb. 28, has backed himself into a corner that will not be easy to wiggle out of if he truly wants peace. He has the Israelis on one side admitting they don’t feel bound by his deal and don’t want an end to the hostilities, and he has the Iranians on the other side feeling confident that they have been able to absorb everything the U.S. and Israel have been able to throw at them while still having a plentiful arsenal of missiles and drones. Iranian leaders have said they will not sit back and watch Israel attack their ally Hezbollah in Lebanon without making the Israelis pay by raining down more missiles on Tel Aviv and Haifa. Iran also has at its disposal the demonstrated ability to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed to commercial traffic, disrupting the global economy.

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