More than 100 days into hostilities, Iran and the United States say they have reached a preliminary deal to end the war. Israel, however, is not a party to the tentative deal and says it plans to keep occupying areas of southern Lebanon — a position still contested by Iran and the key sticking point to the partial ceasefire deal agreed to by the U.S. and Iran in April. Although the new agreement is set to be signed Friday, Israel's unrelenting assault on Lebanon could once again spoil any deal.
"This is going to become the center of whether any actual agreement takes place," says Drop Site News's Jeremy Scahill, who joins Democracy Now! to break down what we know about this latest round of diplomacy. As the U.S. now intends to end the war without accomplishing its initial goals of regime change and nuclear capitulation, it appears that Trump has "finally accepted some version of his manufactured and almost entirely false victory narrative." Scahill, who has spoken extensively to Iranian officials about the negotiations, says it remains to be seen if Iran can successfully "decouple" the U.S.-Israeli alliance from Israel's expansionary front in Lebanon, or whether it has relinquished too much of its own "strategic leverage" by agreeing to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
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