A FACULTY MEETING, WITH HIGH EXPLOSIVES.

There is a fourteen point "memorandum of understanding" circulating that appears to be what diplomats are using to, for the moment, restore the free transit of oil at market prices through the Strait of Hormuz.  The Institute for the Study of War offer their analysis in their 16 June briefing.

Both the faculty meeting and the high explosives are in plain view.

Details of a 14 point plan have now been leaked to multiple media outlets, though Trump insisted Wednesday that the so-called memorandum of understanding is not final and issued new threats if he wasn't happy with the agreement.

"If I don't like it, we'll go back to shooting at them, dropping bombs on their head," Trump, at the G7 summit in France. "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, OK?"

With Israel still striking Hezbollah, and Iran wary of signing any deal that does not ensure peace in Lebanon, there remain concerns the deal could still fall apart.

That both the Israeli government and what claims to be the Lebanese government want Hezbollah reduced to a political party rather than a proxy militia is going to pose problems.

The principals to this memorandum, though, both have reason to stop the fighting.

Trump has given shifting rationales for attacking Iran, but appears to have achieved little of what he has said he wanted: Iran's theocratic government remains in place, its ballistic missile program has not been dismantled, and it has not ended its support for anti-Israel militias like Hezbollah.

The accord exposes Trump, a Republican, to criticism from within his own party ahead of midterm elections in November. Meanwhile Iran's leaders could face renewed protests if they fail to ease economic pressures after a destructive war.

Iran's government has long been under economic pressures, some of them self-inflicted.

Does the existence of this memorandum change anything?

Trump made a good point about the nature of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which is that it's not actually a deal. It's barely a ceasefire at the moment, although the reported elements of sanctions relief and asset releases certainly raise eyebrows. Its function is to create a structure for later talks while ending the Hormuz crisis by having both sides pull back and allow for fully normal commerce.

Trump told reporters that Iran has to comply with the conditions in the MOU to get to a negotiated settlement, and if they don't, watch out

Both Iran and the Gulf Arab states loosely aligned with the United States at the moment benefit from that free passage of oil.  The unbundling, for the moment, of the free passage of oil from all the other points for discussion, makes sense.  What comes next is harder to envision.

Trump began escalating military strikes this month in response to Iranian non-compliance, with a full-scale, two-day return to full targeting that forced the Iranians back to the table.

That ain't nothing. It may not deter the IRGC from continuing the Tehran Two-Step, but Trump has set that precedent as a deterrent. If he sticks to it while the IRGC continues to insist on collecting "tolls" in international waters, then the process won't get past the fourth point in the MOU. That's well before the release of the frozen assets and the end of the naval blockade, or at least close enough to re-establish the latter and put everything back to Square One.

It may not get past the first point anyway, as I mentioned earlier. The MOU extends to Lebanon without Israel's approval, and Israel does not appear to approve.

Hugh Hewitt observed earlier today that any future peace, or not, will depend on the implementation of the eighth point, Iran's renunciation of nuclear weapons, in the memorandum.  Everything else is window dressing.

In the financial parts, Reason's Matthew Petti asserts, "Hawks are exploiting" the sanctions relief "in order to sabotage the peace."  (Do I have to append a disclaimer, "that is, if there will be peace?")

Iran is "not getting a single dime of American money," Vance says. In exchange for Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz, the memorandum immediately lifts the U.S. military blockade of Iranian ports and waives sanctions on Iranian oil exports and the "banking, insurance, transportation, and the like" that the state-run oil industry needs, according to the leaked text.

The document promises that the two sides will work to trade "the fate of enriched [Iranian nuclear] material and the fate of all other mutually agreed nuclear-related issues" for "all types of sanctions currently facing the Islamic Republic of Iran."

Two big numbers have been floating around: $24 billion and $300 billion. The first number, $24 billion, refers to the total value of Iranian money frozen in foreign bank accounts, most of which is revenue from oil sales that Iran was paid but never able to withdraw due to sanctions. The second number, $300 billion, refers to prospective private investments in Iran's reconstruction.

The Trump administration has been recruiting private businesses to offer loans, credit lines, and direct investments in reconstruction as an incentive for Iran to finish a deal—since those offers can only work if sanctions are lifted. Reuters reported on Tuesday that the effort has so far secured $150 billion in commitments, and the memorandum promises to double that number. Vance suggested to CBS that the money is coming from oil-rich Arab countries. (Of course, talk is cheap; last year, Arab petrostates also promised Trump trillion-dollar investments that are unlikely to ever happen.)

It is ironic that something the U.S. had to extract from Venezuela by force—the ability of foreign businesses to invest in the country—is considered a U.S. concession to Iran. The same goes for oil waivers. Iran's greatest point of leverage had been its ability to attack global energy supplies. Now it is asking for a role in refilling the world's oil reserves.

Of course, the Iranian government is asking for sanctions relief because it will benefit, both from directly state-owned oil revenues and from the general improvement of the country's economy. On the other hand, these benefits will make Iran more dependent on its new trading partners. Iran is less likely to bomb Arab oil fields when its reconstruction is being paid for with Arab oil money. In other words, "you only get the benefits of the bargain if you change your behavior," as Vance told the Megyn Kelly Show.

As for Obama's "pallets of cash," those had nothing to do with sanctions relief. In January 2016, the Obama administration flew a plane carrying $1.7 billion to Iran, ostensibly to settle a court case over a trade dispute from the 1970s. The administration later admitted that the money was connected to negotiations to free American captives from Iran. The uproar over this apparent ransom payment got folded into the debate about Obama's separate deal to lift sanctions in exchange for Iranian nuclear concessions.

Aside from the confusion about whether Iran is getting American taxpayer money, hawks have several honest, coherent reasons for opposing sanctions relief. Probably the largest reason is that they don't want to give up leverage so easily. Hawks' most common complaint about Obama's deal was that it didn't win concessions on other issues, such as Iran's conflicts with Israel and Arab states.

I'd be surprised if diplomacy accomplishes enough to get to a situation in which those conflicts become the subject of negotiation.  To do so, however, might go a long way toward ending one long emergency.

Iran is not known for keeping its word with The Great Satan (us). There is every reason to believe that the vaunted deal is just another sorry episode of them stringing the USA along, playing us. But Mr. Trump has made it clear he reserves the option to rev up the bombers and “do a number on” the Islamic Republic if they pull a fast one on this.

For its part, Iran is crowing in its own state-controlled press that it has won the war. Iran can say whatever it wants to — world opinion will probably not be fooled — if it makes the people running the joint feel good about themselves losing a war. It’ll be Iran’s actions that matter. There’s a chance, perhaps a low-percentage chance, but a chance nonetheless, that Iran has been persuaded to stop being insane.

They do have an opportunity to put jihad aside, sell oil and pistachios to the world, and try being a normal nation for a change. It’s asking a lot, I’m sure, but there’s a lot in it for them. If they actually showed a serious attitude adjustment, you can bet that Mr. Trump would offer help setting up bigly capital investments there, enabling new trade relations, and easing them back into a world of non-insane, sovereign polities with reality-based interests. He already invited them to join the Abraham Accords, to establish full diplomatic relations with the other signers, embassies, direct flights, trade, tourism, and security cooperation.

So, let’s stand by and see if the Memorandum of Understanding gets signed later this week. The president is winging to Geneva for the G-7 as I write. The other parties to the deal are on their way there, too. The face to face meet-up between the American President and whoever Iran sends to the ceremony will be more thrillingly momentous than any pairing of UFC cage fighters on the White House lawn.

The risk the mullahs, or whoever is claiming to be the government in Iran these days, run is that even small steps toward becoming a normal country might be just the thing to motivate an already restive population to say "Faster, please!"

Iran's leadership is trying to present its emerging memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the US not as a retreat, but as the result of resistance and victory. That is not an easy argument to make.

The country has just gone through a damaging war, the economy is under severe pressure, and parts of the Islamic Republic's own support base have spent months denouncing any compromise with Washington.

There are also Iranians, both inside the country and abroad, who see the crisis not as a moment for diplomacy, but as an opportunity for regime change.

This is the divided political landscape in which Tehran is now trying to sell the deal.

Senior Iranian officials have framed the deal as a win. Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, the Speaker of parliament and the leading Iranian figure in the talks, said Iran had taken "a long step towards final victory".

President Masoud Pezeshkian has described the understanding as potentially transformative, saying that if fully implemented it could resolve many of Iran's problems and create "a different world" in Iran and the Middle East.

There might be people within Iran's government for whom any concessions to the infidels lose too much face.

One hard-line MP, the deputy chair of parliament's National Security Committee, has reportedly described the draft deal as a document that would turn Iran into an American colony.

He also accused negotiators of ignoring the supreme leader's directive not to re-open the Strait of Hormuz to shipping.

That criticism matters because it does not come from outside the system. It comes from within one of the institutions meant to oversee national security.

For months, hard-line voices in parliament, state-aligned media and nightly pro-government gatherings have argued that the US cannot be trusted.

And therein might be additional leverage for the United States and its allies whose interests align but are not congruent.

The Islamic Republic is selling the deal as victory because it cannot easily sell it as necessity.

But for many Iranians, its success will not be measured by slogans. It will be measured by whether the war stops, whether prices ease, whether sanctions relief arrives, and whether the leadership can manage the next phase without another sudden escalation.

The faculty meeting begins sometime after Friday.  The next round of high explosives?  What's the over-under on "by Independence Day?"