From Natanz to New York: Boom & Bust

A look at who won, who lost, and who survived this week

Lots of celebrations…. Happy birthday Dionne! And Kimberly and AJ. And early happy birthday to my wonderful sister Elif—the best sister in the world.

Happy pride! 🏳️‍🌈

Happy Canada Day 🇨🇦 and Happy 4th 🇺🇸. Because next Friday is the 4th of July, I’m not doing a regular newsletter. I will put out something about the UN’s Financing for Development conference next Wednesday. I’ll be back with a regular newsletter on Friday, July 11. But then, exciting for me, will take off again for much of July. I’m taking an actual vacation! Not sure when I’ll resume all things Interruptrr, but it will be sometime in August. Because I can’t resist. And you’ll miss me, obviously.

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Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

Once again, it was a firehose of a news week. The US bombed Iran’s nuclear sites. Trump called a ceasefire and said that the US would sit down with Iran next week, though it’s not clear if the Iranians have agreed. Zohran Mamdani trounced Andrew Cuomo in NYC’s Democratic primary. NATO held its annual summit where members agreed to increase spending. All of it made it hard for me to focus on one event. And, to be honest, sleep… So, I opted for a list of week’s winners, survivors, and losers. Because don’t we all love listicles?

Winners

Benjamin Netanyahu – He is definitely the comeback kid. Here’s a guy who is still on trial for corruption charges, is enormously unpopular at home, and overseeing the mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. A few months ago, Trump brushed him aside in the White House, announcing that the US would restart talks with Iran to reach a nuclear deal. The US president then skipped over Israel on a visit to the region. On June 13, Bibi, as he is known, took back the narrative. He ordered strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. It not only prompted Trump to claim credit, but led him to order US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities on June 21. Sarah Yerkes has a good piece below on how “the man on trial in Jerusalem is now calling shots in the Oval.”

As Trump would say, #sad

Get out the vote - Zohran Mamdani didn’t merely beat scandal-scarred, uber funded Andrew Cuomo; he buried the old playbook. His campaign attracted 50,000 volunteers who knocked on more than a million doors across the five boroughs. Meanwhile, Cuomo stayed inside union halls and churches while his $25 million super-PAC carpetbombed negative and Islamophobic ads. To be fair, early voting and the ranked choice format helped mobilize people to the polls. Turnout ran about five percentage points above 2021. Still, it was the humble ground game for the win. That smile didn’t hurt either.

In case you missed my post on the mayoral election.

Survivors

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – With a target on his back, Iran’s 86-year old Supreme Leader spent the past two weeks underground, in an undisclosed location. Netanyahu has made it clear that he wants to get rid of Khamenei, along with Iran’s Islamic leaders. The Israeli leader calls it regime change. What he’s actually angling for is state failure. Israel managed to take out Iran’s top military leadership and nuclear scientists in its recent attack. After the US strikes, the world braced for World War III. Instead, Tehran alerted Washington that it would fire missiles at a US military base in Qatar, avoiding any casualties—and an American response. On June 26, in a video message, Khamenei said that the US did not achieve its aim in destroying Iran’s nuclear capabilities. It’s what Vali Nasr calls “no war and no peace”—not antagonizing, but not capitulating. That includes giving up its nuclear capabilities. If the strikes did not, in fact, destroy Iran’s nuclear enrichment and material, the regime would have likely moved it elsewhere. Given that Iran’s parliament has suspended cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, we’re not likely to know that—until there’s a bomb.

Losers

US intelligence – Hours after the US dropped “bunker busting bombs” on three nuclear facilities in Iran, Trump bragged that they had been “obliterated.” The next day, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine was more circumspect, noting that it was too early… to comment on what may or may not still be there.” On June 24, reports of a leaked intelligence assessment began to surface, indicating that Iran’s nuclear program may have only been set back a few months—not years. DNI chief Tulsi Gabbard posted on X that Iran’s nuclear sites were destroyed. CIA Director John Ratcliffe followed on with his own statement that the sites were “severely damaged.” This “was-it-obliterated-or-not” circus laid bare how national security facts now bend to politics. So desperate to win back the narrative and the optics of a Trump win, the White House waved an Israeli intelligence claim that the job was done. Pity the CIA officer, who risks his or her life to gather information, then the analyst who dedicates time to analyze it—none of it matters.

Diplomacy –In Foreign Affairs, Jennifer Kavanagh and Rosemary Kelanic write that “Trump’s heavy use of threats will fail to bring them (the Iranians) back to the negotiating table.” Coercion only succeeds when a target believes that capitulation will be rewarded. “If Iran believes that Israel or the United States will use military force no matter what, it has no incentive to compromise.” Trump has said that the US will meet with Iran next week; Iran has not confirmed that. Not sure what the point of the meeting would be anyway, since Trump said that a deal was “no longer necessary.”

Mark Rutte – aka Trump hype-man. The Dutch-born NATO Secretary-General called Trump “daddy” at the NATO summit, in an attempt to praise the US president for his actions on Iran. Following the meeting, where NATO members collectively agreed to increase individual spending from two percent of GDP to five by 2035. Rutte wrote to Trump that “this would have never happened if you would not have been elected in 2016 and re-elected last year….so I want to thank you.” 🤢

The Democratic Party establishment – for lacking a ground game or imagination and backing Andrew Cuomo, who as Nick Catoggio notes, is “an arrogant, corrupt, incompetent, lascivious scumbag.” Well said. —Elmira

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Elsewhere in the World.....

On our radar...

Iran

The US dropped bombs on Iran’s nuclear sites over the weekend—to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon. How close was it to doing so? Stacie Goddard takes a look at the various components that go into actually building a weapon. (Good Authority)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been adamant about regime change in Iran forever. What actually happens if Iran’s Islamic mullahs are toppled? Tanya Goudsouzian notes that it is unlikely that democratic, pro-Western forces would emerge. (Responsible Statecraft)

The Gulf isn’t taking sides between Israel and Iran. What they’re rooting for is both their weakening, writes Mira Al Hussein. In Israel, the Gulf would like to see a political change that “sees the end of oppressive policies against Palestinians and curbs to regional aggression.” Meanwhile, in Iran, the Gulf doesn’t want to see regime change, especially if that produces a “nationalist, pro-western government.” It could overshadow Gulf economies and revive old territorial disputes. (The Conversation)

Listen: Saturday night’s US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities exhibited years of military planning and coordination. Politically, however, the best tool to restrain Iran was the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), says Mara Karlin. (Brookings: The Current)

Benjamin Netanyahu has dangerous power over Donald Trump. The Israeli prime minister led the US president into bombing Iran’s nuclear sites. Though Trump has announced a “ceasefire,” if Netanyahu wants to stay in the war, he’ll make Trump stay too, says Sarah Yerkes. (Carnegie Endowment)

Gaza

The world’s focus might be on Tehran, but let’s not forget that Netanyahu is continuing to slaughter and starve Palestinians, writes Linah Alsaafin. (Middle East Eye)

NATO Summit

NATO members gathered at The Hague this week, for the annual NATO Summit. Defense spending topped the agenda. Laura Kupe argues that it should also include a focus on young people. Military might alone won’t sustain NATO’s existence, if the future generation doesn’t believe in it. (Diplomatic Courier)

Financing for Development

On Monday, world leaders, NGOs, and civil society will gather for the UN’s 4th International Conference on Financing for Development in Seville, Spain. On the agenda: an agreement that will shape the global development finance landscape for the next decade. Minh-Thu Pham has been a leading voice in this effort. Her Project Starling summarizes the draft outcome reached this week—a consensus made possible only after the US withdrew from the process. (Project Starling)

With the US withdrawal comes setbacks. How can the final document from the Financing for Development conference succeed? Prevent crises from occurring, say Alexandra Readhead and Fernando Morra. They outline the areas that could derail the agenda and financing priorities that countries should focus on. (International Institute for Sustainable Development)

US

Robert Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, says that the US will no longer contribute to GAVI, a global vaccine alliance. The US is one of GAVI’s six original founders. Sarah Jerving notes that without US support, “75 million children would not receive their vaccinations and more than 1.2 million children in low- and middle-income countries would die as a result. (DevEx)

Shameful.

Africa

Nationwide protests turned violent in Kenya on Wednesday. Sixteen died and property destroyed in a push back on police brutality and calls for President William Ruto to resign. Evelyne Musambi reports. (AP)

Congo and Rwanda sign a peace agreement in Washington DC today. It’s an agreement that the US and Qatar helped broker. But an agreement is one thing. Implementing it is another, writes Michelle Gavin. (CFR)

Nigeria and Brazil have signed a $1 billion agreement to boost agriculture, food security, energy, and defense between the two countries.

Middle East

The headlines on Gaza are overwhelming and keep coming at us: the struggle for food and aid; the destruction of neighborhoods; lack of access to medical equipment. Fionnuala Ní Aoláin steps back to give us a comprehensive look at what is meant by cumulative civilian harm in order to reframe our understanding of the scale and profundity of violence that Palestinians experience. (Just Security)

Will the flashpoint in Iran result in increased tensions between Israel and Turkey? It might. Aslı Aydıntaşbaş calls on Europe to intervene to diffuse tensions. (ECFR)

Europe

A huge headline that got buried amid the Iran-Israel-US war triangle and Zohran Mamdani news is the release of Belarusian prisoner Siarhei Tsikhanouski. As Hannah Liubakova notes, it “was a rare moment of optimism that offered hope for the future, while also serving to highlight the plight of the more than one thousand Belarusians who are still imprisoned in the country on politically motivated charges.” (Atlantic Council)

As Europe ups its defense spending, it is cutting what it allocates to aid and development. Spain is the one exception, points out Ana Carbajosa. The country is increasing it. (Guardian)

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Opportunities

Interruptrr is hiring! I’m looking for journalism or international relations majors to help me put together special sections for the newsletter. More info here. I close applications on Monday.

This looks like a great job—in Baltimore, Executive Director, Bloomberg Center for Innovation.

There are a number of interesting positions at the International Rescue Committee, including a Data Science Lead.

At Stanford, the Technology Ethics & Policy Rising Scholars Program is looking for a Research Associate.

Human Rights First is hiring a Vice President, External Relations.

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Editorial Team

Elmira Bayrasli - Editor-in-Chief