Democracy Dies with Dictatorship
NY Times
Jun 18, 2026
Iran War Live Updates: Oil Prices Fall as U.S.-Iran Deal Offers Hope for Shipping
With an initial agreement signed by both sides, oil could soon flow again through the Strait of Hormuz. But prospects for a long-term deal remained murky as talks on tougher issues loomed.
by Leo Sands
Here’s the latest
Energy prices fell further on Thursday as the signing of a cease-fire deal between Iran and the United States offered hope that oil would soon start to flow again through Strait of Hormuz.
The agreement commits both countries to begin immediately reopening the waterway, whose closure has roiled global supply chains and caused energy prices to jump. Energy traders showed signs of cautious confidence on Thursday as Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, fell to about $77 a barrel, approaching levels not seen since the early days of the war.
The average price of gasoline fell below $4 a gallon for the first time in months in the United States, although that is still about a dollar more than the prewar price. Shipping industry officials struck an optimistic tone, though they said they were awaiting guarantees that their vessels could navigate the strait safely.
President Trump and President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran signed the preliminary cease-fire deal remotely on Wednesday, both sides said, setting the stage for a new round of negotiations that could begin as soon as Friday. The agreement allows for at least 60 days of talks and is expected to cover the thorniest issues between the two sides, including Iran’s nuclear future.
According to a senior U.S. official who shared the text of the memorandum of understanding with The New York Times, the signed deal outlines a $300 billon plan for Iran’s reconstruction and at least temporarily lifts restrictions on Tehran’s oil exports. And it commits both sides to ceasing hostilities in Lebanon, linking the cease-fire to Israel’s long-running conflict with the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia there.
Here’s what else we’re covering:
Signing ceremony: A formal signing ceremony scheduled for Friday was in doubt after Iran’s foreign ministry suggested that it would no longer take place because the cease-fire was already signed. A ministry spokesman added that the negotiating teams would still be in Geneva.
Lebanon: Israel is not a party to the agreement, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that he does not feel bound by its terms, saying that Israel would maintain a troop presence in areas of southern Lebanon. Iran has said it would hold the United States responsible for ensuring that Israel complies with the deal.
Rebuilding Iran: Mr. Trump has denied that the United States would invest in a rebuilding fund, but the prospect has still attracted criticism from some Republican lawmakers.
June 18, 2026, 8:00 a.m. ET9 minutes ago
Reporting from NATO headquarters in Brussels
Hegseth berates NATO allies for a ‘shameful’ response to the war
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth berated NATO allies as “shameful” for their reluctance to assist in American strikes against Iran, suggesting on Thursday that the Pentagon would reduce the number of troops it keeps in Europe as a result.
He repeated President Trump’s previous description of the military alliance as a “paper tiger” and warned that U.S. support to NATO would not be “a one-way street.” Mr. Hegseth’s 12-minute lecture cast a chill over a meeting that had been designed to set a collaborative agenda for a summit of NATO leaders next month.
He scolded allies whom he described as having failed to step up their defense spending, as the alliance agreed to do last summer, under pressure from Mr. Trump. But Mr. Hegseth reserved his harshest remarks for countries that had resisted letting American jets or ships use bases in Europe on their way to attack Iran during the war that the United States and Israel initiated Feb. 28.
“Too many of our allies said no, or tried to drown us in arcane legal debates, or criticized us publicly for doing what they aren’t prepared or able to do themselves,” Mr. Hegseth told the other 31 NATO defense ministers gathered at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels.
“It was shameful,” added Mr. Hegseth, who did not name the countries he was criticizing. “These allies, they put America’s sons and daughters — our sons and daughters — at risk by denying them the predictable access basing and overflight that never should have been in question at all.”
Mr. Trump has long questioned the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s value, threatening at times to either leave the alliance that the United States helped create after World War II, or saying he would not defend its other members.
At the outset of the war with Iran, European leaders grappled with whether to support U.S.-Israeli attacks that many viewed as potentially illegal. France and Italy refused to allow American bombers to take off from bases in their countries, while Britain offered limited access to its bases in Cyprus and allowed only warplanes flying “defensive” missions to land in Britain. Spain blocked U.S. military jets involved in the Iran mission from using its airspace.
Mr. Hegseth then announced a six-month review of the U.S. troop presence in Europe “to ensure our forces are postured for America’s global needs.” He said that the review would seek to ensure that American access to bases and airspace was clearly understood, while putting the onus on NATO to ensure that Europe took primary responsibility for its own defense, instead of relying on the United States.
The United States is already planning to significantly reduce the aircraft and warships that it makes available for NATO operations in Europe. That could limit NATO’s ability to monitor Russian submarine traffic, for example, or launch long-range Tomahawk missiles deep into Russian territory.
Additionally, Mr. Hegseth said the United States would reduce what it pays in annual NATO dues if other members did not increase their annual defense spending as Mr. Trump has demanded. The United States pays about 15 percent of annual NATO administrative costs, amounting to about $790 million, about the same as Germany.
Mr. Trump demanded last year that all NATO members spend at least 5 percent of their national economic output on their militaries and defense-related projects, up from a 2 percent benchmark set in 2014. Three countries — Albania, the Czech Republic and Slovenia — still fell short of 2 percent as of last year, the latest official numbers available.
“We are going to keep a close eye on allies who are not doing that,” Mr. Hegseth said Thursday.
His speech was unusual compared with the customarily anodyne remarks delivered at the start of meetings of the NATO ministers, who gather only a few times a year. The alliance’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, took the microphone after Mr. Hegseth and tried quickly to pivot to business as usual, saying they had “much to discuss.”
June 18, 2026, 7:07 a.m. ET1 hour ago
Reporting from Jerusalem
Israel stunned by Trump’s Iran deal
Israel awoke to a frightening new reality on Thursday as it absorbed, with disbelief and largely in silence, the terms of President Trump’s agreement to end the war with Iran.
It is a disastrous deal from Israel’s point of view, analysts said, because it accomplishes none of Israel’s war aims and arguably leaves the country in worse shape on each of them.
“It’s a bad agreement in which the Americans are paying with cash, and got, at the maximum, a letter of intent,” Yaakov Amidror, a hawkish former national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, said in an interview.
David Horovitz, the editor of The Times of Israel, called it “a catastrophic capitulation,” in the headline of a lengthy opinion column.
And Nir Dvori, an analyst for Israel’s Channel 12 News, likened the deal to a “diplomatic Oct. 7” — a cataclysmic disaster for which Israel was wholly unprepared.
Regime change? The government in Tehran is emerging from the war even more hard-line and emboldened, despite being decapitated at the outset of the conflict in late February. Some analysts said Iran had effectively chased the U.S. military out of the region, given the deal’s requirement that American forces retreat from the “proximity” of Iran within 30 days.
Ballistic missiles and proxy militias? The agreement does nothing to address Iran’s missile arsenal or its support of Israel’s enemies, like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.
Worse, by constraining Israeli military action in Lebanon — indeed, by requiring that Israel withdraw its forces from that country — it seeks to handcuff Israel in a way that it was not before the war began.
The hundreds of billions of dollars that Iran could receive in sanctions relief, unfrozen assets, or reconstruction aid could wind up funding more missiles in Iran and aiding Tehran’s militia allies around the Middle East.
And Iran’s nuclear program? The existential threat to Israel that Mr. Netanyahu tried to eliminate throughout his career, and which was Mr. Trump’s primary reason for joining the wars on Iran, was left for a later stage of U.S.-Iran negotiations.
Mr. Netanyahu and top officials in his government offered no public comment on the agreement overnight, leaving minor ministers and backbench lawmakers to put the best possible face on it.
Amichai Chikli, the diaspora affairs minister, speculated in a radio interview that Mr. Netanyahu would know how to say no to Mr. Trump about pulling out of Lebanon just as he knew how “to bring the United States into this war.”
But others more soberly grappled with the degree to which Mr. Netanyahu’s triumphalist rhetoric from early in the war had proved fantastical. He had repeatedly and confidently assured Israelis that the country and its alliance with the United States were “changing the face of the Middle East” to Israel’s advantage.
“We are remaking the region,” Chuck Freilich, a former Israeli deputy national security adviser, said on Thursday.
“Iran came out stronger, and I believe is now the regional hegemon,” he added.
“They stood up to the U.S., the global superpower. They can have missiles, and there’s nothing in the agreement about the nuclear issue except we’ll talk about it. This is an Iranian victory over the U.S. and Israel.”
June 18, 2026, 6:48 a.m. ET1 hour ago
Reporting from Geneva
Rafael Grossi, head of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, said that with a preliminary deal signed between the U.S. and Iran to the end the war, negotiations on a nuclear agreement were entering a decisive phase.
The deal extends a cease-fire to allow negotiations on some contentious points, including Iran’s nuclear program.
“The I.A.E.A. will do only a process which is technically sound,” Grossi, who leads the International Atomic Energy Agency, said on Thursday in a news conference in Geneva. “The parties are saying they want this agreement and they want the I.A.E.A. to verify it.”
June 18, 2026, 6:40 a.m. ET2 hours ago
Reporting from London
Six vessels passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, including an oil tanker that was subject to sanctions that took a route hugging the Iranian coastline. The number of ships was well below the recent rolling average, and it was down from 14 vessels that transited on Tuesday, according to Kpler, a maritime data company. On Thursday, three tankers carrying Saudi crude oil have transited through the strait, as well as one vessel carrying liquefied natural gas.
Dimitris Ampatzidis, a maritime risk manager at Kpler, said the figures suggested shipping companies were being cautious since the United States and Iran signed a preliminary deal to end their war. “Operators may be watching the cease-fire announcement closely, but they do not yet appear to be materially changing behavior,” he said.
June 18, 2026, 6:21 a.m. ET2 hours ago
The Israeli military said on Thursday that it would remain in the swath of southern Lebanon that it occupied after the start of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran to “remove threats and strengthen the defense of Israel’s northern residents.” The preliminary U.S.-Iranian agreement to end their conflict declared the “permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon,” but Israeli officials have repeatedly said that the country had no plans to withdraw its forces.
The Israeli military on Thursday published a map of its “security zone” in southern Lebanon, which showed that Israel has pushed further into some areas since it was first announced in April.
June 18, 2026, 6:14 a.m. ET2 hours ago
Reporting from Hong Kong
China, the biggest buyer of Iranian oil, may be slower than other countries to ratchet up imports after the Strait of Hormuz reopens. During the war, Chinese refiners cut imports by roughly a third and relied on vast crude stockpiles instead. At the same time, Beijing restricted the export of gasoline and other fuels while refiners continued producing from those reserves, leaving storage tanks unusually full, said Muyu Xu, a senior oil analyst at Kpler. That could mean refiners have little incentive to quickly restore imports to prewar levels, even if oil prices fall further.
June 18, 2026, 6:14 a.m. ET2 hours ago
Reporting from NATO headquarters in Brussels
The U.S. defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, excoriated NATO allies as “shameful” for being reluctant or refusing to allow American jets or ships to depart from bases in Europe as they prepared to strike Iran during the war. “These allies, they put America’s sons and daughters at risk,” he said during a 12-minute lecture to the alliance’s defense ministers. American forces struck targets in Iran that “threaten European interests even more directly than they threaten us but too many of our allies said no, or tried to drown us in arcane legal debates, or criticized us publicly for doing what they aren’t prepared or able to do themselves,” he added.
June 18, 2026, 6:14 a.m. ET2 hours ago
Reporting from NATO headquarters in Brussels
Belgium’s defense minister, Theo Francken, said the country was ready to deploy its minesweeping ship to ensure safe passage for commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz after the United States and Iran signed a preliminary deal to end their war. “It’s already deployed in the Mediterranean in a NATO mission, so it’s prepositioned, and then we’ll take the decision to bring it to the Strait of Hormuz as soon as possible,” he said at NATO headquarters on Thursday.
Mr. Francken made the comments at a meeting of NATO defense ministers, who said they were considering what support they could send to the Persian Gulf to stabilize the global economy.
June 18, 2026, 6:14 a.m. ET2 hours ago
Reporting from Rome
Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the chairman of Saudi Arabia’s state oil giant, Aramco, said a pipeline that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz was crucial for the kingdom’s economy. Iran blocked traffic through the waterway, a crucial transit route for oil and gas, after the start of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran started on Feb. 28. But the pipeline, which connects Saudi Arabia’s oil fields to export terminals on the Red Sea, can move 7 million barrels a day and helped bolster Aramco’s revenues. The company reported a 25 percent profit jump in the first three months of the year compared to the same period a year earlier.
“If it weren’t for this pipeline, we wouldn’t have a lifeline for us as a Saudi economy,” Al-Rumayyan said at an investment conference in Rome.
June 18, 2026, 6:14 a.m. ET2 hours ago
Reporting from Rome
Yasir Al-Rumayyan also said Saudi Arabia would likely expand storage capacity around the world, crediting vast stockpiles in the United States and China for helping keep the disruption of energy supplies from inflicting more serious damage on the global economy. “Aramco has storage facilities around the world especially in Asia, in Korea and Japan, and we are thinking seriously of having larger storage facilities all over the world,” he said.
June 18, 2026, 6:14 a.m. ET2 hours ago
Reporting from New Delhi
India stands to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the lifting of restrictions on Iranian oil exports. As one of the world’s largest importers of oil and gas, India has been hit hard by higher prices and supply disruptions during the war.
Iran was India’s second-largest oil supplier as recently as 2009, accounting for 14 percent of imports. By 2019, under pressure from President Trump in his first term, India stopped buying Iranian oil altogether. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, discounted Russian crude briefly filled the gap until Washington moved to penalize India for those purchases as well.
June 18, 2026, 6:14 a.m. ET2 hours ago
Reporting from Beirut
Fighting in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah has eased in recent days but has not ceased completely, making it uncertain whether the U.S.-Iran deal can produce a durable halt to their conflict. The agreement explicitly calls for an immediate end to military operations “on all fronts, including in Lebanon,” but neither Israel nor Lebanon signed it and it does not explain how they would be compelled to comply.
Since the deal was announced, Israel has stopped issuing near-daily evacuation orders for towns and villages across southern Lebanon, and the pace and scale of strikes has waned significantly.
June 18, 2026, 5:28 a.m. ET3 hours ago
Iran Gets Major Economic Lifeline for Minimal Concessions in Initial Deal
An initial agreement by the United States and Iran to halt their war grants Iran major economic benefits while delaying, for now, the thorniest areas of disagreement between the two countries and the toughest concessions Iran would have to eventually make on its nuclear program.
The agreement lifts the U.S.-imposed naval blockade of Iranian ports and, most crucially, grants Iran waivers to begin exporting its oil even before the negotiation of a final agreement on its nuclear program. That will give Iran a critical economic lifeline. In recent years, its economy has been in a tailspin, with a collapsing currency and sky-high inflation.
The one major step to be taken by Iran is reopening the Strait of Hormuz to free passage for the next 60 days, though the agreement seems to leave open the possibility of charging fees after that period.
“On balance, the memorandum appears to favor Iran,” said Nicole Grajewski, who teaches at the Center for International Studies at Sciences Po in France and studies Iran’s foreign policy. “Tehran secures movement toward sanctions relief, a pathway for the restoration of oil exports, access to economic benefits and a reduction in military pressure while making relatively limited new nuclear commitments.”
But many of the most difficult concessions that the United States sought have been postponed, she said, though it is possible a future agreement could rebalance each side’s concessions and gains.
“But judged solely on the memorandum itself, the immediate and concrete benefits accrue disproportionately to Iran,” Ms. Grajewski said.
The agreement stipulates that the United States must begin lifting its naval blockade of Iran immediately and that Iran must allow commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, but it was unclear whether those steps had occurred. Nevertheless, the news that the two countries had agreed to the deal sent oil prices downward, with the average U.S. gasoline price hitting less than $4 per gallon on Thursday for the first time in months.
Iran hawks are alarmed by the oil sales clause in particular, in part because it also commits the United States to temporarily lifting banking restrictions to help facilitate Iran’s oil trade.
“Broadening authorization to financial transactions would crack the core architecture of U.S. oil and financial sanctions against Iran, arguably the most powerful economic leverage the U.S. holds over this regime, absent the naval blockade,” Miad Maleki, a former U.S. Treasury official and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, wrote on social media.
Those who favor diplomacy with Iran over open conflict or sanctions praised the memorandum, saying it offered the chance for a new page in U.S.-Iran relations.
“The measures in this agreement should not be read as concessions, but rather corrections to a decades-old policy of coercion that was an abject failure and made war inevitable,” Jamal Abdi, the president of the National Iranian American Council, an advocacy group, said in a statement.
Some analysts were puzzled over why a similar agreement could not have been made before a monthslong war that has killed Iranian civilians, destroyed parts of the country’s infrastructure and enabled Iran to exert leverage over the global economy.
“It’s difficult to escape the conclusion that these negotiations could have taken place without a three-month war,” said Holly Dagres, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute. “Much of what is outlined in the agreement — including the Strait of Hormuz, which has historically remained open — could have been addressed through diplomacy.”
And she pointed out that the agreement left the most difficult issues, including the precise limits to be imposed on Iran’s nuclear program, for later talks.
“I’m skeptical that the next 60 days of talks will produce concrete results,” she said. “This is merely kicking the can down the road.”
June 18, 2026, 3:55 a.m. ET4 hours ago
The average price of U.S. gas fell below $4 a gallon for the first time since the war’s early days
The average price of U.S. gasoline fell below $4 a gallon on Thursday for the first time in months, after Iran and the United States signed a preliminary agreement to cease hostilities for 60 days and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline fell to a fraction of a penny below $4, down from $4.03 the day before, according to the AAA motor club.
Still, gas prices hovered just below $3 a gallon before the first U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran in late February. They spiked to around $4.50 a gallon in May, as throttled energy supplies from the Middle East pushed up the price of crude oil, a crucial ingredient in gasoline.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan, which helped mediate the deal, said in a post on X that the memorandum of understanding had been signed electronically by the U.S. and Iranian presidents. As a result, the agreement to begin reopening the strait and lifting the U.S. naval blockade would “enter into force with immediate effect,” he wrote.
Rising fuel costs have strained household budgets and pushed up prices across the economy. At one point in the early days of the war, oil prices spiked to nearly $120 a barrel — the highest level since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — contributing to a sharp increase at the pump.
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Oil prices have fallen about 10 percent this week alone. Even so, gas prices remain about a third higher than before the start of the war.
“We’re getting close to the numbers we were before the war started,” President Trump said on Monday in France at the annual Group of 7 summit.
Other fuel prices are also beginning to ease. Diesel cost $5.13 a gallon on Thursday, down from more than $5.60 a gallon a month ago, offering relief to truckers, farmers and other big users of the fuel.
High gas prices have bled into Americans’ lives beyond the pump, including travel. For example, airfares were up nearly 27 percent in May, owing in part to surging jet fuel costs.
Economists caution that it takes time for lower oil prices to be reflected fully in the cost of gasoline. Regional differences remain significant, driven by variations in state taxes, distribution costs and refining capacity.
Drivers in parts of the Great Plains and the South have been among the first to see prices drop below $4, with some areas approaching $3.50 per gallon. On the West Coast, however, prices remain well above $4 a gallon.
Aruni Soni contributed reporting.
June 18, 2026, 3:08 a.m. ET5 hours ago
Oil prices fall as the deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz takes ‘immediate’ effect
Oil prices fell and stocks rose on Thursday after Pakistan’s leader announced that the agreement between the United States and Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz would take effect immediately, eliminating any delay in its implementation.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan, which helped mediate the deal, said in a post on X that the memorandum of understanding had been signed electronically by the U.S. and Iranian presidents. As a result, the agreement to begin reopening the strait and lifting the U.S. naval blockade would “enter into force with immediate effect,” he wrote.
Upon signing, the United States is expected to issue sanctions waivers, allowing Iran to resume oil sales on global markets.
Oil prices continue to drop
The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, fell nearly 3 percent to about $77 a barrel, approaching levels not seen since the early days of the war.
West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, was down more than 3 percent to around $73 a barrel.
Stocks rise
Futures on the S&P 500 pointed to a 0.7 percent increase when stocks resume trading in the United States on Thursday.
Stocks in Asia, where countries import vast quantities of oil and gas, were mixed. Stocks in Japan and South Korea jumped about 2 percent, while shares in Hong Kong were down more than 2 percent.
Gasoline prices fall
Gas prices fell again on Thursday, dropping below $4 a gallon for the first time since the early days of the war, according to the AAA motor club. The price of gasoline is still about a third higher since the war began.
Gas prices don’t move in lock step with crude, usually trailing increases or drops by a few days.
The average price of diesel also fell on Thursday, to $5.13. It remains more than 35 percent higher since the start of the war.