The United States unveiled new sanctions on Iran Friday, an act which crucially breaks a key aspect of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) agreement signed last month - namely that no new sanctions can be imposed while the warring sides negotiate to reach a lasting peace.
The ceasefire itself is already out the window, President Trump has said late this week, amid contradictory reports over indirect talks being back on. The new US Treasury action specifically targets an Iranian businessman accused of managing a global financial network for the country's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei
The US is also going after multiple exchange houses that Washington says seek to get around sanctions and maintain access to foreign currency. The three entities named are Mohammad Darbani and Partners, Lavasani and Partners, and Mohsen Khandan and Partners - along with their managing partners.
After earlier boasting that he helped engineer a currency collapse in order to get masses into the streets - related to the last January protests - Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent now says he cares about the "Iranian people"...
The so-called Supreme Leader is hiding in seclusion while his regime crumbles. Treasury will continue using every tool at its disposal to isolate him and other regime elites from the global financial system. We will preserve these assets for the Iranian people. https://t.co/cAtlx2Pplv
— Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (@SecScottBessent) July 10, 2026The new Friday action is perhaps the single biggest indicator that the United States is ready to abandon the MoU, and that it is already in effect crumbling and defunct, following a couple nights of major tit-for-tat attacks between the US, Iran, and involving strikes on Gulf countries by Iranian forces. But the bombs have stopped as of Thursday night through Friday.
There are a couple of key MoU points which deal with the question of sanctions on Iran during the negotiating process. Number seven of the 14-points reads as follows [emphasis by ZH]:
The United States of America undertakes to terminate all types of sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the United Nations Security Council resolutions, IAEA Board of Governors resolutions, and all unilateral US sanctions, primary and secondary, in an agreed upon schedule as part of the final deal. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America acknowledge the critical importance of the sanctions termination issue above mentioned, and expressed their intentions to immediately address these issues in the negotiations in order to achieve mutual agreement on them.
And point number nine spells out no new sanctions:
Pending the final deal, the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran agree to maintain the status quo. The Islamic Republic of Iran will maintain the current status quo of its nuclear program, and the United States of America will not impose any new sanctions and will not deploy additional forces in the region.
It is not only the ceasefire that's now effectively dead, but the MoU itself is clearly on life-support.
Both sides have already repeatedly accused the other of violating the terms of the MoU, but in many ways these new sanctions are confirmation that a 'new MoU' will have to be worked out, if there is a way forward.
Tyler Durden Fri, 07/10/2026 - 21:25Authored by Frank Filocomo via RealClearBooks,
You've probably heard the refrain before, but it bears repeating: The West is the best.
As I write this, it's nearly one hundred degrees Fahrenheit here in Brooklyn. Thank God for air conditioning.
The air conditioner, by the way, was invented by the New York-born Willis Carrier in the early part of the twentieth century. Willis was, without question, a product of Western Civilization.
Before the AC - which we, no doubt, take for granted nowadays - our ancestors, when faced with the dog days of summer, would have no choice but to sit on ice blocks, drink cold beverages, and fan themselves to stay cool.
Many non-Western countries still resort to these old methods.
The computer in which I am typing this article is also a product of Western innovation. After I finish writing this, I'll use it again later today to schedule a doctor's appointment, wherein I'll likely be prescribed Western medicine.
Okay, okay. What am I getting at here? Well, simply, I am proud to be a product and inhabitant of Western Civilization.
Not all, however, feel such gratitude.
In his latest book, Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind, Gad Saad documents the myriad ways in which Westerners today engage in ethno-masochism and self-flagellation.
"The suicidally empathetic person," Saad writes, "feels guilty that they were born in the West, whereas others were not as fortunate."
To be sure, we do indeed have it good here. And there's nothing wrong with having empathy for those who've never experienced Western living.
Under Maduro's rule in 2017, starving Venezuelans were literally stealing animals from the Zoo with the intention of eating them.
That's not a problem we have here in the West. It's natural to pity such people.
It is when our pity becomes excessive, to the point where we are hurting our own in the pursuit of altruistic ends, that we encounter civilizational decay.
While reading Saad's book, which relates dozens of stories of "privileged" white Westerners forgoing their own welfare to appear morally virtuous, I recollected the now-famous tiff between Trump advisor Stephen Miller and then-CNN journalist Jim Acosta, wherein Acosta basically argues that our immigration policy should be dictated by the Emma Lazarus poem tacked onto the Statue of Liberty.
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..."
I don't know, Emma. I'm not sure that's always such a good idea.
As Saad rightly notes throughout the book, non-Western immigration has fundamentally altered the identities of many once-great European nations, rendering them nearly unrecognizable.
That Islamists come here with the intention of bringing with them their illiberal and theocratic cultural attitudes is of no concern to the wide-eyed liberal, who is more fearful of coming off as "Islamophobic" than they are of being sexually assaulted by Muslim grooming gangs.
"Suicidal empathy," Saad writes, "leads to caring more about the rights of rapists and felons than their victims."
Right-wing shock jock and host of Get Off My Lawn Gavin McInnes once quipped that the Left is so tolerant that they tolerate the intolerant.
Truer words have never been spoken.
Equipped with a sardonic wit, Saad plays the Left's language game. Just as we've been coached to say "undocumented immigrant" when referring to illegal aliens - the correct term - Saad, in a dark but humorous attempt to demonstrate his Suicidally Empathetic bona fides, refers to rapists as "undocumented lovemakers."
To be sure, some readers might find this dark humor to be flippant and distasteful. I'm a bit ambivalent about it myself. Still, the point holds: to the Suicidally Empathetic Left, it is more important to demonstrate tact and
Tyler Durden Fri, 07/10/2026 - 20:50