PRESS REVIEW – Thursday, June 18: An Israeli paper slams the US's deal with Iran as a "catastrophic capitulation". While Trump sees the US as the big winner, the press says Iran's chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz shows that it has set a new status quo. Also, EU leaders scramble to find anti-China trade measures without provoking Beijing into a trade war. Plus, as a heatwave returns to Europe, French resort towns plan to fine men who go shirtless in public.
There are lots of reactions to the Memorandum of Understanding that both the USA and Iran have signed. But few publications think this deal is actually good for the US. Libération, the left-wing French paper, says that even in the late supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei's wildest dreams, he could not have imagined this outcome for a war that Donald Trump himself started. The conservative Wall Street Journal reminds us that Iran held the Strait of Hormuz hostage during the war and that the agreement will "formalise the extortion into a new, worse status quo" and empower Iran to "define the future administration of Hormuz." The Tehran Times uses the opportunity to take pot shots at Iranian opposition groups. It says that US and Israel relied heavily on exiled opposition figures to advance their regime-changing plans. Once the "geopolitical winds shifted, they were discarded without ceremony."
