Iran's own ruling class can't settle whether it wants to make peace with the United States — but that hasn't stopped Speaker Johnson and the DC war lobby from agitating to bypass constitutional war powers and entangle American troops in their squabbles.
Foreign Policy reports that after an April cease-fire and nearly 70 days of indirect talks brokered by Pakistan and Qatar, the U.S. and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding ending their war. The first round of talks in Switzerland produced a road map to a final agreement within 60 days, working groups on nuclear enrichment and sanctions, and new channels to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. The blockade is lifted. The Iranian rial gained more than 15 percent against the dollar.
Sounds like progress. Here's the catch: Tehran's elites are at each other's throats over what comes next.
The foreign ministry insists every organ of the state acted "with one voice." Hard-line newspapers claim the talks proceeded under the personal oversight of the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani called the negotiators and soldiers alike men cut from the same cloth of "armed resistance." Foreign Policy frames this as a closing of ranks — and it is, but only as a consensus to stop a war nobody could win. On the actual question of how Iran positions itself toward the outside world, the Islamic Republic is anything but united.
In late May, the Paydari Front and the network around hard-line former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalali mounted a coordinated effort to strip parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf of his post. The timing was deliberate — right during the most delicate phase of diplomacy, framed plainly as an attempt to weaken the negotiating track. Ghalibaf survived, but the episode proved hard-liners remain loud and willing to sabotage deals. By early June, reformist commentators were calling the persistent demands for President Masoud Pezeshkian to resign a "deliberate strategy of attrition."
So let's take stock. One faction in Tehran wants to honor the deal. Another faction wants to burn it down and force confrontation. They can't agree among themselves — and somehow Washington is supposed to commit American blood and treasure to sorting out their civil war?
Meanwhile, back home, Americans are celebrating the nation's 250th birthday — parades, fireworks, baseball games, and exhibits on liberty and justice, as M Live Michigan reports. Schoolcraft is bringing back its 4th of July parade after two years of cancellations. The Kalamazoo Institute of Arts opened a new exhibit called "For the People, By the People" to reflect on the country's enduring ties to liberty and identity.
That's what this country was built for — not to referee factional disputes in Tehran. The Founders gathered in taverns under British rule and asked how to build a nation that governed itself. They did not ask how to police every sectarian grudge half a world away.
The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war for a reason. Any effort to bypass that — whether by Speaker Johnson or any other warmonger — is a direct assault on the framers' design. Iran's elites can't even agree on whether they want peace. The question for Americans is simpler: why should we die for their disagreement?
