The MoU is dead, long live the _______! - with Nadav Eyal

**Dan Senor** (0:02)
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**Nadav Eyal** (0:50)
You are listening to an Ark Media podcast.
This is a revolutionary regime. It's burying its leader that was killed in an Israeli strike sanctioned by the United States. So they are in no mood for compromises right now on what they see as an agreement that gave them a lot of advantages. It's plausible that the Iranians themselves think that now is their time to escalate.

**Dan Senor** (1:30)
It's 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, July 8th here in New York City. It's 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 8th in Israel, where Rahm Emanuel, a possible 2028 presidential candidate, just delivered what some are characterizing as a quote unquote tough love speech regarding the future of the U.S.-Israel relationship. We will have a lot more to say in the coming days when Rahm joins me for a conversation on Call Me Back.
Five weeks ago, a memorandum of understanding, otherwise called the MoU, was signed between the United States and Iran that was meant to close out the war, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and give a battered Islamic Republic of Iran a path back into the world. That was May 25th. Yesterday, Tuesday, it came apart. In the course of 24 hours, three tankers were hit in the Strait of Hormuz, a Qatari gas carrier, a Saudi vessel, and a third vessel. Doha and Riyadh both blame Iran. US. Central Command answered with a new wave of strikes. More than 80 targets, air defenses, radar sites, IRGC small boats, and Washington revoked the oil sanctions waiver it had extended to Iran under the deal.
Standing in Ankara, Turkey, President Trump flatly said the MoU is, quote, over, though he left the door open to more talks, although he is now threatening additional strikes. US. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's first visit to Israel as Pentagon chief was abruptly canceled amid the tension over a possible F-35 sale to Turkey. And all of this is unfolding during the days-long funeral of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. So, with the MoU all but dead, what comes next? A third round of open war, a contained exchange both sides want to walk back from, or something messier, something in between? And what does this all mean for the US., for Iran, and for Turkey, which is trying to assert itself in the region? Ark Media contributor and senior analyst for Yedioth Ahronoth, Nadav Eyal, joins us to make sense of all of it. And there's a lot, right after this quick message.

**Deborah Pardes** (3:46)
I'm Deborah Pardes, the host of Ark News Daily. What's happening in Israel and the Jewish world right now matters. But it could be hard to keep up, let alone make sense of it all. That's why we started Ark News Daily.
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**Dan Senor** (4:31)
Nadav, welcome back.

**Nadav Eyal** (4:32)
Thanks for having me, Dan.

**Dan Senor** (4:34)
So in the space of a day, three tankers were hit in the Strait of Hormuz.
The US answered with strikes on more than 80 Iranian targets, as I mentioned in the intro, and also revoked the oil sanctions waiver. And President Trump told reporters in Ankara that the MOU is over. So where are we right now?

**Nadav Eyal** (4:52)
The MOU was a flawed product to begin with, and we are now seeing the price for that flawed product. And what we are seeing now is how the Iranians are analyzing, are interpreting the MOU.
They see the MOU as allowing them to control the movement in Hormuz to a certain degree. The United States has a completely different interpretation to what the MOU is, an interpretation that was put forward by the president, basically saying that movement should be completely free in Hormuz. Iranians never accepted that, and they are trying to assert their control over the Strait of Hormuz. As far as they are concerned, it's not business as usual, and it will never return to what it was before the war.