The past day has been more of the same with regard to the U.S., Iran, and Israel. But there have been a few dominoes that have fallen as a result of the entire MoU and negotiations.
President Donald Trump has claimed that everything is moving forward in a good way and that Iran will open the Strait of Hormuz and allow inspectors to review their uranium and nuclear program. Benjamin Netanyahu expressed again that Israel is not going to leave an unattended border with the terrorists of Hezbollah, and that Israel will both maintain a buffer zone and respond to any attacks by Hezbollah.
Iran was especially aggressive in their rhetoric on Tuesday morning (and dismissive of JD Vance). Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei stated that 'Tehran has no plans to allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to visit nuclear sites that were bombed in the war.' Baghaei's statement partially contradicts remarks by Vance, who said negotiations in Switzerland led to an agreement for the IAEA to visit Iranian sites. And Iran's ambassador to the UN mission in Geneva said, "Lebanon is an integral part of the peace agreement, there should be no new attack against Lebanon, and the agreement includes the withdrawal of Israeli forces... Our red line is any further attack against Lebanon, including Beirut and the south."
Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York has been feeling even more emboldened in the last couple of days. He called AIPAC "a monster that funnels dark money to enable genocide in Netanyahu's wars.” For those unclear, AIPAC is a 72-year-old institution that protects Jewish rights and advocates for Israel. When confronted about his Jew-hating remarks, Mamdani felt empowered enough to double down on them, repeating Hezbollah and Hamas' propaganda by saying, "When we ask ourselves how such death and destruction happen overseas, it is important that we name those who enable it to happen. AIPAC has supported a status quo of immorality." Like Vance, Mamdani echoes Islamic propaganda and tries to draw a moral equivalency between the terrorists who rape, murder, kidnap, and torture and a nation defending itself.
There is a story that a king had a contest to see who in his kingdom could fill a room most completely. Different contestants try filling it with water or gold, rice or silver, but in all cases, when the door to the room is open, the contents spill out, and the room is no longer full. One young man seems to do very little, other than bring some mirrors into the room. When the king asked him to open the door and see how full the room was, the young man opened the door to a pitch-black room filled with nothing. The entire court started to laugh at the young man. But then he took a candle, brought it to the middle of the room, and lit it. The mirrors reflected the light, and not only was the room entirely filled with a bright light, but it poured into the hallway as well.
In the midst of the darkness of the world right now, we need to remember this teaching. As long as we allow ourselves to reflect God's light into the world through our actions and words, the darkness will always be dispelled and defeated.
May we all have the courage to allow God's light to fill the world through the reflection of our own actions.
Chazak u'Baruch
Rabbi Michael Barclay
June 23, 2026
8th of Tammuz, 5786
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