This is our glass. On This American Life, one that we like is a good mystery. Sometimes about really big things, but most times, the little mysteries are the best. Our lost and found is currently filled with pants. I don't know, I've never seen this happen. Wait, is this true? This is true. Mysteries of every size, each week, This American Life, wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, it's the MPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Mara Eliasson, Senior National Political Correspondent. And MPR Business Correspondent, Camila Dominozki is also here with us. Hi, Camila. Hello, hello. Hi. So we're recording this at 103 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, June 15th, 2026. And today, there appears to be an agreement between the United States and Iran for a potential end to the war in the Middle East. Leaders plan to sign this agreement in Geneva on Friday, and President Trump talked about the deal in France today, where he is for the G7 meeting. Very importantly, the oil is plummeting down, and the stock market is shooting up like a rocket today, like record kind of numbers. And the oil is taking its biggest plunge, and we're into the low numbers. Not quite back yet, Kevin, to the extent that we're getting clubs to the numbers we were before it all started. And the main thing is that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. So Mara, it's worth reiterating here that this deal, again, is not final, but Trump also says the Strait of Hormuz will be open again starting Friday. How much of a political win could this be for the president? I think it is a very big short-term political win. The most important thing for the president politically was to get the Strait of Hormuz open. This is something that was causing inflation in the United States and around the world. It was causing gas prices to go up. It was causing fertilizer prices to go up. The cost of food was going up. The war was extremely unpopular at home, and people were connecting the war in Iran with higher prices. So on that level, just in terms of domestic politics, this is a win for him. Because he gets to have a face-saving off-ramp from the war that he started that so far has not achieved his bigger goals. Well, Camila, since this war began, I feel like most of your job, or a lot of your job, has been covering gas prices in this country. How have the oil markets responded to the news of a potentially open Strait? I mean, they were enthusiastic. For most of the conflict prices have been above $100 a barrel. They were dropping in early June, largely out of expectations the deal was coming. And then they have fallen further, the very end of last week, and then after the announcement on Sunday. Right now, Brent Crude, which is the global benchmark, is right around $83 a barrel. So that is down significantly from $100 plus. It's still quite a bit higher, as Trump acknowledged there in that tape, than it was pre-war when we were looking at the 60s. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask, just how this all compares to where we were three months ago. Yeah, well, you know, this winter, the world was really oversupplied with oil. The world was producing more oil than it needed supply, outstrip demand. And that was keeping prices quite remarkably low. And that led to very low gasoline prices here in the US. When the conflict began, when Israel and the US attacked Iran and the Strait of Hormuz shut to traffic, which was unprecedented, that had never happened before, the world almost immediately lost access to about 20% of global oil production and liquefied natural gas trade. Some of that oil was able to get redirected through other routes to get to markets, but it was still the largest disruption to oil supplies in history. And that is what pushed out prices so much. Got it. And so, Mara, as we're thinking about this, the Strait potentially being open obviously could potentially relieve a lot of these financial pressures. But when the United States started striking Iran a few months ago, there were a lot of other goals that the president mentioned. Things like potentially regime change early on was brought up before the strikes happened and then early on. And then, I mean, this idea of Iran not being able to have a nuclear weapon. How much do we know at this point about how the deal addresses these other goals other than opening the Strait? We don't know a whole lot, although there's no indication that any of those goals have been met by this agreement. This agreement is a ceasefire agreement. It says hostilities will end while the two sides talk for 60 days about all the same issues that Trump said he went to war for, like stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, like getting Iran to give up its store of enriched uranium to stop enriching any more uranium. Regime change. Yesterday he said, as far as regime change, I never cared about regime change. I mean, he's changed his goals as the war has become more frustrating to him. And also, we're hearing different messages from the Iranians. We have an Iranian statement that said that they were going to reopen the Strait of Hormuz if the U.S. released $25 billion in frozen assets. Well, Trump says they're not getting any money at all. So lots of things are unclear. And the other thing about Iran agreeing to never acquire a nuclear weapon, they have been agreeing to that for over 50 years. So that is their official position. How exactly Trump plans to prevent them from acquiring a nuclear weapon is unclear. I also want to play out, I guess, politically what this means. If gas prices do over time eventually go back down ahead of the midterms, it's worth noting here thousands of people have died as a result of this conflict, including more than a dozen U.S. service members. Do you think, I guess, how do you think this war is going to impact Trump's legacy outside of the gas prices question? Well, right now, just if you listen to experts who have studied this region and this intractable conflict for decades, he comes out of this having weakened the United States. Giant superpower could not subdue Iran. Iran's regime survived. That is a success right there for them. And he leaves them more or less with the ability to shut the straight again. Iran also issued a statement where they said that the Strait of Hormuz will be open, but it will remain subject to Iranian arrangements. So they can do this again. This is a big weapon they never had. They never used, at least, to close the straight. So I think right now his legacy is solid. He weakened the U.S. and Iran in the long term, even though he did degrade their military capabilities a lot. So I think it really depends on how these negotiations play out. Right now, it looks like a blot on his legacy. Camila, I guess, looking ahead to the midterms, how likely is it that gas prices will go down again? Or to what degree will they go down before the midterms? Yeah. Well, it depends on what you're comparing them to. Over the past few weeks, gasoline prices in the U.S. have trended down. Three straight weeks of falling prices were about 50 cents cheaper than they were at their peak. And a lot of that is because oil markets were anticipating that a deal was coming and crude prices were dropping already. And the current price would lead to gasoline prices dropping further still. That's the likely expectation. We just got a note from Patrick DeHaan with the App Gas Buddy who follows this. He says, if this holds, if the straight does open, if there's no resumption of conflict, and these prices stay, then yes, that trend should continue and gasoline prices should keep going down. Now, if you compare again to before the war started, it's a different story, right? We're looking at a global oil system that needs to recover after this huge shock. That means production fields that were shut down need to restart. That means that refineries that were damaged need to be repaired. Ships need to get in and out of the Gulf, and then they need to travel around the world. And all of the stockpiles of crude oil that the world tapped into in order to make up for missing supply, well, countries are going to want to rebuild those stashes, including the U.S. And that's going to put upward pressure on demand. All those things mean higher oil prices for a period of time, and that keeps upward pressure on gasoline prices, not to mention it's summertime right now, which always means higher gas prices. All right. Well, let's take a quick break and more on this potential deal in just a moment. You know, every day on Up First, NPR's Golden Globe nominated Morning News podcast, we bring you three essential stories. At the heart of each story are questions. What really happened? What really mattered? What happens next? At NPR, we stand for your right to be curious and to follow the facts. Follow Up First wherever you get your podcasts and start your day knowing what matters and why. And we're back. So, Mar, I want to get into how the world, how the U.S. political system is all responding to this potential agreement, starting with here in the United States, specifically Republicans. I mean, have we had heard from any other Republicans on how this deal is being met? Well, we've heard from Lindsey Graham. He posted on X, I'm pleased to hear the memorandum of understanding will allow the straight to be open, but he went on to say, I'm somewhat concerned that Iran's view of the agreement seems different than what the American negotiating team is claiming. He also said that any nuclear deal with Iran has to be sent to Congress. But what's so interesting about that is the art of diplomacy is allowing both sides to claim victory. Both Iran and the U.S. needed a face-saving off-ramp. But if the two sides are too far apart and see this ceasefire agreement in diametrically opposed ways, it lessens the chance that these negotiations, which are now going to go on for 60 days, can be successful. So I think you do have a group, a small group of Republican Iran hawks like Lindsey Graham in Congress looking at this. Israel, which is a player here, is very unhappy with this deal. Up until now, they've been in lockstep with the U.S. on the goals. They thought that they were finally going to get rid of Hezbollah and the threat from the Iranian regime, and they're being left far short from that. So that's just something to watch for. But politically, again, I think that this is not going to cause a huge rift in the Republican Party. Most Republicans are thrilled that gas prices might be coming down. They want to win their reelection campaigns. But there's still so much that we don't know. And I think you're going to hear a small but pretty loud chorus that this agreement is pretty weak. Yeah, I feel like it's worth underlying over and over again that we have not seen text of what this agreement actually entails. Which is kind of significant. Yeah. Is it fair to say that under the Trump presidency, the idea that something is said is happening, but it's not happening for a few more days, there's still a level of skepticism maybe that's warranted on what the deal is exactly, like what is going to be agreed upon? Yeah, and don't forget that if you went through Trump's utterances and posts over the last couple of months, he has said they already agreed to not have a nuclear weapon many times. He has said that they already agreed to open the straight of the farm as many times. He said we won the war. He said there's been regime change. So, you know, he is a master at declaring success with little evidence. Yeah, and I will note that oil markets have repeatedly responded to headline after headline saying that a deal was imminent. Right? We have seen prices drop like a rock over and over again. It's almost become kind of a meme, a joke in people who watch oil markets. But, you know, overall through this conflict, oil prices have not been as high as you would have expected based just on a description of what was happening with oil supplies. Right? Because of China? Partly because China was not using as much oil as people expected, whether that was bigger stockpiles than people knew or that they were able to reduce demand more than expected. It's going to be really interesting to see which of those it was. More oil sneaking out of the straight than people thought. And I think also there was a big disconnect between the futures market, which is much more psychological, and the physical market where, you know, people were paying $150 a barrel for crude oil in the Middle East. Not on the futures market, but for real barrels. So there was a degree of traders thinking that this was always about to end so soon. It could end in any minute, and that was kind of keeping a lid on prices. Well, I feel like you're kind of alluding to something which I was going to get to here, Camilo, which is that we talk a lot about oil prices, but the effect of this war have been broader than just that on the global economy. Have we seen anything else more broadly in terms of, just in the time since this agreement was announced, in terms of how the broader economy is responding? Well, certainly we've seen stock markets also are up, right? So enthusiastic response. If the straight does resume something like normal traffic, it will be a huge deal to economies, especially in Asia, that have dealt with a very material disruption in fuel supplies, which is really, really affecting them. Europe, too, it's affecting economic growth. It's also inflationary. The higher price of fuel drives up costs for almost everything else in the economy, because transporting things and creating things and farming things and building things, that all of that costs more money all of a sudden. So this was an inflationary pressure that was being felt in the U.S., where inflation just topped 4% for the first time in several years, similarly in China. It's a big deal if it happens, if this time, and compared to the previous times, we should note there is now an indication, it's not just Trump saying there's a deal, right? We have both sides and the negotiators saying that there is some kind of a deal, even if we don't know what it is. But if that does materialize, it is a huge relief to a global economy that had been deeply concerned about what the consequences would be if oil supplies kept being so disrupted as the world's stockpiles of oil dwindled. Well, I'm really interested also, Maher, in how this deal is playing out in the region there, because this war has been incredibly destabilizing for the entire Middle East, in Lebanon specifically. Israel has been fighting Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia. Thousands have been killed there. Plus, about a fifth of Lebanon's population has been displaced. So this relationship between Trump and Israel's leader Benjamin Netanyahu seems pretty key here. What can you say about how this agreement is playing out there, or how that relationship is playing into all this? Well, Israel is extremely unhappy about this, and this is not what B.B. Netanyahu thought he had gotten Trump to agree to. For a while, they were walking in lockstep, and all of a sudden, Israel feels that Trump has pulled the rug out from under them because they weren't finished destroying Hezbollah, and they wanted the Iranian regime to be much more degraded than it has been. I think, and Trump has used some of his harshest language for B.B. Netanyahu, who was one of his closest allies and friends globally, and he's warned him not to bomb Lebanon anymore, and B.B. Netanyahu went ahead and did it. So I think it's frayed that relationship, and I think politically it probably is much more meaningful domestically in Israel than it is in the United States. So in some ways, this Friday signing this agreement, assuming it happens, is still just the beginning of this conflict coming to an end. Can I ask, let's start with you, Mara, what you're watching for in the coming weeks? Well, I want to see what Iran got. Iran seems to say it got a certain amount of unfrozen assets. Well, is that true? Do they have to do something to get them, or do they get them just for reopening the Strait of Hormuz? That's what I'm most interested in. How does Iran come out of these talks? And is there anything that could possibly break these ceasefire talks? I kind of doubt it. I mean, I think Trump is ready to be done. He wanted an off ramp, and it sounds like this is the one for him. Camila, what about you? What are you watching for? Well, I'm going to be watching to see how many ships pass through the Strait of Hormuz every day after it is officially declared open. First, if it's declared open, and then second, how many actually go through if there's an assessment of risk that keeps traffic depressed, or if there's a surge of all that pent up traffic coming through. And I'm also going to be keeping an eye on prices, obviously. And I'll be curious to see what President Trump said as one of his justifications for this war that global oil prices had been increased, had been pushed up by a risk premium due to Iran's control of the Strait, which frankly was not true before the war. It might be true now, and it'll be interesting to see what happens there. Okay, well, let's leave it there for today. Thank you so much for joining us, Camila. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And I'm Mara Eliessen, senior national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the MPR Politics Podcast. On Consider This, NPR's afternoon news podcast, we cover everything from politics to the economy to the world. But every story starts with a question. And NPR, we stand for your right to be curious to make sense of the biggest story of the day and what it means for you. Follow Consider This wherever you get your podcasts.
