June 25, 2026

Good morning! Today is Thursday, June 25th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Leonid Ragozin reports that European leaders are exploiting Trump's Iran setback to derail his Russia rapprochement, gambling that a politically weakened president facing tough midterms will pivot toward coercion against Moscow. Ragozin traces the Ukraine conflict's roots back to Russia's explicit exclusion from the Euro-Atlantic project and warns that each successive peace framework, from Istanbul to Minsk to Anchorage, has proven worse for Kiev than the last. Harrison Berger covers the seventh day of the Iran truce, with Oman opening transit lanes through the Strait of Hormuz even as Israel signals it will stay in southern Lebanon and redirects its hostility toward Turkey. and now for the details. As the dust settles on the brief war with Iran, European leaders are seizing the moment to push Ukraine back to the top of the global agenda. At last week's G7 summit in Evian, allied capitals worked to convince President Trump that his Iran setback should translate into a harder line against Vladimir Putin, and that his attempted rapprochement with Moscow was a mistake. As Leonid Ragozin reports for The American Conservative, the calculation in European capitals is that a politically weakened Trump, facing difficult midterms, may prefer being seen as tough on Russia rather than accommodating. Ragozin traces the long arc of this conflict back to the late 1990s, when Russia was a Western client state, and argues that the war grew not simply from NATO expansion but from Russia's explicit exclusion from the Euro-Atlantic project. He notes that successive peace frameworks, from the Istanbul talks at the start of the invasion to the Minsk Accords and now the Anchorage framework discussed at the Trump–Putin summit last year, have each been derailed by Western insistence on better terms, only for the next deal to prove worse for Kiev. Ragozin warns that the current PR campaign aimed at sinking the Anchorage framework follows the same pattern that turned Afghanistan and Iraq into furnaces for taxpayer money, with no return in American or global security, and only deepening devastation for Ukraine. The interim peace deal with Iran is holding into its seventh day, with new movement on one of the world's most critical waterways. Oman announced Wednesday that it will temporarily open two designated lanes for transit through the Strait of Hormuz, in coordination with the International Maritime Organization. The prime minister of Qatar arrived in Muscat to help broker talks between Iraq, Iran, and the Gulf States over the future of the strait. President Trump posted on Truth Social that no tolls, insurance costs, or other charges are being sought by Iran on ships transiting the waterway, and warned that negotiations would end immediately if that proved false. Harrison Berger reports that complications remain on other fronts. Israel's defense minister, Israel Katz, said Wednesday that Washington has made no demand for Israel to withdraw from southern Lebanon, and stated Israel would remain there in any case. That position sits uneasily with the first article of the interim deal, which calls for the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts and protection of Lebanon's territorial integrity. Meanwhile, Israeli cabinet officials are publicly redirecting their hostility toward Turkey, with Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli describing Erdogan's Turkey and al-Sharaa's Syria as more concerning than Iran. Brent crude fell below seventy-four dollars on the news, though the national average price of gasoline remains near three dollars and ninety-three cents a gallon. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.