IMMEDIATE RELEASE 26 June 2026WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUNDToday’s Events in Historical PerspectiveAmerica’s Longest-Running Column, Founded 1932By Douglas Cohn and Eleanor Clift August in JuneWASHINGTON – It is August in June. The future is now because the future has already been set. It will play out in August, beginning with a Memorandum of Understanding that recognizes Iran’s victory in the just-ended war.The MOU specified that a final agreement is to be established in 60 days – mid-August. Yet, we know the final terms have already been decided. August is already here.Sanctions long ago placed against Iran are being terminated. Portions of frozen Iranian funds will be released. Access to $300 billion in loans will commence. The Iranian regime changed for the worse and will continue in power unabated. Uranium enriched to nuclear weapons grade will remain in Iranian hands, albeit with Iran’s hollow promise not to build a nuclear weapon. Mines are being cleared from the Strait of Hormuz, and ship traffic has already resumed there, dramatically bringing down the price of oil and fertilizer, the two most important products transiting the strait, products that affect the prices (read inflation) of energy and farm products.Enter the Federal Reserve, which predictably held interest rates unchanged. However, the guidance offered by a majority of the Fed’s Open Market Committee reversed predictions for 2026. For two years, the Fed has forecast multiple interest rate cuts for this year, but that has been reversed with predictions of one or two rate hikes. The Stock Market was stunned and immediately fell hard. But this is August in June, and investors quickly realized that the Fed is getting it wrong. Interest rates are falling, not rising.Fast forward to the middle of August, when the midterms will be looming just over the horizon. Gas prices are nearing where they were in January before the war. Inflation will be cooling as well, and with fertilizer coming through the reopened Strait of Hormuz, food prices are settling down.Trump says that if the Iranians don't behave, he will start bombing again. How many times has he made that threat? Too often to take him seriously. The bombing did not work, and it will not work. He knows it. And the Iranians know it. And this time the midterms will stop him.Trump has uttered a lot of empty threats and unfulfilled promises, but he's at an impasse here, so he got out of a quagmire while he still could. And come August, he will not resume the war. He will be locked in by events of his own making, and the best he will be able to say is that things are at or near status quo ante – where they were before the war.So, the August script has already been written – steady the course as things get back to normal. Do not upset anything before the midterms. Forget about Iran and hope the public will as well.Trump does remain proactive in one arena. He is adamant about passing his Save America bill as a means of impacting the November elections, but the votes are not there in the Republican-dominated Senate. The operative word here is “elections” because all elections are held at the state and local levels. There is no national election, and several states are already passing legislation that will ban federal officers from polling sites.This attempt by Trump to interfere with the elections is already fading, and by August, it will have moved from the legislative front to the midnight front, fraught with online presidential rants.Rarely in American history has the stage been so set. It is June, and we already know what August will bring. See Eleanor Clift’s book Selecting a President, and Douglas Cohn’s latest books The President’s First Year: The Only School for Presidents Is the Presidency and World War 4: Nine Scenarios (endorsed by seven flag officers).Twitter: @douglas_cohn© 2026 U.S. News Syndicate, IncDistributed by U.S. News Syndicate, Inc.END WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND
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