We are a flawed species destined for extinction by our own hand.

Happy 84th, Paul McCartney.

A senior U.S. official on Wednesday provided NBC News with the text of the memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran. The U.S. had originally held back on releasing the text of the MOU signed Sunday at the request of Iran, the official said. The U.S. was coordinating their release with Iran and hoped to officially get them out tonight, the official said.

Here is the text of the 14-point agreement:

It looks as if Trump’s war on Iran has cost the U.S. the lives of thirteen service members, injuries to 400 more, and at least $132 billion so far in immediate costs, lost income, and higher consumer costs, only to leave the U.S. in a significantly worse place with regard to Iran than before Trump started bombing.

The costs to the world have been significantly higher in terms both of lives—beginning with more than 175 Iranian schoolchildren and their teachers—and of economies.

Journalist David Shuster reported that the Iranian government is declaring “total victory.”

Former secretary of state Antony Blinken posted: “By President Trump’s own terms, the war is a failure. The Iranian regime is intact and its military wing more empowered, while the Iranian people are more impoverished, repressed and desperate…. The only ‘achievement’ of the ceasefire is the likely re-opening [of] the Strait of Hormuz—which was open before the war started. And we will apparently pay Iran to do so…. Don’t expect a return to normal any time soon, if at all,” he warned.

After setting Vance up to take the fall for the deal, tonight at a dinner with French president Emmanuel Macron at the Palace of Versailles, Trump signed the MOU himself. It was a moment when a knowledge of history would have been useful. As MeidasTouch noted, it was at Versailles after World War I that the Allied powers forced Germany to sign the Treaty of Versailles, “one of the most famous surrender documents in modern history.”

Earlier in the day, asked by a MeidasTouch reporter about Trump’s cognitive decline at the G7, Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) said: “The president has been humiliated on the world stage, and many Americans are increasingly concerned about his stability and his capacity in the office. It’s deeply distressing to Americans across the political spectrum to see a president so incompetent and so incapable attempting and failing to represent the nation internationally.”

A source separately provided WIRED with the registration list for Dialog’s 2026 retreat, which names 222 people and records what the list describes as each registrant’s membership status and attendee type, including “active member” and “guest.” The retreat is scheduled for August 12-16 at a venue near Dublin, Ireland.

Daido Moriyama b:1938

Untitled, from "Shinjuku", 2002