Evening Brief, Tuesday 23 June

Donald Trump gave diplomacy a 60-day lease. The U.S. Treasury waived sanctions on Iran, letting Tehran resume oil sales and receive payments after direct talks at Switzerland's Bürgenstock resort. American and Iranian teams agreed a roadmap toward a permanent accord within the same period, with working groups on sanctions, nuclear affairs, reconstruction and monitoring. JD Vance called the meeting a foundation for a final deal, and oil prices fell more than 3% before Brent steadied near $78 a barrel.

“If Iran doesn’t live up to their agreement, or if they’re not behaving, I will do what I have to do.”

Iran, however, kept leverage where it counts. Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf said Tehran would manage the Strait of Hormuz, although he promised respect for international rules, while Qatar and Pakistan helped set up a communications line for commercial shipping. Two crude tankers carrying nearly 2 million barrels passed through on Monday, a small but useful signal that the choke point was loosening. Yet Iran also ruled out International Atomic Energy Agency visits to nuclear sites damaged by American and Israeli strikes, which leaves inspectors outside the very places diplomats most need to understand.

“We had no meeting with the director general of the IAEA and we do not foresee the agency inspecting the Iranian nuclear facilities damaged by the American and Zionist military aggression.”

The talks also sit beside a fragile Lebanon ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, with a new Washington round due. The bargain can lower the temperature quickly, but it will define little unless it turns access, shipping guarantees and nuclear limits into enforceable habits rather than hopeful communiqués.

Keir Starmer resigned after Labour MPs decided that his landslide had curdled too quickly. He entered Downing Street in July 2024 with 411 seats and a promise to restore competent government after 14 years of Conservative rule. Less than two years later, poor local-election results, gloomy economic messaging and a business-tax rise helped turn a parliamentary majority into an internal rebellion. Starmer will remain as caretaker while Labour chooses a successor, with nominations opening on July 9 and a new prime minister expected by September.

“The question that my party asks now is whether I am the best positioned to lead us to the next general elections.”

Andy Burnham now looks like the practical answer. His win in the Makerfield by-election restored him to Westminster, and Wes Streeting, once viewed as a rival, backed him rather than fight a summer leadership contest. Nigel Farage demanded a snap general election, arguing that Burnham did not stand at the last election on any manifesto, but Labour appears set to change leader first and dare the public later. Britain has now shed six prime ministers in 10 years, the highest turnover rate in nearly two centuries, and the resignation landed on the eve of the Brexit vote's 10th anniversary.

“We could spend the summer exaggerating small differences, or we can roll up our sleeves and help him to deliver the change our party and our country needs.”

Burnham inherits a country tired of resets and allergic to sermons. His first task is not to invent another national story, but to prove that a government can last long enough to finish a chapter.

France moved from discomfort to emergency. The national average daytime temperature reached 29.2C on Monday, a June record, and the average overnight minimum hit 21.6C, the hottest June night ever measured. Châteaumeillant touched 43.3C, parts of the south-west were forecast to approach 44C, and Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said 40 people had drowned since the heatwave began last Thursday. Officials linked many deaths to unsupervised swimming in rivers, canals and lakes as people fled the heat.

“To go swimming in unauthorised areas, during a heatwave, is not something to take lightly.”

• France daytime average29.2
• France night minimum21.6
• Châteaumeillant peak43.3
• Andújar peak45
• UK forecast peak40

The heat bent routines as well as rails. France closed more than 1,350 schools and placed 54 of its 96 mainland departments under red alert, covering about 39 million people. SNCF withdrew 10% of Paris-region trains to protect tracks, while Belgium pulled non-air-conditioned carriages from rush-hour service. Spain recorded 45C in Andújar and kept red and orange warnings across large areas, with tropical and torrid nights offering little relief. Britain issued a rare red extreme-heat warning for southern England and Wales, cut rail services and let some schools partially close as forecasts pointed toward 40C. Scientists tied the scale and persistence of the episode to a hotter climate. Spain's weather agency noted that mainland Spain recorded 10 June heatwaves from 2000 to 2025, compared with two in the previous 25 years. The old European assumption that heat is a holiday nuisance has failed; this is now a public-safety, school-design and transport-maintenance problem arriving in June, not August.

A UN commission moved its Gaza inquiry into a harsher register. The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel said Israeli security forces deliberately killed and harmed Palestinian children, and argued that those acts formed part of genocidal intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza in whole or in part. The report covered the period after the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, and described attacks on schools, orphanages and healthcare facilities, as well as arbitrary arrests, torture and sexual violence against children in detention.

“The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces.”

The numbers carry the report's political charge. The commission said at least 20,179 children were killed in Gaza between October 7, 2023, and October 7, 2025, about 30% of the total death toll, including 5,031 children under five. It compared that share with previous rounds of fighting, when children made up about 24% of fatalities in 2008-2009 and 2014. Israel's mission in Geneva rejected the findings as a libellous sham and said the commission ignored Hamas tactics, including attacks on Israeli children and the use of Palestinian children as human shields. Israel also pointed to vaccination campaigns, field hospitals and medical entry it said it facilitated. The report landed after an October 2025 ceasefire brokered by Donald Trump, which Israel and Hamas have each accused the other of violating. Gaza's health ministry says more than 1,020 Palestinians have been killed since the truce began, while UNICEF estimates at least one Palestinian child has been killed on average every day in the eight months since. A ceasefire that cannot protect children is less a pause in war than a thinner form of it.