Deal with Iran, Alan Greenspan, Reflecting Pool algae

The (still blue) Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool Keystone/Swissinfo

Welcome to our press review of events in the United States. Every Wednesday we look at how the Swiss media have reported and reacted to three major stories in the US – in politics, finance and science.

There are only ten days to go before the United States turns 250. Ten days is a long time in politics, especially when Donald Trump is involved, but will it be enough to clean up the most controversial reflecting pool in the world?

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US President Donald Trump (left) and French President Emmanuel Macron at the Palace of Versailles, where Trump signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran, on June 17. Keystone

Last week US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed an agreement aiming to end the war. Swiss newspapers see it as a defeat for Trump.

“The war against Iran has ended in failure for the US,” the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) wrote on Saturday. “There’s no longer any way to sugar-coat the situation: Israel and the US have missed every target with their air campaign against Iran. Their position in the Middle East has been weakened, while the unpopular regime in Iran feels emboldened.”

Swiss public broadcaster SRF explained that the memorandum of understanding focused on the immediate cessation of hostilities, free passage through the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s nuclear programme and the lifting of sanctions.

“In terms of content, therefore, there are no surprises,” SRF wrote. “However, there are many problems, because key points are listed in the document but remain unresolved: for example, whether passage through the Strait of Hormuz will in future be free of charge again, in accordance with international law – the Iranians say a clear ‘no’, the US a clear ‘yes’. Nothing at all has been clarified regarding Iran’s nuclear programme. Nor is it at all clear how and when the $300 billion (CHF245 billion) is to be channelled to Iran, or who will pay for it.”

SRF continued: “No matter how much Donald Trump may proclaim that the agreement is brilliant, that the US has got its way and that the Iran problem is now essentially solved, it’s not true. The framework agreement – in which many key points still have to be negotiated – is clearly skewed in Iran’s favour. The US and Israel have, in essence, achieved very little with their war.”

An opinion piece in the Tages-Anzeiger didn’t hold back. “What Trump signed this week at the Palace of Versailles is one of the most embarrassing acts of capitulation America has ever signed,” wrote Markus Somm, editor of Swiss satirical magazine Nebelspalter. “Donald Trump is set out to go down in history. He is likely to succeed. Unless he takes care, he will go down in the history books as the weakest president since 1776.”

• Coverage of Trump’s deal with Iran – SRFExternal link (German), Tages-AnzeigerExternal link, NZZExternal link (German, paywall)

Alan Greenspan at the G7 meeting for finance ministers and central bank governors in London in 2005. Keystone

Alan Greenspan, chair of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, died on Monday aged 100. Swiss media acknowledged that he oversaw an uninterrupted decade of growth from 1991 to 2001, but they agreed that his reputation was tarnished by the financial crisis of 2008.

“It’s difficult enough to narrow Greenspan’s life story down to a single main theme,” the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) admitted. “He grew up in a small flat in northern Manhattan with his mother and grandparents. A gifted clarinettist, he studied for a short time at a renowned New York conservatoire [Juilliard] but dropped out and then spent years earning a living with his jazz band. It was only later that the highly gifted numbers man trained as an economist.”

The second-longest-serving Fed chair behind William McChesney Martin, Greenspan was first tapped by President Ronald Reagan in 1987 and was later re-appointed by George HW Bush, Bill Clinton and George W Bush.

Tachles, a Swiss Jewish weekly magazine, said that, as Fed chair, Greenspan “fostered a long period of prosperity, weathered historic crises such as the economic fallout from 9/11, and shaped a market-friendly economic policy”.

“During his long tenure as head of the world’s most influential central bank, he enjoyed such high esteem that, upon his departure in 2006, he was widely hailed as an ‘oracle’ and a ‘maestro’,” added the Tages-Anzeiger.

“However, his reputation suffered enormously when the US property market collapsed shortly after the end of his tenure, triggering a global financial crisis,” the Zurich newspaper wrote. “At the time, the US banking system nearly collapsed, and the economy plunged into the worst recession since the 1930s. Critics blamed the crisis primarily on Greenspan’s loose monetary policy and what they saw as his excessive confidence in financial markets that were subject to only weak regulation.”

Greenspan later admitted that he had made a mistake in assuming that the country’s banks – whose stability underpinned the financial system and the economy as a whole – could essentially regulate themselves, the Tages-Anzeiger said.

The Tribune de Genève also said the legacy of the “enigmatic financial genius” was marked by the subprime mortgage crisis.

• Alan Greenspan obituaries in TachlesExternal link (German), the Tages-AnzeigerExternal link and the NZZExternal link (German, paywall), and the Tribune de GenèveExternal link (French)

• Coverage of Greenspan’s death on Swiss public broadcasters SRFExternal link, RTSExternal link, RSIExternal link (German, French, Italian)

Members of the National Park Service clean algae from the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on June 18. Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

It’s rare for almost every Swiss newspaper to cover a story about algae, but this week the “debacle”, “fiasco” and “pratfall” involving the colour of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, DC, was everywhere.

“Donald Trump had a dream,” the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) explained on Tuesday, echoing Martin Luther King Jr. “He wanted a ‘Reflecting Pool’ that was worthy of the name. The pool on the National Mall in Washington was to shine as blue as the blue of the American flag on the upcoming national holiday, the Fourth of July.”

The 619-metre-long and 51-metre-wide pool, which lies between the Lincoln Memorial and the George Washington Obelisk, is a source of pride for Americans and photo for tourists, the NZZ continued. “Yet, as magnificent as the complex is, engineering issues caused problems right from the start – such as leaking pipes and algae growth. This is because the pool was built on former marshland, the instability of which caused massive leaks in the concrete and the pipes. And in the shallow water of the pool, the algae multiplied uncontrollably.”

Trump has sought to turn the pool “American flag blue” in time for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which included painting the bottom of the pool a dark shade of navy officially called “Old Glory Blue”. The pool was emptied, painted and refilled at the beginning of June – at a cost of $14 million (CHF11.4 million) – but algae soon turned the water a murky green, and paint began flaking off.

“In the days that followed, National Park Service staff poured in large quantities of hydrogen peroxide in an attempt to stem the spread. But nothing worked,” Le Temps reported on Tuesday. “Images of the site in a sorry state were circulated across the United States. Trump then went on the offensive: in a barrage of tweets posted between Saturday and Monday, the occupant of the Oval Office accused ‘vandals’ of having poured ‘corrosive and destructive chemicals’ into the pond. He then claimed that the algal bloom was the work of ‘Radical Left Lunatics, most likely Dumocats, who have spent their lives trying to ruin our Country’.”

For their part, scientists have highlighted the albedo effect: the darker the colour, the warmer the water, and the stronger the algae growth. “Algae spores in the pipes could also be responsible,” the NZZ proposed. “These were carried into the refurbished pool with the fresh water and spread explosively. And finally, there is ‘New Pond Syndrome’: In a meticulously cleaned pond, the ecological balance between microorganisms is disrupted, allowing a single organism to flourish unchecked.”

The NZZ said Trump had announced that the Reflecting Pool – now being protected by the National Guard – would have to be drained again to repair the damage. “Perhaps the president will still manage to present a blue pool to the world on July 4,” the newspaper concluded. “But in the public imagination, the refurbishment of the Reflecting Pool is likely to be remembered as a toxic green shambles.”

• Coverage of the Reflecting Pool algae – SRFExternal link (German), WatsonExternal link (German), Tages-AnzeigerExternal link, NZZExternal link (German, paywall), Le TempsExternal link (French, paywall)

The next edition of ‘Swiss views of US news’ will be published on Wednesday, July 1. See you then!

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