The documents show the fallout for the US in Bahrain, Indonesia and Azerbaijan as it struggles to catch up with pro-Iran messaging.
The Iran war is risking America’s global security ties and damaging its reputation, especially among the world’s Muslims, according to a set of State Department cables obtained by POLITICO.
The cables, dated Wednesday, described the fallout of the war for America’s standing in three countries in different parts of the world: Bahrain, Azerbaijan and Indonesia.
U.S. diplomats at embassies in the countries’ capitals painted damning portraits of an America under siege in multiple media spheres by pro-Iranian actors that are exceptionally agile in the digital space.
In other news: water is wet
ETA: fuck ICE, & free Palestine
Also fuck israel
The Republican party’s destruction of the US is almost complete and other countries are loath to follow.
I am sure in 30 years there will be plenty of Americans worship Trump just like they are doing now to Reagan.
Even though both of them fucked literally everything up.
Apart from all the obvious US policy failures, there are also the less obvious ones.
The current admin has no understanding of soft power. The US spent decades building trust in the Voice of America. Sure, it was US propaganda in some ways, but it was often much more truthful about the facts than the local government news. The people who worked at VoA cared about being reporters and wanted to tell the truth. They had bureaus around the world broadcasting in local languages, and it cost almost nothing. It was old fashioned radio, a technology that’s a century old. Something that might have been useful in Iran where the Internet has been cut off for months now. So, Iran can now get their narrative out to all the other countries nearby, and the US has no way of correcting / countering the Iranian propaganda.
The US also used to know the value of diplomats. The Trump admin doesn’t think expertise matters. So, the Iran deals are being conducted by the President’s son in law, and a buddy of Trump’s who’s also a real estate developer. Unsurprisingly, they’re not succeeding. Ambassadors have always been a cushy job, often given to big donors or friends. But, Trump has made it so entire embassies are effectively useless.
The kinds of damage being done in just a couple of years will last for decades. I don’t know if the US will ever recover from this. Many of the problems probably won’t even show up for more than 5 years. Instead of a US military base in a foreign country having a lease that’s easy to renew, the next time it comes up there will be pushback or refusals.
The US dominated world sucked in a lot of ways, but at least it was stable. My guess is that the next few decades will be a lot less stable. Maybe the end result will be better. I’d love it if Europe stepped into the vacuum left by the US. They’re doing a lot of good things when it comes to environmental laws, privacy, anti-monopoly, etc. If it’s China that steps forward, I’m less confident it will be an improvement on the US. Other than those two, I don’t really see any other country or bloc of countries that could try to do the necessary work.
China would at least be better than the US for environmental and anti-monopoly laws, and at this point, I think it’s fair to call it a parallel move on privacy. That’s rough to realize.
I don’t think that’s true. Yes, the Trump admin is horribly corrupt, but a collection of states just won in court, finding that Ticketmaster was an illegal monopoly. There’s a chance that after Trump goes away / dies that whoever replaces him will take monopoly enforcement seriously. It’s a popular bipartisan issue.
Meanwhile, in China, what President Xi wants, he gets. At the moment he doesn’t seem to be doing the Trump speed run of corruption and personal enrichment. But, rule of law in China is limited because ultimately it’s whatever Xi decides.
Privacy is basically non-existent in China. Sure, the US tries to spy on its citizens, but often the FBI is reduced to buying data on Americans from private companies because they can’t spy on people directly. There’s a lot of self-censorship in the US, and oligarchs are buying up media to restrict what views are published. But, that pales in comparison to the Great Firewall of China, and the massive internal censorship network.
And, keep in mind, that’s what China does to Chinese citizens. When they show up in Africa they definitely don’t treat Africans the same way Chinese people are treated. They are happy to help Chinese companies do corrupt deals that would never be permitted in China, but when it’s Africans that suffer they really don’t care. The US was hardly an angel around the world, but at least it made tiny steps towards trying to curb things a bit, like the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Trump may be speed-running overt corruption and self dealing, but there are still remnants of the old system of laws and rules that occasionally stop some of the things he’s doing. Xi is not as obviously overtly corrupt, but the Chinese system has never been in any way democratic. It has always been one where the people at the top get to dictate how the people at the bottom live their lives. Personally, I’d prefer a fighting chance against a corrupt mob boss style dictator who hasn’t yet fully corrupted the entire system, vs. being ground under the boot heel of a “president for life” who maybe was making decisions that he thought was best for his country, but who isn’t even willing to allow protests or mockery, let alone the free communication of ideas.
Okay, I’m trying to be as nice as I can about this, but most of the world legitimately doesn’t give a shit about anything you just said. Why would someone from Africa or South Asia or South America care what America or China allow to happen in their own borders? Do you seriously think the “freedoms” afforded to Americans but American law mean anything to an Iraqi whose life was and remains defined by the fallout from American imperialism? That’s not how modern empires work; neither China nor America are going to treat a third party anything like they treat their own citizens, and in a comparison of how they treat others’ citizens China has nothing that can top this. Your appeals to tiny steps and corruption aren’t just meaningless; they’re outright insulting to the hundreds of millions of lives that were ruined by America around the world.
I really wish more Americans understood soft power and how much we used to have. Hell, I was on vacation to Montreal a few years back and I ran into a dude from France there. You know what we did? Quoted American TV to each other, in English. He knew lines from futurama and archer in English.
Hell at work I run into a lot of Germans and French folk and dispite not using imperial they knew how far a mile was in kilometers (1.6 for the curious)
The US dominated world sucked in a lot of ways,
Agreed
but at least it was stable.
Highly debatable.
I think we’re going to appreciate how stable it was soon.
You are assuming it was stable for everyone. It used to be unstable for specific groups, now its unstable for everyone. Fair is fair I guess.
IMO, this is what the goal was. Instability and loss of power. This was a coup, and many if not most of its goals were met.
A coup by whom? Nobody is benefiting from it.
The rich.
ETA
I’m sorry, I totally didn’t supply enough context. I meant all of the shit that America is doing right now.
The United States has been taken over in a bloodless coup and the rich are benefiting.
Are they though? Stocks are up at the moment, and Trump tends to chicken out of policies that hurt the stock market numbers. But, in the long term a lot of this chaos will probably hurt rich people. For example, the best students are now choosing not to study at schools in the US because of the ICE crackdowns, when they graduate they’re much less likely to work for an American company. And then there’s the long-term economic damage due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. That will probably result in years of higher prices and inflation that will hurt businesses.
Rich people tend to mostly like stability. It allows them to make long-term investments knowing that the rules won’t change before those investments pay off. Trump’s administration is anything but stable. Backing off of terrible policies when the markets react isn’t as good as not risking those stupid policies in the first place.
Yes, they’re getting some temporary wins, because Trump has gutted parts of the government that oversee or enforce rules. But, if I were a rich person I’d be very worried about the long-term damage he’s doing.
https://cepr.net/publications/the-trump-administration-government-by-billionaires-for-billionaires/
They are benefitting, without doubt… Long term will be different though, so you’re not wrong.
It doesn’t matter to 🍊🤡 because he’ll die before society collapses entirely.
Plenty of people are benefiting. In one ear you have the Christofascists who simply want to punish women and turn the US into a religious state, in the other you have the VCs who want to weaken America so they can establish autonomous zones outside the US purview.
The VCs and Christofascists are currently on the same side, but have almost no interests in common. The VCs in particular care about the rule of law because it’s hard to invest in something that won’t start making money for years if you don’t know that the laws will be stable through those years. The VCs might like that Trump is removing some burdensome regulations. But, for example, the tariff chaos would have been horrible for them because from one day to the next who knows what the tariffs will be.
Then there’s immigration. A lot of the MAGA nazis want the US to be a purely white place with white, christian, men dominate. That means severely restricting immigration. Meanwhile the VCs want to be able to bring in all the cheap foreign labour they can, which means they want H1B visas to be easy to get. Those are directly opposing sides. If one side wins, the other one loses.
It’s hardly a coup when the backers all want different things, and they’re not getting what they want anyhow because Dear Leader is obsessed with settling personal grudges and doing whatever his dementia-addled brain thinks of on the spot.
I don’t mean the regular small-fry VCs who care about the day-to-day. I mean the Network State types who are playing the long-game.
https://www.vcinfodocs.com/day-one-of-venture-capital-takeover
DCVC has commented on how higher tariffs under the VC-supported Trump regime have boosted American venture capital, stating: “Increased tariffs benefit many of our portfolio companies, most directly by encouraging foreign direct investment in their U.S.-based factories (a phenomenon we saw during the first Trump administration), and by increasing demand for domestically sourced materials, products, and energy.” Tariffs pave the way for DCVC and other venture capitalists to continue their expansion into manufacturing, biotech, space, weaponry and other cartel priorities.
https://www.dcvc.com/reports/deep-tech-opportunities-report-2025/
China is, but that’s just doing nothing and winning
Doing nothing is hardly a coup.
Sure, it was US propaganda in some ways, but it was often much more truthful about the facts than the local government news
The Russians, after seeing their lives collapse in the 1990s, were rumored to have said something to the effect of “we always knew our government was lying about communism, so we assumed they were also lying about how bad capitalism is. Turns out they weren’t.”
So, Iran can now get their narrative out to all the other countries nearby, and the US has no way of correcting / countering the Iranian propaganda.
Fortunately in this case, since Iranian propaganda is more or less just the truth in this case. Can’t get much more fucked up than bombing a girls’ school on day one.
I’d love it if Europe stepped into the vacuum left by the US. They’re doing a lot of good things when it comes to environmental laws, privacy, anti-monopoly, etc. If it’s China that steps forward, I’m less confident it will be an improvement on the US.
Europe is part of the same imperialist apparatus as America, and fortunately for everyone involved it won’t be able to replace the US. Pretty much every US imperialist action gets European support, even if it comes with denial or condemnation. For example Europe was deeply involved in turning Iran into a pariah state, making the current war possible. And that’s before we get into Europe’s own neocolonialism (see: France). China has plenty of skeletons in its own closet, but they don’t have a habit of overthrowing regimes they don’t like halfway across the world.
Don’t forget about the European countries. The disdain in Spain for the US is palpable for example.
Yes, and that’s why US tourists should stick to visiting coastal regions when visiting, as the disdain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.
Nah, it’s actually the anti-tourist squirt guns in the plain - the 19th century Brits just couldn’t understand such a superior technology when they coined the rhyme.
Please dont use or link politico. It is part of Springer Publishing, which is attempting to become the European equivalent of Fox News
Fox News isn’t putting out a lot of stories that shed negative light on Trump.
Believe me, nothing good comes from this publishing house. In Germany, they are neoliberal and right-wing. They are largely responsible for right-wing ideas gaining acceptance even within middle-class circles. They are against climate protection policies, in favour of fossil fuels, against feminism, against migrants, nationalistic and racist, against social policies, in favour of militarisation, and against anti-fascism. They will always side with employers, persuade people to vote against their own interests, and defend the interests of capital. At the moment, they’re in a growth phase with Politico, and you don’t win over right-wing Europeans with pro-Trump rhetoric. After all, he threatens national European interests.
Substitute Iran war with Donald Trump and now you have reality.
Don’t worry, Trump’s son-in-law is in the negotiations! He brought peace to the Middle East, he’ll save us!
I am having a stroke please send short bus
The Bondulance?
JD Pon Don once again confirming he plays an active role in the demise of the US empire. Classic
Trump is the modern world’s version of “You will destroy a great empire.”
Have the day you voted for wanks.
GJ Iran!
[…] an America under siege in multiple media spheres by pro-Iranian actors that are exceptionally agile in the digital space.
What the fuck are they talking about?
This is hardly about who is better at propaganda, it’s about who’s doing what.
The memes are coming from inside the house!
The whole world has been bending to the will of the pedophiles regime, allowing the US to kill and loot… just since the start of 2026, USA is starving Cuba, stealing the wealth of Venezuela and trying to turn Iran into another Iraq or Syria.
Europe isn’t stupid, Latin America and the middle east aren’t stupid either, but everyone is playing ball, a mechanism of survival. Question is, if Iran continues to humiliate the Epstein regime, how quickly is the world going to start saying no to US and stop abiding by its sanctions and bullying.
Point is, Bahrain, Azerbaijan and Indonesia are just the start.
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