How World Leaders Forced Trump Into a Strategic Retreat

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2:45Ben Meiselas:Furious world leaders checkmated Donald Trump into submission with Iran. one by one foreign leaders were calling Foreign Minister Aragchi of Iran coordinating behind the scenes. This is the untold story about what really happened. Sure, Donald Trump may want to pretend that it was a bilateral negotiation between the United States and Iran, but nope, what actually happened was world leaders were working with Iran in order to corner Donald Trump. As I note, one by one, they were calling up Iran's foreign minister. For example, you had France coordinating an international coalition made up of the UK, European Union, and others.

3:30Ben Meiselas:Remember, they made that 40 to 50 nation coalition that they were prepared to kind of work with Iran on a one-to-one basis while Donald Trump was flailing. Well, you had Iran's foreign minister and the French foreign minister discussed regional diplomatic efforts on Friday morning. Iran's foreign minister, Aragji, and French foreign minister held a conversation to discuss the latest regional situation. They did so on equal terms. This would have been unheard of before Trump and Netanyahu's invasion of Iran. But let's keep on following the breadcrumbs here to see what was really going on behind the scenes.

4:12Ben Meiselas:You see, the day before that, on June 11th, the European Union, number two, the European Union foreign minister, Kaha Khalas, spoke with the Iranian foreign minister, Aragchi, about the, quote, regional developments taking place. And they were having conversations about coordinating efforts there to resolve the Trump and Netanyahu invasion. And then what happened a day before that? You see how Iranian Foreign Minister Aragut one by one was lining this up? Because you see on June 10th, you had the Iranian Foreign Minister holding a phone call conference with his Turkish and Saudi counterpart at the same time.

4:56Ben Meiselas:Turkey, Saudi Arabia, speaking with Iran, coordinating this together. One by one, they were putting the places where the United States was left isolated and all alone as Donald Trump was flailing, ranting and raving like a lunatic. The Turkish foreign minister, Haqqan Fidan, and the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, had separate phone calls one by one but this was all coordinated on june 10th with foreign minister aragchi and that followed a prior phone call with the foreign minister of saudi arabia on june 8th they were working on this point by point what else was happening at the same time qatar sent their delegation and their foreign ministry working with pakistan to go to iran and to have communications there and to work on a new regional security framework.

5:52Ben Meiselas:You better believe behind the scenes, Wang Yi of China, China's foreign minister, had his hands all over this with Xi Jinping. You better believe that was what going on. And then we learned what else went down. Do you see how all the chips are falling into place right here? What else went down? The foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates traveled and had a meeting with Foreign Minister Aragchi towards the end of last week in Iran. And what we learned was going down on Thursday and Friday was that the UAE actually agreed to give lots of money to Iran, upwards of$20 to$30 billion, which is likely going to be funded through either through the United States or through a broader regional security plan taking place.

6:46Ben Meiselas:But do you remember when Iran was responding in a retaliatory way to Trump and Netanyahu last weekend and then they agreed to stop? Remember, there were rumors that Iran got paid$3 billion by the United States. Well, it seems that a lot of that money was actually coming from the United Arab Emirates. And you'll recall during this Netanyahu and Trump invasion of Iran, Iran responded by striking the United Arab Emirates in Abu Dhabi and in Dubai. And those areas were seriously damaged, their tourism industry, their real estate, commercial real estate. And so the United Arab Emirates, which back during Trump term one, they joined the Abraham Accords after they were pressured by Kushner to do so.

7:37Ben Meiselas:So did Bahrain, meaning they moved closer to Israel. Well, now this has pushed them further away from Israel, now closer to Iran. And the whole time, do you remember what Iranian foreign minister Aragji had been saying that and the messages Iran had been sending to the other Arab nations saying, we need to show unity together. We're stronger together. There's a new security architecture forming. Do you remember when Foreign Minister Aragchi met with the Russians, met with Xi Jinping, met with the Chinese, met with the delegation there? Remember what was going on right there? Remember how Aragchi was there in China right before Trump was there as well?

8:22Ben Meiselas:All everything that I'm discussing right now was being planned to ice out and to freeze out the United States. So United Arab Emirates probably going to give$30 billion to Iran. And now one of the things that what we're hearing the United States is doing is that they're going as part of this resolution framework of a deal, whatever you want to call it, may be giving upwards of$300 billion now to development in the Middle East in general, which, again, all of this has been heavily coordinated by Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar. directly with Iran, and you see that the European Union and Turkey, and they were all very closely involved in this negotiation, we're learning additional details as well.

9:19Ben Meiselas:That during the war itself, one of the things that it seems that actually may have went down is that Qatar entered into a secret deal with Iran to pretend that the Ras Laufen facility was destroyed by Iran when it was actually not destroyed by Iran. The Ras Laffin is kind of in the Qatari area. It's right by the Iranian facility, the South Pars. Then you have the Ras Laffin kind of in the Northern Qatari area. And so it seemed Washington Post is reporting this and others are reporting it as well, although Qatar denies it, that they basically did a deal saying, Iran, pretend you just destroyed our oil fields heel and the Rosloff, and we'll say you destroyed it.

10:05Ben Meiselas:We'll voluntarily then just shut it down to create pressure on the United States. Then don't destroy it, but we'll voluntarily shut down our production until the end of the war. And so it seems that they were making a secret deal with Iran. So while Donald Trump was out there flailing and sending his social media posts. Oh, we got a deal. Very good. Deal, deal, deal. All of these forces were working behind the scenes to isolate and freeze out Trump and to squeeze him and squeeze him. They saw in Donald Trump a mark and they squeezed the hell out of him, put the dagger in, put the screws in and started twisting.

10:45Ben Meiselas:When I say they, remember all of these meetings I've been saying that have been happening? This has now all come together, right? France leading a delegation of the European Union, of the UK, of other Southeast Asian nations. Those calls were happening. The U.S. not involved. These Arab nation meetings, one-on-one, two-on-one with Foreign Minister Aragji. The meeting between Foreign Minister Aragji and Xi Jinping in China. All of this was coordinating to squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze Donald Trump and put him in a position where, if Trump didn't make a deal of essentially surrender, the U.S.

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12:59Ben Meiselas:And so as Tara Bloom explains over here, crushing current inventory is 21.6 million barrels, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. that's dangerously close to operational stress levels, the tipping point at which the Cushing struggles to supply all of its customers. So the tanks in Cushing, Oklahoma are hitting bottom. Remember I was saying too that you have all of these oil facilities quite literally hitting tank bottom. Tank bottom doesn't quite literally mean they run out of crude, but it means that it hits a point where all of a sudden the prices of gas will now be$200 per barrel,$250, and you'll be paying$8,$10 per gallon.

13:48Ben Meiselas:We were right on the cusp of that. Iran waited to the last minute. They pulled all of these countries together to kind of put the dagger in. As Ali Ahmadi explains, the assumption I had throughout until recently was not that the entire GCC, the Gulf Coast countries was moving closer to Israel, but that the UAE definitely was. They were in the Abraham Accord, so was Bahrain. The other Arab nations wasn't. UAE seemed drifting toward Israel, even over Saudi objections. Now it seems the regional powers are trying to move back towards Iran, back towards each other, away from Israel. And ironically, in this deal, this is why we have to be very careful of what's about to happen next because obviously Netanyahu hates this deal.

14:36Ben Meiselas:Obviously he hates this deal. So Israel's going to try to make some moves, it seems, to try to blow up this deal as they did before. That's what we need to be paying attention to this weekend. And also, I mean, Pakistan, let me be clear. I think Pakistan did a very good job mediation. And the mediations, ultimately, it was Pakistan and Qatar that I think put this thing over the finish line. But let's not be naive about where Pakistan is in all of this. Pakistan certainly has more of it. I mean, Donald Trump, leave it to Donald Trump to think that Pakistan's like a big Donald Trump fan. I mean, they created a crypto fund to divert crypto money to Donald Trump and said he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize to raise the Pakistani profile at the expense of India during all of this.

15:29Ben Meiselas:Remember when India and Pakistan were in a war and India wouldn't say that Donald Trump should get a Nobel Peace Prize and India denied that Donald Trump had anything to do with the resolution in the India-Pakistan war. And Pakistan said, no, we should give Trump a Nobel Peace Prize and let's give Trump crypto. So Trump's like, I like Pakistan more. That pushed India closer to Russia, helping Russia's war machine against Ukraine, moving India away from the United States, also moving India closer to China after decades and decades of cultivating a better relationship with India. But Pakistan, if we recognize basic foreign policy dynamics, was always going to be closer to the Arab nations, always had a closer brethren relationship with Iran over the United States.

16:12Ben Meiselas:Just go look at the history. That should be obvious. And you have Pakistan feeling that the true global hegemon is China. Remember what Sharif and Munir said about Xi Jinping. They literally said in the past 45 days that China is the new global hegemon that needs to be respected as the global hegemon. and how China is this, this is how they described it, or how Sharif, the prime minister of Pakistan, described as China being this benevolent hegemon replacing the United States. That's basically what he said recently when he had this meeting with China. So you had all of these forces coalescing.

16:52Ben Meiselas:Trump didn't see everything that I described, which is actually five-dimensional chess. Trump's just out there posting on social media, he has Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio. He's got the dumbest people around him, and Trump's one of the dumbest people imaginable too. He's just good at brainwashing people. Don't see any of the dynamics that I've just described. Oh, then you layer in the fact that Canada has been playing this incredible role as this bridge, is this uniting force between trans-Pacific, trans-Atlantic alliances. That's why you see how this all fits together. Canada being invited to the European Union political community meeting in Yerevan, Armenia, also strategically picked because Armenia moving away from the Soviet Union, making a statement there that as Trump moves closer, as Trump moves closer, not closer, as close as you can be to Putin.

17:50Ben Meiselas:They're checkmating them, although Armenia is not going to be in NATO per se, moving really close to basically making a NATO-like statement as Trump was degrading and weakening the capabilities of NATO. And with all of this taking place too, you have Zelensky in Ukraine projecting a more robust strength targeting inside of Moscow, inside of St. Petersburg and successfully launching a counter-offensive as well. And Zelensky helping the Arab nations with technology and with drone interceptors and drones and other technology for modern warfare as the United States security umbrella fell. That brings me to the last piece of this for those who watched Usual Suspects, right?

18:39Ben Meiselas:This is your Kaiser Sose moment, right? Where what happens in the last 24 hours as well? Boom, Prime Minister Carney showing up in France right before a G7 summit, meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, and Macron says the following. Let's play this clip. We see that the international order is fragmented, marked by the return of power dynamics, by challenges to common rules, by economic coercion, by interference and information struggle. And fundamentally, we believe in the rule of law, in the international order, in science, in climate change, and what it implies, in respecting our democratic values, and protecting them, and also in protecting our children.

19:28We have both made this observation, and in the face of this, our two countries share the same conviction. Democracies must be clear-eyed, strong, and capable of acting together. We must strengthen our decision-making autonomy, our economic security, our industrial energy and technological resilience, in a word, our sovereignty. This is by no means a choice of retreat, but a condition for being democracies capable of protecting their citizens and defending their interests. Our bilateral relationship is part of a broader dynamic, that of the strategic rapprochement between Canada and the European continent.

20:07Ben Meiselas:Oh, and you want your final Kaiser Sosse moment right here? Then you have Pope Leo XIV give an incredible speech in Spain, which denied the U.S. rightfully so, as many European countries did airspace and air bases in response to Donald Trump's heinous conduct. And Pope Leo XIV giving this impassioned speech on loving thy neighbor and the importance of immigration and respecting people. Integration does not mean erasing the history of the person who arrives, nor demanding that they leave behind everything that forms part of their memory. Neither does it mean creating parallel worlds closed off from one another where people live side by side without truly meeting.

20:49Ben Meiselas:Integration is a reciprocal journey. The one who arrives learns to inhabit a new land, and the one who receives learns to enlarge their own home without diluting their identity or closing their heart to encounter. powerful words, whether you're religious or not religious. This isn't a religious network where you just respect people who are empathetic and loving and caring. That's the most important thing here. But I think those words are profoundly powerful in my view. Let me know what you think. Hit subscribe. Let's get to 7 million. Thanks for watching.

21:33growing together