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.
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.