Who is behind the West's Iran policy?
Key Markets report for Tues, 30 June 2026
Over the past few years, I came to the conclusion that Great Britain was world’s chief arsonist of peace and suggested that if, the City of London, with its supporting structures in British government, banking, intelligence, secret diplomacy, along with a vast network of think tanks, media organizations, NGOs, charitable organizations and gambling casinos around the world could somehow be quarantined, probably 95% of all the world’s wars and other problems would vanish overnight.
The “Russiagate” tell
This may sound like an exaggeration, because this parasitic structure perfected the art of making itself nearly invisible. A good example was the Russiagate scandal from President Trump’s first term. When Hillary Clinton, supported by Lynn Forrester de Rothschild, lost the presidential election to Donald Trump, his legitimacy was immediately attacked with insinuations that he was Vladimir Putin’s puppet. Apart from members of the Democratic National Congress, pretty much all the key protagonists of the affair were British intelligence assets: Christopher Steele (former MI6 agent and author of the Russiagate dossier), Sir Richard Dearlove (his “former” boss and former head of MI6), Stefan Halper, Joseph Mifsud, Alexander Downer, and Fiona Hill.
This was fairly obvious, and the average normie might expect Western free and independent media to be all over this story, outing the British as co-conspirators in undermining the Trump presidency. But hardly anyone covered the story at all, and the only network that did cover it, the Rupert Murdoch-owned FOX News, scrupulously avoided connecting the glaringly obvious dots. The lead reporter on Russiagate was Sean Hannity whose daily talking point was, “Russian lies, Russian disinformation, and a dossier concocted by foreign nationals,” as though he was forbidden from specifying that those foreign nationals were, in fact, British.
Most Americans heard, “Russia, Russia, Russia,” daily, but not a peep about Great Britain, suggesting that its role was being deliberately concealed from the American public.
The Iran policy
Fast forward to today and we are faced with Donald Trump’s inexplicable obsession with Iran. This obsession truly is hard to explain and many people accept the idea that he was dragged into it by Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli supporters in his government and among his political donors. Not only is that relationship not being concealed, Trump, his State Secretary Marco Rubio and another few government officials said it explicitly.
The United States plays a very visible role, Netanyahu’s badness and Trump’s zealous devotion to Israel are part of the commonly shared perceptions, but again, nobody mentions the Perfidious Albion. First off, we should remember that in the summer of 2019, Trump came under intense pressure to attack Iran. This initiative was driven and coordinated by the British Embassy in Washington, but almost no mainstream media reported on that.
Today, it may seem that the current confrontation with Iran is all driven by Israel, and by an inner core of arch-Zionists in Trump’s government. But the strategy of confronting Iran long predates the war, Trump’s second term, “October 7,” Trump’s first term, for that matter, and even the Global War on Terra (GWOT). For example, on 7 October 2024 (thus, anniversary of October 7 and before Trump’s election for his second term), Chatham House published an article by Sir John Jenkins titled, Lasting Israel–Palestine peace will not be possible without a new policy to neutralize the Iranian threat.”
Sir John’s article was based on a more extensive policy paper published by The Policy Exchange on 17 July 2023 (thus, before “October 7”), titled “The Iran Question and British Strategy.” Both documents spell out much of what we are observing in the region today and the 2023 document even explains the broader framework behind the need to take down Iran: it is an obstacle for Britain’s “Indo-Pacific Tilt.” In its foreword, the paper says that, “Iran’s increasingly appalling human rights record, accelerating nuclear programme, sponsorship of proxies throughout the Middle East, extensive assistance to Russia in its brutal war on Ukraine, and sponsorship of terrorism and kidnapping makes it an obvious threat to international stability.”
The authors shed some light on Britain’s disproportionate power, given its minuscule military and disintegrating economy: “The UK’s diplomatic and military toolkit allow it to make a difference in the Middle East. For historic and strategic regions, the UK has deep and longstanding relationships with almost every country in the Middle East. This fact, alongside its UN Security Council membership and military capacity, give it the ability to have an outsized influence on the course of Middle East affairs.”
The US must do this, and it must do that…
Sir John Jenkins’ prose is unapologetic about how, exactly, Britain’s foreign policy objectives in the Middle East are to be attained. It amounts to a lot of, the US must do this and it must do that… For example:
“Above all, the US and its partners must keep close to Israel and provide iron-clad long-term security guarantees. That has to mean helping Israel neutralize Hezbollah and Hamas - and also the Houthis, who cannot be allowed to become a Hezbollah of the South. … In the military sphere, groups like Shia paramilitaries in Iraq and the Houthis must be hit hard every time they attack US and other targets.”
It may be hard to argue that somehow, the UK formulated the policy for the Trump administration to carry out, or that Trump adopted British policy as America’s own. However, Britain’s strange obsession with projecting power, dominating Eurasian landmass and the Middle East with it, and prescribing what the US should do there and in other regions. It’s also strange that there’s essentially little divergence between the geopolitical strategies drafted by the Chatham House, which is very close to London’s Foreign Office and the MI6, and the policies that end up pursued by the United States.
Back in 2019, when British Ambassador in Washington, Sir Kim Darroch orchestrated a pressure campaign to push President Trump to attack Iran, he suggested that Trump could, ultimately, be maneuvered to attack Iran and that it would be a matter of surrounding him with “Trump whisperers,” who could “flood the zone” around the President. At the time, Darroch wrote that “we have spent years building the relationships [with certain individuals]; they are the gatekeepers… the individuals we rely upon to ensure the U.K. voice is heard in the West Wing.”
A Washington Post assessment of July 8th 2019 described Darroch’s “coterie-including Kellyanne Conway, Stephen Miller, Mick Mulvaney, Sarah Sanders and Trump ally Chris Ruddy” who have met at the British embassy and “share about the President and his decision-making.” In the present administration, a different group of people have been assembled, including Marco Rubio, Susie Wiles, Jared Kushner, Steve Wytkoff, and still, the ever-present Stephen Miller. These dots connect in a way that’s compelling and any crime-scene investigator would have to take them seriously. We are certainly dealing with a conspiracy: the current policy are not what the American people asked for, and they are not what Trump promised them. They’re something else altogether and there has got to be an explanation (and it’s not incompetence).
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