By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
The general rule on the battlefield is Bang! Bang! You’re dead!
The general rule of White House and Kremlin politics is Bang! Bang! Maybe you’re dead! Maybe I’m dead! Maybe we’re both alive to fight the next round! Meantime let’s all get richer!
Hors de combat in war means you’re either KIA or too wounded to fight on. In politics, you aren’t KIA if your pockets keep filling up.
In the war which the US is waging in the Middle East to destroy the remaining resistance to its control over the flows of the region’s oil, gas, and money which is led by Iran, President Donald Trump thinks he has won. He has destroyed, he says, twenty years of the Iranian economy, military capacities, and domestic support for the regime, whose leadership he has transformed by killing. “The first group, they’re all dead. The second group, they’re dead. A part of the third group is gone, and we’re dealing with people that I think are very rational people,” Trump said yesterday.
The cost, he thinks, is about to be paid by what Vice President JD Vance calls the “Gulf Coast coalition”. They will pay Teheran reparations for their war losses through a $300 billion fund Trump officials will regulate in exchange for which their shipping out and in to their economies will be released from interception at the Strait of Hormuz and tolls.
Trump will get more protection money than ever before from Qatar, he has just been assured by its ruler, Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani. “We are here to help whenever, you know, um friends ask us to help,” Hamad said – “we’re always here, uh, to help. Of course, also our bilateral relationship, Mr. President, since your historic visit in Doha last year, our, uh, trade partnership is gonna reach $1.2 trillion.”
Trump corrected the Emir on the price. “Qatar is going to be investing much more than $1 trillion in the United States. We have over 18, it’s going to be 19.4 or so when the new figures are out, but, you know, we set a record. There’s never been anything like it…We’ll be having, uh, almost 19.1, $19.2 trillion invested in the United States.”
In a following conversation with Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan (MbZ) of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Trump repeated himself: The UAE, he claimed, has “invested trillions of dollars in the United States. And I was telling them [Qataris] before, in another meeting, that we have over $19 trillion being invested in the United States, which is a record, and it’s building factories, car plants, everything. We’re doing things that have never been done. The record was $3 billion many years ago with a different country, and we’re going to be over $19 trillion…I think we’ll hit $19.3 trillion.”
MbZ has promised to match the al-Thani payment. “It is my pleasure, Mr. President, to be with you here. And I want to say…thank you for your support, your commitment to your friend, to your allies, and especially, thank you for your support during the six war — six-week war.”
“Thank you, my friend,” Trump replied. “See, when you’re that rich, you can speak that lowly [sic]. I was just wondering, can anybody hear that? But when you’re so rich, you have such confidence that you don’t have to do any strain to the voice.”
Trump is right. There’s never been an American extortion and protection scheme as rich as this one in the Middle East. The shakedown dwarfs the Pentagon outlay of $29 billion for the men, munitions and equipment spent on the war against Iran since February 28.
The Trump take also dwarfs the US budget allocation of cash and arms to Israel since the beginning of Gaza war in October 2023 – about $22 billion so far.
Israel’s only mistake, Trump said aloud to the Qatari ruler, was not to capture southern Lebanon and destroy Hezbollah’s men and fortifications as quickly as he, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Trump’s Jewish advisers in Washington told him they were expecting. Asked if he’s disappointed with Netanyahu, Trump said: “we’re talking about, uh, some end details. I didn’t like that he, uh, did an attack based on a, you know, there’s a very minor, uh, little thing with some drones that were released and he ends up doing a very, I saw that attack… I’m not happy with the way Israel has handled themselves with Lebanon and with Hezbollah. They should have been able to do the job faster. It, it just goes on forever. And when that happens, it throws a negative light on the big deal and that’s the deal with Iran. So, so, uh, when you ask me about Bibi, an unbelievable relationship. But Israel would have been blown up a long time ago had I not gotten involved.”
Trump, Vance, and the White House election strategists are also calculating that by opening the Hormuz Strait now – with four and half months still go before the Congressional elections in November – and forcing the oil price downwards, they will cut the Democratic Party’s gains in the House of Representatives to less than 20; and in the Senate to just two. That would preserve Republican Party control of the Senate with a narrower majority than it has had. It would also protect Trump and his family by blocking a two-House vote for either impeachment or removal of Trump on the disability provision of the Constitution.
Trust-in-Trump (TiT) — in the Kremlin’s factional politics, President Vladimir Putin is now risking his party control of the State Duma in the September elections, and his succession for the 2030 election, by sticking to this strategy. TiT is what he and his advisers call the Anchorage Formula. Those advisers want a quick end to the Ukraine war on US and NATO terms, and a sharp cut to the Russian military budget so that it cannot fight the long war which the US, Germany, the UK, and the other Europeans have in mind.
One of the TiT faction is Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina. She is now meeting in Moscow with an Iranian Central Bank delegation led by Abdolnaser Hemmati. He has just been in Qatar negotiating the release of Iranian bank assets frozen on US orders. Hemmati has come to Moscow to work out a scheme for Iranian-Russian fund transfers to preserve and expand the vital military trade between the two armies as they face the same enemies.
Watch closely to see if Nabiullina stonewalls and sabotages Hemmati. Returning from “sick leave” of almost a month, Nabiullina will face the press on Friday (June 19).
To interpret what happens next, click to view or listen to the new podcast with Nima Alkhorshid.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMb2r1TiViA
IRAN CENTRAL BANK TEST FOR NABIULLINA
Left: Russian Central Bank Governor, Elvira Nabiullina; right, Iranian Central Bank Governor, Abdolnaser Hemmati. Reuters report: https://www.reuters.com/world/putin-signals-key-rate-cuts-his-central-banker-is-sick-leave-2026-06-10/
TRUMP ADVERTISES HIS IRAN WAR VICTORY TO US VOTERS BY TWEET
TRUMP ADVERTISES ARAB CONSENT TO PAY HIS PROTECTION FEE
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh7HIn3BbB4 Transcript: https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-remarks-bilat-al-thani-qatar-g7-evian-france-june-16-2026/ Excerpt: Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani: This is our main, uh, target, but looking at the economy and the opportunity, I'm sure they're going to be huge opportunities and, you know, as long as I said, this is a very important momentum to keep, uh, working like that, to reach let's say the final deal. After that, Iran will be, you know, of course, uh, open for, uh, any kind of investment and I'm sure there are going to be huge opportunities… Donald Trump: Well, they're going to need something because we blew them up and, you know, you could make the case, I used to make the case that like a week ago I said, and now it's different, we have an agreement, but if you, if we left, we did a great job. If we just left, we did a great job because it'll take them 15, 20 years maybe to rebuild. And we were going to do a much bigger job if the agreement wasn't signed, we would have taken it to a level. But, and if, if we did that, they would never, ever, I believe, be able to rebuild. Too much…if they had a nuclear weapon, they would have used it on Israel and I hate to say it and probably the rest of the Middle East because they had all those missiles aimed at the Emir, at Saudi Arabia, at UAE, at Kuwait, at Bahrain. I mean, the biggest surprise in this whole thing, I didn't think you guys would, I thought he would aim at Israel, but he didn't aim in Israel much less. He aimed at your countries. And actually that was a mistake for them because it brought us, these countries, in particular the five countries, it brought us, I mean, he even hit Turkey once. I never understood it. I ne- -- nobody's going to understand it. That's the problem. They're totally irrational people and those people are now gone. And I think Iran has rational leadership now.”
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JL9CqG4O10 Transcript: https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-remarks-bilat-al-nahyan-uae-g7-evian-france-june-16-2026/ Excerpt: “Question: Are you considering an increase on sanctions on Russia and whether it's illegal -- Donald Trump: Well, soon we'll be able to do that because the oil is now flowing. So we put -- we took sanctions off because, obviously, we're not looking to impede the oil. So we're in a position to do that soon. Question: Let them lapse and -- Donald Trump: Yeah, at some point.”
CORRELATION BETWEEN OIL PRICE AND US VOTER APPROVAL FOR TRUMP – OIL PRICE FALLS, TRUMP DISAPPROVAL DROPS
Source: https://oilprice.com/oil-price-charts/
Source: https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/donald-trump/approval-rating The peak voter disapproval for Trump was on May 28, when it reached 58.2% and approva,l 39.7%; the negative gap was then minus 18.5 percentage points (pp). As of June 15, disapproval had fallen to 56.1%; the negative gap was minus 15.4pp, a decline of 3.1pp. In this analysis of the November 3 election, the projected outcome is for a Republican-controlled Senate of 51 to 49 (loss of 2) and a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives of 220 (a gain of 8).
Source: https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/republican-primary/2028/national The Republican calculation is that its candidate can defeat another run by Kamala Harris, currently the frontrunner in the Democratic nomination race, and the next in line, California Governor Gavin Newsom. For Vance, this means that to win the presidency in 2028 he must hold the Republican Party together on a peace-and-price platform and persuade the MAGA constituency that Trump is too debilitated himself to attempt a third term and his sons too vulnerable, too corrupt.
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