We Lost More Than This War: Iran Ascendant.
Unf*cking The Republic
UNFTR Media
4.8 • 761 Ratings
🗓️ 21 June 2026
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Trump lost more than the war with Iran. U.S. media tends to look at things through a bilateral or ethnocentric lens of winners and losers. The bigger story is how Trump singlehandedly altered the calculus for multiple nation states, and fundamentally shifted historic alliances. Israel stands to lose the most and is increasingly isolated now that Iran and its proxies are triumphant. But this also has enormous implications for the Gulf States who have to renegotiate their relationship with Tehran. Whether there are any actual payouts in this agreement is icing on Iran’s liquidity cake as entry to market oil prices and flows alone will amount to a huge windfall. In three short months Trump weakened the position of U.S. allies and strengthened Iran and its allies.
Resources
CNBC: Pres. Trump: MOU is not final, if I don’t like agreement we will go back to dropping bombs
AL-MONITOR: Analysis-Gulf recalibrates as Iran emerges intact from war
Al Jazeera: Will a US-Iran deal unlock $300bn in investment fund for Tehran?
Middle East Eye: US-Iran deal leaves Israel isolated and Netanyahu exposed
Brookings: The end of the American way of war?
Media Bias Fact Check: Shafaq News – Bias and Credibility
Shafaq News: Two powers, one grid: The geopolitical siege of Iraq’s economy
Frontline: Qassem Soleimani’s Complex Legacy in Iraq
Alcon Intel: Iran Proxy Network Post-War: Reconstitution & Threat
U.S. EIA: Country Analysis Brief: Iran
Tehran Dispatch: Iran Quietly Expands Oil Sales to Asia, Bypassing Western Sanctions
UNFTR Resources
Video: Trump Weakened U.S. Allies While Strengthening Iran.
Essay: We Lost More Than This War.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the story of a political pundit who looked at the world around him and just said, fuck it. |
| 0:07.7 | Gives the middle finger to authority and says, kiss my ass. |
| 0:11.6 | But instead of a revolution, he started a podcast. |
| 0:15.4 | Just what the world be. |
| 0:17.6 | He started a podcast. |
| 0:19.0 | Another basic white guy who started a podcast. Another basic white guy. |
| 0:21.3 | But it's fun because he curses. |
| 0:25.2 | All through the podcast. |
| 0:26.8 | On the fucking the republic. |
| 0:28.7 | We're his motherfucking podcast. |
| 0:30.3 | Podcast. |
| 0:34.3 | No one has ever accused Donald Trump of being a brilliant or even a competent strategist, |
| 0:44.5 | nor will they ever, not after starting and then losing a costly war to Iran. |
| 0:50.1 | This bilateral perspective, though, is what we're fed through U.S. media channels, so it's a little |
| 0:55.7 | limited and ethnocentric, because the wider implications of this unconditional surrender to Iran |
| 1:01.2 | changes the calculus for a host of nations in the Middle East and beyond, and it may have |
| 1:07.4 | fundamentally altered the balance of power. So, to be clear, the memorandum of understanding, |
| 1:13.7 | in the words of a former U.S. diplomat Aaron David Miller, |
| 1:16.8 | is, quote, a ticket to negotiation. |
| 1:19.9 | So in other words, there's still time to screw this up, |
| 1:22.7 | or, as our dear leader so eloquently said, |
| 1:25.4 | If I don't like it, we'll go back to shooting at them, dropping bombs on their head. |
... |
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