The neocons say Trump has no plan.
Chatham House says you can't do regime change from the air.
Then Iran's new leadership called Washington, and Trump picked up.
The special relationship is cracking open — and the men who ran it are on the chopping block.
Susan Kokinda argues that John Bolton and the foreign policy establishment are alarmed not by U.S. strikes on Iran, but by President Trump’s refusal to commit to a managed regime-change architecture.
She contrasts Bolton, Anne Applebaum, and Chatham House, criticizing a lack of strategy, with Trump telling The Atlantic he has agreed to talk with Tehran, framing this as a break from “The Great Game” geopolitics.
Kokinda says the strikes publicly cracked the U.S.–UK “special relationship,” citing that Britain was informed but not included, Starmer refused U.S. use of British bases, and European leaders issued statements emphasizing non-participation.
She claims Tehran is calling Washington, not London, and links this shift to the arrests of former Prince Andrew and Lord Peter Mandelson, described as key operators connected to Epstein-file allegations.
Chapters
00:00 The Monday Brief - BOLTON SCREAMS: It’s All Over for Them
02:36 The Regime Changers Are Not in the Room
05:10 The Special Relationship Shatters
07:56 The Operative Gets Arrested
Snapshots and Notes
Why would John Bolton, the man who has wanted to bomb Iran for 30 years, suddenly sound the alarm about the president who finally did it?
Politico’s headline read, John Bolton sounds the alarm on Trump’s Iran gamble,
and here’s what Bolton told News Nation…
“We can’t get a completely straight answer from the president what his objective is.
“He says with one set of remarks, it’s regime change.
“And that, by the way, is my preferred objective.
“I’m entirely in favor of it.
“But, then says in other remarks, this could be over within a couple of days.
“If this turns into a one-and-done operation, two, three, four days of strikes, and then President Trump says, ‘OK, opposition, over to you’, there’s not going to be regime change.”
Bolton’s complaint was echoed across the British press and the foreign policy establishment, it’s that the president is not on board with their policy of regime change.
Chatham House, the intellectual arm of the British Foreign Office, chimed in, saying, …
No strategy can be done from the air.
That was the expert consensus over the weekend.
Then on Sunday, President Trump sat down with the Atlantic and said this about the Iranians...
Iran’s new leadership called Washington, not London - and Trump answered.
Now, the left is denouncing the strike.
The neocons are worried Trump won’t manage it correctly.
And everyone is arguing about whether it will succeed, all assuming the same thing about what success means.
What none of them understand is that the president’s policy is a rejection of more than 100 years of geopolitics, what’s known as the Great Game, and key operatives of that Great Game, like former Prince Andrew, are now on the chopping block, and that is not a coincidence.
Susan Kokinda has been tracking how British geopolitics has subverted American foreign policy for over a century - that is, until now.
Today, she is going to show you three things that are actually one…
The end of geopolitics is the thread running through all of this…
The Regime Changers Are Not in the Room (02:36)
Being precise about what Bolton actually said, the Politico reporter asked Bolton,
“Do you think the president and his team have fully considered all the consequences?”
And Bolton said, …
But Bolton’s fear isn’t that Trump acted.
His fear is that Trump might not finish the job on Bolton’s terms, because what he means by strategic thinking is committing the U.S. to a fully managed regime change architecture: transition teams, Western-approved successor networks - in other words, replace one controlled regime with another.
And Trump is not using that playbook.
Here’s what Anne Applebaum, who’s got one of the most severe cases of TDS, wrote in the Atlantic on the same weekend…
Now, apparently, Anne didn’t know her own publication was about to print because the man she said had no plan had already agreed to talk to Tehran.
So one of the flagship journals of the foreign policy establishment ran both pieces in the same weekend.
That tells you everything about the state of expert opinion right now.
Then along came Bronwyn Maddox, the director of Chatham House.
You don’t do regime change from the air.
Chatham House has enthusiastically justified every regime change from Libya, Syria, Iraq to Ukraine, never once worrying about whether it could be done from the air.
Their concern isn’t that regime change will fail - th’s that it’s being done without them, without their opposition networks and their transition governments.
Bolton, Applebaum, and Chatham House are all standing outside the room, and they can’t even find the door.
The old players are gone.
The Bolton regime change architecture doesn’t apply to a leadership that wasn’t part of the old game.
Iran’s new leadership is calling Washington because Washington is the only party that actually changed anything.
The British have played the Great Game in the shadows for more than a hundred years.
Now it’s in the open, and it’s being stymied.
The Special Relationship Shatters (05:10)
Now let’s talk about what the Iran strike did to the so-called special relationship, because this is where over a hundred years of British manipulation of American policy is shattering right out in the open.
When the strikes began on Saturday, Britain’s position was extraordinary - the UK was informed on Friday afternoon, but was not included.
Starmer refused to allow the US to use British bases, including Diego Garcia, or to use Britain itself.
Britain refused not because it developed a conscience about international law, but because it’s no longer running the table.
And the British press admitted that it is the end of the game for the special relationship, with a headline that read, …
And that article pointed out that Starmer appears to have had little influence on Trump, who went ahead regardless.
Now, a Conservative British Channel put it even more bluntly in terms of the damage that’s been done to the special relationship…
Mark Dolan: “What are the implications, Piers Pottinger, for the special relationship in the context of Starmer’s refusal to help?”
Piers: “I don’t know.
Mark: “I don’t think the Americans will forget.”
Piers: “No, I don’t think so. And I think Trump will be, if indeed it’s true that he wanted to use our bases and we didn’t allow him, I think he will not forget that or forgive it.”
But it wasn’t just Britain.
France, Germany, and the UK issued a joint statement clarifying that, first and foremost, they did not participate in the strikes; not a statement of strategy, a statement of absence.
link (paywall) / no archive avaiiable
And the best the European Union could manage was Ursula von der Leyen sending a message to the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.
And here’s what she said...
The responses to this on X were brutal.
One commentator appropriately rephrased it, quote,
In other words, Trump won’t take my call, and we have no clue what’s going on.
That’s exactly right.
And the Statesman drilled down on the same point.
So the special relationship is cracking in public.
When Tehran calls, it calls Washington, not London.
And the question worth asking is, how did that special relationship actually work?
Not the photo ops and the state visits, what was the real mechanism?
Part of the answer is former Prince Andrew.
The Operative Gets Arrested (07:56)
Let’s go back to 2008, when the British were still happily directing American foreign policy.
Andrew, then Britain’s special representative for international trade, sat down in Kyrgyzstan with a roomful of businessmen, government officials, and the American ambassador.
The American ambassador wrote it all down in a cable, later published by WikiLeaks.
And she told people that, with astonishing frankness, Andrew told the room the following…
He wasn’t being metaphorical.
He was describing it to an American diplomat on the record, the actual operating framework of British foreign policy, not the public version dressed up in democracy and human rights, but the real version in his official capacity as Britain’s trade representative.
Now Andrew’s been arrested, the first royal arrest in centuries, on suspicion of misconduct in public office.
The Epstein files contain evidence that he was passing confidential trade reports to Epstein’s networks.
So the man who bragged about winning the Great Game was running British strategic intelligence through Jeffrey Epstein.
That is not a personal scandal - that is the operating method of the imperial apparatus now on public record.
And shortly after Andrew’s arrest, Lord Peter Mandelson, who had been appointed by Starmer as Britain’s ambassador to Washington, was arrested, sent to manage the special relationship at the very moment Trump came in for his second term.
The Epstein files show that Mandelson was passing advanced knowledge of British financial policy into the same networks.
So the geopolitical operative and the financial operative, both out on bail, arrested, both exposed at the same moment, the apparatus itself is being dismantled.
The Iran strike ended the special relationship, and it’s out in the open.
Britain is sidelined.
Europe is issuing statements of absence.
Tehran is calling Washington.
And simultaneously, the men who ran the real special relationship,
Andrew, running the geopolitical side, and Mandelson, running the financial intelligence, are on the chopping block, taken off the board together.
This is not a coincidence.
This is the end of geopolitics.
Now, ending an entrenched system is not easy and is dangerous.
Which is why you have to stay focused and on the stage of history.
Join Promethean Action so that we can see this through to the end.
